A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  The comm chimed at her.

  “Gnostor Omilov to see you,” came Tuan’s voice.

  As required by courtesy, their conversation began with generalities, but quickly Omilov steered it to the round of gatherings that had signaled, to her at least, the onset of decision among the Douloi.

  “It’s my understanding,” she said, “that the Aerenarch will be at the Masaud ball, while Hesthar al’Gessinav has obtained the attendance of Admiral Nyberg and his staff at a soiree. I have my suspicions about that arrangement. I imagine that like me, you also have been invited to both.”

  “Yes,” replied Omilov. “And since the Masaud and the Gessinav hate each other cordially, they will each assume I am attending the other’s gathering.”

  “You don’t intend to go to either of them?” she asked with care.

  Omilov blinked. “I’m sorry, Numen, I’m getting ahead of myself. But it’s a perfect opportunity to introduce the Eya’a to the hyperwave and test their reactions. All eyes will be elsewhere.”

  Shock stopped Eloatri’s breath for a heartbeat. Was this what the disorder of her dreams pointed to? Was that why her visions linked the Dol’jharian to the Aerenarch, despite his utter lack of psychic powers? Were all of these things part of the political endgame? Her conjectures crashed in ruin as she struggled to adjust to this new possibility.

  “Numen?” A wash of acid light from the storm outside silhouetted his figure.

  “Your pardon, Gnostor. You’re right.” Evidently Omilov had bowed out of the political game—but there was no doubt this was equally important. “But you’ll need time to prepare. Perhaps I could assist you by bringing them all to the hyperwave?”

  Omilov began to assent, then suspicion brought his bushy brows down. “‘Them all’? Just Vi’ya and the Eya’a—and Gnostor Manderian.”

  She stood up. “No, Sebastian. Not just Vi’ya and the Eya’a. We must also have Ivard and the Kelly—they, too, are part of it.”

  A part of what? Omilov did not hide how unsettling he found her strange request. “I’m sorry, Numen, but I can’t countenance that. It will make things too complex.”

  “Have you spoken to Gnostor Manderian about this?”

  He had not, and Eloatri touched the com tab, requesting Tuan to connect her to the Dol’jharian scholar and tempath.

  A landscape on the wall shimmered and became a window into Manderian’s quarters on the ship he shared with others of his College. Like him, most of them were sensitives of one sort or another and preferred isolation—in this case almost 50,000 kilometers out—from the simmering noetic energies of the crowded souls on Ares. His cabin was starkly somber.

  After the briefest light-speed pause, Manderian’s eyes focused on them. “Yes, Numen?”

  “Gnostor Omilov has suggested introducing Vi’ya and the Eya’a to the hyperwave while the attentions of the rest of Ares are bent upon the social activities coming up.”

  “An excellent idea.”

  “But he objects to the presence of Ivard and the Kelly.”

  “I feel it would complicate the experiment too much,” Omilov interjected with polite firmness.

  “Experiment.” Manderian’s voice was flat, conveying a hint of distaste at Omilov’s choice of words. “Say rather a stage in a process that we are privileged to witness. It would be a grave mistake to exclude the youth and the Kelly—they are an integral part of the noetic unity whose perceptions you wish to test. Are you aware that Ivard has often been seen in the company of the Eya’a—without Vi’ya—in the Cap, on the periphery of the project security cordon?”

  “Ah.” Omilov looked discomfited. “I see. Well, Gnostor, I defer to your specialized knowledge.”

  And not to me, the High Phanist. She didn’t know what Omilov had encountered in the Dreamtime, on Desrien, but it was obvious to her that he had barricaded himself against the memory and would yield nothing to her on religious grounds. He must have been very deeply hurt, to build such a formidable wall.

  Above them the storm moved anti-spinward. A last flash of lightning illuminated the garden outside.

  Neither the High Phanist nor the gnostor noticed. There was much to do.

  SIX

  Vahn’s private signal bloomed, and Keveth reported a visitor—Vannis Scefi-Cartano. He waved Keveth off and trotted up the pathway adjacent to the garden entrance to the Enclave. From behind the drooping leaves of the swensoom tree he watched, his augmented hearing picked up Vannis’ soft footfalls.

