The Thrones of Kronos (12 page)

The stone rejected by
the builders . . .

Osri felt his career in the balance; had he judged the
Panarch’s need correctly? “Admiral,” he said, surprised at how steady his voice
was, “I request permission to return that gift now by volunteering for detached
duty as discussed.”

Ng could hear the lieutenant’s unease, and felt a moment of
empathy; was he now feeling as she had when she’d put her career on the line in
support of Brandon Arkad? But he’d stepped into the middle of a delicate
negotiation; it had been for the Panarch to speak.

“We haven’t decided that point yet,” Ng replied, and Osri’s
heart thudded hard at the flatness of her voice.

“I think the Dol’jharians have decided it for us,” said
Brandon. “But I’d like a moment alone with Genz Houmanopolis before we
continue.” He gestured towards the still-open door behind him.

Jep thoroughly enjoyed the look on the faces of Siulys and
Chestin as he walked around the table. The Panarch lifted a hand to invite him
through the door and, to Jep’s surprise, used that same hand to halt the
Marines who tried to accompany them. The door closed, leaving them alone, and
somehow, despite seventy-plus years of deadly politics, he had no sense that
there were hidden jacs trained on him. Cynicism exerted itself nonetheless
against that feeling.
This one is good.
Very good.

“The Dol’jharians certainly left you no choice,” said
Brandon. “Or you’d not be here.”

“Nor you, I think,” replied Jep. “You were on the Riftskip
for a time. Long enough to make quite a mess on Rifthaven, anyway.”

The Panarch’s quick grin made him look young, almost boyish.
From the vid, Jep remembered Brandon Arkad’s hilarity during the battle at
Giffus Snurkel’s, whose assassination afterwards despite following Eusabian’s
orders had begun Rifthaven’s drift towards this very moment.

“What would you have done if the Dol’jharians had not
attacked?” Jep continued. “Would you now be a Rifter rather than ruler?”

The Panarch shrugged, his expression pensive as he gazed
down at a plain gold ring on the little finger of his right hand. “I don’t
know.” He looked up at Jep. “But I do know that things couldn’t have gone on as
they were, and certainly cannot now.”

Brandon could see the impact of his statement in the old
man’s face. This was the man who, as much as anyone could be, was his antitype
among the Rifters. A man who represented a world that had welcomed Markham, and
had given Vi’ya refuge.

He spoke as one symbol to another. “I have made a covenant.
If we win through, I will find a new way for Rifters, Highdwellers, and
Downsiders to coexist.”

Jep felt the words strike like rocks on a hull, with a
weight not to be denied. Thanks to Ares 25, he knew what covenant the Panarch
referred to. Time to seal the agreement.

“Well then, as we’re to be married by Magister Firejac, I’ve
a wedding present for you. There’s a hyperwave salvaged from Aroga Blackheart’s
ship on the
Gloire
, and it’s yours.”

Vannis Scefi-Cartano, former Consort to the Aerenarch
Semion vlith-Arkad (deceased), moved among the nodding blooms in the garden of
the Enclave. She carried a long basket on her arm, into which she laid the
carefully chosen blossoms she cut from time to time.

To the observer, she would appear wholly absorbed in her
task. Even when deep in thought, Vannis was always cognizant of the possible
observer—it had been one of the first lessons drilled into her as a small
child.

She assessed herself with her inner eye: her formal walking
suit, simple in design but costly in fabric, falling in complicated layers to
sandaled feet, its color grading from white to palest lavender as a subtle
indication of mourning for the dead Panarch Gelasaar; her hair swept up in a
coronet, bound only with a single strand of pearls; her hands free of jewels,
moving with unhurried calm.

Visible observers would be the Marine guards, eternally
vigilant, posted at the entrances to the Enclave, and the steady stream of
functionaries, messengers, and titled petitioners going to and fro along the
main pathway. Invisible observers might be anyone. Not so long ago she herself
had spied on the Enclave from inside her villa across the lake.

