Warlord (47 page)

She nodded. It was quite possible he
could
somehow contrive the expedition's ruin; and escape blame for it, too.

"Thank you, Abdullah," she said sincerely, tucking the sheaf of notes into her own sleeve. He bowed, smiling. Pleasure at her gratitude, and at the excitement of the task.

"Ndella," she continued.

The Zanj bobbed her head. Her flat black face was exotic to East Residence eyes, and Suzette had added gold snake-coils for her arms and neck to heighten the effect. People in the Civil Government rarely encountered Zanj, and knew them mostly through highly biased accounts from the Colony. The Colonists were commercial rivals of the southern continent's city-states, there were frequent military clashes—full-fledged war quite recently, which was how Ndella had ended up on a Sandoral auction-block—and the orthodox Sunni Muslims of the Colony detested the Reformed Baha'i heresy the Zanj practiced. To hear the Colonists talk, all Zanj were depraved savages who ate their young and mated with anything, carnosauroids included.

So nobody in East Residence would be likely to suspect that Ndella, for example, was literate in four languages. . . .

"Messa Whitehall, I have now access to Messer Berg's Palace household; a few matters of healing, and, ah"—she coughed discreetly—"I have become very good friends with one of the household servants, an undercook." Ndella liked girls, usually a matter of indifference but here rather useful. "Lorhetta has been adding the
capoyam
to Messer Berg's chili, on the understanding it improves his digestion and temper.

"Add the
beyem
," she went on, briefly showing a small glass vial, "to anything he drinks, and . . . heart failure. Perfectly safe for those not sensitized by the
capoyam.
Undetectable."

 . . . and nobody would be likely to suspect Ndella was a doctor, either. Women could learn medicine in the Civil Government, although most who did were also Renunciate Sisters, but the Colony was very restrictive. Everyone would assume the Zanj were even more so.

"Excellent," Suzette said. "Thank you, my friends."

Abdullah and the black woman took the hint, leaving quickly. Fatima released her squirming son; the boy ran half a dozen steps and grabbed the cushions of the opposite couch. He turned his head to give the two women a toothless grin of delight, then hauled himself along the settee hand-over-hand, until he came face to face with the house cat sleeping curled up on a cushion at the end. The animal opened yellow eyes and submitted to pats and gurgling cries of pleasure for a moment before fleeing; the baby went on all fours and began a determined pursuit.

Fatima turned back to Suzette with the same bright-eyed interest she had shown for the last half hour; the hint had been delivered, however. She had a child to consider.

Suzette put aside envy; there was no time, not now, later . . . "Young Barton seems to thrive," Suzette said.

Fatima sighed. "Only if his father does," she replied, a little more subdued.

Suzette leaned back, nodding and sipping at her kave. Her own point had been conceded.
Whichever one
is
his father,
she thought.
But both of them are Raj's men.
 

The Arab girl had nearly taken out the eye of a 5th Descott trooper while he and his squad tried to rape her, back in El Djem, the Colonial border-hamlet where she had grown up as a very minor daughter of a minor concubine of the town's mayor. Fatima bint Caid, she had been then; Fatima cor Staenbridge, she was now. Two of Raj's officers had rescued her from an unpleasant death by the trooper's bayonet—on a whim more than anything else, being lovers themselves—and she managed to make it back to the Civil Government border with the 5th during the chaotic nightmare of the retreat through the desert. A prudent career move, given the options available to an ex-virgin with no family in the Colony's strict Islamic society.

She had been pregnant as well; by Gerrin or Barton, but it was the heirless Gerrin Staenbridge who had manumitted her and adopted the child. Which made her a free commoner technically, with a nice little annuity and excellent prospects as mother of a nobleman's heir; besides that, she was still the—very occasional—mistress of both men, and well-liked. Gerrin Staenbridge and Barton Foley were both Companions now, their fortunes as one with Raj's; Gerrin was his right-hand man. "You have been very kind to me, Messa Suzette," Fatima said, in a quiet tone.

That was true enough; Raj and she had stood Star-parent to young Barton Staenbridge, which was a lifetime tie and taken seriously by the Civil Government's nobility. And Suzette had eased her path socially, as well. A mistress could not be received formally, even if she was the mother of an acknowledged son, but informal acceptance was possible—if the consensus of the
Messas
, the gentlewomen, favored it. Suzette had seen that it did, and she had the ear of Lady Anne, the Governor's wife.

