The Rifter's Covenant (29 page)

They fell in step,
Ng and Koestler leading as the two who were about to become admirals, and the
others falling in according to rank.

Osri let out his
breath in a long sigh and saw his emotions reflected in the faces of the
others.

We have to unite,
Osri thought soberly. The enemy is going to be hard enough to fight without
feuds among us.

“Let’s go,”
Rom-Sanchez said.

o0o

Most of the
Douloi slept late the day of the Accession, for their time was to be that evening,
and all wanted to look their best, and be at their sharpest. But Vannis rose early,
knowing that Brandon was already moving through the last phase of his appointed
rounds, finishing his three-day progress through every level of Ares Station.

Soon, he would
convene the remains of the old government, and, as was traditional, hear the
renewed Oath of Fealty. Afterward he’d host a vast celebration for officers,
the highest ranking Douloi, and a selection of civilians chosen by the College
of Archetype and Ritual in conference with half-a-dozen other Colleges,
Commander Nyberg, and even—it was rumored—the High Phanist of Desrien. The
guest list had been the hottest topic of debate since the news had spread of
Gelasaar’s death.

It was time to
dress. Vannis’s gown—white for mourning, as was proper for the last official
act of the deceased Aerenarch’s consort—was deceptively simple in design, made
of costly material that shimmered with the fluid beauty of light through a
fountain. Having very nearly reached the end of her resources, she had pawned
half her jewels for that fabric. Her hair was bound up with a strand of pure
white moonstones; her only other ornament was a ring given her by her mother.
Its sea-colored stone brought out the green flecks in her eyes.

She scrutinized her
reflection. Everything must be perfect. Touching her bodice, where she kept Fierin’s
chip, she left for the new government building. There people were already
gathering to watch the Council of Pursuivance assemble, for the new Privy
Council would be drawn from their number, just as it had been since the time of
the first Nicolai centuries before.

The Marine dyarch in
charge of security passed Vannis through with no hint of recognition. Vannis
wondered if he remembered as sharply as she did the last time they had seen one
another: Vannis had been half-drowned after her disastrous attempt to keep
Brandon away from the cabal’s coup.

Oh, yes. He had to
remember, but, she reflected, they had both learned something that night, that
neither of them could hold Brandon against his will.

Inside, the tianqi
were set to Midsummer Morning. At intervals a gentle tone sounded, evocative at
times of bells, at times of voices, each time a different timbre and pitch. The
atmosphere tingled along her nerves as she surveyed the spacious hall. Designed
in the Archaeo-Moderne mode, it deliberately harkened back to the golden age of
Burgess II.

The spacious
circular walls inexorably drew the eye to the opposite end, where a number of
comfortable chairs sat on a slightly raised dais. Only one of them was
occupied, by the High Phanist, always a member of the Privy Council since the
time of Gabriel and the deposition of the Faceless One. A small woman of maybe
eighty years with an unremarkable face, and eyes that seared through to one’s
core, she sat to the right of the central chair.

As the last
surviving spouse of an Arkad, Vannis had a right to another of those chairs—until
the Aerenarch formally took the oath and became Panarch. Then all that would be
left would be her final obeisance and the long walk away from Brandon
hai-Arkad, stripped of her title, nearly resourceless, with only her social
skills to keep her among the High Douloi in orbit around the Arkad sun. Vannis
exchanged a nod with the High Phanist, then took the seat to the left of the
central chair.

The room gradually
filled, dense with color as the military arranged themselves by rank and the
Douloi in complex patterns of deference and preference. Occasionally eyes
lifted to meet hers, and she saw fleeting glimpses of resentment, or amusement,
or indifference, or pity, for she would not be called upon to speak any Oath:
she had no title, held no possessions by grace of His Majesty. She was a
relict, and this would be her last chance to preside.

Portus-Dartinus-Atos
arrived, elegant boswells glittering on threir head-stalks. Chains of what
looked like drops of liquid fire hung in graceful catenaries between the bodies
of the trinity, somehow without hindering threir movement.

