Her eyes burned and her jaw ached with the effort she was expending, and still the music fell around her, invisible knives to flay her outer shell and expose raw nerves to the air.
She would not raise her eyes to the balcony where Brandon Arkad sat, though she could feel his presence, like sunrads through an opaqued port.
Possibly he was watched her, trying to ascertain her reaction—for she knew that this entire concert, every piece of music, even the order in which they were played, was aimed at her. I refused to talk to him about Markham, so here is the result.
It was a kind of communication she could not ignore, but she knew it was not meant in malice, for that was not in Brandon Arkad’s nature. The Arkad intended this as a tribute, a gift. He was giving her to know, as clearly as if he spoke, his feelings for his dead friend, for Brandon had loved and trusted Markham vlith-L’Ranja. The music was a gift to the one other person who had loved and trusted him and in turn had earned Markham’s love and trust, a wordless acknowledgment of the bond of loss they shared.
She would not close her burning eyes. The musicians’ heads bobbed, each with a smearing aura of light surrounding it.
He could not know—and would not—that she would rather be anywhere, even the torture pits of Dol’jhar, than here, seeing in Markham’s music what Brandon Arkad could not.
There was no original music in KetzenLach’s repertoire. Did he not perceive the terrible parallel? That KetzenLach was, after all, only a clever mimic—and so, too, had been Markham?
And that . . . and that . . .
She forced the thought away, with a violence that caused an answering pang in one temple. A tremor went through the small white-furred figures at her side, and she felt their question inside her aching skull. She sent a reassurance, even as the insidious melodic line whipped monothread tendrils through layer after layer of buried memory, stirring up images and emotions she had labored to banish.
The Masque of the Red Death . . . A long face, tangled blond hair, a lazy, slanting smile, all unreal, all a mask, for the poses, the cadence of the words, and deeper, deeper, the gaze of humorous compassion on an unforgiving universe, the delight in finding beauty in the most unexpected places and the urge to share it, those things were not characteristic, but had been consciously modeled after another.
“The other two, slight air and purging fire;
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire . . .”
The pure voice of the young singer carried KetzenLach’s plainsong note through the swooping, fluttering melodies fashioned by the musical instruments. Vi’ya did not have to close her eyes; she could not see the singer now.
For she was a tempath—a telepath now—and to deny nature, to shutter the instinctive urge to touch that other mind, the one that, after all, she had really been attuned to all these years, caused a terrible mental feedback that made her head reel with pain, muting sound and sight. Each breath rasped her dry throat, and the need to remain still took every vestige of her energy.
But she welcomed it. Pain was immediate, it required no risk, it was merely there to be endured: it was the anodyne to passion.
FIVE
ABOARD THE SAMEDI
When Gelasaar was brought to Anaris’s cabin, he spoke before he even sat down. “You said before that there were two things you did not understand. Marriage was one, and the second?”
“The second,” said Anaris, willing—for now—to permit the deposed Panarch to guide their talk, “is regret.”
“Ah.”
“It seems an utterly futile emotion,” Anaris said. “Why think at all about that which cannot be changed?”
“One cannot mend the past,” the Panarch said, “but regret is a motivator for shaping the future.”
“I do not see that,” Anaris said. “I formulate my plans, I carry them through. In this way, the future becomes today, exactly as I would have it.”
The Panarch looked down at his folded hands for a time, then at last said, “In so doing, you merely perpetuate the mistakes of your forebears. If this is the extent of your goal, then so be it. But I do not think it is.”
“Say, then, that it is not, for purposes of discussion.”
“I would direct you to read the words of Sanctus Gabriel, in his discourses on the teaching stones. He calls regret, remorse, mercy, compassion, patience, and humility the rocks that one carries in one’s rucksack on the uphill journey.”
“And then presumably one sets them down at some point?” Anaris asked, still amused.
“Never. But one becomes strong enough to bear them, and eventually to replace them with the burdens of one’s accrued responsibilities.”
“You describe a servant, not a leader,” Anaris said, making a dismissive gesture with his dirazh’u.
