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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

_The Princess Cecile came down on the patch of dirt between
two Dalbriggan cutters, a hundred yards from the Hall. This was a normal landing place: already blast-scarred and separated by a berm from the Hall which faced it.

"Normal" meant a berth for a 300-ton cutter, however, not a corvette four times as heavy. The Princess Cecile's plasma thrusters slammed the vessels to either side of her, flinging rocks and clods of baked clay against their hulls.

When the Princess Cecile finally came to rest, Daniel rose to his feet feeling shaken. "Almighty God!" he said to Adele because she stood facing him. "I almost let reflected thrust flip her over on her back. On water . . ."

He let his voice trail off because he feared he was making excuses. When a starship landed on water, as Daniel had on every previous occasion, a tilted thruster raised a plume of steam which righted the imbalance gently. From a hard surface, the plasma reflected in a violent shock wave. The Princess Cecile had pogoed from outrigger to outrigger in the half-second it took Daniel to cut thrust by three-quarters.

"The boarding party's waiting at the main hatch, sir," Woetjans said. The bosun held a stocked impeller and wore a bandolier of reloads besides her equipment belt. She didn't look any more concerned about the landing than Adele did.

"Not before the master puts on his pretty white suit," Hogg announced. He held the jacket and trousers of Daniel's 1st Class uniform; Tovera, smiling faintly, stood behind him with the shoes and hat. "You're going to see the high muckymuck of the whole cluster, after all."

Adele looked at Hogg curiously. "The Astrogator is a pirate, Hogg," she said, an observation rather than an argument.

"All the more reason, mistress," Hogg said firmly. "You've got to put on side with wogs or they don't respect you."

Adele grimaced—Daniel knew she didn't like the ethnic pejoratives that were universal with Hogg and most of the Cinnabar spacers. She turned up her palm and let the subject drop.

Daniel changed clothes, which mostly meant moving his limbs as directed while Hogg and Tovera stripped off his garments and put on fancier ones. "Adele?" Daniel said. "Will you be needed at your console, or . . . ?"

"Certainly not," Adele said tartly. "I'll be with you in case the Astrogator requires detailed information."

Daniel smiled. "Yes," he said. "That too."

Adele looked suddenly worried. "I don't have to change clothes, do I? I don't have a white uniform."

"Just the master dresses up, mistress," Hogg said with assurance. "The rest of us look like a buncha scruffs, but we carry enough hardware to blow a hole in the landscape. Not that I expect shooting, but we gotta blend in t' talk to these types."

Daniel heard the main hatch undogging in a metallic chorus. The bolts withdrew with quick hammerblows that rang through the fabric of the ship. He keyed the PA system and said, "Mr. Mon, you're in command until I return from a chat with the Astrogator," he said.

Starting for the companionway, Daniel added, "Woetjans, I think an escort of ten crewmen under a petty officer will be sufficient."

"You've got twenty and I'm in charge of them," the bosun said as she preceded him. "Besides your own party. Sir."

Which amounted to—Daniel looked over his shoulder to see who was following—Adele with Hogg and Tovera both. The pale spider whom Adele used for a servant carried the attaché case which contained her submachine gun. Hogg had slung a knapsack over his left shoulder; on his right hung a submachine gun muzzle-forward in a patrol sling.

"We're not going to fight a whole planetful of pirates, Hogg," Daniel said, knowing he sounded peevish. If there was fighting at all, it meant that his plan had gone wrong.

"If we look like we're ready to, young master," Hogg said, wheezing down the companionway behind him, "then maybe we won't have to. And anyway, I'm not as sure as you are just what's going to happen in that warehouse you're taking us into."

Daniel grimaced but said nothing further. In all truth, a gunfight in the pirate's council hall would be a lot less surprising than the recent attack by the Tanais defenses.

The guards in the entryway were alert, which wasn't entirely a good thing. Daniel had been raised in the country and had handled guns from before he could write in cursive. Most of the spacers were as ignorant of firearms as they were of formal etiquette. There was a real possibility that a tense guard was going to blow a hole the size of a dinner plate through Daniel as he walked down the gangplank.

"Hogg, remind me to institute a program of small-arms training as soon as we've sorted out this business with Strymon, will you?" he said.

"That's if none of our good friends have shot holes in our backs in the meantime, you mean," Hogg muttered.

"Yes, indeed," said Adele, and even Tovera was nodding with her serpentine smile. It seemed to be a general concern among all members of the community who really knew which end of the gun the slug came out of.

The crewmen of the escort waited in the B Level corridors to either side of the entryway, keeping out of the way until it was time to leave. They jostled as they fell in behind Daniel.

All were volunteers, but virtually every spacer on the Princess Cecile would have joined the party if Daniel had been willing to strip the ship. Those Woetjans had chosen were those she wanted to have at her back in a brawl: mostly big, invariably aggressive, and for this mission armed to the teeth.

The ground reradiated the heat of its recent bath in plasma. The local time was just after dawn, and the blue-white intensity of S1 cast sharp shadows across the Council Field.

"They've got some defenses here and no mistake," Woetjans muttered, nodding in the direction of a circular wall like a well coping, one of six such ranged in a diagonal line across the field. Each was a cluster of hypervelocity rockets which could skewer a starship in orbit.

"I've taken over the central controller," Adele said primly, "but each installation has an optical sight and manual controls that I can't touch. Well, from outside the installation itself, I mean."

"I don't believe we'll need to assault the harbor defenses," Daniel said, wondering if Adele had been seriously considering that. Council Field was nearly a mile square, though the ships were mostly at this end, near the Hall. Houses were scattered throughout in the neighboring forest. Running over bare baked earth to attack the most distant rocket pit didn't strike him as a practical proposition.

He smiled. Woetjans saw the expression and said, "Sir?"

"I was just thinking," Daniel explained. "Needs must when the Devil drives. But I really doubt he's going to drive us hard today."

The sky rumbled with the arrival of another starship. The flickering plasma threw faint highlights into the long morning shadows.

"Ship to boarders," explained the intercom in a female voice—Vesey, for a fact. "One of the pickets is coming down. Seven cutters have lifted from outlying locations and are proceeding toward the Council Field within the atmosphere. Ship out."

Aircars were approaching the Hall also. As Woetjans led the dismounted party into the opening through the berm—built out in an elbow to block blasts from landings and liftoffs—a big vehicle overflew them at low level. It had started life as a truck, but the addition of armor and pintle-mounted weapons turned it into an assault vehicle of sorts. The Selma pirates attacked settlements on the ground as well as preying on merchant vessels.

