by Kate Elliott
“Then?”
“Vende patria, comrade. A man who knows when the time is right to shift allegiance.” Jehane glanced at the doors that lead into the concourse. “Where is our new colleague?” he asked. “He was supposed to be with us now.”
“He’s coming now, comrade,” replied one of the soldiers.
There was a rustle of movement, and a slight reordering of positions, as two new people entered the room. Lily recognized the tall, white-haired man immediately: Pinto’s father, Senator Isaiah.
26 Death by Water
ISAIAH DID NOT RECOGNIZE her: that became apparent when the Senator, looking carefully around the room, did not give Lily a second’s glance, dismissing her as unimportant. At Robbie he paused, but then dismissed him as well and came forward to stand beside Jehane.
“We’d best go,” he said to Jehane, sounding both impatient and, surprising to Lily, respectful. “The override program I installed in Central’s main computer won’t wait, and we have to strike as soon as it goes into action.”
Jehane nodded at Kuan-yin to precede the party out of the room.
“Then it is true,” Isaiah continued in the pause while Kuan-yin reordered the soldiers to provide what she considered adequate security. “That you personally led the breakout on Blessings against two centuries of Immortals—and made it out alive.” The awe in his voice gave Lily a sudden understanding of the obvious respect with which he treated Jehane—not a politician’s respect, but the giddy fear that a true man of action and physical power instills in a man of more sedentary habits.
“I was not alone,” said Jehane. He checked his wrist-com. “You are right, Senator. We have very little time.”
“We’re ready,” said Kuan-yin, consulting comrade Vanov, who had just appeared from the corridor. “A number of vehicles are leaving this area now. Our truck is waiting to take us to the tac center.”
Senator Isaiah seemed about to ask a question, but Jehane efficiently swept him out of the room, leaving the rest of his retinue to follow behind. Robbie did not even pause, but followed out the two Arcadians Lily did not know. The two commanders hurried after them, but Lily hung back. Robbie’s decision she could no longer influence; now she needed to meet Pinto and put into motion whatever plan Kyosti had devised. It would be easy enough to fall behind, to slip off undetected.
“Comrade.” Comrade Vanov, flanked by four soldiers, halted behind her. “We’ve orders to be sure that everyone here goes on to headquarters.”
Lily eyed him speculatively, but he had too much backup, and he was too aware, and too well armed. All the doors but one in that long corridor had now closed before her: she followed Jehane’s party.
The truck in which they traveled had the exterior of a common cargo van, but inside it had been redesigned to carry passengers in comfortable padded benches. She sat in silence in the back row, Vanov on one side, a soldier on the other, and listened to the quiet flow of conversation from the seats in front. Several conversations intertwined, eddying around Jehane’s silence: The Hierakis Formula. Jehane’s single-handed routing of the Immortals on Blessings. The disposition of Jehane’s forces surrounding Central, poised at every gate in the huge wall that would soon be opening, unbeknown to those besieged inside, at the command of one of their own, turned traitor. How Jehane had had to be talked out of leading the first assault himself.
Robbie sat with a distant, intent look on his face that betrayed to Lily that he was thinking very hard about something or, perhaps, planning a speech. Jehane sat perfectly still, face impassive, in that way that only honed fighters perfect: conserving their energy. Now and then he shifted his gaze, examining his retinue.
Without realizing it, she discovered that she was looking directly at him, and he at her. An instant, where he was perhaps as unguarded as she, and the kind of communication that is always wordless, and the more profound for it, passed between them.
He did not trust her. She knew it from his gaze. Felt it. But more than that, worse by far, she had a deep glimpse of what her instincts had felt all along: he was a genuinely dangerous man—not because he did not believe in the revolution, but because he believed he was the only person fit to lead it. It was her trust in Robbie that had blinded her; Robbie’s idealism that blinded him. Of course it had been right to tell Robbie about the Hierakis Formula—but by doing so, and by coming along with him when he made the inevitable and—she saw now—misguided choice to tell Jehane, she had forced Jehane’s hand.
