Adele thought about the mindset that was always prepared in case of an assassination attempt at an innocent party. She could learn to live that way, she supposed, but it seemed to her that the alternative to life was preferable if such paranoia were necessary.
She smiled. “Not at all, Tovera,” she said. “I think I’m better off delegating those concerns to you.”
A number of the party guests were standing around the plasma cannon, discussing it in amazed tones. The bolt had shrivelled a broadening wedge of vegetation from beneath the muzzle to the edge of the islet. The iridium barrel was no longer glowing, but any of the spectators who decided to touch the metal were going to cook their flesh to the bones.
Adele smiled grimly. Not so very long ago she wouldn’t have had any more experience of a plasma cannon than did any other Academic Collections staff member. Being caught in the Kostroma rebellion had certainly broadened her horizons.
Adele’s display shifted into the answer she’d expected. She looked up, hoping to catch Daniel’s eye. He held two pistols by the barrel in his left hand and was talking to a young man in the beige uniform of the Militia, the national police. Despite the flashing lights and the downdraft, Adele hadn’t noticed the Militia aircar landing beside the assassins’ skiff.
Delos Vaughn walked up on shore, surrounded by servants and several aides. One of the latter had taken off her taffeta cape and was toweling Vaughn’s legs with it. Adele watched her for a moment, blinked, and went back to the display feeling queasy. The Mundys hadn’t encouraged that sort of abasement from their retainers; though when she let herself remember, there had been times . . .
She shook herself. She didn’t want to think about the night her father won the race for Treasurer of the Republic and a dozen women, wives and daughters of his retainers, had buffed the gilded body of his aircar with their long hair. That was what they did for him in public. For herself, she didn’t want anybody to offer her honors that she would never grant to another living person.
“You there!” Vaughn said. “What in heaven are you doing with Cornelius? Let him go at once!”
Everybody turned at the shout. Hogg was holding Tredegar upright, trussed by the neck and—behind his back—his wrists. An aide stepped forward.
“No, Tovera!” Adele shouted.
Hogg’s hands were occupied with a prisoner who was conscious but noosed too tightly to be able to stand without help. He kicked the aide squarely in the crotch, doubling her up with a scream that a man in a similar situation couldn’t have bettered.
It could have been worse. Tovera had turned also. Adele wasn’t absolutely sure that her shout would’ve been enough to keep the pale woman from killing Vaughn’s aide with the same wasplike skill that had eliminated the three assassins.
“But this is Cornelius Tredegar,” Vaughn said, no longer speaking with an implicit threat in his voice. “He’s one of my oldest associates. He came into exile with me, for God’s sake!”
“He knew about the ambush,” Daniel said, walking over and drawing the policeman with him. The fellow’s partner was still in the aircar, calling for additional help. Another Militia aircar had landed, but its personnel were fending off the crush of velvet-clad Gardens employees gabbling about the damage to the settings. “If he didn’t plan it, then he was helping whoever did.”
“Tredegar was the paymaster,” Adele said, drawing everyone’s eyes from Daniel to her. They were quite a pair, dripping wet and muddy besides. “He withdrew six thousand florins from his account at the Divan branch of Stevenage Trust ten days ago. He must have paid the assassins the second half of the money just this morning, because they’re still carrying it.”
“Mistress?” the policeman said, glancing at the coins beside the dead man’s purse. “How do you know that?”
An enclosed twelve-place aircar with Militia markings wallowed to a landing at the edge of the islet, smashing another section of the amber wall. Daniel winced though he didn’t say anything. Almost half the carefully formed circuit of trees had been snapped off or uprooted.