The Road of Danger

by David Drake

“The additional ships will need crews, of course,” she said. “I’ll provide commanders and perhaps some key personnel, but the common spacers will be hired locally.”

  Mangravite had subsided briefly in the face of Adele’s frozen haughtiness. The business discussion had allowed him to recover, however. He said, “What do you consider the proper conversion rate between Alliance thalers and our credits, Your Ladyship? Since of course we will be paying in Cremonan currency.”

  “The exchange rate doesn’t enter into the matter,” said Adele. Cazelet had briefed her on this point before she left the corvette. “I can’t pay my crew in credits — which are scarcely useful to buy rotgut in your dockside taverns! And even if I were willing, I have to buy — procure, at any rate — ships and crews. Unless you gentlemen — ”

  She surveyed the room with the air of a hawk scanning a meadow for prey.

  “ — and both you ladies care to provide the ships and crews out of your private resources, I’m sure that the owners will require hard currency. As will the spacers, since the blockade runners they would otherwise sign with pay in thalers. Or florins, of course.”

  The room broke into general discussion, occasionally heated. The men to Mangravite’s right and left both leaned toward him and began to speak with worried earnestness. Mangravite snarled at the beginning but then subsided. He clenched his huge fists and hunched like a lion being pelted by hail.

  Osorio smiled toward Adele in a commiserating fashion. After waiting with his hands before him for long enough to let the first edge of the arguments pass, he rose to his feet and raised his right arm.

  “My fellow patriots!” he said, turning to sweep the room with his attention. “A moment, if you please!”

  When the level of noise reduced abruptly, Osorio said, “My friends, we are being discourteous to our guest. Please, for the honor of Cremona and of our assembly, let me discuss what I see as a possible solution. Do I have your approval?”

  Adele happened to glance at Mangravite at the other end of the table. If looks could kill . . . , she thought.

  The fat man’s face had swelled in purple fury. All the renewed babble was agreement with Osorio in some fashion or other. It won’t matter how rich you are if you burst a blood vessel in your brain.

  Osorio bowed to one side of the room, then the other. Still standing, he said to Adele, “Lady Hrynko, we Friends cannot quickly raise such sums in hard currency, but we can provide you with notes to be redeemed in hard currency which you can negotiate.”

  “That isn’t acceptable,” Adele said. “I would have to discount them by ninety percent to get anyone to take them.”

  She would never be a financier, but years of learning to manage her increasing wealth — and the training which Daniel’s elder sister, Deirdre, had provided in handling that wealth — had taught her a great deal. Deirdre Leary approached finance in the same spirit and with the same genius as her brother showed for astrogation.

  “Not by so much, I hope,” Osorio said, nodding, “but with a significant discount of course. We would adjust the notes to reflect a portion of that discount. And — ”

  Adele raised an eyebrow as she waited. She wondered how much of this performance was for Osorio’s fellows rather than really aimed at her.

  “ — after your victory over the Estremadura, the value of our notes will increase to near par, providing Your Ladyship with a very handy profit, is it not so?”

  There was a gasp of delight among the Friends who understood the proposal, and a wash of whispering among those who did not. Finance at this level was unfamiliar territory for many of those present.

  Adele considered the matter. Osorio was putting a very positive face on the proposition, but it wasn’t completely unreasonable. Adele needed a plausible reason to do what she intended to do anyway: punish the Estremadura. This offer provided that color, though she would ask Cazelet to knock down the details.

  There was one other point to pursue, not so much for its own sake as because it would further Adele’s plans to learn as much as possible about the affairs of the Sunbright rebels and thus their leader, Freedom. She let her eyes rest on the fixtures which flanked the door, cascades of dangling crystals that diffused the light efficiently while sparkling like the sun on wavetops off the coast of the Leary estate.

  “Insofar as the hire of the House of Hrynko is concerned,” Adele said, “I accept Master Osorio’s offer as a matter for detailed discussion with my business manager. That does not cover the hire or more likely purchase of two subordinate vessels and payment for their crews, however. That will require hard currency, as you put it, and I will not defray those expenses myself.”

