“I take it you are Anaris, heir to Eusabian of Dol’jhar?” Ng said.
Eloatri did not hear the reply, for Manderian tabbed the vid off and touched her arm, his eyes full of concern. “Numen?”
After a long moment the physical reaction released her, except for the tolling of her heart.
“He is the missing part of the vision,” she said finally, and watched her shock mirror in Manderian’s face. “The final member of the Unity. Anaris achreash-Eusabian, together with these others, will bring us to a hinge of Time.”
PART TWO
ONE
ARES
From anyone’s perspective it was a colossal logistical nightmare.
So thought Vannis Scefi-Cartano as she watched from afar the tremendous energies exerted by the awe-inspiring number of people laboring to convert the Ares Highdwelling, daily more crowded with refugees of every conceivable culture and status, into a center of government for a new Panarch who had not been trained to rule.
On distant Arthelion, there had been thousands trained for the smooth, dignified transfer of power from the dead to the living. There in the Mandala, the mystical center of the Thousand Suns, the machinery of accession had been oiled with the weight of centuries of slowly evolving tradition centered around the symbols of a thousand years of Arkadic rule: the Emerald Throne, the Mace of Karelais, the Phoenix Signet, and the Fleet.
But the Emerald Throne had been usurped, the Mace buried in the radioactive ruins of the Hall of Ivory, the Signet vaporized with the Panarch Gelasaar over Gehenna, and the Fleet scattered through a billion cubic light-years, harried by an enemy armed with weapons from a war that had ended before humankind discovered fire.
Meanwhile, Ares and what was left of the government prepared to deal with an accession for which there was no precedent, which made it even more necessary to reenact as much as could be contrived of the age-old rituals. Since Brandon’s return from the unsuccessful rescue mission, the remnants of the Council of Pursuivance, under the aegis of the College of Archetype and Ritual, had struggled to fashion a new ritual of accession, adapting tradition to convey a symbolic promise to war-wracked subjects: See, we can still impose order in a universe gone mad.
How to translate the symbol into reality in the midst of a desperate war had consumed countless hours of impassioned arguments to the point of duels, until at last the new Panarch was consulted.
Through patient listening and indirect questioning. Vannis monitored the preparations, gathering snippets of much-repeated talk until there resolved a clear picture of Brandon’s tastes and manner. Always with due appreciation to every side, he made his wishes known: the Enclave would remain his residence. He would retain his Rifter bodyguard and chef. There would be a new building for the government, a balance of military efficiency and civilian elegance.
But no throne. On that the new Panarch was adamant. There would be no enthronement until the Mandala was retaken. For an accession without enthronement there was precedent, but no one spoke of it, for it had not followed but preceded the death of a Panarch, and that the one whose name was never spoken, whose image never seen, for neither existed anymore.
All available cims had been put to work on the assembly of the new building, as if in distraction from that grim prolepsis, while all over the station accoutrements had been busily fabricated or gathered, preparing for the day of Accession.
It was less than a week away when Vannis paid a visit to the Whispering Gallery to relax, away from protocol and politics, and found there the means to discharge a debt that had disturbed her for some time.
o0o
“I’d better cut this session short,” Pankar, Fierin’s co-volunteer, said before he touched the console.
A bell chimed and the children at the sims and booths looked up.
Seeing the row of disappointed faces, Fierin forced a smile. “Time to change over. See how many are waiting for a turn?” She indicated the growing group of youths standing just beyond the circle, some shifting about impatiently as they sent glowering looks at her and the other volunteers.
Her heart sped up; those lanky Polloi looked so uncontrolled.
But those at the sims got up obediently enough, despite their time having been cut. They formed into a shuffling but orderly line, ushered by Pankar.
And then Fierin saw trouble.
As soon as the chime’s echo died away, most of those waiting straightened out into a ragged line. When Pankar had seen the last child away from the booths, the first boy in line started forward, then spun around when a girl from the back made her way, her face preoccupied, for the first sim booth.
