“I wish to congratulate you on your successes with the Court of Honor,” he said. “Some of the resignations, I confess, surprised me. I’d supposed they would put up more resistance.”

  “The more resignations I procure,” Sula said, “the more formidable my reputation becomes. I hope that soon convocates might resign the second I look at them.”

  “But Lord Hottash? You must have done more than just look at him.”

  “I got him stinking drunk, then told him the Convocation was about to become a serious, earnest body intent on spoiling everyone’s fun, and that he wouldn’t enjoy it. I made it seem like a colossal joke. He signed with a high heart, and staggered out.”

  She didn’t mention that she’d slammed down a lot of töldo in the process of getting herself and Hottash on the same wavelength, and that she’d spent the next hours nearly paralyzed, unable to get out of her chair without toppling back into it. Eventually she’d crawled to a settee, curled up, and waited for the agony to end.

  At least she was getting better at drinking. She’d managed to avoid vomiting on herself.

  Saïd pursed his lips. “Lord Roland,” he said, “has urged me to fully empanel the Court of Honor so that hearings proper could begin. He gave me three names—all convocates who were denounced under the last administration and who were being held in jail awaiting trial when Gruum’s administration fell.”

  “That should get the job done,” Sula said.

  “I fear that the specter of vindictiveness might hover over the proceedings,” Saïd said.

  Sula hoped that it would, but knew better than to say so. “I don’t know them,” she said, “but I am the chair, and I’ll keep them in order if I have to.”

  Saïd tilted his head. “Perhaps,” he said, “all three will not be necessary.”

  “Your lordship knows better than I.” They were Roland’s choices, after all.

  Sula lifted her cup to her lips, inhaled the smoky aroma of the tea, then took a sip. Saïd continued to regard her with assessing, contemplative eyes.

  “You will be playing a much more prominent role in the Convocation than previously,” he said.

  Sula laughed. “More prominent than being accused of blowing up the economy?”

  Saïd’s eyes twinkled. “Events have served to acquit you,” he said. “No—I think I’m not wrong in saying that you wish an independent role in the Convocation, leader of your own faction, rather than being a supporter of some other leader.”

  By which he means Roland, Sula thought.

  “I prefer not to be ordered about,” Sula said. “I’ve had enough of that in the Fleet.”

  “I wish you every success,” said Saïd. “But I fear you do not have sufficient resources. I believe you are quite well-off, but building a faction costs money, and you don’t have nearly enough.”

  Sula rubbed the pad of scar tissue on her right thumb. “I have a very old name,” she said.

  “That name will open many doors,” said Saïd, “and you will be able to join a great many exclusive clubs, but that alone won’t convince many to follow you.”

  Sula sipped her tea again. She thought she knew where this was going, but decided that Lord Saïd should be the one to raise the issue.

  Saïd gave a little smile, perhaps appreciating Sula’s choice of silence.

  “Before the war,” he said, “I believe I mentioned to you my grandnephew Eveleth. He is an accomplished young man, a sportsman, and already bears a great name. He is very wealthy—wealthy enough to support a faction in the Convocation.”

  “He is also in want of a wife,” Sula finished.

  “That is truly the case,” said Saïd. “For the most part he’s an exemplary fellow, but there are certain realms in which he lacks maturity, and marriage would serve to season him in important ways.”

  Sula was not about to become the designated seasoner for some rich, overprivileged, overbred ninny.

  “It is very kind of you to consider me,” Sula said, “but as I told you before, I’m not interested in marriage at this time.”

  Dr. Gunaydin had finally achieved his separation from the Fleet and would soon arrive in Zanshaa City, and marriage was the very last thing Sula had in mind.

  “If your ladyship is certain . . . ?” Saïd asked.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Well then,” Saïd said. “I’m a little sorry for the both of you, as I think you’d be well matched.”

  Sula bade farewell to Saïd and left his chambers. In the soft-carpeted corridor she met Captain Naaz Vijana, the victor of the Yormak Rebellion and the tireless advocate of Terran supremacy. His pointed face brightened as she approached.

