The Rifter's Covenant (44 page)

Then she said, “You
look tired. I’m sorry you should be coerced into having to hide me.”

Osri had taken
good-natured chaffing from his colleagues all day for his dissipated face.
After she spoke he’d glanced into his mirror for the first time, and was
startled by the lines of tension and tiredness he saw there.

With a swift,
graceful movement she flung the covers back and rose, still wearing Osri’s
robe. “Would you like some shakrian?” she offered, the silver eyes still
unreadable above her polite smile. “I’m accounted very good.”

“No,” he said,
backing up a step. “Ah, um, have you eaten?”

She shook her head.
“I woke up an hour ago. I thought I’d wait for you, genz Omilov.”

“Lieutenant,” he
corrected automatically. Then he remembered his manners. As host, it was up to
him to shift from the formal to informal mode. He hesitated, trying to sift the
implications, and shook his head. He had no idea what the implications of this
situation would be, no matter what he did. “Call me Osri,” he said.

She bowed, her thin
hands gesturing. He didn’t know what she meant, but he sensed no mockery. “I am
Fierin,” she responded so softly he almost couldn’t hear her.

He called up food
and they ate in the outer room. If the conversation was not as awkward as it
could have been, it was entirely due to Fierin’s skill with inconsequential
chatter.

They did not
discuss the events of the night before, and she did not bring up the name of
Tau Srivashti. She did mention her brother once or twice—more often as the
hours slipped by. Osri didn’t know what to say. He’d cordially loathed the
languid, sardonic Lokri. It was jolting to see his long silver eyes in Fierin,
and to hear Lokri referred to as Jes, as if he were sixteen years old.

The second day,
when Osri came back from work, she had a dinner waiting, and she’d somehow
managed to make it elegant, using the minimal supplies with which he’d stocked
his tiny kitchen outlet. She was dressed in her court gown again, her hair done
up, but unadorned. Osri remembered then that she had left most of her jewels
lying on the floor of the pod. She did not ask about them; he hoped Brandon had
retrieved them.

The third day, Osri
came back early to find her enveloped in one of his shirts. She was seated at
the console, apparently absorbed in a math problem. On his entry she rose,
smiling a welcome that appeared to be genuine. Her thin body looked childish in
the shirt, which was huge on her—the shoulder seams halfway down her arms, the
cuffs rolled back to frail wrists. The tail came down to the middle of her
thighs.

Looking at those
bare legs—shapely, smooth-skinned—Osri felt another kind of stirring, which he
squashed with a feeling akin to desperation as she stepped forward, and reached
for him with unmistakable intention.

It was her eyes
that stopped him; he couldn’t even articulate why he backed hastily away from
her touch, it was just that look, like
I
know what must come next
. Like she’d been trained to offer sex in trade for
safety, not because she wanted him. The thought of taking advantage of those
haunted eyes thoroughly unmanned him.

“I’ll see about
getting you some clothes,” he had mumbled . . . .

The pod stopped.

Osri shook his head
violently, fighting back the flood of memories and emotions.

Since that day he’d
used the pod when Brandon summoned him for reports, just so he could avoid the
chatzing novosti. Once he’d even encountered one of the dogs; he didn’t know
which one. It had given him a quick sniff, then ignored him until the tube
stopped and it got off, for all the world as though it knew where it was going.
Perhaps it did
.

He stepped out onto
the concourse. Hidden sensors triggered a retinal scan. A few seconds later the
door slid open, then another door, directly into the rich beauty of Brandon’s
study in the Enclave. Once, that door had remained closed, and he’d had to walk
up a very narrow corridor to another door, another room. He hadn’t asked why.

Brandon sat at his
console, his fingers moving rapidly. In the background the Rifter Jaim was busy
at the monneplat. As Osri waited for Brandon to finish whatever task he was
working on, Jaim came forward and silently offered Osri a mug of real coffee,
which he accepted gratefully.

Osri sipped, glad
for a respite in which he did not to have to talk, or even to think.

