RCN 11: Death's Bright Day (eARC) Read online

  “Speaking of Hogg—” said Deirdre.

  She paused as the tram rocked to a start a moment after the lead car. The monorail vehicles weren’t coupled, but the central computer was moving the procession as a unit. Ordinarily it directed the trams to call boxes and then by the most efficient route to the riders’ destination.

  “—why is he riding on top of the car? And there’s someone on the lead car also.”

  She gestured through the front windscreen. A Xenos tram with unscratched windows was at least as remarkable as one with wood inlays.

  “Ah,” said Daniel. He coughed into his hand. “That’s Midshipman Hale, who served with me on two recent voyages. She and Hogg—” Daniel’s servant, mentor, and father figure since his earliest days on the Bantry Estate “—thought they’d have a better view from up there in case of trouble. A needless precaution, but if it pleases them to do it…”

  He shrugged. He didn’t mention that the long blanket-wrapped bundle Hogg had beside him was a stocked impeller, nor that the slightly built Hale’s shorter bundle was a carbine. Within her range, Hale was as good a shot as the countryman who had been poaching game all his life.

  Above them the tram’s magnetic suspension rattled over junctions. The streets were still lined with cheering citizens.

  “I wonder if they’ll stretch all the way to the townhouse?” Deirdre said. “You’re a famous man, brother.”

  “It’s just the spectacle that draws them,” Daniel said uncomfortably. “There’d be as many people if I were being carried in the other direction to have my head cut off and nailed to Speaker’s Rock.”

  “Don’t you believe it!” said Mon. “Listen—they’re shouting, ‘Cacique! Cacique!’ They’re cheering the man who beat the Alliance above Cacique and brought peace after decades of war.”

  “Daniel?” Miranda said, scanning the lines of shouting, happy faces along the route. “How will they all fit in Chatsworth? It’s a big house for the center of Xenos, but…?”

  Deirdre smiled. Daniel gestured toward her with an upturned palm and said, “I’ll let my sister answer that. She was in charge of the arrangements.”

  “Mistress Sand, Lady Mundy’s colleague, had as much to do with it as I did,” Deirdre said in a nonchalant voice. Bernis Sand was the Republic’s spymaster. She wasn’t precisely Adele’s other employer, because Adele didn’t take money for the work she did on Sand’s behalf. “In addition to Chatsworth Minor, all six houses on the close have opened their ground floors to the reception, and refreshments will be served in the street itself.”

  “How the bloody hell did you do that?” Mon blurted. “Kidnap their children?”

  Daniel felt his lips purse. He’d had the same thought, but he hadn’t asked because he’d been afraid that he wouldn’t want to have heard the answer.

  “No, no, no strong-arm,” Deirdre said.

  Her easy smile implied that the notion was absurd. It wasn’t absurd.

  “One of the owners was kin to Lady Mundy on her mother’s side,” Deirdre continued. “Distantly enough that he survived the Proscriptions, but happy to do her ladyship a favor. Another neighbor was enthusiastic to help the Hero of Cacique. You may get a dinner invitation, brother. You’re not obliged to accept it, of course.”

  “I will,” said Daniel. Miranda nodded crisply.

  “Apart from those, there was a little extra time on a mortgage, help with a client’s legal problems, and an invitation to a party at which neither you nor I would be caught dead, brother. It will be the achievement of a life’s social ambition, however.”

  Deirdre coughed. “Finally,” she said, “Mistress Sand arranged for the suppression of certain information. I don’t know precisely what the information was, but we were suddenly offered free use of the house on the south corner for as long as we wanted.”

  The tram slowed for the stop at the head of the cul-de-sac on which Chatsworth Minor was located. Three passengers were getting out of the leading car. The pavement within the close was packed with people, all shouting.

  Miranda leaned closer. “Welcome home, darling,” she said into Daniel’s ear. “Welcome home, hero.”

  * * *

  Adele took a front-facing corner seat in the lead tram. She wasn’t surprised when Miriam Dorst followed her and Tovera: Miranda’s mother had to ride somewhere, after all. Two middle-aged couples, dressed in up-to-the-minute fashion with ruffs at their wrists and necks, started to get on.

  Miriam blocked them. Miranda played field hockey; her mother was fit and had the same stocky strength. “The bride’s family has reserved this car,” she said in a sharp tone. “Please find other places.”

