The Thrones of Kronos (22 page)

“That’s it.” Jumec growled in anguish. “Dead trace.”

“You’re not thinking,” Nik countered, prowling around the
room. “You saw what the captain of the
Emris
did. She knew, and whoever passed on the order knew, that the
Telvarna
had a functioning fiveskip. Otherwise
she just would have ordered them to return. Where would they go?”

No one spoke.

“But knowing that they had a fiveskip, and a Rifter tempath
on board who could earn the price of a planet for going to the Suneater, why
didn’t they blast the
Telvarna
?”

After a long pause, Jumec said dryly, “You’re right.”

Nik nodded. “There’s some kind of connection. Something no
one has talked about.”

Liet sighed loudly. “Like what? You think the Panarch was
bunkin’ with one of them? All of them, maybe?”

“Rich perversion even for a Douloi,” someone muttered.
“Rifters—a Dol’jharian—the youngster bonded with the Kelly—those brain-burners,
maybe?”

“Does anyone know the gender of the Eya’a?” Liet asked.

“Or if they have gender?” Tovi put in.

“And would that matter to a Douloi?” Omplari muttered from
the back of the group.

Everyone laughed, even Nik.

“Even if the Panarch was bedding all of them, where’s the
profit in rizzing him over it?” Derith said. “He’s popular now. Sex stories are
only fun when no one likes the person.”

“She’s right,” Tovi put in. “Dump bad if we do a bed-spy
story on the Panarch and there’s no point.”

“But there is a point,” Nik said, his restless hands
touching, tapping, from surface to surface in the room as he paced back and
forth. “Think. Think! I don’t care who he bunnies with or how many times, but
whatever his connection with the
Telvarna
Rifters is, the fact they’re connected with him means it’s gonna affect us
all.”

Derith said slowly, “No one high up will talk, you know
that. As for the Panarch himself, bet he would grant us an interview, but he’d
say exactly nothing. And I don’t have the skill to sting him into revealing
anything he doesn’t want to reveal. Do you?”

Nik shook his head slowly. “Doubt it.” He snorted. “Listen
to us. Taking it for granted that we can get an interview with the Panarch.
We’ve come a long way from Reginale.” Then he straightened up. “Time for us to
go loud, I think. We might flush someone who isn’t as good at hiding.”

“Teasers?” Liet shook her head. “Knife edge, that.”

Derith crossed her arms and leaned back in her pod. “Then
it’s appropriate we start at Detention, huh? Detention Five. Right where the
Rifters lived.”

Anaris shoved his chair back and dropped the report flimsy
on the heavy carved desk. He smiled, wondering what Barrodagh would make of his
apparent interest in disposer statistics. Perhaps he should research poisoned
enemas next, to give Barrodagh, already no doubt seriously constipated,
something more to worry about.

A laugh escaped him as he gestured a command. Morrighon
looked up from his compad, then passed it to Anaris, who swiftly reviewed the
vid of Vi’ya’s first attempt to power up the station and then, again, the vid
of his own reaction. He remembered nothing of it save awakening in his bed with
a nova-sized headache.

One thing was certain: they would have to concentrate all
his stasis clamps around his bed before she made her next attempt. Obtaining
more, with Barrodagh’s interest in them, would be too revealing.

Handing the pad back to his secretary, he gazed at the
age-darkened tapestry on the nearest wall, reviewing the interviews—brief so
far—he’d had with Vi’ya.

The calm face, the stance of readiness: those came from
years of Ulanshu discipline. Her unpredictable sense of humor and the ability
to fence with words: those came not just from the Panarchists, but from the
Douloi. Apparently she had been rescued from Dol’jhar by Brandon Arkad’s old
lover, Markham vlith-L’Ranja, whom Anaris had met once, briefly. Recalling the
quick give-and-take of laughter-punctuated comments, the airy Douloi gestures,
the trusting camaraderie of those light-haired and dark-haired young men,
Anaris contemplated how events seemed to have created this curious circle.

Vi’ya had even encountered Brandon, however briefly;
apparently his gratitude after the Charvann rescue and the flight to and from
Arthelion had not extended to preventing Vi’ya and her crew from being slammed
into prison as soon as he’d been repatriated to Ares.

