Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

In Bending’s lapel was a small silver pin, three stylized knifefish leaping: the crest of the Learys of Bantry. Bending’s father had been a Leary retainer with a post in the Agriculture department through Speaker Leary’s influence. The son had obviously followed the same route to preferment and had already done rather better from it.

Awareness of the pin made pieces click together in Daniel’s mind. “I gather you called my father’s office after I called you, Wex?” he said. “To see whether you were permitted to talk to me, that is.”

Corder Leary’s goatee and sideburns framed his thin, ascetic visage to form a portrait of devilish wisdom. The same style made a clown of the round-faced Bending.

“Well, not permitted, Daniel,” Bending said with a hurt expression. “But despite a friendship as close as ours, I couldn’t dishonor my name by acting against the wishes of my patron.”

“I know exactly what you mean!” Daniel said, slapping the bureaucrat on the back with a broad grin. He did indeed realize that the friend who’d played hide-and-seek with him in the gardens of the Leary townhouse when he visited his father had become a poncing little courtier to whom position was everything. Daniel hoped his smile hid that knowledge, but it really didn’t matter: Bending wouldn’t have met Daniel if he didn’t think that was Speaker Leary’s desire. That being the case, he would have grinned and obeyed if Daniel ordered him to hop around like a gerbil.

Which left the question of why Father had approved the meeting, but that wasn’t the matter that brought Daniel to this place. They charged a florin a glass for wine that didn’t hold a buzz in a caskful. “So Wex,” Daniel said. “What can you tell me about Delos Vaughn? I saw him at Harbor Three yesterday.”

“Oh, he’s mad for warships, they tell me,” Bending burbled, sipping his own faintly violet concoction. “Strymon had quite a fleet in its day, you know. But they’re held to a few dozen antipirate frigates by treaty—and anyway, he’s never going to leave Cinnabar, no matter how many senators he bribes.”

“Ah,” Daniel said, nodding to show that he was listening. He took a sip of his wine and found he’d drained the glass. The stuff had no more body than seafoam! “Someone’s spending money to keep him here, then?”

Bending turned so that he faced Daniel directly. His right hand was on the bar; the left held his glass at a calculated angle. Unless Daniel was badly mistaken, he was admiring his pose in the mirror beyond.

“Oh, there’s a certain amount of that, sure, Daniel,” he said, puffing his chest out slightly. “Being appointed Observer on Strymon is known to be quite a political plum. No senator’s ever come back poor from there, and the staff does itself bloody well too, let me tell you.”

Bending drank, then lifted his glass slightly and appeared to admire the remaining liquid as he swirled it. “But that’s not the real reason, you see,” he said. He leaned closer to Daniel and added in a conspiratorial whisper, “Our Delos is too bloody sharp, that’s the problem. Better for the Republic that he never goes home, do you see?”

Daniel frowned. Claiming to be a babe in the woods of interstellar relations was the right way to draw confidences out of a man who obviously delighted in playing the learned insider. It was also God’s truth in this instance.

“To tell the truth, I don’t understand, Wex,” he said. “Surely nobody’s concerned that Vaughn would try to claim independence again? We’ve crushed Strymon twice, and that was before Uncle Stacey cut the travel time to a fraction of what it’d been for Admiral Perlot’s squadron.”

“Ah, that’s right, you’re a navy man,” Bending said in what seemed to be genuine surprise. Daniel would’ve thought a 1st Class uniform made that about as obvious as you could wish, but apparently rising members of the Ministry of External Relations operated in a sphere which didn’t involve using their own senses. “It’s easy enough to talk about sending a squadron heaven knows how far, but quite another thing to pay for it.”

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