The older of the pair nodded to her. She ignored them—she didn’t need a guard’s permission to do as she pleased in what had been her second home—and tapped on the door with a stencilled 6. A poster was taped over the inside of the little window.
Bernis Sand, a stocky woman of sixty, dressed in plain but very expensive good taste, opened the thin door. There was a second chair inside along with the spartan desk and workstation, cramping the cubicle even more than usually would have been the case.
Adele felt a surge of nostalgia. She’d spent years closeted with a tutor in this cubicle and the others in the rank, learning the most important part of an education: how to learn.
Now she was getting further lessons; this time from the head of the Republic’s intelligence service.
“You’re looking fit, mistress,” Mistress Sand said, stepping back and gesturing to the nearer chair. “Was your voyage comfortable?”
Adele closed the door and seated herself, scraping the chair an inch back to give her knees and those of the older woman more room. “Lieutenant Leary assures me that almost everyone gets used to the experience of entering the Matrix,” she said. “I have no evidence as yet that I’m among that fortunate majority. Apart from that, yes. The Princess Cecile and her crew performed in accordance with the traditions of the RCN.”
She permitted herself a smile to show that she wasn’t trying to sell Mistress Sand on the virtues of Daniel and his temporary command. Nonetheless, what she said was literally true. Insofar as possible, everything Adele said was the literal truth.
Sand chuckled, appreciating the subtlety of Adele’s presentation. She took a conical ivory container from her sleeve and poured a dose of snuff into the cup between her clenched thumb and the back of her left hand. She didn’t bother offering what Adele had refused in the past; Mistress Sand didn’t waste motion—or anything else that Adele had noticed in their short acquaintance.
“What do you know about Strymon, mistress?” Sand asked as she lifted the snuff, blocking her right nostril with that index finger.
“I made a cursory search yesterday, before you called me to this meeting,” Adele said. Her face remained calm, but her brain was racing to correlate Sand’s question with Delos Vaughn’s visit to the Princess Cecile. “Not a great deal.”
“There’s rumors on Pleasaunce that Councillor Nunes is intriguing with the Alliance,” Sand said. “Nothing from Strymon itself, though.”
She snorted the dose of snuff, grimaced, and sneezed explosively into a lacy handkerchief from the same sleeve as the snuffbox.
“There’s rarely fewer than a dozen Cinnabar-registered vessels on Strymon at any time,” Adele said, ignoring Sand’s satisfied dabbing at her nose. “Cursory search” in Adele’s terminology was more inclusive than many people’s “full briefing” would be. “Generally twenty or more. Word would get out.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Sand said, looking up again. Her eyes were mottled brown, as hard as chips of agate. “What about the rumors on Pleasaunce?”
“The Fifth Bureau—” Guarantor Porra’s personal security service “—spreads lies,” Adele said. “Bureaucrats lie to make themselves look effective without anyone else’s encouragement.”
“All true, all true,” Sand said; her tone didn’t imply agreement. “Regardless, I have a bad feeling about Strymon.”
Adele said nothing. She hadn’t been asked a question, and she didn’t require amplification of what she’d just been told. Mistress Sand had remained in her position too long for her intuitions to be safely disregarded.
“The Navy’s sent a squadron to Strymon to show the flag,” Sand said. She eyed the snuffbox judiciously, then set it back within the sleeve of her frock coat. “Two destroyers and an old cruiser. They left Cinnabar a week ago Thursday.”
Adele smiled faintly to hear Sand, an outsider for all her rank and knowledge, speak of what Warrant Officer Adele Mundy would have referred to as “the RCN.” Her smile faded. If the squadron had already set out, why had Sand called her to this meeting?
“There was a bit of a communications failure between the Navy Office and my staff,” Sand said, answering Adele’s unspoken question. “It won’t be repeated, at any rate not by the same people; and it’s nothing that can’t be remedied. A fast vessel can join the squadron en route.”