  Again there was a babble. Osorio, still standing, settled his face warily. He had been grinning broadly about the room, though he was careful not to let his gaze settle on Mangravite. From the fat man’s expression, it was not beyond imagination that he could be goaded into lurching from his chair and crushing his rival like an avalanche.

  “I can suggest an alternative to you Friends finding the thalers yourself,” Adele continued, raising her voice. Silence spread in waves. Those who had understood what she had said whispered to those nearby until everyone in the room had been informed.

  Adele looked left, then right, before focusing on Osorio. The Friends could provide hard currency in the necessary quantities: the five major members each controlled shares in blockade runners to the equivalent of two full ships apiece. It would require many days and the publication of their private financial records — which Adele could do, but which would make an enemy of each member affected — in order to get that money, however.

  “I believe your group has influence with the government of Cremona?” she said blandly. Mangravite sneered, and both men to Adele’s right at the table chuckled at the idea. They knew, as she did, that the government of Cremona was whatever a wealthy and powerful individual wanted it to be.

  “Very good,” Adele said. “If the government is willing to give me authorization, I will raise the necessary sum in the form of loans from the foreign factors here in Halta City. Can you procure me that authorization?”

  This time the chatter was delighted. Mangravite sat silently, his fists clenched like hams on the table before him.

  “I believe that should be possible, since the proposal doesn’t affect any member of this group,” Osorio said, cutting through the enthusiasm.

  He turned and for the first time looked directly at his rival. “That is true, is it not, Master Mangravite? Do you agree that we Friends of Sunbright should use our influence to permit Lady Hrynko to solicit loans for this purpose?”

  “The factors will never agree!” Mangravite said. His words were almost lost in their growling overtones.

  “I believe you’re wrong, my good man,” Adele said, the syllables sounding like whipcracks. “But in any case, I do not require anything of you save the legal authorization to try. Do I have that agreement?”

  No one spoke for a moment.

  Adele put down her control wands, though she kept her hands on the tabletop for now. “Do you grant me that authority, Master Mangravite?” she repeated.

  “Yes, damn you!” the fat man said. “And much good may it do you!”

  Shouts of delight filled the room. Several Friends clustered about the beaming Osorio.

  It will, Master Mangravite, Adele thought as she leaned back into her chair for the first time since she sat down. It will serve my purposes very well.

  CHAPTER 19

  Halta City on Cremona

  Osorio’s driver set the aircar down on the apron in front of the three-story brick warehouse. Adele had asked to borrow him with the vehicle. Not only was the fellow very skillful, he could stay with the car while she and Tovera were inside. There were bollards to keep trucks away from the building except at the loading docks, but he had simply skimmed over them.

  “I’ll do my best, mistress,” Tovera said as she eyed the Wartburg Company headquarters. “But th
ere’ll be a lot of places to snipe from inside, and if we have to fight our way down from the penthouse . . .”

  The walls on the ground floor were solid, though orbital imagery had showed that there were windows on the courtyard side. The warehouse wasn’t air-conditioned, so the multi-pane casements on center pivots the length of the second and third floors were necessary for ventilation as well as for light during daytime. The glass was clear, in a manner of speaking, but its coating of grime would block vision as thoroughly as muslin curtains.

  “We’ll hope it doesn’t come to that, Tovera,” Adele said austerely as she started for the pedestrian door, which had been propped open by what seemed to be the stator of an electric motor. “Master Brock agreed politely to meet me in his office, after all, so I can scarcely object to where that office is, can I?”

  Adele wore a russet pantsuit rather than formal robes. She was no longer the technological illiterate she had portrayed on Madison and had intended to remain on Cremona. Her current role — for this too was acting; she was acting in all her appearances outside the hull of the Princess Cecile, which had become her real family home — was that of a wellborn woman from a world more sophisticated than Cremona.

