A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  Yenef bobbed a brief curtsey, but Vannis could see non-comprehension there as Yenef glanced at the console.

  “No sign of the Aerenarch?”

  Yenef, glad to be moving, tapped the keypads, choosing different discriminators. “No sign of anyone, highness,” she said.

  Vannis tried a last time. “You know that until the Aerenarch’s arrival, the Douloi had relaxed etiquette.” That had been unexpectedly delightful, a sense of adventure and freedom. “Some had arrived with even less than we brought, having been rescued from Highdwellings or planetary enclaves under attack. A few had only what they stood up in.”

  Yenef bobbed her curtsey from behind the console.

  “But with so many coming in, the return to etiquette has been inevitable.” Some might say a desperate grasp at a semblance of normality. “And the most strict rule of all is Mandalic court mode, which we must follow to honor the last living Arkad.”

  Yenef could have recited that lesson herself: the latest court mode, due to the incipient millennial celebration of the Panarchy’s existence, had swung all the way back to the modes popular in the days of Jaspar Arkad, when those who identified as female wore gowns, and those who identified as males wore tunic-jackets of a quasi-military cut, trousers, and boots. Only the actual military was exempt, but they wore their dress uniforms, which also hearkened back to ancient styles.

  “So I need a gown,” Vannis said, as if stating it would make one materialize in her closet. She was already wearing every jewel she had brought, her heavy brown hair dressed elaborately.

  Vannis knew she was waiting for a miracle—for one of her smiling peers to boz her with an apology, and a team of tailors. There were tailors here—some of the bigger yachts had brought stores, tailors, even musicians.

  But no one, it seemed, deemed Vannis important enough to loan her one, now that Semion was dead, and a new Aerenarch had taken his place.

  The symbolism was crudely ineluctable. Her enormous wardrobe at the Mandala, gone. Here, her enormous prestige . . . gone? Scefi and Cartano holdings and clients scattered, dead, blown up, who knew?

  Her funds were fast running out, yet Brandon had still not contacted her, even though she was the closest thing to family he had on Ares. She had found through some discreet checking that the only outside contact Brandon had made had concerned some injured Rifter boy from his rescue ship. His staff, from all reports, consisted merely of a suitable Marine guard, a couple of men (some said Rifters), and a pair of Arkadic dogs rescued from Arthelion.

  He had room for dogs and Rifters, but not for her. Either he was truly the dissipated sot that Semion had always said he was, or he was playing some sort of game.

  It didn’t matter. In either case, humiliation and final failure loomed huge ahead as the Aerenarch-Consort, who had set fashions for the past ten years, contemplated attending the reception in one of the same morning and garden party garments she’d been wearing for weeks.

  “Your highness,” Yenef spoke suddenly. “The Aerenarch is just leaving the Enclave, and there is a vid issued by the Cap with total override. It’s from Arthelion!” She hesitated. “But there’s a warning of graphic content.” She reached for the console again. “I’ll scan the summary . . .”

  “The Aerenarch,” Vannis interrupted. Important things first. “Who’s he with, and what is he wearing?”

  “One other man, highness,” Yenef said. “In a livery I do not recognize. The Aerenarch wears white, with no decoration. I thought at first it was Naval uniform,” she added. “But there is no rank marking, and the wrong buttons.”

  “He can’t be wearing a Naval uniform,” Vannis exclaimed. Wasn’t he thrown out of the Navy? The Academy, anyway.

  Yenef shook her head. “Plain dress, highness.” She tapped her boswell, and the desk holo came to life, showing two male figures walking across the grass toward the central pavilion. The colors were hard to discern because of the darkness; the imager that Yenef had tapped into apparently had poor light enhancers.

  Vannis studied the flattened figures. The tall one in gray could be dismissed. He walked in the place of a bodyguard. Brandon . . .

  Vannis chewed her underlip. His tunic was indeed utterly plain. He didn’t even wear any jewels. What did it mean?

  Doesn’t matter what it means. Killing the image with a sweep of her hand, she turned. “Ah.” She grabbed at the shimmering folds of a much-worn semi-formal afternoon hostess gown in layers of sheer gauzy silk, and ripped away the upper layers of pale blue, revealing the plain white under layers.

