Jaim kept his promise, when he next had free time.
Whatever the Kelly had done, Ivard had not only been cured of the effects of the ribbon, he had improved almost beyond recognition. Although he still bore a green ring around his arm apparently no more dangerous than body art, gone were the pinkish-red eyes, constantly irritated by allergens, gone the sickly pale skin marred by melanin blotches too small to protect him. Gone even was the youthful awkwardness.
Yet the Kelly kept Ivard in their quarters for a time, and so Jaim went there to give Ivard his first lessons.
Ivard sprang up with an energy he’d never exhibited before. “Are you ready?” he asked. “I am!”
Jaim knew something was missing. When he looked around again, he discovered what it was. “Did you lock up Gray and Trev?”
Ivard shut his eyes, his nose twitching slightly. Then he opened his eyes again. “They’re outside.” He made a vague wave. “Playing with some other dogs. They know their way around.”
Jaim accepted that; the dogs were really Brandon’s responsibility.
“Here’s your basic stance,” Jaim said, and settled into it, ready to launch into the explanation of foot placement, trunk, breathing, alignment of arms and head, but Ivard mimicked him with an apparent effortlessness that froze the words in Jaim’s mouth.
“First move.”
Within the first ten minutes, the cautious program Jaim had so carefully thought out was abandoned, and he took Ivard through the first-level kinesics.
At the end, Ivard scarcely seemed winded, and when Jaim returned a couple days after, Ivard proudly demonstrated them all correctly. So Jaim took him through the second-level kinesics.
Jaim couldn’t get away until after a protracted shift for their third session. By then, Ivard was back at the detention quarters in the Cap. When Jaim arrived he found his shipmates’ quarters empty, and passed through the anteroom into the faux garden. There he found Lucifur, the big white Faustian cliff cat that Vi’ya had rescued on one of their runs years ago, prowling restlessly.
Ice-blue eyes glowed at Jaim, reflecting the muted lighting that indicated a late hour. The big wedge-shaped head butted Jaim’s thigh, and when he reached to scratch between the battered, notched ears, Luce’s low, ratcheting purr rumbled.
The cat stilled to alertness, and with a graceful bound, disappeared over a low, ivy-covered wall.
Jaim turned around as Vi’ya tabbed the door shut. “Ivard’s away, but he will return shortly,” she said.
Jaim shrugged, relieved. He was tired. “Tomorrow, then.”
Vi’ya nodded. “As you will.”
Jaim knew she would not offer any more information unless he asked. “Will he be disappointed if I don’t wait?”
“I’ve run him through the second-level falls, and some of the easier combinations,” she said. “He has the first-level kinesics and combinations mastered. But the sparring combinations must wait upon you. Healed as he may be, I still do not want to risk damaging him.”
Jaim hesitated. Since Markham’s death, he’d become accustomed to her one- and two-word answers. When she talked this much, she usually had something on her mind.
So he followed her into the common room. “Where is he? Oh. Of course—with the Kelly.”
“Actually I believe he is visiting his nuller friend.”
Vahn had filled Jaim in on Tate Kaga; when asked what interest the ancient Douloi had in Ivard, the Marine had shrugged. He’s a nuller and a Prophetae, and he’s over six hundred years old. Who can tell what interests him, and why?
Vi’ya punched up something to drink, filling the room with the sharp tang of caf. After a week of real coffee, the synth drink smelled sharp and unappetizing, but Jaim said nothing.
Two cups appeared in the dumbwaiter. They retrieved them, and Jaim followed her into the tiny room where she slept. It contained nothing more than a bed, a wall storage cabinet, and a pull-down console desk.
Without looking to see if he followed or not, she sat down, her fingers moving with assurance over the keys. It was such a familiar sight that he started to back away, thinking that he’d misjudged and he was disturbing the captain at her work, but then he remembered that she was no longer captain.
She could not be monitoring supplies, or planning a run. Telvarna had been impounded somewhere in a Cap compound, and she had nothing, in fact, to do. He wondered why she even bothered with the console, so heavily filtered it must be—perhaps the challenge of bypassing its limitations appealed to her. But that could only be a game.
