The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6)

by J. A. Sutherland

  Alexis lunged.

  Avrel Dansby at her bloody bedside was closer than she’d ever thought she’d get to the man again. Conspiring with Eades to send her off to the bloody Barbary where his own old fellow Ness was the target, sending her to Wheeley who was involved to his eyebrows in the bloody mess, and all without telling her what to expect.

  She might be injured and he might have whatever power had so terrified the band of pirates of him, but she’d beat them and she could take their bogeyman as well.

  She couldn’t roll and grasp him with her right hand as well, but she got his face with her left. Fingers clawed, she grabbed at him, getting her thumb inside his mouth as he spoke and clamping down with whatever strength she had left. Perhaps, if she could leverage around his teeth she might rip his bloody jaw right off, and his thrice-damned lying tongue with it.

  “’Ikki!”

  Dansby tried to pull back, but she got her grip and twisted. He could bite her, but she didn’t think he could bite clear through her thumb before she did more damage to him.

  “Ow, ‘uggerin’ ‘ell!”

  “You lying, snake!” Alexis rasped at him, though not loudly, for her mouth was still dry and she felt herself weakening quickly. “You knew! Had to have known!”

  Eades stepped to Dansby’s side.

  “A ‘it o’ ‘elp, ‘an!” Dansby’s head twisted to the side and nearly down to Alexis’ bed as she pulled on him.

  Alexis very nearly released Dansby to lunge at Eades, for he was as much to blame, but she remembered the Foreign Office man’s speed when she’d once struck at him in full health. His bit would have to wait until she was out of hospital.

  Eades grasped her wrist and tapped it, deceptively lightly for the shot of pain that ran up her arm, causing her fingers to go limp and unresponsive.

  “Much as I’d enjoy seeing you rip his face off, Miss Carew, I’m afraid I can’t allow it. We’ve only woken you because there’s a word or two I’d pass along in person before I must leave.”

  “You bastards!” she said. “Sending me off into that mess without a bit of warning of what to expect!”

  Eades sighed, but Dansby stood up, rubbing at his jaw and giving her a wounded look, then his shoulders slumped and he reached out to grasp her limp hand.

  Alexis grasped it back, though her fingers were still so numb and weak Dansby might not have realized she was trying to break one of his fingers.

  “I swear to you, Rikki, I didn’t know,” Dansby said.

  Alexis gave off trying to will strength into her left hand and glanced at Dansby’s face, the look of which shocked her. His normally dapper appearance was rough and haggard — hair out of place, unshaved where it was normally clean and beard ragged where usually well-trimmed. His eyes were red-rimmed and narrowed in what she would almost take for true concern in a normal human being.

  “I sent you to Wheeley thinking he’d point you away from Ness and his group — point your privateering at some independents, is what I thought,” Dansby went on, “and I’d certainly never have expected that bastard to have let himself get caught up in taking fleet spacers. Sweet Dark, the arrogance of him. Thought certain those must have made planetfall on some world never sees a merchant but in a jubilee year and merely needed finding.” He took a deep breath. “I swear it, Rikki, by everything I hold dear.”

  The often-smuggler, sometime-pirate, and likely always confidence-man’s voice sounded quite sincere to her. She could almost believe him, which was likely an effect of whatever drugs the hospital had put in her.

  Eades cleared his throat. “Such a nugget of truth from Mister Dansby is a rare and precious thing. One should grasp it. None of my sources, either, suggested any pirates, much less Ness’ band, were at all involved with our spacers. I’d thought the privateering merely a convenient ruse for you to be in the Barbary and agreed Mister Wheeley would do an adept job of steering you away from his own band of scoundrels, who were a greater force than any single private ship could hope to confront.”

  “I swear it, Rikki,” Dansby repeated.

  It seemed oddly important to him that she believe him, so she nodded. She could always shoot him once she recovered more if she found out he was lying. Wheeley had, when she was able to open the miser’s fists on information, pointed them in much the same directions as Skanes, which was to say, nowhere in particular.

