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She smiled slightly.

“Fortunately, Daniel and I know one another well enough that I don’t have to pretend interest in his offer to avoid offending him. At some point”—probably very soon, judging from Daniel’s past behavior—“he will decide that he wants another command. I will expect to accompany him when he does.”

“I see,” Deirdre said. She tented her fingers before her on the black leather, then looked up to meet Adele’s gaze squarely. She said, “I’m being blackmailed over financial and political matters. I need someone to act for me in the affair. If you are willing to take on the problem, I will give you carte blanche to solve it.”

She made a dismissive gesture with her left hand and added, “And of course pay whatever fee you set.”

The fee was minor to both of them: to Deirdre because she controlled vast wealth, to Adele because she didn’t care very much about money.

“Give me the background to the situation,” Adele said quietly. She had considered the request thoroughly in her several seconds of delay. Her first impulse—as generally—had been to begin searching with her data unit.

She smiled inwardly. It would have been difficult to get the information that way, though it would have been interesting to try.

Deirdre nodded. “A Pantellarian businessman named Arnaud,” she said, “has become a member, the leading member, of the Council of Twenty which rules Pantellaria since the planet regained independence following the Treaty of Amiens.”

Adele had noticed a minuscule hesitation before Deirdre began laying out the data, but it had been no more than Adele’s pause before she decided to pursue the matter instead of walking straight out of the office, the bank, and Deirdre’s life. There had been none of the usual maundering: “This must remain secret,” or “You’ll have to swear not to say anything about this,” or other such nonsense.

Deirdre had asked for Adele’s help; Adele had asked for information which she would need to provide that help. Nobody who knew Adele would have assumed that she would accept a proposition without learning the details—for anyone except for Daniel Leary.

“At the beginning of the recent war”—between Cinnabar and the Alliance—“Arnaud owned a small repair yard,” Deirdre continued. “In the course of the war, and after Pantellaria had been annexed to the Alliance of Free Stars, Arnaud found outside investment to expand his yard and to construct ships of some size. Among the yard’s projects were five or six destroyers, which operated as elements of the Alliance Fleet in battle against the RCN.”

Deirdre grimaced and stared at her fingers again for a moment, then looked Adele in the face again. “I was the outside investor in Arnaud’s yard,” Deirdre said. “That is, Bantry Holdings made the investment.”

She smiled wryly. “It’s been quite profitable for us,” she said. “Though peace will require some adjustments.”

“I would have expected you,” Adele said carefully, “to have worked through a series of cutouts which would make it impossible for the investment to be traced back to Bantry Holdings in a provable fashion.”

Then Adele shrugged. “There could be allegations,” she said, “but there are always allegations. Your enemies will believe them, your friends will pretend that they don’t.”

Deirdre made a sour face. “Under ordinary circumstances,” she said, “that would be true—though I’ll admit that when I looked at the detailed records, I found that the security arrangements weren’t as complete as I would have wished them. My primary concern, however, is that Councillor Arnaud is the party threatening me. He probably can prove our close association during the war.”

“I see,” said Adele, because she suddenly did see. “Please wait a moment.”

Deirdre had said that she was the blackmail victim, but in fact the information led to Bantry Holdings, which she now managed. At the time the initial investments were made, Deirdre could not have been more than ten or twelve years old. Corder Leary himself had been in charge.

Adele felt her lips quirk into a smile. She had allowed herself to pretend that she could associate with the Leary family but not with its patriarch, Speaker Leary, who had murdered her family. Reality had just forced its way to the front, as it had been certain to do unless Adele had died before that happened.

She had two options. On reflection she found herself unwilling to cut herself off from Daniel Leary and through him the RCN, the first real family Adele had known in her life.

“All right,” Adele repeated.
In for a soldi, in for a florin.
“What is Arnaud asking from you?”

She brought her data unit live and began searching, starting with the
Sailing Directions
for Pantellaria,
published by Navy House. Whatever the specifics of the problem were, the more she knew about Pantellaria, the better off she would be.

“The Treaty of Amiens required that the parties”—the Republic of Cinnabar and the Alliance of Free Stars—“give up all territories captured during the course of the war,” Deirdre said. “There were balanced exceptions, but Pantellaria regained the independence it had lost eighteen years earlier.”

“Yes,” said Adele to show that she was listening.
Of course.
But it was a polite acknowledgment, and she had been raised to be courteous when that was possible.

“Pantellaria had six colony worlds, all of which were controlled by the Alliance during the war and which were returned to Pantellaria under the treaty,” Deirdre said. “One of them, Corcyra, declared its independence from the homeworld.”

