March To The Sea

'It is your duty, now that I think about it,' Roger said with a grin, then touched the Mardukan on a lower shoulder. 'Seriously, I'm not sure I dare go out there at the moment.'

'Not a problem,' the asi said. 'After all, I'm not the one they long to entice into their power.'

' 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,' ' Roger quoted with another grin. 'I'll meet you at the room after this madhouse subsides.'

'I'll see you then,' Cord agreed, and opened the door and forced his way into the crowd of shouting messengers.

'And tell Kosutic to send some spare guards down!' Pahner yelled to Kyrou as the door closed, then looked at Roger with a crooked smile. 'Ah, the joys of civilization.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Rastar shook his head over the invitations laid out on the floor.

'Some of these I can only guess at, but you're right. Whether or not we get any support is going to depend more on these invitations than any Council meeting.'

'Am I reading these right?' Roger asked. 'Do they really say something like 'and bring a date'?'

'Yes.' Rastar chuckled. 'The local custom, decadent in the eyes of my people, is to have men and women at the same dinner. The women are supposedly there to lend an air of grace to the proceedings. I think the idea is for them to keep us from spitting on the floor.'

'Bloody hell,' Roger said. 'Do they realize that one of my main advisers is a woman? And one of my senior officers, as well, for that matter?'

'I'm not sure,' Rastar said. 'But it's going to be very important for you to attend at least three of these if you hope to achieve anything here in the city. How you divide them up is going to be . . . interesting.'

'Eleanora . . . ?' the prince said plaintively.

'I'll do my best,' the chief of staff sighed. 'I wish I understood the position of women in this society better, though. I'm getting this queasy feeling that we've arrived in the middle of the suffrage movement, which means that any time a female opens her mouth in a definitive manner, as I tend to, it's going to be taken as a political statement.'

'Well, let's go on as we intend to end,' Roger told her. 'We're a mixed unit from a mixed society, and I don't intend to convey anything else, whatever the societal norms. Also, there's this story of a woman who organized the evacuation of D'Sley.'

'There are three invitations from D'Sley nobles,' Rastar noted. 'But none from a woman.'

'Julian,' Pahner said. 'Track down that story and get us some clear intel on it.'

'You think it's important?' Roger asked.

'If we have to stay and fight, it will be,' the captain said. 'If she can organize a sealift one way, she can organize one the other way.'

'Ah.' The prince smiled. 'Rastar, I get the feeling that D'Sley wasn't a democracy?'

'No,' the Northerner said. 'It was controlled by a council of nobles and a weak king. From what I've heard, the king is dead, and many of the nobles as well, but many of the commoners escaped, especially the women.'

'And they're clogging the city,' Julian added. 'That's one of the sore points at the moment—all the D'Sley refugees.'

'Just once,' Roger said, shaking his head. 'Just damned once, I would like something to go smoothly somewhere on this planet.'

'There is a sense of dejа vu here, isn't there?' O'Casey laughed. 'I'll set about divvying up these invitations with Rastar. You go discuss clothes with Matsugae. I'm going to need a clean and presentable dress or suit, as are several of the Marines. We can . . . elevate their social importance for the evening.'

'Oh, Lord,' Roger said, grabbing his head. 'Just once. Please God, just once.' He shuddered. 'Poertena. At a formal dinner? The mind boggles.'

* * *

Kostas Matsugae shook his head and grimaced.

'You really don't appreciate me enough,' he said.

'Probably not,' Roger agreed wryly. 'But we need dresses or suits for myself, Pahner, O'Casey, Kosutic, and some of the other Marines.'

'Why here? They seemed to do just fine with chameleon suits everywhere else.'

'The locals are a bit more sophisticated in K'Vaern's Cove,' Roger said. 'They deal with so many different cultures that they're more likely to notice the . . . poor condition of the uniforms, even if they don't wear clothes themselves. Unfortunately, we can't afford to create anything but the very best impression, because we need something from these guys, like a fleet of ships, so Armand wants you to coordinate with Eleanora to see to it that any appearance we present is a good one.'

'Oh, very well,' the valet said with a sudden twinkle. 'I'll think of something. There are a couple of bolts of dianda left, and I'm sure the locals have some of that serge-like material I found at Diaspra, if nothing else. And I've already seen some very nice wall hangings and tapestries here, so if I look really hard . . .'

His voice trailed off thoughtfully, and Roger stood.

'Right, well, I'll leave you to it,' he said.

'Hmmm,' Matsugae said with an absentminded nod, but then his eyes sharpened. 'Do we know who's going to be attending these events? And when are they?'

'Uh, no,' Roger said as casually as possible. 'We're not quite certain yet who's on the guest list from our side. But the dinners are mostly tomorrow evening,' he finished brightly.

'Tomorrow!'

'I guess I'd better get going now,' Roger said, beating a hasty retreat.

'Tomorrow?!'

'Have a good time, Kostas. Use whatever funds you need,' the prince said, and disappeared out the door like smoke.

The valet stood staring at the closed door, jaw still half-dropped, for several fulminating seconds, but then he began to smile.

'Whatever funds I need, hmmm?' he murmured. 'And coordinate with Eleanora, is it?' He chuckled evilly. 'This one you're going to pay for, Roger,' he promised the absent prince. 'In fact, I think it's two-birds-with-one-stone-time, young man!'

* * *

Eleanora O'Casey glanced up as Matsugae walked into her office, took one look at his expression, and chortled. Then she gestured at the scrolls scattered over the floor around her.

'Look at this before you complain to me about your problems,' she warned him.

'Oh, I wasn't going to complain,' he said with a decidedly wicked grin. 'I was only wondering if you'd decided on who was escorting whom?'

'Well, we've got a minimum of two separate categories of meetings going on, and probably at least three. The first category consists of the ones which are going to be crucial to getting overall political support, so those are the most critical and I'm assigning senior officers and in some cases some of our more . . . polished NCOs to them.'

'All right. And the others?'

'The second category are the dinners where I can reasonably expect the majority of the conversation to revolve around military-technical issues. Bistem Kar is hosting one of those, for example. For those, I feel comfortable sending experienced but slightly less polished NCOs. Then there's a dinner invitation from a shipyard