A Prison Unsought (4 page)

“Good. This may shock him into
talking, and the simplest solution for all of us would be if he talks to you.
Tells you what happened on Arthelion, and then we will get a better sense of,
ah, who he is. How we must act.”

She uttered a strangled sound that bore no resemblance to a
laugh, though she’d meant to keep her sense of humor. “An apolitical in a
situation positively mined with political fallout?”

With that she rose to her feet, trim and decisive in her
movements in spite of her age. “I’d best comm the Enclave immediately.”

Nyberg rose with her, tabbing his boswell as he walked her
to the door. His punishment for loading this task onto her was the daunting
pile of urgent communiqués building. “I am in your debt, Vice-Admiral,” he
said, formality—and the clear obligations of duty—restored.

o0o

Jaim, once a corridor rat of Rifthaven and now sworn man
to Brandon vlith-Arkad, reflected that the Arkadic Enclave might look like an
old-fashioned villa designed for recluses, but there was nothing outdated about
the gymnasium beneath the main chambers.

Since Brandon had cut their sparring practice short to meet
with a tailor that some nick had sent, Jaim used the time freed for a private
workout.

It was there that the former Douloi neurosurgeon-chef who
called himself Montrose found him.

Jaim was aware of the big man standing, fists on hips, as he
looked about with an appraising air. Jaim continued the two-sword kinesic
without missing a beat.

Montrose, in his turn, took the opportunity to watch the
young engineer. Montrose had been worried about Jaim ever since the
Telvarna
had returned from their
triumphant raid on Arthelion to discover their secret moon base on Dis replaced
by an enormous crater in a moon cracked in half, and their other ship left as a
taunting abattoir. No one had survived.

Including Jaim’s beloved Reth Silverknife.

“Montrose?” Jaim asked.

“Done?” Montrose asked.

Jaim indicated the energy weapons. “I was going to run the
holo and do some shooting.”

Montrose eyed Jaim, whose tight-leashed energy seemed
scarcely abated, though sweat dripped from the mourning chimes in his braided hair.
“I’ve been worried about you,” he said.

“No need,” Jaim responded, as
Montrose had expected he would.

“Well, I am,” Montrose continued
imperturbably. “Ever since Dis.”

“I would worry about Vi’ya,” Jaim
said as he wiped down the swords and carefully replaced them. Beautiful
weapons—he wondered which old Arkad had had these made. “You know it’s always
bad when she goes silent. And Lokri. Locked away by the nicks under some kind
of death sentence. And Ivard, out of his mind from that Kelly ribbon.”

“Ivard is in good hands. Or will
be, when the Kelly chirurgeons do whatever it is they do to get that ribbon of
their Archon’s out of his DNA. It looks like they think Ivard is stable enough
to endure it, maybe even as soon as tomorrow. But you . . .”
Montrose lifted a hand toward the ceiling. “You always prized your
independence, more than any of the crew. Yet here you are, shadowing young
Brandon. I’m not saying it’s wrong, or I wouldn’t be running his galley. I
agreed to it for my own amusement, and because the kitchen here is the best I
have ever seen. What chef could resist? But you. Is this where you want to be?”

Jaim set the last weapon in the case, touched the control that
slid the swords back into the wall, and turned toward the door.

Montrose persisted. “I can’t help noticing that you haven’t
been performing your Ulanshu rituals. Except for the fighting.”

Jaim bowed his head, permitting the pulse of anger to fade
before he spoke. “I was once a Seeker of the Ulanshu Path. Now? I don’t know. I
won’t turn my back completely on the faith that Reth and I shared. To utterly
deny it would be to deny her.”

Montrose tabbed the door open. “I don’t see that.”

Jaim made a warding motion. “Perhaps because you never
understood.” He lifted his head, met Montrose’s gaze, and watched the impact in
the older man as he said, “Reth’s faith never faltered. Not even in the ugly
death Hreem the Faithless forced on her. I saw it. In little signs. She held to
the Flame to the end.”

Montrose recollected the desecrated body, preserved in vacuum,
and dropped his gaze.

Jaim said softly, holding his finger to the control so that
the door wouldn’t close, “But she is gone. Once we believed our spirits would
be forever united, but there is no sign of her. And so, for me, the Flame has
burned out.”

Montrose nodded slowly.

