Conventions of War

THIRTY

Sula had thought fighting a war was hard. She discovered that running a planet was harder.

Worse, she had to be Lady Sula all the time. As Gredel, she’d been able to follow her own instincts, to fall into old patterns. Caroline Sula’s skin was more difficult to inhabit. It was artificial rather than natural, a personality she had deliberately created, an artifice she had to carefully assemble every day.

She wore Lady’s Sula’s uniform. She kept the High City accent on her lips and held her spine straight and military, and she kept her head rigidly erect and looked levelly at others from beneath the brim of her uniform cap.

Lady Sula wasborn to run planets. She kept telling herself that.

She called as many old civil servants to the colors as she could, to staff the ministries and keep services running. Naxid security forces were disarmed and either sent to the barracks or to their homes, if they had any. Naxid police were permitted to patrol their own neighborhoods, though without firearms. The Naxids in the Imperial Hotel surrendered, and about a third were arrested and the rest told to find lodging off the High City and report their whereabouts to the local police.

An advisory council was formed, with people from the ministries, with Macnamara and Spence as representatives of the secret army, and with Julien and Sergius Bakshi to add a dose of grim realism.

She ordered no more arrests, except for a few of the more spectacularly brutal officers of the security services. She wasn’t surprised to hear that most of them didn’t survive the trip to the jails.

Nor was she surprised to hear of a spasm of revenge killings as people settled old scores. She ordered the members of the secret army to have nothing to do with it, but had her doubts about whether the orders were obeyed.

Tork kept urging her to greater bloodshed.

“All who served the enemy deserve death!” he said. “Let their heads be mounted on every street corner!”

Allwho served the enemy? she wondered. Every tram conductor, every sewer worker, every usher in the Convocation?

She settled for tossing a few more bureaucrats off the High City.

The city’s professional interrogators had reported to work after the surrender, the same professionals who for the last months had been flaying and murdering members of the secret army. Now they were set to work on the senior members of the rebel government. Computer passwords were disgorged, and the records of the Naxid administration were laid bare.

Allof them.

Sula discovered the disposition of the Naxid fleet, the five ships at Magaria, the two guarding Naxas, the eighteen under construction in one corner or another of the Naxid dominions. She sent the information to Tork, and received more harassment in return.

“You have failed to conduct the executions that I ordered!” he said. “I want lists of those who cooperated with the Naxids forwarded to my staff, and arrests made at once!”

By then, contact between her office and the Supreme Commander had been regularized. With the passwords to the powerful communications centers of the Commandery, Sula had been able to use the dedicated lasers mounted on the roof to send Tork a code through which they could communicate. It didn’t make his demands any less aggravating.

“I fully intend that those responsible for the rebellion should die for their crimes,” she responded. The Supreme Commander was on the other side of Shaamah at present, and the message wouldn’t reach him for eleven hours or thereabouts. “But I intend in the meantime to serve the empire by extracting every bit of information from the prisoners before throwing them off the rock. I wouldn’t have been able to send you the enemy order of battle unless I had pried it out of their Fleet personnel first.”

She began assembling lists. Lists of Bogo Boys and other cliquemen, so she could grant the amnesties she’d promised; and a list of the secret army, with real names replacing the code names used till now. She wanted to know who had enlisted and who didn’t, because after the war, many would falsely claim to have been on the High City on the day of the battle, and she would have the evidence to refute that. She also wanted to recommend awards and medals to the Fleet and to the Convocation, and for that she needed documentation.

She also demobilized certain elements of the secret army-certainly those who raced up and down the boulevards of the High City in stolen vehicles, firing guns into the air and looting palaces. They were sent home, and as much of their loot confiscated as possible. Julien acted as her enforcer. The rest of the secret army were put on the government payroll.

She slept a few hours each night, but badly.

Her more immediate problem had to do with food rationing. Most of the foodstuffs on the planet was in the hands of the ration authority. The population assumed that rationing would end along with the Naxid occupation. Sula was tempted to simply abolish the authority, but Sergius Bakshi warned her against it.

“You abolish rationing,” he said, “and food will disappear from every market on Zanshaa. The ration authority was run as a private concern, and if you abolish the bureaucracy, that still leaves all the food in the hands of the Naxid clans who were put in charge. They’ll keep food off the market till prices go sky-high-or they’ll sell it to speculators who will do the same thing-and you’ll get the blame.”

He turned his dead-fish eyes to her. “It’s whatI’d do in their place,” he said.

Sula considered this. “Perhaps we could limit prices,” she said.

Sergius flapped his listless hands. “That won’t make them sell,” he said. “They’ll just hang onto the food and sell illegally, to people like me.”

Sula chose her words carefully. “You could make a lot of money yourself off this scenario. I have to commend your sense of public spirit.”

Sergius’s expression didn’t so much as flicker. “I’ve already made money off this situation,” he said. “The best way of preserving what I’ve made is to make certain that once we’re in power, things improve for the ordinary population.”

Sula suspected that Sergius had an angle, that whatever happened, he was going to make himself a vast profit, but on reflection she didn’t care.

There was probably a very sophisticated macroeconomic solution to the problem, but she couldn’t think of one, and neither could anyone else. She abolished rationing for ordinary citizens, and imposed price controls on basic staples like grains, legumes, and the types of meat that the Torminel preferred for their carnivore diet. The prices were slightly below the prewar market levels, and Sula took pleasure in the thought of the Ushgays, Kulukrafs, Ummirs, and the others seeing a slight loss on every sale.

There was no point in controlling vegetables and fruit because if anyone tried to hoard them, they would spoil. Luxuries she simply didn’t care about.

Those clan heads in her custody were released, though ordered to remain on the High City. Then, to make certain they got the point, Sula called each and told them the new arrangement.

“As long as staples are plentiful in the markets,” she said, “I will take no action against you, and I will note your civic spirit. If there are any shortages, then I’ll have you killed and appoint a new clan head.”

She probablywould have to kill a number of them, she thought.

In the end she had to kill only one, Lady Jagirin, whom she ordered arrested and beheaded following the appearance of spot shortages in the southern hemisphere. Since the Naxid head contained no vital organs and only sensory apparatus, the body staggered around, arms and legs flailing, for quite some time before Jagirin finally died of shock and blood loss.

Sula made certain the video of the execution was sent to the other clans on the ration board. There was no further trouble. The new Lord Jagirin was particularly cooperative.

“We’ll continue price controls until the harvest from the southern hemisphere is in,” she told the council. “After that, we’ll remove controls from certain items and see what happens. If the results are positive, we’ll lift controls gradually from then on.”

It was difficult to be certain, but she thought, as she spoke, that she caught a glint of approval in Sergius Bakshi’s cold eye.

Casimir got the extravagant funeral that Sula had promised him. It took place six days after the surrender, in one of the cemeteries on the fringes of the city. In one of the gestures that seemed natural to the absolute ruler of a world, she confiscated an elaborate marble tomb that had originally belonged to a family of Daimong who had either become extinct or left Zanshaa. The original inhabitants of the tomb were removed to one of the city’s ossuaries and the memorial plaque outside replaced with one that featured Casimir’s name, dates, and engraved image.

He was buried wearing one of his Chesko outfits, strips of leather and velvet ornamented with beads and mirrors, and polished boots. His long pale hands were folded over his crystal-topped walking stick. The cliquemen had emptied half the flower shops in the city: the coffin was carried between tombs along a lane made of fragrant blossoms that wafted gusts of perfume to the mourners.

