Walter Williams - The Praxis

Alikhan accepted the bottle with gravity. “Thank you, my lord.”

Martinez finished his drink and decided not to pour himself another, at least not yet. The example of the master weaponer was a little too strong. “Too bad it’s the only reward you’re going to get for saving the captain from disgrace.”

“It’s more than I usually get,” Alikhan remarked—and, with an ambiguous smile, braced in salute and left.

Two days later, after the last of the meetings in which the commanding officers refought the maneuver, Fleet Commander Fanaghee announced a Festival of Sport that would take place at Fleet facilities. Teams from every ship in Fanaghee’s command would participate, andCorona’s football team would face Magaria’s own champions from theBombardment of Beijing in a special match. Tarafah announced an intensified program of training for his team, beginning immediately, before the ship even docked.

When Martinez crawled off his watch that night, he didn’t stop at one drink. Or at two.

The bank was built of granite, a miniature Great Refuge complete with dome, probably to suggest permanence, but now, in the absence of the Great Masters, perhaps suggesting something else. Wesley Weckman, the trust manager, was a young man with a prematurely grave manner, though the style of his glossy boots and his fashionable bracelet of human hair suggested that his life outside the bank was not as sedate as his working hours.

“Interest has stayed at three percent in the years since you entered the academy,” he said. “And since you’ve returned most of your allowance to the bank since that time, I’m pleased to report that the total sum now exceeds 29,000 zeniths, all of which I can put in your hands when your trust fund matures on your twenty-third birthday.”

Which was in eleven days. Which made her, in Terran years—she had once known someone who calculated “Earthdays”—just past twenty.

Sula briefly calculated what 29,000 zeniths might buy her. A modest apartment in the High City, or an entire apartment building in a decent section of the Lower Town. A modest villa, with extensive grounds, in the country.

At least a dozen complete outfits from the most fashionable designers of Zanshaa.

Or one perfectly authentic rose Pompadour vase from Vincennes dating from four centuries before the conquest of Terra, conveniently up for auction at the end of the month.

Given prices like that, Sula figured the antimatter bombs had broken a lot of porcelain.

It was a ridiculous fantasy to spend her entire inheritance on a vase, but she felt she’d been working hard for a long time now and deserved a moment of complete irrationality.

“What do I have to do to get the principal?” she asked.

“A small amount of paperwork. I can do it now, if you like, and it will take effect on your birthday.”

Sula grinned. “Why not?”

Weckman printed out the papers in question, and handed them to Sula along with a fat gold-nibbed pen. Then he activated the thumbprint reader and pushed it across his desk.

“You’ve got my thumbprint?” Sula asked in surprise. “From all those years ago?”

Weckman looked at his screens to make certain. “Yes. Of course.”

“I don’t remember giving it.” She crossed her legs, laid the papers on her thigh, and read them carefully. Then she put the papers on the desk, raised the pen above the signature line, and hesitated. “You see,” she said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with the money.”

“The bank employs several investment counselors,” Weckman said. “I can introduce you to Miss Mandolin—I see that she’s at her desk.”

Sula capped the pen. “The problem is, I’m in transit. I don’t even know what my next assignment is going to be.” She put the pen on the desk before Weckman. “Maybe I’ll just leave it in the trust fund, at least till I make Lieutenant.”

“In that case, you need do nothing at all.”

“Is it all right if I keep the papers?”

“Of course.”

She rose, and Weckman bowed as he showed her out of his office.

What would she do with a vase anyway? she thought. She didn’t even own any flowers to put in it.

She decided to visit the auction house again, and say good-bye.

She should have known better than to permit herself certain dreams.

“Put him in the river,” Gredel said. “Just make sure he doesn’t come up.”

Lamey looked at her, a strange silent sympathy in his eyes, and he put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. “I’ll make it all right for you,” he said.

No you won’t, she thought,but you’ll make it better.

The next morning, Nelda threw her out. She looked at Gredel from beneath the slab of gray healing plaster she’d pasted over the cut in her forehead, and she said, “I just can’t have you here anymore. I just can’t.”

For a moment of blank terror Gredel wondered if Antony’s body had come bobbing up under Old Iola Bridge, but then realized that wasn’t it. The previous evening had put Nelda in a position of having to decide who she loved more, Antony or Gredel. She’d opted for Antony, unaware that he was no longer an option.

Gredel went to her mother’s, and Ava’s objections died the moment she saw the bruise on her cheek. Gredel told her what happened—not being stupid, she left out what she’d asked Lamey to do—and Ava hugged her and said she was proud of her.

Ava worked with cosmetics for a long time to hide the damage, then she took Gredel to Maranic Town, to Bonifacio’s for ice cream.

Ava, Lamey, and Panda helped carry Gredel’s belongings to Ava’s place, arms and boxes full of the clothing Lamey and Caro had bought her—the blouses and pants and frocks and coats and capes and hats and shoes and jewelry—all the stuff that had long ago overflowed the closets in her room at Nelda’s and for the most part was lying in neat piles on the old, worn carpet.

Panda was highly impressed by the tidiness of it. “You’ve got asystem here,” he said.

Ave was in a better situation than usual. Her man was married and visited only at regularly scheduled intervals, and he didn’t mind if she spent her free time with family or friends. But Ava didn’t have many friends—her previous men hadn’t let her have any—so she was delighted to spend time with her daughter.

Lamey was disappointed that Gredel didn’t want to move into one of his apartments. “I need my ma right now,” Gredel said, and that seemed to satisfy him.

I don’t want to live with someone who’s going to be killed soon. She kept that thought to herself. And she wondered if she was obliged to live with the boy who had killed for her.

Caro was disappointed as well. “You could have moved in withme! ” she said.

Shimmering delight sang in Gredel’s mind. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“No!” Caro was enthusiastic. “We could be sisters! We could shop and go out—have fun.”

For days Gredel basked in the warm attentions of Caro and her mother. She spent almost all her time with one or the other, to the point that Lamey began to get jealous, or at least topretend that he was jealous—Lamey was sometimes hard to read that way. “Caro’s kidnapped you,” he half joked over the phone. “I’m going to have to send the boys to fetch you back.”

The nights Ava was with her man, Gredel spent with Caro. There was a lot of room in the big bed. She found that Caro didn’t so much go to sleep as put herself into a coma: she loaded endorphins into the med injector and gave herself one dose after another until unconsciousness claimed her.

Gredel was horrified. “Why do you do it?” she asked one night as Caro reached for the injector.

Caro gave her a glare. “Because Ilike it,” she snarled. “I can’t sleep without it.”