House of the Wolf (Book Three of the Phoenix Legacy)

by Wren, M. K.

  Mankeen’s guards reacted with a barrage of laser fire that killed Aldred instantly. Mankeen survived the knife thrust, but his friendship with Alric Berstine didn’t survive the death of his son, however deserved it was. Berstine renounced Mankeen and surrendered to the Concord, and he was one of the few League Lords whose House survived.

  Another councilor, also Lord of a landed House, was more loyal to Mankeen, and his House paid the price. Myron Holst Desmon held land grants on most of the Missour River drainage in central Noramerika, and although he was among the last Lords to join the League, he was one of the most loyal to Mankeen. He was also one of the three Lords who accompanied Mankeen on his final voyage toward the sun. Afterward, his first born, Danis, managed to trade his and his family’s lives for a merger with Olin Fallor, whose lands adjoined his on the north, and who treated the Desmons despicably. Danis survived the merger by only three years, and his death, officially listed as suicide, probably occurred when he tried to kill Olin Fallor.

  Another landed Lord and councilor who remained loyal to Mankeen and joined him on that final flight was Owen Alis Arnim, who held sheep and cattle franchises and a large land grant in north central Conta Austrail. His wife and three children accompanied him on Mankeen’s death flight, and few of his remaining relatives—or even his Fesh and Bonds—survived the Mankeen Purge. His holdings were awarded to the House of Hamid, which under the aegis of the Selasids was very much a rising power at that time, and within ten years of the end of the Revolt occupied the House of Tadema’s seat on the Directorate.

  Another agrarian House on the League Council was that of Bernar Po Kien, whose Home Estate was in Ningsi in central Sinasia. Kien was, like Mankeen, the descendant of a “native” Lord appointed by Ballarat, and traced his dynasty back ten generations before the Wars of Confederation. The dynasty ended with Kien, who would undoubtedly have joined Mankeen on that last flight, but he was killed six years earlier at the Battle of Paykeen. His holdings were absorbed by Titus Vanevar, a Cognate House of Omer.

  The third Lord who accompanied Mankeen on his last flight was Winston Grenwell Pretoria, one of the two mining Houses on the Council. His Home Estate was in Sudafrika, in Pretoria, from whence the House name was taken; his predecessor was one of the Fesh commanders awarded Lordship by Ballarat. Pretoria apparently inherited a talent for tactics and took an active part in Mankeen’s military campaigns, after 3112 serving as Cormoroi’s second-in-command. Perhaps for that reason, his House suffered particularly during the Purge. His holdings and basic metals franchises were given to the House of Cameroodo, which was also very much a rising power, and a few years later Lerenz Cameroodo was sitting on the Directorate in the Adalay chair.

  The other mining House on the Council was that of Lore Videl Valera, whose Home Estate was in Cracas, Sudamerika. He was one of the first Lords to join the League, and one of its most outspoken partisans in the beginning, but his enthusiasm waned quickly, although he didn’t work up the courage to break way until Berstine left Mankeen in 3118. Valera joined Berstine in his renunciation of Mankeen and surrendered to the Concord, but he didn’t fare as well as Berstine, perhaps because he wasn’t as adroit an opportunist. The House of Valera and its holdings were a few years later absorbed by Ivanoi.

  There were only two industrial Houses on the Council, and both were Mankeen partisans for palpably selfish reasons. Karol Zleski Delai, whose Home Estate was originally in Victoria but was moved to Varsaw during the Revolt, held computer franchises that put him in direct competition with Omer, a Directorate House that was systematically forcing Delai into bankruptcy. Obviously, Lord Karol had his reasons for fighting for the emancipation of his House, but whatever his motives, he fought hard for the League and was killed on the battleline in the last Battle of Toramil. His first born, like Danis Desmon, managed to make a bargain for survival, with Omer in this case, and in the resulting House merger, Delai’s descendants fared far better than Desmon’s.