Her profile was somber, its planes and curves clear-cut, her blue-black, glossy hair pulled back in the uncompromising tail Jaim had always seen her wear. In eight years it had only gotten longer, yet she never wore it loose. She could have: she had beautiful hair.
She is beautiful, but it is irrelevant to her, Reth Silverknife had said once. And it was true. Vi’ya hid the graceful lines of her tall, strong body in a utilitarian flight suit. Before Markham’s death she had delighted in jewel-toned colors, but wore no actual jewels or ornaments, though she liked to look at them; it was only possible to see the generous curve of eyelid and brow, enhanced by the dramatic sweep of dark lashes, when her attention was otherwhere, for when she looked straight at you, you noticed only the density of her pupils in an uncompromising gaze that usually made people uncomfortable.
You can take the Dol’jharian out of Dol’jhar, but you can’t take Dol’jhar out of the Dol’jharian, Lokri had joked.
She worked steadily, her eyes on the keypads.
A terrible conviction gripped him: she was trying to break into the station system, and failing that, she was about to demand that he use his position to aid her.
He forced his thoughts away, and she didn’t react. He recognized grimly that despite their long association he really didn’t know her. Did anyone? Had anyone? Once. In all the years she and Markham were mates, they had never once touched one another or displayed any kind of affection in front of others. Yet each had spoken for the other with an effortlessness that comes of intimate knowledge—and trust.
“You’re here!”
Ivard’s glad cry caught Jaim by surprise, and old habit spun him around, hands stiff. From behind came a snort of amusement from Vi’ya.
Was that all? She just wanted me to wait for Ivard?
“I hoped you’d wait,” Ivard said as Jaim joined him in the main room. “I was up at the spin axis in Tate Kaga’s palace. You should see it. Better than any chip! And then I visited the Kelly. We lost track of time, doing the—” He trilled and honked, making noises Jaim would have thought impossible from a human throat. Ivard didn’t seem to notice his change to Kelly-language. “Goes so fast.”
“Let’s get started,” he said.
Ivard nodded and followed them out of Vi’ya’s tiny chamber. He stood aside and closed his eyes as he concentrated on his breathing. Vi’ya moved quietly to help Jaim push back the sparse furnishings to the edges of the room. Then she took up a station at the archway into the garden, the angle of her head intent.
“Let’s see what you learned from Vi’ya. Show me the second-level falls,” Jaim said.
Ivard obediently dived forward.
Vi’ya stayed to watch the lesson, though she neither moved nor spoke until Ivard, frustrated with his inability to immediately master a tricky combination, called to her for a demonstration.
Expecting her to refuse, Jaim was surprised when she left her post by the window and took up a stance facing Jaim, a hand’s breadth out of reach, humor narrowing her slanted eyelids above the pure black eyes.
“Hah!” she breathed, and attacked.
Jaim’s body reacted before his brain did. After a lightning-fast exchange of light-handed blows, Vi’ya picked Jaim up bodily, with only a soft grunt of effort, and threw him. Jaim twisted, landing in a perfect roll-to-crouch, hands ready.
“That was great!” Ivard enthused. “Do it again!”
They did, and Ivard said, “I want to do that!”
“The air spin is third level. You have a lot of second-level combos ahead. Back to the forearm block-elbow strike, now that you’ve seen it from attack and defend.”
Ivard obeyed, but then he launched himself into the air, flailing as he attempted to mimic Jaim’s fall. So Jaim shrugged, and demonstrated.
Ivard barely made it.
“You’ll need to practice that,” Jaim said, hands on hips. “Dive off that chair and master the roll-to-crouch before you move up to the hip twist.”
Ivard nodded, swiping back the sweat-dark red hair, and did so, again awkward but successful. He did not seem to notice his own rasping breath, but Jaim motioned for him to sit down.
“Do a bout,” Ivard said. “Show me. You’d never let us watch you before.” His voice ended on a faintly interrogative note, his gaze on Jaim, not Vi’ya.
He got to know her as well, within his own perceptive limitations, Jaim thought wryly.
Then he abandoned thought as Vi’ya reached for him. They feinted and attacked, engaged and retreated. Jaim had always found her proximity disturbing; it was difficult to remember how young she was. When Markham had found her, she was scarcely the age of young Ivard. Tall and thin but never gangling, she’d grown taller over the next year, and she’d already been immensely strong. Memory-images, no more than echoes, flickered through his mind. The scent of sweat mixed with a subtle spice; the sight of the long-fingered hands, their nails closely trimmed; the soft sigh of midnight-black hair against his cheek or his arm when she spun out of his grip.
