A Prison Unsought (34 page)

“No—he and my father
seemed to get along quite well. It was me he went after, with a single-minded
focus that I never could explain. My brother Galen came in for a few shots as
well, probably because of proximity to me.”

I wish he’d succeeded, she thought viciously, and from
far off came the Eya’a: Shall we amend one-who-gives-fire-stone with fi?
Something like panic lent force to her No! And far in the distance she heard
the Kelly echo her negative.

The exchange worsened the vertigo. Nausea clawed its way up
inside her.

“Am I boring you?” Now he was in
front of her, the blue eyes on a level with her own, searching, and she
understood that he had tried to provoke her.

He was trying any way
he could to get her to respond, but he didn’t see how deeply every word he
spoke cut. “You knew Markham,” he went on quickly, with disarmingly apologetic
sincerity in voice and face. “You knew him after he left the confines of
Panarchic society. Here our violence is circumscribed, most of it diverted into
word, tone, gesture.” He spread his hands, palms up. “Did he kill anyone? How—”
He faced her again. “—did he live with the regrets once the danger was over,
and time permitted the endless reviewing of one’s actions?”

“Every man’s death
diminishes me.”
It was something Markham had said to her after their very first
meeting.

Again memory claimed precedence, though it was no longer a
refuge. The parallels in her meeting with the Arkad and his friend were an
ironic counterpoint: both times; a firefight first, both times centered around
her. Only with Markham it had been his chivalric rescue. With Brandon, it was
his chivalric protecting of his dying liegeman.

She looked up, knowing what was coming just before it came:
“‘Every man’s death diminishes me,’” the Arkad said. “I found that in an old
book when I was a boy, and we used to debate its meaning, Markham and I, before
we had any idea of its real significance. Did he—”

“Yes,” she said, stepping back.
Looking away.

The interruption surprised him, and his intent stilled,
pooled into question.

Time to thrust back. Now. “But only until the reality of
survival stripped away the futility of sentiment.” A deep breath. “He changed,
Arkad. He wasn’t a nick, mouthing philosophy and ordering servants to do his
killing for him.” She unleashed some of her anger, hearing it color her voice,
sharpen her words. Knowing how her anger made others afraid of her.

It had taken time to accustom to that, but the fear had
proved to be useful: it bought her distance.

Using the anger as a shield, she turned to gaze straight
into his eyes, standing close enough to hear his breathing, to see the pulse in
his temple just beneath the soft fall of hair. He returned the gaze, his pupils
so wide his eyes darkened. All his attention was on her now, a danger she’d
risked once before. All his focus, the entire spectrum of emotion—except fear.

“But he didn’t survive,” the Arkad
said gently.

o0o

Ivard gasped.

Propelled by the violence of the sparkling wine escaping
from the bottle, Dandenus staggered off the edge of the platform into full
free-fall and shot away like a comet, trailing a fizzy tail of yellow wine,
straight for the bubble of water, just as the ear-torturing keening of the
Eya’a rose to a climax above the frightened shrieks of the youths diving away
from the Kelly platform in all directions, and the sharp barks of Trev and Gray.
The noise cut like knives in Ivard’s ears. Ami buried her head in her arms and
screamed.

A series of loud detonations, each accompanied by a shower
of sparks, erupted from parts of the structure around them as the ultrasonics disrupted
the delicate electronics of the Gardens. The water bubble distorted, then as
Dandenus impacted it full-on, morphed slowly and sickeningly into a fractal
chaos of oscillating, ever-dividing blobs of water bejeweled by the lights all
around.

Far below, the Douloi stared up in amazement. A whooping
siren added to the chaos as the fail-safes engaged; a forest of reddish beams
erupted from the walls, spearing the human figures flailing in space and
bearing them to safety. Ivard saw Dandenus carried off upside down, his eyes
manic.

But the overload had left no spare capacity in the safety
devices. With awful slowness, the countless globs of water, writhing like
demented slugs, accelerated toward the distant floor. The ant-like figures
scurried in all directions, but too late, as thousands of gallons of water
deluged the floor of the gardens, upending tables and washing the Douloi and
all their elegance into tangled heaps of sodden splendor among the ruins of the
landscaping.