Anaris dismissed Brandon and considered Vi’ya again. Like
himself, Vi’ya had become a hybrid. She was certainly difficult to read for
motivation or reaction, which made her interesting. Used to abject fear,
hatred, or unctuous toadying, he found it refreshing to interact with someone
who made no effort to please him, showed no more interest than one would in an
adversary, and displayed no fear beyond a healthy awareness of who held the
power.

On the other hand, she hid behind that calm facade a
formidable ability. He knew his own rudimentary psi talents were a candle to
Vi’ya’s sun. How was she able to encompass touching the Heart of Kronos, and
standing in that room, without suffering the reactions that overcame Anaris
whenever any tempath tried? He had not touched the Heart, nor would he—not
without learning some way of circumventing the reactions. The drugs Morrighon
had stolen from Norio were barely sufficient even at this remove from the
Chamber of Kronos.

He would not, of course, give her ammunition by telling her
that he, too, carried the taint of the Chorei. Was there some way to find out
what he needed? Then he thought of her ship.

“What is the status of the Rifter vessel?” he asked.

“Left closed but not locked up,” replied Morrighon.

“Ah.” Vi’ya must have known that locking the ship would only
have guaranteed that Barrodagh would cut his way in.

“It has already been searched. His main interest appears to
have been the dispensary.” Morrighon’s skewed gaze narrowed briefly in smug
humor, and Anaris wondered idly what lever he had found to suborn a Tarkan. That
had to be the source of his information, since Barrodagh would have had no one
else accompany him on that search.

“He also checked the computers. They have an unusually large
installation of arrays, which may account for their successes as Rifters before
the paliach.” Morrighon tapped at his pad. “There appears to have been no
further activity.”

Anaris smiled. Had he known how much amusement would be
afforded in watching Barrodagh’s reactions of rage and fear whenever Vi’ya was
around, he would have exerted himself before this to have a Dol’jharian tempath
located.

Except someone from the
home world would merely be adept at hiding his or her talents, and would not be
nearly as interesting,
he thought as he stood up. “I am curious. It is said
that a ship reflects its captain.”

He walked to the landing bay, Morrighon scuttling alongside.

The Tarkans guarding the bay admitted them without
challenge; he knew that whispered stories of his invocation of Urtigen in the
Chamber of the Mysteries on the
Fist of
Dol’jhar
had reached even here.

The old Columbiad sat in the bay near two Dol’jharian corvettes,
silent, its running lights dark. He tabbed the control for the ramp. It came
down promptly enough, and three strides brought him within the ship. Morrighon
followed more slowly. Inside the lock he paused; his secretary silently handed
him the compad with a standard Columbiad layout displayed. Anaris glanced at
it, handed it back, and walked toward the bridge.

The air was still, with a vaguely oppressive feel to it. Perhaps
it was stale. It smelled faintly of cinnamon. This roused a distant memory, too
evanescent to pursue. Interesting that their tianqi would vent so strong a
scent, he thought as he followed the faint glow of emergency power lights to
the bridge. Which of them required the smell of cinnamon?

The Kelly! When he reached the bridge, it came back to
Anaris. The Kelly Archon on Arthelion had smelled something like burned
cinnamon. Was the scent here to ease the youth with the Kelly ribbon on his
arm? Morrighon’s Bori noderunner had extricated from Barrodagh’s files the
records of the
Telvarna
crew’s brief
stay on Rifthaven, before they were captured by the Panarchists. The surgeon
Montrose had taken the youth—Ivard—to a Kelly doctor, one of whose employees
had disclosed to Barrodagh’s agent that Ivard indeed had somehow bonded with a
Kelly ribbon during the raid on the Mandala and that it was slowly eroding his
health.

He looks healthy
enough now
, Anaris thought, recalling the red-haired youth as he keyed up
life support and power. Lights glowed, and the tianqi whooshed cool air against
his face as he looked around the bridge.

Once again that sense of a closing circle seized him. He
stood on the bridge of the one vessel that had escaped his father’s grip on
Arthelion. He recalled the visual record of that flight. Vi’ya had outrun the
ruptors of his father’s battlecruiser by a fraction of a second.

