Logs crackled and roared in the fireplace. An antique spring-loaded mechanism, with chains and cogs of black iron, roasted a Hone-bar phoenix on the slowly rotating spit. The odors of cooking filled the room. Patel and Julien drank hot toddies from a punch bowl placed on a heavy wooden table, and Sula had tea sweetened with cane sugar.
“I should make the rounds of the guard posts before I turn in,” Julien said. “A night like this, the guards are probably all hiding indoors.”
Sula smiled. Julien was turning into a martinet, and his newfound rigor saved her a good deal of disciplinary work.
“Eldey,” Sula said, “suggested we should begin to think about disbanding the army.”
Julien gave a contemptuous laugh. “What does Eldey have to say about it? He’s one of those that ran and left us here with the Naxids.”
Patel, however, was looking carefully at Sula. “You’re going to do it,” he said. “Aren’t you, princess?”
“Yes. I’ve requested a posting with the Fleet.” And to Julien’s shocked look, she said, “Once they’re back—the real government—we become a danger to them. And we can’t beat them.”
Julien flushed with anger, all but the thin white scars he’d received in the Naxid interrogation. “You’re giving up!” he said.
“I’m getting on with fighting Naxids. That’s what I’m good at.” She looked at him. “We’ve got to quit while we’re ahead. Before we make too many enemies. Ask your father—he’ll agree.”
Julien turned his pointed face to the fire. He raised his cup of punch to his lips, then lowered it. “Ilike being in the army,” he said. “It’s going to be hard going back to the old life after this.”
“You don’t have to go back to the old life,” Sula said. “That’s what the amnesties are about.”
“I don’t have that option.” He gave her a look. “Pop’s taking the amnesty route, but he wants me to step into his place.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “if that’s not what you want.”
Julien shrugged. “It’s not a bad life,” he said. “I’ll have money and any other damn thing that takes my fancy, and this time I’ll be boss.”
Patel watched the two of them with soft dark eyes. “The thing is, princess,” he said, “we all got used to being loved.”
Sula smiled. “That was the best part, wasn’t it?”
Being loved. Finding the words“Long live the White Ghost!” sprayed on some apartment wall, seeing people stepping off trams reading copies ofResistance, watching the look on the faces of others when she appeared in public, walking through the Textile Market in her uniform or delivering stolen food to the Old Third. Being folded in Casimir’s arms, his musky scent filling her senses. She had been at the center of something magnificent, and knew that she would never matter that much again.
She turned to Patel. “And you?”
His lips quirked in something like a smile. “Oh, I’m going back to the old life. How else can I afford my vices?”
She raised her teacup. “To new adventures,” she said.
The others raised their glasses and drank. Julien looked gloomily into the fire.
“It won’t be as much fun without Casimir,” he said.
Sula followed Julien’s gaze into the flames as regret wafted through her heart.
“That’s true,” she said.
He was Martinez, but somehow not Martinez—he had the lantern jaw and the heavy brows, but there was something different in the set of his face, and his hair was black and straight instead of brown and wavy. He and Sula stood in the front room of Sula’s old apartment, the one behind the old Shelley Palace.
The not-quite-Martinez wore the silver-braided captain’s uniform, and he held out a Guraware vase filled with gladioli. “You gave this to my father for his wedding,” he said. “I thought I would give it to you for yours.”
Sula stared in shocked silence as she realized that this wasn’t Martinez, but his son by Terza Chen.
“It only makes sense that our clans be united,” said the future Lord Chen. “If you’ve solved that little problem, that is.”
Sula managed to speak. “What problem?” she asked.
The young man gave her a pitying look. “That was Gredel’s voice,” he said. “You’re slipping.”
Sula adopted her High City voice. “What problem?” she demanded.
“We only need to take a drop of blood. It’s for the gene bank.”
Chen put down the vase and reached out to take Sula’s hands. She stared at her own hands in horror, at the blood that poured from little lakes of red in her palms. The scent of blood flowed over her like a wave. Chen looked down at the blood pooling on the floor and spattering on his polished shoes, and a look of compassion crossed his features.
“That won’t do,” he said. He released her hands. “There won’t be any wedding until we deal with this situation.”
He stepped to the ugly Sevigny sofa and picked up a pillow. Little gold tassels dangled from each corner. He approached her, the pillow held firmly in the large, familiar hands.
“It’s the only way, I’m afraid,” he said, in Terza’s soft tones, and pressed the pillow over her face.
She fought, of course, but he was far too strong.
Sula woke with a scream bottled in her lungs and her mouth as dry as stone. She leaped out of bed, her hands lashing out blindly at any attacker. She tried to call for lights but failed to get the words past her withered tongue. Eventually she fell against the wall, groped her way to a touch pad, and hammered it with a fist till lights blazed on.
The large, silent bedroom in the Commandery glittered in the light, all mirrors, gilt, and polished white marble. No intruders menaced her. No Chens lurked behind the curtains. Her broad bed lay with its viridian spread tangled. One of her pillows had been flung partway across the room by Chen, or Martinez, or possibly someone else.
The door burst open and Spence rushed in, her straw-colored hair wild, her nightdress rucked up above her sturdy hips. She wore white underpants, had a wild look in her eye, and carried a pistol ready in her hand.
“My lady?” she said.
Sula tried to speak, failed, made a gesture of conciliation. Spence hesitantly lowered the pistol. Sula turned to where a beaker of water waited, poured, and rinsed out her sandpaper mouth.
“Sorry,” she said. “Bad dream.”
A look of compassion crossed Spence’s face. “I get them too,” she said. She looked at the pistol in her hand. “I wonder how smart it is to keep firearms within arm’s reach. I’m always afraid I’m going to ventilate the ceiling.”
Sula looked back at her bed, at the sidearm she’d placed carefully by the comm unit.
“I forgot I had a gun,” she said.
Spence put her gun on one of the gilt and marble tables and twisted the hem of her nightdress to let it fall to her knees. She stepped close and put a warm hand on Sula’s shoulder. “Are you all right now? Would you like me to get you something?”