A Prison Unsought (44 page)

Not at once. Charidhe Masaud had assumed leadership again,
delivering a stinging opinion of the lapse in public taste now that more and
more people favored holographic accompaniments to music. Defenders and
attackers spoke up. More than one glance was sent Brandon’s way, the topic
taking on a significance it wouldn’t have had before his arrival.

He didn’t seem to hear because he was talking to Geoff.

Faseult gulped down his last pastry, and with his empty
plate as his shield, made his way to the table. As he contemplated the cakes,
he listened to the adolescent snicker, followed by Brandon’s voice: “No, we
really did use the mechwaiters.”

Faseult took a step nearer. Brandon went on. “Picture this.
The Tarkans in their servo-armor . . .” He mimed heavy
mechanized steps. “The mechs load up . . . clang . . .
whizz . . . splat! A helmet full of glop. Two of them move
blindly toward each other, and . . .” He pinched a pastry,
causing filling to squirt out.

Geoff snickered again. “That’s the way the Rifter told it,
at the f-free-fall gym,” he stuttered. “Some s-said he made it up.”

“Truth.”
Brandon held his hand up, palm out. “I programmed the mech-waiters myself—my
brother Galen and I used to program ’em so we could duel each other with nasty
pies.”

“I
heard that story.” It was another youngster, a tall weedy girl who’d sat on the
fringes at the other end of the room. “But—” She looked serious. “Did you
really let the Rifters loot the Palace Major, Your Highness?”

“Only
the Ivory Antechamber,” Brandon said. “And every one of those items is
cataloged. I’ll buy them back someday.”

Geoff mumbled something, as a group of the girl’s friends
joined them.

Brandon laughed. “Yes, my plan exactly. And what better use
for Eusabian’s treasury?”

Two new voices joined in the laughter.

“So
who else has a good escape story?” Brandon asked, looking around the small
group of teens.

Faseult gave up his pretense of not listening, and leaned
against the table, observing as, too gradually for it to be perceived as a
social coup, the conversational matrix shifted to center around Brandon and
Geoff Masaud. Reminiscences—comedic and tragic—gave way to talk of what had
been left behind. The exchange was cathartic as Douloi, so adept at hiding,
talked frankly of what they had lost.

The subject stayed with material things, but the emotional
undertone was loss as well—losses shared, pointing the way to unity. As Anton
Faseult listened to the light voice reacting in a tone to complement each
speaker’s, he experienced one of those taps or tugs of memory, too brief to
identify.

So he watched, surprised to hear the stuttering, clumsy
Masaud boy reveal an intense fascination with piloting; he and Brandon
exchanged a fast discussion of the technical specs of several atmospheric craft.
Brandon might have remembered those from his Academy days, but where would
Geoff Masaud have learned such? Brandon’s sympathy, his subtle encouragement,
seemed to go right past the mother, who hovered nearby, her thin cheeks
flushed. Was she angry at being supplanted? Or pleased to find her son for once
at the center of a social circle?

Perhaps Charidhe herself did not know—for when Brandon left
a little while after, she was on his arm, her gangling son walking close by his
other side, and the last sound was Geoff’s adolescent bray mingling with the
Aerenarch’s hearty laughter.

Faseult stayed a while longer, contemplating how all the
energy and light seemed to have gone out of the room, as those left behind
began bozzing friends and relations.

Charidhe was also bozzing, gracefully begging pardon for her
anticipated late arrival at a gathering as she carried the Aerenarch off.

Her idea was to form a very exclusive impromptu party around
him, but her plan dissolved when they came face to face with some of the guests
she had just excused herself from, and during the mingled greetings and mutual
compliments, Brandon expertly extricated himself, and made his way down a
garden path toward the lake, shadowed by his Marine guard—and watched by Vannis
Scefi-Cartano, who had received four bozzes.

She had left that same Name Day party when Charidhe arrived,
and now she watched the lakeside path through enhancers.

She surveyed the entire lake, her eye caught by a young man
debarking from the transtube near the Enclave.

“Omilov,”
she murmured, recognizing the straight back and the big ears. What business had
a mere lieutenant with Brandon? Osri Omilov had been there twice in as many
days.