  Yenef gasped.

  Their eyes met across the length of the room, mistress and maid. She needs me, Yenef thought, relieved, almost dizzy with the idea that she and Vannis were in some wise conspirators.

  Her thoughts raced as rapidly as her fingers would have to shortly, circling around the word that the steward had used when interviewing her: Loyalty.

  It had always been one of those words that people uttered but that didn’t mean anything to Yenef. ‘Loyalty’ and ‘honor’ and suchlike were play words for the Douloi, who controlled everything. Yenef wanted to make clothes—and become famous for doing it. Ten years of bowing and smiling for the Arkads—ten well-paid years, housed in a palace—would have enabled her to go anywhere and command whatever salary she liked.

  Now she lived in a tiny villa on a military outpost, she had become a maid-of-all-work, and she suspected her pay might abruptly diminish just as her living circumstances had.

  But now. If this ruse of Vannis Scefi-Cartano’s worked, what might it do for Yenef?

  “Do you see?” Vannis asked.

  “Yes, highness,” Yenef said. “If I snip the lace, and satin-stitch the silk here and here . . .” She touched her neck.

  “Do it,” Vannis said, unclasping her jewels and tossing them down. “And find my white morning slippers. No, I will. You sew, and we’ll watch whatever this is the Navy saw fit to send so late, in case we need to know its contents before the reception.”

  Vannis carefully lifted her parure from her high-dressed hair, then touched the console to view the waiting vid as Yenef sat down with needle and thread. For a few moments the needle flashed and flashed again, then slowed and stopped, suspended as both women stilled with shock and horror.

  o0o

  Jaim followed Brandon along the curving path toward the huge, golden-lit pavilion. At the edge of the lake, Brandon paused, Jaim suspected to permit Roget’s teams to sweep the shadowy garden bounding the landward side of their path. From this vantage, the line of villas and the pavilion looked peaceful, untouched by war.

  Under the oneill’s false night the soft, cool air carried the scents of loam and blossoms and fresh water. Jaim could almost believe he was on a planet: high overhead, the patterns of light created by the dwellings on the far side, nine kilometers away, and lights on the structures of the spin axis, simulated the constellations of a planetary sky. He stopped, staring upward, as the essentially Douloi design of Ares manifested itself. The dwellings in the Ares oneill were arranged not only to appeal to people in their proximity but also with an eye to their appearance in the night sky of the opposite surface.

  Brandon had halted a short distance away. He gazed across the water, silhouetted against the upcurving lights twinkling in the darkness, and Jaim, despite a life spent in ships and freefall and Rifthaven, experienced an unsettling shift in paradigm whose impact was subliminally physical: it seemed for that moment as if all the constellations of Ares formed a frame around that single figure.

  The notion was fanciful in fact, but symbolically? Jaim was beginning to fathom how symbolism was used in the Panarchy. The Douloi do nothing without intention. Was awareness of that frame part of this moment for Brandon?

  Jaim waited for Brandon to either move, or to speak. But he stood as water lapped at the shore, and unseen frogs croaked a curious rhythm, half-muffled by the plash of a waterfall. Finally, he turned away from the lake and gazed at the brilliantly lit pavilio
n, a lacework of graceful lines that could never have withstood real weather, though he took no step toward it.

  “It’s time to go,” Brandon said.

  An observation or an order? Was it now, on the cusp of Brandon’s re-entry into the world of the Douloi, that Jaim’s status was to change?

  If so, could he accept that?

  Time to test. Jaim did not answer, but swept the low bow that Vahn had taught him, servant to sovereign.

  Brandon’s thoughts had run on a trajectory that looped memory into the present until Jaim performed that deliberate bow, stiff because it wasn’t yet body memory, but graceful because Ulanshu masters were rarely otherwise. Brandon sensed the question, and underneath the deeper question of possible personal betrayal. As with every single move, every breath, there were a thousand potential paths, and too many of his choices had led to betrayal or death.

  There was only one possible response. Brandon swept the exact same bow to Jaim, to the same precise degree. “Nothing has changed, Jaim.” Brandon opened his hand, taking in the station curving overhead. “Just a bigger prison.”

  “So you really can’t get Vi’ya and the crew out?”

