She turned to Will Stockton. “Not a lot happens here, does it,” she said, for the sound of their footsteps was beginning to make her nervous.
The sergeant continued giving his attention to the walkways and exits. ‘The deck’s been cleared out for you, my lady. Generally it’s a pretty crowded place.”
“Oh.” She felt her face get hot. Of course the deck, with its bays of ships and equipment, cried out for more personnel. Where did she come by this gift for saying such obviously stupid things? And to the sergeant of all people, whose respect she would like to have, and before Hartley Quince of the cutting tongue.
What incredible embarrassment would she perpetrate in front of Adrian? She brooded, certain that the two men walking beside her were turning over her idiocy in their minds, too polite to comment on it.
Hartley spoke. “Ever been in a short-range?” The question seemed to be aimed at Will Stockton, who shook his head.
“Not much call for it in City policework.”
Hartley, not quashed at all by this leaden response, transferred his smile to Iolanthe. “Lovely gown, if I may presume to say so.”
‘Thank you.” It came out as leadenly as Will’s reply. Hartley had chosen the gown himself in tandem with her mother, during one of those mystery shopping trips that took all afternoon. It was midnight blue with fine lace-work, and depressing in its clarity of purpose: Chosen to please Adrian, not her.
“It suits your fair skin.”
“I prefer lighter shades.” As well my mother knew.
“One dresses for onlookers, not for oneself. Wouldn’t you agree, Willie?”
“No,” said Will Stockton shortly. Io glanced from one to the other of her assigned escorts. What in the world was going on with them?
“There speaks an honest guardsman,” said Hartley. “You will find, Iolanthe, that an awareness of one’s audience is a prerequisite for success in any project. If they consider painting the face blue and spitting pomegranate seeds to be the height of charm, then start painting and learn to spit.”
“Words to live by?” inquired Will.
“If you like.”
They had reached the ramp of the private Council short-range. One of Will’s Sangaree guards detached himself from their group, entered, and returned.
“Pilot’s in place, sir,” he said to the sergeant.
Io could barely make out the words, his accent was so thick. She determined to listen more closely; she was tired of having things talked of around her, decisions reached without her knowledge. She took Will’s arm and climbed the ramp beside him.
At the top she stopped and looked around. Opal Transport Deck: Good-bye to all that. Hartley Quince paused by the sergeant, just inside the doorway.
“Heard any good heartsingers lately?” The Lord Cardinal’s assistant was speaking in Sangaree, she realized vaguely, the knowledge drifting smokily through her brain as though from another country. Up and down the deserted deck, panels sat gently glowing. She’d left her room so quickly this morning, there’d been no time for any last looks.
“Never listen to them,” said Will, in flawlessly correct court speech.
“And you a product of Tanamonde Street. Where do you go for recreation, Willie? I know you keep away from the smokeshops.”
All her plush dolls and animals had been left on the quilt, just as if she were coming back. The silk doll’s clothes she’d helped to sew when she was seven; the miniature umbrellas, the complicated headdresses of velvet and feathers. A new one each birthday, bought by her father from the old man who ran the shop in the most exclusive district of the City. The smell of sawdust and paint in his studio.
She’d meant to take a last look.
“Don’t expect to be happy.” The soft swish of her mother’s silk gown as she lifted the material and ran it through her fingers. The satisfaction in her eyes. “Io, darling, have I warned you about what he’ll expect from you?”
Will’s voice was at her ear: “Come inside, my lady.”
She felt him change position, moving so that his body was between her and the deck. Cutting off her view.
Hartley’s voice, then: “What about The Caravanseri?”
Will looked past her, and spoke in the tones of one goaded into the truth. “If you think that sucker-joint for bored aristos is a real Sangaree bar, Hart, you’re more out of touch than you know.”
He’d answered in Sangaree dialect. Iolanthe finally responded to his tugging, stepping into the ship, as Hartley Quince began to laugh.
Adrian took his seat at the head of the marble-topped conference table in the Flux Chamber. The chamber, built into the heart of the Diamond, was a translucent square suspended within the sac of irrationality that was the Curosa flux drive. Its walls pulsed with rainbow pastel shades, a constantly shifting pattern of color. “What do they mean?” he’d asked Fischer, the first time he ever chaired a council meeting there.
“What?” the Chief Adviser had replied blankly.
‘The walls. What do the patterns mean?”
Fischer looked around, as though Adrian had suddenly asked for a definition of light and dark. “Something to do with the drive, I suppose.”
“But what? Look there—they’re going faster now. Did something change in the drive?”
“I wouldn’t know. Adrian, do you want to go over what I told you about Lord Muir—”
“Hmm. I suppose if the drive explodes or something, we’ll be the first to go, but it won’t really matter since everyone else will die, too. What if it just breaks down, though? Do
