Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

That was playacting for the servant’s benefit; normally Hogg would merely have grunted after opening the invitation and tossed it to Daniel. The poor messenger’s face was nearly the same shade as his livery.

Daniel ran through the sequence of business which needed to be done before the corvette could lift. He should have his portion complete by mid-morning. The crew would begin reporting as soon as officers of the day read the proclamation to their companies at morning formation. And it would be read, however little other captains liked it, because it had been issued in the name of Admiral Anston personally.

Former Sissies would be enrolled as a matter of course. Any of the warrant officers could handle that. The only question for Daniel would be the handful of positions still open when all the Sissies on Cinnabar had decided whether or not to rejoin; that wouldn’t be determined till after six, anyway.

“Yes, all right,” Daniel said. “My guest and I would be pleased to attend.”

The servant bowed again and backed hurriedly out the doorway open behind him. His eyes didn’t leave the point of the skinning knife until he turned to scuttle down the staircase.

“Well, this ought to be interesting,” Daniel said, rubbing his hands together. Of course he’d take Adele, who was far too good a friend for Daniel ever to think of her as a girl. It was the sort of gathering sure to be stocked with friendly young things who loved a uniform. Adele would sheer off and give him clear running, while if he brought a real date he’d feel honor bound to go home with her.

“It’ll be formal dress, is what it’ll be,” Hogg said. “I’ll be back with your whites, but better not wait up for me.”

Quite apart from the women, Delos Vaughn was interesting . . . and interested in Daniel, which meant Daniel had best learn more about him. Speaker Leary’s son didn’t have to be taught politics that basic.

Chapter Five

Tovera was buying Adele a suit for the party, freeing Adele to do something she was good at instead: absorb background about Delos Vaughn and the situation on Strymon. Not that she regretted the invitation and Daniel’s assumption that she would join him. Quite the contrary: there should be at least as much to learn at the party as there was from the databases on Cinnabar.

Her wands twitched. The blurs of holographic color her data unit projected in the air before her fused, shifted, and fused into new images.

On the wall beyond, a pair of feathery feelers extended from a crack in the plaster. Judging there was no risk, first one and then a score of flat, leggy things raced across the wall in the direction of the kitchenette.

Adele supposed she could apply the lowered bank discount to better housing, but her standards had slipped a great deal in the past fifteen years. She didn’t need much, after all: plain food, basic shelter, and access to information. The latter was as easily available from here, a room in the servants’ quarters of a former mansion broken up into apartments, as it was in a suite like Daniel’s in a now-fashionable district. Adele wasn’t going to be entertaining, after all.

She read: after the Quetzal Dispute, sometimes called the Second Strymon War, Strymon had accepted the position of Friend and Ally to the Republic. That meant in practice that her navy was limited to light antipiracy vessels, all external treaties were subject to approval by the Cinnabar Senate, and the Senate also took an interest in any change of government.

It was a light yoke—Strymon was too distant for tight control to be economically beneficial to Cinnabar—but the locals chafed under it nonetheless. The ruling class did, at any rate: Cinnabar had always found oligarchies and autocrats easier to deal with than democracies, so the Republic hadn’t tried to change the existing political system.

Someone began screaming in the street outside Adele’s barred window. Either a woman or a man being gelded, and in this district you couldn’t be sure. . . .

Under other circumstances Adele would have worried about the security of her few belongings during the times she was out of her room, but Tovera had seen to that. The first day, Adele returned before Tovera got back from business of her own. She found the corpse of a man with a swollen purple face lying in the doorway, still holding the hammer with which he’d smashed the lock. Poison of one sort or another, probably gas.

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