Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [40]
Seb waved his hand towards the hangar bay. ‘Choose your chariot—any except this one.’ He pointed to Trin’s sleek, liveried AiV, which had been towed in and placed in a diagnostic gripper. An analytic hand probed inside it, blasting an air-water mix into the engine cavity. ‘Some loco soffice ran the cooler all night with it stationary: seized the motor. Apparently he was afraid of the hotwinds.’
The circle of men roared with laughter.
Trin felt the rush of bloodheat to his face. How foolish of him—Seb Malocchi had meant him no kindness at all.
He walked away from them, straight-backed, fuming. He would leave here at once. That notion propelled him into the first Carabinere vehicle he came to, but he faltered when he saw the controls. Unfamiliar icons danced on the display—a more complex selection than his personal AiV. He slipped his hand tentatively inside the pilot glove, feeling again the frustration of his own limitations.
‘It is not permitted for you to be unaccompanied, Don Pellegrini.’
Trin located the voice at the cabin door. A Cavaliere stood, leaning inwards with his hand cupped around his rifle. His tone was unapologetic.
‘Am I your captive?’
‘Only if you try to leave here alone, Don Pellegrini. The Principe has ordered it so.’
Trin’s fingers curled to a fist. ‘Remember who the next Principe is, Cavaliere,’ he said clearly. ‘For he shall remember you.’
The Palazzo guard released the grip he had taken instinctively on the door frame and straightened to make way for Seb and Vespa Malocchi.
Seb climbed straight to the front of the vehicle. He slapped Trinder playfully across the back of the head and slumped into the second pilot seat. ‘Now, now, Pellegrini,’ he said with impertinence. ‘Don’t be like that.’
* * * *
‘Baronessa Fedor? It is Don Trinder Pellegrini. I have come to pay my respects.’
‘Carabinere, Baronessa,’ said Seb, speaking over Trin’s shoulder. ‘We have questions to ask you.’
The masked woman moved closer to her viewer. ‘What nonsense is this? Since when do the Carabinere call on me? And since when has the young Principe been one of the white ones?’
‘Let us in, Baronessa,’ said Vespa.
Faja Fedor released the gate and met them halfway down the path to the villa. She was dressed in a full velum. ‘What is it you want?’ Her voice sounded thin through the velum’s amplifier.
‘To be invited inside, Baronessa, would be a beginning,’ said Trin.
Reluctantly she beckoned them through the coldlock into her parlour, a largish room—though not by Palazzo standards—decorated with soft sapphire drapes, winding ornamental candelabra and hand-woven rugs that bore the Fedor crest. Each must have come with the familia from Latino Crux—such things could not be procured on Araldis. Nor could the inlaid-pearl occasional tables and the slightly shabby ceremonial chairs.
Trin recognised them as copies—valuable in their own right but not comparable to the authentic Pellegrini originals. For a time in Latino Crux it had been a fashion to duplicate the valuables of the patricians.
A thin, unsightly humanesque woman brought them cups of cold Latino-bean coffee and Pan di Stelle biscuits on a tarnished silver tray. The stars were misshapen and the chocolate pale for lack of cocoa.
Trin noticed the little signs of impoverishment. He waited until the woman, after serving the refreshments, had left before he addressed the Baronessa. ‘Where are your familia servants?’
Faja Fedor unfolded her mask so that he could see her face. He was struck by how little she resembled Mira and by how much more typically Latino in bone structure and colouring she was.
‘My circumstances are my business, Trinder Pellegrini,’ she replied.
‘Not when we have an order to detain your sorella,’ said Seb Malocchi. ‘Your business has become ours.’
Faja raised her eyebrows in shock. Trin noticed they weren’t thinned in the artful manner of the court women—their masculine breadth lent her face strength.
‘What can you mean by “detain”? Mira is not a common criminal, she is