With the Lightnings

by David Drake

  “Go a—” Adele began. She recognized the voice. She turned, the shelving forgotten for the moment.

  “Lieutenant Leary,” she said. She was more surprised than angry, but not a little angry as well. “I thought I’d made my desires clear at our previous meeting. Quite apart from that, I’m more busy than you can possibly imagine!”

  He was wearing the same uniform he’d had on the day before: it had a resewn seam joining the right sleeve to the bodice, a neat job but not one that had escaped Adele’s notice. Part of her wondered at the son of one of the richest men on Cinnabar wearing a repaired garment.

  “I’m very sorry,” Leary said with quiet formality, “but your duties to the Elector don’t take precedence to obligations of honor between Cinnabar citizens.”

  “Ah,” Adele said. “I see.”

  She supposed she should have expected this. Thinking back on their interaction the previous day, it should have been obvious that it would end in a duel. That hadn’t been her intention, but …

  That hadn’t been her conscious intention.

  “There’s an empty balcony down the hall,” Leary said, nodding in the direction of the palace’s central structure. The building’s wings were relatively unadorned, boxes for the staff to work in. The central mass had a triple colonnade on the front and loggias on the second and third levels to overlook the gardens to the rear. “We can talk there.”

  “All right,” Adele said. She looked around to find Vanness and tell him to take charge temporarily. Everyone in the library was staring at her, including the two carpenters. Staring at her and Leary.

  “Don’t any of you have work?” she shouted. “By God that’ll change when I come back, see if it doesn’t! Carry on, damn you!”

  She returned her attention to Leary. His expression hadn’t changed; it was as neutral as the surface of an oil bath. He bowed her toward the door.

  “After you,” she snapped. The library was her domain. No outsider was going to patronize her here.

  The third-floor halls were surfaced in hard-fired hexagonal tiles laid to form patterns in three shades of gray. The effect was nothing like as lush as the varicolored mosaics on the lower floors, but it was attractive and far more to Adele’s taste.

  She’d fought a duel not long after she found herself in exile on Bryce. An Academy classmate from Trimshaw’s End, one of the most rural of the worlds of the Alliance, chose to find insult in an innocent comment of hers. He offered a challenge.

  The duel should never have been permitted to go ahead, but the housemaster was lax and the dormitory monitor immature. Both Adele and the boy were outsiders; their classmates viewed the matter more as a cockfight than as a conflict between humans.

  Even at the time Adele had known that she should end the farce by an apology. The boy was frightened, in over his head, and more afraid to draw back than go on.

  Adele wasn’t afraid, but she’d learned of her parents’ death only two days before. She didn’t care about her responsibility for those who weren’t able to act responsibly themselves. She didn’t care very much about anything else, either.

  She’d fought perhaps a thousand duels against holographic trainers at Chatsworth and in the basement of the Mundy townhouse: the Mundys were a hot-blooded lot, very punctilious about their honor. Because she was so thoroughly prepared, her strongest recollections of the real event were the ways in which it differed from what training had led her to expect.

  The single-shot electromotive pistols were a set manufactured on Pleasaunce and lent by a friend of the dormitory monitor. Their long barrels threw a heavy slug at moderate velocity, whereas Adele had trained with Cinnabar-style weapons whose pinhead-sized pellets left the muzzle at the speed of a meteor.

  Perhaps the barrel’s weight caused her to overcompensate when she swung onto her target. She’d aimed at the top of his breastbone; instead, she hit the boy between the eyes. The pinhead would have disintegrated, converting its slight mass to kinetic energy. The heavy projectile went on through and splashed trees twenty yards back with liquified brains.

  Somebody screamed. There were at least a hundred people watching, members of the duelists’ house and friends from elsewhere in the Academy.

  The boy rotated and fell to the ground. His back was bent in an arch. His heels drummed so wildly on the ground that one of his slippers flew off into the leaves. The doctor somebody’d hired for the event didn’t bother to go to the victim; instead, she knelt and began to tell the beads of her rosary.

