"Tan uri-kah." He caught up with Miklos and the guards followed at his heels.
"It's nearly time for the noon meal," Miklos said. "Please join me in my quarters—our chefs here are excellent and can cater to your particular preferences on very short notice. Afterwards there is one other person who would like to meet you. I think you'll find it worth your while."
"Captain," Charis's voice said over the intercom, "I'm sorry to disturb you, but I need you in engineering immediately."
Cynara woke from her light doze and glanced at the clock. It was the middle of second watch, not yet time for her next shift. She'd slept a little more than an hour.
Since the Pegasus had left Persephone at dawn that morning, Cynara had thrown herself into her duties, making up for the fallow time on Persephone and Adumbe's long watch. She'd relieved him on the bridge and taken the ship out of orbit, setting course for the wormhole that would propel them to the edge of Concordat space and into shaauri territory.
Most of the crew, sensing her mood, hadn't troubled her with questions. Adumbe was glad enough to get away to his own quarters, and Cynara adjusted the watch schedule to permit a longer break for those who had stood at their posts for an extended period.
Working kept her thoughts away from Ronan and their last night together. She was almost convinced that Ronan would be all right, that Miklos's advocacy would counteract Janek's hostility, and that she would be able to return to Persephone as captain of the Pegasus.
Almost.
She would gladly have continued on the bridge all day and through the following night, but Adumbe returned after the eight-hour watch and admonished her to take a brief rest. Miya Zheng seconded the suggestion.
She hadn't known why they insisted until she saw her face in the mirror. Her eyes were dark hollows surrounded by pale, drawn skin, haunted and hectic at the same time. She looked as though the blow of a child would knock her over. She felt almost as bad.
Once she slept, she had plunged into nightmares that grew mercifully dim when she received Charis's call. She threw her legs over the side of the bunk and punched the 'com. "I'll be right down, Chief."
She hadn't changed her shipsuit since boarding the Pegasus, so she undressed quickly, put on a clean one, and took the lift down to engineering. The marine on duty admitted her through the heavy doors. Charis was waiting inside.
'Thank you for coming, Captain," she said, rocking nervously on the balls of her feet. "I have a report… one I wish I didn't have to make. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you earlier, but I had to be sure my suspicions were correct."
Charis had never seemed so grim. "What is it, Chief?"
The engineer held up her hand. On her palm rested a standard data slide. "I found this in one of my consoles a few hours before we left Persephone. I didn't think much of it at first, but I never leave slides out when I'm not using them. I asked the other crew, and none of them had done it either. Still nothing so terrible, but then…" She ducked her head. "I checked the log, and found that someone had viewed several pages of the schematics file. Then I started to remember."
Cynara shivered. "Remember what?"
"That I'd felt strange the day of the shaauri attack—a little off, somehow, like I was on meds, but I wasn't. I asked if anyone else had noticed. They said I'd gone out suddenly for some reason, while we were tuning the drive, and didn't say why. Crew also mentioned having experienced similar sensations after I returned—feelings of disorientation, as if their eyes weren't quite seeing straight.
"That was when I couldn't find my passcard. I usually keep it in my pocket, so I thought I'd left it in another 'suit.
No go. It just disappeared. And I started remembering conversations I knew I didn't have with any of my crew.
"Well, I knew something wasn't right, so I ordered a thorough sweep of all stations in engineering. We came up with a few drops of perspiration on my console and asked Doc Zheng to take a look. She checked the mitochondrial DNA. It wasn't mine or any of the crews.'"
Cynara knew what Charis was about to say. "Whose, Chief?"
"I'm sorry, Captain. Doc says it's Ronan's."
* * *
Chapter 19
« ^ »
The meal in Miklos's quarters was elaborate by ship-board standards, but Ronan hardly tasted the food his host's servers delivered on silver platters from a private lift serving the distant kitchen. He ate just enough to avoid giving offense while Miklos lingered over his meat and wine with every evidence of pleasure.
