“Give me the wine, Jason,” D’Omaha said finally. “I’ll pour you a drink.”
“He can have mine,” Stairnon said reaching over to the table to pick up one of the glasses. But D’Omaha stayed her offer by taking the glass from her. He looked grim. She looked grimmer. D’Omaha gestured with his empty hand for the wine.
Jason handed over the bottle and watched while D’Omaha took the remaining goblet from the table then set them carefully on the sideboard. He fetched fresh goblets from the cabinet. Stairnon pulled her shawl tightly across her shoulders, as if to ward off the exaggerated echo of every sound: D’Omaha decanting the wine, pouring it, placing the goblets on a tray, his footsteps. The goblets were brimming. Stairnon was staring at the two on the sideboard.
“Apology accepted,” D’ Omaha said, raising his goblet. A few drops of wine spilled over. Stairnon, still looking grim, touched the rim of her goblet to Jason’s. Grim, but her hand didn’t tremble, and she might be pale just now and looking so guilty that Jason knew with certainty that he had interrupted some intimate ritual. But she also looked strong and robust. Dear Timekeeper. She’s finally sharing his elixir, and she feels ashamed.
Hastily, Jason drank.
***
Jason found Marmion in the tunnels behind Red Rocks tallying bales of boiled cocoons that were stacked there until they could be traded to the next freetrader. They’d exceeded what locked storage they had for the miners’ goods, and though only guards and maintenance crews were permitted in these tunnels, Marmion insisted on spot checking the bales to be certain none were pilfered before he had a chance to trade them. Arria was with him, carrying the record plat from which she read off ownership data that Marmion compared to the tags on the bales. She touched Marmion’s arm to make him look up from his work, then gestured toward Jason. Marmion straightened and smoothed his hair back with his hand.
“Full dress,” he said with approval. “Now that’s a touch I wouldn’t have thought of. How did it go?”
“It was bizarre,” Jason said. He sat down on one of the bales and described what had just happened, omitting his suspicions about D’Omaha sharing his elixir with Stairnon. It was not his concern; D’Omaha was free to do as he liked with his allotment. And Jason found he couldn’t help drawing an uncomfortable parallel between them and himself and Calla. If a similar gesture were within his power, it would do him no good to offer it to Calla. It disturbed him to know that Stairnon had accepted and that Calla never could.
Marmion and Arria sat opposite him, she with her legs crossed under her skirt. “I never even sat down. I think they were both very glad to see me go.”
“At least he accepted your apology,” Marmion said. “That’s the most important thing.”
“He did it only to stop Stairnon, only to get me out of there. I can understand his behavior. It’s Stairnon that has me worried. I thought she understood.”
“Understood what? That you’re giving Calla unconditional support, even at D’Omaha’s expense?” Marmion shook his head. “She goes to bed with him each night. D’Omaha may be careful about what he says publicly, but I doubt that he holds back his opinions with Stairnon. She’s a great lady, but she does have limits. She told you that herself.”
Arria looked up at them expectantly, and Jason knew she had picked up from one of them that she’d been involved somehow, but she knew better than to ask outright. She scowled at Jason, but said nothing.
“I think I’d feel better about this if she just hated me for disagreeing with him. That I could understand, too, but her believing I’m just deliberately antagonizing him just isn’t like her.”
“Your feelings are hurt!” Arria said suddenly.
Jason started to shake his head; it was almost instinctive to disagree with Arria. “I suppose that’s true. I expect her always to be as perceptive as the day I first met her when she took the nymph thread. I didn’t have to explain anything to her. She just knew what to do.” He looked at the stack of bales behind Marmion and Arria. It almost reached the ceiling.
“It could be that she doesn’t know what to do when the ranger-governor accuses her husband of holding back information. He is, after all, a decemvir, the decemvir without whom we wouldn’t be here today. Accusing him was not one of your more inspired deeds,” Marmion said.
“I thought it was possible,” Jason said stiffly. “His opinions are different, and it could have been due to his having more information than me. Considering who he is, I had to know.”
