The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  “Confusion to the enemy!” voices repeated, some in ringing tones, others in the whisper of an oath or a prayer as the smashing of glass rose to a crescendo.

  Margot Ng opened her eyes, drank her champagne in one eye-stinging swallow, and smashed her glass to glittering shards in the very heart of the fire.

  o0o

  Osri Omilov, Lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy, gripped his kit in one sweaty hand and tabbed the shuttle’s lock annunciator. “Lieutenant Omilov reporting for duty. Permission to come aboard?”

  A voice said, “Come aboard, Lieutenant.”

  The lock opened, and Osri looked into the blatantly curious gaze of a young, obviously newly promoted ensign.

  Osri saluted, and belatedly the young woman saluted, her cheeks going crimson. She didn’t falter again, though, as she went through the age-old naval ritual of welcome.

  The rest of his introduction to the Grozniy proceeded more smoothly, lulling him with its familiarity. Finally the door to his cabin slid open, and he stepped in, glancing around, briefly disoriented at how familiar it was: he could have been standing in his quarters aboard the Mbwa Kali—or on Ares or Minerva. The proportions were regulation, which meant one knew them whatever vessel one entered, knew them well enough to maneuver in the dark if the ship went to emergency power.

  Now, for the first time, this might actually happen. Except I will be serving aboard a Rifter ship. Osri shook off the reaction and stowed away his gear in half a dozen swift movements.

  Then he hesitated, looking at his chrono. His own inclination had been to appear at the last moment, which would place his dealings with others onto the comfortable basis of regulation interaction. But Fierin had talked him into going early, to introduce himself informally to his fellow officers, at least.

  “Then I have longer to fumble around sounding and looking like a fool,” he had said.

  She grinned, grabbing his ears to kiss him. “Better that than they think you’re a snob,” she said.

  “Snob?” he’d repeated, totally taken aback.

  “Whether you like it or not, you’re known to everyone as the Panarch’s boyhood friend and confidant, and though rank will make it possible to work with you, they’re going to stay strictly away unless you make the first move.”

  Osri knew enough of how preference and deference worked among the Douloi to see the force of what she said. He’d acquiesced—even though it had cut short, by an hour, their time together.

  But their time, however curtailed, had been sweet. Neither had talked of the future; they were both too much a part of the Douloi world, wherein words could so easily be misconstrued, or made false by damning circumstance. Their emotions had found outlet in passion, so strong and abiding that for once Osri had not felt clumsy, or awkward, or tentative.

  He shook his head. Memory of that time was for later.

  Now he had to keep his word to Fierin.

  He tabbed the door open and made his way to the officers’ wardroom.

  o0o

  Fierin vlith-Kendrian turned away from the port overlooking the enormous bulk of the Grozniy. She’d imagined herself by Osri’s side on his shuttle, then going aboard the battlecruiser, then settling in his rooms, which would be exactly like the ones she’d lived in secretly before Jes’s trial.

  But after that her imagination failed her, and anyway, it was time to go.

  She made her way through the crowd seeing off their families and lovers and friends. Everyone was polite, some distracted. A few betrayed traces of tears, most in tight little knots, utterly unaware of the little dramas so similar to their own being enacted within meters on all sides.

  I almost wish the Dol’jharians had attacked us, she thought as she waited in line for a transtube. It would have to be better than this terrible, deliberate parting. It’s like they’re going to their execution, and they know it.

  She winced away from the thought and welcomed the press of people on the trans-tube. It felt safe, to be pressed in a crowd. It felt . . . normal.

  The ride was short and oddly quiet. Very few people spoke. Fierin had been glad to join the crowd, but she was just as glad to leave it. She had never considered herself sensitive, but it was too easy to fancy the pain of separation felt by each of the people there multiplying into a kind of vast desolation.

  She knew she already missed Osri’s touch, his clean, masculine smell—for just as he employed none of the Douloi arts to mask or deflect emotions, he wore no jewels or personal scents. He was who he was: stiff, awkward, utterly honest, with a quirky sense of humor and solid as a planet in space.

