The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  It was more than she would have had with Semion, who had made it abundantly clear that after Panarch Gelasaar died her job would be to reign over the High Douloi’s eternal social season, but she was not to meddle with the military or government, which would be strictly his domain. Brandon seemed to be implying that they would be partners in ruling as well as reigning—just as his parents had been.

  But it was not like Gelasaar and Ilara after all. That had been a love-match.

  Vannis took a deep breath, then another, and because they were alone, suspended between the faux sky and ground of this spinning cylinder in space, she said, “What about Vi’ya?”

  He brought the air car over its pad and landed it with a gentle thump, and the engines whined down into silence. One last tab and the console went dark, so all she could see was the glow of his tunic against the darkness behind, and the silhouette of his head. But she knew his voice, and heard the care with which he kept his tone even instead of revealing—amicable instead of intimate—as he said, “I do not know if Vi’ya would agree to the constraints of being Kyriarch. If we see one another again, my hope is that we will be mates. But I cannot leave you here as my enemy, Vannis. The government is too new, the situation too fraught, for you to be anything but my ally, to guard and to guide while we see this war through.”

  Not all those years of training could prevent a human reaction. “You mean,” Vannis said, “while you throw everything away to chase this Rifter who likes your bed but not your board.”

  Brandon sighed, leaning his head back on the cushioned pod. “‘What human beings want, in the highest and spiritual sense, are the lineaments of satisfied desire.’ You didn’t listen to the messages behind the speeches when we welcomed the Rifthaven delegation? Some of that was meant for the High Douloi—for you.”

  So Eloatri was again right. She caught her lip hard between her teeth, and made no answer.

  “Before I left Arthelion the day of my Enkainion, I had it in mind to find the Rifters and win them, if I could, to our side. Vi’ya knows this, just as I know that if she thought I was capable of throwing away my responsibilities to chase a bed-mate, she would bunk me out so fast I’d be left breathing vacuum. This is someone who had been actively planning to break her crew member Lokri out in her own way if Panarchic justice had failed him. Or die in the trying.”

  Vannis thought of the teams of highly trained Marines guarding the formidable security areas and remembered Vi’ya’s cold black eyes, the trace of Dol’jharian consonants in her voice, and shuddered. Yes, Vi’ya was very capable of walking deliberately into life-threatening danger. What Vannis had not known is that she would do it motivated by loyalty, and not just from a taste for violence.

  “So why did she leave?” Vannis asked.

  “She doesn’t think I can change the Panarchy enough to make room for the Rifters. No . . .” He looked up, his profile etched against the matte-black wall behind the air car. “She won’t let herself hope I can do it. In all her life there has been little to trust. Shall we go in?”

  They left the pad, and the featureless wall closed soundlessly behind them again. Brandon led the way out onto the path, and Vannis heard once more the rise and fall of the tireless voices at their Vigil. The candles, seen through a latticework of century-old ferns, made a rain of sifted light.

  With aching eyes she watched the slow, serpentine circle. Again she assessed her roiling emotions, foremost a vast anger that had at its center desolation. She had lost sight of the game, but he hadn’t, and in proposing this marriage alliance he had completely outmaneuvered her.

  He had made his offer clear. She would be Kyriarch, but not mate. There would be no ancient wedding ceremony, complete with vows of eternal devotion and rings to seal them, as Gelasaar and Ilara had made.

  He had known about her plans all along, and now he had set her up with her emotions balanced against her ambition.

  Checkmate.

  “More coffee?” he asked. “It’s going to be a long night—”

  Voices, close, interrupted. They both turned quickly, and she saw, again, that he was as tense as she.

  “Forgive me,” Artorus Vahn said, stepping out onto the terrace and bowing. “A message from Admiral Faseult. Houmanopoulis wants access to the hyperwave.”

  Brandon’s head turned sharply. He looked back at Vannis, who forced herself to remain still, her face blank, her hands void of expression. In his eyes was not triumph, but perplexity.

  “. . . it is a thing you will never know if you persist in mistaking possession for love.” It isn’t he who set me up, it’s I. He really thinks what I love is power.

