"Maybe. Just don't count on anything. And while I think of it, you and Tindal and Mikhailova have clearance to make that transmission tomorrow to the Admiralty. Morwen says you can send it from the Fianna communications room."
"Whatever you say, sir." A speculative smile softened her face. "Just imagine, maybe by spring we could have some more people here from Earth."
"We'll see. Anything could happen by then." If his suspicions turned out to be as well-grounded as he thought, he reflected gloomily, Terrans could very soon be Aeron's least favorite aliens to have around.
*
"Ever so good of you both to help me out with this."
O'Reilly looked skeptically at Tindal, then over at Mikhailova, who cast up her eyes to heaven. The three of them were in the communications room of the Fianna Commandery, across the square from the palace, preparing to send Haruko's message to the Admiralty. As ordered, it was being sent by way of the Sword, with the help of the Fianna computers.
"We didn't seem to have much of a choice," remarked O'Reilly. "And anyway, you told Sir you couldn't do it alone."
"Oh, well, maybe I did say something like that... Not that I couldn't, you understand; it's just so much easier when you--Oh, Christ, Athenee! Don't touch those!"
Mikhailova, who had been on the point of transmitting a long list of codes up to the Sword to activate the combanks, froze, staring at Tindal in astonishment.
"I'm sorry! They're only verification codes--"
"I know perfectly well what they are! I mean, I sequenced them myself, I know how they go. I'll do it." He wiped the list from Mikhailova's screen and onto his own, which faced the wall and could not be overlooked by wandering eyes.
"All right, Hugh, there's no need to get shirty. Athenee didn't mean to profane your sacred sequencing." O'Reilly made a little grimace of exasperation to herself and a little face at Tindal's averted back, and sat down beside Mikhailova. The two worked together in silence while Tindal executed his own program in privacy on the other side of the console.
After a while O'Reilly glanced up. "Are you ready, Your Ubiquity? Or would you like to do this whole thing yourself after all?"
"No, no, Sally, as I said, I'm grateful for the help... I'll just take it back now, thanks so very much."
O'Reilly took advantage of the momentary respite in her chores to have a good close look at Mikhailova. She was disconcerted to see her fellow crewman's face thinner and paler than it ought to have been, with dark smudges under the hazel eyes.
"Athenee? Are you all right? I mean, if something was wrong, you would tell me? Or Sir?"
Mikhailova would not meet her gaze. "I'm fine, Sally. There's nothing wrong. I'm just a little tired, maybe. Why do you ask?"
"Well, it's just that--you've been so reclusive lately, I thought... well, I was a little worried, and so was the Captain. You weren't so antisocial when we first got here, and I wondered if something might have happened that you hadn't told us about."
"No. Nothing happened. Nothing at all, I'm just tired, can we not talk about it, please?"
"Well--sure." O'Reilly shrugged, defeated. "What's to say about nothing, anyway?"
"Quite."
"On the mark, O'Reilly," called Tindal over the top of the console. "Time to do your stuff."
This was O'Reilly's specialty, and she was very good at it indeed. She riffled through the program at top speed, but somehow only the robot was working on the job. The real O'Reilly was analyzing very different data: data to do with why the woman sitting beside her seemed so very unhappy. But it did not compute, and after a while she gave it up, and put it away for future consideration.
Tindal had reclaimed the program again, she realized. Strange that he seemed not to want anyone else to handle those codes...
She leaned forward and craned upward, resting her chin on the top of the console housing and peering down at Tindal. He was intent on his work, oblivious to her scrutiny, and smiling--no, smirking, she corrected herself--smirking with a kind of buttery self-satisfaction that one would have thought entirely inappropriate to the job at hand.
He finished with a flourish and looked up at O'Reilly with a broad grin.
"Logged, coded, scrambled, dispatched and stored. Sir will be pleased. A job well done, Lieutenant."
O'Reilly continued to look soberly down at him. "If you say so," she said then.