The powerful fans buffeted the spacers beneath, knocking some to their knees. It was like being caught in a millrace. Daniel glanced back. Hogg, his feet braced wide apart, held Adele like scaffolding about a slender pole. Grit and larger pebbles bit as they spun about the narrow passage.

"Boarders, don't shoot!" Daniel said, using the intercom to make sure of being heard over the aircar's roar. "We knew they'd be playing games, so just keep your tempers! Over."

"It scarce can keep in the air!" shouted Barnes, who'd driven aircars both as a civilian and under Daniel's command. "They're a load of bloody fools to load the bitch that way!"

The aircar dropped below the berm and landed noisily just out of sight. Other vehicles, similar but not quite so extensively modified, came from all directions to join the assembly. Daniel wondered if the car that had hammered them did so not as hazing but because the entranceway was the only place the driver felt confident of getting his overweight vehicle over the berm.

"Boarders, they're for scaring civilians, not for real fighting," Daniel said. He used the intercom again so that all his crew could hear the calm in his voice. "They know we're here to bargain and they're just starting the haggling early. Over."

"They come down on Bantry in them clown cars and they'll learn what real fighting is," Hogg said. He was genuinely angry, a very different thing from the loud bluster he used to cow people who were frightened by open emotion. "Me and half a dozen of the boys'd take care of the business without having to reload."

Hogg had a cut on his cheek from some jagged bit of debris, though he seemed to be more concerned about Adele . . . who was fine, as her quick nod assured Daniel.

"For the moment my priority is with the people who fired plasma cannon at us, Hogg," Daniel said, coloring his voice with the hint of superciliousness which never failed to remind Hogg that Daniel was his master in fact. "There may be a chance to discuss matters with the folks who blew dust on us later, but I can't say it concerns me a great deal."

"Sorry," Hogg muttered. "Won't happen again."

"Carry on," said Daniel mildly. Nothing had really happened, of course, but Daniel knew his servant too well—and Hogg knew himself—for either of them to take the matter lightly.

The Hall was the size of a maintenance hangar, built of wood on pilings that raised it three steps above the ground. A sounder of lean gray pigs, Terran stock but feral, trotted along the side of the building in the direction of the garbage dump to the rear. In the lead was a boar who clashed his tusks at the strangers coming through the berm. The pigs ignored the garishly dressed locals swaggering toward the Hall.

Three aircars landed in quick succession. Each driver tried to put his vehicle closer to the Hall's entrance than the other two. What would've been a shoving match in humans meant screaming metal, then a crash like a sack of anvils falling.

"They're saving us effort, Mister Hogg," Tovera called in a clear voice. "Perhaps we should be thankful."

Hogg guffawed loudly. Daniel leaned close to Adele and said into her ear, "I didn't know your servant had a sense of humor, Adele."

"I'm not sure she does," Adele replied with cool amusement.

The Hall's roof had a high central peak and flaring eaves. Though the air was dry at present and dust blew along the ground, the structure gave every evidence of being built for downpours. Which raised the question of refilling the Princess Cecile's reaction mass tanks on a dry field, but that could wait for a more suitable time.

Instead of a door, the whole end of the Hall was open. Daniel looked upward and saw, furled beneath the eaves, curtains of bark fiber to shield the interior in event of rain.

On the broad porch fronting the entranceway stood Dalbriggans in flowing, garish dress. Weapons—knives, guns, and the occasional rocket launcher—were the universal accessory items. More locals joined those already present, not overtly hostile but showing no sign of opening a passage for the approaching Cinnabars.

"Barnes, Dasi, Hogg, front of the line now," Woetjans ordered. Barnes and Dasi were the biggest men on the ship, nearly as tall as the bosun and with the male animal's greater muscle mass.

Hogg, short and pudgy, was on the end opposite Woetjans for reasons other than size. He reached into his knapsack, came out with three fist-sized bundles, and began juggling them. That was an impressive trick while walking forward with gear strapped over both shoulders.

The Cinnabars started up the building-wide steps toward the jeering mass of pirates. Daniel saw the locals brace themselves shoulder to shoulder to resist the spacers' impact. Behind them, their fellows leaned forward to add their weight to the line.

Daniel grinned faintly. He wondered when it would be that a pirate noticed that Hogg was juggling—

"Ganesh bugger me!" a Dalbriggan shouted over the catcalls of her fellows. "That's metallic hydrogen he's tossing around!"

Hogg neatly reversed the flow of his juggling from clockwise to counterclockwise. Three identical items were nothing for a juggler as accomplished as he was. He'd kept the young Daniel amused for hours with up to seven objects—eggs, stones, or the cook's knives, it was all the same to Hogg—in the air at one time.

Now it was blasting charges of metallic hydrogen in zero-zero insulation. Metallic hydrogen had greater energy density than any other explosive, and more shattering power—greater propagation speed—than anything but capacitor-discharge units.

The charges had no fragmentation effect, of course: the explosive's violence would rupture any casing into its constituent atoms. The blast alone would puree everybody on the porch and deafen their neighbors half a mile away.

"Hey, make way, you ratfuckers!" called a front-rank pirate over his shoulder. "These guys juggle bombs!"

"Hold up!" Daniel called, though the veterans around him didn't need to be warned. They'd already paused on the second step for the message to spread over the noise of the crowd.

A corridor opened through the crowd, caused in part by Dalbriggans going into the Hall ahead of the strangers. The game was over. The locals had pushed, the Cinnabars had pushed back; there was no longer any point in standing out on the porch when the real business would take place inside.

Adele stepped close and said, "They aren't frightened."

Daniel nodded. "Well, no more than we are," he said with a grin. "I assure you, tossing around hydrogen charges scares all thought of sin right out of me. . . . "

He felt his grin broaden into a sunny smile. "Well, perhaps not all thought," he added. "Did you see the little blonde in leather dyed the color of her hair?"

"The one with the right side of her scalp shaved and the hair on the left side down to her waist?" Adele said. "Yes, as a matter of fact I did notice her. Though I obviously lack the eye of a connoisseur."

"Let's go!" Woetjans ordered, starting the party forward again. Hogg had stopped juggling. He slipped two of the bombs into his pockets and held the third in his left hand with his thumb though the safety ring. His grin showed he'd gotten over his ill-temper of a few minutes before.

