“Tailor?”
“Lord Commander Enderby is going to decorate you in a ceremony tomorrow. You can’t show up in what you’re wearing.”
“Oh. Right.”Decorate? she thought.
“I got your height and weight and so on out of your records. The tailor’s put a uniform together from that, but you’ll still need the final fitting.”
Elastic snapped around Sula’s ankles as the riggers knelt and put slippers on her feet. The vac suit was carried off for checkout, refurbishment, sterilizing, and storage. A thought struck her. “I don’t have to wear parade dress, do I?”
“Full dress, not parade dress.”
“Oh, good. My feet and ankles are swollen from sitting all this time on that couch, and I’d hate to get fitted for a pair of boots right now.” And then she remembered.
“Decorate?”she asked.
“Medal of Merit, Second Class. You’ll be decorated with nine others, after which there will be a reception and questions from reporters.” He gave her a significant look. “The yachting press. Answer their questions fully and freely, and if you want to give credit to my brilliant plan for your success, I think it would only be just.”
Sula looked at him. This last was said in a jocular tone, but perhaps with more emphasis than necessary.
“I think I’d like to take a shower now,” she said. She knew that showers were always adjacent to the sterile ready rooms, and her whole body shrieked for soap and hot water.
“Certainly. This way.”
He directed her to the changing room and politely held the door for her.
“I’m likely be here awhile,” she said.
“Take all the time you like.” He smiled. “By the way, I arranged a furlough for you, starting in two days. It’ll last until the death of Anticipation of Victory, and then all furloughs are off anyway.”
He smiled again and let the door sigh closed behind her. Sula turned and propped the door open with one hand. He looked at her, his heavy brows raised.
“Are you always this efficient?” she asked.
Martinez tilted his head as he considered the question. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I believe I am.”
Sula, wearing her new uniform and medal, sat in the Commandery’s cadet lounge, where three separate football games blared from the video walls. She was perched on a chair of carbon- fiber rods with a lemon-flavored beverage in her hand, while Cadet Jeremy Foote lounged before her in another, deeper, overstuffed chair.
“Martinez?” Foote said. “He’s got you in his sights, has he?”
“Sights!” snorted Cadet Silva from the sofa. “Bang! Another virgin gone!”
Silva, Sula thought, was very drunk.
“Virgin?” Foote said. He turned to Sula and raised an eyebrow. “You’re not a virgin, are you? That would be original.”
“I’m pure as the void itself,” Sula said, and enjoyed the expression that crossed Foote’s face as he tried to work out exactly what she meant.
She had sought out the cadet lounge because it was one of the few places in the Commandery where an off-duty cadet was permitted. Senior officers and politicians apparently preferred to work, drink, and dine without having to rest their eyes on the gauche, ill-mannered, pimpled, and inebriated apprentice officers.
After a brief exposure to Cadet Silva, Sula was beginning to think they had a point.
“So is there anythingwrong with Martinez?” she asked.
“Nothing, if you’re attractive, female, and a shop girl,” Foote said. “He’s got money and a degree of charm and a limited sense of style, and I’m sure he gives his usual sort of companion no reason to complain. But those from a higher station in life can’t be so very impressed.” He gave Sula a significant look. “Youcould do much better, I’m sure.”
“Troglodyte!” Silva called. “That’s whatwe call him!” His voice grew excited. “Goal!Did you see that? Point forCorona! A header off the goalie’s hand!”
“Troglodyte?” Sula asked.
Foote smiled thinly and swiped at the cowlick on his blond head. “It’s those short legs of his. And the long arms. Have you noticed? He must be a throwback to some primitive form of human.”
“But he’s tall,” Sula protested.
“It’s all in his back. The legs are short.” He nodded. “Mind you, he’s got a good tailor. The cut of the jacket hides it, except it can’t hide the hands that hang almost to his knees.”
The comm unit on the wall chimed. Foote told the video walls to be quiet, rose from his chair and answered. He turned to Silva. “Package at the Fleet Office, Silva,” he said. “Needs hand delivery. Take it, will you?”
“You’re first in the queue,” Silva said.
Irritation crossed Foote’s face. “Just go, will you, Silva?”
“The score’s tied two-all,” Silva complained, but he rose, buttoned his tunic, and headed for the door.
“Breath, Silva,” reminded Foote. He tossed Silva a small silver aerosol flask, and Silva gave his palate a shot of mint. Silva tossed the flask back to Foote, who pocketed it, and Silva departed.
“Do you make a point of easing life for your drunken friends?” Sula asked as Foote resumed his seat.
Foote was surprised. “Friends help each other out,” he said. “And as for drinking, you have to do something here to keep away the boredom. For myself, I’m thinking of taking up yachting.” A thought struck him. “Why don’t weboth take it up?” he asked. “You showed real skill capturing theMidnight Runner. I’m sure you’d do well.”
Sula shook her head. “I’m not interested.”
“But why not?” Foote urged. “You’ve won the silver flashes—surely you must have considered yachting. And the Fleet will encourage you, because it’ll improve your piloting.”
