Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  Another heavy silence rose. A leaden hopelessness beating through her veins, Sula looked at the others. “Do you all agree?” she asked.

  Tan-dau and Sagas said nothing. Patel gave a rueful grin. “Sorry the love thing didn’t work out, princess,” he said. “It could have been fun.”

  “The Naxids are already nibbling at your businesses,” Sula said. “When rationing starts and you go into the food business, you’ll be competing directly with the clans the Naxids have set in power. It’s then that you’ll be challenging them directly, and they’ll have to destroy you.”

  Bakshi gave her another of his dead-eyed looks. “What makes you think we’ll involve ourselves in illegal foodstuffs?”

  “A market in illegal foodstuffs is inevitable,” Sula said. “If you don’t put yourselves at the head of it, you’ll lose control to the people who do.”

  There was another long silence. Bakshi spread his hands. “There’s nothing we can do, my lady.” He turned to Casimir and gave him a deliberate stone-eyed look. “Our associates can do nothing either.”

  “Of course not, Sergius,” Casimir murmured.

  Sula looked down her nose at them each in turn, but none offered anything more. Her hands clenched behind her back, the nails scoring her palms. She wanted to offer more arguments, weaker ones even, but knew it would be useless and did not.

  “I thank you then, for agreeing to hear me,” she said, and turned to Tan-dau. “I appreciate your offering this place for the meeting.”

  “Fortune attend you, my lady,” Tan-dau said formally.

  Fortune was precisely what had just deserted her. She gave a brisk military nod to the room in general and made a proper military turn.

  Macnamara anticipated her and stepped to the rear of the room, holding the door for her. She marched out with her shoulders still squared, her blond head high.

  Bastards, she thought.

  There was a thud behind her as Macnamara tried to close the door just as Casimir tried to walk through the doorway. Macnamara glared at Casimir as he shouldered his way out and fell into step alongside Sula.

  “That went better than I’d expected,” he said.

  She gave him a look. “I don’t need irony right now.”

  “Not irony,” he said pleasantly. “That could have gone a lot worse.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Oh, I knew they wouldn’t agree with you this time around. But they listened to you. You gave them things to think about. Everything you said will be a part of their calculations from now on.” He looked at her, amused appreciation glittering in his eyes. “You’re damned impressive, I must say. Standing there all alone staring at those people as if they’d just come up from the sewer smelling of shit.” He shook his head. “And I have no idea how you do that thing with your voice. I could have sworn when I met you that you were born in Riverside.”

  “There’s a reason I got picked for this job,” Sula said.

  And her ability to do accents wasn’t it. She and Martinez had just blown apart and she’d thought that killing people or getting killed herself would be a welcome distraction from her miseries. Her idiot superiors had taken her, and now here she was.

  There was a moment of silence as they all negotiated the front door of the club. This time, at least, Macnamara didn’t try to slam the door on Casimir. Score one, she thought, for civility.

  The delay at the door gave Julien time to catch up. He caught his breath in the copper-plated corridor outside, then turned to Sula. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Better luck next time, hey?”

  “I’m sure you did your best,” Sula said. It was all she could do not to snarl.

  “Tan-dau got wounded in an assassination attempt last year, and he’s not game for new adventures,” Julien said. “Sagas isn’t a Daimong to take chances. And Pops,” he gave a rueful smile, and shook his head, “Pops didn’t get where he is by sticking his neck out.”

  “And Patel?” Sula asked.

  Julien laughed. “He’d have followed you, you heard him. He’d like to fight the Naxids just for the love, like he said. But the commission’s rulings are always unanimous, and he had to fall in line.”

  They descended the moving stairs. Sula marched to the doors and walked out onto the street. The pavement was wet, and a fresh smell was in the air: there had been a brief storm while she was conducting her interview.

  “Where’s a cab rank?” Sula asked.

