David Drake: When the Tide Rises

Daniel looked up. Cassandra McDonough, Admiral James' flag lieutenant, looked expectantly over the railing of the upper terrace. She looked very good in Dress Whites, but Daniel could as easily imagine making love to a porcelain figurine.

"His Lordship would appreciate a few words with Commander Leary," McDonough said when she had their attention, "before he seals the courier pouch."

Stickel snorted. "What did I tell you, Leary?" he said. "The manwill have everything just so before it goes off to Navy House. Go cross his tees for him, boy-but remember what I said about dinner."

"Yes sir!" said Daniel as he strode for the steps to the upper terrace. "I most certainly will."

McDonough waited for Daniel to get up the flight of broad stone stairs before turning to precede him around the fringes of the dancing. The band had resumed with a hornpipe which bounced over the happy murmur of voices. Couples swung into the quick rhythm or drifted off the chalk-bounded dance floor to wait for a less strenuous measure.

Daniel and his guide entered through a lounge with a coffered ceiling. Its cells were skylights; another volley of fireworks trailed sparkles in the sky above them. Half a dozen members of the Governor's staff sat smoking on the black leather chairs; a servant with a tray of drinks bent to serve them.

The civilians followed the two officers with their eyes. Daniel nodded pleasantly in acknowledgment, but Lieutenant McDonough paid them no more heed than she would've done for balls of mud on the area rugs.

There usually wasn't any love lost between the civil and military staffs of a protectorate. Here on Diamondia the naval personnel treated the civilians as cowards who'd fled rather than take the risk that an Alliance raider would sneak through the minefield and target the Residence; the civilians had considered RCN officers pushy from the moment they arrived and had found them next to unbearable since their victory. Daniel supposed both sides had the right of it.

McDonough tapped on the elegantly carved north door. "Your Lordship, Commander Leary is here," she said in a quiet, penetrating voice.

"Enter!" said James. McDonough opened the door, nodded Daniel through, and closed it firmly behind him.

The office had started out as a sitting room, but James had installed a standard RCN console in place of what'd probably been a glass-topped table. The result was serviceable though a little odd; the maroon banquette on which James was sitting in one corner made a particular contrast. Mirrors etched with hunting scenes covered two walls.

The Admiral had a courier pouch in his lap. He was in his sleeveless undershirt; the tunic of his Whites, stiff with medals and braid, hung over the back of the console. He gestured Daniel to the other arm of the banquette.

"Sit down, Leary," he said. "I want to talk with you privately before I seal this."

He tapped the pouch and continued, "And Imean private. There's no rank in this room until I tell McDonough to open the door again."

James sounded tired, but this time in a good way. The exhaustion he'd displayed when Daniel first met him on the terrace of the Residence had been as much depression as overwork.

Daniel settled onto the maroon leather in a gingerly fashion. He wasn't going to argue with an admiral, but he knew how bloody dangerous these 'all pals together' situations were for a junior party who was fool enough to take his senior at his word.

A mirror-backed wall sconce above the banquette lighted Daniel very well. James hadn't seen him in full dress before. He guffawed and said, "Well, you're a sight for sore eyes, aren't you, Leary?"

"Sir, I feel like a clown," Daniel said sincerely. "But you said 'Cinnabar and foreign medals.' "

James chuckled. "So I did, and you're certainly one up on Niven and his pretty boys in their frock coats," he said.

In a slightly softer tone he added, "A bloody impressive clown, Leary. I've read your record. Fruit salad's easier to come by than a record like yours."

Daniel cleared his throat. "Ah, thank you, sir," he muttered.

James tapped the courier pouch. Sealing it would arm a layer of thermite in the lining of the case. Opening the pouch by force would incinerate the contents, along with the person applying the force and probably the room in which it happened.

"I suppose you hope that my report recommends you for promotion because you tricked Guphill into sending away half his squadron," James said bluntly. "Don't you?"

"Sir, I'd never suggest what ought to go into my commanding officer's after-action report," Daniel said. "Never."

"I didn't ask what you'd suggest, Commander," the Admiral snapped. He'd been under strain for a very long time, and victory brought its own different stresses. "I said that's what you hoped. Isn't it?"

"No sir," said Corder Leary's son, not a politician but a man who knew politics from the inside out. "I very much hope you wouldnot put that in your report to Navy House, because it involves matters beyond the remit of the Admiral Commanding the Diamondia Squadron. At the very best, the Navy Board would regard the recommendation as an impertinence and ignore it. More probably, particularly given my history with Admiral Vocaine, the Board would assume I'd somehow nobbled you-"

James snorted.

Daniel flashed him a hard smile. "Yessir," he continued, "but they would. And they'd post me to the job of latrine inspection on West Bumfuck in response."

James chuckled. The sound was rusty as though he hadn't laughed in a while.

"I don't know that it'd be anything quite so dire, Leary," he said, "but it wouldn't have a good result, no. So I haven't done it. I do note that the intelligence of enemy movements which thePrincess Cecile brought was of inestimable value, and that Captain Leary handled his corvette with the skill and courage to be expected of an RCN officer."

"Thank you, sir," Daniel said. He was just as sincere as he'd been when he said he looked like a clown.

"If you'd managed to get yourself killed the way Powell and Meltzer-" the captains of theExpress andEscapade "-did," James continued, "I'd put you in for a Cinnabar Star. In your case, a wreath to the Star. But you don't get even that."

"That's all right, sir," said Daniel, smiling. "Perhaps I'll have better luck next time, eh?"

James laughed again. "Perhaps you will at that, Leary," he said. "Well, it's happened to plenty of others who swore the oath, hasn't it?"

His right index finger ran along the seam of the courier pouch. "I dare say it'd have happened to most of us in the Diamondia Squadron if we'd had those two battlecruisers to deal with also," he said.

Daniel didn't speak. His eyes were on the painted screen on the wall behind the Admiral. It showed a scene on the deserts of Ryndam, a voorloper stalking a casiline bird whose vestigial wings ended in defensive spikes. Did Governor Niven come from Ryndam, or had some interior decorator liked the contrast the screen made with the harbor outside?

An open plastic writing sheet lay on the small table at James' end of the banquette. He picked it up, glanced at it again, and handed it to Daniel.

"I'm sending a personal note to my cousin in the pouch, Leary," James said. "Go on, read it."

Daniel took the document but didn't let his eyes fall onto the writing yet. "Ah, your cousin, sir?" he said.

"What?" said James, a trifle sharply. "Yes, my cousin. You didn't know that Eldridge Vocaine's my wife's aunt's son?"

"Oh," Daniel said. "I didn't know that, sir."

Pursing his lips, he looked down at the letter. The richly grained plastic had a high gloss; he found he had to adjust the angle slightly so that the Admiral's firm, black writing wasn't lost in the reflection of the light sconce.

The Residence, Diamondia