It was going to be a working day, not a celebration, and she wasn’t going to waste time on busywork after all.
Heris approached the Rotterdam Station cautiously. She still didn’t think this was where Lady Cecelia had been taken, but just in case she didn’t want to blunder into any R.S.S. or law enforcement scrutiny. Oblo insisted that Sweet Delight’s latest identity would hold up to anyone’s checking, but she preferred not to test it if possible.
The Station itself had a scuffed old clunker of a freighter nuzzled into one docking station, and two small chartered passenger vessels spaced around the ring from it. The Stationmaster, who ran Traffic Control herself during mainshift, told Heris to dock four slots down from the freighter.
“That charter’s a bunch of high-powered lawyers,” she told Heris, while explaining which coupling protocol they used—Rotterdam Station had no tugs. “Couldn’t come on the same ship—not them. Ridiculous! Bet it comes out of our taxes, some way.”
Two ships full of lawyers? Heris suspected they’d found Cecelia, and so had someone else. Several someones else.
“And now you. We haven’t seen so much unexpected traffic in years. I don’t suppose you want to declare your business?”
“Bloodstock,” said Heris, inspired. After all, Cecelia was supposed to have had a training farm. “We hauled something for Lord Thornbuckle last year—” His children, when Cecelia was aboard, but the Stationmaster didn’t need to know that.
“Ah. You’re horse people?”
“Well . . . I’d hate to claim that; I’ve got no land of my own. I ride, of course.”
“Over fences?”
“To hounds,” Heris said, hoping this would work the miracle the doctor had mentioned.
“Mmm. Better come by my office, Captain.”
Heris left everyone aboard when they’d docked, and made her way alone to the Stationmaster’s office. There, she found a stout gray-haired woman with only one arm yelling into a vidcom.
“No, you may not preempt a scheduled shuttle flight, and I don’t care who your employer is! We got people downside depend on that shuttle, people that live here, and you can just wait your turn like anyone else.” She glanced at Heris, waved her out of pickup range, and continued the argument. “Or you can charter a plane, fly to the other shuttleport, and see if they’ve got room for you. Take your pick.” She cut off the complainer, and grinned at Heris.
“You know Lady Cecelia. You know Bunny . . . right?”
“Uh . . . yes, Stationmaster.”
“Forget that. M’name’s Annie. Who told you she was here?”
“Nobody—a doctor over in the Guerni Republic said to start looking here because this was where she’d had the training stable. Frankly, I thought that was too obvious . . .”
“But someone would’ve heard? Good thinking. Situation now is she just got her legal status back . . . those snobs I was arguing with were her family’s lawyers trying to keep her from it. Probably getting fat fees from managing her affairs.”
Heris blinked. Cecelia well enough to get a competency hearing and reverse the earlier ruling? Perhaps she didn’t need any more medical treatment . . . but surely she’d need her own transportation.
“By the way,” the Stationmaster said, “you might want to avoid those lawyers. First thing they did when they arrived is show a holo of you all over this Station asking if anyone had seen you.” She grinned. “Of course we hadn’t, and we haven’t now. You didn’t tell me your name was Heris Serrano, and that ship out there isn’t the Sweet Delight, or even that other name—what was it?—Better Luck. Where’d you get the new beacon, Miskrei Refitters over at Golan?”
Heris had to laugh. “Annie, you’d make a good match for one of my crew. Any way I can get transport down without running into those lawyers coming up?”
“Why do you think I told them they couldn’t charter a special run of the shuttle? Down shuttle leaves in half an hour; they’ve found out its return run is fully booked, and with any luck they’ll all be on their way over to Suuinen to catch the other one.”
“Is there a young woman named Brun with Lady Cecelia?” She hoped so; maybe Brun could figure out what was going wrong with Sirkin.
“That blonde girl? Bunny’s daughter, isn’t she? No, she took off for Rockhouse a while back with Cory—well, you don’t know him.”
Heris wondered what that was about, but she had a shuttle to catch. “My second-in-command’s Kennvinard Petris, and the other seniors . . .” She gave the Stationmaster the names. She almost named Oblo instead of Sirkin, but that would insult the girl, and besides she had an awful vision of what Oblo and the Stationmaster could do in the way of mischief if they put their heads together. She would not be responsible for that—not until she needed it. “None of my people should come onto the Station except Skoterin; the others were known to be part of my crew back at Rockhouse Major. I’ll tell them, too.” She called the ship, and explained quickly. Skoterin, and only Skoterin, could leave the ship for anything the others wanted or needed.
The down shuttle had only two other passengers, both obviously Station personnel on regular business. Heris tried to relax—the shuttle’s battered interior did nothing to promote its passengers’ confidence—and endured the rough ride silently. Sure enough, the shuttle station onplanet was almost empty; the clerk ignored her request for a communications console, and simply led her out the door. A big green truck huffed clouds of smelly exhaust at her, and a thin dark-haired girl leaned out the window. “You for the stable? The . . . uh . . . captain?”
“Right.” If the girl didn’t say her name, she wouldn’t, though she could see no watchers. The girl pushed open the other door, and Heris climbed up. Amazing. She had seen no sign of customs checks. Did they let anyone on and off the planet without even checking identification?
“Lady Cecelia’s really glad you’re here,” the girl said, as the truck lurched off in a series of slightly controlled leaps. “Sorry about that—Cory was supposed to have fixed the transmission. It’s the road, really. It shakes everything loose.” She was already driving at a speed that made Heris nervous, ignoring the warning signs as she approached the road beyond the shuttleport. The truck leaped forward, into a gap between another truck loaded with square bales of hay, and one hauling livestock. Heris didn’t recognize the animals: dark, large, and hairy.
“I’m Driw,” the girl continued, as if she hadn’t heard the squeal of brakes and tires, the bellows of rage from the other drivers. “I’m one of the grooms, and I always get stuck with the driving.” The truck swayed as she put on speed, and overtook the hay truck ahead. Heris found herself staring fixedly out the side window; she didn’t want to know about oncoming traffic. “Because I’m safe,” Driw said, taking a sharp curve on fewer wheels than the vehicle possessed. Heris could hear its frame protesting. “Everyone else has wrecked the truck at least twice, and Merry—that’s Meredith Lunn, Lady Cecelia’s partner—said I was to do all the driving.” She laughed, the easy laugh of someone who finds it natural, and Heris tried to unclench her own hands from the seat.
“Don’t worry,” Driw said. “We’ve got a load of feed back there; it’ll keep us on the road.”
Heris had a vision of the feedsacks reaching down grainy fingers to grip the road—or perhaps it was molasses in sweet feed—and felt herself relaxing. If she died in a feed truck driven by a crazed groom, it would at least be unique. No Serrano she’d ever heard of had done that. She began to notice the countryside—the gently rolling terrain, the trees edging fields fenced for horses, the horses themselves.