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

by Wren, M. K.

The cheers exploded around him. His voice struck out into the rush of sound.

  “Galinin seeks aid of the All-God, but I ask you, who does the All-God choose to favor? The Concord? Can you doubt whom the All-God chooses to bless when within twenty-four days of our offensive, Mars has erupted in violent uprisings demanding a concentration of Conpol and Confleet forces unprecedented since the War of the Twin Planets? The Concord is staggering, fighting with every available resource to save Mars. What will be left to join the battle to save Centauri? What except a shattered remnant of its vaunted fleets? And we will strike like a storm, without warning. We will rouse the silent, enchained masses, and they will swell our ranks by thousands, by millions! The people of Centauri will rise up and say to the proud Lords of the Concord—no more! We will live in your chains no more! We will set ourselves free, and the Republic will live again! The Peladeen did not die! Freedom did not die! Freedom is the Phoenix, the immortal bird rising from the ashes of death! The Republic of the Peladeen lives; it lives in victory!”

  He lifted his arms, calling up the thunder of straining voices, turning slowly to encompass them in the beatitude of his outstretched hands, his head thrown back, flame-hued hair seemingly tossed in the storm wind.

  And he shouted, “Victory!”

  They took up the word hungrily, letting it give shape to their formless clamor, and as each voice found the word, it became a rolling, rhythmic tide, the three syllables pounding out in crashing cadences, drowning everything except that one word, drowning even Predis Ussher’s unleashed laughter.

  “Victory! . . . Victory! . . . Victory! . . . Victory! . . .”

  6.

  The white beads slipped through her fingers, one by one, her lips moved, tolling the silent minutes with prayers.

  Val Severin knelt in the first row of pews, and before her the chapel altar vanished into distanced shadows; tiers of gilt saints and seraphim winged into the hallowed darkness that swallowed up the light of the altar candles. There wasn’t even enough light to trace the interlaced arches to their culmination above her, and in the cavernous spaces meant to hold the echoes of the orchestral organ, there was no sound except the whispers of her penances.

  Her knees ached unmercifully against the stone floor, and yet she wondered sometimes if she didn’t unconsciously seek these hours of prayer penances. The solitude in this chapel was different from that of her small room; less constricting spatially, at least.

  And easier. Face it, she admonished herself bitterly, in that room the transceiver was waiting, and she never thought she’d dread her few nocturnal minutes with Jael, but she did now, because every call meant admitting another day of failure.

  I’m slipping, brother, slipping over the edge. Hold on to me. For the God’s sake, give me your hand. . . .

  Forty days and nights behind these walls, twenty-six since Sister Betha’s death, since Alex Ransom’s surrender to pain and grief. And twenty-two until Concord Day. She tolled the days with her prayers, pale, lightless beads, moving one by one through her fingers, and with every day she felt herself slipping nearer the edge of some incomprehensible abyss—

  “Sister Alexandra?”

  The voice took her breath. She hadn’t heard anyone approaching. In all this huge silence, not a sound had reached her mind.

  Sister Herma. That precise, clipped inflection was unmistakable. She stood in the aisle at the end of the pew. Val looked up at her, wondering as she always did what kind of face hid behind that veil.

  “Yes, Sister Herma?”

  “Did you know it’s past curfew?”

  I am slipping, Val thought distractedly. She hadn’t even heard the chapel chimes ringing the curfew hour.

  “No . . . I didn’t realize . . .”

  “I think you’ve done penance enough to satisfy the All-God, my dear. You’d best get to bed now.”

  Val rose, teeth set against the pain in her knees. At the aisle, she genuflected toward the altar, touching the first two fingers of her right hand to her forehead, then her heart, executing every movement carefully with Sister Herma looking on. Then she turned and nodded respectfully.

  “Good night, Sister Henna. Lord bless.”

  “Good night.” A hesitation just long enough for Val to take three steps up the aisle. “Sister Alexandra . . .”

