Why had she helped Markos? Adele didn’t really believe Mistress Boileau had been in danger. Not only was the professor well connected with members of the power structure on Pleasaunce, her knowledge made her a national treasure. The Fifth Bureau knew that better than most.
Beyond question, Adele and her family had been ill-treated by the Republic of Cinnabar. She couldn’t claim that she’d acted out of anger, though. The massacre of her family had stunned her, but she wasn’t angry now and probably hadn’t ever been angry. Hot emotions like love and hate weren’t a major part of Adele Mundy’s personality.
She had done what Markos demanded because that was the simplest choice. She did it to be finished, so that she could get back to the important work of cataloguing a library.
Adele Mundy had betrayed the Kostroman state that employed her and the Cinnabar state whose citizen she was because she was lazy. She hadn’t wanted to be bothered by a man she loathed but who might have the power to harass her.
Markos stood facing the Cinnabar delegates. Alliance soldiers held either end of the leash binding the three together. The civilian member of the Navy Board spoke angrily about the law of nations, but Lasowski and the man from the finance office were coldly silent as they met Markos’s eyes.
The room quieted. “Kneel down,” Markos ordered pleasantly.
“I’ll be damned first,” Admiral Lasowski said. Her voice was thin with pain from her wound.
“Force them to kneel,” Markos said to the soldier on one end.
The soldier frowned and looked toward the officer in battle dress. “Make them kneel,” the officer said. He didn’t sound comfortable. “Mr. Markos is in command.”
The soldiers stepped back to tension the leash, then used their weight to drag the prisoners down. The Navy Board functionary cried out as he lost his footing and slipped headlong. The Alliance officers watched with obvious distaste.
“You see,” Markos said, “it’s possible that our Zojira friends here think that in the future they might be able to invite Cinnabar to return and nonetheless keep their ruling positions on Kostroma. That can’t be permitted.”
Leonidas Zojira shook his head nervously. He was a dapper little man with a mustache as sharp as paired stilettos. “I assure you that our treaty with the Alliance of Free Stars is sacrosanct, good sir. You need not—”
“As sacrosanct as your pledge of eternal alliance with Walter Hajas here, no doubt,” Markos said with catlike amusement. “Well, never fear. You’ll stay loyal to the Alliance.”
He crooked a finger toward one of the soldiers standing in back of the prostrate Cinnabar delegates. “Shoot them,” he said.
“You can’t do that!” said an Alliance naval officer. “They’re prisoners of war. We don’t shoot prisoners!”
“I’ll remind you of what Colonel Dorrien just noted,” Markos said. “The Guarantor has put me in charge.”
He nodded to his aide. She stepped past him, aimed her submachine gun one-handed, and fired a single shot. Admiral Lasowksi thrashed like a pithed frog.
“Oh good Christ,” said the Alliance naval officer who’d protested. He turned his back. The colonel in battle dress was expressionless, and the other naval officer looked white with rage. “Oh good Christ!”
The aide fired twice more. The snapping discharges weren’t loud in the big room, but they echoed in the eyes of all those watching.
The Navy Board member was flailing and crying out. When the pellet hit him, his voice rose to a high-pitched whimper. The aide grimaced and put a second round into the back of his skull.
“I suppose it’s better that the executions be carried out by a Kostroman citizen anyway,” Markos said. “Don’t you think so, Elector Leonidas?”
He laughed and added, “Anyway, now we can get back to deciding the future shape of the government of Kostroma.”
Adele Mundy turned and walked out of the Grand Salon. No one paid any attention to her.
Not that she cared.
Somebody’d put a burst of shots into the head of the Triton. Water streamed from a dozen ragged bronze holes, but only a little dribbled out of the conch itself.
Three Hajas guards lay in a short row in the entryway. They’d been riddled too, but they’d long since stopped leaking fluids. Splotches of blood remained beside the pillars where they’d fallen. Water had been sluiced over the mess, but it still looked as though buckets of maroon paint had burst on the dark stone.