The big Rifter grinned crookedly. “I left that behind in the Riftskip. And there are levels, dammit. It’s the Tetrad Centrum Douloi.” He shook his head. “No time for that.” He pushed himself off the platform and dropped his feet to the floor with surprising grace. “I put in my request the moment we reached Ares space because I thought it might be days, even weeks, before the message reached you, and you arranged your affairs. But someone else clearly believes you are the best, and that it matters perhaps more than either of us are aware to have you come immediately.”
Ixvan had not considered that aspect of things. Even more questions flooded his mind as Montrose shook his head, and went on, “I’ve just begun here myself, walking into a backlog of cases that gets longer by the minute. And I ought to tell you that you’ve a client in despair. The youngster needs some encouragement. You’ll find what I know, at least, waiting in your drop when you get to your quarters—directions are on the console there.”
TEN
Ivard banked the aircar and dove downward. Cold wind whipped at his face. He glanced over his shoulder at the arced bank of clouds behind him, shaped by the curvature of the oneill, their tops teased antispinward below the diffusers now far above.
He pulled out of the dive and brought the little vehicle to a stop a few meters from where a tall, thin man waited in the diffuse light of early morning.
“Eh, Firehead?” the man said, squinting up at him. “Not done yet? Rain comin’.”
“I think one of the lumbae is sick. Smells wrong.”
The man nodded soberly and yanked his sleeve back, pulling his boswell up.
Ivard didn’t wait to hear the result. In the short time he had been assigned to the menagerie, those in charge had learned to trust his nose.
No other traffic appeared above the curving landscape, so Ivard raced the aircar until his eyes streamed. He loved working with the menagerie—not only checking on the well-being of the various animals but also because he was permitted to fly an aircar for the job. All pleasure vehicles had been grounded, and except for security and maintenance (which included the menagerie), all others were only allowed to fly on a case-by-case basis.
He sailed the aircar into the shed, checked it over, set it on recharge, then surrendered his ID patch and logged off for the shift. Two or three other workers waved cheerily at him, and his heart leaped when once again he found Gray and Trev waiting, tongues lolling, outside the shed.
But as he knelt down to scratch each dog’s head, and bury his face in their fur to sniff where they’d been, he felt them stiffen to alertness a heartbeat before he heard the crunch of footsteps. He looked up as a smiling man approached, the ajna on his forehead shimmering. “Nik Cormoran, Ares 25.”
Ivard shook his head. “I told the other one I didn’t want to talk.”
But the man kept pacing him. “Heyo, I don’t bite! Ask your friend Marim. We had a good conversation—I’d love to hear your version of the L’Ranja Whoopee, and your other adventures . . .”
Vi’ya had warned Ivard that the novosti were trying to stir people up against Rifters to hurt Lokri’s chances of winning his trial. He wasn’t going to give them any help. He tried to shut the man out as he hurried down the pathway. He spotted the vet departing in the direction of the barren hills where the huge lumbae tribe wandered. No aid there. But he knew what might rescue him—he had worked late so he could enjoy the scheduled rainstorm, and here it was, right on time.
Lightning flickered. Thunder crackled and rumbled, and here came the deluge. The novosti ran for the first transtube access as the rain started. Ivard and the dogs sprinted in the other direction, slowing to a steady run as raindrops stung his face and hit the ground with soft pats. All the scents of loam, shrubs, air changed; it was headier than dreamsmoke.
Ivard had learned from the dogs how to sniff without making noise. As he ran along, he breathed in the moisture-laden air, sifting scents carried down from the clouds, and thought about his day. Right now he was happy. The job he’d been assigned was fascinating, and here he ran with Gray and Trev, who he sensed were also happy.
Until now he’d never considered just how carefully the oneill ecosystem was balanced. Most of the wildlife on it was permitted to roam freely. Those creatures brought on various ships that could not be allowed into the environment were sequestered in cleverly designed areas that made as much use of space as possible, so the animals would not feel caged.
Only those meant for radically different climates were “underground,” in vast sealed biomes with meticulous replications of their native environments.
