There was no time for breakfast, or even a mug of caf. He set the sound dampers on high, slipped out the door, and hurried to class.
When he returned that evening, she was still lying in the bed, but she was awake, her face composed, her long silver eyes unreadable. Osri felt all his old dislike return.
Then she said, “You look tired. I’m sorry you should be coerced into having to hide me.”
Osri had taken good-natured chaffing from his colleagues all day for his dissipated face. After she spoke he’d glanced into his mirror for the first time, and was startled by the lines of tension and tiredness he saw there.
With a swift, graceful movement she flung the covers back and rose, still wearing Osri’s robe. “Would you like some shakrian?” she offered, the silver eyes still unreadable above her polite smile. “I’m accounted very good.”
“No,” he said, backing up a step. “Ah, um, have you eaten?”
She shook her head. “I woke up an hour ago. I thought I’d wait for you, genz Omilov.”
“Lieutenant,” he corrected automatically. Then he remembered his manners. As host, it was up to him to shift from the formal to informal mode. He hesitated, trying to sift the implications, and shook his head. He had no idea what the implications of this situation would be, no matter what he did. “Call me Osri,” he said.
She bowed, her thin hands gesturing. He didn’t know what she meant, but he sensed no mockery. “I am Fierin,” she responded so softly he almost couldn’t hear her.
He called up food and they ate in the outer room. If the conversation was not as awkward as it could have been, it was entirely due to Fierin’s skill with inconsequential chatter.
They did not discuss the events of the night before, and she did not bring up the name of Tau Srivashti. She did mention her brother once or twice—more often as the hours slipped by. Osri didn’t know what to say. He’d cordially loathed the languid, sardonic Lokri. It was jolting to see his long silver eyes in Fierin, and to hear Lokri referred to as Jes, as if he were sixteen years old.
The second day, when Osri came back from work, she had a dinner waiting, and she’d somehow managed to make it elegant, using the minimal supplies with which he’d stocked his tiny kitchen outlet. She was dressed in her court gown again, her hair done up, but unadorned. Osri remembered then that she had left most of her jewels lying on the floor of the pod. She did not ask about them; he hoped Brandon had retrieved them.
The third day, Osri came back early to find her enveloped in one of his shirts. She was seated at the console, apparently absorbed in a math problem. On his entry she rose, smiling a welcome that appeared to be genuine. Her thin body looked childish in the shirt, which was huge on her—the shoulder seams halfway down her arms, the cuffs rolled back to frail wrists. The tail came down to the middle of her thighs.
Looking at those bare legs—shapely, smooth-skinned—Osri felt another kind of stirring, which he squashed with a feeling akin to desperation as she stepped forward, and reached for him with unmistakable intention.
It was her eyes that stopped him; he couldn’t even articulate why he backed hastily away from her touch, it was just that look, like I know what must come next. Like she’d been trained to offer sex in trade for safety, not because she wanted him. The thought of taking advantage of those haunted eyes thoroughly unmanned him.
“I’ll see about getting you some clothes,” he had mumbled . . . .
The pod stopped.
Osri shook his head violently, fighting back the flood of memories and emotions.
Since that day he’d used the pod when Brandon summoned him for reports, just so he could avoid the chatzing novosti. Once he’d even encountered one of the dogs; he didn’t know which one. It had given him a quick sniff, then ignored him until the tube stopped and it got off, for all the world as though it knew where it was going. Perhaps it did.
He stepped out onto the concourse. Hidden sensors triggered a retinal scan. A few seconds later the door slid open, then another door, directly into the rich beauty of Brandon’s study in the Enclave. Once, that door had remained closed, and he’d had to walk up a very narrow corridor to another door, another room. He hadn’t asked why.
Brandon sat at his console, his fingers moving rapidly. In the background the Rifter Jaim was busy at the monneplat. As Osri waited for Brandon to finish whatever task he was working on, Jaim came forward and silently offered Osri a mug of real coffee, which he accepted gratefully.