Sula led the procession in formal parade dress, with the cloak that fell to her ankles, the heavy shako with its silver plate, the polished jackboots, the curved knife at her waist. Winter had clamped down firmly on the city: the skies were a mass of gray, and wind kept whipping the cloak off her shoulders. Occasional drizzle moistened her face. Behind her, Julien and Sergius and other cliquemen carried the coffin; and behind them the Masquers of Sorrow performed their ritual dance.

Cameras were present-anything the lady governor did was news-but had been told to keep their distance.

A Daimong chorus chanted Ornarak’s arrangement of the Fleet burial service, ending with the deep bass rumble, “Take comfort in the fact that all that is important is known.” As the harmonies faded among the tombs, Sula bent to kiss the polished surface of the coffin, and looked down to see her own distorted, reflected face, its expression carefully painted on that morning lest the features beneath dissolve into turmoil and grief.

She was expected to say something, and could think of no words. Casimir had thrived in a life of crime and glamour and violence, a happy, amoral carnivore, and died, with many others, fighting to replace a vicious tyranny with another tyranny that at least possessed the grace of being inept. He and Gredel, as Lord and Lady Sula, could have burrowed into the darker corners of the High City and emerged gorged with loot, content and sleek as a pair of handsome young animals. The House of Sula would have been built on a foundation of plunder.

Casimir’s lack of compunction was a part of his dangerous glamour. He took what he wanted and simply didn’t care what happened later. Sula had taught him that patience, at least occasionally, paid; but it was only out of his strange sense of courtesy that he deferred to her-courtesy, and perhaps love, and perhaps curiosity to find out what she would do next. Perhaps she and Casimir had been more in love with adrenaline and their own mortality than with each other. Whatever the case, she knew that each had taken from the other what they wanted.

None of this was anything Lady Sula could say in public, or anywhere else.

She stood by the coffin and looked out over the crowd-the fighters, the cliquemen, Spence and Macnamara in viridian green, the Masquers in their strange white costumes with their tufted ears. A gust of wind brought an overwhelming waft of the flowers’ scent, and she felt her stomach turn. She moistened her lips and began.

“Casimir Massoud was one of my commanders, and a friend,” she said. “He died in the act of bringing the Naxid dominion to an end.

“Like everyone else in the secret army, Casimir had other choices-he didn’t have to be a fighter. He was very successful at his work, and he could have kept his head down for the remainder of the war and come out of it with wealth and credit and”-for a moment her tongue stumbled-“and his life,” she finished.

She looked at the coffin, at the expectant faces ranked behind it, and felt a tremor in her knees. She anchored herself on the concrete beneath her feet and spoke over the heads of the people in front of her, into the wet cold sky.

“And his life,” she repeated.

“I would like to be present at every memorial for every victim of the Naxids,” she said, “but I can’t. Let this service represent them all. Let the record state that Casimir was brave, that he was very smart, that he was as loyal to his friends as he was deadly to the enemy. That he chose to fight when he didn’t have to, and that he never regretted his choice, not even when he was dying in the hospital.”

Her voice faltered again, and she managed through an act of will to make a gesture of finality.

“May the Peace of the Praxis be with you all.”

The Bogo Boys stepped forward, raised rifles, and fired volleys into the air. The Masquers went into their ancient pantomime as the pallbearers lifted the coffin and carried it into the tomb.

As the tomb was sealed and the monument placed in front of the door, Sula felt dropping upon her the horrendous weight of being Lady Sula, of living every minute with the consequence of a reckless, angry decision taken years ago, of living forever behind the mask she had painted that morning on her face, and living alone…

She and One-Step and Turgal traveled then through Riverside and the other neighborhoods in the Lower Town and carried out the instructions given by Casimir in his will. One safe after another was opened and emptied, and the proceeds of Casimir’s businesses dumped into pillowcases. In similar fashion, Sula acquired the profits of her shipping company from their hiding places and theju-yao pot from her last safe house. She then went to a bank, opened an account, and deposited it all.

A hundred and ninety-five thousand zeniths, more or less. Hardly a sum to compare with the great fortunes of the High City, but enough to keep her in luxury to the end of her days.

The money was spare comfort. Perhaps she would throw it all off the terraces of the High City after all.

She held the pot between her hands as One-Step drove her back to the Commandery, and as her fingers blindly traced the smooth, cool crackle, she thought that perhaps she, as well as the pot, had outlived her proper time.

“Ihave received the recommendations for awards and decorations that you have forwarded to me.” The image of Tork had been recorded seven hours earlier and spent the intervening hours in transit. Sula had made a point of finishing her luncheon before viewing it, as she knew it was bound to sour her digestion.

“I believe that on further review you will wish to reconsider some of the recommendations,” Tork said. “You have recommended commoners for awards that are customarily given only to Peers. A lower grade of decoration is surely more appropriate.”

A buzzing disharmony entered the Supreme Commander’s chiming voice.

“And as for the amnesties that you have proclaimed for various citizens, I must question them. To fight bravely for the Praxis is no more than one’s duty, and hardly excuses any criminal offenses that might have been committed earlier in life. I shall keep these for a careful review. And now…”

Tork’s voice filled with clashing discord, a sound that raised the hackles on Sula’s neck. She could imagine that the sound was intimidating at close range-even at the range of seven light-hours it was unpleasant enough.

“I must strongly disapprove,” Tork said, “of your appearance at the funeral of someone who seems to have led an-irregular-life. This is consistent neither with the dignity nor the gravity of an official of high rank. Nor did the-the ‘soldiers’ at the funeral”-Sula could hear the quotes in Tork’s voice-“display appropriate military discipline. I trust that there will be no repetition of this kind of disgraceful exhibition.”

The orange end-stamp appeared on the screen before Sula could hurl at it the obscenities she held pent-up in her lungs.

And then she thought,How does he know?

The funeral had been broadcast on Zanshaa, but how had Tork heard of it light-hours away? No one was beaming news video from Zanshaa to the fleet.

Someone, Sula thought, had been sending Tork messages. She wondered who it was.

These speculations moderated the tone of her reply, though not by much.

She replied from the private quarters of the commander of the Home Fleet, with the polished silver symbol of the Fleet on the paneled wall behind her, and seated behind the commander’s massive kesselwood desk.

Theju yao pot stood on a corner of the desk, just in pickup range.

“I would love to have rewarded Peers for their bravery, my lord,” she said, “but unfortunately most of them had already fled Zanshaa as fast as their yachts could carry them, and the ones that didn’t seemed to have kept away from anyplace where bullets were likely to fly. So far as I know, there were only two Peers in the entire secret army, and I was one of them. The other, PJ Ngeni, you’ll note I recommend for the Medal of Valor, First Class.

“The fact is, my lord,” she went on, gazing straight into the camera pickups, “the commoners have been far braver in this war than the Peers, and they know it. If we Peers want any credit at all, we should at least recognize the courage that these people displayed. All of my recommendations stand-and in fact they will be proclaimed publicly by the time you have a chance to view this.”

She offered the camera her most pleasant smile.

“Because the Peers and the political leadership fled, and because my own superiors were captured by the Naxids within days of their arrival, in order to carry on the war I was forced to make deals with individuals who hold…local power. One of the promises I made them was that of amnesty for any’irregularities,‘ to use your term, they may have committed prior to their joining the army. If the word of a Peer is to mean anything…”

Anything more,she thought,than the word of the Peers,Lord Tork among them, who swore to defend Zanshaa to their dying breath and then ran like dogs.

