Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  Casimir drew back. His face hardened. It was as if she’d just challenged the manhood of the whole Riverside Clique.

  “Julien won’t talk,” he said. “He’s a good boy.”

  “You don’t know what they’re going to do to him. The Naxids are serious. We can’t count on anything.”

  Casimir’s lips gave a scornful twitch. “Julien grew up with Sergius Bakshi beating the crap out of him twice a week—and not for any reason either, just for the sheer hell of it. You think Julien’s going to be scared of the Naxids after that?”

  Sula considered Sergius Bakshi’s dead predator eyes and large pale listless hands and thought that Casimir had a point. “So they won’t get a confession from Julien. There’s still Veronika.”

  Casimir shook his head. “Veronika doesn’t know anything.” He gave her a pointed look. “She doesn’t know about you.”

  “But she knows Julien was expecting the two of us for dinner. And the Naxids will have seen that Julien was sitting at a table set for four.”

  Casimir shrugged. “They’ll have my name and half of yours. They’ll have a file on me and nothing on you. You’re not in any danger.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” Sula said.

  He looked at her for a moment, then softened. “I’m being careful,” he said in a subdued voice. He glanced around the room. “I’m here, aren’t I? In this little room, running my criminal empire by remote control.”

  Sula grinned at him. He grinned back.

  “Would you like something to eat or drink?” he asked.

  “Whatever kind of soft drink they have would be fine.”

  He carried out his dinner tray. Sula toured the room, tidied a few of Casimir’s belongings that had been carelessly discarded, then took off her shoes and sat on the floor. Casimir returned with two bottles of Citrine Fling. He seemed surprised to find her on the floor but joined her without comment. He handed her a bottle and touched it with his own. The resinous material made a light thud rather than a crystal ringing sound. He made a face.

  “Here’s to our exciting evening,” he said.

  “We’ll have to make all the excitement ourselves,” Sula said.

  His eyes glittered. “Absolutely.” He took a sip of his drink, then gave her a reflective look. “I know even less about Lady Sula than I do about Gredel.”

  She looked at him. “What do you want to know?”

  There was a troubled look in his eye. “That story about your parents being executed. I suppose that was something that you said to get close to me.”

  Sula shook her head. “My parents were executed when I was young. Flayed.”

  He was surprised. “Really?”

  “You can look it up if you want to. I’m in the military because it’s the only job I’m permitted.”

  “But you’re still a Peer.”

  “Yes. But as Peers go, I’m poor. All the family’s wealth and property were confiscated.” She looked at him. “You’ve probably got scads more money than I do.”

  Now he was even more surprised. “I’ve never met a whole lot of Peers, but you always get the impression they’re rolling in it.”

  “I’d like to have enough to roll in.” She laughed, took a sip of her Fling. “Tell me. If they don’t find Julien guilty of anything, what happens to him?”

  “The Legion? They’ll try to scare the piss out of him, then let him go.”

  Sula considered this. “Are the Naxids letting anyone go at all? Or does everyone they pick up for any reason join the hostage population in the lockups?”

  He looked at her and ran a pensive thumb down his jaw. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Plus he could be hostage for his father’s good behavior.”

  Casimir was thoughtful.

  “Where would they send him?” Sula asked.

  “Anywhere. The Blue Hatches, the Reservoir. Any jail or police station.” He frowned. “Certain police stations he could walk right out of.”

  “Let’s hope he gets sent to one of those then.”

  “Yes. Let’s.”

  His eyes were troubled.

  Good, she thought. There were certain thoughts she wanted him to dwell on for a while.

  The first use of the Sidney Mark One rifle came the next morning, as a car drew up alongside two Naxid members of the Urban Patrol and gunned them down. Unfortunately, the driver failed to make a successful escape and three young Terrans were killed in a shootout that left two more members of the Patrol wounded.

  Despite the fact that the assassins had been killed, the Naxids shot seventy-two hostages anyway. Why seventy-two? she wondered.

