His confidence returned, bringing with it his earlier euphoria. History was in the making, and he was a part of it. Y’Talob saw him, and deferred: now that they were in agreement, it was time to take the lead.
“Because we are all of like mind, my friends,” Kestian said, “let us discuss the formation of a Privy Council. I will lead off by nominating my esteemed neighbor, the Archon of Torigan, whose grasp of trade issues is scarcely equaled.”
Murmurs of polite compliance wreathed Y’Talob as he bowed profoundly, then spoke: “If I may serve the polity that has given me birth, and gifted my Family for eight generations, I can ask no higher. May I in turn nominate the excellent Aegios of Boyar, whose abilities with respect to economics are renowned?”
One by one they pulled each other in, applauded by an ever-growing circle. Even the absent Hesthar was nominated, in a superbly passionate speech by the elderly Cincinnatus: her age guaranteed preference. And last was Tau Srivashti, who closed the circle by proposing Kestian as their chief.
Kestian’s head rang with glory, and a flush of pride suffused his neck and cheeks as Charidhe Masaud bowed, smiling, and music began once more.
He missed the signal that returned the party to her governance, but she made her desires clear as she extended her hand to him to lead off in the Masque-Verdant Quadrille. A subtle movement of the nominees converted them into a circle apart; the rest of the guests withdrew slightly, indicating acceptance of the decision, and soon the ballroom was filled with people dancing.
At the end of the quadrille, the new Privy Council left the Masaud salon, departing for the Cap via transtube. The atmosphere in the pod was electric, but no one spoke. Kestian studied them all, committing each moment to memory: these people would guide the destiny of the Thousand Suns. Personal inclination had to be set aside. He must exert himself to bind them into a cohesive body the same way he had done with the crowd of Douloi elite.
Unless . . . Reminded of the barge disaster and the disappearance of the Aerenarch, Kestian sensed control slipping once again. He sought Srivashti’s face for reassurance, but the Archon gazed out at the glory of lights.
Where was the Aerenarch? What was he doing? What could he do?
Nothing, Kestian decided, nothing. Really, a pleasant young man, but clearly not suited to the demands of government. They would find him presently, and he’d have no choice but to fall in with the desires of his people.
Kestian sat back and considered how to win the last of the Arkads to supportive cooperation—and obedience.
EIGHT
Brandon felt the pod shift as the transtube curved up vertically, carrying him up the south pole of the Ares oneill toward Tate Kaga’s palace.
He had no idea what the nuller’s residence looked like. He’d play out the consequences, whatever they were, but then he would go after his father. Either with the Navy behind him, or . . .
His thoughts splintered, images of Dis, of Markham, of the Telvarna, of Vi’ya flickering through his mind.
Vi’ya . . .
It was probably outright stupidity to leave at the height of crisis in order to pay one last visit to a woman who went to such lengths to avoid him. But he had to know what it was in her that had caused the laughing, freedom-loving Markham to live with her as his mate—and he had to know what he had done to make her despise him.
His ears popped as the transtube approached its destination 4.5 kilometers above the interior surface of Ares. The pod slowed. The interior flooded with yellow light warning of null-gee conditions, and his stomach lurched as weight diminished. Brandon grabbed the hold-ons as the pod stopped, and he swung himself out, pausing long enough to apply the affinity dyplast to his feet at one of the dispensers outside the portal.
Then he looked up.
Shock hit with more impact than his first sight of the interior of Granny Chang’s. He was looking along the spin axis, between the massive trefoil of girders and cables supporting the diffusers, a complex tracery of alloy and dyplast with the nuller’s palace—a confusion of vitrine bubbles glinting polychrome in the light of the night-dimmed diffusers—perched dead center like a spider in its web. A small, swiftly moving blot resolved into the form of a brightly decorated gee-flat, like one of the legendary flying carpets of Lost Earth.
He stepped onto it and it accelerated toward Tate Kaga’s palace with the characteristic motionless feel of all geeplane devices. Far below the Enclave lake glimmered, a dark blot reflecting the lights above it.
