Death's Bright Day: Chapter Two

Xenos on Cinnabar

    Adele would rather have been in her library with the door shut, but today she was a hostess. Lady Mundy therefore stood on the steps of Chatsworth Minor where she could be seen.

    A rigger named Chabat lurched out of the scrum at the nearest refreshment tables. She had a mug of ale in one hand and the other arm around a civilian youth who would probably look better after a few more drinks.

    “Hey, Mistress!” Chabat called. “Anything I can bring you? So you don’t get your dress mussed, you know?”

    “Thank you, Chabat,” Adele said. She waved, since she wasn’t sure the rigger could hear her even though she was — by her standards — shouting. “I’m all right.”

    Chabat turned away. The young man seemed bored but willing.

    Even better than being in her own room would be to be transported to the Academic Collections and her carrel on the top floor of the Old Stacks. Nobody came there.…

    Deirdre approached, escorted by a much more impressive man — but also a professional. The blue of her dress complemented her reddish hair. Like Daniel she fought a tendency to plumpness; which was odd, Adele realized, because Corder Leary was a lean, craggy man and considerably taller than his children as well.

    “I hope my brother doesn’t do this again for a long while,” she said. “I’ve merged three trading houses with less effort.”

    She climbed the three steps to stand beside Adele. Tovera moved to the sidewalk to make more room.

    A group of people — three couples, none of the six familiar to Adele — came out of the building and moved past, talking brightly without apparently listening to one another. Spirits were available on the ground floor for those who chose to ask, and these folk had clearly been sampling them.

    “I was surprised when Daniel asked that only beer be served in the open and that he’d direct his spacers not to go into the houses,” Deirdre said. “Don’t spacers drink?”

    “RCN ships use ninety percent ethanol as a working fluid in the Power Rooms,” Adele said, allowing herself another slight smile. “It’s ethanol because the crews are going to drink it anyway, so it may as well be a poison to which the human species has acquired a degree of resistance.”

    “But?” said Deirdre.

    “Mixing drunken spacers with drunken civilians is a separate problem,” Adele said. “As a matter of loyalty I would bet on the RCN, of course; but it wasn’t the sort of entertainment Daniel wanted for his wedding. His only wedding, I hope and believe.”

    A young man approached but waited politely on the sidewalk until Adele noticed him and met his eyes. He moved to the bottom of the steps, nodded to Tovera and then to Deirdre, and said, “Lady Mundy? A friend said she hopes to talk with you today if you have a moment.”

    “Ah?” Adele said, glancing at Deirdre.

    Deirdre gestured her toward the messenger and said, “By all means. I’m sure I’ll manage to occupy myself.”

    “You’re to guide me?” Adele said as she joined the young man.

    “If you don’t mind,” he said, turning toward the head of the close. Adele didn’t know his name but she had seen him working as the doorman of Oriel House, the Sand residence. He had been a very good doorman, but she doubted that he considered that his primary occupation.

    Behind them two men and a very mannish woman converged on Deirdre. Lady Mundy’s presence had kept others at a distance, but as soon as Daniel’s sister was free they moved in with their Very Important Questions. Presumably Deirdre really liked that sort of environment or she would live a different life, but Adele found the fact hard to fathom.

    Aloud to her guide, she said, “Deirdre probably wouldn’t be happy researching pre-Hiatus texts.”

    “Probably not,” he said equably. “But judging from Mistress Leary’s performance in other lines, I expect she would be good at it.”

    He gestured toward the steps of middle house of the three on the right of the close. The entrance was on the side rather than facing the street. A young civilian — another of the “servants” at Oriel House — and Midshipman (Passed Lieutenant) Cazelet stood on opposite sides of the doorway.

    The civilian — if he was one — bowed to Adele, and Cazelet drew himself to attention with a grin. He was the grandson of Adele’s mentor and protector when she arrived on Bryce as an orphan, though she didn’t realize her status until the news from Cinnabar arrived by the next ship. Cazelet’s parents had incurred the wrath — or possibly just the greed — of Guarantor Porra, which was as fatal a condition as plotting against a government led by Speaker Leary.

