“I see,” Martinez said. He swirled his brandy as he considered PJ’s decision. “But Lord Pierre is a loyalist convocate,” he said, “and the Naxids must have him on their list of people they’d very much like to…” He searched for an appropriate euphemism. “Interview.And I can be reasonably certain that I’m also on the list, and now you’re related tome as well.” He looked at PJ carefully. “I don’t really think you’d be safe.”
PJ flapped away the danger with his hand. “Pierre thinks I’ll be all right. I’m only a cousin, after all. And it’s not as if Iknow anything…”
“There may be a great deal of discomfort before the Naxids find that out. And besides, you could be held hostage.”
PJ put down his glass and straightened his jacket. “As if anyone in the empire would alter their course of action on the chance thatI might be killed.”
Martinez had to concede that PJ probably had scored a point.
“Gareth,” PJ said, “it’s the only way I can help. It’swar, it’s critical that I do…something.If all I can accomplish in the war is to look after some property and some farms and pensioned-off servants while Pierre is away, then that’s what I’ll do.”
Martinez narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t volunteered for anything else, have you?”
PJ blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You haven’t volunteered to work for the Legion, or the Intelligence Section, or some similar outfit?”
PJ seemed genuinely surprised, but then turned thoughtful. “You think they’d take me?”
I hope not, Martinez thought. “I shouldn’t think so,” he said.
PJ reached for his glass and took a long, morose drink. “No. I’ll just be living in a wing of the palace while the rest of it’s closed up, and making sure that my old nurse and a few hundred other folk are looked after.”
To Martinez, it seemed as if PJ was genuinely determined. “Well,” he said, raising his glass, “here’s luck to you.”
“Thank you, Gareth.”
As Martinez touched his lips with his glass, the front door boomed open and a gust of wind riffled papers on the side table. Martinez glanced through the pocket door to see Roland in the hall wiping rain water from his jacket.
“Damn it!” Roland called. “I wish I’d thought to take my overcoat. It was sunny when I left. Is that brandy?”
He strode into the parlor, water droplets clinging to his hair, poured himself mig brandy, and took a deep drink.
“Sempronia’s married,” he said. “I just came from the ceremony, such as it was.”
“I thought we weren’t speaking to Sempronia,” Martinez said.
“We’re not.” Roland took another drink. “But I was required to sign the papers permitting the whole thing to take place. Which Ihad to do, because Proney was threatening either to travel with Shankaracharya as his mistress, or to join the Fleet as a common recruit and serve as his orderly.”
Martinez concealed a smile. “She hasn’t lost her spirit, I see.”
“No. She has her young man thoroughly under her thumb, from what I could see.” There was a cynical glimmer in Roland’s eye. “In ten years, she’ll look brilliant and he’ll look fifty.”
Martinez looked at his brother. “Now you’re the only one of us unmarried,” he said. “And you’re the oldest. It hardly seems fair.”
Roland smiled into his brandy glass. “I haven’t found the right woman.”
“Why not?” Martinez said. “I’m surprised you didn’t try to marry Terza yourself.”
PJ, with his recent marital wounds, seemed uncomfortable at a question concerning the rational organization of matrimony.
Roland waved a hand. “I prefer to keep my arrangements with Lord Chen on a business basis,” he said, then shrugged. “Besides, I’d make Terza unhappy, and you won’t.”
Martinez gazed at Roland in pure curiosity. “How do you know that?”
Roland patted Martinez on the shoulder. “Because you’re a decent person who gives everything his best,” he said, “and I’m a cad who would put Terza aside the second I’d fathered an heir on her and could find a better match.”
Martinez found himself absolutely at a loss for a reply. Roland finished his brandy and smiled.
“Shall we call Walpurga and have our supper?” he said. “Signing away a sister makes me hungry.”
Supper was in the smaller family dining room, a place with yellow silk wallpaper and elaborately carved furniture inlaid with bits of white shell. PJ and Walpurga dined in amity, though without any expressions of affection beyond Walpurga’s offhand, “Pass the sauce, dearest.” Roland discoursed on political events. Martinez, when asked, said that he found marriage surprisingly congenial, something he would have said even if it weren’t true.
When Martinez returned to the hotel he found Terza lying on the bed still in the light trousers and silk jacket she’d worn to her tropical destination, curled around a calla lily she’d plucked from one of her arrangements. There was a satisfied, rather secretive smile on her face.
Martinez paused in the doorway and absorbed this sight. “What are you thinking of?” Martinez asked.
Pleasure twitched at the corners of her mouth. “Our child.”
He felt a shimmering warmth in his blood. He crossed the space between them in a few steps, sat on the mattress, and touched her arm. “You can’t know you’re pregnant already, can you?”
“No. In fact I’m reasonably certain I’m not.” Terza looked up at him, and shifted to place her head in his lap. “But I think I will be before you leave. I have a…sense of impending fertility.”
Martinez stroked the fragrant mass of her hair. Her cheek was warm against his hand.
“Four days,” he said.
She sighed. Her dark eyes sought his. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve been very good to me.”
He was puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“The marriage wasn’t your idea. You could have taken any resentment out on me—I was the one available, after all.” She took his hand and kissed it. “But you’ve tried to make me happy. I appreciate that.”
Andareyou happy? That was the next question, but Martinez hesitated to ask it. There was an air of truth that hung in the room at the moment, and he didn’t want to tempt fate.
“I can’t imagine wanting to hurt you,” he said.
She kissed his hand again. “Four days,” she said, and smiled up at him. “We’re lucky to have so many.”
“We are.” He stroked her cheek as a warm tenderness rose in his blood. “I’m a lucky man.”
The luckiest man in the universe,he thought, remembering Sula’s words.
He wondered if Sula would say the same now.
The day after the Convocation left Zanshaa, the new Military Governor, Fleet Commander Pahn-ko, announced that, as a safety measure, martial law was to be imposed on all of Zanshaa and that the accelerator ring was to be completely evacuated within the next twenty-nine days. As the ring that circled the entire planet possessed an enormous internal volume that housed nearly eighty million citizens, this announcement created something of a logistical challenge.
It could have been worse, Sula thought. The interior spaces of the ring, enormous but lacking in charm, were the natural habitat of the poor. Yet the authorities hadn’t wanted a critical installation like the Zanshaa ring, with its port and military facilities, its administrative centers and its quantities of dangerous antimatter, to house unstable social elements, and these elements tended to lurk among the lowly. Rents had been artificially kept high and the inhabitants relentlessly middle-class, drawn to the ring by certain privileges, such as excellent educational facilities for their children and the chance to profit as middlemen on interstellar trade, or as contractors for military or civilian transport. Most of the ring was in fact empty, with no water, power, or heat available for anyone trying to live on the cheap in the uninhabited space.