Change of Command Read online

  "Get out of that," Cecelia said, but without much heat. She herself had sneaked a look at the hay receipts for other owners, wondering if they had a better source. Everyone snooped in stable offices.

  "You're looking splendid," Pedar Orregiemos said. "Still—terrible news, terrible news."

  "Yes, it is." Cecelia sat down heavily in one of the battered leather chairs. "I'm still not really grasping it."

  "I came over because I knew you'd been close to both of them," Pedar said.

  Cecelia looked up sharply. "Both of them?"

  "Bunny and Kevil, I mean. At least, that's what the word was, the past few years. People were even twitting young George about it."

  "About me and Kevil?"

  He shrugged. "And why not?"

  "Kevil and I are friends," Cecelia said, almost spitting the words out. "Friends, not lovers." Well, only twice, after which they'd both agreed it wasn't working nearly as well as they'd hoped. "Yes, I spent a lot of time with him after my rejuvenation, because I needed his legal advice to untangle my affairs. But that's all." She was aware of the heat in her face, mixed anger and shame.

  "Well, a friend, then. But still . . . I was sure you'd be upset, so I came over to check on you."

  Disgusting little climber. Yes, he was rich, and yes, his family was Seated, but he was, compared to her, a minor twig on the very large and ancient Conselline elm . . . her branch of the Aranlake Sept made up a much greater percentage of the even larger and older Barraclough oak.

  Cecelia pushed that back down. She wasn't the sort of person who worshipped a family tree; people didn't get to choose their parentage. Pedar's mannerisms, more pronounced in old age and despite several rejuvenations, had been there from the day she first met him, at someone's birthday party. He wanted to be a protector . . . bad luck for him that she didn't need protecting.

  "I'm fine, Pedar. I'll be fine—I'll grieve, and then I'll get over it."

  "Why don't you let me take you to dinner?"

  As so often, the kind impulse that was exactly wrong. "Not tonight, please. I just want to go back and cry a little. Another time, perhaps."

  "I'll hold you to it," Pedar said, and bowed politely. Go away, Cecelia thought, as loudly as she could while holding a polite smile that made her face ache. He bowed again and left.

  She and Bunny had laughed about Pedar, from time to time—trusting each other not to share that fact. His stiff little bows; his exaggerated courtesies; his passion for antique clothing and sports even more useless than foxhunting and eventing.

  She would never have Bunny to laugh with again. She would never see that long, foolish face come alight with intelligence, with his quick wit. She would never warm herself at the glow of the love between Bunny and Miranda . . . a love she had watched grow and deepen over the many decades she'd known them both.

  Tears ran down her face, and when Dale came back to the office, she was curled into the big chair, and didn't hear him step in, then quietly close the door behind him when he left again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CASTLE ROCK, THE OLD PALACE

  The day of Bunny's funeral dawned clear and cold. Miranda woke before dawn, and watched the light seep into the eastern sky. She lay still beneath the covers, feeling the weight of them, reluctant to leave that warm nest and face what would be a long and difficult day. Their room—her room—was not cold, but she had not felt warm since that first horrible moment when they'd told her Bunny was dead.

  A faint click, then music so soft she could barely hear it—the music she had chosen herself. She reached over and punched up the volume—no sense in that slow crescendo if she was already awake—and threw off the covers in one angry gesture.

  Bunny was dead. Nothing would change that, not the music, not the dawn, not whatever mood she was in. Beneath her feet, the carpet was still soft and thick. Around her shoulders, the fleecy jacket warmed her.

  Bunny was dead. She was alive, and beautiful (she heard people whispering, and after all it was true) and very, very wealthy.

  Faintly, through the closed door, she heard a lusty cry.

  Wealthy, and the grandmother of bastards whose fathers were, if not dead, criminals and no doubt partners of those who had killed Bunny.

  Miranda had not told Bunny how she felt about those babies. Grandmothers were supposed to have a natural love for grandchildren, but she could not see those boys as anything but vandalism perpetrated on her daughter.

