The Rifter's Covenant

by Sherwood Smith

  Vannis had introduced the fashion for natural appearance at the Mandala; many had whispered that she could well afford to, as she had been born with the perfect heart-shaped face, crowed by the perfect hairline with the tiny dip in the middle; her eyes and her hair were exactly the same luxurious rosewood brown, the eyes with tiny highlights of green, her skin a shade lighter for perfect contrast.

  Fierin gazed at her, stricken almost witless, and Vannis gazed back, startled at the stark terror in Fierin’s face.

  Her insides cramped at the effort Fierin made to smile politely as she sketched a bow. “The day at the crèche was long,” she said. “I—I don’t know.”

  Vannis hesitated.

  She knew better than to exhibit the slightest interest in Tau Srivashti’s youngsters, but she felt sorry for Fierin, who reminded her of a lost kitten.

  She gestured toward the lakeside. “Walk with me, Fierin. We’ve had little enough time to converse since recent events overcame us.”

  Fierin remembered Vannis’s whispered warning about her brother, and all thoughts of Felton—and Srivashti’s smiling cruelties when his will was crossed—fled.

  Vannis was also thinking of that episode, the impulse prompted by her anger at being manipulated by Srivashti and his cabal in their attempt to force a government onto Brandon. They had neatly sidelined her by using her as bait to decoy the Aerenarch.

  But that was past history, and she knew that to interfere at all in Srivashti’s personal affairs would be a serious misstep.

  And yet. “I find the Whispering Gallery a restful diversion,” Vannis said as a conversational opening.

  Fierin spread her hands, noticed the tremble, and hid them among the folds of her skirt. “It—after the crowds, it’s—” Her throat constricted; her voice would go shrill. She clenched her teeth. Why couldn’t she get control of herself?

  But Vannis was a tapestry of courtesies, jeweled by wit. “This one is very much like the original on Montecielo, where I grew up. I’m fascinated with the idea of an ever-changing maze; no one ever figures it out.” She smiled. “It’s the best of childhood games, but with an adult risk.”

  The change of subject steadied Fierin. “I’ve only been inside this once. People really do talk frankly there?”

  “They do,” Vannis said. “For some, the novelty of being able to say what you think is delicious. For others it is a release. But games must have a stake, carry a danger, or they have no lure.”

  I have no one to talk to. I don’t dare, Fierin thought, her throat tightening again.

  Vannis thought, She’s terrified. And I know who is to blame. An echo of her own experience with Srivashti pulsed, unwelcome, in the pit of her stomach and she looked out over the placid lake waters, the color of pewter in the diminishing light, as she said, “It has a peculiar history. The idea dates all the way back to Lost Earth. In one region, apparently houses all carried spyvids, so when people wished to talk politics, they had to walk outside, even though the climate was deadly cold. In fact, some days it was so very cold, the air would conduct sound to a remarkable degree; people could hear the whispers of other people they could scarcely see. On Montecielo, the fashion has been for personal discourse only, not political, which was merely dull. I expect that will change here.”

  Fierin drew a deep breath. “Whichever carries the most risk, yes?”

  Vannis smiled at her. “Exactly right. Human nature never fails to surprise me even in its familiarity. Our attraction to risk . . . certain kinds of risk, I should say.”

  Fierin’s nerves, attenuated to pain, flashed cold.

  “In the Gallery,” Vannis said slowly, for she sensed Fierin’s fragile control about to break. Did she really want the consequences? An image of Srivashti’s merciless smile was followed, disconcertingly, by an image of Brandon’s kindness toward that hapless Rifter boy with the Kelly genome embedded in him. “In the Gallery,” she began again, “the risk is merely diverting, protected as it is by anonymity—and devoid of proximity. There are too many—proximate risks—in everyday encounters, don’t you think?”

  Fierin could not stop herself from turning sharply to study Vannis.

  The artfully enhanced eyes were acute, but the lovely curved mouth carried no shadow of triumph, or of malice. Vannis slid her slim, small hand over Fierin’s sleeve and tucked it comfortingly in the crook of her elbow. “My villa lies over that hill. Let us enjoy a pleasant walk, with something warm to drink at the end,” she said, and they set out down the path.