“If the word of a Peer is to mean anything at all, I repeat, then these amnesties should stand. This list too will be made publicly available within the hour.”

She took a breath and leaned slightly forward. “As for the discipline of the army,” she said, “they were so busy killing Naxids that they didn’t have a chance to learn to march properly.”Perhaps in your own command, she thought,the reverse is true. “I’ll do my best to teach them the necessary skills, however.

“End communication.”

Sula sent the message before she had the opportunity to change her mind, then arranged for the Ministry of Wisdom to make public the list of decorations and amnesties. It was then that she received a message from the guard on the Commandery’s main entrance saying that she was needed there urgently.

She arrived to find a group waiting at the front door in a drizzling rain. In the lead was a tall Torminel in the undress uniform of the Fleet, followed by others similarly clothed. Sula looked at the rank badges and saw that the leader was a lieutenant captain, and the rest petty officers.

The next thing she checked was to see if they were armed. No weapons were visible. She signed for the door to be opened.

“Yes?” she said. “Who the hell are you?”

The leader gave her a surprised look, the fur tufting up above her dark goggles. “I would expect a salute,” she said, “from a lieutenant.”

“From a military governor,” Sula said, “you get nothing till you tell me who you are.”

“Lieutenant Captain Lady Trani Creel, Action Group 569.” She reached in her pocket and produced a Fleet ID.

Sula looked at the picture now dotted with tiny drops of rain. Everything seemed in order.

“Ah. Hah,” she said. There had been Torminel missing from the Naxid roundup following the Axtattle battle, and now she knew where they were, all-she counted-thirteen of them.

It also occurred to her that she now knew who had been sending Tork reports of her activities.

Lady Trani licked her fangs delicately. “I would appreciate a report, Lieutenant,” she lisped.

Sula looked at her. “To what end?” she asked.

“So that I understand what’s happening in my command. I gather that I’m the senior officer present.”

A burst of laughter erupted from Sula. “You can’t be serious!” she said.

Again that surprised look. “Of course I’m serious. May I please come in out of the rain?”

“Why not?” Sula laughed again, and stepped back from the door. Lady Trani moved into shelter, brushing rain off her shoulders. Drops of water glittered like rhinestones on her goggles. The other Torminel crowded in behind her. The air began to smell of wet fur.

“Do you really expect to take command of my army?” Sula said.

“Of course. And the government as well, until a proper governor arrives from the Convocation.” Sula could see her reflection in the Torminel’s dark eyeshades. “I’m still awaiting a salute.”

“You’ll wait a long time if you expect a salute from the army,” Sula said. “May I ask where you’ve spent the war?”

“Kaidabal,” Lady Trani said, naming a city south of Zanshaa. “We ran there after we heard that everyone was being arrested. We stayed with a client of ours, a wealthy businessman.”

“And what did you do there?”

“Hid. We had no other options, because we had to abandon all our equipment in Zanshaa.” Lady Trani sighed. “There were such problems. We couldn’t get ration cards, you see.”

“I see.” Sula looked Trani up and down and saw little evidence of starvation. Her fur was glossy and her bottom was no less plump than that of most Torminel.

“Lady Trani,” Sula said, “may we speak privately?”

“Of course.”

Sula took Trani’s arm and led her to the room where important visitors had once been asked to wait while their escorts were found. The place still had its thick carpeting and expensive paneling, but the original furniture was gone, and had been replaced by some cheap sofas on which the guard took their breaks.

“My lady,” Sula said, “please believe I have your best interests at heart. I ask that you not make yourself ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?” Again that surprised look. “Whatever do you mean, Lady Sula?”

“You can’t expect my army to respect a commander who spent the war hiding in Kaidabal when they were fighting and dying here in Zanshaa. And the government-I proclaimed myself Governor on the day of the victory and no one has disputed it.”

“But I’m the senior officer,” Lady Trani said, her lisping voice quite mild. “One doesn’t salute the person; one salutes the rank-and obeys it too. You keep referring to ‘my’ army, but it doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to the empire, and I am the senior imperial officer present. I don’t dispute that you’re the military governor, just as I don’t expect you to dispute the fact that I’m about to succeed you.”

“They’ll laugh at you,” Sula said. Her own laughter had faded, to be replaced by a growing foreboding.

“As long as they laugh in private,” Trani said, her voice level. “If they laugh in public, or disobey, I shall be forced to cut their throats.”

Sula refrained from taking a step back, and reminded herself that Lady Trani was unarmed.

“I think,” she said, “that we should refer this matter to higher authority.”

The delay was mainly to allow herself time to think. Lady Trani no longer seemed a figure of fun. She was going to be a serious problem, and worse for the fact that Fleet law, custom, and the Praxis were all behind her.

Furthermore, the only person to whom Sula could appeal was Tork. He was exactly the sort of person who would find Lady Trani’s simplicities appealing; and in any case, Sula very much doubted that Tork, on the heels of receiving her last message, would feel much in sympathy with her.

“While I don’t dispute that Lady Trani outranks me,” Sula said in her message to Tork, “I am nevertheless concerned whether someone who spent the war in hiding, after abandoning her equipment, is going to receive the respect of the army and other institutions here in the High City. I don’t want to push myself forward, but if the disparity in rank is truly a problem, you could solve the problem by promoting me. I’m already doing the work, after all.”

As Sula expected, Tork’s reply, received some fifteen hours later, ignored this suggestion.

“It has long concerned me that a lieutenant of such youth and of only a few months’ seniority held such a critical post,” he said in a message addressed to Lady Trani Creel. “It is meant as no offense to Lady Sula to say that she has suffered from her inexperience. Lady Trani, I am pleased to confirm you as Military Governor of Zanshaa. I hope you will rule with firmness, and consider it your first duty to kill the traitors who have caused our people so much suffering.”

Lady Trani turned from the screen to where Sula sat, in the office of the Home Fleet commander with its huge curved glass window.

“I believe I’ll take that salute now, Lady Sula,” Trani said.

“Yes, my lady.” With grave deliberation Sula rose from her desk and braced.

“Thank you very much,” Trani said. She ambled across the office to join Sula behind her desk. She looked through the great curved window at the morning light shining over the Lower Town, the kingdom she had just conquered without firing so much as a shot.

“I’ll need your access codes,” she said. “I trust you will remain on hand for the duration of the transition, after which I will find you a posting suitable to your station. And of course I’ll recommend you for a nice decoration for all you’ve done here.”

Sula tried not to show the savage amusement she felt. No doubt Trani was trying to be kind.

“Thank you, my lady,” she said.

She’d had nearly fifteen hours to make herself ready for this moment.

Lady Trani looked down at the desk. “I’ll also need to meet with your council, or cabinet, or whatever they’re called.”

“I don’t believe they have a name,” Sula said. “But I’ll call them.”

“No,” Lady Trani said firmly. “I’llcall them. If you’ll provide me with contact information.”

“Very well.”

Sula had to admire Lady Trani’s composure. She knew so very clearly what she wanted, what was proper, and what was her due.

Whether anyone else could be brought to agree with her was another problem.

“I’ve been reviewing the communications between the governor’s office and Supreme Commander Tork,” Lady Trani told the meeting later. “The Supreme Commander has several areas of concern.

“First, the matter of punishments. We simply haven’t been killing enough traitors. It’s my understanding,” she said, turning to Sula, “that we have something like a thousand prisoners?”

