Allof them.
Sula discovered the disposition of the Naxid fleet, the five ships at Magaria, the two guarding Naxas, the eighteen under construction in one corner or another of the Naxid dominions. She sent the information to Tork, and received more harassment in return.
“You have failed to conduct the executions that I ordered!” he said. “I want lists of those who cooperated with the Naxids forwarded to my staff, and arrests made at once!”
By then, contact between her office and the Supreme Commander had been regularized. With the passwords to the powerful communications centers of the Commandery, Sula had been able to use the dedicated lasers mounted on the roof to send Tork a code through which they could communicate. It didn’t make his demands any less aggravating.
“I fully intend that those responsible for the rebellion should die for their crimes,” she responded. The Supreme Commander was on the other side of Shaamah at present, and the message wouldn’t reach him for eleven hours or thereabouts. “But I intend in the meantime to serve the empire by extracting every bit of information from the prisoners before throwing them off the rock. I wouldn’t have been able to send you the enemy order of battle unless I had pried it out of their Fleet personnel first.”
She began assembling lists. Lists of Bogo Boys and other cliquemen, so she could grant the amnesties she’d promised; and a list of the secret army, with real names replacing the code names used till now. She wanted to know who had enlisted and who didn’t, because after the war, many would falsely claim to have been on the High City on the day of the battle, and she would have the evidence to refute that. She also wanted to recommend awards and medals to the Fleet and to the Convocation, and for that she needed documentation.
She also demobilized certain elements of the secret army—certainly those who raced up and down the boulevards of the High City in stolen vehicles, firing guns into the air and looting palaces. They were sent home, and as much of their loot confiscated as possible. Julien acted as her enforcer. The rest of the secret army were put on the government payroll.
She slept a few hours each night, but badly.
Her more immediate problem had to do with food rationing. Most of the foodstuffs on the planet was in the hands of the ration authority. The population assumed that rationing would end along with the Naxid occupation. Sula was tempted to simply abolish the authority, but Sergius Bakshi warned her against it.
“You abolish rationing,” he said, “and food will disappear from every market on Zanshaa. The ration authority was run as a private concern, and if you abolish the bureaucracy, that still leaves all the food in the hands of the Naxid clans who were put in charge. They’ll keep food off the market till prices go sky-high—or they’ll sell it to speculators who will do the same thing—and you’ll get the blame.”
He turned his dead-fish eyes to her. “It’s whatI’d do in their place,” he said.
Sula considered this. “Perhaps we could limit prices,” she said.
Sergius flapped his listless hands. “That won’t make them sell,” he said. “They’ll just hang onto the food and sell illegally, to people like me.”
Sula chose her words carefully. “You could make a lot of money yourself off this scenario. I have to commend your sense of public spirit.”
Sergius’s expression didn’t so much as flicker. “I’ve already made money off this situation,” he said. “The best way of preserving what I’ve made is to make certain that once we’re in power, things improve for the ordinary population.”
Sula suspected that Sergius had an angle, that whatever happened, he was going to make himself a vast profit, but on reflection she didn’t care.
There was probably a very sophisticated macroeconomic solution to the problem, but she couldn’t think of one, and neither could anyone else. She abolished rationing for ordinary citizens, and imposed price controls on basic staples like grains, legumes, and the types of meat that the Torminel preferred for their carnivore diet. The prices were slightly below the prewar market levels, and Sula took pleasure in the thought of the Ushgays, Kulukrafs, Ummirs, and the others seeing a slight loss on every sale.
There was no point in controlling vegetables and fruit because if anyone tried to hoard them, they would spoil. Luxuries she simply didn’t care about.
Those clan heads in her custody were released, though ordered to remain on the High City. Then, to make certain they got the point, Sula called each and told them the new arrangement.
“As long as staples are plentiful in the markets,” she said, “I will take no action against you, and I will note your civic spirit. If there are any shortages, then I’ll have you killed and appoint a new clan head.”
She probablywould have to kill a number of them, she thought.
In the end she had to kill only one, Lady Jagirin, whom she ordered arrested and beheaded following the appearance of spot shortages in the southern hemisphere. Since the Naxid head contained no vital organs and only sensory apparatus, the body staggered around, arms and legs flailing, for quite some time before Jagirin finally died of shock and blood loss.
Sula made certain the video of the execution was sent to the other clans on the ration board. There was no further trouble. The new Lord Jagirin was particularly cooperative.
“We’ll continue price controls until the harvest from the southern hemisphere is in,” she told the council. “After that, we’ll remove controls from certain items and see what happens. If the results are positive, we’ll lift controls gradually from then on.”
It was difficult to be certain, but she thought, as she spoke, that she caught a glint of approval in Sergius Bakshi’s cold eye.
Casimir got the extravagant funeral that Sula had promised him. It took place six days after the surrender, in one of the cemeteries on the fringes of the city. In one of the gestures that seemed natural to the absolute ruler of a world, she confiscated an elaborate marble tomb that had originally belonged to a family of Daimong who had either become extinct or left Zanshaa. The original inhabitants of the tomb were removed to one of the city’s ossuaries and the memorial plaque outside replaced with one that featured Casimir’s name, dates, and engraved image.
He was buried wearing one of his Chesko outfits, strips of leather and velvet ornamented with beads and mirrors, and polished boots. His long pale hands were folded over his crystal-topped walking stick. The cliquemen had emptied half the flower shops in the city: the coffin was carried between tombs along a lane made of fragrant blossoms that wafted gusts of perfume to the mourners.
Sula led the procession in formal parade dress, with the cloak that fell to her ankles, the heavy shako with its silver plate, the polished jackboots, the curved knife at her waist. Winter had clamped down firmly on the city: the skies were a mass of gray, and wind kept whipping the cloak off her shoulders. Occasional drizzle moistened her face. Behind her, Julien and Sergius and other cliquemen carried the coffin; and behind them the Masquers of Sorrow performed their ritual dance.
Cameras were present—anything the lady governor did was news—but had been told to keep their distance.
A Daimong chorus chanted Ornarak’s arrangement of the Fleet burial service, ending with the deep bass rumble, “Take comfort in the fact that all that is important is known.” As the harmonies faded among the tombs, Sula bent to kiss the polished surface of the coffin, and looked down to see her own distorted, reflected face, its expression carefully painted on that morning lest the features beneath dissolve into turmoil and grief.
She was expected to say something, and could think of no words. Casimir had thrived in a life of crime and glamour and violence, a happy, amoral carnivore, and died, with many others, fighting to replace a vicious tyranny with another tyranny that at least possessed the grace of being inept. He and Gredel, as Lord and Lady Sula, could have burrowed into the darker corners of the High City and emerged gorged with loot, content and sleek as a pair of handsome young animals. The House of Sula would have been built on a foundation of plunder.
Casimir’s lack of compunction was a part of his dangerous glamour. He took what he wanted and simply didn’t care what happened later. Sula had taught him that patience, at least occasionally, paid; but it was only out of his strange sense of courtesy that he deferred to her—courtesy, and perhaps love, and perhaps curiosity to find out what she would do next. Perhaps she and Casimir had been more in love with adrenaline and their own mortality than with each other. Whatever the case, she knew that each had taken from the other what they wanted.
