He wanted to shriek at them. Shriek. But they wouldn't listen, wouldn't hold off their gorging even when the Naxids loomed and threatened to knock down the whole foul sty.

  Martinez found Terza standing by a Devis paper screen, white with one panel of pale blue. Her gown was a radiant contrast to the austerities of the Devis mode, in the ornate high style so popular since the war had begun, deep gold with a pattern of green vegetation and brilliant scarlet flowers, all flounces and fringes, and slashed to reveal the satin underskirt. Terza's hair was bound with white mourning thread, and covered with an intricate net of tiny white starflowers. She was with a group of her girl friends, and listening to them with what appeared to be careful attention.

  Martinez hesitated at the sight of her, then made his way to her side. She turned to him, and her lips parted in a shy smile. “Captain Martinez,” she said.

  “My lady,” Martinez answered. He turned to her friends. “I'm afraid I must beg your pardon for taking Lady Terza away from you.”

  He drew her away, down a side corridor. His nerves flared with contrary impulses: to laugh, to whimper, to tear off his clothes and fly screaming down the hall. Instead he asked, “Has your father spoken to you?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was soft. “Just before we left home.”

  “You got the news before I did.” Terza moved with perfect grace in her elaborate, rustling gown. Martinez tried a door at random, found it opened on a kind of bed-sitting-room, a somber bed in white and black and a desk of pale cinder-colored wood with paper, glass calligraphy pens, and a stick of ink ready for use. He drew her inside and closed the door.

  “I'm sorry about the mourning threads.” Terza's hand made a vague gesture by her hair. “I knew I shouldn't be wearing mourning when we're engaged, but my father only talked to me after I'd dressed.”

  “That's all right,” Martinez said. “From everything I've heard about Lord Richard, he was someone worth mourning.”

  Terza looked away. There was an awkward silence. Martinez took a grip on his thoughts.

  “Look,” he said. “If you don't want to do this, we'll call it off. And that's that.”

  Faint surprise marked her features. “I-” Her lips shaped a word that she failed to utter. Her eyes darted to Martinez. “I don't object,” she said. “I know families arrange these things. My engagement to Lord Richard was arranged.”

  “But at least you knew him. You moved in the same set. You barely know me.”

  Terza gave a fluid nod. “That's true. But-” A kind of tremor passed across her eyes, a reflection of some inner thought, and she looked at him. “You're successful and reliable. You're intelligent. Your family has money. So far as I can see, you're kind.” Her gown rustled as she raised a hand to touch his sleeve. “Those are good things, in a husband.”

  Martinez felt the world spin in giddy circles about the small room with its writing desk and austere little bed. He looked at the young woman standing before him, the perfectly schooled body with its willowy grace, the elegant hands, the lovely serene face and smooth skin, and he wondered if what he beheld was entirely art-if it was the trained response of a woman who knew her duty to her clan and who was doing it regardless of any distaste she might feel, or if by any chance there was some genuine feeling behind her words. If beneath the brocade and elegance she was one of those nightmare creatures he had seen clustered around the trough, or was what she actually appeared, a beautiful and gentle human being.

  But even if she were the former-even if there was avarice and calculation behind the mask-what did that matter? It was only fit in that case that Martinez should shoulder his way to the trough and seize what he could for himself, the appointment under Michi Chen being only the appetizer.

  And if Terza were actually what she appeared, then that was even better, and he was lucky. Sula had once called him the luckiest person in the universe. Certainly he had been lucky enough to escape Sula. Perhaps Terza Chen was another great piece of luck.

  Distantly, the dinner gong rang. The wedding guests would begin their progression toward the ballroom, where the tables had been set.

  He looked at Terza and put his hand over hers. “Just remember,” he said, “you've had your chance to run away.”

  Conscious of the light touch of her on his arm-the touch not of the woman he loved, but of a stranger-Martinez turned and walked with Terza toward the fate that awaited them.

