Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

Daniel Leary emerged from the stairwell at a polite distance behind Lady Torgis. Instead of dragging his companion, a striking redheaded woman, the way Torgis did his wife, Daniel supported her in the crook of his right arm. Adele would’ve said that the redhead looked healthy enough to climb stairs by herself, but no doubt Daniel knew his business. Climbing stairs probably wasn’t the—person’s—preferred form of exercise.

Daniel caught Adele’s eye and waved his free hand to her. She smiled back, causing Cherry’s face to brighten with speculation, then go studiously blank.

Behind Daniel and his tramp came a stream of other guests, panting and distressed. The line was long enough to keep the door to the third floor open; thus the dance music flooding out to announce Admiral Torgis’s arrival.

“Holodi of Zampt and her husband, they’re factors for Zampt and the Learoyd Cluster,” Tovera said as the first couple came into view. Her running commentary continued, identifying those following Torgis as among the leading residents of Sexburga.

They were divided equally between natives and expatriates, just as Cherry had suggested. When the Resident Commissioner had decided not to wait for the elevator, all his chief guests had to follow suit.

Adele felt a faint smile play at the corners of her mouth. There were extensive floral arrangements on the buffet tables. If Admiral Torgis picked an iris and began chewing on its stem, his guests would strip the displays of iris . . . though Adele believed they were poisonous. She withstood the urge to pull out her personal data unit and get a certain answer to the question.

“Let’s get some more tables here for me and the lieutenant!” Admiral Torgis said. Harassed servants held a quick conclave, then shunted food from one of the serving tables to the others and brought the emptied one out to join the smaller eating tables.

“Adele,” Daniel said, stepping over to her while the admiral’s orders were being obeyed, “allow me to present Mistress Kira . . .”

He looked suddenly stricken.

“Lully,” Tovera said in Adele’s ear as the two of them rose.

“I believe you’re Mistress Lully,” Adele repeated in straight-faced amusement, touching fingertips with the redhead. She’d already noticed that women didn’t clasp one another on Sexburga—any more than they did on the Alliance worlds. “Very glad to meet you. I’m Signals Officer Mundy of the Princess Cecile.”

“Leary, bring your Mundy over to join us,” Torgis boomed. “Who’s that, Cherry? You come over here too, Cherry, if you like. Anyone good enough for the company of an RCN officer is good enough to eat with me!”

Servants were rustling chairs from around the room. One of them had started to snatch Adele’s when she stood up, then froze in horror as he realized the junior officer had become one of the admiral’s pets. Working for a master whose whims were as strong and (from a diplomatic perspective) unconventional as those of Admiral Torgis must be a nervous business at best.

“You had luck, Leary,” the admiral said in a voice that could probably be heard on the floor below over the orchestra. “You know it and I know it. But all the luck in the world wouldn’t have saved Kostroma if you hadn’t been a man and a damned fine officer. By God, I’m glad the RCN still makes men the way she did when I was a cadet!”

“Hear, hear!” cried the members of his entourage, locals and expatriates evidently trying to outclap one another. They’d have been cheering just as loudly if the Resident Commissioner had called for infanticide and immediate submission to the Alliance of Free Stars. In Sexburga’s social hierarchy, the Cinnabar representative was the sun and everyone else seemed desperate to become the planet in the nearest orbit.

Daniel leaned close to Adele’s ear and whispered, “I know, it’s all nonsense . . . but I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit it feels good.”

Adele patted him lightly below his gold-encrusted right epaulette. That raised eyebrows from not only Cherry but Mistress Lully as well.

“Quite all right, my dear,” Adele said to the local woman in an accent redolent of the highest strata of Xenos society . . . to which she had, after all, belonged. “Our association is purely professional.”

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