Whatever the reason, it couldn’t have involved money or prestige or patronage in the Fleet, otherwise Martinez would have made Terza his first choice, not his second. There had to be some reason why he’d approached Sula first.
And then it occurred to her that there need be no reason other than a nasty little game that Martinez chose to play with the hearts of women. Months ago, the cadets in the duty room had told her of his success in love—was it possible to be a seducer without despising the object of seduction? Perhaps Martinez played Sula for his own amusement. It was Sula who resumed contact with Martinez after months of separation, and now she wondered if Martinez had viewed this as an opportunity for seducing one woman while quietly courting another.
The musicians struck a decisive chord: Sula’s eyes leaped to the stage. A moment of decision had been reached. The singer lowered the dagger, her hand trembling. Tears glittered in her eyes. Her lips caressed the names of her children.
Then the singer called out the name of her man, and the dagger flashed high again as another chord rang out.
And perhaps, Sula thought, the game had been Terza’s as well. Terza had seen Sula socially—had said sheadmired Sula. During that time, had Terza been aware of negotiations for the Martinez marriage? Or perhaps even initiated the negotiations?
Sula’s hand on the table formed a fist, the knuckles white. The tension in her arm made the liquid in the chilled glass tremble. Suppose, she thought, it was all Terza’s fault.
In Sula’s mind there formed the vision of a sumptuous bed, satin sheets, limbs interwoven and glowing in candlelight. For a moment she entertained the fantasy of bursting in the door, of committing massacre…
Another chord rang from the stage, and the singer’s hand lowered again, trembled, and then drove the imaginary dagger into her own belly. The derivoo cried out, stumbled, and died in song, with the name of her man on her lips.
The singer took her bows as applause rang out. A cold smile played across Sula’s lips. There was a difference, she thought, between truth and melodrama, and the singer had crossed it.
So had Sula.
She raised the chilled glass to her lips, inhaled the harsh fumes for a moment, then slammed the glass to the tabletop. Liquid splashed her fingers.
Sula rose, put money on the table, and walked out into the night.
TEN
That the Convocation was to take Wormhole 2 to Zarafan was a coincidence: Zanshaa’s place in its orbit currently made Wormhole 2 the closest of Zanshaa’s eight wormholes, and thus the Convocation was much more likely to be out of the system by the time the Naxids arrived.
But Zarafan was only ten days’ hard acceleration from Zanshaa, and too close for the Convocation’s safety: a Naxid expeditionary force might just decide to venture that way. It was then that Lord Chen fully earned every septile the Martinez family was paying him, by standing in the Joint Evacuation Committee (which included the Fleet Control Board) and moving that the Convocation simply keep on going once they reached Zarafan and continue all the way to Laredo.
Laredo was three months away at reasonably comfortable accelerations, and tucked into a fairly obscure corner of the empire. There were many more likely places for the Naxids to search for the Convocation than Laredo, and if the enemy moved in that direction they would have to make a significant commitment of resources, there would be plenty of warning, and the Fleet would have time to counter the enemy advance.
In addition, the small squadron of frigates being built at Laredo shipyards by Lord Martinez should be complete by then, and able to aid the Convocation’s defense. The Convocation would be withdrawing toward its supports.
Lord Chen’s motion was passed by the committee. Lords Saïd and Tork insisted on secrecy, even from other members of the Convocation; and it was Lady Seekin who suggested that false rumors of the Convocation’s destination should be spread.
So it was that the next day the Convocation found itself voting to evacuate to a destination kept secret even from them. There was a good deal of grumbling, but a rumor that the Convocation was due to convene on Esley, with its spectacular vistas and luxurious resorts, helped to reconcile the lords convocate to their collective exile.
At Lord Saïd’s urging, the Convocation voted to evacuate in three days’ time, and to declare that any convocate who remained behind would be declared a traitor. Each convocate was allowed two servants or family members, and the rest of the household would have to find their own transport.
To Esley. Or to Harzapid, headquarters of the Fourth Fleet. Suddenly there weretwo rumors.
Lord Chen, fortunately, had no worries about losing Terza in all the confusion. She would be flying to Laredo on her own, on Lord Roland Martinez’s family yacht, unaware of the fact that her father would probably arrive ahead of her.
It was on the day prior to departure, during a debate on finance, that Lord Chen managed his own personal triumph. The evacuation of Zanshaa meant that the war wouldn’t end soon, with a huge battle that would crush the Naxids and reestablish order throughout the empire. Instead the war would continue, along with the appropriations necessary to keep it going. Thus far the empire had kept running through a series of emergency spending measures backed by currency reserves and special issues of bonds. But the reserves were gone, the price of bonds had crashed after the news of Magaria became general knowledge, and the government was now simply creating money on a day-by-day basis to meet its obligations. No revenue was expected from the third of the empire controlled by the Naxids. Inflation was heading toward double-digit levels. Once the empire was informed that the government had fled Zanshaa, who then was going to accept its currency? The bonds might well be worth more as wallpaper than at their face value.
In normal times the government was run on a relatively small budget. The Peers took care of most minor matters at their own expense. The rest was paid for by rental of government property, distribution of energy from ring stations and other sources, sale of antimatter to private shipping, a tax on telecommunications, and an excise tax on interstellar commerce.
All this was clearly inadequate, and had been from the first day of the war. But the alternative was to tax those who actually possessed wealth, and these were for the most part Peers and Peer-owned enterprises. Peers had always been reluctant to tax themselves; and for the most part they saw no reason why mere civil war should alter this condition. They pointed out that they already spent a great deal of capital in the public interest, maintaining roads, creating water and sewer projects, managing charities, sponsoring theatrical events, and the like. The lords convocate became desperate to raise money by any means other than direct taxation, the result being an erratic series of consumption taxes—on salt, on beverages, on use of warehouse space in government-controlled ring stations.
That last intrusive decree had driven Lord Chen into a frenzy. As a shipowner he was already subject to a flat fifteen percent tax on the value of any cargo he discharged onto a ring station—to have to payagain, to store the same cargo, was ruinous.
Yet most of the Convocation were not shipowners, and in their desperation tried to double the excise tax to thirty percent. At this rate of taxation interstellar commerce was simply unprofitable: no ships would fly. Lord Chen and every other convocate with shipping interests pointed this out repeatedly, and in the end staged a filibuster that managed to talk the subject to death.
The impending evacuation of Zanshaa had removed the last of the die-hards’ excuses for believing the war would be a short one, and in the Convocation’s last session before its departure from the capital, a bill was placed before the house to pay through the war by means of an income tax of one percent. Traditionalists insisted that this was worse than revolution—even the Naxids, vile as they were, would not be so vicious and so radical as to place a tax on equity. Lord Saïd assured the lords convocate that the measure was a temporary one only.