The Sundering (20 page)

Martinez slid the heavy door shut and dropped into a plush chair. Vipsania and Walpurga sat on satin cushions on an ivory divan, and Roland sat like an uncrowned king in a massive, hooded leather armchair. Vipsania turned to Martinez.

“I’ve just got a hysterical call from PJ Ngeni,” she said. “He’s received a message from Sempronia that she’s broken the engagement and run off with another man—
with the man she loves.
”

Martinez felt the slow, cold toll of doom sound through his blood. “Did she say who?” he managed.

“Apparently not,” Vipsania said. “We’ve been cudgeling our brains trying to think who it might be.”

“It hardly matters,” Walpurga said. “Sempronia isn’t of an age to marry without the family’s permission.”

Roland gave a furious little jerk of his chin. “So she’s run off with a man and
can’t
marry him,” he scorned. “Is that supposed to make it any better?” His voice turned thoughtful. “If we sent police or private detectives after her, that would only make the scandal worse. Our only hope is a private appeal.” He turned to Martinez. “Do you have any idea—
any idea—
who it might be?”

“I’m thinking,” Martinez said, and what he thought was,
Shankaracharya, you little bastard.
He turned to Vipsania. “How was PJ?”

“Grief-stricken. In tears.” Her tone was disapproving. “It seems he’s made the mistake of caring for her.”

“We
all
made that mistake,” Roland said grimly. He passed his hand over his forehead, as if swiping away any inconvenient sympathy. “We can’t afford to make enemies of the Ngenis,” he said. “They’re our patrons and are too critical to everything we hope to accomplish.” He turned to Walpurga. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but you’re going to have to marry PJ, and soon. We can’t drag out your engagement as we could with Sempronia.”

Walpurga took this news with a long breath and a hardening of her dark eyes. “Very well,” she said.

Roland took on a calculating look. “The marriage won’t have to last long, I think. And then”—he offered a reassuring smile—“then we can pay off PJ and find you someone more to your liking.” With one hand he thoughtfully brushed the soft leather of his chair arm. “I’ll contact Lord Pierre and make the arrangements.”

Martinez felt his anger rise. “Now wait a minute,” he said. “The whole engagement to PJ Ngeni was a
fraud.
I
know
it was a fraud—it was
my
fraud, I
thought
of it.” He turned to Walpurga. “This was never intended to be a real marriage. You don’t have to do this—not to pay for Sempronia’s mistake.”

“Someone has to pay for it,” Vipsania said levelly. “Otherwise we’re disgraced in the eyes of all the highest Peers and of the Ngeni family.”

“The Ngenis will get over it,” Martinez said. “So will everyone else. They all know how much PJ is worth. All they have to do is get PJ drunk and
he’ll tell them himself.
” He pointed at Walpurga. “I
forbid
you to marry PJ Ngeni. You’re worth twenty of him and you know it.”

A light flush dappled Walpurga’s cheeks. She looked down at her hands. “No,” she said. “It’s necessary. I’ll marry PJ.”

Martinez slammed his fist on the arm of his chair. The sound boomed against the paneled walls. He turned to Roland. “If you think PJ is worth so damn much,” he said, “then
you
marry him.”

A soft smile played over Roland’s lips. “I don’t think PJ has the proper hormonal bias.” He looked at Martinez. “You’ve got to stop thinking like a military officer, Gare. You can’t carry the High City by storm. You have to
infiltrate.
”

Martinez rose to his feet and took an angry step toward his brother. “What prize are you playing for? What is there in Zanshaa High City that’s worth selling your sister to PJ Ngeni?”

Roland’s chin lifted. “We’re playing for our proper place in the order of the empire,” he said. “What else is worth the game?” His mild brown eyes rose to gaze at Martinez. “And what about yourself, Gare? I haven’t noticed that you’re free of ambition.
You
devised this sham engagement in part to benefit yourself—and now it’s Walpurga who pays when it goes wrong.”

Fury blazed in Martinez’s blood. He took another step toward Roland and raised a fist.

Roland made no move, and he regarded Martinez with a kind of dispassionate, studious interest. Then Martinez turned to Walpurga, and he slowly lowered the fist.

“I’m not going to fight for you if you won’t,” he said.

Walpurga said nothing, just turned to Roland. “Make the call,” she said.

“You’re all insane!” Martinez offered, and stormed from the room.

He bounded up the stairs to his room, still humid with the scent of hops, and stalked for a long moment in a tight angry circuit at the foot of his bed. Then he raised his arm and triggered the comm display.

