Sula looked for Macnamara and found him at one of the windows, tracking an enemy with his rifle. He fired, then dropped into safety as return fire cracked over his head.

  “Macnamara,” Sula called. “Take another of the guards and go upstairs. See if you can set up a sniper’s nest and push those people away from the house.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “And see if anything’s happening on our flanks and rear. It would be embarrassing if they all just walked in the back door.”

  Macnamara looked at the other guards, then gestured at a small red-haired woman who had been part of Sula’s guard team for three or four weeks. The two paused to resupply with ammunition and crawled out of the room.

  The yacht pilot named Kelly, one of Martinez’s protégées, was still sprawled near Sula, her pistol trained on the front door. Sula looked down at her.

  “Doing all right?” she asked.

  There were bright spots of color high on Kelly’s cheeks. “If I suddenly go mad and tear out my hair,” she said, “it’s because I’ve remembered the siege at the Corona Club. But right now I can’t remember anything, so I’m grand.”

  “Nonii,” Sula said. “We’ll be all right as long as the ammunition holds out.”

  And then the double doors at the front of the building blew inward with a flash and a thunderous concussion. Wood splinters as long as Sula’s arm hummed through the air. Sula’s vision went black as the table behind which she and Kelly sheltered hurtled into her face.

  The acid reek of explosive clogged her throat. Sula could hear nothing but the shrieking in her ears. She was stuck under the heavy table and she tried to struggle out, but her movements were strangely uncoordinated; getting free took a lot longer than she intended, and the effort left her exhausted.

  Her helmet had been tipped forward over her eyes, and she pushed it back to see a room full of mist or suspended dust. The defenders were sprawled at their posts, making the slow, blundering movements of people fighting their way back to consciousness. The large wooden double doors had been blasted open, and one hung cockeyed, nearly blown from its hinges.

  The attackers wouldn’t have blown the door if they didn’t plan to come in, Sula thought. The idea seemed to float slowly into her head through a sea of golden syrup. It would be desirable, she thought, to prevent enemy ingress. She marveled at the way the term ingress had floated to the top of her mind, then reached for her rifle and tried to drag it out from beneath the table. Her fingers lacked the strength.

  “Shoot, shoot!” she shouted. “Keep them back!”

  She barely heard her own words over the wailing in her ears. Dark figures appeared in the doorway. Again, she tried to seize her rifle and managed to drag it free, but then she flopped onto the floor, lying on her back like a turtle.

  Words floated into her mind through the lake of golden syrup. I am going to die here. And it will be colossally stupid.

  Bullets were flying in the room but she could barely hear them. She tried at least to point her rifle in the right direction.

  And then Gareth Martinez appeared in the hall doorway, walking upside-down into her field of vision with a rifle at his shoulder. Upside-down Martinez was shooting, and she could see bursts of fire spitting from the muzzle. She rolled onto her stomach and thrust out her own rifle and saw dim figures outlined in the arch of the front door, and she saw that they were dropping. She got her gun to her shoulder and began to fire. She didn’t think she was managing accurate fire but at least she could add to the volume of bullets flying out the doorway.

  Other members of her small army were beginning to react now, either shooting those coming through the door or firing out the windows to keep the attackers pinned down. Martinez dropped the empty magazine from his weapon, put in another, and fired a few more rounds before he could no longer find a target. Then he stepped forward, knelt, and with one hand picked the table off the floor and set it again as a barrier.

  “How’s Kelly?” he asked.

  Kelly lay inert next to her pistol. Sula put out a hand to Kelly’s throat and felt a pulse.

  “Alive,” she said. The word felt like a sponge ball she had to work hard to push out of her mouth.

  “They’re trying to get in the back,” Martinez said. “I was trying to hold them off but this seemed more important.”

  Sula tried to hear the words over the screaming in her ears. She nodded.

  “I need to borrow a guard or two for the back,” he said.