  Team 491, alerted by Casimir through the Riverside Clique’s contacts in the police, stayed indoors for the day.

  By then Sidney had his Mark Two ready. Sula called him as the team were out making deliveries, and he said things were excellent, not first-class, and she could pick up her package.

  The Mark Two was a pistol, small and useful for assassination, that used the same ammunition as the Mark One. It came complete with designs for a sound suppressor.

  Sula kissed Sidney on his smoky mouth, gave him enough money to pay the next month’s rent on his shop, and let PJ buy them all lunch.

  Meanwhile, Julien had been cleared of suspicion by the Legion of Diligence, though he was remaining in custody as a hostage. Casimir called to tell Sula. “He’s in the Reservoir prison, damn it,” he said. “There’s no way we can get him out of there.”

  Calculations shimmered through her mind. “Let me think about that,” she replied.

  There was a moment of silence. Then, “Should we get together and talk about it?”

  Sula knew there were certain things one shouldn’t say over a comm, and they were skating right along the edge. “Not yet,” she said. “I’ve got some research to do first.”

  She spent some time in public databases, researching the intricacies of the Zanshaa legal system, and more time with back numbers of the Forensic Register, the publication of the Zanshaa Legal Association. More time was spent seeing who in the Register had left Zanshaa with the old government and who hadn’t.

  Having gathered her data, Sula called Casimir and told him she needed him to set up a meeting with Sergius. While waiting to hear back from him, she prepared the next number of Resistance.

  In addition to including plans for the Sidney Mark Two, she praised the Axtattle sniper—“a member of the Eino Kangas wing of the secret army”—and eulogized the assassins of the Urban Patrol officers as “members of the Action Front, an organization allied with the secret government.” She hoped the realization that they had two organizations fighting them now would drive the Naxids crazy.

  When Casimir called, he told her the meeting had been arranged. Sula removed her contacts, donned her blond wig, and went to the Cat Street club to meet him.

  Sergius Bakshi and Casimir had resumed their normal lives after the Legion had released Julien to the prison system, as Sula was taken to meet Sergius in his office, on the second floor of an unremarkable building in the heart of Riverside.

  She and Casimir passed through an anteroom of flunkies and hulking guards, all of whom she regarded with patrician hauteur, and into Sergius’s own office, where he rose to greet her. The office was as unremarkable as the building, with scuffed floors, second-hand furniture, and the musty smell of things that had been left lying too long in corners.

  People with real power, Sula thought, didn’t need to show it.

  Sergius took her hand, and though the touch of his big hand was light, she could sense the restrained power in his grip. “What may I do for you, Lady Sula?” he asked.

  “Nothing right now,” she said. “Instead, I hope to be of service to you.”

  The ruthless eyes flicked to Casimir, who returned an expression meant to convey that he knew what Sula proposed to offer. Sergius returned his attention to her.

  “I appreciate your thinking of me,” he said. “Please sit down.
”

  At least, Sula thought, she got to sit down this time. Sergius began to move behind his desk again.

  “I believe I can get Julien out of the Reservoir,” Sula said.

  Sergius stopped moving, and for the first time, she saw emotion in his dark eyes; a glimpse into a black void of deep-seated desire that seemed all the more frightening in a man who normally appeared bereft of feeling.

  Whether Sergius wanted his son back because he loved him or because Julien was a mere possession that some caprice of fate had taken from him, it was clearly a deep, burning hunger, a need as clear and primal and rapacious as that of a hungry panther for his dinner.

  Sergius looked at her for a long moment, the need burning in his eyes, then straightened in his shabby chair and clasped his big pale hands on the desk in front of him. His face had again gone blank.

  “That’s interesting,” he said.

  “I want you to understand that I can’t set Julien at liberty,” she said. “I believe I can get him transferred to the holding cells at the Riverside police station, or to any other place that suits you. You’ll have to get him out of there yourself.

  “I’ll provide official identification for Julien that will allow him to move freely, but of course…” She looked into the unreadable eyes. “He’ll be a fugitive until the Naxids are removed from power.”

