The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  Barrodagh—and Riolo and Vi’ya and her crew.

  At the thought of the black-eyed woman, his heart thumped faster, but he reassured himself with a reminder of Riolo’s promises. And he figured Barrodagh probably had plans in place as well. He’s probably more afraid of her than even Norio was, Hreem thought grimly. Which is why I’m still here. When she’s done with whatever they brought her for, if the Tarkans and the Ogres don’t get her, he knows I will.

  A pale-faced Bori tech ran down a side adit. “You! Come here!” Hreem yelled in Uni.

  The Bori slowed. “Don’t impede me,” he began. At least he spoke Uni.

  “Just want to know where the rec room is,” Hreem said.

  “Follow.” The Bori ran off. Hreem lengthened his strides and was soon brought before a big door that was held open all the time. Outside of it stood an Ogre, huge and forbidding even deactivated. Hreem watched his Bori guide give it one cringing look before he scuttled away.

  Ogres finally emplaced. Hreem grinned as he sauntered past. He knew what had taken so long. Lysanter must have tried every test known to Panarchists and Dol’jharians in order to find out if the Ogres had been booby-trapped, but the Barcans had obviously outsmarted him. Hreem had gambled on this. He knew if they’d found them, he might have faced the mindripper, but he’d trusted Riolo, at least as far as hiding the traps went. Riolo had his own plans, which so far meant cooperating with Hreem.

  So far. Hreem remembered that moment on the shuttle when Riolo had revealed he understood Dol’jharian. Somehow that fact had never come out during the time Riolo had crewed on the Lith.

  He scanned the rec room. Dol’jharians at one side ignored him after one cursory look; glances from the Bori on the other were more lingering, most of them apprehensive. Hreem enjoyed that. He liked people to be afraid of him. Put things on the proper footing right away, got business done faster.

  But what would he do with a lot of blunge-eating Bori, afraid or not? Stepping further inside, he noticed one table had the biggest crowd. Mostly Bori, but two Dol’jharian menials stood there, towering over the rest, watching.

  Hreem threaded his way toward that table and saw in the midst of the dark heads one with yellow curls.

  “Heyo, you vacuumskulls!” a fluting voice laughed—in Uni.

  Another Rifter! Had to be. One of Vi’ya’s crew.

  Shoving a couple of Bori out of his way, Hreem walked up and stood right across from her. She looked up; short, sharp face, tight clothes on a very nice body. Blue eyes raked him down slowly, then she leaned back in her pod, crossing her arms.

  “Why, if it isn’t the Panarch of puke-wits,” she said, somehow managing to sound cheerful and sneering at the same time.

  Hreem shoved a Bori off a pod and sat down. “What game you running, crotch-lips?”

  “Phalanx. L-2 for the toothless, L-3 for them who like a little fun.”

  Hreem snorted. It had been years since he’d bothered with computer games—why, when you could shoot real ships whenever you wanted? But he’d been good once, long before he became a captain, and it would be fun to tromp this mouthy little blit and make her squirm. “L-3 it is,” he said. “Stop yakkin’ and call it up. I’ll watch,” he added, certain the implication she cheated would annoy her further and thus make her play more poorly.

  But she just laughed. “Ram it up your blunge-hole, Hreem.”

  He had to laugh as well. He never would have tolerated this kind of backchat on his ship, but now he was enjoying it. He missed the wild anarchy of Rifthaven, the rowdy give-and-take of interactions there. Being shut up among these dour, puritanical Dol’jharians was giving him the jonahs and he hadn’t even felt it hitting him.

  For the first time in what seemed years, he felt the urge for some bunny fun with something—someone—besides his shestek.

  “Care to lay a little bet?” he asked.

  “What you got in mind?” she answered promptly.

  “We’ll think of something,” he said.

  Her lips curled, miming acute nausea, and she gave a snort that sounded like some kind of mammoth creature pulling a hoof out of sucking mud.

  But he noticed she didn’t say No.

  THREE

  Corianor carefully extended the lookaround into the cross-tunnel of the three-way junction. The ruddy walls surrounding him returned the quiet snicking of the imager’s telescoping joints in a soft, chattering echo. The image on the screen cradled in his palm trembled; he studied it for a long time before stepping carefully around the corner.

