"Have you decided whom to name as your heir?" her stepmother asked. Sanni shot her a look that should have had gray goosefeather fletching, it was so sharp.
"Not now," her father said.
"No," Esmay said. "I haven't—it's all too new. I will need to consider carefully." She would need to look at the family tree; she had no idea who might be eligible. It might even be Luci. That wouldn't be so bad.
"The paperwork starts tomorrow," her father said. "All the judicial red tape."
"How long does that last?" Esmay asked.
He shrugged. "Who knows? It's not something we've done for a long time, and since then some of the laws have changed. It's no longer enough for the family to swear agreement to the whole change; it has to be done piece by piece."
It sounded far worse than Administrative Procedures. If the whole family had to pledge peaceful acquiescence to the change in ownership of each field, each woodland patch . . .
"At least, much of it can be done by proxy, now. My guess is that it will take hours, if not days—and all to do over again when you abdicate." He sounded more tired than resentful; Esmay considered that he had probably taken on most of the family responsibility on her behalf since her great-grandmother died.
"If she abdicates," Papa Stefan put in. "She should stay, marry well, and be the Landbride we need. She's been a hero to the world—she has proved herself—but they cannot need one young hero as badly as we need her here. She could retire now."
Her father gave her a look, and a tiny lift of the shoulders. He knew what her career meant to her, as he knew what his meant to him—but there was much he didn't know, as well, and at the moment, Esmay could almost see the wisdom of leaving Fleet before they forced her out.
"It may not be me that you need, Papa Stefan, but someone who has lived here all along, who knows more—"
"You can learn," he said, his spirits rising as he had someone to argue with. "You were never stupid, just stubborn. And why should you serve the Familias Regnant? We have not even a Seat in their Grand Council. They do not respect us. They will use you up, and discard you at the end, whenever you displease them, or they tire of you."
That was too near the mark; Esmay wondered if some word of her disgrace had leaked through the newsnets. But Berthold jumped in.
"Nonsense, Papa. Young officers of her quality are rarer than diamonds at the seashore. They won't let her go easily. Look what she's already done."
"Finished eating, is what she's done," her stepmother said. "Dessert, anyone?"
Esmay was glad enough to have the subject turned, and accepted a bowl of spiced custard gratefully.
Next morning, the legal formalities began. Her father had brought an entire court to the house: judge, advocates, recording clerks and all. First, although Esmay had openly accepted her heritage in the ceremony, she must now swear that she had done so and sign the Roll, her signature beneath her great-grandmother's, where anyone could compare its slightly awkward simplicity to the lovely old-fashioned elegance of her great-grandmother's writing. But three lines above, someone had signed in awkward childish letters that looked even worse.
Once she was sworn in as heir, the true Landbride, the real work began. Every Landsteward, including Papa Stefan and her father, had to submit an accounting of the management of each division of the Landbride's Gift. Esmay learned things about the family estancia she had never known, because in her great-grandmother's long tenure as Landbride, changes had been made before Esmay was born which had now to be explained. From the trivial (the decision to move the chicken yard from one place to another, to accommodate a covered passage to the laundry) to the major (the sale of almost a third of the cattle lands to finance artillery and ammunition for her father's brigade in the Uprising, and its eventual repurchase), the last 70 years of history were laid out in detail.
Esmay would have stipulated that the accounts were correct, if she could, but the judge would have none of it. "You were away, Sera. You cannot know, and although these are your family, and you are naturally reluctant to consider them capable of the least infidelity or dishonesty, it is my duty to protect both you and the Landbride Gift itself. These accounts must be scrutinized carefully; that is why we brought along the accountants from the Registry."
And how long would that take? She did not want to spend days sitting here watching accountants pore over old records.
"Meanwhile, Sera, as long as a representative of your family is here to answer any questions, we need not detain you."
That was a relief. Esmay escaped, only to be captured by Luci, who had in mind a lengthy discussion of the herd she managed for Esmay. From one accountant to another—but Luci was so eager to explain what she'd been doing, that Esmay did not resist as she was led through the kitchens, out the back of the house, and into the stable offices.
"You hadn't said what direction you wanted to take," Luci said. "So I decided to sell the bottom ten percent at the regional sales, not under your name. Your reproductive rates are above the family average, but not much—"
"I didn't know they could be improved at all . . ."
"Oh yes." Luci looked smug. "I started reading offworld equine reproductive journals—couldn't afford a lot of what they talked about, but I made some changes in management, and everyone smirked at me until the first foal crop. Then they said it was normal statistical variation—but your second foal crop hit the ground this year, and it was a point ahead of last year's."
Esmay had never had any interest in equine reproduction, but she knew natural enthusiasm when she saw it. She had definitely picked the right manager for her herd . . . and maybe more than that.
"What did they say about selling off the bottom end without the family name? They were branded, weren't they?"
"No . . . I decided to defer branding until after the cull period. Papa Stefan was angry with me, but it was your herd, so he couldn't stop me."
"Mmm. And what criteria are you using for culling?"
