Conventions of War (56 page)

“I have to compliment you on your firmness in dealing with the Naxids in charge of the food ration,” he added. “But you might have accomplished your task much easier by announcing a stiff tax on food, to go into effect in, say, six months.”

Sula grinned. There really
was
a macroeconomic solution to the problem.

“What truly surprises me is the Naxids,” Sula said. “They've been very quiet and cooperative, even the captives. I understand that the prisoners may be cooperating so we won't go after their relatives, but there's no way to tell if there's some Naxid out there working from my playbook, and that any day we're going to start seeing assassinations and bombings.”

The answer, when it arrived a day later, startled her.

“I think that after their defeat, the Naxids will become good and loyal citizens,” Eldey said. “When the revolt first happened, I couldn't understand it—why would some of the most prominent people in the empire, Peers who already held vast amounts of wealth and power, risk so much?”

He bobbed his venerable head. “I think the Naxids' revolt should be read through their species psychology—they are pack animals, and will follow a clear leader. The Shaa were the head of the pack that was the empire, and when their replacement was a committee of equals, it must have made the Naxids uneasy. The situation was too ambiguous. They couldn't be certain where they stood in relation to all the other members of the pack.

“When the war is over, and it's clear that the Naxids have been thoroughly beaten and are driven to the absolute bottom of our society, I think they will be content with that. Once they know for certain where they are in the hierarchy, they will be happier than they would be otherwise. They will excel in their particular niche.”

Sula considered this through a haze of surprise, and decided that though the theory was interesting, she'd better continue to be ready for a Naxid counterattack. This thought occupied her sufficiently that Eldey's next statement caught her unprepared.

“What we should perhaps begin to concern ourselves with,” he said gently, “is sending the army back to their normal lives. I will welcome your suggestions.”

Well, Sula thought, that was the crux of the matter, wasn't it? Her own position on Zanshaa depended on the army, and the army was small, imperfectly trained and equipped, and already longing for their own beds. Someone like Lady Trani, a latecomer of little understanding and deserving no respect, could be dealt with. Tork, confined to running circles around the Zanshaa system and unable to unleash his formidable weaponry on his own capital, could be kept at arm's length.

Lord Eldey, intelligent and credible and with the authority of the Convocation and the empire behind him, was something else. Once he landed, Sula realized she became not simply redundant, but a potential embarrassment. What exactly could she do, in command of an army that was no longer needed? If she rebelled, who would it be against?

For a moment she entertained the thought of returning to her underground life and becoming Bandit Queen of Zanshaa, but common sense reasserted itself before she developed this fantasy very far. It was a role without a future, and it could only bring jeopardy to people she cared about.

There were many roles available to her now, but the only plausible one was that of Captain Sula, a high-ranking Peer of the empire. At least she'd wangled command rank out of Tork—it would have been difficult to be reduced in rank to Lieutenant after so absolutely ruling an entire planet.

Besides, the only thing she was absolutely good at—besides being unlucky with men—was killing things.

Time to threaten Tork again, she thought.

She sent the message in text rather than video because she didn't want Tork to see the smirk on her face:

Lord Commander, I am pleased to report to your excellency that within a few days I will welcome Lord Eldey to his new posting in Zanshaa High City. As my presence in the city afterward may prove at best a distraction and at worst a focus of discontent, I should like to request an immediate posting. As I desire nothing so much as to once more lead loyal citizens into action against the Naxids, I request command of a warship in the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance.

It wasn't quite
Give me a job or we'll have civil war,
but it would do.

She copied the message to Eldey and to the Fleet Control Board, and made certain this was plainly indicated on the message before she ordered it coded and sent. That way Tork couldn't order her to a remote posting on Harzapid or into the Hone Reach without the others noticing.

What remained now, alas, was to tell the army.

