Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  “You were very insistent,” he said.

  “I was upset.”

  “But why?”

  That seemed the point. He had asked her to marry him, and she had refused him—with anger—and marched off into the Zanshaa night.

  Sula stopped, turned, looked at him. He could see the muscles strained in her throat.

  “I’m not good at relationships,” she said. “I was afraid, and you wouldn’t let me be afraid. By the time I got over the fright, you were engaged to Terza Chen.”

  “My brother arranged that without telling me.” He hesitated, then spoke. “I called you all night.”

  She stared at him for a blank second, then reeled as if he’d struck her.

  “I was upset,” she said. “I was—” She shook her golden head. “Never mind what I was doing. I told the comm to refuse all calls.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Martinez felt as if an iron hand had seized his vitals and twisted them. It was like losing her all over again.

  “I…forgive you,” he said.

  He took a step toward her, but she had already turned and was walking away, heading for the next companion. Martinez followed.

  At the bottom of the stair her orderly waited, properly braced. The airlock door was only a few paces away. The words that were on the verge of spilling from Martinez’s tongue dried up.

  Sula turned and held out her hand. “Thank you, Captain,” she said. “I’ll see you again.”

  He took her hand. It was small and elegant and warm in his ungainly paw. Her musky perfume caressed his senses, and his nerves leaped with the impulse to kiss her.

  “Sleep well, my lady,” he said.

  And dream of me…

  That night Sula dreamed of nothing but the dead. She woke after a few hours with a scream bottled in her throat, and knew that she didn’t dare rest again.

  She used her captain’s key to open Confidence’s databanks and edited out all references to the blood pressure spike that had shut down the engines during the Naxas battle. Instead she blamed the engine trip on a power spike in a transformer, a spike caused by radiation from a near miss. The transformer was scheduled to be replaced anyway.

  There were anomalies in the cover story, and there would be her footprints in the record, but it would take a fair amount of detective work to find them, and she suspected that no one would ever be that interested.

  The whole point of the elite commission, after all, was to bury everything that had happened on Confidence. She doubted anyone would look at the official records.

  She resolutely refused to think of Martinez as she worked, and did her best to ignore a prickling of her neck hairs that told her he was standing right behind her, looking over her shoulder as she committed a lengthy string of electronic felonies.

  I’ve done worse, Sula told the specter.

  Martinez, she thought, strolled through life profiting from the death and misfortune of others.

  She, on the other hand, was the bringer of death and misfortune. Make the two of them a couple, and the implications were chilling.

  If we are ever together, she thought with a shiver, one or both of us will die.

  She sent the revised database to bed. It was over an hour to breakfast, and she was still afraid to sleep. She sat up reading The Greening of Africa, another of her Earth histories.

  She still felt Martinez standing behind her, silent and reproachful as the dead.

  Martinez spoke to each of his staff in turn to find out if they were willing to stay with him after Illustrious went into refit. He was allowed to take servants with him from one posting to the next, but he wanted to make certain they were willing.

  Alikhan accepted, as Martinez had hoped he would. He knew that Narbonne, Fletcher’s formet valet, didn’t like being Alikhan’s junior, and he wasn’t surprised when Narbonne asked for a discharge.

  Montemar Jukes was more problematical. “I don’t think I’m going to need an artist after this,” Martinez said. “I won’t have a ship to decorate.”

  Jukes shrugged. “I can save those plans for another day, my lord. But on Zanshaa you’ll have a palace, won’t you, Lord Captain? You and your lady? And won’t that palace need decorating? Perhaps with a full-length portrait of Lady Terza to match the one of yourself.”

  “Ah…perhaps,” Martinez said. He didn’t want to admit to himself that a future without Terza was a possibility that lurked somewhere in the back of his mind.

  Jukes remained on his payroll, and began contemplating themes for the decoration of a large house.

  The surprise was the cook, Perry.

  “I’d like to request a discharge, my lord,” he said.

