Kryshevski stepped down. Hogg bowed to him and said, "There's some loose bricks on the right in the ceiling of the passageway to Ms. O'Sullivan's. You'd be wiser to chance the puddle on the left instead of getting brained trying to arrive with dry shoes."
Kryshevski handed Hogg a tip that made his eyebrows lift with pleasure. He was laughing as he entered the gateway.
* * ** * *
When the footsteps didn't stop at the first door beyond the head of the stairs, Adele realized the visitor was coming for her. The man in the second room down the hallway worked nights, and the woman in the remaining room would only be returning at this hour if she had a client. The person coming was alone.
Adele took out her pistol and laid it on the desk at which she sat facing the door.
The knock was discreet. "Yes?" Adele said without getting up.
"My name is Sand, mistress," replied the voice of a woman with a cultured Cinnabar accent. "I'd be grateful for a few minutes of your time."
Adele considered the situation. She'd returned to the apartment she'd lived in before the coup because she had nowhere else to go. She still had nowhere to go.
"Come in," Adele said. She'd known someone would come. She'd expected more than one person, but she hadn't expected them quite so soon. "The door isn't locked."
The door opened. Sand was about sixty years old. She wore a long cloak and shoes that seemed unobtrusive unless you realized what they must have cost. She was heavy, though not quite what even Adele's lack of charity would call fat.
"I appreciate your seeing me," Sand said, sounding sincere. "I regret the hour, but I came as soon as I could."
"You came from Elphinstone," Adele said. Her lips smiled. "Let me rephrase that: Elphinstone works for you."
She didn't suggest her visitor sit down. The room's only chair was the one in which Adele herself sat anyway.
Sand laughed and seated herself on the edge of the low bed. "Commander Elphinstone most certainly does not work for me," she said. "He's a naval officer. Wonderful fellows in their place, naval officers. Rock-solid, straightforward people, crucial to the survival of the Republic. Unfortunately . . ."
She paused to throw back the wing of her cloak. The price of the suit she wore beneath it would have paid Adele's apartment rent for a year. Sand brought an ivory snuffbox out of an inside pocket, offered it to Adele, and put a pinch in the hollow of her left thumb.
"The trouble with naval officers," Sand continued, "is their confidence that the only way to an objective is through the direct application of force. Whereas civilians like you and me know—"
She snorted, pinching shut the opposite nostril, then sneezed violently. "Nothing like it to keep your head clear," she said in satisfaction.
Sand met Adele's eyes squarely. "Sometimes all you get from driving head-first into a situation is a headache, Ms. Mundy," she said. "Which is what that fool Elphinstone has caused for me. I'm hoping that you'll not let that prevent you from acting to your advantage and to that of the Republic."
"I'll give you the same answer I did him," Adele said coldly. She felt silly to have the gun in plain sight, though it would be worse at this point to pocket it again. Sand didn't use force, and she was much more dangerous than those who did.
"If I asked the same question, I'm quite sure you would," Sand said. "And if you think I would ask the same question then I've misjudged your abilities of analysis."
Adele laughed and put the pistol away: an apology for being foolish, understood and accepted by Sand's nod of approval.
"It's obviously to my benefit to help you," Adele said. "I'll do so if I'm able to with honor. But you should be aware that my honor is engaged in this matter."
"Oh, no one has designs on your honor," Sand said good-humoredly. "And there's plenty of honor to go around in a victory as great as this one. Admiral Ingreit will get the formal thanks of the Senate for capturing Kostroma, and as for Lieutenant Daniel Leary, well, he'll be a nine-days' wonder, won't he? The last thing a wise senior officer would do is to seem to be blackening the name of the hero of so brilliant an exploit."
"Some people might not see it that way," Adele said.
Sand snorted. "Some people are fools," she said.
Her face, never particularly attractive, was suddenly that of a bulldog preparing to leap. "Let me assure you, mistress, that Admiral Ingreit is capable of taking good advice if it's put in a form he can understand. My delay in visiting you was because I thought it desirable to discuss matters with the admiral first."
Adele laughed. "I'd offer you a drink," she said, "but I don't have anything on hand. I don't have very much at all, to be honest, including the next week's rent."