ONE

Admiral Trungpa Nyberg, Commander of Ares Station, peered through his shuttle’s overhead port at the vast, curving hull of the battlecruiser Grozniy, sculptured into a confusion of forms and vacuum-sharpened shadow by weapons pods and sensors and other less identifiable . . .

A spurt of amusement briefly eased his anxiety and fatigue as a section of the hull resolved into the form of an improbably well-endowed man. So he’d spotted the Grozniy’s shiplord. Somewhere else on the enormous expanse of the battlecruiser’s hull reposed the no doubt equally shapely shiplady, but it would take similar luck or a month’s systematic search to locate it.

He’d sensed anticipation in the pilot guiding the shuttle at the strictly enforced regulation crawl. She’d served on Grozniy, he recalled; was that the hint of a smile?

The respite was gone as the discriminators delivered another report: three civ contractors were still missing aboard the Wu Zetian, holding up decon.

Their flight path brought into view the edge of a kilometer-long wound gouged into the Grozniy’s hull. As the shuttle passed over the chasm, winks of light in its depth revealed demo crews still blasting away wreckage. Captain Ng had fought the ship to the edge of destruction.

Nyberg became aware of his personal aide standing beside him. “Admiral, Vice Admiral Willsones requests an interview at your earliest convenience.” His voice was apologetic.

ASAP, Nyberg translated. He said, “If she’s in that much of a hurry, she can catch me at the dock,” and resumed listening to the relays.

The problem was, everyone now wanted everything done ASAP. Including Trungpa Nyberg.

He shut his eyes and breathed out, knowing that his anxiety-driven impatience would not move anyone the faster. From the pilot in her pod to the rawest recruit out there handling cables, everyone was working at capacity. And beyond, he thought, when he recognized the running lights of the captain’s barge belonging to Margot Ng, the Hero of the Battle of Arthelion, as she personally supervised the careful teardown of the ruptor turret destroyed by a glancing skipmissile hit from a Rifter destroyer.

A shudder ran through the shuttle as the locks engaged. A hiss, a subdued clank, and the hatch opened. He walked out to find the tall, thin form of Vice-Admiral Damana Willsones at the forefront of those waiting, her age-white hair clipped close to her head.

Willsones breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Nyberg step out. Roll out. Nearly as broad as he was tall, Nyberg reflected an ancestry of enormously strong men of sturdy frame and musculature protected by an impressive layer of fat. Way back when they were young pups at the Minerva Naval academy, his probie nickname had been Battleblimp—a term of disparagement that had altered to respect when he’d outperformed most of their classmates in every physical sport but sprinting.

Dire as the situation was, Willsones took a moment to appreciate Nyberg’s presence, everyone around him deferring as if he projected a force field. A high stickler for his officers’ and enlisteds’ fitness, he did not exempt himself; though his uniform strained a bit between the buttons over that mighty chest and belly, the power in his stride had not lessened a whit, nor had it in the alert blue eyes, but the dark skin of his face was darkened still more by the circles around those eyes, and his short blond hair had gone silver. He’s getting old, she thought.

He probably thinks the same about me, came the prompt answer, with a too-brief flutter of humor. Then the humor was gone as they both saluted.

He gestured for her to fall in step beside him, and flashed her a sharp glance of inquiry as she considered how best to word her news.

There was no ‘best’ here. Only the relative mercy of simplicity. “There’s something you’d better see right away.” She disclosed the chip on her palm, and watched his expression change from impatience—the unexpressed why couldn’t you just relay it to my office?—to the smooth mask that acknowledged the dire implication of whatever it was she saw fit to bring, in person, on a chip that she didn’t trust to network crypto.

Nyberg abandoned his inspection tour in an abrupt change of direction. They threaded through the crowded corridor at a brisk pace, as everyone gave way and saluted.

Nyberg began what for him was small talk. “Captain Ng is out there herself supervising the repairs. Is there a reason that I ought to know?”

“Nothing more, I believe, than the urgent wish to be battle-ready yesterday. Her crew seems to like her visiting, but she doesn’t hover. I glimpsed her babysitting comms when I started my watch,” Willsones said.

‘Comms’ in this instance had to mean the top secret room in the Communications level, housing that Urian hyperwave Ng had fought a bloody battle to capture.

Nyberg knew that Captain Ng often visited it, to observe first-hand what the Dol’jharians and their Rifter forces were broadcasting to one another. The hyperrelay broadcast was apparently instantaneous—something hitherto nobody had thought possible, accounting for the speed with which the Dol’jharian onslaught had brought down the strategic centers of the Panarchy.

Teams of cryptographers labored non-stop to decode the Dol’jharian communications, while being horrified and sometimes entertained by the Rifters’ less strategically significant but wild broadcasts en clair; scuttlebutt, officially unnoticed, whispered of a highly prized vid involving a man, two women, a pot of melted chocolate, and a floating eyeball in zero gee—with an obviously-added chorus of panting, groaning, and a commentary furnished by some Rifter with a excellent command of Dol’jharian invective.

Nyberg wrested his focus back to Willsones. “. . . and before I turned in, I saw Ng among the captains bearing Mandros Nukiel off to be roast-and-toasted after his court martial. I am beginning to think the woman never sleeps.”

Nyberg grimaced at the reminder of that court martial. Life had become strange enough without the weird, really, the sinister influence of Desrien. “Nobody sleeps anymore.”

Willsones’s white brows hitched upward. “None of us can outrun the truth,” she murmured as they stepped into a lift. An accusation? No. As the doors closed she uttered a truism—“Ares is a battle station. It was never intended to house the refugees from countless worlds”—that made it clear her ‘truth’ encompassed them all.

The doors slid open, and neither spoke as they entered his office, which was a hum of ordered activity. With a practiced ear Nyberg assessed the voices, and observed the angles of head, shoulder, hand as the staff saluted. No incipient panic. Nyberg saw the impulse to catch him for some urgent matter, but he shook his head and closed himself and Willsones in the inner office, something he did rarely, meaning interrupt only if the station is exploding.

“Speaking of comms,” Willsones said, aware that prolonging the inevitable was weak. “Specifically the Urian hyperwave. When we met outside the chamber, Captain Ng told me she believes those little white psi-killers are sensitive to Urian objects.”

“The Eya’a,” Nyberg said.

Willsones grimaced. “Forgive me. I understand that they have been granted ambassadorial status as sophonts, but their reputation . . .” She made a gesture of warding.

“As yet they haven’t used their psi powers to boil any of our brains,” Nyberg observed with a brief smile. “Anyway, Phinboul in Xeno suspects that that there is some psychic connection between the Eya’a and Urian artifacts, but there is no mutual vocabulary even with the Rifter captain translating. And of course we dare not pursue it. She must not discover that we captured the Urian hyperwave. And we cannot interrogate the Eya’a separately from her.”

Willsones crossed her arms, her expression fierce. “But you can separate this Rifter captain from them. If you haven’t done that and interrogated her, why not?”

“Because,” Nyberg exhaled the word on a sigh, “the Aerenarch requested that the Rifters who brought the Eya’a, as the actual rescuers of himself and both Lieutenant Omilov and his father, be granted preferred status within the confines of D-5.”

Willsones knuckled her temples. She had, without consulting Lt. Osri Omilov, given the order to distract the novosti by identifying him as the rescuer of the Aerenarch. Since the news feeds, constrained by martial law, were prevented from interviewing the Rifters, they’d gleefully pounced on the story, and the entire station had been full of talk about the miraculous escape from Charvann by the Aerenarch and his boyhood friend.

In actuality, neither the Aerenarch nor young Osri, a navigation instructor on leave visiting his father when Rifters attacked Charvann, would have made it out of the system were it not for the Rifters now imprisoned in Detention Level 5.

Osri was invited everywhere, by captains as well as Osri’s own peers, and everywhere bludgeoned with questions. Willsones had heard plenty about the L’Ranja Whoopie and other escapades that sounded like something out of a really imaginative wiredream—but not from him. Osri was, if possible, even more laconic than his father Sebastian, a retired Gnostor of Xenoarchaelogy, and not given to hyperbole.

“I hope at least you are keeping those—the Eya’a far, far from Communications,” she said.

“My first order after I read the Xeno report.” Nyberg eyed her, then leaned a fist on his desk. “Damana. You pulled me off-course with a must-see, then sidetracked me with the Eya’a. I take it whatever is coming is bad. Shall we get it over with?” He tapped his console.

“I wanted you to see it alone, Trungpa. And sit down. This is going to hurt.”

Chill flashed through his nerves as they moved to chairs at the side table, and she tabbed the console. “I haven’t watched it all yet. We found it in the cryptobanks aboard the Sola Astarte, arrived with the latest wave of refugees yesterday. The fact that it was hidden makes it certain that someone hoped to use it for political effect. Licrosse is holding a Kestian Harkatsus, his passengers, and his crew at the staging point, pending your orders.”

The screen lit. Dread pooled in the pit of Nyberg’s stomach. He immediately recognized the awe-inspiring Throne Room in the Mandala, center of the Panarchy’s government for ten centuries.

Only, seated in the astonishing tree-like throne was not the short, slim figure of Gelasaar hai-Arkad, Panarch for most of Nyberg’s life. Instead, a tall, massively built man defiled it with his presence: Eusabian of Dol’jhar.

Then it got worse.

The only sound as they watched the atrocity was one short intake of breath from Willsones. He himself made no sound because his breath strangled in his throat.

When it ended, Willsones said, “I can go over the redaction analysis with you,” her age-roughened voice husky with emotion. “That will take longer.”

Nyberg stared out the wall-sized dyplast port behind his desk, taking little comfort from the sweeping view it gave him of the top of the Cap, the military portion of the starbase. The massive plain of metal, scattered with refit pits, glinted crimson in the light of the red giant whose gravitational field protected the station from skipmissile attack. In the foreground the aft portion of the Grozniy loomed. In spite of all that constant activity, from this angle it still looked much as it had when he had arrived. It will not be battle-ready yesterday, or even tomorrow.

No doubt Eusabian would bend the slaughter from the Battle of Arthelion to his purposes as well, Nyberg thought sourly, with another propaganda vid as false as the one he’d just seen. But not as bloody.

“Murphy’s own timing,” he said when he was sure of his voice. It was the cold horror of the two boxes held up for the Panarch’s inspection that had shaken him most.

