The Sea Without a Shore (7 page)

Adele smiled grimly. If more politicians knew anything about history, there would be fewer wars.
And if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride
.

“—most of the miners would shoot at the expeditionary force if it attacked the Highlands. They’re not trained, though, and they don’t have a real leader.”

She cleared her throat, then remembered to drink. “The Pantellarians landed at Harbinger in the Delta,” she said. “The planetary capital was at Brotherhood at the base of the Highlands, the port of the mining region.”

“But the exiles?” Miranda said, leaning forward slightly.

Adele nodded again. A
very
clever student. “Yes,” she said. “The exiles include some former military officers, and they’ve brought with them enough professionals to provide a training cadre for the Corcyrans whom they’ve hired. They have money. One of the two factions calls itself the Corcyran Navy and defected with a Pantellarian destroyer. The exile factions make up only a few hundred troops each, but such evidence as I have suggests that those are likely to be the equal of a similar number of Pantellarian regulars.”

“Are Pantellarian regulars any good?” Miranda asked.

“I’m sure some of them must be,” Adele said. “I have no record of any, however.”

Miranda’s smile indicated that she understood not only what Adele had said, but also what she meant.
Daniel has a real prize here
.

“The largest body of trained troops on the rebel side,” Adele said, “is the former Alliance garrison—about a battalion, five or six hundred men. It wasn’t repatriated when Pantellaria became independent, because most of them were recruited on Corcyra. There’s no data about their quality as troops, but they’re trained and equipped. When Corcyra rebelled, they took the name the Corcyran Army. Records from other sources on Corcyra—”

Everything that Adele had gleaned from Mistress Sand’s files.

“—continue to refer to them as the Garrison. They were the instrument of Alliance control until independence, and they’re not well liked by anyone else on Corcyra. They’re nonetheless the strongest single element of the forces opposing the Pantellarians.”

Adele considered whether or not to explain what she would be doing.
Why not?
she decided. What had held her back was what she considered decent reticence; others seemed to think she was secretive.
I don’t hide my personal life; I just don’t see a need to broadcast it to the world
.

“My particular interest is in a religious group, the Transformationists,” Adele said. “There are about five hundred of them settled in the valley of a tributary of the Cephisis, fifty miles south of Brotherhood. This is deep into the mining region, but their community is devoted to harmony and mutual support. They don’t appear to have a philosophy or ritual beyond that. I’m not one to come to for explanation of spiritual enlightenment.”

“Do they have soldiers?” said Miranda, filling her glass again.

There’s enough dust here to make anybody thirsty,
Adele thought. She’d let things go too long because she didn’t care.

“The Transformationists have a hundred personnel in the siege lines around Harbinger,” Adele said, “but they appear to rotate their troops back and forth from the Pearl Valley frequently. I would judge they must have three hundred people capable of serving, though they may not be able to arm more than half that number.”

She paused and considered. “The Transformationist troops don’t show gender distinctions,” she said. “The Garrison and the local volunteers—the miners, basically—have almost no women.”

Miranda frowned. Though she hadn’t asked, Adele explained. “That sort of prejudice is common on less advanced worlds and among the less educated classes of advanced ones. The classes which provide most miners and professional soldiers, that is.”

Adele smiled faintly. “Tovera and I have not infrequently found it an advantage,” she said. “But of course, I never expected to like reality.”

“Yes,” said Miranda. “I understand that.” Her expression softened and she added, “Though reality for me has improved a great deal since I met Daniel.”

Adele nodded. She decided not to say that this would change very quickly if Daniel should die violently, which was a probable result of the way he lived his life.

And then she smiled:
Miranda knows that
. Her brother had been vaporized in a space battle which could as easily have claimed Daniel instead—or Daniel also. Miranda was focused on her present life, which was very good.

As is mine, but somehow I can’t accept that
.

“Yes,” Adele said aloud. “I should learn from you.”

She cleared her throat and said, “I will be involved with the Transformationists. Helping them, I suppose, because my principal has business in Pearl Valley, and they’ll expect him to sing for his supper, so to speak. There’s nothing more of importance which I can think to tell you, though I should know more this afternoon, after I speak with a man who just arrived from Corcyra. If anything changes, I will tell you.”