After he was finished, he took Ronan on a tour of the prosperous and busy neighborhood at the foot of the Acropolis, where merchants of every kind kept shops catering to the aristocracy of Eos. Subtle as they were, Miklos's guards doubled in number as soon as their master left the palace grounds, ranging just out of sight so as not to alarm the citizenry.
Miklos was clearly proud of his people and his city. He spoke of the freedoms the Concordat's citizens enjoyed, the high standard of living, good health, and ambition of Persephoneans. The heart of Eos was beautiful by human standards, with the symmetrical, unbroken lines of the architecture, the bright stone and orderly progression of buildings. The blocks of greenery Miklos called "parks" were as flawless and contained as everything else.
Even so there was life—couples walking hand in hand in the open way of humans, children racing about the parks, passers-by offering respectful and affectionate greetings to Miklos when they recognized him. Eos was not ruled by tyrants, and signs of human violence were absent.
Yet Miklos brought his warriors with him wherever he traveled, and these ve'laik'i were not merely for sh'ei—honor—but protected their lord from dishonorable assault.
"You see why we wish to retain what we have fought to build since the Reunion and founding of the Concordat," Miklos said as they began the walk back to the Acropolis. "Humanity crawled out from the dark and rebuilt all we had lost. Now we're on the verge of new discoveries, new possibilities beyond the regions we know. That's why the blockade must end. Without the possibility of growth and freedom, humans wither and die."
His passionate speech left no room for argument. It sickened Ronan, for it illustrated the very nature that Kalevi, Rauthi, Aarys, and their allies feared in the enemy. Humans recognized no limits; they saw only new opportunities to swallow up whatever they discovered, to expand without restraint and impose their own inverted order on the universe.
"Ronan?"
He came back to himself and found Miklos regarding him quizzically. "Aino'Kei."
"I hope you've found our tour of some interest, but it's nearly the hour I promised to take you to meet another member of my family."
The angle of the sun told Ronan that the day already approached its end, and he had achieved nothing of worth. But he had obviously won Miklos's trust, and there might be opportunities tonight, before the questioning, to explore further. One of Miklos's servants could have a weakness in his mental shield. One vulnerable mind, in a human free to move about the palace, was all he required.
"May I know the name of this one I am to attend?" he asked with a show of courteous interest.
Miklos smiled. "You'll discover that very soon." He picked up his pace, choosing the steep stairway rather than the private lift. He, Ronan, and the guards entered by a back entrance to the palace. A series of concealed doorways and narrow corridors led to a more familiar section of the complex, and into a wide hall Ronan had not seen before.
The grandness of it reminded Ronan of the Council building on Dharma, and he knew it was a place of ceremony. The servants and guards wore livery and were openly armed.
A new alertness gripped Ronan, anticipation out of proportion to the circumstances. He half expected a trap of human devising. Miklos strolled along the hall at his ease, and his ve'laik'i maintained their positions well behind.
The doors at the end of the hall were greater than all the others Ronan had seen, pale stone embossed with scenes of naked human figures, stylized planets, and sl
eek starships. They swung open as Miklos approached. The chamber beyond was broad, walls lined with hundreds of chairs, and at its end was a dais and a massive throne carved much like the doors.
This must be the public receiving room of Persephone's ruler, the Archon. But the throne was empty. Miklos strode halfway down the room and then turned to a small, unobtrusive door set in the wall. Two uniformed attendants within moved quickly to admit the visitors.
A tall, thin man rose from a chair beside a simple stone hearth and held out his hands. "Miklos," he said. "I am glad you could come."
Miklos bowed his head briefly. "My Lord Archon, I present to you Ronan VelKalevi, brought to us by Captain Cynara D'Accorso of the Pegasus."
The Archon. The Archon himself, a pleasant gentleman in his sixth decade who might have been a common an'laik'in save for the intelligence in his eyes and the grace of his bearing—an unremarkable human with white hair and a long face drawn with care and old sorrow. All Ronan's nerves sharpened to needle points, stabbing his body in a thousand places at once.