But he didn’t have the luxury of time to indulge his horror. Willsones was smart, unnervingly prescient at times, yet she had chosen Communications in spite of the fact that the top rank attainable was what she held presently: vice-admiral. As long as he’d known her—nearly fifty years—the only ambition she had steadily expressed was her wish to stay as far from power politics as she could get.

But now they were hip-deep in politics, the tide of muck rising fast.

As Nyberg considered how to broach the subject, Willsones was thinking along a parallel track, though her focus was individuals rather than masses. In specific the young man whose head had been intended for a third box, Brandon, youngest of Gelasaar’s sons. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been a mischievous boy, staring out at the world from his mother’s gray-blue eyes.

Now, bearing a reputation as a sot and a wastrel, he was immured in the Arkadic Enclave in the oneill portion of Ares. The vid’s false proclamation of his death was perhaps the least of its lies, but it would lend more force to the unanswered questions about Brandon vlith-Arkad’s escape ahead of the Enkainion atrocity, which had spared him his brothers’ fates.

She pressed her hands to her face, struggling to dismiss the mental image of that obscene vid. “Frankly, given the priority the Dol’jharians put on broadcasting it, I’m surprised a copy hasn’t arrived before now. While we can sit on the contents of the ship’s cryptobanks as long as we please, there are refugees besides Harkatsus at the staging point with more preference than poor Licrosse can handle. He’s not going to want to hold them any longer without specific orders.”

“I can’t say I’m not tempted to suppress it,” Nyberg replied slowly. He knew he would have to release the vid eventually, but the timing was terrible.

Willsones said, “Is it not today that the Douloi are holding their reception for the Aerenarch?”

“Burgess Pavilion, 1800,” Nyberg corroborated; this was the occasion that would see Brandon vlith-Arkad leaving the seclusion of deep mourning, a polite fiction that both he and the Navy had colluded, unspoken, in propagating.

Willsones pursed her lips. “The timing really doesn’t matter, does it? Even without the vid’s confirmation of the rumors about Semion’s and Galen’s deaths, you can’t keep Brandon vlith-Arkad sequestered if he wants to enter public discourse.”

“No,” Nyberg said. He untabbed his collar. “But the sight of those bloody blades is going to work as a metaphor to the meanest intelligence.”

“Yes,” she said precisely. “The Dol’jharian rape of Arthelion has wrecked the careful machinery of our governance as effectively as the Dol’jharian executioners’ blades dealt with the Panarch’s high counselors in the throne room.”

The habits of Tetrad Centrum Douloi usage urged him to turn from such distasteful bluntness. But turn as he would, he would still face the same mental mirror, reflecting the truth: Ares was now the de facto capital of the Panarchy.

Willsones went on inexorably. “With no constituted government, the influx of Douloi refugees from the war is going to transform Ares from a smoothly regulated starbase into an aristocratic madhouse.”

And no one could stop it. Nyberg’s temples began to throb, and he tapped the tianqi to a pelagic spring evening mode, the lighting subtly adjusting to the new scents in the air flow.

“Have you ever visited Charybdis?” asked Willsones. The subdued lighting struck silver highlights from her white hair as she tapped her compad. “Their Equinoctial is a whisper at first, like that maelstrom of intrigue and venom building up around the Arkad boy.”

“He’s hardly a boy.” Nyberg’s tone betrayed rising impatience, and he made a quick, apologetic gesture.

“No,” she replied, and because they were alone, and he had drawn her into this conversation, she must honor them both with the blunt truths so rare and risky among Douloi. “A boy could grow out of a regency. Has he issued any commands?”

“Not yet.”

She heard hesitation in his reply. “But?”

“The Faseult seal ring that he’s wearing. He won’t talk about it—an obligation of the Phoenix House, he said during the debriefing.” Nyberg shook his head. “Anton is already completely overloaded, and there’s worse to come as more refugees arrive. He doesn’t need this complication.”

She’d missed that detail. Anton Faseult, now heir to the Charvann Archonate after his brother’s brutal murder on Charvann by Eusabian’s Rifter allies, was head of Security for the entire station, military and civilian.

“You think the Aerenarch intends to use the ring as leverage?”

“What better time than tonight?”

Nyberg could see his question hit home. Willsones nodded slowly.

“Either he’s as subtle as his father—and his reputation does not bear that out—or he’s hiding,” she said. “Or sulking. Or senseless in some orgy. It doesn’t really matter. What does is my fear that he’s a dissolute cipher who will need to have a privy council imposed on him, and there are already those on this station who should never grasp the reins of power.”

A yellow ophidian gaze flickered through Nyberg’s memory: Tau Srivashti, once Archon of Timberwell. “I don’t suppose . . .” He gestured at her compad.

“For a time,” she said, “we could probably phage the vid if it’s released, but it’s going to leak, probably sooner than we would like, and then we incur howls about suppression. We can’t purge memories or immobilize tongues.” She glanced down at her compad, and gave a soft grunt. “As I thought. Archetype and Ritual strongly recommends releasing it immediately, and Volkov at Moral Sabotage just now sent me a comm that they concur. You know what they say about rumor.”

A weapon with no handle and no defense. Deadly to public order and perhaps the most powerful weapon of Douloi politics.

Nyberg gave his head a shake, then thumbed his eyes, as if that could remove the images he was certain had been burned into his retinas. “I don’t know what to do.” The words were wrung out of him.

“This isn’t the Battleblimp I know,” Willsones said, trying for a semblance of humor.

“This isn’t the Ares I know,” he retorted. “It’s not even the Thousand Suns I knew. I sat in on Nukiel’s court martial yesterday, listening not to orderly testimony from technical experts and military witnesses, but to the High Phanist of Desrien. And it was her testimony—full of unprovable . . .” His hands groped in the air. “Preposterous mystical rhetoric . . .” He faltered, unable to express his loathing, unable to admit it hid an even deeper fear.

“I know. I was there,” Willsones said calmly, her cool tone more effective than the tianqi. “But it’s hard to argue with the Gabrieline Protocol, whether or not you believe any of Desrien’s mystical claims. And I find I can’t argue against the fact that Mandros Nukiel, who is one of the most honest, and least outwardly religious men of my professional acquaintance, risked his entire career in order to heed a vision.”

Nyberg let his breath out. “Did you see her hand?”

“Whose hand?” Willsones’ brow cleared. “Ah, the burn of the Digrammaton on High Phanist Eloatri’s palm. I didn’t. There are many who insist she put it there herself, except that doesn’t account for the Digrammaton’s presence here, or its radioactivity.” Her upper lip betrayed her discomfort as she added, “It’s unlikely to be a forgery, given what happened to the Second Anti-Phanist when he wore a counterfeit.”

“Desrien.” Nyberg made a warding motion. “It’s useless to talk about it. ‘To speak of the Dreamtime is to enter the Dreamtime,’ and right now this nightmare—” He opened his hands. “Is enough for me. Nukiel’s acquittal means we have to accept that woman as High Phanist, but for now let us deal in facts. Beginning with the two inescapable ones that hold me helpless between them. One, I seem to have become the de facto ruler of the Panarchy, while the de jure ruler is on his way to Gehenna and his only remaining heir sits in the Enclave under suspicion of treason.”

“Not treason.” Willsones’s recoil was instinctive. “Even if the Aerenarch skipped out on his Enkainion, he broke no law that constitutes treason. What he did was contravene tradition.”

“At best,” Nyberg said. “At best, he flounced away in a childish gesture to flout his brother. At worst . . . In here we may as well use the words we mean. It would be treachery and treason if he connived at that dirty bomb in the Palace Minor. It would be treachery and cowardice if he found out about it and skipped out without alerting palace security. They might have saved a few,” he finished bitterly.

“But it is possible he had no part in that, nor foreknowledge.”

“Then why isn’t he offering to debrief us? Nukiel said he gave him every opportunity during the flight to Desrien and from there to here. Gnostor Omilov, once his tutor, told us during his debriefing that Brandon never talked about it.”

Willsones pursed her lips again, then said, “If I were in his place—and you know I have dedicated my life to avoiding politics—but were I in his place, and I could not prove anything I said, I would say nothing.”

Nyberg cursed under his breath. “Bringing us right back to where we started. This much I know.” He dropped his hands onto his knees. “If we expect to hold onto what remains of the Panarchy, then we have to follow the rules. And that means according the Aerenarch all the due deference owed the Arkad name.”

“But not the power,” Willsones said.

Nyberg’s memory flashed to the iconic statue in the gardens of the Palace Minor, seen only once in person. He flicked his fingers over the admiral’s stripes on his sleeve. “That’s number two: this uniform makes me officially powerless.”

Willsones sat back, musing. “I wonder what Eusabian thought of the Laocoön, if he’s seen it?”

Her statement, unsettlingly parallel to Nyberg’s, demonstrated once again why rumors of telepathy had dogged her entire career, despite her null certificate from Synchronistics.

One hand strayed lightly across her blanked compad. “Do they have snakes on Dol’jhar?”

Nyberg appreciated her attempt at humor—release—a moment to mentally regroup. Before he left this room he was going to have to make a decision. They both knew it.

He snorted. “Probably. With fur, no doubt.” The tightness between his shoulder blades eased a fraction.

“Ours run more to silk and jewels, don’t they?” She uttered a dry laugh, more like a cough. “This vid will be like whacking the whole ball of them with a stick. Just don’t give them time to think.”

Nyberg straightened with decision. “Right. We’ll release the vid at 1800 hours, or whenever Brandon leaves the Enclave for Burgess Pavilion. But the senior officers will view it first. And . . . ” He knew his duty. “Damana, you knew the Kyriarch Ilara, I believe.”

Her eyes narrowed, and the precision returned to her voice. “Yes. Through my daughter. They were at school together, before my daughter chose Minerva and the Navy, and Ilara caught Gelasaar’s eye.”

“I’d like you to invite the Aerenarch to join us in the Situation Room. This is not an order. Merely a request.”

Willsones inhaled and laid her hands carefully to either side of her compad, hearing in Nyberg’s voice the unspoken apology for such a trespass. But she could not deny that she was perfectly placed for such a duty.

Times were too desperate for resentment, and so she did not ask him why he didn’t do it himself. What is it you fear seeing in young Brandon?

With most other officers, Willsones would suspect that personal fears of career suicide might override anything short of outright riot. But she’d known Nyberg since the Academy. She’d be surprised if his concern here was himself.

