There was nothing in sight but glass, and mirrors, and water so lit it looked like running flame.
He spotted a discreet door; five steps, six, he reached it, and plunged into air and freedom. He let the door shut behind him and hustled through the garden and away.
He waited until he was in the transtube to review the recorded conversation, but when he activated his boswell, he heard nothing but the sound of falling water. Yet he was willing to wager his life that by the time he returned to Derith and the others, there’d be a drop waiting, handing them a scoop that the other novosti would kill to get. What a life!
He threw his head back on the seat and laughed.
o0o
“Are you sure you want to attend this thing?” Osri turned to Fierin, his heavy brows a straight line over his dark eyes.
Fierin slipped her arm through his and smiled. “It won’t last long. I know this is stupid—I’m sure Houmanopoulis and my brother have never once met—but watching him brings me closer to Jes somehow. Rifthaven has been his home for the last fifteen years.”
Osri felt obliged to demur. “Dis was his home. Though I don’t know for how long. And that place was destroyed.”
“But he spent time on Rifthaven, and it was his heart-home. Like ours is the Mandala.” Fierin hesitated, then dropped her gaze. “I can’t explain well. But I want to watch.”
‘Then we’ll watch,” Osri said, consciously abandoning the subject. A flutter of self-mockery behind his ribs accompanied the awareness that not so long ago he would not have been able to resist arguing the point. Fierin’s emotions were more important to him than faulty logic—and he had discovered that the heart has its own logic. “My father said he’d save us a good spot.”
Fierin’s silvery-gray eyes widened in surprise. “Then the Privy Councilors are not a part of the ceremony?”
“Just Brandon, Admiral Ng, and the High Phanist.”
Fierin thought that over as the trans-tube took them to the Circle. “Where did they find a precedent for this ceremony?” she asked as they entered. “Surely they won’t welcome him as a head of state, as though the Rifters were rediscovered exiles?”
Osri frowned, considering. “I suppose not,” he replied. “Although,” he added in an undertone that made her wonder if it was addressed to her or merely an audible thought, “that’s a pretty good description of them, I suppose. Ah. There’s my father. He sees us.”
A short time later they wedged into a crowd of titled Douloi and fairly high government functionaries.
When the ceremony began, Fierin could scarcely hear the words, but she didn’t care. They’d be meaningless anyway. She watched the people, letting herself get caught up in the stylized unfolding of the ritual. It was so very much like a dance, only one that told a story. Something seemed odd; after a short time, she realized what it was and said, “No mention of time.”
Osri turned his head, looking perplexed. “What’s that?”
“No mention of when he came. It’s an official welcome, but there’s no pretense he just arrived.”
Osri said with an ironic lift to his brows, “That would be stretching credulity even for an official function.”
On her other side, Sebastian Omilov murmured, “You imply these functions are meaningless.”
“Well, aren’t they?” Osri asked.
“In the immediate sense, perhaps,” his father replied. “But even pragmatists acknowledge the place of symbolism.”
Fierin said, “They can’t pretend he just arrived—not after the Ares 25 story about Houmanopoulis being on Ares. And all that spew from 99 about Rifter atrocities. Everyone knows he’s here. Which is why I thought there might be something important about this function.”
Sebastian Omilov made a negating motion with one hand. “At some point they will release the vid of this to the DataNet. So this function is not aimed at us on Ares, but at everyone else in the Thousand Suns—including the Rifters.”
“It will make it impossible for Rifthaven to go back on their word, and it will sow dissension among those still allied to Dol’jhar,” explained Osri.
Below, Eloatri stepped aside and Brandon began speaking to Jep.
Fierin asked, “Do you think the military let Nik Cormoran’s group find out about his visit?”
Osri shook his head. “No. We would have preferred to keep it secret.”
Fierin watched Jep’s lined, cruel face and Brandon’s hands as they spoke. From the sudden smiles of the others, he had made some kind of joke. “The Panarch doesn’t just want a patched-together alliance, he wants some kind of new structure that both sides can live with.”