  He watched as she stood before the door; her hands flexed once, then buried themselves among the folds of her skirts.

  Vahn’s interest sharpened.

  At four that morning Faseult had summoned him for a briefing. They expected a coup that night, with Vannis the mostly likely prospect for decoying the Aerenarch with Willsones’ barge. That much we know, Faseult had said. Then he added: You will not disseminate any of this information to anyone at the Enclave. That includes the Aerenarch. Understood?

  Vahn understood the orders, but not the reasons why. But he’d placed his best coverts at that Masaud ball, in case they were needed.

  The door opened to reveal Jaim, who then retired back into the shadows of the garden room as the Aerenarch emerged. He was dressed for the ball, the candles gilding with rich light the golden leaves embroidered on his night-black tunic. “Vannis?” he said, his light voice merely inquiring. “Good evening.”

  Vahn saw her hands tighten on the fragile silks of her gown, behind her back. “A surprise,” she said, smiling, her head canted toward the Aerenarch. “Now, don’t be angry. The Masaud ball will be a hideous crush, so I arranged a little diversion. Of course you have only to say the word, and you can be restored to the crowd.”

  She stepped back and waved toward the lake. Willsones’s old-fashioned lovers’ barge floated near the platform, colored lanterns strung along its low rail. Vahn could see a table and musicians waiting.

  She had obviously gone to a lot of trouble, and it was possible within the complicated patterns of Douloi etiquette to accept a private invitation from someone of higher rank than the original host, even at the last minute—though it carried implications.

  But it’s a trap. Don’t walk into it.

  “Well, then,” the Aerenarch said, holding out his arm. “Let us divert.”

  Vahn bozzed Roget. (He’s taken the bait. Teams two and three, ready?)

  (You going?) Roget bozzed.

  (No. They wouldn’t dare try anything violent; this is the decoy.)

  Vahn then bozzed Jaim, careful to make his order sound like a request. He had come to like the laconic Rifter, for his cooperative spirit if nothing else. He didn’t like blindsiding him, but that was orders.

  Roget, his partner for over a year now, knew where his thoughts were headed.

  (I’ve sent Jaim. Keveth, shift the Masaud teams along the route from the lake to the ball. If the cabal does try anything, it’ll be there. Whatever happens, I can’t be stuck in the middle of the lake on a logos-loving barge.)

  He’d had his teams placed in three possible directions; now that the trap had closed, he could redeploy everyone along predicted lines.

  He issued the orders as Vannis and Brandon trod down the grassy path toward the landing. She was still nervous; Vahn saw that in the sudden shimmer of the string of gemstones wound through her hair. Poised and tense as a duelist, she knew something was happening, all right.

  He sent Jaim a carefully framed warning, ending with the request that he stick close to the Aerenarch. Vahn was going to need to listen to every damn word.

  o0o

  Ordinarily Ivard would have loved standing on the broad ring-promenade that fronted the entrance to the Cap, watching the lighting stab at the curving landscape far below. Up here at the spin axis the view was unmatched anywhere else on Ares, except for Tate Kaga’s palace at the other pole. But he could feel Gnostor Omilov’s impatience, tasting like rusting metal, as he talked to Manderian, who stood quietly, his h
ands hidden in the robes of his College.

  The blue fire of the Kelly Archon bubbled up inside, bearing words from Portus-Dartinus-Atos: “Wethree are making haste as slowly as possible.” The accompanying image of the trinity pirouetting in a complex dance that moved them sideways as often as forward made Ivard snicker. He swallowed it at the harassed look the gnostor shot him from underneath his heavy brows.

  Ivard turned so the gnostor couldn’t see him. Vi’ya stood a few meters away with the Eya’a, her gaze inward. He could smell her tension, as if she were balancing something almost too heavy to hold; a searingly focused, unintelligible emotion scoured his brain from the Eya’a. Ivard’s fear spiked. He’d been as curious as everyone about the Urian thing, but now he wasn’t so sure he wanted to be anywhere near it.

  He tried to calm himself by peering along the spin axis, in hopes of spotting Tate Kaga. A sour knot of panic welled up in his stomach. He didn’t want to face the gnostor’s experiment unless his teacher could be there.

