Several people joined the little group, so Faseult turned his mind to duty and started circulating, grimly focusing on each conversation he passed. Politics.
Haesterfeldt and Oskandir did not command the presence of the cruiserweights in the social arena. The highest rank present was Charidhe Masaud, and it was easy to see why she had condescended to attend a party with Tetrad Centrum Douloi with minor political influence: she was trying to force young Geoff Masaud to gain a little polish. But it was equally obvious that Geoff’s worst enemy was not his awkward body and preternatural sensitivity so much as his mother’s angry hovering. Before long, Geoff had retreated to the far end of the room, half-hidden by a bank of nodding blooms, his untouched plate lying in his lap. His mother held pride of place near the hostess and led the conversation, punctuating it with titters of angry laughter.
But then the steward appeared at the door and announced in a deadpan voice that did not hide his disbelief: “His Highness the Aerenarch.”
Exclamations were smothered by the rustle of costly materials as everyone rose; Faseult almost dropped his plate. Though he was certain Brandon was invited to every single party on Ares, no one had expected him to show up at this one.
But there he was, dressed for the role in pale blue and silver, apparently unaware of the heightening of energy in the crowded little room. His reason for coming was soon apparent; Besthan Haesterfeldt’s delight reminded Anton that the woman had been a friend of the Kyriarch’s.
But once his respects were paid, he did not leave, as might be expected. He looked about, greeted several by name, and sat down with a drink in hand.
“We were talking,” Charidhe Masaud said, “of the new historical play by Elissa Beynset, agreeing that Mandala tastes might find it backward, yet it had its entertaining moments.”
Several shots there, Faseult thought, entertained in spite of the fact that he liked young Brandon, and he did not like any of the Masauds he’d met.
But Brandon appeared to be either unaware of veiled insult, or impervious. “The part that made me laugh was the heroine’s description of the dream-demon, and the eavesdropping prince thinking it a description of himself.”
Murmurs of appreciation sounded round the circle, and they exercised their wit in dissecting the play. After Charidhe aimed two or three barbed shafts at Brandon (whose ignorance of innuendo was either stupidity or masterly deflection, as he agreed with everything she said) the conversation ranged to whom in Mandala circles Beynset was digging her quill into.
Midway into this discussion Brandon began to make his way to the refreshment table, pausing to exchange brief words with everyone.
The general conversation had switched to the latest names in kinetic art when Brandon finished loading a plate, but instead of making his way back to the favored side of the room, he chose a bench near Geoff Masaud.
Every room had its central point, but if the highest in rank did not choose that prerogative, it often unhinged conversation.
Not at once. Charidhe Masaud had assumed leadership again, delivering a stinging opinion of the lapse in public taste now that more and more people favored holographic accompaniments to music. Defenders and attackers spoke up. More than one glance was sent Brandon’s way, the topic taking on a significance it wouldn’t have had before his arrival.
He didn’t seem to hear because he was talking to Geoff.
Faseult gulped down his last pastry, and with his empty plate as his shield, made his way to the table. As he contemplated the cakes, he listened to the adolescent snicker, followed by Brandon’s voice: “No, we really did use the mechwaiters.”
Faseult took a step nearer. Brandon went on. “Picture this. The Tarkans in their servo-armor . . .” He mimed heavy mechanized steps. “The mechs load up . . . clang . . . whizz . . . splat! A helmet full of glop. Two of them move blindly toward each other, and . . .” He pinched a pastry, causing filling to squirt out.
Geoff snickered again. “That’s the way the Rifter told it, at the f-free-fall gym,” he stuttered. “Some s-said he made it up.”
“Truth.” Brandon held his hand up, palm out. “I programmed the mech-waiters myself—my brother Galen and I used to program ’em so we could duel each other with nasty pies.”
“I heard that story.” It was another youngster, a tall weedy girl who’d sat on the fringes at the other end of the room. “But—” She looked serious. “Did you really let the Rifters loot the Palace Major, Your Highness?”
