"Do you still think I'm a provocateur?"
He grinned and shook his head. "The police under the Naxids don't have to bother with evidence anymore. Provocateurs are looking for work like everyone else."
"Yes," Sula said.
He blinked. "Yes what?"
"Yes. You can see me."
His grin broadened. He had even teeth, brilliantly white. His dentist was to be congratulated.
"I'll give you my comm code. Set your display to receive."
They activated their sleeve displays, and Sula broadcast her electronic address. It was one she'd created strictly for this meeting, along with another of what were proving to be a dizzying series of false identities.
"See you then." Sula walked for the door, then stopped. "By the way," she said. "I'm also in the delivery business. If you need something moved from one place to another, let me know." She permitted herself a smile. "We have very good documents," she said. "We can move things wherever you need them."
She left, then, before glee got the better of her.
Once outside on the hot, dark streets, she used evasion procedures to make certain she wasn't followed home.
Casimir called after midnight. Sula groped her way from her bed to where she'd hung her blouse and told the sleeve to answer.
The chameleon fabric showed Casimir with a slapdash grin pasted to his face. There was blaring music in the background and the sound of laughter.
"Hey Gredel!" he said. "Come have some fun!"
Sula swiped sleep from her eyes. "I'm asleep. Call me tomorrow."
"Wake up! It's still early!"
"I work for a living! Call me tomorrow!"
As she told the sleeve to end her transmission and made her way back to the bed, she decided that she'd done a good job setting the hook.
The next day she had deliveries in the High City, the cocoa and tobacco and coffee that Sula had spent her modest fortune acquiring when she found out that Zanshaa's ring was going to be destroyed, and that there wouldn't be imports of anything for a long time. At each stop she talked to business owners and employees, a task which came under the heading of "intelligence gathering" even though there was no one left to report the intelligence to – all her superiors had been captured and tortured to death, their torments broadcast live to the planet as a lesson to anyone tempted by the idea of loyalty to the old regime. Sula survived by way of bombing her own apartment as the Naxid police crashed down the door, and then used her back door into the Records Office computer to give herself and her team clean identities.
Sula returned to her apartment weary and sweat-stained. Gredel's comm unit showed that Casimir had logged three calls asking her out for the night. She took a long, delicious bath in lilac-scented water while considering an answer, then picked up the comm, turned off the camera button that would transmit her image, then returned the last call.
"Why not?" she said at the sullen face that answered. "Unless you've made other plans, of course."
The sulky look vanished as Casimir peered into his sleeve display in failed search for an image. "Is this Gredel?" he asked. "Why can't I see you?"
"I'm in the tub."
A sly look crossed his features. "I could use a wash myself. How about I join you?"
"I'll meet you at the club," Sula said. "Just tell me what time."
He told her. Sula would have time to luxuriate in her bath for a while longer and then to nap for a couple of hours before joining him.
"How should I dress?" Sula asked.
"What you're wearing now is fine."
"Ha ha. Will I be all right in the sort of thing I wore last night?"
"Yes. That'll do."
"See you then."
She ended the call, then ordered the hot water tap to open. The bathroom audio pickup wasn't reliable and she had to lean forward to open the tap manually. As the hot water raced from the tap and the steam rose, she sank into the tub and closed her eyes. She allowed herself to slowly relax, to let the scent of lilacs rise in her senses.
The day had started well. She thought it would only get better.
Sula adjusted her jacket as she gazed out the window of the apartment she shared with Macnamara and Spence, the two members of her team. Because of electricity shortages, only every third street lamp was lit. Most businesses were closed, and those remaining open had turned off their signs. The last of the street vendors were closing their stalls or driving away in their little three-wheeled vehicles with their business packed on the back. The near-blackout imposed by the Naxids – not to mention the hostage-taking, and the roundups that took place in public areas – had severely impacted their business, and there weren't enough people on the streets after dark to keep them at their work.
"I should be with you," Macnamara argued. He was a tall young man, a bushy-haired recruit who had been the star of the Fleet's combat course. He was from a mountain village on a backwater planet, and war was his way of seeing the worlds.
"You should be with me on a date?" Sula laughed.
Macnamara pushed out his lips like a pouting child. "You know what he is, my lady," he said. "It's not safe."
Sula fluffed her black-dyed hair with her fingers. "He's a necessary evil. I know how to deal with him."
Macnamara made a scornful sound in his throat. Sula looked at Spence, who sat on the sofa and was doing her best to look as if she weren't hearing this.
Shawna Spence was a petty officer and an engineer and good at things like bombs, though her chief contribution to the war effort so far was to blow up her own apartment.
"Can it, Macnamara," she said.
Macnamara ignored her and spoke to Sula. "He's a criminal. He may be a killer for all you know."
_He probably hasn't killed nearly as many people as I have_, Sula thought_. _She remembered five Naxid ships turning to sheets of brilliant white eye-piercing light at Magaria.
She turned from the window and faced him. "Say that you want to start a business," she said, "and you don't have the money. What do you do?"
Macnamara's face filled with suspicion, as if he knew Sula was luring him into a trap. "Go to my clan head," he said.
"And if your clan head won't help you?" Sula asked.
"I go to someone in his patron clan," Macnamara said. "A Peer or somebody."
Sula nodded. "What if the Peer's nephew is engaged in the same business and doesn't want the competition?"
Macnamara made the pouting face again. "I wouldn't go to Casimir, that's for sure."
"Maybe you wouldn't. But a lot of people do go to people like Casimir, and they get their business started, and Casimir offers protection against retaliation by the Peer's nephew and his clan. And in return Casimir gets fifty or a hundred percent interest on his money and a client who will maybe do him other favors."
Macnamara looked as if he'd bitten into a lemon. "And if they don't pay the hundred percent interest they get killed."
Sula considered this. "Probably not," she judged, "unless they try to cheat Casimir in some way. Most likely Casimir just takes over the business and every minim of assets and hands the business over to another client to run, leaving the borrower on the streets and loaded with debt." As Macnamara looked about to protest again, Sula held out her hands. "I'm not saying he's a pillar of virtue. He's in it for the money and the power. He hurts people, I'm sure. But in a system like ours, where the Peers have all the money and all the law on their side, people like the Riverside Clique are necessary."
"I don't get it," Macnamara said. "You're a Peer yourself, but you talk against the Peers."
"Oh." She shrugged. "There are Peers who make Casimir look like a blundering amateur."
_The late Lord and Lady Sula, for two._
She told the video wall to turn on its camera and examined herself in its screen. She put on the crumpled velvet hat and adjusted it to the proper angle.