*
Two days later Aeron summoned Gwydion to her formal office on the palace's ground floor. Unlike the solar, where she did her real work, the huge chamber was the sort of imposing, elegant setting popular opinion imagined a queen would work in: walls of polished rose marble, high ceilings frescoed with historical scenes, an enormous goldenwood desk backed by priceless tapestries, windows opening on a view over the sea. Aeron did not love the room, and used it only because her father and grandfather had done so.
Gwydion was nearly at the door when the formidable Elharn emerged from the office into the corridor. The Master of Sail's face was white and his expression dazed, and he did not seem to recognize his friend.
"And they said the King was dead," he muttered, and went on down the hall, shaking his head.
Gwydion looked after him a moment, then pushed the door open and went in. Aeron was standing behind her desk, the aftermath of her anger still vivid on her face. Gwydion nodded to Aeron's secretary Robat, who bowed and withdrew.
"What happened here?" he asked mildly.
"Some slight brangle. My uncle Ironbrow and my cousin Macsen had an idea I liked but little. I'll mention it to Macsen later," she added darkly. "But come with me to my tower, if you would. I have asked a few others to come in a while also. There is something I have to say." The flash of a rueful smile. "And perhaps you would fetch your telyn? I should like to improve my mood before they arrive."
*
"Who is that singing?"
"Aeron and Gwydion, I should think," said Morwen, who preceded Haruko on the stairs from the faha up to Aeron's rooms. "That is certainly his hand upon the harp."
"So beautiful."
"Oh aye, they sing like the Sidhe, those two, when it suits them."
Haruko couldn't say about the Sidhe, but the two in the room above sang like angels: Gwydion's deep bass and Aeron's unexpectedly crystalline soprano. Somehow Haruko hadn't thought Aeron would have so high and soaring a singing voice; it rang true and clear on the notes, like a bell over water.
"Most harmonious," he said, and Morwen snorted.
By now they had reached the level of Aeron's rooms. Much to Haruko's surprise, the door that led from the staircase into the tower was unguarded, though there had been Fians posted below in the faha. Morwen noticed, and laughed.
"Nay, Aeron is not so trusting as that. Put out your hand."
Haruko extended his right hand directly beneath the carven stone lintel of the doorway. Sudden cold gripped his hand in a net of invisible ice-crystals, holding it frozen and immobile. He tried to withdraw it, but his struggles only caused his arm to be drawn in up to the elbow. He looked at Morwen in mute panic.
"It is well. Stand quiet." With perfect equanimity she stepped entirely into the strange cold field, spoke in a clear, even voice. "Morwen, with Haruko." The iciness vibrated around them, and then it was gone.
Haruko reached a careful finger behind him. There it was, as cold as before. "Ve-ry neat," he said, much impressed.
"Aeron prefers as few guards as possible near her private quarters," said Morwen. "This is much more effective."
"How does it work?"
"In non-technical terms, it is a modified restraint field, keyed to voice in combination with known personal auras."
"Oh. Magic." Haruko thought about it for a moment. "You mean if I stepped into it and said I was Prince Rohan, it wouldn't believe me?"
"Not only would it not believe you, Theo, it would knock you senseless and hold you there until the guards, or Aeron herself, came to release you. I'd not advise the experiment... But here we are."
*
In O'Reilly's chamber, where she had gone early to bed for once, the transcom buzzed discreetly, and she groaned as she rolled over to answer it.
"The Ard-rian's compliments to Lieutenant O'Reilly, and would you attend her directly in the Western Tower."
"Me! The Queen wants to see me? Now? Oh, yes!" She leaped out of bed and began to scramble into her clothes.
The interior approach to Aeron's chambers ran along a gallery overlooking the sea, and O'Reilly saw no one in all her long walk from her own rooms in the Rose Tower. When she arrived, the doors stood open, though this entrance, unlike the one used by Morwen and Haruko, was guarded by impassive Fians. The wolfhounds Cabal and Ardattin lay across the threshold, and they thumped their tails to see her, though they did not otherwise bestir themselves.
