“Will you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he will think it his duty to stop us.”
Jaim slammed his hand down on the console, surprising them both with his vehemence. “Then you are a fool,” he said in a hard, angry voice.
She did not react. “You are angry for the wrong reasons, Jaim,” she said. “These Douloi view interactions differently. It is not in their nature to remain constant. When they get bored with one partner they part with grace, and gifts, and move on with light hearts. I cannot be left twice.”
She had never before said even this much about her emotions. All the anger drained out of Jaim, leaving him feeling tired and a little sick. “I don’t think you’re right,” he said, “but I can’t prove it. About this plan. What makes you think you can get the rest of the engine parts?”
“Eloatri wants us to go,” Vi’ya said. “I am sure of it, though no words have passed between us. There have been no inspections of the ship since I began sleeping there—and a week ago, when I was sure the inspections had ceased, I breached the outer seal to do some of the preliminary work myself.”
Jaim sighed, sinking down onto the narrow bed. “And if he does figure it out while we’re in the course of leaving? He’s fast.”
“If it is necessary, I plan to ask someone to cover for us.”
“Who?” Jaim asked with foreboding.
“Vannis Scefi-Cartano. She wants us gone as well.”
“Of course she does,” Jaim snapped, his anger flooding back. “She’s probably lied about you as well—” He bit the words off, and shook his head. Who else was moving them around the board for their own ends? But he decided it didn’t matter. It certainly wouldn’t make any difference to Vi’ya, as long as she attained the goal she sought. But that was hardest to fathom.
“I don’t understand, Vi’ya. Why do you have to do this?”
“Because it is the best thing I can do for him,” she said. “It is a parting gift, one fit for a king.” There was no irony in her voice. “As for Vannis, there is no evil in her. Her center is no longer self. She wishes to take her place at the side of a panarch. Let her strive to do so. It will suffice: they understand one another.”
Jaim sighed again. “I think you’re wrong.”
She shook her head slowly.
Outside the door Lucifur yowled.
TWO
“No, I just feel sick from worry,” Fierin vlith-Kendrian said. “I’m sorry if—”
“Don’t apologize,” Osri said gruffly. He had been looking at the decking of the transtube pod. He glanced her way, his cheeks reddening when their eyes met. He added in a surly mumble, “I suppose Srivashti got you in that habit?”
Fierin bit her lip, reminding herself consciously that Osri was not angry with her. He never was angry with her. That scowl meant worry, perplexity, perhaps frustration, and sometimes he did get angry, but never with her. “He hates loss of control,” she said. “Feeling sick from emotional reaction is a very distasteful loss of control.”
Osri snorted, and there was his angry scowl. But not aimed at her. “I’d like to make him sick. See how he controls it.”
It was such an unexpected reaction that she laughed. He looked up sharply, then one side of his mouth curved up in a reluctant grin.
“I think he would control it,” she said, sobering. “Fiercely.”
There was no chance for further talk—they had arrived.
The gathering in the Panarch’s splendid parlor numbered the same people as before. Fierin spied Vannis, looking cool and beautiful in a deceptively simple lounging outfit of deep blue. Minute crystals had been sewn over it in graceful patterns so when she moved toward Fierin, tiny streams of starlight shimmered in the folds of the flimsy, delicate fabric of her wide-legged trousers and the layered over robe.
“Courage, child,” Vannis said, both hands out.
Fierin kissed her. Vannis tasted of fresh mint and smelled of herbs. “I’m so glad the trial is tomorrow, and it will all be over,” she whispered.
They sat down, and the huge, ugly man named Montrose—whom Osri had described so vividly—served coffee and many-layered nutcakes, just as if this were a regular party, and not a strategy session the night before a trial for a capital crime.
The conversation was light. Fierin recognized an attempt to ease her own stress. Vannis bantered laughingly with the Panarch, quoting some obscure poetry about an infamous dinner. The older woman Fierin knew simply as Sedry—they toasted her resignation from the Navy. She no longer seemed so dour-faced, as though she’d left her pain behind with her rank. And Vi’ya watched each speaker in turn, her demeanor calm and relaxed.
