beyond which I can’t stop.”
“Oh.” Sula looked into his eyes, a shimmering diamond brilliance in the candlelight. “I was hoping we’d passed that point ages ago.”
Martinez groaned and threw himself on her. His lips devoured her throat, his tongue licked along the flesh of her shoulder. His hands kindled fire as they touched her. She gave a gasp and thought, against the throb of panic that beat in her chest, this is not Lamey.
And he wasn’t. His hands brought her first pleasure, then joy, then wild acceptance. This was unlike anything she had experienced in her old life. Lamey had been a boy, a wild desperate savage boy, but this was a grown man, certain of his powers, with a sharp, calculating mind and with experience and a willingness and a desire to bring pleasure…
And yet a boy after all, after the percipient mind sank beneath the tide of lust—and Sula felt the joy of command, that she had brought him helpless to this state. But then her own power vanished, poured away like dust streaming into the ocean of desire, and need claimed her and sent her crying aloud into the starry pavilion of night.
SEVEN
Martinez was amused that Sula kept getting up during the night to plunder the kitchen. “Didn’t you eat at the party?” he asked.
“No. Want anything?” Smiling over her shoulder.
“No thanks.”
They weren’t actually dressed till noon, when they breakfasted on whatever food was left in the kitchen, plates and food strewn over a table ornamented by some distressed daffodils and supported by Sevigny caryatids with sagging breasts, knock knees, and goggle eyes. Sula commanded the windows to open, letting in the spring breezes.
Martinez always delighted in the first breakfast with a lover. From a state of pleased satiation, he could contemplate his companion in light of the fact that his knowledge of her had increased by a factor of six or eight or even a hundred. He knew where she was bold, where reluctant, where shy, where exuberant. He would know at least some of the secret places where she liked to be touched. He would learn how she liked to spend the time in between the courses of a night-long banquet of love—and in Sula’s case, that seemed to be with her head in the refrigerator.
And in the morning he would learn what a lover liked for breakfast. Alikhan knew to serve him strong coffee and smoked or jellied fish—he liked protein to start his day—but Sula preferred carbohydrates and sweets, flat wroncho bread with a chutney of plums and ginger, fried sweet goat cheese with a topping of strawberry jam, and coffee turned into a near-syrup with golden cane sugar.
Martinez was buoyant. Energy cascaded through him. He wanted to address the Convocation, command a battleship, write a symphony. He felt capable of doing all three at once.
Perhaps, he thought, he would sing an aria instead.Oh, the woman on the strand…
Sula’s comm chimed just as Martinez was on the edge of bellowing the first note. Sula spoke to the doorman, then went to the door to sign for an envelope from a uniformed functionary. She returned to the dining room and broke the seal.
Martinez’s nerves prickled at the possibility that a posting might take her away. “Orders?” he asked.
“No. The Blitsharts trial.” She stepped toward the open window and tilted the document toward its light. “I’m giving my deposition in three days.”
Martinez observed something glistening below Sula’s lower lip, a smear of the strawberry jam. He considered licking it off.
She slowly lowered the thick legal document. Her bright eyes had grown sober. “Therewill be a posting after the deposition, though. My month’s leave is almost gone.”
“Maybe it will be in the capital.” He grinned. “And if it isn’t, well,I have a month’s leave. I’ll just follow you.”
As she looked at him he saw the hint of sadness in her eyes. “If the Naxids don’t come,” she said.
“If the Naxids don’t come,” he repeated. She knew the odds as well as he. Thirty-five ships to twenty-five, with two of the loyalist squadrons being scratch forces, ships thrown together that wouldn’t normally serve in the same division. And the eight Naxid ships last seen at Protipanu were still unaccounted for.
“Do-faq was practicing the new tactics—ournew tactics,” he said. “Maybe he can convince Michi Chen. Maybe the two of them can convince the new fleetcom.”
“Do you think new tactics are enough?” Sula said. “Enough to overcome the odds?”
Martinez thought about it, then drew a breath. “We’d have to be lucky.”
Her jade eyes seemed to gaze through him into some deep abyss of time. “I wasn’t scared of the Naxids till just now,” she said. Her voice was strange, the languid Zanshaa consonants replaced by sharper accents. There was a flicker across her face, as if she’d just realized where she was; and her eyes focused on him, on the present. “I’m frightened of losing what we’ve just found,” she told him, the Zanshaa voice back. “I’m frightened of losingyou. ”
A slow, sad thrill rang through him like a chime. He rose from his chair and embraced Sula from behind, holding her close, her head lolled back against his shoulder. He licked the jam from her lower lip.
“We’ll get through it,” he said, making an effort to fight the tone of hopelessness that threatened to invade his voice. “I’m going to get a ship, and I’ll request you as a lieutenant. We’ll spend half each day plotting strategy in the recreational tubes, and the crew will spit with jealousy.”
A smile drew taut the sadness on her lips. The soft warmth of her hair touched his cheek like a caress. “I don’t even know why they’re trying to hold Zanshaa,” she said. “Not when there’s every reason to give it up.”
Martinez felt his mouth go dry. Cold, calculating energy sang through his nerves as he gave the expected reply. “Zanshaa is the capital. It’s the government. If Zanshaa falls the empire goes with it.” Even as he said the words he knew where the flaw in the argument lay.
“But none of that’s true.” Sula turned to give him a serious look. “The capital isnot the same as the government . The government—the Convocation and the senior officials—they can beanywhere. We should put them on a ship and get them out of the way of the Naxids.
“Right now the Fleet is nailed here defending Zanshaa against a force we can’t defeat. More ships are being built to replace our losses, but they need time.” She tapped a finger against his chest. “Time, in war, is the same as distance. If we draw our forces in toward our source of supply, we’re falling back on our own reinforcements. If the Naxids come after us, they’ll strain their lines of supply.” Her lips drew back to reveal her sharp incisors. “Particularly if we make certain that they can’t draw support from here, from Zanshaa.”
He looked at her. “How would you prevent that?”
Sula shrugged. “Blow the accelerator ring.”
Martinez gave an involuntary glance toward the ceiling, toward the silver accelerator ring that had encircled the planet for over ten thousand years.
“They’ll never go for that,” he said. “Zanshaa is thecenter. All the Great Masters lie in the Couch of Eternity here in the High City. If we start dropping bits of the ring onto the planet, that’sdesecration. The government would lose all legitimacy—no one would follow them.”
Martinez felt Sula’s muscles grow taut. “If we won the war, they damn well would,” she said. “It’s not as if we’d give them a choice.” She gently detached herself from his embrace and reached for her cup of coffee. “But that wouldn’t happen anyway. The ring isbuilt to be detached from the planet.”
“You’re joking,” Martinez said.
“No. I found that out when I was sent to guard a ring terminus just after the rebellion began—I checked the records to find out where the vulnerable bits of the terminus were. And I found out about the fail-safes built into its structure.” She sipped her coffee. “The engineers weren’t stupid—they wanted to be prepared in case something went wrong. They didn’t want the whole mass of the ring to come crashing down on the planet, particularly with antimatter on board. So the accelerator ring was set into an orbit where, if the cables were broken, the release of centripetal force would gently carry the ring away from the planet, not toward it.”
“But you’d have to break the ring into pieces.”
“Right. The engineers calculated exactly where the scuttling charges would have to be placed. And scuttling