  His helmet lamp illuminated the corridor only a short distance ahead. Beyond, lit only by the dim, unchanging glow of the Suneater’s substance, the tunnel sloped up in irregular swales; its floor curved out of sight perhaps one hundred meters ahead. Further on, he knew, it pouched out into a vestibule with five tunnels opening on it. It was there that he had found the efflorescence of what the Rifter Marim called Black Negus.

  Corianor paused, every sense alert. Even before the Suneater devoured the tempaths the more remote corridors and adits had seemed haunted: never the same twice, though the differences had been subtle. Now he couldn’t even be sure he would find the vestibule where it had been, let alone still sprouting the prized Ur-fruit from every surface.

  Even worse, beyond this point there were no stasis clamps, only passive quantum interfaces. Corianor shuddered, the vid of the gray’s sacrifice Barrodagh had shown him still vivid in memory. There had been no stasis clamps in that chamber, either.

  Corianor fingered the safety-comp on his belt dubiously—the green light on it shone steadily. Any activity in the walls detected by the interfaces within its range would change the light to red and sound a tone. Supposedly, triggering the safety-comp would generate a destructive overload in the interfaces, creating a stasis in the Urian quantum-plast that might enable him to escape the terror that dwelled in the walls.

  If this one even works. It would be just like Barrodagh to have given him one that didn’t. He couldn’t test it. His superior would have him in the mindripper for squandering interfaces.

  Corianor wrenched his mind away from the image; it didn’t matter. He had no choice. Even above the screams of the hapless victim in the vid, Barrodagh’s acerbic voice was still etched in his memory. “I need not describe the consequences if your role in obtaining the Ur-fruit the grays used were to be revealed.” Then, to Corianor’s amazement, Barrodagh had continued, “So you will give her the fruit only when I tell you to.” His face had twisted into a painful, gloating smile. “You may even keep whatever it is you get from her in exchange.”

  Corianor burned with humiliation at the implication. Among the Catennach, to doubt that another had truly been neutered was the ultimate insult. But he was lowest in the Catennach here.

  Corianor heel-toed slowly up the tunnel, pausing frequently to listen, but he heard nothing save his own harsh breathing. The psychoactive varieties of Ur-fruit, which could now be found only in the remotest tunnels due to Delmantias’ efforts, had seemed a way up in the bureaucracy. He had been building a web of dependence among the low-caste Bori and the grays, but Barrodagh had been watching all along and had twisted Corianor’s efforts to his own advantage.

  He wasn’t watching now. There were no imagers this far out. No Ogres, either, but at this point Corianor almost would welcome their presence—if he could count on their protection.

  When he reached the vestibule, he was relieved to find he crop of Ur-fruit, the black-skinned, fist-sized spheroids glistening in the weird light. He began twisting them off their stems and stuffing them into a cloth bag, frequently checking his surroundings, especially the unreachable adit climbing at a steep angle from its mouth in the ceiling. The thing in the walls favored attack from above, it seemed.

  Then he heard a strange rhythmic whine, accompanied by a measured thumping, like footsteps. It was coming from the adit to his left. Startled, he hastened back the way he’d come, then staggered to a halt when he heard a tone fr
om his safety-comp. The light shone red; ahead the ceiling bulged strangely. He cringed against the wall as the bulge swelled into a blister that split to reveal a pair of black boots. Another dead victim!

  Corianor’s heart bounded painfully as he darted into another adit that twisted downward around a sharp bend. He was so intent on escape that he banged his head on the ceiling and his light went out. Blinking tears from his eyes, he crouched, terror clawing at his throat when he perceived in the dim light a short distance away that this corridor pinched off into an impassable cannula barely as wide as his head.

  The thump, thump grew louder; he hoped that the swale in the floor and the bend in the corridor would hide him from the nexus.

  The noises stopped. There was a soft thump from further away, followed by the sound of footsteps. Then a twin whine accompanied by metallic sounds, which ceased abruptly at the sound of a deep voice: “Hold.”

  The Avatar! Corianor began to tremble. The source of the strange whining sounds was clear to him now: the Ogres.

