by David Drake
She probably wouldn't have accepted the invitation had she not known—from an intercepted call—that Posy had asked Mistress Brown to arrange a meeting with Lady Mundy. It seemd the best way for Adele to meet her target; and a meeting was necessary, because in the two days the Princess Cecile had ridden in Calvary Harbor, it had become obvious that electronic means were not going to unveil any of Posy's secrets.
The garden was a square fifty feet on a side. A service building, probably a kitchen, and a wall of open brickwork set it off from what may have been intended as a park. Now it was a tangle from which trees with coppery foliage emerged.
The enclosure wasn't in a great deal better shape. The shrubs had been pruned within the past day or less, so that statues of cherubs with gardening tools were again visible among the lopped stems.
The "lawn" had been hacked off also. Short tufts of something grasslike were surrounded by circles of dirt which their foliage had shaded bare until the recent shearing.
The clearance work—calling it yard work seemed akin to describing a heart attack as indisposition—might explain why Braga glowered so fiercely as he handed Adele a glass of faintly greenish wine. Unless the job market in Calvary was very tight, Mistress Brown would be looking for new servants shortly.
The wine tasted all right, despite the hue. The glass was etched with the monogram dS, marking it as a piece Clothilde deSales Brown had brought with her to the marriage.
"Quite good," Adele said to her hostess. That was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was close enough. Some of the Mundys and their affines had been experts in vintages and liquors, but Adele's interests ran to colophons and Pre-Hiatus incunabula.
The maid standing behind Posy's chair wore a white cap and pants suit with a broad black sash, a servant's uniform in the Pleasaunce style. Adele wouldn't have paid particular attention—it wasn't surprising that Lady Belisande would have brought a maid when she returned home from civilization—were it not that the servant was looking at Tovera.
Adele's lips squeezed into a tiny, cold smile. Posy's servant was from the same mold as Tovera herself. That wasn't surprising either, given who Posy had been. That left the question of whether the "maid" was a bodyguard or a minder to the Guarantor's former favorite; or most likely both.
"When I left Zenobia five years ago," Posy said, sipping a glass of what was probably the same wine, "I thought I'd love the excitement of Pleasaunce society. After I'd been there a time, well—"
She gave Adele and Clothilde a dazzling smile.
"—it was very exciting, but sometimes a little too much so. I wasn't altogether sorry when events made it prudent for me to come back home. And I do like it in Calvary, really, but when I first arrived I found no one to talk to. I'm so glad that the new Commissioner's wife is a lady."
She saluted Clothilde with her glass.
"Commissioner Brassey was an old bachelor, and he neither visited nor entertained." Posy smiled again. "I gather he found our local vintages, ah, compelling."
"And it was wonderful to meet you, dear," Clothilde Brown said with warm sincerity. "Pavel would be happy anywhere that he had accounts to check—that's what he's doing now. But I thought I was going to go mad here until I met you. There's no one to talk to!"
"There's an Alliance Resident on Zenobia, is there not?" Adele said, raising an eyebrow as she sipped. She'd watched Daniel deal with Resident Tilton, but she was interested in Posy's description of the man.
"He's a reptile!" spat Clothilde, slashing her hand before her face. She wrinkled her nose.
"Tilton is certainly a reptile," Posy said. "He's a tradesman's son, and from Pinnacle besides. I don't know how familiar you are with the Alliance, Lady Mundy . . . ?"
"I was educated on Blythe," Adele said. "And yes, it's possible that there are good people on Pinnacle, but they certainly seem to have sent their scum to other worlds."
She paused. Posy giggled; Clothilde nodded with grim enthusiasm. Adele added, "And I would prefer to be 'Adele', Posy."
"Well, you understand then, Adele," Posy said, gesturing with her glass again. It was nearly empty, but even so the remaining thimbleful sloshed perilously close to the rim. "Tilton made a, well, an infamous suggestion when he first called on me. Not only that, but I think he might have tried to use force if Wood hadn't been present. He ordered her out of the room, of all things. Giving orders to my maid in my brother's palace!"