“If you had asked me,” Arria said, “I could have told you what Tonto’s vigil display was about.”
“I wasn’t worried about the one I was seeing. I wondered how many I had missed,” Jason told her sternly. “But now I’ll look at every zephyr log each morning. If there was something incoming, like a drone-messenger, I’ll know if someone goes to pick it up.”
“If one comes, this time I’ll not be considerate of your rest, Ranger-Governor,” Marmion said. “I’ll wake you and make you go with me. I wish I had done so the last time; you wouldn’t be so suspicious now.”
That he’d come and gone one night had been a surprise to Jason, and an unpleasant one when he realized that if Marmion hadn’t routinely turned the message over to him, he’d never have known about it. “We’d also have had a hole in our security system, so it’s just as well, don’t you think?” Marmion nodded in agreement, which gratified Jason, for he had high regard for Marmion. “Are you finished here?”
Marmion nodded. “Just spot checks, and everything tallies. We’ll do a full audit soon.”
“You’ve taken a big burden from me, Marmion. And I don’t mean just keeping good inventories. I mean the whole problem of the miners. You’re doing a great job.”
“Thanks. It varies the routine, gives me something to look forward to.” He got up, ready to leave. Arria handed him the plat and followed. “I imagine you feel the same kind of relief when you look at the danae reports.”
“Yes.”
“Are they done well?” Marmion asked. An innocent sounding question, but he knew quite well that all the reports came from Arria these days. Marmion hadn’t stopped hinting on Arria’s behalf, wouldn’t cease making excuses to bring them together. Jason hadn’t tried to put a stop to it. One sharp word would have ended it, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“Yes. Quite well.”
Arria turned to smile at Marmion. She was especially pretty when she smiled, and Jason realized suddenly that she smiled infrequently, and never at him. The state of things saddened him, but he supposed it couldn’t be helped. He thrust his hands in his pockets and walked on, less aware of the clicking of Marmion’s boots than of Arria walking soundlessly next him.
They passed a guard post, and the woman on duty diligently ticked them off on the counter hooked to her belt. Jason turned to Arria. “What was Tonto’s vigil display all about?”
“I was wondering when you’d ask,” she said, looking pleased with herself for waiting. “I think it was a comet.”
“In the daytime?” Jason said doubtfully.
“A prominent one on the nightside, nothing he could see himself. A song he was catching from others.”
“Comet songs,” Jason said.
“An away song,” Arria corrected. “At any rate, it was receding, not approaching, and I could have told you that if you’d asked.”
“I wasn’t worried about what I already had under control. Only what I might have missed.”
“I could tell you that, too,” Arria said flippantly.
Jason grabbed her hand and stopped her. “What have I missed?” he asked.
She looked nervously at Marmion. The perfectionist was standing with his hands on his hips, looking at Arria as intensively as Jason. She’d intended to tease, Jason realized, and got more than she bargained for.
“It was nothing, right?” Jason said, trying to make sense of the flash in her gray eyes. “You’re playing games with me again. Trying to get my attent
ion.”
“I have no difficulty getting your attention, Jason Anwar D’Estelle,” she said breaking her hand away from his grip. “You like to watch me move, so I need only come into your field of view if I want your attention.” Deliberately she hiked her skirt to her knees.
Jason rolled his eyes in despair.
“All right, all right. I won’t remind you of that. But no, I wasn’t playing games with you. You’ve missed lots of danae vigil displays.”
“You didn’t mention them in the reports,” Jason said.
“I didn’t know they were important. I didn’t think meteorites counted, only freetrader shuttles.”
Jason sighed. “Meteorites?” He shook his head. “You were trying to get my attention.” She looked as if he’d slapped her, and he wished he’d let the matter pass.
“Are you certain they were meteorites?” Marmion asked. “All steadily accelerating trajectories, usually winking out before they reach the horizon. Were there any that seemed very long in duration? Maybe too long by comparison?”
Arria was silent for a moment, thinking. “Yes, there were some too long,” she said. “Two, maybe three.”
“Do you remember when?”