 

S
he told her friends first, in a dinner in the eight-hundred-year-old New Bridge restaurant. She had once been part of a drunken celebration there, rejoicing at Jeremy Foote's promotion to lieutenant, and had topped her evening by threatening to set one of Foote's friends on fire.

The current setting was a lot more sedate. She had rented one of the private dining rooms upstairs, with ancient roof-beams of a deep amber gold, a fireplace of soot-scarred red brick, and a balcony with a wrought-iron rail topped by polished bronze. Thick snowflakes, so heavy and majestic they might have been created by a firm specializing in high-quality atmospheric effects, fell in silent grandeur outside, building a rich, cold carpet on the balcony.

Logs crackled and roared in the fireplace. An antique spring-loaded mechanism, with chains and cogs of black iron, roasted a Hone-bar phoenix on the slowly rotating spit. The odors of cooking filled the room. Patel and Julien drank hot toddies from a punch bowl placed on a heavy wooden table, and Sula had tea sweetened with cane sugar.

“I should make the rounds of the guard posts before I turn in,” Julien said. “A night like this, the guards are probably all hiding indoors.”

Sula smiled. Julien was turning into a martinet, and his newfound rigor saved her a good deal of disciplinary work.

“Eldey,” Sula said, “suggested we should begin to think about disbanding the army.”

Julien gave a contemptuous laugh. “What does Eldey have to say about it? He's one of those that ran and left us here with the Naxids.”

Patel, however, was looking carefully at Sula. “You're going to do it,” he said. “Aren't you, princess?”

“Yes. I've requested a posting with the Fleet.” And to Julien's shocked look, she said, “Once they're back—the real government—we become a danger to them. And we can't beat them.”

Julien flushed with anger, all but the thin white scars he'd received in the Naxid interrogation. “You're giving up!” he said.

“I'm getting on with fighting Naxids. That's what I'm good at.” She looked at him. “We've got to quit while we're ahead. Before we make too many enemies. Ask your father—he'll agree.”

Julien turned his pointed face to the fire. He raised his cup of punch to his lips, then lowered it. “I
like
being in the army,” he said. “It's going to be hard going back to the old life after this.”

“You don't have to go back to the old life,” Sula said. “That's what the amnesties are about.”

“I don't have that option.” He gave her a look. “Pop's taking the amnesty route, but he wants me to step into his place.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, “if that's not what you want.”

Julien shrugged. “It's not a bad life,” he said. “I'll have money and any other damn thing that takes my fancy, and this time I'll be boss.”

Patel watched the two of them with soft dark eyes. “The thing is, princess,” he said, “we all got used to being loved.”

Sula smiled. “That was the best part, wasn't it?”

Being loved. Finding the words
“Long live the White Ghost!”
sprayed on some apartment wall, seeing people stepping off trams reading copies of
Resistance,
watching the look on the faces of others when she appeared in public, walking through the Textile Market in her uniform or delivering stolen food to the Old Third. Being folded in Casimir's arms, his musky scent filling her senses. She had been at the center of something magnificent, and knew that she would never matter that much again.

She turned to Patel. “And you?”

His lips quirked in something like a smile. “Oh, I'm going back to the old life. How else can I afford my vices?”

She raised her teacup. “To new adventures,” she said.

The others raised their glasses and drank. Julien looked gloomily into the fire.

“It won't be as much fun without Casimir,” he said.

Sula followed Julien's gaze into the flames as regret wafted through her heart.

“That's true,” she said.

 

H
e was Martinez, but somehow not Martinez—he had the lantern jaw and the heavy brows, but there was something different in the set of his face, and his hair was black and straight instead of brown and wavy. He and Sula stood in the front room of Sula's old apartment, the one behind the old Shelley Palace.

The not-quite-Martinez wore the silver-braided captain's uniform, and he held out a Guraware vase filled with gladioli. “You gave this to my father for his wedding,” he said. “I thought I would give it to you for yours.”

Sula stared in shocked silence as she realized that this wasn't Martinez, but his son by Terza Chen.