They all believe Jes will be free by tomorrow, or they wouldn’t be so easy, Fierin thought. And with a kind of swooping sensation inside her, she let herself believe at last that she would see her brother tomorrow night. Then she could institute a reversal of the praecidens decree, and discuss legal control of the business, for he had been the heir when she went to music school.
If there still was a business.
Brandon said, “Perhaps we’d better get to our plans now.”
Fierin tensed, then leaned against Vannis’s silky-smooth shoulder.
Brandon said, “I think it appropriate for genz Thetris to begin.”
With a tiny nod toward Fierin, Sedry murmured, “Breaking bad news is no duty I like, but we’ve found out who wanted your family dead—and why.”
Then she hesitated, so Fierin said, “Please. Nothing will bring my parents back, but knowing my brother will soon be exonerated takes much of the poison away. What did you find?”
Sedry flexed her blunt hands. “Vi’ya and I had actually been following different threads of the same conspiracy, before His Majesty teamed us up. Once we were able to share our discoveries, our progress accelerated.” She turned to the Vi’ya. “She is one of the deepest noderunners it’s ever been my privilege to work with. Her semiotic abilities far exceed mine.”
Vi’ya inclined her head, saying nothing.
“To continue, it appeared that someone was systematically destroying the replicates of an enormous datapacket incoming to Ares from the DataNet, and the other threads we followed seemed tied into this. Captain Vi’ya believed the interference to be the work of Hesthar al-Gessinav. When we were finally able to verify that, only days ago, our work went much faster.”
Thetris sighed, drank something strong, and blinked tiredly. “What we have proved is that the Archon of Torigan did indeed arrange to have the Kendrians killed. Along with all the students on their last expedition. He planned it out, hired the killers, then had them disposed of. And all this was on the orders of Hesthar al-Gessinav.”
Fierin frowned, confused. “Why did she want my parents killed? And the others—I hadn’t known that,” she added.
Brandon’s expression had tightened, the uncharacteristically grim line to his mouth frightening. Fierin was reminded of the history chips of his grandfather, whose severity and occasional rages had been famed. “Why? For profit. But the result was the deaths of billions. She sold the Suneater data to Dol’jhar.”
Fierin gasped, the shock overwhelming the last of her Douloi reserve. As implications bloomed like deathly roses in Fierin’s mind, the reaction was physical, a deep, sick chill: the enemy was not light-years away, but right among them on Ares.
Brandon gestured for Thetris to continue. “The Kendrians and their students had stumbled across the Suneater completely by accident during a survey mission. They UL’d the data at the first Node on the way back, coded as is customary. Unfortunately that was in Rouge Nord, where the Anachronics Hub had been corrupted by Hesthar. She found out about the Suneater and later had the students killed to protect her deal with Eusabian. She knew he would pay anything for data that would aid him to achieve vengeance.”
Vi’ya’s expression heightened Fierin’s awareness of Dol’jharians—her oval face as smooth as carved stone, the slanted blac
k eyes unblinking, and Fierin was glad Vi’ya was on their side. She hoped never to meet any of the enemy.
Thetris went on. “The Srivashti Family had long sought to reestablish the preeminence they enjoyed early in the Thousand-Year Peace. And Tau Srivashti had nearly succeeded, but that seems to have left him wanting more. Hesthar used him, apparently concealing the Suneater information from him, letting him know only of the Dorjharian attack, which he hoped would destroy the Phoenix House and give him the Emerald Throne. His assistance was instrumental in the deaths of both Galen and Semion; it was he who provided the contacts that enabled the inside attacks. She has struck a mighty blow for her god of nullity,” Commander Thetris finished, her voice flat with scarcely repressed revulsion. “No Ultschen in history has ever created such chaos.”
Montrose smiled grimly. “But now we know. And where there is knowledge, there can be justice.” He turned Brandon’s way.
Brandon lifted his glass. The liquid within scintillated with ruby highlights. “To our victory over Entropy.”
