The bosun looked down at him, then barked a laugh. “Right!” she said, smacking the tubing into her left palm with a sound like a whiplash. “Boarders with me. We’re going to get a good spot to see Cinnabar’s best make monkeys out of a bunch of wogs!”
“Come on, Adele,” Daniel said. Loud enough to be sure that everyone in his party could hear, he added, “We’ll get a good view of the room from the top step, don’t you think?”
* * *
Most of the smells peculiar to this part of Dalbriggan were unfamiliar to Adele, but they were pleasant enough. She particularly liked the spicy sweetness that seemed to come from the wood of the Hall itself.
The hog-scavenged dump was downwind, a considerable improvement on her apartment in Xenos where the street was cleaned primarily by the heavy spring rainfalls. It wasn’t a matter of great concern to Adele, but she noticed it as she noticed many things.
She walked forward with Daniel. Their escort had stopped a pace back, but there was no longer a crush that Woetjans and her henchmen had to muscle through. The Dalbriggans had left room for the escort at the front of the gathering; the space was tight, but the Cinnabars were no worse crowded than the locals themselves.
“As the local representatives of the Republic of Cinnabar,” Daniel declared at the foot of the dais, “my companion and I will take our places beside the Astrogator!”
He’d started out speaking at maximum volume. A hidden directional microphone picked up his words and amplified them around the Hall without need for human effort. Daniel let his voice drop and found that the public address system compensated with no more than a stutter.
He glanced at Adele and winked; she kept a straight face, concerned about what she was to do. This was worse than a formal dinner in the Princess Cecile’s wardroom. There at least it was unlikely that she could make a mistake which would lead to the massacre of all her companions.
She smiled, a reflection of the amusement she knew Daniel would express if she’d been able to speak the last chain of thoughts aloud. That wasn’t practical, so she had to laugh on her friend’s behalf.
“Captain Leary stands by me,” said the Astrogator. His voice had a resonance that could have filled the vast building unaided. “His officer stands on the bottom row where she belongs.”
Daniel took the first step and the second at a measured pace, gesturing Adele along with a minuscule crook of his index finger. “When you come to Cinnabar,” he said ringingly, “you follow Cinnabar custom. When Cinnabar comes to you, Astrogator Kelburney, you still follow Cinnabar custom. We represent the Republic!”
Daniel took the third step, then the fourth; none of the captains already on the dais moved to bar his way. Adele followed, watching her feet. The treads were deeper than she was used to, and it wouldn’t help the mission if she were to fall on her face.
Kelburney laughed; it was impossible to tell how much of the humor was real. “Come up, then, Captain,” he said. “And bring your bitch as well if you’re so devoted to her.”
They took their places on the top level, Daniel to the Astrogator’s right and Adele beside Daniel. She turned and looked back the way she’d come. The Hall had very nearly filled during the time it took the Cinnabar contingent to walk its length. There were several thousand people present, more than Adele would’ve imagined possible from the Hall’s forested environs.
“Silence for the cup!” said the woman at the lectern. So many people in a single room couldn’t be really silent—their breathing alone was a deep susurrus like that of a sleeping dragon—but the voices stilled. A pair of servants came forward.
They were old, and both were crippled: the man stomped along on one leg and a peg, while the blast that scarred the left side of the woman’s face had also burned off her arm. She carried a wineskin on a strap over her good shoulder. The man had a gold-mounted cup in his hands.