Fierin bit her lip, watching the four walk down an aisle through the midst of the spectators. Her mind skipped from fact to fact, and she said, “So . . . Ares 25 got their facts from someone else? From whom—the Rifter triumvir?”
Osri opened his mouth, but his father forestalled him, saying easily, “Who knows where they got them? What matters is that they did. Shall we adjourn to my quarters for lunch?”
Fierin took Omilov’s offered arm and walked next to him, with Osri at her other side, his face sober, hands behind his back.
They threaded their way at a leisurely pace through the crowd, talking of inconsequentials until they reached the peaceful garden of the Cloisters.
Fierin had been there once before, with Osri. The way the building was designed—the way the garden was laid out—imbued the place with a sense of timelessness. Even the air seemed different, which she knew was absurd: it shared the air of all of Ares. It was the subtle blend of scents breathing from the plants, and light diffusing through the leafy greenery, that created the effect.
As she sank down onto a carved bench, tension of which she had not been aware drained away.
Osri sat next to her, and Omilov across from them, his fingers steepled. “We can discuss this further, but I thought it better to do so here—and for our discussion to remain here.”
The tension spiked again. Fierin said, “It’s about Jes and his crewmates?”
Father and son exchanged looks, and Osri transferred his gaze to the ground.
“In a sense,” Omilov said slowly. “In a sense. But before we consider this matter more deeply, may I put some questions to you? You need not answer any that seem . . . inappropriate, I need hardly add.”
Surprised, Fierin threw her hands wide. “I don’t know anything inappropriate—but yes, do ask whatever you wish.”
“My questions,” Omilov said as he rose again and paced the short distance to a complicated wall of shrubbery, “concern the Panarch and Vannis Scefi-Cartano.”
Even more surprised, Fierin waited.
Omilov said, “Have they discussed the question of the Rifter alliance before you?”
“No.”
“Any politics?” Osri spoke for the first time since their arrival at the Cloisters.
“Never.” Fierin looked from one to the other, then said, “I trust you are not going to put these questions to me and then refuse to explain.”
Osri jerked a negative, and by his stiff posture, Fierin knew he was highly uncomfortable with the subject.
Omilov’s demeanor gave no hints; they might still be making small talk. “It is not that we mistrust your discretion,” he said, his brow furrowed as if he chose his words with care. “Indeed, you seem to have been forced into skillful assimilation of numerous dangerous secrets during your short life—”
“An unenviable claim,” Osri said, scowling at his father.
Omilov bowed, hands in reservation-of-judgment mode. The bow indicated he did not consider himself fit to judge, a silent testament to his own life of secrets. Fierin’s heart crowded her throat. In her life since her parents’ deaths and Jes’s disappearance, there had been few people who had made her well-being a priority. That’s probably why I mistook Srivashti’s abuse as protection, she thought, and rubbed the chill from the outsides of her arms.
She lifted her chin, catchi
ng the tail end of an exchange of glances, and belatedly she understood: Osri had challenged his father on what might have been construed as condescension—and the gnostor responded by dismissing his own authority with a gesture, and establishing them all as equals.
More than equals. As family.
Her eyes burned, but she fiercely controlled the reaction.
Omilov went on: “They talk of inconsequentials, then?”
Fierin nodded.
“Polite, friendly, perhaps deferential?”
“Before me,” Fierin said, able now to trust her voice. “I don’t know how they are alone, except—” She frowned, thinking rapidly, then said, “I don’t believe—of late I’m very sure they aren’t alone. It’s either the three of us, or a very great party, or else Vannis and me. I haven’t been alone with him. He’s too busy.” She shook her head. “Does this have to do with the Rifter alliance and the welcome of this Houmanopoulis person today? We were talking about how Ares 25 had done stories about him being here, which forced this welcome ceremony today. Why does our discussing this have to remain secret? Might Houmanopoulis himself have released this news, in order to gain some kind of advantage?”