"Several things." Luci ticked them off on her fingers. "Gestational length—early or late is one cull point. That could be the mare, but there's evidence it may be the foal, too. Time to stand and suck, and vigor of suckling; if they're outside a standard deviation on time to standing, or if they don't have a strong suck, that's another cull point. You already have good performance mares in that herd—but you'll benefit by having additional survival vigor."
Esmay was impressed. "I assume you'll cull mares later?"
"With your permission, yes. And while they're young enough to sell on . . . according to the articles I read, after three foals you should know if length of gestation, foaling problems, foal vigor, and milk production are due to the mare. I can show you the references—"
"No, that's all right. You've done very well. Tell me what you think we should do with this herd."
"Produce exportable genestock," Luci said promptly. "We have the perfect outcross genome for at least five other major horse-breeding worlds. All our horses have been performing—we've culled for soundness, speed, and endurance. I entered a query in one database, to see if anyone knew of, or would be interested in, what we've got, and the response was promising. Here on Altiplano, with the reputation our family has, we can sell live animals, but the export costs are far too high to export anything but genestock . . . so I would concentrate on the most salable genestock."
"Sounds good to me," Esmay said. "When do you think we might see a profit on it?"
Luci looked thoughtful. "Not immediately. Since we usually do live breeding, and have never exported genestock, we'd need an investment in equipment. I put the income from the cull sales into a fund for that, pending your approval."
"Would genestock from the rest of the family holdings, or from Altiplano in general, be salable?"
"I would think so. Possibly even other livestock, like our cattle . . ."
"Then I'll see if it's possible to make an investment from family funds, and then you could rent the facilities."
> "Would you really?"
"If it's possible, yes. Why not? It would benefit not only our family, but all Altiplano."
Luci nodded, looking satisfied. She made a notation in one of her books, then gave Esmay a challenging stare. "You look worse than you did when you left," Luci said.
"You have less tact," Esmay said, nettled.
"Was it the fighting?" Luci asked. "They say the Bloodhorde is terrible."
"No." Esmay turned over a leaf in the studbook. "I don't really want to talk about it."
Luci cocked her head. "You weren't this grumpy before, either. You looked horrible for a day or so, then better—and you were helpful to me. Something's wrong."
The girl was persistent as a horsefly, with the same ability to go straight to the blood of it. It crossed Esmay's mind that tactical ability could be shown in more than one way.
"I have had some problems. There's nothing you could do."
"Well, I can wish the best for you." Luci moved restlessly from door to window and back. "If you were my age—" A long pause, which grew uncomfortable.
"What?" Esmay said finally.
"I'd say you were lovesick," Luci said. "You have all the signs."
"Lovesick!"
"That's just the way Elise said it, when she thought no one knew. But they did. Is it lovesickness, or something else?"
"Luci." There was no way to explain. She tried another approach. "There are things I can't tell you about. Fleet things. Sometimes bad things happen."
"Esmay, for pity's sake—I grew up in a military household. I can tell worry about a war from a personal worry, and you needn't try to pretend that's what's going on."
"Well, it is, Persistence. Great-grandmother died; I've had to take on the whole estate; there's a lot to worry about."
Luci turned the conversation back to the horses, and for an hour they spoke only of this line or that, this outcross line or another. They walked up to the house together, still deep in the intricacies of fourth-generation distribution of recessives. At the door Luci said, with the most spurious wide-eyed innocence Esmay had seen, "Are you going to marry and settle down here, cousin, the way Papa Stefan wants?"
In the hearing of half the kitchen staff and Berthold, who had wandered into the kitchen before the meal as usual. Silence fell, until one helper dropped her knife.
"I'm a Fleet officer," Esmay said. "You know I told everyone I would have to appoint a trustee, and an heir."
"Yes," Luci said. "I know that. But you hadn't spent even a week on Altiplano yet. You could change your mind, especially if things aren't going well in your Fleet."
Berthold snorted. Esmay could have done without that; Berthold's humor was uncomfortable at best.
"You see what she's like," he said, around a couple of olives he'd filched.
"I'm ready for lunch," Esmay said. "And those had better not be the export-quality olives . . ." Her warning glance took in the cooks and Berthold. He wagged a finger at her.
"You sound exactly like Grandmother. She could squeeze oil out of the very smell of olive."
"Lunch," Esmay said, leading the way. "A morning spent with lawyers and accountants, then Luci, has starved my brain."
Darien Prime Station
Pradish Lorany turned the pamphlet over and over in his hands. He wasn't sure about this. Yes, it was totally unfair that Mirlin had taken the children and moved away—that Sophia Antera had been promoted over his head—that over half the seats on the station citizens' council were held by women. He loathed the very thought of artificial births and manipulation of the human genome—if that wasn't interfering with God's plan, he couldn't think of anything that was. But while he agreed in principle that society was corrupt and degraded, and that it all began with the failure to understand the roles God had ordained for men and women, he could not quite convince himself that therefore it naturally followed that blowing up people was a Godly act. Especially since Mirlin and the children would die, too. He wanted respect from women, and leadership by men, and an end to tampering with human reproduction, but . . . was this the way to do it?
