Lt. Leary, Commanding

by David Drake

  “Yes, I agree with your assessment, Mistress Leary,” she said. She stood because she had work to do, absorbing information on Strymon. If the banker had more to say, it was time to say it.

  Deirdre rose also. “Since you raise the matter, however,” she said, “it would be to Daniel’s financial advantage to transfer his account to the S&M.”

  Adele suddenly remembered the first time she’d heard the details of her sister Agatha’s abuse and murder. “I won’t pledge my honor to induce Daniel to take any action whatever regarding the Leary family, mistress,” she said. Her voice was as thin as stressed piano wire.

  “Nor would I expect you to, mistress,” Deirdre said, as little moved by Adele’s anger as granite is by the rain. “But I am pledging my personal honor to you that no ill would result to my brother as a result of any dealings he might have with the S&M.”

  This woman has as much stiff-necked pride as a Mundy! Which was no surprise, because the families had been poured from the same crucible of Cinnabar politics.

  “I noted when I reviewed your file,” Deirdre said, looking off at an angle, “the irregular way that a portion of your family properties were restored after the Edict of Reconciliation. I suspect there was collusion between the court and the cousin claiming to be the closest surviving relative. Such a miscarriage of justice could be righted even now.”

  Adele smiled faintly and extended her hand. “Good day, mistress,” she said. “I believe that the past is often better forgotten, however I’ll keep that information on hand against later need.”

  She walked out of the bank; beside the building was a stop for the east-west loop of a car line. She’d go back to her apartment and from that privacy assemble the information she’d need. The first sweep, that is, to enable her to focus more accurately for the next pass.

  She wouldn’t say anything to Daniel about her meeting today; either meeting. It would merely make him uncomfortable to know about Mistress Sand, and as for his sister—

  Adele wasn’t going to mention Deirdre until she herself had a better notion of what to think.

  *

  Daniel Leary sat at the civilian desk, furnished when he rented the apartment, and switched off the phone on which he’d called Lt. Mon. The view from his window looked down the hillside over three-and four-story apartment houses similar to his own. Because most of them had roof gardens, the effect was more similar to Bantry, the Leary country estate, than a major city.

  Hogg came in with a flimsy in one hand and a bleak scowl on his face. “Your new Dress Whites aren’t going to be ready inside a week unless I squeeze Sadlack harder than I’ve done so far,” he said. “Have we got a week, do you figure?”

  Hogg was shortish, plumpish, and balding, although he was only in his forties. He was neither a gentleman’s valet nor the typical naval servant, an enlisted crewmen who looked after one of the officers for an additional stipend paid from the officer’s purse.

  “A week?” Daniel repeated. Ordinarily it might take a week or even longer for sailing orders to make their labyrinthine way through the Navy Office, but the brusque certainty of Daniel’s own appointment suggested there was nothing ordinary about this business. “Not a chance, Hogg. I’ve just told Mon to have the Sissie ready for liftoff in six hours if possible. It’ll take two days to gather a crew, but that’s the only delay I expect. I suppose I’ll have to make do with my grays.”

  Hogg had watched over Daniel while he was growing up on Bantry. Nurses and tutors had come and gone. Mother was a gentle presence in the background, and Corder Leary made flying visits from the city to dispense commands, punishment, and occasional praise before returning to the things he found important.

  Hogg was always there, teaching what he knew: about wildlife and women and cards, about how to hold your liquor and when to hold your tongue; about loyalty and courage and the history of the Learys of Bantry. As much as anyone can teach another, Hogg had taught Daniel how to be a man.

  “Naw, I’ll just lean on the snooty bastard a little harder,” Hogg said, sounding more pleased than not. He was a countryman who’d learned city ways well enough to profit by them—in Hell, Hogg would probably win all the pitchforks with the three-card trick—but who would never lose his distaste for tradesmen with polished accents. “You’ll not be going out on your first permanent command without a dress uniform, Master Daniel.”

