Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER FIVE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tovera entered with a garment bag over her arm, aware of the pistol pointed at her and mildly amused. She didn't worry that her mistress would shoot her by accident. Actually, Tovera probably didn't worry about dying at all . . . any more than Adele did.

"Time to get cleaned up and dress, mistress," Tovera said, hanging the bag on a cord strung the width of the room. She'd been carrying a dagger concealed beneath the garment bag; she sheathed it in a sleeve. Anyone who'd tried to snatch the bag would have been surprised, for a very brief time.

"Yes, all right," Adele said, rising and shrugging off her jacket. The water tap was at waist height in the kitchenette, over a tile drain. It made an adequate shower if you squatted under it.

She'd learned all she could from documentary sources. Perhaps the party would give her some useful insight.

Aloud she said, "Delos Vaughn isn't just a playboy, so why does he go to so much effort to pretend otherwise?"

Tovera smiled without humor or emotion as she took the garments Adele handed her. She looked like a menial servant, too downtrodden to have a personality, let alone opinions.

And that of course was the answer: because she looked harmless, nobody noticed Tovera until she struck. So when did Delos Vaughn intend to strike?

And where would Adele Mundy be when the blow fell?

The service area was a hollow rectangle and all four walls of the wine bar were mirrored. When Daniel heard over the hubbub the call, "There you are, Leary! Good to see you!" he had no idea where the voice was coming from. He looked to his left, turned to his right; saw hundreds of well-dressed men and women, infinitely multiplied in reflection, and Wex Bending slid in behind him. He'd come from the left after all.

It had to be Bending, though the goatee and flaring sideburns Daniel's childhood friend now affected had changed his appearance almost beyond recognition. He hugged Daniel around the shoulders and went on, "How's the Speaker keeping, Daniel? A splendid man, splendid!"

Daniel blinked, wondering if there was some mistake after all. Surely Bending would know that he and his father were on bad terms—or rather, on no terms at all?

"I haven't seen my father in six years and more, Wex," Daniel said. "From what I see on the news, he's much the same as always. But I don't have much call to watch the news, even now that I'm back on Cinnabar."

One of the three liveried bartenders set a drink in a fluted glass in front of Bending without being asked. He'd obviously suggested the location because he was a regular here.

"Thank you, Torvaldo," he said. He glanced at Daniel meaningfully. "Ah . . . ?"

"On my tab, waiter," Daniel said, catching the drift quickly enough. A junior lieutenant's pay was well beneath whatever Bending must be making in the Ministry of External Affairs, but Bending's upkeep must be equally high. Certainly the mauve suit he wore was several times as expensive as Daniel's uniform.

Daniel wasn't the sort to object to buying someone a drink, even at the prices this place charged. He'd called Bending on a whim when he realized they'd have time to meet before Vaughn's party, but he'd wondered if he'd be conspicuous in his Dress Whites. In fact, the doorman might not have passed him if he'd worn anything less pretentious.

In Bending's lapel was a small silver pin, three stylized knifefish leaping: the crest of the Learys of Bantry. Bending's father had been a Leary retainer with a post in the Agriculture department through Speaker Leary's influence. The son had obviously followed the same route to preferment and had already done rather better from it.

Awareness of the pin made pieces click together in Daniel's mind. "I gather you called my father's office after I called you, Wex?" he said. "To see whether you were permitted to talk to me, that is."

Corder Leary's goatee and sideburns framed his thin, ascetic visage to form a portrait of devilish wisdom. The same style made a clown of the round-faced Bending.

"Well, not permitted, Daniel," Bending said with a hurt expression. "But despite a friendship as close as ours, I couldn't dishonor my name by acting against the wishes of my patron."

"I know exactly what you mean!" Daniel said, slapping the bureaucrat on the back with a broad grin. He did indeed realize that the friend who'd played hide-and-seek with him in the gardens of the Leary townhouse when he visited his father had become a poncing little courtier to whom position was everything. Daniel hoped his smile hid that knowledge, but it really didn't matter: Bending wouldn't have met Daniel if he didn't think that was Speaker Leary's desire. That being the case, he would have grinned and obeyed if Daniel ordered him to hop around like a gerbil.

Which left the question of why Father had approved the meeting, but that wasn't the matter that brought Daniel to this place. They charged a florin a glass for wine that didn't hold a buzz in a caskful. "So Wex," Daniel said. "What can you tell me about Delos Vaughn? I saw him at Harbor Three yesterday."

