As the last surviving spouse of an Arkad, Vannis had a right to another of those chairs—until the Aerenarch formally took the oath and became Panarch. Then all that would be left would be her final obeisance and the long walk away from Brandon hai-Arkad, stripped of her title, nearly resourceless, with only her social skills to keep her among the High Douloi in orbit around the Arkad sun. Vannis exchanged a nod with the High Phanist, then took the seat to the left of the central chair.
The room gradually filled, dense with color as the military arranged themselves by rank and the Douloi in complex patterns of deference and preference. Occasionally eyes lifted to meet hers, and she saw fleeting glimpses of resentment, or amusement, or indifference, or pity, for she would not be called upon to speak any Oath: she had no title, held no possessions by grace of His Majesty. She was a relict, and this would be her last chance to preside.
Portus-Dartinus-Atos arrived, elegant boswells glittering on threir head-stalks. Chains of what looked like drops of liquid fire hung in graceful catenaries between the bodies of the trinity, somehow without hindering threir movement.
Those members of the Council of Pursuivance who had managed to reach Ares filed in from side entrances, taking their positions in the front of the hall, before the dais. Some wore the formal robes of their Colleges, some uniforms. New faces appeared among them. A full convening of the entire Council happened rarely, which was why these many were still alive. Gelasaar hai-Arkad’s Privy Council, which had been drawn from these people, were all dead.
Anticipation heightened as the music, barely heard above the murmur of conversation, evolved into a weightier mode, resolving into the familiar tonalities of the Manya Cadena. Voices ceased as subtle signals winged from security to steward to those waiting in readiness without.
Six annuncios in ancient garb entered, taking up positions to either side of the door, and brought golden trumpets to their lips. The Phoenix Fanfare pealed out, filling the huge room with harmonic cascades of brassy sound. Vannis and the High Phanist stood.
At the height of the fanfare, when all the trumpets had joined in, Brandon Arkad entered in time to the music and mounted the dais. Vannis took in his austere clothes of white edged with dull gold, then raised her eyes to meet his steady blue gaze; his mobile brows quirked in question.
She answered with her own eyes, and he saw the question there.
The last notes of the fanfare died away as Brandon bowed to Eloatri, the High Phanist. Eloatri stepped forward to meet him.
“The Phoenix Signet vanished in the light of your father’s passing above Gehenna,” she said, her quiet voice clear and sharp in the ringing silence. “I cannot, as did my predecessors, place it on your finger in token of your hierogamy to the Mandala, the mystical lens through which we look back to our Lost Mother, and forward to our unimaginable destiny in Telos.”
She twisted a plain gold band off her left ring finger. “But this ring bound me to my first hejir, when I stepped, as you do now, into unknowable futurity. Let it be as a symbol of my faith in you and those to whom you are linked—” Here Vannis heard the faintest trace of ambiguity in the High Phanist’s tones. “—and of your promise to all of us.” The High Phanist traditionally did not take the Oath of Fealty, but she had nonetheless made a firm statement of support for the new Panarch.
The ring was too small for any but Brandon’s little finger. He slipped it onto his right hand. His gaze seemed to reach beyond the hall, as if he were struck by memory. But it only lasted a heartbeat, then he lifted his head to address the room, his voice carrying.
“Here, in a system empty of life save for this fragile construct of humankind, we begin the enactment of the ancient ceremony of accession. But only begin, for there is much to do first.”
He held up his right hand. “Let this ring be as an unbreakable link in the chain that binds me to you and to my tasks: the defeat of Dol’jhar, the return to the Mandala, and the restoration of the Thousand Suns. Then, with the Phoenix ring reforged from the mold interred with Jaspar Arkad, we will complete the action we initiate this day.
“Here witness you, then,” he continued, shifting into the formal aorist mode, “my oath and my undertaking, to spend my substance and my soul in unstinting Service to humanity in Exile, in my life and in my dying, until death take me, or the world end.”
When the last echo of the light, assured voice died away Vannis stepped down, turned, and with sustained deliberation, made the formal obeisance to the sovereign, and everyone in the room followed her cue.
