Walter Williams - Conventions of War

Clean porcelain surfaces floated through her mind. Celadon, faience, rose Pompadour. Her fingers tingled to the remembered crackle of herju yao pot.

The day had started well. She thought it would only get better.

Sula adjusted her jacket as she gazed out the window of the communal apartment. The last of the vendors were closing their stalls or driving away in their little three-wheeled vehicles with their businesses packed on the back. The near-blackout imposed by the Naxids-not to mention the hostage-taking-had severely impacted them, and there weren’t enough people on the streets after dark to keep them at their work.

“I should be with you,” Macnamara argued.

“On adate?” Sula laughed.

He pushed out his lips like a pouting child. “You know what he is,” he said. “It’s not safe.”

She fluffed her black-dyed hair with her fingers. “He’s a necessary evil. I know how to deal with him.”

Macnamara made a scornful sound in his throat. Sula looked at Spence, who sat on the sofa and was doing her best to look as if she weren’t listening.

“He’s a criminal,” Macnamara said. “He may be a killer, for all you know.”

He probably hasn’t killed nearly as many people as I have.Sula remembered five Naxid ships turning to sheets of brilliant white eye-piercing light at Magaria, and decided not to remind Macnamara of this.

She turned from the window and faced him. “Say that you want to start a business,” she said, “and you don’t have the money. What do you do?”

His face filled with suspicion, as if he knew she was luring him into a trap. “Go to my clan head,” he said.

“And if your clan head won’t help you?”

“I go to someone in his patron clan. A Peer or somebody.”

Sula nodded. “What if the Peer’s nephew is engaged in the same business and doesn’t want the competition?”

Macnamara made the pouting face again. “I wouldn’t go to Little Casimir, that’s for sure.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t. But a lot of peopledo go to people like Casimir, and they get their business started, and Casimir offers protection against retaliation by the Peer’s nephew and his clan. And in return Casimir gets fifty or a hundred percent interest on his money and a client who will maybe do him other favors.”

Macnamara looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “And if they don’t pay the hundred percent interest they get killed.”

Sula considered this. “Probably not,” she judged, “not unless they try to cheat Casimir in some way. Most likely Casimir just takes over the business and every minim of assets and hands it over to another client to run, leaving the borrower on the streets and loaded with debt.” Macnamara was about to argue, and Sula held out her hands. “I’m not saying he’s a pillar of virtue. He’s in it for the money and the power. He hurts people, I’m sure. But in a system like ours-where the Peers have all the money and all the law on their side-people like the Riverside Clique are necessary.”

“I don’t get it,” he said. “You’re a Peer yourself, but you talk against the Peers.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “There are Peers who make Casimir look like a blundering amateur.”

The late Lord and Lady Sula, for two.

She told the video wall to turn on its camera and examined herself in its screen. She put on the crumpled velvet hat and adjusted it to the proper angle.

There. That was raffish enough, if you ignored the searching, critical look in the eyes.

“I’m going with you,” Macnamara insisted. “The streets aren’t safe.”

Sula sighed and decided she might as well concede. “Very well,” she said. “You can follow me to the club a hundred paces behind, but once I go in the door, I don’t want to see you for the rest of the evening.”

“Yes,” he said, and then added, “my lady.”

She wondered if Macnamara’s protectiveness was actually possessiveness, if there was something emotional or sexual in the way he related to her.

She supposed there was. There was with most men in her experience, so why not Macnamara?

She hoped she wouldn’t have to get stern with him.

He followed her like an obedient, heavily armed ghost down the darkened streets to the Cat Street club. Yellow light spilled out of the doors, along with music and laughter and the smell of tobacco. She cast a look over her shoulder at Macnamara, one that warned him to come no farther, and then she hopped up the step onto the black and silver tiles and swept through the doors, nodding to the two bouncers.

Casimir waited in his office, along with two others. He wore an iron-gray silk shirt with a standing collar that wrapped his throat with layers of dark material and gave a proud jut to his chin, heavy boots that gleamed, and an ankle-length coat of some soft black material inset with little triangular mirrors. In one pale, long-fingered hand he carried an ebony walking stick that came up to his breastbone and was topped by a silver claw that held a globe of rock crystal.

He laughed and gave an elaborate bow as she entered. The walking stick added to the odd courtly effect. Sula looked at his outfit and hesitated.

“Very original,” she decided.

“Chesko,” Casimir said. “This time next year, she’s going to be dressing everybody.” He turned to his two companions. “These are Julien and Veronika. They’ll be joining us tonight, if you don’t mind.” Julien was a younger man with a pointed face, and Veronika was a tinkly blonde who wore brocade and an anklet with stones that glittered.

Interesting, Sula thought, for Casimir to include another couple. Perhaps it was to put her at ease, to assure her that she wouldn’t be at close quarters with some predator all night.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said. “I’m Gredel.”

Casimir gave two snaps of his fingers and a tiled panel slid open in the wall, revealing a well-equipped bar, bottles full of amber, green, and crimson liquids in curiously shaped bottles. “Shall we start with drinks before supper?” he asked.

“I don’t drink,” Sula said, “but the rest of you go ahead.”

Casimir, on his way to the bar, was brought up short. “Is there anything else you’d like? Hashish or-”

“Sparkling water will be fine,” she said.

Casimir hesitated again. “Right,” he said finally, and handed her a heavy cut-crystal goblet that he’d filled from a silver spigot.

He mixed drinks for himself and the others, and everyone sat on the broad, oversoft chairs. Sula tried not to oversplay.

The discussion was about music, songwriters, and musicians she didn’t know. Casimir told the room to play various audio selections. He liked his music jagged, with angry overtones.

“What do you like?” Julien asked Sula.

“Derivoo,” she said.

Veronika gave a little giggle. Julien made a face. “Too intellectual for me,” he said.

“It’s not intellectual at all,” Sula protested. “It’s pure emotion.”

“It’s all about death,” Veronika said.

“Why shouldn’t it be?” Sula said. “Death is the universal constant. All people suffer and die. Derivoo doesn’t try to hide that.”

There was a moment of silence in which Sula realized that the inevitability of misery and death was perhaps not the most appropriate topic to bring up on first acquaintance with this group; and then she looked at Casimir and saw a glimmer of wicked amusement in his dark eyes. He seized his walking stick and rose.

“Let’s go. Take your drinks if you haven’t finished them.”

Casimir’s huge Victory limousine was built along the lines of a pumpkin seed, and painted and upholstered in no less than eleven shades of apricot. The two Torminel guards sat in front, their huge, night-adapted eyes perfectly at home on the darkened streets. The restaurant was paneled in old, dark wood, the linen was crisp and close-woven, and the fixtures were brass that gleamed finely in the subdued light. Through an elaborate, carved wooden screen Sula could see another dining room with a few Lai-own sitting in the special chairs that cradled their long breastbones.