Vaughn shook hands with the colonel who’d accompanied him in the boat, then walked over to where Daniel’s vessel grounded softly. The aide at the controls lowered a gangplank, though that seemed scarcely necessary for a craft with less than six inches of freeboard.
“Lieutenant Leary,” he called, “would you and Mistress Zane care to join me for a glass of wine before we adjourn to individual explorations? I’ll pledge my honor as a Shipowner of Strymon that your lovely companions will be waiting for you when we finish.”
He turned his smile toward Elinor and Shawna. Shawna made a face as though she’d bitten something sour and said, “He doesn’t have to give me orders, Danny. I’d wait for you anyway.”
“And me too!” said Elinor, rising on her tiptoes to kiss Daniel’s cheek.
Daniel patted both girls on the shoulder and stepped past them. The aristocrat who’d lost out in the race for seating moved in; Shawna ostentatiously turned her back and began talking to Elinor in her normal affected voice.
Daniel pretended to ignore the byplay. He doubted that the girls were professionals, or at least fully professional. No question that they took whatever orders Vaughn chose to give them, however. Perhaps they just wanted to stay on the A-list for his parties.
Tredegar had turned when Vaughn spoke to Daniel. He came over with quick steps and said, “Delos, perhaps you should—”
“Tredegar,” Vaughn said as though he hadn’t heard the other man speak, “would you go organize the service for me? You know where everything is, you see.”
Tredegar paused with his mouth open. He closed it, took on a blank expression, and strode off silently.
“Thea, Lieutenant, let’s go over here,” Vaughn said, leading the way to a bower whose curved couch had room for four. The barge with the servants was only now grounding, but an aide from the second boat was already setting a tray with a chilled bottle and three glasses on the half-round table facing the couch.
This invitation wasn’t spur of the moment. I doubt Delos Vaughn does things on the spur of the moment any more often than my father does, Daniel thought with a flash of realization.
The aide poured the wine, then stepped back and set a screen of woven feathers across the open side of the alcove. Vaughn handed glasses to his guests, then took a sip himself. “Do you like the vintage, Lieutenant?” he asked.
Daniel tried his glass, remembering Hogg drilling him in company manners and not slurping it down all at once. It had a fruity taste with a tingle underneath. Besides that, the color was a nice blend of gold and pale raspberry.
“Yes, I like it well enough,” he said, “but I’m not a connoisseur, I’d have to say. I’d probably be as well satisfied with any old thing from a jug as I would with what is, I’m sure, an exceptional wine.”
He raised his glass for punctuation.
Vaughn laughed at the candor. “It’s from my own planet, Strymon,” he said. “Thea brought it with her to remind me of home, not that there was any likelihood of me forgetting.”
“Are you familiar with Strymon, Lieutenant Leary?” Zane said, watching him over the rim of her glass. She wore a ring whose bezel was two serpent heads facing one another; the eyes of one were ruby chips, the other diamonds.
“After we met Mr. Vaughn at Harbor Three,” Daniel said, nodding to his host, “I went over my Uncle Stacey’s logs of his visit to Strymon twenty-seven years ago. Of course, that was a long time past, and ships’ logs aren’t heavy on local color.”
But Daniel Leary, using the official logs and Uncle Stacey’s annotations, would be able to take the Princess Cecile from Cinnabar to Strymon with an efficiency no other ship of her class could equal. Piloting a ship through the Matrix was an art. There’d never been a greater master of it than Commander Bergen, but his nephew had enough talent to gain full profit from his teachings.
“I haven’t been back to Strymon in many years,” Vaughn said. “As no doubt you know. Your father is Corder Leary, the former Speaker of the Senate, I understand?”