  Sergius held her gaze for a moment, then nodded. “How may I repay you for this favor?” he asked.

  Sula suppressed a smile. She had her list well prepared.

  “The secret government maintains a business enterprise used to transfer munitions and the like from one place to another. It’s operating under the cover of a food distribution service. Since food distribution is about to become illegal, I’d like to be able to operate this enterprise under your protection, and without the usual fees.”

  Sula wondered if she was imagining the hint of a smile that played about Sergius Bakshi’s lips. “Agreed,” he said.

  “I would also like ten Naxids to die.”

  One eyebrow gave a twitch. “Ten?”

  “Ten, and of a certain quality. Naxids in the Patrol, the Fleet, or the Legion, all of officer grade; or civil servants with ranks of CN6 or higher. And it must be clear that they’ve been murdered—they can’t seem to die in accidents.”

  His voice was cold. “You wish this done when?”

  “It’s not a precondition. The Naxids may die within any reasonable amount of time after Julien is released.”

  Sergius seemed to thaw a little. “You will provoke the Naxids into one massacre after another.”

  She gave a little shrug and tried to match with her own the glossy inhumanity of the other’s eyes. “That is incidental,” she said.

  He gave an amused, twisted little smile. It was as out of place on his round immobile face as a bray of laughter. “I’ll agree to this,” he said. “But I want it clear that I’ll pick the targets.”

  “Certainly,” Sula said.

  “Anything else?”

  “I’d like an extraction team on hand, just in case my project doesn’t go well. I don’t expect we’ll need them, though.”

  “Extraction team?” Sergius’s lips formed the unaccustomed syllables, and then his face relaxed into the one he probably wore at home, which was still, in truth, frightening enough.

  “I suppose you’d better tell me about this plan of yours,” he said.

  Sula’s legal research told her that three sets of people had the authority to move prisoners from one location to another. There was the prison bureaucracy itself, which housed the prisoners, shuttled them to and from interrogations and trials, and worked them in innumerable factories and agricultural communes. All those in the bureaucracy with the authority to sign off on prisoner transfers were now Naxids. Sergius apparently hadn’t yet gotten any of them on his payroll, or Julien would already have been shifted out of the Reservoir.

  The second group consisted of Judges of the High Court and of Final Appeal, all of whom had been evacuated before the Naxid fleet arrived. The new administration had replaced them all with Naxids.

  The third group were Judges of Interrogation. It was not a prestigious posting, and some had been evacuated and some hadn’t. Apparently, Sergius didn’t have any of these in his pocket, either.

  Lady Mitsuko Inada was one of those who hadn’t left Zanshaa. She lived in Green Park, a quiet, wealthy enclave on the west side of the city. The district had none of the ostentation or flamboyant architecture of the High City—probably none of the houses had more than fifteen or sixteen rooms. Those homes still occupied by their owners tried to radiate a comfortable air of wealth and security but were undermined by the untended gardens and shuttered windows of the neighboring buildings, abandoned by their owners, who had fled to another star system or, failing that, to the country.

  Lady Mitsuko’s dwelling was on the west side of the park, which was the least expensive and least fashionable. It was built of gray fieldstone, with a green alloy roof, an onion dome of greenish copper, and two ennobling sets of chimney pots. The garden in front was mossy and frondy, with ponds and fountains. There were willows in the back, which suggested more ponds.

  Peers constituted about two percent of the empire’s population, and as a class, controlled more than ninety percent of its wealth. But there was immense variation within the order of Peers, ranging from individuals who controlled the wealth of entire systems to those who lived in genuine poverty. Lady Mitsuko was on the lower end of the scale. Her job didn’t entitle her to an evacuation, and neither did her status within the Inada clan.

  All Peers, even the poor ones, were guaranteed an education and jobs in the Fleet, civil service, or bar. It was possible that Lady Mitsuko had worked herself up to her current status from somewhere lower.

  Sula rather hoped she had. If Lady Mitsuko had a degree of social insecurity, it might work well for Sula’s plans.