  Swift as light, she reassessed all their interactions, leading up to his offer. He wanted to leave, yes, but he was not abandoning the Panarchy—instead, he was asking Vannis to serve in his place. Instead of faulting her political ambitions, he acknowledged her goals as worthy. Such an offer had not been made out of coldhearted gamesmanship, but out of generosity of spirit—out of trust and faith.

  Three times you were right, Eloatri.

  With one hand he held them all back, though the pressure of time, of events, of the countless demands awaiting him towered invisibly over them both. He waited, question clear in his countenance.

  Vannis could not bring herself to answer.

  She closed her eyes, and the voice she knew best sank below the noise of other voices. And very soon he was gone.

  TEN

  SUNEATER

  Riolo tar Manjanhalli gazed at the flickering screen.

  This console was little more than a toy, its crudity one of the innumerable studied slights Riolo had learned to live with as part of his mission among the descendants of Exiled Earth.

  His chamber was small, unpainted, with merely two stasis clamps, furnished with a bed, disposer, and only recently this console. Riolo had not revealed how he actually preferred it to the ugly rooms forced into cubes, with gray sloshed over the walls.

  Though one could not pretend this place was anything like his home Under, still, there were similarities. The warmth. The dim light. The sense of movement; though of course the wall and floor Under did not move, the days and nights were filled with the quiet slitherings of the Messengers moving ceaselessly along their paths, and in Riolo’s dreams, at least, the station’s flutterings were strangely comforting.

  The toy console was the result of Riolo’s cooperative spirit, his ready answers to the penetrating questions put to him by the Panarchic exile Lysanter.

  Riolo’s fingers absently caressed the skin-pucker above his right collarbone as he considered the interchanges between himself and Lysanter. It had taken all of his mental facility to hide the range of his knowledge of the Ogre technology and to keep Lysanter from guessing that he was hiding anything.

  But it seemed to have sufficed. Barrodagh had permitted this console to be installed, supposedly so that Riolo could occupy his time playing games with unseen opponents in some recreational area deeper within the station complex.

  And for a time Riolo had played the games, making certain that he neither won nor lost too many. And when he had judged that Barrodagh’s increasingly distracted attention was no longer on him, he had broken easily past the rudimentary safeguards that the Dol’jharians used to protect their consoles. They rely on fear more than technology, he had realized early on. Fear and arrogance. They do not seem to comprehend that the only truly secure system is one that has no connections anywhere.

  Nevertheless he had moved with care. It would not do for him to become too arrogant: once indeed he had, and he had been discovered and disgraced. His efforts now were to regain what he had lost, the ineffable joy of Elevation.

  As he carefully constructed workspace behind the perimeters of the game space, he reflected how human beings outside of Barca, unaware of the rightness of life Under and the achievement of Elevation, were like worms groping their way through little cannulae above the rich, woven Cannulae of civilization. But the worms were
persistent, and nearly infinite in number, and one must never discount them even in their lowliness.

  He regarded the data ranking on the console, glad that he had been so circumspect. Having broken free of the gates constructed by the Dol’jharians, he had encountered traces of four separate entities, three as adept at the manipulation of dataspace as he, or nearly, and one who far surpassed him.

  He touched the console tabs as he considered his next step.

  Two of the entities he had names for. Both noderunners, one based on far-distant Arthelion, and one here in the Suneater, a Rifter named Tatriman. The latter’s dataspace was hidden behind the formidable protections surrounding Lysanter’s space. To break those would take time and tremendous care if Riolo wished to go undetected.

  The third was relatively new, and he only found out about him or her because of furtive, well-camouflaged exchanges with Tatriman. The workspace of this individual would be difficult to find. The fourth one, though . . . It carried the taint of the Panarchist rulers, and it was as fast and as effective as a laser. How to encompass this?

  Riolo was still considering this when without any warning, his door slurped open. Two quick tabs, and though the screen did not change, now he was in the midst of a game. It had been run by a construct; the code not only changed the metaphor to a game but released control of his side to him.

