The sound of Terza’s harp floated through the palace from the music room. Martinez walked toward the sound blindly, his mind aswim in something like a storming sea. Part of his brain saw nothing but horrors, the Corona Club filling with bodies, the stairs running with blood, friends fighting and dying while Martinez himself stood helpless, unable to prevent the slaughter. Another part of his brain was making lists—lists of routes, of officers, of supplies. A third was working on a more abstract level, conceptualizing fleet tactics to be employed when heavily outnumbered. That last process was going on entirely on its own, and he was aware of it only when some small insight bubbled to the surface of the crashing waves that seemed to fill his head.
He walked into the music room and saw Terza with her harp, her long black hair pinned back, her agile fingers plucking at the strings, and he realized that now she lived in a different world than he, a world in which war and treachery and annihilation were far, far away, and not looming right on the doorstep.
Martinez walked into the music room and sat heavily on a couch. Terza remained focused on her music, though he knew by a slight shift in the angle of her eyebrows that she was aware of his presence. The music flowed on, glissandos alternating with fingernail attacks. Singing chords echoed from the geometric Devis-style roof beams. Terza was an expert harpist and often played in a chamber ensemble made up of her friends.
It’s starting again, he thought.
Except that it was worse this time. During the Naxid War the majority of Naxids remained loyal, and when the ringleaders were killed or committed suicide, Naxids were ejected from the Fleet and some of the security agencies, but otherwise permitted to go about their lives unmolested.
But now it seemed that all Terrans were being judged guilty of crimes that no one had so much as defined. Perhaps, Martinez thought, the Convocation shouldn’t have been so eager to congratulate Lord Mehrang on his bloody suppression of the Yormak Rebellion. The Yormaks had been reduced to a few refugees penned up on reserves, and no one knew if they would survive as a species.
Annihilating an entire species, Martinez thought, might have set entirely the wrong precedent. Particularly since his own species might be the next to be eliminated.
The piece came to an end in a great swash of glimmering sound. Terza paused to let the last echoes fade, then looked up.
“What’s wrong?”
Martinez only blinked at her.
“Is it Lieutenant Kelly? Has something happened to her?”
“No.”
Good, Martinez thought. He had managed to utter a single syllable. He could only improve from here.
He gave the words all his concentration, and spoke. “I just had a meeting with your father. It’s very bad news.”
Terza turned off her harp, shifted it from her shoulder, rose, and joined Martinez on the couch, landing with a swirl of silk skirts and the heart notes of vetiver. Intelligent concern shone in her dark eyes. She took his hand.
“In your own time,” she said.
In his own time he told her, stumbling a bit here and there. “So Maurice thinks we should become refugees,” he concluded, “then mutineers.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Apparently.” Martinez took a breath. “I’m one of the Terran criminals, after all. I shouldn’t be caught here when things come apart.”
In silence, her eyes inward, Terza pondered for a moment. “Who else knows?” she said finally.
“I’m the only one Maurice has told.”
“Does your brother know?”
Martinez considered the question. “I don’t think so. Certainly he hasn’t told me anything.”
“He’s a Terran criminal as well. So are your sisters. If you’re going to run, they should come as well.”
“I’m supposed to take officers with me to Harzapid, to crew Michi’s ships. I’ve been . . . making a list.”
Her warm hand shifted in his. “I hope I’m on that list. Along with the children.”
His breath caught in his throat. A surge of pure inchoate emotion prickled the hairs on Martinez’s arms.
He looked at her. When he could manage words, he said, “Are you positive you want to do this?”
She had been in mourning for her fiancé, Richard Li, when Roland had strong-armed her father into agreeing to let her marry Martinez. Martinez himself had been in shock after the shattering of his relationship with Sula. The development had been so sudden that there were still white mourning threads in Terza’s hair during the public announcement of their engagement.
He had sworn to himself that he would treat her with all the courtesy and regard that a husband owed his wife, and for the most part he had succeeded. If his thoughts sometimes strayed to Sula, to her golden hair and emerald-green eyes and the pale skin that could flush so easily with passion, it was not his fault. He behaved toward Terza as if his own passion had been directed always toward her.
But he could not help but wonder if she, too, had made a similar resolution. If each of them was playing a part, then what was the marriage but a fragile structure like Young Gareth’s cardboard castle, knocked flat by the first careless blunder?