“Urgent to Lieutenant Lord Nikkul Shankaracharya,” he said. “This is Captain Martinez. You are to contact me immediately.”

The answering call came in a few minutes, and it was from Sempronia. Her narrowed eyes looked at him from out of the sleeve display.

“Too late,” she said.

“It’s not,” Martinez said. “Your arrangement with PJ was a joke—no one ever intended for you to go through with it. I don’t care what you do with Shankaracharya, and maybe even PJ doesn’t—but now that you’ve run off, Walpurga is actually going to have to go through with
your marriage
.”

Sempronia gave a contemptuous little puff of anger through pursed lips. “Good,” she said. “Walpurga had no problem with PJ when
I
was engaged to him—now let
her
entertain him for a change.”

“Proney—”

“I’m not your pawn any more, Gareth!” Anger came hissing off Sempronia’s tongue. “
You
shackled me to PJ! And
then
you wrecked Nikkul’s career!” The display whirled, and Martinez saw a flash of ceiling, of floor, of a table behind which sat the wide-eyed, meek figure of Shankaracharya. There was the sound of something crumpling near the sound pickup, and then Sempronia flickered back into the frame, holding a large, official certificate, all gold ink and elegant calligraphy, that she brandished before the camera.

“There!” she said. “We’ve both been to the Peers’ Gene Bank! Our visit will be posted in the official record tomorrow. We can get married now.” She offered the camera a defiant glare. “You told me to help Nikkul choose another path. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“You can’t marry without permission,” Martinez said, fearing as he said it that this would only provoke another storm.

“Then the family will give permission,” Sempronia said. “Or if you won’t, then we’ll just live together until we can marry on our own.” She dropped the certificate out of frame. “The one thing you won’t do is stop us. Because if you interfere with our arrangement, people will start to hear about some of Roland’s dealings, particularly with the likes of Lord Ummir or Lady Convocate Khaa.”

Perfectly respectable Naxids,
as Roland had called them. Martinez suspected others might disagree with Roland’s description.

“May I speak to Lieutenant Shankaracharya?” Martinez asked.

He heard Shankaracharya murmur something in the background, but Sempronia was quick to answer. “No. You may not. He actually respects you, but I know better. Comm: end transmission.”

The orange end-stamp appeared in the display. “Comm,” Martinez said grimly, “save transmission.”

He called Roland. “Sempronia’s with a Lieutenant Lord Nikkul Shankaracharya.”

Roland’s brow clouded. “Isn’t he one of
your
officers?”

“He’s Sempronia’s officer now,” Martinez said. “I’m forwarding you the recording of the conversation I just had with her. I suggest you pay particular attention to the threat she made at the end.”

He sent the recording, then erased it from his own array’s memory and blanked the display, the chameleon-weave fabric returning to its normal viridian green.

Martinez stood in the silence of his room for a long moment, his anger burning.
Isn’t he one of
your
officers?
It was becoming clear who was going to get the blame for Sempronia’s defection.

He decided not to stay around to wait for the blame to descend on his head. He changed into civilian evening dress, brushed his hair, and descended the stair in silence. The doors to the parlor were still closed, he saw; the family conference was still going on, with marriages and condemnation being assigned on every hand.

Martinez felt his spirits lift the second he was outside of the palace and into the mellow twilight. In the pre-dinner hour there was little traffic on the streets, and few walkers. A scattering of stars were visible in the darkening sky, and Zanshaa’s shadow had cut a wide slice out of the silver accelerator ring. A ship’s antimatter torch blazed directly overhead, brighter than anything in the sky, and heading—Martinez guessed—for Wormhole 4 and Seizho. Thoughts of Sula set his nerves tingling.

Martinez bought an armful of flowers from the Torminel pushcart vendor on the corner—a carnivore selling blossoms—then turned the corner and walked on to Sula’s building. She met him at the door of her apartment, fading surprise still in her eyes.

“You’re early,” she said. She wore a green Fleet fatigue coverall, apparently her usual dress at home.

“Sorry,” Martinez said. “I couldn’t wait.” He offered her the flowers. “I thought I’d replace those stolen daffodils.”

Sula looked at the extravagant bouquet with bemused pleasure. “You’re going to have to give me a lot more vases at this rate,” she said.

He stood in the hideous Sevigny extravagance of the front room while Sula busied herself filling some vases, equally hideous, that had been sitting empty on stands, intended apparently as objects of admiration. Fleet officers, raised in a tradition in which every object had its proper drawer or bay or locker, were a tidy breed, but Sula’s room was preternaturally neat: even papers with arithmetical jottings, worksheets from her hobby of mathematical puzzles, were squared neatly on a table, slightly offset so that the numbers on the upper right corners were visible. Aside from the vases with their flowers there was no indication that Martinez had ever been present in the room at all, something that sent a waft of depression sighing through him.