  Fierin’s manners were excellent, her voice soft and pleasing as she commented on the beautiful scenery, and on this or that social affair. With mild humor, Vannis Scefi-Cartano noticed how carefully Fierin avoided all mention of the cabal or the aftermath of its attempted coup.

  It was meant as a kindness, for which Vannis silently awarded due appreciation. The attempt itself had been too public to hide; afterward Tau Srivashti, valorous as only the heartless can be, had faced down waggling tongues with barbed comments and dismissive gestures of his strong hands. Those who never would have dared to try wresting a government unto themselves had been left admiring his careless acceptance of defeat.

  For most of the cabal, the coup could be shrugged off as a game of chance, for they still had left their titles, their considerable possessions, and even their social standing.

  For Vannis, new to the prospect of a life of straitened obscurity, the defeat had engendered a total change in focus. She often met the former members of the cabal, trading smile for smile and bow for bow. She read in Srivashti’s remote air, and in Hesthar’s spiky amusement, their condescending assumption that she had suffered a defeat of which she was scarcely aware. The untruth of assumption she regarded as another weapon in her growing arsenal.

  “Was the Whispering Gallery on Montecielo exactly like this one?” Fierin asked, bringing the subject around once more.

  “Alike in the glass and mirrors, but the greens are vastly different, and we do not have the exquisite mosaics here, which took nearly a hundred years to lay . . . .” All her life until now had gone into social training, and Vannis could chat inconsequentials with a small part of her mind, while her eyes gauged her companion’s compressed breathing, and the greater part of her thoughts ranged ahead, assessing, planning.

  As a young girl she had spent countless hours roaming the crystalline pathways of the Whispering Gallery, scrutinizing the subtle alterations in the tiles, watching people in the mirrors and practicing her lip-reading—a skill her mother had insisted on and which Vannis occasionally found useful—and listening to the sound patterns until she perceived the whole as a gestalt. The random changes in walls and doorways were actually comparatively minor, if one could see the place as an entity in itself.

  The same geometry worked for this Gallery, she had found. Singling out individual speakers ordinarily held little interest for her. Customarily she paced the cool beauty of the maze assessing patterns in the social converse. Today she had marked out a wraith-figure in a rumpled green gown fleeing as if from specters.

  Of course her anxiety had something to do with Srivashti and his refined tastes in cruelty.

  “Here we are,” Vannis said, indicating the narrow path to her villa. “It’s quiet inside, only my maid, and I can send her off.”

  She led the young woman to an intimate room within the villa. Fierin stood still and tense, her anxious silvery gaze wandering sightless from object to object in the room. “It’s all right,” she said, the convulsive smile almost a rictus. She had very nearly lost all vestiges of control. “Really. I am already late, and Tau will be worried. . . .”

  Vannis captured the moth-like hands, and made a small gamble. “Tau and I are old friends. You step into the bain—it’s just beyond there—and rid yourself of the worst part of the day, and I will tell him you were taken ill at your labors and are sleeping here. He won’t mind. He knows no harm could possibly come of your being here.”

  Fierin turned, her brea
th catching, and Vannis smiled. “Go on. I will send him a drop.” She raised her wrist, fingers poised above her boswell.

  Her decisiveness decided Fierin, whose footsteps diminished rapidly in the direction of the bain. Vannis sent a drop to Srivashti, who returned a polite answer, as expected. Then she took the opportunity to opaque the windows to pleasing designs, establishing an ambience both suggestive of safety and suitable for intimacy.

  When Fierin reemerged, her color high and her damp hair lying orderly on the borrowed silken robe, Vannis had a silver service waiting on a low table. She had extinguished all the lights but one, and the tianqi circulated soft air in Winter Fireside mode, fostering warmth and comfort.

  As Vannis made a slow business of preparing the hot chocolate, the story of Fierin’s terrible day came tumbling out.

  Vannis listened in silence, murmuring sympathetic half-phrases only when Fierin looked up for a reaction. Vannis sensed that something far worse lay underneath the complaints about overcrowding and Polloi versus Douloi clashes, serious as they were.