  A gray-tunicked Bori entered. “Come with me,” he said in Uni.

  Beyond, in the harsh light of the hallway, Riolo glimpsed the silhouettes of two armed gray-clad soldiers.

  His eyes were already watering. Amusement flickered through him as the Bori looked around the naked red-glowing walls and made a face of fear and disgust. Riolo had never turned on the harsh light that these fools preferred. He pulled his goggles on as, behind, he heard a soft beep. The game had shut itself down—and his workspace behind it.

  The Bori’s gaze went from Riolo’s goggles to his codpiece, then back up again, contempt tightening his features. Yes, you despise what has been denied you, eh, neutered worm? But Riolo pretended, as he always had, that he was not aware of his guide’s reaction, and followed in silence as they traversed long tunnels.

  Curiosity trumped fear when Riolo saw Barrodagh waiting for him. The Bori was scarcely two centimeters taller, but his mass was probably little over half of Riolo’s. Thin to the point of emaciation, Barrodagh’s muscle rigidity, his skin tone, the lambent pinpoints of light in his blinkless gaze, all betokened the attributes of a madman.

  He walked away, not watching to see if Riolo was following, as of course he was. They stepped into a transport, which whisked them along a considerable distance to a door before which stood two Tarkans, weapons ready. In silence Barrodagh opened the door.

  Riolo followed into a room filled with a bizarre combination of technical equipment and what looked like religious artifacts.

  A heavy, unpleasant tang lay in the cold air, making the skin on the backs of Riolo’s arms roughen and his neck feel tight.

  Barrodagh tabbed an annunciator on an inner door, and at the query, spoke only his name.

  The door opened, and a strange figure emerged. Tall as the Dol’jharian Tarkans, but instead of wearing the ubiquitous gray, this individual wore robes with ugly patterns embroidered on them, and his—her—hairless scalp bore scars with similar patterns and colored tattoos.

  “Senz-lo Adhasz,” Barrodagh said, his tone formal and obsequious.

  “Serach Barrodagh,” came an unexpectedly mellow feminine voice. “You interrupt.”

  ‘The service of the Avatar requires that we witness the Transfiguration in process.” Barrodagh also spoke in Dol’jharian, and the first pricklings of terror seized the back of Riolo’s neck.

  He had never admitted to anyone that the Matria had sent him on this mission because of his language training, but Barrodagh somehow had found out. There was that in his demeanor that seemed to make it plain that he knew Riolo understood his words. What else had he betrayed?

  The women gestured with a lean, scarred hand and Barrodagh nodded at Riolo to enter the next room.

  If he could have found a way to avoid it, Riolo would have, for the thin, high whining sound that emanated therefrom sent shudders of terror along his nerves. Barbaric these people undoubtedly were, but it was never more apparent than now that he was utterly in their power.

  Barrodagh indicated the long form of a Dol’jharian strapped to a gurney. A mesh cap was fitted over her head, which was attached to the machine that made the noise. Riolo looked at the victim, whose eyes were distended; blood ran in a thin trickle from her compressed lips.

  The robed figure moved to the other side of the gurney, and Riolo heard the cold, precise clink of metallic instruments being shifted on a metal tray.

  Holding up a thin steel prod with a curved hook at its end, the robed figure bent over the woman on the gurney. “Now, Kulusan, we will discourse on the proper modes of the Karusch-na Rahali among those so depraved as to choose other than True Men for the struggle,” she said.

  Lightly, almost caressingly, she touched the hooked object to the prone woman’s eyelid, and with a practiced twist, impaled the thin flesh. “You will be grateful for the honor done you in helping school your eyes to look upon suitable targets for the struggle . . .”

  A racking gasp from the victim made Riolo react. He tried to unfocus his eyes, endeavored not to hear the tortured, keening breathing, as he fought against unconsciousness.

  The torturer’s voice went on, smooth, calm, even intimate as the victim uttered wordless expressions of pain.

