Milla said, “Have you had any luck with Julian?”
“Nothing.”
“I could try,” Milla offered.
“Have you got any secret methods of communication you aren’t sharing with me, Milla?”
“I’m telepathic,” Milla said, her voice as flat as it could possibly be. “Didn’t I mention?”
For a moment Constance was too startled to react. Then she laughed. “Of course,” she said. “In that case, I would appreciate if you’d try to telepathically reach Julian on your own. I think I’ll try with the communicator a little longer myself.”
“Very well,” Milla said. “I didn’t come here to speak of Julian. I have news from the planet’s surface.”
“Venus?” Greene’s resistance had been crushed almost entirely; Constance couldn’t imagine what could have gone wrong.
“It’s Altais,” Milla said carefully. “He has been ruling the territories that you have defeated.”
“Ruling?” Constance snapped, all her stillness and good humor vanished. “What does that mean?”
“Stationing troops in the conquered areas,” Milla said, “ostensibly to keep the order. Extorting tithes.”
“And in my name?”
“In the name of liberation.”
Not even in her name. How dare he take the lands for his own, the lands she had worked to free? And not even do so out of loyalty to her?
“Summon him here,” Constance said.
“Is that wise?”
“Does he know that what he’s done is wrong?”
“I think he may suspect you will not approve,” Milla said. “Hence he has not mentioned it.”
Constance leaned forward onto the conference table, bending over the communicator that was still lying there, silent. She thought of Altais strategically holding his tongue, cowardice keeping him from conversation with her. He would have kept his silence until she had gotten into contact with Julian and left this planet, and him, behind.
“He won’t dare to refuse to come,” Constance said. “Summon him here.”
“Very well,” Milla said, but she did not leave, so that could not have been all that she had come to discuss. Nor could Marisol have been the point of her trip; she seemed to have said everything she had to say about the girl. What else could there possibly be to discuss?
Milla said, “Constance—”
Someone rapped hard on the door. It was not a knock with the strength of urgency, only the strength of personality. Constance knew that forceful knock: it was Arawn.
“Come in,” she said, and to Milla, “Does he know?”
“Doubtless,” Milla said. “He has a way of finding things out.”
The edge of overt unpleasantness was so very unlike Milla that Constance looked at her sharply, but she did not have a chance to ask, because Arawn stepped in. He had trimmed his dark hair and shaved; his beard traced a sharp line down his broad jaw.
When he saw Milla Ivanov, he flashed white teeth through that dark beard. “Doctor Ivanov,” he said, then, to Constance, “I see you leave your bodyguard outside.”
“There’s no reason for Rayet to be in here.”
“And yet isn’t the whole reason you assigned him that you were attacked by some traitors in your own quarters?”
“He searched the rooms.”
“Good,” Arawn said. “Because that’s the real danger. I don’t want you to be attacked again by someone you should trust inside your own home.”
Milla Ivanov stood up abruptly. “I have work to do elsewhere,” she said, and nodded at Constance. “Huntress.”
After the door closed behind her, Constance said to Arawn, “Whatever your problem is with Milla Ivanov, end it.”
“Right,” he said amiably, and then took Milla’s vacated seat at Constance’s side. He seemed to fill up that seat more than Milla had in more ways than just his greater size. Constance could feel his presence more keenly, her skin pricking from the nearness of his. Angry as she was, that pricking seemed all the stronger.
He said, “You heard about Altais?”
“I heard,” Constance said, and tried to swallow her simmering rage.
He leaned back in his chair, letting his legs spread. He was far too comfortable around her. She thought about telling him off but didn’t.
“He’s been executing dissidents, System or not,” Arawn said. “You hear that part?”
“No,” Constance said, and knew her fingers had curled into fists only when she felt the bite of her nails in her palm.
Arawn nodded thoughtfully. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ve summoned him here,” Constance said. “I want you and Doctor Ivanov present.”
“What, to talk to him?”
“What else?”
“Well, say he listens,” said Arawn, and leaned forward, elbows on knees so that his face was below hers. She could see faded scars near his hairline and wondered absently if the System had given them to him. “And he goes back to Venus, and he does as you order, and he lets all those cities go, and he’s an obedient friend of the Mallt-y-Nos again.”
“That would be the goal, Arawn.”
“And then you leave,” Arawn said. “For Luna or for wherever. But he’s still back there all alone, without the Mallt-y-Nos up in orbit to keep him in line. So what does he do?” She did not answer, and so Arawn answered his own question. “So he breaks your rules.”
“Don’t you think he would know to hold his tongue out of respect for me?” Constance asked, raising her eyebrows at Arawn pointedly.
“Any man with sense would. But I don’t think Altais is a man with sense.”
Arawn’s eyes were dark, not light as Ivan’s had been. And with that thought she leaned back in her chair, away from the nearness and the presence of him, and pushed thoughts of them both from her mind.
“What else would you have me do?” she demanded of him, but before he could answer, the communications device began to cough and sputter with static. Then it began to howl, a pack of hunting dogs all singing together.
Julian.
