“You have always told me,” Anaris said, “that you valued truth.”
“So I do,” Gelasaar replied.
“Then why did no one ever speak about Tared vlith-L’Ranja, Archon of Lusor in the ten years after that scandal?”
“Perhaps for the same reason you did not ask at the time?”
Anaris grinned. “I can safely say that their reasons and mine would not be the same. At the time, I was sequestered by the tutors and guards you set about me. And while I heard rumors when I attended social gatherings, the Archon of Lusor was not known to me, except as one of the many names of your court of advisors. It wasn’t until recently, when I was reading through the records Barrodagh exhumed when searching for likely subjects to suborn, that I connected that particular scandal with Brandon’s being expelled from the Academy on Semion’s orders.”
“They were connected, yes.”
“And as nothing seemed likelier than that Brandon would cheat and rely on his name to get him out of trouble, no, I did not ask you about that at the time, either. But there are some who, Barrodagh discovered, felt that Semion distorted events to his own purpose yet again. So in effect, you had two sons lying.”
“There are layers to truth,” the Panarch began.
“Sophistry,” Anaris remarked.
The Panarch’s eyes narrowed in humor. “Let me rephrase. There are layers to perception.”
“Either Semion lied, or Brandon and Lusor’s son did; I suspect the latter, as Lusor committed suicide. That would seem to be an indictment of Brandon’s co-conspirator.”
The Panarch’s eyes half-closed as he slipped into reverie. Anaris waited in silence, the dirazh’u quiescent in his hands.
At last Gelasaar looked up. “I see two questions here. One concerns my sons, but the greater question concerns the Archon of Lusor’s suicide, and how my council and advisers responded. First of all, you must realize that I did not view Tared L’Ranja’s suicide as an admission of guilt. Quite the opposite. For that I blame myself, not him. Or my sons.”
“Explain?”
“Events moved too swiftly. By the time I found the matter at the top of crowded list of priorities, Tared L’Ranja had taken himself beyond justice or compromise. There was no chance to interview him; the pain of his loss kept those who knew him silent out of respect for his achievements.”
“So no one criticized the necessity?”
“With Tared dead and his son vanished, Lusor resolved its affairs internally. I could not investigate, and my advisers knew it. Discussion thereafter was . . . oblique.”
“They have not been so oblique since?”
“No,” said the Panarch. “We have the leisure—one might call it the luxury—to be direct.”
“Ah,” Anaris said, “one would expect the opposite. When you were in power, since you say you valued truth from those around you, directness would be deemed a virtue.”
The Panarch inclined his head. “When I was in power, time and the weight—measured in consequences—of one’s words combined in exponential pressure. To function at all under those circumstances, one learns the language of compromise.”
Two Marines escorted Montrose and Jaim to their shipmates’ cell; one took their boswells and instructed them in a clipped voice to request escort out through the intercom when finished, then both departed. The door slid open.
The living space assigned to the Telvarna’s crew was functional, even spacious to those used to living on shipboard: a main room, fitted with a console (heavily filtered, Jaim guessed), and access to a tiny garden beyond, artfully designed to suggest outdoors. Small sleeping rooms opened off the main salon, each with a private, if tiny, bain.
They found Vi’ya and Marim eating breakfast. Both looked up sharply at their entry. Marim cocked a knee over the other leg, and leaned back in her chair. “Though we’d never see you.”
“Security preparations,” Jaim responded, to which Marim made an obscene gesture. She wouldn’t care about the politics, even the little he could explain.
Montrose turned to Vi’ya. “Brandon said the Kelly chirurgeons put a priority on treating Ivard, but didn’t get a lot of cooperation from Ares, nicks, or Navy.”
Vi’ya’s black eyes gazed back impassively. “It is so.”
“Can you tell me more?” Montrose asked. “You may or may not be aware, but Brandon requested daily reports. Which were minimal.”
Vi’ya said, “The medics have tested him since we got here, with no apparent conclusion. Then, a week ago, the Kelly showed up and things started moving.” She angled her head at one of the tiny sleeping rooms. “Ivard rests in isolation until his guard arrives to take him to the Embassy for the procedure this afternoon.”
Marim didn’t want to talk about Ivard, whom she’d bunked out long before they ended up prisoners on Ares but found herself stuck with anyway. Or stuck with something: with all his gabby outbursts—which made him blush green, like a time-lapse of a corpse decaying—and his twitching in a boneless way that suggested too many joints, she wasn’t sure he qualified as human anymore. She wished they’d keep him locked up, preferably somewhere else. She’d much prefer Lokri being returned to them.
“Heyo,” she said, hitching one foot up onto the table so she could scratch the black microfilaments gennated on the bottoms of her feet, and grinned. “I start work today on a refit crew.” She brandished a pair of mocs: the Panarchists did not approve of gennation, so Jaim figured Vi’ya had prevailed on Marim to hide her feet while outside D-5.
His sharp tug of longing surprised Jaim. He was an engineer by choice, and he knew that refit would be badly needed, with the glut of ships coming in each day. “Fiveskip repair?”
Marim laughed and shook her head. “No chance! Told us that every civ ship coming in gets its fiveskip disabled and sealed, and the nicks do that. We’re gonna patch up the ones Eusabian’s chatzers couldn’t blow out of space.”
“They are being very careful with the data they allow to leave Ares, and so must we be,” said Vi’ya. “I refer most particularly to the news that Eusabian possesses hyperwave capability.”
Shock radiated through Jaim. He hadn’t forgotten Marim’s startling discovery on Rifthaven, but before their subsequent capture shortly afterwards by the Mbwa Kali, the probable existence of hyperwave had merely been one more datapoint in their narrowing list of options. After their capture, it had become the nicks’ problem, and it had not even occurred to Jaim to tell them about it. In any case, he’d been half-inclined to discount it as bilge-banging.
As if reading his mind—which Jaim knew she couldn’t—Vi’ya said, “I believe it is real enough for us to consider the consequences if we talk about it.”
“Like now?” said Montrose, but even as he spoke he realized what she was doing. Talking to two different audiences with the same words was very Douloi; Markham had taught her well. He glanced at Jaim, laid a finger alongside his nose, and saw the lift of eyelid that indicated awareness.
“No,” she replied. “But any mention beyond the confines of D-5, I suspect we’d find ourselves locked in maximum security along with Lokri. Are we agreed?”
To Vi’ya Marim said, “I’m mum. I didn’t believe it anyway. Still don’t.”
Montrose watched her merry face with its fringe of blond curls. She’d sell us all if she thought there was high enough pay—and she could get away with it, he thought.
“Do you think the nicks know?” said Jaim, wondering if his oath required telling Brandon.
Vi’ya’s expression was bleak. “We cannot know what they are aware of. They had some of us under noesis, so I consider it very likely.”
