Tan-dau and Sagas said nothing. Patel gave a rueful grin. “Sorry the love thing didn’t work out, princess,” he said. “It could have been fun.”
“The Naxids are already nibbling at your businesses,” Sula said. “When rationing starts and you go into the food business, you’ll be competing directly with the clans the Naxids have set in power. It’s then that you’ll be challenging them directly, and they’ll have to destroy you.”
Bakshi gave her another of his dead-eyed looks. “What makes you think we’ll involve ourselves in illegal foodstuffs?”
“A market in illegal foodstuffs is inevitable,” Sula said. “If you don’t put yourselves at the head of it, you’ll lose control to the people who do.”
There was another long silence. Bakshi spread his hands. “There’s nothing we can do, my lady.” He turned to Casimir and gave him a deliberate stone-eyed look. “Our associates can do nothing either.”
“Of course not, Sergius,” Casimir murmured.
Sula looked down her nose at them each in turn, but none offered anything more. Her hands clenched behind her back, the nails scoring her palms. She wanted to offer more arguments, weaker ones even, but knew it would be useless and did not.
“I thank you then, for agreeing to hear me,” she said, and turned to Tan-dau. “I appreciate your offering this place for the meeting.”
“Fortune attend you, my lady,” Tan-dau said formally.
Fortune was precisely what had just deserted her. She gave a brisk military nod to the room in general and made a proper military turn.
Macnamara anticipated her and stepped to the rear of the room, holding the door for her. She marched out with her shoulders still squared, her blond head high.
Bastards,she thought.
There was a thud behind her as Macnamara tried to close the door just as Casimir tried to walk through the doorway. Macnamara glared at Casimir as he shouldered his way out and fell into step alongside Sula.
“That went better than I’d expected,” he said.
She gave him a look. “I don’t need irony right now.”
“Not irony,” he said pleasantly. “That could have gone alot worse.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Oh, I knew they wouldn’t agree with you this time around. But they listened to you. You gave them things to think about. Everything you said will be a part of their calculations from now on.” He looked at her, amused appreciation glittering in his eyes. “You’re damned impressive, I must say. Standing there all alone staring at those people as if they’d just come up from the sewer smelling of shit.” He shook his head. “And I have no idea how you do that thing with your voice. I could have sworn when I met you that you were born in Riverside.”
“There’s a reason I got picked for this job,” Sula said.
And her ability to do accents wasn’t it. She and Martinez had just blown apart and she’d thought that killing people or getting killed herself would be a welcome distraction from her miseries. Her idiot superiors had taken her, and now here she was.
There was a moment of silence as they all negotiated the front door of the club. This time, at least, Macnamara didn’t try to slam the door on Casimir. Score one, she thought, for civility.
The delay at the door gave Julien time to catch up. He caught his breath in the copper-plated corridor outside, then turned to Sula. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Better luck next time, hey?”
“I’m sure you did your best,” Sula said. It was all she could do not to snarl.
“Tan-dau got wounded in an assassination attempt last year, and he’s not game for new adventures,” Julien said. “Sagas isn’t a Daimong to take chances. And Pops,” he gave a rueful smile, and shook his head, “Pops didn’t get where he is by sticking his neck out.”
“And Patel?” Sula asked.
Julien laughed. “He’d have followed you, you heard him. He’d like to fight the Naxids just for the love, like he said. But the commission’s rulings are always unanimous, and he had to fall in line.”
They descended the moving stairs. Sula marched to the doors and walked out onto the street. The pavement was wet, and a fresh smell was in the air: there had been a brief storm while she was conducting her interview.
“Where’s a cab rank?” Sula asked.
“Around the corner,” said Julien, pointing. He hesitated. “Say—I’m sorry about today, you know. I’d like to make it up to you.”
Can you raise an army?Sula thought savagely. But she turned to him and said, “That would be very nice.”
“Tomorrow night?” Julien said. “Come to my restaurant for dinner? It’s called Two Sticks, and it’s off Harmony Square. The cook’s a Cree and he’s brilliant.”
Sula had to wonder if the Cree chef thought it was his own restaurant, not Julien’s, but this was no time to ask questions of that kind. She agreed to join Julien for dinner at 2401.
“Shall I pick you up?” Casimir said. “Or are you still in transit from one place to another?”
“I’malways in transit,” Sula lied, “and now you know why. I’ll meet you at the club.”
“Care to go out tonight?”
Sula decided she was too angry to play a cliqueman’s girl. “Not tonight,” she said. “I’ve got to assassinate a judge.”
Casimir was taken aback. “Good luck with that,” he said.
She kissed him. “See you tomorrow.”
She walked with Macnamara to the cab rank and got a cab. He sat next to her in the seat, arms crossed, staring straight forward. One muscle in his jaw worked continually.
“So what’syour problem?” Sula demanded.
“Nothing,” he said. “My lady.”
“Good!” she said. “Because if there’s anything I don’t need, it’smore fucking problems. ”
They sat in stony silence. Sula had the cab let her off two streets from her apartment. Rain had started again, and she had to sprint, her jacket pulled over her head. One-Step, sharing a vendor’s awning with a few others caught in the downpour, did a double take as she ran past, her blond hair flying.
Inside, she tossed the wet wig onto the back of her chair and combed her short, dyed hair. She considered checking the news, but decided against it, knowing the news would only further irritate her.
In the end she decided a long bath was in order. Followed by her latest book of mathematical puzzles, and possibly a book she’d acquired at a stall two days ago,The Diplomatic History of Napoleonic Europe, something obviously printed by a history student for his own use, bound cheaply, then discarded. It was just the sort of page-turner she most enjoyed.
She took the book into the bath with her and found it an ambiguous comfort. Compared with the likes of Paul II or Godoy, her own superiors seemed positively…brilliant.
After her bath, she wrapped herself in a robe and went to the front room. The rain was still pouring down. For a long moment she watched herju yao pot as the crackled glaze reflected the beads of water that snaked down the window.
While watching the pot an idea occurred to her.
“Ah. Hah,” she said. The idea seemed an attractive one. She examined it carefully, probing it with her mind like a tongue examining the gap left by a missing tooth.
The idea began to seem better and better. She got a fresh piece of paper and a pen and outlined it, along with all possible ramifications.
There wasn’t a problem that she could see. Nor a way it could be traced to her.
Perhaps she could credit the influence of Metternich or Castlereagh or Talleyrand for the idea. Perhaps the afternoon of staring into Sergius Bakshi’s predator-fish eyes and wondering what was going on behind them.
Or perhaps the scheme came entirely from her own mind, from the mind that floated with the reflection of the raindrops on the window. In which case, she really had to admire her brain.
She destroyed the paper, leaving no evidence of her scheme. She looked at her right thumb, the thick pad of scar tissue where her print had once been.