The Imperial girl rolled the woman’s body back John could see her pale; the soft-nosed slug from the derringer had gone up under the dead woman’s chin and exited through the bridge of her nose, taking most of the center of her face with it. Not instantly fatal, although it would have been a toss-up whether she bled out from that first or from the bayonet wound through the kidneys.
—an infant, Center concluded, as Pia picked up a cloth-wrapped bundle from where the woman’s body had concealed it. She knelt and unbound the swaddlings. John came closer, close enough to see that it was a healthy, uninjured boychild of about three months—and reassured enough by the contact to let out an unmistakable wail. Also badly in need of a change; Pia ripped a square from the outer covering and improvised.
“There’s a carrying cradle on the saddle of that horse, I think,” she said, without looking up. “Why doesn’t someone get it for me and save the time?”
Don’t even try, kid, Raj said at the back of John’s mind.
Nightmare images of himself trying to convince Pia that it was impossible to carry a suckling infant on a forced-march journey through the disintegrating Empire flitted through John’s mind. He smiled wryly, even then.
Besides, he thought, looking down at the road, there’s been enough death here.
“Sinders, do that,” he said aloud. “Let’s get moving. And if there’s a live nanny goat down there, somebody truss it and put it over one of the spare horses.”
CHAPTER TEN
The throng filling the Salini waterfront had the voice of surf on a gravel beach: harsh, sometimes louder or softer, but never silent. A mindless, inhuman snarl.
The bridge of the protected cruiser McCormick City was crowded as well. Many of those present were civilians whose only business was to speak with Commodore Maurice Farr, Officer Commanding the First Scouting Squadron. The situation didn’t please Farr. Captain Dundonald, the flagship’s captain, was coldly livid, though openly he’d merely pointed out that the admiral’s bridge and cabin in the aft superstructure would provide the commodore with more space.
Farr sympathized with his subordinate, but “subordinate” was the key word here. He had no intention of removing himself to relative isolation while trying to untangle a mare’s nest like the evacuation of Santander citizens and their dependents from Salini. Farr was sleeping in the captain’s sea cabin off the bridge, forcing Dundonald to set up a cot in the officers’ library on the deck below.
“Commodore Farr,” said Cooley, spokesman for the captains of the five Santander freighters anchored in the jaws of the shallow bay that served Salini for a harbor, “I want you to know that if you don’t help us citizens like your orders say to, you’ll answer to some damned important people! Senator Beemody is a partner in Morgan Trading, and there’s other folk involved who talk just as loud, though they may do it in private.”
Three of the other civilian captains nodded meaningfully, though grizzled old Fitzwilliams had the decency to look embarrassed. Fitz had left the navy after twelve years as a lieutenant who knew he’d never rise higher in peacetime. That was a long time ago, but listening to a civilian threaten a naval officer with political consequences still affected Fitzwilliams in much the way it did Farr himself.
“Thank you, Captain Cooley,” Farr said. “I’ll give your warning all the consideration it deserves. As for the specifics of your request . . .”
He turned to face the shore, drawing the civilians’ attention to the obvious. The Salini waterfront crawled with ragged, desperate people for as far as the eye could see. The McCormick City and two civilian ferries hired by the Santander government were tied up at the West Pier. A hundred Santander Marines and armed sailors guarded the pierhead with fixed bayonets.
Behind them, the six staff members of the Santander consulate in Salini sat at tables made from boards laid on trestles. The vice-consuls poured over huge ledgers, trying to match the names of applicants to the register of Santander citizens within the Empire.
The job was next to hopeless. No more than half the citizens visiting the Union had bothered to register. The consulate staff was reduced to making decisions on the basis of gut instinct and how swarthy the applicant looked.