  “We’re friends of Captain Leary!” said the leading woman. She wore a striped top and a stiffly conical skirt, a combination that made Adele think of a shuttlecock.

  “No, you are not,” Adele said, looking up from the display of the personal data unit in her lap. “Mistress Dorst has requested politely that you find other places. Please do.”

  “Would you like me to shoot them, mistress?” Tovera said. She gave the intruders a bright smile.

  “I’ll call an usher if necessary, Tovera,” Adele said. The question was an example of Tovera’s sense of humor: if she had really thought that shooting the civilians was a good idea, she wouldn’t have bothered asking.

  Tovera would shoot them if asked, of course. She was a sociopath who rather liked killing people, to the extent that she had any emotional involvement at all with people.

  The woman who had spoken froze. Her husband tugged her backward; the second couple had already backed away. As the speaker—Mistress Ethyl Smith with her husband the Honorable Edward Smith, according to image recognition software in the data unit—left the car, she snarled, “You’re sick!”

  Miriam closed the door. Tovera giggled and said, “If she only knew.”

  The tram started off. Miriam said, “I suppose you wonder why I’m here. I decided it was the best way to have a private conversation with you, Lady Mundy.”

  Adele looked up again, frowning; she’d been searching to learn the Smiths’ relation to the bridal couple, not from any need but rather for her usual reason: she liked to learn things. Miriam hadn’t seated herself. She looked stern and very possibly angry, which was puzzling.

  “It’s none of my business where you ride, Miriam,” Adele said. They had been on a first name basis in the past, Adele far preferred to remain informal with Daniel’s mother-in-law. “It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder.”

  Adele’s mouth twitched in the vague direction of a smile. She suddenly realized that if she had been watching imagery of this scene, she would find it interesting. She needed an interface between herself and information before it really touched her.

  Miriam looked puzzled, as Adele had found people often did when she answered their questions. In order to ease the situation further, she said, “I was glad that you requested that the Smiths leave. I haven’t found any connection between them and Daniel yet. I suppose you would know if they were friends of your family?”

  “What?” said Miriam. The tram jounced between connectors hard enough to rattle the suspension against the overhead railing. She grabbed a support pole, then lowered herself onto the seat across from Adele.

  “Oh, Ethyl Smith was an admiral’s widow before she remarried,” Miriam resumed. “Quite full of herself when she was Mistress Admiral Colfax. I suppose Daniel might have served under him at some point. If so, I sympathize. Timothy did, and it wasn’t a happy posting.”

  “Daniel did not serve under Admiral Colfax,” Adele said with satisfaction. She shrank the holographic display of the data unit and transferred both control wands to her right hand, then looked Miriam directly in the face. “What was it you wanted to discuss, Miriam?”

  “Oh,” the older woman said. She swallowed. “What I was going to say is that Daniel, that Captain Leary, has been very supportive of, well, his friendship for you. He’s having the initial ceremony he
re in Xenos. He’s even taking his bride to the Mundy townhouse, your house, ah, Adele. Instead of at the Leary estate, Bantry.”

  “Yes,” said Adele. She didn’t add, “Of course,” because she found that just as silly as stating the obvious in the first place. Miriam Dorst wasn’t stupid, so there would be a point coming sometime.

  “Well, why then did you refuse my daughter’s request that you be her maid of honor?” Miriam said. She grimaced and said, “Are you angry because Miranda married your friend?”

  Adele started to bring the data unit’s display up again. There was nothing she wanted to check on it, but it would be a normal thing for her to do. When faced with an absurd situation, she very much wanted to return to normalcy.

  Retreating into the data unit would be a better choice than drawing the pistol in the pocket of her tunic, the other tool that experience sent her to when reality seemed to be coming apart. Nonetheless, the best choice was the usual one, to answer the question calmly—and to be ready to deal with whatever the reaction might be.

  “No,” Adele said aloud. “I’m pleased that Daniel is marrying someone whom I like and respect, unlike the bubbleheads whom he favored before he met Miranda. Though if he had married a bubblehead or a dozen bubbleheads, it wouldn’t have been either my business or a matter of concern to me.”

  “Why, then?” Miriam said. She was gripping her own hands fiercely; her knuckles were white as her fingers writhed together. “Why did you refuse to be Miranda’s maid of honor?”

