She could feel the heat in her face. Yet—if he laughed at her like that, he was not afraid of her wits. She allowed her voice to carry a little sting. "I see what you mean, Pedar. Those who cannot afford rejuvenation, or who are simply impatient, see ahead of them a lifetime of blocked opportunities—blocked by the Rejuvenants. But the universe is large—if they are discontented and ambitious enough, there are colony worlds—"
"Theft is always more profitable, until the thief is caught," Pedar murmured.
"That's—" She was about to say ridiculous, when a tension in Pedar's face silenced her.
She had too much to think about, and she did not really want to think about any of it. Of what use were her wealth, and her skills, and her rejuvenated body, if she couldn't do what she liked without having to worry about the rest of the universe? What she had wanted—what she hoped to gain—was a long life full of her own particular pleasures . . . which began, though they did not end, in that stable block on Rotterdam. Which centered on horses and the people who had identified themselves as horse people since long before humans left Old Earth.
She reminded herself that she had time for both, now. No longer need she fear the advancing years, the aging of joints and bones that would make her slower, clumsier. She could afford to spend a few months now dealing with whatever complication Pedar meant, without losing it.
But she didn't want to.
And Pedar knew that. As she dipped the asymmetrical spoon always used with Biaristi cold soups, as she refreshed her mouth afterwards with a sip of Eran ale, and went on to the crunchy-coated strips of spiced rock grouse, she was aware that Pedar, in sounding her out, was expecting exactly the retreat she most wanted to make. He had turned the conversation back to the Trials, to her chances, and his. She answered automatically, but watched as from a distance the subtle signals of his expressions.
What a toad the man was, after all. He would dangle some conspiracy in front of her for his own amusement, sure that she could not concentrate on anything but horses for long enough to learn anything dangerous, or do anything . . .
"I think you're quite right to ride anyway," Pedar said. "After all, it's too late to attend any ceremony."
"The horse is ready," Cecelia said, fighting back an urge to change her mind and not ride after all. "And so am I. You're staying too."
"For the same reasons," Pedar said. "I'm ready; my horse is ready, and my competition . . . is here."
And because it gave him a strong apparent alibi. While someone had plotted Bunny's assassination, Pedar had been very publicly visible a very long way away, supervising his horse in training for the Senior Trials. Cecelia knew it would have been possible to have it done—anyone knew that—but finding and proving the links would be more difficult. And dangerous.
She was, she discovered on the day, more ready than she knew for this particular event. While nothing could make the Senior Trials effortless, she was hardly aware of the effort she exerted. Seniority reacted well to her detached calmness, and put in faultless cross-country and stadium rounds . . . which, in the end, were enough to win, when the dressage leader (also faultless in cross-country) had a rail down the next day. Liam Ardahi had to withdraw during the cross-country, when Plantagenet refused the water repeatedly. Cecelia wondered if that were entirely an accident; Plantagenet had always been bold into water. But if Pedar wanted her distracted by a major win . . . he was ruthlessly competitive, but he had won a much larger competition—as he saw it.
She smiled for the press on her victory gallop, and remembered to thank all her staff, enclosing a personal note with the bonus credit each received. At the reception that evening, she wore her amber necklace carved in the likeness of Epona. Like that enigmatic goddess, she smiled and accepted congratulations, finally pleading a sore elbow in order to leave before midnight.
An hour later, wearing a groom's overall, she was hacking down the dark road to the spaceport on Max, whose alert ears and brisk movement revealed that the horse, at least, thought this was a fine idea. If anyone asked, her groundcar was parked in the stable lot, and everyone knew that she was likely to have gone to the stables to end the night's celebration there. Colum had had Max saddled for her—an extra hack would do that one no harm—but had been out of sight when she led the horse out.
Five kilometers away, where a service road met the tracks of A Course, Phase C, Dale waited with the truck and trailer, in which a horse stamped its impatience; Roz had driven her own battered little groundcar. Cecelia swung off Max, helped load him in the trailer beside Dulcy—Max could be difficult to load in an empty trailer—then struggled with the car's cranky driver-side door. Roz slammed it from outside, and climbed into the truck; Cece drove off alone to the regional airport.
The advantage of piloting her own ship was that her flight plan and her actual destination need have nothing to do with each other. She had discussed with her staff the training schedule for Seniority and Max for the rest of the season, and told them she was going to visit EquiSite's lab before returning to Rotterdam, to check on a new gene-sculpting technique only recently applied to horses.
Then she filed a flight plan for Rotterdam, knowing that her staff would not comment.
Her new planet-to-jump craft allowed her to bypass Zenebra's crowded station. She expected Pedar to check on her flight plan, and her jump vector. Fine. Let him check. The exit vector for Rotterdam actually led to the first intermediate jump point, and from there she could route to Castle Rock easily. She spared a moment to thank Heris for suggesting that she get a license and learn to pilot her own craft.
Though she did miss the luxury of
Sweet Delight
, and the deference accorded a full-size yacht. What she really wanted was another long, hot bath and a massage. She had managed to cram in a small wet-bath facility and the necessary recycling gear by eliminating any possibility of inviting someone else along. So a shower and no massage, and she would expect to wake up stiff in the morning. Even a rejuvenated body couldn't do the Senior Trials without strain.
Still, it was worth it.
Pounce
had more speed than her old yacht, as well as the ability to land onplanet. She was past the orbital station now, following the beacons out to the system's jump point.
