“And you’re a guest in his home,” she replied, closing her eyes and turning away. “If he has one principal occupation in life it’s in the generation of noise. If you could bottle it and sell it we would have been a much richer family.”
Whatever retort Arberus began to voice was drowned out by a fresh upsurge of rhythmic thumping from downstairs. Lizanne bit down a curse and opened an eye to view the clock on the bedside table. Fifteen minutes past ten, and she had a very important meeting at twelve.
“Go on,” she said, nudging Arberus’s naked form with her foot. “Back to your own room, if you please. Appearances must be maintained.”
“Surely he knows by now. Your aunt certainly does.”
“Of course she knows, and so does he. It’s a matter of respect. Now”—she gave a more insistent shove—“go!”
She felt the mattress bounce as he got out of bed, hearing the rustle of hastily donned clothes. She heard the click of the latch then a pause as he hesitated at the door. “You don’t have to go,” he said. “It’s not as if you owe them anything, after all.”
“I have a contract,” she reminded him. “I like to think that still means something in this world.”
She turned onto her back as he slipped out, less quietly than she would have liked, and stared up at the ceiling. It was decorated with a spiral pattern made up of birds and dragon-flies, her aunt’s work. The colours were a little faded now but the swirling mass of flying creatures remained mostly unchanged from childhood. She would stare up at them every morning in the days before the Blood-lot saw her shipped off to the Academy. The notion stirred memories of Madame Bondersil and the lingering pain of her betrayal. She had a contract too.
? ? ?
She found Tekela at the kitchen table eating an oversized breakfast under Aunt Pendilla’s supervision. “Not healthy for a girl your age to be so thin,” Pendilla said, pouring tea and nodding at a plate of buttered bread. “Eat up now. Never catch a husband looking like a stick.”
“I don’t want a husband,” Tekela responded in her now-near-perfect Mandinorian. “Lizanne appears to get along perfectly well without one. And so, I notice, do you, Miss Cableford.”
Seeing her aunt’s face darken, Lizanne moved quickly to relieve her of the tea-pot. “Allow me, Auntie.”
“This girl is of too sharp a tongue for her own good,” Pendilla stated.
“An observation you are not the first to make.” Lizanne sat down next to Tekela and poured herself some tea as Pendilla disappeared into the larder.
“She’s obsessed with making me eat,” Tekela murmured. “It’s unnerving.”
“She’s obsessed with making everyone eat,” Lizanne returned. “Something many in the incomers’ camp would appreciate. I’m sure I could find one who would be willing to swap places with you.”
A slight vestige of her old pout came to Tekela’s lips before she caught herself and returned to her breakfast with renewed enthusiasm. “Wasn’t complaining.”
Lizanne sipped her tea and winced as a fresh round of thumping came from the direction of the workshop. It continued for about thirty seconds before stuttering to a clanking halt. “I see they still haven’t fixed it,” she observed.
“Jermayah says it’s the intake valve,” Tekela said. “The Professor says the combustion chamber.”
“Which means they’ll be tinkering with the bloody thing for weeks to come whilst more pressing work remains incomplete.”
“We’re keeping up with orders,” Tekela pointed out. “Producing up to six Thumpers a week now. I believe I could probably assemble one myself without assistance, if anyone would let me. I think I have a way to do it faster too.”
Lizanne hesitated before telling her to stick to their established piecemeal manufacturing methods. The three weeks since their rag-tag refugee fleet arrived in Feros had taught her that a bored Tekela was a very trying Tekela. “You can demonstrate when I return this afternoon,” she said, moving back as Aunt Pendilla returned to set a heavily laden plate before her. “Thank you, Auntie.”
“You’re wearing that, are you?” Pendilla asked, her somewhat critical gaze playing over Lizanne’s rather plain dress of light blue fabric adorned only with a shareholder’s pin on the bodice. “It hardly reflects your current status.”
Current status? Lizanne had puzzled over this particular question since stepping onto the Feros quayside. What was she now exactly? A hero to many. The saviour of the Carvenport Thousands to some. The refugees still called her Miss Blood, showing a sometimes annoying deference in her presence, as if the authority she wielded in fending off the drake and Spoiled assault still held true. In fact, whatever titles or respect they chose to bestow upon her she was officially a suspended agent of the Ironship Exceptional Initiatives Division, an agent currently awaiting the findings of a Board-sanctioned inquiry.
“Sober dress is expected at Board meetings,” she told her aunt, glancing at the clock above the range. An hour to go, and it would be best not to be late.
“Good morning, Major,” Pendilla greeted Arberus with a bright smile as he descended the stairs. She bustled over to pull a chair out for him. Lizanne had noticed before how her aunt tended to do her best bustling around the major. Lizanne assumed Pendilla was worried Arberus would decide to take himself off without marrying her ruined niece first. Both her aunt and her father retained some tiresomely outdated notions.
“You do look smart today,” Pendilla said, patting the shoulder of the overly expensive suit Arberus had insisted on buying to replace his tattered cavalryman’s uniform. Lizanne often thought it strange that a man of fierce egalitarian convictions should care so much about appearance. “Doesn’t the major look smart, ladies?”
“Green suited you better,” Tekela muttered around a mouthful of bacon.
“I thought I should make the effort.” Arberus forced a smile at the veritable mountain of food Pendilla placed before him. Unlike Tekela, he retained a strong Corvantine accent, though his syntax was flawless. “It’s not every day a man steps into the lair of the corporatist cabal, after all.”
“You’re staying here,” Lizanne told him, glancing at Tekela. “The contingency.”