She should have looked out of place, but she’d received several compliments on her appearance from people since she’d arrived, some of them from people who had no motive for pleasing her.
And the look on Martinez’s face when he’d first seen her had been priceless.
“Are those beads porcelain?” Martinez asked, his gaze straying to her neck.
She tilted her head to let him see them. “Blown glass.” Layered with brilliant color, each bead an individual, swirling masterpiece of art, and inexpensive compared to the rest of her turnout.
“Very nice.” His nostrils flared, just a little. “And is Sandama Twilight another part of tonight’s ensemble?”
“It is.”
He smiled happily. “I’m so pleased you could attend my party, Lady Sula.”
She gave a formal nod in acknowledgment and felt the tension flutter in her chest like a caged bird. “I’m pleased to be here,” she said.
For the party, pocket doors had been rolled into the walls, turning two parlors, a drawing room, and a formal dining room into one long reception room. Martinez took her the length of the room to the buffet and offered to fill a plate for her. Sula was too nervous to have an appetite, but she managed to swallow a pair of the little bow tie—shaped pastries.
Do not destroy this night, she told herself. Remember that this one actually likes you. Remember that he’s giving you a second chance after you wrecked the last one.
Martinez brought her sparkling mineral water.
“I laid in a stock of this just for you,” he said as he poured from the violet-colored bottle.
“You think of everything.”
“Yes.” A tight little self-congratulatory smile. “I do.”
Martinez wore the viridian dress uniform of the Fleet. At his throat was the badge of the Golden Orb, a circular sun disk on a gold-and-black ribbon, which he wore instead of carrying the heavy baton. His two decorations sparkled on his chest, the Medal of Merit First Class, for his part in rescuing Captain Blitsharts, and the Nebula Medal with Diamonds, for the Battle of Hone-bar.
She had watched Lord Chen pin the latter on his tunic that morning. Lord Tork, the chairman of the Control Board who had presented to Sula her own medal, had not been present, and neither had any of the other board members. She presumed they were occupied with urgent meetings concerning their fellow board member Lady San-torath, who had been arrested the previous night on charges that she had conspired to suppress information concerning enemy movements at Hone-bar. She had been subjected to a midnight trial before a judge of the High Court, and sentenced to die at the exact moment at which Martinez was being decorated.
Die screaming.Sula remembered the satisfaction in Lord Ivan Snow’s voice when they met two days before. He had already known what San-torath’s fate would be—to have her fragile, hollow arms and legs broken with steel bars, after which her limbs were amputated with a special hydraulically operated cutting tool and the still-living torso thrown off the acropolis from a site near the great granite dome of the Great Refuge. The new laws specified being flung from a height as the punishment for treason, in imitation of the Naxid convocates who had been thrown off the terrace of the Convocation after proclaiming the rebellion. Executions were no longer performed on the terrace, presumably because it might put the Lords Convocate off their feed, and the Shaa who had once inhabited the Great Refuge were dead, and could hardly object.
The news of the conspiracy, released that morning, also gloated over the fate of the conspirators captured at Hone-bar, who were thrown from a greater height—they were to be stuffed into vacuum suits and hurled with some force from Hone-bar’s accelerator ring. Their air supplies had been carefully calculated: they were to burn alive in the atmosphere before they could suffocate. It would take a little over three days for the video images to reach Zanshaa, after which they would be broadcast repeatedly on the news programs and on the channel reserved for punishments.
All very imaginative, Sula thought. If only the imagination applied to torture and executions had been applied to the running of the war.
Sula stood with Martinez’s family on the gallery overlooking the Hall of Ceremony, and applauded as Lord Chen took Martinez’s hand and murmured some carefully chosen words while a pair of aides strapped on Martinez’s new captain’s shoulder boards. After which Dalkeith, Martinez’s premiere, received the Medal of Merit Second Class, and her step to lieutenant-captain. Other officers likewise received recognition or promotion.
Quite a number ofCorona ‘s crew turned up for the ceremony. There was a little blond lieutenant, very young, a half-dozen cadets, and a number of senior petty officers with truly magnificent mustachios. Sula noticed that Lieutenant Captain Kamarullah, who had wrested command of the squadron from Martinez, was not present and was not receiving awards. Also absent, more oddly, was Lady Sempronia Martinez.
While Fleet officers were receiving their promotions and while conspirators died in pain and terror, on his flagship in orbit around Zanshaa’s primary the official victor of Hone-bar, Do-faq, was decorated and jumped two grades to senior squadron commander. Various of his officers were likewise honored. The whole circus, trials and deaths and glittering medals, had been carefully staged to maximize the value of the news to the government. With the video of Do-faq’s promotion coming in from five light-hours away, and the video of the executions on Hone-bar coming in three days, the honors of the righteous and the degradation of the corrupt would occupy public attention for some time to come.
Sula reached a hand to Martinez’s chest and adjusted the sparkling new decoration. “It looks good on you,” she said.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Martinez said, pleased. He took her hand, and his expression changed. “Your hand is cold,” he said.
“Yes. I’m—” She took a breath. “Very nervous.”
Concern entered his face, and again he put her arm in his and walked away with her, toward the hall. “Let me take you to a place where we can be private,” he said, and then he looked at her. “Unless that would make you more nervous rather than less.”
“I think…I’ll be fine, whatever you decide.”
She had decided to surrender to the man with more experience. Martinez adopted an air of firm authority that kept others from approaching him while he marched off with Sula. Suddenly she could imagine what Martinez had been like in command ofCorona — incisive, intense, and very stern. He led her out of the reception room, then down a hall, through a parlor, and through another hall to a small room, quietly furnished.
“Roland’s office,” Martinez said. With the back of his knuckles he brushed the walnut desk’s gold inlay and silent inset, the access to the palace’s various cyber systems, then he sat on the edge of the desk, took her mineral water from her hand and placed it on the table. Drew her to him. She could feel the warmth of his body on her bare shoulders and face.
“Will it help the nervousness if I just kiss you now?” he asked.
An anxious titter escaped her lips. “It wouldn’t hurt,” she said.
He drew her closer and touched her lips with his lips. They were pliant and not too insistent, both qualities that she appreciated. Her jangled nerves began to ease.
Martinez drew back. “I’m beginning to see what’s so special about twilight on Sandama,” he said.
She barked another nervous laugh. The brown eyes beneath his heavy brows were half veiled, frankly appraising, but somehow appraising without the insolence she saw in the eyes of other men. A nice trick, she thought.
“You are the most beautiful thing here tonight,” he said, breath warming her cheek. “And I’m the luckiest man in the empire—which you once pointed out to me, I remember.”