    Adele had gained a protégé, and the RCN had gained a very useful junior officer.

    “I’ll leave you on your own, your ladyship,” Adele’s guide said. “She’s waiting on the top floor.” He bowed and was gone into the crowd.

    Cazelet pulled open the door to the house for Adele. “Good to see you, ma’am,” he said.

    She nodded. If Cazelet had a fault as an officer, it was that his training had come from working his way up in the family shipping business. He treated Adele with the respect he owed a skilled colleague, not as a person of a particular rank in the RCN. Since Adele was of a similar mindset, they meshed well.

    There were a number of people sitting in the entrance hall, including two RCN officers in their Whites who were drinking spirits and talking to the much younger women seated to either side of them. Bottles clinked down the hall to the right, and voices came from the drawing room directly ahead.

    A plush rope closed the staircase beside the hall, but the servant waiting there unhooked it when Adele entered. She didn’t recognize him, but he was cut from the same polite, well-born cloth as her guide and the man outside with Cazelet. When she and Tovera had started up the stairs, the servant dropped the loop back over the newel post behind them.

    This house was three floors rather than the four of Chatsworth Minor, though there may have been a windowless garret under the high peak. Adele rather liked climbing stairs. They reminded her of her youth in the Old Stacks when she had no responsibilities except to learn, and — because warships had companionways rather than elevators — of the Princess Cecile where for the first time in her life she was part of a family.

    Another servant, a trim young woman this time instead of an athletic young man, stood by the closed door to the left of the stairhead. She bowed to Adele and walked down the hall into an open room.

    “I’ll go chat with her,” Tovera said, nodding after the servant. “Maybe we have friends in common.”

    “All right,” said Adele. She tapped on the closed door.

    Tovera was not a spy. She had been trained by the 5th Bureau as a bodyguard and killer, support staff for the spy she had accompanied to Kostroma. When her previous principal died, she had attached herself to Adele.

    This wasn’t a change in allegiance: Tovera had been a tool of the Alliance when she worked for the 5th Bureau, and she was a tool of Adele Mundy now. She had no more patriotism than the pistol in Adele’s tunic pocket, and she was just as willing to kill whoever Adele pointed her at.

    Tovera did have a degree of self-preservation, though; she had become Adele’s retainer because she saw a familiar ruthlessness in Adele. Adele would supply the direction which would keep Tovera within social norms: an external conscience for a killer with no conscience of her own.

    Adele’s smile was cold. She had a perfectly good conscience, one which regularly awakened her in the small hours of darkness with a parade of faces she had last seen over her pistol sights as her trigger finger took up the final pressure. Tovera’s character flaw allowed her to sleep soundly.

    “Come in and sit down,” called a familiar voice.

    Adele entered what had probably been meant as a servant’s room. The original furnishings had been replaced with a table, two straight chairs, and a side table with a decanter, siphon, and glasses. Mistress Sand was in the chair across the table from the door; a half full glass sat on the table in front of her.

    “I ought to get up,” Sand said with a lopsided smile, but she made no attempt to move. “Will you have one yourself?”

    If I drink, she’ll drink with me, Adele thought. And she really doesn’t need more.

    “I’ll have a short one,” she said aloud and sat down. I’m not responsible for Mistress Sand’s private life. “I saw your husband earlier to nod to, but I wasn’t surprised to see him — either of you — at Daniel’s wedding.”

    Mistress Sand took a second glass and poured into it a more than the two fingers which Adele had meant by a short one. “If this hadn’t come up,” she said, “I would’ve arranged to see you anyway. Just to talk.”

    She set the decanter back on the serving table, then slid the glass toward Adele without picking it up. The decanter was down by about a third, but it might not have been full when it was brought here.