  She smiled mentally. That would be true for a real principal of Kostroma, and Mundy of Chatsworth on Cinnabar was all those things in spades.

  The racket inside the warehouse was punishingly louder than it had been in the street, even with the door open. Fans thrummed in the ceiling, diesel-powered forklifts blatted under heavy load, and paired elevators — when her eyes adapted, Adele saw a set at each corner of this wing — squealed and groaned. Presumably all the same things were happening on the upper floors, adding their counterpoints.

  The light banks high above were probably adequate, but for the first moments after Adele entered, she had the impression of having fallen into a deep cavern. The massive wooden beams of the ceiling were covered with soot which absorbed any illumination that fell on them. Workmen were wraiths, dwarfed by the machinery and the piles of goods among which they moved.

  Adele led the way along the aisle, between the front wall and stacks of large crates which often encroached on the passage painted in yellow on the floor. The section foreman was in a miniature office whose walls were glass from above waist height. The three loading docks were beyond him, and a passenger elevator was just in back.

  That elevator, like its larger brethren at the ends of the building, was a platform riding between two pillars without a cage. Again like the freight elevators, it was one of a pair on the same cables; one rose as a counterweight when the other half dropped.

  The foreman was alone in the office, glaring at a flat-plate display and growling into a handset cradled between his ear and shoulder. Adele tapped on the glass politely. The foreman angrily waved them away.

  Does he think I was asking his permission? Adele entered and sat down.

  She didn’t hear the door close behind Tovera so much as she felt the level of ambient noise reduce. The office must have an active cancellation system.

  “Get your bloody asses out!” the man said with a brusque wave of the hand holding a memorandum book. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready to see you!”

  Adele brought out her data unit. She shrank the foreman’s display and froze the console. That shut off his phone also, since outside communications were through it.

  “I am Principal Hrynko,” she said, her tone coldly polite. “I have an appointment with Master Brock.”

  “What in blazes happened to my console?” the foreman said, flipping the external power switch back and forth with no result except faint mechanical clicks from the toggle. “It just cut out!”

  It would be nice if I lived in a world in which people were either smarter or more polite, Adele thought, not for the first time. But I’ve learned to make do with what I have.

  Aloud she said, “Your equipment will not work until you have taken me to Master Brock. I suggest you do that so that you can go back to your business.”

  The foreman stared at her, his lower lip trembling. He was a brawny man in his fifties. A thin scar curved across his scalp, turning the hair white along its track, and he was missing the lobe of his right ear.

  “Are you a witch?” he said in hoarse surmise.

  Adele blinked. I thought Cremona was unsophisticated. Apparently it’s simply backward.

  “More like a demon if you irritate her,” said Tovera. “I suggest you do what she says and avoid that danger. Of course — ”

  Tovera smiled. The expression was inhuman, which was an accurate description of the pale woman herself.

  “ — I wouldn’t need to be irritated to open your belly and start winding your guts out on a stick. Why don’t you take us to your master and avoid that too?”

  “The elevator,” said the foreman, twisting his head enough to suggest the one beside his office. He didn’t turn too far to keep his eyes on Adele, however. “Just pull the cord when you get on and pull it again when you’re at the penthouse.”

  “Thank you,” said Adele. The platform would be tight enough for two, so she didn’t object to the plan. She turned on his console and got to her feet.

  The noise buffeted her when she stepped out, but she had a direction now and didn’t notice distractions. The foreman was still gaping as she and Tovera walked around the office. He seemed to have forgotten the phone in his left hand.

  Tovera stepped onto the platform. It was four feet square and supported by a cast-iron double yoke; a chain hung from each arm to a corner. The cord that the foreman mentioned ran up through the hole in the ceiling and presumably to a switch at the roof level; it didn’t move with the platform.

  Adele got on also. Tovera held her attaché case half-open, with her right hand inside on the concealed submachine gun, so Adele tugged at the cord. For a moment nothing happened; then the elevator began to rise with a series of individual jerks as though it was being hauled up on cogs instead of a cable drum.