“I’ll do it.” She let out her breath. “Ilara was a remarkable young woman. Her death unmoored all of Gelasaar’s sons, none worse than Semion.” She looked directly at Nyberg. “ I admit to some curiosity about how much of her inheres in Brandon Arkad.”

“Good. This may shock him into talking, and the simplest solution for all of us would be if he talks to you. Tells you what happened on Arthelion, and then we will get a better sense of, ah, who he is. How we must act.”

She uttered a strangled sound that bore no resemblance to a laugh, though she’d meant to keep her sense of humor. “An apolitical in a situation positively mined with political fallout?”

With that she rose to her feet, trim and decisive in her movements in spite of her age. “I’d best comm the Enclave immediately.”

Nyberg rose with her, tabbing his boswell as he walked her to the door. His punishment for loading this task onto her was the daunting pile of urgent communiqués building. “I am in your debt, Vice-Admiral,” he said, formality—and the clear obligations of duty—restored.

o0o

Jaim, once a corridor rat of Rifthaven and now sworn man to Brandon vlith-Arkad, reflected that the Arkadic Enclave might look like an old-fashioned villa designed for recluses, but there was nothing outdated about the gymnasium beneath the main chambers.

Since Brandon had cut their sparring practice short to meet with a tailor that some nick had sent, Jaim used the time freed for a private workout.

It was there that the former Douloi neurosurgeon-chef who called himself Montrose found him.

Jaim was aware of the big man standing, fists on hips, as he looked about with an appraising air. Jaim continued the two-sword kinesic without missing a beat.

Montrose, in his turn, took the opportunity to watch the young engineer. Montrose had been worried about Jaim ever since the Telvarna had returned from their triumphant raid on Arthelion to discover their secret moon base on Dis replaced by an enormous crater in a moon cracked in half, and their other ship left as a taunting abattoir. No one had survived.

Including Jaim’s beloved Reth Silverknife.

“Montrose?” Jaim asked.

“Done?” Montrose asked.

Jaim indicated the energy weapons. “I was going to run the holo and do some shooting.”

Montrose eyed Jaim, whose tight-leashed energy seemed scarcely abated, though sweat dripped from the mourning chimes in his braided hair. “I’ve been worried about you,” he said.

“No need,” Jaim responded, as Montrose had expected he would.

“Well, I am,” Montrose continued imperturbably. “Ever since Dis.”

“I would worry about Vi’ya,” Jaim said as he wiped down the swords and carefully replaced them. Beautiful weapons—he wondered which old Arkad had had these made. “You know it’s always bad when she goes silent. And Lokri. Locked away by the nicks under some kind of death sentence. And Ivard, out of his mind from that Kelly ribbon.”

“Ivard is in good hands. Or will be, when the Kelly chirurgeons do whatever it is they do to get that ribbon of their Archon’s out of his DNA. It looks like they think Ivard is stable enough to endure it, maybe even as soon as tomorrow. But you . . .” Montrose lifted a hand toward the ceiling. “You always prized your independence, more than any of the crew. Yet here you are, shadowing young Brandon. I’m not saying it’s wrong, or I wouldn’t be running his galley. I agreed to it for my own amusement, and because the kitchen here is the best I have ever seen. What chef could resist? But you. Is this where you want to be?”

Jaim set the last weapon in the case, touched the control that slid the swords back into the wall, and turned toward the door.

Montrose persisted. “I can’t help noticing that you haven’t been performing your Ulanshu rituals. Except for the fighting.”

Jaim bowed his head, permitting the pulse of anger to fade before he spoke. “I was once a Seeker of the Ulanshu Path. Now? I don’t know. I won’t turn my back completely on the faith that Reth and I shared. To utterly deny it would be to deny her.”

Montrose tabbed the door open. “I don’t see that.”

Jaim made a warding motion. “Perhaps because you never understood.” He lifted his head, met Montrose’s gaze, and watched the impact in the older man as he said, “Reth’s faith never faltered. Not even in the ugly death Hreem the Faithless forced on her. I saw it. In little signs. She held to the Flame to the end.”

Montrose recollected the desecrated body, preserved in vacuum, and dropped his gaze.

Jaim said softly, holding his finger to the control so that the door wouldn’t close, “But she is gone. Once we believed our spirits would be forever united, but there is no sign of her. And so, for me, the Flame has burned out.”

Montrose nodded slowly.

Jaim continued in that soft, cold voice. “One day I shall exact a price from Hreem for that murder. That vow is part of my present path, the Path of the Warrior. But my purpose, as sworn on Desrien, is to guard Brandon Arkad.”

Jaim’s mind flickered back to the quiet cathedral on Desrien. Eloatri, the religious leader who seemed to understand the Path in all its variety, had said that Brandon would have need of him.

Montrose said skeptically, “It might have made sense if we’d been dumped back on Rifthaven. But now Brandon’s got the entire Panarchic Navy to babysit him. What’s left of it.”

Jaim acknowledged, then walked toward the galley. “True,” he said. “But.”

He considered his words as they traversed one of the pleasant, if utilitarian, servants’ corridors under the Enclave. The Navy had been relatively decent, the Marine solarch, Artorus Vahn, who’d been assigned as guard to Brandon, readily answering questions and even undertaking to teach Jaim something about the bewildering intricacies of nick life. In specific, the Tetrad Centrum Douloi, elite among the elite.

“But?” Montrose prompted as they entered the galley.

Jaim considered their stay so far. The inmates of the Enclave had been left to recover—officially, it was mourning—though Jaim was beginning to perceive the discrepancies between official words and fact.

Another ‘so far’: Brandon did not appear to question the fact that Solarch Vahn or his team accompanied him everywhere, insisting that security required a schedule with search-and-sweep beforehand. He had not tried again to visit the Telvarna’s crew, housed in some detention center, after being politely told that security was still being arranged, though he’d sent back to Ivard the two Arkadic dogs they’d rescued from the Mandala, and he’d made a request for daily reports on Ivard’s well-being.

Jaim understood this much: although Brandon was the highest ranking civilian on the station, it was a Naval station. The Navy could not command civilians—neither could Brandon command the Navy.

“But today, everything is going to change,” Jaim said.

At that moment—as Montrose was reaching his hand out to pour a cup of freshly ground coffee for Jaim—the alert toned, and on Montrose’s galley console, the vid flickered to show a spare, elderly woman in a subdued uniform. An ID floated above her head: Vice-Admiral Damana Willsones.

“Hello, I suspect those changes are happening right now,” Montrose said. “Here. Take these sandwiches I was making for lunch. And the coffee. Whatever is going on, there is always a need for refreshments.”

Jaim carried the tray to the inner reception chamber where Brandon was dealing with the tailor.

As yet Jaim didn’t know what the huge party the Tetrad Centrum Douloi were throwing in Brandon’s honor really meant, and Brandon hadn’t told him. They talked about many things as they drilled in Ulanshu kinesics every day and then sparred, or shared meals, but never the future. Or the past before they met at the hideout on Dis.

Jaim had set the sandwiches down when Solarch Vahn led Damana Willsones to the inner reception chamber.

Willsones had never been in the Enclave before, and looked around with curiosity. The little she saw had been designed with Tetrad Centrum Douloi style and attention to comfort, but with maximum security in mind.

“Thank you, Solarch,” she said, appreciating how silently and efficiently the Marine jeeved. He managed to seem nearly invisible as he took up a stance in the least significant corner of the room, from which he had clear lines of fire on all three doors.

In the center of the octagonal chamber, she found the Aerenarch Brandon vlith-Arkad standing patiently under the fussy ministrations of an elderly tailor. The Aerenarch inclined his head in silent apology for the delay, then he looked up as the woman’s deft fingers twitched at the high collar of a tunic jacket. Nearby, a tailor’s dummy displayed a magnificent formal mourning outfit, a vivid contrast with the severely plain civilian mourning white the tailor was fussing over.

Against one wall a buffet offered beautifully presented little sandwiches, and hot coffee, from the smell; beside it stood the Rifter, Jaim, whom the Aerenarch had taken as his sworn man. In defiance of all convention, as might be expected from someone who had grown up in the anarchy of Rifthaven, he lounged next to the buffet: seemingly casual, but his was the second position that commanded a clear field of fire.

Jaim’s gaze met hers without the deference of a servant: dispassionate, considering. His stance, too, conveyed his lack of acquaintance with or his disregard for Douloi expectations. A proper servant would have exerted himself to remain invisible.

Jaim selected a sandwich and popped it into his mouth, an absolute breach of protocol for a servant to the Douloi.

The tailor paused, looking inquiringly from Willsones to the Aerenarch.

Willsones said, “I can wait.” She didn’t care if Brandon’s pet Rifter stayed, went, or hung from the ceiling and hallooed, though her opinion of Brandon dropped a notch. Why would he take a Rifter as personal sworn man?

She pondered this question as the grateful tailor resumed her twitching and tucking, muttering in an urgent under-voice to a point somewhere between the Aerenarch and her assistant. A lover could be politely ushered out. A bodyguard could only be commanded by Brandon, but why this Rifter? It was too easy to assume that Brandon was setting up a favorite, the fiction of bodyguard to place his lover outside the rules. Yet so far, Vahn reported, there was no sign of intimacy, and the Aerenarch slept alone. Then there was the fact of a second Rifter having been put in charge of the kitchens—a former Douloi, chef and surgeon both, a bit of detritus from Tau Srivashti’s abominable rule of Timberwell.

Damana Willsones recalled Brandon nyr-Arkad as a boy, trotting behind his brother Galen, the tall, thin poet who so strongly resembled Ilara’s father. Semion had been a throwback to Gelasaar’s father. Brandon, at first glance, resembled neither of his parents closely, though details evoked one or the other, such as those blue eyes so like Ilara’s.

From a purely aesthetic perspective, the presumed heir was at his best, standing there in shirt and trousers and boots. Rumor for the past decade had done little to flatter him, but there was no sign of gluttony or debauchery in the clean lines of his body, the contour of muscle not completely masked by the loose linen sleeves, or in the clear gaze. But Willsones knew debauchees who appeared to advantage, as if leading the most abstemious of lives, Tau Srivashti being one of them.

Brandon’s dark, curling hair, that was the Arkad heritage. What was going on between those fine ears lying so flat to his head?