Though he’d spent the most time with Brandon, he was
useless. If Omilov knew anything about the mystery of Brandon’s escape from the
Enkainion holocaust, he wouldn’t talk, and he never attended any but the most
general functions—and then he stood with the Navy brass, or the old gnostor.

Brandon did not turn down the path leading toward the
Enclave. Instead he wandered, apparently aimlessly, along the lakeside.

In the direction of her villa.

She slapped her enhancer into its case and opened the garden
door. Damn those Dol’jharians for broadcasting that obscenity in the Throne
Room of the Mandala. Semion’s bodiless head haunted her dreams now.

Much as she had
detested Semion, she believed the remnants of the Panarchy desperately needed
his ability to wield power, to command ships to go this way and that, defeat
the Dol’jharian monsters, and restore life to normal—
restore me to my old
position.

But even if we manage
to reestablish ourselves . . .

Things still wouldn’t be normal, and that was her worst
fear. Before Santos Daimonaskos walked out of a lock into space on hearing from
Hesthar al’Gessinav that his metals refinery, in mid-space in the Konigvalt
system, had been blown apart by Rifters acting for Eusabian of Dol’jhar, Vannis
had not thought about the second, bloodless war that had been triggered by the
first: the economic one. Hesthar undoubtedly had clever agents in place, who
would protect those of her interests not destroyed by the enemy fleet, but some
people had come to realize that even if their homes might not be touched, their
industries might.

On impulse she touched
her boswell and sent a message to Brandon. To her surprise, he responded
immediately.
(You bozzed me?)

(Forgive me: Danaerik
brooking over the ruins. It was an impulse, a need for converse free of the
bindings of Court.)

It didn’t matter, she
told herself, what he said, this do-nothing third son of
Gelasaar-who-might-still-live, but still her heart rate accelerated and she did
not breathe until, after an endless pause, his answer came back.

(I happen to be in
your vicinity. Would you like a visit?)

He had been elusive for weeks—and now it was so easy!

He arrived not long after, and Vannis, having dismissed
Yenef on an errand likely to take hours, opened the door herself, glad it was
the Marine with him instead of the long-faced Rifter. The Marine’s abstract
gaze was easily ignored; he knew the rules, and stayed unobtrusively at a
proper distance. The Rifter with his tinkling Serapisti mourning braids . . .
watched.

“Morning,
Vannis.” Brandon stepped through the garden door. “I didn’t see you at the Name
Day.”

“I
was among the first guests.” She smiled and held both hands out, the pose one
of deference but her manner inviting—daring—intimacy. Brandon pressed her hands
together between his and brought them up to kiss her fingers. Not with Srivashti’s
lingering possessiveness, but lightly.

“Something
to drink?” Vannis asked. One had to say something while the Marine made his
circuit of the room.

“Thanks,
no,” he said, waiting politely for her to invite him to sit.

Unwanted, an image of Semion crossed her inner vision, so
she laid her hand on the door latch. “Let’s walk,” she said.

Politesse in Semion,
and Srivashti, was a weapon; in Brandon it seemed innate. There was no irony in
this wordless gesture of deference, and a stray memory of her mother surfaced,
her distant gaze as she said,
Vannis, there is no longer any point of contact
between me and those in power who use manners as a weapon.

But Gelasaar never used
manners as a weapon,
Vannis told that old shade.

And Brandon had never possessed any power.

She reached the little bridge over a tumbling stream. The
chuckle of the water sounded peaceful, though it did nothing to soothe her
tension.

She cast a sidewise glance. He was taller than she
remembered, and the blue gaze, so oblique on the ballroom floor, was both
direct and acute: she had not succeeded in gaining his attention in general
gatherings, but she had it now.

Nerves flaring, she glanced around for a topic, any topic,
and waved at the flickering silver fish below. “Are they real or mere holos, do
you think?”

His gaze shifted to the stream, and she could think again. Her
focus sharpened to how his lashes hid the entire iris; the diffuse light
outlining the curve of his cheek; his light breathing.

“They’re
real,” he said. “At least, the ones at our side of the lake are. Ducks, too.”
He flashed a grin. “Jaim and I sometimes throw vegetable trimmings to ’em. They
catch ’em out of the air.”