  She did not want to think about a future without him in it.

  A sob, hastily suppressed, and a low murmur of voices caught her attention. Impulse made her strike off the walkway and take a shortcut across the lawns, giving the unseen their privacy.

  She reached the Enclave a short time later; even the ever-present guards seemed more solemn than usual.

  Inside, music greeted her, the slow, sustained harmonics of an opera whose words came from Lost Earth centuries before Exile. Fierin, who had studied music in school, was familiar with the tragedy of Troilus and Criseyde.

  Alone in the study Vannis sat, her profile absorbed, her thin hands gripping her upper arms. It was so revealing a pose—so uncharacteristic of Vannis—that Fierin was shocked.

  She stopped in the doorway, wondering if she should make her way to another entrance. But Vannis, ever sensitive, must have felt the air currents shift, for she looked up, and when Fierin lifted a hand in wordless question, she said, “Stay with me.”

  The shock turned to ice running through Fierin’s veins, but she asked no questions. Instead, she sat down on the couch next to Vannis and put her arm around the older woman—noticing again how small Vannis really was.

  Vannis’s head dropped back against Fierin’s shoulder, the subtle perfumes in her hair refreshingly pleasant. Vannis tightened her arm and shifted her hip so they fit more comfortably together, and Fierin stared at the flaring candles, wondering what in a tragedy about a woman with two loves could mean so much to Vannis now.

  Before long she was caught up in the opera, and time diminished into one of those rare stretches of infinity. Peace, at least on the surface. In sound: the music interspersed with the plashing of one of the ubiquitous fountains, and closer, their own breathing. In sight: the quiet room with its harmonious mixture of ancient and modern furniture, somehow masculine in feel, but maybe that was because she had first come to the room with Brandon as its master. His presence was invoked by little things, and Vannis’s by little things, the whole softened into dream by the light from twin candles on the low glass table.

  Will I remember this in future days?

  Her thoughts drifted, to be absorbed again into the music. Presently she shut her eyes, dream images guided by the pure voices singing out their tragic lives, until Vannis moved.

  It was a slight move, no more than a tightening of muscles, but Fierin was instantly alert.

  The room had gone even dimmer; only one candle remained, its flame a tiny flicker of blue.

  What was wrong? The music played on, unheeding; somewhere in the interval, the opera had ended and begun anew.

  Vannis brushed her lips softly against Fierin’s forehead, and then rose.

  A nyghtyngale, upon a cedir grenë,

  Under the chambre wal ther as she ley,

  Full loudë song ayein the moonë shenë . . .

  Fierin saw a tall figure in white cross the terrace to the open doors, and Vannis went to meet him.

  Brandon reached the doors, and though it was too dark to see his face, Fierin knew at once that he recognized the music, and it made him stop, his head lifted. What did it symbolize to them?

  Vannis said, her hands going out, “Your question can wait for my answer. There is someone you must ask first.”

  Brandon murmured, almost too softly to hear, “I must go.”

  Vannis said, “You have thre
e hours.”

  And as she slep, anonright tho hirë mettë

  How that an egle, fetherëd whit as bon,

  Under hirë brest his longë clawes settë,

  And out hire herte he rentë, and that anon . . .

  In an altered voice, with a hint of amusement, Vannis added, “Cormoran will present his story tomorrow, and your Rifters will be heroes. There will be nothing on Ares for you to fear.”

  And dide his herte into hirë brest to gon,

  Of which she nought agroos, ne nothynge smertë;

  And forth he fleigh, with hertë left for hertë.

  Brandon bowed, low and sustained, with both hands out in gratitude.

  But Vannis did not bow back. She took one of his hands, with the other gestured toward the hallway leading to the suites.

  Brandon laced his fingers in hers, and they went out together, leaving Fierin alone with the impassioned singers, and the quiet room, and the guttering candle.

