Queen of the Pirates (22 page)

She was well dressed by the local standards, and extremely attractive. Like people on all worlds, she represented an interesting mix of ethnographies. Brown hair framed a heart–shaped face and brown eyes. Her figure was verging on lush, for lack of a better term to describe it. She might have been any age between twenty–five and forty–five. It was hard to judge.

Jessica could see worry scribed on her features as she approached the hospital bed.

“Daneel?” she said, barely above a whisper.

“Hello, Teri,” he said. Jessica rated his carefully neutral voice about the same level as Marcelle’s.

Interesting
.

Teri paused for a moment, obviously looking for the right words. “Are you okay?”

“You should see the other guy,” he replied with a laugh.

Jessica stepped to her left so that she could see both of them at the same time, accidentally mirroring Marcelle, who was doing the same from the other side.

Jessica also felt like a giant next to this newcomer, which was rare, as short as she was compared to most women, to say nothing of men. However, they both probably massed about the same, given the shorter woman’s curves and bosom.

The stranger turned suddenly to Jessica. “Keller, right?”

Jessica nodded.

“Thank you.”

“For?” Jessica felt like she had come into the middle of a previous conversation.

“Bringing him home. Protecting him. Helping.”

“You’re welcome,” Jessica replied. She felt the neutral tones of the room bleed into her conversation as well.
Time to fix that.
She forced a polite smile. “And you are?”

“Ekaterina Estes,” the young woman replied. “Teri.”

She paused, looking for the next words. She didn’t find them quickly enough. The woman was an open book. Concern. Uncertainty. Something deeper?

“Teri,”
Warlock
said quietly. “Why are you here?”

Teri took a deep breath, almost a sigh.

Jessica felt uncomfortable just listening and watching.

She didn’t do emotional scenes. She didn’t enjoy watching them, either.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay, Daneel,” Teri said in a pleading voice. “Isn’t that what friends do?”

“I’m good, Teri,” he replied. “for nearly dying in a duel. In good hands now. And I’ll be back to normal in no time. Does Jean–Michel know you’re here?”

Teri reacted exactly as if
Warlock
had gotten out of bed and slapped her with an open palm. The look of pain and anguish that took over her face almost made Jessica want to punch the man, on general principle.

She refrained, barely.

Marcelle seemed to be thinking similar dark thoughts.

Instead of speaking, Teri turned to Jessica. Jessica felt her look up one side and down the other, with a wild, angry gleam in her eyes, even as Teri’s face flushed.

Jessica almost stepped back from that look. She even considered a couple of blocks and strikes from close range, before she stopped herself.

This woman wouldn’t be crazy enough to attack her. Right?

With a flash of insight, things crystalized around Jessica. The woman, the look, the language, the body language. The banter with
Warlock.

Jealousy
.

Teri saw her as a romantic rival for this man.
Really? Her? Him?

Teri glanced back at
Warlock
, even angrier. “You’re right, Daneel,” she sneered suddenly. “I should be home with my husband instead of worrying about you. You’re fine. You’re always fine, aren’t you?”

The woman gave Jessica another hard look, but she was speaking to
Warlock
anyway. “I can see that I’m not needed here. You’ll be just fine. I’ll take my leave, thank you.”

In a flash, she was gone, with Marcelle trailing in her wake.

Jessica took a breath and tried to figure out what had just happened. She looked back at Daneel. He shrugged.

“It’s complicated,” he said, by way of explanation.

“Ex–girlfriend?” Jessica hazarded a guess.

“Close,” he replied. “Ex–wife.”

Jessica raised an eyebrow at him.

“Complicated.”

“She thought I was the new one, apparently,” Jessica said.

“Teri can be a drama queen,” he said. “Besides, would that be so bad?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Jessica didn’t bother trying to keep the anger out of her voice.

Maybe she should punch him. Knock some sense into the man.

She was tired of getting marriage proposals from pirates. It was getting old, and hadn’t been funny to begin with.