The Eya’a stood unmoving, their white fur fluffed up, then
at a questioning bark from Gray they seemed to notice the dogs, and followed
them as Trev led them away.

Ivard shifted his attention from the disaster far below to
Ami. She met his eyes, hers wide. Then her mouth twitched, Ivard snorted, and a
tide of hysterical laughter overwhelmed them both. And when that died away, a
very different passion took its place.

o0o

But he didn’t
survive.
Vi’ya’s anger flared.

The Arkad released her gaze a heartbeat before she could
have struck—would have struck—to
smash that face, feel bone splinter and brain spurt, closing those eyes forever . . .

“Vi’ya.”

Jaim’s voice. Speaking twice.

“Vi’ya. You better come. Some nullwit
trashed the free-fall gym. People are panicking and the Eya’a are with the dogs.”
And then, “You all right?”

Nausea burnt acridly at the back of her tongue, but she
swallowed it down. Reached for words. Found two. “I’ll come.”

She met Jaim’s gaze and felt him flinch. The fallout
continued, magnified: the Eya’a, probing for meaning, their thoughts resonant
with fear; Ivard’s dizzying melange of emotions; triumph and desire and
consummated lust smothering his remorse at her anger. And the Kelly, a remote,
compassionate presence, their question unspoken.

She longed for removal, to be alone. But she would not be
alone, until she could get away from Ares—or unless she died.

“I’ll come,” she said
again. “It’s nothing.”

(Found him,)
Jaim
reported.

Vahn let out a long breath of relief. The Aerenarch and the
Dol’jharian woman appeared to have been alone, or they were coincidentally in
the same place. If she’d wanted to kill Brandon, she could have done that when
they were running to and from Arthelion; far more likely she’d acted as backup
bodyguard to Jaim.

Vahn sucked in another breath in an effort to shed tension
as he swiftly moved to join Jaim. Damn these gardens anyway. If they became
popular, he was going to have to put the entire team through training to deal
with them, himself included. He couldn’t believe he’d lost Brandon, whose vague
blue gaze and amiable smile seemed unconcerned. Vahn said, “Are you all right?
What happened?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Brandon said,
sounding distracted.

The Dol’jharian woman stalked past like a predatory feline.

“Liquor,” the Aerenarch said
plaintively. “I got lost.”

Vahn might have believed that once—and there was no doubt
that Brandon had been using the appearance of drunken stupidity as a shield for
years—but even if he had, the quick pulse of a vein at the side of Brandon’s
neck betrayed some kind of emotion that had nothing to do with liquor.

“Burgess liked the juice, too,”
came a voice from overhead.

Vahn whirled, his hand going to his jac and then falling
away when he saw Tate Kaga in his bubble.

The aged nuller moved over Brandon’s head, facing down,
forcing the Aerenarch to look up at a sharp angle. “Caused no little talk
during his Regency,” the Prophetae continued.

“Our livers are justly famous,” the
Aerenarch replied, still with his head forced back.

“On Lost Earth some thought it the
seat of the soul,” said the nuller. “Where’s yours?”

“Where’s what, my seat or my soul?”
The Aerenarch’s voice was light, his smile rueful. With his head at that angle,
Vahn saw the vein in his temple beating to a quickened pulse. “My liver will
serve both functions, filtering and discarding poisons.”

“Too much of that and it turns to
stone,” the old man said. He brought his bubble down in front of Brandon. “Will
you be a man or a memorial?”

“The Phoenix Antechamber is lined
with my ancestors.” Brandon made a graceful gesture with one hand. “All carved
in marble. None of them,” he added, “are likely to move.”

Although he’d seen it only once, Vahn remembered the long
hall in the Palace Minor in the Mandala, lined with the busts of former
Panarchs and Kyriarchs.

Tate Kaga’s bubble snapped upside down, making his
expression unreadable. “There are many opinions about that.”

“‘A plague of opinion,’” the
Aerenarch replied. “‘A man may wear it on both sides.’” Vahn heard the
quotation in his voice but didn’t recognize it.

“Ho! A plague! Life and death: more
the latter, no?”