  Four hours afterward, Vannis and Fierin stood together in silence, watching the departure of the Grozniy.

  It was strange, she thought, that for all the Douloi love of ritual, this most important departure was so lacking in drama. But, as Osri had explained to her, the Dol’jharians were undoubtedly watching the station with a VLDA, and so no signal of this ship’s importance could be given.

  Still, for those who knew what it implied and who had room in their hearts for inspiration, the silent ascent of the vast ship from its docking pit on glittering wings of dust-scattered radiance lifted spirits in spite of anguished hearts. Fierin’s own heart ached for the lover she already missed, and wonder for the two lovers whose presence would be forever entwined in memory with soaring arias from an ancient tragedy.

  Vannis stood straight and dry-eyed, her hands quiet and composed, her face like a carving from burnished wood, but as Fierin watched the ship lights winking out one by one, leaving only cold stars, the music played again in her mind and brought images of Troilus finding Criseyde’s house closed and shuttered and knowing she has left Troy.

  Instead of the vast darkness of space, she saw him weep at the sight of the barred doors as he cried out to the house as to a body from which the spirit is gone. “The lanterne of which queynt is the light.”

  She closed her aching eyes, fiercely willing herself not to weep. She was not the only one who had to face the terrible wait ahead, to be lived hour by painful hour, until they found out who won—who lived, who died.

  Vannis stirred and smiled. “Shall we return? There is much to be done.”

  “Tell me what I can do to help,” Fierin said.

  Fro thennesforth he rideth up and down,

  And every thyng comm hym to remembrauncë

  As he rood forby placës of the town

  In which he whilom hadde al his plesauncë.

  “Lo, yonder saugh ich last my lady dauncë;

  And in that temple, with hire eyen cleerë,

  Me kaughtë first my rightë lady derë . . .

  “And at that corner, in the yonder hous,

  Herde I myn alderlevest lady deerë

  So wommanly, with vois melodious,

  Syngen so wel, so goodly, and so clerë,

  That in my soulë yet me thynketh ich herë

  The blisful sown; and in that yonder placë

  My lady first me took unto hirë gracë.”

  PART THREE

  ONE

  ARTHELION

  Leontides Halkyn stood beside the man known to the rest of Arthelion Resistance only as the Masque, reflecting on how what had begun as identity suppression out of necessity had metamorphosed into a symbol so powerful it was taking on mythic proportions. The Masque stood at a console, watching the sunlit garden pathway three hundred meters directly above them, and Halkyn watched the Masque.

  Tall, with the muscular leanness of the born athlete, a shock of iron-gray hair queued at his nape, the upper portion of his face not scarred by plasma fire harsh in outline, he had once been handsome, and now, with the red silk mask that concealed all but his eyes, he was intimidating to the human viewer, though not to the Arkad dog and her two pups who gamboled around him, tongues lolling.

  Above them, Jesserian, commander of the Dol’jharian occupiers, stood motionless, gazing at the struggling figures caught in the coils of the serpents in the ancient marble statue Laocoön. The Dol’jharian was tall, heavy-boned, his aspect martial. It did not seem in character for him to be contemplating an old statue, but so he had been—for nearly a quarter of an hour.

  And the Masque had stood as long watching him via spy-eye.

  Halkyn suppressed a sigh as the mother paused, ears alert; then, at some sound or signal beyond Halkyn’s perception, she bolted off, followed by the pups, the only noise the clicking of their toenails on the cement of the corridor.

  Now there was nothing to look at but the still figure of the Masque, but patience was a lifelong companion. Halkyn permitted his mind to range freely.

  It was rare enough to have time for thought. In fact, it was probably a direct result of his having had scant opportunity for reflection that it was difficult to believe anything that had happened within the last year as real.

  Reality to Leontides Halkyn was being steward-in-residence to Gelasaar hai-Arkad, forty-seventh Panarch of the Thousand Suns. From his earliest memories he had always known he would be steward and had taken great pride in the fact that Arkads, while in their ancestral home, had been able to summon a Halkyn to their aid for over four hundred years.