“They’re being debriefed,” Sula explained. “Once the interrogators are done with them-”

“Lord Tork said just to kill them,” Trani said. “It seems to me that we could do it all at once, with machine guns.”

“The penalty for treason,” Sula reminded, “is to be thrown from a height.”

“Blast. I forgot.” A shiver of annoyance crossed Trani’s furry face. “Well, can’t we machine-gun them first, then chuck them?”

The governing council gazed at her from their places. They used the room in the Commandery, all subdued lighting and polished wood, that had been used by the Fleet Control Board before the evacuation. Overhead glowed a wormhole map of the empire, Zanshaa a burning red jewel with its eight wormhole gates. The council sat at a U-shaped table, with the new lady governor at its center.

“The High City lacks the necessary open spaces for a mass execution in that style,” Sula said. “Besides, the custom is for the victim to be alive when he’s tipped over the side.”

“Blast,” Trani said. “Well, see that it’s done as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, my lady,” Sula said.

Her reluctance to kill the Naxid prisoners had nothing to do with compassion. They had killed tens of thousands, and she wished them nothing but years of torment. She just didn’t want them to die until their last brain cell had been stripped of any useful content.

Lady Trani paused to light a cigarette, which she placed in a holder that clipped to one of her fangs, allowing her to talk and smoke without using her hands. Sula wondered idly if the cigarette was one that, at some point, she’d had in one of her warehouses.

Trani looked at the others. “Smoke if you please, my lor-I mean, ladies and gentlemen.”

Julien reached in a pocket for a cigarette. Sergius, seated next to him, stared expressionlessly at the lady governor, his thoughts well hidden behind his dead eyes.

“Another item,” Lady Trani said, “concerns the matter of awards and decorations. I shall personally review any recommendations to make certain they are appropriate.

“And the third,” she said, looking up, “concerns the matter of amnesties promised by Lady Sula for offenses committed prior to the war. I will review these on a case-by-case basis. The Supreme Commander sees no reason why doing one’s duty in fighting the enemy should excuse criminal activity in the past.”

Julien snickered behind his cloud of cigarette smoke. Sergius Bakshi maintained his expressionless stare. Sula gave a cough as a whiff of tobacco hit the back of her throat.

“Lady Commissioner…” Lady Trani spoke to the senior police officer present. “I would appreciate your assistance in locating police files.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Julien snickered again. The Lai-own commissioner was a friend of the Bakshis, and had a long, financially profitable relationship with them. It was likely that quite a number of files would turn up missing.

Trani received reports on antimatter and power supplies, on economic and security matters. Sula made notes on the data screen set into the table in front of her.

Certain of the notes were sent to a desk at the Ministry of Wisdom. While Lady Trani received the reports of the council, the ministry broadcast the news of Sula’s supercession, along with capsule biographies of Sula and the new lady governor. It was made clear that Trani had spent the Naxid occupation in hiding.

It also mentioned that amnesties were being questioned, and that the army was going to have its medals taken away by someone who had spent the war skulking in Kaidabal.

Nothing could have served to make the new governor less popular with her citizens.

That would be a useful lesson, Sula thought. If she had the time and energy, she could teach Lady Trani quite a lot with lessons like these, and very possibly Trani would find herself seeing Sula’s point of view.

But she didn’t have the time, and she certainly didn’t have the energy. The lesson, therefore, would have to be for the benefit of someone else.

As the meeting broke up, Sula found herself walking next to Julien. “You’ll take care of this, won’t you?” she said.

Julien gave her a cold little smile. “Leave it to me,” he said.

“My lord,” Sula sent to Tork, “your new governor lasted all of two days before she got herself killed in a riot. Exactly what happened is a little vague at this point, but it appears that during the course of a public address, she saw fit to threaten the crowd-told them that if any of them had ever cooperated with Naxids, they were going to be punished. It was the wrong sort of crowd to threaten, I’m afraid.”

She looked into the camera pickup and suppressed her instinct to shrug.

“I will of course launch a thorough investigation. The official video record of the proceedings seems to have been destroyed, but maybe something will turn up.”

She had returned to the office of the commander of the Home Fleet, with its magnificent view of the Lower Town. Techs were in the process of changing the passwords to all the computer files. Theju yao pot was back in its place on her desk.

“I have been reviewing your correspondence with Lady Trani,” Sula said, “and I have come to agree with you that the task of military governor is unsuitable to someone with the permanent rank of lieutenant.”

She couldn’t quite hide the smile that she felt twitching at the corners of her mouth.

“I believe I should like to be promoted Captain, at least,” she said. “I’m going to need all the advantages of rank in dealing with this situation. The people here have overthrown two governments that didn’t suit them, and I don’t want them to get into the habit.”

Not unless it suitsmeas well, she thought.

After concluding her message, with the little threat at the tail like the sting of a scorpion, Sula reached for the cup of tea that waited on the desk and turned her swivel chair to view the Lower Town below. The scent of cardamom rose from the tea, and she’d sweetened it with condensed milk, just as she liked it.

Not caring helps, she thought. She could bet everything on a single throw of the dice because the results didn’t matter to her.

Perhaps she’d be accused of conspiring to murder Lady Trani.

Perhaps Lady Trani was but the first governor of Zanshaa she’d have to kill.

Perhaps she’d even be promoted to Captain. She was open to that sort of surprise.

Tork showed that he’d learned Sula’s lesson, and promoted her to Captain, though he couldn’t bring himself to do it in person-the message came from a staff officer. Sula sent to her tailor for new uniforms.

Her mastery of the Records Office computers proved a bonus. Fictional killers were created, their names proclaimed to the public at large, and police sent after them.

She decided to keep the back door into the Records Office after her term as governor ended. It was proving too useful.

She now was surprised to discover the existence of another loyalist force that had remained behind, one that she’d never guessed at.

There were small stay-behind intelligence teams in the fragments of Zanshaa’s demolished ring, floating weightless for months, listening to electronic communications and forwarding it to the Convocation and the Fleet, relaying it through stealthy, uncharted satellites placed on the far sides of the wormholes. Sula surmised that they must have been providing Lord Tork with very detailed knowledge of the Naxid Fleet throughout the enemy occupation of Zanshaa.

The teams asked Sula for relief. She wanted to oblige-particularly since the highest-ranking of them was a warrant officer and there was no danger of them trying to supplant her-but the only way she had of relieving them was to pick them up with shuttles, and since the only shuttles she had on the planet were configured for Naxid crews, she had to tell them to wait.

Perhaps, she thought, she’d overestimated Lady Trani. She hadn’t been reporting behind her back to Lord Tork, it had been the intelligence teams on the ring.

Two days after Lady Trani’s death, as frozen sleet pounded the High City, regular communication was opened between the empire and Zanshaa. Another wave of Tork’s commandos had been launched at the relay stations, and this time there was no Naxid fleet to vaporize them.

After months of silence, massive amounts of information began to flood into Zanshaa. Messages, held in some remote electronic buffers for ages, now poured into the private files of Zanshaa’s citizens: information about relatives and loved ones, births and deaths, money and markets. The capital went mad with rejoicing.

Sula received very little personal mail. A kind note from Lord Durward Li, a former client of the Sula clan whose son, Sula’s captain, had died at Magaria. A formal change of address notice from Morgen, who had been the senior surviving lieutenant of theDelhi, and who had been promoted to Lieutenant Captain.