He at least had the courtesy to look chagrined as she rounded on him. Both of his hands came up, although she couldn’t tell if that was a defensive response or surrender.

Better be both, mister.

“Sorry, Keller,” he said. “I spoke out of turn. It won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t, Daneel,” she half–snarled back at him. “We do that sort of thing differently in
Aquitaine
. Perhaps you should learn that sometime.”

Jessica didn’t wait for a response. She stomped to the door, flung it open, and stomped out, surprising Marcelle and the boys guarding the room. Marcelle fell in immediately, letting her longer legs keep up with Jessica’s agitated pace.

About thirty meters down the hallway, getting back into the main parts of Arnulf’s palace, Jessica stopped so suddenly that Marcelle actually ran into her shoulder.

Had she really just told
Warlock
to learn
Aquitaine
customs if he wanted to court her? It had sounded like that coming out of her mouth, once she had time to consider her words.

Crap
.

She certainly couldn’t go back and explain what she really meant.

What had she really meant?

Jessica blinked up at Marcelle, almost in embarrassment, and then continued back down the hall without a word. Silence seemed the least possible evil right now.

But strange thoughts intruded, atop all the tactical and strategic politics that had been filling her morning.

She certainly couldn’t tell Marcelle how the man smelled. There was a rightness to it that hadn’t registered on her before now.

Marcelle would give her no end of grief. Besides, she was the one that chased after men, or women, as the mood struck, not Jessica.

That was not her style. He was not her type.

Did she have a type? Had any man turned her head, ever? Well, one, but he was happily married and didn’t see her that way.

Crap
.

Jessica growled under her breath and set out to locate Desianna’s apartment. Hopefully, that would go over easier than this had.

She really needed another session with the fighting robot.

Chapter XXIX

Date of the Republic November 2, 393 City of Corynthe, Petron

Desianna waited.

She did that well.

Patience.

Water was soft, and yet would grind down mountains with time.

It was patient.

Fire was hot and fast and often painful.

Wind was a burst of energy and then nothing.

Kind of like a few of the men she had known.

This sitting room was as perfect as she could get it. Cozy. Discrete. Subdued.

Nobody was allowed in here except her. Locals would have found the space disconcerting, claustrophobic.

It was, for Desianna, a shrine to her mother. To the time before Father had taken them to the frontier to find his fortune. Before poverty and piracy and
Corynthe
.

Not that she would ever whisper a hint of that to anyone.

She had spent four decades fitting in, making do, overcoming obstacles, going from that little girl in pigtails to the First Wife of
Corynthe
.

Not that she entertained Arnulf very much anymore. Mei Fan was the favored consort now, since Charlotte had died. But still, Desianna kept his attention from time to time, with passions the younger woman hadn’t learned or never discovered.

Her place in his palace was secure.

As long as it was
his
palace.

What did
Aquitaine
want? What did it mean, that they were here, now?

The riptides were building. She could feel them tug at her toes.

Fools would fall. Fortunes would be made.

And an
Aquitaine
fleet hovered overhead.

Desianna remembered to breathe.

She felt almost dowdy today, dressed in simple slate–gray pants and a maroon tunic, Arnulf’s favorite colors. The ensemble made her hair glow softly and her eyes glow like fire.

Only the barest minimum of jewelry today, all gold: a ring from Arnulf, all those years ago; earrings from her son; a bracelet that had been her mother’s.

She felt almost naked without half a pound of gold in bangles and chains and fripperies, to say nothing of pearls and gems and the sorts of jewelry an important, beautiful woman can acquire for a favor or a smile.

And the room was too subtle for someone from
Petron
, even a native of the capital city. The walls were done with a fabric dyed a very dark green, highlighted with gold and white.

Before Keller had arrived, very few people would have seen those colors and realized they were the colors of the Republic.