  “No Tarkans, Father?”

  Corianor’s bladder burned. There was no hope for him now. The other voice was that of the heir, Anaris.

  “I need no longer depend on them,” said Eusabian. “With these to guard me, the Suneater is mine alone.”

  Corianor heard the double meaning. So did Anaris, it seemed.

  “It seems neither of us need fear the chorahin, then.” That was what the grays now called the horror lurking in the walls—a word derived from the long-dead Chorei.

  “No,” replied the Avatar. “But fear of that fear?”

  What did that mean? What could it be but Barrodagh, and his insatiable desire to control everything—to know everything?

  What would Barrodagh give for a recording? If Corianor could just live through it, what would it be worth in the Catennach struggle?

  The thought gave him enough courage to trigger the lookaround’s memory. Then, with excruciating care, he carefully levered it into position, careful not to bang it into a wall, and extended the bare tip of it over the swale that concealed him from the two lords.

  Eusabian stood between his pair of Ogres, his heavy-shouldered figure shortened by the enormous battle androids with their insane double faces. A few meters away Anaris faced his father, his hands hanging easily at his sides. He stood directly under the ceiling opening; if he was aware of it, he was not disturbed.

  “Perhaps,” Anaris said. “It is you who has set a Chorei to energize this place.”

  Eusabian grunted. Was that a laugh or a growl? “The Avatar uses even the karra to fulfill his will.” It sounded like he was quoting someone.

  “Just so,” Anaris replied. “And so the weapon grows dull in your hand while you forbear to use it.”

  “It is sharp enough for the purpose.” Eusabian looked around. “This is a place of power, for both of us. But I can leave and still draw upon its strength. Can you?”

  “A pretty balance,” Anaris said, leaving Corianor even more confused. “For how long?”

  Eusabian gestured dismissively. “I do not fear the conclusion.”

  Anaris smiled slowly. “Nor I.” Then, after a further pause, “I shall enjoy polishing your skull.”

  Eusabian’s face darkened and he raised one hand, clenching his fist. The Ogres came to life. But as they glided forward with shocking speed, Corianor’s safety-comp toned softly and the floor of the vestibule convulsed, knocking the machines off balance as a hump pistoned under the heir’s feet and rocketed him up into the adit overhead, which shut behind him.

  A rumble receded into silence as the Ogres reached toward the ceiling.

  “Hold,” the Avatar said again, staring up at the pucker.

  Corianor held his breath as Eusabian lowered his gaze and looked around. Had he heard the safety-comp? Had the Ogres? But he left, the Ogres whine-thumping ahead and behind him.

  Corianor let his breath trickle out. He was still too weak with reaction to trust his legs. When his heart quieted, he collapsed the lookaround and returned to the vestibule. He studied the pucker in the ceiling, now flattening out like one of the many organic curves of the Suneater, and began picking Ur-fruit again.

  He was still alive. And with that recording!

  Let’s see Barrodagh sneer at me now.

  o0o

  Barrodagh did not sneer. He curbed his impatience, an effort made easier by the flush of triumph accelerating his heartbeat.

  “Very well,” he said to Corianor. “You will be suitably rewarded. For now—” He let threat sharpen his voice. “—no one is to know about this.”

  Corianor’s eyes widened, and Barrodagh held out his hand. “I’ll take care of that.”

  Corianor surrendered the lookaround, bowed, and left.

  As soon as he was gone, Barrodagh copied the lookaround’s recording into his compad, then erased the memory. Dropping the tool into a corner on top of a stack of flimsies, he tabbed the compad and watched the interaction again, and a third time, with the avid fascination of one who has been too long thwarted in his ambition to witness the Avatar and the heir together—alone.

  I shall enjoy polishing your skull. Was that the opening move in the war of the succession, or did they always issue such overt threats to one another when they were alone? In the presence of others, they were either impassive or cooperative—the Avatar being very specific about the transfers of power to his son—and once or twice Barrodagh suspected they were sharing a secret amusement, laughing at him.