“I was just about to take a bath and change,” Sula said as she returned a vase to its stand.

Martinez brightened. “Would you like company in the bath?”

“Good grief, no,” she said. Martinez blinked in surprise.

And then, as if Sula had begun to suspect she’d been too blunt, she stepped close to him and put her arms around him. “My baths are for me alone,” she said. “It’s one of those things I’m fussy about. Sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Martinez said. How Sula’s standards of privacy could possibly have been maintained in the Fleet was something he couldn’t imagine.

He kissed her. “Would you mind terribly if I left my family and joined yours?”

She gave him a curious look. “My family’s dead,” she said.

“There are advantages to that,” Martinez said. “And in any case it’s you I want to join.”

Her expression softened. He kissed her again, and her hands cupped the back of his head to hold his kiss to hers.

Join Sula’s family? he thought.

He could. He believed he could.

S
ula watched as the juggler spun and danced in the center of a whirl of blades. Torchlight glowed on keen-edged steel. The knives were attached by elastic to the juggler’s wrists, ankles, and hips, and snapped back as she threw them out over the heads of her audience. To control them she had to catch them and throw them again, or let the elastic wrap around her limbs or body or head, and then cast the knives off with a jerk of the head or a spin of the body.

The timing was exquisite, and breathtaking. One slip and the girl would be cut, or if the elastic was cut instead someone in the audience could get a knife in the eye.

Sula’s breath frosted in the chill midnight air. Martinez’s arms coil around her from behind, and she leaned back against his warmth.

He had taken her to a series of clubs in the Lower Town, and on their return had encountered a group of street performers presenting their act on the wide apron before the lower terminal of the funicular railway. Surrounded by torches, Cree drummers had beaten a rhythm while Daimong acrobats balanced atop chairs or barrels or each other; and nocturnal Torminel, huge eyes wide in the semidarkness, had performed a slapstick routine. The air was heavy with the scents of roasting chestnuts and ears of maize produce shipped up from Zanshaa’s southern hemisphere, sold by vendors from portable charcoal braziers. Now a Terran girl barely in her adolescence was mastering the flying knives with an intent stonefaced courage that left Sula dry-mouthed with admiration.

“Here,” Martinez said. “Try one of these.”

In one hand he held a crystalized taswa fruit just purchased from a vendor. Sula bit down on it, and bright sparks of sugar exploded on her tongue, followed at once by a tartness that flooded her mouth with flavor.

“Thank you,” she said as the acid puckered her lips.

The juggler was a blur of motion now, the bright knives whipping around her. Sula could hear the sound of her soft leather soles on the flagstones. The juggler bounded into a twisting somersault, landing on her feet just outside of the knives’ danger zone. Her hands were a blur as she snatched the steel from the air. Metal clacked on metal. And then the girl was motionless, the knives bunched in her hands, and in the absolute silence she drew her feet together and bowed.

The audience, a hundred or so drifting toward the High City from their evening in the Lower Town, burst into applause and cheers. Sula cheered wildly with the rest, applauding till her palms grew red, and when one of the Torminel came by with a little portable terminal for contributions, she keyed in a generous contribution.

Another act followed, a mournful-looking Terran whose performance consisted entirely of bouncing a ball on the pavement, but doing it in surprising ways. Martinez’s arms were still around Sula. She took another bite of the candied taswa fruit.

I am sitting in a circle of torches watching a grown man bounce a ball
,
Sula thought, and I am feeling…what?

Happiness…
The surprise was so strong that she took a sudden astonished breath of the charcoal-scented air.

Happiness. Bliss. Contentment.

The thought that she might be happy was so startling that she had to probe the thought carefully, as if it might explode. She found herself suspicious of the very idea. Moments of happiness had been rare in her life, and nonexistent since she’d stepped into the role of Lady Sula. She had not thought happiness possible, not when her whole life was an imposture and when she had to remain constantly on guard against the lapse that could expose her.

The man with the ball reacted to an unexpected bounce, and Sula laughed. She hugged Martinez’s arms to her. Lazy pleasure filled her mind.

Happiness.

What a shock.

“No,” said Lord Tork. “Never. Abandon the capital? Such a thing can never happen.”

Lord Chen feigned a curiosity he did not feel. “Both my sister and Lord Squadcom Do-faq have endorsed the plan. What is your objection?”