  The dormitory monitor was acting as Adele’s second. His mouth opened as he stared at the thrashing corpse. She walked over to him, reversed the empty pistol, and presented it.

  “Here,” she said. The coils in its barrel were warm even from the single discharge.

  The monitor looked at her. For the first time Adele had realized that he was little more than a boy himself. He took the pistol’s grip reflexively, realized what he held, and let it drop from his fingers. Adele stepped clear as the monitor began to vomit over the ground, the pistol, and his own silken trousers.

  Nobody spoke to Adele as she walked back toward the house. None of her classmates spoke to her for weeks thereafter. Servants packed the monitor’s belongings that evening, but he never reentered the house or attended another lecture at the Academy. A long time ago …

  The third-story loggia bayed out from the wall directly over the ramp leading from the palace into the terraced garden. Two servants had gone out to eat lunch while Leary was in the library. They were seated on the stone rail. One of them gestured with a handful of mince stuffed in a wrapper of large leaves as he told a story, wobbling on what seemed to Adele to be a dangerous perch.

  She smiled at the thought. Less dangerous, perhaps, than a duel.

  Leary opened the glass doors onto the loggia. The servants looked at him with surprise and a degree of belligerence.

  “I’m sorry, but we need this location,” Leary said with a peremptory gesture. “I’ll let you know when you can return.”

  The male servant who’d been telling the story snarled a reply in a northern dialect; Lupanan, Adele thought, but she didn’t have to understand the exact words to get the meaning. Status on Kostroma was generally indicated by bright colors. Leary’s uniform was gray with black piping and, to a rube from Lupana, looked like a pot boy’s garb.

  Leary grabbed the servant’s loose collar and tossed him through the doorway. The Kostroman hit the far wall of the corridor. His companion squealed and scurried after him.

  Leary closed the glass doors, faced Adele, and crossed his hands behind his back. “Mistress,” he said in a clipped voice, “I know nothing about politics except that they exist. My father and sister take care of that end of family affairs.”

  Adele said nothing; she hadn’t been asked a question. Leary wasn’t a large man, neither as tall nor as bulky as the servant he’d thrown into the corridor. For a moment she’d thought he was going to pitch the fellow down into the gardens, and even now she suspected the choice had been a near thing.

  “When I was just turned seven, there was all kinds of excitement at Bantry,” Leary continued. “My father had gotten information from an Alliance agent; tortured it out of him, I suppose, but all I knew at the time was a conspiracy to murder us in our beds with Alliance help. Father flew off to Xenos with most of the guards. The rest of us stood watch all night in case the Alliance attacked.”

  He shook his head in wry marvel. “Hogg gave me a shotgun,” he said. “I’d never been so excited in my life. Now, well, I wonder what a bunch of house servants and groundskeepers were going to do if a squad of Alliance marines in battle armor dropped on Bantry in an assault boat. But that’s all I knew or know about the Three Circles Conspiracy, and I care even less.”

  Adele said nothing. And I care even less…. Did she care? She certainly hadn’t cared about the issues at the time. That’s why she’d gone to Bryce where the proscriptions had passed her by as surely as they had passed by
Speaker Leary’s young son.

  “While I’m on Kostroma,” Leary continued in a tone as emotionless as that of an accountant making a report of expenditures, “I intend to avail myself of the privilege of using the Electoral Library, granted all members of the delegation by his Excellency Walter III. I understand that might be a problem for you, Ms. Mundy. I therefore—”

  He took a small case from his purse and opened it. His fingers moved with assurance though he continued to meet Adele’s eyes.

  “—offer you my card with the address of my present lodgings written on the back. If you choose to have a friend call on me, my landlord will take the message even if I’m absent and we can proceed with arrangements.”

  Shouted confusion rattled windows in the north wing. The noise might well be coming from the library, but for the moment that wasn’t the most important situation Adele Mundy had to deal with.

