The Sea Without a Shore - eARC

by David Drake

  The room settled with the scrape of chair legs on the floor and the whisper of angry breathing. Paul turned to Daniel said, “You’re here to negotiate. Let’s hear more of that and fewer insults!”

  Daniel nodded pleasantly. “Ischia has been treated very badly is the past two years,” he said. “By fate certainly, but especially by the new government of Pantellaria. Among the things which haven’t screwed you over, however, are the independent Corcyrans.”

  “We offered them a fair deal,” said the Councillor to Paul’s right. Adele scrambled through data, but without images she couldn’t tell whether the speaker was Councillor Maurice or Councillor Patric. It was something to concentrate on.

  “Yes sir, you did,” Daniel said, glancing over his shoulder and giving Patric or Maurice a friendly nod. “But it’s a deal that they couldn’t accept and still get the weapons they need to fight the Pantellarians. The same bastards who’re screwing Ischia, and in particular screwing you Monfiores! You used to be able to trade with Corcyra at fair rates for both sides. Not so?”

  The Councillors—including Louis—nodded. There were murmurs of agreement from the audience.

  “We need trade,” Paul said. His voice was harsh, but he remained seated. “Fairness is fine and justice is fine, but we have to feed our children!”

  Agreement rolled across the room like surf rushing to the shore. Instead of waiting for it to subside, Daniel raised both arms, palms outward. “I agree!” he said. Even more loudly he repeated, “I agree! I’m offering you trade with Dunbar’s World!”

  The noise in the hall broke into chaos, rising and falling. Daniel waited where he stood, both hands on the chair back.

  The Elder Paul rose and tried to speak into Daniel’s ear. Adele doubted that Daniel could understand the words, but sight of the two leaders trying to talk made the babble of the audience subside.

  Paul turned to face his people again. “Quiet!” he said with his hands raise. “Quiet so that I can ask Leary a question!”

  In the relative silence he turned to Daniel and said, “I know about Dunbar’s World. All the trade’s held by Cinnabar. Are you committing the government of Cinnabar in this deal?”

  “Off planet trade with Dunbar’s World is held by a cartel of Cinnabar companies, not by the government of the Republic itself,” Daniel said. “There are five trading companies involved. Two of them are owned by Corder Leary, my father.”

  He spoke toward the audience. If he had boomed the answer directly at Paul, the Elder would have reacted subconsciously to a threat even though he knew intellectually that it was not hostile.

  “Now…,” Daniel continued over the excited babble. The audience had understood that Daniel had said that Corder Leary would do what his son requested. That most certainly was not true. “I’ve got some clout on Dunbar’s World myself. I was able to help the current government with a problem—”

  A war. A war they were losing until Daniel intervened.

  “—they were having a few years ago. That will help you on Dunbar’s World. As for the Cinnabar cartel, my colleague Lady Mundy has come here with full authority to negotiate on behalf of all Leary enterprises.”

  “That’s correct,” said Adele. She raised her data unit. “I have this authority.”

  Nobody can hear me.

  Hogg stood and made a megaphone of his hands. “She’s got it!” he boomed. “Any bloody thing the mistress says is true! But she’s a lady, see, and she’s not going to scream her lungs out for yobs like me and you!”

  There was no logical reason that Hogg’s statement should be taken as authoritative, but it was. There was a gush of laughter; then the audience quieted again.

  “Now,” Daniel resumed. “I’m telling you that the existing cartel and the government of Dunbar’s World are going to back the deal. I’m not telling you that you won’t have trouble on the ground with ship owners and dock gangs who liked things the way they were before.”

  “I guess we can handle that,” said the Elder Paul.

  “I guess we bloody well can!” replied a burly, tattooed man in the audience.

  Adele’s lips quirked upward. “Come on, Sunshine, if you think you’re hard enough.” How often have I run into that attitude since I became a Sissie?

  Daniel crooked his finger toward Adele. She put the data unit away and joined him and Paul—and he three Councillors, by the time she got there. Cazelet waited at the edge of the dais, and the two servants stood with their backs to their principals, beaming at the milling audience.