“Zanshaa is the heart of the empire!” Tork chimed. “The capital cannot be surrendered!”

“To defend Zanshaa is to stake everything on a battle where the odds are against us from the start,” said Chen.

“If the government
can
be moved—” began Lady Seekin.

“The government will not move,” Lord Tork said. “Lord Saïd would not permit such a radical step.”

We’ll see about that, Lord Chen thought grimly. He would seek a personal appointment with the Lord Senior.

The eight members of the Fleet Control Board sat around their broad black-topped table in their large, shadowy room in the Commandery. Someone had forgotten to tell the staff to remove the ninth chair, the one suitable for cradling the long breastbone of a Lai-own, and it sat empty as a reminder of Lady San-torath, flung from the rock of the High City two mornings ago.

“I would like to further remark,” Tork continued, “that it is not the place of a junior captain to submit these kinds of memorials to the Board. It is the task of junior captains to carry out the tasks assigned them in silence, and to spare us their opinions.”

Lord Chen suspected that he was stepping into a trap, but a need for clarification demanded he speak. “I beg your pardon, lord fleetcom,” he said, “but it was not a junior captain who submitted this plan to the board. It was myself.”

Knowing there was prejudice against Martinez on the board, he had told them only that it was the product of two officers who had brought it to his attention.

Tork turned his white, round-eyed face to Lord Chen. A strip of dead flesh dangled from his chin like a large, twisted whisker as he spoke. “Squadron Commander Do-faq submitted the memorial to me this morning, and identified Captain Martinez as the author.”

“Martinez!” cried Junior Fleetcom Pezzini, as if some terrible private theory had just been confirmed, and slapped his hand on the table in annoyance.

Lord Chen would have mentioned Lady Sula as the coauthor, but he suspected he would only blacken her name.

“Captain Martinez has a habit of submitting memorials to his superiors,” Tork continued as disapproval rang in his words. “He has offered a radical tactical theory to Do-faq, and Do-faq has given it to your sister. Now they are both engaged in maneuvers that are detrimental to the traditions and practice of the service.”

“Will his interference never cease?” Pezzini said, just as Chen was about to reply. “Just a few days ago he blackened the name of a client of mine, a perfectly sound young man who revered him—revered him against my advice, I must point out.”

“I fail to see where any of this is improper,” Lord Chen said. “Captain Martinez submitted his suggestions to his superiors with proper regard for rank and with all deference. And now
your own commanders
see merit in these proposals.”

“The rot has spread far,” Tork said. “I trust that Lord Fleetcom Kangas will halt the infection and restore discipline. Only the tactics of our ancestors, adhered to with utmost inflexibility, can possibly save the capital.”

“Let Martinez rot in his damned training school,” Pezzini said. “That should cool his ambitions.”

Chen, his face expressionless, felt his insides twist with growing contempt.
You people know nothing but how to lose a war,
he wanted to shout.
You’ve been offered a way to win, and you can’t see it.

But he kept silent. He knew that protest was useless in the face of Lord Tork’s rigidity, and his private lobbying with other board members hadn’t yet reached the stage where they would support a vote against the chairman.

He would send the Lord Senior a message requesting an immediate meeting. And then hope for the best.

Martinez, in high heart, stepped into the foyer of the Shelley Palace twirling the ribbon of the Golden Orb medal around his index finger. As he prepared to bound up the stairs to his room, he was approached by one of the maidservants—a thick-legged, homely woman, the type his sibs hired so that the Martinez sisters would always be the most beautiful women in the room.

“Captain Martinez,” the woman said. “Lord Roland asked me to tell you that he’d like to see you in his office.”

In his memory, a girl snatched flying knives from the air. Martinez caught his medal in his hand with a sigh and said, “Very well, thank you.”

He found Roland behind his desk, talking to someone—a Torminel—on his display. “We hoped you could attend,” he said, “as you’ve been so kind to us since our arrival.”

The Torminel, whomever she was, accepted the invitation, whatever it was, with pleasure. Roland signed off and looked up.

“I hope you’ll be able to take time off from your carnal adventures,” he said, “to attend your sister’s wedding tomorrow, at sixteen and one.”

Martinez dropped into a chair. “Which sister are we talking about?”

“Vipsania. After which she will be joining Lord Oda and his family on a visit to their clients on Zarafan.”

