The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  Lar hesitated. Here was yet another knife edge; again their lives rested on making the right choice. That’s the curse of this life, he thought desolately. The slightest mistake means death, yet the reward for doing the right thing is simply continued existence. He fought the emotions back and faced the problem. He had obediently carried out all Tat’s little tricks and stratagems in order to ascertain whether the new Rifters—especially the noderunner—could be trusted. They’d all either been deflected or else met with friendly (but penetrating) questions.

  Lar could understand someone learning Dol’jharian. He and Tat had been brain-stuffing the loathsome language ever since they knew they wouldn’t get quickly out of this Suneater mess. But to learn Bori? No one learned Bori who wasn’t a Bori—even Bori such as the Catennach tried to eradicate it from their minds and refused to use it at all. If they had to, they spoke Uni. Exchanging the tongue of one conqueror for another.

  If he and Tat could only get more time, he could have found out, little by little, if Sedry Thetris, once a nick officer, was to be trusted. But it seemed they wouldn’t get it.

  “Nicks are here. Evidence all over dataspace,” Tat murmured, right into his ear, so softly he could barely hear her over the rush of water on both their skulls. “Worse—last attempt by tempath started station powering up all on its own. Incremental, but who knows how long that will last? Or how the Avatar will react? We have to decide right now—and act. Now.”

  Lar pressed his thumbs round the edges of his eye sockets and groaned, not caring whether hypothetical narks conveyed the sound straight to some unseen listener. What could make life any more terrifying?

  He tried to balance all the factors. The Panarchists were already here somehow; Barrodagh was getting rastier by the hour; and jacking the stress into surreal proportions was the fact the Dol’jharians’ Karushna inexorably got them hot-eyed and merciless hunting for sex—the more violent the better. Add to that the Ogres—only two now, toys for the Avatar, Tat said, but more to come.

  She sensed his hesitation. “I planted some trapdoors in the system. How I got Lysanter’s idea about the Panarchist hyperwave. Maybe do us some good later.”

  “Even against Ogres? Rifters can’t help there, not even brain-burners.”

  “Maybe even there. Lysanter made control tags. Maybe we con some tags, protect us, Dem, others.”

  He sighed, and hit the shower control. “Let’s try it,” he said. “I know what the Telvarna Rifters’re doing now, and Dem is safe here. I’ll go get them—you hide in the storage alcove off of the rec-area access tunnel.”

  Tat’s mouth pressed into a white line. “Better run.”

  A short time later, the plans buzzing in Sedry’s mind like maddened insects vanished in a wink when she and Marim followed Lar around a corner and the Bori came to an abrupt halt. Sedry gazed up the long tunnel, wondering what to expect—and saw Tat dashing full speed, her footsteps echoing.

  Breathless, Tat labored to sound nonchalant, but her voice trembled. “I’m off shift. Can I join you?”

  Sedry’s brow contracted over a searching gaze, but Marim barely glanced at her. “Sure,” Marim said cheerfully. “More the better. No one seems to want to come to the rec area, and I’m bo-ooored.”

  “It seems we are off limits to the Dol’jharians,” Sedry said. “But we’re not walking alone. Do come with us. How are you at L-3?”

  “Love it,” Tat said fervently.

  Sedry saw Tat signal unobtrusively to Lar to keep Marim busy. When he signified his understanding—and his approval—relief flooded Sedry. Then this is for me, not Marim, Sedry thought.

  “It’s rare that I get a chance to play another noderunner,” Tat said. Her large light brown eyes were steady, her thin brows in an anxious line. Her fingers semaphored: Need to talk.

  And Sedry mirrored the signal.

  Tat drew in a low breath as they all scanned the intersection, even Marim.

  No one at all was in the last two corridors, and in the third, a group of Bori tightly pressed together moved almost at a run, the oddness of which sent Sedry’s adrenaline pumping again. She wished she hadn’t asked Lar what was going on.

  The real horror was, apparently you never saw the roving Dol’jharians until they got you. She’d envisioned packs of lip-smacking grays and Tarkans tromping around in their heavy boots and poking into rooms and so on. Instead, you didn’t see any of them. Which means they must lie awake for days and days and plot who to get and when and where to do it—while never giving a hint of it to anyone.

