S. Stirling - Conquistador

The door swung open. Well, I was wrong, the Colletta thought mordantly.

“Major Mattei,” he said.

The soldier saluted and then bowed. “Sir,” he said. “I have been ordered to bring you the decision of the Chairman.”

“As if I didn’t know it,” the Colletta said; he could feel the eyes boring into his back, from the portrait above.

Mattei silently drew the pistol at his side and laid it on the desk before his overlord. “Chairman Rolfe says that he allows this—and the survival of the Colletta domain—as a favor to his old friend, your father.”

Giovanni felt the hot flush of anger on his cheeks. “He would spare my son anyway! There is nothing to tie him to my actions. Why should I make his political life easier?”

Mattei sighed. “Sir, I am afraid that Chairman Emeritus Rolfe predicted that would be your answer.”

Giovanni snorted, turning half away from the man who had commanded the domain’s troops. Mattei took up the pistol, and the Colletta had a brief moment of utter surprise as he saw it leveled.

“Which is why he allowed me two rounds,” Mattei murmured, looking at the body sprawled back in the rich leather of the chair. Was that a glint of amusement in the painted eyes in the portrait on the wall above?

“Two rounds, so that I could perform this last service for you, sir. And for your House.”

He raised the pistol to his own temple, then shook his head. Better to be safe, even if it was inelegant; if he had a private horror, it was to be a human vegetable hooked to machines. He sat at the feet of the chair—of the man he had followed for so long. Better that he be found so, to make it plain the Colletta had taken his own life, and his faithful retainer had followed him.

The metal of the automatic tasted bitter and oily in his mouth, but not for long.

“Most pleasures fade with age,” John Rolfe said quietly, obviously savoring the smoke of the cigarillo. “One of the few exceptions is power—not least because it enables one to punish one’s enemies and reward one’s friends.”

Outside the elegant octagonal office, the rains of winter streaked down on the glass of the windows; a fire crackled merrily in the hearth, and a cat curled asleep on the rug before it. There was a hint of the pleasant odor of burning oak mingled with fine tobacco and the scent of a snifter of brandy nearby.

And all ends well, Tom Christiansen thought, shifting his weight to spare the right leg. And just how ironic am I being, there?

John Rolfe waved him to a seat. “I insist,” he said, then grinned, a charmingly wicked expression in the ancient seamed face. “Pains in the leg are something I’m thoroughly familiar with…. Mr. Christiansen, do you know what my favorite part of a Shakespearian drama always was?”

“No, sir.”

“The end, where the duke or prince comes out and plays deus ex machina.”

Adrienne chuckled slightly beside Tom on the sofa. “And I’m the raccoon in the background, Grandfather?” she said.

Well, you won’t be looking like a raccoon much longer, Tom thought stoutly. The reconstructive surgery was over, and the bruises that covered most of her face would fade. Her hand stole into his, and he gripped it gently. Her grandfather went on:

“Now… Mr. Tully, I assume you and this young woman intend to marry?”

“Yes, sir,” Tully said, taking Sandra Margolin’s hand as she sat nervously in her wheelchair; one leg was still in a cast, waiting for the last in a series of ceramic-and-titanium implants to bond with the bone.

“The young heal quickly,” John Rolfe said. “In heart not least. And your marital intentions are very convenient. So much so that I would have had to insist….”

The ancient eagle eyes turned on Salvatore Colletta II: “Young Salvo, we’re tying up loose ends right now, and this young lady is—albeit on the wrong side of the blanket—a cousin of yours. I presume you’re not going to be tiresome about a DNA test?”

“No, sir,” the Colletta said. “Of course, I will have her enrolled among the collaterals of my House at once.”

Since you’re on long-term probation and escaped execution only by virtue of your father’s extremely convenient suicide and extremely detailed documentation proving you were entirely in the dark, Tom thought mordantly. I am somehow not surprised.

“Just so,” John Rolfe VI nodded. “It will do the Commonwealth good to have that group… diversified. And that will make you, Mr. Tully, a member of the Thirty. Hmmm. Of course, you and your bride will also be eligible for an estate of your own in the Colletta domain. I think the Colletta, all things considered, would find the Owens Valley and its attached silver mine a suitable endowment. Especially in view of the long delay in regularizing Ms. Margolin’s status.”

“Of course, sir,” the second Salvatore said. He surprised them all with a smile. “It doesn’t have very positive associations for me, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, sir.”

Rolfe smiled, a sly expression this time. “And the Tully family will have an Indian princess at its genealogical root, just like the Rolfes.”

He trickled smoke through his nostrils. “Now, let me think…. I’ve given the Batyushkov domain to young Siegfried von Traupitz; it would be embarrassing for him to inherit from his father, after killing the man. Let his younger brother take the original domain and committee seat, when he reaches his majority.”

“That was a good idea. And you should do something for Jim Simmons, Grandfather,” Adrienne Rolfe said.

“Seeing as he’s dead and has no immediate family, what can I do besides a posthumous medal?”

“Something for Kolomusnim’s family. Jim’s tracker. He’d want that.”

“Ah.” The elder Rolfe closed his eyes, then sighed. “Very well. I’ll arrange for citizenship for the tracker’s children, and scholarships, and I’ll enjoin Charles to keep an eye on them in matters of patronage, according to their abilities…. I suppose you will too? Excellent. Loyalty must run both ways. And for you, Mr. Villers? What would you have of me? My House is in your debt, as well. Although I doubt, to be frank, your underlying devotion to its cause.”

The black man met the leaf green eyes levelly. “Well, you gave Good Star a whole country down in Sonora,” he said. “You going to promote me to the Families as well?”

The old man grinned like a shark. “I suspect that you wish me to do so, Mr. Villers, only in order that you may throw it back in my face.”

Henry Villers’s own face fell a little. Tom smiled to himself; there were no flies on John Rolfe VI, even if he was slowing down a bit.

I suspect this will be his last hurrah, though, after he’s tied up the ends, he thought. John Rolfe VI was enjoying himself, but he did look pretty tired. A fitting conclusion.

“Well, Mr. Villers, what would you say to a job?” Villers looked startled. “You were a soldier, and a detective, and a very good one, I understand. You ferreted out our secret, after all. Now, what would you say to… mmm, shall we say a captain’s commission? Gate Security must be rebuilt, after all….”

Tom nodded sympathetically as he saw temptation warring with impulse on the other man’s face. That wouldn’t only make Villers an important man; it would guarantee his children’s positions in the Commonwealth, too. Nepotism was an established mode of operation here. He’d have the power to push their careers forward as well, and he’d have a set of powerful patrons backing him while he did it.