Observers would only see the former Aerenarch Consort
cutting flowers, as she did early each “morning.” But behind the impervious
facade, her mind worked furiously on a personal campaign, conducted through
purely social means, but the goal was as far-reaching as the war plans being
argued in public and in private by the political and military leaders of the
new government.

She had learned to evaluate her tactical strengths and
weaknesses before planning a strategy. Now, as she stooped over a rosebush,
reaching for a single perfect bud partly hidden behind an interlacing of
leaves, she examined the terrain.

She lived at the Enclave, Brandon having invited her to
relocate from her villa in order to deflect political speculations about his
having taken over the wardship of Fierin vlith-Kendrian. As Aerenarch-Consort
she had reigned over the social life of the Mandala on Arthelion, a position
she had resumed as if the intervening war had never happened. And life was
uncertain enough on Ares that the Douloi—even those who had lost families and
fortunes—went right along with the illusion.

So the Enclave had metamorphosed from a retreat of monastic
quiet to the center of a constant series of entertainments, all planned by
Vannis and often hosted by her. And every single one of them was designed to
please one person: Brandon Arkad.

This overt part of her campaign was both an unspoken apology
and a declaration. She did not expect him to acknowledge it (though hope
refused to die) and so far he hadn’t. He was precisely as polite, as
considerate in the minutiae of sharing living space, as he would have been had
she done nothing—which made his response impossible to interpret.

Vannis straightened up. Today, yellow roses, ranging in hue
from ivory to the color of the setting sun over the Mandala. She had gathered
enough for three bouquets.

A subtle flex of her wrist, and her boswell obligingly told
her the time.
They will just be starting.

Moving at a leisurely pace over a circuitous route,
presently she arrived, alone and unobserved, at a little alcove, and sat in the
dark room so that light would not shine in the window that looked down onto the
gym.

This time, a group of perhaps twenty men and women—from
Marines to house staff—in addition to Fierin and Brandon, finishing the set of
rhythmic exercises that warmed and stretched muscles, under the strict eye of
the squat, middle-aged woman who was Ares’s leading Ulanshu expert. Brandon
stood in the middle of the crowd, shadow-punching and kicking, whirling, and striking
the air with precisely placed hand and foot.

She watched him as she examined with remorseless clarity her
spectacular, passion-driven entry into the political arena. For a few hours she
had reveled in the riots triggered by her release of the data on the villainous
acts of al-Gessinav, Srivashti, and Torigan. The riots had served a double
purpose: to vent public rage against the villains and to cover the escape of
the Rifter crew of the
Telvarna
—captained
by the woman Brandon loved.

Too late had Vannis discovered that what for her was
expedience was to him a betrayal.

As he moved through mock battles with laughing young
Marines, she reviewed the conversation that she had forced on him the following
day. Convinced after a sleepless night that if he could just be brought to
understand that she, too, was motivated by love, she had broken all the
boundaries of Douloi etiquette and indirection to speak directly to him and to
force him to speak directly to her.

“
Your Rifter captain
wanted to leave,” she said. “Are Dol’jharians even capable of love?”

“Dol’jharians are
human beings, no more and no less than anyone else, Vannis.” He’d sat across
the room from her, hands flexed on the arms of his chair, his patient face
marked with the signs of extreme physical exhaustion.

“If Vi’ya loves you,
then why did she leave?”

“She loves me,” he
said, “to the extent that she has pledged her life to make me a gift suitable
for a panarch.”

Vannis stared at him
through burning eyes. “That is what she wants, then? To be a kyriarch?”

“No,” he said. “It is
me she loves. It’s the 48th Panarch she doesn’t trust. My pledge is to prove
the latter worthy of her trust, and the former worthy of her love.”

“Can you understand
why I did what I did?” she said, through aching throat. “It was my pledge to
you—”

“Your pledge to a
panarch,” he said, without anger, or malice, or even accusation. Gentle and
sober and devastatingly honest. “Worthy of a kyriarch. But your actions
yesterday left no room for friendship, or trust, for the human being behind the
title.”