Arria nodded, then shook her head in disappointment. “Not like you mean, not to the very night. One last month when there were no moons up. Another last summer, and maybe one last winter.”
Marmion was looking at him. It wasn’t enough to tell them anything, only enough to worry about. At last Marmion put his arms around Arria. “If it happens again you must tell us.”
“You wouldn’t have had to say that even if I weren’t psi,” Arria said dejectedly. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it was important.”
“It’s my fault, Arria. Not yours,” Jason said. “If I’d told you how the danae’s vigil display tipped me off to Compania being behind the moon even before Calla set foot on Mutare, you might have realized what it could mean.”
“You knew about Compania?” Marmion asked, obviously surprised.
“Not her name, but I knew Calla had stashed another ship up there. And I knew it sent shuttles down. Either you or Calla had checked out a zephyr whenever it happened. Secret orders I wasn’t privy to, I assumed. That’s why I got so angry with you for not telling me right away when the drone-messenger arrived. Still a bit paranoid that maybe I wasn’t really in charge, that you or D’Omaha were still getting messages from the Decemvirate that I didn’t know about.”
“Or worse,” Arria said. And when Marmion looked at her blankly, she added: “A message from Calla that he didn’t know about.”
“Same thing,” Jason said.
“Hardly,” Arria said.
“You’re misinterpreting,” Jason said sharply. “I know what I’m thinking and you do not. You don’t have full background to understand. Calla may be the woman I love and I may, indeed, wish there were some word from her, some special words for me. But dammit, she’s also the gold commander the Decemvirate sent on a special mission, the same one who charged me with defending Mutare while she’s gone. She’s the one on the battlefront, not the Decemvirate, so of course I’d rather hear from her.”
Arria nodded glumly, but Jason had the feeling she’d never understand.
“I’m sorry I raised my voice,” he said. “I guess it wouldn’t bother me half so much if I didn’t care at all about you. You need help that we can’t give you here on Mutare and I just want you to come out of this damn war all right.”
“And the danae,” she added sincerely. “It’s not fair to them either.”
“No, it’s not. But I can’t help that. Timekeeper knows I can’t help any of it.” And that was the worst of it, that he had no control at all over the destiny of anything he cared about. The war was still very far away, and yet it was here, too, in his every thought and deed. Even the danae had an active part in it now; he’d be scrutinizing every vigil display Arria reported, fearing an overlooked log entry that might indicate a drone messenger had been intercepted by someone on Mutare, someone who might be keeping Mahdi posted on the complex’s fortifications. Precious little to tell about, nothing worth mentioning unless the complex really were the last elixir garden in the known worlds and therefore too precious to risk. But what if it were only the second to the last? Would Mahdi hesitate to blast a hole in the mountain? Would Calla think twice before destroying it altogether?
Dear Timekeeper, I don’t believe I’m having such thoughts, not about Calla.
Chapter 22
When Calla opened the raider’s hatch, planetary gases and vapors rushed up the access tube into the cockpit. She gasped involuntarily. It was nothing more than warm summery air, but the resinous odors from the distant Amber Forest mixed with spicy flower perfumes emanating from the nearby meadows were shockingly overpowering after thirteen months of canned and recycled air onboard Compania. Beside her, Tam Singh Amritsar sneezed and coughed, but he was grinning, too. With the exception of the brief touchdown when he had come to ferry her from Mutare to Compania, it had been even longer since Singh had smelled fresh air. He and her other officers and crew had stayed onboard Compania, hiding in far-orbit from the then unknown traitor. Before that, they had been enroute to Mutare’s star system, and before that on maneuvers in the Hub, continually between planets.
A squad of Jason’s rangers waited at the bottom of the ladder, long lasers in hand, spare stellerators at their feet. While she and Singh donned the stellerators, she saw the ruby-red target-finder beam of a laser cannon on the hull of the raider. Though she looked, she could not see the cannon nor its operators anywhere in the rocks or trees above the landing pad. Perhaps Jason had placed them on the mountain behind. She knew they were not real cannons from the Hub; she was completely aware of what was and was not in Jason’s armory. But it didn’t take much to convert jack-lights into cannons, and she knew that in the right hands they could cripple even a raider.