The tailor fretted to herself, then glanced one last time at her boswell as she muttered, “It will have to do. . . .” She stood back, surveying her work with what unease, then glancing eloquently at the tunic on the dummy. “I do not know how I will explain this to the Archon.”

“Archon Srivashti will be apprised of my entire responsibility for the situation, and my total satisfaction with your efforts,” said Brandon. “Thank you.”

Interesting that he rejected Srivashti’s gift, Willsones thought.

The tailor bowed, hesitated when she glanced again at the splendid outfit on the dummy, then she gestured to her assistant, who took the tunic jacket Brandon shrugged off and bore it to the team waiting in an antechamber to hand stitch the final adjustments.

Willsones advanced, and then, instead of a formal military salute, which would precede a military briefing, she offered her hands in the formal Douloi greeting.

(So this is not a Naval visit, but civilian), came Vahn’s bozzed voice in Jaim’s inner ear. (Different rules.)

Brandon straightened, his beautiful manners revealing nothing as he lightly touched fingertips to Willsones’ palms. She glanced from the Faseult ring to the bland mask of Brandon’s face.

“Admiral Willsones,” Brandon said. “My mother introduced us, did she not? Aren’t you related to the Lieutenant Willsones who ran nav on her yacht?”

“My daughter.” Willsones watched the lift of his dark brows in recognition, then the quick contraction of sympathy as he realized that Lieutenant Willsones had died with the Kyriarch Ilara when the Dol’jharians had murdered the Trucial Commission twenty years before. That quick, instinctive sympathy—that was Ilara’s.

He said, “I’m sorry,” and then, before she had to say anything, he indicated the Rifter who was eating another sandwich. “This is Jaim, my bodyguard.”

What did he mean by introducing the Rifter bodyguard as if he were a guest? Willsones found her first impression veering back toward favorites. Either Brandon’s well-publicized excesses had rotted his brain entirely, or was this an indirect invitation to state her business? He knows his position is anomalous. Even a drunken sot who had been raised on the Mandala, political center of the Panarchy, would perceive that much.

So she stepped outside of Naval and Douloi patterns of interaction, staying within the context of familial connection as she said, “You know that the Navy scans the cryptobanks of all incoming ships now, not just what they discharge as their DataNet obligation. One held a vid that Admiral Nyberg thought you should see before it is released. I am here to escort you to a secured briefing room, if you wish to accept the Admiral’s invitation.”

“I am at your disposal,” the Aerenarch said. “Lead on.”

o0o

Silence gripped the briefing room.

Commander Sedry Thetris clasped her hands tightly behind her, careful to keep her sweaty palms away from the wall. At her left and right, a captain and another commander breathed harshly, their tension heightening her own.

Before them a holographic view of the Emerald Throne Room on Arthelion appeared, familiar to nearly every citizen. But in the huge, tree-like throne there sat instead of a small, dapper, silver-bearded man a tall, broadly built one with a grim, hard-boned face, every line of his body glorying in triumph.

The unknown Dol’jharian with the ajna swept the view away from the throne to the long approach leading down from the huge double doors. Small at first, but instantly recognizable, the Panarch—dressed in prison garb and wearing a shock collar—was brought forward by a smirking Bori.

Sedry, who had spent fifty of her sixty years working actively for revolution, controlled the twitch in her fingers; she longed to rip that Bori’s lips off his gloating, sniveling face.

“Kneel,” the Bori said to the Panarch, and the ajna showed the Panarch kneeling obediently at the left of the throne.

“Eusabian is broadcasting this for a purpose,” Nyberg had said when they first filed in. “I will remind you all that we cannot be certain that anything we see really happened the way it appears.”

The Bori stood forth and addressed a long line of Privy Councilors and other exalted Panarchists, all prisoners. Sedry expected to feel triumph at their downfall, but felt nothing. She was still angry that the imminent revolution, so long needed to rid the Tetrad Centrum Inner Planets of the rule of debauched aristocrats and get power back into the hands of the people, the imminent revolution that had superseded her own group’s careful plans, had turned out to be a blind: what she had helped contrive, so willingly and high-heartedly, was this Dol’jharian betrayal.

As the Bori’s speech went on, something about fealty, she covertly studied the ring of silent viewers in the room.

The new Aerenarch stood a little apart from the ranked officers, a straight, slim figure whose reputation largely condemned him for depravity, stupidity, and cowardice. Would he pretend outrage, while hiding relief that he was not there with them? Or would he hide behind the Telos-cursed Douloi wall of politeness, a wall that masked corruption and rot at least as lethal as this Dol’jharian seated on the throne?

A gasp from nearby brought Sedry’s attention back on the holograph. “Bring the beasts first,” Eusabian said as black-clad soldiers herded a Kelly trinity forward.

Interest flashed through Sedry at hearing the enemy’s voice for the first time, then shock radiated through her as Eusabian held up a ball with something fluttering in it and said, “This is all that remains of your Archon,” and dashed it to the floor.

Tarkans with huge broadswords then strode forward and cut the unmoving Kelly down.

The viewers around Sedry reacted with twitches and gasps of horror. She was aware of her own sorrow and rage, and under it all, fear.

Everyone else in her cell had died after the Dol’jharians swept in; she was the only one highly placed enough to win free, and she had turned and fought with renewed passion against the conquerors.

Nights she had worked the computers, removing every trace of her plans, old and new, and every reference even to the dead. Haunted by how they had been so successfully used . . . no . . . that was not it. . . .

In the holo, the horror went on as eight or ten men and women died under the Dol’jharian swords, until the floor pooled with blackly congealing blood.

I am haunted by how easily Dol’jhar identified us to trick us. Had our government known about us as well?

She had fought without regard to personal consequences, to cauterize betrayal. It had taken rescue, removal, and rest to assess how her position had altered: having subsequently received rank points and two decorations for bravery, she’d gained the respect of her peers that had never seemed possible while caught fast in administration in Highdwelling Shelani.

In those first few heady weeks after rescue, it had seemed as if the revolution had happened, after all: everyone, Downsider and Highdweller, Douloi and Polloi, reveled in the freedom and exhilaration of change. They had only the Dol’jharians to defeat, and government would begin anew. And with the Aerenarch Semion and his chokehold on preferment gone, anyone could be a part of it.

Or so it had seemed.

She sustained another shock. The tenth person she recognized: it was old Zhach Stefapnas, Demarch of the community of Highdwellings in which Sedry had grown up. She was not surprised to see him shake badly, hesitate, then prostrate himself before the Dol’jharian monster.

A voice that did not belong to him said, “I swear loyalty to you, O Lord Eusabian. . . .”

With a wince of distaste, Sedry blocked out the false litany. She wondered if his horrible sister, Charite-Pius, probably now dancing or drinking with those damned Douloi in the Ares pavilion, had any notion of what had happened to her brother, and wished viciously that she could see this.

After the Demarch, the rest of the Panarchists responded with a similar cowardly refrain: Sedry knew that for a few of them it was expedience, and a desire to fight against the supposed new masters, that prompted them. Her interest wandered, probing at her own fears, like probing an open wound.

Her attention sharpened when the line reached the instantly recognizable remainder of the Panarch’s Privy Council: all venerable with age and experience, the tallest of them Padraic Carr, the High Admiral of the Fleet. Bile clawed at her throat at the way he moved. What had they done to him? Somehow it was worse that no marks showed.

With a gesture of contempt the Dol’jharian conqueror motioned them away. Then he spoke, but it was just more rhetoric about power, and her mind arrowed back to the startling whisper that came out of the gloom late after a shift: Sedry Thetris, of the Seven-Eyes Cell. Wasn’t your password “When the bough breaks”?

Her sweaty palms turned clammy, and memory of the tall, gold-eyed man was replaced in the holo by the Panarch, brought to stand before Eusabian.

“It seems,” Eusabian said coldly, “neither your prayers nor your priorities did you much good.” He waved a hand, indicating the dead and the living, now herded along by the sword-bearing soldiers. “Nor your loyal subordinates.”

“What will you do when the Fleet arrives?” The Panarch’s voice sounded weak in the vast room. Only Dol’jhar’s could be heard clearly, from his position of command.

“Your concern for my travails is touching, Arkad, but your grasp of my power is faulty. . . .” He went on to brag about the Urian missiles to the unbelieving Panarch.

Old news. Why would Dol’jhar broadcast this? He must be having trouble controlling his Rifters, Sedry thought.

Her mind reverted to her own problem: the former Archon of Timberwell, who had somehow found out about her betrayal, and now threatened to reveal her.

I admire you, the suave voice had whispered, husky with amusement. You’ve done well for yourself in the shambles. There will be a place for you in the new government if you are intelligent enough to recognize when to fight and when to defer to those with greater experience.

Anger churned in her guts. The Douloi did not lie—he did have the power. It didn’t matter how she’d managed to slip up in covering her tracks. He knew, so she either got him what he wanted—or died. The decision was to be made here, right now.

I want to know what Nyberg is hiding, he’d said.

She tightened her grip on her hands, her boswell still recording. At any moment she could turn it off.

But if she did do the noble thing and die, he’d merely find another more willing tool—someone who might not work against him should it be necessary.

“So, Arkad,” the Bori’s gloating voice broke into her thoughts, “are you curious to know your fate?”

Sedry’s gaze shifted to the new Aerenarch, standing so still before the holo. Rumor whispered of expedience, and of cowardice, in his own survival. Was that true? His actions since were puzzling: he had not had his father declared dead and started up another government. If he was waiting, was it for this?

She studied his profile, expecting to observe that Douloi mask of privilege, as if they stood above mere human emotion. But there was no mask. Pale with nausea, his eyes crimped with pain, he watched unblinking as the Bori brought forward two boxes and set them down.

“I’m sure you’ve spent twenty years devising something bloody, and nothing will stop you now. . . .” the Panarch said, still in that weak voice.

Eusabian smiled. “I need not exert myself to kill you—not when the denizens of Gehenna will do it for me.”

A murmur, quickly stilled, rose up from the ring of watching officers. Sedry watched the Aerenarch’s hands flex once, then drop to his sides.

The Bori said something gloating, and the Dol’jharian responded. Sedry knew herself poised on the brink of her own precipice.

The Bori made a flourish and lit the boxes: mounted inside them, plainly to be seen, the heads of the former heirs. The Dol’jharian spoke, but the words went past Sedry. It was all meaningless ritual now, the triumphant conqueror parading his prize prisoner in order to ensure obedience in his lower-ranked new subjects.