Anaris stood behind Vi’ya’s empty pod, trying to envision
her sitting there, watching the
Fist
looming in the viewscreen, fighting off its initial barrage of missile clusters
and gambling their lives they could make it to radius before Juvaszt finally
fired the ruptors. That had taken the coolest kind of courage. Had she brigged
Brandon Arkad, or did she force him to stand and watch the race with death
above his conquered planet?

Wondering if there was some way to find out, he left the
bridge in search of the captain’s cabin, which he assumed would be the largest,
and closest to the bridge, if the old Columbiad hadn’t been too greatly
modified.

The ship was scrupulously clean, its lines forcefully
evoking Douloi tastes. That would be left over from L’Ranja’s tenure. Despite
the tianqi activity, the air still felt hard to breathe, a sensation that
increased with distance from the bridge. Had they jiggered the life support to
discourage trespassers? Morrighon, too, seemed uncomfortable, looking around
nervously, but he said nothing.

Anaris found the cabin where he expected it and tabbed the
door open, wondering if L’Ranja had left anything of himself in the captain’s
cabin. No. The cabin was as plain as a jail cell. Narrow bed against one wall,
and no personal effects in view except for a tapestry on one wall and a small
hook on the opposite wall. Below it was a faint, arc-shaped scrape, as though
something had hung there.

He turned to the tapestry, his interest sharpening when he
recognized it as ancient Dol’jharian work—representative of the destruction of
the Isle of the Chorei.

It was the same theme, though not from the same artist, as the
old picture he had acquired in boyhood and had kept as a reminder during the
long years of his fosterage. Staring at the stitched fires that long-dead hands
had made so painstakingly, a surge of—something—rippled through his
consciousness, forcing him off balance, and he wondered with a pulse of near
panic if Vi’ya was making another try at starting the station—or if he was
going to be sucked, against his will, into yet another vision of the
destruction of the Chorei island centuries ago, as he had experienced in the
landing bay at her arrival.

But the sensation subsided, taking with it the vertigo,
leaving only a residue of discomfort that he ascribed to the tianqi. He turned
away from the tapestry and sat down at Vi’ya’s console, bringing it to life.
After a short time, he shut it down again. As he’d expected, Vi’ya had archived
all the ship’s logs under some kind of code, deep in the system. He’d need a
noderunner to excavate them out again—an experienced noderunner with lots of
time.

Anaris left the cabin and hesitated, wondering if further
exploration of the ship would repay the time. He took a couple of tentative
steps toward the stern, then stopped. No, his interest was in the captain. If
her private space was that bare, there would be no trace at all of her
elsewhere.

As he retreated to the bridge to cut the power, he decided
it was time for another interview with
Telvarna’s
captain.

Within the Rifters’ chamber, Vi’ya took a deep breath,
trying to encompass the flood of data coming via the Kelly through Ivard
through their mental contact.

I don’t think Eusabian
knows about his son.
Ivard sat a meter from Vi’ya, eyes closed, as he had
been ever since he had been startled into wakefulness by the news that Anaris
was on the
Telvarna
, poking around.

He had gone only to the bridge and then to Vi’ya’s cabin; the
manipulation of the reactivated tianqi by the Kelly, including subsonics, had
deterred further explorations, so he had not discovered the trinity hiding in
Ivard’s cabin. But his proximity had enabled the Kelly to probe his mind and
they had sent a barrage of those of Anaris’s thoughts and actions that were
comprehensible to them.

Anaris had known Markham. He, too, carried genetic material
from the Chorei. He thought little of his talents, though they were strong
enough to strike some kind of inadvertent synchrony with the Kelly, and through
them the Eya’a, awakening them from hibernation. Luckily he did not seem to
know what had happened.

Vi’ya shut her eyes, willing away the building headache.

The Kelly trinity sent soothing thoughts to her, along with the
assurance that, with the Eya’a now awake, they might be able in concert to ease
some of the mental stresses the station imposed on her.

Vi’ya opened her eyes. Ivard regarded her with an expression
of extravagant disgust.
I wish Eloatri
had told us that the missing member of the Unity had been that blunge-brain
Norio. We could have stayed on Ares,
he thought.