  Sula nodded again. She was still sprawled on the floor, and she tried to pick herself up, rising to her knees behind the shelter of the table.

  “They had one bomb,” she tried to say. “I should have guessed they’d have another.”

  She had the suspicion that the words came out so garbled that no one could possibly understand them, and apparently Martinez didn’t.

  “Can I have a guard?” he asked.

  Sula nodded yet again.

  Martinez crawled to one of the guards who seemed not to be shooting at anything, gestured for him to follow, and crawled out of the room with the guard following.

  Fucker, Sula thought. He saved the day.

  Martinez encountered Mpanza lying propped against the wall in the corridor. A piece of flying debris had knocked him on the head and flattened him, and blood ran freely down his face while he looked at the world through dazed eyes. Martinez touched his leg.

  “Agustin,” he said. “Try to find some shelter. Bullets are still flying.”

  Mpanza looked as if he were trying to process the words.

  “Do you understand?” Martinez asked. “Find some shelter till you feel better. We want to save you for Miss Juskiene.”

  Mpanza nodded. Martinez continued his crawl down the corridor. He stationed his new guard behind a sturdy food prep table, then took his own post in the stairway. No one had entered the back of the house since he’d been gone, and the fighting in the front seemed to have died down while the attackers worked up another plan.

  He called Lord Chen. “We still need help,” he said.

  “Has no one arrived?” Chen asked. “I’ve sent every constable available, and I’m even sending units from the Lower Town. I’ve called the Motor Patrol, and they said they were responding.”

  “Can you connect me to whoever’s on the scene?”

  “That would be Lieutenant-Captain Bhatti.”

  “Oh. I know him from the warehouse raids. Stand by.”

  Martinez told his sleeve display to connect him to Bhatti. Bhatti, a young man with a black-eyed, aquiline face, appeared on his display, apparently sitting at ease in his vehicle.

  “This is Fleet Commander Martinez,” Martinez said, inflating his authorized rank so as to seem more formidable. “My house is still under attack. Where are you and when can we expect your arrival?”

  “My lord!” Bhatti straightened in his seat. “We’re a short distance away, but we’ve been stopped at a roadblock by an officer of the Legion. She said there was a Legion action under way and we would only interfere.”

  “The Legion?” Martinez was taken aback, and his mind spun for a few seconds before a response occurred to him. “Lord Elcap, the Legion of Diligence isn’t involved here,” he said. “That officer is either an imposter or a part of the insurrection. Kill her or arrest her, and bring your constables here at once.”

  Bhatti’s eyes flashed. “Yes, Lord Fleetcom!”

  Martinez sat in the stairwell and kept a watch on the rear windows while waiting for the next development. Broken glass, still hanging in the window frames, tinkled in the light breeze. The sense-clogging scents of propellant and explosive slowly cleared from the newly ventilated palace with its walls of shattered windows. Desultory fire sounded from the front of the building. No one seemed interested in charging the house from the rear.

  Then a loud electric warning tone came from the street, and there was an increase in shooting. Sula’s voice sounded down the corridor. “They’re running for it!” A series of metallic crashes followed, then another shout from Sula. “Don’t let the bus get away!”

  Martinez left his guard at his post and returned to the front of the building. Mpanza had crawled from the hall and left a bloody trail to a bathroom. All the windows of the front rooms were occupied by defenders maintaining a steady fire on the retreating enemy. Sula knelt behind one of the windows with her rifle shouldered. Through the windows Martinez could see a gray-skinned bus trying to bash its way free of stalled and abandoned vehicles. Surviving attackers were alongside the bus dodging from cover to cover as they took snap shots at the building. The bus wasn’t armored, and its windows gaped open and its flanks were riddled with bullet holes.

  Kelly still lay on the floor near her canes. Martinez knelt by her side and turned her over. She gave a sigh and her eyes slitted open, then widened as they recognized him.

  “What . . . ,” she murmured.

  “It’s nearly over,” Martinez said. “Don’t worry. Just take it easy.”