Striking to her heart was the grief in the Panarch’s face, twinned, amplified, in the Aerenarch’s before her. But where the Panarch managed to smooth his features, assuming once again the detestable Douloi superiority, the light in Brandon Arkad’s eyes gathered, brimmed, and with an impatient hand he dashed away the tears before they could fall.

“Has your famous wit deserted you?” Eusabian sneered. “You, who have lost your Fleet, your heirs? You, who were never able to penetrate the secrets of the Ur? I have, and I control the powers of the Ur as easily as that controls you.”

The Bori triggered the shock collar, forcing the Panarch to drop to his knees, then after an agonizing time, prone, at the feet of his conqueror.

The holograph faded out, replaced by another scene entirely: the Navy’s planet Minerva under fire, making it clear that no one had escaped.

Nyberg gestured, and the holograph ended.

“Thank you,” the Aerenarch said huskily, and went out, followed by Vice Admiral Willsones.

Silence gripped them for an indrawn breath, then burst as the room filled with voices: angry voices, excited ones, voices filled with bravado as oaths of vengeance were sworn.

Sedry cut off her recording and straightened out her sleeve before letting her arms drop to her sides.

You’ll get your secret, Tau Srivashti, Sedry thought grimly, memory of the grief in the Panarch’s face, and in his one living son’s, still before her eyes. Perhaps you are strong enough to defeat this monster. And then . . . and then . . .

The image of grief-stricken Arkad faces blocked out the hallway as she followed her fellow officers out. Convinced that she had seen her own death warrant in there, she felt a strange, almost giddy sense of release. Eventually she would be brought to justice, either by Timberwell or by herself.

But first she had a goal: she would exert herself to bring about justice for those who had died before her.

o0o

“You’d better see this,” Vahn said to Jaim.

Commander Nyberg had released the vid to the Aerenarch’s security team at the same time it was viewed in the briefing room. Side by side, Vahn and Jaim watched the vid on the main console, Montrose and the rest of those not on duty behind them.

No one spoke until it ended.

Vahn’s tight expression matched the angry disgust burning inside Jaim. “The Navy is releasing that?”

“They will soon, probably before the reception.”

Jaim shook his head, his mourning chimes tinkling.

A short time later Willsones appeared, escorting Brandon. With formal salutes—somehow the moment required nothing less—she left the Aerenarch with Vahn and returned to the Cap to report her total lack of success to Nyberg.

Brandon vanished without a word into his suite. Jaim followed, in case he wanted anything.

Presently Jaim was back.

Vahn said, “Did he say anything?”

“Nothing.” Jaim stared back at that closed door, then shook his head. “I better get ready.”

Brandon had left the design of Jaim’s formal livery to Jaim, who had chosen the gray of stone, of steel, of compromise between light and darkness. Jaim retreated to his quarters to change, wondering what would happen if Brandon didn’t come out of his room for this party. But when Vahn bozzed Jaim that the tailor had emerged from the anteroom, Brandon emerged from the bedroom and stood still as the tailor eased the coat up over his arms, fastened it herself, and smoothed its perfect lines.

Two minutes was all it took, then she stepped back. Brandon expressed his thanks in a voice devoid of expression; she ducked her head, and withdrew.

They had half an hour left. Vahn and his team had already taken up position along the two fastest routes, each of which would get them there in five minutes.

But Brandon said to Jaim, “Ready? I’d like to walk.”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go,” the Aerenarch said; over his connection, Jaim heard Vahn contacting Roget, who headed the outer perimeter, and her orders shifting the teams.

o0o

In a small but centrally located villa on the other side of the lake, Vannis Scefi-Cartano, Aerenarch-Consort to Brandon’s eldest brother Semion (now deceased), faced the biggest crisis of her life: she had nothing to wear.

She ripped out one outfit after another, scrutinizing it in growing hopelessness, then throwing it on the floor. Vannis was peripherally aware of her maid Yenef’s silent reproof, as they both knew who would have to clean up the mess, but Vannis was too angry, and too desperate, to care.

Yenef stood against the far wall, her attention divided between the desk console and her mistress, aware that she had made a drastic error.

“Half an hour. Half an hour until the reception,” Vannis said, her voice low and melodious even in the extreme of anger. “No sign of the new Aerenarch?” The word ‘new’ prefaced a word Vannis had come to hate in the years she’d spent married to Semion.

“No, highness,” Yenef said.

Two things will keep you safe, the Aerenarch-Consort’s Head Steward had said to Yenef when she was hired a mere four months ago. Silence, and silence. The first, when you are in their proximity. Say nothing unless you receive a direct question. The second, when someone tries to hire you to spy for them—and you will receive these offers, we all have—you do not respond, but turn it directly over to Security. The Head Steward had added drily, They will find out anyway, and anyone stupid enough to break that rule disappears, by direct order of Aerenarch Semion.

To? Yenef had asked, appalled.

The Head Steward had shrugged. Who knows? I don’t, and I don’t care. What I expect from the Aerenarch-Consort’s personal staff is loyalty. If you cannot give us that, consider my words as advice in self-preservation.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Vannis murmured, flinging down a dainty, fragile lounging outfit made entirely of spider-lace.

Vannis’s enormous personal staff on Arthelion would have known this for a rhetorical question, but Yenef, though exquisitely trained in the arts of tailoring, was new enough, and stung enough, to respond, albeit with downcast eyes. “I did tell you, highness.”

At one time any servant who spoke back would have been instantly dismissed. But this one maid was all Vannis had. “You merely informed me that the Navy said that naval stores are reserved for military purposes.”

“So it was, highness.”

“You did not tell me until this morning—this morning—that . . .”

Vannis halted there, hearing a memory of her mother’s smooth, precise diction: There is never a time, or an excuse, for bad manners, followed by her governess’s practical tones: Treat your servants like human beings, and they will be loyal; treat them like machines and they will plot against you.

Vannis forced herself to pick up the trousers of the lounging outfit, smooth them, then the paneled over robe, and last the chemise that went under the robe. When she had finished this, she spoke again. “You are new, so I can’t expect you to understand the political implications of the Navy’s stricture against sharing stores with anyone but the ruling family.”

Yenef was surprised into pointing out, “But highness, you are a member of the ruling family.”

Vannis suppressed a hot surge of anger. “I was. A member of the ruling family. You surely know that no married partner of any Arkad is adopted into the Arkad Family until his or her spouse becomes a ruling Panarch or Kyriarch.” When Yenef bobbed her head in agreement, Vannis went on. “You might be forgiven for not considering what that means.” And the words came unbidden, “I did not consider what that means. But it appears others have. Thus your observation to me this morning that you thought the messages gone astray, the unaccountable delays that my peers have all put down to the chaos of refugee life and communications blunders, the promises of the loan of a tailor and team that never materialized, were obfuscations, came too late.” Her voice did not rise, but her consonants sharpened.

Yenef responded once again. “I was not certain . . . and I was afraid.”

Vannis could hear the tone of conviction in Yenef’s low voice, and saw it in the maid’s tight mouth.

I don’t have time to educate her, Vannis thought—but if she didn’t do something, all she would have would be time. For the Douloi accumulating on Ares, the only people who mattered, would know that she was a relict. A nonentity.

Anger gave way to a spasm of regret that she had only this one newly-hired maid with her. Though Vannis had dared not contravene Semion’s orders that she attend Brandon’s tedious Enkainion in his place, she had taken steps to at least guarantee a pleasant journey to Arthelion. Her friend Rista, too indolent to have political leanings, but rich enough to possess a small, fast yacht designed for comfort, not capacity, had enabled her to slough off the security; choosing Yenef to accompany her meant the least chance of divided loyalty.

Unfortunately, while Rista was wealthy enough to possess such a ship, its maintenance and proper crewing had apparently strained her resources. The fiveskip failed—beyond the ability of the crew to repair—three days real-time from Arthelion.

No regrets. That disabled skip had probably saved their lives, for the long approach under gee-plane meant they’d discovered from the safety of deep space that the entire universe had gone mad rather than by skipping into the middle of it.

Vannis looked up at Yenef, who stood in a submissive posture, her shoulders rigid, and her hands pressed stiffly together.

Disarm with the truth, or some of it.

“Your area of expertise is clothing. You know how long it takes to make court clothing,” Vannis said carefully.

Yenef said, “Yes, highness.”

“But I do not.” Vannis spread her hands. “You understand that the very reason why the Tetrad Centrum Douloi are never seen in any machine-made piece of clothing is that our apparel must be unique, that our wealth itself is not on display, but what it gains us. I, as Aerenarch-Consort, fully expected to appear in Arthelion the day of the Enkainion, give you and the waiting staff an order for a new gown, and have it ready by evening. How many of you would that have taken?”

“Anywhere from ten to thirty. The embroidery is the most difficult,” Yenef said.

“See, I did not know that. I give the order, and the work is executed somewhere out of my sight. I give an order for a ball tomorrow evening, with a rain-shield, a complete display of fireworks, a live orchestra, a twelve-course meal for 500—a breakfast for twelve on a barge the next morning—and it all happens. Wealth is the power to make it all happen.”

Yenef bobbed a brief curtsey, but Vannis could see non-comprehension there as Yenef glanced at the console.

“No sign of the Aerenarch?”

Yenef, glad to be moving, tapped the keypads, choosing different discriminators. “No sign of anyone, highness,” she said.

Vannis tried a last time. “You know that until the Aerenarch’s arrival, the Douloi had relaxed etiquette.” That had been unexpectedly delightful, a sense of adventure and freedom. “Some had arrived with even less than we brought, having been rescued from Highdwellings or planetary enclaves under attack. A few had only what they stood up in.”

Yenef bobbed her curtsey from behind the console.

“But with so many coming in, the return to etiquette has been inevitable.” Some might say a desperate grasp at a semblance of normality. “And the most strict rule of all is Mandalic court mode, which we must follow to honor the last living Arkad.”

Yenef could have recited that lesson herself: the latest court mode, due to the incipient millennial celebration of the Panarchy’s existence, had swung all the way back to the modes popular in the days of Jaspar Arkad, when those who identified as female wore gowns, and those who identified as males wore tunic-jackets of a quasi-military cut, trousers, and boots. Only the actual military was exempt, but they wore their dress uniforms, which also hearkened back to ancient styles.