  After an eternity, the whine on the machine changed, and the victim emitted a low, hoarse moan that rose to a breathless shriek punctuated by the clink of instruments. Riolo gritted his teeth, wishing the figure on the gurney would die already, or faint.

  A touch on his elbow made him start violently.

  Barrodagh regarded him with a thin smile. “We will depart.”

  The robed woman ignored them both. Barrodagh gave her a short bow and tabbed the door open.

  Riolo was grateful for the lengthy journey away from that terrible chamber. He managed to get control of his breathing and to banish the faintness that had threatened to drop him. Though he knew he was still very far from being safe, the more distance put between himself and that place, the more he could regain some semblance of thought. Mindripper! He’d heard the term, but nothing could prepare one for its horrible reality.

  Finally the transport stopped before another pucker in the walls, anonymous like all the others. They entered and Riolo recognized they were in Barrodagh’s work chamber.

  The door squelched shut, leaving Riolo alone, face-to-face with Barrodagh. Riolo fought the urge to swallow, to touch damp palms to his clothing. He would have to proceed with extraordinary caution, after that effective threat.

  “What is this?” Barrodagh tabbed his console.

  The screen flickered.

  Riolo recognized Hreem as he fell onto his bed, reaching with eager hands for the case in which the shestek nested.

  “The Messenger?” Riolo asked, watching Hreem’s bliss.

  “Messenger?” Barrodagh repeated with obvious distaste.

  In the vid the ceiling bulged and a hideous face appeared. Barrodagh and Riolo both watched in silence as a skeleton fell onto the Rifter in a horrible parody of birth.

  Riolo tasted acid at the appearance of the fistulas in the floor, analogous to the cannulae of Barca, and the way the shestek behaved as if it was trying to achieve a passageway in the Under. Hreem wrestled violently with it until it thinned and broke, then he closed the half he’d kept hold of into its nest where it could not reunite itself with its missing part.

  “What is it made of?” Barrodagh was more insistent now.

  On the screen, the still-half-naked Hreem shoved his feet into his heavy boots and began stomping on the skeleton the wall had extruded onto him. Barrodagh had damped the sound, so Riolo could not tell what he was shouting; the Bori
tabbed impatiently and the screen froze on the captain mid-stomp.

  “What is it made of?” he demanded.

  Riolo’s heart accelerated at the insane anger radiating from the Bori. Now he knew why the visit to the mindripper. But, ironically, this vid, by bringing vividly to mind his distant home, had calmed him, enabling him to think rationally again.

  “You will have to address this question to the Matria,” Riolo said. “It is not given to us to understand the secrets of the Labyrinth. I only know that the shestekli are the Messengers of the Matria. We obtain one when we have earned the right.”

  Barrodagh tabbed his console again, and Hreem lifted his feet, backed to the bed, jumped out of his boots, took his hands away from the vibrating shestek case, then fell forward as the two parts of the shestek met. The screen froze, then moved forward, image by image, until the pink forepart disappeared into the floor.

  Riolo’s heart beat painfully.

  “How long have you Barcans been using these things?”

  Riolo shook his head. “They are there, as far back as our history records.”

  With a decisive flick of his hand, the Bori shut down his console. His thin, restless hands picked up a stylus and he played with it idly; Riolo’s gaze shifted to it as he noted how it resembled the steel instrument in the torturer’s hands, and he could not prevent a shudder of memory.

  “You just now met Lord Eusabian’s pesz mas’hadni,” Barrodagh said. “These physicians are trained in all the arts of pain.” He laid the tool down with a decisive clink. “I decided it would save us both time if I showed you the reality of disobedience among Dol’jharians. I know that you Barcans consider us to be barbarians and fools. We may not have your expertise in the manipulation of dataspace, but I assure you, we are not fools. Our skills have gone in other directions, one of which you have just witnessed.”

  Has Tatriman found my workspace?

  Riolo compressed his lips, waiting for word of his future.

  And Barrodagh said, “You know how to program these Ogres you brought. We both know that Hreem will betray anyone and everyone, and I am certain he commanded you to place in them certain safeguards. Lysanter may not have the experience that you do, but he learns very fast.”