Read Online Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake - Free Book Online Page B

office where Adele had set up the account, but that was only to be expected. It was on the north slope of Progress Hill, however; easier to walk to than to take a car.
    It was also only to be expected that something was wrong with her account. Well, she'd known poverty before; she could learn to skip meals again.
    She set off through the archway beneath the upper court. It was unadorned concrete, the lighting muted but functional. This passage wasn't meant for show but merely for the use of visitors coming from the north to the Celsus or to offices in the complex.
    Ahead of her walked a noble with a small retinue. A group of minor bureaucrats passed from the other direction, one eating the last of a roll-up and others carrying part-filled mugs. They were talking about a construction project and speculating on how much the contractor would pay for permit approval.
    Adele felt her senses focus down: locking faces in her memory without appear to stare, catching intonations and freezing the precise phrasing of the discussion. She caught herself and rubbed the impulse—though not the series of impressions—from her mind.
    The Xenos municipal government wasn't paying her to root out graft. Still, Adele had spent her life learning to gather and integrate information. The past months with Daniel—and Mistress Sand—had led her to consider other forms of information to remain alive, but she couldn't let that get out of hand if she were to stay sane.
    She grinned. Her sanity was perhaps an unwarranted assumption.
    There was nothing in the call from the bank that required encryption. Besides, if someone did want to know about it, the original message had certainly been in clear. Tovera had relayed it in secure form because Tovera sent all messages to her mistress in code, so that data which was of crucial importance wouldn't stand out because it alone was encrypted.
    Tovera did everything by plan because she lacked the instincts on which normal humans operated most of the time. Guarantor Porra's Fifth Bureau had trained her well . . . and now Tovera did as Adele directed her, just as the pistol in Adele's left jacket pocket would do: no scruples, no hesitation—only action when the trigger is pulled.
    Adele stepped out of the tunnel. She'd checked the address against a map reference but hadn't bothered to call up an image of the building. It was of five stories and, though quite new, had a pillared facade which echoed the architecture of the complex on the hill's reverse slope.
    The small brass plate beside the door read SHIPPERS' AND MERCHANTS' TREASURY; its air of understated elegance would have been anathema to the populist pretensions of Adele's parents. She stopped dead when she read it.
    Adele hoped she had few pretensions, and she'd lived as an impecunious member of "the common people" for too long to find anything in the concept to be idealistic about. Nonetheless, she'd gone to the People's Trust to set up a drawing account. This wasn't her bank, and if somebody thought to play games of that sort with a Mundy of Chatsworth . . .
    She didn't follow the thought through, because she could thus far only visualize a pinkish blur instead of a real face over the barrel of her duelling pistol.
    A doorman bowed politely as he ushered her into the lobby, an unexpectedly small room. A tree with a fan of broad leaves at the top grew from an alcove, lighted by a shaft to the roof high above; beneath it was a receptionist at a desk of age-yellowed ivory.
    The two teller's cages were unoccupied. Closed doors along the back wall gave onto rooms which provided greater privacy for clients.
    "I was directed to Office E," Adele said to the receptionist, wondering if her face showed the anger she was trying to suppress till she was sure of her facts.
    The receptionist touched an unobtrusive button and rose with a smile. "Yes, Mistress Mundy," he said. "Will you come this way, please? It won't be a moment."
    He opened a door into a drawing room