Jaim continued in that soft, cold voice. “One day I shall
exact a price from Hreem for that murder. That vow is part of my present path, the
Path of the Warrior. But my purpose, as sworn on Desrien, is to guard Brandon
Arkad.”

Jaim’s mind flickered back to the quiet cathedral on
Desrien. Eloatri, the religious leader who seemed to understand the Path in all
its variety, had said that Brandon would have need of him.

Montrose said skeptically, “It might have made sense if we’d
been dumped back on Rifthaven. But now Brandon’s got the entire Panarchic Navy
to babysit him. What’s left of it.”

Jaim acknowledged, then walked toward the galley. “True,”
he said. “But.”

He considered his words as they traversed one of the
pleasant, if utilitarian, servants’ corridors under the Enclave. The Navy had
been relatively decent, the Marine solarch, Artorus Vahn, who’d been assigned
as guard to Brandon, readily answering questions and even undertaking to teach
Jaim something about the bewildering intricacies of nick life. In specific, the
Tetrad Centrum Douloi, elite among the elite.

“But?” Montrose prompted as they
entered the galley.

Jaim considered their stay so far. The inmates of the
Enclave had been left to recover—officially, it was mourning—though Jaim was
beginning to perceive the discrepancies between official words and fact.

Another ‘so far’: Brandon did not appear to question the
fact that Solarch Vahn or his team accompanied him everywhere, insisting that
security required a schedule with search-and-sweep beforehand. He had not tried
again to visit the
Telvarna
’s crew,
housed in some detention center, after being politely told that security was
still being arranged, though he’d sent back to Ivard the two Arkadic dogs
they’d rescued from the Mandala, and he’d made a request for daily reports on
Ivard’s well-being.

Jaim understood this much: although Brandon was the highest
ranking civilian on the station, it was a Naval station. The Navy could not
command civilians—neither could Brandon command the Navy.

“But today, everything is going to
change,” Jaim said.

At that moment—as Montrose was reaching his hand out to pour
a cup of freshly ground coffee for Jaim—the alert toned, and on Montrose’s
galley console, the vid flickered to show a spare, elderly woman in a subdued
uniform. An ID floated above her head:
Vice-Admiral
Damana Willsones
.

“Hello, I suspect those changes are
happening right now,” Montrose said. “Here. Take these sandwiches I was making
for lunch. And the coffee. Whatever is going on, there is always a need for
refreshments.”

Jaim carried the tray to the inner reception chamber where
Brandon was dealing with the tailor.

As yet Jaim didn’t know what the huge party the Tetrad
Centrum Douloi were throwing in Brandon’s honor really meant, and Brandon
hadn’t told him. They talked about many things as they drilled in Ulanshu
kinesics every day and then sparred, or shared meals, but never the future. Or
the past before they met at the hideout on Dis.

Jaim had set the sandwiches down when Solarch Vahn led
Damana Willsones to the inner reception chamber.

Willsones had never been in the Enclave before, and looked
around with curiosity. The little she saw had been designed with Tetrad Centrum
Douloi style and attention to comfort, but with maximum security in mind.

“Thank you, Solarch,” she said,
appreciating how silently and efficiently the Marine jeeved. He managed to seem
nearly invisible as he took up a stance in the least significant corner of the
room, from which he had clear lines of fire on all three doors.

In the center of the octagonal chamber, she found the
Aerenarch Brandon vlith-Arkad standing patiently under the fussy ministrations
of an elderly tailor. The Aerenarch inclined his head in silent apology for the
delay, then he looked up as the woman’s deft fingers twitched at the high
collar of a tunic jacket. Nearby, a tailor’s dummy displayed a magnificent
formal mourning outfit, a vivid contrast with the severely plain civilian
mourning white the tailor was fussing over.

Against one wall a buffet offered beautifully presented
little sandwiches, and hot coffee, from the smell; beside it stood the Rifter,
Jaim, whom the Aerenarch had taken as his sworn man. In defiance of all
convention, as might be expected from someone who had grown up in the anarchy
of Rifthaven, he lounged next to the buffet: seemingly casual, but his was the
second position that commanded a clear field of fire.

Jaim’s gaze met hers without the deference of a servant:
dispassionate, considering. His stance, too, conveyed his lack of acquaintance
with or his disregard for Douloi expectations. A proper servant would have exerted
himself to remain invisible.

Jaim selected a sandwich and popped it into his mouth, an
absolute breach of protocol for a servant to the Douloi.

