by Sharon Shinn
“Deals?” Drake said innocently.
“For instance, you. You are a goodwill chip in a high-stakes game.”
Drake grinned. The governor played poker. “Sure. You’ve got an excellent export product, you’ve got some strategic importance, and you’re the key to another alliance the council is hot to make. Of course they want you.”
“How long can I make them want me without giving them what they want in return?” Ruiso asked.
Drake whistled soundlessly, for that was going to the very heart of the matter. To answer honestly might be to betray Raeburn and undercut some of his promises; and yet Drake was essentially an honest man. “A long time, I would think,” he said slowly. “If they want you bad enough, they’ll dance around a while giving you opportunities to buy in. They’ll send you Sayos like me if you ask for help—even send you troops if you need them, just to prove to you how good it can be to have a Moonchild battalion behind you.”
“But?”
“But Interfed doesn’t play games forever. I give you that information for free. The days of our rampant imperialism are over, so I don’t see Semay being in any danger of attack from Interfed itself. Let me give you a different scenario. You have wealth, spices and strategic importance, and you give Interfed the cold shoulder. Some other well-armed aggressive alliance comes in and threatens to wipe you out. You appeal for help to Interfed, who says, No go. You’re attacked, you’re invaded, you’re defeated. Interfed waltzes in then to make friends with the victors. Interfed doesn’t really care who runs Semay, you know—it just wants access to the treasures the world has to offer.”
“That is not a pretty picture, Lieutenant.”
“Interfed is not always an attractive entity, Governor.”
“And yet you serve it.”
“Ava has two faces, glad and solemn,” Drake replied. “And yet you love her.”
“It is not the same thing.”
“Maybe not,” Drake said. “I believe in the federated coalition of planets, Governor. And I am a thinking man. I believe that an alliance of nations is stronger, better, more humane and more likely to survive than a collection of hostile individual worlds that distrust and fear each other. I am a man who always votes for the common good, despite the expenses, because the costs always seem too high for me the other way around.”
“It is just those costs that concern me,” Ruiso replied. “And I too am a thinking man.”
Drake did not feel he could make any illuminating answer to that. Clearly, the governor had more thinking to do on the topic. Drake wondered what mix of truth and promises Raeburn had been feeding Ruiso. It was not a thing he could easily ask either man.
The formal meal had been over for some time while Drake and Ruiso finished their conversation, and about half the guests were on their feet and mingling now. Someone had caught the governor’s attention from a distance, and he nodded.
“Excuse me, if you would,” he said, turning briefly back to Drake. “I’ve enjoyed this chance to talk.”
“So have I,” Drake said, and watched him go.
He was not particularly interested in attempting another conversation with the people left at his table, so he finished his glass of wine and signaled for another. Rising to his feet with the wineglass in his hand, he moved circuitously around the room. Tall windows at the far end of the hall gave out onto a softly lit garden, and Drake slipped outside as unobtrusively as possible.
It had not been especially warm inside the temple (air conditioning again, Drake belatedly realized) but it was even cooler outside, a perfect evening. He walked slowly through the well-tended shrubbery, sipping his wine just because it was in his hand, and wondering what bush was responsible for the subtle fragrance that came teasingly over the faint breeze. At one point he stopped and looked above him at the crystal magnificence of the stars, losing himself once more in that eternal wonder. Although he had, before he arrived in Semay, acquainted himself with the formal arrangements of the constellations over Madrid, he had yet to learn what fanciful names and histories had been given to them by the residents of this world.
“Stargazing, Cowen Drake?” said a soft voice behind him, and he turned with a smile. In her black gown, with her goddess-eye pendant and matching earrings, Jovieve reminded him of the vista overhead, at closer, warmer range.
“Noche cristal,” he said, holding out his hand to her. She took it, lacing her fingers with his. Hands locked, they promenaded slowly through the garden.
“The night sky?” she said.
“You.”
She gave him a sideways smile and did not ask what he meant. “Have you been enjoying yourself?” she said. “I’ve been watching you, but I couldn’t tell from your expression.”
“Yes, it’s been a very pleasant evening. Mostly I’ve amused myself by wondering what opinions you hold on the question of federating.”
“I’m undecided,” she said promptly. “But it is a question, as they say, of great moment, and the politicians and powerful people of Semay spend nearly all their time debating it. What did you tell Alejandro?”
“That he can probably hold off deciding for a good while yet, but that eventually the council will lose patience, and then he can expect no more help ever from Interfed.”
“True?”
“True.”
“I am not entirely opposed to federating,” she said. “But I am not a great fan of wholesale change. For Semay to be suddenly overrun with off-worlders and Moonchildren and intergalactic mercenaries—it is a sobering thought. What happens to Madrid? Does it become an intergalactic port? Will it grow so rapidly that the infrastructures of the city cannot support it? Will the off-worlders displace the Madrid residents—or, on the contrary, will there suddenly be such a large job market in the city that the young people leave the spice farms and journey to the city to work? Then what happens to the agriculture that has made us the valuable world we are?”
