The Phoenix in Flight (57 page)

Brandon nodded. “They’re smart, but these old open cars
aren’t safe for them. The computer controls it.” He glanced around, his brow
puckering. “I don’t know if we’ll see any. Given the circumstances, it might be
best if we did not.”

Brandon waited until the others boarded and then tapped the
keys in the small console. The carrier accelerated smoothly into the tunnel.
Widely spaced lights held back the darkness. The rush of air past the fairing
was loud and constant, interrupted occasionally by a muffled
whoomp
as
they passed a side tunnel. The only other sound was an intermittent clicking
from the rails as they passed switching points.

Presently Ivard leaned toward Greywing to whisper, “This
place is a maze.” His voice echoed.

“Seems us Rifters have nothing on these crooked old Panarchy
chatzers,” Lokri said agreeably.

“Some of those crooked old Panarchy chatzers would be
violently insulted to be mistaken for the Hegemonists who built these tunnels,”
Brandon said in an equally pleasant tone, his blue gaze meeting Lokri’s cold
gray stare.

Lokri grinned, a wide grin that slashed clear across his
face.

Greywing let herself observe his handsome dark face, never
more attractive than when laughing, or acknowledging a hit. His long curling
hair blew back in the wind, his gemstone gleamed in his ear.

Then she deliberately looked away.

Montrose sat back in the carrier, watching the younglings.
Amusement was his foremost emotion at the ebb and flow of their interactions.
Amusement and a catch at the heart very near regret when he observed the
gangling red-haired pup. So would his own two have gazed around, had they lived
long enough to visit the Mandala—but they had not lived, they’d been murdered,
along with their mother, back on Timberwell. And so he moved through his days
without ever making plans, with amusement as his goal. If he died here today,
it would be nothing more than he expected. If he lived, he planned to take away
a fortune and spend it all on entertainment when he could. Tomorrow could take
care of itself. He would do his best to survive today.

Nobody spoke as the cart raced along the tunnels. Ivard
gawked, the captain observed, the Eya’a sat still, the breeze kicked up by
their movement ruffling through the ice-white fur. Greywing hunched into
herself, her healing wound clearly paining her. Montrose had not missed her
long scrutiny of the oblique comtech Lokri. Nor had he missed the moment when
something in the Krysarch’s manner caused one of Lokri’s lightning changes of
intent: the Arkad, no doubt totally unaware, had metamorphosed from adversary
to quarry.

If they returned safely, Marim and Lokri would probably
institute one of their outrageous bets, the Krysarch’s seduction being the
purpose and something either risky or costly, or both, the stake. And young
Greywing would watch through that unnerving rheumy stare, her attraction to the
elegant and devious Lokri only exceeded by her distrust.

Montrose never interfered. No one ever thanked you when you
were right, and if you were wrong, they never forgot. Anyway, the eternal dance
of attraction and anger was far more amusing when viewed from a distance.
Otherwise he would have taken Greywing aside and told her to get Lokri drunk
and bed him, and then forget him.

Except she wouldn’t forget him. If easy-hearted bunk-hopping
had ever been in her nature, it had gone out of it when she arrived at Dis as
Jakarr’s partner, her eyes bleak and her pale skin marked with bruises.
Montrose could have told her how to handle Jakarr, but he did not interfere,
and eventually she had considered her own and her brother’s place among the
crew secure enough to throw Jakarr out of her bunk.

His thoughts broke when Ivard said, “What did the
Hegemonists use these tunnels for?”

Montrose grinned. He’d never seen the boy so talkative.

“I don’t think anyone knows,” Brandon replied. “They
destroyed a lot of their data when they fled Arthelion.”

“Why’d they do that?”

“There were a lot of things they did that they didn’t want
remembered.” He paused. “One of my uncles on my mother’s side used to terrify
Galen and me when we were really small, with stories about things they’d left
behind, lurking in the tunnels.” He chuckled. “He took us Adamantine hunting
once. My mother was furious.”

“Adamantines! Like on Saxe Anglia, in
The Invisible
College
!” Ivard looked around, his expression one of mingled unease and
delight.