He sent a silent apology to Vannis. He regretted leaving her to cope with the mess of her crashed barge and ruined plot. And Vahn will probably try to hold her against my return, he thought, but that will protect her from the Harkatsus cabal’s wrath.
The gee-flat slowed to a stop. He grabbed a cable and propelled himself into Tate Kaga’s domicile.
The interior matched the exterior: a confusion of bubbles and cables and platforms at all angles, more disorienting even than the Ascha Gardens. Plants and objets d’art bound the whole into pleasing patterns. A sudden peeping announced a cloud of brightly colored, bullet-shaped creatures swirling around the edge of a bubble to dance around his head.
They were tiny birds, a rainbow of colors, their wings flicking out only to change direction, then folding back against their bodies until the next maneuver. Their motions were angular, almost insect-like, completely unlike the flight of the birds he knew from home.
The nuller appeared, descending at a dizzying angle from somewhere overhead, his colorful robes fluttering. He braked to a stop by slapping at the cables along his path as he approached, his oversized hands and feet evoking a series of plangent tones from them that echoed weirdly off the complex surfaces all around. He brought with him a scent of wood-smoke and tangy herbs.
Tate Kaga was no longer in his bubble. In its absence, his movements displayed a natural grace that underscored his centuries of life in free-fall, and made him seem both alien and human at once. The birds eddied in a complexity of patterns, surrounding Tate Kaga in a halo of chirping life and color as he stopped right before Brandon, upside down, his wrinkled face evocative of soundless amusement.
“Ho! It is the Young Arkad,” the ancient wheezed. “You know that someone among your Wicked Douloi is about to tweak your tail.” He pointed up at his crotch.
“I know,” Brandon said, suppressing a laugh. “You said in your privacy that Vi’ya asked for me?”
“She did not ask for you. She mentioned your name. Or was it the name of your grandfathers?”
Tate Kaga spun himself around, orienting in the same direction Brandon stood. Brandon knew it was not belated politeness, but an oblique challenge: he was being assessed.
He was used to being assessed, usually as a possible pawn in everyone else’s game, occasionally as a guess at when he might initiate his own game. And that will be very soon indeed: if not within the law, then without it.
“So why did you send for me?” he asked.
“Why did you come?”
“Curiosity.”
Tate Kaga laughed, calling forth another series of tones from the cables nearby as he slapped himself into a sideways spin. “Hau! And curiosity is why I called you!” The nuller suddenly launched himself away. “She lies ahead. Come.”
Brandon pushed off, diving after the old man.
At the opening indicated, Brandon grabbed a cable to stop, looking in at the woman floating so still in the center of a spherical room, amid a wrack of small bubbles hanging motionless at random intervals throughout the space. Below, near the bottom of the room, floated a long, wide platform, carpeted in living moss spangled with small yellow flowers. Set in the walls, polygonal viewscreens of various sizes and shapes showed a variety of ever-changing scenes: deep space, noon-colored skies with swiftly moving clouds, forests, barren dunes, and twisted rock formations.
Vi’ya’s long hands lay loose, and her night-black hair, usually smoothed back and controlled, pooled in shadow about her. As Brandon watc
hed, her eyelids lifted. She gazed without comprehension into the space above her.
Markham’s mate. Why?
Tate Kaga was gone. Grabbing the door frame, Brandon pushed himself through—and though he touched no controls, the door slid shut behind him.
Vi’ya had only a moment’s warning.
Like the first brilliant rays glowing past the viewports as the ship turns toward a sun, she felt Brandon’s emotional signature.
She had enough warning to tighten the shields against the full force of radiation before he appeared in front of her, his tunic molded carelessly to his body, his hair floating about his head. It looked like silk.
“We have a few minutes,” he said, “without an audience loud in its partisanship, or outrage, so—” He pushed off slowly from the wall and withdrew one of his hands from his tunic pocket. “I wanted to return this to you.”