Jaim glanced at Marim, who rolled her eyes. She, Vi’ya, and Jaim were the only ones that the nicks could subject to noesis, for the rest of the crew were technically citizens, even Ivard.
He knew he’d gone through it, although that’s all he knew. No one remembered noesis itself, and no one ever found out what had been revealed unless they faced a court or tribunal. And he was pretty sure Marim had undergone it. But Vi’ya? Had her connection to the Eeya’a spared her that for fear of the consequences?
In any case, as Montrose had reminded him, she was speaking on two levels, both designed to protect her crew. The second and more important audience wouldn’t answer, of course, unless not throwing them all in max was counted. Apparently that’s all Vi’ya wanted to make sure of for now.
Vi’ya spoke to him. “You are still guarding the Arkad?”
Montrose’s gaze met his. She’s reminding them of our connection to Brandon, too.
Jaim assented, unsettled by the calculated implication: that she was going to use Brandon any way she could to protect the Telvarna’s crew.
“Then you will have a certain amount of freedom of movement,” she said. “Will you visit Lokri?”
“Soon as I have free time.” Whenever that might be, Jaim thought, checking his boswell. A few minutes to go.
Montrose yawned. “Well, that’s settled, then.”
Jaim followed him to the door, hesitated, then turned to Vi’ya. “Having a job will occupy the time,” he said.
She saw the question in his gaze, and remembered that Jaim had been there the last time she spoke to Brandon. Markham trusted you, she had said to Brandon, partly a gift because he had not hidden his grief, but also . . .
She did not like following that mental path. She had always assumed from Markham’s stories about Brandon that the two had shared certain characteristics; she had discovered only upon meeting Brandon that Markham had adopted those characteristics from Brandon. Mimicked them.
But that did not mean that Brandon shared Markham’s own qualities, such as his loyalty to the many he loved.
Brandon had his own secrets, including his purpose; she acknowledged that he might use the Rifters as readily as she would use him. It made sense. And yet, and yet . . .
She looked up, and discovered Jaim waiting for an answer. How much time had passed? No matter. “Perhaps I will take a job. But I will not permit them to monitor my movements.”
Marim waved her fork. “Montrose! Sneak us some real coffee, would you?”
Montrose snorted. “As if you can taste the difference, nullrat.”
They left on the sound of her cheery laugh, and as they retraced their steps through the various security checkpoints, Vahn, sitting behind Brandon in the private transtube on the way back to the Enclave, and listening to the telltale inside Jaim, was glad that no one could see his reaction.
(Hyperwave?) Vahn could hear Roget’s disbelief over their private boswell link.
Vahn understood. “Hyperwave” was a term straight out of star fantasy, the technological equivalent of a word like “unicorn”: denoting something mythical, impossible, yet eternally sought. And Eusabian had it? Chill gripped him viscerally.
Vahn gazed at the back of the Aerenarch’s dark head three seats forward, wondering how much of this he knew. He cursed mentally: too many hours without sleep, Rifters to guard (one of whom had only minutes before announced his intention to assassinate an Archon) as well as an Arkad famed for indiscretions, and now this bomb.
(What now?) Roget asked.
(Since the Rifters just agreed to sit on it, I think we’re safe keeping it tight until we’re debriefed in person. If it’s really true, whoever needs to know already does.)
Roget gave a soft laugh, then she reverted to business: (Montrose and Jaim just boarded the transtube: over to you.)
o0o
Montrose and Jaim’s transtube reached the Enclave, and both were aware of eyes turning their way as they debarked. Montrose ignored their fellow passengers with a zing of pleasure, but Jaim scanned for subtle signs of intent before he followed Montrose out.
Then he wondered if it was him and Montrose they’d been staring at, or the Aerenarch, who stood on the platform with Vahn and a thin, mild-faced young man wearing the robes of an Oblate.
The tube hissed quietly away, leaving them alone.
“We just got here ourselves. This is Ki,” Brandon said. “A former student of Sebastian’s. He will be taking on the comtasks.” To Ki, Brandon said, “You have my basic preferences for discriminators, but feel free to set up other sub-categories as you see fit.”
“I’ll find him a room,” Montrose said, rubbing his hands and grinning. “And he can get right to work.”
Brandon made the gesture that Jaim had learned meant thanks, and turned to Vahn. “Let me know when Ivard’s procedure is imminent. They will probably be taking their time to set it up.”
Jaim caught a glance of muted curiosity from the Marine. It sent alarm through him, but Vahn said nothing as he and Ki followed Montrose up the gravel pathway toward the house. Maybe that look was nothing more than wondering why Brandon wanted a change of guard.
Meanwhile, why had Montrose grinned at the prospect of this addition to the household? It wasn’t as if he’d paid any attention to the constant influx of mail arriving for Brandon.
A former student of Sebastian’s. Jaim had learned that Brandon seldom said anything that was not to a purpose, even if he did not state the purpose. Oblate, student of an honest man: probably this Ki could be trusted not to be reporting every movement to someone else. Would that, in turn, be an oblique warning to Vahn?
That’s it. Jaim smothered an inward laugh. Too much more time on Ares and he’d be as twisty as any nick.
Brandon scanned the distant line of dwellings on the far side of the placid lake waters. “So give me your impressions of the reception last night.”
Jaim considered his words as he wondered what Brandon was looking for. Or who. A knot of people appeared on a distant grassy hill; Brandon chose a pathway that would avoid a meeting.
“Tension,” Jaim said at last. “Patterns of avoidance and coherence. A sorting out, not complete.” Whispering—about you. Is it time to say that? He paused. “Or did you want individuals?”
Though Brandon had not looked his way, Jaim saw by the angle of his head that he was listening. “Speak.”
“That business with the tunic, and Archon Srivashti,” Jaim said. “Why did you refuse to wear the flash one? Would have looked all right in that crowd.”
“Would it have?” Brandon walked sideways, his blue eyes wide.
Jaim considered the costumes of the Douloi, some of which (he guessed) might cost half as much as a ship. “One degree more flash,” he said finally.
Brandon grinned. “A little test.”
Remembering the Archon’s husky voice, and the slight emphasis on “miracle” when referring to Brandon’s escape from the Enkainion, Jaim wondered how many tests he hadn’t discerned.
He said, “Did you pass it?”
“I . . . postponed it. What did you think of Vannis?”
Jaim drew in a deep breath. “Diamond.”
Brandon laughed. “I’ve heard that before. I don’t know her at all—she’s always avoided me. I suppose my duty now is to find out why.”
They had been steadily approaching a grove of low-sweeping trees. As he passed the first of them, Brandon whipped his arm around in a lethal strike.