With relief, Constance swiftly decrypted the message. Julian’s recorded voice said, “Julian Keys to the Mallt-y-Nos. This message is meant for the ears of the Mallt-y-Nos and the Mallt-y-Nos alone.”
Next to her, Arawn stretched, looking pleased that she had not sent him away, and grinned at her when she gave him the eye.
Julian said, “I’ve spoken with Christoph. My fleet was enough to deter him for a little while, but negotiations have fallen apart since. He’s refused to back down, and he’s started moving his fleet toward the inner planets again.”
Constance’s fingers gripped the edge of the conference table hard enough that her bones creaked.
“Anji won’t stop him,” Julian continued in his mellifluous Lunar-tinged Terran accent. He spoke his disastrous news in an even tone that reminded Constance of Milla Ivanov and Ivan at his most withdrawn. Terrans, she thought, but the thought was less dismissive than it was despairing. “Christoph will pass right through her territory. He’ll go right through Jupiter to get to you, but she’s going to let him.” The briefest pause, a hesitation in Julian’s steady tone. “I do not think she condones it. I believe, from what I have seen, that she is having difficulty maintaining control of her forces and is focusing her attention on that.”
If her troops had been mutinous, that would explain some of Anji’s actions. Constance tried not to feel a faint relief that Anji’s defection might have had an outside cause. No matter what the cause was, Anji was still a traitor.
“Diplomacy will not work with Christoph,” Julian said. “Please relay to me…what you would like me to do.”
The recording ended.
Constance sat back in her chair. Christoph was coming toward her, and somewhere the System was rebuilding its strength. If she didn’t handle things swiftly, she might find herself attacked on two sides.
“What does he want?” Arawn asked.
&nbs
p; Constance almost laughed. Never would she have been able to predict this back before it happened. But even so, she understood him now.
“Christoph was always one for show,” she said. “The targets he always wanted to hit were big—grand buildings, statues celebrating the System, anything to show that we were better. I liked that about him then. His targets weren’t always the smartest or the best choices, but they always had an effect.”
“And now you’re his grand statue.”
“If he defeats me, he shows Anji that he’s the one in charge,” Constance said. It was disturbing having the logic that had always been her ally turned against her.
Arawn said, “It looks like you don’t have any other choice.”
“I have choices,” Constance said.
“You’ve done nothing about Anji, and you’ve barely done anything about Christoph, and you’re not going to do anything decisive against Altais. What kind of bargaining power did Julian have when you sent him to talk to Christoph? He could talk and he could order Christoph, but Christoph would know you weren’t going to do anything to follow up.”
“You speak too plainly.”
“I’m not a diplomat, Huntress,” Arawn said, “and I’m not some silver-tongued Terran, either.” Constance recoiled. “I speak plainly. And plainly, it’s like this: you’re not taking action, and not taking action makes you look weak.”
“I acted against Greene.”
“Yeah, but Greene is gone. Christoph and Altais and Anji are the problem now. And the System fleet is out there somewhere. There’re rumors they’re on Europa. There’re rumors that they’re back on Mars. They—”
“Mars?” Constance said sharply. “The fleet might be back on Mars?”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” Arawn said. “God only knows if it’s true; it’s hard to get good information these days. But the fleet could be near as Mars, and if they come at us while we’re divided—or if they join up with Christoph or Anji against us—”
“Christoph and Anji would never ally themselves with the System.”
“But even if they don’t,” Arawn said, “they’re still weakening you, and every day that passes while they do is another day the System fleet is holed up somewhere, getting its strength and its numbers back and getting ready to undo everything you’ve done.”
Constance wondered how it seemed so clear to him, how he could be untroubled by the conflict between strength and old loyalty. She suspected he would say that Christoph and Anji had no loyalty to her any longer, but just because they had lost that loyalty, that didn’t mean she had to do the same thing. She would be righteous, she told herself; she would be better than what others were.
“Since you seem to have the answers,” Constance said, her voice tight, “why don’t you tell me what you think I should do?”
“That’s your choice, Huntress, and I trust your wisdom,” Arawn said, and Constance wondered if she was imagining the doubtful weight on his words. “But if it were me, in your place, I would kill Christoph.”
“Kill him,” Constance said flatly.
“Yes. Julian’s in the right place to send an assassin. Answer his message, tell him—”
“It’s a matter of trust that Julian is there as a diplomat.”
“What kind of meaningless honor is that when Christoph’s already turned on you?”
Meaningless honor, but that kind of honor had kept Constance and her revolution alive back when they were fighting in secret and had to rely on one another entirely. Arawn’s meaningless honor had been what had made Constance’s revolution possible; meaningless honor had kept Ivan’s mouth shut on the Ananke, even to his death.
“I’ll take your advice under consideration,” she said to him, another Ivanov phrase. She could almost hear the Terran tinge to it even through her Mirandan accent. She turned from him, a dismissal. She reached for the tablet and said into it, “Julian, stay with Christoph for now. I will contact you within twenty-four hours with instructions. Be ready to receive them. Transmission over.”
Despite her clear dismissal, Arawn had not moved. “Is there something else you would like to say?” Constance asked, danger in her tone.
