The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  “What is the status of the Rifter vessel?” he asked.

  “Left closed but not locked up,” replied Morrighon.

  “Ah.” Vi’ya must have known that locking the ship would only have guaranteed that Barrodagh would cut his way in.

  “It has already been searched. His main interest appears to have been the dispensary.” Morrighon’s skewed gaze narrowed briefly in smug humor, and Anaris wondered idly what lever he had found to suborn a Tarkan. That had to be the source of his information, since Barrodagh would have had no one else accompany him on that search.

  “He also checked the computers. They have an unusually large installation of arrays, which may account for their successes as Rifters before the paliach.” Morrighon tapped at his pad. “There appears to have been no further activity.”

  Anaris smiled. Had he known how much amusement would be afforded in watching Barrodagh’s reactions of rage and fear whenever Vi’ya was around, he would have exerted himself before this to have a Dol’jharian tempath located.

  Except someone from the home world would merely be adept at hiding his or her talents, and would not be nearly as interesting, he thought as he stood up. “I am curious. It is said that a ship reflects its captain.”

  He walked to the landing bay, Morrighon scuttling alongside.

  The Tarkans guarding the bay admitted them without challenge; he knew that whispered stories of his invocation of Urtigen in the Chamber of the Mysteries on the Fist of Dol’jhar had reached even here.

  The old Columbiad sat in the bay near two Dol’jharian corvettes, silent, its running lights dark. He tabbed the control for the ramp. It came down promptly enough, and three strides brought him within the ship. Morrighon followed more slowly. Inside the lock he paused; his secretary silently handed him the compad with a standard Columbiad layout displayed. Anaris glanced at it, handed it back, and walked toward the bridge.

  The air was still, with a vaguely oppressive feel to it. Perhaps it was stale. It smelled faintly of cinnamon. This roused a distant memory, too evanescent to pursue. Interesting that their tianqi would vent so strong a scent, he thought as he followed the faint glow of emergency power lights to the bridge. Which of them required the smell of cinnamon?

  The Kelly! When he reached the bridge, it came back to Anaris. The Kelly Archon on Arthelion had smelled something like burned cinnamon. Was the scent here to ease the youth with the Kelly ribbon on his arm? Morrighon’s Bori noderunner had extricated from Barrodagh’s files the records of the Telvarna crew’s brief stay on Rifthaven, before they were captured by the Panarchists. The surgeon Montrose had taken the youth—Ivard—to a Kelly doctor, one of whose employees had disclosed to Barrodagh’s agent that Ivard indeed had somehow bonded with a Kelly ribbon during the raid on the Mandala and that it was slowly eroding his health.

  He looks healthy enough now, Anaris thought, recalling the red-haired youth as he keyed up life support and power. Lights glowed, and the tianqi whooshed cool air against his face as he looked around the bridge.

  Once again that sense of a closing circle seized him. He stood on the bridge of the one vessel that had escaped his father’s grip on Arthelion. He recalled the visual record of that flight. Vi’ya had outrun the ruptors of his father’s battlecruiser by a fraction of a second.

  Anaris stood behind Vi’ya’s empty pod, trying to envision her sitting there, watching the Fist looming in the viewscreen, fighting off its initial barrage of missile clusters and gambling their lives they could make it to radius before Juvaszt finally fired the ruptors. That had taken the coolest kind of courage. Had she brigged Brandon Arkad, or did she force him to stand and watch the race with death above his conquered planet?

  Wondering if there was some way to find out, he left the bridge in search of the captain’s cabin, which he assumed would be the largest, and closest to the bridge, if the old Columbiad hadn’t been too greatly modified.

  The ship was scrupulously clean, its lines forcefully evoking Douloi tastes. That would be left over from L’Ranja’s tenure. Despite the tianqi activity, the air still felt hard to breathe, a sensation that increased with distance from the bridge. Had they jiggered the life support to discourage trespassers? Morrighon, too, seemed uncomfortable, looking around nervously, but he said nothing.

