“Mmm,” said Heris, considering just how Cecelia’s sister could have that much influence with the Crown. Her train of thought came out before she censored it. “Does . . . uh . . . Ronnie look much like his father?”
Lady Cecelia snorted. “Yes, but that doesn’t answer your real question. Ronnie’s an R.E.—” At Heris’s blank look she explained. “A Registered Embryo, surely you have them?”
“I’ve heard of them.” It cost more than a year’s salary to have an R.E., and what you were paying for was not technology but insurance. In this instance it also meant that Ronnie had not resulted from a casual liaison.
“Anyway,” Lady Cecelia went on, “my sister Berenice decided that I should take Ronnie on. She never has approved of the way I live, and I was there, handy.”
“Because Captain Olin ran late,” Heris said.
“Yes. Normally I’m at the capital only for the family business meeting—in and out as fast as possible. This year I missed the meeting—which meant my proxy voted my shares, and not as I would have wished—and arrived just in time for Ronnie’s disgrace. These are not unconnected; it was apparently in celebrating his first opportunity to vote his own shares at the meeting that he overindulged, and came to brag about the singer.”
“So—your sister had your yacht redecorated—”
“And she is paying for Ronnie’s expenses. Up to a point. I’m supposed to be grateful.” Lady Cecelia made a face; Heris wondered what had caused the bad feeling in her family in the first place. She waited in attentive silence, in case Lady Cecelia wanted to say more, but the older woman turned to ask the attendants to bring the sweet. Heris was glad to see the last of the fruit and cheese, but not really interested in the sweet. She wanted a few hours’ sleep.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she began. “I really need to check with the refitting crew aboard, and my watch officer.”
“Oh—certainly. Go ahead.” Lady Cecelia’s expression was carefully neutral. Did she think Heris was disgusted with her? Heris felt a surge of sympathy for the older woman. She grinned.
“I have a wager to win, remember?”
That got the open smile she hoped for, and Lady Cecelia raised her glass in salute. “We shall see,” she said. “I have the feeling you’ll make an excellent horsewoman.”
Heris laughed. “As the luck falls, and my ability to push the refitters succeeds. See you later.”
Lady Cecelia watched her captain leave the room, and wondered what the woman really thought. Clearly she had more qualifications than shipboard skills alone: she was well read, she wore good clothes, she knew what to do with the array of eating utensils common to fine dining, and she had surprising tact. On the face of it, she would have made a far more compatible sister than Berenice. She let herself imagine the two of them riding side by side across the training fields . . . relaxing together over dinner. No. This woman never relaxed, not really, while she . . . Lady Cecelia allowed herself a relaxed sigh. Her captain might snatch a few hours’ sleep, but would doubtless dream of wiring diagrams and structural steel. She herself would follow this excellent dinner with a relaxing stroll in the hotel’s excellent garden, and then sleep as long as she liked in her luxurious bed with all its inventive amenities.
The stroll and the engineered scents in the garden eased the last of the tension her nephew’s rudeness had put in her shoulders, and she slipped into the warmed, perfumed bed contentedly. She could hear Myrtis checking all the room’s controls, murmured that she’d like it a bit cooler, and was asleep before the cooler draft had time to reach her cheek.
Morning brought complications, as she’d expected. This was not the first time one of her employees had died, just the first on her yacht, and by far the most violent. She had already contacted the legal firm recommended by her family’s own solicitors; the bright-eyed young man in formal black had been waiting downstairs by the concierge’s desk when she emerged from her bedroom and called for breakfast. She looked at the local time, and whistled. Mid-morning of mainshift, and he had time to wait on her? She checked her captain’s whereabouts while he was on the way up, and found, as she expected, that Serrano was back at work on the yacht.
He was talking almost before he got into the room. “Now, Lady Cecelia, I’m sure you’re simply devastated by this, but let me assure you that our firm is experienced—”
She stopped him with a gesture. “Wait. I’m going to eat breakfast, and you’re welcome to join me. But no business until afterwards, though in fact I’m not devastated, and if you weren’t experienced, you wouldn’t have been recommended.” That stopped him, though he fidgeted all through breakfast, refusing to eat. Finally his nervous twitches got to her, and she gave up on the diced crustaceans in a puree of mixed tubers. . . . It was mediocre anyway, too heavily flavored with dill and some local spice that burnt her tongue without offering a taste worth the pain. She finished with a large pastry, and a silver bowl of some red jam—quite flavorful—and nodded to him. “Go on, now; what’s the damage?”
“Your crewman . . . that was killed . . .” He seemed stunned that she wasn’t falling apart. What did he think, that older women never saw death?
“Environmental technician Nils Iklind,” Lady Cecelia recited. “He disobeyed the captain’s orders to wear his protective suit, opened a badly overfull sludge tank, and died of hydrogen sulfide poisoning. You have seen the data cubes?”
“Yes, ma’am . . . Lady Cecelia. Our senior partners reviewed them, and feel that you have a very strong case for accidental death.”
“So what is the problem?”
“Well . . .” The young man fidgeted some more, and Lady Cecelia began to compose the memo she would send to the family solicitors explaining why this firm was not suitable. “It’s the union, ma’am. They think it’s the captain’s fault for sending him into a dangerous area—for inadequate supervision in allowing him to enter the area without his suit on. Particularly since your other crewman also did not have his suit properly on, and says that all the captain did was tell them to meet there, suited up.”
Cecelia sniffed. “And how was the captain to know that he would open the hatch before she got there? Why didn’t he wait?”
“That’s not the point. They’re inclined to argue that the captain should have been there to enforce the order to suit up. Or at least another officer. On larger vessels, of course, there would be a supervisor. Technically, Iklind held a supervisory rating, but he hadn’t been acting in that capacity. And the maintenance logs and emergency drills—”
“That was Captain Olin’s misconduct; Captain Serrano told me she had begun training crew and reestablishing the correct procedures.”
“But she hadn’t completed that process yet, and that’s what the union is arguing. I’ll need to interview the captain—”
“She’s aboard the ship, overseeing the refitting. You’d have to suit up.” A chime sounded; when she looked, the comunit flashed discreetly. “Excuse me a moment.”
“It might be the office for me,” he said, but Cecelia waved him to silence as she pressed the button to her ear.
“Sorry to bother you,” Captain Serrano said, “but we have a new problem that may help solve an old one.”
“What’s that?” Cecelia asked. The young man across from her looked as if he were trying to grow his ears longer; it gave him a very odd expression.
“Mr. Brynear has found . . . items . . . in one of the scrubbers. It might explain why Iklind risked going in unsuited, and it might explain why Captain Olin connived at a fake maintenance procedure.” Her captain said no more; Cecelia hoped it was because she assumed her employer’s innocence and intelligence both.