Jaim snorted a laugh, blocked the blow, then grabbed at Brandon’s arm to spin him around. Just barely the Aerenarch avoided his fingers, whirling to kick up at Jaim’s face.
It was the Ulanshu Kay-To, wherein either partner can attack the other at any time. It was an ancient form of training—the origin of its name had been lost in the Exile—but it was a fundamental aspect of the Ulanshu disciplines. Vi’ya had insisted on it from time to time, when the gang was on either base for more than a few days.
The outcome was inevitable, but it did take Jaim somewhat longer than before to get Brandon pinned down on the mossy ground, one arm twisted up behind his back. “Give?” Jaim asked helpfully.
Brandon was laughing too hard to reply, his breath wheezing. Jaim lifted his hands and they stood up, Brandon spitting out bits of green plant matter. He brushed absently at his clothes, which were much the worse for grass and mud stains.
Jaim wiped absently at the side of his face, discovering a streak of dirt. He thought they would return to the Enclave directly, and was surprised when Brandon resumed walking toward the barely visible row of splendid villas, formerly the homes of the upper-ranking officers’ families, and now the quarters of the high-end nicks.
When they crossed a little bridge and emerged beyond a low fence clustered with blooming trumpet lilies, Jaim and Brandon scanned the row of villas built around little ponds or gardens. No one visible; Jaim wondered if the nicks were still abed.
“We have business here?” Jaim asked.
“Of a sort.” Brandon gave Jaim a rueful smile. “More of a duty. While things are still relatively peaceful.”
Jaim remembered Brandon’s injunction. “What?”
Brandon gestured at the houses. “The ones who have nothing to prove or to pursue are probably sound asleep. The others are glaring at one another over coffee at one of three parties. Long odds,” he added under his breath, “on Her Highness.”
They walked up a gravel pathway, and Jaim felt the subtle touch of a security scan. Then Brandon turned up a flower-lined path and tapped at a door in a pleasant, low-roofed villa set around a shrub-framed pool.
The door was opened by a woman wearing a plain gown in midnight blue, almost black, edged with gold at sleeves and neck: the former Aerenarch’s personal colors. She bowed.
“Morning,” Brandon said. “Is Vannis here for visitors?”
The woman’s gaze flicked from Brandon’s messy clothes to his own face, then to the ground. “She is out, Your Highness. Would you like to leave a message?” She opened the door wider and indicated a guest console inset in the foyer; Jaim wondered if it was considered rude among nicks to use their boswells.
“We’ll meet up eventually,” Brandon said with a casual wave of his hand. “Bid her good morning.”
They walked away, but not back to the Enclave. Brandon led the way to the closest transtube. “Vahn says they’re ready for Ivard right now. Nice timing, what?”
They crossed a little bridge, and met several Douloi on the path. Jaim watched them register the Aerenarch, then perform the most informal of the formal bows, which Vahn had told him was used for morning accidental encounters with one of higher rank. Laughter fluttered in his chest at the oblique glances at Brandon’s disheveled appearance.
As they entered the tube, Jaim wondered how many private messages were radiating outward.
o0o
For the Panarchists, the prospective . . . what to call it? Meeting? Medical intervention? They had no official term for it because it was a first in the Panarchy’s long history, and everyone in each involved chain of command was nervous.
This was the worst possible timing.
For the Kelly trinity known to humans as Portos-Dartinus-Atos, the attempted recovery of the Eldest’s genome from a human carried far more import than mere governments, or wars. Threir sovereign status gave threm total control; threir careful choreography extended even, perhaps especially, to the order of arrival of those involved, here at the dual-jurisdiction meeting space in front of the Kelly Embassy.
First the High Phanist, as with all sophonts naked to the synesthetic unity of Kelly senses, which can only be described sequentially in human narratives. The livid glow of the Digrammaton exposed on her chest over the sonic shadow of the rad-shield concealed by multi-buttoned black; posture and movement, outward and inward, pulse, peristalsis and much more; from every pore the waft of her metabolism and the savor of her biome; all testified to her uncertainty, which apparently encompassed everything about the ceremony except her conviction that she must attend. Threy knew she had used the full weight of the Magisterium to ensure her presence.
And to ensure access for Portos-Dartinus-Atos to the Eya’a and their pet human.
Threy knew of no other Kelly who had yet encountered that odd trinity, first fruit, perhaps, of the reluctant Kelly intervention on that dreadful ice planet, after the invading humans were wiped out and quarantine imposed from both sides of the atmosphere. Previous access had been blocked, somewhat apologetically, by the Navy until after the acquittal, largely due to Eloatri’s testimony, of the captain who had brought her here. Thus, they greeted the High Phanist with unbounded appreciation.
Eloatri had once before, long ago, seen a Kelly trinity in person, but had never met one. She found herself swarmed by three dancing Kelly, threir head-stalks sinuous and rapid in their twirling grace as their velvety lips caressed her gently from head to toe. Threy smelled of cinnamon and burned cork; threir voices reminded her of the living wind-harps on the peaks of the Hazard Mountains of Donialan.
“Welcome, Numen,” the Intermittor of the trinity fluted, as all three withdrew slightly and twisted threir head-stalks into a sinuous interpretation of a formal deference.
She bowed in return, finding an unexpected joy in the obvious delight the Kelly expressed in imitating human gestures, while adding threir own inimitable trinitarian grace. Portus-Dartinus-Atos pivoted threir attention to the next arrivals coming through the hatch, the pro forma Marine guard fading into the background.
Vi’ya had several times seen the Kelly Chirurgeon or threir Kelly visitors dancing through the corridors of Rifthaven, but like Markham, she’d had little interest in Kelly. Not so the Eya’a.
She braced herself as the hatch opened onto the plaza before the Embassy; even so, the blast of fi with which the Eya’a greeted the Kelly ambassador still rattled her teeth, echoing her shock the first time they’d met the trinity—was it only last week? It strengthened her desire to avoid the Kelly. She had enough to keep out of her head in this madhouse.
Vi’ya’s nose wrinkled at the cursing-powder and old boots smell of the Kelly as the Eya’a glided rapidly to threm, their movements somehow more fluid. The little sophonts piped shrilly, their emotional signature intense as the scream of shearing metal. She turned physically, longing to turn psychically, and here was that old woman from Desrien.
The mind-noise of the Eya’a made other minds hard to hear; Vi’ya gave the black-gowned woman her blankest stare. In response she got a pleasant smile, empty of any other message, and a slight nod. Then the Kelly spun across the deck toward her. Again she braced herself, this time against the comparatively lesser trespass of the highly-physical Kelly greeting.