The Hall had a cathedral ceiling forty feet high at the ridgepole. Clear panels set in the roof lighted the interior during daytime, but Daniel noted that a system of cold-discharge illumination ran along the roofbeams. Though the Hall appeared rustic, its fittings were as advanced as those of the Senate House in Xenos . . . which also held to the appearance of past times for tradition's sake.

The Hall's only furnishings were a curving, five-step dais at the end opposite the opening and a lectern at one side of it. A score of Dalbriggans stood at various levels of the dais, a hierarchy that both Daniel's interests in natural history and his experience in the RCN fitted him to understand. The man alone in the center of the top row was tall, thin, gray-haired, and as surely in charge as Speaker Leary at the height of his power a decade before.

"Astrogator Kelburney," Adele said, speaking into Daniel's ear. She avoided using the intercom except when there was no other choice.

With the spreading nonchalance of water poured from an overturned bucket, locals entered the Hall around and behind the Cinnabars. Occasionally a Dalbriggan would join the leaders on the dais, but for the most part they stood in self-defined groupings on the open floor. At a quick glance Daniel judged about a third of those present were women, though their numbers on the dais formed a lower percentage.

A middle-aged woman in severe black, the only person Daniel saw who wasn't armed, stood at the lectern. She spoke, her voice filling the vast room from scores of speakers hidden in the roofbeams. "Captains and officers to the front, common crew in the body of the Hall! No exceptions!"

Daniel turned his head with a smile. "Boarders," he said. The Hall was alive with sound. "Officer Mundy goes with me, the rest of you take your places in the front of the crowd. Over."

"Sir, I'm an officer!" Woetjans said, her face screwed tight with concern. She held the length of alloy tubing that was her weapon of choice in any circumstances that permitted it.

"Yes," Daniel said. "And I'm your captain. Carry out your orders, Officer Woetjans."

Those closest could hear them, but this discussion wasn't over the intercom. Woetjans wasn't concerned about status. She simply wanted to be beside Daniel if trouble started.

Halfway up the pillar which supported the roof at the open end was a platform holding a life-sized statue of the man at the top of the dais. It was of gold; not a significant cost increment to a spacefaring nation which could gather metals in any volume in asteroid belts, but nonetheless an untarnishable assertion. Its blue-glinting eyes were faceted sapphires.

Daniel smiled. His father hadn't gone to quite that length, but he would certainly have appreciated Astrogator Kelburney's gesture.

Hogg nudged Woetjans in the ribs. "Hey," he said. "Stick by me, cutie, and I'll let you hold one of my bombs."

The bosun looked down at him, then barked a laugh. "Right!" she said, smacking the tubing into her left palm with a sound like a whiplash. "Boarders with me. We're going to get a good spot to see Cinnabar's best make monkeys out of a bunch of wogs!"

"Come on, Adele," Daniel said. Loud enough to be sure that everyone in his party could hear, he added, "We'll get a good view of the room from the top step, don't you think?"

Most of the smells peculiar to this part of Dalbriggan were unfamiliar to Adele, but they were pleasant enough. She particularly liked the spicy sweetness that seemed to come from the wood of the Hall itself.

The hog-scavenged dump was downwind, a considerable improvement on her apartment in Xenos where the street was cleaned primarily by the heavy spring rainfalls. It wasn't a matter of great concern to Adele, but she noticed it as she noticed many things.

She walked forward with Daniel. Their escort had stopped a pace back, but there was no longer a crush that Woetjans and her henchmen had to muscle through. The Dalbriggans had left room for the escort at the front of the gathering; the space was tight, but the Cinnabars were no worse crowded than the locals themselves.

"As the local representatives of the Republic of Cinnabar," Daniel declared at the foot of the dais, "my companion and I will take our places beside the Astrogator!"

He'd started out speaking at maximum volume. A hidden directional microphone picked up his words and amplified them around the Hall without need for human effort. Daniel let his voice drop and found that the public address system compensated with no more than a stutter.

He glanced at Adele and winked; she kept a straight face, concerned about what she was to do. This was worse than a formal dinner in the Princess Cecile's wardroom. There at least it was unlikely that she could make a mistake which would lead to the massacre of all her companions.

She smiled, a reflection of the amusement she knew Daniel would express if she'd been able to speak the last chain of thoughts aloud. That wasn't practical, so she had to laugh on her friend's behalf.

"Captain Leary stands by me," said the Astrogator. His voice had a resonance that could have filled the vast building unaided. "His officer stands on the bottom row where she belongs."

Daniel took the first step and the second at a measured pace, gesturing Adele along with a minuscule crook of his index finger. "When you come to Cinnabar," he said ringingly, "you follow Cinnabar custom. When Cinnabar comes to you, Astrogator Kelburney, you still follow Cinnabar custom. We represent the Republic!"

Daniel took the third step, then the fourth; none of the captains already on the dais moved to bar his way. Adele followed, watching her feet. The treads were deeper than she was used to, and it wouldn't help the mission if she were to fall on her face.

Kelburney laughed; it was impossible to tell how much of the humor was real. "Come up, then, Captain," he said. "And bring your bitch as well if you're so devoted to her."

They took their places on the top level, Daniel to the Astrogator's right and Adele beside Daniel. She turned and looked back the way she'd come. The Hall had very nearly filled during the time it took the Cinnabar contingent to walk its length. There were several thousand people present, more than Adele would've imagined possible from the Hall's forested environs.

"Silence for the cup!" said the woman at the lectern. So many people in a single room couldn't be really silent—their breathing alone was a deep susurrus like that of a sleeping dragon—but the voices stilled. A pair of servants came forward.

They were old, and both were crippled: the man stomped along on one leg and a peg, while the blast that scarred the left side of the woman's face had also burned off her arm. She carried a wineskin on a strap over her good shoulder. The man had a gold-mounted cup in his hands.

Adele's face hardened. The cup was made from the brainbox of a human skull. For a moment Adele had permitted herself to imagine that the able use of technology made Dalbriggan a sophisticated planet.

The woman filled the cup, lifting the strap with her shoulder and squeezing the wineskin between her elbow and torso. The man handed the cup to the Dalbriggan on the end of the bottom row. He drank, an honest swallow, and passed the cup to the officer beside him. She drank as well and passed the cup in turn.

Four more had drunk before the last handed the cup to the servants to be refilled. The ceremony continued.