“The economic factor would pretty much dictate that the spice farms are never abandoned,” Drake said. “The farmers have to pay higher wages to keep workers, maybe, but they then charge higher prices, and because your market is so expanded, they can get whatever they ask.”
“But the social changes,” Jovieve murmured. “What happens to the political families of Madrid, and the moral structure of the family, and the quiet religious observances that are so much a part of our daily lives?”
“What happens to the power of the Triumphantes?” he said for her. “Do they still control the politicians and are they smart enough to outmaneuver the diplomats of Interfed?”
“You laugh,” she said, “but the power of the Triumphantes has made Semay what it is today, and if that power is abrogated, I do not know what will happen to us.”
“I’m not laughing,” he assured her. “It’s a real issue. It has confronted every governing body that has decided to admit Interfed into the fabric of its society. And not all of those governing bodies have survived. But the strong ones have.”
There was a white stone bench in a shaded spot off the main path. By the pressure of her hand, Jovieve guided him there, and they sat.
“I wish Ava was in the habit of sending visions,” she said, sighing. “Then I could pray for a glimpse of the future, and know more surely how to act.”
He smiled slightly. “And which way does Ruiso lean? Toward Interfed or against it?”
“Publicly, he is entirely neutral.”
“And privately? Surely you discuss it?”
She gave him another sideways look. It was not so dark that he could not see the amusement on her fine features. “Now, how exactly do you mean that remark, I wonder?”
It was reprehensible, but his own smile grew. “I was told that you and the governor are—allies. How did you think I meant it?”
Jovieve was not deceived. She raised her brows. “So the Moonchildren are gossips. I would not have tho
ught it.”
“Gossip is the best way to learn the intimate secrets that are often necessary for the performance of one’s duties.”
She sighed and leaned against the hard back of the bench. Her hand was still wrapped in his. “Well, at least I know now why you disapprove of me.”
“Why would I disapprove of you?”
She turned her head just enough to gaze at him from an angle. “I do not think you are a man who is easily shocked, Cowen Drake. You could hardly be, and be a Special Assignment Officer for the Moonchild forces. But I think you have strong values, formed in your long-distant childhood, by which you still judge people in some primitive fashion. And by these standards I have, in some way, fallen short.”
He did not answer her directly. “Interesting,” he said. “Just the other day someone told me I was the kind of man who liked everyone.”
“I agree,” she said swiftly. “I didn’t say you don’t like me. I said you don’t approve of me.”
He was silent a moment. He spread out the fingers of his hand, the one that held hers, and laid his other hand along the back of hers. He laced his fingers together, squeezing her palm between his with an insistent sort of pressure.
“I admire you,” he said at last. “Somewhat against my will. You are not a simple woman—although, don’t mistake me, I do not particularly have a preference for simple women.”
“You have a preference for simple religions,” she murmured.
He nodded. “Yes. I cannot reconcile you with what I learned about my gods at an early age. And yet my heart tells me this is my fault, and not yours.”
“Someday you must tell me what those gods have done to you, or the priestesses who serve your gods, because they have left you much more bitter than you would like to admit.”
He smiled entirely without humor. “That is the gist of it,” he said. “I do not even honor those gods anymore. To judge someone else by their standards is stupid—worthless. I had not realized I still did it.”
“In my experience,” she said, “those early teachings are rarely overcome. Which is the reason, of course, that the Triumphantes spend so much time at the schools and with the children—to instill, very early, the doctrines that we live by. If you believed something when you were seven years old—if you believed it passionately, wholeheartedly, with all the mysticism that a child is capable of—then you may never fully eradicate those beliefs, no matter how much your adult knowledge contradicts those childhood precepts.”
She paused, watched his face for a moment, and smiled. “Which means, I suppose,” she continued, “that you will never entirely accept me.”
His pressure on her hand was now acute. He knew it, but she did not protest. “I don’t think that can be true,” he said. “You must have converted more stubborn souls than mine.”
“If they wanted to be converted,” she said.
“Maybe I do,” he said.
Quite suddenly, she put her free hand up to his face, cupping his cheekbone in her palm. He thought he had never felt a hand so wise, so knowledgeable. He shut his eyes. She moved her fingers slowly down his jawline, played the back of her hand across his other cheek. When she turned her palm against his mouth, he kissed it. His eyes were still closed.
“Ava te ama,” she breathed.
He carried her other hand to his mouth and kissed those fingers as well. “Tu tambien,” he whispered.
From a distance there was a sudden swelling of sound, as if a door to the banquet hall had opened. Drake felt Jovieve sit forward, and he opened his eyes.
“Someone looking for you?” he asked.
“Probably. I cannot easily escape my own party to go dallying on the temple lawn.”
He stood up and pulled her to her feet. “Dallying,” he repeated, and began to slowly walk her back toward the sanctuary. “I hadn’t considered myself the type.”
“On the contrary,” she retorted, “the first day I met you, I thought you were the type who would do it quite well.”
“Maybe I just never considered it as frivolous a pastime as the word implies.”
