Aloud she said, “Get into the house and call the Militia. I’m sure somebody else has done so already, but make sure there’s been a call from Chatsworth.”
“Mistress Mundy?” Wilsing said as he lowered the phone. “We need to get to, to Captain Carnolets as soon as possible. Quickly, now!”
“We can’t leave—” Adele began.
The young lieutenant waved his hand at the sprawled bodies. “This has all been taken care of!” he said angrily. “Come! It’s really most important!”
“We’d best do as he says, mistress,” Tovera said with a smile as cold as a cobra’s. “Mistress Sand isn’t a person who likes to be kept waiting.”
Adele nodded curtly. “All right,” she said. “I don’t suppose I need to change after all.”
Wilsing pulled out an oddly-shaped key as he led the way back to the tram stop. Adele avoided all the outstretched limbs, but despite her care her right half-boot came down on a trickle of blood. The sole was tacky, at least in her mind, with every step she took thereafter.
CHAPTER 4
Militia aircars were parked across both the east- and westbound monorail sidings at the head of the court. The slowing tramcar sensed that the stop was blocked and began to accelerate again. The half-dozen other passengers in the car with Hogg and Daniel gaped and chattered about what was going on.
Daniel grabbed the emergency stop cord and pulled hard, cutting the current to the magnets that levitated the car above the rail. They slid to a screeching, sparkling halt between the two police vehicles. A heavy-set passenger lost his balance and slammed into the front of the car with an angry shout.
Hogg stepped out and held the door open. Daniel let go of the cord and followed his servant. He was aware of the gabbling of his bruised fellow passengers only as he might have noticed the twittering of birds when he walked past a hedge on important business.
There were a dozen Militia personnel in riot gear in the court, but they were in a tight, frustrated-looking group under the eyes of a civilian woman with the red-and-gold Leary rosette on her collar and a man in the uniform of the RCN’s Shore Police with a stylized gorget. Two aircars had landed in the court proper. One was an enclosed van with shore police/republic of cinnabar navy on the sides.
The other vehicle wore Militia markings but was of much higher quality than those the Republic bought for its national police. Daniel didn’t recognize that particular aircar, but he’d seen earlier versions of it before his break with his father. Speaker Leary kept a small fleet of them for his use and that of his personal security detachment.
“Stop right where you are!” said the maybe-Shore Policeman, pointing his left index finger at Daniel while his right hand hovered over his holster. “You’ve got no business here!”
“I’m a resident,” said Daniel, continuing to walk forward. “And besides, I’m Lieutenant Daniel Leary.”
“I don’t care if you’re—” said the cop; he was certainly a cop, whatever his precise affiliation. Daniel drove a straight left into the man’s solar plexus, doubling him up as suddenly as a thrown brick.
“When the man tells you he’s a Leary, you’d better care, buddy,” said Hogg said as he sauntered past at Daniel’s heel, putting on a pair of mesh-covered gloves. He kicked the fellow’s knees out from under him.
A Militiamen laughed. Speaker Leary’s official looked at him; she didn’t frown or even raise an eyebrow, but he fell silent anyway.
Daniel walked around the van. The other side was hinged down; four men in nondescript coveralls were loading sheet-covered bodies into it. There were several in the vehicle already, stacked on the floor like cordwood.
“Who—?” Daniel said. He had no particular emotion at this moment, just a need to gather information.
He snatched back the sheet from the face of the corpse being lifted into the van. It was a man with a sunburst tattoo on his right cheek: nobody Daniel knew, and anyway a man.
“You there!” a man in the utility uniform of an on-duty RCN commander. “Lieutenant! Stop where you are. You have no business here.”