The Reaches (82 page)

Blythe nodded, her expression deliberately blank. "Credit's tight, yes," she said. "Credit
was
tight before I came back from Lilymead with an empty hold, though I thought—I think that I'll be able to raise the necessary on the basis of the Commission of Redress."

She cleared her throat. "I . . ." she said. "Ah, thank you for what you did."

She was looking at him, but he continued to view the room. "My pleasure," he said. He laughed, a sound like that of bricks clinking together. "It's a pity, I suppose, but that's really true."

Blythe cleared her throat. "Well, thank you again. I need to see Councilor Duneen, so—"

"We have business to transact," Stephen said crisply. "If you're amenable, I'll take a silent partnership in your venture. You'll retain full control of the
Gallant Sallie
—captain her, engage the crew, all as you've been doing previously. I'll undertake to outfit the vessel for the voyage at my own sole charge, and to provide expertise."

He gave her a businesslike smile. "You'll need an expert, me or someone like me. I assure you, a raiding voyage is very different from the commercial endeavors in which you've been engaged to present."

She nodded back. "I can see that," she said. She didn't really understand, though. She thought he meant differences in staff and equipment. . . .

"The relative value of the ship's share and the backer's share will be determined by survey of the vessel," Stephen continued, speaking with the seamless precision of a man at one with his subject. "We'll each appoint a surveyor, the pair to choose the third man themselves. Captain's and crew's shares aren't affected, of course."

"I'd want to discuss this with . . ." Blythe said, but she let her voice trail off as she reconsidered. Her father, Stephen assumed, though there might well be a man in her life. There deserved to be.

"Alternatively," he concluded, "I'll put a consol down and you'll double it to me on your return. For honor's sake."

He grinned. Her face lost the thoughtful animation of a moment before and became guarded again.

"I told those three that I was your partner, you see," he explained. "So I need to put something into the expedition."

At the back of the room, Piet shook hands with Kuelow of Thorn, leaning across the table to clap the magnate on the back. Piet's eyes met Stephen's in a quick flicker. Stephen flared the fingers of his left hand in an all's-well signal; Piet nodded and switched the full force of his personality to the next man waiting to talk with him, the agent of a syndicate of Betaport shippers.

They'd been looking out for each other for a decade now, he and Piet. One way and another.

"Why are you making this offer, Mister Gregg?" Sarah Blythe said. She wasn't quite able to hide the unintended challenge.

"My uncle is Benjamin Gregg," Stephen said in a mildly bantering tone. "Gregg of Weyston, Weyston Trading. Uncle Ben would disown me if I turned down a business opportunity like this when it dropped in my lap. And there's also . . ."

Stephen looked at Captain Sarah Blythe, feeling the sadness at what so easily might have been: Stephen Gregg, merchant. Stephen Gregg, managing partner in Weyston Trading by now, though Uncle Ben wasn't the sort to give up titular control while life was in him.

"There's also the fact that I said I'd make amends for my boorishness," he went on, rubbing his cheek where she'd hit him.

Blythe snorted. "I'd say running those three off put the debt on my side of the ledger," she said, nodding dismissively toward Factor Richards, glimpsed across the room.

"I said that was a pleasure," Stephen repeated. "God help me, but it was."

"Very well," Blythe said. "My hand on the bargain then, Mister Gregg."

Her grip was firm, but her palms were sweating. If she had not been nervous, that would have meant she didn't understand what had been going on.

"I'll talk to Calaccio about the survey," she went on. "He's the primary noteholder. Ishtar Chandlery, you know."

Stephen nodded. "I'll get one of Uncle Ben's people and tell him to contact Calaccio," he said. "Oh, and if you'll ask Calaccio to turn over the vessel's full supply and maintenance logs to my representative, I'll get to work at once on my end. And let me take care of Duneen."

"I should hit men more often," Blythe said with a straight face.

"If they behave the way I did, you should indeed," Stephen replied.

Blenrott, beaming with the success of the affair he was hosting, turned from a group of courtiers and caught Stephen's eye. Stephen gave him a full bow.