  “You’re both bloody, addle-pated scrubs.”

  Eades sniffed.

  “At times, Rikki, at times.”

  None of which explained why she was wrapped up in hospital, though.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You don’t recall?” Eades asked.

  Alexis made to shake her head, then thought better of it at the twinge of pain.

  “Last is dinner the night before my testimony — did I —”

  “It’s five days since then,” Eades said. “We ourselves arrived two days ago after hearing rumors of what happened. Word of Captain Ellender’s arrival spread and we took ship immediately, thinking you must be involved somehow.”

  “The board?” Alexis asked.

  “All right,” Eades said. “The board’s not heard you yet. You were attacked on your way to —”

  “Attacked?” Her voice was growing raspy again and Dansby took up the cup of water to hold it to her lips once more.

  “When someone takes the time to relate events to you, Carew,” Eades said with a sniff, “it will often go faster if you don’t question every revelation — just assume, for the moment, the teller isn’t a bloody nincompoop and will get the whole thing out if you give him time.”

  Alexis thought he might have got the whole thing out in the time he spent admonishing her, but held her tongue.

  “Thank you.” Eades began pacing the room. “It’s said you had the poor fortune to walk into an attack by separatists — at least if the corridor video of the attack is to be believed. You, your Frenchy fellow, and Captain Skanes were quite close to the blast and —”

  “Blast?”

  Alexis had thought some sort of bar fight or robbery attempt, but had there been a bomb? And if so, how badly was she hurt — they’d said Delaine was all right, but —

  “Where’s Delaine?”

  Eades sighed.

  “Bugger off, old man,” Dansby said, “you’ve never cared about another in your life, so you can’t imagine.” He pulled out his tablet and tapped at it. “There, Rikki, I’ve sent him a message you’re up — and your man, Isom, as well, for he’s been haunting the corridors and driving the staff mad. They’ll likely be here in a moment, so I’ll tell the rest.”

  Eades shrugged and stepped away from her bedside.

  “Skanes was killed,” Dansby said bluntly, “and it was only you throwing your fellow to the deck that kept the two of you from it as well.

  “He’s fine,” Dansby stressed as Alexis opened her mouth again. “A nick or two where you weren’t enough to cover him, but … as it was —” He nodded to her right arm. “— you’ll recover, but they’ve said it’ll not be an easy road.”

  Alexis brought her left hand over and felt at her right. It was solidly wrapped, with the ridges of tubing and other medical devices embedded in the covering.

  “I’m sure some doctor’ll be along soon to tell you, but the gist is you’ll keep the arm and it’ll function with a bit of work.”

  “Function,” Alexis repeated. She raised her hand, almost fearfully to her head and felt at the bandages over her right eye.

  “That’ll be all right as well, they say,” Dansby told her. “You’ve not lost the eye, at least.”

  “Sweet Dark,” Alexis muttered.

  It was too much to take in.

  She’d sailed to the Barbary, engaged pirates, taken a whole bloody planet, and barely made it off the pirate flagship before its fusion plant went up, all with merely a cut or two — only to be blown up in the heart of Naval territory on Penduli Station. It was difficult to credit —
r />   Alexis paused.

  “You said, ‘It’s said.’”

  “What?”

  “Not you.” She nodded at Eades who was across the room studying some device in the corner. “Mister Eades, you are not one to be careless with words — what did you mean by that?”

  Eades raised an eyebrow. “Only that the Gaelics off Killarney II have taken responsibility for the blast and renewed demands for New London to pull out.” He shrugged. “Your bad luck they chose to attack here … at Penduli … half the kingdom away from Killarney, or any real political target for that matter … after —” He shrugged. “— nearly three decades of silence on that front … and right along your route from quarters to the inquiry room. Quite bad luck.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dansby snorted. “Come, now, Rikki — you know him. I might be a snake, but he’s a bloody spider, aye? Sees everything as convoluted as his own webs, and makes up what he can’t prove.”

  Eades shrugged.