  Val turned warily. “Yes, Sister?”

  “You know, my dear, I’ve been wondering if—well, if you’ve really found your answer at Saint Petra’s. Many young women who come here find the convent isn’t the answer for them, and there are so many ways to serve the All-God and the Holy Mezion outside the convent.”

  Val stared through the haze of her veil, restraining the impulse to tear away that other veil. Herma wanted to put her out of Saint Petra’s. She was suggesting with her usual blunt subtlety that Val leave voluntarily.

  Never.

  She almost spoke the word aloud. You’ll have to throw me out first. Not until I’ve accomplished my mission here, until I’ve finished with Saint Petra’s, until . . .

  She said meekly, “Sister Herma, I’m here because I found no other way that satisfied me to serve the All-God and the Holy Mezion. I’m sorry I seem to cause you so much trouble; I don’t mean to, and I’m trying to learn the ways of Faith.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you are, my dear, but it seems to be so difficult for you.”

  “I never expected it to be easy, but I haven’t given up, and I would hope the Holy Mezion hasn’t given up on me so soon. He always answers my prayers with hope.”

  Herma’s sigh whispered in the shadows. “Then that’s as it should be. Good night, Alexandra. Lord bless.”

  Val bowed her head and turned. “Good night, Sister Herma.”

  She felt the eyes behind that veil on her every step of the long passage up the aisle. She walked circumspectly, restraining the overwhelming urge to break into a run, to escape those unseen, all-seeing eyes, her hands clasped under her sleeves, so tightly interlocked, they tingled numbly. The distance seemed lengthened by the night shadows; demons of frustration and fear seemed to flit on the periphery of her vision. At length she reached the ponderous, carved-wood doors that pivoted on rumbling hinges, willfully resisting her trembling muscles. She heard a muffled whimper as she pushed them shut, and didn’t at first realize it was in her own throat. The doors closed with a dull thud, and she stood with her back against them, both hands in fists pressed to her forehead, shivering as if the darkness were cold; the veil suffocated her.

  I’m slipping, slipping. Jael—oh, Jael, help me. . . .

  Her hands locked on her koyf; she jerked it off with the veil and cape, tossing her hair free. Before her, the long, arched hall, dimly lighted at amber intervals with stabile shimmeras, stretched to a dark infinity, and she began running toward it, koyf and veil clenched in one hand, the other holding back the snare of skirts, the beat of her footfalls quieted by the soft-soled shoes.

  The shimmeras made dull streaks on her retina, her heart pounded ever faster with her footsteps, the habit beat about her legs, billowed behind her. The stairway. Soft footsteps pounding against stone, jarring through bone and flesh from heel to skull. The stairs turned. For every level, three right-angle turns. Stone steps, dished with dead footsteps; two centuries of dead footsteps.

  Three turns. An empty, soundless hallway. Three more, step upon step. Hot pain shot along her leg muscles, hissed out with every breath; the amber lights jigged in the reddening shadows. Three more turns to the third level. Nine steps; turn. Three steps; turn. Nine more to make the holy number three sevens.

  Jael, brother . . . help me.

  She faltered on the seventeenth step, fell on the eighteenth, hands bruised on the twenty-first, and that was all that stopped her head from smashing against the stone tier.

  She lay in a heap of pain, every panting breath burni
ng, her cheek against the stone, cold and wet with tears. It was a long time before she could hear anything for the pounding of her heart and her gasping breaths; a long time before she could be sure no one else had heard the intolerable sounds of running feet, of panting breath, of weeping.

  If Sister Herma heard it, if she found her here like this—

  Val pulled herself up slowly into a sitting position on the top step and put her back against the stone wall while she delved into a pocket for a handkerchief.

  To hell with Sister Herma.

  At any rate, it was past curfew. Henna and the other Sisters charged with maintaining the purity of Saint Petra’s novices would have completed their curfew rounds. They never made a second check.