She straightened, steeling herself to turn away with the appearance of grace, when Brandon smashed all her calculations—and those of every Douloi in the Hall—by stepping down from the dais and holding out his hand to her. A check of surprise, of hope hidden beneath her years of training, then she placed her hand in his. His fingers were cool, his clasp easy as he brought her back onto the dais and turned her, lightly, as if leading in a dance, to take position next to him again.
Then, one by one, in order of preference, the members of the Council of Pursuivance came forward and pledged their oaths. Admiral Nyberg, as commander of Ares, was the first.
After he took the Oath, ending, as had his sovereign, with the words “in my life and in my dying, until death take me, or the world end,” Brandon extended his hand and brought Nyberg up onto the dais—as the highest ranking military officer in the Panarchy, Nyberg was the obvious first choice for the Privy Council.
Hesthar al-Gessinav stepped up proudly, her triumph apparent in the splash of red along each thin cheekbone, and sardonic shadows at the corners of her thin lips. She wore the robe of the College of Applied Epistemology and Rationetics, which she now headed in the place of her cousin. As such, she would effectively head the DataNet once they defeated Dol’jhar.
Or Hesthar believed she had the DataNet, Vannis thought as the rail-thin woman bowed, then stepped forward to take her Oath.
Then shock almost unhinged Vannis’s composure as Brandon took Hesthar’s hand and raised her onto the dais, into the Privy Council. Vannis shifted her gaze to the rest of the Douloi in time to surprise a brief eye-widening of shock in Tau Srivashti’s gaze before his expression shuttered.
After all the Council of Pursuivance members had pledged, the higher ranks presented themselves—including Srivashti, who performed his bow and Oath with his usual grace. Stulafi Y’Talob, Vannis noticed, struggled to conceal his fury at Hesthar’s elevation.
Physically, Vannis stood in the same place she had before the ceremony commenced, but symbolically her position had changed. She observed the Douloi, resplendent in their best clothing, graceful and assured in carriage. She read in the glitter of tension in ringed hands and heard in the heightened cadences of speech by Archon and Aegios, Demarch and Temenarch, the hopes and expectations that hammered in each breast as they made obeisance to Brandon.
Some of them glanced her way. Where earlier she had seen pity or indifference, she saw interest and speculation; amusement or resentment had altered to confusion and contempt.
The remainder of the Douloi presented themselves, minor family members, and those whose holdings were in question for whatever reason. Fierin appeared, her eyes gray with fatigue and tension and her sweet face drawn. She spoke the Oath of Fealty scarcely above a whisper while Tau Srivashti watched her from under boredom-slackened lids.
Anger burned in Vannis. Fierin had not wanted to make the Oath, for by so doing she acknowledged publicly what the Archon of Torigan maintained by his active prosecution of the trial of the brother: that Jesimar vlith-Kendrian, as a capital criminal, had lost the rights to title and holdings. Srivashti had coerced her, of course.
And then it was time for the military.
The endless white uniforms blended into a seeming infinity. It was necessarily a long ceremony, but after the shock of seeing elevated to the Privy Council a woman who had been deeply involved in an attempt to murder the very man to whom she had just pledged fealty, it seeme
d transfinite in length.
Vannis’s focus returned at the appearance of the trim woman no taller than she herself, Margot Ng, who was made an admiral. Next to be promoted was a familiar figure—she had seen Jeph ban-Koestler numerous times at Semion’s Court. He moved with the care of someone suffering great pain.
After that, though Vannis did not alter her stance at all, her attention narrowed to Brandon, standing two meters away. With unceasing courtesy he still met the eyes of each person who stood before him, and—it seemed, anyway—he listened to each word of each Oath as if for the first time. He betrayed no sign of tiredness; she saw only faint marks, no more than smudges, under his eyes.
Finally it was over. Time to withdraw in stately accord across the lake to the Pavilion, where the reception ball was to be held.