“The best leader serves,” Gelasaar replied. “If you want to lead people, you must learn how to follow them.”
Anaris extended a hand, encompassing them both, there in the hold of the commandeered Rifter ship, he in his family’s accustomed black, and the Panarch stripped of all insignia of rank, garbed in prison gray. “A leader leads,” Anaris corrected gently, setting aside the dirazh’u to summon the guards. “I bring you when I wish, I dismiss you when I will. You follow my lead. Next time, let us discuss our perceptions of the word ‘strength.’”
ARES
Light-headed with pride, Kestian Harkatsus stood back against the wall and surveyed his salon. The room, too small by Douloi Highdweller standards, and set with furniture that in times of sanity he would not have given his servants, gained in significance what it never had in grace by virtue of its occupants: the most powerful people in what remained of the Panarchy of the Thousand Suns.
His pleasure was too boundless to rein in, so he stood in the background, watching as they arrived one by one and settled into the plain Navy-issue chairs, ordered food or drink from Tau Srivashti’s silent liegeman Felton, who had come early to aid Kestian’s servant in vetting the place for intrusive devices.
Srivashti and Stulafi Y’Talob had enjoined everyone to secrecy, to which Kestian had agreed, but still, unknown to them, Kestian was recording it all in his boswell for posterity.
Future generations will remember this day. Kestian wished he could use his boswell imager, but there was no hiding that.
“We will await Hesthar,” a husky male voice rose above the rest: Tau Srivashti.
Who was the fool who had called Srivashti passionless? Memory goaded Kestian, bringing the old anger and humiliation, stirred up like black mud in a Downsider stream. He forced it to settle again. In spite of his twenty-year-old grudge, he had come when Srivashti snapped his fingers, during the desperate flight from the Dol’jharian butchers. He had carried that chatzing vid in his cryptobanks because Srivashti promised a suitable reward, and he had laughed in private when whatever Srivashti had planned to do with it was effectively scuttled by the Navy’s making the vid public.
But Srivashti had exhibited no sign of disappointment, saying only that pettiness was not for those who guide the destinies of planets.
Since those early days, Kestian had learned that he had not been the only newly-titled youth whom Srivashti had romanced and dropped.
Srivashti has a taste for the young, he’d overheard the former Aerenarch-Consort saying to someone at a party, while they watched Srivashti dancing with that little Kendrian heir. But there’s nothing of the hot-house for him: his toys are always innocent, handsome, and of course well born, and as soon as they gain experience, he marries them off into some alliance he’s arranged to their benefit.
She’d spoken with an amused drawl, but Kestian, sensitive to a subtle tone he could not even define, had wondered if she, too, had been one of his toys. Painful as it had been to have his own experience described—and so baldly!—as a caprice, Kestian had given no sign of remembering those days, taking his cue from Srivashti.
His gaze was still on Srivashti�
��s bent head, so he saw the flicker of those half-shut eyelids: a signal to Felton. Kestian had learned very early to be wary of Felton, who seemed to enjoy only pain. Very smoothly, Felton stepped forward and poured more of a curious thick black liqueur into the Archon of Torigan’s cup.
Stulafi Y’Talob drank deeply, then rubbed his fleshy face and snorted. “Damned inconvenient.”
Inconvenient? Angered, Kestian thought the insult directed at his lamentably small quarters, but a few words caught him up: they were still talking about the Aerenarch’s concert.
“Inconvenient?” said little Fierin, who was settled quite close to Srivashti. Judging from the past, she’d enjoyed Srivashti’s capricious benevolence longer than most. Kestian wondered whether she ought to be considered for Dandenus, once Srivashti spotted his new chase. Find out her holdings first—and if this scandal of hers is really settled. Someone said the brother is not dead, after all, but is here on Ares.
Y’Talob had not answered her. His one glance in Fierin’s direction made clear his scorn for her lack of power or rank.
“Inconvenient?” The old Archonei of Cincinnatus keened her high, shrill laugh. “I’d say he threw that Lusor rizz right into your teeth.” Her eyes darted around, reminding Kestian of a reptile. “Who noised that foolery about again?”