  When Fierin reached her entrance to the Whispering Gallery, Vannis moved, setting the gilt-edged chinois cup and saucer within reach of the young woman’s restless hands.

  “And I saw you once,” Fierin said, picking up the delicate cup with careful fingers. “But there’s no way to follow someone, is there? We left at the same moment by accident?”

  Her voice threaded again. Vannis, watching obliquely over the rim of her own cup, saw stark terror in the waiting eyes. “I left on pure impulse,” Vannis said, smiling before she sipped.

  And watched Fierin’s eyes close for the space of a long, racheting breath. When they opened again, the focus was intent. “So you do things on impulse?”

  Vannis tipped her head, considering not the question, but the fear behind the rush of words. “Of course I do,” she murmured, infusing her calm voice with humor. “The art of living well requires moments of sudden decision to pique and surprise. But,” she said slowly, “one must first have the freedom to decide.”

  There, it was out. She hoped it would not provoke a long retailing of Srivashti’s proclivities for mixing pain and pleasure; sexual confidences were merely sordid.

  Srivashti did have a taste for the young and inexperienced, but his habit had always been to toy with them for a short time, and then marry them off to his economic or political advantage. Fierin, inexplicably, he had kept at his side well beyond his normal span of interest.

  She lived with Srivashti; her brother—long sought for murder—languished in prison. And Srivashti’s closest associate exerted himself personally to arrange an expeditious trial of this same brother, ostensibly for high-minded reasons.

  There had to be a connection.

  Vannis’s mother had spent a fortune raising her under the tutelage of the finest laergist she could lure away from Court. In the peaceful garden of their estate on Montecielo, Vannis had grown up in company with the best musicians, artists, and performers her mother could afford. She was sensitive to every inflection of the complex Douloi gestural semiotics, and an accomplished lip and muscle-reader. The consequence was a highly finished mistress of the social arts, peerless even at Court. Then, fifteen years ago, her mother had disappeared on a religious quest—a woman who had never acknowledged an interest in religion.

  She left behind the family business, which had been signed over to Vannis’s uncle, and a daughter who embarked on what had promised to be the most brilliant social career possible for anyone not born an Arkad.

  Now Semion was dead, and Vannis had no real social standing. Along with him had vanished all the wealth she had commanded. Vannis had been left with nothing but her wits—and the dawning knowledge that her mother had kept from her careful curriculum any real knowledge of political verities.

  It was this that Vannis had sought during these last weeks. Reading far into the long nights, and pacing about in solitary introspection during the days, she struggled to gain a clear view of how the Panarchy had come to the present crisis.

  In perusal of recent history she had stumbled on one of the key pieces of her puzzle, bringing the whole into sharper focus: the Kyriarch Ilara, briefly her mother’s rival then long her best friend. Recovering childhood memories, Vannis had realized two things. One: that the death of the Kyriarch at the hands of Eusabian of Dol’jhar had begun the train of events that precipitated her mother’s sudden withdrawal from public life.

  And two: the most surprising fact, all that careful training had been to one end—that Vannis was to be another Ilara.

  “. . . no freedom,” Fierin said, her voice trembling. “This means that one cannot actually ever act on impulse. There has to be someone waiting, watching, from just beyond vision—waiting to trap you.” She sipped convulsively at her hot chocolate, then gasped for breath.

  “Slowly, child, slowly. I made it myself. It’s meant to be savored.”

  Once again Fierin made a visible effort to control herself. Vannis’s neck muscles twinged in sympathy.

  “It’s delicious,” Fierin said, sipping obediently. She closed her eyes, and sipped again.

  Vannis suppressed a sigh at this gallant attempt at recovery. It was time for another tactic. “It is an interesting subject to contemplate, just how impulsive we really are. I suspect that, were one to examine every action for motivation and intention, a subconscious prompt could be found for the simplest act.”

  Fierin’s glossy dark head dipped in a fervent nod.

  Vannis sat back, sipped again. The chocolate was creamy, rich, with a hint of several savory spices. And well hidden behind the bouquet of flavors, a mild relaxant. She watched the pupils widen in Fierin’s huge eyes. Against the beautiful dark skin her eyes seemed more silver than gray, a rare combination much prized for the dramatic contract. Was the brother this handsome? Someone had told her he was. Time to get the sordid confession out, and over with. “What I detest is finding that I have not acted, but reacted—out of fear.”

