An overweight man beyond middle age stepped onto the dais with the help of an aide. His uniform was relatively simple; there seemed to be an inverse relationship between rank and the degree of florid dress.
Having said that, this fellow wore a gold sash as well as gold piping on his blue trousers and tailcoat. His chest was a clinking mass of medals.
“That’s Grand Admiral Sanaus,” Adele’s sole companion explained in a respectful whisper. “Chief of the navy.”
Sanaus spoke to the bandleader, then offered his hand to a doll-like blonde woman who clearly believed less was more when dressing to gain attention. Adele sniffed, but she had to admit the girl—she was no more than twenty-five standard years old—was impressive. Real muscles rippled beneath the smooth skin of her thighs and shoulders, too.
The band hit a low chord and sustained it while the assembly quieted. “My officers and honored guests!” Admiral Sanaus said in the relative silence. “It’s my pleasure to greet you in the name of the navy of the Commonwealth.”
Sanaus wheezed between words and the puffiness around his eyes was a sign of ill-health Adele wouldn’t have wanted to see on anyone she cared about. That was few enough people, of course.
“It’s my even greater pleasure to ask for a few words from the lovely lady who’s deigned to accompany me tonight,” the admiral continued.
He bowed to the blonde. The room broke into good-natured cheers. “Ms. Mirella Casque, the scion of Casque Trading and the representative of that famous house here on Kostroma!”
“He’s bragging,” Adele’s companion whispered. They were only twenty feet from the dais. “But he surely has reason to, doesn’t he?”
“He does if he survives the night,” Adele said.
“Even more if he doesn’t!” the Kostroman replied. He was too young to know how to fake gallantry.
Casque Trading was one of the oldest and largest firms of its sort in the Alliance. This girl seemed young to represent the Casques on so important a trading system as Kostroma, but her being a daughter of the house explained the choice.
The girl bowed, then smiled as she ran her blue eyes across the assemblage. Adele felt their touch. The intelligence within that pretty package was just as real—and as hard—as the thigh muscles.
“I want to thank you and to thank your entire planet for the kindness and hospitality you continue to show me,” she said. Her voice was clear and perfectly modulated; perhaps a trifle studied for the ingenue she looked like, but quite in keeping for the local head of an important trading company. “The settlement of Kostroma was a happy day for me and for Casque Trading, as well as for all you wonderful people.”
She gripped Grand Admiral Sanaus’s hand, bowed again—so deeply that Adele suspected the fabric of her top was glued—and hopped off the dais. She handed Admiral Sanaus down herself, ignoring the aide’s attempt to get involved.
“She’s really something, isn’t she?” Adele’s companion said. Conversation had picked up so he was able to speak in a normal voice without fearing the admiral would overhear. “And very wealthy, from what I hear.”
“The Casques are old money,” Adele said. Her words weren’t the agreement the boy probably thought they were. “The founder of the family was a member of the original colony on Pleasaunce, and because the Casques are close to government circles they’ve grown wealthier as the Alliance has expanded.”
“Remarkable,” the Kostroman said, watching the woman who called herself Mirella Casque walk away on the arm of his superior.
Remarkable indeed. The woman had a Bryce accent: she was no more a Casque than Adele herself was. The family was a useful cover to explain the amounts of money “Mirella” was almost certainly spending to cultivate the leaders of the Kostroman navy.
Adele didn’t know who the woman really was, but she had a good idea of who the woman worked for. Not the Fifth Bureau, though. More likely one of the aspects of Alliance military intelligence.
From what Adele had seen while she worked at the Academic Collections, spies of rival branches of the same nation didn’t get along any better than professors at the same university were likely to.