“Last time,” she said, “you were off on a warship, and I was pregnant, and I couldn’t be with you even though I wanted to. But now we’re going to be refugees, and if that’s going to happen we should be refugees together.”
The words had stopped up his throat again, so Martinez took Terza in his arms and held her against him. Her vetiver perfume whirled in his head.
“I’m glad we’ll be together,” he managed finally.
We should be refugees together. It was the strongest possible affirmation of Terza’s commitment to their marriage.
How can I possibly deserve this? he asked himself.
But then he knew immediately that he didn’t deserve it at all and drew back. Terza took his hand again.
“Roland has the family yacht docked on the ring,” Terza said. “Do you know how many passengers can fit aboard?”
“A dozen or so in comfort.” He offered a faint smile. “The junior officers can sleep on the floor and on the tables.”
“Lots of playmates for Chai-chai.”
And then a thought struck him, and he laughed.
“We don’t need Roland’s boat!” he said. “We’ve got Corona!” He laughed again at the thought of the yacht carrier flying his refugees to Harzapid in complete luxury. “We can put a hundred passengers on board if we need to.”
Amusement touched Terza’s lips. “And if we’re bored, we can stage yacht races.”
He looked at her. “I suppose we can hope the cruise is boring, yes?”
She looked away. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose we can.”
Martinez glanced again at the brass plugs on the walls, each marking a bullet fired in anger. Until a few hours ago, they had been an interesting item of decor, but now they seemed an omen.
Sula left the Nicotiana Smoking Club and took her first welcome taste of fresh air. Hope I can get the smoke out of these clothes, she thought. She walked away from the club brushing at the sleeves of her jacket, and taking one grateful gulp of air after another.
She was going to need a shower.
She was so offended at Lord Inspector Snow’s trapping her in a room filled with tobacco smoke that it took a while for his message to sink into her mind. Ships being moved to where they could be captured and disarmed. Trials and torture. The human race labeled as criminals and rendered defenseless.
There is no situation so terrible, she decided, that Tork can’t make it worse.
She wondered if it could be called mutiny if it were the head of the Fleet leading it.
And then, as she walked toward the Garden of Scents, her old wartime reflexes suddenly invaded her perceptions, the habits she’d acquired while hiding underground during the Naxid occupation, when she was known as the White Ghost. Sula found herself making abrupt, random turns at intersections, covertly examining the other pedestrians on the street, looking in shop windows in order to use the reflection to check for anyone tailing her, and keeping a mental tally of automobiles and small trucks to note if they kept reappearing. She had just been enrolled in a conspiracy that the authorities would find subversive, and there was no way she could know that Lord Ivan Snow hadn’t already been denounced or discovered, and that anyone meeting him would be incriminating herself. If she were being followed, she might have to sprint for safety, something that would be difficult insofar as she was one of the most recognizable Terrans on the planet.
No one seemed to be keeping her under observation, though. Which was no guarantee that she wasn’t, but it was enough to allow her to walk to the funicular, descend to the Lower Town, and from there walk to the Petty Mount and her home. The instincts of the White Ghost remained alert as she walked, and it was the White Ghost, rising to consciousness, who began a series of calculations that she continued once she arrived, and while she was taking her shower.
The first thing she did after showering and changing clothes was to log on to the Records Office through the back door she had built during the Naxid War. She hadn’t had occasion to use it since the war, and she wasn’t sure it would still be there, but the Records Office computer hadn’t been upgraded or altered, and Sula began to create new identities for herself, as well as for Spence and Macnamara.
Time to put Action Team 491 back in commission, she thought.
Macnamara walked into her study when she was thus engaged and asked if she’d like a pot of tea.
“Yes, thank you,” she said. “By the way, we’re going to have to go underground for a while. I’ll have your new identity ready in a few minutes.”
There was only the briefest hesitation before Macnamara’s reply. “Yes, my lady. Shall I inform Spence?”
“Yes. And start to consider how and what we’re going to pack. Necessities only, I’m afraid.”
“Right away, my lady.”