"On Thursday," Stephen said in a voice that Blythe leaned closer to hear, "I'll attend Factor Blenrott's levee. My presence will make his peers think he stands a meter taller; which is stupid, but it's the truth nonetheless."

"I think my friend Mister Gregg can best supply those estimates," Piet said in tones pitched to carry across the five meters of conversation separating the two of them.

"Duty calls," Stephen said, gesturing with his left hand but looking directly at Blythe for the first time since he'd driven away the bankers. "Blenrott's affair will be excruciatingly dull," he went on in the same soft voice as he'd used when he discussed their host before. "That's good. I believe a person should be punished for acting badly. It makes it unlikely that he'll do that particular thing again."

Stephen bowed to the woman and returned to where Piet needed him for a discussion of share percentages.

Marcus Blythe opened the street door cautiously, but he dropped his walking stick with a loud clatter before he managed to close the door behind him. He froze.

"It's all right, Dad," Sal said. "I'm up working, so you haven't bothered me."

"Ah," said Marcus. He turned around and saw his daughter seated at the table in the common room of the suite. He'd thought the light was on merely to guide him back to his bed as usual. "Ah."

"Do you need . . ." Sal asked.

"No, I'm quite all right," Marcus said in a tone of injured innocence. He bent carefully to retrieve his stick, fumbling it several times in the process. That was as much his arthritis-twisted hands as the drink, though. In truth, he wasn't drunk by his standards or those of the Old Port District more generally. "I was out toasting the success of our new venture with a few friends, you see."

He began to tremble. Sal rose quickly from her seat, bumping the table and disarranging the array of small parts on it. "Dad?" she said.

"No, I'm all right!" Marcus said with a touch of the fire appropriate to a space captain and shipowner; rarely heard since he became a cripple who spent his time drinking with other has-beens.

Sal put her arms around her father anyway, holding him close. There were tears at the corners of his eyes. Marcus wasn't an old man, but to himself—not to her, never to her—he was a useless one.

"Is it really going to happen, Sallie?" he said.

Sal used the bandanna with which she secured her hair in private to dab at the tears. "I don't think Mister Gregg lies about things, Dad," she said." I don't think he could imagine a reason he'd want to. Now, if you're really all right, why don't you wash up before you go to bed? I've changed your sheets—and not before time."

"Yes, I'll do that," Marcus agreed humbly. He didn't move for a moment. "It . . . Sallie, it's so hard to believe that my own daughter is in partnership with Stephen Gregg. Mister Stephen Gregg!"

"Yeah," Sal said. "It is very hard to believe."

She hadn't let herself feel anything. She didn't know what she even ought to feel. Elation? Fear? There was reason enough for those and any number of other emotions; she just didn't know what was right.

"It means we'll be rich, you know, Sal," he said. "When I was young I thought—well, you're young, you know. But—"

"I don't know that we're going to be rich," Sal said, almost completely concealing her nervous irritation at hearing her father tempt fate. "All we have is a chance, a
chance
to recoup our losses on the last voyage."

"Oh, it's better than that, girl!" Marcus said, irritated in turn at having his hopes discounted. "Why, Gregg is Captain Ricimer's right-hand man! Gregg's cut his way to a dozen fortunes in the Reaches. You think he's not going to make sure this latest investment doesn't turn a profit too? A profit in a rich
gentleman's
terms!"

Sal swallowed. "I know that Mister Gregg is a skillful businessman, Dad," she said. "I just don't want you to get your hopes up. Would you like a hand to the corner?"

The bathhouse was at the junction with the main corridor three doors down.

"And I want you to know," Marcus bumbled on, "that nobody thinks the less of you for . . . what you've done. Your mother was a good woman at heart, a truly loving wife while we were together, and—"

"Dad, shut
up,
" Sal said in a voice like a dragon's. "You're drunk and you don't know what you're saying."

She turned her father around in a curt movement better suited for shifting furniture and opened the door for him. Men were shouting at one another in slurred anger somewhere in the night, but they could have been blocks away. When there weren't crowds of pedestrians to absorb sound, it echoed long distances in the underground corridors of the older Venerian settlements.

