The clerk’s muzzle dropped open in shock. “My lady. We can do that for you.”
“No, you can’t. I can’t allow you to know their names. It’s a military secret.”
“But my lady—”
“You know,” Sula said, “I could save a lot of money for the administration just by shutting this place down. It’s not like any Peers have been getting married lately.”
There was a scurrying for overcoats and hats, and the clerks fled into the slate-gray winter day. Sula locked the front door and sat at the control station. After a pause to savor the moment, she deleted all Caro Sula’s ancestors going back some 3,500 years, replaced them all with herself, then shut down the terminal.
She did the same for the backup.
Perhaps, she thought, that would finally put Caro to rest.
Sula and Lord Eldey developed a cordial relationship in the days that followed their first exchange. He confirmed all her appointments, her amnesties, and recommended to the Fleet Control Board that they confirm the awards she had given to the army. She told him of the shortages Zanshaa was experiencing in antimatter for power generation, and he told her that the shortage had been anticipated and shipments of antihydrogen were on the way. She told him of the various conflicts that were appearing between loyalist factions that had stepped into power in various cities, and Eldey offered suggestions for handling them.
“I have to compliment you on your firmness in dealing with the Naxids in charge of the food ration,” he added. “But you might have accomplished your task much easier by announcing a stiff tax on food, to go into effect in, say, six months.”
Sula grinned. There reallywas a macroeconomic solution to the problem.
“What truly surprises me is the Naxids,” Sula said. “They’ve been very quiet and cooperative, even the captives. I understand that the prisoners may be cooperating so we won’t go after their relatives, but there’s no way to tell if there’s some Naxid out there working from my playbook, and that any day we’re going to start seeing assassinations and bombings.”
The answer, when it arrived a day later, startled her.
“I think that after their defeat, the Naxids will become good and loyal citizens,” Eldey said. “When the revolt first happened, I couldn’t understand it—why would some of the most prominent people in the empire, Peers who already held vast amounts of wealth and power, risk so much?”
He bobbed his venerable head. “I think the Naxids’ revolt should be read through their species psychology—they are pack animals, and will follow a clear leader. The Shaa were the head of the pack that was the empire, and when their replacement was a committee of equals, it must have made the Naxids uneasy. The situation was too ambiguous. They couldn’t be certain where they stood in relation to all the other members of the pack.
“When the war is over, and it’s clear that the Naxids have been thoroughly beaten and are driven to the absolute bottom of our society, I think they will be content with that. Once they know for certain where they are in the hierarchy, they will be happier than they would be otherwise. They will excel in their particular niche.”
Sula considered this through a haze of surprise, and decided that though the theory was interesting, she’d better continue to be ready for a Naxid counterattack. This thought occupied her sufficiently that Eldey’s next statement caught her unprepared.
“What we should perhaps begin to concern ourselves with,” he said gently, “is sending the army back to their normal lives. I will welcome your suggestions.”
Well, Sula thought, that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? Her own position on Zanshaa depended on the army, and the army was small, imperfectly trained and equipped, and already longing for their own beds. Someone like Lady Trani, a latecomer of little understanding and deserving no respect, could be dealt with. Tork, confined to running circles around the Zanshaa system and unable to unleash his formidable weaponry on his own capital, could be kept at arm’s length.
Lord Eldey, intelligent and credible and with the authority of the Convocation and the empire behind him, was something else. Once he landed, Sula realized she became not simply redundant, but a potential embarrassment. What exactly could she do, in command of an army that was no longer needed? If she rebelled, who would it be against?
For a moment she entertained the thought of returning to her underground life and becoming Bandit Queen of Zanshaa, but common sense reasserted itself before she developed this fantasy very far. It was a role without a future, and it could only bring jeopardy to people she cared about.
There were many roles available to her now, but the only plausible one was that of Captain Sula, a high-ranking Peer of the empire. At least she’d wangled command rank out of Tork—it would have been difficult to be reduced in rank to Lieutenant after so absolutely ruling an entire planet.
Besides, the only thing she was absolutely good at—besides being unlucky with men—was killing things.
Time to threaten Tork again, she thought.
She sent the message in text rather than video because she didn’t want Tork to see the smirk on her face:
Lord Commander, I am pleased to report to your excellency that within a few days I will welcome Lord Eldey to his new posting in Zanshaa High City. As my presence in the city afterward may prove at best a distraction and at worst a focus of discontent, I should like to request an immediate posting. As I desire nothing so much as to once more lead loyal citizens into action against the Naxids, I request command of a warship in the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance.
It wasn’t quiteGive me a job or we’ll have civil war, but it would do.
She copied the message to Eldey and to the Fleet Control Board, and made certain this was plainly indicated on the message before she ordered it coded and sent. That way Tork couldn’t order her to a remote posting on Harzapid or into the Hone Reach without the others noticing.
What remained now, alas, was to tell the army.
She told her friends first, in a dinner in the eight-hundred-year-old New Bridge restaurant. She had once been part of a drunken celebration there, rejoicing at Jeremy Foote’s promotion to lieutenant, and had topped her evening by threatening to set one of Foote’s friends on fire.
The current setting was a lot more sedate. She had rented one of the private dining rooms upstairs, with ancient roof-beams of a deep amber gold, a fireplace of soot-scarred red brick, and a balcony with a wrought-iron rail topped by polished bronze. Thick snowflakes, so heavy and majestic they might have been created by a firm specializing in high-quality atmospheric effects, fell in silent grandeur outside, building a rich, cold carpet on the balcony.
Logs crackled and roared in the fireplace. An antique spring-loaded mechanism, with chains and cogs of black iron, roasted a Hone-bar phoenix on the slowly rotating spit. The odors of cooking filled the room. Patel and Julien drank hot toddies from a punch bowl placed on a heavy wooden table, and Sula had tea sweetened with cane sugar.
“I should make the rounds of the guard posts before I turn in,” Julien said. “A night like this, the guards are probably all hiding indoors.”
Sula smiled. Julien was turning into a martinet, and his newfound rigor saved her a good deal of disciplinary work.
“Eldey,” Sula said, “suggested we should begin to think about disbanding the army.”
Julien gave a contemptuous laugh. “What does Eldey have to say about it? He’s one of those that ran and left us here with the Naxids.”
Patel, however, was looking carefully at Sula. “You’re going to do it,” he said. “Aren’t you, princess?”
“Yes. I’ve requested a posting with the Fleet.” And to Julien’s shocked look, she said, “Once they’re back—the real government—we become a danger to them. And we can’t beat them.”