Sula paused for a moment to appreciate Macnamara’s virtues. He was a fine shot with rifle or pistol, reasonably competent in the kitchen, and sufficiently anonymous to disappear into a crowd. He was a little overprotective, certainly, but he would do his best with every assignment, either shadowing a target, serving a cocktail, or burying a dead Koridun. And, more importantly, keeping his mouth shut about the latter.
While Sula was busy with the Records Office computer, she could feel the White Ghost active in some other level of her consciousness. So when she finally finished crafting the new identities, she found herself busy checking means of getting to Harzapid and the Fourth Fleet. There would be no passenger vessels traveling directly to Harzapid for some time, but a huge immigrant ship was leaving Zanshaa’s ring for Chee after embarking thousands of new settlers. While it stopped at Zarafan to take on more passengers, Sula and her party could transfer to another, smaller cargo-passenger vessel heading for Harzapid. The immigrant ship would be leaving in six days. That gave her a deadline.
Next Sula followed the list the White Ghost had made and began looking up officers who might be available for a very long trip out of town. At the head of the list were Haz, Giove, and Ikuhara, lieutenants from Sula’s last command, Confidence. They had been contaminated by their association with Sula and had been unemployed since the war. Haz, she remembered, had got promoted to lieutenant-captain due to family influence, but he’d never got a command, and now he was here with the others, kicking at the doors of the Commandery looking for a job.
She looked for other old acquaintances and found Senior Captain Linz, who had commanded a frigate in Sula’s Light Squadron Seventeen. She had been promoted after the war and commanded a cruiser but was now an inspector of replacement parts and foodstuffs destined for Fleet bases and ships—hardly the most stimulating of assignments.
Sula began making calls. A reunion of the officers of Confidence was definitely in the cards.
“What,” Sula asked, “would be the effects on the economy of another war?”
Ming Lin looked at Sula in concern. “What sort of war?” she asked.
“Let’s be optimistic and say it’s somewhat smaller than the last one.”
Sula and Lin were having one of their regular meetings, over tea, in Sula’s office. Lin wore her student’s gown and managed not to look even remotely like a successful author.
The Convocation was not in session, and most convocates were away, but their offices were still open and handling routine business. The fundamental prisonlike gloom of Sula’s inner office had been relieved with flowers and gleaming porcelain, and Sula was amused that Lin’s rose-pink hair was echoed by a display of dianthus and hibiscus blooming behind her on a shelf.
The clove-like scent of the dianthus complemented the aroma of the tea, which had a subtle taste of almond that survived even when diluted by Sula’s usual dollop of cane syrup. Sula sipped her tea deliberately while Lin considered Sula’s question. When Lin spoke, her voice was cautious.
“Would there be, for example, battles and raids involving the Fleet?”
“Let’s say there are.”
Lin nodded, more to herself than to Sula. “Civic disruption on the surfaces of planets?” she asked.
“We’ve already got that.”
“It could get worse,” Lin said.
Sula nodded. “It probably will,” she said.
“If warships get blown up,” Lin said, “they will have to be replaced. Shipyards and shipbuilders will get contracts. And there will be more contracts for supplies, replacement parts, and so on. Shipyards are almost at a standstill now, because nobody knows how hard Tu-hon’s tax will fall on commerce, or when, or if it will at all—so if you expect their business to pick up, they’d be a good investment now.”
“Yes.”
“But of course if the shipyards are destroyed in the war,” Lin continued, “your investment will be destroyed as well.”
Sula sipped her tea and nodded.
“Large government expenditures will benefit certain industries and supply chains and will supply a boost to the economy—but really, if the spending is confined to the Fleet, it won’t create that much wealth across the board. And if the Fleet is interdicting commerce between worlds, and destroying ships and supplies, that will significantly hamper any recovery. So you might consider investing in some rather basic things, like food, food packaging, and food distribution, because people will need food whether there’s a war or not.” She raised her cup of tea to her lips, then lowered it. “And, you know, water. Because people need that, too.”
During the Naxid War, Sula had bought stocks of chocolate and coffee, items that she knew would become scarce on Zanshaa. Buying into ordinary food suppliers had not occurred to her.
“Thank you,” she said.
Again Ming Lin raised her cup, then let it fall again. It rattled in the saucer.
“My lady,” she said carefully, “do you know something I don’t?”
Sula looked at her. “I believe I just told you.”
The cup rattled in the saucer again. Lin put the saucer on the side table with a trembling hand.
