They halted before the entrance to his father’s suite, deep within the Fist of Dol’jhar. One of the Tarkans identified them, then it opened and Anaris stepped through, fighting against revealing his tension. The Tarkans did not follow, and the door slid shut behind him with finality.
The room was large and stark. At the far end, the heavy-shouldered figure of Jerrode Eusabian stood before a giant viewscreen, silhouetted by the blue and white glamour of Arthelion. Tension sharpened into fear when Anaris recognized the trembling figure standing to one side. It was Lelanor, clad only in a shift, her face streaked with tears. What is she doing on this ship? Why didn’t Barrodagh warn me?
The bluish light from the viewscreen cast a corpselike pallor over his lover’s smooth, golden skin and short white-blond hair, making his heart thud painfully in his chest. He made an abortive move toward her, then halted as his father spoke.
“The next step in my paliach approaches. In a few hours I will descend upon Arthelion in triumph. My enemy lies captive within this ship. His sons are dead.”
Anaris’s thoughts tumbled in confusion, unsettled by the unexpected presence of Lelanor.
“But my enemy will deny me total victory if he has stolen the last of my seed from me.”
Perhaps you shouldn’t have been so quick to murder the others, Anaris thought. And now you have no options. The Panarchists told me what the weapons unleashed against your ship at Acheront did to your germ plasm. And I’ve heard rumors of the pitiful monstrosities you fathered afterward.
“I will not permit him even this partial denial of my paliach,” Eusabian stated, giving Lelanor a glance of disgust. “This is evidence that he has made you incapable of the rigor necessary to a ruler, contaminating your spirit—” Eusabian used the word hachka, denoting the virtues inherited from one’s ancestors. “—with Panarchist depravities such as love.” His father’s sneering emphasis on the last word was accentuated by the fact that he perforce used the Uni term, there being no Dol’jharian equivalent.
“You have befouled your ancestors with your behavior with this slave, as if such a prikoschi could even offer a wholesome struggle.” Eusabian broke off, smiling with cold distaste. “Oh yes, you were watched.” His face tightened to grim anger. “How do you expect to have worthy heirs from such a worm?” Eusabian struck quickly, casually. His great strength lifted Lelanor off her feet, smashing her against a bulkhead.
Anaris’s stomach tightened, but he showed no reaction as his lover struggled to her feet, her frightened eyes meeting his in mute appeal.
“Yet you persist in meeting with this slave again and again, a sickness you have learned from the Panarchists, for there has been no such perversion in my House since the founding of Hroth D’Ocha.” Eusabian stopped abruptly, as if mastering an overwhelming revulsion.
No doubt it was sincere. When he first came to Arthelion as hostage, Anaris had been too young to have any interest in the strictness of Dol’jharian ritual, but the single servant (or spy, as the man himself had admitted) sent with Anaris had tried his best to inculcate these views. Which had lasted about a year after Anaris discovered sex, and not much longer than that in his servant, eventually making them conspirators instead of watcher and watched.
Anaris schooled his expression, dismayed at the betrayal implied in his father’s words: he really thought he’d gained control over that wing of the household. He would remember this—if he survived the next few minutes.
As none of my siblings did.
Eusabian’s voice dropped back to its original level. Was he remembering that he had no more sons or daughters?
“But now I have time to devote to your reeducation, to inculcate in you the virtues inhering in the descendants of Dol, so that the spirit of Dol may someday dwell in you as it does in me. I will not be denied. I shall reclaim my son.”
Anaris glanced covertly at Lelanor, whose frail body was shaken at intervals by bouts of trembling. She hugged her elbows in against her sides, her skin roughened by the cold air of the suite, and looked from one to the other of the two men in incomprehension. Brought as a slave to Dol’jhar by Rifters, she had never learned Dol’jharian. Anaris, newly returned to his home planet, had found her company a relief from everyday life among Dol’jharians.
Eusabian favored Anaris with a wintry smile, and pressed a button on a small table beside him. A side door opened to admit the lean figure of Evodh, the lacquered karra-patterns on his skull gleaming in the light from Arthelion.
