“It’s a good thing life in the field isn’t usually like this,” Tully said, retrieving his sausage and wrapping a slice of the dense, chewy bread around the sputtering, smoking meat before stripping it off the stick. “War might get too popular…. Pass that mustard, would you?”
“Here,” Adrienne said, and tossed it over. “I suspect we’re all going to suffer enough to satisfy the most exacting conscience before this is over, so let’s store up some memories while we can.”
The sun vanished in a line of red fire and hot gold among the clouds on the western horizon. Stars began to appear above the low crescent moon, and the air grew chillier; he put a pot of coffee on the ring, and Sandra unwrapped some chocolate-walnut brownies.
“Made these myself,” she said. “Seven Oaks walnuts—best in the domain.”
Tom sat on the sand and threw a few more sticks of driftwood onto the fire before leaning back against the log. The flotsam burned with a snap and crackle, flames flickering blue and green with the salts dried into the wood. Adrienne curled into his shoulder, and he put an arm around her; he suspected Tully and Sandra were doing the same, but his eyes were a little dazzled by the fire.
“Just my luck,” he said lightly.
“Kemosabe?”
“I find the girl of my dreams, and she’s a spook from another dimension with a license to kill.”
Adrienne chuckled. “Here, you’re from another dimension. Although I grant you’re not a spook—you’re a game warden from another dimension….”
Tom sighed, taking a sip of the coffee and another deep breath of the cool, sea-scented air. “Just doesn’t get better than this, I suppose.”
Adrienne’s lips touched his ear just as he was taking a sip of the coffee; he might have managed that, but not the tongue that slid in after them. When he’d finished coughing, she thumped him helpfully on the back.
“I’ll have you know that I come second to no meal. Or even a Pacific sunset,” she said, grinning wickedly.
“Ah… I think it’s about time to turn in,” Tom said, ignoring laughter from across the fire. “Long day tomorrow.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Piet Botha reined in his horse. He rode in Boer fashion, slumped with his legs nearly straight and slanted forward. His son rode beside him, using the bent-knee New Virginian style. They were alike otherwise, given the twenty-five-year gap in their ages. Schalk Botha was a little lighter in his coloring and had eyes of an unusual tawny shade; besides that he was an inch shorter than his father’s six-three, and without any of the older man’s extra flesh. He was also grinning with excitement.
“Hell, yes, Pa,” he said. “Sounds like fun!”
“You’re not too old for me to clout across the ear,” Piet growled. “This is serious business, boy. We may have to fight some of our relatives, not just the bliddy Indians.”
Schalk shrugged his wide shoulders. “Only if they’re fools enough to get mixed up in treason.”
“Treason is what you do when you lose,” Piet said. “I’d be on the other side myself, if I thought it would work. But it wouldn’t.”
He stopped and leaned down from the saddle to fasten the gate. His cow-beasts were all inside the paddock now, and he looked up the long slope of the land to where his farmhouse glittered white and red among its trees and orange groves, and the mountains reared blue behind it. It was a hot day, but tempered by a breeze from the sea; the air was full of the smell of horse sweat and cattle dung and crushed herbs. Behind them was a dirt road, and beyond that a waste of tall dry grass, dead reeds that had grown in seasonal sloughs earlier in the year, an occasional thicket of oak or sycamore or willow, and patches of the tall stalks of wild mustard.
It’s home to young Schalk, he thought. His homeland. He came here young enough; I’ll be an exile all my life.
He shrugged at the thought; he’d be an exile in the land of his birth, too, even if he could live there unmolested by the new government’s police—something unlikely in the extreme. The country that had borne him didn’t exist anymore, not really. Instead he spoke of practical things. “We’ll be getting the horses. Good ones—no show beasts, mind—ones that’ll stay alive over the mountains. And the mules.”
Adrienne Rolfe smiled to herself as they climbed out of the amphibian and onto the floating dock, blinking lazily in the bright San Diegan sunshine. I’m feeling disgustingly sleek and satisfied, she thought, as the crewmen took the ropes. I like Tom. I like him a lot.
She grew aware of exactly how sleek and satisfied her smile was, and shrugged ruefully at Tom’s expression; Tully’s was carefully neutral, but the little man was alarmingly perceptive.
San Diego was the third-largest city in the Commonwealth, nearly twenty thousand people and growing fast. She rather liked it, in small doses—except when the Santa Ana was blowing, of course. The town was a decade younger than the ones around the bay, and it had a tarry practicality, a big-shouldered quality that gave piquancy to the sun-washed, mountain-backed setting. It was also a Commission territory, not dominated by any Family the way Napa or New Brooklyn were. It wasn’t centered around the Families collectively either, the way the capital was. Settler merchants and manufacturers set the tone here.
The floatplane docks were near the yacht basin, and just over from the main harbor, all facing south toward Coronado Island and within the sheltering hook of land that cut off the harbor from the Pacific. The land airport was on the shore to the west; a Hercules was coming in as she watched, with the winged Thompson gun of the Collettas on its tailfin; her mouth quirked at the irony.
The main harbor was busy too, amid a white storm of gulls: ten big windjammers , a couple of flat-decked wooden tankers and dozens of smaller craft, from tugs down to fishing craft and rowboats, all moving about the dredged channels to the redwood piers. New nahua workers filed over the gangplanks of a three-master up from the southern ports; cranes swung ashore its other cargo: baled raw cotton, rare tropical woods, cacao in the bean, leather, featherwork cloaks, chilies and caged macaws. Another fair-sized sailing ship was being towed in; the absence of a diesel auxiliary and some subtle elements in her lines showed she was foreign—Dahaean out of Hagamantash, probably, from what FirstSiders would call Shanghai—laden with silk and cotton fabrics, tea, pepper and cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg and inlaid furniture, jade statues and thousand-knot rugs. A Tahitian schooner looked more exotic, with its twin prows and flamboyantly colorful tiki-mask figurehead.
Most craft were from the Commonwealth, swapping northern timber and manufactures and FirstSide goods for refined petroleum, chocolate, cement, brick, tile, borax….
And there she is, Adrienne thought.
A tall young woman with yellow hair came swinging down the docks; she was dressed in a white linen dress with a thin black belt and a wide-brimmed white hat; a little discreet jewelry, and the Families’ gold-and-platinum ring on her left thumb. She took off her sunglasses and waved with a bright artificial smile, and walked more quickly.
“Tom Christiansen, my cousin Heather Fitzmorton,” Adrienne said formally. The bitch, she did not add aloud, as they exchanged a formal kiss on the cheek.
Heather was Adrienne’s age to a year. Her eyes flicked across Tully, lingered on Sandra for an instant, then took Tom in from feet to head.