“Do you know when it’s going to start?” she said.
Sula put her own saucer down and leaned back in her office chair. Pneumatics sighed.
“I advise you to leave Zanshaa. A promotional tour for your book, say.”
Lin blinked. “I can’t afford that.”
“I’ll pay for it,” Sula said.
“I—” Lin raised a hand to her throat. “When? Because I’m supposed to defend my dissertation.”
“When?”
“Something like twenty days from now.”
“You’ll have to leave before that, if you’re going.”
Lin’s dark eyes began to search the shadowy corners of the room, as if she could find an answer there. “I don’t know,” she said.
Sula let the breath sigh from her lungs as she considered her words. “If it helps you make up your mind, you should remember that you’re a known associate of one of the Terran criminals, and that you’ve written a book that contradicts the story that Gruum and Tu-hon are spreading about the causes of the decline.” She restrained a savage laugh. “They might well decide you need silencing, one way or another.”
Ming Lin straightened in her chair, her spine erect. “It seems I have little choice.”
“I’ll make the arrangements,” Sula said. “You should pack, and you shouldn’t tell anyone you’re going away. Once we’ve left Zanshaa, you can send your regrets to your dissertation committee.”
Lin offered a rueful smile. “They may not forgive me.”
“They will have more important things not to forgive,” Sula said.
Lin’s look darkened as she puzzled that out, then she shook her head. “When am I leaving, then?”
“I’ll let you know. And you may trust that the message will come at the last possible second.”
Lin reached for her saucer. “I suppose that if I am going underground,” she said, “I’ll be safest going with you.”
Sula sipped at her own tea, found it cold, put it down. “I’m sorry if I surprised you,” she said. “Sometimes I forget that not everyone has been expecting this for years.”
Lin seemed puzzled. “Years? How long exactly?”
“Since the end of the last war, in the Year of the Praxis 12,483. I remember telling Gare—telling Captain Martinez that we’d be at war again within six years. I seem to have been overpessimistic by three years.”
Lin seemed intrigued. “Why did you think there’d be another war? The Naxids were beaten pretty comprehensively.”
“Because we still have a government that could permit something like the Naxid War in the first place.” Sula warmed her cup with tea from the pot. “They have no way to prevent a conflict from starting.” She stirred more cane syrup into her cup. “The convocates were set up in the Convocation to follow policy set by the Great Masters, not make policy themselves,” she said. “They were reasonably good at that, that and sucking up to the Shaa. But they’re not good at making decisions, or questioning themselves, or coping with changed circumstances. They’ve been hopeless at dealing with the economic crisis, and they’ve allowed something like the Steadfast League to spread right under their noses.” She spread her hands. “So—we’ll be on the run soon.”
Lin nodded, her expression bleak.
“Be sure to pack something nice to wear,” Sula said. “We’ll be going first class.”
Lin stared at her. “Wars seem to have improved since I fought in the last one.”
Sula sipped her tea and smiled. “At least the accommodation will be better.”
The reunion of Confidence’s wardroom took place at Julien Bakshi’s restaurant. Sula was known there, and the maître d’ welcomed her and showed her into the private room she’d booked. The Cree chef hustled in to explain the latest features of the menu. As the afternoon progressed, it was difficult chasing off the highly attentive staff so that Sula could deliver her message.
Rebecca Giove was her usual kinetic self, and the perpetually youthful Pavel Ikuhara had grown a little mustache in hopes of looking more mature. It wasn’t working. The big surprise, however, was in discovering that her former premiere lieutenant, Lord Alan Haz, was now Lady Alana. This sort of transformation was uncommon among the Peers, who worried that it might interfere with their primary duty of reproduction, but apparently Lady Alana had sufficient resources and independence to flout tradition.
The metamorphosis was clearly a work in progress. Lord Alan had been a big, square, hearty young man, with a robust manner, a commanding baritone, and an exquisite set of tailored uniforms. Lady Alana’s dress sense remained, for her Chesko frock was elegance itself and artfully de-emphasized her mesomorphic frame; but the personality that had seemed natural had now become studied, and the voice a mere whisper until she forgot herself, and the baritone boomed out over the table. In her tall heels, she towered over everyone else in the room.
