“Just so,” John Rolfe VI nodded. “It will do the Commonwealth good to have that group… diversified. And that will make you, Mr. Tully, a member of the Thirty. Hmmm. Of course, you and your bride will also be eligible for an estate of your own in the Colletta domain. I think the Colletta, all things considered, would find the Owens Valley and its attached silver mine a suitable endowment. Especially in view of the long delay in regularizing Ms. Margolin’s status.”
“Of course, sir,” the second Salvatore said. He surprised them all with a smile. “It doesn’t have very positive associations for me, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, sir.”
Rolfe smiled, a sly expression this time. “And the Tully family will have an Indian princess at its genealogical root, just like the Rolfes.”
He trickled smoke through his nostrils. “Now, let me think…. I’ve given the Batyushkov domain to young Siegfried von Traupitz; it would be embarrassing for him to inherit from his father, after killing the man. Let his younger brother take the original domain and committee seat, when he reaches his majority.”
“That was a good idea. And you should do something for Jim Simmons, Grandfather,” Adrienne Rolfe said.
“Seeing as he’s dead and has no immediate family, what can I do besides a posthumous medal?”
“Something for Kolomusnim’s family. Jim’s tracker. He’d want that.”
“Ah.” The elder Rolfe closed his eyes, then sighed. “Very well. I’ll arrange for citizenship for the tracker’s children, and scholarships, and I’ll enjoin Charles to keep an eye on them in matters of patronage, according to their abilities…. I suppose you will too? Excellent. Loyalty must run both ways. And for you, Mr. Villers? What would you have of me? My House is in your debt, as well. Although I doubt, to be frank, your underlying devotion to its cause.”
The black man met the leaf green eyes levelly. “Well, you gave Good Star a whole country down in Sonora,” he said. “You going to promote me to the Families as well?”
The old man grinned like a shark. “I suspect that you wish me to do so, Mr. Villers, only in order that you may throw it back in my face.”
Henry Villers’s own face fell a little. Tom smiled to himself; there were no flies on John Rolfe VI, even if he was slowing down a bit.
I suspect this will be his last hurrah, though, after he’s tied up the ends, he thought. John Rolfe VI was enjoying himself, but he did look pretty tired. A fitting conclusion.
“Well, Mr. Villers, what would you say to a job?” Villers looked startled. “You were a soldier, and a detective, and a very good one, I understand. You ferreted out our secret, after all. Now, what would you say to… mmm, shall we say a captain’s commission? Gate Security must be rebuilt, after all….”
Tom nodded sympathetically as he saw temptation warring with impulse on the other man’s face. That wouldn’t only make Villers an important man; it would guarantee his children’s positions in the Commonwealth, too. Nepotism was an established mode of operation here. He’d have the power to push their careers forward as well, and he’d have a set of powerful patrons backing him while he did it.
“Can I think about it?” he said, with small beads of sweat on the dark brown skin of his forehead. “Sir.”
“By all means, Mr. Villers. By all means. Take as much time as you wish. Your father-in-law will need you to run his establishment for a time, in any case.”
I wonder what that means? Tom thought.
“And shall I find a reward for you, Mr. Christiansen?” John Rolfe said, after the others had kissed his hand and left.
“You know better, sir,” Tom said, and helped Adrienne to her feet. What a pair of wrecks we are! “I’ve found my own.”
“Excellent, young man. And now if you will excuse me? There are a few things I must attend to. One or two, before the baptism.”
He laughed at Adrienne’s expression; Tom had to admit that it was sort of raccoon-like, with the rings of dark bruise around her eyes.
“You thought I wouldn’t know? Reckless of you to begin so soon, but then we Rolfes never were much for caution.”
They bowed over his hand. “Baciamo le mani,” Tom murmured.
“Scary,” he said when they were outside, and winced a little as his foot caught on a rug.
Adrienne’s hand closed on his arm. “Do you want to stay over?” she said. “It’s a bit of a drive back to Seven Oaks, in this weather.”
“Weather?” he said, looking down at her and grinning. “You Californians call a bit of rain weather? Why, back in North Dakota we’d call this a balmy spring evening.”
“Yah, you betcha,” she said. “And you walked through blizzards to get to school every day, with a rope tied to your waist and a St. Bernard following along behind.”
“Skis,” Tom said. “That’s all we Norski need. Skis, and an axe to beat off the wolves.” He looked up; Tully was waiting, standing behind Sandra’s chair. “Heck, Roy can drive. Roy! You want to crash at our place?”
“Hell, yes, Kemosabe,” the smaller man said. “We can talk about what we’ll build out on our place… where we’re really out in the country.”
“Sounds good,” Tom said. “Let’s go. I want to get home.” He caught Adrienne’s eye and laughed softly. “Nice-sounding word, after all the goddamned adventures, isn’t it?”
“You said it.”
Sergei Lermontov was sweating slightly, despite the fact that the temperature inside the great metal room was barely fifty degrees. The wreckage had long since been cleared away and the damaged structures removed, but the echoing emptiness of what had been a bustling nexus for so long was a reproach in itself.
Although not so much so as the armed guards, he thought. And the sentence of death with conditional stay of execution.
Beside him, Ralph Barnes made a final adjustment to the control console. A stroke of luck there, that he was the one to interrogate me and take my offer of a new Gate to the Rolfe. Like most Americans, Barnes was sentimental about persons he’d come to know as persons.
A metal framework outlined the area where the Gate had stood for so long; control cables ran to it, and to a cat’s cradle of leads all around it.
“You must understand, sir,” he said. “The wave form—”
“Mr. Lermontov,” John Rolfe VI said softly.
He sat at his ease in a padded chair, comfortable in his alpaca greatcoat and ascot. The armed men behind him somehow looked entirely at one with his conservative elegance.
“I find myself growing less patient as I grow older,” he said. “I’m also content to let you experts handle these matters. Leaders motivate their subordinates, and the subordinates act. A division of labor.”
“Blackmailer,” Ralph Barnes growled, shooting him a glance from under shaggy brown brows.
John Rolfe arched one of his. “Why, Mr. Barnes, you wrong me,” he said, with a slight sardonic smile. “Didn’t I shower you with rewards and praise? You are here entirely as a volunteer this time.”
“And you said you’d shoot Sergei if he couldn’t give you back your toy,” Ralph said. “What’m I supposed to do, let you kill him? Besides, Sergei could do it alone. It would just take longer, and maybe something would go wrong and everyone would get hurt.”