He held out the large tear-shaped gem—the Stone of Prometheus—from the Ivory Hall in Arthelion’s Palace Major.
“It was a gift,” he said, when she did not take it.
And when she still did not move, he grabbed one of the little bubbles and used it to change his own direction, coming nearer to her. Now she could hear his breathing, the rustle of cloth as he reached to lay the stone in her hand.
She kept her palm flat. His sleeve brushed lightly against the inside of her wrist as his fingers laid the stone in her hand. She closed her fist around the stone as its armor of light crept up her arm, and turned away, her wrist falling to scour away his touch against the rough weave of her clothing, the movement strong enough to set her to spinning.
Pain lanced through her head; an afterimage of the damned hyperwave spun through her mind, echoed from far away by Ivard and the Kelly. Of the Eya’a there was no trace. She forced the image away—and grabbed hold of a bubble to steady herself so she could find an exit.
“Wait.”
Her head turned, not to hear what he said so much as to avoid a second physical trespass.
“Did you enjoy the concert?” he asked.
One had to look somewhere. She opened her hand, and watched the remarkable transformations taking place as the colors bloomed out of the stone, fluorescing the polychrome armor steadily toward her shoulder.
“It seemed to accomplish its purpose,” she said.
It was impossible to close him out completely. The warmth in the light voice had said: Did you enjoy my gift?
Now the warmth withdrew, his face closing behind the mask of polite blandness that one so easily misconstrued. The emotions, unfortunately, did not barrier themselves, shifting instead into a mesmerizing blend with question overriding, and ordinary human hurt underneath.
“What purpose?” he asked.
She lifted the stone, its chain writhing like a snake through the air. She held it up against a hexagonal view of the cold stars of space. The colors in the stone swiftly altered through blue, then indigo, and then faded, leaving diamond clarity. “You used Markham to slap the faces of your nick lords,” she said. “And it seems to have worked.”
He made a gesture of denial, his emotions altering with a complexity dizzying in its intensity. “No,” he said. “They designed that message themselves, because they arrived looking for it. I gave them Markham’s music, which evoked in each what was most important to him. Or her,” he added softly. “Am I right?”
The urge to strike out in defense was very nearly overwhelming. “If you wish to be thanked, then I thank you.” If surliness would not end this interview, perhaps pettiness would.
He did not move, or speak, but she felt his recoil—and it still left questions. He would not go away. He would not go away, and this time there would be no interruptions to save her.
“Why—” He spread his hands. “—won’t you talk to me?”
She altered her position, all her Dol’jharian instincts awakening. It was time to flee—
Or to fight.
“You’re afraid,” he said in wonder.
She looked up once, briefly, a flicker from night-black eyes.
Her anger impacted him, a blow to the spirit, but he went on. “Not the clean fear of battle. You have no fear of battle. I’ve seen you deliberately shoot people down, and just as coldly risk being shot at. But that’s an admirable trait in a Dol’jharian, isn’t it? To deal death without emotion?”
She gritted her teeth.
“No answer?” He slung himself nearer, slapping at bubbles to circle around her. “Afraid to answer?”
She looked away, toward what might be the exit. Before the fine black hair floated in a swooping drift to shadow her face he saw a line of tension across her brow.
“Why?” he asked, and then fired a shot at a venture. “What could Markham have said about me to provoke such a response?”
A sharp lift to her chin, one hand flexing: his shot had struck home.
“Nothing,” she said. Looking away, “Where is the old—”
“You are afraid,” he repeated, and the amusement gathered into a breathless laugh. “You’re afraid of my title?” He spread his hands, laughter breaking his voice. “Of all the people on this station, you. The tough nihilist Dol’jharian escaped slave, cringing away from a crown like any fawning sycophant begging for a place in the train—”
Her hand cut through the air, straight-edged as a knife, toward his face.
To block her would probably break his arm; he pulled himself aside, using a high-level kinesic to deflect the blow. Force spun her around, and she struck again, still with an open hand, but with all her considerable strength.