  He brought a hand up, gnawing at a ragged nail. Familiar as his nightmares was the old wish that he had been farther up in the Catennach hierarchy when Jerrode had made his move against Urtigen, the then Avatar. He had not been privy to any of the planning; he had only suspected imminent action after observing the exponential increase in tension among the upper hierarchy.

  He remembered being woken up one night and issued explicit orders, which he carried out with no deviation. On his return to the Catennach tower he’d discovered his predecessor standing over the mangled remains of Urtigen’s secretary. Just as Morrighon expects to come after me, he thought, anger tightening his guts again.

  Unless I get you first. So how to use this new data with the most effect?

  The screen was frozen on Anaris’s sardonic smile. Barrodagh clenched his jaw. How he loathed that smile, and the fearlessness and sense of superiority that prompted it. He tabbed the screen again and watched Anaris’s spectacular exit.

  Telekinesis.

  All the anomalies fell into place: the flying objects in the landing bay when Norio died, the theft of the drugs from Norio’s quarters—so Morrighon didn’t know I was using them—and Anaris’s mysterious insistence that he be apprised of the experiments with the tempaths, only to hide instead of observe.

  Barrodagh was certain that if Anaris had had this ability previous to his arrival at the Suneater, it had been negligible. But the station had somehow enhanced it.

  Which means he was born with the taint of the Chorei.

  For inexplicable reasons, the Avatar had chosen to delegate certain powers to Anaris. Of course the heir did his best to augment these at his father’s expense. And mine. One of the most serious erosions of the Avatar’s power, Barrodagh felt, was through the strengthening bond between the Tarkans and Anaris.

  Favored of Urtigen, the Tarkans called the heir.

  Barrodagh sat back, contemplating the Tarkans. Fiercely loyal, austere, and unimaginative, they scorned political maneuvering—and they were sincere in cleaving to Dol’jharian superstition. Their leader was all of these things to an extreme.

  Barrodagh smiled, savoring Chur-Mellikath’s likely reaction when he saw this evidence of Anaris achreash-Eusabian’s tainted Chorei blood. Nothing short of an exhibition of cowardice, which unfortunately was not a remote possibility with Anaris, could more effectively undercut that alliance.

  And best of all, Morrighon will not find out, Barrodagh thought, and laughed.

 
; o0o

  Marim woke up in a good mood.

  At first she couldn’t identify why, and she had to laugh at herself. Good mood? At the Suneater? I must be going crazy-bad, and I don’t even know it.

  She sat up, seeing the others waking up as well. Unfortunately they were all used to emergencies, thus were light sleepers. If one person woke, everyone did.

  “Markers,” Lokri said sleepily.

  They all tossed a coin into a bowl. Montrose dropped a data chip on the table, averted his eyes, and shook the bowl until the coins had fallen out near the chip. Everyone glanced down to see where his or hers had fallen. The owner of the coin closest to the chip got a shower first.

  For once Marim was in ahead of everyone else.

  Under the stinging water, she thought over her day and identified the cause of the good mood: anticipation. Rec room—and Hreem. Safe under the rushing water, she snickered.

  Who would have thought it? She actually had fun when the chatzer came in to play. She loved insulting him to his face, and it was even more fun to destroy him at L-3. Though lately she’d lost almost as many as she’d won, and those wins were tougher to make.

  They’d made a lot of reckless bets, since neither had anything real to stake. Though as yet neither of them had even pretended to collect, she had a feeling . . .

  He’s interested, all right. And why not have a little fun on the side? Maybe I can find something out that will give us an edge. She rather liked the picture of herself offering some crucial bit of data, casual like, into general conversation. She’d love to see the looks on the others’ faces. Be a nice change from them acting like I left my brains back at Dis.

  She might give Hreem a taste of Black Negus and see what happened. She had a good supply, thanks to Corianor’s addiction to games—and his being terrible at them.

  Weird, how the twistiest mind in the place at runnin’ free market is the stupidest at games. Corianor had control of most of the illegal trade in Ur-fruit, and what he didn’t control, he had a piece of. Black Negus was what she called the rarest kind of all—it was a little like a blend of the best and strongest liquor plus a dash of hopper plus maybe some Vilarian Negus, but not enough to ruin your fun by bringing on those stupid dreams.