  Tovera was trying to look in all directions, not forgetting straight up through the hole in the ceiling. Adele was determined not to let her servant’s paranoia make her equally nervous, but it was only by effort of will that she kept herself from gripping the pistol in her pocket.

  Adele looked outward as the elevator rose, viewing the warehouse. The second floor looked the same to her as what she had seen at the ground level, and the third as well when the platform rose into it. The warm, nutty odor of pink rice permeated the big building, though Adele didn’t identify any storage hoppers.

  Men — and perhaps a few women, as genderless as spacers in dim light and their loose outfits — worked among the vast array. They reminded her of ants, absorbed in their business, and seemed as oblivious of her scrutiny as those insects would have been.

  The platform rose into the arched cover — it had no front or back, so it couldn’t be called an enclosure — on the roof. It seemed silent after the cacophony within the warehouse proper.

  Adele pulled the control rope firmly. In all probability the elevator would have shut off automatically at the top, but she saw no reason to trust the quality or even the good sense of the engineer — or mechanic — who had designed the system.

  Turning to Tovera as they stepped off, Adele said, “I’m sure we could have jumped clear if it hadn’t stopped.”

  “Yes,” said Tovera. “But if the elevator destroyed itself, we would have been faced with starvation since we couldn’t have gotten down again. Life is filled with dangers.”

  She cocked her head toward the penthouse — actually a shed of structural plastic, large enough for two rooms. “Of course, we could hold out for a little longer,” Tovera said, “by eating Brock and any office staff he has here.”

  Adele smiled as she followed her servant to the door. Tovera had no more sense of humor than she had a conscience, but she had learned to imitate the sort of jokes that ordinary humans made. The problem was that a sociopath finds cannibalism just as funny
as she does anything else.

  So, fortunately, did her mistress.

  Adele stepped in front of the door. “You can avenge me if I’m shot down on the threshold,” she said.

  Does Tovera realize that is a joke? she wondered. Not that it mattered, as her servant would find that response as natural as breathing.

  The secretary at the console in the outer office was male, though young and attractive enough, Adele supposed. Instead of asking the newcomers’ business, he turned his head toward the open door behind him and called, “Hey, boss? That Sunbright lot’s here to see you. They’re women.”

  “Well, send “em in!” said the man within, also shouting through the door. “And tell Herrigord that I’ll get back with him in ten minutes.”

  “You heard the man,” said the grinning secretary, jerking his thumb in the direction of the door. “I’d say he doesn’t bite, but I’d be lying.”

  Tovera grinned at him as they went past.

  Adolph Brock was as squat as a fireplug. If he had been standing, his breadth would have made him look shorter than he was, but even so he probably wasn’t as tall as Adele. He still had his hair, but it was white and cropped so closely that he would have looked bald at any distance.

  Tovera closed the door behind them. Brock barked a laugh and said, “You needn’t have done that, because you’re going straight out again. I’m seeing you to tell you to your faces that I’m not giving you a loan. I don’t consider lining the pockets of a monkey from Kostroma to be a good business decision. Now, out!”

  Adele sat on one of the straight chairs facing the outfitter’s desk and took out her data unit. The room’s furniture was wooden and attractive, though of a heavier style than the appointments of her own townhouse in Xenos. She had expected functional, mismatched pieces of metal and plastic.

  “Since I’m here, Master Brock,” she said, “I’ll explain the aspects of my proposition that I didn’t choose to state on the phone or put in electronic form.”

  “You’ve nothing to say!” Brock said. For the moment, he appeared to be more nonplussed than angry. “Look, I know people in the shipping business and ex-Fleet folk too. I put your proposition to them and they say — every bloody soul of them, I mean! They say you wouldn’t stand a prayer against the Estremadura. She’s bigger, better armed, and she’s got top Fleet officers and a crew they picked themselves from pirate-chasers when the Peace of Amiens was signed and two thirds of the ships went into ordinary.”