Hands reached for drinks or beckoned for servants to bring more: everyone remembered Torigan’s little speech after Srivashti’s dinner the other night. Our Aerenarch’s tentative status might take harm, he’d sneered, if people remember that he has no commission because he was thrown out of the Academy ten years ago—he and Lusor’s adopted son, Markham vlith-L’Ranja.
“NorSothu nyr-Kaddes was babbling on about it in front of a dozen people,” Hesthar al’Gessinav said from the back of the room, her whispery voice somehow carrying. “KetzenLach was a favorite of both Lusor and his son, and the Memoria Lucis—played by a Rifter follower of L’Ranja, no less—at the end made it fairly clear that the concert was a tribute.”
She entered slowly, taking her place with the self-assurance of one who knew that even important meetings would await her presence.
And she exulted in the oblique signs of hatred and wariness cast her way. Knowing very well what she was doing, she stretched out her hands for a goblet, permitting the edge of her emerald sleeve to fall back enough to reveal the Mark.
Kestian stared at some kind of complicated tattoo on her smooth gold-brown skin; he couldn’t make it out exactly, but the indistinct shape made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
Hesthar’s gaze met Felton’s. She smiled thinly, and her sleeve slid to her wrist again.
Srivashti stirred, drawing attention his way. “It would appear that the incident is redounding to Aerenarch Semion’s discredit, and not to our present Aerenarch’s. You must remember that His Highness is remarkably adept at expressing himself through the social medium, if I may employ so inept a term.”
The old Archon of the ice planet Boyar spoke up, a very rare occurrence: “Evoked the Mandala as well.”
“Which we may take as a challenge,” Hesthar said.
“What kind of challenge?” Y’Talob grunted, thrusting a finger toward al’Gessinav. “Defense of his favorite’s family, or—?”
“A threat? To us?” Kestian asked.
Heads swung briefly in his direction.
A privacy came promptly from Srivashti: (Let us endeavor to remain positive. Stulafi is with us now, but his loyalties are notoriously flexible. And I fear we have a limited amount of time.)
Srivashti lifted his hands, once more summoning attention. “Friends,” he said, “you talk as if we were gathered together to plot something dire. Far from it: we are here to form a council of advisers for His Highness. If he wishes to restore the memory of the House of L’Ranja to its former honor, why should we not help him as much as we are able?”
Fierin made a small, nervous gesture; the more observant in the group wondered what the Lusor affair had been to her? Ah, the Lusor scandal had removed the scandal of her parents’ murder by her brother from the public arena.
Y’Talob smirked at Srivashti, and Vannis—silent and observant—recollected that the Kendrian scandal had taken place on his own planet.
“A more constructive topic would be how, since the machinery of government has been effectively destroyed, to achieve our transition as smoothly as possible,” Srivashti suggested.
To which Y’Talob retorted, “We must stay secret until we have control.”
“Permit me to disagree.” Srivashti gave Y’Talob a profound bow. “And honor me with your pardon: remember, we’ve four days.”
“Inertia might keep any rescue from going out,” Cincinnatus added. “If no one gives the Navy the command, the deadline passes.”
“But Grozniy has been repaired with a speed that hints at purpose,” Hesthar said. “Please, Tau. Finish your thought.”
Srivashti bowed. “As time is so short, and we do not know what the Navy might be planning, it is time for us to gain the support of the Service Families, which means we must emerge into the open.”
It was Y’Talob’s choice, as the challenged one, to demur or to concede. He bowed from his seat on the couch, a perfunctory rippling of his massive frame, but it was a concession.
Srivashti did not appear to notice his tight face. “I thank you, Stulafi, for your forbearance.” Srivashti’s respectful deference was an exercise in grace; when Y’Talob did not respond, he continued. “His Highness appears to be taking his expected place in the social hierarchy, and I believe it ought to be there that our gesture of unity begins. Kestian: it falls to you to give a few stirring words concerning our goals.”