Eloatri saw the tension in Vi’ya’s flare of nostrils as Portus-Dartinus-Atos gave the Dol’jharian an equally enthusiastic greeting. Beyond her, Commander Buersco, the medical officer from Xeno—fitted with an ajna, no less—observed the Eya’a, his throat working in synchrony with an arrhythmic thinning and bulging of the semi-living lens on his forehead. He might not like hearing that it looks like he’s trying to grow a horn. An appropriate image, she decided, as the man’s department head had used influence to horn Buersco into this occasion, displacing the LTC who’d followed Ivard’s treatment so far.
Buersco tried to hide his thoroughly unprofessional thrill. If this goes well, it will make your career, his chief had said. And if it’s a disaster, you’ll make a fortune selling your images to the novosti. Buersco had said everything his chief expected to hear, but oh, what he truly wished to witness was a meeting of polysemous minds.
He noticed the High Phanist’s considering gaze, and tendered her a respectful salute.
When the Eya’a moved toward Eloatri, everyone but the Kelly stilled, Vi’ya with her eyes closed, and the Marine guards shifting uneasily.
When Eloatri met the faceted eyes, the sophonts chittered softly as they tilted back their heads. The Eya’a drifted past to inspect a diorama on one wall as the hatch opened. Two Kelly headstalks whipped sinuously to take in Ivard, and the two dogs who apparently had played an important role in keeping him alive, followed by more Marines.
With them, the Chief Wrangler of Ares Base, a plain, muscular woman whose incandescent smile transformed her. No wrangler needed Eloatri’s welcoming nod, but the forms were important, especially when dealing with someone well into a liminal state with regard to oneself; Eloatri felt the impact of that smile like a lancing ray of sunlight through the interminable clouds over Desrien.
M’liss was more than half in love with Eloatri, despite being less than half her age. Her promotion to Chief—now no longer Acting—was a gift of the war, as for so many others; in the normal course of events, they would never have met, but the High Phanist had been firm in her insistence that M’liss be present. She drew in a deep breath of intense pleasure: this scene was a wrangler’s dream. All but one of the known sophonts together in one space, plus the first Dol’jharian she’d ever seen, sibling Arkad dogs . . .
. . .and the Rifter youth Ivard, who, she’d already decided, didn’t seem to fit any of those categories. M’liss watched Eloatri’s customary inscrutability altered subtly to tenderness as her gaze rested on Ivard.
Buersco choked on an exhalation, a hand to his mouth. How is that youth even alive? Although he’d followed LTC Dorn’s reports closely, the reality was more disturbing, the effect heightened by the complex scents of the Kelly slamming the limbic system.
Buersco focused the ajna on Ivard as the youth stumbled toward the Kelly in a boneless lurch. It looked like the two Arkad dogs were the only things keeping him upright. He could see the muscles in their shoulders and haunches bunch as the youth’s weight came down on them erratically; nonetheless, each had one ear cocked at Ivard, the other alertly forward, flicking to the side occasionally.
Buersco’s gaze arrowed to the green ribbon embedded in Ivard’s wrist. There, replicated by the strange biology of the Kelly ribbons, which were both sexual and neural tissue, resided the last trace of the Archon and threir memories. It should have killed Ivard.
He focused the ajna in close. Ivard had begun life ugly, with the pale, blotchy skin of an atavism and improbably red hair, now patchy from the trichotillomania that had presented this last week. Add in the gawky coltishness of late adolescence compounded by malnutrition, the unsettling bonelessness to his movements (not to mention their three-four rhythm), and the greenish cast to his skin, deepening to emerald on his arm . . . Ivard had crossed well over into the uncanny valley.
Portus-Dartinus-Atos also found Ivard uncanny, though not for the same reason. It was the wafts of the Third of Three’s personality emanating from the youngling with increasing strength, and Ivard’s new habit of plucking out his hair, recapitulating the death and dispersal of that Elder following the bombing of the Arkad princeling’s Enkainion.
Threy greeted Ivard gently, guiding his hands away from his head as threy noted further degeneration of his condition. The Third of Three would burst this vessel soon; thus this desperate effort, whose efficacy the humans seemed to take for granted. Portus-Dartinus-Atos would let events confirm or collapse that assumption which, for now, upheld the humans’ spirits.
Eloatri sensed the infinite tenderness in the Kelly’s manner as they swarmed around Ivard, honking and hooting. Ivard honked back, startling Eloatri. She hadn’t known a human throat could make such noises. It could, but not comfortably; Ivard broke off, coughing.
The Kelly pressed in closer around Ivard, and Eloatri’s perspective underwent a dizzying change. She’d accepted the stereotype of the Kelly as a comical race of sophonts, taking an unlikely delight in copying various elements of human culture. Now she comprehended that for the protective camouflage it was.
These sophonts represented a culture ancient with a weight of ancestral memories that in humans were accessible only in dreams, if then. For the Kelly, the memories of those passed into the embrace of Telos were vividly present and immediate. And threir Archon, murdered on Arthelion by Eusabian, was the repository of threir most ancient knowledge: only that Kelly trinity remembered the awakening of the race to sentience, a million years past and more.
By contrast, M’liss concentrated on the dogs, suppressing a spurt of jealousy at the ease with which the Kelly so effortlessly conversed with Trev and Gray. Freed from supporting Ivard by the embrace of the Kelly, the two dogs gamboled in a complex pattern among the nine legs of the trinity, often rearing up to push their noses deep into the fleshy ribbons of threir pelts and then sneezing in an ecstasy of scent-sorting.
M’liss wrinkled her nose and sneezed, too; some of the scents Portus-Dartinus-Atos emitted were reminiscent of something any dog would be eager to roll in—carrion was too bland a word for it. Several of the Marines wrinkled their noses and backed up slightly as the dogs returned to Ivard’s side and sat down.
“All are here,” announced the Kelly in a mellifluous woodwind chorale, a sinuous triplicate motion toward Trev and Gray. “The collars must be removed from these two of Ivard’s three. All must play their role here freely, with moral agency intact.” All three head-stalks arched toward M’liss, who reddened.
“You can’t do that,” said the Marine squad leader as M’liss stepped forward. “The dogs are to be collared whenever they are with the Rifter. Our orders are clear.”
“So are mine,” replied M’liss as she bent over Trev and pressed her fingertip to his collar. “To assist in this procedure as may be requested or directed by Portus-Dartinus-Atos as the representative of a sovereign nation.” Her boswell clucked and the collar fell into her hand. She freed Gray and straightened up. “And I’m Chief Wrangler, and you’re not,” she said with a big smile.
The smile was instinctive, but she could see its impact on the Marine; That smile is your secret weapon, her mother had insisted. Going from plain to dazzling can throw almost anyone off balance, if your timing is correct. M’liss had hated that lesson in manipulation—it was perhaps one of the many reasons she had chosen to work with non-humans—but she’d found it bearable when her mother had added trenchantly, Keep your heart clean, though, or your smile will become an insufferable smirk.
