The Serrano Succession (93 page)

"Fine," Brun said. Kate waved, and turned away. Brun started to offer her a ride, but realized that the Ranger was more than capable of finding her own way. Brun glanced aside, to be sure her security detail was in place, and then walked tamely to her own transport.

At the town house, she kicked off her shoes as she entered the small but comfortable library. It had been her father's . . . his father's, too, she presumed. Now it was hers—at least, when she was here alone. She sank into one of the big armchairs, propped her feet on the hassock, and closed her eyes. She couldn't hear street traffic from here, but she could hear a gardener complaining to another about a shipment of bedding plants.

She heard the distant burr of an incoming call and ignored it, closing her eyes a moment. But the soft swish of footsteps coming down the hall brought her upright. "For me?" she said, as the housekeeper came to the door.

"Yes, sera. Viktor Barraclough." Viktor! What could he want? "I'll take it in here," she said.

"It's on the secure line," the housekeeper said.

Which meant using the privacy booth in the hall. Brun fitted herself into the booth, put her hands on the ID plate and looked into the scan mask. When the light turned green, she sealed the unit, then spoke.

"Viktor? It's Brun—how may I help you?"

"Brun, Stepan wants to meet with you."

The head of the Barraclough sept wanted to meet with her? Her heart started pounding, and questions raced through her mind. She asked the only useful ones. "Where and when?"

"He would prefer that you come to his attorney's office—and is Kevil Mahoney well enough to come along?" What was going on?

"I have a lunch meeting," Brun said. "But I'll contact Kevil and see—I'm assuming he wants to meet today?"

"If possible, this afternoon at three—if not, tomorrow."

"I see."

"And—it's Family and sept business, which we would prefer to be kept private. I know you have that woman from the Lone Star Confederation with you—some kind of law officer?"

"A Ranger, they call it. Yes—she was helpful when Harlis was fighting Dad's will."

"So I understood. If you believe her to be discreet, Stepan would not object to your letting her know where you are, but not anyone else."

"Fine, then."

She called Kevil, now home from the rehab center, from the same booth and waited while he made the secure connection.

"What are you up to now?" he asked.

"Viktor Barraclough," Brun said. "He called to tell me Stepan wants to see me—and you, if you're up to it—on Family and sept business, this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon."

Kevil pursed his lips a moment. "That's . . . very interesting. Have you been following the news the past couple of days?"

"No—we've been getting Esmay back to Fleet and off to her new command. Why?"

"The Consellines are bruiting it about that your family colluded with the Benignity to arrange the deaths on Patchcock, Hobart's assassination and Pedar's death."

"My," said Brun. "That's ingenious—how do they think we did it?"

"Well . . . apparently Oskar Morrelline came up with the idea that the Benignity spy in their Patchcock pharmaceutical facility was planted there by your family—to ruin the Morrellines' reputation, you see."

"But that's ridiculous," Brun said.

"Paranoid in high degree," Kevil agreed. "Unfortunately, however, Ottala, Oskar's daughter, must have told her father unflattering things about you, from your school days together, because he's convinced that you all had a grudge against the Morrellines."

Memories of schoolgirl pranks rose in Brun's mind—the time she had . . . the time Ottala had . . .

"She was fairly poisonous," Brun said, "but I didn't do anything worse than she did."

"That's not how he heard it. He's almost got himself convinced that this spy was not only planted by your family, but that Ottala was on the spy's trail and about to expose him when he killed her."

"Ottala couldn't have trailed a paint-dipped cat across a white carpet," Brun said, the old resentments flaring up. "She was impenetrably self-centered." Kevil said nothing, and she felt herself going hot. "Of course, so was I—so were we all, except maybe Raffaele—but Ottala wasn't just spoiled and rich and selfish . . . she wasn't overbright, besides."

"Whatever the facts," Kevil said, "what people believe is something else. Oskar got a little of his influence back under Hobart, and he's making the most he can of Hobart's death. He's convinced the Benignity ambassador is lying—that the Benignity wouldn't really have someone killed just because of their beliefs about rejuvenation—and besides, Hobart wasn't a rejuvenant."

"So the Consellines are painting us black," Brun said. "Our immediate family, or the whole sept?"

"The whole sept."

"I suppose Stepan wants me to be the sacrificial lamb," Brun said. "In Council, in front of everyone."

"I doubt it," Kevil said. "Stepan respected and liked your father—he's very old, you know, and he's never rejuved. I suspect he wants you to do something, and we'd better find out what."

"Can you make it this afternoon?"

"Of course. Three? I'll be there. And I would bet you, if you were a gambler, that if I call his attorneys right now, someone will ask me to lunch, and then we'll go back to their offices around two, chatting about how to get my business back in shape . . . and I just might still be there at three, when you arrive."

"Deviousness," Brun said.

"Yes. And if you think you and Stepan will be pulling up to the door at the same time, think again. Three this afternoon gives him plenty of time to arrange staggered arrivals for everyone he wants to have come and not much time for leaks. Look worried, Brun, when you arrive—look like someone who's expecting a scolding or even to be denied her Seat. And it wouldn't hurt if you called Buttons and asked what he thought of the Morrelline rumor mill, without mentioning Stepan."

"More deviousness," Brun said. "I can do that."

Shortly after that, Kate arrived for lunch, kicking off her high heels as she stepped onto the patterned carpet of the hall.

"I don't see why you wear those things if they hurt your feet," Brun said.

"For the sheer pleasure of taking them off and wiggling my toes in this," Kate said. She looked triumphant. "I've almost got the Foreign Ministry to agree to cancel the trade embargo, and I have appointments with two other ministers this afternoon. When I get those assets unfrozen, then it's over and done and I can take off for home. With maybe just a bit of sightseeing along the way."

