Four footmen from Chatsworth Minor stood in a tight circle, surrounded by SPs and Leary retainers. Another Mundy servant was on a stretcher by the front door, his head bandaged. Daniel wasn’t sure, but the fellow looked like the day-shift doorman.
“I have every business here,” he said, his voice ringing from the facades to either side. “I was told that my shipmate Adele Mundy was in difficulty. Where is she, if you please?”
Eyes peered out from the drawn blinds of the silent houses. None of the residents or servants showed themselves openly, but Daniel knew every soul in the court was watching unless they were in a sick bed or drunken stupor.
There were half a dozen uniformed SPs and an equal number of folk in coveralls; workmen, Daniel supposed. Garbage collectors, one might say. Corder Leary’s personnel amounted to six or seven besides the woman watching the Militia.
The RCN commander—who was no more a part of the RCN Daniel served than he was a priest—held a phone. He looked hard at Daniel; Daniel stared back, giving him no change. The phone came up toward the commander’s face, then lowered again.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “you may go into your dwelling if you like, but you’re to stay there until the street is reopened in a few minutes.”
“Where is Adele?” Daniel demanded. He wasn’t shouting, exactly, but he was speaking very distinctly in a voice that could’ve been heard on the bridge of a warship during action.
Good God, how many bodies were there? A couple more lay behind the footmen and guards nearer the house, and the pavement Daniel crossed toward the commander looked like it’d been painted red.
“Lieutenant, that’s none of your concern!” said the commander. He looked toward the heavy-set man beside him. The latter wore a midshipman’s hollow pips, but he was muscle pure and simple.
“The Hell it’s none of my—” Daniel said, and this time he was shouting.
“Sir, she’s all right!” cried one of the footmen. “She and that snake of hers—”
A Shore Policeman grabbed the servant by the throat and raised his riot baton. He shouted, “You were warned, boyo!”
“Hogg,” Daniel said, but he didn’t need to give the order. A four-ounce deep-sea sinker had already spun out of Hogg’s hand, trailing a shimmer of monocrystal fishing line.
The weight toonked into the SP’s skull, just behind the right ear. Hogg recovered it neatly into the gloved hand which held the sinker on the other end of the line. A bullet couldn’t have dropped the fellow more neatly.
The “midshipman” reached for his belt holster. Daniel caught his right thumb. “Don’t!” he said, and as the heavy’s knee came up Daniel shifted his hip, took the jolt on bone, and felt the scrunch of cartilage tearing as he dislocated the fellow’s thumb, he’d told him. . . .
There were guns out, SPs or whoever they were but Speaker Leary’s retainers were armed also. There’d been a bloodbath an hour ago in this quiet court and there was about to be another because some flunky had lashed out when Daniel Leary asked about a friend.
“Stop!” shouted the leader of SPs “For God’s sake, put your weapons away, now! Now!”
Nobody moved for a moment, not even Hogg—though his two sinkers cotinued to spin in opposite directions. His long folding knife was out in his left hand.
“This is Speaker Leary’s son,” said a well-groomed man in civilian clothes with a Leary flash. He might have been a lawyer or an accountant, one who was abnormally careful to stay fit. “Sir.”
The “sir” was perfunctory.
Daniel stepped back. He was trembling with surges of the adrenaline he hadn’t burned off in the past few seconds.
“Yes, I take your point,” the commander said, grimacing in disgust at the situation. “Look, we’re all on the same side.”
His glance took in Daniel. Daniel was glad of it, but he could only manage a nod as he twisted his hands together to work out the incipient cramps.
The burly midshipman was holding his right hand in his left. The shock wore off; he muttered in delayed pain.
“Will you shut up, for God’s sake?” the commander shouted, letting off his own stress. Calmly to Daniel and the head of the Speaker’s detachment he continued, “Lieutenant Leary, your friend’s safe. She was called off on business that had nothing to do with this. I give you my word on that.”