Osri sipped, glad for a respite in which he did not to have to talk, or even to think.
Brandon tapped his send key with a gesture miming shooting off a jac, then he whirled the chair to face Osri. He was dressed formally—and formidably—in embroidered velvet, which indicated he was stealing time between two engagements. His blue eyes were remarkably clear. Osri wondered what his own life would have been like if he’d been born with that ability to go for days with minimal sleep. Probably no different, he thought with bleak humor.
“Any news?” Brandon asked.
Osri swallowed his coffee, trying to clear his head, then he I said, “My father is still busy trying to take apart the Shiavona hyperrelay. And failing. He wants to stall for time. Oh. I just remembered. Did you find Fierin’s jewels in the pod?”
“Yes,” Brandon said. “I’ve got them if she asks for them. As for your father, I know he wants to save that station if he possibly can. What did Nyberg say?”
“Only that he could have time. Some time,” Osri corrected himself. “Mentioned waiting for more ships to muster in. And the need to find out how to destroy the Suneater, using the relay as a test if necessary.”
Brandon tapped several flimsies neatly into line, then got up and inserted them into the disposer, which devoured them with a quiet thump. “We could be planning now. He’s putting it off.”
“That was all the Admiral said.”
“I know. It’s what he said to me after the official tour of sho-Bostian’s Norsendar, this morning. What he hasn’t told me about were three duels during the last week. Not between Douloi. Faseult sends daily reports on the violence among the civs, which is also daily. No, duels between officers. Nyberg quite understandably doesn’t want me to know about any trouble between officers, let alone lethal encounters. The navy likes to solve its own problems. But it isn’t solving them. Margot Ng was not invited to the tour this morning, though Koestler was there, limping painfully at my heels. What else is he hiding?”
Osri shrugged uncomfortably. These things weren’t secret, precisely, but . . . .
“Don’t tell me anything you feel you can’t,” Brandon said unexpectedly. “But you really are the only one I can ask without there being political repercussions. No one knows you’re here, and at least as yet, no one dares ask me my source.”
Osri said, “I don’t understand it myself. Nyberg asked me if Koestler’s or sho-Bostian’s or Theron’s crews have given me any trouble. They don’t make trouble, they act, oh, how to put it?” He frowned. “They act as if permanently on general quarters.”
“Keeping themselves to themselves,” Brandon said.
“Yes. Especially with these morning workouts.”
“Ah. I saw the notice posted: oh five hundred, right? Midlevel officers and up. In Phoenix-Three-Gamma. Nothing amiss with that. Or do they hold an ID check at the lock and not permit anyone else in?”
“I haven’t gone,” Osri said. “I don’t want to get up at four if I don’t have to, even if I were competent at second-level Ulanshu and single-stick and whatever else they do. Fencing, too, someone said.”
“Fencing?” Brandon smiled. “Vice-Admiral Ng used to take ribbons at Minerva with regularity. Has she been there?”
“No. No one from Grozniy. They don’t even talk about it. Rom-Sanchez told me a group from Mbwa Kali and a couple of destroyers went in, and they were totally ignored. Even if they made obvious mistakes. Most of them have stopped going. A few stick it out, to show they don’t care.”
>
Brandon shook his head. “Sounds childish, doesn’t it? Except two people have died over it. And soon, we’ll all be out there depending on one another when we face Eusabian’s skipmissiles at the Suneater.”
We? But Osri did not query that.
“How’s Fierin?” Brandon asked, aligning another stack of flimsies. The High Phanist’s gold ring glinted on his hand.
“She’s started studying nav,” Osri said, adding, “She says it’s a lot like music, her study at school until she had to leave. I understand that she’s been running the family business in her brother’s name for years. Until the accession, when Srivashti pretty much forced her to claim her place as Aegios, giving her some story about how, as Aegios, she would have more influence with respect to Lokri’s trial.”
“So that’s why she came forward. I did wonder.” Brandon cursed under his breath. “So she now wants to learn piloting? According to Vi’ya the pilots were all family.”
