Daniel ran toward the fallen assassins. Adele instead waded back into the water. The rest of the flotilla clogged the channel, some vessels halting on reversed thrust while others chose to ground on the fern-covered islet to the right.
Delos Vaughn hunched below the retaining wall where undamaged sap still provided a curtain from sight. Tredegar stood in the middle of the canal, his eyes wild and his mouth open though speechless.
There’s my purse. Despite the violence, the water remained clear except for swirls of weed and air bubbles. The channel was concrete colored to give it the appearance of mud.
Adele raised the purse and took the data unit from it. Pray to whatever Gods there were that its seals are as good as they’re supposed to be.
Tredegar came to his senses from watching Adele’s organized action. He sloshed toward the nearest of the undamaged boats, the ten-seater which had brought Daniel and Adele into the Gardens. Shawna and Elinor stood in the bow, watching events with perfect aplomb while everyone else on the craft lay flat on the deck.
“Hogg, don’t let Tredegar get away!” Adele cried. It wasn’t an order. She didn’t have authority to order Daniel’s servant to do anything, as Hogg would be the first to tell her if provoked.
He wasn’t the man to ignore a warning, though. Hogg turned in the cockpit and judged his distance as the aide splashed past him. Ten feet of weighted line shimmered from Hogg’s hand and wrapped around Tredegar’s arm and throat. The aide fell backward into the water.
Adele stamped ashore again, clumsy from the weight of water trapped in her pant legs. The suit Tovera picked for her had gathered cuffs, a matter that Adele hadn’t paused to consider when she put the garment on. Clothes were something she wore as a social or environmental necessity, not out of any intrinsic interest they had for her.
If she had to do it again, she’d specify drain holes at wrist and ankles. Though how the damned fabric could let water in so easily and then hold it there like a set of fluid leg irons was beyond her.
An alarm had been given—many alarms, judging from the number of sirens she could hear at varying distances. Ignoring them, ignoring also the shouts and bustle of people around her, Adele walked over to the nearest of the dead men.
There were three holes in the back of his neck, so close together that she could have covered them with her thumb. Tovera was already there, going through the man’s pockets. Daniel had switched off the skiff’s power, bringing it down to the ground again. He was searching the other two assassins.
Adele took the pistol from the dead man’s hand and thrust it through her waist sash. Tovera looked at her. “He doesn’t have any identification, but he’s carrying a thousand florins.”
“They’re probably just local thugs,” Adele said. She took one of the peacock-hued hundred-florin coins Tovera had fanned on the ground beside the man’s purse. “Anyway, I don’t need identification if the money’s there.”
Adele had brought up her personal data unit as she spoke. Her wands flickered, entering the coin’s serial number into the records of the Central Bank of the Republic.
The database was supposed to be restricted, of course. Because Adele was using the Ministry of Defense computer for access, she was probably getting the information faster than one of the bank directors could have done after entering a series of codes and passwords. Even so, a search so enormous took some time.
She looked at the submachine gun in Tovera’s hand. The barrel was only four inches long and the few pounds the weapon weighed weren’t enough to stabilize it when fired full automatic—Adele would have thought, barring the evidence of the corpse before her.
“How did you get that through the screening at the gate?” she demanded.
Tovera’s expression became guarded. “My case projects the image of a data unit and other ordinary office equipment,” she said. “There are ways to defeat it, but none that these civilians would have available.”
Carefully, her eyes never leaving Adele’s, she added, “I’m sorry, mistress. I should have carried your weapon through the screen with me.”