What Distant Deeps by David Drake Read Free Book Online Page A

twenty rounds in the magazine of my pistol.”
    She tapped her left tunic pocket.
    “They wouldn’t be of any use to me if I weren’t willing to expend them.”
    “That doesn’t bother you?” Sand demanded. Her face sagged into a lopsided smile. “I suppose it doesn’t at that. You understood it from the beginning, when I first approached you; so of course you’re not going to complain about a choice you made willingly. You wouldn’t.”
    Adele said nothing. She realized, not for the first time, that anger was a common human response because it was a comfortable one. The mood in which she’d started this interview was much easier to bear than quietly listening to Mistress Sand say things that Adele would rather not hear. She could solve the problem by hurling the water pitcher to the floor and storming out of the room.   .   .   .  
    She smiled. “Easy” had never been the major criterion for her decisions.
    Sand shook her head slowly. She took out the snuffbox again, but instead of opening it she raised her eyes.
    “Sorry, Mundy,” she said. Her voice was normal again. “I realize there’s no need for me to say anything, not to you; but I started this, so I’ll finish it. I expect you to extract whatever useful information Posy Belisande has. I expect you to considerably expand my information on Palmyra and on anything else in the Qaboosh Region which is material to the Republic of Cinnabar. This is a real mission.”
    Though she was obviously trying to seem cheerful, the impression Adele got from Sand’s sudden smile was sadness. She said, “Mundy, we—the Republic—are as much at peace as it’s possible for an entity of our size to be. If I thought it would do any good, I’d suggest you take a research fellowship in Novy Sverdlovsk. Captain Leary would make a splendid Naval Attaché at our embassy there, I’m sure. I didn’t think that would work out, however.”
    Adele felt the corner of her mouth twitch in the direction of a grin. “No,” she said. “I don’t think it would. For either Daniel or for me.”
    Sand nodded agreement; she was relaxing again. “It appeared to me, however,” she said, “that this business in Zenobia might be a useful stage for you both—for servants of the Republic like yourselves—to transition from the business in the Montserrat Stars back to normal life.”
    “Thank you, mistress,” Adele said as she rose. “I appreciate your   .   .   .”
    She paused, searching for the way to phrase what she wanted to say.
    “I appreciate your intelligent concern.”
    Sand remained seated. Adele made a slight bow, then turned to the door. As she reached for the latch, she heard a shot in the near distance.
    Adele was striding down the hallway in the next heartbeat, her left hand dropping to her pocket. Tovera led with a miniature sub-machine gun openly displayed in her right hand. There was another shot from outside, toward the sea front.
    The trouble with normal life, Adele thought, is that it doesn’t stay normal for very long.
     
    Daniel felt his eyes narrow slightly as he looked past Peterleigh’s ear to watch the group centered on Chuckie Platt some twenty yards north up the sea front. Peterleigh was giving a full discussion of the formal garden he was building at Boltway Manor, complete with a grotto populated with—fake—crystalline formations which were meant to suggest petrified trolls.
    “Just like they’d been touched by sunlight and turned to stone, don’t you know?” Peterleigh burbled. It was the sort of fashionable nonsense that would have bored Daniel to tears if he hadn’t had Platt and Lieutenant Cory to worry about. Both young men held dueling pistols.
    Peterleigh said, “Of course, that’s where the paradox is that you need for real art. They’re underground in the grotto, don’t you know, so the light couldn’t have touched them! That’s a paradox!”
    Platt was aiming out to sea. His body was edge-on, making a single