“So Fierin said.” Osri still had trouble reconciling his presuppositions about the sophisticated young socialite with what he expected of the head of a business concern. Especially someone so young. Over dinner, they’d had several conversations about salvaging old ships and scavenging outmoded scientific equipment—the trade-off being price for technological limitations—and she knew more than he did. “She said that her brother had wanted to be a pilot.”
“Any more nightmares?”
“Every night,” Osri said. “She doesn’t always wake up.”
Brandon drummed his fingers on the desk. “I wish I had more to tell her. But I might. Soon.”
Osri said, “I don’t see how the information she uncovered can help his case.”
“It can’t.” Brandon thumped his fist lightly on the edge of his console, the gold band on his little finger glinting. “We don’t know enough yet. And someone’s been destroying the replicates of the information Cheruld tried to send to Ares.”
“Who’s doing it?”
“Not certain, and we have to be. I’ve commanded the couriers to range further out in hopes of intercepting a replicate before these phages find it. I don’t know if it will be found in time to help Lokri. The trial date is set, despite Vocat Ixvan’s best delaying efforts. We have very little time.” His gaze shifted to somewhere beyond the walls. “What we have won’t help anyone, unless it turns out to be connected to something larger.”
“Knowing about the plot against your family was not large?” Osri retorted, struggling with conflicting emotions.
“That knowledge was surprisingly widespread,” Brandon said. “Someone recently confessed to me having been part of the Arthelion attack, after originally having joined a democratic revolution for a badly run Highdwelling Cloud. The plot had wheels within wheels, and the conspirators were expertly manipulated. When I say expertly, I mean the proof is difficult to find. And Srivashti’s letter, closely read, makes it clear he thought he was part of a mere palace coup. Hesthar al-Gessinav probably thought the same.” He smiled suddenly, a grim smile. “Remember Deralze, my loyal bodyguard who died protecting me?”
Osri said, “Quite well.”
“You didn’t hear his last words, did you?”
Osri shook his head, hating to remember the terrible days early in the attack. “I was being held at a distance.”
“He died assuring me that Markham knew nothing about the bomb in the Ivory Hall.”
“But Markham had been killed the year before—” Then the implications hit Osri. “You mean, Deralze knew all along? But he didn’t tell you?”
“Only in dying. You have to remember that I hadn’t seen him since the day Markham was cashiered. So he came to that Enkainion armed with the knowledge of the bomb. And, since he did not know that Markham had been killed, he’d known about that bomb for over a year.” He got up, moved to the window, and looked out. “I’ve begun to believe that each person brought into the plot was given a carefully tailored and different view of what was to happen.”
Osri shook his head, feeling a faint sense of vertigo at the tangle of questions this news raised. Brandon ran his hand back and forth along the edge of the console. He was restless—tense. Yet during the almost stupefying variety of adventures that had befallen them both of late, he had rarely betrayed this level of tension.
“Maybe I’d better go,” Osri said.
Brandon gave him an abstract look, glanced at his chrono, and gestured toward the inner door. Osri raised his hand in salute and left.
o0o
Vi’ya woke up feeling someone had poked the inside of her skull.
The room lay at a crazy angle above her, and spun gently. She forced her aching eyes to move. It took all her effort.
She was alone. Shutting her eyes again, she concentrated on Ulanshu breathing as she gathered what little strength she had, then slowly sat up.
The last couple of times she’d lost consciousness her head had dropped forward onto the console, but this time she’d fallen out of her chair onto the floor. Her muscles trembled with the effort it took to lever herself back into the chair.
She stared at the chrono on the console: she’d been out for seven hours. Her fingers shook as she coded and locked her findings, and then, an acrid-tasting wave of disgust rising up her gorge, she threw the empty brain-suck capsule into the disposer.