The rain reached its maximum intensity when Ivard’s energy began to flag. He slowed, concentrating on his breathing, and the dogs slowed as well. “Where’ve you been staying?” he asked them, for the fun of watching their ears take in his words, then shift to the outside world. He knew from the scents in their fur that they had recently been bunking with the Kelly—and that made sense. Only the Kelly truly understood the world of smells that the dogs lived in.
His focus turned inward as he pushed himself to keep at a steady pace, so when a sudden swirl of warm, dry spice-laden wind buffeted his face, he almost stumbled.
Trev gave a sharp yip. Whirling about, hands raised in guard position, Ivard faced—
“Tate Kaga!” Laughing, he stumbled to a stop.
“Ho, Little Egg,” the ancient nuller greeted him, making his gee-bubble whirl. “And his guardian friends. You must keep moving.”
Gulping down air, Ivard began jogging at a much slower pace.
The gee-bubble glided smoothly beside him. “So! You forget old two-legged friends?”
“No.” Ivard shook his head violently. “But I started this job, and in the mornings Jaim is still teaching me Ulanshu defense . . .” He hesitated, then with a grimace said in a rush, “Well, there was someone I was pairing with. Before we left. When we came back, well . . . I’ll have those hours free now.”
The wrinkled face creased in a sympathetic laugh, and the gee-bubble whirled, stopping with Tate Kaga upside down. “Your heart is so, Little Egg?” He pointed a knuckly finger toward the ground.
Ivard smothered a groan. He was resigned to the fact that Vi’ya could read his thoughts. He knew she didn’t try, but as yet he could not prevent his strongest emotions from entering his dreams, and because of the mental link with the Eya’a and the Kelly, those dreams always seemed to get shared with her.
Though Tate Kaga made no claims to any powers psychic or otherwise, Ivard suspected the old man already knew what was going on. Regret hurt his heart, tasting of bitter things when he thought of Ami.
“What is it with the Douloi?” he blurt out. “Ami liked me enough—but she just shut me out. Oh, she’s friendly enough, but she’s no longer interested in me. I can smell the difference.”
“She has found a new bolster for her bed, eh?”
“Some ensign off that ship, the Astraea. Looks like a stiffrump to me, but she got herself sewn to him while we were on the Telvarna.”
“Astraea,” the nuller said in his rusty old voice. “Skipped in bearing its wounds like a badge. Some find this aura of heroic action attractive.”
Ivard opened his mouth to deny how much action anybody serving on one of those big battlecruisers could really have seen—then he remembered the Grozniy at Gehenna and the Korion. Hot blood suffused his cheeks when he also recalled Ami had first expressed interest in him, after the Eya’a and the Kelly had singled him out at that party. And it was Tate Kaga’s party, so he must have seen her choose me.
Which meant he knew as well as Ivard did that Ami had been drawn to him for exactly the same reason.
“Blunge,” he muttered.
Tate Kaga laughed, but somehow the sound was not at all offensive. “Remember something about the Douloi, Little Egg,” Tate Kaga said. “Most are just so—they change partners with exactly the same care that they change clothes.”
“My sister told me before she died that t
here is no such thing as love. She was talking about Rifters, but I guess she meant Douloi, because I’ve seen love in Rifters.” He couldn’t bring himself to mention his violent feelings for his first lover, Marim, before he found out she’d seduced him for his part of the Arthelion treasure. And he didn’t feel it right to mention Vi’ya and Markham, or Jaim and Reth Silverknife.
“Some Douloi do not know such an emotion. They marry for political and economic expedience, and they bunny indiscriminately—and even some of those partners are chosen for social or political reasons.”
Despite the rain, Ivard thought he caught a whiff of sharp scent—something different than the autumnal spices the nuller liked in his air. He’s warning me. Now that it’s too late.
“Come, Little Egg! You have more tale ahead than you do behind.”
“Meaning I’m young,” Ivard panted in a disgusted voice, but then he looked down, comprehending there was a second meaning to Tate Kaga’s words, and he snickered.