Aeron was not alone in the inmost chamber. She was wearing another of her old ragged robes, her feet bare as usual; and again as usual, she looked no whit the less regal for it. Haruko, sitting in a cushioned chair by the fire, appeared remarkably at his ease, and he smiled warmly at his officer. Morwen, also shoeless, was stretched out on her stomach on the furs by the hearth, and across the room, in the shadows of the window embrasure, Gwydion was a dark quiet presence. A small gold harp lay in his lap.
"Am I in trouble?" muttered O'Reilly to her captain in Japannic, and he shook his head almost imperceptibly.
"You come too late to join our singing," Aeron was saying, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed. She was unbraiding her hair as she spoke, her temper much improved from that of an hour before. "Rohan would also be here, but for that he is away from the City tonight... Well, all of you know by now that Theo's messages to the Federacy, and the ones we ourselves have sent, have been received. And now have I received an answer, and I wished you to hear it. Terra will be sending an embassy ship to us, to leave Earth in advance of the Sword's scheduled departure from here. But, since I knew that the arrival of the formal embassy ship would relieve you, the exploratory crew, of your diplomatic duties, I also made formal petition that you be permitted to remain with us as military liaison, if you so choose." O'Reilly's face lighted, and Aeron smiled. "I have received no word on that as yet, though I think they will be full willing to grant my request." She pushed her unbound hair back over her shoulders and looked at each of them in turn. "Whatever, the ship will soon be on its way to us. And I intend to send Terra an embassy of my own, before I am many days older."
"You have decided, Lady?" asked Haruko. It had to be; she'd made up her mind, then...
"I have. I decided long ago, truly; it was only that everyone else needed to grow accustomed to the idea. But it will be formal alliance, a sealed and signed treaty. It will not be a totally popular decision, and almost certainly it will involve one or both of our nations in war. Indeed, the mere hint of alliance was apparently cause enough for the Fomori to arm against us. Very like, too, it will be a treaty years in the working-out; but I wish to grow oaks, not dayflowers... Any road, I shall announce this in Council tomorrow, but I wished you to hear it in private first. Is there any other thing I should know before I make known my decision?"
Haruko thrust any least tiniest wisp of a thought of Tindal firmly behind a wall of steel in his mind, and kept that wall solid against her as her glance touched on him, though his heart ached to do it.
Apparently she sensed nothing amiss. "Does no one have anything to say. then?" she demanded, half-laughing. "I can hardly believe it... Taoiseach?"
"None, Ard-rian," said Morwen. "You know all my thought."
"First Lord of War?"
Gwydion drew a soft chord from the telyn in his lap before answering. "You know my thought as well, Ard-rian. Whatever dan your decision brings, I shall find you the swords to deal with it."
Aeron sighed. "Be it so, then." She leaned back against the solid brindled flank of Ardattin, who had crept, one huge paw at a time, onto the bed during the conversation, and who now lolled on the pillows, imagining herself undetected. "Well, has no one a song to give us?"
*
Sleet scratched on the windows of O'Reilly's room. She had crawled gratefully back into her bed some three hours after having been so peremptorily summoned out of it, her head now dizzy with ale fumes and buzzing with song and talk. She had reached the toppling edge of sleep when the door opened. As she sat up, startled, in the big bed, Haruko came warily in.
"I hate to bother you, Sally," he said, "but can I talk to you?"
The grave look on his usually cheerful face pierced her sleepiness and surprise, and she nodded.
"Sure. What's the matter?" In spite of herself, she yawned.
Haruko hesitated only briefly. "Treachery. Well, I think so anyway. Maybe. I'm still not sure. Certainly not sure enough to tell Aeron or Morwen. But it's been bothering me, and I needed to tell someone."
O'Reilly laughed incredulously. "Treachery! Oh sir, you're joking." But she quickly sobered at the sight of his eyes. "You're serious--but whose?"