Fierin moved to intervene, but the youth acted too quickly. Catching the girl’s shoulder with one long, sinewy hand, he thrust her back toward the line. “I’m first, piss-face!”
The girl staggered back, her mouth open. Two or three other youths reached for her, some with fists. Their voices rose in shouts: “Wait your turn!” “Douloi nullbrain!”
“Stop!” Fierin cried, but no one listened.
She watched in helpless terror as a growing circle of boys and girls mobbed the Douloi girl, one voice shouting above the rest, “We’ll teach you precedence, Douloi strut—”
The girl’s face blanched yellowish, then her jaw set. A blur of movement and one youth fell back screaming in pain, blood splashing from a broken nose, the other curled over a broken arm. The girl whirled about, hands ready, her stance betraying Ulanshu training. “Touch me again and you die,” she said unsteadily into the sudden silence.
“We’re going to have a riot if we don’t act now,” Pankar said, pushing past Fierin. The old man stamped between the girl and the frozen line of youths. “Stop! All of you,” he commanded. Over his shoulder he sent Fierin an impatient glance, tipping his head, and she recalled the emergency code.
With shaking fingers she tapped it out on the console, then breathed in relief when four Marines appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and took charge: the injured were borne off in one direction, the Douloi girl in another.
Then Pankar motioned the rest of the line forward, and sober-faced children took places at the booths, some muttering and sending angry glances after the girl—others looking about fearfully.
Beyond the study circle, Fierin saw other adults efficiently breaking up the crowd of young spectators that had materialized.
In the subsequent quiet, Fierin and Pankar did a slow circuit, observing each youngster busy at a console.
Pankar returned to the control console and tapped at the pads. IDs appeared on the screen, and Fierin’s heart contracted when she recognized the girl’s name: Haril vlith-Yamaguchi. Fierin had been told that the entire Yamaguchi family had been victims of Rifter atrocities when their homeworld was sacked. Haril survived only because she had been at school.
But the name didn’t mean anything to Pankar, that was clear. He shook his head. “Someone needs to tell these Douloi youngsters that insisting on precedence just means shoving ahead of one’s place to other people.”
Fierin said, “I saw her—she didn’t insist. It was just habit.”
Pankar’s mouth tightened. “It’s a habit she’ll have to break.” He tapped again, then gave Fierin a straight look from under bushy white brows, raking from her elaborate hair down her formal gown. “You Douloi would do better to take the likes of young Haril into your villas and yachts. You certainly have the extra space.”
She started to say “It isn’t that simple,” but the words “You Douloi” impacted her, and she stopped. How to explain that those with no family ties on Ares had to rely on ties of alliance—and that ignoring them could cause tensions that might take years to undo? And how to explain that even though one appeared in the formal gowns of Mandala fashion, one might not be any better off than untrained workslubs in their borrowed scrubs? That to have extra people crowded into what seemed to a Polloi a large space was just as intolerable to the Douloi as tiny rooms were to the Polloi crammed into them?
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br /> How to explain that she didn’t dare to adopt a child and bring him or her into a dangerous situation that she would escape as soon as she knew how?
Fierin smoothed her face, and said in her most diplomatic voice, “I’ll do another round,” and turned away.
Her temples throbbed when, three hours later, she joined the line at the transtube. It was two hours past her usual departure time, but there had been problems in other portions of the crèche, and all the volunteers were busy either with reports, repairs, or mediation.
As she waited in the crowded terminal, she tried not to listen to the tight-voiced, angry conversations around her. But then she overhead her Family name.
“. . . and not just Kendrian. I say they ought to try them all. Damn all Rifters for murdering chatzers.”
They were talking about Jes! Fierin sneaked a glance at the speakers, two slender Polloi women of indeterminate age, their faces seamed by exposure to UV.
“But the Kendrian Rifters did help the Aerenarch.”
“For a whopping good price—looting the Mandala! And him just sitting there watching.”
