Thornbuckle sighed. "Perhaps. She can be . . . provocative. But still—"
"But still you're annoyed because Lieutenant Suiza wasn't more tactful. I sympathize. In the meantime—"
The knock on the door interrupted him; he turned to look. Normally, no one disturbed a private meal here, and that knock had a tempo that alerted them both.
Poisson, the most senior of the private secretaries attached to Lord Thornbuckle's official position, followed on that knock without waiting. Unusual—and more unusual was his face, pale and set as if carved from stone.
"What is it?" asked Thornbuckle. His gaze fixed on the package Poisson carried, the yellow and green stripes familiar from the largest of the commercial express-mail companies, Hymail.
"Milord—milord—" Poisson was never at a loss for words; even when Kemtre abdicated, he had been suavely capable from the first moments. But now, the package he held out quivered from the tremor in his hands.
Thornbuckle felt an all-too-familiar chill as the food he had just eaten turned to a cold lump in his belly. In the months of his Speakership, he had faced crisis after crisis, but none of them had arrived in a Hymail Express package. Still, if Poisson was reacting like this, it must be serious. He reached out for the package, but had to almost pry it from Poisson's grip.
"You opened it," he said.
"With the others that came in, yes, milord. I had no idea—"
Thornbuckle reached into the package and pulled out a sheaf of flatpics; a data cube rolled out when he shook the package upside down. He glanced at the first of the flatpics and time stopped.
In a distant way, he was aware of the way the other flatpics slid out of his grasp, and fell slowly—so slowly—turning and wavering in the air on their way from his hand to the floor. He was aware of Poisson with his hand still extended, of Kevil across the table, of the beat of his own pulse, that had stumbled and then begun to race.
But all he could see, really see, was Brun's face staring into his with an expression of such terror and misery that he could not draw breath.
"Bunny . . . ?" That was Kevil.
Thornbuckle shook his head, clamping his jaw shut on the cry he wanted to give. He closed his eyes, trying to replace the pictured face with one of Brun happy, laughing, but—in his mind's eye, her haunted frightened gaze met his.
He didn't have to look at the rest. He knew what had happened, without going on.
He had to look. He had to know, and then act. Without a word, he passed the first flatpic to Kevil, and leaned over to pick up the rest. They had landed in a scattered heap, and before his hands—steady, he noted with surprise—could gather them together a half-dozen images had seared his eyes: Brun naked, bound to a bunk, a raw wound on her leg where her contraceptive implant had been. Brun in her custom protective suit, with a gag in her mouth, being held by gloved hands. Brun's face again, unconscious and slack, with some kind of instrument in her mouth. Brun . . . he put the stack down, and looked across at Kevil.
"My God, Bunny!" Kevil's face was as white as his own must be.
"Get us a cube reader," Thornbuckle said to Poisson, surprised that he could speak at all past the rapidly enlarging lump in his throat.
"Yes, milord. I'm—"
"Just do it," Thornbuckle said, cutting off whatever Poisson had been planning to say. "And get this cleared away." The very smell of the food on the table nauseated him. As Poisson left, he retrieved the flatpic Kevil had, and turned the whole stack carefully upside down. Two of the serving staff came and cleared the table, eyeing them worriedly but saying nothing. They had just gone out when Poisson returned with a cube reader and screen.
"Here it is, milord."
"Stay." Poisson paused on his way back out.
"Are you sure?" Kevil asked.
"The damage is done," Thornbuckle said. "We'll need at least one of the secretaries to handle communications. But first, we need to see what we're up against." He did not offer Kevil the other flatpics.
The image on the cube reader's screen wavered, as if it were a copy of a badly recorded original, but it was clear enough to see Brun, and the heavily accented voice on the audio—a man's voice—was just understandable. Thornbuckle tried to fix his mind on the words, but time and again he lost track of the man's speech, falling into his daughter's anguish.
When it was done, no one spoke. Thornbuckle struggled with tears; he could hear the other men breathing harshly as well. Finally—he could not have said how long after—he looked up to meet their gaze. For the first time in his experience, Kevil had nothing to say; he shook his head mutely. Poisson was the first to speak.
"Milord—will want to contact the Admiralty."
"Yes." A rough croak, all he could make. Brun, Brun . . . that golden loveliness, that quick intelligence, that laughter . . . reduced to the shambling, mute misery of that recording. It could not be . . . yet, though recordings could be faked, he knew in his heart that this one had not been. "The Admiralty, by all means. We must find her. I'll go—get transport." He knew as he said it how impossible that could be. In Familias space alone, there were hundreds of worlds, thousands perhaps—he had never actually counted—where someone might be lost forever. Poisson bowed and went out. He had not told the man to be discreet—but Poisson had been born discreet.
"We will find her," Kevil said, the rich trained voice loaded with the overtones that had moved courtrooms. "We must—"
"And if we don't?" Thornbuckle felt his control wavering, and pushed himself up out of the chair. If he stood, if he walked, if he acted, perhaps he would not collapse in an agony that could not help Brun. "What am I going to tell Miranda?"
"For now, nothing," Kevil said. "It might still be a fake—"
"You don't believe that."
"No. But I want someone expert with image enhancement to work on it before you tell her."
"Look at those," Thornbuckle said, gesturing at the pile of flatpics on the table. He stared out into the green and gold garden, the water dimpling as a breeze swept across it. Behind him, he heard Kevil's breath catch, and catch again. Then the chair moved, and he felt more than heard Kevil come up behind him.