He smiled at her, softly mesmerizing, and she knew without a doubt that he did not intend to let her or Robbie out of his zone of control until things had fallen out as he wished them to. All the doors were shut now. Hawk, and whatever allies he chose to trust on the Forlorn Hope, were alone, because she always acted before she really investigated her gut feelings.
She wrenched her gaze away from his hypnotic one and did not look up again for the rest of the ride.
Headquarters proved to be one of Arcadia’s large net centers: broadcast headquarters for several image and sound nets. From the outside, little distinguished it from the rest of the buildings surrounding it, but inside, the security measures were both obvious and brutal. Everyone but Jehane and Kuan-yin was searched twice. Lily was relieved of even her com-screen. The soldiers under Kuan-yin’s command entered fully armed.
Again, when she lagged behind as the others swept into the elevator, Vanov prodded her forward, not very gently. He was enjoying himself.
They came out of the elevator into another security checkpoint, and then walked down a long corridor studded with white-clad soldiers at every branching and door. Eventually they came to a huge room filled with screens and consoles and banks of computers that all served to coordinate the flood of information and images and transmissions that intersected in this chamber.
Lily came up beside Robbie as they entered and paused, taking in the melding of images and sound and the quiet intensity of the people staffing the consoles.
“Perfect,” said Robbie in a strangely normal voice. “I’ll get to work right away encoding and positioning the message about the Hierakis Formula so that it can be broadcast as soon as Central has surrendered. But I’ll need additional information from you, Lily.”
Lily glanced to either side, aware that although Jehane had gone forward to greet the staff, Vanov stood less than four paces from them. The soldier glanced across at Kuan-yin, who had followed Jehane. Her gaze was fixed on Robbie.
“Robbie,” Lily said slowly. “I don’t have any more information.”
He glanced at her, clearly puzzled by her tone of voice, and then looked straight at Vanov. “Comrade.” His gaze, as always, was open and direct. “Perhaps you can ask your commander to introduce me to whichever of your staff here can assign me a free terminal.”
“What for?” asked Vanov rudely.
If his bullying tone startled Robbie, he did not show it. Jehane had circled around the room quickly and now returned efficiently to their side. “To encode and position a message about the Formula,” Robbie answered, leaving the of course unsaid but clearly understood.
“Of course,” interposed Jehane smoothly as he came up to them, as if he were echoing Robbie’s unspoken words. “Comrade.” He looked at the green-clad civilian beside him. “Comrade Pero needs a console. Do we have one free?”
“Yes, comrade Jehane. Certainly.” The man bobbed his head enthusiastically. “This way, comrade Pero. I have heard your speeches many a time, and my own cousin was swayed by your ‘waters shall not rise’ speech last summer when before she had nothing but scorn for the movement. And the ‘I see this system’ speech, too, I recall with great pride, although perhaps”—his voice lowered a note in respectful sorrow—“those were your predecessor’s words.”
“Yes,” said Robbie simply. “They were.”
Both Jehane and Kuan-yin watched as the green-clad man led Robbie away. Lily tried to drift unobtrusively away, to escape into the maze of consoles that littered
the floor of the chamber, but Vanov continued to trail her at a distance. She roamed slowly through the activity, marking the three exits from the room—each heavily guarded—watching Kuan-yin’s brisk circuit of all the soldiers stationed at doors and on the balcony that led to a plastiglassed booth overhead. Jehane had halted beside the large central console and now spoke with a nervous-looking Senator Isaiah and the two mercenary commanders.
Across the array of screens, Lily saw images of units massing for the strike, or else static screening whatever existed inside Central’s walls. Many people spoke in the room, collating or processing the deluge of knowledge and communications that collected in this chamber, but overall it came to her as a hushed buzz, anticipatory and controlled, not frantic.
Lily strolled back to stop behind Robbie. At first, consumed in his work, he did not notice her, but eventually he paused and glanced up at her, questioning. Vanov had stationed himself about eight paces away.
