The Phoenix in Flight (59 page)

Vi’ya shrugged slightly. “As captain, I receive fifty
percent of everything they take.” Her smile was faint. “Having now seen a small
portion of your home, I am not worried about being able to afford whatever
Telvarna
requires, so I can take the liberty of pleasing myself.”

They had been slowly walking in no particular direction
along the length of the hall and now stood in front of a pedestal displaying
something that glittered softly in the light from above. It was a necklace,
with a chain composed of large links—too large for a human neck—of a dark
silvery alloy with an almost oily sheen to it. Suspended in a simple setting
was a large elliptical gem. It was a soft gray, the indistinct color of morning
rainclouds, and had no facets.

Greywing sucked her breath in, mesmerized by the eye-tricking
depths in the stone.

Brandon lifted the necklace from the display and held it out
to Vi’ya, and when she extended her palm, he dropped it into her hand. Slowly
the gem came to life, apparently activated by the heat of her hand. It began to
flicker with a holographic medley of colors that slowly flowed up her arm,
layering her in an armor of light. Against the severity of her attire and the
calm impassivity of her expression the effect was startling.

“The Stone of Prometheus,” said Brandon, “found in the
wreckage of an alien spacecraft in the Oort Cloud around the Ndigwe system some
six hundred fifty years ago. No one knows anything about the race that made it,
or where they came from.”

He bowed with a flourish, his hand making an airy arc that
somehow combined both grace and humor. “As my last official act, as Krysarch
Brandon Takai Burgess Njoye William su Gelasaar y Ilara nyr Arkad d’Mandala, I
give this to the captain of the
Telvarna.”

Vi’ya hesitated, her expression altering very slightly, but
she did not return his smile. Her hand closed over the stone. She made a
little, quick gesture—almost a nervous movement, though Greywing had never seen
the captain display that emotion, even under fire.

Brandon seemed to sense it, too. “What is it?” he asked, his
smile changing to question.

Vi’ya shrugged, this time a sharp movement. “The captain of
Telvarna
thanks you,” was all she said as she walked past.

“It’s your moves,” Greywing said. “Like this.” She flicked
her hand up in a parody of his mocking bow. “Don’t know whether you got ’em
from Markham or he got ’em from you, but sometimes looking at you is like a
ghost come to life.”

Brandon’s smile vanished. He gave her a sober nod, then his
expression altered again when his gaze moved past her shoulder.

Greywing turned to look at what had caught his attention and
saw the captain approaching the big double doors.

o0o

“Got room for this one, Firehead?” Lokri asked.

“Sure,” Ivard said, happy at the comtech’s friendliness.

“Good. Here’s another one for Marim. If we don’t bring her
plenty, she’ll hack our balls off while we sleep and have Montrose cook ’em for
our breakfast.”

Ivard winced as he shoved another pointy art thing down the
inside of his sleeve. He could barely move. He’d have to stop somewhere and
figure out a way to shift all this stuff around better.

Snorting a laugh, he thought about the fortune he was
carrying inside his clothes. How he wished old Trev back on Natsu could see him
now! He still couldn’t believe it. Him and Greywing actually in the Palace
belonging to the Panarch—and robbing it! And with one of the Krysarchs cheering
them on!

He checked to see if Greywing was having fun, but she was
frowning. And the captain was coming his way! He gulped and faded back
defensively, but she passed by him without a glance.

Curious, he ducked around Lokri, who was digging with the
point of his springknife at the jewels encrusting a huge statue. The captain
stopped before those big doors with the things carved on them.

“What’s that?” the Krysarch said, walking fast.

Ivard followed.

A thin yellow sash with purple blotches was draped across
the carved doors that separated the antechamber from the Hall beyond. Its
garish color clashed horribly with the old-gold of the design in the carpet.
Ivard’s skin prickled as the blotches resolved into the ancient and terrible
symbol of the inverted trefoil.

“Radiation?” the Krysarch said sharply. “In the Hall of
Ivory?”

He pulled at the door handle. The yellow plastic sash
stretched and snapped as the doors swung open under the impulse of the hinge
engines, and the sight thus revealed wrung a shout of anguish from the Krysarch
as he ran through—
“No!
“—and fell to his knees.