Buersco let out his breath. The truce was holding. Greater access to the Eya’a had been the prize for his chief at Xeno; the upper ranks didn’t care about the dogs. Their mistake, he thought; he’d spent all his internship studying the Arkad dogs.
Eloatri was surprised by the pang in her heart when M’liss smiled. She’d been alone so long she’d thought it in accordance with her calling. Now she doubted that, but even if she had the time for personal pursuits, she would never drag M’liss into the lethal politics of the Tetrad Centrum Douloi. Eloatri knew herself untouchable, but only so long as she remained alone.
Buersco fell in next to Eloatri on the way into the Embassy proper, acknowledging M’liss at her other arm with a polite nod. “Was Ivard this bad before Desrien?”
“He was even less coherent. I was told he was dying, his immune system overwhelmed by the Kelly ribbon. Afterward he seemed to . . . not recover, but to experience a remission.”
Buersco gestured at Ivard. “What happened, then? Why the relapse?”
“The Dreamtime apparently wasn’t done with him. It may be that today is when it releases him.”
“As much as it releases anyone,” said Buersco under his breath.
That explains his irenic attitude, Eloatri thought. He’s a haj. She bowed with the inflection of one returned from a pilgrimage to Desrien, which Buersco returned, confirming her supposition.
The Kelly ushered all but the Marine guards into the warm interior of the building, which was humid and evocative of the spicy atmosphere of the Kelly home world, suitably filtered of its usual load of anaphylactic triggers, prions, and similar unpleasant or lethal agents. Eloatri’s first impression was of overwhelming greenness, against which Ivard’s red hair made a startling contrast, while the Kelly became oddly hard to see as threy and the youth and the dogs pirouetted ahead of the rest of the group.
Down a short, oddly-proportioned corridor an archway opened into a spacious room with a pile of colorful pillows in the center that glowed in an atrocious medley of colors, as if in challenge to the viridian splendor of the lush foliage that obscured the room’s perimeter. As the Kelly moved with Ivard to the pillows, Eloatri saw another Kelly approach. No. Mirrors stood among the foliage. Her understanding of the space around her opened up abruptly, and she shivered as echoes of the Dreamtime stirred within her.
Ivard’s movements had become less uncoordinated; he dropped with a semblance of ease and relaxed into the nest of pillows, snorting and snuffling, while the two dogs, as if commanded by someone unseen, sat on guard to either side of Ivard’s knees, ears and eyes alert.
Vi’ya took up a stance nearby, breathing with less effort as the psychic pressure of Ivard’s fear and anxiety eased to something near euphoria.
“They’re gonna take my ribbon,” Ivard said to her, and held up his skinny arm with the startlingly bright green ring in the skin.
On his other side, Eloatri observed his hand gripping tightly on something small—she spotted a tuft of silk protruding beyond his little finger.
“Wethree can only take from you the genome,” the Intermittor said in her reedy voice. “The Archon now is part of you, and you of threm. That was accomplished far from here, and not by any art we know.” The other two blatted agreement, their headstalks writhing in a complex pattern.
Ivard sat up on his elbows, and asked in the half-cocky, half-frightened manner of adolescents everywhere: “Will it hurt?”
The Kelly trilled laughter. “Perhaps a little, but only briefly. Wethree shall bear you up, O small seeker.” The Intermittor pranced behind Ivard while the other two Kelly disposed themselves in front of the youth, making the three apices of an equilateral triangle around him.
The dogs wormed in against Ivard’s sides.
At a gesture of invitation from the Intermittor, Vi’ya knelt between the two Kelly in front, facing Ivard. The Eya’a remained behind her, their faceted eyes glinting in the now subdued lighting.
Everyone stilled. Gradually Eloatri became aware of a low hum. As it intensified, the voices blended and separated in hypnotic harmonics. The head-stalks of the three Kelly undulated in a slow, compelling pattern, the fleshy lilies of threir mouths oriented on Ivard, who began to blink, as if fighting sleep. His eyes closed.
The alien threnody resonated in Eloatri’s chest, rhythms syncopating within the polyphonic drone. The light dimmed until the ribbons of the Intermittor glowed with a subtle phosphorescence that fluctuated in synchrony with the crooning of the Kelly. The poignant sound evoked a complexity of emotions; Eloatri wondered if her response corresponded in any way with what the Kelly were experiencing.
Ivard’s ribbon also glowed, fluctuating in the same rhythm as the sound deepened and intensified, catching Eloatri up in a dizzying current of emotion. The palm of her hand tingled, the burn inflicted by the Digrammaton after its impossible leap vibrating in time with the swelling rhythms of an impossibly complex harmony; it sounded like an entire choir of Kelly. Eloatri found herself swaying. She let go of fear, let go of self, though she sensed the proximity of a million-year precipice as she peered back and back into the natal history of a people civilized before humankind achieved speech.
Ivard opened his mouth. His high tenor joined the threnody. His body remained utterly relaxed while his arm, girdled by the green, glowing ribbon, snaked up into the air and swayed gently. Vi’ya, too, was swaying, her body expressive of extreme tension.
Eloatri’s vision blurred. No, the ribbon had twinned, a new loop twisting up from Ivard’s greenish flesh. Ivard’s back arched and a terrible cry broke from his lips, but Vi’ya’s voice rose with it, wordlessly matching it and then, somehow, forcing it back into the music of the Kelly. Twice more Ivard cried out; pain lanced through the image of the Digrammaton mirrored in Eloatri’s palm, then vanished as the head-stalk of the Intermittor darted forward like a snake striking, thrust through the twinned loop writhing up from Ivard’s wrist, and pulled it free.
The alien song rose to a shout of triumph and joy as the green ring rotated slowly down the Intermittor’s head-stalk and disappeared amongst her ribbons, now fluffed out as if by a huge charge of static electricity. Bands and splotches of color chased across the Intermittor’s body, accompanied by wafts of complex scents. Eloatri’s eyes watered.
Silence fell, and then the Eya’a keened shrilly, their heads twitching with inhuman speed from side to side, and Vi’ya’s body jerked in a clonic spasm.
One of the dogs uttered a high, thin howl; both lay with ruffs fluffed, their ears flattened.
The Kelly hooted, their head-stalks swiveling. Eloatri sensed deep surprise. The image of the Digrammaton in her palm thrummed painfully.
The Eya’a pushed past Vi’ya as her head bowed, her arms slipping off her thighs onto the floor as if attempting to support a terrible weight descending on her shoulders. The Eya’a’s twiggy hands danced gently across Ivard’s slowly relaxing body, stilling in a lacy cradle around his head.
