Walter Williams - Conventions of War

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…