  She looked at the card of bi-surfaced plastic. The front read:

  DANIEL OLIVER LEARY

  LIEUTENANT, RCN

  The finish was slick and hard enough to turn a knifepoint. She flipped the card over to read the address written on the porous back in a neat hand. The street was somewhere down by the harbor, she thought, but she hadn’t made an effort to learn the geography of Kostroma City.

  As she weighed her response, knuckles tapped and the glass doors opened. She and Leary looked around, Adele in surprise and the lieutenant with obvious irritation.

  The woman who’d intruded was big and had close-cropped black hair. She was around thirty and would have had an attractive face if it weren’t for the scar across her lower left cheek, ear-tip to chin.

  In the woman’s right hand was a hammer gripped by the head. She slapped the handle into her left palm idly. The hammer looked very similar to the one the journeyman carpenter in the library had carried.

  “Yes, Woetjans?” Leary said in a thin tone.

  “Sorry to intrude, sir,” the woman replied; she didn’t sound particularly sorry. “There was a bit of difficulty when we asked the wogs where the shelving was supposed to go up. If the officer-in-charge here—”

  Woetjans nodded toward Adele.

  “—will come set us straight, we’ll get started.”

  She smiled with satisfaction. “Doesn’t look like much more than a couple weeks’ work to get shipshape, though that depends on your man Hogg finding the materials like he says he can.”

  “What in God’s name is going on?” Adele asked mildly.

  Leary cleared his throat. In some embarrassment he said, “It appears to me that since you’re in charge here, Ms. Mundy, the library project is a matter of Cinnabar’s national pride. I’ve therefore taken the liberty of enlisting a detachment of sailors to show the locals how it’s done. Ah …”

  He looked away, grimaced, and turned to face Adele squarely again. “This business is irrespective of any matters of honor that may take place between two Cinnabar citizens, of course.”

  Adele tapped the card on her opposite thumbnail. “I see,” she said. “An admirably succinct explanation.”

  She tucked the card into her purse and looked at the lieutenant again. He stood in a loose brace, waiting for her decision. He wasn’t nearly as young as she’d first judged him.

  “I won’t have a friend call on you, Lieutenant Leary,” Adele said, “because I don’t have a friend on this planet. Few enough anywhere else, though Mistress Boileau no doubt qualifies.”

  Leary smiled. For an instant he was a boy again, or a friendly puppy.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d come with me now,” Adele continued, “to give me your viewpoint on how the library should be organized. I’m always willing to learn from those whose knowledge and ability I respect. And I’m afraid that if the rest of the navy is like you—”

  She gave Woetjans a glance of appraisal only slightly softened by a smile.

  “—we’ll probably find the room completely finished if we delay more than a few minutes.”

  Leary bowed her toward the doorway. They walked down the corridor side by side. Woetjans strode ahead of them bellowing, “Clear way, you lot!” and gesturing with the hammer to emphasize her point.

  BOOK TWO

  Daniel Leary eased his way around a group of Kostroman citizens, most of them arrayed like peacocks, already gathered in the third-floor hallway hours before the Founder’s Day activities would begin. The procession would wind through all the districts of Kostroma City, but the best place to view it for those who weren’t in the grandstands immediately below was from the upper portico of the palace facade.

  In contrast to the crush at the front of the building, the hall at the back of the north wing was empty except for a pair of men arguing about freight rates and, at the end, the Electoral Librarian with her hand on the padlocked library door. The staple and the lock itself were new since when Daniel last visited the palace.

  “Good morning, Mundy!” Daniel called, waving the loose ball of his handkerchief containing the insect he’d brought. “I’m glad I caught you before you got your seat for the celebrations. Though if you want to leave now …?”

  The reserved expression on Mundy’s thin face broke into sudden recognition. “Good morning indeed, Lieutenant,” she said. “Without your uniform I wasn’t sure who it was.”

  She pressed the thumb and index finger of her right hand against the lock’s identification plates. The hasp popped open. “I was arriving, not leaving. You’re more than welcome. In fact I was regretting I hadn’t come to thank you already. I suppose you’ve been occupied with your duties, but I should have made the effort.”