"Oh, he's mad for warships, they tell me," Bending burbled, sipping his own faintly violet concoction. "Strymon had quite a fleet in its day, you know. But they're held to a few dozen antipirate frigates by treaty—and anyway, he's never going to leave Cinnabar, no matter how many senators he bribes."

"Ah," Daniel said, nodding to show that he was listening. He took a sip of his wine and found he'd drained the glass. The stuff had no more body than seafoam! "Someone's spending money to keep him here, then?"

Bending turned so that he faced Daniel directly. His right hand was on the bar; the left held his glass at a calculated angle. Unless Daniel was badly mistaken, he was admiring his pose in the mirror beyond.

"Oh, there's a certain amount of that, sure, Daniel," he said, puffing his chest out slightly. "Being appointed Observer on Strymon is known to be quite a political plum. No senator's ever come back poor from there, and the staff does itself bloody well too, let me tell you."

Bending drank, then lifted his glass slightly and appeared to admire the remaining liquid as he swirled it. "But that's not the real reason, you see," he said. He leaned closer to Daniel and added in a conspiratorial whisper, "Our Delos is too bloody sharp, that's the problem. Better for the Republic that he never goes home, do you see?"

Daniel frowned. Claiming to be a babe in the woods of interstellar relations was the right way to draw confidences out of a man who obviously delighted in playing the learned insider. It was also God's truth in this instance.

"To tell the truth, I don't understand, Wex," he said. "Surely nobody's concerned that Vaughn would try to claim independence again? We've crushed Strymon twice, and that was before Uncle Stacey cut the travel time to a fraction of what it'd been for Admiral Perlot's squadron."

"Ah, that's right, you're a navy man," Bending said in what seemed to be genuine surprise. Daniel would've thought a 1st Class uniform made that about as obvious as you could wish, but apparently rising members of the Ministry of External Relations operated in a sphere which didn't involve using their own senses. "It's easy enough to talk about sending a squadron heaven knows how far, but quite another thing to pay for it."

"I can see that's true," Daniel lied. What he really saw was that Bending had no idea of what was involved in manning, arming, and equipping a fighting squadron. For that matter, Bending probably had no real idea of what the Treasury had to go through either: those were just words to show that he was knowledgeable about government. "But we'd still send a squadron, despite the cost, and it seems to me that if Vaughn's as smart as he's well connected here on Cinnabar, he knows we'd break him as sure as we broke his predecessors."

Bending drained his glass and set it on the bar, looking obviously uncomfortable. Daniel set his own glass beside the bureaucrat's and signalled the bartender. God knew how much this afternoon was going to cost, but it was better to go ahead rather than waste the money already invested.

"Well, the truth is, Daniel . . . " Bending said. He seemed to have sunk in from his posturing frog manner of a moment before. "It's all very well to say that the Republic wants its allies to prosper—and we do, of course. But under Leland Vaughn, the Strymon fleet kept down piracy and regional traffic was almost entirely in Strymon freighters. Nowadays the pirates get a subsidy from shipping firms, a transit tax you could call it . . . and Cinnabar firms have deeper pockets than the locals do. More than half the trade's in Cinnabar hulls now."

"Ah," said Daniel again. He drank in order to hide what otherwise would have been a disgusted expression. "I see. And Delos is of the same mettle as his father, is that it?"

"Delos is twice anything his father dreamed of being, we think in the ministry," Bending said, showing the decency to be a little embarrassed. "I know it may not seem proper to a navy man—" He was right about that! "—but it really is the best option for the Republic."

For Cinnabar shippers to lick the boots of pirates? No, I don't think so. 

Aloud Daniel said, "What do you suppose Vaughn was doing at Harbor Three yesterday, Wex?"

Bending laughed and drained his own glass. He set it upside down on the bar to indicate he was through with his liquid lunch.

"I suspect it's the reason a prisoner looks at the sky, Daniel," he said. "To remind himself of what he doesn't have."

He slapped Daniel on the shoulder again and pushed off through the crowd. "Remember me to the Speaker, Daniel," he called back.

"The very next time I see him!" Daniel replied cheerfully. He looked at the chit the bartender set between the empty glasses and raised an eyebrow, then rooted through his purse for a ten-florin coin.

And if I do ever see Father, we'll probably have another flaming row when I tell him what despicable toadies he has wearing the Leary collar flash. 