  She made a disgusted face. “I was knocked out again?”

  “You’re getting better at it,” Martinez said. “You won’t be in a coma this time.”

  “Nonii.” Kelly closed her eyes.

  The sounds of combat outside rose to a tremendous volume, and Martinez concluded that Bhatti’s constables had finally arrived at the party. He rose and took a careful look through a window in time to see the bus crash into a Sun Ray van and come to a stop. The attackers were in full flight, running from cover to cover while throwing away their weapons and equipment. After them came Bhatti’s constables in remorseless pursuit.

  Martinez went to his sleeve display to call for as many ambulances as the Glory of Hygiene Hospital could send.

  Sula dumped her helmet, body armor, and rifle in the wreckage of the front parlor, and then paused while she tried to think what to do next. There would be an inquest, she supposed, and she would be required to make a report; but she had a merciless headache, her ears were still ringing, and her mouth tasted as if she’d swallowed a handful of propellant—which, she reflected, perhaps she had.

  She made a circuit of the room to make certain that her guards were well. There were no major injuries, though some showed signs of concussion. A woman appeared in spotless white with a tray of biscuits, and a weaponer with a bandaged head and a curling mustachio brought in a tray with glasses and chilled soft drinks. Sula approached him and took a Citrine Fling.

  “Got something stronger?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  Martinez had rescued a chair and sat in it, speaking softly into his sleeve display. He wasn’t ignoring Sula, she thought, but he was definitely choosing to engage with something else.

  Sula’s headache beat at her temples with lead-weighted cudgels. The weaponer returned with another tray, a bottle, and cut-glass tumblers. Sula recognized the bottle as being the Martinez estate’s Laredo whisky, which she felt herself obliged to hate on principle. Nevertheless, she poured herself a stiff round and drank it off.

  Her sinuses afire, she put the tumbler back on the tray and found Gareth Martinez standing nearby and giving her a speculative look.

  “That’s new,” he said, and sipped his fizzy pomegranate drink.

  Sula shrugged. “I have decided to fully engage with the grand pageant that is life.” Proud that she had managed to articulate an entire sentence, and an ornate one at that, she poured herself another round and drank it off.

  Perhaps, she thought, one day she and Martinez might meet on an occasion that didn’t involve firearms.

  “Ambulances are on their way,” Martinez said to the room in general. “The injured should be looked at, along with anyone in the sitting room when that bomb went off. You all need to be checked for concussion.” His eyes turned to the weaponer with the bandaged head. “Including you, Mpanza.”

  “These other people first, my lord,” Mpanza said. “I’m all right.”

  The clarion voices of children began to sound from the passage, and a girl and a boy stormed into the room, accompanied by a Daimong butler. Sula had seen pictures of Martinez’s offspring on the walls of his sleeping cabin during the period when she spent more time there than in her own quarters, and she recognized young Gareth and Yaling as older versions of the children in the photographs.

  Young Gareth took a few steps into the room and stopped, his eyes wide at the wreckage of the room, the guards in their armor, the weapons propped against furniture or shelves.

  Fortunately for his tender young mind, the bodies lying in the foyer had been dragged outside onto the lawn. Their blood still smeared the floor.

  Yaling marched straight to Sula and looked up at her. “You’re Lady Sula!” she proclaimed. “You’re famous!”

  Sula couldn’t help but laugh, then winced when the laughter sent another bolt of pain through her head. “That’s right,” she said.

  “I want to be just like you when I grow up!” Yaling said.

  Sula thought Martinez might just choke on his fizzy pomegranate drink.

  Sula thought she might find herself liking Terza Chen’s kid. Her forthrightness, anyway.

  “I advise constant target practice,” Sula told Yaling. “It may come in handy.”

  If Martinez was striving to conceal his stormy expression, he failed.

  Yaling made pistols of her fingers. “Pssh! Pssh!” Shooting the attackers down.