  The other industrial House, and the last of the nine original Council Houses, was that of Lord Aram Sejanis, whose Home Estate was in Stanbul. The name of Sejanis has since become synonymous with treachery, and for good reason. The House was a Cognate of Selasis with franchises for the manufacture of certain cast-metal parts used in Selasid ships, and until Aram became First Lord, the relationship between the two Houses was peaceful, with the previous Sejanid Lords carefully avoiding antagonizing the Goliath of Selasis. Lord Aram, however, was an avaricious and ambitious man who thought to play the role of David. He was among Mankeen’s most zealous partisans in the beginning, but later became the first League Lord to renounce Mankeen. That was in 3112, and it’s never been clear why he chose to do so at that time; the League was then in a good position strategically and still a potential winner in its contest with the Concord. Sejanis, however, was to a great degree responsible for the change of the tide of the League’s fortunes in that year. He wasn’t satisfied simply to desert the League and surrender to the Concord, but took with him information and strat plans that led to Cormoroi’s shattering defeat at the Battle of Pollux.

  For a while it seemed that Sejanis had made a good bargain. Lord Bernar Selasis took him under his wing and treated him magnanimously, which perhaps should have served as a warning to Sejanis. Apparently it didn’t, and he enjoyed the fruits of his treachery for five years before he met his death in a fall from a balcony in his Stanbul Estate. Few people accepted his death as an accident, especially when Selasis moved so quickly afterward to consolidate the House’s holdings with his own. But there was no great outcry for justice on Aram’s behalf. Despite the fact that he gave the Concord its first major victory, Aram Sejanis was as much despised by the Lords of the Concord as he was by the Lords of the League.

  Before the end of the Revolt, Mankeen had become accustomed to renouncement and desertion. By 3118 a third of the League Houses had been destroyed, their holdings absorbed by Concord Lords, and another third had deserted and surrendered, most of them suffering the same fate. And in that year, while Mankeen was still recovering from the stab wound dealt by Aldred Berstine, his wife joined the exodus. Lady Lizbeth sought sanctuary with her father, Lord Tomas Lesellen, but she didn’t go alone. Feador, their first born, and Julian, their third son, accompanied her. There is evidence, although Concord histories play it down, that Mankeen not only didn’t oppose this desertion, but insisted upon it. Leo, the second born, and Irena did not go with their mother and brothers to Bonaires, and I can’t believe they weren’t given a choice. They chose to stay with their father and finally join him in his last voyage, as the remaining third of the League Lords chose to remain loyal to him to the last battle, however hopeless.

  Chapter XVI

  Augus 3258

  1.

  Erica Radek checked the S/V screens to see that they were on total opaque from the outside. A hulking man stood guard near the cubicle; from all appearances, he hadn’t moved a muscle since Jael posted him there. A “blade,” Jael called him, a paradoxical term; the man wore the usual Outsider’s knife, but it was obvious he didn’t depend on that to carry out his duties, but on the imposing X2 holstered on his hip and the metal-studded gloves covering huge hands that curled menacingly even in relaxation.

  She turned and went to the chair by the bed. As a psychosociologist, she should be making use of the fund of information available to her now on the Outside, its customs, traditions, behavioral codes, and people. “Members” would be more apt. Like Dr. Cedric Eliot. What had brought a man so skilled and dedicated to his work into the Brotherhood? She’d been apprehensive about the staff in Amik’s infirmary; this wasn’t a case to be trusted to incompetents. But Eliot had been a pleasant surprise—if anything in these last four hours could be called pleasant.

  She sagged back in the chair, letting her eyes close.

  Three hours in surgery, and there was so little they could do. The muscles and tendons had been repaired to some exten
t, bone cultures implanted, skin grafts made. But Alex needed vascular and neural implants if the arm and hand were ever to function at anything close to a normal level. Dr. Eliot didn’t have the facilities or the expertise for that kind of surgery. It was all they could do to save the arm.

  And what was so bitterly galling was the knowledge that the specialists and equipment necessary to treat this wound properly were available in Fina.