A difficult blend of emotions accompanied that memory: humiliation and excitement, fear and anger. He had laughed most of any of them at Lokri’s tired old joke because until recently he of all of them knew best that she was, after all, a Dol’jharian: she had attacked Jaim, with rape the intent, one terrifying night not long after her arrival on Dis, and he’d ended up fighting for his life.
His gaze brushed her dark gaze. Was she remembering as well? Or had it so little meaning to one of her culture she had long since forgotten? She had never again referred to it, and after she had forced a similar encounter onto the hapless Lokri not long ago, she had again behaved as though nothing had happened.
When they finished, Ivard went off to his room, feinting and jabbing before him at imagined enemies.
Jaim said to Vi’ya, “Back tomorrow, if circumstances permit.”
She retreated to her room, leaving Jaim to exit.
The guard lifted his hand in a casual salute, which Jaim returned with a wave. Jaim retraced his steps through the corridors to the transtube to wait for the next pod. He sniffed the air. It was “morning”; the lighting had been altered subtly to resemble morning light on one of the planets that claimed to be most Earth-like.
The transtube arrived, a quiet rumble under his feet. He found a seat behind a number of people going off to work. The transtube lurched into motion; Jaim felt the smooth acceleration in his midsection. The pod burst out of the Cap and began its descent to the surface of the oneill. He watched the patchwork of greenery grow into detail as they fell, with the raw scars of newly constructed refugee camps scattered throughout.
Unlike Rifthaven, there was no ugly place on this habitat. Even the new camps, prefab though they might be, were pleasant to see, albeit crowded. But the surface space of the oneill was limited, since much of it was given over to food crops. He could see construction of new quarters going up at the Cap. Even from a distance they appeared much less pleasant.
He knew from the Marines that some of the civilians had expressed anger at their displacement; from those sequestered in the Cap for their work with the captured hyperwave, that anger was feigned.
Jaim remembered the dispassionate gaze of Admiral Nyberg at the Aerenarch’s briefing about the hyperwave. Obviously even so small a detail as exploiting the infighting for living space to cover the sequestration of critical personnel had not escaped his attention. Jaim knew nothing of the station’s commander, but was beginning to understand that the man was as much a master of the political arts as he, Jaim, was of the Ulanshu. And he’ll need every bit of that talent to deal with the likes of these doll-faced Douloi.
Haze hid the lake near the Arkadic Enclave from this distance. Around that lake the competition among the Douloi for high-status living space seethed; he wondered if Vannis Scefi-Cartano and her friends ever glanced at the scenery. No. They look around to see what those next higher on the rungs are doing.
And for Vannis, that meant Brandon.
When Jaim had asked about Vannis, Brandon had said, “We’ll leave the door open once. I owe that much to my brother, I think.” What had he meant?
I don’t have to understand it. Jaim leaned his head back on the seat, too tired to think.
o0o
Marine Solarch Artorus Vahn gasped as his sparring partner’s kick glanced off the side of his knee, jolting him with pain. Anger flashed, he struck back in a whirl of blows, and when his brain caught up he stood over his partner, the side of his hand at the man’s neck.
Vahn grimaced and straightened up. “Sorry, Reffe,” he said.
Reffe rolled to his feet, mopping with his sleeve at his bleeding nose. “No problem,” he said thickly, as they all did when someone landed them on their ass. Especially a superior. “An enemy won’t go as easy.”
They all said that, but Vahn could see the resentment Reffe tried to hide, and his chagrin worsened. Reffe was an excellent inner perimeter man, usually part of Roget’s detail; he’d done two watches back to back while everyone else was cycled through the new training.
Vahn hated himself for his loss of control. Reffe wouldn’t be human if he wasn’t furious.
The medic drew Reffe aside, and Vahn forced himself to move away. He took his chagrin (and his own exhaustion) to weapons practice, and when he came out, he was not surprised to find his watch commander waiting for him.
“You all right, Artorus?” she asked.
