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

by Wren, M. K.

  That was a crucial half century in Centauri, of course, and although the brave experiment of the Peladeen Republic was abruptly and cruelly culminated with the War of the Twin Planets, the very fact that it existed will have repercussions in the future. And, among other things, the Phoenix is a product of that experiment. It seems ironic in a way that if the hopes and potentials of the Republic and the Phoenix are ever realized, it must be attributed in an indirect, almost inadvertent, manner to Lionar Mankeen.

  Chapter XVIII

  Octov 3258

  1.

  The bed, covered and curtained in satinet and silk, was an excellent example of Early Kao-rossic, with its cantilevered canopy. The chair Erica had pulled up for herself was carved ebony, and if it were in fact a Starenza, which Alex didn’t really doubt, it couldn’t be less than three centuries old.

  Amik was a gracious host, as always, and Alex appreciated the apartment provided him for these last five days, especially when he compared it to the sterile, ticking cubicle in the infirmary. Yet in a short time he would leave these luxuriously appointed rooms for the rock-walled chambers of the COS HQ, and he couldn’t muster a grain of regret at the exchange.

  He sat on the side of the bed, while Erica, oblivious to the fact that she was occupying an heirloom, shaped a strip of gauze into an overlapping spiral around his right arm. His left hand strayed to his throat, encountering the fine chain that seemed so familiar to his touch, but it wasn’t Rich’s medallion that hung there now. The betrothal ring. Ten days ago it had been brought to him with a promise: when they were finally reunited, an exchange would be made. The ring was simply an assurance, proof of Adrien’s living, as the medallion had been another kind of proof to her.

  He had wept when he first heard her voice in a static-ridden interconn; dust storms in the Barrens. It didn’t matter. All he cared about was her voice. Since then, he’d spoken to her at least once each day, and always found it difficult not to weep. For so many years he had considered himself incapable of tears, but they came all too easily now. He had journeyed too near death to return unscathed, and somewhere on that journey he had learned to weep again.

  Erica glanced up at him, perhaps responding to some subtle symptom of tension, asking with the silent lift of an eyebrow if her ministrations were too painful. He responded with a shake of his head.

  It was painful, even with the analgesics. The bandaging always followed fifteen minutes of what Erica called “exercise.” Alex wouldn’t dignify it with that term. She did all the exercising, moving the arm through short, repetitive arcs, turning it a few degrees this way, a few that, flexing the wrist up and down. He might call it therapy, but not exercise; that implied voluntary movement, and he was capable of no more than a jerking contraction of the thumb and a grand total of ten degrees flexion at the elbow.

  He looked away from Erica and her work, his left hand seeking the reminder and solace of the ring.

  Today was the promised day of reunion. A few hours. Adrien.

  And Richard and Eric.

  He pronounced the names in his mind as he had in every waking hour for the last eight days. Erica had waited two days before telling him about his sons, waited until he had recovered enough to dispense with the life-support systems. He wondered if she thought the shock of learning he’d become twice at once a father might precipitate a relapse.

  It had no effect at all, as far as he could determine, and perhaps that was because he didn’t really believe it. It was so incomprehensibly incredible, it didn’t reach him.

  The first born Adrien had already named. Richard. She told him the child had been named when it was conceived, and even now when he thought of the calculating risk she’d taken—that he let her take—the realization dizzied him.

  She asked him to name the second born, and he did. There was no question in his mind about the choice of a name. It had come without conscious thought, as if the decision had been made long ago, and perhaps it had been; made when he first came to Fina and found Rich’s dearest friend waiting, made when that friend was forced to bring his griefs to him and bear them with him.

  Yet Erica Radek’s namesake, an infant, a human being to be called Eric—Alex could accept that, and Rich’s namesake, as a premise in some system of reality as he accepted the existence of the electron, but it didn’t touch him as part of his own reality.