  Val wiped her tear-wet face and blew her nose as quietly as possible. She was still shaking and her eyes felt swollen shut.

  Panic. It was that simple, and this wasn’t the first time it had gotten the best of her. She was walking a tightrope with the medication: calmers to keep her from going hysterical; drenaline to keep her going in general, to compensate for the sleep lost every night while reviewing monitored conversations or to stubborn insomnia.

  Val rested her head against the wall and looked down the empty, doorless hall. At a distance of five meters, a shimmera cast a gloomy pool of light. Finally, she pulled her skirt up over one knee; a watch was strapped there. She couldn’t depend on the chapel chimes; occasionally she needed to know minutes, not just hours.

  It was 18:20 TST. She was more than an hour late calling Jael. That wasn’t so unusual, but he would worry. Still, she made no move to rise. She couldn’t let him hear her voice now; he’d recognize the aftermath of panic, the tears in it.

  Besides, she wasn’t yet ready to admit another day of failure, nor to broach—again—the alternative of approaching Sister Thea with the medallion. That was a decision reached over her beads in the chapel. The time was coming for that last resort.

  She unfastened the stiff collar of the habit, her fingers seeking the medallion. Perhaps she’d wait until tomorrow night to bring that up. A doricaine and a good night’s sleep—she could survive one more day.

  The medallion was in her hand. She wasn’t even conscious of unclasping the chain; she did it so often in moments of privacy.

  The lamb. The pale light glowed lovingly on the fine contours of the tiny figure. A smile touched her lips. She hadn’t really been a close friend of Richard Lamb’s, but he had a gift for making everyone feel close, and he had entered the Phoenix at a crucial time in her life. She’d been a member for two years and was suffering doubts about it. Rich had stilled those doubts even though she had never spoken to him about them. It was simply that she couldn’t doubt any cause Richard Lamb espoused. He was so gently, truly just, he seemed to make anything he was part of unassailably right.

  She turned the medallion over and felt a cold weight taking form under her ribs. When she looked at the wolf, she always saw three small pill bottles in her hand.

  Cyanase.

  Yet Alex believed her when she said she didn’t know what those pills contained. He didn’t for a moment doubt her.

  She held his life in her hands then, and she held it now. Would he believe her again, believe she—

  Her hand closed on the medallion.

  A sound.

  Her heart began pounding anew; she didn’t move, hardly breathed, listening past the dull thudding in her breast.

  Footsteps. But the Sisters never made a second check.

  A soft, irregular padding; she began to relax a little. Someone coming out of the novices’ wing. At least she’d be in a position to bargain; neither of them were supposed to be out of their rooms after curfew.

  Still, there was something unnerving about the slow, halting approach of those footsteps; the back of her neck prickled. She waited, unblinking eyes fixed on the empty section of hall lighted by the shimmera. She couldn’t have guessed how long she waited, listening to the footsteps falter and stop, proceed hesitantly a while longer, stop again, approach again. She didn’t know what she expected to see, and somehow she wasn’t surprised that it was an apparition.

  A faceless woman in a flowing white gown, long raven hair falling about her shoulders, catching silken lights, her left hand against the wall, sliding along it as her halting steps took her forward out of the shadows into the pallid glow of the shimmera. She stopped again, right hand pressed to her body, a sound escaping her, a sighing cry.

  The God help me, I’ve gone over the edge. . . .

  At first, that was Val’s only coherent thought. But that sound, that muted cry, jarred her back to rationality. It seemed so solidly real, and the woman was moving into the light now; perhaps that robbed her of her ghostly aura.

  Her white raiment proved to be nothing more than the shapeless white nightgown issued to every nun at Saint Petra’s, and she was faceless because she was using a face-screen. That was odd, but certainly not supernatural.

  The light gave further elucidation. It delineated the swollen curve of her abdomen and explained the faltering step, the cry of pain.

  Sister Iris. The pregnant one. She must be in labor.