"I anxious am—sorry, am anxious to repay your kindness," she said, dropping back into the Sponglish she had made such an effort to learn.

Suzette leaned over and patted her on the shoulder. "Don't worry, my dear—it's just that sometimes we have to . . . look out for the men. Now, what I'd like you to do is drop by on Tanha Heyterez." Berg's mistress, and rather a neglected one, according to rumor. "She's a country girl, just in from Kendrun, and doesn't know anyone here." Hence likely to be desperately lonely and ready to talk. "She needs a friend . . . and
Berg
needs to be brought around to helping—himself, too—rather than hindering.

"So what I need to know," she went on, lowering her voice, "is
everything
about Messer Berg. Particularly the things his woman would know: what he fears, what he likes, what his tastes are."

Fatima nodded slowly. "I understand, Messa Whitehall," she said formally. Then she grinned, an urchin expression that made her face look its eighteen years again. "I have a problem, though. Barton and Gerrin, they don't want me to come on campaign with them this time. Gerrin wants me to go back to his lands, stay with his wife."

"Why not?" Suzette asked. Since a childless wife could be divorced at will, the lady in question ought to be fairly grateful; now that Staenbridge had an heir, she was safe. Nor was there likely to be much jealousy, since, from what Suzette had learned, Gerrin's wife had known his tastes before the wedding.

"Boring!" Fatima said. "Besides, I want be there if they're hurt."

Suzette nodded understanding; she had always followed the drum herself. It was bad enough to send Raj off to battle; to be a thousand kilometers away, not even
knowing
for months—she shuddered slightly.
And he needs me.
 

"I can't interfere in Messer Staenbridge's household," she pointed out gently.

"Oh, I take care of that. I got Gerrin to promise I could come as long as I healthy—now he and Barton trying to get me pregnant again so I
have
to stay home."

"You don't like that?" Suzette said, surprised.

"Oh, I like the
trying,
just don't want it to
work.
"

They laughed together, Suzette a little harder than she had expected. There had been few enough chances for humor, in the past few months here in the Palace. Maneuvering against Chancellor Tzetzas was not something you could do with less than your whole intent, even if you were a good friend of the Governor's wife.

"That I can help with," Suzette said, wiping her eyes. "Or rather Ndella can, when I tell her to." She quieted. "I'll be glad to get out of East Residence again," she said. "Out where you can see things coming."

Which was odd, she thought, sitting in silence after the young Arab girl had left. Back in her own girlhood—sometimes she had to remind herself she was still four years shy of thirty—Suzette had never looked uphill to the Palace without a stab of envy. That was her birthright, the legacy of the Wenqui
gens
; forty generations of East Residence nobility, ever since the Governors had come, fleeing the military takeovers in the Old Residence. Poverty had kept her out, and the need to care for Father after Mother died coughing her lungs out, leaving Suzette chatelaine of a dying house at fourteen.

Poor Father. Always with his books and a few old cronies, never even noticing.
Not noticing when she had to sell off the furniture and the paintings and the rugs to feed them and pay the doddering ancient servants she hadn't the heart to dismiss, when the pitiful rents from their last few farms had to go to keep the townhouse from being sold under their feet. All the years of scrimping and wheedling to get invitations, lessons, research, the coldly calculated dalliances, all aimed at precisely this. A big suite in the Palace apartments, wealth, recognition, to be a known and feared player in the ancient, stylized minuet of intrigue . . . 

All wasted, my love,
she thought with a warm irony. Whom had she been hoping to meet at Alois Orehuela's garden-party? She couldn't even remember that now. Raj Ammenda Halgern da Luis Whitehall had been just another name on a stolen guest-list, another uncouth Descotter squire down from the northeastern hills, doubtless with a tail of bandits-in-uniform dangling after him and barely able to tell which fork to eat the fish with . . . 
and then I saw you, looking like a sword in a silverware set and all that training and effort I went through was for nothing.
 

"No, not
quite
for nothing," she mused softly to herself, walking to the windows and out onto the terrace.