Back | Next
Contents
Framed

Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER FIVE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tovera entered with a garment bag over her arm, aware of the pistol pointed at her and mildly amused. She didn't worry that her mistress would shoot her by accident. Actually, Tovera probably didn't worry about dying at all . . . any more than Adele did.

"Time to get cleaned up and dress, mistress," Tovera said, hanging the bag on a cord strung the width of the room. She'd been carrying a dagger concealed beneath the garment bag; she sheathed it in a sleeve. Anyone who'd tried to snatch the bag would have been surprised, for a very brief time.

"Yes, all right," Adele said, rising and shrugging off her jacket. The water tap was at waist height in the kitchenette, over a tile drain. It made an adequate shower if you squatted under it.

She'd learned all she could from documentary sources. Perhaps the party would give her some useful insight.

Aloud she said, "Delos Vaughn isn't just a playboy, so why does he go to so much effort to pretend otherwise?"

Tovera smiled without humor or emotion as she took the garments Adele handed her. She looked like a menial servant, too downtrodden to have a personality, let alone opinions.

And that of course was the answer: because she looked harmless, nobody noticed Tovera until she struck. So when did Delos Vaughn intend to strike?

And where would Adele Mundy be when the blow fell?

The service area was a hollow rectangle and all four walls of the wine bar were mirrored. When Daniel heard over the hubbub the call, "There you are, Leary! Good to see you!" he had no idea where the voice was coming from. He looked to his left, turned to his right; saw hundreds of well-dressed men and women, infinitely multiplied in reflection, and Wex Bending slid in behind him. He'd come from the left after all.

It had to be Bending, though the goatee and flaring sideburns Daniel's childhood friend now affected had changed his appearance almost beyond recognition. He hugged Daniel around the shoulders and went on, "How's the Speaker keeping, Daniel? A splendid man, splendid!"

Daniel blinked, wondering if there was some mistake after all. Surely Bending would know that he and his father were on bad terms—or rather, on no terms at all?

"I haven't seen my father in six years and more, Wex," Daniel said. "From what I see on the news, he's much the same as always. But I don't have much call to watch the news, even now that I'm back on Cinnabar."

One of the three liveried bartenders set a drink in a fluted glass in front of Bending without being asked. He'd obviously suggested the location because he was a regular here.

"Thank you, Torvaldo," he said. He glanced at Daniel meaningfully. "Ah . . . ?"

"On my tab, waiter," Daniel said, catching the drift quickly enough. A junior lieutenant's pay was well beneath whatever Bending must be making in the Ministry of External Affairs, but Bending's upkeep must be equally high. Certainly the mauve suit he wore was several times as expensive as Daniel's uniform.

Daniel wasn't the sort to object to buying someone a drink, even at the prices this place charged. He'd called Bending on a whim when he realized they'd have time to meet before Vaughn's party, but he'd wondered if he'd be conspicuous in his Dress Whites. In fact, the doorman might not have passed him if he'd worn anything less pretentious.

In Bending's lapel was a small silver pin, three stylized knifefish leaping: the crest of the Learys of Bantry. Bending's father had been a Leary retainer with a post in the Agriculture department through Speaker Leary's influence. The son had obviously followed the same route to preferment and had already done rather better from it.

Awareness of the pin made pieces click together in Daniel's mind. "I gather you called my father's office after I called you, Wex?" he said. "To see whether you were permitted to talk to me, that is."

Corder Leary's goatee and sideburns framed his thin, ascetic visage to form a portrait of devilish wisdom. The same style made a clown of the round-faced Bending.

"Well, not permitted, Daniel," Bending said with a hurt expression. "But despite a friendship as close as ours, I couldn't dishonor my name by acting against the wishes of my patron."

"I know exactly what you mean!" Daniel said, slapping the bureaucrat on the back with a broad grin. He did indeed realize that the friend who'd played hide-and-seek with him in the gardens of the Leary townhouse when he visited his father had become a poncing little courtier to whom position was everything. Daniel hoped his smile hid that knowledge, but it really didn't matter: Bending wouldn't have met Daniel if he didn't think that was Speaker Leary's desire. That being the case, he would have grinned and obeyed if Daniel ordered him to hop around like a gerbil.

Which left the question of why Father had approved the meeting, but that wasn't the matter that brought Daniel to this place. They charged a florin a glass for wine that didn't hold a buzz in a caskful. "So Wex," Daniel said. "What can you tell me about Delos Vaughn? I saw him at Harbor Three yesterday."

