Lady Trani turned from the screen to where Sula sat, in the office of the Home Fleet commander with its huge curved glass window.
“I believe I’ll take that salute now, Lady Sula,” Trani said.
“Yes, my lady.” With grave deliberation Sula rose from her desk and braced.
“Thank you very much,” Trani said. She ambled across the office to join Sula behind her desk. She looked through the great curved window at the morning light shining over the Lower Town, the kingdom she had just conquered without firing so much as a shot.
“I’ll need your access codes,” she said. “I trust you will remain on hand for the duration of the transition, after which I will find you a posting suitable to your station. And of course I’ll recommend you for a nice decoration for all you’ve done here.”
Sula tried not to show the savage amusement she felt. No doubt Trani was trying to be kind.
“Thank you, my lady,” she said.
She’d had nearly fifteen hours to make herself ready for this moment.
Lady Trani looked down at the desk. “I’ll also need to meet with your council, or cabinet, or whatever they’re called.”
“I don’t believe they have a name,” Sula said. “But I’ll call them.”
“No,” Lady Trani said firmly. “I’llcall them. If you’ll provide me with contact information.”
“Very well.”
Sula had to admire Lady Trani’s composure. She knew so very clearly what she wanted, what was proper, and what was her due.
Whether anyone else could be brought to agree with her was another problem.
“I’ve been reviewing the communications between the governor’s office and Supreme Commander Tork,” Lady Trani told the meeting later. “The Supreme Commander has several areas of concern.
“First, the matter of punishments. We simply haven’t been killing enough traitors. It’s my understanding,” she said, turning to Sula, “that we have something like a thousand prisoners?”
“They’re being debriefed,” Sula explained. “Once the interrogators are done with them—”
“Lord Tork said just to kill them,” Trani said. “It seems to me that we could do it all at once, with machine guns.”
“The penalty for treason,” Sula reminded, “is to be thrown from a height.”
“Blast. I forgot.” A shiver of annoyance crossed Trani’s furry face. “Well, can’t we machine-gun them first, then chuck them?”
The governing council gazed at her from their places. They used the room in the Commandery, all subdued lighting and polished wood, that had been used by the Fleet Control Board before the evacuation. Overhead glowed a wormhole map of the empire, Zanshaa a burning red jewel with its eight wormhole gates. The council sat at a U-shaped table, with the new lady governor at its center.
“The High City lacks the necessary open spaces for a mass execution in that style,” Sula said. “Besides, the custom is for the victim to be alive when he’s tipped over the side.”
“Blast,” Trani said. “Well, see that it’s done as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, my lady,” Sula said.
Her reluctance to kill the Naxid prisoners had nothing to do with compassion. They had killed tens of thousands, and she wished them nothing but years of torment. She just didn’t want them to die until their last brain cell had been stripped of any useful content.
Lady Trani paused to light a cigarette, which she placed in a holder that clipped to one of her fangs, allowing her to talk and smoke without using her hands. Sula wondered idly if the cigarette was one that, at some point, she’d had in one of her warehouses.
Trani looked at the others. “Smoke if you please, my lor—I mean, ladies and gentlemen.”
Julien reached in a pocket for a cigarette. Sergius, seated next to him, stared expressionlessly at the lady governor, his thoughts well hidden behind his dead eyes.
“Another item,” Lady Trani said, “concerns the matter of awards and decorations. I shall personally review any recommendations to make certain they are appropriate.
“And the third,” she said, looking up, “concerns the matter of amnesties promised by Lady Sula for offenses committed prior to the war. I will review these on a case-by-case basis. The Supreme Commander sees no reason why doing one’s duty in fighting the enemy should excuse criminal activity in the past.”
Julien snickered behind his cloud of cigarette smoke. Sergius Bakshi maintained his expressionless stare. Sula gave a cough as a whiff of tobacco hit the back of her throat.
“Lady Commissioner…” Lady Trani spoke to the senior police officer present. “I would appreciate your assistance in locating police files.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Julien snickered again. The Lai-own commissioner was a friend of the Bakshis, and had a long, financially profitable relationship with them. It was likely that quite a number of files would turn up missing.
Trani received reports on antimatter and power supplies, on economic and security matters. Sula made notes on the data screen set into the table in front of her.
Certain of the notes were sent to a desk at the Ministry of Wisdom. While Lady Trani received the reports of the council, the ministry broadcast the news of Sula’s supercession, along with capsule biographies of Sula and the new lady governor. It was made clear that Trani had spent the Naxid occupation in hiding.
It also mentioned that amnesties were being questioned, and that the army was going to have its medals taken away by someone who had spent the war skulking in Kaidabal.
Nothing could have served to make the new governor less popular with her citizens.
That would be a useful lesson, Sula thought. If she had the time and energy, she could teach Lady Trani quite a lot with lessons like these, and very possibly Trani would find herself seeing Sula’s point of view.
But she didn’t have the time, and she certainly didn’t have the energy. The lesson, therefore, would have to be for the benefit of someone else.
As the meeting broke up, Sula found herself walking next to Julien. “You’ll take care of this, won’t you?” she said.
Julien gave her a cold little smile. “Leave it to me,” he said.
“My lord,” Sula sent to Tork, “your new governor lasted all of two days before she got herself killed in a riot. Exactly what happened is a little vague at this point, but it appears that during the course of a public address, she saw fit to threaten the crowd—told them that if any of them had ever cooperated with Naxids, they were going to be punished. It was the wrong sort of crowd to threaten, I’m afraid.”
She looked into the camera pickup and suppressed her instinct to shrug.
“I will of course launch a thorough investigation. The official video record of the proceedings seems to have been destroyed, but maybe something will turn up.”
She had returned to the office of the commander of the Home Fleet, with its magnificent view of the Lower Town. Techs were in the process of changing the passwords to all the computer files. Theju yao pot was back in its place on her desk.
“I have been reviewing your correspondence with Lady Trani,” Sula said, “and I have come to agree with you that the task of military governor is unsuitable to someone with the permanent rank of lieutenant.”
She couldn’t quite hide the smile that she felt twitching at the corners of her mouth.
“I believe I should like to be promoted Captain, at least,” she said. “I’m going to need all the advantages of rank in dealing with this situation. The people here have overthrown two governments that didn’t suit them, and I don’t want them to get into the habit.”
Not unless it suitsmeas well, she thought.
After concluding her message, with the little threat at the tail like the sting of a scorpion, Sula reached for the cup of tea that waited on the desk and turned her swivel chair to view the Lower Town below. The scent of cardamom rose from the tea, and she’d sweetened it with condensed milk, just as she liked it.