Wood smiled faintly at the reference. The expression reminded Adele of Tovera, or of a predatory bird.
"He touched me on the pier," Clothilde said with another grimace. "If it hadn't been for Captain Leary and his man, I don't know what might have happened. Pavel isn't any use in that sort of business."
Your Pavel might not be as used to knocking people down as Hogg and Daniel, Adele thought. But a woman with pretensions to culture might consider that an attribute rather than a flaw in her husband.
Aloud she said, "Surely there's a foreign community on Zenobia in addition to the government representatives, is there not? The warehouses facing the harbor include the names of several trading firms which I know have their headquarters on Pleasaunce. At least some of them have off-planet managers, do they not?"
Clothilde looked hopeful, but Posy grimaced and said. "When I was young, I thought the foreigners on Ship Hill—that's where they live, most of them—were arrogant swine. All us Zenobians did, and we despised them. Now—"
The grimace turned to a sneer.
"—I know what they really are: failures from the core worlds, the drunks and fools, the embarrassments whose families shipped them as far away as they could get. Some of them sent their cards when I returned, trying to scrape acquaintance with Guillaume's mistress . . . ."
Posy paused, giving Adele a speculative glance. Adele met it with no hint of emotion or understanding.
"That's what I was, you see," Posy said after a moment. "Guillaume Porra's mistress, Guarantor Porra. Perhaps you knew that?"
"My parents were executed for treason, Lady Belisande," Adele said evenly. "In fact my ten-year-old sister was executed for treason as well. I'm scarcely in a position to make moral judgments, even if I were the sort of person who approved of doing such things."
Wood was staring at her. Adele glanced up, and the maid looked away.
"I'm sorry," Posy said. She reached out and touched Adele's left hand, then settled back on her chair. "Others have made judgments, you see—though generally women who would have liked to know Guillaume as well as I did. And please—Posy."
"Adele?" said Clothilde Brown. "If you don't mind my asking?"
"Asking what?" said Adele, more sharply than she had intended. She raised her hand in apology. "Please, I'm sorry; but just ask the question, Clothilde. It's wasting time, which is likely to make me snappish."
"Well, it's about you being on the ship," Clothilde said. "I know you say that you're Officer Mundy when you're there, not Lady Mundy, but you are still Lady Mundy. How do you stand it?"
Adele wondered what the other women saw when they looked at her. Something quite different from what she was in the mirror of her own mind, certainly. The thought made her smile, but she suspected some of the sadness she felt showed in her expression also. Sometimes she wished she could be the person that other people saw.
"I'm not a gregarious person," she said, "but I escape into my work, so cramped physical surroundings don't bother me. Nor do I feel the lack of elite society with whom to—"
She started to say, "natter," but she caught her tongue in time to change that to, "—exchange views."
Posy Belisande's hinted smile showed that she understood the word or at least the type of word that Adele had barely avoided, but she didn't seem offended. Clothilde remained intently quizzical. She had recovered from Adele's verbal slap, but she obviously wasn't looking for another one.
"As for being in close confinement with spacers," Adele said, "I assure you that they're far better companions than the neighbors I was generally
thrown together with during the years I was very poor. Besides, on a starship I don't have to deal with people like Louis Tilton. Space is a very dangerous environment, and people of his sort don't last long."
"I wish Resident Tilton could drift off into vacuum," Posy said. Lifting her glass to shoulder height, she added, "More wine, Wood."
Wood carried the glass to the serving table, sidling so that she didn't have to turn her back on Adele and Tovera. Which of us is she more concerned about? Adele wondered.
The truth was—if Wood was anything like Tovera, and she certainly appeared to have been trained in the same school—she probably worried even that the Commissioner's wife might smash her stemware into a spike of crystal and lunge for Lady Belisande's throat. Once you start down the path of paranoia, there's simply no line that you can't cross.
Adele smiled—internally, because Posy would have misinterpreted the expression. She fought her own tendency to consider everyone as a potential enemy and every place as a potential ambush site. That was madness.