  Holding the lock in one hand, she swung the door open and gestured Daniel into the library. “I cleared up some cataloging matters this morning in my apartment before coming in. I have a personal terminal.”

  She gestured toward the flat bulge along her thigh.

  “I should have checked on the work earlier,” Daniel said in apology. “Not that I was concerned about Woetjans.”

  Shelving already rose floor to ceiling to cover a quarter of the library’s area. The room was noticeably dimmer as a result, even now near midday, but conduit snaked across the ceiling decorations in obvious preparation for artificial lighting.

  “As for my duties,” he added with a tinge of bitterness he didn’t like to hear in his voice, “no doubt I’ll be informed when any are assigned me. I expected to be sent on a round of diplomatic parties, but Admiral Lasowski’s secretary takes care of that.”

  Daniel cleared his throat, swallowing his next intended comment with the phlegm. The justification for Lasowski’s behavior was that “young Leary is a hothead who can’t hold his tongue.” No point in providing supporting evidence.

  “The secretary’s a Martino of Ulm,” he said instead. “A very cultured fellow and handsome in his way. But not RCN.”

  Mundy ignored the implications either out of disinterest or because she thought the discussion would be painful to her visitor. She walked down an aisle of quite practical width, gesturing to the new shelves.

  “Leary,” she said, “I wouldn’t have believed it was possible in this length of time. I’ve cleared a third of the boxes off the floor. I truly believe that in a few days I’ll be able to start the rough sorting. I thought … I didn’t think …”

  She turned to face him. “Lieutenant Leary,” she said, stiff as a statue with the light of the north windows behind her, “when we first met my behavior was unworthy of a citizen of Cinnabar, let alone a Mundy of Chatsworth. I offer you my sincere apologies—and my hand, if you’ll take it.”

  She held out her hand. Daniel reached for it with both of his, then realized he held the handkerchief with his prize in his left.

  They shook right-handed. Mundy’s flesh felt like ivory, dry and firm. “I saw nothing in your behavior that in any way discredited one of the great houses of the Republic,” he said. “And, ah … When I was growing up on Bantry I was Mister Leary to my tutors, but always Daniel
to the other children on the estate. My friends.”

  Mundy smiled without humor. “Mistress Boileau calls me Adele,” she said. “I’ve always called her ‘Mistress Boileau’ or ‘professor.’ I’m not used to first names for other people.”

  She gave Daniel a glance that he thought was wistful. “I’m willing to try, though,” she added.

  “Good, good,” Daniel said warmly. They’d covered the subject to an adequate degree. In a conscious effort to sheer away from embarrassment he went on, “And now you can help me, if you will. The natural history database aboard the Aglaia is regional and only hits the high points of individual worlds, so to speak. I want to know what this is.”

  He set the handkerchief on a box and opened the corners, darting his thumb and finger in to catch a leg of the trapped creature before he completely uncovered it. It was the size of his thumb and had four legs like all Kostroman insects. Briefly it unfurled dull wings, then folded them back onto its carapace. The creature’s only touches of color were the violet beads pulsing to either side of the neck.

  “They live under water on tidal flats,” Daniel explained. “The purple color is gills that they spread out on the mud. They lure sucker fish in for dinner by looking like patches of algae.”

  He grinned broadly. “Supplying dinner, not eating, that is. But when the pools dry, they fly into trees and wait for the tide to come in again. They’re triphibious, and I’ve never seen the like before.”

  Adele seated herself at the working data console. “Give me keywords,” she said as she typed. “Insect, water and air living, fish-eating—what?”

  “Family Barchidae,” Daniel said. “That’s a guess, but reasonable from the wing structure.”

  “If you told me the thing’s name was Thomas …” Adele said with a faint smile. She continued to adjust her controls. “I wouldn’t question it. The only interest I have in bugs is when I find them in my apartment; which, I regret to say, is more often than not.”