The vast interior of the Hall of Ivory was a charred ruin,
illuminated only by the light from the open doors and the few lamps left
unshattered in the blackened ceiling. The tapestries on the walls were mere
traceries of ash and tattered cloth. The windows—evidently destroyed by
whatever energies had been released within the Hall—had been covered with
opaque dyplast sheets. The sweet stench of burned flesh loured faintly in the
air. At the far end of the Hall the immense doors that guarded the Ivory
entrance to the Throne Room were seared and blackened, their inlaid design
reduced to twisted strips of metal.

Ivory.

The words that Deralze spoke just before he died came back
to Brandon:
“Trust him. He didn’t know... Plot. Ivory...

Now he understood Deralze’s uncertainty in the Palace, the
day of the Enkainion.
Lenic knew about this.

If it hadn’t been for Markham, Brandon would have died with
the others in the Ivory Hall.

The Faseult ring burned on his finger. Brandon gazed down at
it sightlessly, his eyes aching as he remembered that day. His ridiculous
conversation with the Archonei Inesset, the irritation he’d felt when he said
his farewell to Eleris without her knowing. The worst she could have been
accused of was ambition.

Farewell.
Eleris, I thought it was I who chose danger,
not you.

He trembled, helpless in the grip of rage and grief, but he
forced himself to observe every detail of the room, and remember. Shallow or
calculating, foolish or devious—as so many of them had been—loyal and
dedicated, faithful and faithless, none of them had deserved this.

He became aware of Montrose’s bulky form, and heard without
comprehending a strident burring noise from his boswell and the one on
Montrose’s wrist. A pair of huge hands grabbed him under the arms and threw him
out of the Hall. He tried to back on his hands and knees toward the Hall of
Ivory as the tall doors swung shut in his face; he could not abandon them, his
mourning should not be interrupted.

Montrose grabbed his upper arms in his huge paws and hauled
him to his feet, whispering fiercely, “Fool! Stay out of there! The rads in
there would kill you, and not quickly. We have nothing on the
Telvarna
to
deal with the likes of that!”

As suddenly as it had gripped him, the storm of emotion
broke and receded.

o0o

Ivard watched the Krysarch straighten up after Montrose let
go of him. He took a deep breath and clawed his hair back from his face, his
hands shaking. Then his face went polite again, but Ivard could still see the
evidence of emotion in tears and the tremble of his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” the Krysarch muttered. “This was where my
Enkainion was held.” He took another deep breath and said with a bitter smile,
“Except I wasn’t here. I’d gone off to join you.”

“Best for you that you did,” said Montrose grimly, tapping
his boswell. “According to my boz’l, whoever settles into this palace will
first have to tear down that hall and launch the rubble into the sun. They used
an obscenely filthy radiation device. There could have been no survivors.”

Ivard turned his back on the blasted Hall and on the
Krysarch still struggling with his reaction. Witnessing his transition from
cool control to wild grief and back again had been more unsettling than the
sight of the destruction inside the building.

He found Greywing crouched on the ground, painstakingly
picking up gemstones from the floor. Lokri was still prying stones from the
statue with his knife. He caught the biggest ones, but let the smaller stones
fall to the floor, where Greywing gathered them.

“There’s better things,” Ivard said to her.

Greywing hefted a handful of stones. “Oh, these’ll bring a
good price, if we don’t sell ’em at once. Good bargaining.” She snorted softly,
lifting her chin in Lokri’s direction. “Already ruined the statue anyway.”

“So what? Nicks can buy themselves a new one,” Ivard said.

Greywing squinted at him, and he knew he’d said something
wrong. “New stones can be dug up,” she said. “But you don’t find things like
this twice.” She pointed at the statue, now scored with knife scratches and
pocked where jewels were missing.

“So. These rich nicks—”

“Look, Ivard.” Greywing put her hand inside her coverall,
wincing slightly, and pulled out a small round silver thing—like a misshapen
coin.

“That don’t look like much,” Ivard said, poking at the thing
on her callused palm. “Won’t bring a big price—”

“That’s all you know,” she said. “It’s from Lost Earth.”

Ivard gasped. Fancy as all these other gemmed and gold
things were, he knew that anything purportedly from Lost Earth was priceless.
“You could buy a ship—for us,” he breathed.