Sula waited until the meal was over, and brandies and coffee had been delivered, before she told the others why she’d brought them together.
“It’s time for us to leave Zanshaa,” she finished, speaking into the stunned silence. “We’re going to be needed elsewhere.”
“Where?” asked Giove.
“You don’t need to know that now. But you’ll each be traveling under another identity, just in case anyone is looking for groups of Fleet officers moving from one place to another.”
Lady Alana stared at the table, her expression troubled. “I don’t know if I dare go.”
Sula looked at her. “Why not?”
“I’ve got a wife and three children in Zanshaa City. I can’t leave them behind, not with things as they are.”
So apparently Haz had done his reproductive duty before beginning his conversion. And he’d remained married through the transformation, which Sula was inclined to think was unusual.
“Can your family come with you?” Sula asked.
“Yes, but—” Haz searched for words. “The children are small. I don’t think they’ll be able to travel under cover identities. They won’t remember who they’re supposed to be.”
“In that case,” said Sula, “you and they can travel under your own names. A single officer shipping with her family is unlikely to set off alarms. Just remember that you don’t know any of the rest of us.”
Lady Alana still looked worried, but she nodded. “That seems possible,” she said.
Sula gave Ikuhara and Giove envelopes with their new identities, prepared ahead of time. “Memorize all the details,” she said. “Do not bring any other form of identification.”
“Very good, my lady!” said Giove. She sounded as excited as a child running free after a day at school.
“Another thing,” Sula said. “Are there any other officers we might contact? We need people we can absolutely trust, officers who can leave at a moment’s notice, and who will be useful in combat—no glits, no high decorative Peers—we’ll need fighters.”
“Do you know Naaz Vijana?” Giove said. “They promoted him after Esley, and promised him a cruiser, but the ship’s not been built yet. I think a subcontractor went bankrupt, or something.”
Vijana, Sula remembered, had been the officer who had obliterated the Yormak Rebellion. Ruthless, she supposed, and a proven fighter, but his combat experience was hardly conventional.
Though maybe an unconventional fighter was exactly who they needed.
“Should you contact him?” Sula asked. “Or should I?” Giove said that she would do it.
Lady Alana mentioned a lieutenant who had served in one of the other Terran ships in Sula’s squadron and volunteered to contact him.
Ikuhara touched his sparse mustache. “Are we looking only for officers? Maitland and Markios are both living on the ring, and currently unassigned.”
Warrant Officer Maitland was a sensor specialist, and Markios, Engineer First Class, had been in charge of the engine station in Confidence’s Command center.
“Very good,” Sula said. “We’ll need experienced specialists.”
“I’ll have to go to the ring to contact them.”
“As soon as possible, then.” She looked at the clock on her sleeve display. “If you’ll pardon me,” she said, “I have another appointment.” She looked from one to another. “Pack and be ready to leave on a few hours’ notice. Don’t tell anyone what’s about to happen, not unless he’s one of the people we discussed.” She looked at Lady Alana. “Don’t tell your family anything, Lady Elcap. Just tell them you’ve got an assignment and they have to depart immediately.”
“They may not understand,” Lady Alana said.
“Understanding isn’t important,” Sula said. “What’s important is that we all leave when we can.”
She went from the private dining room to Julien Bakshi’s private office on the second floor. Julien had just arrived—he was practically nocturnal—and his bodyguards knew Sula and let her enter. Julien had been fighting the war for weeks, his Bogo Boys ambushing members of the Steadfast League, and sometimes being ambushed in return.
He accepted Sula’s news with a nod. “We’ll be getting weapons out of storage, then,” he said. “I suppose we might have to arm half the Terrans in Zanshaa City.”
“I’ll see you when we take the city again,” Sula said.
They embraced. His hair pomade had a repellent fruity scent, and it took an effort of will for Sula to hold him close.
From Harmony Square she went to the High City and Sidney’s Superior Firearms. Sidney welcomed her into his basement firing range, a place that smelled of both propellant and Sidney’s hashish. Sidney looked more like a dying man than ever, but his mustachios were waxed at a jaunty angle, and he offered her a lemonade and gave her a metal stool to sit on while he fired up his pipe. He coughed, hacked, drew in more smoke. Sula told him what was happening.
