The Rifter's Covenant (42 page)

At four, most
support staff would change over, but Jaim would remain on duty.

A light, musical
riff of laughter brought Jaim’s attention to the center of the room, where
Brandon was involved with a dozen others in learning the galliard. The frequent
missteps inspired good-natured amusement from the Douloi watchers.

“So clever of
Caroly to have dug that up,” the elderly, well-preserved Archonei Rachid
murmured to her companion, the extravagantly gowned Archonei Todghift, both
seated a few meters from Jaim.

“She says it was
all the rage four hundred years ago, when everything had to be archaic.”
Todghift set down her crystal glass with a precise ting and added, “You should
see the collection of dusty handwritten books we inherited from that fad.”

Jaim noted the
politely raised brows and fixed smile in the elegant Rachid, which indicated a
score. Doubtless her family was not that old.

“Four tapestries we
have from that time, depicting people in outlandish clothing, with Old Earth
script bannered across the lower edges,” a languid young man put in, lounging
nearby.

“Why aren’t you
dancing, Philan?”

The young man, a
Chival from Karelais, shrugged one shoulder. “Too tiresome, trying to remember
all the steps. If Vannis doesn’t change the fashion by next week, then I
suppose I’ll have to learn.” He bowed, low and elegant. “Just watching them is
fatiguing. I believe I will seek some refreshment. Do either of you ladies
require anything?”

The two women
thanked him and he strolled away. Todghift said to Rachid, “A wager? Next party
he’ll show up an expert at the galliard, and probably the minuet as well.”

Rachid laughed
softly. “I already warned my daughter to clear her schedule for morning minuet
parties . . .”

That was the third
time Jaim had heard Vannis mentioned. Jaim transferred his gaze once more to
the dancers. Controlled and graceful, Brandon and Vannis led the row, executing
the primly flirtatious steps with occasional falters and laughs. At a short
distance Tau Srivashti sat, surrounded by sycophants, watching.

The poles of power
had shifted twice during the long evening. Both times Brandon had obliquely
facilitated the drifting of attention away from himself, while Vannis had
smilingly bound the disparate knots into a whole by suggesting something new.
Listen,
Brandon had said to Jaim
earlier.
They talk more freely when they
aren’t competing for my attention.
Jaim wondered if he had asked Vannis to
help him in his deflection, or if this effortless-seeming, unspoken partnership
of theirs was leftover habit from their Mandala days.

Fighting a sudden
yawn, Jaim activated the mastoid sound enhancers that Artorus Vahn had given
him, and he focused on the little conversational knots, sorting for anything he
ought to hear.

“. . . managed
to get four client families in, though I don’t know where he expects to house
them . . .”

“. . . won’t
let his heir anywhere near the spin axis, but I let both my children go. They
know how to keep their distance from the more raffish Polloi . . .”

“. . . things
will be hideously different, I fear. Simply horrendous . . .”

.. and the Rigali
family as well. Everything lost. Everything. I don’t blame Trellora for
committing suicide . . .”

“. . . likes
his toys young and inexperienced. Oh, speaking of toys, you know of course that
his ward, the Kendrian girl, has vanished?”

Jaim did not alter
his stance overtly, but he focused in on the speakers: four young people, two
men, two women. By now he knew all of the significant Douloi orbiting the Arkad
sun.

Yudri
nyr-Chezare-Masaud said, waving her fan, “From what I’ve heard about his
bedroom habits, who can blame her?”

“No finesse,” tall,
blue-eyed Julienne ban-Athios said, sniffing delicately. “That’s not the way
things are done. She’ll do her family untold harm with such sopvid behavior.”

“But if the reasons
were political?” Vidal vlith-Estrasi murmured, leaning over the back of her
chair.

All four glanced
quickly Tau Srivashti’s way, then back again. If the Archon noticed, he gave no
sign.

In a lower voice,
Vidal went on: “You’ve all heard the novosti going on about the Douloi Rifter.”
He drawled the oxymoron with distaste. “Her brother. Who was one of the Rifters
with the Panarch.”

“Srivashti’s
putting it about that some Polloi kidnapped her for ransom,” said Julienne.

“Ah, that would
explain why he’s been trying to get himself placed on the Committee for Public
Safety,” Yudri said, tapping Vidal’s muscular arm with her fan. “I heard that
from Mishi.”

