Zanshaa, but common sense reasserted itself before she developed this fantasy very far. It was a role without a future, and it could only bring jeopardy to people she cared about.
There were many roles available to her now, but the only plausible one was that of Captain Sula, a high- ranking Peer of the empire. At least she’d wangled command rank out of Tork—it would have been difficult to be reduced in rank to Lieutenant after so absolutely ruling an entire planet.
Besides, the only thing she was absolutely good at—besides being unlucky with men—was killing things.
Time to threaten Tork again, she thought.
She sent the message in text rather than video because she didn’t want Tork to see the smirk on her face:
Lord Commander, I am pleased to report to your excellency that within a few days I will welcome Lord Eldey to his new posting in Zanshaa High City. As my presence in the city afterward may prove at best a distraction and at worst a focus of discontent, I should like to request an immediate posting. As I desire nothing so much as to once more lead loyal citizens into action against the Naxids, I request command of a warship in the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance.
It wasn’t quiteGive me a job or we’ll have civil war, but it would do.
She copied the message to Eldey and to the Fleet Control Board, and made certain this was plainly indicated on the message before she ordered it coded and sent. That way Tork couldn’t order her to a remote posting on Harzapid or into the Hone Reach without the others noticing.
What remained now, alas, was to tell the army.
She told her friends first, in a dinner in the eight-hundred-year-old New Bridge restaurant. She had once been part of a drunken celebration there, rejoicing at Jeremy Foote’s promotion to lieutenant, and had topped her evening by threatening to set one of Foote’s friends on fire.
The current setting was a lot more sedate. She had rented one of the private dining rooms upstairs, with ancient roof-beams of a deep amber gold, a fireplace of soot-scarred red brick, and a balcony with a wrought-iron rail topped by polished bronze. Thick snowflakes, so heavy and majestic they might have been created by a firm specializing in high-quality atmospheric effects, fell in silent grandeur outside, building a rich, cold carpet on the balcony.
Logs crackled and roared in the fireplace. An antique spring-loaded mechanism, with chains and cogs of black iron, roasted a Hone-bar phoenix on the slowly rotating spit. The odors of cooking filled the room. Patel and Julien drank hot toddies from a punch bowl placed on a heavy wooden table, and Sula had tea sweetened with cane sugar.
“I should make the rounds of the guard posts before I turn in,” Julien said. “A night like this, the guards are probably all hiding indoors.”
Sula smiled. Julien was turning into a martinet, and his newfound rigor saved her a good deal of disciplinary work.
“Eldey,” Sula said, “suggested we should begin to think about disbanding the army.”
Julien gave a contemptuous laugh. “What does Eldey have to say about it? He’s one of those that ran and left us here with the Naxids.”
Patel, however, was looking carefully at Sula. “You’re going to do it,” he said. “Aren’t you, princess?”
“Yes. I’ve requested a posting with the Fleet.” And to Julien’s shocked look, she said, “Once they’re back—the real government—we become a danger to them. And we can’t beat them.”
Julien flushed with anger, all but the thin white scars he’d received in the Naxid interrogation. “You’re giving up!” he said.
“I’m getting on with fighting Naxids. That’s what I’m good at.” She looked at him. “We’ve got to quit while we’re ahead. Before we make too many enemies. Ask your father—he’ll agree.”
Julien turned his pointed face to the fire. He raised his cup of punch to his lips, then lowered it. “Ilike being in the army,” he said. “It’s going to be hard going back to the old life after this.”
“You don’t have to go back to the old life,” Sula said. “That’s what the amnesties are about.”
“I don’t have that option.” He gave her a look. “Pop’s taking the amnesty route, but he wants me to step into his place.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “if that’s not what you want.”
Julien shrugged. “It’s not a bad life,” he said. “I’ll have money and any other damn thing that takes my fancy, and this time I’ll be boss.”
Patel watched the two of them with soft dark eyes. “The thing is, princess,” he said, “we all got used to being loved.”
Sula smiled. “That was the best part, wasn’t it?”
Being loved. Finding the words“Long live the White Ghost!” sprayed on some apartment wall, seeing people stepping off trams reading copies ofResistance, watching the look on the faces of others when she appeared in public, walking through the Textile Market in her uniform or delivering stolen food to the Old Third. Being folded in Casimir’s arms, his musky scent filling her senses. She had been at the center of something magnificent, and knew that she would never matter that much again.
She turned to Patel. “And you?”
His lips quirked in something like a smile. “Oh, I’m going back to the old life. How else can I afford my vices?”
She raised her teacup. “To new adventures,” she said.
The others raised their glasses and drank. Julien looked gloomily into the fire.
“It won’t be as much fun without Casimir,” he said.
Sula followed Julien’s gaze into the flames as regret wafted through her heart.
“That’s true,” she said.
He was Martinez, but somehow not Martinez—he had the lantern jaw and the heavy brows, but there was something different in the set of his face, and his hair was black and straight instead of brown and wavy. He and Sula stood in the front room of Sula’s old apartment, the one behind the old Shelley Palace.
The not-quite-Martinez wore the silver-braided captain’s uniform, and he held out a Guraware vase filled with gladioli. “You gave this to my father for his wedding,” he said. “I thought I would give it to you for yours.”
Sula stared in shocked silence as she realized that this wasn’t Martinez, but his son by Terza Chen.
“It only makes sense that our clans be united,” said the future Lord Chen. “If you’ve solved that little problem, that is.”
Sula managed to speak. “What problem?” she asked.
The young man gave her a pitying look. “That was Gredel’s voice,” he said. “You’re slipping.”
Sula adopted her High City voice. “What problem?” she demanded.
“We only need to take a drop of blood. It’s for the gene bank.”
Chen put down the vase and reached out to take Sula’s hands. She stared at her own hands in horror, at the blood that poured from little lakes of red in her palms. The scent of blood flowed over her like a wave. Chen looked down at the blood pooling on the floor and spattering on his polished shoes, and a look of compassion crossed his features.
“That won’t do,” he said. He released her hands. “There won’t be any wedding until we deal with this situation.”
He stepped to the ugly Sevigny sofa and picked up a pillow. Little gold tassels dangled from each corner. He approached her, the pillow held firmly in the large, familiar hands.
“It’s the only way, I’m afraid,” he said, in Terza’s soft tones, and pressed the pillow over her face.
She fought, of course, but he was far too strong.
Sula woke with a scream bottled in her lungs and her mouth as dry as stone. She leaped out of bed, her hands lashing out blindly at any attacker. She tried to call for lights but failed to get the words past her withered tongue. Eventually she fell against the wall, groped her way to a touch pad, and hammered it with a fist till lights blazed on.
The large, silent bedroom in the Commandery glittered in the light, all mirrors, gilt, and polished white