Miranda rose to her feet in a single, smooth motion. “Thank you, Adele,” she said. “I feel better now.”

Adele grimaced. “I can’t imagine why,” she said. “I don’t even know what help I’ll be providing to the cultists—”

She hadn’t meant to use the word, but it was adequately descriptive for the present purpose.

“—since they probably don’t know themselves. People rarely do, I’ve found, though they believe they do.”

Adele realized that she was describing the situation as though she would be assisting Daniel to help Rikard Cleveland. A simple way to carry out her own mission for Deirdre would be to arrange that Arnaud captured Corcyra without Cinnabar assistance.

Would that be treason? And to whom?

Adele smiled sadly. For the first time, she understood the way her parents had made the decisions which had led to their heads being displayed on Speaker’s Rock.

“Adele?” Miranda said. “If Daniel were fishing with no communicator along, how would you contact him in an emergency?”

Adele pursed her lips. It wasn’t a question she had expected, but she didn’t really care what information people wanted from her. It was her job to provide information, period.

“Fishing on the Bantry estate?” she clarified. Miranda nodded agreement.

“I would use satellite imagery to track his boat,” Adele said. “If I were at Bantry myself, I would borrow an aircar to reach him. Tovera can drive, well enough.”

“I learned to drive an aircar,” Miranda said. “But I’d have to call you to access the satellites. If the situation arose again, that is.”

“Yes,” Adele said. “Of course.”

Tovera led the girl downstairs again to the front door. Adele went back to her logbooks.

I hope Daniel knows what he has there,
Adele thought.
I certainly do
.

* * *

Daniel had never thought about the appearance of the Sands’ townhouse: it wasn’t the sort of question that interested him. If someone had asked him what he expected Cleveland House would look like, he would have guessed it was something like Chatsworth Minor or The Almoner, the Leary townhouse in Xenos.

“This is,” he murmured to Adele as they waited for a servant to take them to Rikard Cleveland, “unexpected.”

“Yes,” said Adele. From her curt tone, her opinion was as negative as Daniel’s own.

“It looks like a bloody whorehouse,” Hogg said, voicing much the same thought, though without the disapproval. “A bloody
fancy
whorehouse.”

The Sand residence stood in a row of houses much like Chatsworth Minor in age though of relatively modest construction. Two had been knocked together to create Cleveland House, as it now was called. The new common facade lighted the three-story entrance hall with a large, east-facing circular window.

Adele glanced up at the window and said, “That’s called an oriel window. Master Cleveland had a sense of humor.”

She looked around at the twisted pillars of colored marble and panels with gold designs inlaid on panels of polished red stone. The frieze just below the coffered ceiling was made of iridescent tiles in primary colors and gold.

“A pity,” Adele added in a voice dry enough to suck moisture from desert air, “that he didn’t have a sense of taste as well.”

“Master Rikard will see you now in the main hall, sir and lady,” said the servant who had gone into the interior of the house. The doorman remained with them in the hall. “Will your servants … ?”

“They’ll wait here,” Daniel decided. The stone benches built against the front wall didn’t look particularly comfortable, but Hogg was used to sitting in a hunting blind during winter storms. Daniel understood very little of Tovera, but he was confident that personal comfort wasn’t one of her priorities, either.

“A glass of cider wouldn’t come amiss,” said Hogg. He was deliberately prodding the pansy servants of this knocking shop.

Which meant he hadn’t taken a good look at these servants: fit young men who spoke with cultured accents. They weren’t the sort of staff you would expect in a house like this, but they
were
the sort that people like Mistress Sand had around them. Hogg’s rural upbringing had played him false.

Before Daniel decided how to respond, Tovera said in a tone of amused disdain, “Take a look at them, Hogg.”

Hogg did. He then spread his hands on top of his thighs, palms down. “Sorry, buddy,” he said to the nearer servant, the doorman.

“I’m sure there’s cider in the cellar, Captain Leary,” said the other man.

“I guess I’ve drunk enough this morning already,” Hogg said, “and I haven’t had a drop.” He looked at Daniel and said, “Sorry, master. Won’t happen again.”