“Only the Ivory Antechamber,” Brandon said. “And every one of those items is cataloged. I’ll buy them back someday.”
Geoff mumbled something, as a group of the girl’s friends joined them.
Brandon laughed. “Yes, my plan exactly. And what better use for Eusabian’s treasury?”
Two new voices joined in the laughter.
“So who else has a good escape story?” Brandon asked, looking around the small group of teens.
Faseult gave up his pretense of not listening, and leaned against the table, observing as, too gradually for it to be perceived as a social coup, the conversational matrix shifted to center around Brandon and Geoff Masaud. Reminiscences—comedic and tragic—gave way to talk of what had been left behind. The exchange was cathartic as Douloi, so adept at hiding, talked frankly of what they had lost.
The subject stayed with material things, but the emotional undertone was loss as well—losses shared, pointing the way to unity. As Anton Faseult listened to the light voice reacting in a tone to complement each speaker’s, he experienced one of those taps or tugs of memory, too brief to identify.
So he watched, surprised to hear the stuttering, clumsy Masaud boy reveal an intense fascination with piloting; he and Brandon exchanged a fast discussion of the technical specs of several atmospheric craft. Brandon might have remembered those from his Academy days, but where would Geoff Masaud have learned such? Brandon’s sympathy, his subtle encouragement, seemed to go right past the mother, who hovered nearby, her thin cheeks flushed. Was she angry at being supplanted? Or pleased to find her son for once at the center of a social circle?
Perhaps Charidhe herself did not know—for when Brandon left a little while after, she was on his arm, her gangling son walking close by his other side, and the last sound was Geoff’s adolescent bray mingling with the Aerenarch’s hearty laughter.
Faseult stayed a while longer, contemplating how all the energy and light seemed to have gone out of the room, as those left behind began bozzing friends and relations.
Charidhe was also bozzing, gracefully begging pardon for her anticipated late arrival at a gathering as she carried the Aerenarch off.
Her idea was to form a very exclusive impromptu party around him, but her plan dissolved when they came face to face with some of the guests she had just excused herself from, and during the mingled greetings and mutual compliments, Brandon expertly extricated himself, and made his way down a garden path toward the lake, shadowed by his Marine guard—and watched by Vannis Scefi-Cartano, who had received four bozzes.
She had left that same Name Day party when Charidhe arrived, and now she watched the lakeside path through enhancers.
She surveyed the entire lake, her eye caught by a young man debarking from the transtube near the Enclave.
“Omilov,” she murmured, recognizing the straight back and the big ears. What business had a mere lieutenant with Brandon? Osri Omilov had been there twice in as many days.
Though he’d spent the most time with Brandon, he was useless. If Omilov knew anything about the mystery of Brandon’s escape from the Enkainion holocaust, he wouldn’t talk, and he never attended any but the most general functions—and then he stood with the Navy brass, or the old gnostor.
Brandon did not turn down the path leading toward the Enclave. Instead he wandered, apparently aimlessly, along the lakeside.
In the direction of her villa.
She slapped her enhancer into its case and opened the garden door. Damn those Dol’
jharians for broadcasting that obscenity in the Throne Room of the Mandala. Semion’s bodiless head haunted her dreams now.
Much as she had detested Semion, she believed the remnants of the Panarchy desperately needed his ability to wield power, to command ships to go this way and that, defeat the Dol’jharian monsters, and restore life to normal—restore me to my old position.
But even if we manage to reestablish ourselves . . .
Things still wouldn’t be normal, and that was her worst fear. Before Santos Daimonaskos walked out of a lock into space on hearing from Hesthar al’Gessinav that his metals refinery, in mid-space in the Konigvalt system, had been blown apart by Rifters acting for Eusabian of Dol’jhar, Vannis had not thought about the second, bloodless war that had been triggered by the first: the economic one. Hesthar undoubtedly had clever agents in place, who would protect those of her interests not destroyed by the enemy fleet, but some people had come to realize that even if their homes might not be touched, their industries might.