Each person there heard the multivocal nature of his toast: defeat to their enemies here on Ares and throughout the Thousand Suns, defeat to evil, to chaos, to ambition that devoured others as means to its own ends.
“Now for the strategy,” Brandon said, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. “Tomorrow at the trial Gnostor Ixvan will bring out the information about the four hirelings who killed the Kendrians and framed Lokri, and reveal Torigan’s complicity. But the rest will not be released—”
Montrose growled. “What? So they go free? Brandon, you just promised me justice—”
Thetris laid a hand on his arm.
“No. The data about Torigan, revealed in the course of a capital trial, will be sufficient to execute a Writ of Nescience against him on the spot.” Brandon smiled sardonically. “He will be detained for his own protection. But we will have to move more carefully against al-Gessinav and Srivashti. If their roles are revealed, the station’s populace will quite simply explode. They’ve already been whipped up to fever pitch by the Rifter stories. The ochlologists would be able to do little more than focus the crowd rage—if that.”
Montrose smiled crookedly. “The appropriate focus would be Srivashti and Gessinav. Wouldn’t that be justice? Especially seeing how it appears she’s the one stirring up those stories?”
“How many innocents would die in the process?” the Panarch murmured.
Fierin felt Vannis’s body tense and glanced at her questioningly.
Tovr Ixvan rubbed his raspy chin. “Under the circumstances, it would take very little to turn a baiting crowd seeking the deaths of two Douloi into a reversal mob that would sweep us all away.” He turned to Montrose. “All of us, including the very structure of justice that will exonerate your friend tomorrow.”
“The Phoenix House will call for a Review Occult of the rest of the evidence,” Brandon said. Then he smiled. “And where will they go in the meantime?”
Montrose sat back; sweat lined his brow. Fierin’s heart cramped when she saw his big, grizzled hands trembling like her own.
“All of these issues shall be resolved,” the vocat said. “And you may be certain that justice will be served.” His tone harshened. “Or I would not be here among you. For my cause is justice, not politics.”
Brandon’s voice was wry. “If I’d been implicated in any of this, our esteemed vocat would be on the opposite side of the courtroom from me. And that is why he was hired.”
Montrose released a long breath as everyone got up to fetch something more to drink, or to move around in an effort to shed tension.
Vannis moved across the room to talk to Vi’ya. Brandon stopped by Fierin’s chair and looked down, concern in his face. “Two more things, one of which may seem very hard. We are no longer sure of data security where Jesimar is being held. He cannot be told any of this; if it leaked, the conspirators might panic, and he would be the first target. Without his trial, we cannot legally use even the information on Torigan.”
Fierin fought tears, pitying her brother, forced to spend the last night alone, without knowing anything. She nodded, not trusting her voice.
“When you are ready to emerge from your isolation,” Brandon continued, “if your brother is agreeable I will have your wardship transferred to me and you can live here.”
“I don’t know what Jes will want,” Fierin said huskily. “I haven’t seen him at all.”
“There is plenty of time,” Brandon said kindly. “You do not have to decide at once.” He looked up at Osri, who nodded. Fierin’s eyes stung, and the voices around her blended and merged. Fighting for control, she thought, Now is the time to get this straight. If I haven’t the courage now, I never will. As the Panarch moved away she turned to Osri, who had not stirred from his seat on her other side. “It is an imposition for me to stay a day or so longer?”
Osri met her eyes and looked away. “No,” he said. Then he smiled slightly and muttered, “I didn’t think I would, but I like having you there. Though it’s damned cramped, and the food is monotonous.”
Fierin sighed, closing her eyes. Had she been wrong about him, then? She had sensed from the start that though he was born Douloi he did not like or trust his own kind. And I am finding I don’t trust them, either, she thought. At least the ones like Srivashti. How many of them were just like the Archon? They all moved with gliding care and spoke in the softly modulated voices, and smiled, smiled, smiled. Srivashti could lie—and often did—with ease. And Hesthar. So, too, could Vannis, who had been her ally, but for impenetrable reasons.