“Brandon.”
His name was out before she thought, but if he noticed the lack of title, he
betrayed no sign. “About the government. We cannot live long with chaos,” she
said quickly.

The oblique look was back: one moment his face was smiling
and boyish, the next smiling and impervious as steel. All the mirth had
vanished from his countenance.

But he said nothing, so, with a distracted glance around for
the Marine—who was, quite properly, not in sight—she went on, “There are
whispers of some kind of intercepted message from the Dol’jharians.” And when
his gaze flicked up and he asked, “Whispers? From whom?”

“I don’t know. I hear it all over. Listen, I fear there
might not be time to rescue your father if something is not done soon.”
Will you act? Or must we act for you?

She had not understood
until she said it that she wanted him to act, wanted him to take control.
Ambition placed her in Srivashti’s group, but emotion, so ill-defined and
difficult to control, wished for Brandon to take his rightful place.

With me by his side.

Blood sang in her ears; she did not breathe.

He spoke in the light, timbreless voice of the ballroom
floor. “I have great faith in our ability to rescue him.”

A statement that
couldn’t be more fatuous.

He really is a
political innocent,
she thought, and her dilemma was decided. He could never
withstand a Regency coup. Ambition was satisfied: she would keep silent about
the cabal, and let events take their natural course.

Which left the way open for pure emotion.

“I’m
sorry,” she said. “I—hope he’ll be rescued, of course.” And turned to face him.

Now came a rush of doubt-impelled images: Srivashti, when he
was displeased; Semion’s sneering face.

Her palms were clammy, her blood sang in her ears. “Stay,”
she said voicelessly.

In the angle of his head, and the one half-lifted hand,
there was caution.

“No
one need know,” she said quickly. “Or if they do, you can cut me dead tomorrow,
for I will never ask you again.” She reached to pull the jeweled clasp from her
hair, which fell down about her shoulders as she opened her hand with a quick
gesture. The jewels glittered, then splashed into the stream. “Today, just you
and me.”

He looked down at glinting jewels in the stream, and she
read faint regret in his movements, and fighting desolation, she said, “You’re
not thinking of Semion.”

It was entirely instinctive, a breach of the impervious
shield maintained by the Douloi, but the quick flicker of Brandon’s eyelids
revealed his own reaction.

“Though
he haunts me everywhere else,” she said in a low, quick voice, “his ghost does
not haunt my bedroom. Semion never slept with me. Ever. He wouldn’t. Because . . .”

Brandon smiled, a sweet smile she had never seen, and took
her hand in his warm clasp. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Your other ghosts
can rest in peace.”

He walked inside with her and shut the door.

Ng stood in the background, watching with appreciation the
pas de deux of politesse as Nyberg welcomed the Aerenarch to his office.

“Thank
you for taking the time to visit, Your Highness,” the admiral said. “We
recently decoded this communication from the Mandala, sent over the hyperwave,
and I wondered if you might be able to clarify it.”

They turned to the screen, where an unidentified Bori in
Dol’jharian service gray appeared. He bowed profoundly to the imager, then said
in an obsequious voice, in accented Uni, “Senz lo’Barrodagh, I regret having to report increasing difficulties
here with the Tarkan units. The, ah, the incidents—” He pronounced the word
carefully. “—are increasing. And Dektasz Jesserian insists I contact you on
behalf of the Avatar’s forces. They claim that the Palace is haunted. What are
your orders?”

The Aerenarch surprised them all by his laughter.

o0o

“You
are almost as selfish as your father, Osri,” Risiena Ghettierus snarled,
glaring at her sullen, obdurate son.

Osri stood silently under the harangue, his attention
veering toward the commotion outside on the green.

“Your
Shiidra-sucking father won’t answer privacies or mail, he won’t come visit. Now
that he’s lodged with the mumbling Desrien fakers.”

Osri suppressed an urge to laugh at the description of
Eloatri as a mumbling faker. Instead, he shifted his stance enough to permit a
single glance past his mother’s shoulder, out the window. The disturbance
resolved into the shouts of some older teens, playing some sort of rapid game.