“That’s correct, so far as it goes,” Daniel said. He wasn’t precisely angry at being interrogated under the fig leaf of polite conversation, but viscerally he reacted to it as a challenge. He knew that was affecting his choice of words, but even so he added, “You should be aware, however, that over the past six years I’ve seen no more of my father than you have of yours.”
He drained his glass. Mistress Zane looked startled, but Vaughn merely laughed and offered Daniel the decanter. “I didn’t have a warm relationship with my father either, Lieutenant,” he said. “It might well have come to a similar pass if I’d stayed on Strymon . . . which of course I did not. And I don’t mean that Leland should’ve been shot in the back, though that’s neither here nor there.”
“On Strymon . . . ” Zane said. Her eyes were like agates, layered brown and green and blue. ” . . . it’s usual for a young man with political interests to serve in the navy for a few years first as a preparation for public life. Is that the case here on Cinnabar?”
“It is not,” Daniel said, a little surprised at his own vehemence. He set down the glass he’d just refilled, afraid he’d otherwise spill it. The woman had—innocently, beyond question—spoken what was virtually blasphemy to an officer of the RCN.
He cleared his throat. “Mistress, the RCN is nonpolitical. Above politics, if you will. The RCN defends the Republic against her external enemies but has nothing to do with internal policies.”
“I don’t mean to contradict you, Lieutenant,” Vaughn said, “but a number of senators are former naval officers, a background they frequently mention during debates on naval appropriations.”
“Yes, sir,” Daniel said, nodding forcefully, “yes indeed. But I think you’ll find that when Admiral Marks or Pereira of Amadore speak in the Senate, they’re representing the RCN as a whole, not aligning the RCN with one or another of the civil factions. As for myself—”
He took a deep breath, then grinned with a return of good humor. “Mistress Zane, my father—and I gather now my sister—are very much a part of the political establishment of the Republic. I’m not, by temperament. If my father and I hadn’t had words, I’d probably be managing Bantry now. Doing an adequate job, I’m sure, but spending most of my time hunting and fishing as I did when I was a boy.”
And meeting girls in the evening; which was easy for the young master to do on Bantry, but not so difficult for an engaging youth in a naval uniform either.
“But what I’ve found now in the RCN is not only a career but a life, sir and madam,” he concluded, raising the glass again. “Any suggestion to the contrary is ill-founded.”
Smiling to take the sting out of a statement of faith, Daniel drank. He forgot he was in urbane society until the full contents had slid down his throat; the sensation was like peppercorns in ice cream.
“I wouldn’t dream of doubting the word of a Leary of Bantry,” Vaughn said easily. “You’re a lucky man to have found your vocation and been permitted to practice it, Lieutenant.”
Daniel looked at him, wondering how much of the statement was sincere and how much was Vaughn’s attempt to curry sympathy for his own plight. He snorted more with irony than humor. As with Speaker Leary, everything Vaughn said was for effect. The statement’s truth or otherwise came a bad second in the decision tree.
“Yes, sir,” Daniel said. “I am very lucky.”
He coughed lightly, to clear his throat and punctuate the thought. “I wonder, sir,” he continued, “since we’re answering questions for one another—”
Daniel had been answering questions for the Strymon citizens; it was time to remind them of that.
“—if you’d tell me why you were visiting the Princess Cecile yesterday when we met? She’s a lovely ship, as I’d be the first to tell you, but not one of the more impressive sights in Harbor Three at present.”
“The Princess Cecile is the corvette Lieutenant Leary captured almost single-handed,” Vaughn said to Mistress Zane. He turned to Daniel and continued, “You’re thinking I should have been interested in the battleship in the next dock, I suppose? Strymon didn’t have battleships when I lived there; we hadn’t had anything so large in a generation.”