He looked at her for a few moments before he spoke. "Tindal."
Tindal! O'Reilly bounced full upright in the bed, wide awake now, the ale haze miraculously dispelled.
"How strange that you should think that," she said. "I believe you. In fact, I have something to tell you... But you first."
Haruko recounted his accidental discovery of the combank calculations on Tindal's computer-pad. "And that's why I've been in such a bad mood over the past couple of days," he concluded. "But what I wanted to ask you was if there was any way--any reason..."
"You mean any way those figures could have been legitimate? Any good honest reason for them being there, before you even asked for them? Not a chance," said O'Reilly flatly. "And that's what I wanted to tell you. When he and Athenee and I were working together, he insisted on being the one who did all the coding--as if he were afraid to let anyone else see the communications log. As if there were something in the log he'd rather keep to himself. Since he coded it himself, of course, nobody else could get at it." She related in her turn what had transpired "I just had a feeling there was something going on, but I couldn't imagine what. And at the moment I was more concerned about Athenee."
"Athenee? What about her?"
"She wouldn't tell me. But you've seen yourself how depressed she's been lately. I think it's to do with some man, personally, and nothing to do with Hugh. But he's been acting weird too. A lot more secretive, and a very lot more obnoxiously self-satisfied than he usually is. You know how he can be. But if you think something's going on, sir, why don't you tell Aeron--or Morwen, if you'd rather not tell Aeron just yet?"
Haruko spread his hands helplessly. "What could I tell them? I haven't any hard evidence, just suspicions and feelings. He'd only be sent home, under a cloud at best or under arrest at worst, and we'd be no closer to discovering his accomplices."
"Which you think he has."
"Which I know he has... I just don't know who. No, this way, you and I, maybe Warren and Athenee, we can all keep an eye on him. Now that we know what to look for, maybe we can come up with something more substantial than just weird feelings. Maybe. I hope."
O'Reilly studied her toes under the coverlet. "You are aware, of course, of how--cozy Hugh's been lately with Arianeira."
"Sure. She was the first person I thought of."
"And?"
"Well--do you think Gwydion's own sister would have anything to do with treason?"
"Well, I don't want to think so, no! No more than you want to think what you're obviously thinking--which is why you're here in the first place. Besides--" she drew her knees up to her chin, hugging them like a child being told a bedtime story--"Arianeira is foster-sister to Aeron and Morwen both. That's as
sacred as blood-kinship to Kelts. She'd never betray a bond like that... do you think?"
"She might, if she thought she had reason to--or had the right sort of persuasion. Do you think Hugh would really mutiny?"
She shrugged. "Maybe he had the right kind of persuasion too. He's been spending all his time at Llys Don lately--and I mean, all his time. If he really is in league with a Keltic traitor, or traitors, it stands to reason Arianeira would be somehow involved. Either he's using her for cover, and she doesn't know it, or else she's the traitor herself. But even supposing all this is true, what could they be planning to pull?"
"I haven't the slightest idea. And I think we'll just have to leave it there. Well, at least for the next few days, anyway. Just think about it, maybe talk about it to Warren and Mikhailova--and then we'll tell Morwen, even if we still have nothing new to go on."
O'Reilly looked doubtful. "Can we afford to wait like that?"
"Given our position? I think we can't afford not to."
*
After the Terrans had been affectionately dismissed, and, a little later, Morwen too had taken warm leave, Aeron lay on the bed watching Gwydion, who now lounged before the fire, idly picking out a Vanx dance on his telyn.
"Shall I stay?" he asked presently. When she made no reply, he said with a smile, "I will, of course, if you wish it, Aeronwy, but I think you may have more need tonight of time to yourself."
She smiled in answer, a lovely warm slow smile that seemed to light all their past as well as the present.
"How comes it you know me so well?"
"Long years' practice, Ard-rian."
The Copper Crown Page 21