He thought not. He made up his mind. He would continue to support the Gender Defense League; he would continue to argue with his former wife that she was misunderstanding his reasons for disciplining the children by traditional methods . . . but he would not attend the next meeting with the representative of the Godfearing Militia who had attempted to recruit him to help place explosive charges.
In a spasm of disgust, he threw the pamphlet toward the orifice of the station's recycling system, but he turned away before it slid into the chute . . . and did not see it miss, to land right in front of the please ensure trash enters hopper sign.
Nor did he see the prune-faced old woman who glared at his retreating back as she stooped to pick up the crumpled pages and put them in carefully—but who stopped, her attention arrested by the glaring grammatical error in the first sentence. Sera Alicia Spielmann, as ardent a grammarian as she was a supporter of public neatness, took the pamphlet home to use as a bad example in her next complaint to the local school trustees . . . but when she read it, she called her friend whose grandson was a member of station security, instead.
She did not connect the "lazy litter-bum" or her own actions with the discovery, two days later, of the corpse of one Pradish Lorany who had been brutally attacked in his own apartment. Others made that connection.
Chapter Sixteen
Altiplano, Estancia Suiza
After lunch, Luci followed Esmay into the Landbride's quarters with obvious intent. Esmay, who'd been hoping for a time alone to think things over, decided she would have more peace if she let Luci talk herself out. "So what is it now?" she asked, half laughing. "Do you have five other schemes for the estancia, or are you planning to take over the government?"
Luci, it seemed, loved a boy—young man, actually—in a neighboring household. "Your father is set against it—I don't know why," she said. "It's a good family—"
"Who is it?" asked Esmay, who had a suspicion. At the name, she nodded. "I know why, but I think he's wrong."
"Is this another of those things you can't tell me about?" Luci asked with a pettish note in her voice. "Because if it is, I think it's mean to let me know you know . . ."
"Come all the way in, and sit down," Esmay said, shutting the door carefully. No one would disturb them now. She gestured to one of the comfortable chintz-covered chairs, and sat in another one herself. "I'll tell you, but it's not a pleasant tale. You know I was miserable the last time I was here, and I suppose no one told you why . . ."
"No one knew," Luci said. "Except that you had some kind of fight with your father."
"Yes. Well . . . there are too many secrets going around, and now that I'm Landbride, I'm going to do things differently. Back before you were born, when I was a small child, and my mother had died, I ran away."
"You!"
"Yes. I wanted to find my father, who was off at war. I didn't understand about war . . . it had been safe, here. Anyway, I ended up in a very dangerous—" Her throat closed, and she cleared it. "A village right in the middle of the war. Soldiers came."
"Oh—Esmay—"
"I was . . . assaulted. Raped. Then one of my father's troops found me—but I was very sick . . ."
"Esmay, I never heard of this—"
"No, you wouldn't have. They hushed it up. Because the soldier that did it was in my father's brigade."
"No—!" Luci's face was white to the lips.
"Yes. He was killed—old Seb Coron killed him, in fact. But they told me it was all a bad dream—that I'd caught my mother's fever, which I may have, and anything else was a fever dream. All those nightmares I had—they made me think I was crazy."
"And you found out, finally—?"
"Seb Coron told me, because he thought I knew already—that Fleet's psych exams would have found it and cured me." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "So . . . I confronted Father, and when I identified
the face in the regimental rolls, he admitted it. That it had happened, that I remembered correctly."
From white, Luci went rage-red. "That's—hideous! Lying to you like that! I would've—"
"And the thing is," Esmay went on, remotely cheered by Luci's response. "The thing is, the person who did it was of that family. The man you love is his nephew, his older brother's son—"
Luci's face whitened again. "Arlen? You can't mean Arlen. But he was killed in action—they have a shrine to him in the front hall."
"I know. He was killed in action—by Seb Coron for assaulting a child—me."
"Oh . . . my." Luci sat back. "And his father was commanding something—so your father didn't tell him—? Or did he?"
"I don't know if his family knows anything at all, but even if they do it was all kept quiet. He got his medals; he got his shrine in the front hall." She could not quite keep the bitterness out of her voice.
"And your father doesn't want anything to do with their family . . . I understand . . ."
"No . . . they stayed friends, or at least close professionally. I think my father considered it an aberration, nothing to do with his family. I danced with his younger brother when I was fourteen, and he said nothing. He'd have been delighted if I'd married Carl. But he's worried now, because he knows I know, and he isn't sure what I'll do."
"I'll—I'll break it off, Esmay." Luci's eyes glittered with unshed tears.
"Don't be ridiculous!" Esmay leaned forward. "If you love him, there's no reason to break it off on my account."
"You wouldn't mind?"
"I . . . don't know how I'd react, if he looks much like Arlen did. But that shouldn't matter, to you or the family, if he's suitable otherwise. Is he a good man?"
"I think so," Luci said, "but girls in love are supposed to be bad judges of character." That with a hint of mischief.
"Seriously . . ."
The Serrano Connection Page 68