  Daniel wondered exactly what “lean harder” meant in this context. He decided he didn’t want to know. He needed Dress Whites to replace the set he’d lost on Kostroma—and he too had found Sadlack, Gentleman’s Outfitter, to be a snooty bastard. If the fellow was going to tailor 1st Class uniforms for officers of the RCN, then he could damned well work the way naval officers did: all the hours the clock had, until the task was accomplished.

  Hogg went back to his own room whistling cheerfully. Daniel lifted the handset again and jumped down the address rota to Adele’s personal number. He pressed send and waited, looking out the window at the greenery.

  Daniel had a naval command helmet on from which he could make calls more easily than with the civilian instrument which was now less familiar to him. He didn’t because of the view out the window: it would be disconcerting to use the helmet but see verdure instead of a gray-surfaced bulkhead in front of him.

  Hogg returned, checking the action of a folding skinning knife. He dropped it into his side pocket.

  Daniel’s call brought no response until it cycled automatically to Adele’s apartment phone. There was a click of connection but the screen stayed blank. Naval phones didn’t waste bandwidth on visuals; Mon had been only a voice when Daniel spoke to him a moment before. In the case of Adele, or rather her servant, the emptiness was a matter of choice.

  “Yes?” said Tovera, her voice as flat as a machine’s. It wasn’t a receptionist’s greeting, but Daniel wasn’t the one to complain. Hogg was as apt as not to say, “And who’s this that’s calling, then?” when he answered the phone.

  “Tovera, please let your mistress know that we’ll be getting sailing orders very shortly,” Daniel said. “That is, the Princess Cecile will shortly be sailing under my command. Also I’d like her help in putting together a crew. She’ll be able to get me real discipline records on spacers I don’t know personally, the information I won’t learn from their present captains.”

  “Ms. Mundy is out, Lieutenant,” Tovera said, “and I don’t know her whereabouts. I’ll give her your messages as soon as possible.”

  The second of those three parts was almost certainly a lie, but Daniel was equally certain that torture wouldn’t get any more definite response from Tovera. She wasn’t a servant who’d suit everybody, but Adele seemed happy with her. That was good enough for Daniel.

  “Thank you, Tovera,” he said and broke the connection. The sooner he got off the line, the sooner Tovera would be able to contact her mistress. Besides—and he’d never say it to Adele, not in a million years, because it was none of his business—the pale young woman made Daniel’s skin crawl.

  “Supper’ll be late,” Hogg said, reaching for the doorknob, “but first things first. If you’re afraid you’ll starve, then I guess you can find somewhere they’ll feed you.”

  “I dare say I can,” Daniel said, wondering what his father’s valet would say if he’d heard that exchange. On the other hand, the valet hadn’t—and wouldn’t—put his life on the line for Corder Leary, and Hogg had done that and more for the son. Daniel didn’t need mincing subservience; he did need Hogg.

  The door chimed, making both men jump. Hogg glanced at Daniel. Daniel nodded, wondering what to do with his hands as he always did at times like these. Hogg opened the door for a servant in puce livery with feathers along the arm and leg seams and a ribbon-tied scroll in his hand.

  Daniel realized he was more interested in the feathers—he’d bet the bird wasn’t native to Cinnabar—than he was in the document. The latter, after all, would explain itself momentarily while in all likelihood neit
her the servant nor the tailor knew where the feathers had come from. They were just accents to most people.

  “Lord Delos Vaughn sends greetings to Lieutenant the Honorable Daniel Leary!” the fellow said with an accent more cultured than you’d ordinarily hear at one of Deirdre’s urbane soirees. “The favor of a reply is requested.”

  He handed the scroll to Hogg, then bowed to Daniel. Hogg bounced the document—it looked like real parchment—in the palm of his left hand, then grinned and drew the knife. He used the gut-hook on the back of the blade to pull the ribbon off.

  “It says you’re invited to a party at the Anadyomene Water Gardens tomorrow afternoon from two till six,” Hogg read, spreading the parchment with his left thumb and forefinger so that he could keep the knife open for the servant to goggle at. “Says you can bring a guest, too. Interested?”