  Martinez looked in surprise at the young man standing opposite his desk.

  “Is there something wrong?” he asked.

  “No, my lord. It’s just that…well, I’d like to strike out on my own.”

  Martinez regarded him narrowly. “There is something wrong, isn’t there?”

  Perry hesitated. “Well, my lord,” he admitted, “sometimes I wonder if you actually like my cooking.”

  Martinez was astonished. “What do you mean?” he said. “I eat it, don’t I?”

  “Yes, Lord Captain. But—” Perry strove for words. “You don’t pay attention to the food. You’re always working while you’re eating, or sending messages on the comm, or dealing with reports.”

  “I’m a busy man,” Martinez said. “I’m a captain, for all’s sake.”

  Determination settled across Perry’s expression. “My lord,” he said, “do you even remember what you ate for your noon meal?”

  Martinez searched briefly through his memory. “It was the thing with the cheese,” he said, “wasn’t it?”

  Perry gave a little sigh. “Yes, my lord,” he said. “The thing with the cheese.”

  Martinez looked at him. “I’ll give you the discharge if you want,” he said, “but—”

  “Yes, please,” said Perry. “Thank you, my lord.”

  Feeling slighted, Martinez wrote Perry an excellent reference, in part so he could feel superior to the whole situation.

  That evening, at his meal, he looked at his plate with a degree of suspicion.

  What was so special about it? he asked himself.

  Sula gave a dinner to thank Michi for her own dinner party, and Martinez, Chandra, and Fulvia Kazakov were invited. Martinez would have been the sole male at the affair if it hadn’t been for Haz, Sula’s premiere.

  Sula’s dining room on Confidence was metal-walled and painted a pale, sad shade of green. An overhead duct was a hazard to anyone tall. She had tried to make light of it by painting DUCK! on the duct in red letters. She served Hairy Rogers for cocktails, followed by wine and brandy. Martinez suspected that, as a nondrinker, her knowledge about how much alcohol people could actually consume without falling over was shaky. She was well on her way to getting everyone plastered.

  Martinez sobered at the table, where he sat opposite Sula. Each cell in his body seemed to yearn toward her with every beat of her heart. He hardly dared look at her. Instead he did his best to follow the conversation, which was bright and amusing and concerned as little as possible with the war, Fleet business, or politics. The captains might be losing their ships, and all the officers might have a permanent black mark against their names for being a part of Chenforce, but the long, violent contest was over and they had all survived. Healthy animal spirits were rising, and on a pair of tubes soaring between the stars, there were only so many outlets.

  Perhaps alcohol was safest, after all.

  As the voyage progressed, he saw Sula frequently. There were only two ships, and the officers were social beings. Some kind of party occurred every day, though it wasn’t always the captains who were involved.

  Still, it was half a month before Martinez dared to invite Captain Sula to dine with him alone.

  He met her at the airlock—she had a different orderly this time, a straw-haired wo
man, but still with a Medal of Valor. Martinez escorted Sula to his dining room, where he offered her a choice of soft drinks. She had a glass of mineral water, and Martinez, who out of courtesy to his guest had decided to avoid alcohol, had another. Sula looked at the Jukes portrait of Martinez, looking brave and dashing at the head of the room, and smiled.

  “Very realistic,” she said.

  “Do you think so?” He was dismayed. “I’d hoped for better than that.”

  Sula laughed and turned her attention to the murals of banqueting Terrans, the bundles of grapes and goblets of wine and the graceful people wearing sheets.

  “Very classical,” she said.

  “It only looks old. Let me show you another piece.”

  He took her into his sleeping cabin and ordered the lights on, to reveal The Holy Family with a Cat. Sula seemed amused at first, and then a little frown touched her lips, her eyes narrowed, and she stepped closer to the ancient work. She studied it in silence for several long minutes.

  “It’s telling a story,” she said. “But I don’t know what the story is.”

  “I don’t either, but I like it.”