“It only makes sense that our clans be united,” said the future Lord Chen. “If you've solved that little problem, that is.”

Sula managed to speak. “What problem?” she asked.

The young man gave her a pitying look. “That was Gredel's voice,” he said. “You're slipping.”

Sula adopted her High City voice. “What problem?” she demanded.

“We only need to take a drop of blood. It's for the gene bank.”

Chen put down the vase and reached out to take Sula's hands. She stared at her own hands in horror, at the blood that poured from little lakes of red in her palms. The scent of blood flowed over her like a wave. Chen looked down at the blood pooling on the floor and spattering on his polished shoes, and a look of compassion crossed his features.

“That won't do,” he said. He released her hands. “There won't be any wedding until we deal with this situation.”

He stepped to the ugly Sevigny sofa and picked up a pillow. Little gold tassels dangled from each corner. He approached her, the pillow held firmly in the large, familiar hands.

“It's the only way, I'm afraid,” he said, in Terza's soft tones, and pressed the pillow over her face.

She fought, of course, but he was far too strong.

 

S
ula woke with a scream bottled in her lungs and her mouth as dry as stone. She leaped out of bed, her hands lashing out blindly at any attacker. She tried to call for lights but failed to get the words past her withered tongue. Eventually she fell against the wall, groped her way to a touch pad, and hammered it with a fist till lights blazed on.

The large, silent bedroom in the Commandery glittered in the light, all mirrors, gilt, and polished white marble. No intruders menaced her. No Chens lurked behind the curtains. Her broad bed lay with its viridian spread tangled. One of her pillows had been flung partway across the room by Chen, or Martinez, or possibly someone else.

The door burst open and Spence rushed in, her straw-colored hair wild, her nightdress rucked up above her sturdy hips. She wore white underpants, had a wild look in her eye, and carried a pistol ready in her hand.

“My lady?” she said.

Sula tried to speak, failed, made a gesture of conciliation. Spence hesitantly lowered the pistol. Sula turned to where a beaker of water waited, poured, and rinsed out her sandpaper mouth.

“Sorry,” she said. “Bad dream.”

A look of compassion crossed Spence's face. “I get them too,” she said. She looked at the pistol in her hand. “I wonder how smart it is to keep firearms within arm's reach. I'm always afraid I'm going to ventilate the ceiling.”

Sula looked back at her bed, at the sidearm she'd placed carefully by the comm unit.

“I forgot I had a gun,” she said.

Spence put her gun on one of the gilt and marble tables and twisted the hem of her nightdress to let it fall to her knees. She stepped close and put a warm hand on Sula's shoulder. “Are you all right now? Would you like me to get you something?”

“I'm fine now,” Sula said. “Thanks.” Her heart was still crashing in her chest.

“Would you like me to sit up with you for a bit?”

Sula wanted to laugh. She put an arm around Spence and hugged her close. Spence's hair smelled of tobacco, with just the faintest whiff of gun oil.

“Thank you,” Sula said, “but I'm fine.”

Spence took her pistol and left. Sula put her glass of water on the bedside table and straightened the covers. She got into the bed and told the room to dim the lights, leaving just enough illumination to be certain no nightmares lurked in the corners.

She lay back on her pillow and wondered what sort of nightmares made Spence keep a pistol within arm's reach.

She was glad she had someone on her staff who made human warmth her specialty.

 

T
ork took three days to answer Sula's suggestion concerning a posting. Perhaps he'd spent the intervening time in conference with the Fleet Control Board and Lord Eldey, or had taken that long to work himself into the right state.

As with all good news from Tork, Sula's appointment came through a staff officer. After Lord Eldey took his post as governor, the order stated, Captain Sula was to proceed to take command of the frigate
Confidence,
where she would replace Lieutenant Captain Ohta, who had no doubt to his own vast surprise been appointed military aide to the new governor.