  Val felt a brief return of panic. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for a contingency like childbirth. Still, she stayed calm enough to realize Sister Iris needed help; that was why she was wandering the halls after curfew.

  Val rose, forgetting her koyf and veil, but taking the few seconds to fasten the medallion around her neck; she’d have secured that if she were dying.

  “Sister Iris, can I help you?”

  She seemed to freeze, head turned toward Val, weight pressing on the supporting hand against the wall, and Val chided herself for coming so suddenly out of the shadows to frighten her.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just coming up from the chapel. Please . . .” She put out a hand to her. “Let me help you.”

  Sister Iris still didn’t move; her voice was pitched low, as Val’s had been, but it had all the tension of a shout in it.

  “Who are you?”

  Val couldn’t answer. She was too close to shock.

  Two things hit her at once. First, the light catching, throwing sparks of color from a ring on the hand against the wall. Sparks of blue and red; sapphire and ruby.

  And that voice.

  She had listened so long for that voice, she wondered if she wouldn’t have had the same reaction even without the recognition conditioning. With it, those few words exploded like a bomb in her mind.

  But it was impossible. Sister Iris was pregnant.

  “Oh, no . . .” The words slipped out, and in a flashing moment Val understood the aching, ironic possibility that couldn’t be denied because it was so tangibly self-evident. And she understood, but took no comfort in the realization, that Bruno Hawkwood had made the same error.

  “Who are you?”

  She drew back against the wall, hiding her left hand under her sleeve, that sibilant query rife with desperate defiance. Val reached for the clasp of the medallion, hands shaking, keeping her voice down when she wanted to shout aloud.

  “Oh, forgive me, my lady, it was just such a—Wait!”

  Val reached out for her, caught her shoulders, and held on desperately simply to keep her from bolting.

  “My lady!” The frenzied whisper echoed in the amber silence. “For the God’s sake, look at this! The medallion! I’m from the—oh, damn!” She couldn’t say the word; her conditioning stopped her. “Alex Ransom sent me. He told me to tell you it was blessed by a saint, oh, please—look at it!”

  Her resistance ceased suddenly; she sagged against the wall, dark hair falling forward over her shadow-face as Val pressed the medallion into her small, cold, trembling hand.

  Val waited, breath stopped, saw the hand move
finally to turn the medallion over.

  “Alexand . . .”

  She was falling. Val managed to ease her down to the floor where she slumped against her, huddled over the medallion, body wracked with muffled weeping. It was like holding a lost child, she seemed so small and frail, and Val felt all her own anxieties and frustrations pale against the lonely terrors echoed in that constrained sobbing.

  Six months. Half a Terran year.

  What kind of nether hell had it been for her?

  But it was over, her hell and Val’s. And Alex’s. Val was weeping, too, although she was hardly aware of it. She was only conscious of a fountain of laughter within her that took the form of tears.

  Jael, brother, I’ve found her—I’ve found Adrien Eliseer. . . .

  7.

  She had been dozing; “skimming sleep,” Jael called it. Erica Radek shifted in the chair, cramped muscles complaining. It was 19:30 TST. She looked across the bed to the biomonitor screen, realizing she’d been closer to real sleep than dozing.

  Alex hadn’t moved; he seldom did. Only regular periods of “exercise” consisting of electrode-induced contraction of the muscles prevented atrophy. What concerned her at the moment was his respiration rate. She had removed the oxymask, another therapeutic measure designed to force his body to keep working for itself. Part of the time, at least.

  He was breathing well enough; shallowly, and a little erratically, but she expected that. She rose and stood looking down at him, automatically checking the web of wires and tubes surrounding him, the thermostat of the heat shell, the feel of his forehead under her hand, an instrument she trusted as much as the biomonitor. Just as automatically, she checked the five capped pressyringes on the control panel at the head of the bed. They were always ready for any emergency brought about by a change in his condition.

  But there was no change.

  At least there seemed to be none at first.

  For a long time she stood watching him, her eyes occasionally flicking up to the screen.