A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  Archon Srivashti seemed too obvious a suspect; far more likely someone hoped to lay the blame for Brandon’s death on Srivashti. Except that anyone who knew Srivashti’s reputation would never believe he’d try anything that crude.

  Again: or so we’re meant to assume, Jaim thought, and grimaced. This was getting so convoluted it gave him vertigo.

  Nothing untoward occurred on the short journey to the glittership. They made it in silence, Brandon looking out in open appreciation at the long length of the fabulous yacht. Jaim eyed the weapons nacelles, both the blatant ones and those disguised, and reflected on the utility of visual communication. This yacht was a moving fortress disguised as a palace.

  I’ll know more when I can see this Archon without the usual crowd of heel-licking blunge-suckers around.

  The gig nestled up against the forward lock of the yacht. A muted boom and clank, a hiss of air, and the doors slid open.

  The Archon waited there himself. Jaim looked past him at the servant hovering behind, a long-faced man who wore patience as a shield, his clothing designed for unobtrusiveness. This was Felton, Srivashti’s personal servant.

  Jaim remembered what Vahn had said about him: He’s a mute the Archon found and rescued from a hellhole somewhere when they were both hardly old enough to shave. No one knows anything about Felton except that he’s an expert in the Kelestri numathanat—the breath that kills—and other neurotoxins.

  Srivashti welcomed Brandon with a profound bow, then gestured the way inside. Jaim missed the first few exchanges as he scanned the environment, the stances of the Archon and his servant. The light cadences of Douloi talk penetrated his consciousness.

  “. . . demands on your time,” the Archon was saying. His voice was husky and low, not unpleasant. “I trust that we can keep you tolerably entertained.”

  “Entertainment,” Brandon returned, lifting his hands, “has been my goal in life.”

  “And a worthy one it is.” Srivashti smiled. “Come this way. Felton! Is the table laid?”

  The liegeman bowed, his lank dark hair swinging close to his face.

  Srivashti motioned Jaim ahead, and they descended a spiral stair into what appeared to be a garden—complete with waterfall.

  The gesture was benevolent. By permitting him to go first, the Archon was acknowledging that Jaim’s liege-bond to Brandon made it necessary for him to check things out, no matter where they were. The Archon could have forced a trust issue, making Jaim’s job more difficult.

  Heady scents filled the air: arrissa, jumari, swensoom. Tranquility seemed to be the keynote. Jaim scanned a low, inlaid table set under a sheltering tree. Silver platters framed a cleverly arranged variety of delicacies. Jaim recognized some of the many-layered pastries, and a surreptitious sniff promised mouth-watering complexities of taste: the Archon had a Golgol chef on his unseen staff.

  Jaim moved from dish to dish, glancing at his boswell unobtrusively. The clone monitor remained quiescent. He knew that he would find nothing amiss anywhere here.

  But he would go through the motions, anyway.

  Once Jaim had finished, Srivashti picked up a golden bottle. “Please, Highness. We’ve a variety of things to offer. I can particularly recommend the crespec. It was an especially fine blend, laid down by my grandmother.”

  Brandon gestured compliance, and Srivashti poured out amber liquor into two fragile shells grown naturally in the shape of flutes.

  “Aerenarch Semion was my close associate,” he said, handing Brandon one glass, “and I like to think my friend.” Srivashti lifted his glass. “In honor of that friendship, behold me exerting myself to continue that alliance.”

  Brandon’s slight bow was polite, his free hand graceful in deference. Jaim knew enough to recognize it as an answer, but not what it signified.

  They drank. “Come, Highness,” Srivashti said with a disarming air of appeal. “Shall we speak plainly?”

  “Plain speaking,” said Brandon, his countenance guileless, “is a gift.”

  Srivashti laughed. “Let us talk, then, as we play.”

  He led the way down a beautifully tiled corridor, to a round room carpeted with living moss that silenced their footfalls; the tianqi diffused cool air with a trace of astringent herbs.

  Subtly lit plants lined the matte-black walls; Jaim’s boswell identified them as rare examples from Timberwell’s eight continents. The ceiling opened to space, or appeared to. Through the window an edge of the huge station loomed, glinting redly in the light of the giant sun it orbited.