Disgust surged in Anaris. Here was another thing he had not missed about daily life on Dol’jhar.
“Your first lesson commences now.” Eusabian motioned to Evodh. “It will last as many days as it takes to purge from you this weakness.”
The last time Anaris had seen what his father laughably called his physician—who was nothing more, or less, than a torturer—had been the month after Anaris’s arrival home, when he, his father and the principal members of the Household had gathered to witness the flaying of his last living sibling, his sister Damar.
Anaris had always hated Damar. Distance, and age, had brought the realization that she had never been sane even by the standards of his homeland, but when he left as a sixteen-year-old, his primary emotion had been relief to finally escape Damar’s predilection for lying in wait to ambush and torture him unless he could fight free. A habit their father had regarded as excellent training for both.
So Anaris had been training in close-in fighting ever since he was ten.
Evodh had his flaying knife in one hand as the other grasped Lelanor’s arm above the elbow. She gave a frightened gasp and twisted away from him, running straight to Anaris’s arms.
Evodh strode forward. As the pesz mas’hadni reached for her, Anaris grabbed his arm and applied an Ulanshu kinesic, sending the man reeling across the room to bounce off a wall and fall to the floor, tangled in his own robes. His expression was mostly distorted rage, but shock as well. No one had dared touch him for decades, no doubt.
Anaris suppressed the impulse to laugh, stepped quickly to Lelanor’s side, ignoring the guards closing in. He gently took her face between his hands as she turned to him.
“Don’t worry, heart of my heart, I will not let them hurt you.”
He had pitched his voice to sound sincere, and felt her relax against him. He bent down and kissed her deeply, lingeringly, caressing her smooth back even as he heard his father’s growl of anger and disgust, and the thump of boots as the Tarkans ringed them.
Anaris felt her respond to him, melting into his embrace, her tongue seeking his hotly in a denial of their surroundings. As her arms glided down his back, he brought his hands up toward her head in a final caress. Then he slipped his peshakh out of his sleeve and thrust its razor-sharp blade deep into the back of her neck. The blade slipped resistlessly between her vertebrae, and she passed into death with only the faintest of tremors.
He tasted blood in her mouth as she slumped against him. After laying her gently on the floor, he straightened up.
As the guards closed around Anaris, their faces blanching at the rage apparent in Eusabian’s face, Anaris smiled mockingly at his father. “Death will come for us both in the end, father mine, but only one of us can grasp its hilt.”
o0o
ARTHELION
Moira’s ninth birthday was the best ever, until the black-clad soldiers came.
Earlier in the week her parents had surprised her by promising to take her to see the Havroy, years earlier than was customary. That morning her father brought flowers from the Palace for her to present to the Havroy, from the gardens he tended for the Panarch.
“Some of these are from planets so far away that their suns are never seen in the skies of the Mandala,” he said.
Their colors and scents were dizzying. Moira inhaled deeply as he laid them in her arms. “Do they miss their sunlight?” she asked, thinking of the Havroy.
Her father smiled. “I don’t know, little one. I try to make them happy h
ere.” His eyes looked sad above his smile, and he turned his head to look toward the hill that stood between their cottage and the distant Palace.
Moira carried the flowers into the kitchen, where her mother was assembling a picnic basket, followed by the attentive gaze of their black-and-brown dog, Popo. “Look, Mother. I’ll bet the Havroy has never seen flowers like these before.” Indeed, some of them were very strange; the sweetest-smelling ones looked like a nest of spotted snakes.
Her mother smiled at her as she packed the last of the food away. There were dark circles under her eyes. “Women come from every one of the Thousand Suns to see her, Moira. I’m sure she’s seen much stranger. What matters is what’s in your heart when you lay them at her feet.”
Just then her father came in, and her mother continued, “Why don’t you go and put on your good sandals and then get some snacks for Popo so he can have a picnic, too.” As she went down the hallway to her room she could hear a snatch of conversation from her parents.