Montrose suspected that the boy was taking in this
experience as though it were a scene from a serial chip. He was sure, from her
sour expression, that Greywing suspected the same, and didn’t like it.

“I don’t expect any are lying in wait for us,” Lokri
drawled.

Montrose chuckled again, now watching the Krysarch, who had
tensed. What did he expect? He was nearly impossible to read, despite his
apparent openness in answering Ivard’s questions. Either Montrose had forgotten
all his Douloi subtleties, or else the shades of ambiguity and deflection
inculcated into the Arkads from birth surpassed the training received by minor
Houses on planets of lesser importance. A shame, really: the prospect of an
Arkad, from a line unbroken for nearly a thousand years, skulking through his
own palace like a hunted rat, promised superlative entertainment indeed.

Brandon said, “We are under the Ivory wing of the Palace
Major.”

The carrier slid smoothly to a stop. Brandon waited while
the crew followed, weapons ready, the Eya’a climbing out with their
characteristic odd little hops that hinted at wellsprings of great energy. Then
he said, his voice sounding oddly disembodied in the vast, empty tunnel, “This
is how to activate the carrier for the return trip.”

No one said anything as he demonstrated. He got out of the
carrier and moved over to a console mounted on the wall next to a ladder. “This
ladder opens into an old utility closet, which is located on the lowest
maintenance level. From what the computer said, it is likely not being used.
There are three more sublevels above that, and then the antechamber to the Hall
of Ivory. That’s where you’ll find what you need to pay for refitting the
Telvarna.
From there we can make our way down to the other side, in the old Hegemonic
subterrenes, and back here again.”

He tapped the console, and a square of yellow light appeared
overhead. He went up first and waited while the others followed. The closet was
large, empty, and stale-smelling, with a single glow-bulb set in the ceiling to
illuminate it. He shut the trapdoor, demonstrated how to reopen it, then went
to the door.

“Wait,” said Vi’ya. She turned to the Eya’a, and the three
froze into a momentary tableau. Then she relaxed. “They report no humans nearby
on this level. There are some above, but too far away to say how many, or
exactly where. They also report some non-human minds, also distant, but do not
know what they are.”

Brandon raised his eyebrows. “Dogs?”

Vi’ya hesitated, her lips parted. Montrose suspected that
neither the Dol’jharian captain nor the Eya’a had seen a canine in the flesh
before the brief encounter in the forest. Once again she stood close to the
Eya’a, all three still, then she looked away. “They do not perceive... life
forms the same way we do. The best I can get from them is that one of the minds
is like a raw hunger. The others are more complex.”

Brandon said, “Now I see why you don’t need boswells to keep
quiet. I shouldn’t have worried about needing the house system, after all.”

She shook her head. “They can’t tell strange humans apart,
so they can’t tell friend from foe until the person sees us and reacts.” She
smiled slightly. “At that point we won’t need the Eya’a to tell us the difference.”

Brandon opened the door. Opposite the closet was a flight of
stairs.

“We’ll come back down those stairs. For now, head left.”

He stepped out, followed by Vi’ya, shadowed closely by the
Eya’a. Montrose waited until the rest had exited and then took up the rear, his
weapon held at the ready, his finger carefully away from the trigger.

The corridor was paneled in a dark, subdued wood, the walls
interrupted at regular intervals by wooden doors, many of which had smaller
doors or hatches inset in them near the floor. Here and there framed paintings
hung on the walls, set off by molding to either side. One of them had a hatch
underneath it.

About fifty meters farther on, they passed a latched-open
fire door. Beyond it passages stretched off to either side, with similar open
fire doors a few meters down them. Brandon led the group straight on.

After the next fire door, Montrose detected a sour odor in
the air. He was about to comment when Lokri spoke. “Is this area usually so
empty?”

“The Palace Major doesn’t have a resident staff, since its
function is largely ceremonial, but even during a major function there wouldn’t
be much activity down here. This is only used for storage.”

Lokri looked around at the subdued elegance of their
surroundings and whistled derisively. “Well, pardon me,” he drawled in a parody
of aristocratic speech, switching his gait to an exaggerated, mincing saunter,
“but I seem to have stumbled into a service corridor. I am
so
embarrassed—”

He bit the word off when he slipped and almost fell. A sharp
stench filled the air.