  Bunny had seen it differently. Bunny had assumed she would love them, if Brun couldn't; Bunny had assumed she would organize their care.

  Bunny was dead.

  She stood, unable to move for a long moment. It wasn't supposed to be like this. People their age were supposed to be adult, mature, stable . . . they were resigned to loss, said the books she'd read.

  She wasn't resigned. She wanted to shake her fist and scream at the sky; she wanted to fall off a cliff and drown. The secret was that the rich had hearts too . . . she had loved Bunny the way girls in romance storycubes loved their heroes, and forty years of marriage had not changed that.

  And he was dead.

  And she was alive, with children and grandchildren and bastard grandchildren who were not at fault for their fathers' sins, and a daughter still healing from what had been done to her, and all Bunny's hopes and dreams for the peace of the world crashing down around them, shattered.

  When her maid knocked, Miranda smiled and calmly accepted a cup of tea, which she drank with perfect composure while her maid ran her bath.

  Brun Meager had wakened even earlier, when the twins cried, as they often did, in the middle of the night. They should be sleeping through the night, the nursemaids said, but they hadn't done so more than one night in four since they were taken from Our Texas. And Brun had discovered, to her annoyance, that when they woke, she also woke, even if someone else was doing the feeding and cleaning.

  She used the time to exercise, the exercises she never skipped these days. By the time her maid knocked, she had already worked herself into a sweat, and showered herself back to normal. In the mirrors of the bath, her face stared back at her, strange after nearly two standard years without a mirror . . . an older face, a harder face, but—in spite of everything—a face of memorable beauty.

  Something would have to be done about that . . . but not today. Today she would walk with her mother, her brothers, her older sister, in the funeral procession; today she would hold her head high in the face of the universe. They had forced her to bear their children. They could not force her to hide.

  PALACE SECURITY, CASTLE ROCK

  Colonel Bai-Darlin had not slept all night. Organizing a state funeral had always been—would always be—a nightmare of protocol and endless complicated detail, but ordinarily a state funeral was not mixed with a top-level security concern. Even when a head of state was assassinated, that usually ended the threat. Only 23.87 percent of political assassinations in the past five hundred years had been followed by subsequent assassinations.

  But this was different. The other branches of the New Texas Godfearing Militia had specifically threatened Lord Thornbuckle and his family, with additional threats to Hazel Takeris, the Rangers' wives and female dependents, and several members of the Regular Space Service, including Admiral Vida Serrano. Fleet, Colonel Bai-Darlin thought, could protect its own. His responsibility was the safety of the civilians, specifically those who would be present, vulnerable, in the funeral procession.

  His predecessor, Colonel Harris, was even now trying to explain why they had not taken sufficient precautions, why Lord Thornbuckle had died, and no one—not one single Militia member or sympathizer—had been captured.

  He would have to assume they'd try again. He would have to assume that everything Harris had done was wrong—that Harris had missed something vital.

  Unless it wasn't the New Texas Godfearing Militia after all. Bai-Darlin's head lifted, as if scenting game. What if it were someone else, someone trying to use the ho
theaded NewTex as a cover?

  In that case, the funeral would probably go off without a hitch. Which, at the moment, was all he cared about.

  Brun eyed her mother as they came out onto the porch, into the cold sunlight. Security, dark-uniformed and obviously armed, hovered around them. Five cars, all identical polished burgundy with black and gold trim, awaited them.

  "Five?" Brun said.

  "Security," her mother said. "Four of them are drags."

  "Ah." Four would lay false trails, though since everyone knew where the funeral would be held, she didn't see how that would help.

  She could at least notice who was here, and who had not been able to—or wanted to—come. No Lady Cecelia . . . well, it was the Wherrin Trials, after all, and she might not even have heard yet. Her sister Berenice, though, and her brother Abelard. No Raffa or Ronnie—absurd how she had missed them. Raffa's Aunt Marta Saenz, such a support to her father while she was missing—her mother's report of that had been just a touch acidic—had gone back to her own world as soon as Brun returned. No George—but of course the odious George had his own critically wounded father to watch over. Of their own sept, her father's younger brother Harlis, and his son Kell, who didn't look to have improved from her last memory of him. A whole raft of Consellines, most of whom she didn't know well enough to put names to, and Venezia Morrelline.