"Sightseeing?"

"Well, like I told that young man on the ship that brought me here, I wouldn't mind a bit seeing the famous sights of the Familias. When else am I going to have time?"

"What's on your list?" Brun asked. "You know it could take a year or more . . ." They discussed tourist destinations over lunch, then Kate put her shoes on and headed out to do battle with the bureaucrats.

Brun arrived at the offices of Spurling, Taklin, DeVries, and Bolton with what she hoped was a worried scowl. She had considered, and discarded, the idea of a disguise, but she wore another conservative dress.

"Ah . . . Sera Meager," the receptionist said. "Please come through," and unlocked the interior door. Brun stepped through, to be met by a glossy young man whom she realized, after a moment, was George Mahoney in formal business attire with an expression so different from his usual that he didn't look like himself.

"Fooled you, didn't I?" he said. As he grinned, the old George reappeared. "Passed my exams. I'm here to interview—"

Brun almost asked if he weren't going to work with his father, but the thought occurred that that was probably the best excuse any of them had.

"Dad had lunch with a senior partner today," he went on, for the benefit of anyone in any of the small offices they were passing. "They have an opening—he called and said to get myself over here. So here I am, and I think they're checking out my willingness to do as I'm told by asking me to escort visitors."

"How were the exams?" Brun asked, the least dangerous of the questions she was thinking.

"I did pretty well," George said. A flush reddened his cheekbones. "Actually—I did very well, and Dad was pleased, and I think that's why he wangled a lunch invitation, though he said Ser Spurling had been asking before if they could help."

"Come tops in the exams?"

The flush deepened. "As a matter of fact, not quite. You know that cousin of yours? Veronica?"

Brun remembered the slightly gawky girl at the Hunt Ball long ago, when the Crown Prince had ridden a horse into the dining hall.

"She came first; I came second. And—we're getting married." Before she could say anything, he said, "And here you are, Sera Meager—Ser Spurling's office."

Ser Spurling, who looked to be about sixty, led her into his spacious office and suggested to George that he might go downstairs and bring some files which the library clerk would have ready for him. In the office were Kevil, looking far more comfortable now with his new arm, Viktor, and Stepan Barraclough.

"Brun, my dear, how good to see you again." Stepan stood and came to her. He was an old man, though not so old as Viktor, and looked it, his face furrowed and sagging with age, showing the bones underneath, his eyes sunken beneath heavy lids. "Thank you for coming."

"Thank you—you're quite welcome."

"You will have wondered why I asked you to come, and you must have heard what Oskar Morrelline's come up with."

"Yes to both," Brun said.

"Good. Brun, I don't know if you ever heard why I refused rejuvenation—" She shook her head. "It was the price Kostan—my grandfather—demanded for ensuring that I would be in succession for the position I now hold. It was his opinion that in the transitional period, as the scope and effects of rejuvenation spread, the sept must have someone in the power structure who had not rejuvenated. Who would be a reality check for the rest, reminding them of the passage of time, and the needs of the whole."

"Long life or power, not both," Viktor put in.

"Exactly." Stepan grinned. "And also, the experience of longing for long life, and the experience of dealing with those who had it. At twenty, I had no difficulty choosing power. At forty and fifty, moving up the power structure of our sept, I first felt the longing, as my friends rejuvenated, and regained their youth. My wife wanted me to rejuv—she had, and when I wouldn't join her, she left me. It was hard, then, to stick to the bargain I'd made, but I am nothing if not stubborn." He chuckled. "Besides, he'd extracted the same promise from one of my uncles, who was then the new head of our sept, so if I'd reneged, my uncle would have found someone else. And I was, as my grandfather had foreseen, good at the kind of work it takes to be a good head of the sept."

"I chose long life," Viktor said. "But then I always had too much temper to be a candidate for the job."

"Ah, but you make a very good stalking horse, Viktor. I can count on you to draw the enemy's fire and reveal their ambushes."

"That's why he's so good at it," Viktor said to Brun, grinning. "He always finds a way to flatter you into doing what he wants."

"Not always. I never found Harlis very cooperative and blessed Bunny for being born first." Stepan looked at Brun, now. "I know what you were bred for, but not entirely what you've made of it," he said. "I need your talents, my dear. I had hoped to wait another ten years or so, but events turned against me. You are young, but you've been through an experience that would mature most people; I'm hoping it's matured you."

"I hope so too," Brun said. She began to have an inkling of where he was going, and the excitement of the possible challenge warred in her mind with the fear that she wasn't ready.

"I need an heir," Stepan said. "And I am offering you the same bargain that was offered me." He paused; Brun said nothing . . . she could not. "The government is at a crisis; even without the Morrelline accusations, the economic problems resulting from this rejuvenation issue, and the threat from the Benignity, would have brought it to the same crossroads. The woman who would have succeeded me first—Carlotta Bellinveau—developed intractible renal failure after treatment for a routine infection. Only rejuvenation would save her life, and she was only forty-five. She opted to risk it, but despite auto-transplants, she died last year. If I were paranoid, I'd suspect the Consellines of doing this by means of the drugs she took for the original infection, but frankly I think it was just one of those things."

"Was that . . . all? You had just one?"

"Not originally, no. But it's the combination of leadership talent and a willingness to forego rejuvenation that makes such people hard to find. Back when I was young and repeatable rejuvenation was new, there were plenty of cautious people my age who didn't rejuv at forty or fifty—but that number dwindled. Now, many of the wealthy are doing their first rejuv at thirty; your own older sister and her husband, Brun, just rejuved and thought nothing of it. They're in their thirties."