Adele didn't let her mind wander; rather she slipped into a world where no one could touch her. It was a cold place and utterly colorless, but it was familiar to her. She'd spent a great deal of time in grayness since the day she learned that her family had been massacred, leaving Adele Mundy a destitute orphan.

She could function in this place but she couldn't feel a thing; which was generally for the best.

There was a sound in front of Adele. Her eyes locked into focus with those of the cripple offering her the refilled cup. "No, thank you," Adele said in a clear voice.

Daniel reached past her and took the cup. The bone was old; yellow on the outside, dark as the wine itself on the inside from generations of use.

"No!" said Kelburney. He stepped in front of Daniel on the broad tread and put his hand over the cup before Daniel could lift it. The Astrogator was taller than he'd seemed when the Cinnabars first entered the Hall, and his powerful wrists belied his slender appearance.

Kelburney wore a cloth-of-gold tunic over pantaloons of the same material. His wide belt and crossed bandoliers were scaly leather, sagging with the weight of ammunition, knives, and pistols in open-topped holsters. The weapons showed signs of hard use.

"She'll drink from the cup, Captain Leary," the Astrogator said, "or she leaves the Hall. That I swear, though a Cinnabar fleet orbits above us!"

Adele stared calmly at the tall Dalbriggan; her mind analyzed the situation as coldly as it would if she were not directly involved. Kelburney's boast that he'd defy a Cinnabar fleet was just that, a boast. The Princess Cecile was the only RCN vessel present, however—and it was quite clear from Kelburney's expression that his anger and determination were real. Tendons stood out on his neck.

Adele smiled. It appeared that the ceremony of the cup was a major aspect of Dalbriggan faith. Well, faith or not, it was equally important to Adele that she not sup with utensils made from human bodies.

"You misunderstand me, sir," she said. The hidden director controlling the parabolic microphone picked up her voice and amplified it so the whole room could hear. "My religion forbids me to drink—"

As Adele spoke, her eyes holding the Astrogator's, her left hand reached out and slid the pistol from the cross-draw holster at his left hip. She didn't know the weapon, but the range was too great for the light projectiles of the pistol in her own pocket.

"—and requires that if I do—"

Kelburney felt the weight of the pistol withdrawing. He tried to grab Adele's hand. Daniel caught his wrist. The two men remained locked together motionless. Kelburney's expression changed to amazement; Daniel only appeared soft.

"—I must kill the person who compelled me," Adele said.

She turned side-on to the far end of the Hall, the pistol extended in line with her left arm. She'd been trained as a duelist, not a pistolero.

The audience was shouting, but Adele doubted anyone was going to shoot at her so long as she was standing close to the Astrogator. The captains nearby on the dais were more of a threat, but they seemed willing to let matters take their course. Anyway, Adele couldn't control what other people did.

She could only control the pistol in her hand.

The weapon was stone-axe simple, with only a post and ring for sighting. At this range, a little over a hundred yards, Adele wouldn't have minded holographic magnification; but she'd make do.

The power was already switched to the coils. Kelburney wasn't the sort to let his last act in life be fumbling to take his pistol off safe.

Adele squeezed the trigger as she exhaled, both eyes open. The sound of the room departed like water vanishing down a drain. The front post was sharply focused; her target was a blue glint in a gray-gold blur.

WHACK! 

The snapping discharge through the impeller rings was a surprise as usual, accelerating the heavy slug to several times the speed of sound. The pistol recoiled in Adele's hand, the muzzle lifting. It was well balanced, settling back on target as naturally as Adele's own familiar weapon would have done.

The head of Kelburney's statue twisted awry. Whether she'd hit the right eye or not, she'd certainly torn the casting enough that the sapphire flew out of its socket.

WHACK/WHANG! 

In her concentration Adele hadn't heard the sound of the first slug's hammerblow on the metal, but she did the second as gold ripped apart. Long splinters, reddish against the age-blackened surface wood, stood out from the post like a halo where the shots had penetrated after striking the metal.

The top of the statue's head tumbled ringingly to the floor. Dalbriggans in the back of the Hall scrambled to get out of the way.

"I believe you have a second cup now, Astrogator Kelburney," Daniel said, releasing the older man and stepping back. "If you'll have somebody bring it up to us, perhaps you and I can use it to drink to a new understanding between your people and mine."

He smiled toward Adele. "At any rate," he added, "I believe you understand Officer Mundy better now."

Adele took the pistol by the receiver with her right fingertips and offered the butt to Kelburney. The flux had heated the barrel to yellow heat in only two shots. It was a powerful weapon, meant to punch through body armor.

"Thank you for the loan, sir," Adele said.

The only noise in the Hall was the continuing echo from the commotion moments before. The Dalbriggan officers on the dais drew back with sharp expressions, more tense than they'd been while Adele was aiming the weapon.

Kelburney took the pistol expressionlessly. He looked at the truncated statue, obviously judging the likelihood that he could duplicate Adele's feat—and correctly deciding that there wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell of it.

"Here, woman," he said, handing the pistol back to Adele. "Anybody who can shoot the way you can ought to have a gun of her own."

And what in heaven's name am I supposed to do with a cannon like this? Adele thought; but she took the weapon with a tight smile. That was the politic thing to do, after all, and it was a very nice piece of workmanship.

Kelburney turned to face the assembly and placed his hands on his hips. "Siblings of the stars!" he said. "Free citizens of Dalbriggan and the universe! Is it your will that I and your council examine these strangers and make policy based on what we learn?"

The shout built from a dozen throats to a hundred; finally the whole assembly shook the walls with its bellowed response. At first there were a few cries of, "No!" among the general assent, but as the volume built so did the agreement.

Kelburney raised his arms skyward. The shouting stopped, though the Hall still rumbled with shuffling feet and indrawn breaths.

"Siblings!" Kelburney said. "Will you be bound by our decision?"

This time there was no opposition. The assembly's decision was implicit in its first response; and this would not, Adele suspected, be a good environment for people who recalcitrantly espoused a minority view.

Kelburney gestured Adele and Daniel both close. He shouted into their ears, "The Council Chamber's through the door behind us. I'm glad to learn the RCN has a proposition for me, because as it chances I have a proposition for the RCN."

He gestured them ahead. Others from the dais were already going into the room beyond, though the Hall proper still reverberated with the enthusiasm of the full assembly.

I wonder, Adele thought, if I should ask for a holster and belt while I'm at it? 

