A gust of wind found its way into the courtyard and rustled leaves. A sudden impulse seized him, and he took her hand. “Terza,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Could we have children—a child—right away?”
She was surprised. “I—I’d have to schedule time to get the implant removed, and—” She looked at him. “Are you sure?”
His mouth was dry. “I might die,” he said.
Her look softened, and she touched his cheek. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.”
Terza put her arms around him and kissed him. His mind whirled. He couldn’t tell whether this paternal impulse was his, or Roland’s. He hated the fact that he didn’t know, that he himself couldn’t tell whether his genes were truly clamoring for offspring or whether he was becoming an unwitting expert at emotional blackmail.
Disgust, he recalled, tasted like copper.
This time it was Terza’s comm that chimed. With a peal of apologetic laughter she dug into her costume for a hand unit and answered. The voice that came from it was that of her father.
“Is Captain Martinez with you?” he asked.
Lord Chen, though he treated Martinez in person with courtesy, hadn’t yet brought himself to address him by his personal name.
“Yes,” Terza said. “He’s here.”
“Then I’ll tell you both,” Chen said. “This morning Lord Said addressed a closed-door session of the Convocation and recommended the evacuation of Zanshaa. The measure passed on a voice vote with very little opposition.”
Martinez felt, in his muscles and nerves, the easing of a tension of which he had been unaware; and he looked into Terza’s face and saw the relief that was mirrored in his own. “Excellent, my lord,” he said loudly, in hopes that Lord Chen would hear him.
Terza turned up the audio for the benefit of Martinez’s straining ears. “Two Fleet cargo vessels are being requisitioned to bring the Convocation to another location—we haven’t worked out where. The Martinez Plan will be adopted, though Captain Martinez should be warned that Lord Tork’s decided it should be called the Chen Plan.”
Chen’s poached my idea, Martinez thought with a spasm of annoyance. “It doesn’t matter what they call it, my lord,” he said, “so long as it contributes to a successful outcome of the war.”
As he uttered this blatant falsehood Martinez saw amusement crinkling the corners of Terza’s eyes, and his irritation increased.
“Good of you to feel that way,” Chen said. “You should also know that the board has agreed to my sister’s request that you serve as her tactical officer. You’ll be ordered aboard her ship as soon as suitable transport can be arranged.”
Which, since Martinez was on Zanshaa and Michi Chen was currently orbiting Zanshaa’s system at enormous velocity, was a more complex task than it sounded.
“Thank you, my lord,” Martinez said.
Terza laughed. “Do you have anything to say tome, ” she asked, “or should I just hand the comm to Gareth?”
Lord Chen lowered his voice so that Martinez had to strain to hear the words. “Just that I’m sorry not to be with you now,” he said. “Things are moving too fast. I wish we could spend more time together.”
“So do I,” Terza said.
“I love you.” There was a hesitation, and then, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you then. Bye.”
Terza put her comm away.
I love you, Lord Chen had said. Martinez had not yet told Terza this, for the simple reason that Terza, an intelligent person, would have known it wasn’t true. He had thought about saying it for form’s sake, or even out of politeness; but something restrained him from beginning his marriage with a lie. Nor did he want to start with an embarrassment of candor:I love another was hardly the best way to approach a relationship.
He sensed that, for both himself and for Terza, a veil was being drawn very carefully over their private feelings. Not simply because truthfulness would be unwelcome, or even because in their situation it was irrelevant, but because it could wound. For Martinez to mention his involvement with Sula would not simply be to voice an awkward truth, it would be to draw a weapon. A weapon that either he or Terza could use in time, and use to draw blood.
And so, silence. He took Terza’s hand and kissed her cheek. And in the bright afternoon light he drew her farther into the garden.
“Walpurga looked lovely,” Terza remarked. “Don’t you think?”
Irony, Martinez was reminded, tasted like old coffee grounds.
Martinez knelt before the battery of cameras with Terza’s feet in his lap and smiled out at posterity. The actual marriage had occurred some hours earlier, in an office at the Registrar before Judge Ngeni of the High Court, and since then there had been a number of popular rituals of which this, the symbolic consummation, was the last.
Above him Terza sat in the canopied bed that had been assembled in one of the parlors of the Chen Palace. She was dressed in a scarlet gown so laden with glistening gold brocade that it creaked. Martinez wore full parade dress, with silver braid and jackboots and—at least for the ride to the Registrar and back—a tall leather shako and a long cloak that draped to his ankles. He had carried the baton of the Golden Orb as well, which meant that Judge Ngeni had to begin the ceremony by snapping to attention and baring the throat ready to be sliced by the sickle- shaped, ceremonial knife Martinez wore at his belt…
Martinez began to undo the red ribbons that laced Terza’s brocade slippers. The cameras whispered as they came in for a closeup. Martinez unlaced both slippers, then drew one off after the other. The audience applauded. Terza’s feet were small and delicate and the soles were warm to his touch.
The last ritual complete, one of Terza’s friends handed Martinez a stylish pair of shoes, red leather and bows, which he drew onto Terza’s feet. He stood and helped Terza, awkward in her brocade and tall heels, to rise. They kissed, and again the cameras whispered.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured.
“Thank you.” She smiled and kissed his ear. He could feel the warmth of her cheek against his own.
Nor were his words anything less than the truth. Terza was lovely in her brocade, with her black hair worn loose past her bare shoulders. She had carried herself all day with perfect grace and composure. The wedding, which she had organized in all its complexity, had gone without a hitch and spoke well for her managerial skills.
Surrounded by the ritual and Terza’s perfect presence, Martinez found in himself the flicker of a growing hope. Much better than black self-disgust he had experienced last night, which he had spent with Amanda Taen.
That had been the end result, perhaps, of an excess of bonhomie occasioned by Lieutenant Vonderheydte’s wedding. The bride, Lady Daphne, had been a young, plump, good-natured redhead, completely unlike anyone Martinez had envisioned as the partner for Vonderheydte in the long-distance delectation that Dalkeith had described.
It was then that Martinez recalled that Vonderheydte’s video lover had been someone named Lady Mary.
Oh, he thought.
Martinez began to relax amid the company of his former shipmates. Vonderheydte had no relatives on Zanshaa and so had called in the Fleet for support: every officer and cadet of Vonderheydte’s acquaintance had been invited. AllCorona ‘s officers were present, except for Shankaracharya, who Martinez assumed was still in hiding.
Martinez was no longer in command of them and he could be at his ease. The young officers were in high spirits, and their merriment rang through the ballroom. The hot punch tasted innocent enough but reeked of brandy fumes. At some point in the afternoon Martinez began to realize that, as an officer at least two grades senior to any other present, his presence was becoming an inhibition to the verve of his juniors. He was perfectly
