The Thrones of Kronos (89 page)

But how had she found Vannis?

Of course. She is a
telepath.

Vi’ya closed the distance with leisurely step. Dressed in
spacer’s tunic and trousers of the blue of steel at twilight, Vi’ya looked down
at the elegant little palm-jac still in Vannis’s hand and said, “Ever had to
use it?”

“Just once.” And Vannis thought with a kind of desperate
challenge,
Read my mind and found out
when, and where, and why.

But the impassive profile next to her did not change as
Vi’ya scanned through the trees at the distant horizon.

They paced a dozen steps in silence, Vi’ya shortening her
strides to accommodate Vannis. At length, Vi’ya said, “I have a question.”

“About the dinner tonight?”

Vi’ya lifted a hand in a dismissive gesture that stirred
deep memory. “I will sit and be silent, and mirror the others. It is what they
expect of a Dol’jharian barbarian,” she added with faint humor.

Vannis opened her mouth to make the diplomatic demur, then
closed her lips.

Vi’ya’s smile deepened, but when she spoke, it was on a new
subject entirely. “Do you remember Anaris?”

Taken completely by surprise, Vannis hesitated—and then she
recognized that gesture of Vi’ya’s. Anaris had used one much like it.

“I do,” she said.

“What happened to him here?”

This question was as surprising. Vannis hesitated, thinking,
Why don’t you just take it out of my
memory?

But Vi’ya said nothing, walking slowly at Vannis’s pace.

So Vannis said, “Can’t you just take it from my memory?”

Vi’ya looked up at the faint glow of evening stars. “Perhaps
I could, if the Kelly were still alive, and with me and the Eya’a, and we were
all in sync. But I am not a computer, to retrieve data from a chip whether it
wills or not.”

Vannis looked up at her in puzzlement, and Vi’ya opened her
hand. “Imagine being locked into a vast room with utterly no light. You cannot
see, and your ears are blocked, so to find other people you must grope and
stumble about. Now I cannot see, either, and must grope and stumble just as
you, except that I am able to hear random shouts and whispers, which at least
give me a direction to grope in—if the speaker is not shouting imprecations
against me.”

Vannis sifted that, and nodded, embracing the several
messages she heard in those words.

“What I wish from you are your impressions,” Vi’ya went on.
“At the end of the battle Anaris warned me that there is unfinished business
between us. I am trying to gain a measure of understanding of what shaped him.”
Again, the faint trace of humor. “The Dol’jharian influences I know. What I do
not know is what happened to him during his years here.”

“Everything I know is hearsay, save very brief meetings at
social events. Have you discussed this with Brandon?”

“Yes. But his perspective is that of a childhood adversary.
They never shared lessons or friends, and thus his view is limited.”

“You know that Anaris attacked Brandon.”

“Yes. I know what he did, and perhaps I know better than
anyone why he did it. But that was at the far end of both their childhoods, one
could say. After that Brandon left Arthelion for Charvann, and then the Academy.
They did not see one another until Brandon’s return, and they never spoke again
until Gehenna.”

“True.” Vannis thought back, evaluating her memories. Anaris
came vividly to mind, and she spoke without considering her words. “Tall,
handsome and dangerous, with a penchant for sarcasm. When he appeared at Court,
it was almost always at Gelasaar’s side. Semion loathed this,” she added with a
laugh.

Sardonic shadows gathered at the corners of Vi’ya’s mouth.

“For a time he was a fashion,” Vannis went on, recovering a
track of memory that she had thought completely forgotten. “Among the young
especially. They competed for his attentions.” She paused, reaching further
into memory, past her own concerns for those observations that had been on the
periphery of her attention. “He seemed to enjoy it—at least to encourage it.
Yes, I believe he must have enjoyed it. For a time. His behavior seemed to
soften. Several people remarked on it. Then, quite suddenly, he withdrew
altogether.”

“Did he give a reason?”

“Not that I heard, but then I never really held converse
with him. My interests lay elsewhere . . .” She stopped there,
for her own interests were not under discussion. “I suspect what happened was
this: he discovered that he was a fashion. That they discussed his words, his
manner, his performance, as they would never do another Douloi.”