“Robbie,” she said in an undertone. “Do me a favor. Let Bach know where we are. But don’t do it overtly. Just let a few of the old codes we used to use to run the underground nets creep in. Bach will trace us.”
“Lya,” he began, and stopped, glancing first at Vanov and then up.
Looking up, she saw that Kuan-yin had ascended the stairs to the balcony and now stood staring directly down at them. “Just do it, Robbie,” Lily said quietly. “While you’re at it, see that Bach gets a complete transcript of whatever it is you’re writing, and set the transmission codes to activate automatically at a preset time as soon as you’re finished.”
“You’re wrong, Lya,” he replied. “But I will do as you say because I have too much respect for you to refuse you.”
“I hope so,” she murmured, and she touched his shoulder, a brief contact. She eased away from him and repeated her circuit of the room. This time she went toward each door and was neatly circumvented by Vanov before she could reach the exit. Not threatened, really; but he clearly relished this game. He finally told her that he had received orders to let no one enter or leave until the operation was over. Kuan-yin no longer stood on the balcony. One possible, final exit. Lily turned away from Vanov and climbed the stairs. This time, to her surprise, he did not follow her.
The control booth at the top of the stairs held five large consoles and five technicians, each strapped into a chair much like Pinto strapped into his pilot’s seat. They were too intent on whatever processing they were involved in to be aware of her. She walked past them and found, around a corner, another door. It was unguarded. And it opened to her touch.
She came out onto twilight.
The sun set into a rippling flow of land that trembled under each lance of light. Wind whipped her hair back, tugged at her clothes. She stood on a balcony, wrist-thick metal rods fencing in a rectangle of balcony some three meters wide and twenty long. The building rose about twenty meters above her, sheer and pocked with light-reflecting windows that gave back the sun’s red glow, and at least twenty meters below, she estimated, running into a barren sheet of land that extended to the horizon where the sun melted down into it, seeming to dissolve in its undulations.
Immediately she knew: get Robbie, get some kind of rope, divert Vanov, and they could escape.
Then she walked to the waist-high fence and gripped it with both hands, staring down.
It was not land. It was water.
She tightened her grip on the rod and fought a searing swell of dizziness. Waves shattered and dissolved against the walls of the building below her. The building itself thrust out far into this—sea.
For that was what it was. She had thought the pond in Zanta District park immense; she recalled the vast, terrifying depths of the irrigation lake that she and Master Heredes and Kyosti had entered into—a foreign, dark substance.
But from space, one saw the unimaginably vast stretches of blue surrounding the lands of Arcadia: this was the ocean, and it surrounded her now on three sides.
What need for the white-clad soldiers who guarded the other doors now? What need for comrade Vanov?
Sun rippled in water. Endless kilometers of water stretched out before her, an infinite expanse of depthless sea. Awe and terror poised like equally matched opponents on the edge of her thoughts.
She unfastened her hands from the railing and walked to one end of the balcony. The building stretched out on either side, at least twenty meters on each side, if not more, and only far away could she see the dark, solid bulk of land, lapped by the white foam of water spilling onto the shore.
“Where is my son?”
The quiet voice surprised her. She whirled, cursing herself for letting anyone come so close without her knowing. Whatever she meant to say died on her lips.
Senator Isaiah faced her. The last rays of the sun bleached his hair and skin so that he looked quite old. His hands trembled as he set them with deliberate effort on the railing.
“Where is my son?” he repeated. “Or is he dead?”
“I didn’t think you recognized me,” she said.
He shook his head, still imperious and impatient although he had so recently betrayed everything that was his. “But Jonathan—”
“He’s alive. He’s a pilot in Jehane’s fleet. He’s found friends, or at least people who think of him as a friend when he’s willing to let them.”
His hand steadied on the railing. “But he’s alive. Does he still owe you his life?”
“Owe me his life?”
