A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  His clothes were rumpled, as if he’d been up all night, and his hair, too long for the latest court fashion, still lay tousled on his neck.

  She stepped inside the room, casting a quick glance around; would he, with a freezing urbanity, introduce her to some lover, relaxed on a sofa in borrowed robes and smiling with pride of possession?

  Then her eyes found the tall Rifter in gray. His long face was marked with exhaustion. Is that it, then? But of course. She remembered that Brandon had been paired with that L’Ranja heir before they were both kicked out of the Academy. So: men, then. The question was, men only?

  “Coffee, certainly, Your Highness,” she said. “I take it you have an unlimited supply?”

  “Comes with the location.” He made an apologetic gesture. “And in here, we can dispense with the titles.” Which dispensed entirely with formality—leaving the way for intimacy.

  The Rifter moved with soundless steps to the wall console and worked there. But we’re not alone, Brandon.

  Approaching the question obliquely, she sat on a low chair and arranged her skirts about her as she said, “Semion preferred the amenities observed whatever the hour or place.” “Even in private?” he can say, and I can hint that we’re not private, and thus get him to send out the lover. Then I’ll know his status.

  “He would.” Brandon sat down opposite her and smiled. His eyes, unlike Semion’s steel-gray ones, were very blue—the same color as the long-dead Kyriarch’s, who had once been close to Vannis’s mother. “I’ve always wanted to know something. Did you ever set foot in his fortress on Narbon?”

  He had not followed her lead. That steady blue gaze jolted old emotions, and his unexpected question intensified the effect, but it still left the way open for intimacy.

  She gave her head a shake, conscious of her loosened hair spilling about her shoulders. Tiny golden chimes on the gem in her hair tinkled. “Only for certain formal affairs. But I was escorted to the formal hall, and then straight back to his private yacht. I never saw the Official Mistress, though I’d hoped to meet her to commiserate.”

  Brandon laughed.

  She smiled, then said, “You?”

  “Oh, yes. Galen and I were both summoned to the Presence.”

  She leaned toward him conspiratorially. “What was it like? Surely he didn’t have a suite for me?”

  Brandon nodded, his smile wry. “Brought me out there once. To teach me discipline, I think. I evaded his watch hounds long enough to take a tour. His suite was enormous, and right next to it another, twin to his, complete down to the clothing in the closet and, I realize now, the scents in the tianqi. All yours.”

  “He was always correct when it came to appearance, I must say.” She put her chin on her hand. “How do you know which scents I like?”

  “Distinctive blend of blossoms and spice,” he said. “I noticed them when we were dancing.”

  Now would be the time for him to move, and she was ready. They were close to the same age, and she’d always thought him attractive. The easiest way to twine herself into his life would be through seduction.

  But he made no move, and from behind crystal rang and silver clinked quietly on porcelain. The Rifter at work.

  Vannis idly ran her thumb over the silken edge of a pillow, aware of Brandon observing her. Did he like what he saw?

  Brandon watched her watching him, and suppressed disappointment. She was beautiful, and had he a mind for dalliance, it would be easy enough to respond to her delicate invitation, but was it idleness or avarice that prompted her?

  Vannis decided that it was time for a general question. If he wants to be personal he’ll bring the subject back. “Semion didn’t keep the singer in the servants’ quarters?”

  “No. Sara had her own wing. I don’t think she was ever in his suite, either.” Brandon’s light voice was very hard to interpret.

  He can’t be angry. She looked up, startled.

  He said abruptly, “Did you know that Galen wanted to marry Sara?”

  Vannis’s expression flickered between surprise and . . . control, an assumption of pity. “I knew that she had been with Galen first, but word in Arthelion was that Semion had seduced her away. Which surprised people—”

  She let the sentence drift.

  Brandon’s sardonic smile recalled his eldest brother to mind for a sharply unsettling moment. “I met her at Galen’s Enkainion. She was probably the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in holo or person, and her voice made one forget her face. I’m sure Semion found that added inducement, but the truth was, he forced Galen’s compliance by taking Sara away that night. They never saw one another again.”