Two queries from Lady Terza Chen, Martinez’s wife, asking where she was and how she was faring. Terza also happened to mention that she was pregnant with Martinez’s child.

Hatred exploded in Sula’s breast. She erased the messages and hoped that, through some kind of sympathetic magic, Terza would be erased along with them.

Among the news items was the information that the Convocation had appointed a new governor of Zanshaa, Lord Eldey, who had been in transit from Laredo to Zanshaa for nearly two months and would arrive in something like twenty days. Sula checked the capital’s copious data banks and found that the head of the Eldey clan was a sixty-one-year-old Torminel and had chaired the Power, Antimatter, and Ring Committee in the Convocation. Between that connection to extraplanetary matters and a nephew who was a captain in the Fleet, perhaps he would have a more sympathetic view of an upstart young officer than someone like Tork.

It seemed worth a try anyway. Sula sent him a complete report of the state of Zanshaa, along with a brief history of her activities and those of the secret army. She also enclosed advice on how to treat the army and the various interests that it represented.

The report, minus the advice, also went to the Convocation and to the Fleet Control Board. She wanted them to see her own words and her own achievements without being filtered through Tork.

To her immense surprise, a reply came from Eldey two days later. The camera showed him in an elaborate acceleration couch, brown leather and silver mountings, and he was dressed informally, in the simple vest that Torminel often wore to keep from overheating in their fur. His voice was very soft, with a bit of a hesitation. His fur was thinning with age. He looked like a slightly worn, much beloved stuffed toy.

“I take your point in regard to the army,” he said, “and I quite agree with your solutions. I will confirm all amnesties and awards under my own authority. I think you have done an extraordinary thing, and I will recommend to the Fleet Control Board that you be decorated. I can’t help but think you have a remarkable career ahead of you.”

This might have been flattery mixed with a careful politician’s appreciation of the possibilities for his own survival-perhaps he meant none of it at all-but at least the words were the right ones. Sula began to think the Convocation might have made a good choice.

If she’d known a few days earlier that someone like Eldey was on his way, perhaps Lady Trani wouldn’t have died. Perhaps the planet could have endured Trani’s presence for twenty-odd days.

On the scale of Sula’s regrets, however, Trani’s fate didn’t rate very high.

Since it appeared she wasn’t about to be killed on orders of higher authority, she began to consider her own future. She went to a pharmacy, donated a drop of blood, and had her genetic code read. Then, with the nonchalance she was developing as an absolute ruler, she marched into the Peers’ Gene Bank, an ornate building of brown stone squeezed between two government offices, and asked for a tour. A flustered Lai-own clerk showed her how the genetic records of every Peer on Zanshaa were collected when that Peer applied for a marriage license, and how these were recorded in the gene banks that went back to the founding of the empire. She showed Sula how the scanned genetic material would be compared for points of coincidence to determine ancestry, if there were ever a question about a given person’s genetic heritage.

“Is there a backup?” Sula asked.

“Yes. In the safe downstairs.”

Sula tried to suppress her amusement. The priceless genetic record of the Peerage and its only copy were kept in the same building, and could be subjected to the same accidents, a fact that revealed a confidence that the High City, and the empire, would stand forever.

“Let me see the backup,” Sula said.

The clerk took her to a room in the basement and opened the safe. Sula had pictured a small, perhaps antique safe, but in fact the safe was huge and magnificent, all gleaming, polished metal. She watched her distorted reflection ooze across the door as it swung open. She and the clerk stepped inside. The interior of the safe smelled faintly of lubricating oil.

The data store, and its operation, were identical to those of the primary computer on the ground floor.

“Show me how it works,” Sula said.

The clerk obeyed.

“Very good,” Sula said. “Now clear out.”

The clerk stared at her with wide golden eyes. “My lady?”

“Leave. Take an early lunch, and take everyone else with you. I need to extract genetic information on some wanted Naxid fugitives, murderous officials who are escaping punishment for their crimes.”

The clerk’s muzzle dropped open in shock. “My lady. We can do that for you.”

“No, you can’t. I can’t allow you to know their names. It’s a military secret.”

“But my lady-”

“You know,” Sula said, “I could save a lot of money for the administration just by shutting this place down. It’s not like any Peers have been getting married lately.”

There was a scurrying for overcoats and hats, and the clerks fled into the slate-gray winter day. Sula locked the front door and sat at the control station. After a pause to savor the moment, she deleted all Caro Sula’s ancestors going back some 3,500 years, replaced them all with herself, then shut down the terminal.

She did the same for the backup.

Perhaps, she thought, that would finally put Caro to rest.

Sula and Lord Eldey developed a cordial relationship in the days that followed their first exchange. He confirmed all her appointments, her amnesties, and recommended to the Fleet Control Board that they confirm the awards she had given to the army. She told him of the shortages Zanshaa was experiencing in antimatter for power generation, and he told her that the shortage had been anticipated and shipments of antihydrogen were on the way. She told him of the various conflicts that were appearing between loyalist factions that had stepped into power in various cities, and Eldey offered suggestions for handling them.

“I have to compliment you on your firmness in dealing with the Naxids in charge of the food ration,” he added. “But you might have accomplished your task much easier by announcing a stiff tax on food, to go into effect in, say, six months.”

Sula grinned. There reallywas a macroeconomic solution to the problem.

“What truly surprises me is the Naxids,” Sula said. “They’ve been very quiet and cooperative, even the captives. I understand that the prisoners may be cooperating so we won’t go after their relatives, but there’s no way to tell if there’s some Naxid out there working from my playbook, and that any day we’re going to start seeing assassinations and bombings.”

The answer, when it arrived a day later, startled her.

“I think that after their defeat, the Naxids will become good and loyal citizens,” Eldey said. “When the revolt first happened, I couldn’t understand it-why would some of the most prominent people in the empire, Peers who already held vast amounts of wealth and power, risk so much?”

He bobbed his venerable head. “I think the Naxids’ revolt should be read through their species psychology-they are pack animals, and will follow a clear leader. The Shaa were the head of the pack that was the empire, and when their replacement was a committee of equals, it must have made the Naxids uneasy. The situation was too ambiguous. They couldn’t be certain where they stood in relation to all the other members of the pack.

“When the war is over, and it’s clear that the Naxids have been thoroughly beaten and are driven to the absolute bottom of our society, I think they will be content with that. Once they know for certain where they are in the hierarchy, they will be happier than they would be otherwise. They will excel in their particular niche.”

Sula considered this through a haze of surprise, and decided that though the theory was interesting, she’d better continue to be ready for a Naxid counterattack. This thought occupied her sufficiently that Eldey’s next statement caught her unprepared.

“What we should perhaps begin to concern ourselves with,” he said gently, “is sending the army back to their normal lives. I will welcome your suggestions.”

Well, Sula thought, that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? Her own position on Zanshaa depended on the army, and the army was small, imperfectly trained and equipped, and already longing for their own beds. Someone like Lady Trani, a latecomer of little understanding and deserving no respect, could be dealt with. Tork, confined to running circles around the Zanshaa system and unable to unleash his formidable weaponry on his own capital, could be kept at arm’s length.

Lord Eldey, intelligent and credible and with the authority of the Convocation and the empire behind him, was something else. Once he landed, Sula realized she became not simply redundant, but a potential embarrassment. What exactly could she do, in command of an army that was no longer needed? If she rebelled, who would it be against?