Anticipation tingled Vannis’s nerves. With one gesture, Brandon had drawn her from the obscurity to which Srivashti and the others had attempted to relegate her, whatever his motivation. It might have been mere whim, and after the reception he could return to his citadel, and be swept forever into the never-ending stream of high politics, forgetting all about her.
She must secure her position. She had the motivation. Thanks to Fierin, she had the means. Now, using her years of training and her wits, she must find the right moment.
Brandon bowed, the company bowed, and Brandon turned, held out his arm, and led Vannis out, with the High Phanist walking in solitary state behind them.
How to shake the old woman?
A small anteroom stood open at the end of the corridor, with two occupants: the Arkad dogs. Tails thumped and ears stood upright as Brandon smiled. “How’d you two get in here, hey? Come to pay your respects or to check up on us, huh?” Murmuring nonsense in a low voice, he knelt to run his hands over the dogs, bracing himself as they thrust their noses into his armpits, and whuffed into his face. From behind the walls, Vannis heard the sudden roar of voices, scarcely louder than the rhythmic surge of blood from her drumming heart.
“Will you join us this evening, Numen?” Brandon said to the High Phanist.
Eloatri smiled. “I will indeed, but after I exchange these robes for something a little less stifling. You did very well today, Your Majesty.”
He returned her smile. “It isn’t over yet.”
With a pleasant nod to Vannis, Eloatri tabbed a side adit and disappeared through it, the dogs scampering after her. And as Vannis waited, Brandon indicated a chair, the plain gold band glinting on his finger. “I need a drink. Do you? My feet hurt.”
Vannis looked around, suppressing an urge to clasp her arms. “There doesn’t seem to be a monneplat,” she said. “Shall I—”
“Sit down, Vannis.” Brandon moved to the door they’d come in through. He tabbed it open, and as two Marines saluted, he said, “Roget, Ju-Khun, anything cold around? Thanks.”
The door closed, and Brandon moved slowly to the chair across from the one Vannis had chosen.
A door opened, and a white-jacketed steward entered, bearing a fabulous silver tray with a decanter and two glasses on it.
The Panarch thanked him, and the steward withdrew. Brandon poured out a finger of liquor into each glass, then he brought one of them to Vannis and held his up in a wordless salute.
She matched his movement, her gaze staying on him as she sipped. The blue eyes narrowed, preoccupied in expression as he savored the liquor, which tasted of wood and smoke and fire.
Outside voices rumbled with the clipped tones of urgency, then dropped in volume.
Brandon’s long hand lifted. “Protected by an army,” he said with good-natured irony, “when today I’m probably as safe as I’ll ever be again in my life.”
No one will try to kill him now, she thought: everyone out there believes they can get something from him.
Lowering the cup to her lap, she regarded him steadily, making certain no vestige of triumph showed in voice or manner, and said, “I don’t want anything, if that’s what you’re asking. But while we are alone, I think there’s something you had better know.”
And knew from the lack of reaction that he was, in fact, as tense as she, or nearly.
He drank off his glass and set it aside. “Personal matters are best savored when the boots come off,” he said, rising.
Her lips parted. His blue eyes flickered once at the walls, and she understood: he did not trust the room’s integrity.
She was glad she had not touched her gown. “You’ll have to forgive the impulse to gossip,” she heard herself say past the singing in her head. “There’s been little else to do of late.”
‘We can amend that, I trust,” he said. “Have you seen the list of parties, regattas, balls, and dinners arranged for my comfort and entertainment? Enough to kill anyone, I should think,” he said as they walked out.
Drawing on ten years of Mandalic habit, she responded to his joking sallies about social affairs as they stepped out onto the concourse. Silent Marines proceeded and followed, and so they progressed past a blur of Polloi cheering faces lining the entire length of the walk, and walked up the broad, shallow steps to the Pavilion.
o0o
Osri Omilov tugged at his collar and checked his boswell, wondering how soon he could slip away from the Pavilion and not be noticed. Around him chattered a group of young officers, drinks in hand. A hundred meters away stood his father, unfamiliar in the somber robes of a Praerogate Overt, talking to the High Phanist, and two or three high-titled Douloi. Before him on the vast floor the Ranks of Service twirled dizzyingly in their interminable waltzes.