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Framed

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

_The Princess Cecile came down on the patch of dirt between
two Dalbriggan cutters, a hundred yards from the Hall. This was a normal landing place: already blast-scarred and separated by a berm from the Hall which faced it.

"Normal" meant a berth for a 300-ton cutter, however, not a corvette four times as heavy. The Princess Cecile's plasma thrusters slammed the vessels to either side of her, flinging rocks and clods of baked clay against their hulls.

When the Princess Cecile finally came to rest, Daniel rose to his feet feeling shaken. "Almighty God!" he said to Adele because she stood facing him. "I almost let reflected thrust flip her over on her back. On water . . ."

He let his voice trail off because he feared he was making excuses. When a starship landed on water, as Daniel had on every previous occasion, a tilted thruster raised a plume of steam which righted the imbalance gently. From a hard surface, the plasma reflected in a violent shock wave. The Princess Cecile had pogoed from outrigger to outrigger in the half-second it took Daniel to cut thrust by three-quarters.

"The boarding party's waiting at the main hatch, sir," Woetjans said. The bosun held a stocked impeller and wore a bandolier of reloads besides her equipment belt. She didn't look any more concerned about the landing than Adele did.

"Not before the master puts on his pretty white suit," Hogg announced. He held the jacket and trousers of Daniel's 1st Class uniform; Tovera, smiling faintly, stood behind him with the shoes and hat. "You're going to see the high muckymuck of the whole cluster, after all."

Adele looked at Hogg curiously. "The Astrogator is a pirate, Hogg," she said, an observation rather than an argument.

"All the more reason, mistress," Hogg said firmly. "You've got to put on side with wogs or they don't respect you."

Adele grimaced—Daniel knew she didn't like the ethnic pejoratives that were universal with Hogg and most of the Cinnabar spacers. She turned up her palm and let the subject drop.

Daniel changed clothes, which mostly meant moving his limbs as directed while Hogg and Tovera stripped off his garments and put on fancier ones. "Adele?" Daniel said. "Will you be needed at your console, or . . . ?"

"Certainly not," Adele said tartly. "I'll be with you in case the Astrogator requires detailed information."

Daniel smiled. "Yes," he said. "That too."

Adele looked suddenly worried. "I don't have to change clothes, do I? I don't have a white uniform."

"Just the master dresses up, mistress," Hogg said with assurance. "The rest of us look like a buncha scruffs, but we carry enough hardware to blow a hole in the landscape. Not that I expect shooting, but we gotta blend in t' talk to these types."

Daniel heard the main hatch undogging in a metallic chorus. The bolts withdrew with quick hammerblows that rang through the fabric of the ship. He keyed the PA system and said, "Mr. Mon, you're in command until I return from a chat with the Astrogator," he said.

Starting for the companionway, Daniel added, "Woetjans, I think an escort of ten crewmen under a petty officer will be sufficient."

"You've got twenty and I'm in charge of them," the bosun said as she preceded him. "Besides your own party. Sir."

Which amounted to—Daniel looked over his shoulder to see who was following—Adele with Hogg and Tovera both. The pale spider whom Adele used for a servant carried the attaché case which contained her submachine gun. Hogg had slung a knapsack over his left shoulder; on his right hung a submachine gun muzzle-forward in a patrol sling.

"We're not going to fight a whole planetful of pirates, Hogg," Daniel said, knowing he sounded peevish. If there was fighting at all, it meant that his plan had gone wrong.

"If we look like we're ready to, young master," Hogg said, wheezing down the companionway behind him, "then maybe we won't have to. And anyway, I'm not as sure as you are just what's going to happen in that warehouse you're taking us into."

Daniel grimaced but said nothing further. In all truth, a gunfight in the pirate's council hall would be a lot less surprising than the recent attack by the Tanais defenses.

The guards in the entryway were alert, which wasn't entirely a good thing. Daniel had been raised in the country and had handled guns from before he could write in cursive. Most of the spacers were as ignorant of firearms as they were of formal etiquette. There was a real possibility that a tense guard was going to blow a hole the size of a dinner plate through Daniel as he walked down the gangplank.

"Hogg, remind me to institute a program of small-arms training as soon as we've sorted out this business with Strymon, will you?" he said.

"That's if none of our good friends have shot holes in our backs in the meantime, you mean," Hogg muttered.

"Yes, indeed," said Adele, and even Tovera was nodding with her serpentine smile. It seemed to be a general concern among all members of the community who really knew which end of the gun the slug came out of.

The crewmen of the escort waited in the B Level corridors to either side of the entryway, keeping out of the way until it was time to leave. They jostled as they fell in behind Daniel.

All were volunteers, but virtually every spacer on the Princess Cecile would have joined the party if Daniel had been willing to strip the ship. Those Woetjans had chosen were those she wanted to have at her back in a brawl: mostly big, invariably aggressive, and for this mission armed to the teeth.

The ground reradiated the heat of its recent bath in plasma. The local time was just after dawn, and the blue-white intensity of S1 cast sharp shadows across the Council Field.

"They've got some defenses here and no mistake," Woetjans muttered, nodding in the direction of a circular wall like a well coping, one of six such ranged in a diagonal line across the field. Each was a cluster of hypervelocity rockets which could skewer a starship in orbit.

"I've taken over the central controller," Adele said primly, "but each installation has an optical sight and manual controls that I can't touch. Well, from outside the installation itself, I mean."

"I don't believe we'll need to assault the harbor defenses," Daniel said, wondering if Adele had been seriously considering that. Council Field was nearly a mile square, though the ships were mostly at this end, near the Hall. Houses were scattered throughout in the neighboring forest. Running over bare baked earth to attack the most distant rocket pit didn't strike him as a practical proposition.

He smiled. Woetjans saw the expression and said, "Sir?"

"I was just thinking," Daniel explained. "Needs must when the Devil drives. But I really doubt he's going to drive us hard today."

The sky rumbled with the arrival of another starship. The flickering plasma threw faint highlights into the long morning shadows.

"Ship to boarders," explained the intercom in a female voice—Vesey, for a fact. "One of the pickets is coming down. Seven cutters have lifted from outlying locations and are proceeding toward the Council Field within the atmosphere. Ship out."

Aircars were approaching the Hall also. As Woetjans led the dismounted party into the opening through the berm—built out in an elbow to block blasts from landings and liftoffs—a big vehicle overflew them at low level. It had started life as a truck, but the addition of armor and pintle-mounted weapons turned it into an assault vehicle of sorts. The Selma pirates attacked settlements on the ground as well as preying on merchant vessels.