Leaning on the railing she could look down toward the graceful but square-built barracks that flanked the main gates. Insect-tiny with distance, the Guard was changing, figures wheeling and halting on the checkered colored brick of the plaza. Faintly the cool brass of trumpets and the rough beat of drums sounded; the blue-and-gold Star banner of Holy Federation was lowered and raised, salutes and ritual words were exchanged.

"Here there are so many enemies you can't fight face to face, with gun and sword and soldier's honor," she whispered. Her face grew bleak as the edge of a knife. "So I'll do it for you, my love. Whether you ever know it or not."

The four Companions rose from the benches and saluted as the door to the Whitehall apartments opened; a pair of 5th Descott troopers snapped to attention and raised bayoneted rifles to the present. Raj grunted in acknowledgment and returned the gesture; these were old comrades, veterans of the Komar campaign and the Battle of Sandoral out on the eastern frontier. His Companions, to use the archaic phrase they had resurrected in what was only half a joke.

"We'd better hurry, gentlemen," he said shortly.

They fell in behind him, left hands resting on the hilts of their sabers. The whole party fell unconsciously into step, the iron hobnails and heel-plates of their riding boots echoing on the marble flags of the corridor. Like most of the East Residence, this section consisted of two-story blocks set around courtyards; they clattered up a flight of stairs and into an entry hall, where whispering knots of officers and courtiers parted to make room. Brigadier Whitehall was well known, after last year's triumph in the east, and the suppression of the coup attempt that followed. So were his Companions; for that matter, the almost ostentatious plainness of their issue uniforms, maroon pants and blue tail-coats and round helmets, stood out in a Residence crowd.

Kaltin Gruder was the first to speak; he was still limping slightly, from a bullet through the thigh during the battles on the Drangosh. He had been something of a dandy, before he met Raj Whitehall; the Komar raid had left him one brother shorter and covered the right side of his face with lines of scar tissue.

"The 7th's still a bit shaky," he said. The 7th Descott Rangers was his new command. "Lot of replacements, after the casualties."

"I could spare a few NCO's from the 5th," Gerrin said.

Raj's step checked slightly; the 5th Descott Guards was his original command, and it had been expanded recently too. He was still nominal Captain-in-Chief, but Gerrin had taken over the actual running . . . 
and you trust him,
Raj reminded himself.

"Thanks, Gerrin; Spirit of Man knows I could use them," Gruder replied. "By the way, did you catch those Brigade ambassadors?"

Antin M'lewis chuckled slightly, showing a few crooked tobacco-stained teeth amid gleaming gold replacements for those knocked out in battle. "Wunnit enough ter fright t'kiddies, though?" he said.

Da Cruz scowled at him slightly, then shrugged in resignation as M'lewis grinned back and jerked one shoulder, marked with an officer's chain-mail epaulet and a Senior Lieutenant's stars. The little ex-trooper from Bufford Parish had been one of the two Companions Raj had taken with him to foil the attempt on the Governor's life last spring, while the rest guarded Lady Suzette. Governor Barholm's gratitude had lasted long enough for M'lewis to get a commission and a moderate-sized estate near the capital; quite a step up for a former rustler and part-time bandit, enlisted one step ahead of the headsman.

At least he didn't have a line command; respectable Descott County yeoman-troopers wouldn't put up with it, even if he was a technical gentleman now. Being from Bufford Parish, the County's disgrace, was enough; never mind his dubious social status. He did well enough with the collection of gallows-bait that Raj had authorized him to recruit, mostly from guardhouses and punishment details. Officially they were the Scout Group of the 5th Descott, more commonly known as the Forty Thieves. Da Cruz had preferred to stay at Master Sergeant rank, even though he had made enough out of the eastern war to buy land of his own back home in Descott County, the farm he had planned to rent on retirement.

"Interestin' weapons them barbs had," the noncom said stolidly. "Not bad shots; surprised they could get that sort of accuracy out of them muzzle-loaders."

The Brigade were fairly civilized for barbarians, having ruled the old Civil Government lands in the far west for centuries now. The emissaries had still been a gaudy sight, fringed buckskins and purple silk, broad-brimmed hats stuck with carnosauroid feathers, gold and jewels and long slashing swords hung over their shoulders. Most of them had had four or five cap-and-ball revolvers slung around them, besides their head-high rifles. They had put on a display of marksmanship in the gardens, smashing bottles at a thousand paces, which was performance as good as you could get from an Armory rifle.