Those members of the
Council of Pursuivance who had managed to reach Ares filed in from side
entrances, taking their positions in the front of the hall, before the dais.
Some wore the formal robes of their Colleges, some uniforms. New faces appeared
among them. A full convening of the entire Council happened rarely, which was
why these many were still alive. Gelasaar hai-Arkad’s Privy Council, which had
been drawn from these people, were all dead.

Anticipation
heightened as the music, barely heard above the murmur of conversation, evolved
into a weightier mode, resolving into the familiar tonalities of the Manya
Cadena. Voices ceased as subtle signals winged from security to steward to
those waiting in readiness without.

Six annuncios in
ancient garb entered, taking up positions to either side of the door, and
brought golden trumpets to their lips. The Phoenix Fanfare pealed out, filling
the huge room with harmonic cascades of brassy sound. Vannis and the High
Phanist stood.

At the height of
the fanfare, when all the trumpets had joined in, Brandon Arkad entered in time
to the music and mounted the dais. Vannis took in his austere clothes of white
edged with dull gold, then raised her eyes to meet his steady blue gaze; his mobile
brows quirked in question.

She answered with
her own eyes, and he saw the question there.

The last notes of
the fanfare died away as Brandon bowed to Eloatri, the High Phanist. Eloatri
stepped forward to meet him.

“The Phoenix Signet
vanished in the light of your father’s passing above Gehenna,” she said, her
quiet voice clear and sharp in the ringing silence. “I cannot, as did my
predecessors, place it on your finger in token of your hierogamy to the
Mandala, the mystical lens through which we look back to our Lost Mother, and
forward to our unimaginable destiny in Telos.”

She twisted a plain
gold band off her left ring finger. “But this ring bound me to my first
hejir
, when I stepped, as you do now,
into unknowable futurity. Let it be as a symbol of my faith in you and those to
whom you are linked—” Here Vannis heard the faintest trace of ambiguity in the
High Phanist’s tones. “—and of your promise to all of us.” The High Phanist
traditionally did not take the Oath of Fealty, but she had nonetheless made a
firm statement of support for the new Panarch.

The ring was too
small for any but Brandon’s little finger. He slipped it onto his right hand.
His gaze seemed to reach beyond the hall, as if he were struck by memory. But
it only lasted a heartbeat, then he lifted his head to address the room, his
voice carrying.

“Here, in a system
empty of life save for this fragile construct of humankind, we begin the
enactment of the ancient ceremony of accession. But only begin, for there is
much to do first.”

He held up his
right hand. “Let this ring be as an unbreakable link in the chain that binds me
to you and to my tasks: the defeat of Dol’jhar, the return to the Mandala, and
the restoration of the Thousand Suns. Then, with the Phoenix ring reforged from
the mold interred with Jaspar Arkad, we will complete the action we initiate
this day.

“Here witness you,
then,” he continued, shifting into the formal aorist mode, “my oath and my
undertaking, to spend my substance and my soul in unstinting Service to
humanity in Exile, in my life and in my dying, until death take me, or the
world end.”

When the last echo
of the light, assured voice died away Vannis stepped down, turned, and with sustained
deliberation, made the formal obeisance to the sovereign, and everyone in the
room followed her cue.

She straightened,
steeling herself to turn away with the appearance of grace, when Brandon smashed
all her calculations—and those of every Douloi in the Hall—by stepping down
from the dais and holding out his hand to her. A check of surprise, of hope
hidden beneath her years of training, then she placed her hand in his. His
fingers were cool, his clasp easy as he brought her back onto the dais and
turned her, lightly, as if leading in a dance, to take position next to him
again.

Then, one by one,
in order of preference, the members of the Council of Pursuivance came forward
and pledged their oaths. Admiral Nyberg, as commander of Ares, was the first.

After he took the
Oath, ending, as had his sovereign, with the words “in my life and in my dying,
until death take me, or the world end,” Brandon extended his hand and brought
Nyberg up onto the dais—as the highest ranking military officer in the
Panarchy, Nyberg was the obvious first choice for the Privy Council.

Hesthar al-Gessinav
stepped up proudly, her triumph apparent in the splash of red along each thin
cheekbone, and sardonic shadows at the corners of her thin lips. She wore the robe
of the College of Applied Epistemology and Rationetics, which she now headed in
the place of her cousin. As such, she would effectively head the DataNet once
they defeated Dol’jhar.