Among them numbered both his half sisters, with his mother watching in grim approval from the opposite side of the room. Basilea Risiena had dragooned Osri into introductions the moment he had walked into the Pavilion. To his surprise Kenzit and Pomalythe still had partners, which probably (he thought wryly) indicated that their ballroom manners, at least, were better than his.
“Come on, Omilov, I want to see you dance,” Rom-Sanchez said, elbowing him in the side. “And then introduce us to some of the pretty ones. I don’t care about a title, as long as they can laugh a little and won’t trip over my feet.”
“You mean you won’t trip over theirs,” young Sub-Lieutenant Wychyrski said, her arms crossed and her curly head at an angle, as others laughed.
Osri shook his head. “Don’t know anyone.” He was used to socializing mostly with the Navy, just as these others were; he hated civ parties of any kind.
Some civ parties, anyway, he thought, remembering the unexpected good time he’d had at a Rifter bubbloid far from here. The memory made his ears burn, but no one noticed as someone said, “There they go,” and all the heads turned to watch Brandon go whirling skillfully down the middle of the floor.
His partner was his brother’s widow, Vannis Scefi-Cartano. Osri watched her perfect profile and the exquisite body in Brandon’s arms as she moved with effortless grace to his quick step. Speculation about her had spread like wildfire since Brandon had restored her to the dais at the ceremony. Women like her scared Osri. He always felt that behind those serene faces and the singsong voices they were secretly laughing at him.
He turned away, glad when someone changed the subject to the news from the latest courier about the battle over Barca and the impending arrival of a Kelly squadron, but the speaker had gotten scarcely ten words into his story when Osri felt his boswell tingle against his wrist: Urgent Privacy.
Who’d want a privacy with him in the middle of a chatzing ball? His neck prickling, he activated the boswell, and cold shock washed through his guts when Brandon said, (Need you.)
A quick glance behind showed his father still talking, his fingers steepled before him, and not lying in a crumpled heap after a heart attack. What could Brandon want, if there was no emergency?
(Fourteen minutes, adit three. Wait for the diversion.) Though Brandon’s last word came through with a hint of humor, Osri was not reassured. He lifted his head. Brandon stood in the center of a group o
f Douloi, talking and gesturing as they laughed. How could he manage privacies without anyone noticing?
Then he remembered he ought to acknowledge. Fumbling quickly at his boswell he sent a pulse—there was no chance he’d try subvocalizing in public like this.
Brandon never once looked his way over the seemingly endless interval. After a minute or two of paralyzed thought, Osri started a slow circuit of the room, moving as quietly as he knew how. Not for him those quick, almost magical disappearances Brandon had become infamous for.
At thirteen minutes, Osri was distracted by the sight of the Kelly trinity dancing in and out among the Douloi, some of whom drew apart to make space, looking entertained.
In a wake rippling gently outward people turned to watch the Kelly make straight for the surprised musicians at the midpoint of the room. The music faltered and died, and everyone stopped dancing and watched as the trinity danced up to two women playing an Abbasiddhu Double-Bow.
After a negotiation punctuated with honks, the two musicians yielded the instrument to the Kelly. Portus positioned her head-stalk along the fret column while Dartinus and Atos each took one of the bows, and they commenced an irresistible triple ostinato accompanied by mellow hooning. The other musicians began to improvise, and the music mutated into an Abbasiddhu triskel.
The Douloi resumed dancing in the more angular measures of the complex triple dance that, with the waltz, was the Kelly’s favorite form of human music. Conversation lulled; led by Charidhe Masaud, with the tall, formidable Tau Srivashti as a partner, the dancers were concentrating on the difficult steps, and those along the perimeter watched with interest.
Fourteen minutes. Osri found the door behind him. Sending one last glance at the strange interruption, he backed through, turned, and saw a portion of the wall slide open on darkness beyond. No one else was in the corridor outside.
The Rifter's Covenant Page 22