“You can come with us,” Sula told him. “We might be able to use a weapons designer. But if you stay, I hope you’ll be able to assist the Terran Secret Army that will be starting.”
Sidney was surprised. “Me? Leave the planet?”
“Why not?”
“The only person in my family ever to leave Zanshaa was my son. And he was killed in the war.”
Which had motivated Sidney to help Sula’s Secret Army during the fighting on Zanshaa. After his son’s death, Sidney had been suicidal, offering firearms that could be traced straight to him; but Sula had found him too useful to sacrifice and used him instead to design cheap, easily assembled weapons suitable for her amateur fighters.
“Do what you like,” Sula said. Even secondhand, the hashish was making her head spin. “But you have to make up your mind now.”
“Well,” he said. His pupils were wide as platters. “I’ll have to let my manager know that I’ll be out of touch for a while.”
“Tell him you’ve gone hunting.”
He laughed, and then the laugh broke down into a wheeze. He spat into a handkerchief, but then he swabbed his chin, straightened, and grinned. “Another world?” he said. “If not now, when?”
She handed him an envelope with his new identity and gave him instructions. “If you can,” she said, “you should bring some weapons with you. Suitably packed, because you won’t be allowed to carry.”
The grin broadened. “I think I know just the thing.”
Sula nodded. “I’m sure you do.”
Weapons were still on her mind the next day, when Sula was in her parlor trying to work out a way to fit an automatic weapon into a credenza. The secret compartment at the back wasn’t long enough to hold the barrel, even after she’d disassembled it, and she hated to leave the weapon behind.
“Let me look at it, my lady,” said Macnamara. He was a fair carpenter, and during the war had built secret compartments into the furniture found in their safe houses. Each apartment had been a small arsenal of firearms, grenades, explosives, and detonators.
In the back of Sula’s mind was the thought that they might have to take command of their transport. Sula had checked the policy of the shipping company, and civilians—which Sula and her friends would pretend to be—were not allowed to carry firearms on the ship. Any weapons would have to be placed in a labeled container and given to the purser for storage. Sula hoped that weapons would be unnecessary, but she didn’t want to trust to the mercies of the purser; and so she’d thought of shipping some of Macnamara’s special furniture as well. If they couldn’t get into the purser’s stores, through either compassion or bribery, they might be allowed into the hold to break the weapons free.
She wondered if she was being paranoid, then reminded herself that paranoia had kept her alive so far.
The air was scented with gun oil. On the floor was a container that Spence and Macnamara had retrieved from one of Action Team 491’s storage units. The equipment had been stored during the Naxid War, and though the weapons and armor should have been turned in at the end of hostilities, Sula had decided against it.
The tradition of paranoia was hard to break.
The container was open, which was unfortunate when Lady Koridun walked in along with Ming Lin. Sula had been expecting Lin—she was arriving to pick up her tickets for the transport—but apparently Lin had met Lady Koridun on the way and hadn’t been able to brush her off.
Lady Koridun’s blue nocturnal eyes opened wide and seemed to glow like lamps. Wordlessly she viewed the rifles, the grenades, the bricks of explosive scattered over the table.
Ming Lin’s face filled with appalled surprise. “Oh, hello!” she said. “I ran into Lady Koridun in the lobby!”
Surrounded by firearms, Sula thought, and not one of them was loaded. She straightened from her crouch behind the credenza and measured her distance to the nearest magazine.
“We’re . . . taking inventory,” she said.
A false, brittle brightness entered Lin’s voice. “Is all that left over from the war? You’ve got a lot of souvenirs!”
Lady Koridun’s eyes shifted from the weapons to Sula. “I wondered why Miss Lin canceled her video appearance next week,” she said slowly. “Now I suppose I know. You’re all running away, aren’t you?”
She had killed so many Koriduns, Sula thought, one more shouldn’t matter. She was trying to work out how to do it, decide whether Koridun would stand still while she loaded a magazine, or whether she’d have to just beat Koridun to death with a gun butt.
“How can I help?” Lady Koridun asked.
Sula was so surprised that she had no real response. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re fleeing, but you’re taking weapons with you. You’re going to start a war against Tu-hon and Tork and the rest. And I want to help.”
Lady Koridun’s tone was so reasonable and full of enthusiasm that it took a moment for Sula to formulate a response.