“Did you hear about
the old Polloi found poisoned?”

“Who? What?”

“It seems the
Kendrian girl worked at some crèche. Someone questioned everyone who was
there—and one of them had disappeared. Corpse found in an out-of-the-way
transtube nexus.” He leaned back, smoothing his long blond hair with a careless
gesture.

“Srivashti wouldn’t
do that,” Julienne scoffed. “Why risk his position? All speculation, and—you’ll
honor me with your forgiveness—tedious at this late hour.”

The violins
flourished the last notes of the minuet, amid laughter and polite applause. The
dancers separated. Brandon moved to where he’d left his drink, and the Douloi
around him adjusted enough to permit Jaim to take up his stance behind him, through
no one acknowledged him with so much as a glance.

Somewhat
surprisingly, Vannis did not find it necessary to drink wine in the Panarch’s
proximity, but included the dancers in a gesture, and led them to the larger
group of watchers on the far side of the room, the complicated braids of her
burnished brown hair firelined with ruddy highlights amid the yellows, blacks,
blues, and rainbow displays of the others. From his position behind Brandon’s
chair Jaim contemplated her perfect profile as she smiled, straight-backed and
clear-eyed, at something someone else said.

“That was
delightful,” a poison-faced woman drawled at Brandon’s right.

Jaim recognized
NorSothu nyr-Kaddes, a social vampire.

NorSothu waited for
the murmurs of agreement from her small circle of sycophants, then sighed
mendaciously. “Vannis has always been the most skillful dancer among us, don’t
you agree?”

“What a question,”
Alian Hristo said. The tall red-haired Aiglar leaned against nyr-Kaddes’s chair
and gently fanned her face. “How can one answer with any grace?”

A ripple of
laughter greeted this, and the heir to the Io family put in, his handsome face
slightly bored, “Merely adding the rider ‘saving present company’ you are free
to agree.”

Hristo’s eyes
narrowed, and though he did not move, Jaim was aware of well-defined muscles
under the green velvet sleeves, and a powerful chest that did not hint of
sloth. “I beg forgiveness for my stupidity, Pereil, but am I to understand that
you do not agree?”

Pereil vlith-Io
kissed his fingertips in Vannis’s direction. “On the contrary,” he said. “She
is all perfection. She even had the good taste to turn me down.”

The laughter swept
away the hint of threat, and Jaim noted several listeners sit back with a faint
air of regret.

NorSothu said, “It
is a positive shame that she is unlikely to host any parties, given how well
she leads us all.”

“What, is she
announcing a new fashion, withdrawal to a hermitage?” Pereil mimed surprise.

Once again the
ripple of laughter, and NorSothu shrugged her thin shoulders. “It may come to
that.” And with a slack-lidded glance in Brandon’s direction, she leaned
forward in a confiding manner, and managed, in spite of lowering her voice in a
pretense of intimacy, to be perfectly heard: “I happen to know that she is
quite without resources: there isn’t one of us she hasn’t borrowed from. Though
she hides it with a commendable air.”

Polite expressions
of regret met this news, whispered by properly somber mouths below eyes that
betrayed, at this late hour, disinterest, pity, and in the redheaded Hristo,
disdain. Brandon said nothing.

“The Cartanos have
their own retreat, no doubt more comfortable than this,” Pereil said, his tone
ambiguous. “Surely they will make good her debts.”

They signed or
spoke polite agreement.

Still Brandon said
nothing, merely sipping at his wine.

NorSothu turned to
her hostess, her thin lips crimped in a polite smile, but the upper lip
betrayed complacency. “Is there to be more dancing, my dear?”

Rista
Litsu-Frazhien clasped her hands together, and Jaim felt her effort to force
her chagrin to sound merely casual. “Alas, I contracted these musicians only
until three, and even bribery won’t keep them here any longer now.” She sighed,
her pained smile reflecting her awareness of the faint signs—slightly lifted
shoulders, a languidly dismissive finger, and exchanged smiles—that her guests
had decided she could not, after all, manage a really memorable event. The
perfect host controlled everything, with no visible effort, until the last
guest left—even if it were days after the original invitation merely for a
dinner.