Adele refined her search while she listened. Deirdre continued. “A number of Pantellarians who were closely associated with the Alliance regime fled to Corcyra. The exiles control a great deal of wealth, even after their assets on Pantellaria have been expropriated. They’ve been helping to arm the rebels—the independence movement, if you prefer. In addition, the former Alliance garrison of Corcyra was locally recruited and remained on the planet.”

Adele continued to read her holographic display. Corcyra held vast quantities of copper. The mining income was sufficient to sustain the rebellion indefinitely, unless Pantellaria was able to sustain a real blockade. That last seemed doubtful when the homeworld itself was disrupted by both the war and its recent change of government.

“Ah,” said Adele. She looked past the hologram to Deirdre and quoted, “‘The Pantellarian Council has appointed Ermann Arnaud as Commissioner Plenipotentiary of Corcyra, with full authority to return it to the beneficent control of the homeworld.’ I would say that Master Arnaud has chosen a difficult task.”

“I’m confident that he would agree with you,” Deirdre said dryly. “It affects me because whatever Arnaud’s original expectation, he is now pinning his hopes on Cinnabar intervention as a signatory of the Treaty of Amiens, returning Corcyra to Pantellaria as part of the status quo ante provisions. Our legal department informs me that Arnaud’s interpretation of the treaty language is open to question.”

Adele flicked her hand. “It doesn’t matter what lawyers say,” she snapped. “If we send troops—or ships, more likely—the Alliance will certainly respond by supporting the pro-Alliance exiles. We’ll be back in a state of full-scale war in six months, or more likely three.”

“Yes,” said Deirdre. “My research bureau said within a year, but I accept your assessment. Renewed war would be even worse for my interests than being accused of supporting the Alliance during the recent war, so I have decided not to comply with Arnaud’s request. Morality aside, of course.”

“Of course,” Adele said. She pursed her lips. Partly to give herself more time to analyze the options, she said, “
Could
you have gotten Cinnabar support for the Pantellarians?”

Deirdre spread her fingers before her. She had chunky hands; indeed, she might best be described as a chunky woman. She was no more a raving beauty than her brother was a conventionally handsome man.

Not that Deirdre’s looks mattered. From what Daniel had said, she preferred professional companionship to amateurs. Professionals cost only money, which she had in abundance.

“There are a number of hardliners in the Senate who believe we should not have made peace with the Tyrant Porra, as they call him,” Deirdre said, smiling faintly. “Senators who feel that Guarantor Porra’s behavior toward his citizens is a proper matter of concern for the Senate of the Republic of Cinnabar. And also—”

Deirdre turned her palms up.

“—there are hard-line or personally involved Alliance citizens who certainly are funnelling arms to the rebels. Though of course the galaxy’s awash with surplus arms following the general demobilization after the treaty.”

Adele nodded agreement. Arms dealers were rarely concerned with the political complexion of potential buyers, so long as they could pay in hard currency.

“A campaign in the streets of Xenos, protesting Alliance aggression, wouldn’t be very expensive,” Deirdre said. “Combined with discussions with individual senators—”

“Discussions” meant logrolling or simple bribery. Which Speaker Leary would conduct, and very ably, too, based on his past performance.

“—I think it might be possible, yes.”

Deirdre didn’t bother to repeat that she had already decided against the option. Adele was pleased to deal with someone who assumed that the person she was speaking to could remember a statement made a few seconds earlier.

“If this matter were publicized,” Deirdre went on, “it would ruin my chance of getting into the Senate. There’s almost no possibility that I would go to jail for treason or even be tried, however. I have always expected to enter the Senate at some point, but I can bear the disappointment.”

Adele looked at her. On the face of it, “I can bear the disappointment” was sneeringly ironic. But behind Deirdre’s polished deadpan, Adele saw a hint that the disappointment would be real. There had been a Leary in the Senate for almost seven hundred years, and
that
, if not personal ambition, would hurt Deirdre.

Daniel would make a
terrible
senator.
But he might feel that family honor compelled him to fill the seat that his father would vacate, upon death if not by retirement.

“How would you like to see the problem solved?” Adele said. A mechanical voice would have held more emotion.

“Any solution which doesn’t result in the ruin of the Leary family is acceptable,” Deirdre said. “I’m aware what may be involved in giving an agent of your caliber carte blanche.”

You
think
you understand,
Adele thought, holding Deirdre’s eyes. But perhaps she truly did. The Learys were a notably ruthless family.

“All right,” said Adele. She shut down her data unit and got to her feet.