The use of his first name was meant to signal no punitive steps, but nothing could make Vahn feel worse than he did. She fell in step beside him as he headed for the showers.
“Momentary lapse. I’m fine, sir,” he said. “If Reffe wants to report it, I’ll support his decision.”
The watch commander shook her head. “Said it was accidental. The vid corroborates, not that I thought it was anything else. Look, you’re all exhausted. I wish I could give you more personnel, but we’re maxed out.”
“And it’s only going to get worse,” he said. “Roget and I will work something out. Maybe staggered watches. We all need to make sure we get downtime.”
“Good man.” She ducked her chin, walloped his shoulder, and turned away as he hit the door to the bain. But before it closed, she said, “Speak up if you find yourselves unraveling.”
He saluted, and the door hissed shut on her worried brown gaze.
He’d promised, and he meant it, but the least he could do for Reffe was to push his own rec time further back, and take the boring study watch so that Reffe could get his nose attended to.
A short time later, clean and spruce in a fresh uniform, he stood at the window of the room the Aerenarch had made his study, dividing his attention between the Aerenarch busy at the console and the grassy sward outside where children played, soft lit in “morning” color.
That clump near the trees, their bodies stiff, their peeks at the sky tentative, were Downsiders. They did not trust the ground-becoming-sky that is an oneill’s substitute for a horizon.
Those who’d raced straight out to play were Highdwellers. The ones who ran the longest, as if joy-crazed by the wide horizons, were from smaller habitats, or even ships. And those who set up a game in a businesslike fashion had probably been born and raised on a standard oneill, like the civilian portion of Ares, whose size and maximum population were prescribed by one of the statutes known as the Jaspran Unalterables.
Vahn sustained a flash of memory, the gardens of Arthelion.
The grim vision of what Dol’jhar must have done to those gardens caused him to turn physically.
The Aerenarch leaned into his work, utterly focused. Vahn had stepped within sight of the screen. The Aerenarch once again labored hip-deep in what appeared to be a multiple semiotic vector problem; he was working in the new Tenno, a small window indicating the presence of his tutor, probably one of Warrigal’s staff. The Aerenarch’s hands moved with swift assurance over the keypads, and the screen rippled, adapting to his input and then evolving further.
His actions made no sense to Vahn. The Aerenarch, as a young Krysarch, had been kicked out of the Academy, and now that he was heir, he would never be commissioned in the Navy. Yet he spent all his free time—sometimes late into the night, if the increasing demands of social engagements used up his day—poring over advanced strategy problems and solutions. Vahn sensed he was looking on long habit. In fact, the only reason I’m seeing him at it is that Semion is dead.
This was not the Aerenarch’s only secret that caused Vahn to speculate on his intent. Though ostensibly the telltale inside of Jaim was for the Aerenarch’s own protection, Vahn knew the real reason was somewhat more complicated.
Faseult’s orders had been succinct on this point: “When he is alone with the Rifter, you and only you will listen. Do not record anything except details concerning his experiences, from the time he left his Enkainion until he was rescued by Nukiel.”
Vahn suspected it was the mystery concerning the Enkainion that concerned his superiors most.
His boswell pinged, and Roget said: (Jaim’s back.)
(Report?)
(Detention Five, Ivard and Vi’ya. Training session, and one of them was working the comp. Discriminators heard nothing. Want a deeper dive?)
Vahn hesitated. It was still a jolt to remember that the Rifters had known about the hyperwave’s existence before the Navy did. But then Eusabian had armed Rifters as part of his fleet. Anyway, he knew that Jaim had not mentioned it to anybody—had not even discussed it with Brandon after they were both briefed by Nyberg. He reached a decision: (Not necessary.)
Roget acknowledged and cut the link.
Vahn activated another signal and waited until Keveth on the outside post had moved to the garden where he could see inside the room. Vahn watched the Aerenarch, and when he was focused on the left side of his screen, jeeved noiselessly; he reached the front in time to intercept Jaim, coffee mugs in his hands. “You’ve been up all night,” he greeted the Rifter. “Coffee?”
Jaim veered and followed, as Vahn had intended.