  The subject was of little interest to Vannis; she reached for Brandon’s motivation in introducing it. “So that’s what happened. I remember that the Panarch was not pleased with his heir, but the only gossip I could rely on was that Semion was furious when Galen refused the marriage contract Semion was negotiating for Galen with the Masaud heir.”

  Brandon lifted his chin in corroboration. “My dreamy brother didn’t even seem to be a part of the same universe. Political boundaries were nothing to him, and he had inherited my father’s predilection for monogamy.”

  Vannis watched the long hands, the distracted smile. Brandon was waiting for something. She said, “And so Semion took her away, and confined Galen to Talgarth.”

  Brandon opened his hand in agreement, and for the sake of friendship, which he needed so badly, he offered her a truth he had never intended to tell anyone but Markham once he reached Dis. “I spent most of the following five years trying to concoct some way of springing her.”

  She stared in surprise. His face was still abstracted, his voice so light it was hard to hear. It was a strange thing to say, and it might even be true. One thing she was certain of: Brandon was not as stupid as she’d been led to believe.

  But it was time to shift the subject from the dead to what mattered now.

  She said, matching his tone exactly, “You wanted to rescue Galen’s singer and I wanted to rescue my mother from Desrien.”

  As a transition, it was peerless. He could now stretch out his hand, whether out of pity, or lust, or sympathy, or shared grief, and make the first move—or what he could think of as the first move, if making the first move was important to him—and thereafter the subject would be Vannis and Brandon.

  She was pleased with her wording and tone, for these transitions were an art—a gift—and had never failed her.

  But as soon as she saw his face, she knew that it was the wrong answer.

  Not that he said, or did, anything overt. He smiled, but the politesse was back, the Douloi mask that shielded thoughts and motives, leaving her farther outside his personal boundary than she had ever been.

  Inside that mask, Brandon hid the sharp disappointment. Vannis seemed to need, or want, a lover, and he needed, and wanted, an ally. Gesturing at the trays Jaim set before them, he said, “Breakfast?”

  As she leaned forward to choose among the gently steaming delicacies, she acknowledged her disappointment while refusing to regard this visit as defeat. But though she strove mightily during the rest of the interview, using smiles, charm, and even—briefly—a return to the subject of the dead singer whom Galen had loved, Brandon did not re-emerge from behind the superlative mask of Arkad politesse.

  It was subtle but ineluctable. They conversed over a number of topics. She exerted herself to be entertaining, and found that his interests ranged wide indeed, that in fact he had not wasted all of the ten years since his expulsion from the Naval Academy in drink, smoke, and sex, as it had appeared from the outside. She had often professed a fondness for history, but she was hard put to recognize names and quotations that came so easily to his tongue, and twice she sensed he would have initiated a debate but she had not the facts or the background to rebut, and she floundered, laughing out loud against the early hour—against her own laziness—but inside she railed against her own ignorance.

 
In truth, though she had not gained what she came for, she was not bored; in fact, the visit ended well before she was ready. And again there was nothing overt, no sign or signal that she could point to, but she was aware of the Rifter again—he had never gone—and Brandon’s patient but tired face, and she found herself rising to leave, protesting that the day was advancing and she would be late for promised appointments.

  Brandon also rose, which he did not have to do (and Semion had never done), and he smiled—but he let her go.

  As she trod back down the garden path, she breathed deeply of the misty air, looking about her at the splendid gardens without really seeing them. Her mind was back an hour, sorting, sifting the reason for the regret, almost a sense of loss.

  I love a challenge, she thought as she turned away from the slide walk and chose a secluded garden path. If he’d come to me when I beckoned, it would not have been half so fun. And I’ve learned much this first visit, for it is only the first.

  She counted up the things she’d learned: she knew that he was not stupid. She knew that he had detested Semion as well, but he’d loved his middle brother. She knew he read history, that he was familiar with the writings of his forebears, that he loved music—they had come back, time and again, to music.

  She knew that rescuing his brother’s lover had been important to him and that she had missed a cue in not perceiving why.