  That was the nastiest aspect of it, the loneliness and secrecy. To a Bori, Lar had explained earnestly, the whole mess was unspeakably perverted. And though Marim had whooped with laughter, Sedry found it frightening. And sad.

  A spurt of tension-inspired amusement fluttered up from Sedry’s chest: what truly amazed her was finding out from Lar that the Dol’jharians considered Bori perverted for keeping sex in the family until its members deemed themselves ready to essay strangers—and then the entire family made the invitation.

  “How else can one learn without getting hurt?” he had said in all seriousness. Sedry had kept her own reactions to this revelation of culturally-supported incest to herself as Lar had added with a moue of distaste: “But then, Dol’jharians like hurting people.”

  As they reached the relative safety of the rec room, Sedry scanned ahead.

  “Blungesuck! We’re alone,” Marim exclaimed in disgust. “May’s well have stayed in our hole.”

  “Shift just changed,” Lar said, rolling his eyes at Tat.

  “Here’s a console,” Sedry said, indicating one off to the side.

  Tat nodded, eyes wide with intent: the position afforded a clear field of vision and a couple of possible lines of retreat.

  Lar said something about distractions and headed in another direction. Marim followed, her fluty voice declaiming how much fun it was to sit near the door so she could see who came and went.

  Sedry seated herself across from Tat, making certain that Marim could not see her.

  “I’ll patch in my compad so we can play larger. I’ve got a hot set of mods for L-3 here.” Tat pulled up her compad from its tether.

  Sedry smiled inwardly at how Tat also found games useful tools of subversion. Her blood rushed in her ears as a flicker of light wedded the compad and the archaic console. Tat’s face had smoothed to an expression of concentration.

  On the screen a header appeared. Below it, Tat typed: Is this yours?

  Sedry’s fingers were unhesitating. No. But that’s a very deep prefix driving it. Deepest I’ve ever seen.

  Tat sighed. Do you know what it is?

  Sedry’s heartbeat thrummed counterpoint to the blood singing in her ears. Tat had taken the first step in trust. She must reciprocate, despite the danger. She flicked her fingers in the wait sign and tabbed in her naval ID while chatting about the game and Tat’s additions.

  Fascinated, she watched as something assembled itself around her code; there was dissonance around the segment denoting her retired status. The mystery header did not originate from Ares.

  More code aggregated around the core she’d furnished. Sedry’s innards churned, causing a shudder of nausea: whoever had programmed this had come perilously close—closer than she ever would—to trespassing the ban on intelligent programs.

  Then whatever it was seemed to accept her credentials and the pattern smoothed into a query, not verbal, but symbolized by an unresolved pointer. Tat tapped busily, carrying both sides of the surface game to cover her, but Sedry could do no more here. She linked the pointer to the node ID of the console in the crew’s quarters, unreachable for now. Tat would have to do the rest.

  I’m not sure, she finally typed. How did you obtain it?

  Came over the hyperwave. Is it from Ares?

  Sedry’s heart hammered painfully. She really did feel sick as Tat rushed on. Lysanter thinks nicks maybe got a hyperwave. When Eusabian finds out—


  Tat stopped typing—she didn’t need to continue. Tat couldn’t know how bad this news made things, and Sedry couldn’t tell her. Not without asking the Unity; maybe not at all.

  Sedry’s guts boiled. She liked Tat and Lar and felt a helpless sense of pity for all the Bori. They didn’t deserve a life in hell—which would only get worse with the revelation of the Ares hyperwave. But the Unity, strange echo that it was of her face of Telos, and behind it all the people of the Thousand Suns, held her first loyalty.

  I think I can work with this, typed Sedry.

  “Chatz. You did it again. Another?” Sedry said aloud, sending a covert glance at Marim and Lar, who were laughing over their game. Then she shook her hand, and a couple of bracelets jingled free of her sleeve. “You win.” Her fingers twitched a jewel from one of them, and she handed that across, saying, “Same wager?”

  Tat took it, her thin brows puckering her high brow in question.