  Anaris found the cabin where he expected it and tabbed the door open, wondering if L’Ranja had left anything of himself in the captain’s cabin. No. The cabin was as plain as a jail cell. Narrow bed against one wall, and no personal effects in view except for a tapestry on one wall and a small hook on the opposite wall. Below it was a faint, arc-shaped scrape, as though something had hung there.

  He turned to the tapestry, his interest sharpening when he recognized it as ancient Dol’jharian work—representative of the destruction of the Isle of the Chorei.

  It was the same theme, though not from the same artist, as the old picture he had acquired in boyhood and had kept as a reminder during the long years of his fosterage. Staring at the stitched fires that long-dead hands had made so painstakingly, a surge of—something—rippled through his consciousness, forcing him off balance, and he wondered with a pulse of near panic if Vi’ya was making another try at starting the station—or if he was going to be sucked, against his will, into yet another vision of the destruction of the Chorei island centuries ago, as he had experienced in the landing bay at her arrival.

  But the sensation subsided, taking with it the vertigo, leaving only a residue of discomfort that he ascribed to the tianqi. He turned away from the tapestry and sat down at Vi’ya’s console, bringing it to life. After a short time, he shut it down again. As he’d expected, Vi’ya had archived all the ship’s logs under some kind of code, deep in the system. He’d need a noderunner to excavate them out again—an experienced noderunner with lots of time.

  Anaris left the cabin and hesitated, wondering if further exploration of the ship would repay the time. He took a couple of tentative steps toward the stern, then stopped. No, his interest was in the captain. If her private space was that bare, there would be no trace at all of her elsewhere.

  As he retreated to the bridge to cut the power, he decided it was time for another interview with Telvarna’s captain.

  Within the Rifters’ chamber, Vi’ya took a deep breath, trying to encompass the flood of data coming via the Kelly through Ivard through their mental contact.

  I don’t think Eusabian knows about his son. Ivard sat a meter from Vi’ya, eyes closed, as he had been ever since he had been startled into wakefulness by the news that Anaris was on the Telvarna, poking around.

  He had gone only to the bridge and then to Vi’ya’s cabin; the manipulation of the reactivated tianqi by the Kelly, including subsonics, had deterred further explorations, so he had not discovered the trinity hiding in Ivard’s cabin. But his proximity had enabled the Kelly to probe his mind and they had sent a barrage of those of Anaris’s thoughts and actions that were comprehensible to them.

  Anaris had known Markham. He, too, carried genetic material from the Chorei. He thought little of his talents, though they were strong enough to strike some kind of inadvertent synchrony with the Kelly, and through them the Eya’a, awakening them from hibernation. Luckily he did not seem to know what had happened.

  Vi’ya shut her eyes, willing away the building headache.

  The Kelly trinity sent soothing thoughts to her, along with the assurance that, with the Eya’a now awake, they might be able in concert to ease some of the mental stresses the station imposed on her.

  Vi’ya opened her eyes. Ivard regarded her with an expression of extravagant disgust. I wish Eloatri had told us that the missing member of the Unity had been that blunge-brain Norio. We could have stayed on Ares, he thought.

  Despite everything, laughter fought its way to the surface of Vi’ya’s thoughts. As well he died, she responded. I confess nothing that has occurred so far misgives me so much as the prospect of having had to go into rapport with Norio to awak
en this station.

  Do you think we can do it by ourselves? Ivard thought, his disbelief a minor discord.

  We have to, Vi’ya replied. It’s the only way we can gain control.

  She felt Ivard’s wordless skepticism as the Kelly trinity’s musical thoughts wreathed her consciousness: Anaris summons Vi’ya. Following that was a vivid flicker, much too rapid for her to follow, between the Kelly and the Eya’a.

  It seemed scant seconds later that Morrighon himself arrived, though by now Vi’ya knew that she could not trust her time sense when involved in such rapports.

  She looked up, shadows skittering at the edges of her vision, and practiced breath control while Morrighon and Montrose held short speech.

  She heard the sounds, but the sense did not yet reach her. Instead, the Eya’a flooded her mind, their high keening indicating that they were in distress.

  Apparently the keening was not just mental. She saw Morrighon recoil, his squinty eyes widening in shock as the little beings emerged from their chamber, their blue mouths open, their twiggy fingers gesturing semiotics at an impossible speed.