  She opened her eyes and looked up at the biomonitor screen on the opposite wall. The moving lines spelled a general state just short of deep shock. Dr. Eliot had hesitated for that reason at giving Alex a sedative after he came out of the anesthesia, but it became a necessity, the lesser of risks. It was imperative that his arm be kept immobile, but even restraining straps didn’t contain his desperate thrashings. Eliot had been at a loss to understand the uncontrollable emotional reaction, recognizing it as a response to something more than physical pain. Erica hadn’t tried to explain it, but she understood it.

  The cubicle still seemed to echo with those agonized cries. She looked at Alex, half her mind still operating on the level of a physician. He lay in a nulgrav bed, enveloped in an invisible bubble of controlled warmth, a respirator mask covering half his face, mechanically pacing his breathing. Taped on the inside of his left elbow was a tube to supply saline and nutrient solutions; electrodes for brainwave monitoring and emergency cardiac shock were attached to his forehead and chest; a biomonitor cuff was strapped to his left wrist, its readings projected on the wall screen. His right arm was bandaged from the knuckles to the deltoid muscle, tented in bacteriostatic gauze, a rack of inverted plasibottles mounted above it with eight tubes looping down, disappearing under the bandages, meting out protein-enzyme solutions.

  Barring infection or rejection of the grafts, the arm would heal. How well it would function, she couldn’t guess, but she doubted he’d ever be capable of full digital apposition.

  But the arm wasn’t her real concern.

  She had seen Alex Ransom weep, and knew what that meant. The locks on the mental chamber where he’d jailed his grief for Rich, for his mother, and even in some senses for his father, had broken with this new grief. Erica had warned him years ago that the locks wouldn’t hold forever, but he’d been unwilling—or unable—to open them himself and endure the natural process of recovery.

  Now he was under a double assault, both mental and physical, and the rigidly disciplined control crumbled in the face of that devastating combination. His last coherent words were, “Let me go—in the name of mercy, let me go. . . .”

  He meant, Let me die.

  And Andreas Riis was free.

  She focused on the thought, trying to recapture the relief and joy she felt when Ben brought him through the MT. The day they had worked for and anxiously awaited for eight long months; Andreas was free, and because she loved him, the relief was still there. But any hope for the future of the Phoenix was dimmed. Whatever his virtues, Andreas wasn’t capable of leading the exiles back to Fina. Not to a Fina occupied by Predis Ussher.

  She reached out and touched the motionless hand lying against the sheet, finding it cold under her fingers. It was a personal conviction that the survival instinct is too strong to be easily overridden, and when existence becomes that intolerable, the victim is justified in asking the mercy of death. She wasn’t sure she was capable of offering that kind of mercy; it had never been asked of her. But it didn’t matter, she had no choice. She couldn’t be merciful. Not to Alex Ransom; to the Lord Alexand.

  But he wanted to die. The question that haunted her now was whether it was within her power to keep him alive.

  She tensed, aware that she wasn’t alone, feeling a chill of fear; this was the realm of the Brotherhood. Then her breath tame out in a sigh of relief. Jael. She wondered how long he’d been standing behind her.

  “Are you well, sister?” He came up beside her and stood looking down at Alex.

  “Yes.”

  “And Alex?”

  “We managed to save the arm.”

  Jael turned to face her, and she wasn’t deceived by the lack of emotion in his black, hooded eyes.

  “Will he live?”

  “He’ll survive the wound.”

  “You slip my questions.”

  She pulled in a deep breath, suddenly so bone-weary, she wondered if she could stand.

  “I can’t answer your questions; not the real ones.”

  He nodded slowly. “That’s answer enough.”

  “What about Andreas?”

  “He’s resting now. We set up an S/V cubicle for him. The ‘cells’ didn’t hold much favor with him.”

  “I can understand that. Does he seem—I mean, is he—”

  “He’s clear and straight down the line. Ben had a long talk with him, skimming the general stat, then Andreas had a head session with Lyden and Bruce, and he’s ready to dive in.”

  “I must talk to him before I go back to Fina.”

  “Erica, it’ll hold. He needs rest, and so do you. Ben said he’d wait on for you at Fina; he left an hour ago.”

  She nodded mechanically, then after a moment frowned. “Will you be here with Alex?”