  “Around the corner,” said Julien, pointing. He hesitated. “Say—I’m sorry about today, you know. I’d like to make it up to you.”

  Can you raise an army? Sula thought savagely. But she turned to him and said, “That would be very nice.”

  “Tomorrow night?” Julien said. “Come to my restaurant for dinner? It’s called Two Sticks, and it’s off Harmony Square. The cook’s a Cree and he’s brilliant.”

  Sula had to wonder if the Cree chef thought it was his own restaurant, not Julien’s, but this was no time to ask questions of that kind. She agreed to join Julien for dinner at 2401.

  “Shall I pick you up?” Casimir said. “Or are you still in transit from one place to another?”

  “I’m always in transit,” Sula lied, “and now you know why. I’ll meet you at the club.”

  “Care to go out tonight?”

  Sula decided she was too angry to play a cliqueman’s girl. “Not tonight,” she said. “I’ve got to assassinate a judge.”

  Casimir was taken aback. “Good luck with that,” he said.

  She kissed him. “See you tomorrow.”

  She walked with Macnamara to the cab rank and got a cab. He sat next to her in the seat, arms crossed, staring straight forward. One muscle in his jaw worked continually.

  “So what’s your problem?” Sula demanded.

  “Nothing,” he said. “My lady.”

  “Good!” she said. “Because if there’s anything I don’t need, it’s more fucking problems.”

  They sat in stony silence. Sula had the cab let her off two streets from her apartment. Rain had started again, and she had to sprint, her jacket pulled over her head. One-Step, sharing a vendor’s awning with a few others caught in the downpour, did a double take as she ran past, her blond hair flying.

  Inside, she tossed the wet wig onto the back of her chair and combed her short, dyed hair. She considered checking the news, but decided against it, knowing the news would only further irritate her.

  In the end she decided a long bath was in order. Followed by her latest book of mathematical puzzles, and possibly a book she’d acquired at a stall two days ago, The Diplomatic History of Napoleonic Europe, something obviously printed by a history student for his own use, bound cheaply, then discarded. It was just the sort of page-turner she most enjoyed.

  She took the book into the bath with her and found it an ambiguous comfort. Compared with the likes of Paul II or Godoy, her own superiors seemed positively…brilliant.

  After her bath, she wrapped herself in a robe and went to the front room. The rain was still pouring down. For a long moment she watched her ju yao pot as the crackled glaze reflected the beads of water that snaked down the window.

  While watching the pot an idea occurred to her.

  “Ah. Hah,” she said. The idea seemed an attractive one. She examined it carefully, probing it with her mind like a tongue examining the gap left by a missing tooth.

  The idea began to seem better and better. She got a fresh piece of paper and a pen and outlined it, along with all possible ramifications.

  There wasn’t a problem that she could see. Nor a way it could be traced to her.

  Perhaps she could credit the influence of Metternich or Castlereagh or Talleyrand for the idea. Perhaps the afternoon of staring into Sergius Bakshi’s predator-fish eyes and wondering what was going on behind them.

  Or perhaps the scheme came entirely from her own mind, from the mind that floated with the reflection of the raindrops on the window. In which case, she really had
to admire her brain.

  She destroyed the paper, leaving no evidence of her scheme. She looked at her right thumb, the thick pad of scar tissue where her print had once been.

  It was very important that she not leave her fingerprints on this one.

  NINETEEN

  In the morning, Sula made deliveries with Macnamara and Spence. Macnamara was a little stiff but at least he wasn’t sulking too visibly.

  In the afternoon, she went to the Petty Mount for a shopping expedition, and wore the result to meet Casimir at the Cat Street club. She was late, and as she approached the club with her large shoulder bag banging her hip with every stride, she found Casimir pacing the pavement next to the apricot-colored car. He was scowling down at the ground, his coat floating behind him like a cloak.

  He looked up at her and relief flooded his face. Then he saw how she was dressed, in a long coat, black covered with shiny six-pointed particolored stars, like a rainbow snowfall.