"Oh, he's mad for warships, they tell me," Bending burbled, sipping his own faintly violet concoction. "Strymon had quite a fleet in its day, you know. But they're held to a few dozen antipirate frigates by treaty—and anyway, he's never going to leave Cinnabar, no matter how many senators he bribes."

"Ah," Daniel said, nodding to show that he was listening. He took a sip of his wine and found he'd drained the glass. The stuff had no more body than seafoam! "Someone's spending money to keep him here, then?"

Bending turned so that he faced Daniel directly. His right hand was on the bar; the left held his glass at a calculated angle. Unless Daniel was badly mistaken, he was admiring his pose in the mirror beyond.

"Oh, there's a certain amount of that, sure, Daniel," he said, puffing his chest out slightly. "Being appointed Observer on Strymon is known to be quite a political plum. No senator's ever come back poor from there, and the staff does itself bloody well too, let me tell you."

Bending drank, then lifted his glass slightly and appeared to admire the remaining liquid as he swirled it. "But that's not the real reason, you see," he said. He leaned closer to Daniel and added in a conspiratorial whisper, "Our Delos is too bloody sharp, that's the problem. Better for the Republic that he never goes home, do you see?"

Daniel frowned. Claiming to be a babe in the woods of interstellar relations was the right way to draw confidences out of a man who obviously delighted in playing the learned insider. It was also God's truth in this instance.

"To tell the truth, I don't understand, Wex," he said. "Surely nobody's concerned that Vaughn would try to claim independence again? We've crushed Strymon twice, and that was before Uncle Stacey cut the travel time to a fraction of what it'd been for Admiral Perlot's squadron."

"Ah, that's right, you're a navy man," Bending said in what seemed to be genuine surprise. Daniel would've thought a 1st Class uniform made that about as obvious as you could wish, but apparently rising members of the Ministry of External Relations operated in a sphere which didn't involve using their own senses. "It's easy enough to talk about sending a squadron heaven knows how far, but quite another thing to pay for it."

"I can see that's true," Daniel lied. What he really saw was that Bending had no idea of what was involved in manning, arming, and equipping a fighting squadron. For that matter, Bending probably had no real idea of what the Treasury had to go through either: those were just words to show that he was knowledgeable about government. "But we'd still send a squadron, despite the cost, and it seems to me that if Vaughn's as smart as he's well connected here on Cinnabar, he knows we'd break him as sure as we broke his predecessors."

Bending drained his glass and set it on the bar, looking obviously uncomfortable. Daniel set his own glass beside the bureaucrat's and signalled the bartender. God knew how much this afternoon was going to cost, but it was better to go ahead rather than waste the money already invested.

"Well, the truth is, Daniel . . . " Bending said. He seemed to have sunk in from his posturing frog manner of a moment before. "It's all very well to say that the Republic wants its allies to prosper—and we do, of course. But under Leland Vaughn, the Strymon fleet kept down piracy and regional traffic was almost entirely in Strymon freighters. Nowadays the pirates get a subsidy from shipping firms, a transit tax you could call it . . . and Cinnabar firms have deeper pockets than the locals do. More than half the trade's in Cinnabar hulls now."

"Ah," said Daniel again. He drank in order to hide what otherwise would have been a disgusted expression. "I see. And Delos is of the same mettle as his father, is that it?"

"Delos is twice anything his father dreamed of being, we think in the ministry," Bending said, showing the decency to be a little embarrassed. "I know it may not seem proper to a navy man—" He was right about that! "—but it really is the best option for the Republic."

For Cinnabar shippers to lick the boots of pirates? No, I don't think so. 

Aloud Daniel said, "What do you suppose Vaughn was doing at Harbor Three yesterday, Wex?"

Bending laughed and drained his own glass. He set it upside down on the bar to indicate he was through with his liquid lunch.

"I suspect it's the reason a prisoner looks at the sky, Daniel," he said. "To remind himself of what he doesn't have."

He slapped Daniel on the shoulder again and pushed off through the crowd. "Remember me to the Speaker, Daniel," he called back.

"The very next time I see him!" Daniel replied cheerfully. He looked at the chit the bartender set between the empty glasses and raised an eyebrow, then rooted through his purse for a ten-florin coin.

And if I do ever see Father, we'll probably have another flaming row when I tell him what despicable toadies he has wearing the Leary collar flash. 

Back | Next
Contents
Framed