  Time, Erica assured him; it will all make sense in time. And he had enough to make sense of out of the twenty-six days he’d absented himself in pursuit of death. On the table by the bed were ten tape spools; only ten out of the hundred capsule reports Erica had provided to bring him up to date on Fina, on Predis Ussher’s offensive, and on the crises that had occurred in the Concord.

  He frowned, remembering that there had been more to occupy him in the last ten days. His body. He resented its weakness bitterly, yet Dr. Eliot kept using the word “miraculous.” Erica had set up a rigid schedule of rest, graduated exercise—real exercise for the parts of his body that still functioned at his command—and diet that included massive doses of vitamins and protein, and he had adhered doggedly to that schedule, but he refused to call the results of those ten days miraculous. Not when he was capable of staying out of this elegant museum-piece of a bed for no more than five hours at a time. Today it would be six.

  He wondered how many hours his body would allow him by Concord Day. It was only fourteen days away.

  Erica had reached the wrist, which had taken the brunt of the laser beam, and he was forced to concentrate on keeping the arm immobile. He would be glad to have it covered and dreaded the time when the bandages would no longer be necessary. He wondered if he would ever accustom himself to those riven scars, patched with sickly white grafts, etched with livid suture lines. He watched Erica’s face, noting the tightness around her mouth.

  He asked, “Is it so distasteful?”

  She looked up at him, startled, until she saw his faint smile; her breath came out in a sigh as she made another spiral.

  “Of course not, Alex. I’ve seen worse than this.”

  “So have I. That’s . . . a little tight.”

  She eased the tension as she worked a loop around the base of his thumb.

  “Better?” Then, at his nod, “I’m amazed at how well you’re tolerating this. It makes me doubt every personality matrix I made on you.” The last of the scars disappeared under the bandages, and finally she cut the strip and taped the end inside his palm.

  “Erica, did you count this in your data?” He touched the ring against his breast. “And Andreas? Andreas alive and free, and the LR-MT within days of proof?”

  “Yes, I counted them, and that revives my faith in my science to some degree.” Then she rose and picked up his robe from the end of the bed. “You’d better get this on.”

  He came to his feet, reminding himself to move slowly, and submitted to her help with the robe. Brocaded velveen in a deep blue; another offering of his gracious host’s. The arm caught in the sleeve and he winced as it treated him to a new spasm of pain.

  “Damn. Retribution, Erica. Did you count that?”

  She frowned, studying him. “What do you mean?”

  “ ‘The Holy Mezion metes out justice in the mirror of injustice.’ ” He pressed the waistband closed awkwardly. “I hope Jael doesn’t forget to bring my clothes. I’d feel a little ridiculous parading around the COS HQ in this.”

  “He won’t, and I won’t let you pass off that retribution business so lightly. Not when I think you really believe it.”

  “Well, perhaps I’ve spent too much time with the Shepherds these last few years, and that reminds me, you didn’t bring the capsule on yours and Jael’s time with them. You won’t put me off on that. I must know which of the Shepherds you’ve seen, and which the Brother must see in the next two weeks.”

  “I’ll discuss that with you t
omorrow, but no sooner, and you won’t embark on any sojourns as the Brother for at least three days. Now, Alex, that isn’t just a medcal opinion, it’s an order.”

  “Erica, we only have fourteen days until—”

  “I can count, too, but I—oh, damn. Who’s that?”

  The argument was cut short by the warning chime that meant someone was entering the salon. Jael, perhaps, Alex thought, or hoped, as he checked the vis-screen by the door. But he was wrong.

  “Amik,” he told Erica. “Your face-screen.”

  “Oh, Alex, I gave that up with Amik long ago.”

  “There’s a servant with him.” He reached up to turn on his own ’screen, then fumbled at the doorcon with his left hand. Amik was crossing the salon like a brocaded mountain, streaming a fumerole of smoke from his jeweled cigar holder.

  “Ah! Up and about, my friend. A small miracle, that.”