  That was playacting for the servant’s benefit; normally Hogg would merely have grunted after opening the invitation and tossed it to Daniel. The poor messenger’s face was nearly the same shade as his livery.

  Daniel ran through the sequence of business which needed to be done before the corvette could lift. He should have his portion complete by mid-morning. The crew would begin reporting as soon as officers of the day read the proclamation to their companies at morning formation. And it would be read, however little other captains liked it, because it had been issued in the name of Admiral Anston personally.

  Former Sissies would be enrolled as a matter of course. Any of the warrant officers could handle that. The only question for Daniel would be the handful of positions still open when all the Sissies on Cinnabar had decided whether or not to rejoin; that wouldn’t be determined till after six, anyway.

  “Yes, all right,” Daniel said. “My guest and I would be pleased to attend.”

  The servant bowed again and backed hurriedly out the doorway open behind him. His eyes didn’t leave the point of the skinning knife until he turned to scuttle down the staircase.

  “Well, this ought to be interesting,” Daniel said, rubbing his hands together. Of course he’d take Adele, who was far too good a friend for Daniel ever to think of her as a girl. It was the sort of gathering sure to be stocked with friendly young things who loved a uniform. Adele would sheer off and give him clear running, while if he brought a real date he’d feel honor bound to go home with her.

  “It’ll be formal dress, is what it’ll be,” Hogg said. “I’ll be back with your whites, but better not wait up for me.”

  Quite apart from the women, Delos Vaughn was interesting … and interested in Daniel, which meant Daniel had best learn more about him. Speaker Leary’s son didn’t have to be taught politics that basic.

  Chapter Five

  Tovera was buying Adele a suit for the party, freeing Adele to do something she was good at instead: absorb background about Delos Vaughn and the situation on Strymon. Not that she regretted the invitation and Daniel’s assumption that she would join him. Quite the contrary: there should be at least as much to learn at the party as there was from the databases on Cinnabar.

  Her wands twitched. The blurs of holographic color her data unit projected in the air before her fused, shifted, and fused into new images.

  On the wall beyond, a pair of feathery feelers extended from a crack in the plaster. Judging there was no risk, first one and then a score of flat, leggy things raced across the wall in the direction of the kitchenette.

  Adele supposed she could apply the lowered bank discount to better housing, but her standards had slipped a great deal in the past fifteen years. She didn’t need much, after all: plain food, basic shelter, and access to information. The latter was as easily available from here, a room in the servants’ quarters of a former mansion broken up into apartments, as it was in a suite like Daniel’s in a now-fashionable district. Adele wasn’t going to be entertaining, after all.

  She read: after the Quetzal Dispute, sometimes called the Second Strymon War, Strymon had accepted the position of Friend and Ally to the Republic. That meant in practice that her navy was limited to light antipiracy vessels, all external treaties were subject to approval by the Cinnabar Senate, and the Senate also took an interest in any change of government.

  It was a light yoke—Strymon was too distant for tight control to be economically beneficial to Cinnabar—but the locals chafed under it nonetheless. The ruling class did, at any rate: Cinnabar had always found oligarchies and autocrats easier to deal with than democracies, so the Republic hadn’t tried to change the existing political system.

  Someone began screaming in the street outside Adele’s barred window. Either a woman or a man being gelded, and in this district you couldn’t be sure… .

  Under other circumstances Adele would have worried about the security of her few belongings during the times she was out of her room, but Tovera had seen to that. The first day, Adele returned before Tovera got back from business of her own. She found the corpse of a man with a swollen purple face lying in the doorway, still holding the hammer with which he’d smashed the lock. Poison of one sort or another, probably gas.

  The second day Tovera was the earlier home. Adele knew something must have happened from the way neighbors looked sidelong at her, angry and very frightened, but she didn’t ask questions. It was almost chance that she found the mortality report and learned there’d been three of them, swinging down from the roof to enter through the window. The eldest had been fourteen.

  There were no further incidents. That was good, because Adele couldn’t convince herself that being young and arrogant was properly a capital crime … but neither was she willing to be a victim simply because she existed. The Mundys had supplied their share of such victims during the Proscriptions.