“So I need a gown,” Vannis said, as if stating it would make one materialize in her closet. She was already wearing every jewel she had brought, her heavy brown hair dressed elaborately.

Vannis knew she was waiting for a miracle—for one of her smiling peers to boz her with an apology, and a team of tailors. There were tailors here—some of the bigger yachts had brought stores, tailors, even musicians.

But no one, it seemed, deemed Vannis important enough to loan her one, now that Semion was dead, and a new Aerenarch had taken his place.

The symbolism was crudely ineluctable. Her enormous wardrobe at the Mandala, gone. Here, her enormous prestige . . . gone? Scefi and Cartano holdings and clients scattered, dead, blown up, who knew?

Her funds were fast running out, yet Brandon had still not contacted her, even though she was the closest thing to family he had on Ares. She had found through some discreet checking that the only outside contact Brandon had made had concerned some injured Rifter boy from his rescue ship. His staff, from all reports, consisted merely of a suitable Marine guard, a couple of men (some said Rifters), and a pair of Arkadic dogs rescued from Arthelion.

He had room for dogs and Rifters, but not for her. Either he was truly the dissipated sot that Semion had always said he was, or he was playing some sort of game.

It didn’t matter. In either case, humiliation and final failure loomed huge ahead as the Aerenarch-Consort, who had set fashions for the past ten years, contemplated attending the reception in one of the same morning and garden party garments she’d been wearing for weeks.

“Your highness,” Yenef spoke suddenly. “The Aerenarch is just leaving the Enclave, and there is a vid issued by the Cap with total override. It’s from Arthelion!” She hesitated. “But there’s a warning of graphic content.” She reached for the console again. “I’ll scan the summary . . .”

“The Aerenarch,” Vannis interrupted. Important things first. “Who’s he with, and what is he wearing?”

“One other man, highness,” Yenef said. “In a livery I do not recognize. The Aerenarch wears white, with no decoration. I thought at first it was Naval uniform,” she added. “But there is no rank marking, and the wrong buttons.”

“He can’t be wearing a Naval uniform,” Vannis exclaimed. Wasn’t he thrown out of the Navy? The Academy, anyway.

Yenef shook her head. “Plain dress, highness.” She tapped her boswell, and the desk holo came to life, showing two male figures walking across the grass toward the central pavilion. The colors were hard to discern because of the darkness; the imager that Yenef had tapped into apparently had poor light enhancers.

Vannis studied the flattened figures. The tall one in gray could be dismissed. He walked in the place of a bodyguard. Brandon . . .

Vannis chewed her underlip. His tunic was indeed utterly plain. He didn’t even wear any jewels. What did it mean?

Doesn’t matter what it means. Killing the image with a sweep of her hand, she turned. “Ah.” She grabbed at the shimmering folds of a much-worn semi-formal afternoon hostess gown in layers of sheer gauzy silk, and ripped away the upper layers of pale blue, revealing the plain white under layers.

Yenef gasped.

Their eyes met across the length of the room, mistress and maid. She needs me, Yenef thought, relieved, almost dizzy with the idea that she and Vannis were in some wise conspirators.

Her thoughts raced as rapidly as her fingers would have to shortly, circling around the word that the steward had used when interviewing her: Loyalty.

It had always been one of those words that people uttered but that didn’t mean anything to Yenef. ‘Loyalty’ and ‘honor’ and suchlike were play words for the Douloi, who controlled everything. Yenef wanted to make clothes—and become famous for doing it. Ten years of bowing and smiling for the Arkads—ten well-paid years, housed in a palace—would have enabled her to go anywhere and command whatever salary she liked.

Now she lived in a tiny villa on a military outpost, she had become a maid-of-all-work, and she suspected her pay might abruptly diminish just as her living circumstances had.

But now. If this ruse of Vannis Scefi-Cartano’s worked, what might it do for Yenef?

“Do you see?” Vannis asked.

“Yes, highness,” Yenef said. “If I snip the lace, and satin-stitch the silk here and here . . .” She touched her neck.

“Do it,” Vannis said, unclasping her jewels and tossing them down. “And find my white morning slippers. No, I will. You sew, and we’ll watch whatever this is the Navy saw fit to send so late, in case we need to know its contents before the reception.”

Vannis carefully lifted her parure from her high-dressed hair, then touched the console to view the waiting vid as Yenef sat down with needle and thread. For a few moments the needle flashed and flashed again, then slowed and stopped, suspended as both women stilled with shock and horror.

o0o

Jaim followed Brandon along the curving path toward the huge, golden-lit pavilion. At the edge of the lake, Brandon paused, Jaim suspected to permit Roget’s teams to sweep the shadowy garden bounding the landward side of their path. From this vantage, the line of villas and the pavilion looked peaceful, untouched by war.

Under the oneill’s false night the soft, cool air carried the scents of loam and blossoms and fresh water. Jaim could almost believe he was on a planet: high overhead, the patterns of light created by the dwellings on the far side, nine kilometers away, and lights on the structures of the spin axis, simulated the constellations of a planetary sky. He stopped, staring upward, as the essentially Douloi design of Ares manifested itself. The dwellings in the Ares oneill were arranged not only to appeal to people in their proximity but also with an eye to their appearance in the night sky of the opposite surface.

Brandon had halted a short distance away. He gazed across the water, silhouetted against the upcurving lights twinkling in the darkness, and Jaim, despite a life spent in ships and freefall and Rifthaven, experienced an unsettling shift in paradigm whose impact was subliminally physical: it seemed for that moment as if all the constellations of Ares formed a frame around that single figure.

The notion was fanciful in fact, but symbolically? Jaim was beginning to fathom how symbolism was used in the Panarchy. The Douloi do nothing without intention. Was awareness of that frame part of this moment for Brandon?

Jaim waited for Brandon to either move, or to speak. But he stood as water lapped at the shore, and unseen frogs croaked a curious rhythm, half-muffled by the plash of a waterfall. Finally, he turned away from the lake and gazed at the brilliantly lit pavilion, a lacework of graceful lines that could never have withstood real weather, though he took no step toward it.

“It’s time to go,” Brandon said.

An observation or an order? Was it now, on the cusp of Brandon’s re-entry into the world of the Douloi, that Jaim’s status was to change?

If so, could he accept that?

Time to test. Jaim did not answer, but swept the low bow that Vahn had taught him, servant to sovereign.

Brandon’s thoughts had run on a trajectory that looped memory into the present until Jaim performed that deliberate bow, stiff because it wasn’t yet body memory, but graceful because Ulanshu masters were rarely otherwise. Brandon sensed the question, and underneath the deeper question of possible personal betrayal. As with every single move, every breath, there were a thousand potential paths, and too many of his choices had led to betrayal or death.

There was only one possible response. Brandon swept the exact same bow to Jaim, to the same precise degree. “Nothing has changed, Jaim.” Brandon opened his hand, taking in the station curving overhead. “Just a bigger prison.”

“So you really can’t get Vi’ya and the crew out?”

“That is no mere prison.” Brandon’s brows lifted. “I’ll have you know that Detention Five is a golden cage; among its more illustrious inmates was one Krysarchei Dalisay, who launched a war against her father, one of my less savory forebears.”

The reference obviously meant nothing to Jaim, but he took the intent. “It was as much as I could do,” Brandon continued. “Any more vigorous attempt might have meant losing all power to help them further.”

“Or yourself.”

“Or myself.” Brandon’s quick smile deepened the shadows framing his mouth. “All the Tetrad Centrum Douloi practice Ulanshu, although too many know it only as a thing of will and intellect.”

He saw the meaning strike home, and waited.

“And you’ve not been interrogated,” said Jaim slowly. “Unless . . .”

Brandon shook his head. “No. You are my sworn man; you would be told.”

The Rifter echoed his movement, the minor chimes in his mourning braids singing out. “If you say so.”

“It is part of the dance. And I don’t know the steps yet.”

Jaim’s chimes sounded again. “Dance? You have to be clear if you want me to understand. Unless you mean, if you step outside of the ‘dance’ of politics, that frees everyone else to do the same.”

Brandon let out his breath in a gusting sigh. “Yes—friend and enemy. As yet, I don’t know who is which. But to be plain, to rule I have to give a first order, and if they refuse to obey it, then I am finished. The Panarchy is finished. And everyone—” The airy gesture took in the Cap and the golden pavilion. “And they know it.”

o0o

After she tied off the last stitch, Yenef let her hands rest in her lap.

The needle fell unremarked from her hand and slithered to the floor with a quiet tic. The sound, soft as it was, startled her out of the grip of horror.

She slowly held up her handiwork. At any other moment her dominant emotion would have been triumph, but the memories were too harrowing for that.

Yenef started again as the annunciator sounded. Vannis took the gown from her, and slipped it over her head as Yenef hurried to answer the door.

Though she’d spent weeks aboard Rista Brandt’s yacht, the woman rushed right past as if Yenef were invisible.

“Vannis, do hurry, the reception has begun.” Rista tried to catch her breath. Really, every day seemed to become more like a wiredream. When she saw Vannis, she gasped. “Vannis? Why are you still not dressed?”

Vannis stared back at Rista, whose round, pleasing figure was enhanced by a glittering gown of pale lavender, sprinkled across by diamonds, kauch-pearls, and deep violet tizti stones, her pale hair dressed high, circled by a coronet of faceted tizti. Delicate filigree bracelets encircled her charmingly dimpled arms and her neck.

Vannis treasured Rista’s uncomplicated friendship, but sometimes thought that Rista still dwelt in the peculiar mental landscape of their shared youth. Vannis said, “Did you not see the vid from Arthelion?”

The young woman raised her hand, reddish fires flickering in the hearts of the tizti stones set in the filigree around her boswell. “Oh, that. So revolting! I only watched a part. NorSothu says it’s completely fake, nothing more than Dol’jharian—”

Rista stopped as she realized that Vannis was not, as she had assumed, half-dressed: that what she’d taken as an under-gown was in fact what Vannis intended to wear. Though a cook-servant would scorn to wear so plain a thing.

Well, if a cook-servant could afford those diaphanous layers of silk, or hire someone to achieve that fit. Rista had to admit that the plain white gown suited Vannis’s warm cinnamon complexion. Her heavy brown hair was swept up simply, bound only with a thin strand of pearls. Tiny as she was, she looked like a girl.

