Adele strode briskly to the half-open gate. An idler whose striped garment had been sewn from one piece of cloth shifted to block her, then saw what glinted in Adele’s hand half out of her pocket. He jumped back and muttered to his fellow without taking his eyes off Adele.
“A Mundy is threatened!” Adele called to the lounging guards. Her voice rang through the arched tunnel and into the courtyard beyond. “Will a Purvis let her be beaten at his doorstep?”
The guards jumped to their feet, their equipment clattering. There were six armed men wearing scarves in the orange-and-blue Purvis colors. A dozen others, mostly women, were either spouses or house servants relaxing with the guards. A boy cooked skewered vegetables on a miniature gas grill in the corner of the closed gate leaf and the wall.
“What’s this?” demanded a man with pistols holstered on crossed bandoliers instead of a shoulder weapon like the other guards. From his accent he’d been born on Cinnabar, a crewman from the Aristoxenos. The rest of the guards appeared to be locals.
“I’m Mundy of Chatsworth, Commander Purvis’ cousin!” Adele said. “This scum and her henchmen—”
She pointed at the taxi driver, now standing open-mouthed with a blank expression. She’d backed against the saddle of her tractor.
“—have attempted to rob me!”
“Clear ’em away!” the guard commander said, drawing his pistols. “Bloody hell! Clear ’em away now!”
He stepped into the street but waited beside Adele against the gate leaf. His men rushed out, swinging impeller butts at anybody they could catch. The hangers-on followed, wielding belts, staves, and what looked like a pair of circular knitting needles.
The victims fled instead of trying to resist. Adele presumed that the guards would’ve opened fire as blithely as they clubbed their weapons if anybody’d been fool enough to object to a beating.
The driver lay sprawled in the street. Tovera had remained on the other side of the wagon, out of the way. Now she leaned over the tractor and grasped the driver by the collar. With a strength surprising in her slight form to anybody who hadn’t seen it before, she dragged the woman over her saddle and left her dangling there.
Blood smudged the yellow dust; an impeller butt had smashed the driver’s nose and cheekbones. Twenty-five florins—twenty-four, really—wasn’t so very much, but the honor of a Mundy was worth life itself. . . .
Tovera switched on the tractor’s turbine, then dropped it into gear and stepped back. The vehicle trundled awkwardly away, down a street which had emptied when the trouble started. Tovera walked over to Adele, the attaché case under her left arm and her right hand resting lightly on it.
The commander of the guard holstered his pistols, then wiped his brow with the corner of his neckscarf. His men and their entourage were trooping back into the gateway, chattering merrily. One woman was showing her companion a necklace of perforated coins and uncut stones that Adele remembered the tailor having worn.
“Sebastian!” he said to a soldier wiping the butt of his impeller clean on his shirt tail. “Take Lady Mundy to see Himself. And don’t be daft enough to ask her for a tip or you’ll get worse than the dogs just did.”
“With me, mistress,” Sebastian said, bowing low. His finger was through his impeller’s trigger guard; the muzzle waggled in a broad sweep that would’ve included Adele’s head if she hadn’t ducked. He turned and swaggered into the courtyard.
“Very nicely done, mistress,” Tovera murmured in Adele’s ear as they followed the soldier. “If I’d dealt with them myself, they’d probably have declared us enemies of the state and had the army kill us.”
She giggled. “Not that I care, of course,” she added. “But you would.”
“Yes,” said Adele. “I suppose I would.”
They crossed the courtyard. A balcony screened by a carved lattice projected from the upper—the second—floor of the wing directly opposite. Guards sat beneath the woven mat strung over the base of the outside staircase. They got up as Sebastian and his charges approached.
“The Chief says these two go to see Himself at once!” Sebastian said to another former Cinnabar spacer, this time a tired-looking woman with a chain of alternating hearts and RCN monograms tattooed around her throat.