  The transtube portal hissed open, and out stepped the Kelly and the High Phanist, who smiled as Ivard ran to them, honking a greeting at the trinity, which was returned threefold as they patted and touched one another.

  Manderian greeted threm as well.

  “Ah,” Omilov said. “Now that we’re all here, let’s move on before something else happens to slow us down.” He gestured to the pair of Marine guards at the entrance to the Cap.

  His arms intertwined with the head-stalks of the trinity, Ivard sent a questioning look at the High Phanist. She made a slight movement with her hands that said as clearly as words: “It’s your responsibility.”

  “Uh, gnostor?” Ivard began, but his words were drowned out by a thunderclap as Tate Kaga’s bubble blurred into view and stopped outside the dyplast window overlooking the interior of the oneill. The Marines jerked their jacs up reflexively, then relaxed as the nuller maneuvered his gee-bubble through a hatch. For once, he was right side up.

  “Ho, Little Egg! Are you ready to lose your self to find it?” Then he spun upside down before the High Phanist, whose eyebrows had lifted at his comment. “Eh, Numen! Did you think you had a monopoly on that idea?”

  “No, indeed, Tate Kaga,” Eloatri replied.

  Omilov approached, looking harassed. “Your pardon, Prophetae,” he said, sketching a bow to the nuller. Then to Ivard and the High Phanist, “We really must hurry.”

  When Tate Kaga and Eloatri turned expectant faces Ivard’s way, Ivard tried again. “I want Tate Kaga there, too. He’s been teaching me things, things I’ll need.”

  Omilov threw his hands wide in a gesture eloquent of frustration. “Isn’t it enough of a circus already?” he said to the High Phanist. “Perhaps we should invite the Kitharee to furnish us with incidental music.”

  “He has to be there,” Ivard said, his voice thin.

  His entire body heated up with embarrassment; he controlled the reaction, but he couldn’t do anything about the awful shrinking feeling in his guts when the gnostor turned to him, tiredness, tension, and impatience clear in his face.

  “Enough, young man. You’ve already committed a major breach of security. Don’t make it worse. Just come along.” He faced Tate Kaga. “I’m sorry if Ivard brought you all this way for nothing, but there’s really no place for you in this experiment. He shouldn’t even have told you.”

  The gnostor turned away and started toward to the Cap portal.

  “No,” said Ivard, his voice cracking. Even with the physical control the Kelly ribbon had conferred on him his nerves flashed hot then cold. “I won’t do it without Tate Kaga.”

  Omilov rounded on him, astonished.

  “You don’t know what I’m like now,” Ivard said desperately. He could smell the gnostor’s impatience turning into anger, and, behind it, a dull pain he didn’t understand. “You don’t know how I think, or how I hear Vi’ya and the Eya’a and the Kelly, or anything about how it works. How can you decide that Tate Kaga can’t help? I say he can. He will. Or I won’t.”

  Omilov’s anger grew. Ivard tasted it, smelled it, becoming weak-kneed in reaction. Then Eloatri stepped forward and laid a hand on the gnostor’s arm. “You cannot force him.”

  As if to emphasize her words, the Eya’a chittered softly.

  The gnostor tossed his hands up in defeat. “Very well. Rather than waste any more time.” He walked past the Marines into the Cap, followed by the others. “Let’s go.”

  o0o

  It did not take much discernment to perceive that Aerenarch Brandon vlith-Arkad was annoyed.

  Vannis Scefi-Cartano could appreciate this: she was furious.

  She’d been outmaneuvered by the people she’d thought her allies.

  We will leave the Aerenarch to you. Vannis gripped her lower lip between her teeth as she trod with Brandon down the grassy path toward the lakeside, her slippers damp from the recent rain. High overhead the diffusers shed a silvery light, simulating a full moon; reflections danced on the rippling surface of the lake. Brandon’s voice gave no thoughts away, but his arm beneath the smooth fabric of his sleeve was merely there, as a prop for politeness. It forced on her a memory, those arms around her, the blend of strength and tenderness—

  She jabbed her teeth further into her lip. As she and Brandon paused for the Rifter bodyguard to go ahead onto the barge and scan it, she faced the fact that she had been sidelined.