On impulse she touched her boswell and sent a message to Brandon. To her surprise, he responded immediately. (You bozzed me?)
(Forgive me: Danaerik brooking over the ruins. It was an impulse, a need for converse free of the bindings of Court.)
It didn’t matter, she told herself, what he said, this do-nothing third son of Gelasaar-who-might-still-live, but still her heart rate accelerated and she did not breathe until, after an endless pause, his answer came back.
(I happen to be in your vicinity. Would you like a visit?)
He had been elusive for weeks—and now it was so easy!
He arrived not long after, and Vannis, having dismissed Yenef on an errand likely to take hours, opened the door herself, glad it was the Marine with him instead of the long-faced Rifter. The Marine’s abstract gaze was easily ignored; he knew the rules, and stayed unobtrusively at a proper distance. The Rifter with his tinkling Serapisti mourning braids . . . watched.
“Morning, Vannis.” Brandon stepped through the garden door. “I didn’t see you at the Name Day.”
“I was among the first guests.” She smiled and held both hands out, the pose one of deference but her manner inviting—daring—intimacy. Brandon pressed her hands together between his and brought them up to kiss her fingers. Not with Srivashti’s lingering possessiveness, but lightly.
“Something to drink?” Vannis asked. One had to say something while the Marine made his circuit of the room.
“Thanks, no,” he said, waiting politely for her to invite him to sit.
Unwanted, an image of Semion crossed her inner vision, so she laid her hand on the door latch. “Let’s walk,” she said.
Politesse in Semion, and Srivashti, was a weapon; in Brandon it seemed innate. There was no irony in this wordless gesture of deference, and a stray memory of her mother surfaced, her distant gaze as she said, Vannis, there is no longer any point of contact between me and those in power who use manners as a weapon.
But Gelasaar never used manners as a weapon, Vannis told that old shade.
And Brandon had never possessed any power.
She reached the little bridge over a tumbling stream. The chuckle of the water sounded peaceful, though it did nothing to soothe her tension.
She cast a sidewise glance. He was taller than she remembered, and the blue gaze, so oblique on the ballroom floor, was both direct and acute: she had not succeeded in gaining his attention in general gatherings, but she had it now.
Nerves flaring, she glanced around for a topic, any topic, and waved at the flickering silver fish below. “Are they real or mere holos, do you think?”
His gaze shifted to the stream, and she could think again. Her focus sharpened to how his lashes hid the entire iris; the diffuse light outlining the curve of his cheek; his light breathing.
“They’re real,” he said. “At least, the ones at our side of the lake are. Ducks, too.” He flashed a grin. “Jaim and I sometimes throw vegetable trimmings to ’em. They catch ’em out of the air.”
“Brandon.” His name was out before she thought, but if he noticed the lack of title, he betrayed no sign. “About the government. We cannot live long with chaos,” she said quickly.
The oblique look was back: one moment his face was smiling and boyish, the next smiling and impervious as steel. All the mirth had vanished from his countenance.
But he said nothing, so, with a distracted glance around for the Marine—who was, quite properly, not in sight—she went on, “There are whispers of some kind of intercepted message from the Dol’jharians.” And when his gaze flicked up and he asked, “Whispers? From whom?”
“I don’t know. I hear it all over. Listen, I fear there might not be time to rescue your father if something is not done soon.” Will you act? Or must we act for you?
She had not understood until she said it that she wanted him to act, wanted him to take control. Ambition placed her in Srivashti’s group, but emotion, so ill-defined and difficult to control, wished for Brandon to take his rightful place.
With me by his side.
Blood sang in her ears; she did not breathe.
He spoke in the light, timbreless voice of the ballroom floor. “I have great faith in our ability to rescue him.”
A statement that couldn’t be more fatuous.
He really is a political innocent, she thought, and her dilemma was decided. He could never withstand a Regency coup. Ambition was satisfied: she would keep silent about the cabal, and let events take their natural course.