  Adele separated her own actions from those of Tovera and others: she didn’t see the faces of those boys when she awoke at two in the morning. She had company enough of her own at that hour.

  She read: as President of Strymon, Leland Vaughn had paid lip service toward recognizing Cinnabar hegemony, but the Senate suspected that he had ambitions toward greater independence. It was suggested that the president send his son Delos to Cinnabar for his education. The word “hostage” was never used, but all parties were clear regarding the reality of the situation. Vaughn, with an RCN squadron led by a battleship in orbit above his planet, perforce agreed.

  The educational record of young Delos was not a scholar’s, but Adele could tell even from the bare bones of the scores that the potential was there. Education simply wasn’t Vaughn’s first priority—nor yet his third, very likely, though it was hard to be sure how important the partying really was to him.

  What were important were first, learning the power structures of the Republic of Cinnabar; and second, ingratiating himself into those structures with the determination of a buck pursuing a doe. The officials guiding Vaughn around Harbor Three were highly placed, but the personages who might have directed them to the task were among the elite of the Republic.

  Adele permitted herself a half-smile. Corder Leary appeared in the list of those who’d exchanged hospitality with Vaughn.

  Three years after Delos arrived on Cinnabar, Leland Vaughn was murdered—by “persons unknown,” but his half-brother, Callert Vaughn, was prepared to instantly step into the presidency. Delos, now eighteen, had applied to the Senate for permission to return home.

  Permission was refused. Callert had made a prompt submission to Cinnabar … and had bribed the senatorial envoy sent to assess the situation, as files provided by Mistress Sand clearly indicated. Strymon remained as much an ally as she’d ever been; the Republic would gain no advantage from stirring matters up. As for Delos—he had a secure income that would buy him anything he could want except for the thing he did want: passage home.

  The cooler in the kitchenette moaned as the current dropped beneath what its compressor required, then picked up again. This district was subject to frequent power cuts, and occasionally the tap water slowed to a rusty dribble.
It didn’t concern Adele; they used the cooler more to keep vermin from the cheese and crackers than to chill food anyway.

  Callert Vaughn had ruled Strymon until eight months ago, when riots against Cinnabar influence had broken out in the capital. Mobs killed several Cinnabar merchants and burned the building used by the Cinnabar observer mission; the Observer and her husband had escaped on a freighter leaving the planet hastily, but the local staff had been massacred.

  Then Callert was killed—“by a stray bullet” claimed Friderik Nunes, the former head of the Presidential Guard and now regent on behalf of Pleyna Vaughn, Callert’s twelve-year-old daughter. The riots stopped as suddenly as if a switch had been turned off.

  Delos Vaughn had again petitioned to return home. His request was pending, but Adele’s sources expected another denial. Pleyna had offered reparations and the apologies of her government for damage to Cinnabar interests. The Senate would probably decide that letting Delos return would merely reinflame a situation that had just returned to stability.

  So long as he lived, Delos Vaughn would remain a club with which the Senate could threaten whoever was in power in Strymon: be good or we’ll send Vaughn back to raise a rebellion against you. But there was very little chance that Vaughn would ever be allowed to leave his gilded cage here on Cinnabar.

  Adele sighed, then muted her display and stared at the wall across the table from her. It couldn’t really be called blank: successive water-stains had left patterns in gradations of sepia on the wallpaper.

  She’d met Delos Vaughn the day Mistress Sand ordered her to Strymon. That was either coincidence—a vanishingly low probability; or Vaughn had penetrated Sand’s organization; or Sand herself was playing a double game.

  There was no way to tell which was true. Adele grinned. Of course, she could ask Mistress Sand …

  Tovera had attached an alarm light to the wall above the bed. It now pulsed three times in a deep yellow that wouldn’t disrupt vision at night. Someone was coming to the door. Adele turned but didn’t get up. She was confident it was Tovera, returning with the clothes for the party. Even so, Adele kept her left hand in her jacket pocket.