For a moment she entertained the thought of returning to her underground life and becoming Bandit Queen of Zanshaa, but common sense reasserted itself before she developed this fantasy very far. It was a role without a future, and it could only bring jeopardy to people she cared about.

There were many roles available to her now, but the only plausible one was that of Captain Sula, a high-ranking Peer of the empire. At least she’d wangled command rank out of Tork-it would have been difficult to be reduced in rank to Lieutenant after so absolutely ruling an entire planet.

Besides, the only thing she was absolutely good at-besides being unlucky with men-was killing things.

Time to threaten Tork again, she thought.

She sent the message in text rather than video because she didn’t want Tork to see the smirk on her face:

Lord Commander, I am pleased to report to your excellency that within a few days I will welcome Lord Eldey to his new posting in Zanshaa High City. As my presence in the city afterward may prove at best a distraction and at worst a focus of discontent, I should like to request an immediate posting. As I desire nothing so much as to once more lead loyal citizens into action against the Naxids, I request command of a warship in the Righteous and Orthodox Fleet of Vengeance.

It wasn’t quiteGive me a job or we’ll have civil war, but it would do.

She copied the message to Eldey and to the Fleet Control Board, and made certain this was plainly indicated on the message before she ordered it coded and sent. That way Tork couldn’t order her to a remote posting on Harzapid or into the Hone Reach without the others noticing.

What remained now, alas, was to tell the army.

She told her friends first, in a dinner in the eight-hundred-year-old New Bridge restaurant. She had once been part of a drunken celebration there, rejoicing at Jeremy Foote’s promotion to lieutenant, and had topped her evening by threatening to set one of Foote’s friends on fire.

The current setting was a lot more sedate. She had rented one of the private dining rooms upstairs, with ancient roof-beams of a deep amber gold, a fireplace of soot-scarred red brick, and a balcony with a wrought-iron rail topped by polished bronze. Thick snowflakes, so heavy and majestic they might have been created by a firm specializing in high-quality atmospheric effects, fell in silent grandeur outside, building a rich, cold carpet on the balcony.

Logs crackled and roared in the fireplace. An antique spring-loaded mechanism, with chains and cogs of black iron, roasted a Hone-bar phoenix on the slowly rotating spit. The odors of cooking filled the room. Patel and Julien drank hot toddies from a punch bowl placed on a heavy wooden table, and Sula had tea sweetened with cane sugar.

“I should make the rounds of the guard posts before I turn in,” Julien said. “A night like this, the guards are probably all hiding indoors.”

Sula smiled. Julien was turning into a martinet, and his newfound rigor saved her a good deal of disciplinary work.

“Eldey,” Sula said, “suggested we should begin to think about disbanding the army.”

Julien gave a contemptuous laugh. “What does Eldey have to say about it? He’s one of those that ran and left us here with the Naxids.”

Patel, however, was looking carefully at Sula. “You’re going to do it,” he said. “Aren’t you, princess?”

“Yes. I’ve requested a posting with the Fleet.” And to Julien’s shocked look, she said, “Once they’re back-the real government-we become a danger to them. And we can’t beat them.”

Julien flushed with anger, all but the thin white scars he’d received in the Naxid interrogation. “You’re giving up!” he said.

“I’m getting on with fighting Naxids. That’s what I’m good at.” She looked at him. “We’ve got to quit while we’re ahead. Before we make too many enemies. Ask your father-he’ll agree.”

Julien turned his pointed face to the fire. He raised his cup of punch to his lips, then lowered it. “Ilike being in the army,” he said. “It’s going to be hard going back to the old life after this.”

“You don’t have to go back to the old life,” Sula said. “That’s what the amnesties are about.”

“I don’t have that option.” He gave her a look. “Pop’s taking the amnesty route, but he wants me to step into his place.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, “if that’s not what you want.”

Julien shrugged. “It’s not a bad life,” he said. “I’ll have money and any other damn thing that takes my fancy, and this time I’ll be boss.”

Patel watched the two of them with soft dark eyes. “The thing is, princess,” he said, “we all got used to being loved.”

Sula smiled. “That was the best part, wasn’t it?”

Being loved. Finding the words“ Long live the White Ghost!” sprayed on some apartment wall, seeing people stepping off trams reading copies ofResistance, watching the look on the faces of others when she appeared in public, walking through the Textile Market in her uniform or delivering stolen food to the Old Third. Being folded in Casimir’s arms, his musky scent filling her senses. She had been at the center of something magnificent, and knew that she would never matter that much again.

She turned to Patel. “And you?”

His lips quirked in something like a smile. “Oh, I’m going back to the old life. How else can I afford my vices?”

She raised her teacup. “To new adventures,” she said.

The others raised their glasses and drank. Julien looked gloomily into the fire.

“It won’t be as much fun without Casimir,” he said.

Sula followed Julien’s gaze into the flames as regret wafted through her heart.

“That’s true,” she said.

He was Martinez, but somehow not Martinez-he had the lantern jaw and the heavy brows, but there was something different in the set of his face, and his hair was black and straight instead of brown and wavy. He and Sula stood in the front room of Sula’s old apartment, the one behind the old Shelley Palace.

The not-quite-Martinez wore the silver-braided captain’s uniform, and he held out a Guraware vase filled with gladioli. “You gave this to my father for his wedding,” he said. “I thought I would give it to you for yours.”

Sula stared in shocked silence as she realized that this wasn’t Martinez, but his son by Terza Chen.

“It only makes sense that our clans be united,” said the future Lord Chen. “If you’ve solved that little problem, that is.”

Sula managed to speak. “What problem?” she asked.

The young man gave her a pitying look. “That was Gredel’s voice,” he said. “You’re slipping.”

Sula adopted her High City voice. “What problem?” she demanded.

“We only need to take a drop of blood. It’s for the gene bank.”

Chen put down the vase and reached out to take Sula’s hands. She stared at her own hands in horror, at the blood that poured from little lakes of red in her palms. The scent of blood flowed over her like a wave. Chen looked down at the blood pooling on the floor and spattering on his polished shoes, and a look of compassion crossed his features.

“That won’t do,” he said. He released her hands. “There won’t be any wedding until we deal with this situation.”

He stepped to the ugly Sevigny sofa and picked up a pillow. Little gold tassels dangled from each corner. He approached her, the pillow held firmly in the large, familiar hands.

“It’s the only way, I’m afraid,” he said, in Terza’s soft tones, and pressed the pillow over her face.

She fought, of course, but he was far too strong.

Sula woke with a scream bottled in her lungs and her mouth as dry as stone. She leaped out of bed, her hands lashing out blindly at any attacker. She tried to call for lights but failed to get the words past her withered tongue. Eventually she fell against the wall, groped her way to a touch pad, and hammered it with a fist till lights blazed on.

The large, silent bedroom in the Commandery glittered in the light, all mirrors, gilt, and polished white marble. No intruders menaced her. No Chens lurked behind the curtains. Her broad bed lay with its viridian spread tangled. One of her pillows had been flung partway across the room by Chen, or Martinez, or possibly someone else.

The door burst open and Spence rushed in, her straw-colored hair wild, her nightdress rucked up above her sturdy hips. She wore white underpants, had a wild look in her eye, and carried a pistol ready in her hand.

“My lady?” she said.

Sula tried to speak, failed, made a gesture of conciliation. Spence hesitantly lowered the pistol. Sula turned to where a beaker of water waited, poured, and rinsed out her sandpaper mouth.

“Sorry,” she said. “Bad dream.”