She forced herself to her feet and drank down all of the water she had learned to leave waiting for her after these sessions; brainsuck could fatally dehydrate the user. Feeling incrementally less deathly, she shuffled to the door, her body protesting as if she’d been thrown back to the heavy-gravity planet of her birth. Why was she at the door? She opened it, and blinked at the tall, broad outline of a man in the common room of the quarters she shared with Marim, Ivard, and the Eya’a.
“Manderian?” Her voice sounded hoarse.
Had that poke been a psi contact? She was too tired to be angry.
“I came,” he said, “at Eloatri’s request, to check on your well-being and to ask if there is anything we can do for you or the Eya’a.”
“I am fine,” she said. “For the Eya’a there is nothing. Short of sending them off to the Suneater. I’d suggest ridding it of Eusabian first, however.”
Manderian smiled. “We will leave that in the Navy’s capable hands.”
She found she could not stand any longer and dropped abruptly into a chair. Perforce she had to invite the man to sit.
“Several days ago Ivard came to see me.” Manderian leaned forward, his black eyes steady. “Have you also had dreams of Anaris achreash’Eusabian?”
She had expected anything but that. Too late, she experienced the complication of threat and interest that the name engendered in her, and saw it impact Manderian.
She would have hidden it if she could, but that was no longer possible. “I have,” she said. “I attributed it to my own background and to the emotional residue of our recent journey to Gehenna.”
He inclined his head, almost a bow. “I am less interested in the dreams’ possible meaning,” he said calmly, “than in the function of dreams in telepathy. Have the Eya’a reported to you a similar pattern, or do they dream?”
“I can’t hear their thoughts when they hibernate,” she said. “It’s hard enough to bring them out of it. Images do not come, only words, as they do not know him. They certainly have not given him a label.”
Manderian accepted this, then said, “And the Kelly?”
“Ivard ought to have told you that.”
“Ivard has difficulty articulating some concepts,” Manderian said. “I thought you might have an observation to offer.”
“No.”
“Very well,” he responded. “Thank you. I will leave you to your rest.”
As soon as he was out the door, she glanced at her chrono again. Between the brain-suck session and its inevitable results, she had lost the entire day and most of the evening. Since the day of Ivard’s and her synesthetic experiences she had taken brain-suck three
times. Each session had afforded new data, but the physical cost was increasingly debilitating.
With heavy tread she retreated to her room and stood there staring down at her console, trying to marshal her thoughts. Every nerve and muscle in her body clamored for sleep, but her mind, still reactive from the experiences triggered by the drug’s synesthesia, ricocheted from one image to another—echoed by ghost snatches of music, taste, scent.
Her promise to Lokri. Her findings in cyberspace. Ivard’s new level of experience and what it meant. The dreams with Anaris, armed with steel, standing on a battleground beside a river of blood.
She was too tired to make sense of any of it, and so she moved toward her bed, relief loosening her muscles.
It was then that her boswell tingled in a familiar pattern, and Brandon’s voice said into her skull: (Vi’ya? A thousand hours of clashing wills, and two interminable dinners have left me thirsty for rational discourse. I found a sim room—would you like to take a walk through the Palace garden?)
She closed her eyes, feeling the weight of her own exhaustion, and, stronger, the tide of time. For two days and nights she had not seen him or heard him, nor had there been a message.
Soon enough, memory will be all I have, she thought.
(I will come,) she said.
o0o
“. . . and she admitted to similar dreams, but attributed the appearances of Anaris to their shared heritage, and emotional residue of the Gehenna mission,” Manderian finished.
The High Phanist stood at her window, watching the rainstorm over the lake. One hand she held flat before her, the thumb of the other rubbing absently over the burn scar of the Digrammiton on her palm.
At length she dropped her hands and turned to face Manderian. Decision marked the wise, kindly face. “My path is clear,” she said. “But it will not be easy.”
NINE
SUNEATER
Anaris walked carefully down the narrow, tube-like corridor, the unused breather on his belt bumping against his hip. The thick, warm air smelled acrid, the only sounds were his own breathing and the muffled thud of his boots on the weird material of the floor.
The Rifter's Covenant Page 33