Two uneventful transits after leaving Zenebra, Cecelia was in Castle Rock's nearspace, confirming that Miranda was still onplanet and still in residence in the Old Palace. When she called, the staff person who answered reported that Miranda would indeed be willing to see her. Cecelia made her shuttle reservation while waiting for the station tug to bump her gently into the docking harness. The paperwork necessary to clear the Rockhouse Major Dockmaster and Customs seemed to take forever (had Heris really coped with this much, or was it worse because of the assassination?) but she made her shuttle with a few minutes to spare. She saw no one she knew on Rockhouse Major, and no one familiar on the down shuttle. That suited her; she was in no mood to talk to any of her acquaintances.
But when she came out of the shuttleport entryway, looking for a hirecar, she saw one of the long black official cars, with the Familias seal on the doors, and the driver clearly recognized her.
"Lady Cecelia?"
"Yes?"
"Lady Miranda sent us for you. Your luggage?"
"In the dump," Cecelia said, handing over the ID strip. The driver nodded to his second, who took the strip and went off toward the dumps. Belatedly, Cecelia wondered if she should make sure of their identity and authorization—Heris, she thought, would be scolding her if Heris were here. But the driver was now holding out a flat packet.
"Lady Miranda wanted you to have this first," he said.
Cecelia opened it. A note from Miranda, and a flatpic of the driver and assistant. "You may not be worried," the note said, "but we have learned we must all take precautions. I look forward to seeing you."
In minutes, the assistant was back with Cecelia's few pieces of luggage, all marked with the striped tape that meant they'd passed Customs. Cecelia got into the car and wondered, as it shot forward into traffic, if they were taking the same route Bunny had followed the day he was killed. She didn't ask.
At the Palace, everything seemed normal at first. The same uniforms at the gate, at the doors. The same quietly efficient staff who guided her first to her guest room overlooking a small garden, and then, when she had showered and changed, to Miranda's suite. It was hard to remember, in this quiet gracious place, that Bunny was dead, and all their peace in peril. She found herself expecting to see him coming down the corridor, his pleasantly foolish face lighting with a smile.
Until she came face to face with Miranda, and saw the devastation of that legendary beauty. Cecelia wondered how the same exquisite curves of bone, the same flawless skin, could now express a wasteland. After the rituals of greeting, when the staff had placed a tea set on the low table and withdrawn, Cecelia could wait no longer. No need, when the porcelain surface had already shattered.
"Miranda, what have they told you about it—about who did it?"
"Nothing." Miranda poured a cup of tea and handed it to Cecelia; the cup did not rattle on the saucer. "I know the news media say it was the New Texas Militia, in retaliation for the executions. I know that the former head of security is on administrative leave. But they have very gently let me know that investigations are in progress, and I will be informed when it is time. Do have a pastry; you always liked these curly ones, didn't you?"
Cecelia ignored the offered pastry. "Miranda . . . I don't think it was the NewTex Militia."
"Why?" Miranda's face had no more expression than a cameo.
"I think it was someone . . . inside."
"Family?" Her voice was cool. Why wasn't she upset? Why wasn't she frightened? Had she been through too much?
Cecelia waited a moment, then went on. "Pedar said . . . that Bunny broke rules."
Miranda's mouth twitched; it might have been grimace or grin. "He did. He was so . . . so quiet, so . . . compliant, it always seemed. But from the first time he brought me a tart he'd filched from the cook, when we were children, and showed me where we could hide from our governesses . . . he broke rules."
"More important than that," Cecelia said.
"I know." Miranda stared past Cecelia's left ear, as if she saw something a long way away, but was too tired to pay much attention.
"Miranda!" Even before Miranda turned her eyes back, Cecelia had bitten back the rest of it, all that she wanted to say. You can't give up now. You have to keep going. You have a family—
"I have a family," Miranda said, in that cool level voice. "I have responsibilities. Children. Grandchildren. You don't want me to forget that."
"Yes . . ." Cecelia had lowered her voice, and strove to sit quietly.
"I do not care." Miranda turned that cameo face full on Cecelia. "I do not care about the children—not even Brun, whom I most desperately want to care about. I do not care about the grandchildren, those bastard brats forced on my daughter—" Her breath caught in a ragged gasp, giving the lie to that
do not care
. Cecelia said nothing; there was nothing she could say. "I do not care," Miranda went on, "about anything but Branthcombe. Bunny. Whom, in this day and age, and in spite of rejuvenations and genetic selection and everything else we invented to spare us the pain of living . . . I loved. All my life, from the time he brought me that cherry tart, and we ate it in alternate bites, sitting on the back stairs . . . I loved him. It was a miracle to me that he loved me. That he survived the hunting season we still make our young people go through, that he remembered me after my years in seclusion at Cypress Hill, that he married me. And fathered my children, and no matter what stayed loyal and decent and—" Her voice broke at last, in a gasp that ended in sobs.
"My dear . . ." Cecelia reached out, uncertain. Miranda had been, for so long, another exquisite porcelain figurine in Cecelia's mental collection of beautiful women—like her sister, like all the women of that type—and she had never touched any of them for more than the rituals of class affection—the fingertips, the cheeks. But Miranda didn't recoil, and leaned into her as if Cecelia were her mother or her aunt.
The sobs went on a long time, and Cecelia had a cramp in the small of her back from twisting to accommodate Miranda's position, by the time Miranda quieted.
"Damnation," she said then. "I thought I was over it."
"I don't think you can get over it," Cecelia said.
"No. Not really. But over it enough to function. You're right, I have to do that much. But I really do not know how."
"Your advisors—"
"Are vultures." Miranda gave Cecelia a sideways glance and pulled back a little; Cecelia took that hint and stood, stretching. "You, never having married, may not realize just how complicated the situation is. Your estate is all yours, and you have the disposal of it—"