“They won’t have time to get through the hull,” Singh said, seeing what she saw.
The chief ranger blinked but didn’t comment. His squad flanked them and they started walking toward Red Rock’s ramp-tunnel. The way was well guarded, and no less steep than it had been before. Silently Singh and the rangers slowed down to accommodate Calla’s slower pace. Calla walked faster, trying to ignore the increasing pain in her hip.
The entrance to the big ramp-tunnel had been fortified and sealed with sheets of shale and metal. It wouldn’t stop Mahdi’s weaponry, but if he punched a hole through it, the force required would also begin to destroy the elixir fabrication area behind it. If he came close enough to do a careful job of it, Jason’s rangers would pick them off, one by one. Calla nodded with approval.
They rode one of the slave-waiters that rolled over an air-cushioned trough down the middle of the tunnel between Red Rocks and Round House. Even Singh was tired and grateful, though Calla knew he could have kept going if he had to. She wasn’t sure she could. The transition from ship gravity to planetary pull was very hard for her, and she hadn’t prepared as well this time as she usually did. Singh hadn’t exercised much either, but he would take some drugs when he got the chance and quickly regain strength. Calla would live with the pain.
At the end of the tunnel, Jason was waiting in battle fatigues, Marmion and the other officers similarly attired standing behind him. They saluted formally, and Calla returned their salutes. For just a moment she hesitated. These people all had seen Jason kiss her when she left Mutare. Would he greet her that way, too? But no. His gray eyes were all business, no hint of a smile on his lips.
“Welcome back to Mutare, Commander,” he said. And as Marmion greeted her similarly, she heard Jason add, “It’s good to see you safe.”
“Let’s go to your conference room,” Calla said. “And bring your officers. Where’s D’Omaha?”
“On his way, ma’am.”
Calla led the way across the staging area, deliberately picking up her pace and choosing a path close to the gallows. Those
, she was pleased to see, were polished with wax to show that they had been well tended in her absence.
“We’ll be using those soon now,” she said loudly enough for the closest officers to hear, and she saw them exchange glances. She wondered how much news they had had of the war. Precious little, most likely, and they wouldn’t much like the full details she was about to give them.
D’Omaha was waiting in the conference room and Calla noticed Jason’s slight scowl when he saw him there. She could guess that D’Omaha had ignored his request to join Jason and the other officers in the staging area to greet her and had come here in anticipation of Calla’s next move. It wasn’t a particularly perceptive prediction that she would brief the Mutare staff, but it was a pointed reminder of his abilities. It could not have gone well between him and Jason, or D’Omaha would have been in the staging area to greet her.
The men and women settled into chairs as soon as Calla sat down, and watched her expectantly; uneasily, she thought.
“This facility on Mutare for fabricating elixir is the last remaining in the galactic Arm. Whoever controls Mutare will control all the known worlds through its elixir. It is my intention to see to it that control is restored to the Decemvirate and the Council of Worlds, right after I swing that traitor, Ramnen Mahdi Swayman, from the gallows in the staging area.”
For a moment all of them were silent. Only D’Omaha and Jason seemed unmoved. Then Marmion spoke. “All of them, Commander? Arethusa, Seydlitz, and Fimbria? Did Mahdi destroy them all?”
“He didn’t destroy any of them. Compania’s raiders, under my command, destroyed them to prevent Mahdi from taking control.”
“Standard procedure,” Jason said. “Prevent the enemy from gaining access to resources that can aid him.”
“But how can we be so certain that Mahdi would not have turned the plants over to the Council of Worlds?” Marmion asked.
“You think, perhaps, that I should be hanged,” Calla said, unable to restrain a disdainful smile. She looked at D’Omaha for support. He could explain better than anyone that the traitor’s behavior had been predicted, and Mutare set up to flush him out. D’Omaha was stonily silent. Jason’s eyes met hers. There was a warning in them. She ignored it. “D’Omaha. Tell them how we know that Mahdi is the traitor.”
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