threw rebel Naxids off the Convocation terrace. I’m sure the Naxids have already decided what’s going to happen to him—and to me.”
Sula looked in surprise into Terza’s mild brown eyes.
“If Zanshaa falls,” she said, “my father will die, probably very badly unless he cheats them through suicide. I may die with him—or I might be disinherited, as you were, or otherwise punished. There’s no point in fleeing, because if Zanshaa falls we lose the war and the Naxids will find me sooner or later.” She gave a little shake of her head. “Besides, I want to be here, with my mother. She’s…a little too high-strung for all of this.”
Sula’s heart gave an uneasy lurch as Terza, in her calm, low voice, so easily spoke of her own possible annihilation. It bespoke a kind of courage that Sula had not expected—in her former life, as Gredel, she’d known such courage only in criminals, who accepted their own deaths as an inevitable result of their profession. Like Lamey, she thought, Lamey her lover, who was certainly dead by now at the hands of the authorities.
It was not as if she herself hadn’t looked at her own death. Everything she’d done since she’d stepped into the soft leather boots of the real Lady Sula had qualified her for nothing but the garrotte of the executioner tightening slowly around her throat. She had publicly claimed the Sula name at Magaria, as she destroyed five enemy ships. “It was Sula who did this!” she’d transmitted.“Remember my name!” If the Naxids won the war, theywould remember. Sula could expect no more mercy than could Lord Chen. The only difference was that she could expect to die in battle, in a blaze of antimatter fire. After all the years of suspense, all the years in which she’d wakened in the middle of the night, clutching her throat in a dream of suffocation, simple extinction was something she didn’t fear.
What Terza said next surprised her even more.
“I’ve admired you,” she said, “for the way you’ve managed to do so well, even though you have no money and no connections. Perhaps—if I’m disinherited instead of killed—you’ll have a few tricks to teach me.”
Admired.Sula was staggered by the word. “I’m sure you’ll do well,” she managed.
“I don’t have any useful skills like you,” Terza judged, and then she smiled. “I could make a living as a harpist.”
She played the harp very well, at least insofar as Sula judged these things. “I’m sure you could.” And then, more practically. “Your father could give some money to one of his friends—a safe friend—for you to use later. I think that’s what my parents did for me, or perhaps their friends just got a little money together and set up a trust.”
Terza gave a solemn nod. “I’ll suggest that to my father.”
“You’ve discussed this?” Sula asked. A macabre little conversation over evening coffee, perhaps. Or a chat in the kitchen, while Lord Chen brewed up some poison so that he could cheat the public executioner.
“Oh yes,” Terza said. She took a deliberate sip from the Gemmelware cup. “I’m the heir. I’ll probably be in the Convocation sooner or later, if the war goes well. I have to know things.”
And Lord Chen, Sula knew, was on the Fleet Control Board, and knew how the odds favored the Naxids. For over a month he had been staring every minute at his own death and the extinction of his house, the lineage that went back centuries, and then gone about his business.
There was courage there, too. Or desperation.
There was a step behind on the gravel path, and Terza glanced up from her cup. As Sula rose from her chair and turned, her heart gave a leap, and then she realized that the tall man behind Lord Chen wasn’t Gareth Martinez after all, but his brother Roland.
“My dear Lady Sula,” Chen said as he stepped forward to take her hands. “My apologies. I so wanted to go to the ceremony yesterday.”
“Terza explained that you had an important vote.”
Chen looked from Sula to Roland and back. “Do you know each other?”
“I haven’t met Lord Roland, though of course I know his brother and sisters.”
“Charmed,” Lord Roland said. He strongly resembled his brother, though a little taller, and he wore his braided, wine-colored coat well. Like Martinez, he retained a strong provincial accent. “My congratulations on your decoration. My sisters think very highly of you.”
But not the brother? For a moment bleak despair filled Sula at the fact that Martinez hadn’t mentioned her name. And then the hopelessness faded, and she found herself thankful that Martinezhadn’t told the story of their last encounter, where they had danced and kissed and Sula, thrown into sudden panic by the arrival of a deadly memory, had fled.
“Tell your sisters that I’ve been thinking of them.”
“Would you pay us a call?” Lord Roland suggested. “We’re having a party tomorrow night—you’d be very welcome.”
“I’d be happy to attend,” Sula said. She considered her next comment for a moment, then said, “Lord Roland, have you heard from your brother lately?”
Roland nodded. “Every so often, yes.”
“Has something happened, do you know?” Sula asked. “I get a message from him now and then, and—well, the last few messages have been heavily censored. Most of the contents were cut, in fact. But nothing seems to have gonewrong —in fact he seems lighthearted.”
Lord Roland smiled, and exchanged a glance with Lord Chen.
“Somethinghas happened, yes,” Chen said. “For various reasons we’re not releasing the information yet. But there’s no reason to be concerned for Lord Gareth.”
Her mind raced. It wasn’t a defeat they were hiding, so just possibly it was a victory. And the only reason to hide a victory was to keep the Naxids from finding out, which meant that behind the scenes, somewhere away from Zanshaa, ships were moving, and battles were in the offing, or had already been fought.
“I wasn’t concerned, exactly,” she said. “Lord Gareth seemed too merry. But the whole business seemed… curious.”
Chen gave a satisfied smile. “I venture to remark that very soon there may be another award ceremony, and that Lord Gareth may be in it. But perhaps even that’s saying too much.”
A victory, then. Joy danced in Sula’s mind. Perhaps Martinez had used the new tactics—hertactics—to crush the enemy.
“I’ll be discreet about the news,” Sula said. Who would she tell?
Chen and Lord Roland made their excuses and went to do business. Sula spent an agreeable hour with Terza in the garden, then said farewell and went out into the sun of the High City. Her footsteps took her to the La-gaa and Spacey Auction House, where she spent a few pleasant hours looking at the displays.
The collectible business was booming. People were turning their wealth into, as she’d once put it, convertible things. Jewelry and portable, durable objects—caskets, small tables, paintings and sculpture—were all doing very well.
Porcelain, by contrast, seemed to be dropping in price. Perhaps people considered it too fragile for the uncertain times ahead.
One pot caught Sula’s eye:Ju yao ware of the Sung dynasty, a pot four palms high, narrow at the base, broad at the shoulders, and a small central spout. Sula’s hands lusted to caress the fine crackle of the blue-green glaze. The factory that created the pot existed in Honan for only twenty years before a Tatar invasion wiped it from the Earth. Sula pictured the pot fleeing south before the invaders, packed in straw in a bullock cart, ending in Yangtze exile a thousand li from its place of origin.
The pot had flown much farther in the years since, and was now part of a collection being dispersed. In the current falling market Sula might be able to purchase it for twenty-five thousand zeniths, a sum amounting to perhaps eighty percent of her current fortune.
It would be absurd for her to spend that much. Insane. And itwas breakable. The luck that carried it safely from the Tatars, and through the Shaa conquest of Terra, might be run out by now.
But what, she argued with herself, did she have to spend the money on other than herself?
In the end, reluctantly, she withdrew. Sula had decided to be practical.
For the next several days she went hunting for an apartment. So many were fleeing the High City that rates were almost reasonable, and she paid a month in advance for a third-floor place just under the eaves of an old converted palace. The furniture was the bulky, ornate, and ugly Sevigny style, but Sula figured she could live with it till her next posting. The apartment came with a Lai-own fledgling to do the cleaning, and a cook would do meals
