The Rifter's Covenant (35 page)

“I am under
sentence of death, anyway,” she said.

“So are we all. Why
rush it?” he replied genially.

“I wanted to wait
until I had enough to convince someone to get me an audience with the Panarch.
Once he is alerted, deeper noderunners than I can quickly get to the bottom of
this. I dared not go through the bureaucracy. Srivashti must have agents salted
throughout it.” She smiled again, more hopefully. “And, when my search for a
conduit to His Majesty turned up your name, and I saw you were also a
physician, I thought perhaps I could be heard before something happened to
me—either naturally or not.”

She massaged at her
left arm again. Montrose noticed how neat and calm her hands were. “So now you
have it,” Sedry said. She dipped her hand into a pocket and pulled out a chip.
“What I have so far is here.”

Montrose took it
from her. “Well, then, the first order of business is scouring out your
arteries, if your heart is strong enough.” He stilled her protest with an
upraised hand. “That will enable you to run the DataNet some more, if you like,
to prepare an even more convincing case.”

Sedry Thetris
closed her eyes, and as Montrose gave her instructions while preparing for his
procedure, he pretended not to see the gleam of tears under her lashes.

She either trusted
him or resigned herself to death, permitting him to put her out for the
administration of the atherolytic agents, whose action could be quite painful.

As he went about
his duties for the remainder of his shift, he thought about trust, and loyalty,
and revenge. He enjoyed a vivid image of his hands about Tau Srivashti’s
throat; was he willing to surrender that visceral satisfaction for the
processes of Panarchic justice?

Yes, he decided, if
he could be sure of seeing the murderer of Timberwell’s hopes—and therefore of
his wife and children—ground up in the gears of justice.

And that depended
on Brandon Arkad.

Inside the Enclave,
protocol was relaxed. No titles, no questions of precedence, exactly as it had
been when they were all aboard the
Telvarna
.
Montrose and Jaim remained Rifters—they had jobs within the Panarchist realm,
but they maintained their separate identities, which Brandon had not
questioned.

Brandon had chosen
to embrace the culture he had seemed to turn his back on, and events had now
had brought him to its leadership.

Montrose stayed
with him because he liked him. Liked his honesty, and his appreciation for
those around him, of whatever degree.

The questions now:
was that a sham? Montrose was often asked to share his observations, which he
enjoyed doing. That very evening he was going to serve at a strictly social
affair, sifting the political undertones.

Did this . . . loyalty,
for lack of another word, really go two ways? There was no question of
Brandon’s interest in justice; his anger, and subsequent action in forcing the
already-overtaxed Navy into investigation of Licross after Ixvan’s story about
the Reef, was proof enough of that. But data manipulation struck at the
foundation of his rule. And his elevation of Hesthar al-Gessinav to his Privy
Council, despite his sure knowledge that she had plotted against him with the
cabal, argued that he possessed a pragmatic view of rulership that might
dictate a different outcome to the matter of Tau Srivashti than Montrose
desired.

I have never tested
him, Montrose thought as he washed up after repairing a shattered bone. Now the
time has come.

The meeting room
of the Privy Council was a bubble on top of the Circle with a spacious view of
the oneill’s interior. Underneath its dyplast dome, an arbor of flowering
plants formed a shady ceiling above the round table and the comfortable chairs
surrounding it.

Hesthar al-Gessinav
hated it instantly. The overarching landscapes looming on either side appeared
to be threatening to fall on her. She dreamed too often, here on claustrophobic
Ares, of a green, overtopping wave of water sweeping her away.

But as she took her
place at the table, exultation overcame repugnance. While that fool Torigan
skulked in the shadows with his toadies, and Srivashti withdrew to the fastness
of his yacht to mask his resentment in sybaritic pleasures, she had attained
the Privy Council. She thought briefly of the disgraced Harkatsus—the man
didn’t even have the grace to commit suicide, living on as a perpetual
embarrassment to his Family. And Srivashti had revealed a turgid sentimentality
by taking up with his son, who couldn’t even bring him substantial connections.