  “The fighting seems to be over,” Martinez reported to the room in general. “We took some prisoners, mostly wounded.”

  “Ambulances are here,” reported one of the guards, looking out the window. “And some other people.”

  Ahead of the medics came another pair of guards, who ventured carefully into the foyer past the broken door and beneath the shattered fanlight. Glass crunched under their boots. Following was Terza Chen, her normally serene expression tautened by anxiety. She walked into the foyer, stopped dead, and slowly surveyed the sitting room, her gaze passing over the wreckage, the bullet holes, the guards, and Sula standing next to her daughter.

  Oh dear, Sula thought. How very awkward.

  Chapter 17

  “My lord, this is Ethgro Tribe.”

  Martinez looked at image of the young Daimong officer on his sleeve display, with his fixed expression of polite surprise. Martinez had got Tribe back into staff work on his personal recommendation, and now Tribe was assigned to Junior Fleet Commander Khalil, who was busy assembling files on every available officer of the Fleet and every resource obtainable in order to accelerate Wei Jian’s plans for replacing the hundreds of ships lost in the war.

  “How may I help you, Lord Ethgro?” Martinez said.

  Martinez was walking through the elaborate Nayanid-style corridors of the Chen Palace while on his way to the Commandery for an appointment. His own bullet-riddled home was unlivable, and likely to stay that way for a while, and so he and Terza had moved their family into her childhood home, with its mellow beige stone, its strange, winged gables, its great library, and its paintings and statues of hundreds of generations of Chen ancestors.

  Plus Lord Chen, of course, wandering aimlessly about his home in a more or less constant state of inebriation.

  “I thought I’d let you know that we’ve been interrogating the surviving attackers of your home,” Tribe said, “as well as tracing messages and money, and we’ve discovered the person responsible for the attack. It was Lady Distchin.”

  Martinez was deeply surprised. “Really? That was very good work, finding out in less than a day.”

  “Apparently Lady Distchin considered the insults offered by Lady Sula at the Court of Honor a mortal offense and decided to kill her.”

  “She brought enough people,” Martinez said. “So many, just to kill one person?”

  “Other attacks were contemplated,” Tribe said. “Lady Distchin was determined to retain her patronage of Spannan and intended to kill anyone intending to take that privilege away from her. Your brother, Lord Oda Yoshitoshi, Lord Chen, Lord Ngeni.”

  “They were just going to drive around in that bus killing people?”

  “Their plan didn’t seem very well thought-out.”

  Apparently I wasn’t important enough to kill, Martinez thought with annoyance. Distchin was just going to murder everyone around me.

  “Thank you, Lord Ethgro,” Martinez said. “I appreciate your letting me know.”

  Martinez walked into the courtyard of the palace and stepped into his Hunhao. His guards entered their own vehicles, and the three-car convoy turned out into the Boulevard of the Praxis.

  Martinez felt only relief. The attack on Sula hadn’t been the first blow of a new civil war, it had been the spiteful revenge of a Peer so upper-upper-upper that no one had ever said no to her.

  He called Roland on his sleeve display and told him about Lady Distchin.

  “That’s a relief,” Roland said. “Now we know how to pitch the story.”

  It had been impossible to hide a long and noisy firefight in the High City, but the official news reports had been cautious. They’d been afraid of labeling the attack an act of insurrection and making the government look weak, and instead reported a fight between “two groups of armed individuals.”

  Roland’s tone turned triumphant. “Now we arrest Distchin and make it clear the attack was that of a private individual, not an enemy army.”

  “Introduce a resolution to take Spannan away from Clan Distchin,” Martinez advised. “And take out the other great absentees while we’re at it.”

  “I would be delighted to do exactly that,” said Roland. “Though there remains the problem of who will become these worlds’ new patrons.”

  “Do developed worlds even need patrons?” Martinez asked.

  “The worlds may not,” Roland said, “but we do. We like having powerful families owing us favors.”