The kitchen was empty, as Montrose did not favor early hours. Another Rifter. Vahn moved to the urn, cursing the difficult position the Aerenarch had put them in with this whim of his. A Rifter bodyguard and another as his chef, the latter a survivor of Timberwell with a cordial hatred for the Archon Srivashti, perhaps the most powerful Douloi on Ares. Jaim sat down at the table, his long face tired, his attitude one of patient waiting.
He knows this is an interrogation. Jaim’s willingness to comply might mean anything, but his falling in with the fiction of a couple of guards taking a coffee break came down heavily in the credit side.
Jaim said, “Has he been studying all night again?”
Vahn nodded, poured fresh coffee and carried it to the table. He sat down opposite Jaim. “Seems to be enjoying it.”
It was an opportunity to enlarge on what reasons Jaim saw behind it, but Jaim just shook his head, the chimes woven into the long mourning braids hanging down his back tinkling on a minor key.
“Got some R&R?” Vahn asked.
Jaim’s smile was brief. “Visited my shipmates.”
“How’s Ivard recovering?”
“Looks good, sounds good.” Jaim hesitated, twitched a shoulder in a slight shrug, then offered a piece of information unasked: “Vi’ya asked me to train him Ulanshu.”
“Expect to ship out together after we finish with Eusabian?”
Jaim’s brows lifted and he stared into his coffee as if seeking an answer there. “No,” he said presently. “I don’t know why she asked.”
“But you do it anyway?”
Jaim smiled again. “She was the captain. It’s a habit.”
Vahn said, “Two masters? That’s a lot of work.”
Jaim seemed vaguely surprised, then rubbed his eyes. “Vi’ya is looking out for Firehead’s welfare,” he said. “That was our name for Ivard.” Holding out his hand flat a few centimeters above the tabletop, he added, “Ivard was that small when his sister Greywing brought him to Dis. Greywing died on our Arthelion run. I think Vi’ya sees herself responsible for him.”
Vahn nodded. Sipped. Said, “I understand they offered her employment, and she refused.”
Jaim shrugged again, this time more obviously. “Won’t wear telltales.”
Vahn thought about Detention Five’s current population, people not classifiable as either citizens or capital-crime criminals, who the higher-ups deemed could not be let loose without monitoring. Especially now. “Those telltales are simply that, to monitor where one goes. For most it will be a temporary measure, a necessary one given the circumstances.”
Jaim flicked his fingers up. “Understood.” He hesitated, then said, “You’d have to know her background.”
That wasn’t what he wanted to say. Vahn wondered what he would say if he found out that he had a far more subtle—and more powerful—transmitter planted in him.
“She’s Dol’jharian,” Vahn prompted. “Escaped from the planet young, is what Nukiel’s techs found out under the noetic questioning. There’s a relation?”
Jaim grinned mirthlessly, taking in Vahn’s casual words, and what they meant. By admitting that they had questioned Vi’ya under noesis, Vahn was as much as confessing that Jaim had also undergone the same. He would consider what this admission meant later, but now: “If you knew much about Dol’jhar, you’d see it. Slaves have old-fashioned trackers planted in their shoulder blades, soon’s they’re sold. Big metal lump, like this.” He indicated a knuckle. “Her first act when she escaped the quarry—she wasn’t much older than Firehead—was to dig it out of her own back with a stolen table knife. Said she’d never bear another, and she keeps her word.”
Vahn winced in sympathy. Instinct prompted him to trust Jaim (who had reacted sensibly to the Vahn’s technically illegal sharing of noetic information), but duty forced him to remain neutral. Too much was at stake. I can’t trust you wholly, but I can let you know that it would be best if we were on the same side.
“You’ll need to get some sleep,” he said, finishing his coffee and getting to his feet. He put his cup in the recycler, then turned back. “Unfortunately I have some news that might make it hard to rack up the Z’s. Want it now, or wait?”
“Let me guess—someone wants our guts for a trophy?” Jaim indicated himself and tipped his head toward Brandon.
“Already tried. Found it right before you two got in from that Archonei’s earlier this evening.”
“It?”
“Helix. On a personal invitation. Clone cells in the tianqi monitors caught it.”