“What have you done?” Rista demanded, her jeweled shoes clattering on the parquet floor. Then she gasped, and clutched at her neck. “You haven’t heard something—that is, they haven’t gotten word from the Panarch? About formal mourning?”

“Of course not,” Vannis said soothingly, pitying anyone who would give NorSothu nyr-Kaddes’s chatter credence. They want that atrocious vid to be fake, so they will pretend that it is until someone has the bad manners to contradict them. “Your appearance is entirely correct, since no one directly connected to you is dead, and official mourning has not been declared.”

Rista sighed, plumping down onto a chair. “That’s what Matir Masaud said, but it could always have been a mislead, to make trouble.” She blinked at Vannis. “Really, there’s never been anything like this before, has there?” She frowned. “But what you’re wearing!” She gestured, her rings flashing. “What does it mean?”

“Personal mourning. Rista, whether true or false, the vid corroborates the fact that we are at war. Is it not time to retrench?”

Rista bit her underlip, then breathed a soft laugh. “If you carry this off, NorSothu will be furious. I hear she’s brought out some embroidered thing she had made for their Archon’s funeral. It will be the most elaborate gown there; the cost, Matir said, was ruinous. Her brother’s got a Hopfneriad wig—complete with butterflies in mourning white.” Rista’s hands fluttered about her head. “But Vannis, we’re going to be late, which I know wouldn’t matter, except aren’t you one of the hosts?”

Vannis could have said several things about her supposed co-hosts, but she confined herself to: “That’s just it, we agreed there would be no host, since we pooled our resources, and the Burgess Pavilion itself is understood to belong to the Arkads when in residence. The focus, quite properly, should be on Brandon.”

Rista said, “You say that so naturally, ‘Brandon.’ None of us have ever met him—and he has such a reputation!”

Vannis let her talk on as they walked out. She covertly glanced at her boswell, which relayed the imager straight to her retina. Brandon was still standing there by the lake as thought he’d completely lost his wits. He had to have a full complement of functionaries—were they unable to keep him sober?

Not that it mattered. He moved at last, and walked straight toward the Pavilion. At least he was arriving alone, for she again discounted the tall man at his side.

So she must arrive alone. But here was Rista, from a minor Douloi family far outside the Tetrad Centrum, intending to attach herself to Vannis once again. I’ve given you prestige ever since our arrival. She owed Rista that much for saving her life, however inadvertently.

She and Rista stepped out onto the lamp-lit slide walk. An aromatic breeze riffled through their hair and clothing as the slide whispered its way toward the pavilion halfway around the lake. Vannis checked her boswell twice while Rista’s royal gossip wandered to how that horrid Basilea, Risiena Ghettierus, had refused to take her husband into her quarters after he’d revealed he was not to live at the Arkadic Enclave.

Vannis laughed along with Rista; she had found out by careful listening to lower-level Naval flunkies well plied with liquor that the gnostor Omilov had been invited to take up residence with the High Phanist.

But that left the Arkadic Enclave with exactly one inmate, as servants and staff did not count. Why is Brandon still alive, when all rumors point to everyone else at his Enkainion dead?

She stared across the dark landscape at the Enclave, an elegantly rambling enlargement of the manor of the Temenarch Ghodsi Illyahin, who had willed her oneill to the Navy eight hundred years before as housing for the occasional visits of Panarchs and Kyriarchs.

I wish I’d bedded Brandon in spite of Semion, Vannis thought. Brandon was by far the best looking of Arkad sons, and he’d shown an interest in her ten years ago, but Semion had been very clear on the subject. You will stay away from my youngest brother, he’d said in that cold, dispassionate voice. He’d added with faint distaste, He’s stupid and lazy, and what’s worse, a drunken sot. I will not have the Family made a target for the coarse-minded.

A drunk could not be trusted for discretion, and anyway the idea that that handsome face had no wit behind it had killed her interest. Some might have a taste for beautiful dolls, but that was not one of her vices.

The slide walk stopped and they stepped off before the huge arches of the pavilion. Music drifted out, below laughter and the tinkling of crystal. The sounds of impending battle. Vannis smiled in the darkness. The ballroom was her theater of war. Another quick check on her boswell: her timing was perfect.

So far.

Now for my deflection. Who? Vannis scanned the main antechamber as she and Rista crossed the polished marble. Ah! Vannis recognized a Chival from Octant Sud with whom she’d once had a flirtation.

“My dear Joffri!” She advanced on him, hands out. He stopped, his companions deferring as Vannis pressed his hands in the mode of intimates. “I am so glad to see you safely arrived. Do you know Rista?” She introduced them both by title, gave them long enough to see that their rank was matched, then uttered a little cry of dismay. “Do go on ahead, both of you?” She touched her boswell. “A crisis—I promised my aid—and you know how unforgivable it is to deal with these things once inside. Do not let me keep you even later!”

Joffri gallantly offered his arm, Rista took it, and Vannis was rid of them both as Joffri rejoined his group and performed introductions.

While they were safely immured in polite chatter, Vannis skirted the curving wall of aromatic shrubs screening the entrance to the ballroom. As the steward grounded his mace, announced in a hieratic voice His Highness the Aerenarch and rolled out all of Brandon’s names, she approached the huge carved doors now wide open against the walls. The interior flowed naturally into a visual theme complementing that flowering outer wall, creating a pleasing sense of invitation.

The steward grounded his mace, and over the chimes called, “Her highness Vannis Scefi-Cartano.”

Her highness—no Aerenarch-Consort. There was a new Aerenarch now: the steward’s announcement confirmed the official acceptance of that vid.

Vannis straightened her back as faces turned in her direction.

Her sense of timing had not failed her. Brandon was not twenty paces ahead of her. He and all the Tetrad Centrum Douloi paused, waiting to see whom he addressed first. He turned at Vannis’s name. Was he postponing the political implications of that first greeting? Is he smart enough to consider that, or is he simply lost in a sea of strangers?

A stupid sot he might be—his brother had certainly called him that—but she had never heard that he exhibited Semion’s penchant for cruelty. She knew the risk she took in so direct an address, and yet, if she did not triumph now, she was finished in the social theatre of war.

She risked it all by extending her hands in a gesture half of welcome, half of question.

He smiled back. And answered by waiting.

Jaim, at Brandon’s shoulder, thus got a full view of a straight-backed, diminutive figure gowned in unrelieved white. The contrast was startling; framed by the splashes and glitter of complicated color around her, the simplicity of her white gown, its hem rilling like sea foam at her feet, seemed to enhance the smooth lines of her body, the dusky shade of her skin crowned by coiled, glossy brown hair.

(Vannis Scefi-Cartano, the former Aerenarch’s consort,) Vahn said, in case Jaim had missed the announcement.

She moved like a trained dancer, so light and elegant she seemed to be a holo rather than real. Reth Silverknife had moved with similar grace. The memory struck Jaim in the heart and he could not look away; he heard the rustle of her gown as she walked straight to Brandon’s side.

“Brandon!” Her voice was clear and musical as she sank into a profound bow. “Permit me to say how very glad I am to find you here, and safe.”

“Vannis,” Brandon said, raising her. “Permit me to return the sentiment.” His grip shifted, and he carried her fingers to his lips, where they lingered, the woman smiling brilliantly up into his eyes, before both dropped their hands.

She said, “As it happens, I preceded you by some weeks, and most of the company is known to me. Would introductions be agreeable, or do you prefer to receive alone?”

Brandon paused a heartbeat, and said, “Whom shall we greet first?”

Jaim knew he’d missed something. Vahn said, (‘Receive’ implies he’s ready, at least socially, to declare himself head of the Arkads. It could be construed by some as the first step in forming a government.)

Jaim watched Vannis move with the assurance of one born to lead; she seemed unaware of the susurrus of tiny gasps and whispers as she took her place at Brandon’s side.

Brandon and Vannis began circling the room. Vahn explained further that Brandon had two choices: he could choose a position and force people to come to him (something the former Aerenarch would have done), or he could move himself, going to the person with the highest rank. That would cause the rest to fall into rank order, as they had when greeting Brandon on his arrival off the Mbwa Kali.

But he had chosen to circle, sidestepping questions of preference—and political intent.

Jaim followed, listening to their pleasant voices complementing one another—his baritone, her soprano—in the slightly singsong Douloi cadences. In spite of Vahn’s explanation, Jaim began to sense that Brandon had an intent.

Their progress was slow enough to permit Jaim to take in his surroundings, a complication of marble, semi-precious stone, and costly draperies, glittering chandeliers floating above the guests, and a low, faux balustrade behind which stretched an immense, real-time vid of Ares seen from space. The illusion was nearly perfect, as though the back of the immense hall were open to space. The massive Cap with its scattered ship bays—each capable of half-swallowing a seven-kilometer-long battlecruiser—loomed over the slowly rotating oneill attached to its underside like the stem of a mushroom, the whole surrounded by a glittering cloud of ships.

As long as Jaim deferred to the Douloi, they ignored him as if he were invisible, as Vahn had predicted.

Jaim was grateful for the reprieve.

It wasn’t their looks that he found intimidating, in spite of their fine, old-style clothing. The glitter-crowds on Rifthaven, with their wild augmentations and body art, were far more entrancing to the eye. Vahn had said that the Tetrad Centrum Douloi fashions were for biological simplicity—no modifications. Each person as born, to the color of eyes and hair. What they prized most were family resemblances.

The intimidation lay entirely in their movements, which reminded him of the ripple of the breezes through the reeds at the lakeside. How did such a crowd know when to sidestep, when to come forward, and when to defer? They did it with those smooth, stylized gestures that were indeed dance-like, the smiling faces with their watchful eyes so like masks.

Brandon and Vannis greeted the guests as if they had been doing this together for years. Brandon received obeisance after obeisance, lightly touching the open hands sometimes with his palms, sometimes mere fingertips; perforce the guests must greet Vannis in a similar manner.

Jaim began to pick up subtle signals that she had won some kind of invisible duel. As for Brandon, there was nothing but politesse in his words or manner, but Jaim had been sparring with Brandon for weeks, and knew the subtle tells of eye, the twitch of shoulder, the tension of wrist that indicated intent.