“Oh, it’s possible, but unlikely,” Osri said. “I don’t think he would have come all this way—a first for Rifters—just to mire negotiations by double-dealing.”
“So who, then?” To Osri, she added, “Can’t you find out?”
“Novosti are even more tight-lipped than the military when it comes to protecting their sources. They won’t tell, not if they expect the source to come through again.”
“Who, then?” Fierin asked.
“Perhaps it might be better to set that aside for now and consider why,” Omilov said.
“Why is easy,” Fierin said. “The obvious reason is to spike the Rifter alliance.”
“That would be a part of it,” Osri said, his voice so low she could scarcely hear him.
“Well, what would the person gain if the alliance is ruined? We lose the war—but that would be the action of an enemy!”
“Whoever gave that story to Ares 25 seems to have made certain that the Rifters would be presented in a positive light,” Sebastian Omilov said.
“That hasn’t stopped 99, though,” Fierin said with a grimace. “They’ve been putting out all that old gas about atrocities and broken alliances, just as they did during Jes’s trial.” She looked up. “I see what you’re saying. The source could just as easily have given the data about Houmanopoulis to Ares 99. Or any of the other newsfeeds.”
“Precisely,” Omilov said. “The choosing of Ares 25 is as much a message as was today’s ceremony.”
“A message?”
“Or a weapon in a silent duel,” Omilov said.
Fierin gazed up at him, mentally assessing the odd course the conversation had taken. Then, without warning, it all fell into place. “You mean Vannis—don’t you? Vannis and Brandon?”
Neither of the others spoke, but they didn’t need to.
FOUR
SKIPRADIUS: SUNEATER SYSTEM
Kyvernat Juvaszt stood before the viewscreen and watched the Fist of Dol’jhar receding sternward. The sensor array on the little shuttle was soon struggling to resolve it, and the image began to fractalize.
Not ordinarily an introspective man, Juvaszt was aware of his anger at being taken away from his command for this tedious journey, plus whatever time he’d be forced to linger on the Suneater for this strategy meeting. What if the Panarchist attack began while he was on the station?
Why was his physical presence required? Anger flared anew at the blandly polite refusal of Anaris’s secretary to explain anything. Still, assuming this was Anaris’s idea, and not further meddling by the Avatar in his boredom, there might be a good reason. The Heir’s quickness to realize the real goal of the Panarchist Navy’s attack on Arthelion had impressed Juvaszt. Since then, the few orders Anaris had issued regarding Rifter unit operations had made it apparent that while he thoroughly understood strategy, he was content to let leave tactics to Juvaszt. As was proper.
Could it be related to the strange, unprecedented noise the hyperwave had emitted a few hours before he was ordered to the Suneater? What if the Panarchists had obtained one after all? That would explain both the summons and the lack of explanation.
A chill settled in Juvaszt’s gut as he realized how much his plans had relied on the assumption that their enemy had no access to their communications. The chill deepened as he considered how the Avatar might react to this news, and how much he himself might now depend on the Heir for survival, despite his years of service.
I am just a game piece in the struggle for the succession. Aware that his thoughts were tending in a dangerous direction, Juvaszt forced himself to leave the pilot to his job and walk back to his cabin. That took him past the garishly dressed Rifter and his Barcan companion in the seating corridor.
A protective movement of the Rifter toward the long case set next to his feet sparked Juvaszt’s interest, but not long enough to investigate. The fact that the Rifter and his companion would be spending very long hours in seats not designed for comfort barely registered in his mind. Had they been of the True Men, such concern would have been beneath them; as they were not, it mattered even less.
Of more interest to him was considering why Barrodagh brought this Rifter, Hreem the Faithless—whose records were a repulsive mesh of self-indulgence and of lawlessness—and the Barcan Riolo to the station. Like all Catennach, Barrodagh never did anything for a single reason, so it was not simply because of the Ogres they had obtained for the Avatar.