“Ho!” The nuller sounded pleased. “Come visit me.” His bubble spun away rapidly.
Peering through the gray sheets of rain, Ivard discovered that he’d reached the next station. Gray and Trev came alert, then ran off. Ivard did not try to stop them as he slowed his pace, walking the last hundred meters to join the crowd already waiting inside.
Automatically he sniffed, sorting the myriad scents of the people around him. They were all tired, and some gave off the faint, sharp odor of anger as they eyed the people around them and shifted their stances—they did not like standing in a crowd. Ivard adjusted his own stance, keeping a distance from them.
The tube was nearly full when it arrived, but he did find a seat, and sank back with a sigh, feeling grateful to Vi’ya for pointing out that if he worked at night, there was less bombardment of psychic static from the people around them.
Since he couldn’t have mental privacy, he didn’t mind sharing with Vi’ya. Nothing shocked or disgusted her, she answered his questions—and she treated him as an adult.
He enjoyed the swooping sense of acceleration as the transtube climbed toward the spin axis and the entrance to the Cap. Sometimes he saw Vi’ya’s dreams, but rarely. She’d learned to block her thoughts, though he could feel the effort it took. And he didn’t like her dreams. It was his reactions to them that always woke her and ended them abruptly.
That part of their connection they had not discussed.
Warned by an upsurge in the blue fire that flickered vigilantly at the edge of his consciousness, he looked up. He had reached his destination. “Leaving,” he called out, and the people around him obligingly made space.
Since their return from the Suneater mission, Vi’ya had been exploring the databanks they now had access to, and had produced some records on their erstwhile home, knowing how interested Ivard was in Panarchic history. He was delighted to find out that the Detention block hadn’t just housed naval scapegraces and bureaucratic petty criminals; there had been some shady rulers in the past who had kept high-powered private enemies there—including, once, a Krysarchei who had been planning a spectacular revolt against her father.
As Ivard walked down the last corridor before Detention Five, he wished he had one of those timeskips people were always inventing in the adventure chips. He’d love to see that Krysarchei—who hadn’t been much older than he was—pacing restlessly back and forth in her diamonds and brocades, plotting how to launch a fleet of ships against Lao Tse. Would she be interesting to talk to?
The Marine guards at the front saluted him, one with a welcoming smile, and Ivard grinned and lifted his hand in return. No one in the future will ever know I was here, he thought—but that didn’t matter so much anymore. One thing he’d learned the last few months while orbiting with famous people: fame wasn’t worth the cost.
As the door to the suite he shared with Vi’ya, Marim, and the Eya’a slid open he was taken by a sudden, enormous yawn. Then a myriad of fast impressions flooded nose, ears, and mind, stopping him dead. Jaim was not there, nor Marim—but sitting across from Vi’ya at the game console was Brandon hai-Arkad, now Panarch of the Thousand Suns. They were deep in a game of Phalanx L-3.
Two brief glances impacted him, one the bright blue of a planet’s summer sky, the other black as space.
“Hey, Firehead,” Brandon said, his smile exactly the same one he’d given Ivard months ago, when, blushing and feeling stupid, Ivard had directed him in restocking the supplies aboard the Telvarna.
Vi’ya said, “Manderian was here after you left. He will return again, at which time he wants to work with the trinity and the Eya’a on the semaphores again.”
“Oh.” Ivard knew at a visceral level that Vi’ya was tired; then, with another swoop of his innards, he noted the rumpled clothing on both. Brandon had been there all night. Not sleeping, either.
“Jaim didn’t come?” He hoped his voice was as casual as he tried to make it sound.
“Vahn’s got him running scan against the circus next week,” Brandon said.
“Circus?” Ivard said blankly. “Oh! You mean the big party thing.”
“Parties,” Brandon said with grim humor. He did not pause in his keying or take his eyes from the screen. “From breakfast until breakfast for three days I’ll be pegged out and paraded, like an insect under glass.”