  “Elder Paul?” Daniel said. “Lady Mundy will present her credentials, but her aide Lieutenant Cazelet will be handling the detailed negotiations. For myself—I wonder if you’d mind if I took a look at your community? It reminds me of Bantry, where I grew up.”

  “I’ll have my son Giorgi take you wherever you want to go, Leary,” Paul said. “Louis? The rest of us will adjourn to your sitting room. The mob here isn’t going to break up any time soon, and I want to get this agreement down as quick as we can!”

  CHAPTER 18

  Jezreel on Ischia

  “I’m Giorgi,” said the man who’d held the door of the Elder’s House when the delegation entered. “My father said you wanted to see Jezreel?”

  Daniel clasped hands with him. They were much of an age, but Monfiore was taller by a head and probably didn’t weigh—Daniel thought ruefully—any more than Daniel did.

  “I’d like to get out of here,” Daniel said, making a minute gesture, his hand close to his body, toward the locals clumping to chatter in the street outside the Elder’s House. “And frankly, I’d prefer to see some of the countryside rather than houses. Even very nice houses don’t interest me very much.”

  A number of the locals were watching them intently. A woman looked as though she were about to join them, but Giorgi’s glare thrust her back.

  She wore a floral bonnet and sashes of red and green crossed over a dull yellow dress. The cut of the garments was closer than those Daniel had grown up with, but the color sense of Jezreel residents was identical to that of Bantry peasants dressed in their “best” clothes.

  Daniel glanced at Hogg, who shrugged and said, “Guess I’ll look around some on my own. There might be a poker game somewheres.”

  “Shall I get the aircar?” Giorgi said. “It’s around the back.”

  “I don’t think we should go any distance,” Daniel said, “but if we could wander down to the riverbank, that would be relaxing. From here it looks remarkably unspoiled.”

  Giorgi laughed. “Above the town, yes,” he said as he took them toward the head of the street. “The shipyard is three kilos downstream, and that isn’t so pristine. Though there hasn’t been much construction recently, so even that isn’t a waste pond.”

  He walked at a swinging pace which did as much to fend off would-be companions as the hard look he gave those they passed. Daniel kept up without difficulty. There wasn’t much room for walking on the Kiesche, but he and Hogg had been tramping the whole of the Bantry estate since he was six years old. Climbing the rigging to view the Matrix kept him more fit on shipboard than he was after staying in Xenos.

  They left the road for a path slanting down toward the river. Short logs or in one case a squared stone block reduced the slope in a few places, but it was still meant for pedestrians moving in file.

  “I noticed that you weren’t carrying a gun when we arrived,” Daniel said as they neared the river. A similar path bordered the water in both directions. “I gather Hogg noticed also, which is why he didn’t stick with me.”

  Giorgi grunted. “Because he didn’t think that I could kill you with my bare hands?” he asked without looking over his shoulder.

  “Because he thought you weren’t stupid,” Daniel said. They’d reached the riverbank. “I suppose he meant it as a compliment.”

  “Sorry,” Giorgi said. He stopped and met Daniel’s eyes. “It wasn’t father’s idea but he went along with it. Schweitzer said that we
needed to put the fear of heaven into you right at the start or you’d run roughshod over us.”

  “Let’s walk upstream,” Daniel said, gesturing. The current was slow, in part because the dam and pool had raised the level above it as well. “But you didn’t agree with Master Schweitzer?”

  “I captain the freighter Bird Girl,” Giorgi said. “She’s there in the pool.”

  He gestured. The six Ischian ships were indistinguishable from this angle, but that itself was sufficient identification.

  “I was on Tumbler when the Heimdall landed in the naval harbor on her way to join Admiral Peterson’s fleet,” Giorgi continued. “I guess if you’re not afraid of a battleship, we’re not going to scare you with small arms.”

  Daniel laughed. “I bloody well was afraid of the Heimdall!” he said. “I was in the cruiser Milton at Cacique, and I don’t know any cruiser captain who wouldn’t be ready to foul himself trading salvoes with a battleship.”