“Blunge!” Lokri glared at the bottom of his foot and then at
Brandon. “I guess there’s no servants to follow the Arkad dogs around with a
blunge-scoop anymore.”

Ivard snorted a nervous laugh and Montrose swatted him on
the shoulder. “Keep your voice down.”

“Is that what that stinks?” Ivard whispered. “Are the little
doors for them?”

“Right on both counts, Ivard.” Brandon said. “Dogs are
conservative creatures. They don’t like change. Normally they’d consider the
Palace their den, which they never soil.”

One fire door later, about halfway down the corridor,
Brandon stopped in front of a painting of an undistinguished landscape. He
grasped the ornate frame on either side, and with a subdued click the paneling swung
inward to reveal a narrow staircase. “This goes up all four levels to the
antechamber of the Hall of Ivory. It opens behind a tapestry.”

They began climbing. The flights were short, with four turns
between each floor. At the top Brandon waited until everyone was on the last
landing, then turned to Vi’ya.

“There’s no one out there,” she reported, “although they say
there are some below and some distance away.”

Brandon tapped a sequence into a keypad next to the door.
There was a flicker of red light, then a lens flashed green. “The alarms are
off,” he announced.

He eased the door open, separated a fold in the tapestry
with two fingers, and peeked through. Then with a grand gesture, and a curious
twist to his mouth that was not quite a smile, he swept the heavy hanging aside
and ushered them into his world.

o0o

Sebastian Omilov was naked, strapped to a chill-surfaced
metal gurney by cuffs around his upper arms, wrists, thighs, and ankles. A cold
breeze blowing from the ventilation duct high in the wall across from him added
to his discomfort, but this was nothing compared to the strain of waiting.

Eusabian’s Bori aide had turned him over to a silent hulk of
a man, instructing him with a few guttural Dol’jharian phrases. The man’s long,
dark face was pitted with sun-cancers, his huge hands horny and twisted with
some degenerative condition, but his strength was more than a match for Omilov.
He had efficiently and impersonally stripped him and bound him to the gurney.
He didn’t even appear to notice Omilov’s resistance. The man had then shaved
Omilov’s head and left him to his thoughts.

Above and behind him was a console with some sort of mesh
affair attached to a wire dangling from a swiveling arm. Against the walls were
ranks of medical devices, including monitoring and resuscitation equipment.
Next to the gurney, where he could see it if he turned his head, was a rolling
table with neatly arranged, coldly glittering instruments with an unpleasant
multiplicity of points and edges and serrated teeth.

He looked away, recognizing this time alone as the beginning
of the torture.

The news of Nahomi’s death had shaken him, and not only
because it denied him the relatively quick death of anaphylactic shock, from
the hidden allergy to truth drugs that had been induced in him when he was
named a Praerogate Occult. Contrary to the reputation she assiduously
courted—her nickname had been one measure of her success—he had known her as an
essentially gentle person, who subordinated her own preference for mercy to the
demands of justice and fealty. She had also been a masterful administrator,
wielding a deft mixture of firmness, respect, and understanding in her dealings
with the Invisibles, men and women who had been entrusted with the authority of
the Panarch himself, who were known only to themselves, the Panarch, and her.
He would miss her greatly.

The door swung open and Omilov turned his head, the surface
of the gurney cold against his cheek. A tall man with an angular, arrogant face
entered and studied him. Another, shorter man stood behind him. The tall man’s
head was shaven, his scalp lacquered with a fantastic arabesque in almost
metallic colors whose major themes seemed to be eyes and teeth and claws. He
wore a long robe of some heavy, shimmering material the color of dried blood.
The front of its sleeves left his arms uncovered to the elbow, while the back
of the sleeves drooped in a fantastic spill of material almost to the floor. As
he scrutinized Omilov he gathered up the excess material of each sleeve and
clipped the tip of it under a claw-like epaulette on each shoulder, while his
assistant pinned the mid-portions to his sides. The effect was unpleasant, like
the furled wings of a large carrion bird, or a demon.