  Alex was tired of the word and distracted by the youth trailing after Amik, carrying three slacsuits on hangars. Amik didn’t wait for permission as he led the way into the bedroom. “Come, Jaro, put them in the closet there. Thank you. You may go now.”

  Jaro nodded and hurried out of the room. The three of them waited until the outer door closed behind him, then the face-screens went off, and Alex went to the closet.

  “These aren’t mine. Jael was supposed to—”

  “My dear Alex, a little patience, please,” Amik said in a pained tone. “It seems my son said something, very much in passing, about bringing clothes for your departure. Now, I’ve seen your wardrobe, such as it is, and I’ve noticed that you invariably wear slacsuits of a standard design in which the shirt is pulled on over the head. I’ve had some experience with laser wounds—vicariously, I’m pleased to say—and I’ve also kept myself well informed on your wound in particular.”

  Alex found himself a chair, annoyed at the need for it, annoyed at the aching of his arm that seemed to intensify with the attention so offhandedly given it, and, above all, annoyed at Amik. He remained pointedly silent as Amik continued his exposition.

  “Well, it occurred to me that standard slacsuit design would create unnecessary problems, even discomfort, for you, and it also occurred to me that my tailor was sitting about idly at the moment, collecting his ’cords, and wasting his time entertaining certain young women, and his imaginative powers creating self-dissolving veils.”

  Erica laughed at that, but Alex was so distracted, he didn’t at first realize why.

  She put on a mockingly sober expression. “Well, Amik, I hope you remedied that.”

  “Naturally. I put him to work designing these slacsuits. One can’t, I suppose, do much about the pants, but Cobrik managed to improve on the shirt.” He went to the closet, and pulled out one of the slacsuits. “So. You see, he’s opened the shirt all the way up the front and put in simple pressure fasteners, and to further facilitate life for you when the bandages come off, Alex, I had him line the inside of the right arms with this rather exquisite material. Soft as sea air. I acquired quite a stock of it in a recent . . . uh, business transaction.”

  Erica went to Amik and took the slacsuit. “The color is nice. That’s what I’d call a true Terran green. Terran moss, perhaps.”

  More like Castorian barrengorse, Alex thought.

  “Come, Alex, try it on. I’ll help you.” Her smile faltered then, as if she realized that wasn’t the best thing to say at this particular moment.

  “I thought it was designed to relieve me of the need for help.”

  Amik shrugged elaborately. “Did I say that? I simply assigned Cobrik the task of making it easier for you—’’

  “To dress myself?” He rose and went to a drawer for underclothing—also provided by Amik—saying over his shoulder, “The break-point test, then, for Cobrik and me.”

  Neither of them offered any assistance, which compounded embarrassment with discomfort, but pride precluded his asking for what wasn’t offered. Childish, no doubt, he chided himself, teeth set as he awkwardly pulled on the pants and fumbled at the waistband fastener. The shirt he managed with relative ease, pulling on the right sleeve first, aligning the front opening with the tab snap provided at the neck, then pressing the front closed. As he slipped on the shoes, he was grateful that he didn’t have to contend with formal boots, and wondered if he ever would again. Finally, he turned to the mirror on the closet door to see that he had everything on straight.

  Erica said softly, “Very handsome.”

  Alex felt all the resentment sagging out of him, remembering a night—how many years and eons ago?—Master Webster fussily draping the Lord Alexand, and Rich, looking on, making the same comment in almost exactly the same tone. Rich, watching from his nulgrav chair, enduring even then the chronic pain that would finally become unbearable.

  Alex turned and met Amik’s eye with a smile.

  “Cobrik has passed the test, Amik. I’m grateful to him, and to you.”

  Amik flashed his golden grin and puffed out a perfect smoke ring.

  “Well, perhaps I’ll reward him with a new challenge: edible, self-dissolving veils.”