Martinez put his feet up on his brother’s desk. He was in a buoyant mood, and not simply because he’d spent the night in Sula’s arms. In the morning had come the communication from Do-faq saying that he approved Martinez’s plan and had sent it on to the Fleet Control Board. Do-faq had also sent the results of his latest series of experiments in the new tactics, and he and Sula had analyzed them over breakfast. He couldn’t help but be buoyed by physical satiation followed by useful mental exercise, and all with a partner whose imagination and wit more than matched his own.

Poor Vipsania, he thought.

“Sounds like a delightful honeymoon,” he said, “stuck on a ship with a pack of her desiccated in-laws. Will she be running her broadcasting empire from Zarafan?”

“Probably, unless Zarafan in its turn becomes unsafe.”

Roland folded his hands on his desk and looked at Martinez from over the glossy toes of the shoes. “If Sempronia tries to contact you, I’d be obliged if you don’t reply.”

Martinez only raised his eyebrows.

“She’s to be disinherited,” Roland said. “No money, no communication, no contact. When we have the time to pack them all up, her belongings will be given to charity.”

“Charity,” Martinez repeated, as if the word were a stranger.

“Walpurga insisted on banishment for Sempronia, and after the threat she made I can’t say I have any objection. Oh, did I mention this?—Sempronia agrees.” Roland gave a smile filled with grim satisfaction. “I spoke to her last night, and again this morning. She’ll be given permission to marry, but she’ll be a Shankaracharya from now on—he’ll have to support her fancies, not us.”

“I believe he’s rich,” Martinez pointed out.

“Clan Shankaracharya is heavily invested in pharmaceuticals and biochemicals.”
Trust Roland to know these details.
“Nothing on Zanshaa, though—we expect she’ll relocate after the war.”

“No doubt a crushing blow,” Martinez said. Roland seemed to have forgotten it was their father, he thought, who did the disinheriting—that was one task he couldn’t delegate to one of his offspring. Martinez might be able to influence that decision with a personal message, perhaps not to Lord Martinez, but to his lady, a woman to whose romantic nature an elopement might appeal…

Roland gave Martinez a curious look. “What did you do to enrage Sempronia so totally? I’ve never heard her use such language.”

Martinez was silent. Roland shrugged, then continued with his news.

“Lord Pierre and I have fixed Walpurga’s wedding with PJ for three days from now. It won’t be a very elaborate affair, but we hope you’ll be present.”

“You don’t mind if I wear mourning, do you?” Martinez barely had to search his mind for the cutting reply.

Roland’s eyes were level beneath his heavy brows. “You know the wedding’s necessary.”

“I know nothing of the sort.” Martinez tossed the Golden Orb medal into the air, then caught it. “You want the Ngenis because they give you access to the highest circles of the capital. Very well.” He drew his feet off the table and leaned forward, letting his gaze meet that of Roland. “Suppose I give you all that myself? Suppose I sacrifice myself in place of Walpurga?”

Roland’s gaze was unblinking. “You’re offering to marry?”

“Yes.” Tossing the medal again.

Roland drew back, his frown thoughtful. “I would have suggested it myself if I hadn’t known how much you enjoy being a bachelor—I assumed you’d turn me down flat.”

“Perhaps I would have. But with all this romance in the air, how can I resist?”

Roland’s look grew abstract. “I can suggest a number of young ladies—”

“I already have one in mind.”

Roland’s eyes narrowed. “This isn’t your Warrant Officer Amanda, is it? Because my patience is—”

“Lady Sula,” Martinez said, enunciating the words with passionate clarity.

Roland blinked, and Martinez rejoiced at his surprise.

“I see,” Roland said slowly. “It’s not Miss Amanda you’ve spent the last couple nights with, it’s—”

“None of your business.”

“Quite.” Roland fingered his chin. “She has no money, of course.”

“Only the Sula title, which is of the highest. You can’t find a more formidable ancestry in the records. And it’s the ancestry and the title that opens the doors to all those drawing rooms and ministries, the ones that won’t open to mere money.”

“True.” Roland still gazed inward at his own calculations. “Still, we’d have to lay out a fortune to set the two of you up in the High City. Provide you a palace here, a place in the country—she can ride, yes?”

“I’ve no idea.” Martinez grinned. “But what
will
be necessary is an empire-class collection of porcelain.”

“Porcelain?”
Roland was frank in his amazement. “What does porcelain have to do with anything? Has she made it a condition?”

“No, but trust me to know my bride.”

A thought occurred to Roland. “Have you even asked her yet?”

“No, but I will tonight.” Martinez suppressed a grim laugh. “How can she resist a family like ours?”

“I doubt she will,” Roland murmured. “She must be sick of being poor in a rich world.”