  In ordinary times—not that the death of her father would ever have been ordinary—Kevil Mahoney would have given the eulogy. Instead it was her Uncle Harlis, and the eulogy slid into a subtle critique of her father's policies. A fine man, a man with strong family loyalties . . . to his children, a man of great abilities who had perhaps not quite lived up to them . . .

  "Ballocks!" That low mutter was a great-great-uncle in the Barraclough main line. He took the floor next, praising Bunny the way Brun had expected him to be praised. That was the father she remembered: generous, loyal, intelligent, capable.

  Others followed. Political friends, describing how Lord Thornbuckle's tactful but firm handling of the government had held it together when Kemtre abdicated. Political enemies, praising with delicate cuts at her father's occasional mistakes, and being so tactful in ignoring the obvious one that Brun found herself the target of one covert glance after another.

  If it hadn't been for her—if it hadn't been for her idiot rashness—her father would still be alive, and in power, and these sly critics would be silent. She glanced down at her mother's hands, and saw the knuckles whitening the skin, though Miranda's face betrayed nothing. Guilt, sorrow, shame . . . and a deep, deep anger. It was her fault—in part—but it was not all her fault. Their maneuvering, their use of her misfortune and her father's death—that was their responsibility.

  She had been determined to go away, to change herself into someone else, and break the connection with the rash young Brun who fell into captivity; but watching her father's enemies—enemies she had not known he had—at her father's funeral, that resolve weakened.

  Prima Bowie sat embroidering a collar with a row of tiny green leaves, and kept a sharp eye on her household. It was hard to realize that only a short time ago she had been Prima Bowie in truth, Mitch's first wife and mother of nine children, with a real household to manage, a household with a garden and weaving shed, with courtyards for the children, and servants and tutors. Now she was Prima Bowie on her new Familias identity card, because that's what Hazel had told them, and even Hazel didn't know that wasn't a name but a title. She had been called Ruth Ann in childhood, long before she was any man's prima, but no one had called her that since her father died. And Mitch's last name wasn't Bowie—that was his title. He was really a Pardue. So her name ought to be Ruth Ann Pardue.

  Should she tell someone? It would not be fitting to be called Prima Serrano, when that young woman became his first wife. She knew that, even as she hated the thought of being second or third behind such a young thing—and, what was worse, a heathen abomination who was actually in the military.

  "Prima?" She looked up, to see Simplicity in the doorway. "Hazel's here, Mama . . . Prima . . ."

  Simplicity had never learned not to call her Mama. Prima wished again that Mitch had not made such a fuss about it, but he had, and she'd had to send the child to the servant's hall even before she was out of the virgin's bower. It occurred to Prima that now she could reverse that decision.

  "It's all right to call me mama here, Simplicity," she said softly. The girl's expression relaxed.

  "Mama! But the Ranger—"

  "Isn't here. You may say Mama."

  Simplicity ran over, just like the small child she was inside, and hugged Prima clumsily. "Love you, Mama."

  "I love you, Simplicity," Prima said, greatly daring. She patted the girl on the shoulder. "There now. Go to the kitchen and bring us some lemonade."

  "Yes, Mama." Simplicity had always been biddable and sweet; Prima could not help wishing Mitch had appreciated that sweetness more.

  Hazel tapped at the doorframe. "Prima?"

  "Yes." Prima pushed the needle through her work, and laid it aside. "Come in, have a seat. What is the news?"

  Hazel looked at her. "You could turn on a vid."

  "Full of nonsense," Prima said. "All that arguing, and bad language, too." She didn't mention the other things she had found there by accident. Men and women with no clothes on, doing things she had never imagined they could do.

  "Lord Thornbuckle's funeral was today," Hazel said.

