Leal glanced around the austere office, idly wondering if this wasn't a more dangerous gambit than taking her message to the Guard. If so, it was far too late for second choices.
She and Antaea had argued long and hard about this choice; oddly, it was Piero Harper who had been the deciding factor. "Hayden's from Aerie," he'd pointed out, "and we left him trapped on the plains of Aethyr. He's Aerie's native son, our hero. Take us to the new Aerie government, they'll fall all over themselves to get him back."
They might, she'd agreed; yet Aerie's government was still a government-in-exile, located in the city of Rush while they awaited the shakedown of Aerie's new sun. All power in the region still rested with Slipstream. It was Slipstream that had the navy, Slipstream the disciplined intelligence network, the money and resources to mount a rescue effort. And more: it was Slipstream that had the international clout to make agreements and alliances stick, right now.
"We're taking our message to Slipstream," she had insisted.
This little office was not in the palace wheel. That vast edifice was visible outside the window to the secretary's left. Currently, the fireworks there were causing banging echoes to rebound throughout the city. The Torn Page of Fate was arrowing for the border as Sarto had promised, but most of Piero Harper's men had gone straight from the docks to the independence ceremony--and part of her longed to be there, too, writing it all down, as it was indeed a historic day.
She would have to content herself with simply saying that she was here for it--later, when she wrote her memoirs. The rebirth of a nation and the division of two peoples like the fissioning of a cell would have to be footnotes to a chapter dealing with this smaller place; this room, and the meeting that was about to start.
The secretary went into the inner office and could be heard speaking to someone. Beside Leal, Antaea cleared her throat and shifted from foot to foot. She half-wished that Jacoby Sarto had come with them, because without even opening his mouth, he had a way of attracting attention and deference like a magnet. The doormen and lackeys who'd only reluctantly let Leal's party through would have leaped to their feet when they saw him coming, even though they had no idea who he was. He simply looked important. It still seemed odd that he'd fled from the wrath of Venera Fanning.
The secretary slid around the door to the inner office and quickly shut it behind himself. "The admiral has appointments today," he said in an arch tone. "He's aware of your petition, and will contact you at your hotel," he glanced down at the paper Leal had given him, "when you actually have one."
Leal felt her stomach flip over in an old familiar way: she was being shunted aside again. The feeling lasted for just a second, and then she laughed.
"What are the odds," she said to Antaea, "that Admiral Chaison Fanning would put off seeing you?"
She turned to the secretary. "All right," she said with a nod. He went to sit down, and as soon as he'd rounded his desk, she stalked over to the inner door and yanked it open. "Hey!" he shouted as Leal walked through.
The old man wobbling on a rolling ladder next to the bookcase said "Oh my goodness!" and would have fallen had she not steadied him. He blinked at her over oval pince-nez glasses, then smiled. "What can we do for you, my dear?"
"I'm looking for the..." Leal forgot the rest of the sentence as she saw the state of the small room. If it even was a small room--it seemed perfectly possible that architecturally, the place was much larger, but had become the repository of so many books, charts, and blueprint tubes that its original walls were hidden, perhaps yards behind the new facades of paper. There was one desk, mounded with paper and parchment with one tiny clear corner (this open space obviously made possible by the growing pile on the floor beside the desk).
It was breathtaking.
"A-Admiral Chaison Fanning?" Leal asked the old man. He laughed.
"Oh my heavens, no." He put a finger to his lips. "I'm not even supposed to be here." He turned and finished jamming a book into the bookshelf--a futile gesture considering that the tomes themselves had become shelves for volumes resting atop them, squeezed in around them, and even (in some cases) hanging off the shelf by opened covers pinned under them.
"Please leave!" the secretary was saying. "Do you know where you are? I can have a dozen naval officers in here in a minute and simply have you thrown off the wheel."
"No doubt," Antaea said dryly.
"Have you seen the admiral?" Leal asked the old man brightly.
He waved at another wall, and after some peering Leal realized there was a door there, half-hidden behind some hanging charts.
"Now don't you tell him I'm in here," he said as Leal picked her way through the maze of books. "Just, sometimes, I have to tidy up a bit."
She put her hand on the half-hidden doorknob, paused, looked back, and asked, "Does he ever notice?"
"All right, I'm calling security," said the secretary, and Leal pushed through this door, too, with her companions behind her. She found herself in a long, wood-paneled hallway with infrequent doors leading off it. Starting to feel a bit ridiculous, she hurried down it.
"Ah!" That had been a woman's voice. Leal stopped.
"Heh heh," chuckled a man. The voices were coming from behind one of the doors. He seemed to be panting, she thought--laboring at something.
Her voice: "Huh-huh-huh-huh!"
He growled in response.
Leal crossed her arms and looked back at Antaea, who suddenly seemed profoundly embarrassed. "Maybe we should come back," said the former Home Guard extraction expert.
Leal thought about everything she'd gone through to reach this spot. "No," she said. She rapped loudly on the door and opened it.
The chamber was large, brightly lit by tall windows, and floored in golden lacquered wood; it looked like a dance floor except that large geometric shapes had been painted on it.
A man and a woman circled each other in the center of the room. He was compact and wiry, with a face that, while somewhat weather-beaten, still managed to convey the mild impression of a civil servant or clerk. He wore naval dress clothes, without the jacket. The woman had raven-colored hair and pale skin, and was dressed in courtly silks that were entirely inappropriate for what she was doing.
"That's a yellow card," the man was saying. "This is sabre: there is a right of way."
She sneered at him. "Advance!" he snapped, and raised his sword.
She seemed to begin a lunge but instead stamped one foot on the floor loudly; he'd twitched, starting a defensive move, and now she skipped in place and then hopped forward. She sent a vicious cut at his head and he dropped onto his hand while his sword arm shot out, placing his blade right at her sternum.
"Appel!" he said as he straightened up.
"--And passata-sotto," added Antaea, clapping slowly. "Nicely done."
The woman snarled in frustration and turned. "Who--" She stopped, gaping at Antaea. Simultaneously, the man noticed the women and almost fumbled his own blade.
"You!" they said as one.
Antaea nodded coolly. "Chaison."
At that moment there was a clattering at the door as six or eight soldiers made their presence known. "Admiral," came the secretary's voice from somewhere behind them, "they barged past me before I could stop them--"
"It's all right, Idosh," Chaison Fanning called out. "They're friends."
As the soldiers backed away, he turned to the visitors and crossed his arms. Venera Fanning came to stand beside him, looking Antaea Argyre up and down as she did. "Ah, Chaison, it's your little friend from before. Antaea, isn't it?" Antaea's momentary cockiness had vanished; now she just nodded guardedly, and Venera gave her another once-over. "I must say, I like your clothes. Where did you get those flying leathers?"