Lord Roland smiled, and exchanged a glance with Lord Chen.
“Somethinghas happened, yes,” Chen said. “For various reasons we’re not releasing the information yet. But there’s no reason to be concerned for Lord Gareth.”
Her mind raced. It wasn’t a defeat they were hiding, so just possibly it was a victory. And the only reason to hide a victory was to keep the Naxids from finding out, which meant that behind the scenes, somewhere away from Zanshaa, ships were moving, and battles were in the offing, or had already been fought.
“I wasn’t concerned, exactly,” she said. “Lord Gareth seemed too merry. But the whole business seemed…curious.”
Chen gave a satisfied smile. “I venture to remark that very soon there may be another award ceremony, and that Lord Gareth may be in it. But perhaps even that’s saying too much.”
A victory, then. Joy danced in Sula’s mind. Perhaps Martinez had used the new tactics—hertactics—to crush the enemy.
“I’ll be discreet about the news,” Sula said. Who would she tell?
Chen and Lord Roland made their excuses and went to do business. Sula spent an agreeable hour with Terza in the garden, then said farewell and went out into the sun of the High City. Her footsteps took her to the La-gaa and Spacey Auction House, where she spent a few pleasant hours looking at the displays.
The collectible business was booming. People were turning their wealth into, as she’d once put it, convertible things. Jewelry and portable, durable objects—caskets, small tables, paintings and sculpture—were all doing very well.
Porcelain, by contrast, seemed to be dropping in price. Perhaps people considered it too fragile for the uncertain times ahead.
One pot caught Sula’s eye: Ju yao ware of the Sung dynasty, a pot four palms high, narrow at the base, broad at the shoulders, and a small central spout. Sula’s hands lusted to caress the fine crackle of the blue-green glaze. The factory that created the pot existed in Honan for only twenty years before a Tatar invasion wiped it from the Earth. Sula pictured the pot fleeing south before the invaders, packed in straw in a bullock cart, ending in Yangtze exile a thousand li from its place of origin.
The pot had flown much farther in the years since, and was now part of a collection being dispersed. In the current falling market Sula might be able to purchase it for twenty-five thousand zeniths, a sum amounting to perhaps eighty percent of her current fortune.
It would be absurd for her to spend that much. Insane. And itwas breakable. The luck that carried it safely from the Tatars, and through the Shaa conquest of Terra, might be run out by now.
But what, she argued with herself, did she have to spend the money on other than herself?
In the end, reluctantly, she withdrew. Sula had decided to be practical.
For the next several days she went hunting for an apartment. So many were fleeing the High City that rates were almost reasonable, and she paid a month in advance for a third-floor place just under the eaves of an old converted palace. The furniture was the bulky, ornate, and ugly Sevigny style, but Sula figured she could live with it till her next posting. The apartment came with a Lai-own fledgling to do the cleaning, and a cook would do meals for an extra few zeniths.
The building was just down a side street from the Shelley Palace, where the Martinez family was staying.
Sula was thinking about Martinez a great deal. Being near him seemed desirable. Having a convenient place where they could retire, a place that was neither a Fleet dormitory nor a palace filled with a gaggle of inquisitive sisters, seemed only practical.
She attended the Martinez’s party, and was greeted with cries of welcome. Sula was a celebrity now, a decorated hero, and her presence made the party an occasion. She reacquainted herself with the family—the ambitious Lord Roland, the two formidable older sisters, Vipsania and Walpurga, and the youngest, vivacious sister Sempronia with her absurd fiancé, PJ.
With all their gifts, none of them seemed a patch on the brother who was absent.
That night she lay in the huge Sevigny bed and wondered what it would be like, after all this time, not to be lonely.
The next day, a polite officer from the Courts of Justice delivered the subpoena to her door.
FIVE
Martinez welcomedCorona ‘s new captain with all the grace he could muster, which wasn’t much, and then went through the formalities of turning over his captain’s key and various other codes. He wanted very much to say, “Try not to get my ship killed,” but he didn’t. Alikhan had his belongings already packed.
He declined the new captain’s civil offer of a dinner, claiming he had an appointment on the planet’s surface—and for that matter, he did.
He was going to meet with his brother, his sisters, the Martinez clan’s patron Lord Pierre Ngeni—anyone, if necessary, up to the Lord Senior of the Convocation, and he would lobby them incessantly until he received an assignment that placed in him command of a ship.
For after a month’s leave to recover from the rigors of the journey, Martinez had been told to report to a training school for sensor operators in Kooai, in Zanshaa’s southern hemisphere, where he would take command of the post.
Atraining school. The message was infuriating. A warrant officer could do the job as well, probably better.
Martinez intended to get himself into a ship again, if he had to personally hector and lobby everyone going in and out of the door of the Commandery. If he had to personally grab Lord Saïd by the throat and shake him until the old man gave way.
Martinez had already said his farewells to his officers and crew, so when he leftCorona ‘s airlock umbilical he just kept on going. Alikhan had procured him a car and driver, which meant he wouldn’t have to wait for one of the trains that rolled along the upper level of Zanshaa’s accelerator ring. The car took him to the Fleet Records Office, where he delivered the data foil that contained the log ofCorona ’s journey. The foil contained as well the recordings that might well explode Kamarullah’s career, that is if anyone bothered to view them.
Perhaps no one would. Certainly no one seemed very interested inCorona ‘s journey—news of the Battle of Hone-bar had yet to be released to the public, and the dull-eyed Torminel petty officer who took the data foil seemed far from excited to be meeting one of the Fleet’s heroes, and indeed seemed about to drop into slumber as he handed Martinez the receipt.
Martinez, fury warring with his body’s pain and great weariness, stuffed the receipt into a pocket and stalked through the translucent automatic doors that led to the anteroom.
And there she was.
The impulse at first was to stare, and then to stagger forward and wrap his arms around Sula’s slim body like a shipwrecked mariner clinging to a mast. Fortunately for the dignity of his rank she wasn’t receptive to an embrace: she was braced at the salute, shoulders thrown back, chin lifted to expose the throat, the sign of subordination enforced throughout their empire by the Shaa.
He paused for a breathless moment to absorb her beauty, the erect body, the silver-gilt hair worn shoulder-length, framing the face with its pale, translucent complexion and its amused, glittering green eyes. Then he raised the heavy baton of the Golden Orb, topped with its sphere of swirling liquid, and bobbed it in her direction, acknowledging her salute.
“Stand at ease, lieutenant,” he said.
“Thank you, my lord.” Her brilliant smile showed a degree of conceit, her own smug amusement at the way she’d surprised him. “You met me, once, when I returned to the Zanshaa ring. I thought I’d return the compliment.”