The powerful fans buffeted the spacers beneath, knocking some to their knees. It was like being caught in a millrace. Daniel glanced back. Hogg, his feet braced wide apart, held Adele like scaffolding about a slender pole. Grit and larger pebbles bit as they spun about the narrow passage.

"Boarders, don't shoot!" Daniel said, using the intercom to make sure of being heard over the aircar's roar. "We knew they'd be playing games, so just keep your tempers! Over."

"It scarce can keep in the air!" shouted Barnes, who'd driven aircars both as a civilian and under Daniel's command. "They're a load of bloody fools to load the bitch that way!"

The aircar dropped below the berm and landed noisily just out of sight. Other vehicles, similar but not quite so extensively modified, came from all directions to join the assembly. Daniel wondered if the car that had hammered them did so not as hazing but because the entranceway was the only place the driver felt confident of getting his overweight vehicle over the berm.

"Boarders, they're for scaring civilians, not for real fighting," Daniel said. He used the intercom again so that all his crew could hear the calm in his voice. "They know we're here to bargain and they're just starting the haggling early. Over."

"They come down on Bantry in them clown cars and they'll learn what real fighting is," Hogg said. He was genuinely angry, a very different thing from the loud bluster he used to cow people who were frightened by open emotion. "Me and half a dozen of the boys'd take care of the business without having to reload."

Hogg had a cut on his cheek from some jagged bit of debris, though he seemed to be more concerned about Adele . . . who was fine, as her quick nod assured Daniel.

"For the moment my priority is with the people who fired plasma cannon at us, Hogg," Daniel said, coloring his voice with the hint of superciliousness which never failed to remind Hogg that Daniel was his master in fact. "There may be a chance to discuss matters with the folks who blew dust on us later, but I can't say it concerns me a great deal."

"Sorry," Hogg muttered. "Won't happen again."

"Carry on," said Daniel mildly. Nothing had really happened, of course, but Daniel knew his servant too well—and Hogg knew himself—for either of them to take the matter lightly.

The Hall was the size of a maintenance hangar, built of wood on pilings that raised it three steps above the ground. A sounder of lean gray pigs, Terran stock but feral, trotted along the side of the building in the direction of the garbage dump to the rear. In the lead was a boar who clashed his tusks at the strangers coming through the berm. The pigs ignored the garishly dressed locals swaggering toward the Hall.

Three aircars landed in quick succession. Each driver tried to put his vehicle closer to the Hall's entrance than the other two. What would've been a shoving match in humans meant screaming metal, then a crash like a sack of anvils falling.

"They're saving us effort, Mister Hogg," Tovera called in a clear voice. "Perhaps we should be thankful."

Hogg guffawed loudly. Daniel leaned close to Adele and said into her ear, "I didn't know your servant had a sense of humor, Adele."

"I'm not sure she does," Adele replied with cool amusement.

The Hall's roof had a high central peak and flaring eaves. Though the air was dry at present and dust blew along the ground, the structure gave every evidence of being built for downpours. Which raised the question of refilling the Princess Cecile's reaction mass tanks on a dry field, but that could wait for a more suitable time.

Instead of a door, the whole end of the Hall was open. Daniel looked upward and saw, furled beneath the eaves, curtains of bark fiber to shield the interior in event of rain.

On the broad porch fronting the entranceway stood Dalbriggans in flowing, garish dress. Weapons—knives, guns, and the occasional rocket launcher—were the universal accessory items. More locals joined those already present, not overtly hostile but showing no sign of opening a passage for the approaching Cinnabars.

"Barnes, Dasi, Hogg, front of the line now," Woetjans ordered. Barnes and Dasi were the biggest men on the ship, nearly as tall as the bosun and with the male animal's greater muscle mass.

Hogg, short and pudgy, was on the end opposite Woetjans for reasons other than size. He reached into his knapsack, came out with three fist-sized bundles, and began juggling them. That was an impressive trick while walking forward with gear strapped over both shoulders.

The Cinnabars started up the building-wide steps toward the jeering mass of pirates. Daniel saw the locals brace themselves shoulder to shoulder to resist the spacers' impact. Behind them, their fellows leaned forward to add their weight to the line.

Daniel grinned faintly. He wondered when it would be that a pirate noticed that Hogg was juggling—

"Ganesh bugger me!" a Dalbriggan shouted over the catcalls of her fellows. "That's metallic hydrogen he's tossing around!"

Hogg neatly reversed the flow of his juggling from clockwise to counterclockwise. Three identical items were nothing for a juggler as accomplished as he was. He'd kept the young Daniel amused for hours with up to seven objects—eggs, stones, or the cook's knives, it was all the same to Hogg—in the air at one time.

Now it was blasting charges of metallic hydrogen in zero-zero insulation. Metallic hydrogen had greater energy density than any other explosive, and more shattering power—greater propagation speed—than anything but capacitor-discharge units.

The charges had no fragmentation effect, of course: the explosive's violence would rupture any casing into its constituent atoms. The blast alone would puree everybody on the porch and deafen their neighbors half a mile away.

"Hey, make way, you ratfuckers!" called a front-rank pirate over his shoulder. "These guys juggle bombs!"

"Hold up!" Daniel called, though the veterans around him didn't need to be warned. They'd already paused on the second step for the message to spread over the noise of the crowd.

A corridor opened through the crowd, caused in part by Dalbriggans going into the Hall ahead of the strangers. The game was over. The locals had pushed, the Cinnabars had pushed back; there was no longer any point in standing out on the porch when the real business would take place inside.

Adele stepped close and said, "They aren't frightened."

Daniel nodded. "Well, no more than we are," he said with a grin. "I assure you, tossing around hydrogen charges scares all thought of sin right out of me. . . . "

He felt his grin broaden into a sunny smile. "Well, perhaps not all thought," he added. "Did you see the little blonde in leather dyed the color of her hair?"

"The one with the right side of her scalp shaved and the hair on the left side down to her waist?" Adele said. "Yes, as a matter of fact I did notice her. Though I obviously lack the eye of a connoisseur."

"Let's go!" Woetjans ordered, starting the party forward again. Hogg had stopped juggling. He slipped two of the bombs into his pockets and held the third in his left hand with his thumb though the safety ring. His grin showed he'd gotten over his ill-temper of a few minutes before.

