“I don’t,” Maurice Farr replied.
They were sitting on the terrace of the naval commandants quarters, overlooking Charsson and its port. This was the northernmost part of the Republic of Santander, hence the hottest; the shores of the Gut were warmer still, protected from continental breezes by mountains on both sides. The hot, dry summer had just begun; flowers gleamed about the big whitewashed house, and the tessellated brick pavement of the terrace was dappled by the shade of the royal palms and evergreen oak planted around it. The road ran down the mountainside in dramatic switchbacks; there were villas on either side, officers’ quarters and middle-class suburbs up out of the heat of the old city around the J-shaped harbor.
The roofs down there were mostly low-pitched and of reddish clay tile; it looked more like an Imperial city from the lands just north of the Gut than like the rest of Santander. Much of the population was Imperial, too—there had been a steady drift of migrant laborers in the past couple of generations, looking for better-paid work in the growing mines and factories and irrigation farms.
Farr’s eyes went to the dockyards. One of his armored cruisers was in the graving dock, with a cracked shaft on her central screw. The other four ships of the squadron were refitting as well; when everything was ready he’d take them up the Gut on a show-the-flag cruise.
“John,” he continued, “is on his way to becoming a very wealthy young man. And he’s doing well in the diplomatic service.
“Thank you,” he went on to the steward bringing him his afternoon gin and tonic. Sally rattled the ice in hers.
“He has no social life,” she said. “I keep introducing him to nice girls, and nothing happens. All he does is study and work. The doctors say he should be . . . umm, functional . . . but I worry.”
Maurice turned his head to hide a quick smile. From what Jeffrey told him, John had been seen occasionally with girls who weren’t particularly nice. Enough to prove that the infant vasectomy the Chosen doctors had done hadn’t caused any irreparable harm in that respect, at least.
“Do you know something I don’t?” Sally said sharply.
“Let’s put it this way, my dear: there are certain things that a young man does not generally discuss with his mother.”
“Oh.”
Smart, Maurice thought fondly. Pretty, too.
Sally was looking remarkably cool and elegant in her white and cream linen outfit and broad straw hat, the pleated skirt daringly an inch above the ankle. Only a little gray in the long brown hair, no more than in his. You’d never know she’d had four children.
“Besides,” he went on, “he’s been assigned to the embassy in Ciano. From what I know of the tailcoat squadron there, social life is about all he’ll have time for—it’s a diplomat’s main function. Count on it, he’ll meet plenty of nice girls there.”
“Oh.” Sallys tone wavered a little at the thought. “Nice Imperial girls. Well, I suppose . . .” She shrugged.
She looked downslope in her turn. There were fortifications there, everything from the bastion-and-ravelin systems set up centuries ago to defend against roundshot to modern concrete-and-steel bunkers with heavy naval guns.
“John seems to think that there’s going to be war,” she said. “Jeffrey, too.”
Maurice nodded somberly. “I wouldn’t be surprised. War between the Chosen and the Empire, at least.”
“But surely we wouldn’t be involved!” Sally protested.
“Not at first,” Maurice said slowly. “Not for a while.”
“Thank goodness Jeffrey’s in the army, then,” she said. The Republic of Santander had no land border with either of the two contending powers. “And John’s safe in the diplomatic corps.”
* * *
“You dance divinely, Giovanni,” Pia del’Cuomo said. “It is not fair. You are tall, you are handsome, you are clever, you are rich, and you dance so well. Beware, lest God send you a misfortune.”
“I’ve already had a few from Him,” John Hosten said, keeping his tone light and whirling the girl through the waltz. The ballroom was full of graceful swirling movement, gowns and uniforms and black formal suits, jewels and flowers and fans. “But He brought me to Ciano to meet you, so he can’t be really angry with me.”