The next day, Michi invited him for cocktails. The elaborate dinners that had for a month occupied the attentions of the officers and their cooks had faded, to be replaced by teas or cocktail parties or gaming functions. People were putting on too much weight, for one thing, and for another, the delicacies that had been brought aboard at Chijimo, and restocked at Zanshaa, were running low.
He found Michi in her office, not in the long dining room. A snack of flat bread, pickles, and canned fish eggs gave off a whiff of stale olive oil. Vandervalk mixed the drinks in the corner and poured them into chilled glasses. Michi gazed at hers, sipped, and gazed again.
She looked tired, and careful application of cosmetic hadn’t entirely disguised the fine new lines around her eyes and mouth. She looked at her drink as if seeing past it to the end of her active career, and Martinez suspected the view wasn’t to her liking.
“I’ve heard from Maurice,” she said after a moment. “He was as annoyed as we were that the Convocation made Lord Tork’s rank permanent. More so, perhaps—he’ll have to deal with Tork at Control Board meetings, while we won’t have to see him at all.”
Martinez very much doubted that anyone was more annoyed with Tork than he was, but he managed to make sympathetic noises anyway.
“Maurice let me know some of what’s been going on behind the scenes,” Michi said. “Did you know that the government was in touch with the Naxids almost the entire length of the war?”
“Was it like Tork and Dakzad before Second Magaria?” Martinez asked. “Arguing the finer points of the Praxis with each other?”
Michi smiled. “Probably. I imagine they mostly exchanged surrender demands. The Naxids even took ours seriously, after they lost Zanshaa.”
He looked at her, the astringent taste of the cocktail on his tongue. “Really?”
“They tried to negotiate an end to the war. But we insisted on unconditional surrender, and they saw no reason to accept that while they still had a fleet in being.
“After Second Magaria the negotiations got a lot more serious. But apparently they decided to gamble on winning at Naxas, and that we’d accept more of their conditions if Chenforce sailed off into the unknown and then vanished without a trace. But it left them without a leg to stand on when we actually won.”
“They had no choice but to commit suicide,” Martinez said.
“Yes.”
“I can’t say I’m sorry.”
She gave a little shrug that said she wasn’t sorry either.
“I’ve got a video from Terza,” she said. “She seems to be thriving. And Gareth is perfectly adorable, obviously a bright child.”
“Obviously a genius,” Martinez corrected.
Michi smiled. “Yes.” The smile faded. “It’s hard being away from them at this age, isn’t it? I know.”
“Have you heard from yours?”
“Yes. James has matriculated, finally.”
“Send him my congratulations.”
“I will. He’ll be at the Cheng Ho Academy next term.”
That was the Fleet academy reserved for the highest caste of Terran Peers. Michi and Sula had attended it. Martinez had settled for the somewhat less prestigious Nelson Academy.
Michi’s face darkened. “I’m not sure it’s wise to send him into the Fleet. I don’t know what I’ll be able to do for him, with Tork hovering over our careers.”
“I’ll do what I can, of course.”
“Of course.” He was family; that sort of thing was expected. She turned to him. “What about Lady Sula?”
His heart gave a lurch. “Sorry?”
“Do you think she’d be willing to take James on as a cadet?”
There was no reason to think that Sula would be enjoying a command in a few years any more than he would, but he answered that he was reasonably sure Sula would oblige.
“Though you may not want James’s career to be entirely in the hands of those on Tork’s shit list,” Martinez said. “I’m sure we’d help, but you might want to find James a service patron who’s not in the line of fire.”
“I’ll do that, thanks.” Michi took another sip of her drink.
Martinez began to fret about his son. Young Gareth would go into the Fleet, of course, there was no doubt about that, and being a Chen, he would attend the Cheng Ho Academy. The junior officers who had thrived under Martinez would then be in a position to aid his son. A brilliant career was therefore assured.
Unless some malevolent force intervened. Of course Tork would be dead by then, but Tork would no doubt pick a successor.
Martinez sipped his drink, letting the burning alcohol fire trickle down his throat, and wondered if for the sake of his son he should hope that Sula was right, that there would soon be another war.
“That rifle? That’s an improvised weapon, used in the fighting in Zanshaa City. And the other one”—Sula turned to him—“that’s PJ’s gun. He was carrying it when he died.”
Martinez looked at her for a long moment, then at the long rifle with its silver and ivory inlay. “He got what he wanted then,” he said. “He was trying to find a way to join the fighting.”
“He was in love with your sister till the end.”
She didn’t have to explain which sister PJ loved. Not Walpurga, the one he’d married, but Sempronia, who had jilted him.
Martinez had been invited to dine byConfidence ‘s wardroom. The frigate’s lieutenants hadn’t heard his war stories yet, and he expected to enjoy himself relating them.
He had arrived early to pay his respects to Sula.
And to talk to her.
And to see her.
And to feel his blood blaze at the sight.
“Would you like some tea?” she asked. “I can have Rizal boil water.”
“No thanks.” The fewer interruptions by servants, he thought, the better.
“Sit down then.”
He sat in a straight-backed metal-framed chair acquired on the cheap by some government purchaser. Sula’s bare, small, functional quarters were far removed from his own luxurious, art-filled suite.
“Are guns your only ornament?” he asked. “I’d send you some pictures, but I don’t think Fletcher’s estate would approve.”
“You’ve got an artist, don’t you?” Sula said. “Maybe I could commission something from him.”
“Perhaps a full-length portrait,” Martinez said.
Sula grinned. “I couldn’t put up with looking at myself hours on end, especially in a tiny place like this. I don’t know how you stand it.”
Martinez felt an implied criticism in this statement.
“I admire the artistry of it. The sfumato, for example.” It was one of the technical words he’d learned from Jukes while he sat for the painting. “The balance of light and shade, the arrangement of objects on the table that helps to bring the image into the third dimension—”
There was a knock on the door, and Martinez turned to see Haz,Confidence ‘s premiere.
“Beg pardon,” Haz told Sula, “but the wardroom is happy to offer Captain Martinez its hospitality.”
“I’ll see you another time, Captain,” Sula said, rising smoothly.
As Martinez took her hand to say farewell, his mind finally received the message that his senses had been trying to send him for some time.
Sula’s scent had changed. Instead of the musky scent she had worn since she’d joined the Orthodox Fleet, she was now wearing Sandama Twilight, the perfume that he had tasted on her flesh as, over a year ago now, they lay in the vast, hideous canopied bed in her rented apartment.
He looked down at her in shock, his hand still wrapped around hers. She gazed back, her face deliberately incurious.
He dropped her hand, turned to follow Haz to the wardroom, and felt a flow of sheer emotion as it rolled like