  “I can be, but I brought Carl Roi from the COS HQ. He’s a Grade 6 medtech.”

  Erica looked out through the haze of the S/V screens and saw a face-screened man standing a little distance from the Outsider guard.

  “Yes, I know Carl. Thank you, Jael. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

  “You’ve had enough to think on.” He looked down at Alex again. “He left some tapes with me. Called one a death testament. Asking fate, damn it; he kept asking fate.”

  “Are the tapes private?”

  “Not the one with my name on it. I’ve called an Exile Council meeting tomorrow; we’ll hear it out then.”

  She noted that “I’ve called,” but the assumption of command implied in it didn’t surprise her.

  “When will the meeting be?”

  “Talk that out with Ben. Any time the two of you can shake loose.” He looked up at the biomonitor screen. “The tape . . . he talked about the Peladeen Alternative.”

  That didn’t surprise her either. “With you as the prospective First Lord of Peladeen?”

  “Yes.” He stared fixedly at Alex; the sighing of the respirator paced out a short silence. “Erica, we can’t be taken down to that alternative.”

  She pulled herself to her feet, exhaustion dragging at her like a tangible weight.

  “Then hope Lady Adrien is alive, Jael. There’s nothing more important to the Phoenix right now than finding her.”

  He hesitated. “And if she is dead?”

  She heard the words, the answer to that question, in her mind: If Adrien is dead, Alexand is dead.

  The tears came unexpectedly, and she was too tired to stop them. Jael said nothing; he only offered a supporting embrace and an understanding silence, holding her until it was over, until she had herself under control again.

  She was thinking of Val Severin when she finally looked up at him. “Jael, I like to delude myself that if I’d ever had a son, he’d be the kind of man you are.”

  He laughed. “What can I do with a gim line like that? Come on, I’m taking you back to the Cave and waving you off to Fina. You’ve had a week in a day.”

  She nodded absently. “I should talk to Carl.”

  “I’ve already lined him in, and he talked to Dr. Eliot. And I’ve set up a schedule; there’ll be a Phoenix medtech with Alex every hour, every day, and they’ll be armed. Besides, I laid edict, and so did the old Ser, and I’ll keep one of the blades on watch here, too. Alex is as safe as a babe.”

  She touched that still hand once more and turned away. “All right, Jael.”

  “Hold it in faith, sister.”

  She smiled faintly as she stepped out of the cubicle, remembering to activate her face-screen.

  “I do. I hold you in faith.”


  2.

  It seemed a frozen tableau, the meeting of the Exile Council. Alex always called it that, and the name held. Jael sat at one end of the table in the rock-walled conference room with the portable speaker before him. He didn’t have to listen to the words; he had them all laid to memory. But at the last words his breath caught and he swallowed at the tightness that closed his throat.

  “. . . and to you, Jael, friend and brother . . . fortune.”

  Jael reached out and turned off the speaker, then let the silence run a while longer until he had himself under hold again. Erica and Ben were watching him, waiting, but Andreas was still staring at the speaker.

  Jael said, “I won’t call that an ‘advisory command.’ At least, I’ll leave off the ‘advisory.’ He laid the lines, and I intend to run the gant like he read it. And I intend to hold down his chair until he comes to claim it.”

  He waited then. If anyone showed any tooth, it would be Ben, and he’d be the hardest to bring around. Ben looked up, meeting his eyes, then gave him a crooked, humorless smile.

  “Jael, there’s a hell of a lot in that tape I don’t like, but there’s nothing I don’t agree with. That includes your holding down his chair. Did you think I’d draw blades with you over that? I accept the alternative Alex put on that tape as exactly what he called it: the only viable alternative. That includes you as his second-in-command and heir apparent.”

  “Thanks, brother. Erica?”

  She’d been watching Andreas, who had at length turned his gaze from the inert speaker and focused it vaguely on Jael’s face. She roused herself to answer him.

  “Jael, you know I’m with Alex. Could I be with him and against you?”

  “No, sister, I don’t think so.” He looked at Andreas, who took a long breath; it came out in a sigh with the weary weight of defeat in it. He turned his palms up.