“Not selling it,” she stated, her eyes wide and intense. “See
it, Ivard? There’s only one, and when it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”

He wanted to say, “So what?” but he could see that this was
important to her. So he looked at it more closely, then discovered what the
shape was. “It’s a bird!”

Greywing grinned like she had when they were small.
“‘Greywing.’ See?” she said. Her fingers closed over it. “Gonna keep it
forever.”

Ivard thought it over. “Like my flight medal? Except you
didn’t do anything for it,” he amended.

To his surprise, his sister shook her bristly head.
“Krysarch gave me a promise. About Natsu. They’ll get their freedom, too.” She
slid the medallion back into her pocket.

Puzzled by this odd turn of events, Ivard looked away, then
made a discovery. “Hey! More stones over there.” He’d help her gather them—he
couldn’t get anything more into his coverall anyway.

Greywing bent to pick up some small rubies, and Ivard saw a
gleam of emerald in a corner behind a statue. He reached to grab it, then
snatched his fingers back with a yelp when a bright ribbon of what looked like
green plastape rustled out and wrapped itself around his freckled wrist.

“Yow!” he yelled. It prickled, not painfully. And, “Hey!”
with real fear when he tried to rip it free, and the ribbon bound tighter.

“What’s that?” Lokri said from behind.

“It
jumped
me,” Ivard quavered, holding up his arm.
“Gimme your knife. I want to cut it off.”

Montrose appeared, frowning. “Looks like Kelly ribbon,” he
said. “Where was it?”

“Under there.” Ivard pointed. “Please, get it off.” He
didn’t know much about the Kelly, who seemed such strange and jolly beings, but
he didn’t trust anything inanimate that suddenly took on a life of its own.

“Here, I’ll do it,” Lokri said, producing his springknife
from his sleeve. “I’ll just—”

Montrose put his hand on Lokri’s arm, restraining him. Lokri
tried to shake him off, then stilled as Vi’ya said sharply, “Silence.”

The Eya’a emitted an ear-tingling chatter. Vi’ya spun around
with her jac in a two-handed grip and fired at a figure that appeared at the top
of the staircase. The man dropped his weapon and slumped down the stairs. The
heavy jac bumped noisily down several risers and then clattered to the floor
below. His body followed a short distance, then his foot caught between two
risers and twisted him over the edge, leaving him hanging upside down like a
carcass in a meat locker.

“Your emotions blocked the Eya’ a from hearing him until too
late,” said Vi’ya, looking from the Krysarch to Greywing. “We had better leave
here with what we have. We won’t have much time once he’s missed.”

She pushed the Stone into her pouch with the other small
items she’d chosen, and gestured with her weapon. “Where now?”

“But this—” Ivard squawked, scratching at the Kelly ribbon
now wrapped tightly round his wrist. It itched fiercely.

Ivard’s question flared to terror when the Krysarch and
Montrose exchanged looks he could not interpret.

“I’ll take care of it when we get back on board, boy,”
Montrose said. “Come on.”

The Krysarch’s face was grim as he led them across the
chamber. Ivard followed as closely as he could, wincing as his treasures poked
his body unmercifully. He rubbed hard at the thing on his wrist.

They passed the dead soldier hanging from the staircase, a
neat, smoking hole marring the red fist of Dol’jhar on the chest of his gray
uniform. Then Brandon twitched aside another tapestry to reveal a narrow door.
He turned to Vi’ya. Behind her the Eya’a stood unmoving, their eyes gleaming.

“This will bring us down onto the level of the old Hegemonic
detention areas,” the Krysarch said. “How far off can they sense humans?”

“They can localize and sense something of their minds up to
a hundred meters away—walls are no obstacle. Beyond that they can sense their
presence, and sometimes strong emotions, but nothing else.”

“But they can’t tell us apart?”

“Only humans they know. We will have to assume that anyone
we meet is an enemy.”

He pushed open the door, motioning them to the landing of a
narrow spiral staircase.

The crew filed past him. Brandon glanced back at the
plundered hall once more, then let the tapestry fall.

They ran down the echoing steel into the darkness below,
Ivard lagging behind. He struggled to stay with the rest, but prickles and
pains shot up his legs and arms from the things he’d thrust into his coverall,
the prickles far worse than they’d been, as if everything had grown sharp
points and edges. His skin hurt all over, but the worst was the green thing on
his wrist.