She paused to slip the data unit into her pocket, then said, “My help will be expensive. Do you speak for the Leary family or just for yourself?”

Deirdre cleared her throat. She remained in her chair. “I must ask,” she said, “if your price will affect the physical safety of any member of my family?”

“It will not,” said Adele with a smile as hard as the muzzle of the pistol she always carried in the left pocket of her tunic.

Deirdre stood and smiled in turn. “In that case,” she said, “I accept your proposition. If my personal resources are insufficient to meet your fee, I will commit those of the Leary family.”

She walked around the desk and offered her hand.

“On my word as a Leary,” she said.

Adele shook Deirdre’s hand. “I know what the word of a Leary is worth,” she said. She opened the door for herself and followed the waiting Tovera through the lobby.

I have a good deal of planning to do,
Adele thought.
But first I need to speak with Daniel
.

CHAPTER 3

The Bantry Estate, Cinnabar

“Here he comes,” Hogg said, looking to the northeast. “And he’s not half moving.”

Daniel rose from his seat on the porch that wrapped around three sides of the manor. Tom Sand’s gray aircar was approaching over open country, which allowed much higher speeds than if it had followed the road from Stavingham, the market town for the region. As Hogg had suggested, the car was moving very fast, faster than Daniel would have said was safe, even twenty feet above the ground.

As the driver approached the village proper, he lifted higher still—sunset brushed the bow—and let the angle of attack brake his vehicle smoothly above the houses. The aircar had slowed to a walking pace before it settled to the paved plaza following the curve of Bantry’s seawall.

“He’s here!” Daniel called into the house as he started toward the car. When he noticed that his servant was coming along, he said, “I don’t think I need help to greet a friendly businessman, Hogg.”

“I thought I’d chat with his bodyguard,” Hogg said blandly, continuing to match Daniel step for step. The driver was opening the limousine’s back door for Tom Sand. His uniform perfectly matched the vehicle’s finish.

Daniel smiled. He’d noticed that city folk generally thought tenants were louts with no more will than the sheep they tended while not jumping to fulfill the master’s whim. That hadn’t been his experience. For that matter, sheep had their own opinions also.

“Welcome back to Bantry, Sand,” Daniel called. “How hungry are you? Because I thought we could talk and watch the sunset from one of the benches—”

There were a pair of west-facing arbors at the inner edge of the plaza.

“—before we went into the house and had dinner. I’ve invited the manager of the packing plant and his wife to eat with us; and Miranda, of course.”

As usual, life was more complicated than the polite words into which it had to be compressed. Chloris had told Gwen Higgenson that the Squire hadn’t caught enough floorfish sprats to feed their surprise guest from the city. Gwen had called the plant, and her husband had rushed home with a dozen sprats. Gwen had filleted them and carried them over to Miranda.

Daniel, when he heard about the confusion, had invited the Higgensons to dinner with the three of them—later in the evening.
It’s what I should’ve done in the first place;
but the whole business had been unexpected.

“I appreciate you seeing me, Leary,” said Tom Sand. He was a solid man and not fat, though he obviously carried more weight than he had when he was thirty years younger. At one time, his hair must have been red. “And I’m not going to be able to taste my food till I’ve talked to you.”

He grunted a laugh and added, “We’ll see how I feel then.”

The arbors had been planted as saplings, then bent and trimmed to shape. They’d been allowed to continue to grow upward; their crowns provided summer shade to the grapes planted around their roots.

Daniel gestured his guest to one end of the bench under the arbor and took the other. Sand settled with a sigh. Meeting Daniel’s eyes, he said, “Leary, I’m here to ask you a favor. And I know bloody well that you don’t owe me anything.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” Daniel said mildly, “but friends don’t keep that kind of score sheet anyway. Ask away, Tom.”

“Ah … ?” said Sand, grimacing. “I was glad when your fiancée said that Lady Mundy wasn’t here. Now—don’t mistake what I’m saying, because I know you’ll have to tell her, but this is going to be easier to say as one man to another.”

“Go on,” Daniel said.
Is Mistress Sand seeing another man?
That seemed unlikely, and it was even less likely that Tom Sand would come here for advice in such a case. Daniel’s experience was all on the other leg of such triangles.

“Bernis was a widow when I married her,” Sand said. “She was born in Xenos, but Ordos Cleveland, her first husband, came from Oriel County. His family
was
something there.” He guffawed. “Sort of like the Learys here, I guess,” he said. “But not in Xenos and politics, you see.”

