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'm here fighting the Naxids.'
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.
Sula smiled at him.
'I guess you know me well enough to buy me a new wardrobe, if you still want to.'
The meeting with Julien's father, Sergius Bakshi, occurred three days after the madcap carriage race, on an afternoon dark with racing clouds. Sula dressed for the meeting 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 her natural shade of blonde. She wore a military-style jacket in a tone of green that wasn't quite the viridian of a Fleet uniform, but which 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 in retaliation for the firebombing of a Motor Patrol vehicle in the Old Third, and then they'd gone into the Old Third and shot about a dozen people at random.
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.
'Now
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 to 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 Sula 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 very 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 and 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 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. I
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 that 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 kindly. 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.
Bakshi continued. 'These are friends who may be interested in any proposition you may have for us.' He nodded at the Terran. 'This is Mister 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.
Sula knew, through Casimir, that the four were a kind of informal commission that regulated illegal activities on this 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, Mister Macnamara.'
Four pairs of eyes flicked to Macnamara, then back to Sula. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she resisted the impulse to clear her throat.
Bakshi folded large, doughy hands on the table in front of him and spoke. 'What may we do for you, Lady Sula?'
Sula's answer was swift. 'Help me kill Naxids.'
Even that request, which Sula hoped might startle them a little, failed to provoke a reaction.
Bakshi deliberately folded his hands on the table before him. His eyes never left hers. 'Assuming for the sake of argument that this is remotely possible,' he said, 'why should we agree to attack a group so formidable that even the Fleet has failed to defeat them?'
Sula looked down at him. If he wanted a staring contest, she thought, then she'd give him one.
'The Fleet isn't done with the Naxids,' she said. 'Not by a long shot. I don't know whether you have the means to verify this or not, but I know that even now the Fleet is raiding deep into Naxid territory. The Fleet is ripping the guts out of the rebellion while the Naxid force is stuck here guarding the capital.'
Bakshi gave a subtle movement of his shoulders that might have been a strangled shrug. 'Possibly,' he said. 'But that doesn't alter the fact that the Naxids are
'How do we know?' Tan-dau's voice was a mumble. 'How do we know that she is not sent by the Naxids to provoke us?'
It was difficult to be certain to whom Tan-dau addressed the question, but Sula decided to intercept it. 'I killed a couple of thousand Naxids at Magaria,' Sula said. 'You may remember that I received a decoration for it. I don't think they'd let me switch sides even if I wanted to.'
'Lady Sula is supposed to be dead,' Tan-dau said, to no one in particular.
'Well.' Sula permitted herself a slight smile. 'You know how accurate the Naxids have been about everything else.'
'How do we know she is the real…' Tan-dau's sentence drifted away before he could finish it. Sula waited until it was clear that no more words were coming, and then answered.
