Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

If the exiled ruler cut at him with the penis bone, Daniel was going to take it away and worry about the consequences later. Cinnabar nobles had never lacked for arrogance, but theirs was the pride of oligarchs who knew that even the greatest of them was merely first among equals. Autocrats, even fallen autocrats like the Captal, were a wholly different breed.

The Captal dropped the rod disdainfully. “A real leader knows how to delegate, Lieutenant,” he said. “Point to the task and reward the laborers suitably when they’ve executed his will. No doubt your father understands this principle, though you do not.”

“Very possibly he does, sir,” Daniel said, trying to keep a straight face. Imagine this Berengian rube implying similarity between himself and Speaker Leary! “To be honest, I’m rather surprised that a planet that’s been continuously settled from before the Hiatus has any major unexplored regions.”

“It wouldn’t surprise you if you’d spent any length of time on Sexburga, Lieutenant,” said Mistress Keeton, a Strymonian who’d been introduced as “a factor with interests in Spires and elsewhere.” Her clothes were of Sexburgan cut but colored in vivid vertical stripes like nothing Daniel had seen on local citizens. “They’re a very conservative people here, the families who trace their lineage back to the original settlement even more so than those from Captain Flood’s refoundation. South Land has a bad reputation, so why go there?”

“It’s not as though there’s population pressure, after all,” a Mr. Cherry said. The gathering under the bronze hands had broken up, and the conspirators were drifting closer to Daniel. “There’s an astrogation beacon on the north cape of the continent. And foreigners visit it occasionally. I’ve been there myself.”

He grinned at Daniel, then to the Captal. “None of my party saw ghosts, and I’ve never heard of anyone who has. But I had to hire spacers to do for us on the trip, because none of the locals would go to South Land.”

A servant took Daniel’s glass and substituted a full one. He’d noticed many times in the past that the drinks he held seemed to vanish as if by osmosis through the sides of his glass. Still, a few drinks, however strong, weren’t going to be a problem.

“I’m not an archaeologist, I’m afraid,” Daniel said with a lift of his hand. “I’m sure that, with the traffic coming through Sexburga, there’ll be a suitable person for the task if you keep your eyes open.”

The Captal da Lund stood with his back to the window, his hands on his hips. Behind him russet fields stretched away to the horizon. He looked as though he ought to have been on a dais.

“There are no men of vision any more,” the Captal announced in a sepulchral voice. “Mankind has devolved to a race of pigmies who cannot see and fear to act.”

“Oh, I don’t know that I’d agree with you there, Captal,” Delos Vaughn said with an easy smile. “I think it’s still possible to find men of vision. Wouldn’t you say so, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, I would,” Daniel said, a little more forcefully than he might have done if he hadn’t first slugged down his fresh drink.

Vaughn meant himself, of course, and he was probably correct in his self-assessment. But Lt. Daniel Leary could see and could act also . . . and his vision didn’t include a Leary of Bantry digging around on South Land at the whim of an exiled wog.

Daniel took a full glass from the servant headed toward him and raised it. “A toast!” he said. “To the Republic of Cinnabar and all her loyal allies!”

Everybody drank, but an appraising glint came into the eyes of Delos Vaughn. It remained there until the gathering broke up at the end of the hour.

Chapter Fourteen

“Good afternoon, mistress,” said the man behind Adele in the buffet line. “Or ‘officer,’ I suppose I should say. You’re one of young Leary’s crew, I take it?”

“He’s named Cherry,” said Tovera, speaking through the bead placed deep in Adele’s right ear canal. It dulled her normal hearing on that side of her head, but it was the only alternative to a surgical implant in her mastoid bone if she wanted commentary from her servant. “He was at the gathering for Captain Leary yesterday.”