  The center of the room offered a billiards table, set on legs carved of paak-wood, the metal-rich soil of its world of origin showing up as subtle colorations in the dark wood’s grain.

  Felton came last, bearing an ancient silver tray as Srivashti moved to a discreet console and caused part of a wall to slide noiselessly aside, revealing a rack of cues.

  “Bluff billiards,” Brandon murmured, looking intrigued. “My older brother played that.”

  “I had many a good game with His Highness.” Srivashti spread his hands gracefully. “Which made the tiresome necessities easier to dispose of.”

  Brandon selected a cue. These, too, were carved from paak-wood, tipped with gilded metal.

  Felton set the tray on a sideboard and refilled the shells.

  “Will you break, Highness?” Srivashti turned his palm up in graceful invitation; to Jaim, it was all as deliberate as a dance, and as mannered.

  Brandon again made the gesture of deference, giving the Archon first stroke, and sipped at the liquor. Crespec, Jaim recalled, was a liquor distilled several times from a plant found only on a world far out-octant. Extremely expensive, it smelled beguilingly of blended wood and smoke, and it didn’t take much to hit the human system hard; Jaim thought he could scent the alcohol fumes from where he stood.

  Srivashti tabbed his console once again, and a subliminal hum signaled the activation of gravitic fields. Across the smooth green surface of the table colorful billiard balls rolled, both holographic and real, to assemble into a perfect triangle. The computer brought the white ball out last, positioning it at the other end of the table from the triangle’s apex.

  The Archon stepped around the table, lined up his cue, and with a forceful tap knocked the white ball directly into the triangle.

  Both players watched the random scattering of the balls. Jaim watched as well, trying to note in the veering trajectories of the balls where they passed through gravitic fluctuations, and at the same time keeping the white ball in sight, in case it touched any of the real balls or passed through a holo-ball.

  One of the solid-colored balls thunked into a pocket.

  “Low balls to me, Highness,” Srivashti said with an air. “A cosmically appropriate disposition of affairs, no?”

  Brandon saluted him with his glass.

  Srivashti looked concerned. “The crespec does not suit?”

  “It is very fine.” Brandon sipped.

  Srivashti bowed, then stepped around the table, his attention on the balls as he murmured, “Most regrettable are what appear to be growing tensions between the Navy and your civilians in Service. One wishes they would perceive how facilitating cooperation would benefit everyone, don’t you find, Highness?” The title was added just after the Archon bent to line up a shot.

  “I do,” Brandon said.

  Smack! The white curved around the one obvious anomaly and ticked against a solid ball near a pocket. As Srivashti straightened up, the ball dropped out of sight.

  The Archon smiled. “Details.” He tapped his cue lightly. “Must stay within bounds, of course, but one might be permitted to ask this much: has Nyberg taken you into his briefings?”

  “Just as much as he is required by law,” Brandon said.

  Snick! Once again the white ball wound its way between the others, not touching any but its target, then rolled gently to a stop.

  Dead zone? thought Jaim. Or just not strong enough a hit?

  With anot
her of those bows, Srivashti stepped back, and drank with a careless air.

  And once again Brandon returned his deference, courtesy for courtesy. He cocked his head, bent, shot.

  It was a bad shot by anyone’s standards. The white caromed into a cluster of balls, scattering them fanwise. Two of them rolled swiftly to a stop: he’d found the dead zone, or one of them, at least. The other three ran merrily through—holo-balls, despite the tick as they rebounded off the side.

  Srivashti stepped up to the table. “You are, Your Highness,” he said slowly, as if his mind were not at all on the game, “in probably the most difficult position any of your illustrious House have ever found themselves.” He looked back over his shoulder.

  Brandon saluted him with his glass.

  Srivashti continued studying the table as he drank. Two balls were easy shots, but were they real or not? Only a player’s ball could move a holo; the white passed right through them.

  He paused to line up a hard shot, then sent an apologetic smile at Brandon as he raised his glass to him, causing them to drink again. “One endeavors to avoid the tactlessness of the obvious simile.”

  Simile? Jaim thought, watching Srivashti’s cue strike, swift and sure, sending the white toward a blue—and through it.

