Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  She could hear Casimir’s heart pounding in his chest.

  “I conceive that no one is injured,” said the burbling voice of a Cree.

  This time it was Sula who was helpless with laughter. She and Casimir crawled from the wreckage of the carriage as the apricot-colored limousine rolled silently to a stop, the Torminel guards appearing in time to prevent a very angry Daimong truck driver from bludgeoning someone. Julien and Casimir passed around enough money to leave everyone happy, the chariot drivers in particular, and then the party piled into the limousine for the ride to the Hotel of Many Blessings.

  Sula sat in Casimir’s lap and kissed him for the entire ride.

  He wasn’t anything like Martinez. Maybe that was the most attractive thing about him.

  She insisted on taking a shower before joining him in bed. Then she insisted that he take a shower as well.

  “We could have showered together,” Casimir grumbled.

  “You could use a shave too,” Sula pointed out.

  He grumbled toward the shower and left her wrapped in the luxurious velvet dressing gown that he’d loaned her. Being alone was a mistake, because she had nothing to do but think, and once she began to think, she began to fear.

  All night she had been playing a part—by now Gredel was no less a role than Sula—but she couldn’t play a part in bed. She wasn’t experienced enough that way. With Lamey she’d been too young, and with Martinez…well, with Martinez the experience had been too singular.

  In a few minutes Casimir would encounter a young, unsophisticated bed partner, caught without the assured, arrogant persona she’d worn all night.

  Sula considered putting on her clothes and leaving, and then she thought about the consequences of that. Then she remembered Casimir’s grating laugh as the wrecked pai-car chariot was dragged along the street, and his scent as her arms went around him, the pulse of adrenaline in her ears.

  She dimmed the lights to almost nothing. Perhaps in the dark he wouldn’t notice the change in her.

  The bathroom door opened and Casimir stood framed in the spill of yellow light. Sula’s blood surged. Before she could change her mind, she stepped toward him and pulled him to the bed. He was showered and shaved and scented with taswa-blossom soap.

  His long-fingered hands began to touch her. He wasn’t anything like Martinez, Sula discovered with relief. Martinez had been patient and giving, and Casimir was impatient and greedy.

  That was all right, because it gave her permission to be impatient and greedy too.

  “Hey!” he said in surprise. “You’re really a blond!”

  She gave a slow laugh. “That’s the least of my mysteries.”

  The fear had gone. That surprised her because in the past fear had always been an element. Perhaps Martinez had liberated her from that.

  Or perhaps she was unafraid because she still knew some things that Casimir didn’t. She still had some cards to play. She was still in charge, whether he knew it or not.

  An hour or so later she decided to play a card or two, and told the room light to go on. Casimir gave a start and shielded his eyes. Sula crawled out of bed and looked for the package that held the clothing she’d worn at the beginning of the evening.

  “Gredel, what are you doing?” Casimir complained.

  “I have something to show you.” She put on her jacket and triggered the sleeve display. She activated the video wall and beamed the jacket’s memory to the wall. “Look at this.”

  Casimir blinked uncertainly at the schematics of the Sidney Mark One. He screwed up his face. “What is that, anyway?”

  “Tomorrow’s edition of Resistance.”

  “Tomorrow’s? What are you—” He looked at her, and as comprehension entered his eyes, his mouth opened in shock.

  Sula dug in an inner pocket and removed the item she’d taken from the storage locker earlier in the evening. She opened the slim plastic case and showed Casimir her Fleet ID.

  “I’m Caroline, Lady Sula,” she said. “I represent the secret army.”

  There was a moment of silence. Casimir squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment, as if in disbelief, and then opened them.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Do you still want to buy me a new wardrobe?” Sula smiled at him. “You can if you like.”