“It is in lieu of the Mandalic ritual,” Vi’ya said, not looking up from the game. Ivard sensed that they were in the final actions—and neither intended to lose.
“No throne, no ring,” Brandon agreed equably. His voice changed slightly as he added, “No government, either.”
Ivard’s innards swooped again; he thought, they’ve been talking about that. Though he wasn’t sure how he knew. Weird. Here he’s got a quarter million people to talk to, some of them owning whole planets, and he’s here in Detention with Vi’ya.
Memory: Markham’s homely face and one-sided grin as he said not long after Vi’ya joined the crew, “She remembers everything she’s heard even once, and she’s more honest than a mirror. It’s a lethal combination.”
Within a year after that they were mates.
Mates . . . He looked at the two heads bent over the consoles, and Tate Kaga’s words came back to him: “They change partners with exactly the same care that they change clothes.”
“Ha.” Brandon sat back and cleared the screen with a careless swipe of his hand. Vi’ya smiled, her face flushed, and her black eyes crescents of mirth.
Ivard couldn’t tell which of them had won.
SUNEATER
Ares flared and evaporated in the fierce rush of energy from the black hole newly created by the Suneater hovering nearby. The ships thickly clustered around it detonated silently in tiny puffs of flame . . .
Eusabian opened his eyes and sat up, leaving the directed dream behind as he stood and began the meditative exercises of the orr nar-hach pelkun turish—the Hour of the Unsheathing of the Will—building on the energy unleashed by the som-turi vision of the final completion of his paliach. A minor irritation persisted: to know the location of his enemy’s base and yet be unable to reach it.
Yet.
He dismissed the thought.
The room was silent, cool. A solitary light hovered above him, dimly illuminating the walls and ceiling of overlapping tapestries and holographs surrounding him in rich imagery as unacknowledged as the air that sustained him or the soft rugs underfoot. He did not have to see the alien material of this chamber in the Suneater. Everything in his sight conformed to his will.
As he dressed, each garment donned invested him with another aspect of his indwelling power, interwoven as they were from threads teased from the robes of his ancestors.
When the Hour had passed, he summoned Barrodagh.
Anaris also awoke at the same hour, but he had not been practicing the art of the som-turi. His Panarchist tutors had given him far older techniques.
None of them were helping.
The room was cool, the featureless
dyplast ceiling diffusing the glow of the solitary light he activated onto the rich hangings on the walls. Thick gray paint showed on the floor at the edges of the rigid dyplast sheet that, scattered with rugs, hid most of it. Air whispered; he sensed a slight fluctuation in temperature, the hint of an odor. He heard the console click as the tianqi compensated for the change; a flicker of status lights indicated an adjustment of the stasis clamps that held the mutations of the Urian station in check.
Anaris began his Ulanshu exercises, combining them with the disciplines of the Hour, drawing strength from both, and grim humor from the fact that in the timeless environment of the Suneater, the Hour was but a matter of the watch he had chosen for his sleep periods. He doubted his father had ever entertained that thought.
He was stiff from the residue of his dream: this one, in familiar and inexorable progression, more intense than that of the night before. He moved more strongly, shaking off the sense of paralysis, of muteness. The heat of his blood finally dissipated the dream-sensation of insects crawling on him.
As yet, he could remember no images from the dreams. Wryly he considered whether gratitude might be the proper response to that.
The oddness of the concept jolted him. Gratitude to whom? What could be lurking in these visions, that he would waken feeling exhausted, yet not remember anything? He felt unbalanced, as though the careful synthesis of Dol’jharian and Panarchist thought he’d achieved was threatening to unravel.
Anaris remembered Gelasaar’s face and the Panarch’s final words to him.
“I regret only one thing—that this last lesson will make it less likely that you will ever underestimate us again.”
“No, Gelasaar. Never again.”
Their discussion on the ship carrying his father’s enemy into exile had opened up new avenues of thought for Anaris, illuminating byways laid down by the tutors of his foster home on Arthelion that were now bringing to light both weaknesses and strengths.
The Rifter's Covenant Page 17