“The Ridani debt of honor: kinnas. He told me when—when I last saw him. I’m sure you remember it.” His voice cracked with bitterness. “He never would accept that his mother marked him irretrievably. I tried to stop her, but those damned tattoos are fanatic about their markings. Once he understood that he could not be my legitimate child he threw it in my face—forced me at every opportunity to confront that fact publicly. What was I to do?”
“Are you asking me for absolution?” Lily asked quietly.
“No.” The wind seamed up the deep creases etched into his face. “I neither want nor would accept anyone’s pardon. But if he is still bound to you, by that debt, I ask that you take care of him.”
The sun melded at last with the sea. Stars began to show one by one in the dark dome above. In the distance, light flashed on the black ridge of land, and a moment later they heard an explosion, echoed by more distant ones.
“It’s started,” said Senator Isaiah. “Central is falling.” He turned and walked back into the building, his step as soundless on the smooth surface of the balcony as the passing of the mantle of power from his shoulders to Jehane’s.
Lily stood alone on the balcony and watched the distant play of light and sound. Stars bloomed above her, each appearing brighter than the last as the dusk shadowed into night. On the horizon, where the last dim remains of the sun’s light edged the far line of the sea, a single blazing star came to life like an echo of the fire and explosion illuminating the land. The wind brought the muted sounds of the assault to her and, occasionally, as it shifted, stripped them away.
She felt a peculiar detachment, gazing at this tumult that touched her so deeply and yet did not touch her at all. The storms of Unruli could never be experienced abstractly. Every action on Unruli stemmed from an awareness of their danger; each foray into the outside sprang only from dire necessity or a reckless urge for adventure.
If Jehane had not decided, years ago, to foment his revolution, would the natural course of events have driven her to this ocean, this shore, anyway? Or was this his storm, artificially constructed and set into action by his desires and his hand?
Movement at the door. She shrank back into the corner, back pressed against the cold railing.
“—that Formula is too valuable to us to waste by letting it be uselessly dispersed to every worthless smuggler and poor, ignorant Ridani when instead it can be a tool. An invaluable tool.” He paused. Because it was Jehane, the pause itself was redolent with unspoken communication. “But I kn
ow of no way to convince Robert Malcolm of this, while he prepares even as we speak to broadcast this discovery to the entire Reft.”
“I do,” said Kuan-yin.
“Do you,” replied Jehane without any intonation at all.
Kuan-yin turned and left the balcony. Lily held her breath. She could see Jehane’s outline silhouetted against the lighter backdrop of sea and sky, his golden hair showing as a pale reflection of the lost sun. He moved along the balcony, face turned to the ocean. Lily wondered if Halfway, the planet Mendi Mun had grown up on, had oceans as broad as these, and if it was such oceans he was remembering now in his seemingly aimless stroll down the length of the railing.
Except that he was Mendi Mun no longer. He shifted abruptly and with the decisive bolt of a trained fighter obliterated the distance between him and the corner in which she hid.
For an instant, she thought of breaking for free ground. But there was no free ground here—she had seen to that—and in that instant’s hesitation he had her.
With both arms pulled uncomfortably up behind her, she could not move without giving him greater purchase to hurt her. He held her as close as any lover might, his face a hand’s breadth away. So close that his body pressed the medallion—the one Master Heredes had given her—into the skin below her throat. She had lost her breathing when he had grabbed her; now she struggled to calm herself, to center and relax. But even as she relaxed, he kept his grip perfectly balanced to counter any move, any break, she might make.
“Never let an Immortal get the jump on you,” she said, not a little disgusted with herself.
Jehane smiled. “Now. Give me the Hierakis Formula.” His voice was soft as a caress.
“I don’t know it.”
His expression did not change. “Not good enough, Lily Ransome. I know where to get it. I’ve already put in a call to the Forlorn Hope, ordering Captain Machiko to use his contingent of marines to keep order on his ship and to detain one comrade Hawk under absolute top security. Well?”