  “You think this was something else?” Alexis asked.

  “Rikki, don’t follow him down these paths, he’s —”

  “There was a time you walked them with me,” Eades said.

  Dansby laid a hand on Alexis’ shoulder and turned to glare at the Foreign Office man. “There was a time I didn’t understand the costs,” he said. “But I came to know them all too well, didn’t I?”

  “What are you two on about?” Alexis asked.

  Eades shrugged again. “Captain Skanes is dead and her testimony with her. Neither the board nor anyone else will ever hear her testimony regarding her former employers. Luck cuts bad for some and quite well for others, it seems.”

  “But she told others what she learned,” Alexis said. “Her testimony notwithstanding, surely —”

  Eades sighed. “Hearsay, slander, libel, defamation per se, Miss Carew. Be careful what you repeat of what you’ve heard, for the ways of silencing you are legion. Only Skanes would have had the facts of what she was told to pass on to you and the other privateers, in conflict with the real state of the Barbary, or what the pirates said to her. Now she is dead and that testimony with her.”

  Alexis frowned. “Are you saying the Marchan —”

  “I am, I assure you, not saying such a thing,” Eades said. He didn’t even bother to look at her, just let his eyes idly scan the room.

  “But the pirates themselves would have the knowledge and could testify. Their records, surely —”

  Eades sighed. “Alas, piracy and good clerkship do not, in general, have compatible skill-sets. As well, the average pirate would know nothing of such things — only the captains, and they only that certain ships were off-limits. The why would be closely held.” Eades sighed again. “Of those pardoned who might have knowledge, I imagine we’ll begin hearing of their deaths soon. The Gaelics —” His voice was heavy with sarcasm. “— are nothing if not thorough.”

  Eades stood and patted Alexis’ shoulder as if she were a child, but his voice became deadly serious.

  “Of course, you’re in no danger from separatists, so it’s best if you simply put the worry out of your mind and not speak of it again. You’ve no need to worry about it, as you’re to be packed off to your home as soon as you may travel.” He grinned at Alexis’ look. “The inquiry is done, or at least what may be done on Penduli. The board decided it were better to pack the whole review off to higher authorities … and remove you from the station as quickly as possible.”

  Home. Injured, but whole, if these two were to be believed, yet with Admiralty’s decision still to be made and the outcome still hanging over her head. Regardless, home —

  With Delaine? She’d have to see about that — having just got him back, there was no way she’d allow them to be separated so soon.

  “So, I must be off,” Eades said, then, as though he were some sort of paternal uncle — or a thoroughly shudder-inducing Foreign Office man — he bent over and brushed her cheek with his lips, whispering low, “For yourself and those you love, be seen to accept it was the Gaelics … for now.”

  He stood and, without a word to Dansby, left.

  Dansby sat and took her hand again. “I should be going too, but I’ll sit with you until your young man returns.” There was a beep from the machinery above her bed. “Or until you’ve gone to sleep again, which it appears they’ve decided you shall.”

  Alexis struggled against the cool flow of the drug, she couldn’t go back to sleep — not until she’d seen Delaine again and made sure with her own eyes that he wasn’t injured.

  “Who’s Kaycie?” she demanded, thinking to keep Dansby talking to her and fight the drugs. “And give me nothing about some girl you wished to bed, for one doesn’t set the keys to a ship by that. And Ness said something of regrets.”

  She’d wondered since he’d first given her the codes to run Mongoose, his Elizabeth, at such an odd set of phrases to take control of the ship, but hadn’t wanted to pry at the time. Now, she thought, he owed her a bit of an answer — and she could always blame the impoliteness of prying on the drugs.

  “Are you certain Ness is dead?” he asked instead.

  Alexis nodded, setting her head to spinning in an oddly pleasant way. She tried it again.

  “He is,” she said. “Hard to believe you were ever involved with one such.” She giggled, the part of her horrified by that buried deep in the pillowy softness pumping through her veins. “Dansby & Ness … sounds like a sweets shop.”