Instead of answering, Brandon made a profound bow.

Tate Kaga’s bubble snapped upright. “
Washte!
It is good. Be careful, Arkad Pup—check carefully which
side is out before you put it on!” A rush of wind stirred their clothing as the
nuller vanished, the motion of his gee-bubble almost too fast to follow.

Brandon turned to Vahn. Yes, there was that revealing vein.
Something had happened, all right. “Lead the way.”

Vahn indicated the direction, the last of his fear-driven anger
cooling to perplexity. He did not understand the conversation he had just
witnessed, but sensed that both participants did—that they both possessed some
key he’d not yet grasped. As if a moment of decision had been reached, though
what it was he could not say.

Bleak humor steadied him as they progressed along another
weird stairway.
With any luck he’s
decided it’s time to call this disaster a night.

A holiday atmosphere prevailed at the South Cap Alpha
shuttle bay where loved ones, friends, and associates waited for the newest
arrival. Those at the front had been there longest, their anticipation
sharpest, whatever the motive.

Farther back, in front of concessions and clubs, the waiters
conversed, a few laughing over reports of the spectacular disaster at the Ascha
Gardens the night before. The few eyewitnesses were listened to with mirthful
appreciation as they relished details.

No one paid any attention to the loner in nondescript tech
clothing among them, a person who stood at the edge of two contiguous groups so
that he might appear to belong to the other, should anyone notice him.

But nobody noticed him. He was too well trained; as he
waited, he ran through his mantra.
I was
born of nothing, and to nothing will I return. I am nothing, except when I
serve as the instrument of Death, who consumes all.

New voices joined from
the back.

Your target is a
laergist, of Archetype and Ritual.

The tech recollected
the supplied image, a tall, thin, angular man in the robes of his College.

He might be in
mourning white.

Ignore his luggage.
Bring me everything he carries on his body.

On the slowly approaching shuttle, there was anticipation in
reverse: closest to the designated lock those at the front had been there
longest, their hopes swooping between hope and fear of disappointment.

But not everyone was there.

The Laergist Ranor sat in his cabin, sick with tension.

Shock had closed him in its vise the day of Krysarch Brandon
nyr-Arkad’s Enkainion, when he had been helpless to intervene as he watched a
bomb destroy everyone who had gathered in the Palace’s great Ivory Hall to see
Brandon take the vows of Service. Brandon had not appeared, for reasons no one
ever did explain.

Afterward, those few who escaped the bomb in the Ivory Hall
were angry that Brandon’s unknown guardians had not seen fit to warn the
guests, much less whisk them to safety. Ranor knew it was not that simple: for
the last report he’d received before the comms went down completely were that
all of the Krysarch’s guardians on duty at that time had been found dead in
some sub-level of the Palace.

But Ranor had been beyond speculating, because among the
dead lay his beloved mate, Leseuer gen Altamon of Ansonia, and their unborn
child.

Much later the tough, gray-haired Navy captain who sneaked
in under the guns of the Dol’jharians in order to rescue the last remaining
fugitives had given him her rare smile, complimenting Ranor on his selflessness
and presence of mind.

Numb with grief, Ranor had been unable to explain that he
saw no further reason for living: it had been habit to calm hysterical people
after the bomb, and to lead to safety through the labyrinthine Palace those few
who were willing to follow.

Ranor had been one of the last rescued from the planet
before the Dol’jharians locked it down, after he’d joined others in
unsuccessfully fighting the invaders through the medium of communications. And
all that time, he had carried with him, next to his flesh, his last link with
his beloved Leseuer: the chip containing the images she recorded through the
ajna-lens on her forehead, recorded right up until the moment of her death.

He’d viewed the chip repeatedly, despite the almost
unbearable pain: an act of penance as much as grief.
I should have been there with you!

But it was not until he transferred aboard this Navy courier
that the implications of the images that Leseuer gave him detonated in his
skull like the bomb that had killed his beloved.

Still reeling from grief, Ranor had racked himself over the
decision he faced: destroy the chip and permit the shattered government to
reform, most probably around high figures who—if the images were to be
trusted—were implicated in the Dol’jharian plot? Or speak, and watch them fall?