"We will get her back," Kevil said, this time with no courtroom overtones. It was as if the rock itself had spoken. Not for the first time, Thornbuckle was aware of the depth of character that lay behind Kevil's easy, practiced manner. "Do you want me to concentrate on the search, or the administration?"
"I have to go," Thornbuckle said.
"Then I'll work with—whom do you want to act as Speaker while you're gone?"
"Could you?"
"I doubt it, not without starting a row. Your best bet would be a Cavendish, a de Marktos, or a Barraclough. I can certainly stay as legal advisor, and hold the carnage to a minimum. But you're the only one everyone trusts right now. Almost everyone."
"Your transportation is here, sir." Poisson again.
"I'll come with you this far," Kevil said. It was not a question.
"Thank you." Thornbuckle did not entirely trust his voice. "I'll . . . just wash up, I think." He gathered up the flatpics and the data cube, stuffing them back into the striped package. Kevil nodded and went on toward the side entrance.
Thornbuckle looked at his face in the mirror after splashing cold water on it. He looked . . . surprisingly normal. Pale, tired, angry . . . well, that he was. After the shock, the pain, came the anger . . . deep, and burning hotter every moment. Without his quite realizing how, it spread from the thugs who had perpetrated this most recent abomination to everyone who had contributed to it . . . the blaze spreading back down the trail Brun had taken, outlining in flame every person who had influenced her on that path.
When he left the dining room he was still in shock . . . by the time he arrived at the Admiralty, he was already beginning to think whom else to blame. Kevil, sitting beside him in the groundcar, said nothing to interfere with the inexorable progress of his rage.
At the Admiralty's planetside headquarters, a commander awaited him . . . someone he remembered from the briefings of the past week, when the replacement of ships from the Xavier action had been under discussion. He realized with a shock that Poisson had not told them what this was about—and then that Poisson had been right.
He nodded to the commander, and as soon as they were inside said, "This is not about the budget; I need to speak to the highest ranking officer present."
"Yes, sir; Admiral Glaslin is waiting. Secretary Poisson said it was confidential and urgent. But since I had met you before, he thought I should be your escort."
Admiral Glaslin—tall and angular, with a heronlike droop of neck—met him in the anteroom and led them into the inner office. "Lord Thornbuckle—how may we help you?"
Thornbuckle threw the package on the desk. "You can find these . . . persons . . . and my daughter."
"Sir?"
"Look inside," Kevil said quietly. "Lord Thornbuckle's daughter has been abducted and mutilated—"
The admiral's mouth opened, then he shut it firmly and emptied the contents of the package onto his desk. At the sight of the flatpics, his face paled from its normal bronze to an unattractive mud color. "When did you get this?"
"Just now," Thornbuckle said.
"It was delivered sixty-four minutes ago, at the palace, as part of the normal Hymail Express daily delivery; Secretary Poisson opened it because it was labelled
Personal
, and when he realized its nature, brought it immediately to Lord Thornbuckle." Kevil paused in his recitation until the admiral nodded. "We were eating lunch, at the time. We have also viewed the data cube."
"Same as the flatpics?"
"The data cube contains both a video record of the capture and an apparent surgical procedure, and audio threats against the government of the Familias Regnant."
"Lord Thornbuckle?" The admiral looked at him.
"I—didn't hear most of the words. Kevil will be correct, however. I want a copy, when you've made one—"
The admiral looked at Kevil. "Do you think that's wise—?"
"Dammit, man! I'm the Speaker; I know what I need!"
"Certainly. But I must tell you—this will have to go to the Grand Admiral—"
"Of course. The sooner the better. You have to find her—" Thornbuckle forced himself to stand, to shake the admiral's hand, to turn and walk out of the office, down the polished corridors, to the entrance where his car waited.
Twelve hours later, Thornbuckle woke from a fitful doze at the approach of the Grand Admiral's aide.
"They're here now, milord."
The conference room, as secure as any room could be, was crammed with officers. Thornbuckle reminded himself that the blue shoulder-flashes were Intelligence, and the green were Technical. At one end of the long black table, Grand Admiral Savanche leaned forward, and at the other was the only empty seat in the room, waiting for the government's senior civilian representative: himself.
He edged past the others to his place, and stood there facing Savanche.
"You've seen the recording," Lord Thornbuckle said. "What I want to know is, what kind of force are you committing to getting her back?"
"There's not a damn thing we can do," Grand Admiral Savanche said. After a brief pause, he appended, "Sir."
"There has to be." Thornbuckle's voice was flat, even, and unyielding.
"We can search," Savanche said. "Which we're doing. We have experts going through the intel database, trying to figure out who these people are, and thus where they might be."
"You have to—"
"My Lord Thornbuckle. Your daughter has not made any official checkpoint since Podj, sixty-two days ago. We have already begun running the traffic records and sightings from all stations—but there are thousands, tens of thousands, of stations, just in Familias space alone. You have three orbiting your own Sirialis. With the staff we can release for this, that's going to take weeks to months, just to sift the existing data."
"That's not good enough," Thornbuckle said.
"With all due respect, my lord, given the recent incursions by the Compassionate Hand and the Bloodhorde, we dare not divert resources from our borders. They can certainly add surveillance for your daughter or her ship to their other duties; those orders have gone out. But it would be suicidal to put all Fleet on this single mission."
"Tell me what else you have done," Thornbuckle said.
"We know that she leased the yacht
Jester
from Allsystems; ten personnel identified as your personal militia boarded with her. Allsystems has provided us full identification profiles for that ship; if it shows up in Familias space, within range of any of our ships, we will know it. We know that she took it from Correlia to Podj without incident. Do you know where she was going next?"