  “You got a coat like mine,” he said, surprised.

  “Yes. We need to talk.”

  “We can talk in the car.” He gestured toward the door.

  “No. I need more privacy than that. Let’s try your office.”

  Petulance tugged at his lip. “We’re already late.”

  “Julien will be all right. His chef is brilliant.”

  He nodded as if this remark made sense and followed her through the club. There were few patrons at this early hour, mostly quiet drinkers at the bar or workers who hadn’t managed to get home in time for dinner.

  Sula bounded up the metal stairs leading to Casimir’s office. “How did the judge thing go?” he asked.

  She had to search her mind for a moment to recall the story.

  “Postponed,” she said.

  He let her into his office. “Is that what you need to talk about? Because even though Sergius said I wasn’t supposed to help you, there are a few things I can do that Sergius doesn’t need to know about. Because—Oh, damn.”

  They had entered his office, the spotless black-and-white room, and Sula had thrown her bag on a sofa and opened her coat to reveal that she wore nothing underneath it but stockings and her shoes.

  “Damn,” Casimir repeated. His eyes traveled over her. “Damn, you’re beautiful.”

  “Don’t just stand there,” Sula said.

  It was the first time she had set out to please a man so totally and for so long. She moved Casimir over the room from one piece of furniture to the other. She took full advantage of the large, oversoft chairs. She used lips and tongue and fingertips, skin and scent, whispers and laughter. She would never have dared try this with Martinez—with him, she lacked this brand of confidence. There was something whorish about it, she supposed, though her own violent, mercifully brief encounter with whoring had been far more sordid and unpleasant than this.

  She kept Casimir busy for an hour and a half, until the chiming of his comm grew far too insistent. He rose from one of the sofas, where he was sprawled with Sula on top of him, and made his way to his desk.

  “Audio only,” he told the comm. “Answer. Yes, what is it?”

  “Julien’s arrested,” said an unknown voice.

  Sula sat up, an expression of concern on her face.

  “When?” Casimir barked. “Where?”

  “A few minutes ago, at the Two Sticks. He was there with Veronika.”

  Calculation burned in Casimir’s gaze. “Was it the police or the Fleet?”

  The voice shifted to a higher, more urgent register. “It was the Legion. They took everybody.”

  Casimir stared intently at the far wall as if it held a puzzle he needed badly to put together. Sula rose and quietly walked to where her large shoulder bag waited. She opened it and began to withdraw clothing.

  “Does Sergius know?” Casimir asked.

  “He’s not at his office. That’s the only number I have for him.”

  “Right. Thanks. I’ll call him myself.”

  Casimir knew he couldn’t get away with a video-suppressed call to Sergius Bakshi, so he put on a shirt and combed his hair. He spoke in low tones and Sula heard little of what was said. She finished dressing, took a pistol from her bag and stuck it in her waistband behind her back.

  Casimir finished his phone call. He looked at her with somber eyes.

  “You’d better make yourself scarce,” Sula said. “They might be going after all of you.”

  “That’s what Sergius told me,” he said.

  “Or maybe,” Sula’s eyes narrowed, “they’re after you, and they went to the Two Sticks thinking you’d be there.”

  “Or they might be after you,” Casimir said, “and Julien and I are both incidental.”

  “That hadn’t occurred to me,” she said.

  Casimir began to draw on his clothing. “This looks bad,” he said. “But maybe you’ll get what you want.”

  She looked at him.

  “War,” he explained, “between us and the Naxids.”

  “That had occurred to me,” she said.

  It had occurred to her the previous night, in fact, while she gazed at reflections of raindrops in her ju yao pot. Which was why, that morning, she’d gone to a public comm unit. She wore a worker’s coveralls and the blond wig and a wide-brimmed hat pulled down over her face, and she’d taken the hat off her head and put it over the unit’s camera before she manually punched in the code that would connect her to the Legion of Diligence informer line.