  Sula's research on the Gene Bank uncovered no loopholes in the regulations that governed the place, and after a while her view of the display began to shimmer with tears. The chime of the comm made her gasp in surprise. She swiped at her swollen eyes with the back of her hand and answered. A few minutes later she signed for a packet of orders from the Commandery.

  Her leave was now officially over, and on the morrow she was to join the staff of Fleet Commander Ro-dai, who headed something called the “Logistics Consolidation Executive,” run out of an office building in the Lower Town.

  Sula reheated the morning's tea and stirred cane sugar syrup into it while she stared at the orders printed on the Commandery's crisp bond paper. You are required and directed to present yourself at 09:01 hours at Room 890 of the Dix Building&It was the reality of it, the creamy paper, the sharp outlines of the letters, the absolute directness and clarity of the Commandery's wording, that somehow made up Sula's mind.

  She would walk around the corner to the Shelley Palace and see Martinez. She would force an interview, if necessary, by claiming to have orders from the Commandery-she had the envelope and paper in hand, after all. She would tell Martinez that she was not the genuine Lady Sula but an imposter who had taken her place, and throw herself on his mercy. Hit me, spit in my face, denounce me to the authorities&or marry me.

  His choice.

  The idea was so dangerous that she felt a welcome rush of adrenaline, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. A wild wind of liberation began to sing through her. To give up her secret seemed intoxicatingly like freedom.

  Sula washed her face and applied cosmetic. She put her orders back in their envelope and tried to reattach the seal, then decided it didn't really matter. They weren't really Martinez's orders, after all.

  The wind of hope blew strong in her heart. She squared her shoulders and put on her uniform cap and left the apartment with the crisp envelope held in her left hand. A drum rattled in her mind as she marched down the pavement in proper military style, executed a precise right-turn at the corner, and paraded to the front door of the Shelley Palace.

  Her ring was answered by one of the Martinez sisters' homely maidservants. “Captain Martinez, please,” she said. “Orders from the Commandery.”

  The servant was a little flushed, and the laughter that tried to tug at her face hinted that Sula had interrupted her in the middle of a good giggle.

  “Captain Martinez isn't in, my lady,” she said. “I believe he may be with his fiancée.”

  “Lord Gareth, I mean,” Sula corrected, “not Lord Roland.” And far too late thought, Roland's getting married?

  The servant appeared a little surprised. “It's Lord Gareth who's getting married, my lady. To Lady Terza Chen. We've all just been told.” She seemed surprised at Sula's shock. “If it's urgent, you might try the Chen Palace, miss.”

  “Thank you,” Sula said. “I will.”

  The door closed.

  “Ah. Ha,” Sula said.

  Military reflexes came to her rescue. Despite knees that were suddenly without strength, Sula managed an about-turn, a right-angle turn at the street, and another turn at the corner.

  On the way to her apartment she clawed the envelope and its contents to confetti.

  Bitch. Bitch, he was mine.

  “Congratulations on your new son-in-law,” said Lord Pezzini. “Now I see why you were so assiduously promoting his career.”

  Lord Chen looked at Pezzini, his thoughts sour, his countenance bland. “Thank you, my lord,” he said. “Though I believe any assistance I've attempted to render Captain Martinez has been based entirely on his merits.”

  Pezzini's lips quirked into a condescending smile. “Of course,” he said.

  Lord Chen considered what an open-handed slap might do to Pezzini's smile, and kept that picture in the forefront of his mind as he walked with Pezzini toward the somber quiet of the Control Board's meeting room.

  Pezzini was hardly the first to smirk at the news. When the announcement of Terza's engagement to Martinez had been announced the previous afternoon at the wedding banquet, the applause and congratulations had been civil, but he'd seen the looks exchanged by the guests, the surprise followed by condescension, pity, and contempt. Another great old family fallen to the parvenu Clan Martinez. Ngeni, Yoshitoshi, and now Chen. What inducements could Lord Roland have possibly offered to persuade Lord Chen to agree to such a hasty, ill-advised alliance? And what rustic swarms of country-bred, knuckle-dragging Martinez cousins and nieces and nephews would soon be swarming into the High City to despoil the great families of their sons and daughters?

