Lt. Leary, Commanding (15 page)

"Lamsoe!" the bosun bellowed. "Lock that Goddamned helmet down or you can see how you like being derated for the tour!"

"I'm going to check the alignment of Number Three thruster, sir," Pasternak said, already backing toward the companionway. "We may have to readjust it after the shakedown run, though."

Betts, the chief missileer, was new to the
Princess Cecile
also. He turned from the attack console and said, "As ordered, sir, we're carrying the tubes loaded and a full twenty reloads. There's no guarantees short of launching them, of course, but I'd bet my life that all twenty-two'll function clean as a simulation."

"It's quite possible we'll all be betting our lives on that, Mr. Betts," Daniel said, with a smile to draw the sting from the reminder. "I'll expect to test your readiness with some target practice if luck doesn't send us real targets on this voyage."

The
Princess Cecile
was carrying two more missiles than her Table of Equipment. They would be expended before she returned to Harbor Three, of that Daniel was determined.

He'd noticed in the past that missileers tended not to think of their charges as being weapons for real use. Missiles were expensive and so big that relatively few could be carried on even a large warship. Missile practice was rarely carried out live, and even during wartime the chance of a missile engagement with a hostile vessel was slight.

Chief Baylor, who'd been the
Aglaia
's missileer, had retired after the ship—including the missiles that had been the children of his heart and mind—had died in the harbor serving Kostroma City. Daniel regretted losing Baylor: the missiles launched in the
Aglaia
's final moments had functioned perfectly, putting paid to most of an Alliance invasion fleet. Still, Betts was an experienced man and far more senior than a corvette would normally rate.

The
Princess Cecile
had been on Kostroma during a major war and revolution. Many items of value had been saved from destruction by members of the corvette's crew, with Daniel's personal servant Hogg chief among the list of rescuers.

Daniel couldn't have stopped the practice—it would be wrong to call it looting; mostly wrong, at any rate—if he'd tried, and he was too well aware of the risks his crew had run to feel they didn't deserve anything they could make off with. He wasn't comfortable with accepting the half share Hogg insisted was his, however—as a moral question, not from fear of being caught. Theoretically Hogg could fall foul of the Republic's customs authorities, but the chance was too vanishingly small to affect Daniel's decision on the matter.

Then it occurred to Daniel that any doubtful money could be spent on raising the
Princess Cecile
's fighting readiness. No one wearing an RCN uniform would find anything morally reprehensible in
that
, even if the money came from brothel receipts. Daniel accepted his half, then spent it on missiles and extra rations for the crew.

Surely the money
didn't
come from brothel receipts, did it? Though knowing Hogg, it was probably better not to enquire too closely.

Adele stood up at the communications console. "My systems are in order, Captain," she said, remembering this time to be formal while in uniform. She was as likely as not to say "Daniel," which from her couldn't be considered a breach of discipline.

"Then I think we're ready to lift as soon as we have orders and port clearance," Daniel said, beaming with pleasure. "It might be as little as four hours."

His grin became rueful. "Or not, of course," he added. "We act at the pleasure of the Navy Office, which is rarely to be hastened."

"I, ah, wonder, Daniel," Adele said. "If we have some hours, might I . . . absent myself on some personal business?"

Daniel blinked. "Why of course," he said; just as he would have said to any of his officers, knowing that even the ones who had a tendency to drink were too excited about the planned voyage for them to risk missing liftoff. Daniel didn't imagine that the truth of the corvette's orders would be half as wonderful as the rumors circulating about them, but the stories had been enough to keep an already crack crew in a state of wire tautness.

Mind, the rumor that the
Princess Cecile
was being sent to capture a disabled Alliance treasure ship was one that had Daniel himself counting shares of dream wealth.

Adele looked down at her clothing as if in puzzlement, pinching a fold of the blouse between her thumb and forefinger. Like everybody else aboard she was wearing a utility uniform of mottled gray fabric. "I'll change and be off, then," she said. "I don't suppose I'll be very . . ."