“Well,” she said, “you might not want to be so closely associated with Terrans right now.”
“Why should I care about that absurd claptrap?” Lady Koridun said. “Tork and Lady Gruum and so on are just wrong. You’ve been right about everything, and they’re out to punish you.” Her blue eyes gleamed. “I’ll do all I can! I’ll bring all my clients into the war on your side!”
“That may be a little premature,” Sula cautioned.
“Hah!” said Koridun. “Tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it. But I will get to run away with you, won’t I? It’ll be so exciting!”
Sula had found Lady Koridun’s hero worship trying in the past, but now she was beginning to understand its uses.
“Well,” she said. “Let’s talk about that.”
In the end there were eighteen of them, officers, cadets, and enlisted, plus Lady Alana’s family. Lady Koridun traveled supreme class in a vast suite decorated in eight shades of cream, while Ming Lin was in first class, her suite adjacent to that of the Haz family.
Lady Koridun had a lady’s maid with her, another Torminel who knew nothing of the purpose of the journey. Koridun was supposed to be traveling to Harzapid in order to take charge of a publisher she’d bought there. Ming Lin was along to do an author tour.
Sula, under her new name of Tamara Bycke, was supposed to be a consultant helping Koridun with her acquisition. Shawna Spence was installed as Ming Lin’s servant, and the rest of the Fleet officers and enlisted were either more consultants, more servants, or immigrants leaving Zanshaa. Most traveled second class—Sula shared a room with Spence, as she had during the war. She didn’t mind second class—at least it was better than immigrant class.
For they traveled on an enormous immigrant ship bound for Chee via Zarafan and Laredo, its four giant engines capped by what looked like a silver mushroom-shaped half dome. There were thousands of voyagers aboard, all bound for their new lives, and nobody questioned the cover identities of Sula’s party. It was easy to disappear into the crowd, and Sula—with contact lenses and a wig disguising her signature green eyes and blond hair—enjoyed anonymity. She drank tea in the lounge, worked her mathematical puzzles, and tried to think as little as possible about events on Zanshaa.
She was less pleased that the ship was the Marcus Martinez, named after the paterfamilias of the Martinez family—Clan Martinez owned the ship and had built it in their own shipyards at Laredo. Lord Martinez was shipping all these immigrants to a planet under his own patronage.
Before she’d left, Sula had told everyone she would be vacationing on Zanshaa’s southern hemisphere, at Lady Koridun’s country estate. She figured no one would be likely to travel all that distance to discover whether or not she was there.
One of the options for video entertainment was a simulation of nearby space, and she noticed the big yacht carrier Corona leaving Zanshaa’s ring three days after the immigrant ship, after which it shaped its course directly toward Harzapid. There was speculation in the media concerning the yachting tactics that would supposedly be developed during the voyage. Trust Martinez, Sula thought, to run for his life in a way guaranteed to make himself seem important and grand.
Corona would probably arrive at their mutual destination ahead of Sula, who would have to detour by way of Zarafan.
Sula kept a watch for warships tracking outgoing vessels, but none seemed interested.
During the war, Fleet elements had traveled from Zarafan to Zanshaa in ten days under massive acceleration, but the immigrant ship, accelerating more gently, took thirty-two days to make the same journey. Sula and her party disembarked from Marcus Martinez straight onto Striver, a cargo-passenger vessel considerably smaller than the vast immigrant ship. There was room for only a hundred passengers, and while there was nothing as crowded as immigrant class, neither was there anything as grand as supreme class. Lady Koridun moved into the vacant owner’s suite, which was the best on the ship; and Ming Lin managed with a suite half the size of the one on the Martinez. Sula and Spence moved from a cabin with double beds to one with bunks.
Sula took the top.
The difference between first and second class was strictly the size of the room: there was no lounge reserved for the higher classes, and all the public spaces, including the restaurant, were used in common. There was no table service in the restaurant, but instead a buffet—and worse, high-caste passengers might think, was that crew dined along with passengers instead of being kept out of sight.
This was fine with Sula until, mere hours before departure, she saw uniformed Torminel come crowding through the passenger entry port into the common room, and she recognized the black tunics of the Legion of Diligence, the fanatical upholders of the Praxis who had dedicated their careers to the eradication of dissidence and rebellion.