  Sedry typed swiftly: I’ve carried this on me since we landed, in case it was needed. Destructive-read crystal. Top-level phage. It will lift the filters from our console, so I can dig into the system. I promise it will not lead to you.

  She knew, of course, that Tat would run a check on it first. She would have to in order to adapt it fully to the Suneater arrays. Tat would understand that Sedry was giving tacit permission.

  Tat’s forehead smoothed as she palmed the jewel. “It’s pretty, but I can’t spend old Rifthaven trinkets. How about wagering food vouchers? We can eat those!”

  The door sucked open on the rumble of Dol’jharian voices.

  Working quickly, Tat reset a game as Sedry said loudly, “Sgatshi! This time the wrath of hell burns within my heart. Let’s have our replay without the mods.” She grinned, thinking of Montrose and his opera, a taste she was slowly acquiring. The Queen of the Night was an apt figure for a noderunner.

  Tat’s compad slipped on its leash onto her lap, and she leaned forward, appearing to concentrate on the game.

  The grays roamed around, boots thudding, and one gave a loud, ugly laugh. Tat hunched, recognizing from that sound that they’d probably been eating the hallucinatory Ur-fruit. She breathed deeply, ready to run if she had to.

  Sedry shut out the sound, bending over the console. Inside she cheered: The Telvarna crew now had an ally.

  o0o

  Eusabian did not turn around as Barrodagh entered his chamber, although he detected a slight movement of his lord’s head as the door squelched back into its usual pucker.

  The Avatar stood before the huge holovid that Barrodagh had recently upgraded from a static display, hoping to assuage Eusabian’s boredom to some small degree. As before, it reflected the view from the tower room in Hroth D’ocha, Eusabian’s ancestral keep on Dol’jhar. The flickering light from the karra-fires of the distant volcanoes on Jhar D’ocha’s northern border stirred the ancient tapestries hung all around to fitful life, animating the orderly gods and avatars of Lost Earth in their eternal dances or battles, the flutters of light terrible mimicry of the uneasy movements of the Suneater.

  Barrodagh shivered. Even though Eusabian’s chamber was utterly free of those movements, being the most heavily stasis-clamped of all, he was less comfortable here than anywhere on the station. The elegant furnishings of the defeated Panarch’s library reminded him of his one encounter with the ghost that now haunted the distant Mandala, and the contrast with Eusabian’s brooding intensified his dread. But he knew what Eusabian was capable of, while the worst the Suneater could offer was death.

  He hoped. The rumors were steadily growing weirder.

  Barely perceptible motions of the Dol’jharian’s broad shoulders indicated to Barrodagh that he was curse-weaving, so Barrodagh was relieved when Eusabian remained facing the holovid, as though looking through a window.

  “What was that sound?” The Avatar’s voice was soft.

  “We do not yet know, Lord. Lysanter is analyzing it. It was not caused by any action of the tempath; she was asleep when it occurred.”

  Eusabian stood in silence for a time. Although he could not see it, Barrodagh could hear the faint whisper of the silken cord in his hands.

  “Your report,” the Lord of Vengeance finally said.

  First the very good news that Lysanter had revealed.

  “Lord, Lysanter also reports that the last attempt by the tempath has apparently begun a very slow, automatic increase in station power. He has begun analysis to both confirm this discovery and to measure the rate of increase.”

  Eusabian stopped his weaving for a time. “It is well,” he said as the whisper of the cord finally resumed.

  Barrodagh stood in silence, waiting, unable to read his lord’s mood.

  “There is more?”

  “Lord, as you planned, the rising resistance on critical Panarchist planets and Highdwellings is making it increasingly difficult for the minor houses to combine against you. But there are also indications of unrest on Dol’jhar, where there are no such distractions.”

  He hesitated, and as Eusabian made no further comment, Barrodagh gave as many details as he judged would not try his lord’s patience. For once, he wanted to conceal nothing. “The full report has been echoed to your console,” he concluded.

  That report, on which Barrodagh and his minions had labored long, dwelled in loving detail on the machinations of the lesser Dol’jharian families and clans, in the hopes of keeping Eusabian busy. His boredom was dangerous: Barrodagh had been horrified at the extent of the Avatar’s computer queries revealed by Ferrasin’s worm.