  “Lady Sula!” he said. “I wanted to congratulate you on your purge of the Convocation.”

  “Thank you,” Sula said. “But there’s a long way to go.”

  He fell into step beside her. “There certainly is,” he said. “How many more before we achieve a Terran majority?”

  “There won’t be a Terran majority,” Sula said. And at Vijana’s scowl, she said, “We’ve calculated that we can dominate the Convocation with a forty percent minority, and it won’t be so obvious that we’re in charge.”

  She and Roland Martinez had arrived at that figure after a certain amount of discussion.

  A confiding smile broke across Vijana’s face. “Oh, excellent!” he said. “I understand. Sneak up on the animals before you conk them on the head and toss them in cages.”

  He made it sound like one of Captain Mazankosi’s animal hunts. “Plenty in cages right now,” Sula said.

  Vijana rubbed his hands. “More to come!” he said cheerfully.

  She couldn’t get away fast enough.

  “My lady,” said Viswan, “we have a call from a Mr. Naveen Patel. Do you know the gentleman?”

  “I’ll take the call in my office.” Sula closed the door behind her before taking the call on her desk comms.

  “Hello, princess,” Patel said with a white smile. “We seem both to have survived.”

  “And thrived, I hope,” Sula said.

  Patel’s dark eyes gleamed. “Thrived more than not,” he said.

  Patel was a glossy, stylish man with gleaming black hair that tumbled in curls to his collar. He was also a leader of the cliquemen, a member of the commission that ruled Zanshaa City’s gangsters. Sula had been allied with the commission in the Naxid War, and they had provided a hard, violent core to her Secret Army.

  When Sula ran for Harzapid, she’d left the cliquemen—the Terran ones, least—at war with Lady Tu-hon’s Steadfast League, originally an organization of those unemployed and impoverished by the economic collapse, but which had evolved into Tu-hon’s very own not-so-secret army.

  “How is Julien?” Sula asked.

  “Julien’s fine,” Patel said. “He’s doing a bit of recuperating in the country.”

  “Recuperating?”

  “Caught a bit of shrapnel,” Patel said, then shrugged. “He was in fine spirits last I heard. But he’s deliberately made it hard for anyone to find him, so we’ll just have to wait for him to surface.”

  Julien Bakshi was another member of the commission. Julien and Sula had been close allies over the years, particularly when a crisis occurred and the military governor of Zanshaa needed to be assassinated, or when Lady Koridun’s older brother needed to meet an accident along with numerous other members of her family.

  “The reason I called, then, princess,” Patel said, “is that over the last two years we’ve acquired a lot of good intelligence on the Steadfast League. In the beginning they were a bunch of losers and pushovers who made a lot of noise but who ran away when things got tough. But Tu-hon moved a lot of hard cases into Zanshaa, and lately it’s become something of a fair fight—too fair, if you ask me.”

  “The fighting isn’t still going on, is it?”

  “No, the league’s officially disbanded. But we figure some of them are biding their time, just like your Action Groups did in the last war, and we have a pretty good idea who they are and where they’re based.”

  Sula considered this. “How do you know this?”

  Patel gave a laughing grin. “Because we infiltrated them, of course!” He saw the question in her eyes and laughed again. “No, we didn’t slip any Terrans into their ranks. But not all cliquemen are Terrans.”

  “Ah. Hah.” Sula nodded. “So you talked Sagas and the others into helping you?”

  “They protected their turf but otherwise didn’t fight,” Patel said. “But they gathered intelligence and provided logistical support. We were able to hide arms and our bomb factories on their turf, where the league and the Urban Patrol wouldn’t look for them.”

  Sula gave the matter some thought. “Send me the information you have,” she said. “I’m not in a position to act on any of it directly, but I’ll try to send it to where it’ll do the most good.”

  Patel grinned. “You could send it to that Martinez geezer,” he said. “He’s been arresting Tu-hon’s friends left and right.”

  Sula winced. She had no intention of providing more opportunities for Martinez to glorify himself.