“Missa! He’s the Panarch.”
The other woman looked abashed. “Well, I’m not saying anything against him, but what about their captain? She’s a tempath and a Dol’jharian. And those little mindkillers always with her. They say—” She saw Fierin watching and glared at her, turning ostentatiously away and lowering her voice to a whisper.
Chagrined, Fierin looked away, humiliated with the thought that her anxiety was eroding her manners. But that was not the first such comment she’d heard. The novosti were hammering on the Rifter role in the war. She didn’t know if it was aimed at Jes, or at the Panarch, or both. And why. She had learned by listening to Tau Srivashti, and especially that frightening Hesthiar al-Gessinav, that multivocality was perhaps the most powerful aspect of symbolic communications. Jes would have called it target-rich.
The first transtube swept in with a hiss of compressed air, but when the doors opened, a solid mass of humanity faced the waiting line. “No room, no room,” peevish voices shouted from the tube.
One person squeezed out from the back, almost falling onto the concourse. Two more tried to jam their way onto the tube. Fierin watched numbly as one of them made it in, despite enraged shouts and insults; the other, a weedy young man, was shoved violently back. The doors shut and the pod disappeared. As the young man got to his feet, several in the line snickered meanly.
The next tube arrived full, but half of the people thrust their way out. Fierin was swept inside with the first half of the waiting line. Nowhere to sit. Of course. Some of the benches had three people wedged into a space designed to fit two. She squirmed behind a seat so she could see the nearest destination screen.
A sudden shove from behind nearly sent her over the back of the seat, but she caught herself. On one side a woman pressed against her. The woman’s clothing was moist where it touched Fierin’s arm and the smell of stale sweat arose from her. Fierin turned her head, only to feel on her face the warm breath—redolent of a spicy meal he had eaten hours ago—of the tall man standing directly behind her. Fierin clenched her teeth, fighting the urge to vomit—to run, clawing and kicking, for the door.
She dared not move, or even breathe deeply. Already there had been fights—and deaths—over the Douloi distaste for proximate trespass.
Four more stops, she told herself, her eyes closed. Control. Control.
She held herself rigidly still as the pod stopped again, and yet another, tighter press of humanity jammed her hip painfully against the unyielding back of the seat. She sucked in a breath, which was a mistake; a sense of suffocation grabbed her by the throat. There’s no air in here, her senses yammered, while her mind tried to reestablish control.
When the tube stopped again, she cried sharply, “Leaving!”
There was no chance to feel embarrassed at the shrillness of her voice; the people around her pressed in to get her space, and she felt herself squeezed toward the door, like something from a null-gee food tube.
The next moment the pod was gone, and she stumbled past the people waiting for the next one. Soft, musical murmurs recalled her to a sense of her surroundings. Douloi stood in an orderly line to wait. A couple of faces were familiar, but her own lack of control caused an uncertain reaction; when she encountered gazes they shifted away.
On impulse Fierin ran, slowing when she discovered herself in a park. And ahead—the Whispering Gallery. She had heard about it, but had never ventured inside.
Breathing slowly of the clean air, she walked straight for the modest doors. The rest of the building, a graceful edifice of colored glass and verdigris alloys, was cleverly hidden by vines and trees.
Then she stepped inside. A cool rush of air bathed her hot face. She leaned against an ivy-covered wall and forced her breathing to calm, the tianqi surrounding her with the soothing scents of Downsider Early Spring, evoking rain, grassy fields, clouds, and new blossoms.
And personal space. It felt as though, were she to turn around and exit, she would step out into the unconstrained horizons of a planet, rather than the enclosing curves of an oneill.
A faint whisper of voices from behind prompted her retreat, and she chose a pathway at random, stopping short only when she came unexpectedly on a mirror.
She was shocked by the image of a thin young woman in a grubby gown with bedraggled hair, and stark eyes staring out of a mottled, stress-tight face. No wonder they looked away.