  The inducements offered by Roland Martinez had been many, in fact, and so had the discreetly-veiled threats. It had taken all the entire morning for Roland to finally batter his way through Lord Chen's defenses. At one or two points Chen had been on the verge of calling the servants to have Roland flung from the house.

  Even now he could barely believe that he had given away his daughter-no, he corrected ruthlessly, not given. Sold.

  To a man who was no doubt laudable in his way- ingenious, that was the word for him, a clever sort of person who had done well in his chosen sphere-but who was in no way worthy of marriage to a Chen. Just because a man was useful didn't mean that he was entitled to father the next clan heir. Who were his ancestors, after all? How many palaces had they owned in the High City, and for how many centuries?

  Terza had taken the news well, simply tilted her head, pondered for a moment, and said “Yes, father,” in her soft voice. The sight of Terza in her room, given such news while she sat in her elaborate gown with the mourning ribbons for Lord Richard still in her hair, had almost broken Chen's heart.

  Lady Chen had been far less reasonable. She had screamed, wept, and threatened, and when none of that worked she shut herself in her room and refused to go to the Yoshitoshi wedding. Lord Chen had the feeling that it would be all he could do to get his wife to her own daughter's nuptials.

  It was a matter of luck, Lord Chen thought as he took his place at the board room's broad midnight-black table. The Martinez clan was lucky, and Clan Chen was not. He needed the Martinezes' luck.

  But some day, he swore, the luck would change. Clan Chen would be restored to its former glory, able to stand on its own without assistance.

  Then his daughter would be free. She would no longer be a hostage to his ill fortune, and would then be able to rid herself of her embarrassment of a husband, and to have a life worthy of the heir to one of the great families in the empire.

  This Lord Chen promised himself. And, in the meantime, if Captain Martinez failed to treat Terza with the utmost respect, if he treated her ill or raised a hand to her or caused her misery, he would see Martinez dead.

  There were still a few things a high-born Peer could arrange. There were clients of Clan Chen whose occupations were less than legitimate, and who would be willing to do favors for the clan head. A son-in-law, dead by mysterious means-it would be easy to arrange.

  He took note of the other board members as they entered the room. He had been quietly lobbying them for the adoption of the plan to evacuate the capital-the plan of that useful man Martinez-and Chen had made headway with his peers. There were three besides himself who were willing to urge the plan on the Convocation, but three wasn't enough. They were balanced by the three votes that Lord Tork could count on.

  That would produce a tie vote. If Lord Saïd would only appoint Lady San-torath's successor, then the issue might be resolved, but the Lord Senior seemed in no hurry to do so. The delay made Lord Chen grind his teeth. He could almost feel the pressure wave of the advancing Naxids on the back of his neck.

  Lord Tork entered, and with him a group of three Fleet officers in full dress uniforms. The leader was a Lai-own in the uniform of a senior captain; the others were aides, a Terran and a Torminel with heavy dark spectacles comforting her large eyes.

  Lord Chen studied the newcomers carefully. Black collar tabs, he thought, that meant the Intelligence Section. Before the war the Intelligence Section had been perhaps the smallest division of the Fleet-there was no enemy, after all, on which to gather intelligence, and the section's rival, the Investigative Service under Lord Inspector Snow, which investigated criminal activity within the Fleet, had thrived at their expense. But the Investigative Service had received a black eye in their failure to discover the rebels' plans, and the Intelligence Section had found a new purpose and new funding. It was trying to come up with imaginative ways to monitor the enemy and even to insert spies into Naxid-held territory, but most of its work at this point consisted of analyzing rebel capabilities. The board regularly received briefings from the Intelligence Section and the other intelligence services, but the group that had entered with Tork contained none of the usual faces.