“Why?” he asked again, still laughing.
But she was beyond talk. He read death in the wide black eyes, as once more she struck.
This time he moved close and used her own weight against her, whirling her around. She flung out arms and legs, no stranger to fighting in free-fall, waiting until she had drifted against a wall, and gathered herself for a launch.
Over the years, enforced leisure had engendered in him a habit of self-appraisal. He recognized, with dispassionate amusement, the twist in his psyche that made seduction a game: allurement, for him, usually came out of indifference, or scorn, and now out of hatred.
Quick as a moth to the flame, he launched first, and buried his fingers in Markham’s lover’s hair, and kissed her.
It was the first time they had touched; the effect was terrifying in its intensity. Lightning shot across his vision as her hand crashed across his mouth, and then again when his head hit a wall. She bounced against the opposite wall, and finding a console by her hand, she struck the gravs with a fist.
They slammed onto the moss-covered platform, Brandon first, the sharp herbal scent of crushed greenery rising around him. Then she dropped on him, her strength as paralyzing as the electric bombardment of rage-hot desire. His vision cleared and he looked up into her teeth-bared feral grin, the killing focus of her eyes, framed by the black velvet fall of her hair.
Her fingers closed on his neck, but he lay unmoving, making no effort to defend himself. The palpable danger ignited his own desire; he saw its effect in the sweat beads across her forehead, and as her fingers found his pulse and slowly, slowly, deepened their pressure, he smiled right up into her hell-hot gaze.
“Tell me,” he gasped through rapidly numbing lips, his voice unsteady with hilarity, “after they bunny, do Dol’jharians gift their lovers with a new set of teeth?”
Her eyes widened, then she threw her head back and laughed, the wheezing, abandoned laugh of someone who is beyond calculation or endeavor, who has only self-mockery left.
The transformation took the last of his breath away: released at last from the mask of cold control and its repelling overlay of anger, her beauty was all the more stunning for being totally free of artifice.
He lifted his hands then, his fingers spread, and ran them through the long black hair, warm next to her skin, cool at the ends. She shuddered, her strong hands still around his throat, but still and te
nse, and when he gripped her shoulders and pulled her to him, the shock of unleashed passion radiated through him from skull to heels.
Neither spoke: words, her armor, she abandoned in challenge; language, his camouflage, he deliberately stripped away, leaving them both exposed to the intensifying scale of sensory harmonics.
They were exactly of a size. Knee, hip, breast, mouth, fit like bone into socket. Experienced in the arts of passion, he played upon her senses while the antiphonal descant of her psychic gift—her pleasure amplified by his, his echoing in hers—beat at them both until the crescendo, prolonged and prolonged, encompassed them both.
The intensity obliterated suns and stars, then spiraled them down into existence once again. It was he, the non-psychic, who first regained the here and now, and all its attendant dynamics.
Still, it did not come at once, and for a short time, as he gazed down into her fathomless black eyes, he felt the universe wheel.
The first reaction was physical, as it had always been: his hand tightened its grip on hers, as if to steady the station gravitors. But Tate Kaga’s room had not lost its grav. They had not moved.
No time to consider it further. He remembered the coup, and he remembered Jerrode Eusabian’s boast about his father. It was time to go—now.
And yet he lingered, his gaze blending with hers. Sex had always been something he could indulge, then let go with perfect freedom. But Vi’ya was not Douloi; she had been, in a sense, an enemy: she did not play the game of passion by the same rules.
There will be consequences. But the thought—invested with the last traces of radiance—beckoned, instead of warned.
“Why is it,” he said, “you would not talk to me about Markham?”
“Because . . . the man he was, and the man we knew, were not the same.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper. “Where is the profit?”
He could not look away from her eyes, the curved lids, the iris so black it could not be distinguished from pupil. Again he sustained the dissonance of grav-failure and breathed deeply to steady himself. “The profit would be in prolonging his life by adding to memory,” he said. “Yours to mine—and mine to yours.”
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