    She looks older every time I see her, Adele thought as she sipped the drink; as expected, it was very good whiskey. But then, I suppose I do too.

    Sand stared at her own glass. “I’m cutting back,” she said — to the glass rather than to Adele. She raised her eyes and went on, “I decided I’d been putting away more than was good for me. It’s…”

    Sand smiled, looking more like the woman who had recruited Adele not so many years ago. She leaned back in her chair: stocky and solid in a dark suit for the occasion rather than the tweeds she had favored most of the other times Adele had met with her.

    “You’d think that with the Republic at peace things would be easier,” Sand said. Her hand touched the poured drink, then snatched back. “That’s not…not what I feel. Before the Treaty of Amiens, you knew where you stood with the Alliance. Now I’m certainly not ready to consider Guarantor Porra our friend, but in some cases the policies of his government may be aligned with the interests of the Republic…”

    “Yes,” said Adele, sipping more of her whiskey.

    Mistress Sand knew that she and Daniel had worked with Alliance officials in the past; she probably realized that they would do so again if circumstances required it. Daniel was better about following orders than she was, but neither of them cared much about the judgment of a fool in authority.

    “You’ve made it clear in the past…” Sand said, keeping her eyes on Adele by sheer determination when she obviously wanted to look away. “That you don’t work for me or for the Republic. Nothing you do has to be taken as an expression of Cinnabar policy. You have a long history of acting on your own.”

    Adele’s personal data unit wouldn’t tell her any more about what was going on than her pistol would. Instead she squeezed the whiskey glass and wished she were somewhere else.

    Aloud she said, “Mistress, if there’s something you’d like me to do, tell me. As you say, I’ve never felt a great respect for Cinnabar policy in the abstract.”

    She pursed her lips as she considered her next words, then said, “To be honest, if the Republic has ever had a consistent policy, I’ve missed it in my reading of history.”

    “You’re consistent,” Sand said. She touched her glass again but she didn’t raise it. “Someone who didn’t know you would think that consistency would make you easier to deal with.”

    “Mistress, tell me what you want,” Adele repeated. She wasn’t sure she knew the person she was talking to any more. “I need information. When you give me that information, I will make my decision.”

    “I don’t want you to do anything,” Sand said fiercely. “I want you to know that if someone makes you a proposition which in your opinion would be to the benefit of the Republic, I hope you will follow your own judgment in the matter.”

    “I see,” Adele said, sipping a little more of the whiskey.

    She did see. Her friend, Bernis Sand, had told her what Mistress Sand, the head of intelligence for the Republic of Cinnabar, could not have said. A task would shortly be offered to Adele, and Bernis Sand hoped that Adele would accept that task.

    “You realize…” Sand said, speaking to her drink again. “I won’t be holding my present position forever.”

    She looked up and met Adele’s eyes. “I would like to believe,” Sand said, “that I would be succeeded by an experienced person whose judgment I trust.”

    Adele put down her empty glass and rose to her feet. “I hope matters go well for you, mistress,” she said. “Speaking for myself –”

    She was turning to the door as she spoke.

    “– I hope I’m not around when that question has to be decided.”

    Adele closed the door behind her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mistress Sand raising her glass.

    Daniel and three officers he knew from the Academy — Commander Vondrian and Lieutenants Pennyroyal and Ames — linked arms and bellowed, “Then he kissed her on the lips, and the crew began to roar.…”

    Though Daniel had lived at Chatsworth Minor for several years, whenever he was in Xenos, he didn’t recall ever having been in the kitchen at the back of the ground floor in the past. Servants had guided him and his friends here where the cabinets had been converted to sideboards for the reception.

    It would have been churlish not to join old friends when they wanted something harder than ale to drink. They’d started with Oriel County rye — Pennyroyal’s choice; she came from Oriel County — and proceeded according to the whim of whoever’s turn it was to pick.