Sula felt a certain comfort in the fact that Foote hadn’t checked her family history. Her membership in the Peerage was genuine enough, for all that the Sula clan had no members other than herself. Her trust fund might support a modest apartment in the High City, but would hardly extend to a yacht.
She could simply tell Foote that she hadn’t got her inheritance yet, but for some reason, she didn’t want to. The less Jeremy Foote knew about her, the better.
“I spend too much time in small boats as it is,” Sula said. “Why ask for more?”
A red-haired cadet entered then and looked at Sula in surprise. “I saw you on vid this morning,” she said. “You salvaged theRunner. ”
Foote introduced Ruth Chatterji, who wanted to know if Lord Commander Enderby was as ferocious as rumor made out. Sula said helooked ferocious enough, but hadn’t behaved with any noticeable brutality when hanging the medal around her neck.
“So tell me what it was like onMidnight Runner,” Chatterji said. “Is it true that Blitsharts got an embolism and vomited up his lungs?”
Sula rose to her feet. “I’d better go. Thanks for the chat.”
“Time for your date with the trog?” Foote said. He slouched in his chair and tossed his head back, looking at Sula under half-lowered lids as she passed. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t I show you a proper evening? I’m having dinner with my uncle tomorrow night—he’s captain of theBombardment of Delhi. He’s always keen to meet a promising officer—maybe he could do you some good.”
Sula looked down at Foote and smiled sweetly. “Captain Foote of theDelhi? ” she asked. She wrinkled her brow as if trying on a memory for size. “He’s the yachtsman?”
“Yes. That’s the fellow.”
Sula let her smile twist into an expression of distaste. “I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “I’ve always thought yachtsmen were the most boring people in the whole fucking world.”
Mean pleasure sang in Sula’s heart as she left Foote blinking in slow surprise and Chatterji staring.
Though the afternoon in the cadet lounge wasn’t without its effect. When Martinez arrived for her, she found herself looking at his legs as she walked beside him through the Commandery.
Theywere perhaps a little short, she decided.
Vipsania raised her glass. “Before we go in to supper,” she said, “I would like to salute our special guest. To Lady Sula, who so bravely and skillfully retrieved theMidnight Runner and the bodies of Captain Blitsharts and Orange.”
Martinez repressed a stab of jealousy as he raised his glass and murmured Sula’s name along with everyone else. Really, he thought, itwas his plan.
He imagined it was too much to suppose that Vipsania would ever bother to offer a toast to him. He was just her brother, after all.
But envy faded into admiration as he contemplated Sula, who stood slim and straight as a lance in the parlor of the Shelley Palace, her porcelain complexion lightly flushing at being the center of attention. Her dark green dress tunic served to heighten the intrigue of her emerald eyes. Martinez’s tailor had done a superb job with fitting the uniform, and a bath, a haircut, and modest use of cosmetic had done wonders to repair the pallor and poor skin tone that were consequences of her long, cramped journey.
Martinez touched his glass to his lips and drank to Sula with complete sincerity.
Sula raised the glass of sparkling water she’d been nursing since the start of the evening. “I would like to thank Lady Vipsania, Lord Gareth”—with a look at Martinez—“and to the entire Martinez clan for their gracious hospitality.”
Martinez modestly refrained from lifting his glass as the guests saluted him. He cast a glance about the room and saw PJ Ngeni, a few paces away, looking at Sula with glowing eyes. “Superb!” Martinez heard beneath the crowd’s murmur. “Wonderful girl!”
Martinez smiled privately.You’ll have no luck with this one, my man, he thought,unless you know the works of Kwa-Zo.
The Martinez sisters’ party seemed to be a success. Martinez saw several faces he’d first seen at Lord Pierre’s dinner party, and PJ had arrived with a couple of his male friends who were less successful than he at concealing their fundamentally decorative nature. Walpurga was in a corner of the room, laughing and smiling with an advocate she had first met at the Ngeni Palace, a man who represented the interests of the Qian clan. Sempronia was speaking near the garden door to a young brown-haired man in the viridian uniform of a Fleet lieutenant.
And Sula, Martinez saw, had become the center of a number of young men, including PJ’s two glit friends. Martinez was thinking about rescuing her when the dinner gong boomed and saved him the trouble.
He wasn’t seated near Sula, who was placed between two of the guests his sisters had poached from the Ngeni Palace, but he had a clear view of her. She was framed perfectly by the chair back, which was made of carved, ancient, darkened Esker ivory that admirably set off her pale complexion. Despite the other guests and the elaborate floral arrangements that had perfumed the air with their scent, Caroline Sula was clearly the object in the room most worth looking at.
Martinez was shifting from the dining room to the drawing room when Sempronia briefly touched him on the left arm. “This isyour fault!” she hissed. “He’s at me to join him for a walk in the garden!”
“It’s a pleasant garden,” Martinez said.
“Not with PJ in it.”
“Besides,” Martinez said, “it’s your sisters’ fault and you know it.”