  “I think I can do better than that,” she said.

  “Security reports that there is a Lieutenant Lady Benedicta Kelly at the door, my lord,” said Doshtra.

  Martinez sprang to his feet. “Pass her!” he said.

  He followed the Daimong butler to the door and watched him admit Kelly, who walked carefully into the house with the aid of a pair of canes. Her color was good. Her smile, which Martinez remembered as being a white shining blaze, was subdued and a little shy. Her black eyes were bright, and her fair, short hair was brushy on top and short in the back and on the sides. Martinez found himself looking for scars beneath the cropped hair.

  He approached her with arms outstretched, and then hesitated. She was dangerously thin, and he didn’t want to crush her.

  Her smile broadened. “Let’s take the hug as read,” she said.

  “Let’s call it postponed,” Martinez said. “Come to the parlor and we’ll talk.”

  Kelly adjusted her canes, aimed herself at the parlor door, and began to walk. Martinez hovered alongside, uncertain whether to offer her an arm.

  “I can walk perfectly well,” Kelly assured him. “My legs are strong. I don’t need the canes to walk, but they help with balance.”

  “I was afraid you’d never wake up,” Martinez said.

  Kelly found a Devis mode chair and swung herself into it with a practiced, agile movement. “The coma lasted five months,” she said. “Then I woke, and I was in a hospital in the country, and they told me you’d sent me there and paid the fees.”

  “I didn’t want you in the city,” Martinez said. “Not with a war brewing in the streets.”

  “I don’t remember the riot at all,” said Kelly. “But they said you saved my life.”

  “I carried you to safety,” Martinez said. “But a lot of people saved your life. Particularly Kosch Altasz, who was killed.”

  Lady Kosch, Kelly, and Martinez had been involved in the hermetic world of yacht racing, as members of the successful Corona Club team. Kelly was emerging as the team’s best pilot when she’d been struck down, as rioters from the Steadfast League tried to storm the Corona Club building.

  “I know about poor Kosch,” Kelly said. “When I was finally able to use a hand comm, I called up all the original news reports about the riot. The articles said the club burned down and was a total loss.”

  “It was insured,” Martinez said. “We were going to rebuild it, but instead we all decided to have this big war.”

  “Can you tell me about my friends?” Kelly said. “I’d like to know if they’re all right.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Martinez said. “But may I offer you something to drink? To eat?”

  “A Citrine Fling?”

  Martinez called Doshtra and asked for Citrine Fling and a pot of coffee. The butler bowed and withdrew.

  Kelly and Martinez had served together only briefly, on the Corona—and in fact had been lovers for at least forty-five minutes during the frigate’s perilous escape from Magaria. Martinez didn’t know all Kelly’s friends, but he was able to tell her that Vonderheydte, another Corona veteran, was captain of his own ship and was now en route to Magaria, part of a division under Chandra Prasad that, with two others divisions under one of Wei Jian’s officers, would take command of the Fleet dockyard and, ultimately, the planet below it. Another division was on its way to Felarus, and small groups of two or three ships would occupy the smaller Fleet dockyards.

  That division featured a newly promoted Squadron Commander Jeremy Foote, whose assiduous courtship of Wei Jian seemed to have borne fruit.

  In the meantime, Wei Jian would remain at Zanshaa with most of the Combined Fleet, which in time would become the core of a new Home Fleet.

  “Vonderheydte and Chandra Prasad are now a couple,” Martinez added. “Though I don’t know if you know her.”

  “Only by reputation,” Kelly said. “Isn’t she a kind of carnivore?”

  “She has sharp teeth, that’s certain.”

  Kelly looked dubious. “Well, I hope Von survives.”

  “And do you remember Garcia?” Martinez asked. “She got a command, but was killed at Second Shulduc.”

  Sadness crossed Kelly’s face. “She had no luck at all,” she said.

  “No.”