  Regret. It was the very first time she had felt this particular response.

  She stopped on a little rise. A breeze ruffled the folds of her gown. Clasping her fingers about her bare arms above her elbows, she remembered his words about the tianqi on Narbon: a distinctive blend of blossoms and spice.

  She wished that she had identified the tianqi scents in the Enclave, then remembered there weren’t any, that the doors stood open to the garden and the air moving over the lake. As for Brandon’s personal scents, she had not been close enough to him to identify them.

  Her hands slid up her arms to her shoulders, and she stood there hugging them close, her chin pressed hard against her wrist. She fought an urge to turn around and look back toward the Enclave, to see if the tall, slim, dark-haired figure would be lounging in the doorway again.

  He won’t be.

  This, too, she acknowledged, and then walked on with brisk steps.

  SEVEN

  ABOARD THE FIST OF DOL’JHAR

  Anaris laid aside his dirazh’u and sat back. “Do you believe your prophecy?”

  The alteration in the Panarch’s countenance was subtle, no more than a change of the light reflecting in his eyes as his chin lifted a fraction.

  “My predictions to your father?” Gelasaar asked, humor relaxing his face. “One of the first topics of discussion when my advisers and I were reunited was the end of that interview.”

  “You don’t remember it?”

  “Not that portion. From my perspective, the shock collar was effective.” Gelasaar’s neck was marked with the still-healing purple scars. “But to answer your question: I don’t know. I think I told you, did I not once? that my mother twice dreamed about war just before an incursion by the Shiidran Hordes. Yet she admitted that she’d also dreamed, before she implemented my conception, that she would bear a daughter.” His eyes narrowed with amusement. “What do you think?”

  Anaris picked up his dirazh’u again and toyed with its ends. “I think that I will enjoy watching to see who is right.”

  ARES

  The flicker of vertigo that presaged a contact from the Eya’a unsettled Vi’ya. Closing down her console with a quick gesture, she shut her eyes and put her head in her hands.

  The Eya’a’s excitement seared along her nerves, making the contact almost painful, like a neural-induction boswell set too high.

  Eya’a can hear the sleeper’s-listenstone, but the walls around admit no passage.

  They have been trying to get at the captured hyperwave, she thought. Their focus hadn’t been this consistently intense since the Arkad brought the Heart of Kronos to Dis.

  Can you hear human-words from the sleeper’s-listenstone?

  Eya’a hear the current of words but not the words. Eya’a need touch.

  What emotions did Eya’a hear concerning Eya’a and the sleeper’s-listenstone?

  We hear fear, we hear chaos. And then a shock ran through them, searing her mind: We hear the eye-of-the-distant-sleeper.

  Where?

  Distant, distant, and moves . . . Their anxiety level rose abruptly, and she was aware of the high, chilling chatter of their speech, used only at times of great stress, or ceremony.

  This was no ceremony.

  Bad sign, Vi’ya thought, fighting the inevitable pang of headache. To give them another direction, she formed an inquiry: Do you hear the ones you call Telvarna-hive?

  We hear. We celebrate recognition of Telvarna-hive ones among the many. We hear one-with-three—

  Ivard. Thanks to the mysterious bond between the Kelly and the Eya’a, Vi’ya also heard Ivard’s thoughts—and she knew he often heard hers, though he did not seem to identify them as hers yet, except when she consciously tried to reach him.

  The Eya’a described Ivard’s dreams through their own perception, then went through the rest of her crew. Except for their calling her Vi’ya, the One-Who-Hears, they did not use humans’ names, but identified them by description.

  We hear the moth-one, who contemplates cessation-in-hive, in anger . . .

  Lokri. Locked away by the Panarchists in the maximum-security Detention One, under a charge of murder. So far, only Jaim and Marim had seen him, for very short visits.

  We hear the one-making-music-and-food, who contemplates the danger of cessation of the one-who-gives-fire-stone. . . .

  So Montrose had recognized the new dangers that faced Brandon Arkad here, eh? She was not surprised.

