Adele turned to her own staff. “And you lot come as well,” she said. “Donkey work is probably all you’re good for, but that’s what’s required today.”
“That’s not our job!” one of the lovers protested.
Adele felt her face change with the suddenness of ice slipping from a sunlit roof. “Am I not a Mundy of Chatsworth?” she shouted. “If I hear any more insolence, the one who speaks will take the field with me if they’ve any blood to be worth my bullet! And if not, I’ll find a whip that works as well on two-legged beasts as any other. I swear it!”
The carpenters had already scuttled from the disordered room. Vanness opened his mouth. Adele pointed her finger at his face. He swallowed and padded out of the library with the other two assistants.
Adele closed the door behind her. “This work is a matter touching my honor,” she said to the Kostromans’ backs. “I advise you to remember that. If to put it right I must shoot the whole lot of you and start over with a staff that knows what it’s doing, then I’ll do just that. Depend on it!”
One of the lovers had started to whimper. The other moved away so as not to be caught in any thunderbolt that resulted.
There should be time to transfer the lumber before the dinner, Adele thought; and if not, well, she’d be late. That was a prerogative of a Mundy.
Daniel Leary stood and raised his glass. “Fellow officers,” he said, “I give you the Aglaia. May she always rejoice in good officers!”
Hogg watched beaming from the hallway. He’d taken over the landlord’s kitchen to prepare dinner for the Aglaia’s four junior commissioned officers—Captain Le Golif was at the Elector’s dinner in Daniel’s place.
Daniel couldn’t afford red meat at Kostroman prices and Hogg was, truth to tell, no more than a passable cook, but matters had gone well. The pilaf had been adequate, and Bantry was a coastal estate. Nothing could have better trained Hogg to prepare a meal on Kostroma, a planet where fish was the staple and there was almost no land more than fifty miles from the sea.
Besides, the wine was excellent.
“And may Admiral Martina bloody Lasowski leave the ship’s officers to do their jobs on the voyage home!” muttered Lt. Mon. His steward had filled about three glasses to every two for the other officers dining.
They all drank. Wonderful wine, absolutely wonderful.
Three hours in the company of the Aglaia’s two lieutenants and two midshipmen had returned Daniel’s normal sunny disposition. The wine hadn’t hurt his mood either. No sir, not in the least.
Lt. Weisshampl belched, stared at her empty glass for a moment, and thought to pat her lips with her napkin.
“Maybe we could lock down the blast door in the corridor to the passenger suites?” said Midshipman Cassanos, a fresh-faced youth of eighteen on his first commission.
Midshipman Whelkine was female, a year older, and had never given Daniel a real smile in the three weeks he’d known her on shipboard. Her hands clenched on her glass when Cassanos spoke, but that wasn’t necessarily a response to the words. Whelkine’s skills were well above the norm for officers at her level of experience, but Daniel had never before met anyone as fearful of putting a foot wrong.
“Midshipmen with interest,” Mon said, fixing Cassanos with eyes like two obsidian knives, “should have sense enough not to insult admirals who can spike any chance of command assignment for those midshipmen in future years. Do you understand me, Cassanos?”
Cassanos stiffened in his seat, flushing with embarrassment. “Sir,” he said. “I spoke out of turn. I humbly ask the pardon of our host and the assembly.”
“Did you say something, Cassanos?” Daniel said as he sat down carefully. “Nobody here heard you, I’m sure.”
Mon’s reaction was kindness, not hypocrisy. He was the second lieutenant of RCS Aglaia, a communications vessel with a light cruiser’s hull and masts but the armament of only a corvette. Space normally given over to weapons and magazines provided passenger suites comparable to an admiral’s accommodation on a First-Class battleship. The delegates to Kostroma travelled swiftly and in the luxury befitting their rank, but without tying up an important naval asset and putting the nose of Elector Walter III out of joint.