  Prima knew that. Everyone knew that. Even with the vid turned off, there was no way to avoid knowing that the Speaker of the Table of Ministers, whose daughter had started all the troubles, had died and was being—not buried, because they didn't do that here, but . . . but whatever they called it, today.

  It was all his fault, really. Prima wanted to believe that, wanted to believe that if that one arrogant blond man had not been so bad a father that his daughter had fallen into captivity, then she would still be Prima Bowie, first wife of a Ranger, safe and happy in the household she had known—had helped make—since her wedding.

  That was a comfortable thought. All his fault, and Mitch the innocent dupe of heathens. Herself an innocent victim. The children . . . Prima sighed. Try as she might, she could not convince herself—quite—that it was all Lord Thornbuckle's fault. Or even his daughter's, though she loathed the tall yellow-haired woman.

  "Prima—" Hazel was leaning forward. "I'm sorry, but—I really need to talk to you about your plans."

  "My plans?" Prima stiffened, her fingers pausing for a moment in their busy work. "What do you mean?"

  "Everyone wants to know what you are going to do—about the children's schooling, about supporting yourself—"

  "Supporting myself!" Prima fastened on that; she was not about to discuss sending the children out to one of the heathen schools. "But the Serranos promised protection—"

  "Protection, yes. But there are hundreds of you, all told—they can't afford to support all of you, not like this—"

  Like this, in a warren of indoor rooms in a tall building, with windows that looked out on more tall buildings. Prima would have given anything for a bit of ground to walk on, sky to look at.

  "And there are laws about the children, about schooling."

  That she could answer. "I am not sending my children to some heathen school to be taught vileness—"

  "There are religious schools," Hazel said. "I brought you a cube—"

  A cube. Which she could access only with a cube reader. A machine. Machines, the parsons had always said, would make women lazy.

  "I need to change my name," she said abruptly. Hazel looked surprised. "I'm not Mitch's Prima anymore," she said. "Ruth Ann was my birth name, and I should be Ruth Ann again."

  "Ruth Ann," Hazel said softly, tasting it in her mouth. "It's a pretty name."

  "It sounds strange to me; no one's called me that since my parents, years ago."

  "Didn't they keep calling you—?"

  "No, it wouldn't
have been fitting. I was Prima Pardue from the day I married Mitch, and Prima Bowie from the day he became Ranger." She fidgeted a bit, wishing she didn't have to ask what she wanted to know. "Hazel . . . I never see anyone like Simplicity, even on the vid, when I do watch it. Surely your people have children that turn out . . . not quite . . . right?"

  "Not many," Hazel said. She flushed; Prima knew something forbidden was in her mind. "I know you don't like to hear it, but—people do tests and medical treatment even before babies are born, to be sure nothing is wrong with them. Then, if something happens during pregnancy or birth, they fix it."

  "Fix it." Like a door? But people weren't doors and shutters and shoes and . . . "How can you fix a mind?" she asked, greatly daring.

  "I don't know." Hazel's flush faded. "I'm still young; I haven't finished my schooling, and I never studied any medicine."

  "Could they fix . . . Simplicity . . . now?"

  "I don't think so," Hazel said. "I can ask. But I think they have to be younger." She cocked her head. "But Prima—Ruth, I mean—there's no need to `fix' Simplicity. She's a sweet, loving person the way she is."

  "Your people don't value sweetness," Prima said. "They value intelligence."

  Hazel paused, looking thoughtful. "There are many places in the Familias where that's true, but there are also many places that will value Simplicity for her gentleness, her kindness. I think you misjudge us. If you want to find a place—"

  "No. I don't want to send her away! That's what Mitch said!" That's what Mitch had done. It still hurt her, that Simplicity had had to endure months in that nursery away from the home she loved.

  "I didn't mean send her away. I meant go with her to a place where she'd be welcome."

  "I can't go anywhere without my—without Ensign Serrano's permission."

  "You could tell him what you want."

  "Hazel—you know I can't do that. He's my—well, not husband, the way he should be, but he's our protector. It is for him to decide what to do with us."