  EIGHTEEN

  The meeting with Julien’s father occurred three days after the madcap carriage race, on an afternoon dark with racing clouds. Sula dressed for it with care. In order that she look more like the person in the Fleet ID, she left off her contact lenses and bought a shoulder-length wig in something like her natural shade of blond. She wore a military-style jacket in a tone of green that wasn’t quite the viridian of a Fleet uniform but that she hoped suggested it. She brought Macnamara as an aide, or perhaps a bodyguard, and bought him a similar jacket. She reminded herself to walk with the straight-backed, braced posture of the Fleet officer and not the less formal slouch she’d adopted as Gredel.

  She wore a pistol stuck down her waistband in back. Macnamara had a sidearm in a shoulder holster.

  These were less for defense than to shoot themselves, or each other, in the event things went wrong.

  There was a lot of shooting going on these days. The Naxids had shot sixty-odd people for distributing the latest copy of Resistance—apparently the plans for the Sidney Mark One had made them more than usually homicidal. Someone had firebombed a Motor Patrol vehicle in the Old Third, where resentment had obviously not died since the massacre, and eleven Torminel were shot and more rounded up.

  The meeting took place in a private club called Silk Winds on the second floor of an office building in a Lai-own neighborhood. Casimir met her on the pavement out front, dressed in his long coat and carrying his walking stick. His eyes went wide as he saw her, and then he grinned and gave one of his elaborate bows. From his bent position he looked up at her.

  “You still don’t look much like a math teacher,” he said.

  “Good thing then,” she said in her drawling Peer voice. His eyebrows lifted in surprise and he straightened.

  “Now that’s not the voice I heard in bed the other night.”

  From over her shoulder Sula heard Macnamara’s intake of breath. Great, Sula thought, now she’d have a scandalized and sulking team member.

  “Don’t be vulgar,” she admonished, still in her Peer voice.

  Casimir bowed again. “Apologies, my lady.”

  He led her into the building. The lobby was cavernous, brilliant with polished copper, and featured a twice-life-size bronze statue of a Lai-own holding, for some allegorical reason beyond Sula’s comprehension, a large tetrahedron. Uniformed Lai-own security guards in blue jackets and tall pointed shakos gave them searching looks but did not approach. A moving stair took Sula to the second floor and the polished copper door of the club, on which had been placed a card informing them that the club had been closed for a private function.

  Casimir swung the door open and led her and Macnamara into the shadow-filled club. Faint sunlight from the darkened sky gleamed fitfully off copper fittings and polished wood. Lai-own security—this time without the silly hats—appeared from the gloom and checked everyone thoroughly for listening devices. They found the sidearms but didn’t touch them. Apparently they discounted the possibility that Sula and her party might be assassins.

  Casimir, adjusting his long coat after the search, led them to a back room. He knocked on a nondescript door.

  Sula smoothed the lapel of her jacket, straightened her shoulders and reminded herself to act like a senior fleet commander inspecting a motley group of dock workers. She couldn’t give orders to these people: she had to use a different kind of authority. Being a Peer and a Fleet officer were the only cards she had left to play. She had to be the embodiment of the Fleet and the legitimate government and the whole body of Peers, and she would have to carry them all along through the sheer weight of her own expectation.

  Julien opened the door and his ey
es went wide when he saw Sula. Suddenly nervous, he backed hastily from the door.

  Sula walked into the room, her spine straight, hands clasped behind her. I own this room, she told herself, but then she saw the eyes of her audience and her heart gave a lurch.

  Two Terrans, a Lai-own, and a Daimong sat in the shadowy, dark-paneled room, facing her from behind a table that looked like a slab of pavement torn from the street. Nature had made the Daimong expressionless, but the others were so blank-faced they might have all been carved from the same block of granite.

  She heard Macnamara stamp to a halt behind her right shoulder, a welcome support. Casimir stepped around them and stood to one side of the room.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, and again made his elaborate bow. “May I present Lieutenant the Lady Sula.”

  “I’m Sergius Bakshi,” said one of the Terrans. He looked nothing like his son Julien: he had a round face and a razor-cut mustache and the round, unfeeling eyes of a great predator fish. He turned to the Lai-own. “This is Am Tan-dau, who has very kindly arranged for us to meet here.”