    “Oh! Oh! Up she goes! We’re bound for Baltimore!”

    Vondrian commanded a destroyer flotilla with Ames as his flag lieutenant and Pennyroyal the first officer of his flagship. They were attached to the Cinnabar Squadron, the portion of the RCN still in commission after the Treaty of Amiens. Vondrian had family money. Going on half pay wouldn’t have seriously affected him, but he also had enough influence to secure an active commission. His friends Ames and Pennyroyal would have been up against it if they’d been landed on the beach for any length of time.

    “So then his kissed her on the nose…”

    Daniel hadn’t partied like this in years. When he’d happened to share a landfall with his friends on Tattersall, they’d hoisted a few — more than a few — drinks together, but they were in the presence of their direct superiors and a number of admirals. Here on Xenos they were friends attending the wedding of one of them, and nothing that happened would be seen as adversely affecting the good name of the RCN.

    “– and the crew began to roar!”

    Hogg came into the room from the back, the door onto the alley. He was dressed like a Bantry tenant, which is how he’d been raised, with an enormous budget to buy finery for the Squire’s wedding. His blue pantaloons and loose green shirt were bright and of thin, hard fabric, and his high leather boots and belt were dyed the same shade of red.

    The same was true of the brimless leather cap which he took off and waved to catch Daniel’s eye.

    “Oh! Oh! Up she goes! We’re bound for Baltimore!”

    Daniel squeezed his friends’ shoulders — he stood between Vondrian and Pennyroyal — and muttered, “Duty calls!” as he disengaged himself. He felt younger than he had since, since —

    Since I was given my first command, he realized. A road had forked then, and Daniel Leary had been very fortunate in the direction his branch had taken him; but…But. There was always a ‘but’ in life.

    His friends closed together and resumed singing. The dozen or so others in the kitchen made way for Daniel, but nobody paid particular attention. He bent close so that Hogg could speak without raising his voice.

    Hogg spoke loudly enough to be heard by anybody on this side of the room anyway: “There’s a fellow out back wants to see you, master. Name’s Huxford, and if it was just him he could get his ass gone. He says he’s from Lord Anston, though, and I know that’s different.”

    “Ah,” said Daniel, nodding. He wished he’d gone a little lighter on the spirits, but he was glad he had old friends. “Yes, that’s different. Let’s see Commander Huxford.”

    Admiral Anston had been in frail health since the heart attack which had forced his retirement as Chief of the Navy Board. Daniel had been pleased to see him on a wheelchair in the temple, but he hadn’t expected the older man to attend the reception.

    He tugged his uniform tunic down and settled his bright sash. Well, Anston had seen a half-drunk officer before. Like as not he’d been one a time or two.

    “I saw Forbes here too,” Hogg said. He blocked the door with the side of his foot and straightened the aiguillette of feathers and tiny diamonds on Daniel’s right shoulder. “Nice to see that she hasn’t forgotten who put her where she is.”

    Forbes had lost the Speakership of the Senate and had been sent — had been exiled — as envoy to Karst to greet the new Headman who had just succeeded his uncle. The embassy had not gone well through no fault of Forbes — or of Daniel, who was captain of the ship which carried her to Karst.

    “We were very fortunate to have the ambassador with us when things went belly up, Hogg,” Daniel said mildly. “The good result was as much political as naval, you know.”

    “That’s not how I remember what happened at Cacique,” Hogg growled. He put his hand on the doorknob, then paused and met Daniel’s eyes. “There’s one thing I’ll give her, master,” he said. “Forbes put the mistress in charge when you got knocked silly, made her an admiral. She knew to do that, at least.”

    Daniel followed Hogg into the alley. He’d heard what happened while he was unconscious above Cacique. Adele knew nothing about shiphandling or naval tactics or any of the other subjects which the instructors at the Academy taught, but she knew a more important thing: to go for the throat.