  That broke the tension with laughter, and if Alex was frowning slightly when he turned again to the mirror, it had nothing to do with Amik’s kindly presumption.

  “I have a challenge for him, Amik. A uniform. Pale blue, trimmed in—in anything but gold braid.”

  “You can have platinade, if it suits you. Of course, you understand that Cobrik is a man of rare talent, and his services carry a high tax.”

  Alex reminded himself to smile at that, and, as he turned from the mirror, put the remembered image from the tape capsules out of his mind: the image of Predis Ussher in his gold-decked uniform. But Ussher was right; the Concord wouldn’t take an army in slacsuits seriously, or a man who still called himself First Commander of Fleet Operations. Costuming is a tool. Phillip Woolf’s words.

  “Forgive me, Amik, but I’m not yet recovered enough to indulge you in haggling. Whatever Cobrik’s price, it will be paid, and silver braid will do. Let’s adjourn to the salon. I’m tired of looking at that bed.”

  They followed him into the salon, another elegantly appointed room whose luxury only seemed oppressive. Amik found a chair that suited him and sank into it with a sigh. Then he straightened abruptly. “Ah! I nearly forgot half my purpose here.” He searched various pockets in his robes, while Erica watched him curiously from a couch nearby, and Alex, still standing, took a quick look at his watch. Jael was late.

  “Ah. Here it is.” Amik proffered what seemed at first only a piece of cloth.

  It was a glove. Alex took it, feeling his guard come up against resentment again. It was lined with the same downy material as the right sleeves of the slacsuits, but it was the outer material that held his attention. Black, with an opalescent sheen; it seemed to be some kind of thin, flexible leather.

  “And is this intended to hide the scars?”

  Amik only shrugged. “If you wish to hide them. Alex, in the Outside, scars aren’t hidden. A Brother who hasn’t a few scars to exhibit by the time he passes puberty will go out of his way to acquire them. Such things are relative. That leather, by the way, is something quite special, and in rather short supply. That, my friend, is the hide of a creature native to Castor, the belnong. It’s a symbiont with the Marching For——”

  “The belnong, did you say?”

  “Yes. You know of it?”

  Alex laughed, remembering the first time he’d heard that creature’s name. In a rose garden, in another life. Alex, I’m tough as a belnong. . . .

  “Yes, I know of it.”

  “So. At any rate, the leather has extraordinary qualities. It’s as flexible as your own skin, and has a slight grain; it will protect your hand without impairing movement or gripping ability.”

  Alex wo
ndered if there would ever be much movement or gripping ability to be impaired in that hand, but the thought inspired no resentment now. He pulled on the glove, a slow and cautious process, but even though it was a little tight over the bandages, it didn’t add to the pain once he had it on. He found a curious resolution in it.

  “Amik, I’ll never be parted from it. Again—thank you.”

  Amik waved that aside uncomfortably. “Don’t weigh me down with more gratitude. I’m too old for such burdens.” Then, with a quick shift of subject, “Jael tells me Ferra Severin has at last accomplished her mission. I assume I’m crossing no lines. In fact, I’m sure I’m not, since my close-mouthed son was my source.” Still, there was a hint of courteous inquiry in that.

  Alex eased into a chair, turning his body slightly so he could rest his right arm on his thigh. “You’re crossing no lines, Amik.”

  “Ah. Then your Lady is well?”

  “She’s well, and she’ll be with me soon in the COS HQ.” Then he added lightly, “We’re a family now, and even if our home must be a cave, it’s fitting that we be together—Adrien and I and our twin sons.” He saw Erica’s eyes flash questioningly toward him. Conditioned or not, neither she nor Jael had presumed to risk trusting Amik with that information, but Alex considered it an offering of gratitude in the form of an expression of faith. Amik deserved that much.

  Amik coughed out a cloud of smoke, and even when he recovered, stared blankly at Alex. Then his black eyes narrowed in speculation, that giving way to a wistful smile with only a hint of irony in it.