The guide bowed Daniel and Adele into a large hall. He was smiling. Daniel paused, looked at the man more closely, and said, “If your name is Hutton, I was in the Academy with your brother.”

“That would be my cousin Julius, Captain Leary,” the servant said. “When he’s next in Xenos, I’ll tell him I’ve met you. He’ll be envious.”

A slender man stood in front of a vast green fireplace. He walked forward to meet them, extending his right hand. If the entrance hall had been gaudy, this room was that in spades. It too was a full three stories high.

The whole ceiling was a skylight of stained glass. The pilasters which supported it were topped by gargoyles rather than capitals, and the fluted shafts had been gilded. Paintings of men in armor and women in gauzy dresses marched around the walls’ upper range, while mural tiles of a hunting scene set in a forest covered the band at floor level.

The floor level was mirrored. Daniel found the effect disconcerting because it multiplied every movement.

“Captain Leary,” said the young man, shaking Daniel’s hand. He bowed to Adele and said, “Lady Mundy. I’m Rikard Cleveland, and I’m honored to speak with you.”

Cleveland nodded toward the huge fireplace. “I’m told,” he said, “that you could roast a whole ox on that hearth.”

If this whelp thinks he’s going to impress a Leary with that …
Aloud Daniel said, “On Bantry we were more given to fish fries. But each to his own taste, of course.”

“I understand perfectly,” Cleveland said. “This hearth, and the way he rebuilt Mother’s family home generally, sums up an aspect of my father’s character. I aped his flamboyance, his self-importance, and his need to be seen to be important by other people. Whatever you’ve heard about my behavior before I left for Corcyra is quite true, or at any rate the truth is just as bad.”

“I see,” Daniel said. His opinion of Cleveland’s character had just risen—and also his opinion of Cleveland’s intelligence.
If he’s chosen this absurd room to demonstrate his present self-awareness, then there may be more to the Corcyra business than I’ve assumed
.

“I was spared Father’s taste for malachite and gilt,” Cleveland added, smiling broadly. He nodded again toward the fireplace of dark green stone with black markings. “Which is a small blessing, I realize, in comparison with the rest.”

Daniel laughed. “Not so very small,
I
think,” he said. He gestured the nearest of the room’s several square tables; they were of a size for cards.

“Are the chairs around those tables comfortable?” he asked. “If they are, I’ll pick one that doesn’t require me to look at the fireplace.”

Cleveland smiled again and waved them to the table. When his visitors took places on opposite sides, he settled into the chair between them with his back to the door.

“I felt alone my whole life,” Cleveland said. “My father had no use for me. I mean literally: I was of no use in advancing his ambitions, so he ignored my existence. Mother tried. I think she would have tried harder if I hadn’t determinedly driven her away because I wanted to be a great
man
like my father. And because I was such a nasty little prick, I didn’t have any friends—which I didn’t realize, because I was surrounded by spongers.”

Adele had taken out her data unit. Cleveland glanced at her, but he didn’t comment or show concern. He probably knew something of Adele, but even so, her behavior often disconcerted people who expected her to pay obvious attention to them while they were speaking.

“Now, I’m not offering this as an excuse for my behavior,” Cleveland said. “Which of course it isn’t. But I want you both to understand why the fellowship I found within the Transformationist community had such a powerful effect on me. I won’t be surprised if you continue to think of me as daft, but do accept that I’m quite sincere in my daftness.”

Daniel glanced at Adele. Her control wands moved in subtle fashions, adjusting the information which danced above her personal data unit like dustmotes in colored sunlight. The holograms coalesced only at the angle of the user’s eyes.

She was letting Daniel take the lead in the discussion, though if Cleveland thought Adele wasn’t listening to him, he was badly mistaken. It was quite possible that she was reading the conversation as a text crawl on her display, of course. Daniel knew his friend preferred to observe reality through an interface.

“Master Cleveland,” Daniel said, leaning forward, “I don’t have any problem with what other people believe, so long as they don’t expect their beliefs to affect my behavior. I gather you believe there’s a treasure on Corcyra. My colleague and I have come here to learn why you believe that.”