    You can’t really teach that, but the great commanders are born knowing it. Forbes had indeed showed her ability when she brevetted Signal Officer Mundy to admiral in the chaos of the damaged flagship.

    The alley at the back of Chatsworth Minor ran between two major thoroughfares and served six culs-de-sac — three on either side — for garbage pickup and bulk deliveries. There were twenty or thirty people crowded into this one; mostly men, mostly servants, and most holding liquor bottles. Those who saw Daniel or anyway recognized his uniform grew quieter, but they weren’t really doing anything wrong.

    Daniel grinned. Or anything he hadn’t been doing himself a few minutes before.

    Commander Huxford was wearing his Grays, a 2nd Class uniform; proper garb for public functions — including command of a ship — but not formal wear for any officer who could afford a 1st Class uniform. Even hopeless officers who had been on the beach for decades tried to scrape up enough florins for a set of Whites when they sat in the Audience Hall at Navy House, hoping against hope that their names would be called for a posting.

    “Thank you, Hogg,” Huxford said. “Captain Leary, his lordship requested that I bring you to him — for the privacy, of course, but also to avoid the –”

    He nodded toward the house, presumably meaning the crowded cul-de-sac beyond.

    “Yes, of course,” Daniel agreed. He’d never met Huxford, though he’d seen him twice. Huxford had acted as messenger for people in the same line of work as Mistress Sand, though probably in a parallel organization out of Navy House.

    Huxford had a history with Adele, which had ended in Adele’s favor. Hogg probably knew more of the details than Daniel did; Tovera certainly knew them, and the two servants talked. All Daniel cared was that it had ended and that his friend was satisfied with the outcome.

    They walked out of the group behind Chatsworth Minor and to Daniel’s surprise turned into a feeder alley serving the close facing a parallel boulevard. A husky looking man with naval tattoos stood at a back door which he pulled open when Huxford approached.

    “I’ll leave you now, Captain,” Huxford said. His salute was curt but proper — they were both in uniform. “His lordship asked me to invite you, but his business is none of mine.”

    Daniel paused in the doorway. He would show due respect for any superior officer, but he felt respect for George Anston beyond anything to do with a uniform. Anston had kept the RCN operating during fifteen years of grinding war with the Alliance, finding crews where there were none and convincing the Senate to build ships with money that had to be squeezed out of taxpayers — much of it from the wealthy Senators themselves.

    “Hogg,” he said, “why don’t you wait here? I…that is, I don’t need help to see the admiral.”

    “Right,” said Hogg, eyeing the burly spacer. “We’ll chat about opera, shall we buddy?”

    “Down the hall and second on the left, sir,” the guard said, ignoring Hogg. He closed the outside door behind Daniel.

    The man waiting in the hall was as tall as Woetjans and big where the bosun was rangy. He opened the door beside him and stood rigidly, staring over Daniel’s head as though he were being inspected by his commander in chief.

    The hinges squealed slightly. That was the only sound Daniel heard. The other doors onto the hall were closed; either the house was empty or the inhabitants were holding complete silence. Daniel was feeling a little uneasy as he looked in, but there was Lord Anston. He’d rolled his wheelchair beside rather than behind the central table.

    “Close the door and sit down, Leary,” Anston said. “When you’re fixing yourself a brandy and soda –”

    He gestured to the paraphernalia in the center of the table.

    “– you can fix me one too. You drink brandy, I hope?”

    “Sir, I’m RCN,” Daniel said. “I drink anything. Some things I won’t drink — ” he was thinking of peppermint schnapps, which had tasted even worse when it came back up than when it had topped off a night of drinking ” — unless I’ve got a load on already.”

    Which I do now, come to think.

    He squirted seltzer into two brandies and put Anston’s beside him before sitting down. He was pretty sure that the older man wasn’t supposed to have alcohol, but that was a matter between him and his doctors — none of whom were in the room at present.

    Anston looked frail enough to have dissolved in the drink. Daniel would regret that, but it might be the kindest thing that could happen.