“A lovely night,
Rista.” There was Vannis, her light brown eyes generous and kind. “But time to
depart. Dancing till dawn was delightful in youth, before one noticed the
wrinkles in one’s gown revealed by the new day.” As the others uttered
well-bred laughter at this sally, she gestured to include everyone, her gaze
moving about and coming to rest, as if by chance, on Jaim.

He was startled out
of his veneer of invisibility, and he missed the responses as his boswell
tingled. It was Montrose.
(I just told
Brandon my client has information, and to meet us in the park.)

Jaim flexed the
muscle that would send an acknowledgment pulse. He did not look at Brandon or
change his stance—in this close-watching crowd, even Brandon would not attempt
a privacy—but as soon as the Douloi began stirring toward the exit, Jaim
activated his boswell again, contacted Brandon, said
(Montrose. Park)
, then issued brief orders to the team waiting
outside the villa to be ready for a change in plans.

Brandon made his
way skillfully through the tide of expensive silks and brocades, speaking
briefly to each person before at last he descended the wide, shallow steps. Now
that they were alone, he caught up with Vannis and offered his arm. “I’ve
offended you, Vannis?”

She blinked at him.
“Your Majesty?”

“We’re alone,
Vannis.”

She smiled, making
an airy gesture with her free hand. “Of course you have not offended me.”

“Yet everyone but I
seems to know that you have reached the limits of your resources. This is easy
enough for me to fix. Mine are unlimited. Or had you forgotten?”

“Your resources
might be, but my good name is not.”

“Meaning?”

“Everyone else
comes to you with pleas, demands, requests. You made a generous gesture at your
Accession, restoring my social position. All I have to offer in return is
friendship—and loyalty.”

“And a great deal
of wit, grace, and skill at bringing back a semblance of social harmony.” Brandon
bowed over her hand, and kissed it. His gesture—graceful, mock-solemn—was
answered by her to the exact degree, to the smile.

“It is my
pleasure,” she said. “Good night.” She walked slowly away down the path toward
her villa.

Jaim watched her
exquisite figure until it was out of sight, then bozzed his team, who moved out
of sight on a vector with the direction Brandon had chosen.

For a time they
meandered with apparent randomness down various pathways. Jaim breathed deeply,
clearing the scents of wine and perfume from his head. The lake was quiescent,
its surface black except where silver darts of light reflected the faux
dawn-light of the diffusers high above.

Then Brandon spoke.
“What,” he said, “did you make of that last?”

Jaim considered. He
could not define the relationship Brandon had with Vannis. They were often
together, they complemented one another with unspoken skill at social events.
Brandon had made that gesture at the Accession, which the Douloi had clearly
not expected. And yet Brandon had not, since that one day, been to her villa
alone, nor had he invited her alone to the Enclave.

“What kind of
response will make you angry?” he said, countering.

“A stupid one.”
Brandon bent down to pet a young cat roaming through the tall grasses.
Adolescent purring beat on the soft air.

“Then I think that
was planned. The nyr-Kaddes woman meant to run Aerenarch-Consort Vannis down,
yet I think Vannis wanted you to hear it. Or hear something, for she didn’t try
to bring that group into the whole. And she could have.”

The answer did not
surprise Brandon. “The point being?”

“You.” Jaim sensed
Brandon waiting, and said, “Whenever you withdrew, she vectored the crowd the
other way. If you didn’t ask her to—”

“I did not.”

“—then she had her
own reason. Purpose.”

Silence brought
other sounds: the crunch of gravel and leaves underfoot; the rustle of brush as
the cat darted away on the track of a small animal; his own breathing. Jaim tried
not to think about Vannis, but that exquisite figure, the subtle waft of her
perfume, the quick glance of her greeny-brown eyes under long lashes intruded
on his senses. Even his dreams.

“Before this war,
the Douloi had all agreed that she would be the perfect Kyriarch,” Brandon
said, looking sideways into Jaim’s face. His gaze in the lifting darkness was
opaque, his light voice reflective.

And that was why Jaim
would never tell anyone about the way Vannis glided through his dreams in a elusive
way he found both ineluctable and troubling. He alone knew where Brandon went
on the nights he could get away, and he had watched, more and more often, the
Panarch leave the Enclave with tension limning his body, and return with some
semblance of peace and the lingering traces of laughter about eyes and mouth.