  “A product more sour and bitter, I assure you. Was it a hard go for him?”

  Alexis thought of what it must have been like for the pirate leader, pinned to the decking where he could hear the countdown on the fusion plant before it went, hearing the clump of boots through the hull, the clangs and thumps as Mongoose worked her way free and he was left behind to his fate, then nothing but silence and the knowledge he’d failed to take his old enemy’s ship with him before the fire. She still thought, no matter how quick, there must be an instant in such a case where a man would know he was being consumed.

  Her eyelids drooped, but she nodded. “I think it was, quite.”

  Dansby looked away and took a deep breath. “Good. Then Kaycie was someone who can finally rest easy.”

  The drugs were taking tighter hold and Alexis’ thoughts blurred.

  “He kept the ears,” Alexis said.

  Dansby’s eyes widened.

  “In a box, with Presgraves’ head, he said — said he whispered to her at times.”

  “So, Presgraves was there when a fusion plant went?” For a wonder, Dansby actually smiled at that, though his eyes were wet. “She’d have liked that.” He sobered. “I’m sorry you had to meet him, Rikki, but I’m in your debt for what you settled.”

  Alexis scowled at him — or one of him, there seemed to be three or more of the man now, something she thought the universe itself might weep at. She fought the drugs, thinking Delaine must come at any moment and not wanting to miss him again.

  “What happened between you?” she asked.

  Dansby’s smile fell. “That’s another story, Rikki, for another time, with time enough between us to share a bottle or two.”

  Alexis’ eyelids drooped despite her best efforts.

  “I broke your ship,” she said to Dansby.

  “Rather expected that.”

  Epilogue

  O’, ease your pulling now, me mates,

  And join we happy few.

  It's raise a glass to Annalise

  And Little Bit Carew.

  Lord Cunningham, First Lord or the Admiralty, turned from the window as the others entered. He’d been idly wondering which departments filled the myriad buildings below him – he always did lose track of the which was where, generally being able to summon whomever he wished to his own offices atop the central, highest tower. Those windows would likely be darkened in a bit, in any case, as they talked about fleet dispositions and those surfaces were used to display data — much as the wal
ls, ceiling, and the surface of the long table dominating the center of the room could.

  Neither were all of those entering of much importance in the coming meeting — it was a wonder to him that the question had risen to this level … again.

  The First Space Lord, Lord Rotherham, would have something to say about it, though with less weight now that the active fighting with Hanover was at a stop. His bailiwick of strategy and operations was once again in decline with no real shooting going on. Although his twin responsibility for intelligence might come into play, given that the whole mess had started with the damned Foreign Office meddling in things they oughtn’t … again.

  Cunningham fought back a grimace at the thought.

  Bloody skulking about, he nearly muttered aloud.

  Lady Swindmore, Second Space Lord and Chief of Naval Personnel, would certainly have a bit to say, as settling the returned spacers, nearly thirty thousand of their own and some four thousand French of the Berry March at last count, had set her department in a tizzy. As well she would be looking to the disposition of this meeting’s cause … again.

  The next three through the door would have little to say, Cunningham thought, though Falkirk, Fourth and overseer of the Sick and Hurt board might put in a word or two — he nearly always did, though the preference of the weaselly little man was to see to the needs and perquisites of his pets, the ships’ pursers and port chandlers, leaving the medical side of things to some deputy. Likely he brought some word to pass along from such-and-such subordinate, who was waiting in the anteroom should they wish to hear an opinion regarding the meeting’s principal … again.

  The last three would certainly have … opinions.

  Fighting admirals all, at least still in name, for they could take to darkspace and command a fleet if they wished, though they were past their prime for such things.

  Kinaellen, Admiral of the Fleet and the Red Squadron, Lady Larcbost, though she preferred Admiral of the White if one were to address her, viewing that title as more her own than the one acquired at birth, and Damerel of the Blue Squadron, least among the three and anxious for Kinaellen to retire so that he could take Larcbost’s position as she moved to become Admiral of the Fleet.