    Anston sipped the brandy with relish. He set the glass down and said, “Well, Leary, I’ll get to the point in good RCN fashion. The Republic is in a bad state, a bloody bad state, and the politicians are pouring us straight down the piss tube.”

    Daniel stiffened and sat upright; he’d been leaning toward Anston without being aware of the fact. “Ah, I, ah…” he said. “I don’t pay much attention to politics, sir. I’m a serving officer and I’m, ah, forbidden to be involved in politics.”

    Telling Anston that was like offering to teach a bird how to fly. The words were a measure of how disturbed Daniel was.

    “Well, it’s time and past time for that to change,” Anston said forcefully. “The Senate will shortly be replaced by a Supreme Council drawn from the RCN and the Land Forces of the Republic. I’ll be President of the Council, but you can see that I’m a clapped out old crock. That’s where you come in, Leary.”

    Daniel stood up, sliding his chair back. It fell over. His skin prickled as it had when he regained consciousness after pinching a nerve.

    “We need you to run operations,” Anston said. “All the real power will be in your hands, and no one better to use it, we think.”

    “I’m very sorry, Admiral,” Daniel said. His ears were buzzing. “I’ve suddenly been struck deaf. I haven’t heard a word since I sat down. I’m off to find a doctor immediately.”

    He had to get off Cinnabar; he couldn’t possibly remain neutral if he stayed. Indeed, he probably needed to get out of the Cinnabar sphere of influence.

    Do I tell Adele? I have to. But do I tell Deirdre, which means telling my father; which means…

    “Leary, come back here,” Anston said, somewhere in the far distance.

    Daniel jerked the door open. The doorman stood in his way.

    “Now, the gentleman says –” the big man said.

    Daniel head-butted him, breaking his nose, backed a step, and kicked the guard in the crotch. That would have been more effective with heavy boots, but the low quarters he wore with his Whites had rigid soles unlike the spacer’s boots worn with utilities and meant to fit within a riggers’ suit.

    “Hogg!” Daniel shouted, hurling the doubled-over guard into the room. He wouldn’t have had a chance against the bigger man in a fair fight, but the guard hadn’t expected the mindless fury Daniel had unleashed on him. He couldn’t hit Anston — he would die before he hit Anston, even if the old man had gone mad — but hitting anybody else was a relief.

    They can’t let us live now, Daniel realized. If he could get to Harbor Three, he might have a chance. There were spacers who would help Captain Leary regardless of what the high brass were saying, but the chance of getting there in torn Whites — he’d burst the seams of both his tunic and his trousers — wasn’t good.

    There was a loud thump from the alley and the door swung open. The outer guard was down. Hogg held his folding knuckleduster knife open in his right hand. Daniel didn’t see blood on the blade, but that didn’t necessarily mean the guard was still alive.

    “Leary, come back!” Anston called. “I apologize for being a bloody fool!”

    The door to the left between Daniel and Hogg opened. Hogg shuffled forward, his knife held low to stab through a kidney toward the heart.

    Mistress Forbes stepped into the hallway.

    “Stop, Hogg!” Daniel shouted, but Hogg had frozen when he saw the Minister of Defense. He put his back against the wall and darted glances in both directions.

    Daniel looked over his shoulder. Admiral Anston was out of his chair and standing in the doorway, gripping the jamb to stay upright. “It’s my bloody fault,” Anston said, but he was wheezing now.

    “No, it is not,” said Minister Forbes. “I’m the one who insisted, because I didn’t trust the admiral’s certainty that no offer could shake your loyalty to the Republic.”

    Daniel felt weak with reaction and relief. He braced the flat of his hand on the wall.

    “Well, mistress,” he said. “I’m not the Leary to be tempted by offering to make me a politician.”

    “I’m glad to hear that,” Forbes said. “Now, can we join the admiral in the room with the brandy and discuss the real proposition I came to offer you?”