Which left the way open for pure emotion.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I—hope he’ll be rescued, of course.” And turned to face him.
Now came a rush of doubt-impelled images: Srivashti, when he was displeased; Semion’s sneering face.
Her palms were clammy, her blood sang in her ears. “Stay,” she said voicelessly.
In the angle of his head, and the one half-lifted hand, there was caution.
“No one need know,” she said quickly. “Or if they do, you can cut me dead tomorrow, for I will never ask you again.” She reached to pull the jeweled clasp from her hair, which fell down about her shoulders as she opened her hand with a quick gesture. The jewels glittered, then splashed into the stream. “Today, just you and me.”
He looked down at glinting jewels in the stream, and she read faint regret in his movements, and fighting desolation, she said, “You’re not thinking of Semion.”
It was entirely instinctive, a breach of the impervious shield maintained by the Douloi, but the quick flicker of Brandon’s eyelids revealed his own reaction.
“Though he haunts me everywhere else,” she said in a low, quick voice, “his ghost does not haunt my bedroom. Semion never slept with me. Ever. He wouldn’t. Because . . .”
Brandon smiled, a sweet smile she had never seen, and took her hand in his warm clasp. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Your other ghosts can rest in peace.”
He walked inside with her and shut the door.
FOUR
Ng stood in the background, watching with appreciation the pas de deux of politesse as Nyberg welcomed the Aerenarch to his office.
“Thank you for taking the time to visit, Your Highness,” the admiral said. “We recently decoded this communication from the Mandala, sent over the hyperwave, and I wondered if you might be able to clarify it.”
They turned to the screen, where an unidentified Bori in Dol’jharian service gray appeared. He bowed profoundly to the imager, then said in an obsequious voice, in accented Uni, “Senz lo’Barrodagh, I regret having to report increasing difficulties here with the Tarkan units. The, ah, the incidents—” He pronounced the word carefully. “—are increasing. And Dektasz Jesserian insists I contact you on behalf of the Avatar’s forces. They claim that the Palace is haunted. What are your orders?”
The Aerenarch surprised them all by his laughter.
o0o
“You are almost as selfish as your father, Osri,” Risiena
Ghettierus snarled, glaring at her sullen, obdurate son.
Osri stood silently under the harangue, his attention veering toward the commotion outside on the green.
“Your Shiidra-sucking father won’t answer privacies or mail, he won’t come visit. Now that he’s lodged with the mumbling Desrien fakers.”
Osri suppressed an urge to laugh at the description of Eloatri as a mumbling faker. Instead, he shifted his stance enough to permit a single glance past his mother’s shoulder, out the window. The disturbance resolved into the shouts of some older teens, playing some sort of rapid game.
“Who is that out there?” Basilea Risiena interrupted herself, glaring out the window. “Disgusting louts! As I was saying, Osri, I’ve tried again and again to get the barest modicum of cooperation from him, and I must add that you could so easily . . .”
Osri reviewed his list of things to be done as soon as he could escape. Belatedly he heard the rise in pitch that indicated question. “ . . .but of course you see him every day, don’t you?”
Him? My father. “Well, yes,” Osri said, looking past his mother at his oldest half-sister, who lounged on a couch, glowering the exact same way she had when they were small.
Pomalythe sighed. “Who else have we been talking about?”
By my count you’ve been complaining about half a dozen people since my arrival. He turned back to his mother. “He never has time for anything not directly bearing on the assignment he received from Commander Nyberg.”
Basilea Risiena glared at her son. Another secret? Fury burned through her, as Osri added the old escape, “It’s classified.”
“Both your lives seem to be classified,” she retorted, angered even more by the way he edged toward the door.
“I have my own duties to keep me busy,” he began.
“Oh, no, you don’t. I found out when your watch is.” Basilea Risiena slapped her hand against the door, the rings hooked through her long nails clattering against the wood.
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