  He cleared his throat and said, “But no, a group of armed civilians weren’t going to affect my negotiations.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Giorgi said, his eyes lowered. “I told father we’d be making fools of ourselves, but he hasn’t been off-planet since before I was born. He’s not stupid, but he thinks in terms of—”

  He spread his arms in a double gesture.

  “—this valley and maybe Ischia. He doesn’t…well, he’s seen your record, but he didn’t see the Heimdall, and he doesn’t know what the record means. I’m glad things worked out like they have.”

  Daniel squatted. Bright green plants rose out of the water and grew on the boggy margin of the path. The stems were five-sided, and the oval leaves sprang from each side in turn as they spiraled upward.

  Attached to an outcrop thrusting into the river was what looked like a small version of the “sponge” he had seen in the pond in front of the Manor in Brotherhood. Daniel set his left palm on the rock and leaned his weight onto it.

  “Careful there!” Giorgi said. “That pinkie-gray firepot there will give you Hell’s own bite. Your whole arm’ll be swelled up for a week, and you’ll feel it in your joints every time the weather changes for the rest of your life.”

  “They’re local here?” Daniel said. He lowered his face-carefully—toward the water to peer closer. He thought he could see bronze specks the size of wheat grains, junior versions of the parasites on the sponge on Corcyra.

  “Anywhere there’s fresh water,” Giorgi said. “They’re a nuisance if you’re going to be swimming or watering your stock, but other than that they’re not a problem. The shellbacks keep them down.”

  Standing behind Daniel, he leaned over also. “There’s one, you see?” he said, pointing to the upstream side of the rock.

  A darkly iridescent oval the size of a man’s palm rubbed close to what was here a firepot. Daniel had taken it for the top of another rock until Giorgi called it to his attention. Scores of legs—Daniel saw mostly the motion through a foot of flowing water—rippled along the edges of the creature. The shellback wasn’t doing anything immediately obvious, but the adjacent patch of the sponge’s body was bare of cilia.

  Daniel stood up in two stages, making sure that Giorgi had enough warning to move back. “I sometimes think of becoming a naturalist when I retire,” he said, smiling broadly to his guide. “But that’s a long time to come, I hope. And I’m not really organized enough to do a proper job of that.”

  Though if Adele should retire at the same time, there’d be a chance for some rigorously reported, first-rate field work on planets which nobody else had given more than a glance at!

  “Captain,” said Giorgi, turning to face Daniel. For a moment he seemed on the verge of saluting. “I want you to know that I opposed the whole idea. Like you said, we Monfiores are spacers, traders. We’re not pirates.”

  He balled his fists. Daniel listened with a friendly smile, ready to react if Monfiore got carried away and swung at whatever happened to be closest.

  “My father said that sometimes an Elder has to make hard decisions to save his people,” Giorgi said. “I say that if being Elder means being a criminal, then somebody else can have the job! I’ll go to Pleasaunce and sign on as wiper on one of their ships.”

  Daniel thought of the decisions he made regularly, as an RCN officer and as a man. Many people had died because of those decisions. Some of the dead were his own personnel, and some were innocent of anything except being in the wrong place when Daniel Leary had a task to accomplish.

  Daniel continued to smile. “It’s over,” he said. “At least I trust that it’s over. I think that the deal offered is fair, and I’m sure that your fellow citizens will see that it is.”

  “I wouldn’t bet…,” Giorgi said, smiling also. “That a General Meeting of my fellow citizens would be able to agree on what day of the month it was. But I’ll swear to you that I’ll do whatever I can to end our descent into piracy.”

  A siren began to wind from the tower on the roof of the Elder’s House. Giorgi glanced up and said, “Speaking of General Meetings, that’s the call. Most people will be taking part by computer, but I need to get back to the hall. By heaven, we’re going to accept your offer or I’ll know the reason why!”

  “I certainly hope you do,” Daniel said, following Giorgi up the path as quickly as they had come down it, regardless of the slope.

  And if you don’t, I’m confident that the same offer made to a consortium of three or four neighboring clans will convince them to attack you and I’ll get the prisoners back that way. It was what Corder Leary and his distant Leary ancestors would have done if it were necessary to accomplish a mission.

