elite can afford your guns anyway,” she told him. The tax of one hundred zeniths on every firearm sale—half a year’s wages for the ordinary person—raised them entirely out of the range of the ordinary consumer. “When you deliver the guns to their new owners, you’ll get through their security.”
Sidney gave a grim smile. “You see me as an assassin?” he asked.
“No,” Sula said. “We haveother people for that.”She hoped. “Instead I need you to take careful notes on access, on what guards are stationed where. On any routines that might be useful.”
“I can do that,” Sidney said. “How do I contact you?”
Sula hesitated. She had declined to give PJ a way of communicating with her on the grounds that he might accidentally give himself—or her—away. For her to give Sidney such a means while PJ was present might offend PJ. And while she didn’t much care if PJ’s feelings were hurt, she didn’t want him made despondent or careless.
“We’ll have to let you know about that later,” she said. “In the meantime, we’ll have to contact you.”
For the present, she gave him the simple communications code she’d given PJ, to use the phrase “first-rate” if he were ever compromised by the Naxids. He nodded with what appeared to be sage comprehension, though considering how much hashish he’d smoked over the course of the day, Sula wondered that he could stand upright, let alone understand instructions.
She supposed she’d find out.
Now, returning to the communal apartment, she checked Gredel’s comm unit and discovered that Casimir had logged three calls asking her out for the night. She took a long, delicious bath in lilac-scented water while considering an answer, then turned off the camera that would transmit her image before she picked up the hand comm to call him back.
“Why not?” she said at the sullen face that answered. “Unless you’ve made other plans, of course.”
The sulky look vanished as Casimir peered into his sleeve display in a failed search for an image. “Is this Gredel?” he asked. “Why can’t I see you?”
“I’m in the tub.”
A sly look crossed his features. “I could use a wash myself. How about I join you?”
“I’ll meet you at the club,” she said. “Just tell me what time.”
He told her. She would have time to luxuriate in her bath for a while longer and then to nap for a couple hours before joining him.
“How should I dress?” she asked.
“What you’re wearing now is fine.”
“Ha ha. Will I be all right in the sort of thing I wore last night?”
“Yes. That’ll do.”
“See you then.”
She ended the call, then ordered the hot water tap to open. The bathroom audio pickup wasn’t reliable and she had to lean forward to open the tap manually. As the water raced from the tap and the steam rose, she sank into the tub and closed her eyes, allowing herself to slowly relax, to let the scent of lilacs rise in her senses.
Clean porcelain surfaces floated through her mind. Celadon, faience, rose Pompadour. Her fingers tingled to the remembered crackle of herju yao pot.
The day had started well. She thought it would only get better.
Sula adjusted her jacket as she gazed out the window of the communal apartment. The last of the vendors were closing their stalls or driving away in their little three-wheeled vehicles with their businesses packed on the back. The near-blackout imposed by the Naxids—not to mention the hostage-taking—had severely impacted them, and there weren’t enough people on the streets after dark to keep them at their work.
“I should be with you,” Macnamara argued.
“On adate ?” Sula laughed.
He pushed out his lips like a pouting child. “You know what he is,” he said. “It’s not safe.”
She fluffed her black-dyed hair with her fingers. “He’s a necessary evil. I know how to deal with him.”
Macnamara made a scornful sound in his throat. Sula looked at Spence, who sat on the sofa and was doing her best to look as if she weren’t listening.
“He’s a criminal,” Macnamara said. “He may be a killer, for all you know.”
He probably hasn’t killed nearly as many people as I have.Sula remembered five Naxid ships turning to sheets of brilliant white eye-piercing light at Magaria, and decided not to remind Macnamara of this.
She turned from the window and faced him. “Say that you want to start a business,” she said, “and you don’t have the money. What do you do?”
His face filled with suspicion, as if he knew she was luring him into a trap. “Go to my clan head,” he said.
“And if your clan head won’t help you?”
“I go to someone in his patron clan. A Peer or somebody.”
Sula nodded. “What if the Peer’s nephew is engaged in the same business and doesn’t want the competition?”
Macnamara made the pouting face again. “I wouldn’t go to Little Casimir, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t. But a lot of peopledo go to people like Casimir, and they get their business started, and Casimir offers protection against retaliation by the Peer’s nephew and his clan. And in return Casimir gets fifty or a hundred percent interest on his money and a client who will maybe do him other favors.”
Macnamara looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “And if they don’t pay the hundred percent interest they get killed.”
Sula considered this. “Probably not,” she judged, “not unless they try to cheat Casimir in some way. Most likely Casimir just takes over the business and every minim of assets and hands it over to another client to run, leaving the borrower on the streets and loaded with debt.” Macnamara was about to argue, and Sula held out her hands. “I’m not saying he’s a pillar of virtue. He’s in it for the money and the power. He hurts people, I’m sure. But in a system like ours—where the Peers have all the money and all the law on their side—people like the Riverside Clique are necessary.”
“I don’t get it,” he said. “You’re a Peer yourself, but you talk against the Peers.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “There are Peers who make Casimir look like a blundering amateur.”
The late Lord and Lady Sula, for two.
She told the video wall to turn on its camera and examined herself in its screen. She put on the crumpled velvet hat and adjusted it to the proper angle.
There. That was raffish enough, if you ignored the searching, critical look in the eyes.
“I’m going with you,” Macnamara insisted. “The streets aren’t safe.”
Sula sighed and decided she might as well concede. “Very well,” she said. “You can follow me to the club a hundred paces behind, but once I go in the door, I don’t want to see you for the rest of the evening.”
“Yes,” he said, and then added, “my lady.”
She wondered if Macnamara’s protectiveness was actually possessiveness, if there was something emotional or sexual in the way he related to her.
She supposed there was. There was with most men in her experience, so why not Macnamara?
She hoped she wouldn’t have to get stern with him.
He followed her like an obedient, heavily armed ghost down the darkened streets to the Cat Street club. Yellow light spilled out of the doors, along with music and laughter and the smell of tobacco. She cast a look over her shoulder at Macnamara, one that warned him to come no farther, and then she hopped up the step onto the black and silver tiles and swept through the doors, nodding to the two bouncers.
Casimir waited in his office, along with two others. He wore an iron-gray silk shirt with a standing collar that wrapped his throat with layers of dark material and gave a proud jut to his chin, heavy boots that gleamed, and an ankle-length coat of some soft black material inset with little triangular mirrors. In one pale, long-fingered hand he carried an ebony walking stick that came up to his breastbone and was topped by a silver claw that held a globe of rock crystal.
He laughed and gave an elaborate bow as she entered. The walking stick added to the odd courtly effect. Sula looked at his outfit and hesitated.
