Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

She grinned. Her sanity was perhaps an unwarranted assumption.

There was nothing in the call from the bank that required encryption. Besides, if someone did want to know about it, the original message had certainly been in clear. Tovera had relayed it in secure form because Tovera sent all messages to her mistress in code, so that data which was of crucial importance wouldn’t stand out because it alone was encrypted.

Tovera did everything by plan because she lacked the instincts on which normal humans operated most of the time. Guarantor Porra’s Fifth Bureau had trained her well . . . and now Tovera did as Adele directed her, just as the pistol in Adele’s left jacket pocket would do: no scruples, no hesitation—only action when the trigger is pulled.

Adele stepped out of the tunnel. She’d checked the address against a map reference but hadn’t bothered to call up an image of the building. It was of five stories and, though quite new, had a pillared facade which echoed the architecture of the complex on the hill’s reverse slope.

The small brass plate beside the door read Shippers’ and Merchants’ Treasury; its air of understated elegance would have been anathema to the populist pretensions of Adele’s parents. She stopped dead when she read it.

Adele hoped she had few pretensions, and she’d lived as an impecunious member of “the common people” for too long to find anything in the concept to be idealistic about. Nonetheless, she’d gone to the People’s Trust to set up a drawing account. This wasn’t her bank, and if somebody thought to play games of that sort with a Mundy of Chatsworth . . .

She didn’t follow the thought through, because she could thus far only visualize a pinkish blur instead of a real face over the barrel of her duelling pistol.

A doorman bowed politely as he ushered her into the lobby, an unexpectedly small room. A tree with a fan of broad leaves at the top grew from an alcove, lighted by a shaft to the roof high above; beneath it was a receptionist at a desk of age-yellowed ivory.

The two teller’s cages were unoccupied. Closed doors along the back wall gave onto rooms which provided greater privacy for clients.

“I was directed to Office E,” Adele said to the receptionist, wondering if her face showed the anger she was trying to suppress till she was sure of her facts.

The receptionist touched an unobtrusive button and rose with a smile. “Yes, Mistress Mundy,” he said. “Will you come this way, please? It won’t be a moment.”

He opened a door into a drawing room appointed in muted good taste. The only apparent exception was the desk, a dense plastic extrusion. In this context it was almost certainly an antique dating from the settlement.

The door in the opposite wall opened for a plumpish, severely dressed woman of Adele’s age. The banker would never pass for beautiful, but if she showed more tendency to smile she might have been pretty. Not that Adele was one to cast stones in that regard.

“Please sit down, mistress,” the banker said. Instead of stepping behind the desk, she went to one of the pair of chairs in front of it.

“Thank you, I’ll stand,” Adele said. She’d never met the woman, but there was a tantalizing familiarity to her nonetheless. “My account is with the People’s Trust. Why have you summoned me here?”

“We bought your account from the People’s Trust this morning, Mistress Mundy,” the woman said. “The new arrangements are among the things I’d like to discuss with you. I should begin by saying—”

They bought my account? How do you buy—

“—that my name is Deirdre Leary. I believe you know my younger brother.”

Oh.

Adele remained stiffly erect, ignoring the hand Daniel’s sister offered her. “Mistress Leary,” she said, “I am leaving now. If you wish any further communication with me, it should be through our seconds arranging a meeting.”

“Please Mistress Mundy,” Deirdre said. She didn’t withdraw the outstretched hand. “Please, this will be to your benefit and that of my brother. On my honor as a Leary!”

Adele remained frozen, trying to understand the situation. Daniel spoke of his sister with respect if not warmth. Deirdre had followed their father into business and perhaps soon into politics as well. She appeared to be a paragon of moral virtue besides; which Daniel was the first to admit he himself was not.

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