The Hall had a cathedral ceiling forty feet high at the ridgepole. Clear panels set in the roof lighted the interior during daytime, but Daniel noted that a system of cold-discharge illumination ran along the roofbeams. Though the Hall appeared rustic, its fittings were as advanced as those of the Senate House in Xenos . . . which also held to the appearance of past times for tradition's sake.

The Hall's only furnishings were a curving, five-step dais at the end opposite the opening and a lectern at one side of it. A score of Dalbriggans stood at various levels of the dais, a hierarchy that both Daniel's interests in natural history and his experience in the RCN fitted him to understand. The man alone in the center of the top row was tall, thin, gray-haired, and as surely in charge as Speaker Leary at the height of his power a decade before.

"Astrogator Kelburney," Adele said, speaking into Daniel's ear. She avoided using the intercom except when there was no other choice.

With the spreading nonchalance of water poured from an overturned bucket, locals entered the Hall around and behind the Cinnabars. Occasionally a Dalbriggan would join the leaders on the dais, but for the most part they stood in self-defined groupings on the open floor. At a quick glance Daniel judged about a third of those present were women, though their numbers on the dais formed a lower percentage.

A middle-aged woman in severe black, the only person Daniel saw who wasn't armed, stood at the lectern. She spoke, her voice filling the vast room from scores of speakers hidden in the roofbeams. "Captains and officers to the front, common crew in the body of the Hall! No exceptions!"

Daniel turned his head with a smile. "Boarders," he said. The Hall was alive with sound. "Officer Mundy goes with me, the rest of you take your places in the front of the crowd. Over."

"Sir, I'm an officer!" Woetjans said, her face screwed tight with concern. She held the length of alloy tubing that was her weapon of choice in any circumstances that permitted it.

"Yes," Daniel said. "And I'm your captain. Carry out your orders, Officer Woetjans."

Those closest could hear them, but this discussion wasn't over the intercom. Woetjans wasn't concerned about status. She simply wanted to be beside Daniel if trouble started.

Halfway up the pillar which supported the roof at the open end was a platform holding a life-sized statue of the man at the top of the dais. It was of gold; not a significant cost increment to a spacefaring nation which could gather metals in any volume in asteroid belts, but nonetheless an untarnishable assertion. Its blue-glinting eyes were faceted sapphires.

Daniel smiled. His father hadn't gone to quite that length, but he would certainly have appreciated Astrogator Kelburney's gesture.

Hogg nudged Woetjans in the ribs. "Hey," he said. "Stick by me, cutie, and I'll let you hold one of my bombs."

The bosun looked down at him, then barked a laugh. "Right!" she said, smacking the tubing into her left palm with a sound like a whiplash. "Boarders with me. We're going to get a good spot to see Cinnabar's best make monkeys out of a bunch of wogs!"

"Come on, Adele," Daniel said. Loud enough to be sure that everyone in his party could hear, he added, "We'll get a good view of the room from the top step, don't you think?"

Most of the smells peculiar to this part of Dalbriggan were unfamiliar to Adele, but they were pleasant enough. She particularly liked the spicy sweetness that seemed to come from the wood of the Hall itself.

The hog-scavenged dump was downwind, a considerable improvement on her apartment in Xenos where the street was cleaned primarily by the heavy spring rainfalls. It wasn't a matter of great concern to Adele, but she noticed it as she noticed many things.

She walked forward with Daniel. Their escort had stopped a pace back, but there was no longer a crush that Woetjans and her henchmen had to muscle through. The Dalbriggans had left room for the escort at the front of the gathering; the space was tight, but the Cinnabars were no worse crowded than the locals themselves.

"As the local representatives of the Republic of Cinnabar," Daniel declared at the foot of the dais, "my companion and I will take our places beside the Astrogator!"

He'd started out speaking at maximum volume. A hidden directional microphone picked up his words and amplified them around the Hall without need for human effort. Daniel let his voice drop and found that the public address system compensated with no more than a stutter.

He glanced at Adele and winked; she kept a straight face, concerned about what she was to do. This was worse than a formal dinner in the Princess Cecile's wardroom. There at least it was unlikely that she could make a mistake which would lead to the massacre of all her companions.

She smiled, a reflection of the amusement she knew Daniel would express if she'd been able to speak the last chain of thoughts aloud. That wasn't practical, so she had to laugh on her friend's behalf.

"Captain Leary stands by me," said the Astrogator. His voice had a resonance that could have filled the vast building unaided. "His officer stands on the bottom row where she belongs."

Daniel took the first step and the second at a measured pace, gesturing Adele along with a minuscule crook of his index finger. "When you come to Cinnabar," he said ringingly, "you follow Cinnabar custom. When Cinnabar comes to you, Astrogator Kelburney, you still follow Cinnabar custom. We represent the Republic!"

Daniel took the third step, then the fourth; none of the captains already on the dais moved to bar his way. Adele followed, watching her feet. The treads were deeper than she was used to, and it wouldn't help the mission if she were to fall on her face.

Kelburney laughed; it was impossible to tell how much of the humor was real. "Come up, then, Captain," he said. "And bring your bitch as well if you're so devoted to her."

They took their places on the top level, Daniel to the Astrogator's right and Adele beside Daniel. She turned and looked back the way she'd come. The Hall had very nearly filled during the time it took the Cinnabar contingent to walk its length. There were several thousand people present, more than Adele would've imagined possible from the Hall's forested environs.

"Silence for the cup!" said the woman at the lectern. So many people in a single room couldn't be really silent—their breathing alone was a deep susurrus like that of a sleeping dragon—but the voices stilled. A pair of servants came forward.

They were old, and both were crippled: the man stomped along on one leg and a peg, while the blast that scarred the left side of the woman's face had also burned off her arm. She carried a wineskin on a strap over her good shoulder. The man had a gold-mounted cup in his hands.

Adele's face hardened. The cup was made from the brainbox of a human skull. For a moment Adele had permitted herself to imagine that the able use of technology made Dalbriggan a sophisticated planet.

The woman filled the cup, lifting the strap with her shoulder and squeezing the wineskin between her elbow and torso. The man handed the cup to the Dalbriggan on the end of the bottom row. He drank, an honest swallow, and passed the cup to the officer beside him. She drank as well and passed the cup in turn.

Four more had drunk before the last handed the cup to the servants to be refilled. The ceremony continued.