Vahn was gratified by Jaim’s reaction of unequivocal revulsion. He hadn’t been sure if Rifters shared the civilized abhorrence of the Voudun genetic poison, cultivated from cloned cells taken from the intended victim and affecting only that person. Rare as it was, only the death of the sensitized clone cells in the tianqi substrates—an expensive precaution that Vahn had ordered as part of the routine security for handling physical mail—had revealed the presence of the poison. It only took a few cells, from under a fingernail brushed lightly against the victim’s skin, or a couple of hairs, to supply enough of the victim’s genome to clone the poison.
And now all his team was going through another crash course in new protocols for poison detection on the move.
Jaim’s face became thoughtful. “The invitation might have passed through many hands on its way to the Arkadic Enclave.”
So he understands, Vahn thought. Like Vahn, Jaim had immediately dismissed the issuer of the invitation from his suspicions. No one would be that stupid. Of course, that might be just what we’re intended to think.
“Right,” Vahn replied.
Jaim grunted and rubbed his fingers from eye sockets to jaw. “Dol’jhar?”
Vahn smiled ruefully. “I’d like to think so, but it’s just as likely to be plotters in the government with an eye to their own advantage should the heir die or, better, be disabled. Forensics hasn’t analyzed the poison yet, so we don’t know which was intended.”
Jaim stared sightlessly into his coffee, and Vahn wondered if he understood how complicated the situation really was. Finally Jaim said, “Arkad know?”
The name, bare of titles, jarred Vahn; his reaction was mixed. During his days under the former Aerenarch Semion, the old saying was, you could be flogged for relaxing protocols even in your sleep. But the new Aerenarch’s orders had been clear: no protocol enforcement when they were alone in the enclave. “Not yet,” he said.
Jaim gave that mirthless smile again. “My job, right?”
Vahn opened his hands. “I may not address him until summoned, or in an emergency.”
Jaim swallowed his coffee, got up, and went out.
Vahn remained where he was, and with a distinct feeling of distaste that grew each time he did it, activated Jaim’s monitor.
“. . . interrupt you?” Jaim sounded loud, god-like.
The Aerenarch’s voice came, flattened slightly. “What, dawn already? Can’t we arrange to slow the chrono?”
Jaim sighed. “Vahn says there was an assassination attempt. Last night. Helix. Found it before our return.”
After a pause, Brandon’s reaction surprised Vahn: “Do you believe him?”
“I don’t see the utility in a lie.”
“There might be several reasons, but none of them likely. Well, then, there was an attempt. Events are moving with a speed I hadn’t anticipated. It’s time, I think, to—”
Vahn had seen the visitor code, but ignored it; very few were on the first perimeter pass list. But this visitor apparently was. As Vahn cursed to himself at the interruption, Keveth’s voice came over the boswell: (Former Aerenarch-Consort Vannis.)
Over the link, Jaim said, “You want to be alone for this?”
The Aerenarch replied, “Why?”
o0o
Vannis had dressed with careful simplicity. She had abandoned mourning white—indicating, she hoped, sincerity—and only wore two jewels, one to catch up half her hair and the other a clasp on her otherwise unadorned gown, from which Yenef had skillfully removed the lace and ribbons indicative of morning at-home. Vannis’s hands were bare, because she’d noticed that Brandon had worn no jewelry other than the Faseult signet, which (rumor had it) had been quietly surrendered to Anton Faseult, oaths to come.
The guards at the gate passed her. Surely Brandon’s position had not become so ambiguous that anyone had instant access.
No. Whatever they were whispering about Brandon, he was still who he was. She had to be on a privileged list; her heart leapt in triumph. Maybe this would be easier than she’d thought.
She lifted a hand to put aside a huge frond and found Brandon standing a meter beyond, leaning in the doorway. She bowed, not the bow of family but of peers one degree removed; it was for Brandon to make any acknowledgment of relationship. She smiled at the last, hoping that the time—early morning—would impel him to drop formality, so that gallantry could inspire him to the familial response.
He touched her hand, smiled to the same degree, and gestured her inside. Informal but impersonal, and typically air-brained. “Morning, Vannis,” he said. “Want some breakfast?”
His clothes were rumpled, as if he’d been up all night, and his hair, too long for the latest court fashion, still lay tousled on his neck.
She stepped inside the room, casting a quick glance around; would he, with a freezing urbanity, introduce her to some lover, relaxed on a sofa in borrowed robes and smiling with pride of possession?
