Raj felt his lips skin back from his teeth. "Tell Tewfik that if he thinks he can overrun us, he's welcome to try," he said. "How many men did he lose today? Twice what we did? Three times? How much burnt-out frontier does he have to hold? And every minute he watches us, more of our comrades escape. Let him come; don't be shy, we'll see to his other eye for him."
The herald bowed and reined about; the wolfhound seemed to float over the baked gravel like a mirage of snow.
"I love you," Suzette said quietly, pulling up beside him.
"I love you, too," Raj replied. "I just wish we'd had longer to do it in." He looked north, to Komar, a week's travel away and as impossibly far as Terra the lost and sacred.
"Let's go, dog-brothers," he said. "Every second man, mount. Keep it ready to about face. At a walk, march."
Chapter Eleven
"Ser."
"Hunnha!" Raj sprang erect, throwing aside a blanket he didn't remember pulling over himself.
"Ser, we're here." M'lewis' voice had a lisp to it now, with most of his front teeth missing. A thick cup of kave steamed in his hands. Raj took it, trying to stop the tremors in his own.
"I was back in the desert," he said, more to himself than anyone else. Most of the other fifteen figures scattered around the lounge of the steamboat Orbital Paradise were as unconscious as he had been a moment ago. All were as filthy-shaggy, uniforms caked and stained until the original color was undetectable. "On the retreat, the third night, when they tried to overrun us again, and the gun blew up, you know. I was back there."
"We're here, ser," M'lewis repeated patiently.
Raj took three careful deep breaths, and a sip of the kave; it had plum brandy in it, and the combination hit the acid tension in his stomach hard enough to make him gasp. The others were beginning to stir, as the city noise penetrated the shuttered windows; Suzette slept on, looking absurdly young curled on the cushions beneath a window. Then the steam whistle cut loose above their heads, and every single one of them rolled upright with a weapon in their hands, crouched and ready. The steamboat's captain had not objected to their commandeering the upper salon, not more than once, at least.
And none of them was going to be able to sleep without their rifles by their sides, not for a long time.
"Arrg," Foley said. "I feel worse than I did when we got on this tub."
True enough, Raj thought dully. When you were riding fast you didn't have time to think. The whistle roared again; they were well past the cut where the docking canal took off from the Hemmar and passed through the thick water-gates of East Residence. The Orbital Paradise was a hundred feet long and half as wide, a shallow-draft hull just big enough to carry the engines that wheezed and chuffed beneath them, with a superstructure like a rectangular wedding cake topped by the twin smokestacks. The paddle wheel at the rear churned into reverse as they slid into the dock, nudging into the rope buffers.
The quays were as crowded as usual, all except this one. A troop of heavy cavalry waited, down where the crewmen were manhandling the gangplank across to the pavement and looping thigh-thick ropes to the bollards; men in the uniform of Vernier's Own. Twenty men on powerful Newfoundlands, in black uniforms and gauntlets, burnished black steel breastplates, helmets topped with black jersauroid plumes. All of them were leading extra dogs, ready-saddled.
The lieutenant of the escort saluted and began a speech of some sort as Raj and his Companions clattered down the gangplank; he stopped in mid-word as they walked past him without pausing.
"My, ain't they purty," M'lewis lisped, as the Descotters swung into the saddle with graceless ease.
"Barholm wanted me soonest," Raj said. "Probably for the frying post. Let's not keep the executioner waiting, shall we?"
* * *
"Out! Useless sluts, halfwits, out, out!" barked Anne, Lady Clerett. She was dressed in pale cream with black trim, the colors of mourning, and she swept forward toward her friend with arms outstretched. "No, wait, you, fetch refreshments, prepare the baths, fetch clothing for Lady Whitehall. Well, don't stand there gaping, go!" The slavegirls fled in a twitter of voices and fabric.
"Oh, Anne," Suzette mumbled, letting herself slump forward. Her carbine thumped to the floor and the Hammamet carpet as she rested her head on the other woman's shoulder and let the strong maternal hug support her weariness. But business could not wait more than moments.
"I'm filthy, I've got fleas, your dress," she said, as Anne guided her to a chair. A flash of acute embarrassment at her state went over her; the room was not large, but it was roofed in pale yellow glass and walled with torofib silk printed in delicate patterns of reeds and lotus and jewel-scaled marsh sauroids. Cool air sighed up through cast-bronze grills in the floor, driven by steam-powered fans in the vaults far below. Nobody could say that Anne used her position with new-rich showiness; she had set herself to learn an aristocrat's version of good taste with the same fierce determination she used on any other task she undertook. A good deal of it had been tutoring by her friend Suzette, Missa Wenqui as she had been then. .
"Here, sweet," Anne said, hard triumph in her voice, as she pushed a silver frame across the inistaria table between them. "You've got just time to read this, then a bite and a shower and my masseur and a full dress-up."
Suzette blinked crusted, red-rimmed eyes down at the frame. It was the letter she had sent from Komar, but annotated in vermilion ink, a man's blocky writing. By the end of the missive the pen had been pressed hard enough to tear the paper.
"My husband was so interested," Anne said. "And Chancellor Tzetzas was. . horrified at what his subordinates had done in his name." A lazy cat-smile. "So horrified that he signed over every inch of land and scrap of personal property in the County of Komar to the Vice-Governor." Her fingernails pressed the inlays of the table. "He's too useful. . Barholm thinks he's too useful. . to dispose of now. And Suzie-" the long-fingered hands closed on hers "-your man certainly came out of this better than anyone else. Better than that fool Stanson, who seems to have done nothing more than get half his behind shot off. Which should make him twice as stupid."
"I missed," Suzette mumbled, fatigue-poisons blurring her eyes.
"What was that?" Anne looked up sharply.
"I said, he won't be missed," she replied more clearly. A thought made her blink at Anne's mourning clothes. "Someone's died?" she asked.
"Someone's going to, my dear. Someone's going to."
* * *
Raj felt himself toppling forward off the bench and jerked himself upright again. He was attracting a few glances, here in the Star Chamber, but less than might be expected; theological controversy was the city's pride and sport, and there was plenty of it here. The great round chamber was filled to capacity with Hierarchs, Sysups, Analysts, Grammers, Church dignitaries of every type and variety from all over the Civil Government; there were even representatives of the Central and Western Territories Sysuprics, in old-fashioned vestments and talking with Spajol accents. Many of them looked a little uneasy, since the Spirit of Man of This Earth was the state cult in the areas ruled by the Military Governments, and the Orthodox from those lands were not used to operating so openly.
Barholm sat behind him, on a throne that had risen soundlessly to head-height on a hydraulic column; he was in full vestments as Supreme Pontiff, strictly speaking the Governor's prerogative, resting his chin on one fist. The light through the Star-shaped skylight in the domed ceiling cast a hard glitter on the jewels and metallic thread in his robes, the gold and ebony of the chair.