tear off his clothes and fly screaming down the hall. Instead he asked, “Has your father spoken to you?”
“Yes.” Her voice was soft. “Just before we left home.”
“You got the news before I did.” Terza moved with perfect grace in her elaborate, rustling gown. Martinez tried a door at random, found it opened on a kind of bed-sitting-room, a somber bed in white and black and a desk of pale cinder-colored wood with paper, glass calligraphy pens, and a stick of ink ready for use. He drew her inside and closed the door.
“I’m sorry about the mourning threads.” Terza’s hand made a vague gesture by her hair. “I knew I shouldn’t be wearing mourning when we’re engaged, but my father only talked to me after I’d dressed.”
“That’s all right,” Martinez said. “From everything I’ve heard about Lord Richard, he was someone worth mourning.”
Terza looked away. There was an awkward silence. Martinez took a grip on his thoughts.
“Look,” he said. “If you don’t want to do this, we’ll call it off. And that’s that.”
Faint surprise marked her features. “I—” Her lips shaped a word that she failed to utter. Her eyes darted to Martinez. “I don’t object,” she said. “I know families arrange these things. My engagement to Lord Richard was arranged.”
“But at least you knew him. You moved in the same set. You barely know me.”
Terza gave a fluid nod. “That’s true. But—” A kind of tremor passed across her eyes, a reflection of some inner thought, and she looked at him. “You’re successful and reliable. You’re intelligent. Your family has money. So far as I can see, you’re kind.” Her gown rustled as she raised a hand to touch his sleeve. “Those are good things, in a husband.”
Martinez felt the world spin in giddy circles about the small room with its writing desk and austere little bed. He looked at the young woman standing before him, the perfectly schooled body with its willowy grace, the elegant hands, the lovely serene face and smooth skin, and he wondered if what he beheld was entirely art—if it was the trained response of a woman who knew her duty to her clan and who was doing it regardless of any distaste she might feel, or if by any chance there was some genuine feeling behind her words. If beneath the brocade and elegance she was one of those nightmare creatures he had seen clustered around the trough, or was what she actually appeared, a beautiful and gentle human being.
But even if she were the former—even if there was avarice and calculation behind the mask—what did that matter? It was only fit in that case that Martinez should shoulder his way to the trough and seize what he could for himself, the appointment under Michi Chen being only the appetizer.
And if Terza were actually what she appeared, then that was even better, and he was lucky. Sula had once called him the luckiest person in the universe. Certainly he had been lucky enough to escape Sula. Perhaps Terza Chen was another great piece of luck.
Distantly, the dinner gong rang. The wedding guests would begin their progression toward the ballroom, where the tables had been set.
He looked at Terza and put his hand over hers. “Just remember,” he said, “you’ve had your chance to run away.”
Conscious of the light touch of her on his arm—the touch not of the woman he loved, but of a stranger— Martinez turned and walked with Terza toward the fate that awaited them.
Sula’s research on the Gene Bank uncovered no loopholes in the regulations that governed the place, and after a while her view of the display began to shimmer with tears. The chime of the comm made her gasp in surprise. She swiped at her swollen eyes with the back of her hand and answered. A few minutes later she signed for a packet of orders from the Commandery.
Her leave was now officially over, and on the morrow she was to join the staff of Fleet Commander Ro-dai, who headed something called the “Logistics Consolidation Executive,” run out of an office building in the Lower Town.
Sula reheated the morning’s tea and stirred cane sugar syrup into it while she stared at the orders printed on the Commandery’s crisp bond paper.You are required and directed to present yourself at 09:01 hours at Room 890 of the Dix Building …It was the reality of it, the creamy paper, the sharp outlines of the letters, the absolute directness and clarity of the Commandery’s wording, that somehow made up Sula’s mind.
She would walk around the corner to the Shelley Palace and see Martinez. She would force an interview, if necessary, by claiming to have orders from the Commandery—she had the envelope and paper in hand, after all. She would tell Martinez that she was not the genuine Lady Sula but an imposter who had taken her place, and throw herself on his mercy.Hit me, spit in my face, denounce me to the authorities…or marry me.
His choice.
The idea was so dangerous that she felt a welcome rush of adrenaline, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. A wild wind of liberation began to sing through her. To give up her secret seemed intoxicatingly like freedom.
Sula washed her face and applied cosmetic. She put her orders back in their envelope and tried to reattach the seal, then decided it didn’t really matter. They weren’t really Martinez’s orders, after all.
The wind of hope blew strong in her heart. She squared her shoulders and put on her uniform cap and left the apartment with the crisp envelope held in her left hand. A drum rattled in her mind as she marched down the pavement in proper military style, executed a precise right-turn at the corner, and paraded to the front door of the Shelley Palace.
Her ring was answered by one of the Martinez sisters’ homely maidservants. “Captain Martinez, please,” she said. “Orders from the Commandery.”
The servant was a little flushed, and the laughter that tried to tug at her face hinted that Sula had interrupted her in the middle of a good giggle.
“Captain Martinez isn’t in, my lady,” she said. “I believe he may be with his fiancee.”
“Lord Gareth, I mean,” Sula corrected, “not Lord Roland.” And far too late thought, Roland’s getting married?
The servant appeared a little surprised. “It’s Lord Gareth who’s getting married, my lady. To Lady Terza Chen. We’ve all just been told.” She seemed surprised at Sula’s shock. “If it’s urgent, you might try the Chen Palace, miss.”
“Thank you,” Sula said. “I will.”
The door closed.
“Ah. Ha,” Sula said.
Military reflexes came to her rescue. Despite knees that were suddenly without strength, Sula managed an about-turn, a right-angle turn at the street, and another turn at the corner.
On the way to her apartment she clawed the envelope and its contents to confetti.
Bitch. Bitch, he was mine.
“Congratulations on your new son-in-law,” said Lord Pezzini. “Now I see why you were so assiduously promoting his career.”
Lord Chen looked at Pezzini, his thoughts sour, his countenance bland. “Thank you, my lord,” he said. “Though I believe any assistance I’ve attempted to render Captain Martinez has been based entirely on his merits.”
Pezzini’s lips quirked into a condescending smile. “Of course,” he said.
Lord Chen considered what an open-handed slap might do to Pezzini’s smile, and kept that picture in the forefront of his mind as he walked with Pezzini toward the somber quiet of the Control Board’s meeting room.
Pezzini was hardly the first to smirk at the news. When the announcement of Terza’s engagement to Martinez had been announced the previous afternoon at the wedding banquet, the applause and congratulations had been civil, but he’d seen the looks exchanged by the guests, the surprise followed by condescension, pity, and contempt.Another great old family fallen to the parvenu Clan Martinez. Ngeni, Yoshitoshi, and now Chen. What inducements could Lord Roland have possibly offered to persuade Lord Chen to agree to such a hasty, ill-advised alliance? And what rustic swarms of country-bred, knuckle-dragging Martinez cousins and nieces and nephews would soon be swarming into the High City to despoil the great families of their sons and daughters?
The inducements offered by Roland Martinez had been many, in fact, and so had the discreetly-veiled threats.