  “How old is this?”

  “It’s from before the conquest. From North Europe, wherever that is.”

  She gave him a sidelong glance. “Martinez, you are really appallingly ignorant of the history of your own species.”

  He shrugged. “Before the conquest it was all murder and barbarism, wasn’t it?”

  She turned once more to the painting. “Judge for yourself,” she said.

  He looked at the cozy little family around their fire, and a warm affection for the painting rose in him. “The picture belongs to Fletcher’s estate now,” he said. “I wonder if they’d let me make an offer.”

  Sula looked at him. “Can you afford it?”

  “On my allowance? Only if they don’t know what it’s worth.”

  She glanced briefly at the other pictures, the blue flute player and the landscape. “Any other treasures?”

  He took her into his office. She looked without interest at the armored figures and the murals of scribes and heralds. Then her eyes were drawn downward to the desk, to the pictures of Terza and young Gareth that floated in its surface.

  Martinez held his breath. The moment crucial, he thought.

  The light in her eyes shifted subtly, like a wispy cloud passing across the sun. Her lips quirked in a wry smile.

  “This is the Chen heir?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “A healthy child?”

  “So I hear.”

  “He looks like his father.”

  Her eyes followed the images as they floated over the desk’s surface.

  “How is your marriage, anyway?” Her tone was delicate and light, shaded with irony. They were both pretending that she didn’t care about the answer.

  “It seemed to go well enough for the first seven days,” Martinez said. “Since then I’ve been away from home.”

  “Seven days?” She smiled. “Fertile you.”

  “Fertile me,” he repeated pointlessly.

  He fought the impulse to take her in his arms.

  Not on Michi Chen’s flagship, he thought.

  There was the sound of footsteps in the dining room, Alikhan bringing in the first plates of snacks.

  Sula brushed past him as she walked to the dining room door.

  Moment passed, he thought. Moment survived.

  He followed her. Alikhan stood by the corner of the table, immaculate in dress uniform, white apron, and white gloves.

  “Master Weaponer Alikhan!” Sula smiled. “How are you?”

  Alikhan beamed from behind his curled mustachios. “Very well, my lady. You’re looking well.”

  “You’re very kind.” She allowed Alikhan to draw out a chair for her. “What are we eating tonight?”

  “I believe we’re starting with a toasted rice paper packet stuffed with a filling of whipped krek-tuber, smoked crystallized sausage, and spinach.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  Sheltered beneath Alikhan’s benign presence, Martinez and Sula managed a civil, pleasant meal. The conversation remained on safe, mostly professional topics, though over dessert he finally managed to deliver an outburst on the subject of Tork. He’d had a lot of practice by now, and his diatribe was exceptionally eloquent.

  Sula shrugged. “The war returned certain people to power,” she said, “and they were the people who had no use for us to begin with. What did you expect? Gratitude?”

  “I hadn’t expected to be treated so badly.”

  “We both have our captain’s rank, and our seniority. Even under the best of circumstances we wouldn’t be promoted to squadcom for years, so we’ve done better than we could otherwise have expected.” She sipped her coffee. “They’ll need us again, for the next war.”

  Martinez looked at her in surprise. “You think there’ll be another war?”

  “How can there not be?” She flung out a hand. “The Shaa put us all in the hands of a six-hundred-member committee. How effective do you think such a group could be in running something as big and complicated as the empire?”

  “Not very,” Martinez said. “But they’re going to have the Fleet, aren’t they?”

  “Maybe. But I think that the only thing a six-hundred-member committee can agree on is that they should all have more and more of what they’ve got already. In the past the Shaa kept a lid on the avarice of the lords convocate, but the Shaa are dead. I think we’ll have war within a generation.” She placed her coffee cup carefully in its saucer and examined it in the light. “Gemmelware,” she said. “Very nice.”

  “Fletcher had good taste,” Martinez said, “or so I’m told.”