Brandon tapped his
send key with a gesture miming shooting off a jac, then he whirled the chair to
face Osri. He was dressed formally—and formidably—in embroidered velvet, which
indicated he was stealing time between two engagements. His blue eyes were
remarkably clear. Osri wondered what his own life would have been like if he’d
been born with that ability to go for days with minimal sleep. Probably no
different
,
he thought with bleak
humor.

“Any news?” Brandon
asked.

Osri swallowed his
coffee, trying to clear his head, then he I said, “My father is still busy
trying to take apart the
Shiavona
hyperrelay. And failing. He wants to stall for time. Oh. I just remembered. Did
you find Fierin’s jewels in the pod?”

“Yes,” Brandon said.
“I’ve got them if she asks for them. As for your father, I know he wants to save
that station if he possibly can. What did Nyberg say?”

“Only that he could
have time. Some time,” Osri corrected himself. “Mentioned waiting for more
ships to muster in. And the need to find out how to destroy the Suneater, using
the relay as a test if necessary.”

Brandon tapped several
flimsies neatly into line, then got up and inserted them into the disposer,
which devoured them with a quiet thump. “We could be planning now. He’s putting
it off.”

“That was all the
Admiral said.”

“I know. It’s what
he said to me after the official tour of sho-Bostian’s
Norsendar
, this morning. What he hasn’t told me about were three
duels during the last week. Not between Douloi. Faseult sends daily reports on
the violence among the civs, which is also daily. No, duels between officers.
Nyberg quite understandably doesn’t want me to know about any trouble between
officers, let alone lethal encounters. The navy likes to solve its own
problems. But it isn’t solving them. Margot Ng was not invited to the tour this
morning, though Koestler was there, limping painfully at my heels. What else is
he hiding?”

Osri shrugged
uncomfortably. These things weren’t secret, precisely, but . . . .

“Don’t tell me
anything you feel you can’t,” Brandon said unexpectedly. “But you really are
the only one I can ask without there being political repercussions. No one
knows you’re here, and at least as yet, no one dares ask me my source.”

Osri said, “I don’t
understand it myself. Nyberg asked me if Koestler’s or sho-Bostian’s or
Theron’s crews have given me any trouble. They don’t make trouble, they act,
oh, how to put it?” He frowned. “They act as if permanently on general
quarters.”

“Keeping themselves
to themselves,” Brandon said.

“Yes. Especially
with these morning workouts.”

“Ah. I saw the
notice posted: oh five hundred, right? Midlevel officers and up. In
Phoenix-Three-Gamma. Nothing amiss with that. Or do they hold an ID check at
the lock and not permit anyone else in?”

“I haven’t gone,”
Osri said. “I don’t want to get up at four if I don’t have to, even if I were competent
at second-level Ulanshu and single-stick and whatever else they do. Fencing,
too, someone said.”

“Fencing?” Brandon
smiled. “Vice-Admiral Ng used to take ribbons at Minerva with regularity. Has
she been there?”

“No. No one from
Grozniy
. They don’t even talk about it.
Rom-Sanchez told me a group from
Mbwa
Kali
and a couple of destroyers went in, and they were totally ignored.
Even if they made obvious mistakes. Most of them have stopped going. A few
stick it out, to show they don’t care.”

Brandon shook his
head. “Sounds childish, doesn’t it? Except two people have died over it. And
soon, we’ll all be out there depending on one another when we face Eusabian’s
skipmissiles at the Suneater.”

We?
But Osri did not query that.

“How’s Fierin?”
Brandon asked, aligning another stack of flimsies. The High Phanist’s gold ring
glinted on his hand.

“She’s started
studying nav,” Osri said, adding, “She says it’s a lot like music, her study at
school until she had to leave. I understand that she’s been running the family
business in her brother’s name for years. Until the accession, when Srivashti
pretty much forced her to claim her place as Aegios, giving her some story
about how, as Aegios, she would have more influence with respect to Lokri’s
trial.”

“So that’s why she
came forward. I did wonder.” Brandon cursed under his breath. “So she now wants
to learn piloting? According to Vi’ya the pilots were all family.”

“So Fierin said.”
Osri still had trouble reconciling his presuppositions about the sophisticated
young socialite with what he expected of the head of a business concern.
Especially someone so young. Over dinner, they’d had several conversations
about salvaging old ships and scavenging outmoded scientific equipment—the
trade-off being price for technological limitations—and she knew more than he
did. “She said that her brother had wanted to be a pilot.”