She stepped toward the cabin off the bridge which she shared with Tovera. It was officially the captain's lounge, half of his tiny suite. Daniel preferred to have Adele bunking there in a crisis rather than in the Warrant Officers' Quarters. Those were at the other end of C Level, adjacent to the Battle Direction Center where Lt. Mon commanded the midshipmen and mates of the missile and gunnery officers on a set of duplicate controls.

"Ah . . ." Daniel said, but he couldn't think of a way to continue.

Adele's few personal belongings were already aboard. She had no friends or family in Xenos—no friends or family anywhere beyond the hull of the
Princess Cecile
, if it came to that—and she wasn't the sort to go out for one last hell-raising party before lifting ship.

Even in the midst of his concern, Daniel felt a smile start to crinkle the corners of his mouth. He'd tried to imagine Adele raising hell—and had collided with a brick wall.

But what in heaven's name
was
she planning to do?

"Wait a moment, Adele," Daniel said, rising from the command console. "I'll tag along if I may."

There wasn't a right answer to the situation. The
Princess Cecile
's captain had no business leaving her on the eve of departure; on the other hand, Daniel Leary wasn't going to let a friend go off alone wearing the expression he'd seen on Adele's face. Needs must, Mon could handle the corvette; probably handle her better than Daniel could.

Adele turned. "No," she said. "There's no need—"

"No, Mr. Leary," said Tovera from the hatch of the cabin. The pale woman's expression was, as always, unreadable, but this time it had an unfamiliar
depth
to it. "I'll accompany the mistress. It's my duty, after all."

"There's no need for anyone to come with me!" Adele said. "I'm just—looking over some real estate before I leave Xenos again."

Daniel looked from one woman to the other. "Yes, all right, Tovera," he said. "But you'll inform me if there's some way I or others can be of service, will you not?"

"Yes, Mr. Leary," Tovera said. "I'll be sure to do that."

Adele grimaced, but rather than argue she disappeared into the cabin. Tovera swung the hatch to, but remained on the bridge.

"With all respect, Mr. Leary," Tovera said softly. "I'm a member of the Mundy household. Accompanying her is my duty."

"I see," said Daniel, who suddenly
did
see. "Ah, I could send Woetjans with a detachment to, you know . . . provide visual evidence of Adele's high merit?"

"That won't be necessary, sir," Tovera said with a crooked smile. "And I think even the suggestion would embarrass the mistress."

Adele opened the hatch and stepped through, wearing civilian clothes of brown fabric with fine black stripes. Her expression would have been angry on another person; Adele being who she was, Daniel suspected it was merely a general comment on the unsatisfactory nature of human existence.

"Good luck in your endeavors," Daniel said. "I—the whole ship, Adele—look forward to your return."

Adele quirked an odd smile. "Yes," she said. "I'm rather looking forward to that also. But I think I have to go."

She stepped down the companionway awkwardly, still not fully comfortable with a warship's structure. Her servant followed without expression.

Tovera was carrying her attaché case.

The new front door was the same style as the one Adele had known, but the center of the solid lower section was the head of a barking dog in relief; worked into the grille protecting the glazed upper portion was the legend ROLFE HOUSE. The doorman playing solitaire on the doorstep gathered his cards into his hand and stood when he saw Adele and Tovera eyeing the dwelling as they approached.

"My mother's people were Rolfes," Adele murmured, feeling a touch of disdain that she supposed was undeserved. "Their crest's a pun on that: Rowf!"

She added, "I suppose they had to replace the door after the Proscriptions, but one could wish that they'd shown a little better taste."

Adele walked up to the doorman, smiling faintly as she considered what she'd just said. It wasn't true, though if she were a better person it might have been. The Adele Mundy who existed in
this
world was glad that the present owners of what had been Chatsworth Minor were people that she could look down on.

The Mundy townhouse was in the style of three centuries past: narrow and four stories high, with brick facings accented by stone transoms and tie courses. The ground floor openings were simple, save for the rose window decorating the pediment above the door. The central windows of the second and third stories were bays half the width of the building, and the facade of the level immediately beneath the peaked roof was fully glazed. At night it had frequently provided a lighted backdrop when Adele's father had stepped onto the balcony to address a crowd of his supporters in the street below.