Daniel smiled. He was letting his guest tell the story his own way, but he couldn’t help wishing that way was a little more direct. The clouds on the horizon were dark in silhouette, but higher in the western sky some cirrus curls were still pink.

“Cleveland came to Xenos and got into finance,” Sand said. “Connections helped him there, you know.”

Daniel nodded.

“He married Bernis and cut quite a swathe for a few years,” Sand said, his voice beginning to rasp. “They had a son, that’s Rikard. And then Cleveland went bust in a big way. He went up to the Oriel County property—to think, he said. And he drowned swimming in a lake there.”

He spread his hands. “Well, it was ruled an accident, and why not?” he said. “And Bernis went around and took care of what was owing. Cleveland had been borrowing on securities that he was supposed to be holding for clients, I hear; but they were all taken care of. And I married Bernis.”

“I believe you made a fortunate marriage,” Daniel said. That was true—for Sand. Mistress Sand was a very impressive woman, and she had been a considerable social step upward for a self-made contractor like Tom Sand. Age and—plain—looks aside, Daniel would rather have married the wolf eel.

“The problem is the boy, Rikard,” Sand said. Then, bitterly, “He was fifteen and trouble when I met Bernis, he was worse bloody trouble all the time until he ran off three years ago, and now he’s back and says he’s reformed, damned if I don’t think he’s the worst trouble of all.
Bloody
kid!”

“I don’t get along well with my father,” Daniel said. That was an understatement: he’d entered the RCN Academy at age sixteen after a screaming row with Corder Leary. That the episode hadn’t ended in murder showed that both men had better control than their closest associates would have guessed. “I can imagine that a stepson and stepfather have an even harder time.”

“It was more than that,” Sand said, looking toward the pale horizon. He sounded despairing rather than angry. “He resented me for being an oik—Bernis remarried beneath her, you see. And he resented her for being alive. Cleveland drank a lot. When he took a swing at me with a bottle, I told Bernis to keep him out of my sight or I’d leave.”

He looked at his big, scarred hands and grinned ruefully at Daniel. “That’s not how I’d have handled the problem with any other man alive,” he said.

Daniel grinned back. He’d never doubted that Tom Sand had been raised in a tough school.

“So after boarding school, Bernis got Cleveland jobs with family friends,” Sand said. “Hers and her first husband’s, not mine. I didn’t check up on him, but none of the jobs lasted long. Then about three years ago, he went off somewhere and Bernis didn’t hear anything from him. Well, he was twenty-four then, old enough to live his own life. Me, I was just glad he was out of mine.”

Spray flashed white several hundred yards out to sea. Moments later came the slap of a fish whose leap had raised the spray. It must have been of some size to be heard over the land breeze.

“So Cleveland’s back,” Sand said, gravel entering his tone. “He’s joined a cult and says he’s reformed. He apologized to me like a man, I’ll give him that. But he says he’s found a treasure on a planet called Corcyra, and he wants Bernis to fund an expedition to dig it up. There’s fighting going on, and he wants the treasure to buy arms for his cult, the Transformationists, so they don’t get squeezed by one side or the other.”

“Corcyra?” Daniel repeated, frowning. “There’s fighting there, all right. I can tell you that Admiral Bocale is putting together a squadron right now, just in case the RCN gets involved.”

Daniel had been offered command of a cruiser in Bocale’s squadron, but he’d decided to remain on half pay a little longer instead. If real war resumed between Cinnabar and the Alliance, Captain Daniel Leary could hope for something more interesting than a cruiser under Bocale. The admiral was known to be so concerned about making the wrong decision that he never made a really right one.

“I guess Bernis knows that, too,” Sand said morosely. “She couldn’t fund it herself since she paid off the people Ordos bilked, but she’s gone to her friends looking for investors.”

He turned to meet Daniel’s gaze and said, “She didn’t ask me, didn’t even mention it to me. But I heard.”

“What
is
the treasure?” Daniel asked, thinking over what he had learned recently about the Corcyra situation. Whether or not he served under Admiral Bocale, it seemed likely that the RCN would shortly be involved in the region. “It seems to me that you’d have to pay extremely well to get anyone with good sense to go to the middle of a war zone to look for treasure.”

Sand nodded. “Bernis believes in the treasure,” he said. “I don’t, but that isn’t the main problem. I figure the only crew which’ll sign up for the job is one that’ll knock Cleveland on the head for his stake. The only question is whether they’ll do it as soon as they lift to Cinnabar orbit or hold off till they learn how bad things on Corcyra really are.”

