“Hey!” he said in surprise. “You’re really a blond!”
She gave a slow laugh. “That’s the least of my mysteries.”
The fear had gone. That surprised her because in the past fear had always been an element. Perhaps Martinez had liberated her from that.
Or perhaps she was unafraid because she still knew some things that Casimir didn’t. She still had some cards to play. She was still in charge, whether he knew it or not.
An hour or so later she decided to play a card or two, and told the room light to go on. Casimir gave a start and shielded his eyes. Sula crawled out of bed and looked for the package that held the clothing she’d worn at the beginning of the evening.
“Gredel, what are youdoing?” Casimir complained.
“I have something to show you.” She put on her jacket and triggered the sleeve display. She activated the video wall and beamed the jacket’s memory to the wall. “Look at this.”
Casimir blinked uncertainly at the schematics of the Sidney Mark One. He screwed up his face. “Whatis that, anyway?”
“Tomorrow’s edition ofResistance. ”
“Tomorrow’s?What are you—” He looked at her, and as comprehension entered his eyes, his mouth opened in shock.
Sula dug in an inner pocket and removed the item she’d taken from the storage locker earlier in the evening. She opened the slim plastic case and showed Casimir her Fleet ID.
“I’m Caroline, Lady Sula,” she said. “I represent the secret army.”
There was a moment of silence. Casimir squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment, as if in disbelief, and then opened them.
“Shit,” he said.
“Do you still want to buy me a new wardrobe?” Sula smiled at him. “You can if you like.”
EIGHTEEN
The meeting with Julien’s father occurred three days after the madcap carriage race, on an afternoon dark with racing clouds. Sula dressed for it with care. In order that she look more like the person in the Fleet ID, she left off her contact lenses and bought a shoulder-length wig in something like her natural shade of blond. She wore a military-style jacket in a tone of green that wasn’t quite the viridian of a Fleet uniform but that she hoped suggested it. She brought Macnamara as an aide, or perhaps a bodyguard, and bought him a similar jacket. She reminded herself to walk with the straight-backed, braced posture of the Fleet officer and not the less formal slouch she’d adopted as Gredel.
She wore a pistol stuck down her waistband in back. Macnamara had a sidearm in a shoulder holster.
These were less for defense than to shoot themselves, or each other, in the event things went wrong.
There was a lot of shooting going on these days. The Naxids had shot sixty-odd people for distributing the latest copy ofResistance — apparently the plans for the Sidney Mark One had made them more than usually homicidal. Someone had firebombed a Motor Patrol vehicle in the Old Third, where resentment had obviously not died since the massacre, and eleven Torminel were shot and more rounded up.
The meeting took place in a private club called Silk Winds on the second floor of an office building in a Lai-own neighborhood. Casimir met her on the pavement out front, dressed in his long coat and carrying his walking stick. His eyes went wide as he saw her, and then he grinned and gave one of his elaborate bows. From his bent position he looked up at her.
“You still don’t look much like a math teacher,” he said.
“Good thing then,” she said in her drawling Peer voice. His eyebrows lifted in surprise and he straightened.
“Nowthat’s not the voice I heard in bed the other night.”
From over her shoulder Sula heard Macnamara’s intake of breath. Great, Sula thought, now she’d have a scandalized and sulking team member.
“Don’t be vulgar,” she admonished, still in her Peer voice.
Casimir bowed again. “Apologies, my lady.”
He led her into the building. The lobby was cavernous, brilliant with polished copper, and featured a twice-life-size bronze statue of a Lai-own holding, for some allegorical reason beyond Sula’s comprehension, a large tetrahedron. Uniformed Lai-own security guards in blue jackets and tall pointed shakos gave them searching looks but did not approach. A moving stair took Sula to the second floor and the polished copper door of the club, on which had been placed a card informing them that the club had been closed for a private function.
Casimir swung the door open and led her and Macnamara into the shadow-filled club. Faint sunlight from the darkened sky gleamed fitfully off copper fittings and polished wood. Lai-own security—this time without the silly hats—appeared from the gloom and checked everyone thoroughly for listening devices. They found the sidearms but didn’t touch them. Apparently they discounted the possibility that Sula and her party might be assassins.
Casimir, adjusting his long coat after the search, led them to a back room. He knocked on a nondescript door.
Sula smoothed the lapel of her jacket, straightened her shoulders and reminded herself to act like a senior fleet commander inspecting a motley group of dock workers. She couldn’t give orders to these people: she had to use a different kind of authority. Being a Peer and a Fleet officer were the only cards she had left to play. She had to be the embodiment of the Fleet and the legitimate government and the whole body of Peers, and she would have to carry them all along through the sheer weight of her own expectation.
Julien opened the door and his eyes went wide when he saw Sula. Suddenly nervous, he backed hastily from the door.
Sula walked into the room, her spine straight, hands clasped behind her. Iown this room, she told herself, but then she saw the eyes of her audience and her heart gave a lurch.
Two Terrans, a Lai-own, and a Daimong sat in the shadowy, dark-paneled room, facing her from behind a table that looked like a slab of pavement torn from the street. Nature had made the Daimong expressionless, but the others were so blank-faced they might have all been carved from the same block of granite.
She heard Macnamara stamp to a halt behind her right shoulder, a welcome support. Casimir stepped around them and stood to one side of the room.
“Gentlemen,” he said, and again made his elaborate bow. “May I present Lieutenant the Lady Sula.”
“I’m Sergius Bakshi,” said one of the Terrans. He looked nothing like his son Julien: he had a round face and a razor-cut mustache and the round, unfeeling eyes of a great predator fish. He turned to the Lai-own. “This is Am Tan-dau, who has very kindly arranged for us to meet here.”
Tan-dau did not look kind. He slumped in the padded chair that cradled his keel-like breastbone, his bright, fashionable clothes wrinkled on him as they might on a sack of feathers. His skin was dull, and nictating membranes were half deployed across his eyes. He looked a hundred years old, but Sula could tell from the dark feathery hair on each side of his head that he was still young in years.
Bakshi continued. “These are friends who may be interested in any proposition you may have for us.” He nodded at the Terran. “This is Mr. Patel.” A young man with glossy hair that curled over the back of his collar, Patel didn’t even blink in response when Sula offered him a small nod.
The Daimong’s name was Sagas. His gray-white face had been permanently set by nature into a look of howling anguish.
Sula knew, through Casimir, that the four were a kind of informal commission that regulated illegal activities on the south end of Zanshaa City. Bakshi’s word carried the most weight, if only because he’d managed to reach middle age without being killed.
“Gentlemen,” Sula drawled in her Peer voice. “May I present my aide, Mr. Macnamara.”
Four pairs of eyes flicked to Macnamara, then back to Sula. Her throat was suddenly dry, and she resisted the impulse to reveal her nervousness by clearing it.