The space was a proper sitting room such as one might find on
Ladaux
or
Anameleck Prime
, comfortable for two, cozy for four. Small enough for tea. Or conspiracies.

A knock startled Desianna from her reveries.

The door opened partway and a woman peeked in.

“Yes, Intan?” Desianna asked, suddenly breathless with nerves.

“Your guest has arrived,” the woman replied quietly.

“Please, show her in.”

Desianna rose to her feet.

She wiped her suddenly damp hands on the backs of her pants and centered herself.

Calmness. Courtesy. Perfection.

Aquitaine
was here.

Ξ

Jessica entered the inner chamber with a touch of trepidation. The rooms she had passed through had had a very homey feel to them, but in a completely feminine way she found almost alien.

At that last door, as the maid knocked, Jessica flashed back to First Lord Kasum’s door at Fleet HQ. Room 2304.

The Dragon’s Den.

This was almost as far as you could get from that place, socially or politically.

And yet…

Inside, the surprises multiplied.

Her mother would have had a tea room like this, had she ever stopped crafting long enough to dedicate a whole room to formally entertaining visitors. Indira Chastain–Keller, however, would have never parted with the sort of money required to purchase the intricately crafted tea set on the table, nor the little statue of Ganesh, or the Kali–ma, the jade carved rose, or the matched set of antique measuring cups. Even after she could have afforded it.

Not even on a wild splurge. She was just too moderate and careful with her money.

Jessica had been in salons like this, though. When visiting Fleet Lords who represented the Fifty Families of the Republic. Money. Power.

Desianna, as far as she knew, wasn’t one of them. But this room had not been assembled overnight. And it could have graced any number of mansions, back home.

Jessica took the offered chair and sat with all the care she would have, had she just discovered she had navigated into a minefield. A real one, and not just a social construct far beyond her experiences.

Hopefully, not beyond her preparations.

The maid left. The door closed with a heft similar to the primary airlock hatch to Engineering.

Solid.

They were alone. She could trust Desianna. She could trust the food.

She hoped.

The tea was amazing. The little cucumber and dill sandwiches could have been served by her mother, or one of her aunts. And they took those sorts of things extremely serious.

The small talk was carefully vague and obtuse. The weather, the room, the ball.

Idle chatter.

Jessica would have been willing to bet anyone good money that there was not another room like this in the palace, let alone on the planet. Meeting here was a message she hoped she could work with, from someone telling her, in her own way, that she understood
Aquitaine
.

Jessica set down her mostly empty tea mug. She dared hope.

Desianna eyed her warily.

“I don’t know where to begin, Desianna,” Jessica said carefully. Social maneuvering was an alien thing. She was still working on it.

Desianna’s stress levels went down. It was there in the relaxation around the eyes, invisible if Jessica hadn’t already been looking so closely at the woman to see it.

“What brings you to
Corynthe
, Jessica?”

Jessica considered herself again.

At the end of the day, nothing so much as raw Gunboat Diplomacy.

A reminder that
Aquitaine
was an ally of
Lincolnshire
, and
Corynthe
should mind its manners and abide by its treaties. A hope that maybe she could prevent a war that would draw
Aquitaine
in, at the very time when the
Fribourg Empire
was already feeling the weight of the fighting after all the damage she had done a year ago at places like
2218 Svati Prime
or
C’Xindo
.

Desianna waved a hand to forestall whatever words she thought Jessica was going to say.

“You destroyed the base at
Sarmarsh IV
, Jessica,” she continued. “You could have easily killed them all. Why didn’t you?”

Jessica took a breath, and a leap.

“
Aquitaine
doesn’t want a war, Desianna,” she said. “I have a reputation back home as a fighting commander. The hope was that
Corynthe
would recognize what I could do if turned loose. Instead, I’m trying to play nice. Will they?”

“I don’t know, Jessica,” the woman murmured back. “Arnulf has enemies. They would overthrow him in a heartbeat if they could. Every day is a challenge to keep the monsters at bay.”