  “That is no mere prison.” Brandon’s brows lifted. “I’ll have you know that Detention Five is a golden cage; among its more illustrious inmates was one Krysarchei Dalisay, who launched a war against her father, one of my less savory forebears.”

  The reference obviously meant nothing to Jaim, but he took the intent. “It was as much as I could do,” Brandon continued. “Any more vigorous attempt might have meant losing all power to help them further.”

  “Or yourself.”

  “Or myself.” Brandon’s quick smile deepened the shadows framing his mouth. “All the Tetrad Centrum Douloi practice Ulanshu, although too many know it only as a thing of will and intellect.”

  He saw the meaning strike home, and waited.

  “And you’ve not been interrogated,” said Jaim slowly. “Unless . . .”

  Brandon shook his head. “No. You are my sworn man; you would be told.”

  The Rifter echoed his movement, the minor chimes in his mourning braids singing out. “If you say so.”

  “It is part of the dance. And I don’t know the steps yet.”

  Jaim’s chimes sounded again. “Dance? You have to be clear if you want me to understand. Unless you mean, if you step outside of the ‘dance’ of politics, that frees everyone else to do the same.”

  Brandon let out his breath in a gusting sigh. “Yes—friend and enemy. As yet, I don’t know who is which. But to be plain, to rule I have to give a first order, and if they refuse to obey it, then I am finished. The Panarchy is finished. And everyone—” The airy gesture took in the Cap and the golden pavilion. “And they know it.”

  o0o

  After she tied off the last stitch, Yenef let her hands rest in her lap.

  The needle fell unremarked from her hand and slithered to the floor with a quiet tic. The sound, soft as it was, startled her out of the grip of horror.

  She slowly held up her handiwork. At any other moment her dominant emotion would have been triumph, but the memories were too harrowing for that.

  Yenef started again as the annunciator sounded. Vannis took the gown from her, and slipped it over her head as Yenef hurried to answer the door.

  Though she’d spent weeks aboard Rista Brandt’s yacht, the woman rushed right past as if Yenef were invisible.

  “Vannis, do hurry, the reception has begun.” Rista tried to catch her breath. Really, every day seemed to become more like a wiredream. When she saw Vannis, she gasped. “Vannis? Why are you still not dressed?”

  Vannis stared back at Rista, whose round, pleasing figure was enhanced by a glittering gown of pale lavender, sprinkled across by diamonds, kauch-pearls, and deep violet tizti stones, her pale hair dressed high, circled by a coronet of faceted tizti. Delicate filigree bracelets encircled her charmingly dimpled arms and her neck.

  Vannis treasured Rista’s uncomplicated friendship, but sometimes thought that Rista still dwelt in the peculiar mental landscape of their shared youth. Vannis said, “Did you not see the vid from Arthelion?”

  The young woman raised her hand, reddish fires flickering in the hearts of the tizti stones set in the filigree around her boswell. “Oh, that. So revolting! I only watched a part. NorSothu says it’s completely fake, nothing more than Dol’jharian—”

  Rista stopped as she realized that Vannis was not, as she had assumed, half-dressed: that what she’d taken as an under-gown was in fact what Vannis intended to wear. Though a cook-servant would scorn to wear so plain a thing.

  Well, if a cook-servant could afford those diaphanous layers of silk, or hire someone to achieve that fit. Rista had to admit that the plain white gown suited Vannis’s warm cinnamon complexion. Her heavy brown hair was swept up simply, bound only with a thin strand of pearls. Tiny as she was, she looked like a girl.

  “What have you done?” Rista demanded, her jeweled shoes clattering on the parquet floor. Then she gasped, and clutched at her neck. “You haven’t heard something—that is, they haven’t gotten word from the Panarch? About formal mourning?”

  “Of course not,” Vannis said soothingly, pitying anyone who would give NorSothu nyr-Kaddes’s chatter credence. They want that atrocious vid to be fake, so they will pretend that it is until someone has the bad manners to contradict them. “Your appearance is entirely correct, since no one directly connected to you is dead, and official mourning has not been declared.”

  Rista sighed, plumping down onto a chair. “That’s what Matir Masaud said, but it could always have been a mislead, to make trouble.” She blinked at Vannis. “Really, there’s never been anything like this before, has there?” She frowned. “But what you’re wearing!” She gestured, her rings flashing. “What does it mean?”