A look of compassion crossed Spence’s face. “I get them too,” she said. She looked at the pistol in her hand. “I wonder how smart it is to keep firearms within arm’s reach. I’m always afraid I’m going to ventilate the ceiling.”

Sula looked back at her bed, at the sidearm she’d placed carefully by the comm unit.

“I forgot I had a gun,” she said.

Spence put her gun on one of the gilt and marble tables and twisted the hem of her nightdress to let it fall to her knees. She stepped close and put a warm hand on Sula’s shoulder. “Are you all right now? Would you like me to get you something?”

“I’m fine now,” Sula said. “Thanks.” Her heart was still crashing in her chest.

“Would you like me to sit up with you for a bit?”

Sula wanted to laugh. She put an arm around Spence and hugged her close. Spence’s hair smelled of tobacco, with just the faintest whiff of gun oil.

“Thank you,” Sula said, “but I’m fine.”

Spence took her pistol and left. Sula put her glass of water on the bedside table and straightened the covers. She got into the bed and told the room to dim the lights, leaving just enough illumination to be certain no nightmares lurked in the corners.

She lay back on her pillow and wondered what sort of nightmares made Spence keep a pistol within arm’s reach.

She was glad she had someone on her staff who made human warmth her specialty.

Tork took three days to answer Sula’s suggestion concerning a posting. Perhaps he’d spent the intervening time in conference with the Fleet Control Board and Lord Eldey, or had taken that long to work himself into the right state.

As with all good news from Tork, Sula’s appointment came through a staff officer. After Lord Eldey took his post as governor, the order stated, Captain Sula was to proceed to take command of the frigateConfidence, where she would replace Lieutenant Captain Ohta, who had no doubt to his own vast surprise been appointed military aide to the new governor.

Sula took a long moment to savor her triumph, then began preparing her departure.

She still had prodigious stores of cocoa, tobacco, and coffee stored in crates labeled “Used Machine Parts, for Recycling.” She saved a few boxes as gifts, kept some for her own use, then sold the rest in a brief auction staged between local wholesalers. Sergius Bakshi bought all the cocoa, and paid generously. Perhaps he was getting into legitimate food distribution. Perhaps he thought of it as a way of bribing her.

One of her gifts was a truck to One-Step, which she filled with commodities. With luck, he’d never have to do his business on the street again.

Even though she’d spent money to fund her army, the profit on the commodities still came to over six hundred percent. War was definitely good for her pocketbook.

She asked Macnamara and Spence if they wanted to remain with her as her personal staff or accept assignment elsewhere.

“Staying with me means a demotion,” she said. “You’ve gotten used to running parts of an army and serving on staff; but if you stay with me, you’ll be rated as captain’s servants.” She shrugged. “Of course, you’ll have money either way,” she added.

Macnamara stood straight and tall in his uniform, the light that came in the curved window of Sula’s office turning his curly hair into a halo.

“Naturally I’ll come with you, my lady,” he said.

“Nothing for me here,” Spence said. There was a mild smile on her face that made it difficult to remember that she was the woman who had blown up the Great Destiny Hotel.

Warmth kindled in Sula’s heart. She wanted to embrace them but, unfortunately, this was not an option for Lady Sula and her servants. Not in her office anyway.

She promoted each to Petty Officer First Class and gave each five thousand zeniths as their share of Sula’s liquidated business.

Spence’s mouth dropped open. “That’s…rather a lot,” she said.

“No false modesty,” Sula said. “No pretending that you don’t deserve it.”

Spence closed her mouth. “No, my lady,” she said.

Sula grinned. “No reason,” she said, “the cliquemen should be the only ones to turn a profit from this.” She looked at them. “Now go hire me a cook,” she said. “I gather that I’m going to need one.”

Lord Eldey’s shuttle landed at the Wi-hun airfield on a day of brilliant sun, flashes of gold running along the polished surface of the vehicle as it extended its great wings and sighed to a landing on the long runway. Its chemical rockets hissed as it turned and moved past the row of shuttles that had brought the Naxid administration and their support elements to Zanshaa. These were configured for Naxids and were now mere souvenirs of war until someone got around to refitting them.

The rockets flared, then died. A massed Daimong chorus sang the “Glorious Arrival” song from An-tar’sAntimony Sky as the main door cycled open. A grand reviewing stage, draped with bunting in red and gold, moved toward the shuttle under its own power and jockeyed up to the door. Sula stood on the stage, the silver braid glittering on her dress uniform. Spence and Macnamara stood with her.

Wearing the dark red tunic of the lords convocate, Eldey stepped out in the shuttlecraft and gazed at his domain with his huge night-adapted eyes. The recent snow had melted, except for patches of white in the darkest shadows, but the country all round the airfield was brown and dead, especially where the Naxids had torn away groves of trees to clear fields of fire for their defensive installations. The air smelled of decaying, moist vegetation and spent rocket fuel.

Sula braced. “Welcome to Zanshaa, Lord Governor.”

“Thank you, Lady Sula. It’s good to see a-a real world again.” He inhaled deliberately, and apparently he didn’t mind the smell of rocket fuel because his nose fluttered with pleasure. He turned to her. “Please stand at ease, and allow me to introduce you to my staff?”

Introductions were made. Sula presented Spence and Macnamara to the lord governor, who surprised them by shaking their hands.

“Shall we continue then?” Eldey asked. “I’m no longer young, and I believe a rather long day is planned.”

“Yes, my lord,” Sula said.

Everyone faced the front of the stage. Sula gave an order on her sleeve comm.

What followed was the first, last, and only grand review of Sula’s army.

The action groups came marching along the landing strip in ranks under their commanders, bearing banners that identified them by the names they had proudly chosen for themselves: the Bogo Boys, the Defenders of the Praxis, the Tornados, the Academy of Design’s Lord Commander Eshruq Wing, with a particularly effective banner, the Savage Seventeen, Lord Pahn-ko’s Avengers…

Sidney and Fer Tuga, the Axtattle sniper, walked in each other’s company, rifles on their shoulders. The old Daimong still limped from his wound.

They wore no uniform, but some wore Fleet or police body armor, and they all wore red and gold armbands. They all shared a common esprit, hats and caps cocked at jaunty angles, weapons carried proudly. They loped along to a Cree band, feet tramping the pavement in unison. Even Lord Tork would have had to admit that the army had learned to march very well indeed.

After the review, the army wheeled around and came back to the stage, standing motionless in ranks before the new governor. Lord Eldey, Sula, and their parties left the stage and walked onto the runway. Sula activated the list on her sleeve display and called out over the motionless heads.

“Fer Tuga!”

The sniper limped forward, and Lord Eldey presented him with the Medal of Valor, First Class. The Daimong braced, then retreated into the throng as Sula called for Sidney, who received the same decoration.

Julien and Patel wore glittering outfits that must have been designed by Chesko, and that set off their medals spectacularly. Sagas, Sergius Bakshi, and Tan-dau, dressed more conservatively, received their decorations in polite silence.

Most of the awards went for bravery-being a member of the secret army, particularly on the day of the High City battle, seemed to call for sheer courage more than anything else. Of the twelve truck drivers she’d sent charging the emplaced Naxid positions on the High City, eight had actually survived, though half the survivors had been wounded. One was still in the hospital and would receive her medal later. The other seven received their decorations from the hands of the new lord governor.