“Any more
nightmares?”

“Every night,” Osri
said. “She doesn’t always wake up.”

Brandon drummed his
fingers on the desk. “I wish I had more to tell her. But I might. Soon.”

Osri said, “I don’t
see how the information she uncovered can help his case.”

“It can’t.” Brandon
thumped his fist lightly on the edge of his console, the gold band on his
little finger glinting. “We don’t know enough yet. And someone’s been destroying
the replicates of the information Cheruld tried to send to Ares.”

“Who’s doing it?”

“Not certain, and
we have to be. I’ve commanded the couriers to range further out in hopes of
intercepting a replicate before these phages find it. I don’t know if it will
be found in time to help Lokri. The trial date is set, despite Vocat Ixvan’s
best delaying efforts. We have very little time.” His gaze shifted to somewhere
beyond the walls. “What we have won’t help anyone, unless it turns out to be
connected to something larger.”

“Knowing about the
plot against your family was not large?” Osri retorted, struggling with
conflicting emotions.

“That knowledge was
surprisingly widespread,” Brandon said. “Someone recently confessed to me
having been part of the Arthelion attack, after originally having joined a
democratic revolution for a badly run Highdwelling Cloud. The plot had wheels
within wheels, and the conspirators were expertly manipulated. When I say
expertly, I mean the proof is difficult to find. And Srivashti’s letter,
closely read, makes it clear he thought he was part of a mere palace coup.
Hesthar al-Gessinav probably thought the same.” He smiled suddenly, a grim
smile. “Remember Deralze, my loyal bodyguard who died protecting me?”

Osri said, “Quite well.”

“You didn’t hear
his last words, did you?”

Osri shook his
head, hating to remember the terrible days early in the attack. “I was being
held at a distance.”

“He died assuring
me that Markham knew nothing about the bomb in the Ivory Hall.”

“But Markham had
been killed the year before—” Then the implications hit Osri. “You mean,
Deralze knew all along? But he didn’t tell you?”

“Only in dying. You
have to remember that I hadn’t seen him since the day Markham was cashiered. So
he came to that Enkainion armed with the knowledge of the bomb. And, since he
did not know that Markham had been killed, he’d known about that bomb for over
a year.” He got up, moved to the window, and looked out. “I’ve begun to believe
that each person brought into the plot was given a carefully tailored and
different view of what was to happen.”

Osri shook his
head, feeling a faint sense of vertigo at the tangle of questions this news
raised. Brandon ran his hand back and forth along the edge of the console. He
was restless—tense. Yet during the almost stupefying variety of adventures that
had befallen them both of late, he had rarely betrayed this level of tension.

“Maybe I’d better
go,” Osri said.

Brandon gave him an
abstract look, glanced at his chrono, and gestured toward the inner door. Osri
raised his hand in salute and left.

o0o

Vi’ya woke up
feeling someone had poked the inside of her skull.

The room lay at a
crazy angle above her, and spun gently. She forced her aching eyes to move. It
took all her effort.

She was alone. Shutting
her eyes again, she concentrated on Ulanshu breathing as she gathered what
little strength she had, then slowly sat up.

The last couple of
times she’d lost consciousness her head had dropped forward onto the console,
but this time she’d fallen out of her chair onto the floor. Her muscles
trembled with the effort it took to lever herself back into the chair.

She stared at the
chrono on the console: she’d been out for seven hours. Her fingers shook as she
coded and locked her findings, and then, an acrid-tasting wave of disgust
rising up her gorge, she threw the empty brain-suck capsule into the disposer.

She forced herself
to her feet and drank down all of the water she had learned to leave waiting
for her after these sessions; brainsuck could fatally dehydrate the user.
Feeling incrementally less deathly, she shuffled to the door, her body
protesting as if she’d been thrown back to the heavy-gravity planet of her
birth. Why was she at the door? She opened it, and blinked at the tall, broad
outline of a man in the common room of the quarters she shared with Marim,
Ivard, and the Eya’a.