  The two aides softly closed the doors, leaving the Fleet Control Board and its guests isolated in the hushed, dimly lit room. The board's Cree secretary took up his stylus and cued recorders that would transcript the meeting for history. The Torminel aide removed her spectacles.

  The scent of dying flesh wafted from Lord Tork as he took his place at the head of the table. His unblinking eyes looked left and right as if he were slowly counting the members present, and then he rapped the table with his pale knuckles.

  “My lords,” he said, “I should like to introduce Captain Ahn-kin, of the Intelligence Section, who yesterday sent me a report that I realized was of profound consequence. The captain has made a discovery with grave implications for the war, and I decided to bring him here before you so that we may respond as a body to this information.”

  Ahn-kin stepped forward-he was not offered a seat-and adjusted his sleeve display so as to send information to each of the board members' desk displays. Lord Chen looked at the desk before him and saw, glowing in the ebony surface of the table, a document with the title Analysis of Premiere Axiom and its Role in Rebel Force Structure.

  Premiere Axiom? he thought. He had heard the name before, but he couldn't remember where. Ahn-kin soon refreshed Chen's memory.

  “Some of you may remember Premiere Axiom as a shipping company created by rebel plotters in order to secretly move resources from one place to another prior to the rebellion,” Ahn-kin said. Without any clear place at the table he was hovering awkwardly above Tork's left shoulder, shifting his weight from one leg to another in his discomfort. “Premiere Axiom was created in the Year of the Praxis 12,477, four years before rebellion, and is privately held. Its principal shareholders include Lady Kushdai, Lord Kulukraf, Lord Aksad, and other rebels. Lady Kushdai serves as chairman.” Chen's display showed the company's organizational structure.

  “On the day of the rebellion,” Ahn-kin continued, “three Premiere Axiom cargo ships were inbound to Magaria.” Names and manifests flashed across Chen's displays. “We believe they carried personnel sufficient to crew the ships captured by the Naxid rebels on that first day, thus enabling their subsequent victory at the Battle of Magaria. Nineteen other ships had been purchased over the years by Premiere Axiom, and probably carried legitimate cargo in addition to any cargoes intended to aid the rebels. At the time of the rebellion most of these were in five other inhabited systems in the reaches between Naxas and Magaria.”

  Chen's display showed planetary systems, all systems that hadn't been heard from since the rebellion had begun. Ahn-kin shifted from one foot to the other, then continued his briefing.

  “We suspect these ships held soldiers that captured critical sections of the ring stations, possibly with the help of rebels already on the station. Though we have heard nothing of any of these Premiere Axiom cargo vessels since the rebellion began, presumably they continue to serve the rebel cause.”

  Lord Chen jumped as Ahn-kin gave a convulsive explosion that Chen only belatedly realized was a sneeze. The poor Lai-own stood directly behind Lord Tork, Chen realized, and was breathing in the scent of Tork's perpetually decaying flesh with every inhalation.

  “I beg your lordships' pardon,” Ahn-kin said, and took a few steps to the side, where the odor was not so strong. He took in a deep breath, then continued.

  “Our investigation into enemy capabilities initially concentrated on military equipment, organization, and facilities, and then only gradually began to take in civilian facilities and capabilities as well. Approximately a month ago we became aware that Premiere Axiom had commissioned ten new cargo vessels from civilian yards on six different worlds, all of which were in one stage or another of completion at the time of the rebellion. We assumed the Naxids wanted to add carrying capacity to their fleet, and these new ships were added to our estimates of rebel inventory. It was only in the last few days, however, that our analysis unit acquired a specialist in ship construction, Lieutenant Kijjalis here”-the Torminel braced, chin high-“who was able to examine the vessels' plans in any detail, and we reached,” he took another deep breath, “certain conclusions.”