The award ceremony went on throughout the long afternoon. A cold wind ruffled Lord Eldey’s fur. His staff began to fidget as they passed the decorations forward from the boxes Sula had placed on the back of the stage. The shadows of the fighters grew long as they stood on the pavement. Then lights flooded the area with a soft glow that illuminated the platform for the fighters and the cameras.

Sula now wondered how many medals had been awarded so far in this war, and if those to the secret army might in fact exceed those awarded in all other battles so far. The vast majority of decorations would have gone to Fleet officers, after all, and the number of Fleet officers who had actually participated in battle were few, and most of those hadn’t survived.

Spence and Macnamara were each awarded the Medal of Valor and the Medal of Merit, both First Class. Flushed with pleasure, they followed Eldey and Sula back onto the reviewing platform, where Sula read aloud the list of those who would be decorated posthumously.

The list ended with PJ Ngeni. She let a silence fall after the name, and for a moment the image of PJ rose before her eyes, the balding head, the pleased smile, the fashionable clothes and the amiably vacant expression…

Eldey’s words returned her to the present. “And now, Lady Sula,” he said, “I have the honor to present you with the following decorations.”

Sula stood in surprise as she received a Nebula Medal to match that won at Magaria, this time with Diamonds and Lightning Bolts, as well as a Medal of Valor, Grand Commander. Then Lord Eldey turned to the army, waved an arm, and said, “Three cheers for the White Ghost!”

The first cheer struck Sula almost with the force of a blow. The other two seemed to draw the air from her lungs. They left her stunned and breathless on the platform, staring in a helpless trance at the sea of shouting faces, at the forest of weapons brandished overhead by shouting, triumphant warriors.

“I believe Lady Sula would like to say a few words,” Eldey said, and shuffled to the rear of the platform, leaving her alone with her army.

She had prepared a farewell address, but the cheers had blown the words clean out of her head. She took a step forward, then another. Thousands of eyes followed her. She gazed out at the ranks of the soldiers she had made and thought,I am mad to give this away.

She had spent all her adult life hiding-hiding her true name, her true person behind the caustic personality and immaculate uniforms of Lady Sula. But hiding from the Naxids, strangely, had freed her from all that-all that she was, all that she had been, Gredel as well as Sula, had been unleashed in the service of gathering her army and fighting the enemy. The army was an extension of her, of her mind and nerve and sinew, and to abandon it now seemed as wrong as cutting off her arm.

The fighters were still looking at her, and the words still failed to come. Sula remembered that she’d written notes for her speech and loaded them on her sleeve display, and she glanced down at her sleeve and manipulated the sleeve buttons with half-paralyzed fingers until the words flashed before her eyes.

“Friends,” she began, and the army exploded in cheers again. Her mind spun like a pinwheel in the whirlwind of love and adoration.

“Friends,” she began again, when control had been regained both of the army and her voice. “Together we have lived a great adventure. With no resources but our own determination and intelligence we have built this army, we have engaged the enemy, and we have brought that enemy down in humiliation and total defeat.”

Another great cry went up. It was growing dark, and she had a hard time seeing the individual fighters against the dazzle of the spotlights, perceiving only the vague great mass that was her army, the organism that she had called into existence as an instrument of her will.

“None of you were required to take up arms,” she said, “but you were unable to tolerate the Naxid regime, with its murders and hostage-taking and theft, and you-each of you, on your own-made up your minds to strike a blow against these crimes.”

Cheers began again, but Sula shouted over them.“You chose your own destiny! You destroyed an illegitimate regime, and you did it all on your own! By your own choice, you made the High City yours! By your own choice, you sent the Naxid fleet fleeing from the system!”

Sula felt a wild vertigo as the cheers seemed to send her spinning like a snowflake into the sky. The dark mass of bodies and heads and weapons in front of her surged like a storm-slashed sea. The cries didn’t cease until she gestured madly for order.

“I thank you from the bottom of my heart for letting me lead you,” she said. “I will never forget you, or forget this moment.”

She took a long breath, and spoke the words she had been dreading.

“Now I am called to further duty against the enemy, and I must leave you.”

There were cries of“ No!” from shocked fighters who hadn’t yet worked this out for themselves.

“No one can take your achievements away from you,” she said. “Take pride in them, and never forget your comrades, or those who gave their lives.”

She raised a hand. “Fortune attend you all.”

Again the cheers sounded, and they resolved into a chant,“Su-la! Su-la! Su-la!” Her heart raced at the sound. She stepped back and let Lord Governor Eldey step forward.

He gave a speech, and Sula heard none of it.I am mad to give this up, she kept thinking.

Hiding from the Naxids had given her freedom. Now that she was Lady Sula again, she was once again in hiding, but from her own side.

Afterward she joined Eldey in the vehicle that raced for the city. Overhead, multiple sonic booms announced the arrival of other shuttles that carried elements of Eldey’s support staff and the thousands of personnel that the empire was bringing to the capital.

Bureaucrats to run the government, engineers to keep services going, and executioners to work their will on the vanquished. It was the way Zanshaa had always been governed.

“I wish you had not so much emphasized those people bringing down a government through choice,” Eldey said. “We really can’t have that sort of thing. But otherwise I think you did very well with them.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Sula said dully. Her mind still swam in the surge of emotion that had swept her that afternoon.

He looked at her with his large eyes. “You might have a future as a politician,” he said.

“I don’t have the money.”

“Don’t you?” Eldey said softly. “Well, there are ways.”

If she hadn’t been so exhausted, she might have asked what Eldey had in mind, but she just sat in the vehicle until it drew up to the Commandery, where the governor bade her good-night and continued on to his own residence.

Her sleep that night was an empty blackness filled with roaring, as if she were at the center of a huge, invisible army, all calling her name.

On Sula’s last morning in Zanshaa she reported to Lord Governor Eldey, gave him the passwords for the more critical files, and then formally resigned her command of Zanshaa’s military. She sent Macnamara, Spence, and her new cook, Rizal, ahead to the Wi-hun airstrip, and then had One-Step drive her to the city of the dead where Casimir lay in his stolen tomb.

A bitter wind scattered flakes of snow over the dried, brown blossoms of the flowers the cliquemen had piled on the sepulcher. The monument installed before the tomb projected a three-dimensional holographic image of Casimir, but it lacked the touch of mordant humor and the slight aura of menace that she remembered. The hologram looked more like the pale, cold face she saw on the floor of the hospital morgue.

Sula paused for a moment before the tomb, her hands in the pockets of her greatcoat, and then drew from her pocket theju yao pot. She held it up to the faint light and saw Casimir’s holographic image reflected irregularly in the blue-green crackle of its glaze. A sharp pain pierced her breastbone. How many deaths had the pot survived, she wondered, in the millennia since it had been carried away from Honan just ahead of a Tatar invasion? How many owners had lifted their eyes to the pot and drawn peace and strength from its timeless beauty?

Too many, she thought.

She walked around the memorial to the tomb itself, to the brushed titanium slab that sealed the doorway. Her reflection wavered uncertainly in the cold light. She raised the pot and smashed it against the slab. It crumbled to bits between her fingers. A sob broke from her throat. She stomped the fragments with her feet, and then a weakness flooded her and she leaned against the tomb for support, her head pressed to the cold metal.

You selfish bastard,she thought.You died and left me alone.

The cold metal was a shooting pain against her forehead. She gathered her strength and pushed herself away from the tomb, then began the walk back to the car.

Fragments of the pot crunched beneath her soles.

Everything old is dead,she thought.Everything new begins now.