  ***

  Adele shut down her data unit and rose from the table in Councillor Louis Holper’s kitchen. Cazelet and the four Ischian officials remained seated. Tovera smiled sardonically; she stood against the concrete outer wall between the door and the window, a casement with six panes.

  Through the door to the sitting room—it didn’t have a table for the locals to place their large data units, so the negotiators were in the kitchen—Holper’s wife Mitzi nervously pretended to dust knickknacks on egg-crate display shelving. It was a pleasant little home for the two of them, and surprisingly neat given that the decision to adjourn here had been spur of the moment.

  “Do any of you see a reason that I should remain with you?” Adele said. Her tone and the fact she was standing made her own opinion clear, though she was quite willing to make it more clear if someone pressed her.

  “I can’t imagine that we will, Lady Mundy,” Cazelet said before the locals could offer an opinion. “The rest of the business should be quite straightforward. Shall I call you at the ship if something comes up?”

  The only thing Adele could do that Cazelet couldn’t was to kill everyone in the house. That shouldn’t be necessary, though if Adele had to endure more drivel abut freight rates, it was a possible result. All the more reason for her to leave.

  In other circumstances Adele might have worried about leaving her agent unsupported in a room with four opponents, but Cazelet’s background made him far more sophisticated than the Ischians. Nor were they going to browbeat one of Captain Leary’s officers.…

  “No, I think I’ll visit the prisoners,” she said aloud. “Master Holper, could your wife guide me, please?”

  “What?” said the councillor. “What? Mitzi! The lady here wants you to take her up to the lodge. Can you do that or should I get—”

  “Get who, Louis Holper?” his wife snapped, stepping into the kitchen. She was already untying the strings of her apron. “I guess I’m not crippled up yet, and I’ll thank you not to tell her ladyship that I am!”

  She turned to Adele and half-curtsied, half-bowed. Stepping to the outside door, she said, “If you’ll come this way. It’s just up to the top of the ridge.”

  They went out in file, Mistress Holper in the lead and Tovera closing the door behind them. A score of locals, men and women both, waited in the
street talking nervously. When they saw Holper and her companions, one called, “Mitzi? What’s going on?”

  “That’s for the people whose business it is, Susey Lainz,” Mistress Holper said. “Which isn’t you nor me either one. You ought all to go home. I’m taking our visitors up to the lodge. And we don’t need help doing that!”

  Adele wondered how much political say women had on Ischia. That the Elder and Councillors were all men might be chance—four was a small sample. Still, she’d noticed in the past that the farther you got from the centers of civilization, the less likely you were to find gender equality.

  That didn’t bother Adele particularly; it was simply data. In addition to taking a detached attitude about most things, she was always aware that the pistol in her pocket gave her the power of life or death over anyone who came within fifty yards of so of her.

  She smiled. There had been times where that was a surprisingly comforting thought.

  Stone steps at the back of the house led up to a track as substantial as the one from the harbor. It was wide enough for two, so Adele chose to walk beside their guide.

  “We use the lodge for gatherings, you know,” Mistress Holper said as she trudged briskly upward. “Weddings and the like, parties. It’s a nice place. We treated your friends just as good as if they was our own.”

  She breathed deeply and looked at Adele. “Your ladyship?” she said. “Is it going to be all right? I know it’s not my place to ask, but we’ve all been so frightened when we heard that Cinnabar was coming down on us! We should never have done it, we know that, but it looked like the only way and that know-it-all Schweitzer, he kept saying it’d be fine, it’ll be fine.”

  She spat. “And where is our Darrell now?” she said. “Hiding in his own root cellar, I hear!”

  “Captain Leary’s offer is very fair,” Adele said. “So long as your community wants peaceful trade, that’s what you’ll have.”

  She wondered if she should have explained that she and Daniel didn’t represent Cinnabar. Quite apart from the fact that the mistaken assumption was to the benefit of Daniel’s position, Adele herself had the authority of the Leary enterprises. That wasn’t precisely “the Republic of Cinnabar,” but Adele suspected that Corder Leary could move the Senate in any direction he chose in dealing with worms like the Monfiore clan of Ischia.