  Tan-dau did not look kind. He slumped in the padded chair that cradled his keel-like breastbone, his bright, fashionable clothes wrinkled on him as they might on a sack of feathers. His skin was dull, and nictating membranes were half deployed across his eyes. He looked a hundred years old, but Sula could tell from the dark feathery hair on each side of his head that he was still young in years.

  Bakshi continued. “These are friends who may be interested in any proposition you may have for us.” He nodded at the Terran. “This is Mr. Patel.” A young man with glossy hair that curled over the back of his collar, Patel didn’t even blink in response when Sula offered him a small nod.

  The Daimong’s name was Sagas. His gray-white face had been permanently set by nature into a look of howling anguish.

  Sula knew, through Casimir, that the four were a kind of informal commission that regulated illegal activities on the south end of Zanshaa City. Bakshi’s word carried the most weight, if only because he’d managed to reach middle age without being killed.

  “Gentlemen,” Sula drawled in her Peer voice. “May I present my aide, Mr. Macnamara.”

  Four pairs of eyes flicked to Macnamara, then back to Sula. Her throat was suddenly dry, and she resisted the impulse to reveal her nervousness by clearing it.

  Bakshi folded large, doughy hands on the table in front of him and spoke. “What may we do for you, Lady Sula?”

  Sula’s answer was swift. “Help me kill Naxids.”

  Even that request, which Sula hoped might startle them, failed to provoke a reaction.

  Bakshi deliberately folded his hands on the table before him. His eyes never left her. “Assuming for the sake of argument that this is remotely possible,” he said, “why should we agree to attack a group so formidable that even the Fleet has failed to defeat them?”

  Sula looked down at him. If he wanted a staring contest, she thought, then she’d give him one.

  “The Fleet isn’t done with the Naxids,” she said. “Not by a long shot. I don’t know whether you have the means to verify this or not, but I know that even now the Fleet is raiding deep into Naxid territory. The Fleet is ripping the guts out of the rebellion while the main Naxid force is stuck here guarding the capital.”

  Bakshi gave a subtle movement of his shoulders that might have been a strangled shrug. “Possibly,” he said. “But that doesn’t alter the fact that the Naxids are here.”

  “How do we know?” Tan-dau’s voice was a mumble. “How do we know that she is not sent by the Naxids to provoke us?”

  It was difficult to be certain to whom Tan-dau addressed the question, but Sula decided to intercept it. “I killed a couple thousand Naxids at Magaria,” Sula said. “You may remember that I received a decoration for it. I don’t think they’d let me switch sides even if I wanted to.”

  “Lady Sula is supposed to be dead,” Tan-dau said, to no one in particular.

  “Well.” Sula permitted herself a slight smile. “You know how accurate the Naxids have been about everything else.”

  “How do we know she is the real…” Tan-dau’s sentence drifted away before he could finish it. Sula waited until it was clear that no more words were coming and then answered.

  “You can’t know,” Sula said. She brought her Fleet ID out of her jacket. “You’re welcome to examine my identification, but of course the Naxids could have faked it. But I think you know…” She gazed at them all in turn. “…if the Naxids wanted to target you, they wouldn’t need me. They’ve declared martial law; they’d just send their people after you, and no one would ever see you alive again.”

  They absorbed this in expressionless silence. “Why then,” Sergius Bakshi said finally, “should we act so as to bring this upon us?”

  Sula’d had three days to prepare what came next. She had to restrain herself from babbling it out all at once, to urge herself to remain calm and to make her points slowly and with proper emphasis.

  “You want to be on the winning side, for one thing,” she said. “That brings its own rewards. Second, the secret government is prepared to offer pardons and amnesties for anyone who aids us.”

  It was like talking to a blank wall. She wanted to stride about, to gesture, to declaim, all in desperate hope of getting at least one of the group to show some response. But she forced herself to be still, to keep her hands clasped behind her, to stand in an attitude of superiority. She had to project command and authority: if she showed weakness, she was finished.