  “I need no report to tell me of their ambitions,” said the Avatar, consonants sharpening with irritation. “They kiss the boot that grinds their faces down, but their fangs seek unprotected flesh.”

  After that, silence for another excruciating interval.

  “They are all fools.” The force of Eusabian’s voice made Barrodagh jump. “The fires of my vengeance will burn forever.”

  “Okhash emmer ti ocha-mi”—the harsh consonants of the ancient quotation resounded in the quiet room, mirroring the deep linkage in the Dol’jharian tongue between revenge and fire and echoing the name of Eusabian’s volcanic patrimony, portrayed before him: Jhar D’ocha, the Kingdom of Vengeance.

  Barrodagh’s nerves jolted as the holovid abruptly changed, revealing the undying fires of the black hole binary that powered the Suneater. The flaring light of the vast spiral of matter falling into a destruction more terrible and final than any human vengeance silhouetted Eusabian’s strong figure into a dark absence, a man-shaped hole in space.

  Who programmed that for him?

  “What has Dol’jhar to oppose to these fires, which I will master?” The future-unconditional aspect of the verb deepened Barrodagh’s anxiety. Lysanter had better continue as cooperative as he’d been lately; in this mood, the Avatar would brook not the slightest hindrance to whatever was in his mind. Barrodagh feared for his additional stasis clamps and compute power.

  Eusabian turned at last, and seated himself in the large wing chair positioned with its back to the holovid. “So Jhar Epoim thinks the time has come to reassert themselves?” he mused, now enhaloed by the stellar destruction behind him. The dirazh’u writhed rhythmically between his powerful fingers. “Have they forgotten so soon my lesson?”

  Barrodagh doubted it. No Dol’jharian had questioned the need for revenge following the disaster at Acheront twenty standard years before. But Sammonyl Epoim, the father of the present head of the clan, had questioned Jerrode Eusabian’s fitness to lead the paliach following his return from that debacle. After the resultant clash Eusabian had had Epoim manacled to the hull of his own shuttle.

  “Am I not the Lord of Vengeance?” the Avatar had asked, invoking the name of the kingdom of the Eusabian clan, and then watched as his rival was born aloft to expire in the emptiness of space. His vacuum-mummified body still orbited the planet.

  The Bori said nothing, and shortly his lord laid the dirazh’u down in his lap, his
fingers relaxed around it.

  “Enough. What of Arthelion?”

  Barrodagh tensed. He had to assume that Jesserian and Ferrasin were as afraid of the truth as he was; the realization sharpened the sensation of teetering along the knife edge. For bringing the furnishings of the Panarch’s library to the Suneater had not diminished in the least Eusabian’s proprietary attitude toward his defeated enemy’s Palace. The Avatar had even commanded the restoration of the Ivory Hall, destroyed in the failed attempt to assassinate Brandon nyr-Arkad, that all might be perfect for his triumphal return when he had annihilated his enemies with the power of the reawakened Suneater.

  “The reconstruction of the Ivory Hall is proceeding well,” Barrodagh replied. “Since the preliminary work was completed, and the most dangerous of the rubble removed, the loss of slave labor to radiation effects has fallen off sharply, and the work is accelerating.”

  Actually it was slower than at first, but that couldn’t be helped. At first the laborers, mostly naval personnel whose records had been ripped out of the computers on Lao Tse, had been forced to clear the hall wearing only the lightest of rad-shields—the bulk of full armor slowed their work unacceptably. It was deemed easier to replace them as the radiation felled them.

  But then the “accidents” started happening: for every laborer that died, a gray died or was crippled. Nothing could be proved, making reprisals useless. And although some of the incidents might have been perpetrated by the resistance, much of it was the work of the Palace computer, manifested in ways that cleverly exploited Dol’jharian superstition.

  Were it not for the valuable dollops of information the computer dished out to Ferrasin from time to time, Barrodagh would have had its links to the planetary network destroyed. Lately that information had proved almost uncannily handy in keeping the Avatar entertained.

  But on Arthelion, the grays were terrified of the center of the Palace Major, where the ghost most often walked. And the laborers now worked at their own pace, in full radiation armor.