“... there’s nothing we can do,” came her father’s voice.
“And the Palace said to go about our business as usual.” Her mother’s reply seemed to ask a question, though her words didn’t.
It was only a short flight to Havroy Bay in their aircar. Moira sat up front with her father, leaning close to the windscreen to watch the cloud-dappled fields and scattered homes glide beneath them. Then, as they skimmed over a range of low hills, the horizon flattened to a ruler-straight line separating gray-blue from sky-blue and they swooped to a landing on the edge of a golden crescent of beach.
The hot sand sifted through her toes as they walked toward the sea. Popo ran ahead of them and back, kicking up a spatter of sand that made them blink.
Moira clutched her flowers to her chest, looking about at the many groups of people dotting the beach, bright in holiday costumes. Some wore clothing she’d only seen in culture chips, or on vids from the DataNet, and some wore nothing at all. Their voices echoed the splashing waves, only some of the words coming clear.
She stared with interest at two people in particular, a man and a woman. They were so tall that they would have had to stand bent over inside Moira’s home. Their skin was a glossy black instead of normal brown, their slanted eyes green, and their long straight hair a blazing reddish gold like the morning sun.
The woman pointed at Popo standing next to her, said something to the man. Moira caught the work “Arkad,” and grinned in pride. The Panarch himself had given Popo to her mother when she came home from the Navy, but he was Moira’s dog. She looked down at Popo pacing easily at her side: as usual when there were crowds of people around, he was watching her face intently, only occasionally glancing around.
“This looks like a good spot,” said her father finally, and busied himself setting up the sunshade.
Its frail, silvery fabric billowed in the soft breeze, ballooning up into an open-sided dome over them as her father stroked the static-tabs at its base. Her mother unrolled the sheet-like bas; it vibrated with a hum, smoothing the sand lumps underneath, then flattened into a rug.
Her father came up beside Moira. “Doesn’t look like much of a crowd today. You should have a few moments to yourself with her.” Her mother came up beside them and slipped her arm through her father’s.
“Silver lining,” she said, but Moira was too intent on what lay ahead to wonder what her words meant.
As they walked toward the small crowd ahead, leaving Popo to watch their belongings, her father smiled again. “Do you remember what you said the first time you saw a picture of the Havroy?”
Moira nodded. “I was sad because I thought they left all the people like her behind on Lost Earth.” They had joined a short line of people, all holding flowers. The tall black people with the red hair were just in front. Moira could smell a sweet, tangy scent coming from them. She tried to peer around to catch a glimpse of the Havroy, but there were too many people ahead.
Moira looked up at her parents. “There aren’t any people like her in the Thousand Suns, are there?”
“No,” her father replied.
“We’ve found many strange people, but never any like her,” her mother said, moving closer to her father, who looked up at the sky, frowning.
He slipped his arm around her, then shook his head and smiled again. “And that’s as it should be. She means much more to us because she’s the only one.” Then he squatted down on the sand next to her and took Moira’s hand in his. His fingers were rough and warm, and Moira could see the traces of dirt around his fingernails that he could never get out.
“Moira, you’re a little too young to really understand, but—” He glanced at the sky again. “But we thought it was time.”
“I know,” she said happily. “Niona was really jealous. Her parents said she’d have to wait till her twelfth birthday.”
He nodded, opened his mouth, then pressed his lips together in a line. “That’s what is usual,” he said finally.” But we are doing it now. So you must listen carefully to your mother.”
He stood up and her mother sat down on her heels next to Moira. “Do you remember what I told you about symbols?”
Moira nodded. “They’re like pictures for stories that are too big for words.”
Her mother hugged her, then let her go, keeping her hands on Moira’s shoulders. “And sometimes they have stories that go with them, that help us see things that are too big and old for us to understand any other way. You know the story of the Havroy, and you know why she sits there, staring out to sea, forever unable to return home.”
Mother’s eyes brightened with little glints of sunlight—and so did Father’s. “The Havroy is a story about us: you, and me, and Father, and all the people on this beach, and throughout the Thousand Suns.”
