Orphan's Triumph

FIFTY

SUBVERSIVES IN DOWNTOWN TRESSIA were as likely to seek out the tenements on the north side as antelope were likely to seek out lion dens. The Ferrents knew it and ignored the neighborhood. That was why the gray three-story apartment building to which I led the Duck overlooked the departure point for “pioneers” bound north.

We paused on the building’s grimy stoop and looked back at barbed-wire enclosures filled with gray Tressen motor coaches waiting to be filled with lines of grayer people.

“Just one smart suborbital down the Interior Ministry chimney, Duck? One?”

He gritted his teeth as he stared at the coaches. “Don’t push the cuteness, Jason. Just show me whatever magic beans you’re peddling.”

In the tenement’s stairwell, we passed an old man, head down, mopping the stone first-floor landing. As we passed, he moved his bucket and its rattle echoed upward.

The second sentry’s hand was inside his jacket when we stepped to the door of the first apartment on the second floor.

Pytr opened the apartment door while he held a pistol in one hand, an antique weapon even by Tressel standards.

Aud and Jude stood in front of us, both in threadbare civvies, like defendants in the dock. Aud leaned on a cane.

The Duck nodded to Jude. “Good to see you safe.” He made a little bow to Aud Planck. “Chancellor.”

Aud made a smile. “Your courtesy is overstated, Consul. We both know there’s only one chancellor now. And I hope you believe that I am as appalled at what you can see from the stoop of this building as you are.”

Jude said, “And so am I.”

The Duck looked from Jude to Aud, and back to me. Then he shook his head. “Gentlemen, it doesn’t matter whether I believe you or whether I think you’re both gallows-converted hypocrites.”

Both Jude and Aud drew back like they had been slapped. I stepped across and stood with my godson and my friend. Aud Planck had risen from his sickbed to save my life-yet again. He might have been too trusting, but he was no Nazi.

The Duck pointed toward the barbed-wire pens beyond the building. “The reason it doesn’t matter is because that abomination out there is the internal affair of a duly constituted government recognized by the Human Union.” The Duck turned to me. “Jason, I’ve bent plenty of rules for you over the years. I’ve bent plenty more before you ever got here, for the sake of my own conscience. But I can’t pretend that Chancellor Planck here is the successor to the legitimate government of Iridia. The union won’t play king maker between squabbling generals. Which is what this looks like, no matter what my conscience tells me.”

I crossed my arms. “Are you done?”

The Duck crossed his arms. “Are you?”

“Perhaps he is, Consul. But I am only beginning.” Celline stood in the doorway that led to the apartment’s second room.

Clothes may not make the woman, but they make a duchess if she looks the part to start with. Celline was so pure-blood royal on both sides of her family tree that her rank survived her father’s death. Chin high, Celline, fifty-seventh Inheritrix of the Duchy of Northern Iridia, and last surviving successor to the common throne of the Unified Duchies of Iridia, lit the gritty tenement. Her business suit was the color of a fawn in autumn, and her blond hair was drawn back so that her eyes looked bigger and greener. Her jewels of rank, as if she needed any, were what the netbloids would call understated, a tiara set with grape-sized emeralds that matched her eyes.

I held my breath, partly because, well, Celline merited it. Partly because we couldn’t produce jack squat in the way of credentials if the Duck didn’t believe Celline was the duchess.

The Duck stared at her.

My heart pounded.

“Your Grace favors her mother.” The Duck bowed.

I exhaled.

Celline cocked her head and smiled. “You are too kind. Have we had the pleasure?”

The Duck didn’t have to work at smiling. “I would surely remember, Your Grace.”

I leaned toward Jude and whispered, “She’s really good at this.”

He whispered back, “I liked her better barefoot.”

After ten minutes of diplomatic slap and tickle, Celline turned and motioned to two vacant chairs in the room’s corner. “Sit with us, Mr. Muscovy.” After they sat, she crossed her legs, then knit her fingers over her knee. “Consul, we must inquire as to the union’s intentions as a cosigning guarantor of the Armistice.”

The Duck cocked his head. “Your Grace?”

“We are not rabble. We are the duly constituted government of Iridia. We no longer require Tressen assistance to maintain order. We intend to expel Tressen by such force as required, as is our right.”

The Duck nodded. “That is your right. That is what the union agreed to.” He glanced across the room, where deaf old Pytr stood guard at the window with a single-shot pistol. “But I’m not authorized to alter the current-ah-imbalance of force.”

Celline shook her head. “We’re not asking for star-ships, Mr. Muscovy. Or for unrewarded charity.” Celline leaned toward the Duck and gave him a look that, I suspected, had been the last thing many a sea monster had seen. “Give us the tools to defeat these butchers and we’ll give the union Cavorite to choke on.”

A smile and a tiara will get a girl only so far, even with a man of conscience. In the subsequent negotiation, the Duck insisted on Cavorite first, within a month, tools of revolution after. The Spooks would prime the pump with a sprinkling of weapons, communications gear, and intelligence dope. America had handed out under-the-table party favors like that since the Cold War. But there would under no circumstances be any military or Spook hands-on participation, not even real-time intelligence if things heated up, except to haul away Cavorite when and if my new boss and her “reformed government” delivered.

Considering that my new boss’s negotiating muscle consisted of maybe a double handful of resistance fighters as fierce as old Pytr, we shouldn’t have expected any more generous terms. The Duck had no choice but to hedge his long-shot bet, which he was placing with his employer’s chips. If we failed, the Human Union needed to be able to plausibly deny connection with these misguided rebels when it knuckled under to the RS, and to knuckle under fast.

So job one was to deliver Tressel’s weapons-grade Cavorite to the Human Union within a month. But a planet’s a big place, and I didn’t even know where to start. However, I knew who did.