The meeting was breaking up. Vannis had taken aside the vocat, while most of the others talked in vibrant voices, giving the sudden laughs of release from tension. Fierin rose, glad to be going back to Osri’s quiet, safe little rooms. She was welcome, she could stay. And tomorrow Jes would be free. There were three things to believe in.
“See you at five tomorrow morning?” Brandon turned to Osri.
“I don’t think so,” Osri answered. He gave his funny smile—like it pained him—and added, “I got what I came for.”
Brandon bowed, gesturing in the pax-of-brethren modality. Osri’s smile was a real one this time, and they left.
When they were alone in the transtube, Fierin said, “I don’t understand. You only went to those exercise gatherings for a few days. What did you go for?”
Osri frowned abstractedly, his heavy brow furrowed. By now she knew that expression for thinking, not anger. “I knew Brandon would manage to diffuse the situation,” he said at last. “I wanted to see how he would do it.”
She said, “Either by confrontation, which is crude, or by changing the focus.”
“A very Douloi approach to controlling a group, isn’t it?” Osri said. “Though not all of them can do it. I can’t. I grew up with Brandon, in a sense. That is, I saw him frequently when he was on Charvann to complete his education, and I visited him a couple of times on Arthelion, when my father was still close to the Panarch.”
Osri rubbed his jaw. “I scorned Brandon, even loathed him and his jokes and teasing. I thought him a fool, throwing away his tremendous opportunities with a total lack of focus. These last few days I watched him in the back of that bay with all those hostile officers off the Astraea and the other two ships, and I saw him draw their notice, then their respect, and then their, well, affection. All without issuing any kind of challenge to them or to their captains.”
“And your conclusion?” Fierin asked. Though his gaze stayed off to the side and his voice was flat, she sensed intense emotion underlying the discussion.
“Two things. There’s no magic in it, no rare talent. I never understood until now just what focus really is. He’s had it all his life: we had much the same opportunities, but I wasted most of mine, out of laziness, or lack of interest. I’d picked navigation, and everything else in life I dismissed as useless or irrelevant. He never dismissed any opportunity as irrelevant, nor any person. And everythi
ng he’s done has been to a goal whose reach was far beyond being the best teacher of navigation.”
Osri looked down at his hands and sighed. “Brandon could walk into that bay and know he could best most of those people because of that focus. Not all, because he’d never made fighting his single focus. But enough so that he understood the principles. Could defend himself against serious attack. I went, but just to watch—if I’d tried half those exercises I’d have fallen down in cardiac arrest halfway through.”
Osri’s voice went husky, and Fierin held her breath.
“The day we left Charvann he told me off for not having augmented the remedial physical training course at Minerva. At the time I thought him an idiot—why would a teacher need that? Just as he, a Panarch’s son, destined for a life of social brilliance, hadn’t needed it, either. But after Semion made sure he couldn’t have it, he got it somewhere anyway. While letting everyone believe he spent days gambling and his nights in drunken orgies. Maybe he kept up his Ulanshu kinesics in private, and supplemented them by playing sports when out in public, just as he kept his mind sharp with L-3 Phalanx tourneys.”
Osri faced her, his dark eyes serious. “Ever played Phalanx, L-3?”
Fierin shook her head. “I was good at level one when I was small. Jes and I used to play level two before, oh, you know.”
Osri smiled, his mouth twisted wryly. “When we were prisoners on that Rifter ship, while I sat in our cabin and sulked, he was out there doing Ulanshu with Jaim, and diving into their computer, and winning them over one by one, not least with his skill at Phalanx, which was beyond anyone on that ship except perhaps Vi’ya. He does it by focus on his higher goal—and by humor.”
“Neither of my parents has much of a sense of humor, though Brandon and Galen did their best to give me one with all their teasing and practical jokes. I didn’t see until a few days ago how wrong my perceptions were: what I saw as teasing was lessons in laughter, and I never realized that they laughed at themselves as much as they did at me. They used laughter as the great leveler, and it works. Brandon had them all those officers roaring this morning, in a mock duel. Somehow I don’t see anyone fighting duels anytime soon—not and risk causing snickers among everyone who was there or who heard about it afterwards.”
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