“And Popo, too?”
Mother nodded. “And Popo, too, and kittens, and horses, and even the trees in the Garden of the Ancients.” She took Moira’s hand in hers and squeezed gently. Her fingers were smooth and cool. “None of us can go home again. We left our home many many years ago, and we can never go back. Just like her. That’s why we brought her with us, to remind us of Lost Earth.” The brightness in her eyes spilled over, but her fingers wiped the droplets away before they could fall.
The line ahead of them had thinned away, the people behind them waiting patiently. Her mother stood up and touched the flowers in Moira’s arms. “And these are the bright stories of our lives in the Thousand Suns—all the beauty and strangeness of our worlds.” She straightened. “Go, daughter, cast them on the sea foam at the feet of the Havroy and look long into her face.”
A little frightened by her mother’s seriousness, Moira walked toward the water’s edge. There was a bubble of solitude around the Havroy, and the sand was carpeted with blossoms cast up by the advancing tide. Moira walked around in front of her and then stopped. Though she recognized the Havroy from the vids, those had not prepared her for the meeting.
Moira took a cautious step, ignoring the cold water that ruffled over her shoes and soaked her feet as she gazed up into the long, sad face. She knew that the Havroy was made of bronze, and she’d seen the way the sun glinted a warm brown like her own skin along the smooth curves of her body in some places, and in other places—the flowing locks of hair that met at the nape of the Havroy’s neck, then fell onto her back, and on the hand that rested on one leg, and on the other that rested on the rock—the colors were rough blues and aqua. Verdigris, the teacher had called those blue colors.
The teacher had said once that time and tides and wind had worn away some of the Havroy’s face, but she still looked sad to Moira, who wondered if the blue streaks below her eyes were tears.
Moira wished she could climb up on the rock and lay her flowers in the Havroy’s lap, but there was no way to climb, and maybe it wouldn’t be right to disturb her as she sat on the rock, her legs bent at the knees.
The sea rushed about Moira’s feet, tickling them with foam and flowers as sh
e struggled to understand a sorrow too big for words, almost too big for her heart, and she let the flowers fall before the statue. A hissing wave of sea foam lifted them from the sand and carried them up the beach past the Havroy, leaving her finned feet garlanded with the offering of the Panarch’s gardens as the water withdrew. Then Moira wiped her eyes and held up her hand, wishing she could wipe the tears off the statue’s cheek.
Moira stood there a while longer, until she became aware of a thin whine that slowly overwhelmed the mournful sighing of the placid waves of Havroy Bay. Movement caught her eyes; farther up the beach people gazed out to sea in alarm. Then a giant voice shattered the calm summer day.
“ATTENTION! PLEASE CLEAR THE BEACH! DO NOT GATHER YOUR BELONGINGS. LEAVE IMMEDIATELY!”
She twisted around. A sleek silver aircar with the Sun and Phoenix blazoned on it arrowed in across the bay and banked to turn. A green finger of light reached out from the land to touch it and the aircar disintegrated in a flare of bloody light and black smoke. A large piece of glowing metal shrieked through the air and slammed to the ground near Moira, spattering her with hot water and sand. It lay hissing in a small crater, the blossoms around it withering to brown rags.
Her mother ran forward and grabbed her, carrying her up the beach. Her father used his shoulder to push through the milling crowd of people now shouting in fear and confusion as a line of black-clad soldiers appeared on the crest of the low hills behind the beach. They made no move, watching with unfriendly faces and holding their weapons at the ready as the crowd halted at the landward edge of the sand. They were close enough that Moira could see a red fist on their uniforms.
The tall black man with the red hair stepped forward, his hands raised, palms out. “We intend no resistance,” he called out in Uni. “Will you please—”
One of the soldiers moved his weapon slightly and burned him down. The tall man’s hair puffed out in a crackling discharge and he crumpled with awful slowness to the sand. The tall woman with him howled and threw herself across his body; the soldiers made no further move.
The Phoenix in Flight Page 20