“In a manner appropriate for a favorite wire-dream
performer, or a clever animal, or perhaps an oddity or experiment?” Vi’ya
asked, her soft voice flat. “Assessing the degree, and the quality, of his
assimilations and entertained by the persistent habits of his barbaric ancestry?”

“Probably,” Vannis said. “But what is this about unfinished
business?”

Vi’ya’s laugh was a short exhalation of breath. “Is there
not always unfinished business in our lives, until death finishes it for us?”

Vannis bit her lip. “I suppose. Do you think he will attack
us again?”

“I do not know.”

Vannis shook her head. “If I had thought about him at all, I
would have imagined him retired to that dreadful planet, living out the
remainder of his life scowling at his quailing servants and swearing eternal
revenge—just like a performer in a third-rate wire-dream.”

“Anaris does not see himself as a villain so much as a
victim,” Vi’ya said, adding grimly, “Though that may well change.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning he has been a prisoner for his entire life—until
now. Whatever he does, it will not encompass sitting by and muttering about
fate, for his fate is now in his hands.”

For the first time since she knew the battle was ended and
that Brandon had lived through it, Vannis felt the chilly prickle of danger.
“But Brandon knows this,” she said.

“Of course he does,” Vi’ya agreed. “And he has already put
in motion a vigorous campaign to limit Anaris’s options.”

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the chaotic tangle of forest
gave way to ordered rows of shrubs, with stately trees planted at pleasing intervals.
They had found their way back to the Palace. Vannis lifted her gaze to the
gleam of lights through the nodding branches. And to the right, the tangled
shadow of a statue, its form difficult to make out in the diffuse twilight.

As they walked toward it, Vannis considered the conversation
so far, and when at last they stood together before the eternal struggle of the
Laocoön, Vannis said, “So you are here now, asking me. Does this bring us full
circle?”

Vi’ya had been stooping down to read aloud the phrases
engraved on the granite marker at the base of the statue. “‘ . . . a prison
unsought.’ Full circle,” she finished.

Vannis could not see the measuring dark gaze, but she
fancied she could feel it.

“And ‘Unfinished business,’” Vi’ya said slowly. “You are
very perceptive.”

Regarding these words as a corroborative transition, and not
as mere flattery, Vannis was silent.

“I will be leaving tonight,” Vi’ya said calmly.

The words were so calm, the voice so soft, at first their
sense did not penetrate. Leaving? The garden? The Palace?

“The planet?”

She realized she had spoken aloud when Vi’ya gave a short,
twisting nod that again struck that chord of memory: it was quintessentially
Dol’jharian, and however long she lived, she would probably never lose the gesture.

“I am,” Vi’ya said.

“Why? For how long?” Vannis almost laughed, so dizzying were
the prospective changes that made in her future tomorrow. Next week. Forever.

“That I do not know. Much depends upon what I discover when
I reach Rifthaven.” Once again humor warmed the quiet tone as Vi’ya added,
“This is not a repeat of my previous departure.”

“I am relieved,” Vannis said dryly.

“If I had foreseen the burden that would place upon you, I
would not have involved you,” Vi’ya said. “I apologize for that: I have learned
much since that time.”

Vannis was uncertain how to answer this, but then she
reflected with bitter hilarity that if tempaths—telepaths—could hear all the
mental shouts and whispers around them, they had to either be good at keeping
people’s secrets or die young.

Vannis drew in a deep breath. “So, if you realize this … if
you’ll honor me with your forbearance . . . why leave?”

“It is necessary,” Vi’ya said with typical un-Douloi
bluntness. “Do you wish to be involved now?”

Vannis was ready to refuse, but as she considered once again
the layers of the conversation, she said, “Willing or not, I believe I am already
involved.” She turned and faced the tall, impassive Rifter from Dol’jhar.
Brandon’s beloved.
And she spoke, no longer
trying to control how her emotions colored the timbre of her voice—why, when
Vi’ya heard them, anyway? “We are involved with one another, probably for the
rest of our lives.”

“This is true,” Vi’ya said, stolid as ever.

“I, too, have learned,” Vannis said. “So please listen. Your
place is here. Not just as Brandon’s mate—that would have made it simple for
all of us—but as Kyriarch.”

Vi’ya made that gesture of negation again.