  Eya’a hear the Distant Sleeper. Strange that the Eya’a still thought of the Suneater as the Distant Sleeper; it suggested a distance in degree, somehow, since they now stood within the station.

  Is there proximity, Eya’a to the Distant Sleeper? Vi’ya thought carefully, trying to project calm emotions. Soothing song flowed from the Kelly, and the Eya’a halted their keening.

  The Eya’a are near, and not near. Vi’ya, the One-in-Three, the Three, are in the hive of the Distant Sleeper, but the Distant Sleeper slumbers in the Winter Sleep.

  Soon we will call to the Distant Sleeper, Vi’ya said, and as their emotions spiked to an excruciating intensification of anticipation, she felt the Kelly once again send their complicated, calming harmonics.

  Now the Eya’a must celebrate the hive of the Distant Sleeper, Vi’ya thought. Sort and celebrate one-patterns in the Distant Sleeper hive.

  We celebrate one-patterns in the hive of the Distant Sleeper, the Eya’a responded, and Vi’ya drew in a deep breath and opened her eyes.

  “It’s all right,” she heard Ivard say to Morrighon. “They always wake up like that. They won’t hurt you.”

  Where did Ivard get the energy? She forced herself to stand, and with a look expressive of relief, Morrighon slapped the door open and retreated. Vi’ya followed, fighting vertigo.

  Morrighon was disposed to hurry, but Vi’ya forced him to slow to her pace. Thus she had some semblance of control by the time they reached an area she had never seen before. Tarkan guards stood ready at most tunnel intersections, and the jagged hum of mind-blurs nagged at her consciousness from time to time.

  Morrighon tabbed an annunciator, then the door control. He stood aside and Vi’ya walked into a room straight out of the nightmares of childhood.

  Fighting for balance, she forced herself to look around slowly. The heavy, carved furniture, the tapestries, even the patterns in the rugs evoked the wealth and power of the rulers of Dol’jhar.

  Seated at his ease behind a big table, Anaris observed her with a sardonic curl of his lip. “Remind you of home?” he said.

  “My home,” she said, “was a stone cottage, with two old wooden cupboards no one else wanted. But we saw this kind of thing on the vids—” She waved a hand around the room. “What is it, the once-proud belongings of some minor lord who had the temerity to permit his shadow to cross your father’s? Brought here piece by piece by a fleet of warships in order to bolster your prestige?”

  Anaris leaned forward to tap at his console as he said, “Was this admirable piece of bravado intended to prove how you’ve managed to rise above your ancestry?” He swiveled the screen around with a careless swipe of his hand, adding, “If so, you’ll need to try harder at burying the evidence.”

  The screen showed Vi’ya herself on the bridge of the Telvarna. “I want,” she said in precise Dol’jharian, “the heart of Hreem the Faithless on the point of my knife.”

  Laughing softly, Anaris killed the screen, then jerked a thumb behind Vi’ya. She turned and regarded her own reflection in a polished steel mirror. Anaris joined her, and they stood side by side, both tall, strong, with the marked bones, brown skin, and dark eyes and hair of their race, and both dressed in uncompromising black.

  Vi’ya stared at her own eyes in the mirror and was reassured by her stony lack of visible reaction. She could have told him that she had not worn black until the day after Markham was killed, when she swore an oath of vengeance on Hreem the Faithless. She knew—had always known—that it was a very Dol’jharian thing to do.

  But she had never attempted to deny her past. Her gaze now encompassed them both, and the differences were made manifest. Her clothing was the comfortable, loose garment of the spacer, worn by either sex. His shared only color; the refined texture, the heavy weave, the design of tunic and trousers which made the most of a powerful build, were meant not so much to conceal as to intimidate.

  Last, she lifted her head and met his gaze in the mirror, and knew her own held nothing but disinterest.

  Whatever he was watching for, he manifested no more reaction than she did. Turning away from the mirror and resuming his seat, he said, “The furnishings in this room were once my father’s, from our tower at Hroth D’ocha. What are your blood antecedents? Do you know?”