There was no need
for her to acknowledge their weaknesses. Now she was head of Gessinav, and,
after this first meeting of the Privy Council, the DataNet would be hers—not
just the Rouge Nord octant, but all of it.
All
of it.

She breathed
deeply, tasting triumph and finding it good. But it did not do to relax
vigilance: she could always gloat later. She sniffed the air again. The tianqi
was set to Convocation mode. She wished instead for something more conducive to
relaxation, although the rustle of clothing and the soft hush of feet on the
thick carpet as other councilors entered was pleasant enough.

Hesthar watched as
the positions around the table slowly filled, mentally ticking off their
usefulness or threat to her: Sebastian Omilov in the Panarch’s camp, but
distracted to uselessness by the Suneater; Eloatri, a dreamer, lost in her
sentimental religious fantasies. Hesthar rubbed the tattoo on her forearm where
the god had bitten her. Desrien had long ago banished the Ultscheni. Fools. They
did not know what true power was.

Anger breathed
through her as Admiral Nyberg entered and she saw the two officers with him.
The woman, Margot Ng, she dismissed. She was Polloi, career Navy, and owed her
present status to the new Panarch. But she’d expected better of Koestler. Did
he think himself another Jaspar?

Thick hatred
curdled her throat as Jeph Koestler’s eyes slid past her without
acknowledgment. He’d done well for himself, and had the solid backing of nearly
five thousand loyal spacers and officers, any of whom would rather pull bilge
duty under his command than captain another ship. With him as ally, she would
have been irresistible.

For she had her
clients, too. In fact, until some fool put the coordinates of Ares on the
DataNet, enabling refugees to bypass the secret marshaling centers, her
influence in the local DataNet had enabled her to bring in a disproportionate
number of her own people. It was harder now, but she still felt the sense of
holding Ares in the palm of her hand. And soon, when Torigan finally disposed
of the Kendrian case, she would close her fingers and take it
.

Already she
controlled nearly all the newsfeeds, carefully distorting their view of the war
by drumming up resentment against Rifters, and thus Kendrian. All except Ares
25. But with the total command of the DataNet this first meeting of the Privy
Council would bestow on her, she would crush those two novosti.

But who was the old
woman in the uniform of a rear admiral who had just entered along with Anton
Faseult, head of Security?

Without fanfare,
the new Panarch entered the room and seated himself. The others—including
Nyberg—sat as well, except for the four officers. They were not members of the
Council, but advisers to it.

“Admirals, please.”
Brandon smiled and gestured. The four sat, Koestler somewhat slowly. Hesthar
breathed out; she hoped he hurt a great deal.

My loyalty is not for sale
, he’d said to her.
And if it were, you’d certainly have no coin to buy it with
. As if
she needed to purchase anyone’s cooperation. Those with any sense had come to
her, Torigan the first of them, long ago. For, in a way more sweeping than the
ancients had ever conceived, knowledge truly was power. She had utterly
controlled the Rouge Nord DataNet. After this meeting, she would hold the keys
to the deep Mandalic levels of the Net, and thus control of every octant.
Nothing would withstand her power.

She waited,
concealing her impatience as the Panarch formalized his appointments, briefly
detailing to each member of the Council his or her spheres of responsibility.
Brandon Arkad had been a surprise; even her wide-flung nets of data had
revealed no hint of his talents. She wondered how much Semion had known. The
new Panarch, untrained, was little more than half her age, but she would not
let either fact lull her into complacency. He was as dangerous as any of his
ancestors. More, perhaps, than most.

Her meditation
changed to anticipation as the Panarch finally came to her. “Gnostor
al-Gessinav, I have kept you until last, for you bear perhaps the most onerous
responsibility. The DataNet is our tenuous connection to all our subjects now
captive to Dol’jhar’s whim.”

Hesthar bowed,
assuming the appropriately grave and humble expression she had practiced before
her mirror.

But he was not
finished. He nodded back, his blue gaze disgustingly reminiscent of his
father’s as he said, “I would not have you bear this burden alone.”