Watching herself unblinkingly, she exerted control, straightening her back. Then she tucked and twitched at her upswept hair, as she dared not pull the clasp free and risk exposing the chip she now wore day and night.
She pressed her palms slowly down the front of her gown, and studied her reflection. The rumpled green gown could not be helped, but at least the gray eyes looking back at her were not wild, the dark hair swept up in a graceful curve, and the hectic flush slowly dying down under her smooth brown skin.
She turned away, and another mirror threw a sudden flight of reflections outward; she turned again and faced a wall of water, falling to below her feet. Light, glass, mirrors, the soft fronds of hanging, clinging, draping greenery, led her deeper into the maze.
Fierin became aware of the occasional drift of voices, always without direction. After a time she lost the sense of which images in the smooth walls were reflection, sometimes multiplied by clever mirrors, and which were other visitors seen through clear glass walls. Following impulse again, she chose a waiting bench tucked behind a flowering tree, and leaned her head back against its mossy trunk.
Impulse. Her body was now under control again, which sent her mind headlong down its own maze. Impulse? How long had it been since she acted without thinking?
A fleeting return of her earlier panic raced her heartbeat, but she pressed her palms together and fought it back.
Was it really impulse? She had not acted without careful thought since she was a child. Had someone planted subtle leads to bring her into this place?
The hiss of sandals passed as one, then another person passed beyond sight. Colors flickered in one of the glass walls, and reflections shimmered across the mirrors.
“. . . dreadful woman,” a female voice came distinctly from no discernible direction. “It appears she really thinks that Jared’s interest will extend past the arrival of the courier from Morigi.”
A man replied in a tone of stinging amusement, “Sad, really, that anyone would want to retain Jared ban-Ronescu’s interest.”
Another voice, criticizing a party given the day before by the Archonei of Hulann, sounded close. Fierin slipped over a little footbridge that spanned a rushing blue stream, pushed past some ferns, and once again was confronted by mirrors.
“. . . if the new Panarch will marry . . . .”
“It might be amusing to watch.”
As the cool, glass-and-greenery-bracketed maze swallowed Fierin ever more deeply, more snips and
scraps of gossip reached her. One bit shocked her with a familiar name as a man murmured in a low, urgent voice, “Don’t believe anything Srivashti says, but above all, don’t cross him . . . .” She tried to follow that voice, but took a wrong turning, and the voices abruptly disappeared.
Faces reflected through a glass wall—two women—then vanished like ghosts, leaving only the hush of falling water.
As the clean, fragrant air and the orderly angles of light calmed her physical self, so did the restoration of some kind of order calm her mind.
It was only after she regained a semblance of calm when it occurred to her that she had seen a familiar graceful figure in a simple sky blue linen walking suit more than once. Intrigued—and afraid, for she did not believe in coincidence any more than she believed in impulse—she tried to follow, to be rewarded once with a glimpse of elaborately dressed brown hair and fluttering panels of sky blue.
Abruptly she sought one of the discreet console panels set at intervals along the paths. Tabbing the single key, she looked about for the green come-along, then followed the dancing wisp of light until she found herself once more at the entrance.
It was time to go back to Srivashti’s yacht. She was already late; she dreaded being searched for by Felton. That could only mean Srivashti was perturbed, and that meant . . . .
The thought made her giggle horribly, a weird feeling that welled up from somewhere inside her chest, and nearly erupted as a sob. She gasped, her ribs shuddering. She held her breath, shocked by how little control she really had.
A familiar friendly voice spoke behind her. “Shall I see you at the Masaud regatta this evening?”
Fierin could not suppress a start, but she forced herself to turn slowly, to smooth her face. “Aerenarch-Consort,” she said.
Vannis Scefi-Cartano was actually shorter than Fierin, but her composure, her exquisite carriage, gave her stature. The warm brown eyes, shadowed by thick lashes, the high, smooth brow with its hint of humor in the arched brows, her perfectly curved mouth all radiated kindness.
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