Again that sideways glance. She freed her hand but continued to walk beside him. His own hand felt absurdly cold when she pulled away. “Maybe,” she said, “that’s what makes you good at it.”
* * *
* * *
Drake left the party shortly after that, but he did not take the borrowed car straight back to the hotel. Instead, for the second night, he cruised through the wreckage of the western slums, studying the terrain, trying to get a feel for the territory at night. He did not see Laura, or any other ermanas, walking the dangerous streets. He told himself he had not particularly expected to.
Back in his room he found himself too wound up to attempt sleep. At random, he pulled out a visicube from the box of hombueno records and slapped it into the player. The litany of names, crimes, accusations and city streets made a pleasant jumble in his mind. In his free time, he had been playing his Semayse language tapes, and he was getting quite good at translating as he read. Still, the words had a melodic, foreign rhythm to them that almost lulled him to sleep.
But a crime committed in the second month of the year, five years ago, caught his attention and made him sit bolt upright at his desk. It was a murder that took place in a quiet home in a respectable neighborhood. Three intruders entered, overpowered the two people in the house, killed one, then left. The survivor and witness was a young Triumphante named Diadeloro; the victim was her brother. Although the amicas had cooperated fully with the police, the perpetrators of the murder were never found.
Drake looked up from the visiscreen and stared unseeingly at the arched rectangle of night outside his window. Five years ago, so Jovieve had told him, Diadeloro had lost her mother to illness and her brother to an accident. She had seemed to recover from her grief, Jovieve said, but one day she had left on a charity walk and never returned. What had happened to her? Why had someone killed her brother? And had that same someone returned to kill Diadeloro—or any priestess in the city of Madrid?
Chapter Eight
As was becoming a habit with him, Drake slept late the next morning. He would have slept later except for the insistent pounding on his door that woke him a couple of hours before noon. When he stumbled to the door, he found Lise outside, looking half amused and half anxious.
“Raeburn wants to see you,” she said. “He’s not happy.”
Drake rubbed a hand over his eyes and jaw and forced back a yawn. “So?”
“So maybe you should see him as soon as you can.”
“Right with you, Sergeant.”
She flirted a smile at him as she turned away. “Bring your ammo.”
Drake showered and shaved with his usual economy and presented himself at Raeburn’s door within twenty-five minutes. An impatient wave of the captain’s hand sent Leo and Lise reluctantly from the room.
Raeburn was on his feet, pacing, but Drake sank to a chair and watched him absently. Clearly, the Moonchild captain had heard of the Sayo’s presence at the Triumphante affair the night before and wasn’t pleased.
The smaller man stopped pacing abruptly and stared fiercely at Drake. “What did you do last night?” he demanded. “What did you say to the governor? Don’t you realize that with a few hasty words you might have undone months and months of careful work?”
“How so?” Drake said mildly. “I didn’t tell him anything, except that Interfed isn’t going to play ball forever. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Raeburn took a step closer. “That’s not what I heard you told him.”
Drake wondered who at his table had been a spy for Interfed. “Well, then, what did you hear? Your eavesdropper may have misunderstood.”
The word made Raeburn’s face tighten with anger, but he did not lose control. “You told him that he could keep us dancing on a string for a long time to come.”
&nb
sp; “I did say that,” Drake admitted. “It’s true.”
“But it’s hardly the sort of information we should be giving to him free!”
“Why not? He’s no fool. He’s read up on the process of federating. He knows what kind of leeway we’ve given optioning planets in the past. Hell, we played games for thirty years with the politicians of Corliss before they graciously decided to slip inside the net.”
“That is not the image we would like to foster in this instance,” Raeburn said coldly.
“Well, your informant didn’t hang around to hear the whole speech, because I laid it on pretty heavy toward the end. I told Ruiso that if he didn’t come around, we’d eventually just sit back and let the planet be wiped out by hostiles so we could swing in and make a deal with a new regime.”
Raeburn was so surprised that he actually seemed to forget his anger. “You said that? To the governor?”
“Sure.”
“What did he say?”
“He thinks we’re imperialist bastards. Didn’t say so, though. I can’t remember his exact words. But it made him think.”
Raeburn shook his head wearily and stalked away, to stand with his back to Drake and his face turned toward the window overlooking the city. Drake noticed that Raeburn’s room, on a corner of the building, was larger and cooler than his own. He came to his feet.
“Why did you go to that dinner anyway?” Raeburn asked, still not turning around. “You had no business being there.”
“Lady invited me,” Drake replied. Raeburn’s snort indicated just what he thought of that particular lady. “Anyway, I don’t think I hurt your cause any. Don’t think I especially helped, either.”
“It’s clear that you’ll never be a diplomat,” Raeburn said.
Drake reached for the door. “Never wanted to be.”
He ate a fast breakfast and headed to the hombueno station. Again, luck was with him, for Benito was at his desk. Drake handed him a hard copy of the report he’d read on his visiscreen the night before.
“Remember this case?” he asked.