  “What,” said Sagas, speaking for the first time in his beautiful chiming Daimong voice, “makes you think that we need pardons and amnesties?”

  “A pardon,” Sula said, “means that any investigations, any complaints, any inquiries, any proceedings come to a complete and permanent end. Not only for yourself, but for any of your friends, clients, and associates who may wish to aid the government. You may not need any amnesties yourself, but perhaps some of your friends aren’t so lucky.”

  She scanned her audience again. Once again no response.

  “My last point,” she said, “is that you are all prominent, successful individuals. People know your names. You have earned the respect of the population, and people are wary of your power. But you’re not loved.”

  For the first time she’d managed to provoke a response. Surprise widened Sergius Bakshi’s pupils, and even the expressionless Sagas gave a jerk of his head.

  “If you lead the fight against the Naxids, you’ll be heroes,” Sula said. “Maybe for the first time, people will think of you as agents of virtue. You’ll be loved, because everyone will see you on the right side, standing between them and the Naxids.”

  Patel gave a sudden laugh. “Fight the Naxids for love!” he said. “That’s a good one! I’m for it!” He slapped the table with a hand, and looked up at Sula with his teeth flashing in a broad grin. “I’m with you, princess! For love, and for no other reason!”

  Sula ventured a glance at Casimir. He gave her a wry, amused look, not quite encouragement but not dispirited either.

  Bakshi gave an impatient motion of his hand, and Patel fell silent, his hilarity gone in an instant, leaving a hollow silence behind. “What exactly,” Bakshi began, “would the secret government want us to do…” Chill irony entered his voice. “…for the people’s love.”

  “There are cells of resisters forming all over the city,” Sula said, “but they have no way to communicate or coordinate with each other.” Again she looked at them all in turn. “You already have a paramilitary structure. You already have means of communication that the government doesn’t control. What we’d like you to do is to coordinate these groups. Pass information up the chain of command, pass orders downward, make certain equipment gets where it’s needed…that sort of thing.”

  There was another moment of silence. Then Bakshi extruded one index finger from a big, pale hand and tapped the table. In a man so silent and restrained, the gest
ure seemed as dramatic as a pistol shot. “I should like to know one thing,” Bakshi said. “Lord Governor Pahn-ko has been captured and executed. Who is it, exactly, who runs the secret government?”

  Sula clenched her teeth to avoid a wail of despair. This was the one question she’d dreaded.

  She had decided that she could lie to anyone else as circumstances demanded, but that she would never lie to the people at the table before her. The consequences of lying to them were simply too dire.

  “I am the senior officer remaining,” she said.

  Surprise widened Patel’s eyes. His mouth dropped open, but he didn’t say anything. Tan-dau gave Bakshi a sidelong glance.

  “You are a lieutenant,” Bakshi said, “and young, and recently promoted at that.”

  “That is true,” Sula said. She could feel sweat collecting under the blond wig. “But I am also a Peer of ancient name, and a noted killer of Naxids.”

  “It seems to me,” Tan-dau said, again seeming to address no one in particular, “that she wishes us to organize and fight her war for her. I wonder what it is that she will contribute?”

  Defiant despair rose in Sula. “My training, my name, and my skill at killing Naxids,” she answered.

  Bakshi looked at her. “I’m sure your skill and courage are up to the task,” he said. “But of course you are a soldier.” He looked at the folk on either side of him and spread his hands. “We, on the other hand, are men of commerce and of peace. We have our businesses and our families to consider. If we join your resistance to the Naxids, we put all we have worked for in jeopardy.”

  Sula opened her mouth to speak, but Bakshi held up a hand for silence. “You have assured us that the loyalist Fleet will return and that Zanshaa will be freed from Naxid rule. If that is the case, there is no need for an army here on the ground. But if you are wrong, and the Naxids aren’t driven out, then any resisters here in the capital are doomed.” He gave a slow shake of his head. “We wish you the best, but I don’t understand why we should involve ourselves. The risk is too great.”