  “I didn’t have any feelings about the matter,” Adele said. “I thought it would be more politic for Miranda to involve Daniel’s sister. I believe Deirdre thinks well of your daughter, but the honor would mean something to her.”

  Tovera was smiling from a third corner as she watched them. I’m glad somebody’s finding this funny, Adele thought; but Tovera’s expression wasn’t necessarily connected with humor.

  Miriam sagged. “I’m sorry,” she muttered to her hands. “Miranda said that you weren’t insulting her, but…I feel very foolish now.”

  You should, Adele thought. It was as though Miriam had told her she believed Adele dined on murdered children.

  “Miranda has had more opportunity to get to know me,” she said aloud. “In another instance”—which I sincerely hope will never occur—“you might reasonably be guided by her judgment.”

  The older woman straightened in her seat. “Well…” she said. Then, more briskly, “Well. I’m very glad we had a chance to talk. I feel much better now. I was very much afraid that you felt that Miranda was your enemy and, well, you’re Captain Leary’s closest friend. That would have been terrible.”

  “Yes,” Adele said, rising to her feet. She slipped her personal data unit away in the cargo pocket in the right thigh of this dress suit. She had a similar pocket in every pair of trousers she owned. “That would have been terrible.”

  It would also have been terrible if a giant invisible asteroid struck Xenos. To Adele the one seemed as likely as the other, but she had learned long ago that her world view differed from that of most people.

  The car slowed as it neared their stop. Adele had wondered whether the crowd would overflow onto the tram line, but Deirdre had planned for that with a human barrier which—

  “Those people are wearing liberty suits,” Miriam said, peering through the forward window. “They’re RCN?”

  “Yes,” said Adele. “Instead of hiring civilians to control the crowd, Deirdre—” or possibly Daniel himself “—seems to be using spacers. I hope they’re not carrying batons.” Or wrenches and mallets.

  “The people who’re most likely to get pushy are other spacers,” Tovera said. “They’re not going to complain about getting their heads thumped at a party. They’re used to it.”

  As Miriam had said, the spacers were in liberty suits: RCN utilities tricked out with ribbons and patches commemorating every landfall the spacers had made and every ship they’d served aboard. Senior personnel wore rigs whose mottled gray base fabric was almost completely hidden.

  Woetjans was in charge. She had been Daniel’s bosun from before he captured his first command, the Princess Cecile. Well over six feet tall and strong even for her size, Woetjans was the perfect person for the job, but she could have been among the wedding witnesses in the temple had she wished. This was what she preferred. Pasternak, the Chief Engineer, and two bosun’s mates had helped Cory advise the civilian ushers at the temple.

  The tram’s door opened automatically when it stopped. Adele gestured Miriam out and followed with Tovera. The joyous roar echoed from the building fronts, amazingly loud. The transit computer shunted their car out of the way to make room for the vehicles following.

  “Miranda has married a great man,” Miriam said. She was looking back, so that Adele as much read the words on her lips as heard them over the cheering. “I only hope he is also the husband who suits her.”

  Adele nodded. “Yes, I hope that too,” she said. It didn’t really matter to her, of course: Daniel was her friend regardless of his private life. He would be happier if his marriage went well, and Adele genuinely did like Miranda.

  She stood facing the close, viewing the sea of faces past the wall of gorgeously beribboned spacers. She had seen similar scenes from the window of her bedroom when she was a child and her father was addressing an election rally of Popular Party supporters from his fourth-floor balcony. That had been the same sound, the same mass of people so enthusiastic that they seemed to blend into a single organism.

  Those cheers had ended a matter of days after sixteen-year-old Adele left Cinnabar to continue her studies at the Academic Collections on Bryce, a member world of the Alliance of Free Stars. The Speaker of the Senate, Corder Leary, had accused Lucas Mundy and his closest supporters of plotting against the Republic. He had moved quickly to crush the conspiracy by summary executions and the confiscation of property.

  Now the close below Chatsworth Minor was rocking with similar enthusiasm for Speaker Leary’s son, Daniel, and his new bride.

  Adele turned to face the tram which immediately followed her own. She smiled as the bride and groom got out to redoubled cheers.

  I don’t believe in omens, she thought.

  CHAPTER 2

  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 sa
mpling 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.”