Other patterns began resolving out of the stylized dance. The most noticeable was the segregation of Downsiders from Highdwellers. Downsiders required more interpersonal distance than Highdwellers, so that mixed groups naturally tended to break up. Only Highdwellers lingered along the low balustrade fronting the vid of Ares—the Downsiders were apparently less comfortable with the illusion.

Jaim sighed. It seemed so futile. Even were there not the grievances between Downsiders and Highdwellers that, according to Vahn, the late Aerenarch Semion had encouraged for political gain, something so simple as a psychological preference could divide people.

Those who see naught but a single road have no choice in where it takes them, Jaim’s mate, Reth Silverknife, had once said.

The most subtle pattern was that caused by the flash and glitter of the signet on Brandon’s finger, beginning with Vannis’s reflective gaze. Others noted the ring, then glanced away to meet other gazes. Jaim could not read those looks, but he sensed a question spreading among them.

Ah. Brandon’s intent: the Naval officers, dressed in full uniform.

The massive form of Ares’s commander, Admiral Nyberg, was instantly identifiable from novosti coverage, but who were the rest of them? He bozzed Vahn a query.

(Tetrad Centrum Douloi, attending as members of their class,) came the answer. Then Jaim became aware of the Douloi movements, subtly at odds with what he understood of Naval rank. A kind of space was opening up around a tall, slender officer whose dark good looks were flattered by the white uniform. He stood to the right of Nyberg, face impassive, his body still with tension.

As Brandon approached, the surrounding Douloi gazes flickered covertly from his ring to that officer.

Another query.

(That’s Commander Anton vlith-Faseult. Chief of Security.) Ah. Brother and heir to the Archon of Charvann who, the elder Omilov had said, had died at the hands of Hreem the Faithless, and whose heraldry was on the ring now drawing every eye. Neural induction could not hide Vahn’s tension.

Before Jaim could frame his next question, a tall, silver-haired, bearded man crossed the room with consummate assurance to intercept Brandon and Vannis. His spare frame, clothed in dark blue, conveyed the impression of great physical strength, as the sheath of a rapier implies its edge; Jaim knew here was another Ulanshu master. (Vahn?)

(Archon Tau Srivashti. Head of one of the most powerful Downsider Families.) The rhythm of Vahn’s reply hinted at danger—as if Jaim could not sense it on his own. Jaim edged a foot forward, flanking Brandon. He tried to be subtle, but the Archon’s slack-lidded gaze flicked his way, then narrowed in amusement before his lined face smoothed into urbane Douloi politeness.

“Welcome, highness,” the Archon said, his voice a husky murmur just above a whisper. “After weeks of grim tidings, your restoration to the living has been welcomed as a miracle.”

“Thank you, your grace.” Brandon briefly touched the offered palms.

(Used the honorific for Archon, not his territorial name,) came Vahn’s voice. (Srivashti lost control of his planet Timberwell, forced to withdraw to the Highdwellings.)

Srivashti was taller than the Aerenarch. His light eyes, a curious yellow-flecked light brown common to his family, narrowed slightly, and Brandon said, “Thank you for the loan of your tailor.”

“She did not please you?”

Brandon smiled. “She nearly killed herself in her efforts to finish a truly memorable design—” Jaim wondered if the hesitation he heard before the word “memorable” was really there, or only his imagination. Brandon gestured deprecatingly down his length and added, “But I believe the circumstances warrant a private mourning.”

“Ah.” Srivashti bowed low. “Entirely correct.” He cast an amused glance at Vannis, who bowed.

Brandon also bowed. And then the Archon disappeared in the crowd.

Jaim found that he’d been holding his breath.

From Brandon’s side, Vannis watched Srivashti gather his admirers around him. Controlling her nerves from hairline to toes, she hid her reaction; his mouth had smirked with amusement, but she had seen anger tighten that slack-lidded gaze, for a single heartbeat, when it first rested on Brandon. The Srivashtis were as old a Family as the Arkads, and their fates had been long entangled.

And so the dance of power begins, she thought as she and Brandon reached the Naval officers. She took a discreet step back, expecting Brandon to publicly offer the Faseult ring to the new Archon.

With the Archon gone, Jaim remembered his question. (Why is everyone watching?) Jaim asked.

(If the Aerenarch presents the ring and bows as if to a new Archon, then he is taking his father’s place in all but name, with a first order.)

(I don’t understand. If this Faseult, or vlith-Faseult, is the heir, then how is that an order?)

(We didn’t make it clear? No Archon or Archonei can hold command in the Navy or Marines. If the Aerenarch greets him as the Archon—an appointment that only a Panarch or Kyriarch can make—then at that moment, Commander vlith-Faseult’s career ends, and he becomes a civilian. And the Aerenarch takes the first step toward claiming his father’s prerogatives.)

Vannis stood a little back, waiting for Brandon to claim power, using the emotional leverage of grief. But Brandon bowed in the mode of civilian to service as he spoke a polite greeting.

Vannis and Jaim were both aware of the almost subliminal universal sigh as Brandon moved on.

(Vahn, what just happened? What does it mean?)

(Nothing. And no one knows,) was the curt reply. Jaim watched Commander vlith-Faseult’s still profile tracking Brandon as the Aerenarch walked on to continue his circle. So the Navy could not approach the Aerenarch at a civilian function, just as the civs could not intrude on the Navy. Interesting balance, Jaim thought.

At that moment the unseen steward signaled the orchestra to strike up the prelude to a waltz.

Vannis was not about to let the moment pass. She smiled up at Brandon and opened her hand in the gesture her tutor had taught her was called the blossom of appeal. “Shall we dance?”

Brandon bowed and held out his arm.

Around Jaim the Douloi paired off, whirling with practiced ease about the gleaming floor. In the center Brandon and Vannis turned and stepped, their plain clothing marking them out from the bejeweled whites and grays and blues and lavenders around them.

Jaim sensed someone on the periphery of his safety zone, and sidestepped, hands ready but dropping again when he recognized Osri Omilov, the gnostor’s son. The dark eyes that had been so hateful during the long adventures aboard the Telvarna were now perplexed.

Jaim remembered his role, and bowed, the correct degree for the heir of a Chival.

Osri’s heavy brow wrinkled in confusion, then he acknowledged with a curt nod. “Have you—”

He broke off as a susurration of alarm caused a surge in the crowd. For once the elegant Douloi parted with rather more haste than grace, revealing the frail-looking white-furred Eya’a, their blue mouths open, faceted eyes throwing back the light from the floating chandeliers. They walked quickly, without looking directly at any of the humans, their gossamer-light robes fluttering. Behind them, tall, straight, and forbidding, strode Vi’ya, her ubiquitous plain black flight suit so out of place in this environment that Jaim grinned.

Her head turned, her long, glossy tail of space-black hair swinging past her hips, and her black eyes caught Jaim’s gaze. Unsmiling, she gave a slight nod of recognition, and then shock burned through Jaim when two of her fingers brushed against her thigh as she walked on. Meeting: ASAP.

Osri drew a breath. “What is she doing here? Surely they don’t let her loose.”

“Interpreter,” Jaim said. “Only one who can communicate with the Eya’a. But she’s got a shadow.” More than one, from the looks of the three unobtrusive figures flanking her at a discreet distance.

“I should have said, what are they doing here?” Osri muttered.

Jaim grinned again. He was used to the Eya’a, who, despite their fearsome reputation for psi powers, had never harmed anyone aboard the Telvarna.

“They have ambassadorial status,” Jaim said. “Though nobody knows if they know it. I guess they’re allowed to wander anywhere, except the Cap.” Vi’ya must have got them to come just so she could signal me. Alarm accelerated his heartbeat, but he hid it as he moved obliquely through the crowd, keeping Brandon and Vannis in sight.

Vannis knew they were being watched, but she trusted to Brandon’s various watchdogs and enjoyed the moment, shutting out the rest of the room; she hadn’t danced with Brandon for close to ten years, and had forgotten how good he was. He seemed to like speed. It took skill to weave so adroitly between the slower twirling pairs.

She could almost hear her casual words to Rista being repeated from lips to ear—We are at war, time to retrench—and rejoiced in having managed to wrest a social triumph from incipient ignominy.

Tonight she reigned in her proper sphere. She had to stay there, and the most expeditious method was to flatter Brandon into the place she wanted him. His clasp was light and impersonal in spite of their speed, his attention somewhere beyond her.

She flicked a glance in that direction and discovered a pair of small sophonts moving through the humans, their twiggy feet brushing over the marble floor in a way that gave her shudders. These were supposedly the ones who could fry brains from a distance. She was vaguely aware of the tall, dark-eyed unsmiling woman behind them, but dismissed her as a Naval or civil hireling.

More interesting was why Brandon watched their progress. Surely he was not afraid of the Eya’a’s psi powers? Then she remembered someone saying that these sophonts had also been on the ship that had rescued him.

“I’m sorry about your brothers,” she said in the mode of companionship, a degree off from intimacy, which invited him to respond with intimacy.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” he said, in an exact mirror to her tone. No intimacy, then, but not in the mode of polite acquaintance, another degree outward, well within the boundaries of politeness, which would make it an effective cut. Tau Srivashti was an expert at the cut.

How to interpret Brandon’s response—and should she ask him about the Faseult ring? Was he too oblivious to see that this would have been a matchless opportunity to claim power, with its sterling emotional appeal?

That could wait. Important things first: solidifying her position. “In light of that horrible vid the Navy just released, it seems the time for the family to draw together.”

Brandon took the lead, spinning them into a tight turn. Vannis caught a flash of rainbow color as they veered between two converging couples.

“We all need to draw together,” he replied, a response so obvious that it was meaningless. Fatuous, even.

It seemed to prove he was as stupid as Semion had said. She cast about for some kind of opener to give her a hint of what—if anything—went on behind those blue eyes.

She tried again. “If nothing else was true on that vid, one thing is apparent, that Arthelion is forever lost to us. What remains of the Panarchy is here, and so here we must begin to rebuild.”

“There are two facts,” he said as the music wound down toward a close.

“What are they?” she asked.

“As you say, Arthelion is lost. But my father still lives.”

She gazed up at him, thinking, Of course he has to say something of the sort. Stupid he might be, but at least he wasn’t the type of brute who would declare the Panarch dead and crown himself. “What shall we do?” she asked, the important word being ‘we.’

He smiled. “Get him back.”

The dance ended, and here were partners waiting to claim them both. He gave her a smile that she took as positively vacant, and was swallowed in the crowd.