  “I want to give some information,” she said. “An anarchist cell is meeting tonight in a restaurant called the Two Sticks, off Harmony Square. They are planning sabotage. The meeting is set for twenty-four and one, in a private room. Don’t tell the local police, because they’re corrupt and would warn the saboteurs.”

  She’d used the Earth accent that had once amused Caro Sula. She walked away from the comm without removing her hat from the camera pickup.

  She must have been convincing because Julien was now under arrest.

  “How shall I contact you?” Sula asked Casimir.

  He adjusted his trousers, then gave her a code.

  Sula nodded. “Got it.”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “You don’t need to write it down?”

  “I compose a mental algorithm that will allow me to remember the number,” she said. “It’s what I do with everyone’s numbers.”

  He blinked. “Clever trick,” he said.

  She kissed him. “Yes,” she said. “A very clever trick.”

  The next day the Naxids went berserk. Someone with a rifle went onto a building overlooking the Axtattle Parkway, the main highway that connected Zanshaa City with the Naxids’ landing field at Wi-hun. The sniper waited for a convoy of Naxid vehicles to go by, then shot the driver of the first vehicle. Because the vehicles were using the automated lanes, the vehicle cruised on under computer control with a dead driver behind the controls. Then the sniper shot the next driver, and the next.

  By the time the Naxids got things sorted out, at least eight Naxids were dead, and more wounded. The sniper, who was clearly using a weapon much better than the Sidney Mark One, made a clean getaway.

  The Naxids decided to shoot fifty-one hostages for every dead Naxid. Sula had no idea how they decided on fifty-one. It wasn’t even a prime number.

  Maybe whoever gave the order didn’t know that.

  Casimir, who heard the news before anyone else, called Sula shortly after dawn to tell her to stay off the streets. She called the other members of Team 491 and told them to stay where they were, then stuck her head out the door and told One-Step to make himself scarce.

  She spent the morning in her apartment with her book of diplomatic history and her mathematical puzzles. At midday her comm chimed with a message that Rashtag, the head of security for the Records Office, had changed his password for the Records Office computer. The new password was included in the message, so she contacted the Records Office computer and found that the Naxids had worked out how Re
sistance was being distributed.

  Rashtag was ordered to change the passwords of everyone in the office and to watch the office’s broadcast node for signs of unusual activity. Neither of these worried Sula: she would always get Rashtag’s new password when he changed it; and when she distributed Resistance, she always turned off the logging on the broadcast node, so there would be no record of the node being used. It would require some fairly high-level coordination to detect her, and she saw no sign of that as yet.

  It was only a matter of time, however.

  Casimir called again after nightfall. “Can we meet?” he asked.

  “Is it safe to go out?”

  “The police have finished rounding up new hostages to replace the ones they shot today, and they’re back to processing ration cards. But just in case I’ll send a car.”

  She told him to pick her up at the local train stop. He gave her a time. The car was a dark Hunhao sedan with one of the Torminel bodyguards at the controls. He took her to a small residential street on the edge of a Cree neighborhood—she saw Cree males on the streets exercising their quadruped females, who bounded about them like large puppies.

  Casimir was in the apartment of a smiling, elderly couple who apparently did very well for themselves renting out their spare room as a safe house. The room was roomy and comfortable, with flower pots on the windowsills, fringed throw rugs, the scent of potpourri, family pictures on the walls, and a macramé border around the wall video. The remains of Casimir’s dinner sat on a tray along with a half-empty bottle of sparkling wine.

  Sula kissed him hello and put her arms around him. His flesh was warm. His cologne had a pleasant earthy scent.

  “I think we’ve got a false alarm,” Casimir said. “The Legion doesn’t seem to be after me. Or Sergius, or anyone but Julien. There haven’t been any raids. No inquiries. Nobody’s been seen doing surveillance.”

  “That may change if Julien talks,” Sula said.