"I'm not drunk!" Marcus protested feebly. "Sallie, what did I—"

"Sweat
all
the booze out of you before you come back here!" Sal said. "In the future, don't tell foolish
lies
to your drunken friends, and especially don't tell them to me!"

Puzzled, shocked completely sober, Marcus Blythe stumbled into the street. "Sallie, I'm sorry for—" he called.

She slammed the door on the last of his words and stood trembling against the inside of the panel for a moment. Were they all saying that she was Gregg's mistress? If her father said it to her face, then they probably were.

Sal sighed. It didn't matter. Most folk assumed the only use for a woman on a starship was to service the sexual needs of the crew. She'd lived with that all her life, so she could live with this too.

She sat down at the table and began to sort the parts into groups by subassemblies. She'd tacked a high-intensity lamp to the wall to work by. Its glare made her eyes sting; she switched it off and rubbed her forehead, swearing softly at nothing she could put a clear name to.

After a moment Sal turned the light back on. She dipped the copper bristles in solvent and resumed brushing the rust off the sear.

Spread before her on the table was the completely disassembled revolver that she'd pulled from the Federation officer's death grip. After she had it completely cleaned, she would treat the external surfaces with a corrosion-resistant phosphate finish.

When Sarah Blythe went beyond Pluto the next time, she would go armed.

Piet Ricimer rose from the table in the back room of the Blue Rose Tavern and stretched with a groan. "I'm going to complain to the landlord about how hard the chairs in this room are," he said.

"They were comfortable enough six hours ago," Stephen said. "Maybe we've just worn them out."

The Blue Rose was on Ship Street, facing the port's transfer docks. The tavern had been Piet's headquarters from the beginning, long before he'd bought the freehold with a small fraction of the profits on his most recent raiding voyage.

Business was good tonight. A gust of laughter from the public bar rumbled its way through the wall. Guillermo was outside, acting as doorkeeper in case an important message arrived in person rather than by telephone.

"Six hours?" Piet echoed. "So it is. Shall we take a break?"

"Ten minutes more," Stephen said. He typed a string of commands on the keyboard, then rotated the holographic screen so that the display faced his companion. "I want to run through the last of the ships offered to the squadron."

Piet sat down again, his expression neutral. "All right," he said.

In the public bar, three sailors sang in excellent harmony, "
There were ninety and nine who safely lay
—"

"The
Gallant Sallie
," Stephen said. He leaned back in his chair so that his shoulders touched the glazed tiles of the wall behind him. "A well-found vessel of a hundred and fifty tonnes. A crew of sixteen plus the captain and mate. She mounts four ten-centimeter guns, sufficient for the purpose we'd want her for—which I take to be transport rather than combat. She could easily be up-gunned, of course."

"No, we don't need another fighting ship," Piet said. He looked at Stephen rather than the display. "If I recall correctly," he continued evenly, "this vessel's owner and captain is a woman."

Stephen got up, turned to face the corner behind him, and forced his palms hard against both walls of the angle. "Governor Halys is a woman, Piet," he said in a tense, clipped voice. "We serve a woman."

"We serve mankind, Stephen," Piet replied. His arms were spread, his right hand on the console and his left draped with deliberate nonchalance across the back of his chair. "I hope that we serve God as well, by executing His plan to return mankind to the stars. But I take your point."

Piet was speaking softly. His face, no longer neutral, bore a look of concern similar to that of an adult with an injured child.

Stephen sighed, turned, and wrapped his arms around himself. He was trying to find a position that relaxed him. "It's not just Lilymead, Piet," he said without meeting his friend's eyes. "I've looked at the
Gallant Sallie
's maintenance records. I may not know the first thing about piloting, but I can see from repair invoices whether the captain's been beating a ship around. She's good."

"By now, perhaps the
first
thing," Piet said with a smile.

Stephen laughed, glad of the release. "All right, I'm a gentleman and can't be expected to touch my delicate fingers to a navigation computer," he said.