“There’s something else you should know,” Arawn said.
“So tell me.” She squared her shoulders like Anji readying herself for a blow.
Arawn rubbed his chin, his fingers scratching the bristles of his black beard, thinking. “I know you like to keep me at arm’s length, Huntress,” he said in that curiously challenging way, “and I won’t insult you by guessing why.”
It was not even his right to question. Constance remained silent and forced him to continue to speak. Arawn said, “Do you remember when you first got into contact with Julian, a few weeks ago? And me and Doctor Ivanov were in the communications room?”
Milla and Arawn had been in the communications room when she’d arrived, with a curious tension between them. “Yes.”
“I told you I was there to get a transmission from my people on Venus, but that wasn’t entirely true. They could’ve sent a message directly to my ship; I didn’t need to be in the communications room. I was there because I’d had my people monitoring transmissions in and out of your fleet, and they’d intercepted an interesting one. I went to go investigate.”
“You’ve been spying on my people? You’ve been spying on my ship?” Constance’s voice was cold. That kind of monitoring, that lack of privacy had been one of the hallmarks of the System.
“Would you rather not know?”
No, Constance almost said. No, I don’t want to know. But she had to. “Tell me what you heard.”
“We didn’t hear the content of the message or any of the messages since. Yes,” he said, seeing her look, “there have been more since then. Several of them, both coming into your fleet and going out. I didn’t tell you before then because I wasn’t sure, but I’m sure now. The transmissions were with Anji Chandrasekhar.”
A chill went through Constance, and when it faded, the burning in her chest seemed hotter than before. “A spy?”
“There’s no way to tell. But someone in your fleet has been communicating with Chandrasekhar regularly for the past few weeks.”
Constance said, with dread warring with her growing rage, “And you know who it is.”
“Aye,” Arawn said. “I know who it is.”
So did Constance if she let herself accept the implication of Arawn’s tone and demeanor. But this was not something she would allow herself to believe on mere implication. She had to hear it spoken outright. She had to know without any doubt. “Tell me her name.”
Arawn said, “Milla Ivanov.”
—
It occurred to Althea to wonder when she woke up how many days it had been since Earth had fallen, how many days had passed since Domitian had died, since Ivan had escaped, since Ananke had come to life. She almost asked Ananke while she dressed herself and pulled her hair back roughly into a ponytail, out of her face, but something unnameable stopped her.
Ananke was waiting for her in the holographic terminal in the hall outside Althea’s room. She was dressed the same as Althea in an old pair of work overalls and with her curly hair pulled back out of her face. But the shape of her jaw was rather more like Mattie’s than Althea’s, and her eyes were Ivan’s.
She looked older today, too, Althea thought. Had the hologram been growing older day by day, imperceptibly, and Althea had noticed only now?
Ananke said, “I’ve been thinking about Constance Harper.”
Althea preferred to spend her days without thinking of Constance Harper at all. “What were you thinking?” she asked, and started off down the hall. She thought about getting breakfast, but her restless sleep and unstructured days had left her without an appetite. The workroom was farther down the hall than the kitchen, and Althea passed the kitchen without pausing.
“I was thinking that it might be good to talk to her,” Ananke said, appearing and disappearing in consecutive holograp
hic terminals, blinking in and out of existence, chasing Althea down the hall. “She might know where Ivan and Mattie are.”
“She might. And she might not tell us.”
“Why not? We mean them no harm.”
Constance Harper might not see it that way, Althea thought. Aloud she said, “She doesn’t know that.”
“We could convince her.”
“And if you can’t?” Althea asked, and Ananke seemed to have no answer to that. Maybe it would do Ananke some good to contemplate what it would feel like to have someone who wouldn’t do what she wanted her to.
Althea doubted that Ananke would make the connection.
Althea had reached the door to the workroom. “Are you ready?” she asked. “I thought we’d try the knot again.” The workroom was already bright, and the hologram was already seated on the terminal, and two mechanical arms were already inside and waiting for her.
“I am ready,” Ananke said. “Give me the rope.”
Althea almost smiled at her eagerness. Her daughter didn’t like to fail. It probably would take a few sessions before Ananke got the knack of it; robotic localization was a standard issue, and it would take some time to refine Ananke’s internal mapping and compensate for any ambiguity in the joints of the mechanical arms.
The mechanical hands plucked the two ends of the twine from Althea’s fingers with unexpected delicacy. Ananke must have implemented some of her own code. The arms moved apart a bit, giving themselves some space to work, and then moved back together. Their motions were smooth and confident, as balanced as a dance. One hand wrapped the rope around, and then the other put its end of the rope to the dangling loop and passed it through, picking up the thread on the other side.
For a moment, a loop of rope the size of Althea’s head dangled between the two mechanical hands, and then they tugged on the twine. Althea almost expected them to snap it, but they were gentle; the twine was pulled until the knot had tightened into a wad too small and dense ever to be undone, and then they held it aloft, triumphant. The hologram was smiling from the corner of the room, her hands upraised in a simulation of victory.
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