“I can see that’s true,” Daniel lied. What he really saw was that Bending had no idea of what was involved in manning, arming, and equipping a fighting squadron. For that matter, Bending probably had no real idea of what the Treasury had to go through either: those were just words to show that he was knowledgeable about government. “But we’d still send a squadron, despite the cost, and it seems to me that if Vaughn’s as smart as he’s well connected here on Cinnabar, he knows we’d break him as sure as we broke his predecessors.”
Bending drained his glass and set it on the bar, looking obviously uncomfortable. Daniel set his own glass beside the bureaucrat’s and signalled the bartender. God knew how much this afternoon was going to cost, but it was better to go ahead rather than waste the money already invested.
“Well, the truth is, Daniel . . . ” Bending said. He seemed to have sunk in from his posturing frog manner of a moment before. “It’s all very well to say that the Republic wants its allies to prosper—and we do, of course. But under Leland Vaughn, the Strymon fleet kept down piracy and regional traffic was almost entirely in Strymon freighters. Nowadays the pirates get a subsidy from shipping firms, a transit tax you could call it . . . and Cinnabar firms have deeper pockets than the locals do. More than half the trade’s in Cinnabar hulls now.”
“Ah,” said Daniel again. He drank in order to hide what otherwise would have been a disgusted expression. “I see. And Delos is of the same mettle as his father, is that it?”
“Delos is twice anything his father dreamed of being, we think in the ministry,” Bending said, showing the decency to be a little embarrassed. “I know it may not seem proper to a navy man—” He was right about that! “—but it really is the best option for the Republic.”
For Cinnabar shippers to lick the boots of pirates? No, I don’t think so.
Aloud Daniel said, “What do you suppose Vaughn was doing at Harbor Three yesterday, Wex?”
Bending laughed and drained his own glass. He set it upside down on the bar to indicate he was through with his liquid lunch.
“I suspect it’s the reason a prisoner looks at the sky, Daniel,” he said. “To remind himself of what he doesn’t have.”
He slapped Daniel on the shoulder again and pushed off through the crowd. “Remember me to the Speaker, Daniel,” he called back.
“The very next time I see him!” Daniel replied cheerfully. He looked at the chit the bartender set between the empty glasses and raised an eyebrow, then rooted through his purse for a ten-florin coin.
And if I do ever see Father, we’ll probably have another flaming row when I tell him what despicable toadies he has wearing the Leary collar flash.
Chapter Six
The lane for aircars approaching Anadyomene Gardens was at four hundred feet over the road for ground transport, too low to gain a full panorama of the site. Nonetheless what Adele could see out the side window was impressive enough.
“Good heavens, do they have a pike tree?” said Daniel, peering through the window on the other side of the car. He had his naval goggles down over his eyes either for magnification or to view the scene in something other than the normal optical spectrum. “I believe they do. Adele, they’ve got a pike tree from Rouge and it must be over a century old! However do you suppose they transported it?”
A tree with branches fluting up from only the last ten feet of a trunk nearly two hundred feet tall grew from one of the Gardens’ scores of artificial islands. Adele had seen it as the car followed the curve of the road below, though it meant no more to her than any of the other types of vegetation separated by the narrow waterways.
Still, with Daniel’s identification of the imported tree to go by, it shouldn’t be too hard to answer the question. Obediently she drew the personal data unit from her purse—the garments Tovera bought her for the party weren’t fitted to carry it, and Adele certainly wasn’t going to leave it behind—and set it on her knees.