The terrible tension left Vi’ya’s body. Ivard emitted a whistling snore as he sank into deep sleep. Something rolled from his hand and hit the floor with a muted clink. Vi’ya grunted with effort, leaned over, and picked it up.
Eloatri glimpsed the silver of a coin and a crumpled bit of silk before the Rifter captain tucked the objects into a pocket on Ivard’s unresisting body. At the sight of the coin, Eloatri’s palm gave a last, valedictory pang, then subsided.
The Eya’a stepped back. All movement ceased.
This tableau held until the door opened and the Aerenarch entered, his clothes smeared with mud and grass stains. Mud streaked one cheek. His guard, the Rifter Ulanshu master, was also marked.
Eloatri felt a pulse of danger, yet Brandon did not betray the manner of one coming straight from a fight as he turned to Vi’ya, his expression questioning, even pained. Eloatri watched as Vi’ya forced her head up, her eyes marked with fatigue: Eloatri recognized a communication in the lifting of chin, the tension of hands, but then that was gone. Both were too good at hiding their true selves.
The Kelly flowed toward the Aerenarch. He greeted them in their signs, but very quickly, then he said to Vi’ya, “Will he be all right?”
“Yes,” she said to her hands. “He will recover.”
The Intermittor danced up and guided the Aerenarch away from the sleeping youth.
M’liss rubbed her head fiercely. It wasn’t quite a headache, nor dizziness; she felt like someone had stuffed her skull with batting.
Then shock cleared her mind as she looked around more closely. “The dogs? Where are they?” They were her responsibility.
The Intermittor turned her way, mellow voice low, but insistent. “All is well, all is well. Their movements are part of the moral agency wethree required.”
“Dogs are fine,” Vi’ya said huskily. “Ivard released them.”
M’liss caught the eye of the Xeno officer, whose gaze was sympathetic. She let out her breath slowly.
Eloatri said to Vi’ya, “You do have a telepathic link to Ivard, then?”
Vi’ya’s dense black gaze lifted briefly, meeting Eloatri’s, then shifted. Eloatri felt a curious inner tingle, as if she’d been through a security scan.
“It is the Eya’a,” Vi’ya said. Her voice was low and soft. “Through them I can link with anyone, it seems. Even you.” She smiled slightly.
“Though there is a cost, am I right?” Eloatri said. “A sense of dislocation—vertigo—and a terrible draining of energy?”
Vi’ya shrugged, but did not deny it.
Eloatri said, “I ask because I believe I can help you.”
Vi’ya looked up quickly, her lips parting in surprise—but her gaze was wary.
Eloatri smiled, doing her best to project reassurance. “Telepathy is indeed rare among humans, though it apparently wasn’t always so. Certainly it was not rare among your own people of the island—the Chorei—before they were annihilated by the mainlanders.” Eloatri paused. Vi’ya said nothing, but Eloatri knew she had her attention. “Among the refugees arrived at Ares are some of my own colleagues, from the College of Synchronistic Perception and Practice. For a number of reasons, they are still living aboard their escape ship. One of their number is a Dol’jharian, a descendant from your Chorei. I can ask if he would be willing to work with you.”
Vi’ya still said nothing.
She has not refused. Eloatri knew when retreat was the best tactic.
“I’ll be in contact,” she said, and went out. She was inclined to smile, but then she remembered that brief, intense moment when Vi’ya and Brandon met gaze to gaze. I shall have to be very careful.
The excitement of the Eya’a seared Vi’ya’s mind as she watched the High Phanist depart. Their thoughts were incomprehensible, the images reminiscent of their excitement back on Dis when the Arkad had arrived bearing the Heart of Kronos, now lost to Eusabian.
But their import was clear.
Now the Battle of Arthelion made sense. Somehow, the growing linkage between Ivard, the Kelly, and the Eya’a had triggered awareness in the little sophonts of the presence of another Urian mechanism, less powerful than the Heart and thus previously unsensed, here on Ares. The Eya’a, who did not build machines, had no idea what it was they’d sensed, but Vi’ya the ship captain did.
Now the Battle of Arthelion made sense, the lives and ships so freely spent in a way she knew was not Panarchic. The hyperwave truly existed. Not only that, the Panarchists had captured one at Arthelion.
If they find out I know about their hyperwave, I will never escape. Assuming they let me live.
She glanced at the Kelly, still dancing threir conversation with the Arkad, wondering if they knew—and if threy’d tell him if threy did. She also wondered how much had the High Phanist understood of those last moments, after the genome had twinned from Ivard.
The images from Desrien welled up from memory, pushing past barriers weakened by the onset of a staggering headache, and she pushed back viciously. Eloatri had no psychic talents, Vi’ya was sure, but she saw far more than most. Behind her slight figure loomed the unknown powers of the Magisterium; after Desrien and the vision of the Chorei she had experienced there, and had discussed with no one, Vi’ya could no more discount the reality of those powers than that of her own heartbeat.
But she’s right. The link with the Eya’a is becoming more than I can handle. The awareness vexed her, but what was, was. She would do what she had to do: a greater mastery of their link, and the new strengths lent by Ivard and the Kelly, could only advance her plans. The nicks would not hold her long.
Her stillness, her tension caught Jaim’s attention. While the Kelly and Brandon exchanged their dance-like conversation, Jaim hunkered down beside Vi’ya. Her black gaze struck his nerves. Is she angry with me? Why? There had been no trace of anger when they’d met the preceding hour.
Her first question took him by surprise. “Why is he here?” She lifted her chin slightly in Brandon’s direction.
“Wanted to check on Ivard.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I came at his command.”
She did not look away, but somehow it was easier to return her regard. Jaim felt as if a vise had eased from his brain; either he was more tired than he’d thought, or else her talents were gaining in magnitude.
“Are you then his creature?” Once again the slight lift of the chin toward Brandon.
That’s the cause of the anger. “I am no one’s creature,” Jaim said. “The Fourfold Path leads me, and for a time I must be his shadow.”
She understood—it was the Ulanshu way.
She said, “I wish you would train Ivard.”
Jaim glanced at the sleeping youth. “Forgetting how to live in his body?”
“Exactly.”
Jaim hesitated. “Why don’t you train him?”
Though her expression did not change, he sensed that she did not like the question. Old memories made fear prickle down his arms, but he stood his ground, and forced himself not to react.
She said only, “The Eya’a occupy most of my time.” Her lips twitched, a change of expression not quite a smile. “And you know how heavy my kind are. I might slip and crush him.”
Jaim grinned. “I’ll teach him.”
Vi’ya lifted a hand. “Fighting?”
“Just movement control at first,” Jaim said. “Until he regains his strength. No hurry. There’s certainly no danger here—” He stopped when her eyes narrowed. “Is there?”