But Adele had the luxury of knowing that Tovera was being paranoid on her behalf, unasked. That didn't seem fair, but the world wasn't fair. And since madness was a word used to describe human beings, perhaps Tovera wasn't at risk.
Posy gulped half her refilled glass, then lowered it and forced a smile. "Tilton fancies himself a ladies' man. He isn't interested so much in the sex, I think, as the degradation of his victims. He particularly fastens on the wives and daughters of the Councillors of Zenobia."
"They don't give in to him, do they?" Clothilde said with a look of revulsion. "Ugh! That bald little pervert!"
"I'm told that Councillor Pumphrey objected forcibly, not long after I left Zenobia," Posy said. Her voice was frighteningly colorless. "I remember his daughter Chris quite well, though we weren't close. She was a very proper girl, and I'm afraid I was too wild for her."
"Did he use the secret police," Adele said, her voice equally detached, "or members of his own security detail?"
Her personal data unit was in its thigh pocket—of course—but she would send the wrong signal if she brought it out now. She wanted the wands in her hands to keep her from reaching for her pistol, which would be even more undesirable.
Adele had to make do with the wine glass and conscious control. Her control had always been sufficient in the past.
"The police," Posy said. "Some of them objected also, till the security detail executed two for treason. The rest were willing to carry off Chris Pumphrey. She hasn't been seen since."
"Oh, dear heavens," Clothilde Brown said, the knuckles of her left hand in her mouth. "Oh dear heavens, where has Pavel brought me?"
"Are Tilton's security personnel from the 5th Bureau?" Adele asked, still sounding as though she were asking about the color scheme in the kitchen.
"No, Residential Services," Posy said absently. Her gaze sharpened. "How do you happen to know about the 5th Bureau, Adele?"
Taking a calculated risk, Adele said, "My servant, Tovera—"
She cocked her head slightly to indicate the woman standing behind her.
"—used to be associated with the organization. Before she retired and went into personal service."
Tovera and Wood had obviously recognized one another—at least as types, but probably as individuals as well. There was no point in refusing to acknowledge what the other party already knew; and with luck, the admission would prove disarming.
"I see," said Posy in a puzzled tone that proved she did not. No one retired from the 5th Bureau, the intelligence service which reported directly to Guarantor Porra. "Perhaps one day we will discuss mutual friends, Adele. Without boring Clothilde—"
She gave the Commissioner's wife another dazzling smile.
"—that is."
"With all respect to your maid," Adele said, glancing up at Wood, "I would think that a security detail of . . . eighteen or twenty Residential Services personnel?"
"About that, yes," Posy agreed.
"Eighteen," said Wood, the syllables as short as successive clacks from a pair of wood blocks. "But two of them haven't been sober for months on end. If they were issued live ammunition, they would shoot themselves."
"Sixteen, then," said Adele. "A large enough body to seriously endanger your safety, Posy, if Tilton is the sort of man you describe."
"I could have gotten rid of him when I was on Pleasaunce," Posy said, glancing at her empty wine glass. "I didn't realize, though. Perhaps if someone had told me; my brother could have, I think. But nobody did. And now, well—"
Her mouth twisted in a mixture of anger and disgust.
"—I no longer have that kind of authority."
Her smile became impish. She said, "I do, however, have a friend in Otto von Gleuck. Otto is a dear man and of very good family. There are five hundred spacers on his ships, and they love him like a father. Perhaps you understand that, Officer Mundy?"
"I might," Adele said with her usual lack of expression. "But—and I don't mean to raise an awkward question . . . but how long will Lieutenant Commander von Gleuck be stationed on Zenobia?"
"Yes," said Posy. "Fleet appointments are of limited duration, and a destroyer doesn't have the facilities for passengers that a heavy cruiser does."
She glanced sidelong to see if Adele would react. Lady Belisande had left Zenobia five years ago as the mistress of Captain Karl Volcker, commander of the Barbarossa. The heavy cruiser was showing the flag in the Qaboosh Region during an interval of peace between Cinnabar and the Alliance.