Adele didn't let her mind wander; rather she slipped into a world where no one could touch her. It was a cold place and utterly colorless, but it was familiar to her. She'd spent a great deal of time in grayness since the day she learned that her family had been massacred, leaving Adele Mundy a destitute orphan.

She could function in this place but she couldn't feel a thing; which was generally for the best.

There was a sound in front of Adele. Her eyes locked into focus with those of the cripple offering her the refilled cup. "No, thank you," Adele said in a clear voice.

Daniel reached past her and took the cup. The bone was old; yellow on the outside, dark as the wine itself on the inside from generations of use.

"No!" said Kelburney. He stepped in front of Daniel on the broad tread and put his hand over the cup before Daniel could lift it. The Astrogator was taller than he'd seemed when the Cinnabars first entered the Hall, and his powerful wrists belied his slender appearance.

Kelburney wore a cloth-of-gold tunic over pantaloons of the same material. His wide belt and crossed bandoliers were scaly leather, sagging with the weight of ammunition, knives, and pistols in open-topped holsters. The weapons showed signs of hard use.

"She'll drink from the cup, Captain Leary," the Astrogator said, "or she leaves the Hall. That I swear, though a Cinnabar fleet orbits above us!"

Adele stared calmly at the tall Dalbriggan; her mind analyzed the situation as coldly as it would if she were not directly involved. Kelburney's boast that he'd defy a Cinnabar fleet was just that, a boast. The Princess Cecile was the only RCN vessel present, however—and it was quite clear from Kelburney's expression that his anger and determination were real. Tendons stood out on his neck.

Adele smiled. It appeared that the ceremony of the cup was a major aspect of Dalbriggan faith. Well, faith or not, it was equally important to Adele that she not sup with utensils made from human bodies.

"You misunderstand me, sir," she said. The hidden director controlling the parabolic microphone picked up her voice and amplified it so the whole room could hear. "My religion forbids me to drink—"

As Adele spoke, her eyes holding the Astrogator's, her left hand reached out and slid the pistol from the cross-draw holster at his left hip. She didn't know the weapon, but the range was too great for the light projectiles of the pistol in her own pocket.

"—and requires that if I do—"

Kelburney felt the weight of the pistol withdrawing. He tried to grab Adele's hand. Daniel caught his wrist. The two men remained locked together motionless. Kelburney's expression changed to amazement; Daniel only appeared soft.

"—I must kill the person who compelled me," Adele said.

She turned side-on to the far end of the Hall, the pistol extended in line with her left arm. She'd been trained as a duelist, not a pistolero.

The audience was shouting, but Adele doubted anyone was going to shoot at her so long as she was standing close to the Astrogator. The captains nearby on the dais were more of a threat, but they seemed willing to let matters take their course. Anyway, Adele couldn't control what other people did.

She could only control the pistol in her hand.

The weapon was stone-axe simple, with only a post and ring for sighting. At this range, a little over a hundred yards, Adele wouldn't have minded holographic magnification; but she'd make do.

The power was already switched to the coils. Kelburney wasn't the sort to let his last act in life be fumbling to take his pistol off safe.

Adele squeezed the trigger as she exhaled, both eyes open. The sound of the room departed like water vanishing down a drain. The front post was sharply focused; her target was a blue glint in a gray-gold blur.

WHACK! 

The snapping discharge through the impeller rings was a surprise as usual, accelerating the heavy slug to several times the speed of sound. The pistol recoiled in Adele's hand, the muzzle lifting. It was well balanced, settling back on target as naturally as Adele's own familiar weapon would have done.

The head of Kelburney's statue twisted awry. Whether she'd hit the right eye or not, she'd certainly torn the casting enough that the sapphire flew out of its socket.

WHACK/WHANG! 

In her concentration Adele hadn't heard the sound of the first slug's hammerblow on the metal, but she did the second as gold ripped apart. Long splinters, reddish against the age-blackened surface wood, stood out from the post like a halo where the shots had penetrated after striking the metal.

The top of the statue's head tumbled ringingly to the floor. Dalbriggans in the back of the Hall scrambled to get out of the way.

"I believe you have a second cup now, Astrogator Kelburney," Daniel said, releasing the older man and stepping back. "If you'll have somebody bring it up to us, perhaps you and I can use it to drink to a new understanding between your people and mine."

He smiled toward Adele. "At any rate," he added, "I believe you understand Officer Mundy better now."

Adele took the pistol by the receiver with her right fingertips and offered the butt to Kelburney. The flux had heated the barrel to yellow heat in only two shots. It was a powerful weapon, meant to punch through body armor.

"Thank you for the loan, sir," Adele said.

The only noise in the Hall was the continuing echo from the commotion moments before. The Dalbriggan officers on the dais drew back with sharp expressions, more tense than they'd been while Adele was aiming the weapon.

Kelburney took the pistol expressionlessly. He looked at the truncated statue, obviously judging the likelihood that he could duplicate Adele's feat—and correctly deciding that there wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell of it.

"Here, woman," he said, handing the pistol back to Adele. "Anybody who can shoot the way you can ought to have a gun of her own."

And what in heaven's name am I supposed to do with a cannon like this? Adele thought; but she took the weapon with a tight smile. That was the politic thing to do, after all, and it was a very nice piece of workmanship.

Kelburney turned to face the assembly and placed his hands on his hips. "Siblings of the stars!" he said. "Free citizens of Dalbriggan and the universe! Is it your will that I and your council examine these strangers and make policy based on what we learn?"

The shout built from a dozen throats to a hundred; finally the whole assembly shook the walls with its bellowed response. At first there were a few cries of, "No!" among the general assent, but as the volume built so did the agreement.

Kelburney raised his arms skyward. The shouting stopped, though the Hall still rumbled with shuffling feet and indrawn breaths.

"Siblings!" Kelburney said. "Will you be bound by our decision?"

This time there was no opposition. The assembly's decision was implicit in its first response; and this would not, Adele suspected, be a good environment for people who recalcitrantly espoused a minority view.

Kelburney gestured Adele and Daniel both close. He shouted into their ears, "The Council Chamber's through the door behind us. I'm glad to learn the RCN has a proposition for me, because as it chances I have a proposition for the RCN."

He gestured them ahead. Others from the dais were already going into the room beyond, though the Hall proper still reverberated with the enthusiasm of the full assembly.

I wonder, Adele thought, if I should ask for a holster and belt while I'm at it? 

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