He stared at his balled fists as he ground the knuckles together. “Look, Leary,” he said, raising his eyes again. “Here’s the rub.
I
don’t think the universe’d be a worse place without Cleveland in it, but his mother loves him and I love Bernis. It’ll break her heart if he’s scragged, especially if she found the money to let him go off and do such a bloody fool thing.”

Sand took a deep breath. “Leary,” he said, “I want you to carry Cleveland on your yacht. I know it won’t be cheap, but I’ve got a good business and I’ll mortgage the last paperclip if that’s what it takes.”

“I think something can be worked out,” Daniel said—because his guest needed an answer immediately. There was an almost infinite number of matters to be determined before he lifted from harbor with Rikard Cleveland; to begin with, it probably wouldn’t be in the
Princess Cecile
, his yacht.

The details could wait, however. Tom Sand had to know that Daniel was considering the proposition before he would be able to relax.

Daniel stood. “Why don’t you stay the night, Sand?” he said. “In the morning I’ll ride back to Xenos with you and talk to some people. Ah, and Miranda will come back with us, too, if you’ve got room in your car.”

The limousine would seat at least six passengers, along with Hogg sitting up front with the driver.

Sand rose also, expelling a deep breath. “By
God
, Leary!” he said. “By
God
! You don’t know what that means to me!”

“Let’s go in and have some dinner,” Daniel said, starting toward the manor house. The episode with the wolf eel had almost slipped from his memory, displaced by the excitement of planning a new project. “I don’t know about you, but I worked up an appetite today fishing.”

As soon as I get back to Xenos, I’ll talk to Adele. But I want to do that in person
.

Xenos on Cinnabar

Adele was in her library on the top floor of Chatsworth Minor when she heard Tovera say from the hallway, “I’m sure the mistress will be glad to see you, Captain Leary.”

Adele couldn’t have heard the words if the door hadn’t been open, which meant that before speaking, Tovera had opened it without Adele’s notice. Sometimes Adele was bothered by the degree to which she was oblivious of her surroundings when she was working, but she wouldn’t accomplish nearly as much if she didn’t concentrate. And it wasn’t as though she had a choice: she was who she was.

Adele didn’t shut down her data unit, but she shrank its display so that when Daniel came to the doorway he wasn’t looking at her through a mist of coherent light. It was mid-morning: not early, but much earlier than Adele had expected to see her housemate.

He was on the west coast so far as she knew. He hadn’t returned to the townhouse last night.

“I have some business I’d like to discuss with you,” Daniel said. “But if this isn’t a good time, we can … ?”

Adele set down her control wands. She hadn’t missed Daniel during the three weeks he had been in Bantry, but she felt a rush of unexpected pleasure at seeing him again.

“I’m going over old logbooks,” she said. She was compiling logs of voyages to the Ribbon Stars, the cluster in which Pantellaria and Corcyra lay. “Nothing that can’t wait.”

Daniel entered the room and closed the door, then looked around. “I don’t come up here very often,” he said.

“This is the library,” Adele said with a deadpan expression. “The suite on the floor below is my living quarters. And no, I don’t see much difference in the piles of books and records, either. Is there a chair—there.”

She pointed.

“Just put those chip files on the floor. They should have kept dust off the seat, at any rate.”

Daniel lifted the stack of frames into which chips—those on top appeared to be transcriptions of local histories—were clipped. Instead of transferring them to the floor, he sat holding them in his lap. He seemed to be ill at ease.

“Tom Sand asked me to transport his stepson to Corcyra to hunt for treasure,” Daniel said, packing a remarkable amount of information into a few words. “I’ve agreed to do so, barring unforeseen factors.”

Strictly speaking there wasn’t a question in what Daniel had said, but even Adele’s doubtful social instincts told her that she had to respond. “I wasn’t aware that Mistress Sand had a son,” she said, expanding her data unit’s display and switching to public records on Bernis Sand. “I know almost nothing about her, except as it directly affects me.”

Adele’s ignorance of Bernis Sand’s private life was a matter of choice. She didn’t want to know anything that Bernis didn’t choose to tell her. She hadn’t delved into Daniel’s background, either, though she was pretty sure that she wouldn’t have learned anything of significance if she had.

Daniel was politely reticent about the names of women with whom he had been intimate. She couldn’t think of any other subject on which a simple question to him would not have brought an equally simple answer. And courtesy aside, Adele wasn’t sure Daniel
remembered
many of the names.

She knew quite a lot about Daniel’s sister, however. Deirdre would probably be surprised to learn how much information Adele had amassed about someone who was wealthy and notably cautious.

BOOK: The Sea Without a Shore
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