The well-connected Volcker had brought Lady Belisande to a court ball following the cruiser's return to Pleasaunce. There she caught the Guarantor's eye, and very shortly thereafter Volcker had been promoted to command a battleship on distant assignment.
Of course I won't react.
Posy smiled faintly at Adele's bland silence and continued, "And that wouldn't be a practical response anyway, since it was suggested at the time I left Pleasaunce that I might want to remain on Zenobia until I was informed otherwise. I suspect—"
She glanced up toward the servant behind her.
"—that I would be reminded of that suggestion if I seemed to be forgetting it."
Wood didn't react either. Of course.
"Perhaps Tilton will be recalled or, or something?" Clothilde said. Her hands were tight together on the stem of her glass. Adele suspected their hostess was considering the possible results of her having slapped the Resident when they met.
"Perhaps," Posy said, with the unvoiced implication, that perhaps pigs would fly. "I only hope that he doesn't provoke a rebellion first. Because I didn't need Otto to warn me what the response to that would be."
She gave Adele a tired grin and added, "I know Guillaume even better than Otto does, you see. He reacts badly to betrayal, which is how he would view the murder of his representative."
Adele rose to her feet. "I'm afraid I need to return to my duties," she said. "I hope I'll be able to see you both again before we lift, though. The Princess Cecile has to remain on Zenobia for some time while her rigging is being replaced, Captain Leary informs me."
Tovera whisked the empty glass out of Adele's hand. She circled with it to the refreshments table, keeping at least one eye on Wood at all times; but she was smiling.
"Oh, surely there's nothing for you to do while you're on the ground?" Clothilde said, rising to squeeze Adele's hands. Braga stood like an unattractive statue; it hadn't occurred to him to take his mistress' empty glass the way Wood and Tovera had done. "Can't you stay?"
"Another time, then," said Posy, coming forward also. "Meeting you has been an even greater pleasure than I expected, Adele. I hope we can talk often while you're here."
"Yes," said Adele truthfully. "It has been pleasant."
Clothilde's maid had been watching from the covered courtyard. A light dawned in her dull eyes and she trotted toward the outside door.
Wood's presence had made this a very different conversation than the one
Adele had planned. Very likely her task, to elicit secrets which Posy had gained in pillow talk, was now impossible.
Mistress Sand would be interested to learn that Resident Tilton had created disaffection among the Zenobian elite, but that was of no real importance at present. There was no gain for the Republic in destabilizing so distant an Alliance world in peacetime, though Adele knew there were Cinnabar agents who would have worked to raise a rebellion here on general principles.
To Adele, that sort of behavior was simply grit in the gears of civilization. And civilization was in bad enough shape without people actively trying to sabotage it.
* * *
Daniel stood at the head of the Dorsal C antenna, which was extended to its full height of 120 feet. His excuse was that the location gave him the best view of Woetjans and her crew stripping the rigging from one antenna at a time and reeving fresh cables through the blocks. That was true, but the Sissie's veteran riggers could have done the work blindfolded and blind drunk besides; they didn't need their captain's eye on them.
The other thing the location gave Daniel was privacy, or as close to privacy as anybody could have aboard a starship. Certainly everybody could see him perched above them. They could even approach him, but they had to want to do so enough to make a long climb. On the masthead, he had figurative as well as literal distance from the rest of the world.
Primarily Daniel was on top of the antenna because he liked to be on top of antennas: in harbor, as here; in sidereal space; and especially on a ship in the Matrix, where all space and time would have been visible if his eyes had been able to comprehend it.
The ground car driving up the quay stopped at the Sissie's slip. Daniel didn't think anything of it: the four Sissies on guard there would be polite, but they had weapons within easy reach if it turned out to be a visit from Resident Tilton's thugs.
The vehicle was obviously local. It appeared to be a high-sided farm wagon with a canvas roof and pneumatic tires. A fifth wheel supported the wagon tongue, on which an engine putted and rattled. The whole installation showed a great deal of ingenuity, combined with a marked lack of polish.