When she spoke, it was with apparent reluctance. “The Eya’a heard it last night, when we passed through that room of chaos,” she said finally. “There is no identity—they still cannot sort humans unless they know them—but there are those who want your Arkad dead.”
My Arkad?
He was going to ask more, but heard Brandon’s quick step.
Vi’ya turned away and joined the Eya’a, who chittered on a high, ear-torturing note. Ivard muttered in his sleep, and the Kelly added their voices in a weird counterpoint.
What’s going on?
No one was going to tell him, obviously. Brandon flicked his gaze around, coming to Vi’ya last. She kept her back to him.
He said to Jaim, “Let’s go.”
o0o
About the same moment Yenef invited the Aerenarch to leave a message for Vannis, Vannis herself was led inside Tau Srivashti’s glittership. As she trod behind the sinister steward along the noiseless corridor, she wondered if her reluctance to trust Yenef with her destination was going to prove one of her more stupid decisions.
Like going aboard Rista’s ship with a newly-hired maid about whom she knew nothing.
The silent, black-clad servitor indicated a plush chair in the private sanctum deep within the glittership, and as Vannis looked around the subtle shadings of steel and silver and bone white, the room quiet as an ancient tomb, she could not help but think that in this ship, no one could hear you scream.
She didn’t need to check her boswell to know that connection to the rest of Ares was muted (or monitored by Srivashti’s unseen staff), and she straightened her spine, annoyed with herself.
Not for being fanciful. Memory flooded back, and she shivered, viscerally aware of the danger of this visit. If Srivashti wanted he could make her disappear, and she suspected even Nyberg wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
Even if he cared. Who would care, really? That’s what brought me here, the fact that nobody cares, because I am one step from powerless.
All right, then, so the former Archon of Timberwell was still powerful, and always had been dangerous. But she had her wits. Use them.
Srivashti himself appeared, dressed in dark colors with accents that drew attention to his pale, almost yellowish eyes, contrasting with the mahogany shade of his skin.
The silent man in black brought in a beaten gold tray on which was set a formal tea service as fine as anything she had possessed on Arthelion.
“Thank you for meeting me,” Srivashti said, and served her himself.
She accepted the tiny chinois cup, from which steam curled languorously, filling the air with a curious scent, sharp, a little like bergamot and honey and musk, with a hint of cedar smoke on a wintry day. She lifted the cup, watching him over its gilt rim as he tasted the brew, his mouth relaxing minutely in approval.
She sipped, her mouth filling with a complexity of flavors nearing the extreme of toleration: hot, but not quite too hot, sharp, but not quite too sharp, an underlying sweetness that just avoided being cloying.
He sat down next to her, his proximity evoking memories—as, she sensed, he was very well aware.
“What is this?” she asked, indicating her drink.
“It is sometimes called Cambrian tea,” he answered. “A harmless enough name for a brew that, apparently, the Shiidra find intoxicating.”
She controlled her reaction, having expected something of the kind. Srivashti always liked to keep people off-balance. So she wouldn’t let it happen. After all, it can’t be so very poisonous to humans, since Shiidra can—and do—eat humans, she told herself. She swallowed off the cup, and set hers down a moment after he finished his own.
He smiled in appreciation, the muted lighting in the cabin heightening the yellow in his eyes as he leaned forward to refill her cup; his proximity stirred up old memories, and she found herself distracted by the shape of his arm beneath the fine silk of his shirt, the slow measure of his breathing. “Now,” he said, “to business. In light of that truly lamentable vid that shocked us all yesterday, I believe the time has come to cease waiting for someone to do something. As a first step, I propose that we join forces, you and I.”
“Join forces?” she repeated, suppressing the brief spurt of triumph. Of course it was not so simple; she was offended that he would think she would believe it to be. She wouldn’t let him see either reaction.
He gestured largely, his signet ring glittering blood red. “The leaders of the two most powerful families in what remains of our polity—either of us . . .” He raised his brows. “. . . eligible heirs, should we lose our two remaining Arkads.”
“It has its advantages,” she said with neutral politesse.
“Of course it does. Even if our alliance is only temporary, each of us can help the other—and if we were to find it to our advantage to ally, ah, permanently . . . who is there to gainsay us?”
Marriage? No, impossible. He’d always said he would never marry until he was old, to prevent tiresome heirs from breathing impatiently down his neck.
He opened his hand in appeal, then brushed his thumb along the inside of her wrist. The brief touch seared her sensitized skin, evoking muscle memory: her wrists pressed against a pillow, the lessons in pleasure and pain.
He doesn’t want me. He wants me to think he does. She knew his tastes ran exclusively to the young and inexperienced; did he actually think she would respond?
Let him think it. He’ll reveal more.
She was aware of a tingling in her lips, the warmth circulating lazily through her body that had nothing to do with the ambient air: the Cambrian tea. She smiled. “Do let us consider it. But you must have something more immediate in mind.”
He smiled back, delighting in the flush beneath her skin, the wariness revealed in the flare of nostril, the contraction of pupil in her glorious eyes. He remembered lessoning a very young Vannis, and though he hadn’t set out to seduce her now, he found himself stirred by warmth. Her spark of resistance added enticement to the moment, opening to equally enticing possibilities. “Immediately—we will jointly give a reception for the conquering hero.”
“Brandon?”
“Has he conquered anything, except a record for longest orgy? You must have seen the feeds’ speculation about what, if anything, has been going on behind the closed doors of the Enclave.” He poured out more of the tea, and picked up his cup, cradling it in his long fingers. “I refer to the hero of the Arthelion battle, Captain Margot Ng. Wouldn’t you like to hear about that engagement? I would, very much. And of course we must invite Brandon as well. He will need friends.”
“We can,” she said slowly, looking away from those hands, and the memory of their imprint on her skin. Heat spiked behind her navel, unfurling downward. “But . . .” She fingered the chinois cup, suspecting that the tea would have an adverse effect. Of course it would. “. . . wouldn’t that be the Aerenarch’s prerogative, to host such a gathering in her honor?”
“We can’t know that his highness will do it. And if he does, whom he will invite,” Srivashti said, enjoying the visible effects of the tea in her still-delicious curves, which matched the intensifying sensations along his own nerves. Really, an unexpected benefit of his intent. “Several of our friends have already tried to honor her this way, and Captain Ng has refused them all. If you and I throw in together, I believe our combined names might obtain a different answer.”
“I’ll do it, of course,” Vannis said slowly. He never has one goal. “But will you forgive my stupidity today and tell me why it is so important? If you want to hear about the Battle of Arthelion, they’ll have something on the novosti feeds before long—”
“They’ll have everything but the objective and the outcome.” Srivashti got to his feet and walked slowly across the room, the light from the golden gargoyle wall sconces glimmering in the gold threads woven in the dark silk that fitted his shoulders so nicely. “Tomorrow Nyberg is holding a briefing.” He turned her way. “They will be going over the records of the battle.”