The doorman looked at Adele with something between a sneer and a frown. His orange-and-black livery hadn't been cleaned in too long, and he didn't bother to slip the deck away into a pocket.

"I'd like to view the interior of Rolfe House," Adele said, offering the doorman her visiting card. "Please inform your master, or whoever's in charge in his absence."

The doorman took the card, read its face, and sniffed. "The master's not entertaining spacers, that I can tell you," he said. "I'll put it in the tray for him to see when he comes down if you like. You can come back another day for your answer."

He held the card back toward Adele. "Or you can just save your time."

Adele took her card and turned it over as she removed a stylus from her breast pocket. The face of the card read:

On its reverse she wrote
Mundy of Chatsworth
. She smiled at the servant. "Take this to your master," she said pleasantly, tucking the card between his lapel and shirt front. "Now. I will await him in the anteroom for a reasonable time, which I have set at two minutes. If he hasn't come to greet me by the end of that period, I will go looking for him."

"But—" the doorman began.

Tovera pinched the man's lips closed. "And I'll come looking for
you
, laddy," she said. "Let's not learn what'll happen when I find you, all right?"

The servant stumbled as he reached for the door because he was patting Adele's card to keep it safe as he moved. He started to close the panel behind him, then remembered the visitors were following. He was leaving the entrance hall on the way to the servants' stairs as Adele entered.

Adele glanced at the floor, then stared in horror and disbelief. What she'd expected was the beewood of her childhood, twenty-inch boards cut from trees on Chatsworth Major, the country estate, and set edgewise. Every generation or so the surface was planed flat, but even so the patterns of wear had an organic reality that bound the house inextricably into the fabric of Cinnabar.

"Good God," Adele said under her breath. She was standing on the cravat of the male half of a pair of mosaic portraits. Gold letters curving like a halo above the man's hair read LIGIER ROLFE. The woman facing him was Marina Casaubon Rolfe, if her caption was to be believed.

A housemaid carrying a laundry basket stepped into the hall from the door under the formal staircase. She called over her shoulder toward the basement, "Well you can tell her for me that—"

She saw the visitors, fell silent, and gave them a half-nod as she scurried out the back door. Adele caught a glimpse of doors at close intervals on both sides of the hall beyond: the servants' quarters here on the ground floor. That at least hadn't changed in the past fifteen years.

"Ligier is your cousin, mistress?" Tovera asked mildly. Her eyes danced across doorways and up the four levels of the staircase, covering angles from which someone might spy on them—or shoot.

"A second cousin of my mother's, I believe," Adele said. Her lips formed the words while her mind still tried to cope with the
desecration
beneath her feet. The mosaic was quite recent; the glazing of the chips in the center of the pattern showed no sign of wear from grit tracked in on the feet of visitors. "I never met him."

She smiled without humor. "If he'd been close to the family, of course," she added, "his head would have been on Speaker's Rock instead of here on the floor."

Two servants started down from the top of the formal staircase. One of them ducked into a room on the third floor and shouted a half-intelligible demand. Moments later he returned with two more footmen in tow, one of them adjusting his cummerbund.

At least the stairs were still honey-colored beewood; though the newel posts, once Mundy arrows, were now capped by barking dogs. It was an ugly—and worse, a silly—crest, but Adele grudgingly admitted that the woodcarver knew his business.

A man smoothing a hastily donned jacket came to the head of the stairs. The footmen arrayed on the third floor started down; he followed in their wake.

"
Just
inside the two minutes," said Tovera. She sounded regretful.

There was no doubt that this was Ligier Rolfe, but his hairline was a good deal higher than that of his mosaic portrait. He held Adele's card in his hand and his expression was troubled. He was in his mid-fifties; about the age Adele's mother would have been if she were still alive.

The servants parted at the bottom of the stairs. Their master, standing on the lowest step, said, "Mistress Mundy? I'm Ligier Rolfe . . . of course, as you know. We weren't expecting . . . that is, I had no idea you, ah . . ."