  Macnamara drove her to the curb in front of the house. He wore a dark suit and a brimless round cap and looked like a professional driver. He opened Sula’s door from the outside, and helped her out with a hand gloved in Devajjo leather.

  “Wait,” she told him, though he would anyway, since that was the plan.

  Neither of them looked at the van cruising along the far side of the park, packed with heavily armed Riverside Clique gunmen.

  Sula straightened her shoulders—she was Fleet again, in her blond wig—and marched up the walk and over the ornamental bridge to the house door. With gloved fingers, to hide fingerprints, she reached for the grotesque ornamental bronze head near the door and touched the shiny spot that would alert anyone inside to the presence of a visitor. She heard chiming within, removed her uniform cap from under her arm and put it on her head. She had visited one of Team 491’s storage lockers, and now wore her full dress uniform of viridian green, with her lieutenant’s shoulder boards, glossy shoes, and her two medals—the Medal of Merit, Second Class, for her part in the Blitsharts rescue, and the Nebula Medal, with Diamonds, for wiping out a Naxid squadron at Magaria.

  Her sidearm was a weight against one hip.

  To avoid being overconspicuous, she wore a nondescript overcoat, which she removed as soon as she heard footsteps in the hall. She held it over the pistol and its holster.

  The singing tension in her nerves kept her back straight, her chin high. She had to remember that she was a Peer. Not a Peer looking down her nose at cliquemen, but a Peer interacting with another of her class.

  That had always been hardest—to pretend that she was born to this.

  A female servant opened the door, a middle-aged Terran. She wasn’t in livery, but in neat, subdued civilian clothes.

  Lady Mitsuko, Sula concluded, possessed little in the way of social pretension.

  Sula walked past the surprised servant and into the hallway. The walls had been plastered beige, with little works of art in ornate frames, and her shoes clacked on deep gray tile.

  “Lady Carolin
e to see Lady Mitsuko, please,” she said, and took off her cap.

  The maidservant closed the door and held out her hands for the cap and overcoat. Sula looked at her. “Go along, now,” she said.

  The servant looked doubtful, then gave a little bow and trotted into the interior of the house. Sula examined herself in a hall mirror of polished nickel asteroid material, adjusted the tilt of one of her medals, and waited.

  Lady Mitsuko appeared, walking quickly. She was younger than Sula had expected, in her early thirties, and very tall. Her body was angular and she had a thin slash of a mouth and a determined jaw that suggested that, as a Judge of Interrogation, she was disinclined to let prisoners get away with much. Her light brown hair was worn long and caught in a tail behind, and she wore casual clothes. She dabbed with a napkin at a food spot on her blouse.

  “Lady Caroline?” she said. “I’m sorry. I was just giving the twins their supper.” She held out her hand, but there was a puzzled frown on her face as she wondered whether she had met Sula before.

  Sula startled her by bracing in salute, her chin high. “Lady Magistrate,” she said. “I come on official business. Is there somewhere we may speak privately?”

  “Yes,” Lady Mitsuko replied, her hand still outheld. “Certainly.”

  She took Sula to her office, a small room that still had the slight aroma of the varnish used on the shelves and furniture of light-colored wood.

  “Will you take a seat, my lady?” Mitsuko said as she closed the door. “Shall I call for refreshment?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Sula said. “I won’t be here long.” She stood before a chair but didn’t sit, and waited until Lady Mitsuko stepped behind her desk before she spoke again.

  “You have my name slightly wrong,” Sula said. “I’m not Lady Caroline, but rather Caroline, Lady Sula.”

  Lady Mitsuko’s eyes darted to her and she froze with one hand on the back of her office chair, her mouth parted in surprise.

  “Do you recognize me?” Sula prompted.

  “I…don’t know.” Mitsuko pronounced the words as if speaking a foreign language.

  Sula reached into a pocket and produced her Fleet ID. “You may examine my identification if you wish,” she said. “I’m on a mission for the secret government.”