  “Yes,” Fierin breathed, her pupils enormous.

  “Let me pour you some more chocolate,” Vannis said, offering the polished pot. “I’m quite proud of my chocolate. The Golgol chefs cannot make it any better.”

  Fierin swallowed the contents of her cup and held it out for more. Vannis bent her head close to Fierin’s as she poured. She could smell the faint trace of fragrant soap on the young skin, and the scented water with which she had rinsed her hair.

  “There are people who frighten me,” Vannis said, leaning back slowly, her chin on one hand. “Hesthar al-Gessinav being one. I learned long ago to avoid any devotee of the Ultschen.”

  “The what?”

  “The cult of the deathsnake. I’m told that they carry what they call the Mark tattooed somewhere on their bodies. Wherever they were bitten in the ritual, rumor has it.”

  “Does she have a tattoo?” Fierin said doubtfully, then her brow cleared. “Oh, I’ve seen a shadow on one of her forearms. Is that it?”

  “Probably. I’ve also been told that those with the tattoo hidden are the most dangerous, especially if they let you see it.”

  Fierin sucked in a breath. “Felton,” she said. “He has one. I saw it once, when he came out of the bain. I don’t think he knew I was there.”

  Vannis’s neck gripped with chill. “I hadn’t known that,” she murmured. “Two of them here. I wonder if they know about each other?”

  “They must,” Fierin said. “When Felton is there for parties, they watch each other. I didn’t understand it before.”

  “Well.” Vannis inclined her head as she lifted her cup. A quick assessment: far from relaxing, Fierin seemed all hunched bones and tangled nerves.

  Fierin took a deep breath. “If.” She looked around. “Is there—” She twisted her fingers together.

  Vannis set her cup down with a clash and reached to touch Fierin’s hand. “There are no spyvids here,” she said. “I scanned the place myself. It was something I gained practice in
, being married to Semion vlith-Arkad,” she added with irony.

  Fierin did not even smile. This was it, Vannis thought, as Fierin said, “If you were to hide,” she said slowly, so softly Vannis had to bend forward to hear, “where would you?”

  “That depends,” Vannis said. “On who I had to hide from. And what I was hiding.”

  “What you said. About Hesthar,” Fierin whispered.

  “Does this concern your brother?” Vannis asked. “The trial?”

  Fierin shook her head, real grief tightening her face. “No. I can’t find out anything to help Jes. Felton—watches me.” She gulped for breath, then shook her head again. “It’s not that. It’s—something worse. Much worse. I don’t know what it means, except . . . .”

  The pure cold fire of triumph scoured from Vannis’s skull through muscles to nerve endings. “Tell me. If I can help, I will. If I can’t, I will tell you—but I will not betray you.”

  “You won’t tell Srivashti,” Fierin whispered.

  Vannis said acidly, “I promise. I assure you I have no fondness for Tau Srivashti.”

  Fierin’s trembling attempted at a smile expressed more pain than humor. And then to Vannis’s surprise, she pulled her hairclasp free, so that her dark hair tumbled down around her elbows. Then she opened her hand, and disclosed beside the expected hair clasp a datachip.

  “I have been hiding this chip since the laergist Ranor gave it to me. He was murdered right afterward,” she said. “It was made at the Aerenarch’s Enkainion. It shows the bomb, and everyone dying. And it shows Hesthar and Srivashti and the Archon of Torigan backing out of the room right before the bomb went off.”

  That same bomb seemed to detonate behind Vannis’s eyes, leaving her skull as empty as a blown egg, and her heart beating fast against her ribs.

  Her days of contemplation had fashioned a single resolve: that she would take her rightful place at Brandon hai-Arkad’s side. She had been trained from birth to be a Kyriarch. Ever since the night Brandon had spent with her—out of friendship and kindness, with his bright skein of laughter and tenderness, and pleasure—every day since she had desired more strongly to bind him to her with her own silken ribbon.