The Archon. The man you were sent to find.
Hector Challinor turned to Ronan and stared, directly and without apology, like a First to one of lowest rank. "I believe you are right, Miklos," he murmured. "It is quite remarkable."
Ronan hardly heard him. He shielded himself from the stare and struggled to make sense of the bizarre thoughts and images in his mind. They did not come from the Archon, or Miklos, or any of the men who watched their masters from the room's perimeter. All the minds here were shielded from interference by anyone of telepathic ability, and none were telepaths themselves.
But something, someone was driving him to a kind of madness he could not control, robbing him of will, demanding instant obedience.
"Welcome to Persephone, young man," the Archon said. "I am very glad you have come to us."
Ronan tried to speak. The Archon smiled in understanding. "My brother has told me what you have endured," he said gently. "I hardly expect eloquence under the circumstances. My name is Hector Challinor, and I hope…"
His voice faded to a murmur behind the clamor in Ronan's head. It was said that at the moment of Selection, a shaauri youth felt perfect unity with all matter, total comprehension of her place in the order of things.
What Ronan experienced was far more terrible. He had felt so once before, when he had recalled his purpose in requesting sanctuary from the humans, when he knew what he was meant to achieve for the sake of his people.
Only the message had changed.
Kill the Archon. It was as simple, as unspeakable, as that. Kill the Archon, and destroy the unity of the humans.
Vision blurred. Muscles locked. This was the true reason he had been sent to human space. The quest for new human technology had been only the cover, a secondary objective if he did not reach the Archon. But his masters had done everything within their power to send him here, to this moment, to this fatal decision that was no decision at all.
The room. The tiny room where they had kept him during the training, as they called it, honing his mind to hold layer upon layer of deception. The darkness and solitude, no voices save those of his trainers; the men and women, Kinsmen, who had reminded him again and again of his chance to win an honorable place among shaauri with courage and sacrifice. Kinsmen, who had invented and imposed a false past of hatred for the aliens, hatred that would propel him on the right course until the time came to remember.
But he had not been meant to remember until he reached the Archon. It was Cynara, and his union with her mind, that had disrupted the Kinsmen's careful work. Now his memory was complete.
Kill the Archon.
He could do it easily, moving faster than any human eye could follow, snapping the Archon's neck and then turning on Miklos as well before his guards recognized the danger.
No.
Kinsman faces watched him, filled with cruel purpose. For your people, Ronan. For your House and your Line.
I will not.
His body shuddered like a ba'laik'in's Tag doll. Something touched him, and it was as if scalding metal had been laid against his skin. Then other hands grasped, held him still, confined him in a cage of flesh. Janek's eyes—Damon's—stared into his.
"You," he whispered. "Take him to a holding cell and set two teams to watch him until I order otherwise. Go!"
"Damon!" Miklos said sharply. "He—"
'This is my charge, Uncle," he said. "He was mine from the moment he boarded the Pegasus." He bowed stiffly to the Archon. "My lord. Forgive this intrusion."
The Archon could hardly be seen behind a wall of ve'laik'i, bristling with drawn weapons. Ronan was incapable of fighting. His limbs had lost their strength, severed from the mastery of his brain. The guards half dragged him from the room and out another door, into narrow, featureless corridors and a lift that carried them down beneath the palace into the rock itself.
They threw him into a cell and activated the transparent containment field. Ronan collapsed against the far wall, between the narrow bunk and the facilities, and closed his eyes.
He had betrayed them all: shaauri, their Kinsman allies, his House and Line—the crew of the Pegasus, Kord and Lizbet and Miya Zheng, Magnus Jesper, Lord Miklos with his ready smile and welcome. Not one had he served with honor.
And Cynara. Even she had not guessed the possible extent of his betrayal. She had believed in him.