Then her eyes found the tall Rifter in gray. His long face was marked with exhaustion. Is that it, then? But of course. She remembered that Brandon had been paired with that L’Ranja heir before they were both kicked out of the Academy. So: men, then. The question was, men only?
“Coffee, certainly, Your Highness,” she said. “I take it you have an unlimited supply?”
“Comes with the location.” He made an apologetic gesture. “And in here, we can dispense with the titles.” Which dispensed entirely with formality—leaving the way for intimacy.
The Rifter moved with soundless steps to the wall console and worked there. But we’re not alone, Brandon.
Approaching the question obliquely, she sat on a low chair and arranged her skirts about her as she said, “Semion preferred the amenities observed whatever the hour or place.” “Even in private?” he can say, and I can hint that we’re not private, and thus get him to send out the lover. Then I’ll know his status.
“He would.” Brandon sat down opposite her and smiled. His eyes, unlike Semion’s steel-gray ones, were very blue—the same color as the long-dead Kyriarch’s, who had once been close to Vannis’s mother. “I’ve always wanted to know something. Did you ever set foot in his fortress on Narbon?”
He had not followed her lead. That steady blue gaze jolted old emotions, and his unexpected question intensified the effect, but it still left the way open for intimacy.
She gave her head a shake, conscious of her loosened hair spilling about her shoulders. Tiny golden chimes on the gem in her hair tinkled. “Only for certain formal affairs. But I was escorted to the formal hall, and then straight back to his private yacht. I never saw the Official Mistress, though I’d hoped to meet her to commiserate.”
Brandon laughed.
She smiled, then said, “You?”
“Oh, yes. Galen and I were both summoned to the Presence.”
She leaned toward him conspiratorially. “What was it like? Surely he didn’t have a suite for me?”
Brandon nodded, his smile wry. “Brought me out there once. To teach me discipline, I think. I evaded his watch hounds long enough to take a tour. His suite was enormous, and right next to it another, twin to his, complete down to the clothing in the closet and, I realize now, the scents in the tianqi. All yours.”
“He was always correct when it came to appearance, I must say.” She put her chin on her hand. “How do you know which scents I like?”
“Distinctive blend of blossoms and spice,” he said. “I noticed them when we were dancing.”
Now would be the time for him to move, and she was ready. They were close to the same age, and she’d always thought him attractive. The easiest way to twine herself into his life would be through seduction.
But he made no move, and from behind crystal rang and silver clinked quietly on porcelain. The Rifter at work.
Vannis idly ran her thumb over the silken edge of a pillow, aware of Brandon observing her. Did he like what he saw?
Brandon watched her watching him, and suppressed disappointment. She was beautiful, and had he a mind for dalliance, it would be easy enough to respond to her delicate invitation, but was it idleness or avarice that prompted her?
Vannis decided that it was time for a general question. If he wants to be personal he’ll bring the subject back. “Semion didn’t keep the singer in the servants’ quarters?”
“No. Sara had her own wing. I don’t think she was ever in his suite, either.” Brandon’s light voice was very hard to interpret.
He can’t be angry. She looked up, startled.
He said abruptly, “Did you know that Galen wanted to marry Sara?”
Vannis’s expression flickered between surprise and . . . control, an assumption of pity. “I knew that she had been with Galen first, but word in Arthelion was that Semion had seduced her away. Which surprised people—”
She let the sentence drift.
Brandon’s sardonic smile recalled his eldest brother to mind for a sharply unsettling moment. “I met her at Galen’s Enkainion. She was probably the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in holo or person, and her voice made one forget her face. I’m sure Semion found that added inducement, but the truth was, he forced Galen’s compliance by taking Sara away that night. They never saw one another again.”
The subject was of little interest to Vannis; she reached for Brandon’s motivation in introducing it. “So that’s what happened. I remember that the Panarch was not pleased with his heir, but the only gossip I could rely on was that Semion was furious when Galen refused the marriage contract Semion was negotiating for Galen with the Masaud heir.”
Brandon lifted his chin in corroboration. “My dreamy brother didn’t even seem to be a part of the same universe. Political boundaries were nothing to him, and he had inherited my father’s predilection for monogamy.”