The tailor paused, looking inquiringly from Willsones to the
Aerenarch.

Willsones said, “I can wait.” She didn’t care if Brandon’s
pet Rifter stayed, went, or hung from the ceiling and hallooed, though her
opinion of Brandon dropped a notch. Why would he take a Rifter as personal
sworn man?

She pondered this question as the grateful tailor resumed
her twitching and tucking, muttering in an urgent under-voice to a point somewhere
between the Aerenarch and her assistant. A lover could be politely ushered out.
A bodyguard could only be commanded by Brandon, but why this Rifter? It was too
easy to assume that Brandon was setting up a favorite, the fiction of bodyguard
to place his lover outside the rules. Yet so far, Vahn reported, there was no
sign of intimacy, and the Aerenarch slept alone. Then there was the fact of a
second Rifter having been put in charge of the kitchens—a former Douloi, chef
and surgeon both, a bit of detritus from Tau Srivashti’s abominable rule of Timberwell.

Damana Willsones recalled Brandon nyr-Arkad as a boy,
trotting behind his brother Galen, the tall, thin poet who so strongly
resembled Ilara’s father. Semion had been a throwback to Gelasaar’s father.
Brandon, at first glance, resembled neither of his parents closely, though
details evoked one or the other, such as those blue eyes so like Ilara’s.

From a purely aesthetic perspective, the presumed heir was
at his best, standing there in shirt and trousers and boots. Rumor for the past
decade had done little to flatter him, but there was no sign of gluttony or
debauchery in the clean lines of his body, the contour of muscle not completely
masked by the loose linen sleeves, or in the clear gaze. But Willsones knew
debauchees who appeared to advantage, as if leading the most abstemious of
lives, Tau Srivashti being one of them.

Brandon’s dark, curling hair, that was the Arkad heritage.
What was going on between those fine ears lying so flat to his head?

The tailor fretted to herself, then glanced one last time at
her boswell as she muttered, “It will have to do. . . .” She
stood back, surveying her work with what unease, then glancing eloquently at
the tunic on the dummy. “I do not know how I will explain this to the Archon.”

“Archon Srivashti will be apprised
of my entire responsibility for the situation, and my total satisfaction with
your efforts,” said Brandon. “Thank you.”

Interesting that he
rejected Srivashti’s gift,
Willsones thought.

The tailor bowed, hesitated when she glanced again at the splendid
outfit on the dummy, then she gestured to her assistant, who took the tunic
jacket Brandon shrugged off and bore it to the team waiting in an antechamber
to hand stitch the final adjustments.

Willsones advanced, and then, instead of a formal military
salute, which would precede a military briefing, she offered her hands in the
formal Douloi greeting.

(So this is not a Naval
visit, but civilian)
, came Vahn’s bozzed voice in Jaim’s inner ear.
(Different rules.)

Brandon straightened, his beautiful manners revealing
nothing as he lightly touched fingertips to Willsones’ palms. She glanced from
the Faseult ring to the bland mask of Brandon’s face.

“Admiral Willsones,” Brandon said.
“My mother introduced us, did she not? Aren’t you related to the Lieutenant
Willsones who ran nav on her yacht?”

“My daughter.” Willsones watched
the lift of his dark brows in recognition, then the quick contraction of sympathy
as he realized that Lieutenant Willsones had died with the Kyriarch Ilara when
the Dol’jharians had murdered the Trucial Commission twenty years before. That
quick, instinctive sympathy—that was Ilara’s.

He said, “I’m sorry,” and then, before she had to say
anything, he indicated the Rifter who was eating another sandwich. “This is
Jaim, my bodyguard.”

What did he mean by introducing the Rifter bodyguard as if
he were a guest? Willsones found her first impression veering back toward
favorites. Either Brandon’s well-publicized excesses had rotted his brain entirely,
or was this an indirect invitation to state her business?
He knows his position is anomalous
. Even a drunken sot who had been
raised on the Mandala, political center of the Panarchy, would perceive that
much.

So she stepped outside of Naval and Douloi patterns of
interaction, staying within the context of familial connection as she said,
“You know that the Navy scans the cryptobanks of all incoming ships now, not
just what they discharge as their DataNet obligation. One held a vid that
Admiral Nyberg thought you should see before it is released. I am here to
escort you to a secured briefing room, if you wish to accept the Admiral’s
invitation.”