  Reality had been knowing the best artisans for new porcelain tableware and how to buy properly hemmed linens for table, bain, and dormaivu. He knew all the support staff families whose expertise had been handed down through generations: those who carved ice, those who repaired tapestries, those who customized air cars, monitored aviaries, tended gardens, cleaned rooms full of treasures, served food with grace and artistry, and guarded the Net.

  By the time he was fifteen he had known the names and vocations of most of the staff in the Residence and Palace Major. By the time his grandmother indicated that she was thinking of retirement, and that he ought to be officially appointed as her heir, his knowledge had extended to the network of support staff all over the planet. For nearly fifty years he had taken pride in how smoothly life ran in the Palaces. His grandmother had often said to the young Leontides, The craft of stewardship is organization. The art of stewardship is invisibility. No one ever had to throw out faded flowers or ask that a carpet be cleaned. Guests had only to state preferences once, and those would be provided without further reminder, even if the visits were once every decade. Order, tranquility, grace. Halkyn bywords.

  Then Dol’jhar had blown all that to chaos.

  It was by the merest accident that Halkyn had been left alive. Horrified by the then unthinkable—the non-appearance of the Krysarch at his Enkainion—Halkyn had not trusted a runner or a comm, but himself had crossed the great distance to the Residence Wing, to find Krysarch Brandon’s rooms empty when they should have been full of personnel.

  He had gone straight down to the service level, a severe lecture forming in his mind, to find the valets and cleaners and servers lying dead in a lake of blood. Only then did he find that the comms were not working.

  He never made it back to the Ivory Hall: hurrying down the last short service corridor to return to his station, he had been knocked to his knees by the concussion of the blast that killed everyone within. And only some long-dead Arkad’s suspicious nature had kept him from dying of radiation, as the walls and floors had proved to be shielded.

  From there his memory was queerly blank. An instinct of self-preservation had prompted him to hide deep in the old Hegemonic maze, with which he had been familiar since childhood.

  Eventually he had found some of his old staff, one at a time, most as dazed and lost as he, and wit and motivation had returned when he discovered that too many others had been imprisoned by the conquerors.

 
There was nothing they could do for their dead, save quietly remove their bodies and bury them when the huge, heavy-booted Dol’jharian soldiers were not prowling around. But they could—and did—use the House system to fight against the enemy’s attempts to master the Palace. And not just the system, they used the orphans left by the Dol’jharians, and they also used the Arkads’ dogs.

  From these three elements the Resistance had been born.

  Halkyn understood that the knowledge he carried in his head was all the more valuable when, at last, the Dol’jharians succeeded in crippling the House computer enough to force entry, and the planetary DataNet had fallen soon afterward.

  It was about six weeks after the attack when, like a lightning bolt, the former Krysarch had reappeared, and before anyone on either side knew of his presence he vanished again, snatching the gnostor Omilov from Eusabian’s torturers—along with a goodly portion of the treasures in the Ivory Antechamber.

  After that visit the House computer had begun to change. At first no one comprehended quite how much, distracted as they were by the Dol’jharians’ violent reactions to the holographic ghosts that Aerenarch Brandon had released, then by the Battle of Arthelion.

  And then by the need to hide the survivors turning up in unexpected places.

  Soon after, Halkyn began to perceive that there had been some kind of fundamental change within the House computer. He had grown up working with this system and was familiar with all its peculiarities. It had been a kind of unseen companion all those years, and watching from a distance as Ferrasin tried hobbling it in order to master it had been as painful as watching a friend suffer dismemberment.

  It was when the survivors of that battle had landed at various points around the planet that the computer had undergone one of its mysterious shutdowns. This one was system-wide, sparking desperate measures on the part of the Dol’jharian techs to get it running again. When it did, Ferrasin had made no real attempt to reconstruct the lost data.