  “Fletcher had good advisers.” She put the saucer and its cup on the table and looked at him. “I hope you’re getting good advice, Martinez.”

  “About porcelain? I depend entirely on your expertise.”

  She gazed at him for a moment, then sighed. “A lot of it hangs on what you like,” she said. “You’re going to have to choose.”

  Sula stood in her miserable metal office, looked at the pair of guns mounted on the wall behind her desk and counted the dead in her life. Caro Sula, PJ Ngeni, Casimir.

  Anthony, her almost-stepfather. Richard Li, her late captain, and the entire crew of the Dauntless.

  Lamey, her lover on Spannan, who was almost certainly dead.

  Thousands of Naxids, who almost didn’t count because she knew none of them personally.

  Each death was a roll of the dice. Against the odds, each time she had come up a winner. For others, luck had not been so generous.

  Now Martinez was coming again into her orbit, and she wondered if he realized how much danger he was in. He was the luckiest man she knew—the luckiest in the universe, she had once told him. She wondered if his luck could possibly overcome the ill luck that she seemed to carry for others.

  Certain calculations could be made. Fertile Martinez had done his duty, and sired a boy on the Chen heir. Perhaps that meant that his family were done with Martinez, at least for the present.

  She wondered how Clan Martinez would take the news if Martinez were to divorce the wife he’d known for all of seven days. Clan Martinez had most of what they wanted, access to the highest levels of the High City, and a Chen heir with Martinez genes. Sula also wondered if Lord Chen would object if his parvenu son-in-law were to decamp and leave him free to marry his daughter to someone with a more suitable pedigree.

  Michi Chen also figured in Sula’s calculations, but she had been sent into obscurity by the Supreme Commander and had lost both her ability to reward and punish. She had become irrelevant to the situation.

  Even if Clan Martinez proved an obstacle, there were other ways. Sula now knew people who specialized in such ways.

  She pictured herself the perfect, doting stepmother, dandling the young Gareth on her knee, letting his tiny fingers play with her medals. Replacing
the mother he barely knew, the one who had died so tragically…

  Sula basked in that picture for a long, sunny moment, then rejected it. Bloodletting was not a suitable way to begin a new relationship. One wanted to begin with hope, not slaughter.

  And besides, she never wanted to put herself in the debt of someone like Sergius Bakshi. Only the worst could come of that.

  If things were to proceed, they would have to move in a more conventional fashion, with drama and rage, anger and passion, sorrow and betrayal.

  With her at the center of the storm, rolling the dice and letting them fall where they would.

  The two ships raced on, accelerating at a steady one gravity. Decks and walls were painted or polished. Meals were cooked and consumed. Parts were maintained and replaced on a regular schedule. Drills were held occasionally, just so the crews didn’t forget how to do their jobs. For the most part life was easy.

  Communication with the outside went only so far and no farther. The wormhole relay station destroyed by the Orthodox Fleet, at Bachun between Magaria and Zanshaa, had not been replaced, and neither had other stations destroyed elsewhere in the empire by Chenforce and Light Squadron 14. Communication was perfect within the part of the empire formerly held by the Naxids, and that sphere was ruled absolutely by Lord Tork, from his new headquarters at Magaria. To reach any area outside that zone a courier missile was required, and the two ships generated no news of sufficient importance to justify sending one.

  The halfway point was reached, and the ships spun neatly about and began the deceleration that would take them to Zanshaa. Shortly afterward they entered the Magaria system and rendered passing honors to the Supreme Commander on the Magaria ring. A staff officer sent a routine acknowledgment, and that seemed to be that.

  Until, a day later, an order was flashed from Tork’s headquarters.

  The message consisted of new orders for Sula. After testifying before the elite commission on Zanshaa, she was to take Fleet transport to Terra, where she would begin a term as captain of Terra’s ring.

  It was intended as punishment, Sula realized with delight. Exile for two or more years to an obscure, backwater planet, off the trade routes, which coincidentally happened to be the home of her species.