She closed her eyes, bracing against the flood of regret and
sorrow that the memory of those words always raised. Down in the gym below,
Brandon strove against an opponent much taller and broader than he. The two men
grappled swiftly, froze in a straining contest of strength, and then with a
bone-jarring thump that Vannis felt rather than heard, Brandon was thrown to
the mat. But he rolled away to his feet, leaping and whirling in a swift attack
that sent his opponent staggering.

They both laughed, then bowed, and the trainer came up and
addressed each of them, her hands gesturing.

Two or three more matches, then they performed as a group
the ritual movements signifying the end of the session.

Vannis walked into the hallway, still carrying her basket of
roses. The door to the gym opened, and Brandon and Fierin emerged, flushed, the
latter bright-eyed and smiling. Brandon’s color was heightened as well, his
fine dark hair damp, but there was no expression in his face beyond the
customary politeness.

“Good session,” Fierin said, lifting her dark braids and
fanning her neck. “She almost killed me, then said I’ve improved.”

“She almost killed me, and said I’m slow, lazy, and
heavy-footed,” Brandon said ruefully.

Vannis smiled. “Breakfast in fifteen minutes.”

“Excellent,” Brandon answered, and with a courteous gesture
indicating he would rejoin them presently, he disappeared in the direction of
his own suite.

Fierin turned to Vannis. Her silvery-gray eyes, startling in
her smooth dark face, were earnest. “Learning Ulanshu defense feels good. I
suppose it’s silly, but I feel somehow that I am preparing myself for this
horrid attack.”

It would take years
before you’d be able to defend yourself against a serious threat,
Vannis
thought.
Better to depend on one’s
wits—and a palm-jac.
But she only nodded.

“I wish I hadn’t been so shortsighted when they offered it
in school. The only people who studied the Ulanshu paths were the ones planning
to go into the Navy, or who really liked sports with physical competition.”
Fierin wrinkled her nose. “Everyone was really focused today, like they might
be needing it soon. I think they all feel the way I do.”

Vannis said, “If we lose the Suneater, there will be nowhere
safe to go.”

“We have to win. We have to.” Fierin flexed her hands, then
dropped them to her sides. “I will be with you shortly.”

When Brandon walked out onto the terrace where they
customarily had breakfast, Vannis twitched the finishing touches on a bouquet.
They were alone; he didn’t like servants hovering around, so all the food sat
in chafing dishes on a buffet. He poured himself some coffee, then let the cup
sit between his fingers. Its column of steam curled up in a hypnotic frond as
he watched.

Vannis glanced at his oblique blue gaze, then returned to
her task, her movements calm and economical. When she was certain the bouquet
was aesthetically irreproachable from all angles, she took her seat opposite
Brandon and poured out coffee for herself. “Fierin will join us presently,” she
said.

Brandon laid a sheet of paper on the table. Vannis knew
without looking that it was a printout of the day’s schedule, produced by
Brandon’s social secretary, the Desrien oblate Ki.

Vannis did not have to listen to him read it out—she already
had it memorized. Almost her first goal on moving into the Enclave had been to
make friends with the staff. One of the fruits of her patient labors with the
reticent oblate was that she had each evening previous the same exact printout.

Instead, she watched Brandon. Though she was an accomplished
muscle reader, his mask of control was nearly impenetrable, as would be
expected of someone who had spent his formative years under the eye of a
brother as inimical as he was powerful. He read swiftly, in a slightly absent
voice, which indicated his thoughts were already otherwhere.
On the governing and command schedule, which
Ki probably does not see.

When he looked up, she said, “Of the invitations issued in
your name, only the dinner and the reception really require your presence. I
can preside over the tours and welcomes.”

He looked up, his gesture one of gratitude, though his eyes
were still distracted.
Planning how to be
two places at once.
Navy meetings, of course, but those were carefully
scheduled not to overlap.
Factions who
don’t share scheduling with the Navy . . . like the newly arrived Syndic from
Rifthaven whom Vannis officially didn’t know about? Probably.

“If I’m late to the dinner, blame it on my drunkenness.”

It was a joke, so she smiled, though it was also a reminder
of the past they shared, and as such, a reminder of that personal distance.
“The High Phanist will understand perfectly.” She raised her brows.