Hesthar’s triumph
abruptly evaporated, and she listened in shock and fierce anger, rigidly
concealed, as Brandon turned to the old woman she hadn’t recognized. “This is
Rear Admiral Damana Willsones, head of Ares Communications, which subsumes
Infonetics in time of war. She will share your duties, both of you reporting to
me . . .”

He moved on, but
Hesthar barely heard. Of course he’d want a military presence to satisfy Nyberg
and his cohorts. As if Hesthar couldn’t get around the old bint!

“. . . and
I expect a great deal of you both,” he finished, then looked around. “Some of
you do not know this, but we have a source of information that is proving to be
invaluable. Vice-Admiral Ng captured one of the enemy’s superluminal
communicators—a hyperwave—during the Battle of Arthelion. That, in fact, was
the action’s goal.”

Hesthar simulated
surprise, watching the others in the hope of discovering who hadn’t known and
who had, but she could detect nothing. The admirals, of course, sat
wooden-faced.

“We have broken
some of the codes and are tracking the enemy’s movements. They are converging
on the Suneater, whose location is now known to us.”

He smiled, inviting
them to share a joke. “An appealing symmetry, were not the times so desperate,
for I have summoned the fleet to Ares, whose location is known to Dol’jhar.
Vice Admirals Koestler and Ng will report on the preparations for the
expedition against the Suneater.” He glanced around the table, then said, “In
the meantime, anything—anything at all—that can be gleaned from the hyperwave
data about the Suneater has top priority.”

But what you needed
to know was, and is, in the DataNet,
Hesthar
thought, enjoying the irony as she bowed along with the rest of them in
acknowledgment of the Panarch’s speech. So far her phages had successfully
destroyed two replicates of Cheruld’s data that she knew of. She had counted on
access to Mandalic levels to destroy the rest; now she would have spend time
walling off Willsones from those threads, while pretending cooperation.

“There is,
however,” he continued, “one bit of knowledge from the hyperwave that only one
or two of you know, for I placed it under my seal as soon as it came in.
Barrodagh has demanded, as he put it, ‘the participation of tempaths in the
exploitation of the power of the Suneater.’ We must consider what this
implies.”

Hesthar watched
Omilov as he gazed gravely at the Panarch. Was that a scowl, or merely that those
repulsively hairy eyebrows make him look ill-tempered? Eloatri, too, seemed
more alert, although what it could possibly mean to that fool had to be
irrelevant.

“Your Majesty,”
Omilov said. “The one tempath whom I know to have inspected the Heart of
Kronos, which is now aboard the Suneater, reported that part of it was missing.
I had already surmised that it is the key to the power of that ancient
machine.” The gnostor’s expression was troubled. “It is not unlikely that there
is therefore a psychic aspect to the control of the Suneater. But I wonder how
that came to the attention of the Dol’jharians?”

“We do not know,”
Willsones said. “Traffic on the hyperwave includes nothing at all about the
Suneater. There are no images, even. When Barrodagh—Eusabian’s voice—appears, nothing
can be seen in his background. We can only surmise what this means.”

From that point the
discussion turned to the readiness of the Fleet, and how long it would take to
muster, given the slowness of courier communications across the vastness of the
Thousand Suns. Hesthar listened carefully, but less for raw information and
more to monitor the interplay of personalities, from which she hoped to garner
lines of attack to further her own goals. She was bozzing all this anyway, as
was everyone else. Any details she needed would be in her transcripts.

The meeting ranged
over many other topics. It finally broke up as the diffusers high overhead dimmed
into night, bringing dusk lapping against the dyplast dome. The Privy
Councilors stood as the Panarch departed. Hesthar remained at her place as the
others left, mulling over how much she would tell Srivashti and Torigan.

She looked up. The
artificial nightfall had turned the vast cliffs of the upcurving landscapes to
either side into dark skies spangled with the faux constellations of various
building and enclaves.

Hesthar much
preferred the night.

Four hours later,
as she moved from one crowded room to another aboard Srivashti’s fabulous
yacht, she received a privacy from Stulafi Y’Talob. Half an hour after that,
she saw Torigan’s massive frame in an adjacent corridor; together they rode the
lift to another floor. Immediately the noise of the gambling party vanished
into total silence.