Or Hesthar believed
she had the DataNet
,
Vannis thought
as the rail-thin woman bowed, then stepped forward to take her Oath.

Then shock almost
unhinged Vannis’s composure as Brandon took Hesthar’s hand and raised her onto
the dais, into the Privy Council. Vannis shifted her gaze to the rest of the
Douloi in time to surprise a brief eye-widening of shock in Tau Srivashti’s gaze
before his expression shuttered.

After all the
Council of Pursuivance members had pledged, the higher ranks presented
themselves—including Srivashti, who performed his bow and Oath with his usual
grace. Stulafi Y’Talob, Vannis noticed, struggled to conceal his fury at
Hesthar’s elevation.

Physically, Vannis
stood in the same place she had before the ceremony commenced, but symbolically
her position had changed. She observed the Douloi, resplendent in their best
clothing, graceful and assured in carriage. She read in the glitter of tension
in ringed hands and heard in the heightened cadences of speech by Archon and
Aegios, Demarch and Temenarch, the hopes and expectations that hammered in each
breast as they made obeisance to Brandon.

Some of them
glanced her way. Where earlier she had seen pity or indifference, she saw
interest and speculation; amusement or resentment had altered to confusion and
contempt.

The remainder of
the Douloi presented themselves, minor family members, and those whose holdings
were in question for whatever reason. Fierin appeared, her eyes gray with
fatigue and tension and her sweet face drawn. She spoke the Oath of Fealty
scarcely above a whisper while Tau Srivashti watched her from under
boredom-slackened lids.

Anger burned in
Vannis. Fierin had not wanted to make the Oath, for by so doing she
acknowledged publicly what the Archon of Torigan maintained by his active
prosecution of the trial of the brother: that Jesimar vlith-Kendrian, as a
capital criminal, had lost the rights to title and holdings. Srivashti had
coerced her, of course.

And then it was
time for the military.

The endless white
uniforms blended into a seeming infinity. It was necessarily a long ceremony,
but after the shock of seeing elevated to the Privy Council a woman who had
been deeply involved in an attempt to murder the very man to whom she had just
pledged fealty, it seemed transfinite in length.

Vannis’s focus
returned at the appearance of the trim woman no taller than she herself, Margot
Ng, who was made an admiral. Next to be promoted was a familiar figure—she had
seen Jeph ban-Koestler numerous times at Semion’s Court. He moved with the care
of someone suffering great pain.

After that, though
Vannis did not alter her stance at all, her attention narrowed to Brandon,
standing two meters away. With unceasing courtesy he still met the eyes of each
person who stood before him, and—it seemed, anyway—he listened to each word of each
Oath as if for the first time. He betrayed no sign of tiredness; she saw only
faint marks, no more than smudges, under his eyes.

Finally it was
over. Time to withdraw in stately accord across the lake to the Pavilion, where
the reception ball was to be held.

Anticipation
tingled Vannis’s nerves. With one gesture, Brandon had drawn her from the
obscurity to which Srivashti and the others had attempted to relegate her,
whatever his motivation. It might have been mere whim, and after the reception
he could return to his citadel, and be swept forever into the never-ending stream
of high politics, forgetting all about her.

She must secure her
position. She had the motivation. Thanks to Fierin, she had the means. Now,
using her years of training and her wits, she must find the right moment.

Brandon bowed, the
company bowed, and Brandon turned, held out his arm, and led Vannis out, with
the High Phanist walking in solitary state behind them.

How to shake the
old woman?

A small anteroom
stood open at the end of the corridor, with two occupants: the Arkad dogs.
Tails thumped and ears stood upright as Brandon smiled. “How’d you two get in
here, hey? Come to pay your respects or to check up on us, huh?” Murmuring
nonsense in a low voice, he knelt to run his hands over the dogs, bracing
himself as they thrust their noses into his armpits, and whuffed into his face.
From behind the walls, Vannis heard the sudden roar of voices, scarcely louder
than the rhythmic surge of blood from her drumming heart.