  Doshtra brought drinks, and the scent of coffee drifted into the room. Martinez was able to tell Kelly about some more of her friends, and for others he used his command privileges to access the Commandery’s database. Many had been interned for the length of the war, and of those who escaped to fight with the Restoration, at least half had been killed.

  “Maybe I’m lucky,” Kelly said finally. “I spent the war being looked after in a hospital. The government never bothered me because I was disabled and unimportant.”

  Kelly was a lower-lower-middle, Martinez knew. She had been talented enough to get into the Nelson Academy, but she lacked the family or service connections to advance in rank, and had been a lieutenant for the last ten years. Fighting with the Restoration would have given her a chance for promotion, and about an even chance of being killed.

  “Are you fit for desk duty?” Martinez asked. “I could offer you a job.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Communications. I always need more signalers, and Banerjee—she’s my best—will be returning to civilian life as soon as the Fleet lets her go.”

  Kelly seemed pleased. “I’d be very happy to do it,” she said.

  “It won’t interfere with your . . . your recovery?”

  “I do most of my therapy at home, so my schedule is flexible.”

  Martinez raised his coffee cup. “Welcome back to the Fleet, Kelly.”

  Her broad brilliant smile blazed out, the same smile he remembered from long ago.

  “Well,” Sula said. “If it isn’t my fancy man.”

  Gunaydin walked through the barred platform gate at the Zanshaa terminal, looked for her, and smiled as he found her in the crowd. He looked just a little strange in civilian dress. She stepped to him, embraced him, and ran a hand over his no-longer-shaven scalp.

  “You’re starting to grow out your winter coat, I see,” she said.

  “You asked me what I looked like with hair,” he said. “Now you know.”

  She looked at him critically. “You don’t have enough hair yet for me to judge.”

  He raised a hand and touched his short brown bristle. “It will grow,” he said.

  Gunaydin shifted his luggage to a robot bag carrier that followed him to Sula’s car. He took in the two Hunhaos, one ahead and one behind, both packed with bodyguards.

  “You’re in danger?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sula said. “No sign so far. But it’s better to be prepared than not, and heavily armed police may act as a deterrent.”

  “You’re carrying a sidearm.”

  “I’m being careful.” She looked at him. “You want me to be careful, yes?”

  He considered this. “I suppose I do. Though a careful Caroline is someone new to me.”

  Macnamara drove Sula to her building and parked in s reserved for Sula and her security detail. Let-kwai swept open the door and allowed the party to enter. Gunaydin followed Sula into the elevator, then to the apartment with its faint scent of lemon polish. When he came into the main room, he walked to the curved corner window and gazed out at Zanshaa Lower Town, with the Apszipar Tower standing tall on the far horizon.

  “My reflexes are all wrong for this,” he said. “I still can’t believe I’m on the surface of a planet. I keep looking for walls and bulkheads, and I can’t see them.”

  Sula stepped behind Gunaydin and put her arms around him, resting her chin on his shoulder. “Oh, the walls are there,” she said. “Most of them are invisible.”

  He turned to her and put his arms around her waist. “Are you free this afternoon?” he asked.

  She sighed. “No. I’ve got meetings with four senile or otherwise demented convocates in hopes of convincing them to resign. The problem being that dementia in a convocate has always been perfectly acceptable.”

  Gunaydin was surprised. “You find the most interesting employment,” he said finally.

  Sula shook her head. “It’s not interesting at all, it’s sad and pathetic. And dull, like everything else that happens in convocation.” She slid out of their embrace and drew her hand comm out of her convocate’s jacket. She tapped it awake, then sent Gunaydin a message.

  “I’ve done some research,” she said, “and I’ve found a number of apartments that might suit you. I’ve sent you a list. I don’t exactly know what you can afford, so I found places across a wide price range. If you’re not too tired, you can view some this afternoon.”

  “Ah,” Gunaydin said.

  She looked up and him and grinned. “Of course, if you really are my fancy man, take whichever apartment you want and don’t worry about the cost.”

  Gunaydin seemed puzzled. “Need I move into a new apartment right away, or am I staying here tonight, or . . . ?”