  “Personal mourning. Rista, whether true or false, the vid corroborates the fact that we are at war. Is it not time to retrench?”

  Rista bit her underlip, then breathed a soft laugh. “If you carry this off, NorSothu will be furious. I hear she’s brought out some embroidered thing she had made for their Archon’s funeral. It will be the most elaborate gown there; the cost, Matir said, was ruinous. Her brother’s got a Hopfneriad wig—complete with butterflies in mourning white.” Rista’s hands fluttered about her head. “But Vannis, we’re going to be late, which I know wouldn’t matter, except aren’t you one of the hosts?”

  Vannis could have said several things about her supposed co-hosts, but she confined herself to: “That’s just it, we agreed there would be no host, since we pooled our resources, and the Burgess Pavilion itself is understood to belong to the Arkads when in residence. The focus, quite properly, should be on Brandon.”

  Rista said, “You say that so naturally, ‘Brandon.’ None of us have ever met him—and he has such a reputation!”

  Vannis let her talk on as they walked out. She covertly glanced at her boswell, which relayed the imager straight to her retina. Brandon was still standing there by the lake as thought he’d completely lost his wits. He had to have a full complement of functionaries—were they unable to keep him sober?

  Not that it mattered. He moved at last, and walked straight toward the Pavilion. At least he was arriving alone, for she again discounted the tall man at his side.

  So she must arrive alone. But here was Rista, from a minor Douloi family far outside the Tetrad Centrum, intending to attach herself to Vannis once again. I’ve given you prestige ever since our arrival. She owed Rista that much for saving her life, however inadvertently.

  She and Rista stepped out onto the lamp-lit slide walk. An aromatic breeze riffled through their hair and clothing as the slide whispered its way toward the pavilion halfway around the lake. Vannis checked her boswell twice while Rista’s royal gossip wandered to how that horrid Basilea, Risiena Ghettierus, had refused to take her husband into her quarters after he’d revealed he was not to live at the Arkadic Enclave.<
br />
  Vannis laughed along with Rista; she had found out by careful listening to lower-level Naval flunkies well plied with liquor that the gnostor Omilov had been invited to take up residence with the High Phanist.

  But that left the Arkadic Enclave with exactly one inmate, as servants and staff did not count. Why is Brandon still alive, when all rumors point to everyone else at his Enkainion dead?

  She stared across the dark landscape at the Enclave, an elegantly rambling enlargement of the manor of the Temenarch Ghodsi Illyahin, who had willed her oneill to the Navy eight hundred years before as housing for the occasional visits of Panarchs and Kyriarchs.

  I wish I’d bedded Brandon in spite of Semion, Vannis thought. Brandon was by far the best looking of Arkad sons, and he’d shown an interest in her ten years ago, but Semion had been very clear on the subject. You will stay away from my youngest brother, he’d said in that cold, dispassionate voice. He’d added with faint distaste, He’s stupid and lazy, and what’s worse, a drunken sot. I will not have the Family made a target for the coarse-minded.

  A drunk could not be trusted for discretion, and anyway the idea that that handsome face had no wit behind it had killed her interest. Some might have a taste for beautiful dolls, but that was not one of her vices.

  The slide walk stopped and they stepped off before the huge arches of the pavilion. Music drifted out, below laughter and the tinkling of crystal. The sounds of impending battle. Vannis smiled in the darkness. The ballroom was her theater of war. Another quick check on her boswell: her timing was perfect.

  So far.

  Now for my deflection. Who? Vannis scanned the main antechamber as she and Rista crossed the polished marble. Ah! Vannis recognized a Chival from Octant Sud with whom she’d once had a flirtation.

  “My dear Joffri!” She advanced on him, hands out. He stopped, his companions deferring as Vannis pressed his hands in the mode of intimates. “I am so glad to see you safely arrived. Do you know Rista?” She introduced them both by title, gave them long enough to see that their rank was matched, then uttered a little cry of dismay. “Do go on ahead, both of you?” She touched her boswell. “A crisis—I promised my aid—and you know how unforgivable it is to deal with these things once inside. Do not let me keep you even later!”