A chill prickled his skin as he thought of the bulky, humanoid shapes packed into the shuttle’s cargo bay. They were the very image of the kipango, among the most terrifying of the karra that infested Dol’jharian legend. Had the Barcans known that, or were these standard Panarchist Ogres and their appearance a mere coincidence? Juvaszt shook his head. That, and whatever else Barrodagh had in mind, was for Chur-Mellikath, the Tarkan commander on the Suneater, to worry about.
By the time he had established himself in the cabin, the sensors had lost the Fist except as a bright star against a stellar backdrop that hid the gathering enemy. For a while longer the ceaseless stream of information coming down the tight-beam from his ship kept him occupied. But as the EM lag from the Fist of Dol’jhar lengthened, rendering him merely an observer of the actions taken by his second-in-command, Juvaszt became increasingly impatient. The sense of impotence the erosion of real-time communications caused was foreign to his nature. He had never forgotten the caustic Rifter comments about him occasioned by that depraved hyperwave of the two women during the Battle of Arthelion. “Juvaszt kim Karusch-na bo-synarrach, gri tusz ni-synarrh perro-ti! “
The memory made him shift in his seat with fury; the Rifters seemed to find amusement in the discovery that equating one’s performance in the wars for progeny with masturbation was perhaps the worst insult possible in Dol’jharian. He’d never found the Rifter who had said that, shielded as they were by the anonymity of the hyperwave.
The fury gave way to frustrated anticipation. The tides of Dol’jhar pulled at him as the Karusch-na Rahali commenced, but now he would be among strangers.
Safe in his solitude, Juvaszt permitted himself a grimace of distaste. He’d have two days to study the roster of the Suneater, which he had DL’d into his compad. Why not begin the task now?
He activated the device. Surely among the Tarkans in the Avatar’s service there would be a worthy opponent. His lip curled at the first name to catch his eyes: so-Erechnat Terresk-jhi. He certainly would not choose her. Although he knew the Rifter vid had not really been the communications officer’s fault, he could not forget her role in that affair.
The annunciator chimed.
“Enter.” His voice was harsher than he had intended.
The hatch slid open, revealing the junior officer assigned to service on the shuttle, bearing his midday meal. The young
woman—Tiademet was her name, he remembered—was strongly built; he eyed her appraisingly, but she would not meet his eyes, impassive in correct subordinate behavior, and he lost interest. Instead, a different sort of appetite awoke, and his stomach rumbled as the savory steam curled up from the dish of steamed gob she uncovered.
Curiosity and boredom moved him to speech as the evosznat saluted and turned to leave.
“The Rifter. What is he doing?”
“Complaining about the food,” she replied. Then, to his surprise, she met his eyes, and a trace of humor deepened her voice. “He demanded entertainment.”
Juvaszt raised an eyebrow.
“I gave him a dhosz-Tathnu chip.”
Juvaszt considered this. “Does he understand True Speech?”
She shook her head, her lips twisting.
Juvaszt laughed. The highly stylized liturgical drama with its ninety-nine Postures and thirty-three Significations was unlikely to appeal to anyone not of Dol’jhar, even if they understood the language. He wondered if the Rifter would even recognize the sexual energy informing the ritual, which was performed only in the season of the Karusch-na Rahali.
Tiademet was subordinate, but she was obviously not stupid.
“Sit,” he commanded, and pushed a dish toward her. “Eat. Strength for the struggle.”
She obeyed with an impassive composure that belied her youth. Juvaszt appraised her as they conversed—and he sensed her own appraisal. Following the careful strictures of rank and custom, they discussed family and clan, establishing the degree of consanguinity created by the complex relations resulting from the wars of progeny between the noble families. Only nobles served as officers in the Dol’jharian Navy—what was left of it.
The talk turned eventually, as it so often did among the naval officers on board the one ship left to the Avatar’s Navy after Acheront, to their Rifter allies. The necessity of their dependence on a lawless, undisciplined mob of culls grated on all of them.
The Thrones of Kronos Page 24