Cynara. Strange that he almost felt as if she were with him, though she would be aboard the Pegasus and far across space on her way to Dharma. Her faith had been for nothing, yet still he sensed her like a pinpoint of light in the back of his brain, never quite extinguished.
He tried to sleep for a while, and wakened again when a new presence touched the edge of his consciousness. The Kinswoman Brit Carter VelShaan entered the corridor, passed through the wall of guards, and stood before the containment field with her hands clasped behind her back.
"Ronan VelKalevi," she said with a slight nod. "I've heard why you are here."
He looked beyond her to the ve'laik'i, and she smiled. "I have permission to be here and speak to you in any manner I wish."
Ronan approached the field, careful not to touch it. "What is there to say?"
"As much as you're willing to share." She glanced about the cold, gray cell. "I regret that it has come to this."
"Why did Damon Challinor send me here?"
"He believes you intended to kill the Archon."
It was not Damon's suspicion that surprised Ronan, but the fact that he had guessed a truth hidden from Ronan himself.
"Did you, Ronan?"
"You have the means to find out, sh'eivalin."
"Means I prefer not to use except in direst extremity—no matter what the shaauri Kinsmen do." She sighed. "I don't believe that you meant to kill the Archon. But I am not confident of your loyalties. Lord Damon's word is influential on Persephone."
"Is he a telepath?"
"We didn't believe so, but we have apparently overlooked certain talents he chose not to share with us."
"If he believes shaauri sent me here to kill the Archon, it will not matter what I say."
"I disagree. Perhaps your reasons for leaving the Shaauriat were complex, and perhaps you didn't have complete control over your fate."
"I determine my own fate."
"Do you?"
Suddenly his fragile discipline wavered, and the images that had come to him in the Archon's presence returned in all their horror. Kinsman faces, Kinsman voices, demanding and promising, minds pushing into his with commands hidden within commands like the pieces of a ba'laik'in's nesting puzzle.
VelShaan caught her breath. "VelRauthi," she whispered.
Ronan retreated to the back of his cell and turned his body toward the wall. Her violation was as nothing to what he had endured on Aitu, but for a time he had thought her better than the Kinsmen who had selected him for murder.
"I'm sorry, Ronan," she said, and silently walked awa
y.
He hissed shaauri laughter and dropped his head to his knees.
Cynara walked up to the first palace checkpoint as if she were on official business, flashing her pass with the easy confidence of one who expected immediate admittance.
The woman on duty examined her and the card and called a superior, who duly sent another guard to conduct Cynara past two more checkpoints and to a third, where he put in another call. Fifteen minutes later, a uniformed attendant led her to a public antechamber in an outer wing and asked her to wait.
She waited, reviewing the events that had led her to return to Persephone with such haste. After Charis's stunning revelation of Ronan's trespass into engineering, Cynara had ordered the Pegasus back to Persephone. She had struggled with her anger and despair and overcome them, keeping her deepest fears to herself.
There had been no question of what must be done. Whatever his purpose—even if he had taken nothing, as the evidence suggested—Ronan had deceived her and the crew, and she had to face him down and demand the truth.
Curious that she had considered the personal first—confronting him, not immediately reporting his actions to Lord Miklos or, God forbid, Janek.
God forbid she would have to admit Janek was right all along. Once she'd seen Ronan and looked into his eyes, she would know. Then no more secrets, no more protecting the man Miklos had dared to suggest she loved.
At this moment she hated Ronan more than she had loved anything in her life.
She sprang to her feet and paced the length of the antechamber twenty times before another clerk led her into a small office, where she presented her full credentials and repeated the urgent need to speak to Lord Miklos Challinor on a matter of Concordat security. More calls, more waiting, and finally an official-looking and dignified personage appeared to conduct her into the heart of the palace.
But it was not Lord Miklos who met her. It was Janek—dressed with elegant simplicity in tunic and trousers, less arrogant and more confident than she could ever remember seeing him aboard the Pegasus. The office he occupied might have belonged to a prince.
Kinsman's Oath Page 25