Vannis watched the long hands, the distracted smile. Brandon was waiting for something. She said, “And so Semion took her away, and confined Galen to Talgarth.”
Brandon opened his hand in agreement, and for the sake of friendship, which he needed so badly, he offered her a truth he had never intended to tell anyone but Markham once he reached Dis. “I spent most of the following five years trying to concoct some way of springing her.”
She stared in surprise. His face was still abstracted, his voice so light it was hard to hear. It was a strange thing to say, and it might even be true. One thing she was certain of: Brandon was not as stupid as she’d been led to believe.
But it was time to shift the subject from the dead to what mattered now.
She said, matching his tone exactly, “You wanted to rescue Galen’s singer and I wanted to rescue my mother from Desrien.”
As a transition, it was peerless. He could now stretch out his hand, whether out of pity, or lust, or sympathy, or shared grief, and make the first move—or what he could think of as the first move, if making the first move was important to him—and thereafter the subject would be Vannis and Brandon.
She was pleased with her wording and tone, for these transitions were an art—a gift—and had never failed her.
But as soon as she saw his face, she knew that it was the wrong answer.
Not that he said, or did, anything overt. He smiled, but the politesse was back, the Douloi mask that shielded thoughts and motives, leaving her farther outside his personal boundary than she had ever been.
Inside that mask, Brandon hid the sharp disappointment. Vannis seemed to need, or want, a lover, and he needed, and wanted, an ally. Gesturing at the trays Jaim set before them, he said, “Breakfast?”
As she leaned forward to choose among the gently steaming delicacies, she acknowledged her disappointment while refusing to regard this visit as defeat. But though she strove mightily during the rest of the interview, using smiles, charm, and even—briefly—a return to the subject of the dead singer whom Galen had loved, Brandon did not re-emerge from behind the superlative mask of Arkad politesse.
It was subtle but ineluctable. They conversed over a number of topics. She exerted herself to be entertaining, and found that his interests ranged wide indeed, that in fact he had not wasted all of the ten years since his expulsion from the Naval Academy in drink, smoke, and sex, as it had appeared from the outside. She had often professed a fondness for history, but she was hard put to recognize names and quotations that came so easily to his tongue, and twice she sensed he would have initiated a debate but she had not the facts or the background to rebut, and she floundered, laughing out loud against the early hour—against her own laziness—but inside she railed against her own ignorance.
In truth, though she had not gained what she came for, she was not bored; in fact, the visit ended well before she was ready. And again there was nothing overt, no sign or signal that she could point to, but she was aware of the Rifter again—he had never gone—and Brandon’s patient but tired face, and she found herself rising to leave, protesting that the day was advancing and she would be late for promised appointments.
Brandon also rose, which he did not have to do (and Semion had never done), and he smiled—but he let her go.
As she trod back down the garden path, she breathed deeply of the misty air, looking about her at the splendid gardens without really seeing them. Her mind was back an hour, sorting, sifting the reason for the regret, almost a sense of loss.
I love a challenge, she thought as she turned away from the slide walk and chose a secluded garden path. If he’d come to me when I beckoned, it would not have been half so fun. And I’ve learned much this first visit, for it is only the first.
She counted up the things she’d learned: she knew that he was not stupid. She knew that he had detested Semion as well, but he’d loved his middle brother. She knew he read history, that he was familiar with the writings of his forebears, that he loved music—they had come back, time and again, to music.
She knew that rescuing his brother’s lover had been important to him and that she had missed a cue in not perceiving why.
Regret. It was the very first time she had felt this particular response.
She stopped on a little rise. A breeze ruffled the folds of her gown. Clasping her fingers about her bare arms above her elbows, she remembered his words about the tianqi on Narbon: a distinctive blend of blossoms and spice.
She wished that she had identified the tianqi scents in the Enclave, then remembered there weren’t any, that the doors stood open to the garden and the air moving over the lake. As for Brandon’s personal scents, she had not been close enough to him to identify them.
Her hands slid up her arms to her shoulders, and she stood there hugging them close, her chin pressed hard against her wrist. She fought an urge to turn around and look back toward the Enclave, to see if the tall, slim, dark-haired figure would be lounging in the doorway again.
He won’t be.
This, too, she acknowledged, and then walked on with brisk steps.