He leaned down and tapped a key; the console showed the highest ranking officers in the station, wearing full regalia, forming the double line called the “arch of steel.”
Vannis had attended enough of them at Semion’s side to recognize the highest honor for a returning captain, and there, alone between the lines as the officers struck fist over heart, walked a small female in uniform. Ng appeared to be forty or so, trim, her coloring the ubiquitous brown of most of humanity, her face intelligent rather than remarkable. She moved with the toe-heel precision of a trained athlete.
The vid was a regular novosti feed; the surprise was Srivashti’s knowledge of the proposed briefing. Again thanks to Semion, Vannis knew how difficult it was for civilians to get access to military schedules.
So how did Tau Srivashti find out? If they really were going to be allies, she hoped he’d give her access to his contacts.
“I shall be honest,” he said with a rueful gesture. “I tried to obtain an invitation.”
She laughed, aware of the movement of air against her skin, the subtle scent he wore, the same scent, the same amber eyes, and the same merciless smile, aboard this very ship ten years ago. He’s using sex to hide his real goal.
“But the Navy—so simple with their black and white judgments—cannot forget that Timberwell was lost to the insurgents,” he went on, with an air of candor. “They were polite enough to avoid trouble, but firm enough that I still remain determined.”
Vannis remembered what the captain of Rista’s yacht had said on their arrival at Ares, The Navy is coming on board to disable the fiveskip—no one leaves Ares while the emergency lasts. Srivashti would hate the inability to leave whenever he wanted.
He was drinking again. Had the tea the same effect on him? It must, but he no doubt had more experience. The room seemed to undulate slowly, and her palms tingled. She lifted her cup to her lips and made a pretense of sipping; if she wanted to be part of any forming government, then she had to be able to negotiate Srivashti’s intrigues. “So you think a gentle hint—purely within the pleasant boundaries of social interaction—might remind our Naval friends that they, after all, defend what is ours. Yet we, as the Panarch’s sworn servants, must have access to information that concerns our government?”
“Correct, my dear.”
My dear? That was what he called his pets. So he thought she’d made a tactical error? She set down the cup, blinking as its outline wavered. Perhaps the error was in accepting his invitation. Yes. He’d beckoned; she’d come.
But she was no longer a girl. Ten years ago, as the negotiations for her eventual marriage to Semion were carried out, she’d happened to encounter the infamous Tau Srivashti, Archon of Timberwell, and he’d chosen her out of all the high company, which she’d found flattering.
The encounter lasted the duration of a journey aboard this very yacht, the cost her innocence. By the time he deposited her at the Mandala before her wedding, she had discovered that the encounter was not accidental. The secondary cost of this encounter—Semion’s hatred of Srivashti, visited thence upon herself—she paid when she met Semion for the first time.
In spite of all her mother’s careful training, that had been her real introduction to court politics. He thinks I’m as ignorant as I was ten years ago. Good. Because his arrogance becomes his weakness.
The decision was made between one breath and another. Vannis would permit Srivashti to regard her as weak. She had learned in dealing with Semion that there was no more exquisite way to undermine the strong than through their own underestimation of others.
“It sounds delightful. And I do want to know what happened.” She smiled as she pretended to sip more tea. The cooling liquid had a faint, oily sheen, its scent thick in her nostrils.
Forcing her mind to focus, she sat back in an attitude of coziness, and saw from the satisfaction in his lazy gaze that this was what he expected. “Another question,” she said, toying with her cup. “Why will Brandon need friends? From my—admittedly little—experience of him, that was the one thing he had no dearth of.”
“True.” Srivashti’s tone was soft. Indulgent. “And I hope he will always retain them, for I hold no grudge against him—really, a very charming, pleasant young man. But there are some rumors, among those handicapped with a narrower vision, that might harm him.”
“I’ve heard nothing.”
“Consider your position,” Srivashti reminded her, still with that instructive air. “Surely no one will wish to commit the solecism of discussing around Semion’s widow how it is that her one remaining relation by marriage is the only one who escaped the disaster at his Enkainion. But you know everyone is talking about it.”
She did know that. Now to elicit some information by displaying her ignorance. “Oh, but surely it was not through his contrivance. If his bodyguards found out about the plot, they would have bundled him aboard a ship so fast he would not have had any choice.”
“Except . . .” Srivashti ticked the rim of his cup with his nail. “None of his bodyguards survived. From what little news we’ve obtained from Arthelion, very few people made it out of the Palace Minor after the bomb ignited.”
“There’s got to be an explanation,” she said.
“Of course,” he agreed, spreading his hands. “And we will see that it gets disseminated when he does tell us. For he is one of us, isn’t he? And we protect our own.”
Warning made her head throb. She was not going to ferret out his real intent now, with this damn tea clouding her mind.
He set his cup down and took her hands in his. This time she could not suppress the shiver, and his smile increased. “Cold, my dear? Shall I adjust the tianqi?”
“Just fatigue,” she said. “The relentless pace of our celebrations.”
“You can rest here, if you like.” He stroked his finger along the inside of her wrist.
She gritted her teeth, watching the little signs of excitement in him at her show of resistance. Ah, another weapon. “I have a pressing obligation.”
He raised her hand and kissed her palm. “Another time,” he promised, and she did not try to suppress another shiver. That tea was now boiling in her stomach. “We will discuss our reception when your schedule allows.” He leaned back and touched his console, and the door slid open. “Felton will show you out. Unless you remember the way?”
The silent man waiting in the corridor took her directly to the lock. She got herself into the shuttle and keyed her destination as her head swam unpleasantly. Chill followed the heat at how painfully her nerves felt unsheathed, so even the touch of her clothing was nearly unbearable, and she was grateful for the escape from the sort of pleasures Srivashti would have taken in that noise-muted room.
Why did he tell me that about Brandon? Any number of reasons; he would not tell her the truth, any more than he meant his words about their union. His Cambrian tea had nearly caused her to commit the first and worst error of a Douloi: loss of control. It had been deliberate.
It took all the strength she had left to walk the short path from the transtube station to her villa, where she sank into the first chair she saw, and closed her eyes.
She made an effort and stirred; here was Yenef, bending over her.
Vannis stared blurrily up into the revolving face, trying to make sense of the words. Yenef went away, then came back with a sharp-tasting drink that cleared Vannis’s head enough for the sense to penetrate. “The Aerenarch called in person while you were gone.”
Vannis sighed. Another tactical error. She tabbed the console and studied the pair who had stood on the threshold, looking like they’d been rolling in mud. Another tactical error? No, that was a challenge.