  By being the decoy keeping Brandon away while the coup took place, she would not be present when the rest of the cabal spontaneously nominated one another as the new council. All those compliments at Kestian’s about how she was crucial to the plans—pivotal—had been heady at the time, but after, when she had leisure to contemplate what had been said, and not said, she saw the truth. She was a dupe. As Brandon was shortly to become.

  She revisited the same inward argument that had kept her awake all through the previous night: should she risk all and tell Brandon about the coup?

  Even if he believed her (it was sickening to contemplate his skepticism) then she would reveal herself as a double traitor: to her once-allies, and of course to him for sleeping with him while all this plotting was going on.

  She strongly suspected that it had been Hesthar’s idea that she must be the decoy.

  Wasn’t there some way to ensure that Brandon would win? Then she could have both her ambitions, to rule as she had been trained all her life to do, and by his side. That part had only become important in the last days, but was now compelling, almost overwhelmingly so.

  Only three days left.

  She resisted the impulse to touch her boswell. Strange, how she had misjudged Fierin vlith-Kendrian. Because she was so much younger than most of the cabal, it had been easy to assume she was oblivious. “I’ll sidetrack the Aerenarch, if you prefer,” Fierin had said. “I don’t mind. There’s nothing more for me to lose.”

  And she’d handled the offer so skillfully, the timing perfectly managed, in transit between one party and another, when no one else was looking their way.

  Vannis had been severely tempted. But even if Fierin could have sidetracked Brandon (which she hadn’t the rank to do), the cabal would probably have found some other excuse to decoy Vannis. In retrospect, it was very clear that there had been a meeting of the inner cabal before Kestian’s, and all the plans laid.

  There might still be some way out. Three days, she thought, tension panging in her forehead. In three days the Panarch is beyond us. Either the cabal gains enough power to forbid any rescue missions, or else it and its opponents mire one another in three days of squabbling, and then it will be too late. . . . Either way, the cabal wins—and Brandon loses what he wants most: a chance to rescue his father.

  “Checks fine, Highness,” Jaim said when they reached the pier.

  Vannis’ attention was caught by the Rifter’s flat voice, his long, curiously attractive face. Though he moved softly enough, he did not affect the selfless blank stare of the trained servant. He met one’s
eyes straight on, his stance correctly deferential but his gaze intelligent and dispassionately assessing.

  Brandon smiled at Vannis, his hand opening: Your move.

  He couldn’t know, could he? No, or he wouldn’t walk so blithely into the trap.

  They entered the barge, Vannis stepping carefully so as not to mar her pretty slippers with the splashing wavelets against the lowered gangplank. She kept up some easy chat about the disaster at the Ascha Gardens party, and how the Garden was being redesigned.

  A quick glance around showed that the barge, at least, was everything that rude, battered old vice-admiral had promised. Willsones had made clear her dislike of the frivolous Douloi civilians by charging a stinging price, way beyond Vannis’s present means.

  The vessel was a relic of a bygone era, when sneaking off for stolen time with one’s adored was in fashion. The design fostered intimacy; the details, from brocaded couches to the graceful pattern of dancing dolphins carved into the low rail—a pattern that never repeated, yet still evoked the yin and yang—were perfect. In keeping with its air of fantasy, it even had a geeplane drive, making it capable of slow and dreamy flight if the lovers’ impulses so demanded. For tonight Vannis had engaged a steersman to pole the barge along the lake; the techs had set the geeplane to merely stabilize the barge.

  “I borrowed a chef,” she said. No need to mention that this chef was Srivashti’s. “Shall we see what she has to offer us?”

  Brandon cast a look over the beautifully arranged delicacies. Mouth-watering drifts of spices and herbs blended with cream pastry tickled her nostrils. She had not eaten all day, but when Brandon passed by the food and walked to the rail, she, too, turned away.

  “Something to drink?” she asked.

  Brandon rested against the rail as the barge gently moved away from the landing. “Please.”

  Vannis moved to the monneplat, busying her fingers with the list of available wines. These, too, had been provided by Srivashti; more gentle hints of the bonds of political bedfellows. Leading the list was an exceptionally old crespec, the strange, costly liquor that Srivashti was known for serving to honored guests.