  She hesitated, sensing the edge of a precipice. But the danger in this method of inquiry about the Arkad’s mental state was only to herself, so she persisted:

  And the one-who-gives-fire-stone?

  The one-who-gives-fire-stone contemplates the patterns that move the metal hives between worlds—

  And far away, she barely perceived a whisper of thought, carried over the familiar high-energy emotional signature: she could, if she concentrated, hear him.

  She forced her attention away.

  The one-in-flight moves in a small metal hive. . . .

  The Eya’a abruptly abandoned Marim.

  Comes Nivi’ya.

  “Another-One-Who-Hears.”

  Vi’ya had only moments to fight off the vertigo of psi-contact before the annunciator emitted its flat chime. This was the man who had visited the Eya’a at Eloatri’s request, the first human to communicate with them other than herself.

  That request had been a shock that caused an inward struggle Vi’ya had had to hide. She had no exclusive claim to the Eya’a, but had become so used to being the only one to communicate with them that her proprietary attitude had become unconscious habit.

  So she’d listened from a distance until they nearly caused the new mind to shut down. Glad that they were not present, Vi’ya tabbed the door open.

  It was startling to see another Dol’jharian, even one wearing the robes of one of the Panarchist Colleges. Tall for one of her people, the old man ducked his head under the door frame as he entered. He was broad in shoulders and chest, and dark of hair and face, and his long beard did not mask the distinctive hawk nose, strong cheekbones, and deep-set eye sockets common to mainland Dol’jharians. The difference, besides the robes, was the incongruously gentle expression in his seamed face.

  “I was sent by the High Phanist,” he said in greeting, and then in Dol’jharian, “and I, too, am a descendant of the Chorei who fled the Children of Dol.”

  Meeting another tempath was always difficult, but the reference to the Chorei, so soon after a contact with the Eya’a, made it especially so. Desrien. Intense memory flooded her mind, causing a shock of in
decipherable reaction from the Eya’a. She wrenched her focus to the tall Dol’jharian waiting patiently before her.

  She could feel the strength of his own focus, a rarity that made her hackles stir. Sharp was the instinct to fight or flee, but she forced herself to use her senses to listen, to evaluate.

  The reward was a steadying sense of personal identity. His emotional signature was powerful—had to be, as she knew her own was—and baffling in its complexity. But she did not find the skin-crawling twist that characterized Hreem’s pet tempath Norio Danali, or the invasive caresses given off by a certain prominent club owner on Rifthaven, whose dedication to the pleasures of the senses was famed.

  In fact, though she could feel the strength of his focus, it did not trigger her danger sense, any more than she felt danger when the deck plates beneath her feet vibrated with power during the shift to fiveskip.

  The silence had grown protracted. Yet her guest seemed content to wait for her to finish her assessment.

  It was a gesture more potent than mere words. She said, “I am Vi’ya, in Eya’a-speech One-Who-Hears. Before my escape, I was called Death-Eyes.” She heard a faint ripple of fear-reaction from the Eya’a, inevitable when she recollected her childhood.

  His head inclined, equal-to-equal. “I was before my own escape Manderian rahal’Khesteli, of the House of Nojhrian.”

  “Nojhrian. Shipbuilders,” she said.

  He bowed his head. “I was content enough to work with ship design, and hide my talents from my mother’s pesz mas’hadni, until my sister decided it was time to begin the war for the succession.” He smiled. “My talents saved me, and my knowledge of ships bought my freedom from the planet.” He shook his head. “It is a bankrupt culture, and there are more of us than the overlords realize. Do you know aught of the history of the Chorei? Not,” he added, “the karra-cursed lies they taught us as children, but the truth?”

  She hesitated. There were histories, untainted by the lies of the Children of Dol; she’d accessed them here on Ares. But the intent of his question reached beyond that. The vision from her stay on Desrien loomed again, with near-paralyzing clarity: the asteroid glow descending so slowly over the eastern sea, heralding the destruction of the island-dwelling Chorei at the hands of the mainland Dol’jharians—but that memory would not be spoken. “Enough,” she said.