“It is so,” Vannis said steadily. “Did you not see how that
business with the Chang representative has resonated through the other
negotiations? It’s true, and he knows it as well. For better or for worse,
whether we will or not, the old order is gone forever, and a new one is being
formed. I was trained for leadership in the old order. For me to step forward
as Kyriarch now would be a symbolic warning that the Panarchy, after all, means
to revert. The Rifters will not cooperate if you disappear.”

Vi’ya sighed, her breathing audible, indicative of a
terrible tension. “He discussed marriage with you once,” Vi’ya said finally. “I
thought that was understood.”

“No.”
And this is
still mystery, how Brandon, whose vision surpasses mine, didn’t see all this.
Or did he, and risked it all on a gamble?
Vannis wondered if she would ever
find out the truth—if indeed there was one truth. “We agreed to wait, and now
it is clear that we were right to do so.”

Vi’ya said, “Anaris was a hostage, and had no choice. I do
not want to enter freely into the same shackles, to perform—whether I become a
fashion or not—as the pet barbarian to the Court Douloi.”

“Then learn their ways,” Vannis said. “You’ve already scared
most of them half to death. They wouldn’t dare to condescend to you.”

But Vi’ya did not laugh.

Vannis pointed at the statue before them, almost a
silhouette in the deepening night. The complicated twist of serpent coils were
difficult to make out, conveying a curious sense of eternity. “There we are,
Vi’ya,” she said. “Our wishes are secondary. You chose your path, and here it
has led. I can serve as a transition, but this is now your place.”

Vi’ya turned her head. “If I come back, and do as you say.
What about you?”

Vannis smiled. “Do not think I intend to withdraw to
obscurity. That is not my nature. I will probably take on at least one of the vacant
archonates. Look in the center of all future political nexi, and you will see
me there. Working alongside Brandon in that sense, as long as his work is to
mend and not to mar.” Vannis waited, and when the Rifter said nothing more, she
went on, “So will you stay?”

“I cannot,” Vi’ya said. And nothing prepared Vannis for the
impact of her next words: “I am pregnant.”

Vannis shook her head. “Pregnant,” she repeated.

Vi’ya said nothing.

“With Brandon?”

Vannis thought herself beyond shock, but was wrong. “I do
not know,” Vi’ya said. “If so, it was certainly not by design. I believe it was
either Eusabian’s or Anaris’s idea, and I now suspect that the antidote to the
ovulation suppressant was introduced through our food. Sedry Thetris, one of my
crew, is also pregnant.”

Vannis tried to comprehend the mind that could perpetrate so
immoral an act, and failed. Or was it an entire culture? “Was this common on
Dol’jhar?”

“I don’t remember,” Vi’ya said. “I know it sounds strange.
But my existence was an anomaly: supposedly we who had the taint of the Chorei
were exposed at birth, but actually, we brought a good price for service. The
double standard was in force again during the days of the Struggle. My owners
made it clear I was not to get pregnant, the single command with which I had no
disagreement. They might have changed their minds later, but I was gone before
I could find out.”

Vannis shook her head. She would think this through later.
“So Anaris is the father?”

“Or Brandon. Or Jaim. Any of them could be, since I do not
know when the drug took effect. I will have the tests done on Rifthaven. Then I
will decide what to do.”

Vannis bit her lip hard, then spoke in a rush: “It wouldn’t
matter to Brandon. He would adopt this child, your child, as his own.”

“I know,” Vi’ya said softly. “But you must remember, if it happened
by Anaris’s design, he will assume it is his. And there will be repercussions.”

Vannis rubbed her numb lip, fighting for balance. “He won’t
tolerate it being raised here, will he?”

“No.” Vi’ya drew another of those deep breaths, and for the
first time, Vannis knew at a visceral level that the other woman’s emotions
were not, in fact, cold; that Dol’jharians had their own mask, just as did the
Douloi. “I am not made for the role of nurturer. It would be easiest if it is
Jaim’s, for then it becomes his, to raise as he wishes. If it is Brandon’s,
again it is easy: I return here, and it becomes his to raise. But if it is
Anaris’s . . .” She lifted a hand.

“Will you give it to him?”

“No,” Vi’ya said. “And I believe he knows it.”