  The subject, of course, was the Chorei. Because she knew that he carried Chorei genes and he didn’t know she knew, and because he used the truce-neutral form of address as did she, when he could have used half a dozen other modes, all conveying different types of insult, she said, “My mother’s foremothers were all weavers, and none of them carried any of the talents. She thought I was the result of an unlucky encounter with a scion of the House of Gaerjhrun during a winter Karusch-na Rahali.”

  “City?”

  “Ephin Hoch’jhan.”

  Anaris squinted up at the ceiling, then gave a soft grunt. “The year Gaerjhrun commenced the paliach against Tharchas.”

  So he knew the year of her birth? Of course Morrighon would have been ravaging the records within moments after he had learned I was in-system, she thought grimly.

  He added, “You said you will not experiment again without the Eya’a. I suggest you awaken them.”

  “They are awake,” she said. “We can begin anytime. I told Lar to advise Lysanter not to attempt any of his physical tests on them. They will not tolerate their bodies being touched.”

  Anaris snapped a data chip into the console. “The transfiguration room underneath the Palace Major, when the gnostor Omilov was taken. Was that the Eya’a?”

  She brought her chin down in assent.

  Anaris smiled. “Barrodagh would have it you’d unleashed some type of Panarchist secret weapon. Did you know he thought Brandon’s pastry attack was this same weapon?”

  She grinned. “What happened?”

  “Jesserian found him in a dead faint. Apparently one of the mechwaiters caught him head-on with one of your acid pies.”

  Though she knew he had a reason—most likely a nefarious reason—for sharing this data with her, she still thoroughly enjoyed the mental image of Barrodagh’s terror and did not attempt to hide her enjoyment.

  Anaris said as he tabbed the summons, “I don’t think I’ll tell him. He’d probably have your crew shot, and you tranked out of your mind except when Lysanter wants you.”

  She said, so he would not mistake her silence for gratitude, “And it serves some purpose besides annoying Barrodagh for us to remain free?”

  He said, “It provides amusement.”

  The door dilated with a slurping noise, and Morrighon entered and bowed. Anaris dismissed them both with a lazy wave of his hand. Morrighon bowed again; Vi’ya turned her back and walked out, and the door closed on Anaris’s mocking laughter.

  A short time later, Morrighon glanced longingly toward the nest of furniture he’d constructed under the sardonic ga
ze of Anaris, who sat cross-legged on his bed.

  “He will not advance the time,” said the Dol’jharian, his black gaze pinioning Morrighon. The dirazh’u twisting around his strong fingers froze in a new pattern.

  Morrighon looked down at his compad. He didn’t like to see the ways Anaris warped his woven curses when he was drugged in anticipation of another tempathic session in the Chamber of Kronos.

  Anaris’s faint, crooked smile made Morrighon even more uncomfortable than the thought of any treachery by Barrodagh. The drugs did nothing to tame the increasingly frequent, increasingly strange moods that seemed to possess the heir. It was as though they came from a totally different part of Anaris’s character. Morrighon remembered the first time he’d seen his lord’s Chorei power manifest: one of the images his TK had stirred up had been of Gelasaar. It’s no wonder he is interested in the Dol’jharian tempath. Another hybrid.

  “One thing still lies unresolved,” Anaris said. “I did not manifest TK in the landing bay when Norio made his attempt.”

  “Do you think it was caused by the presence of two . . . Chorei together?” Morrighon asked carefully.

  For a panicky suck and wash of heartbeat Anaris gazed narrow-eyed at him. Morrighon swallowed. The only way to test that would be for Anaris to go to the Chamber of Kronos during an attempt. Is that what his lord wanted him to say?

  Then Morrighon’s compad beeped, rescuing him. “The final injection, lord,” he said apologetically.

  With no change in expression Anaris reached over, picked up the sprayjector, triggered it into the pit of his elbow, and then dropped it in Morrighon’s hand.

  He carefully locked it away as his lord lay back, staring at the featureless ceiling, then Morrighon retreated with alacrity to his flimsy bunker. He peered anxiously between two file cabinets as the moment approached. This was their only real function, for the flimsies and hard copies in them contained nothing of real interest to Anaris. That went into Morrighon’s compad, and nowhere else.