Kestian bowed, not trusting himself to speech. Srivashti’s pale eyes caught golden highlights from the twisted dragon wall sconces, and reflected the tawny shades of the intricate embroidery on his long wine-colored tunic.
Vannis took in Srivashti’s smiling countenance. Triumph? What is he not telling us?
“We’ll have to neutralize the Masauds.” Cincinnatus sighed. “They’ve all gone insane over that gesture with the diamond.”
“It was a splendid gesture.” Vannis smiled at them all. “We know that the Masauds are notoriously heart-driven.”
Hesthar’s thin lips vanished in a tight line at the mention of Masaud.
Srivashti looked amused. “Exactly. You are both correct, Vannis, Cassir.”
“The Masaud masquerade,” the Archonei said. “It must be there.”
“Yes. So.” Y’Talob lifted a hand and closed it into a fist, his rings sparkling. “As hosts, they’re immobilized. Now, how do we neutralize the Navy?”
“They exist to serve,” Srivashti said, his voice gentle. “We have no need: when the time comes, our united voices will give them the directive that the Panarch’s regrettably absent leadership cannot. But they must be distracted long enough to prevent preemptive action, should any desire such.”
“You may leave that to me.” Hesthar gave Srivashti a slow nod. “An intimate gathering for Nyberg and his staff will suffice.”
Srivashti bowed to her. “Then we need have no further concern in that direction. There are, however, other interests that we must consider. We will have to be vigilant, but I think we can convince the greater portion of those sworn to Service to see our way.” Srivashti’s voice remained bland.
Hrishnamrutis of Boyar spoke once more. “Aerenarch.”
Silence fell, but Hesthar, then Srivashti, then Cincinnatus moved subtly: Privacies.
Annoyed at being left out, Kestian said, “What about the Enkainion? Is that what we use to gain his cooperation?”
No one moved or spoke. It was that stillness that convinced Kestian that the Aerenarch’s Enkainion mystery had been the subject of the privacies, and he flushed with annoyance at being left out.
That is not triumph, Vannis thought. As the captor watches the prisoner, so too does the prisoner watch the captor, each revealing to the other.
Kestian saw what he wanted to see, but Vannis let the clues accumulate: Srivashti’s shoulders, his fingers, his wide eyes betrayed suppressed tension, excitement, a mixture of anger and challenge.
He’s on the hunt. Doubt curled within Vannis; the secret had something to do with the Enkainion, and most of these people here seemed to think that Srivashti held some secret against Brandon. Vannis thought, If he had something against Brandon, now would be the time to share it. What if it’s not about Brandon at all?
“The problem with the Enkainion,” Hesthar said with a slight smile, “is that none of us were there. Regrettable: I was to have represented our family, as my cousin was on Lao Tse, but my yacht would not cooperate.”
Fierin lifted her head, and the light caught in the gemstones in her hair.
“We’ve only hearsay,” Hesthar finished, “which does not constitute proof.”
Y’Talob’s brows lifted. “What matter? Whether out of cowardice or expedience, he left, and we can hold him to an investigation if it’s necessary. Legal, perfectly legal . . .”
“And if he submits, it will ruin him,” Cincinnatus whispered.
Srivashti gestured reluctance, his expression one of faint distaste. “One regrets any gesture of disrespect to the thousand years of Arkadic rule.”
“No finesse,” Hesthar said, still smiling. “Much better to secure our position while he is busy elsewhere.”
Y’Talob drank again. “Which means he can’t be at the Masaud ball,” he stated over the rim of his cup. “How do we contrive that?”
Srivashti, stroking his fingers over Fierin’s wrist, said nothing.
It was Hesthar who turned her smile up at Vannis. “We will leave the Aerenarch,” she said, “to you.”
Vannis was so still her jewels winked to the beat of her heart. Then she bowed, a graceful gesture of profound irony.
o0o
Admiral Nyberg stood and lifted his glass; the other three rose with him. The wine glowed like embers in the goblets above the snowy linen on the table. “His Majesty Gelasaar III,” he intoned, and emptied his glass with a defiant toss.
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