  Srivashti finished his drink with a toss, holding the crystal flute out to be refilled without looking to see where Felton was. “Sympathetic as I am, that is not the crux of our dilemma. Until we know, we have merely the ashes of the former government.”

  He means the Phoenix—the Panarch—dead.

  Brandon made a random shot. Again he sent the balls scattering; Jaim tried to watch them all, and thought he saw the white pass through the edge of one high ball. Three others passed through, or near the edge of the dead zone—then the timer chimed, which indicated another change in the gravitic flux.

  “But my father is still alive,” he said.

  “Let us drink to that,” Srivashti responded, raising his full glass.

  “We can get him back if a rescue mission goes to Gehenna,” Brandon said as Srivashti sank another ball.

  Srivashti moved around the table. “The prospect of battle,” he said, lining up another shot, “is the only subject I’ve heard more frequently than battle reminiscences.”

  Brandon said nothing.

  “The risks are very real, Your Highness, as I am sure you are aware.” Srivashti’s smile was reflective. “And the reminiscences hint at a disturbing possibility.”

  Brandon said, “The Dol’jharians possessing hyperwave capabilities.”

  Srivashti’s smile widened—he was not at all surprised to hear the word hyperwave. “So that was the subject of Nyberg’s secret briefing?” He tapped the white ball delicately and stood back to watch its slow progress, bent by a flux.

  “Ng and a few of her officers put together a hypothesis after analyzing battle data,” Brandon said.

  The white brushed Brandon’s two real balls, making them roll inward slightly.

  I’ll wager my life that’s the dead zone, Jaim thought.

  “And nothing more concrete than that?” Srivashti stepped aside with a graceful gesture.

  Jaim reflected that anyone with any kind of connection knew to the minute how long the briefing had been.

  Brandon said with a slight shrug, “Those not involved in the pertinent battles found it difficult to believe. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Did you, Your Highness?”

  “I believe nothing without evidence,” Brandon replied.

  Srivashti laughed softly. “The assurance of youth. I, however, am older, and I have come to give credence to persistent rumors—even the inconvenient ones. Sometimes those especially.”

  “Such as?” With great care, Brandon shot, and sank one of his balls. He made a second shot, which seemed to go wide.

  “Such as the belief, held by many, that a government in suspension is more dangerous even than the enemy.”

  “There is the question of authority,” Brandon said.

  “True.” Srivashti scanned the table. “But where one is limited, several can carry a point.”

  “Belief,” Brandon said, “requires evidence.”

  That’s the second time he’s said that, Jaim thought. A challenge?

  Srivashti flashed another well-bred smile as he made his shot, and the ball rolled just short of the pocket. “Belief, if Your Highness will honor me with permission to contradict—” Again the deference, calculated to the millimeter. “—requires faith. Those who made their Vows of Service swear to a person, but only insofar as that person symbolizes the polity as a whole.”

  Brandon’s countenance had smoothed to the blank, bland one that Jaim had begun to suspect was only seen when Brandon’s mind was working fastest. He bent and made three shots in succession. Brandon doesn’t need to be told what the vows—Belatedly Jaim remembered that Brandon had not made his own vows, had skipped out on the ceremony.

  His mind churning furiously, Jaim tried to focus on the game—and realized that Brandon was, very suddenly, ahead.

  “Well done, Highness,” Srivashti said. “You were quite helpless: I really thought I had you.”

  He bent to shoot, his shoulders and arms lined with a new tension. He took a long minute to line up his shot, and when he made it, even Jaim could see that it was brilliant. The balls moved in a complex pattern, some dropped—and he was only one shot behind.

  “Good.” Brandon tipped his head, brows up. “Very good.”

  Srivashti acknowledge with a gesture. “You see, there are some things an old man such as myself could teach you.”

  Now it was Brandon’s turn to make the deferential gesture, but with an airy grace that somehow indicated humor. “I’ve so many interested in my welfare,” he said. “Nearly half a dozen tutorials offered since my arrival.”

  What the hell does he mean by that? He can’t be about to tell this chatzer about the Navy lessons?

  But Srivashti did not query it. His eyes narrowed, and he shot, a convulsive movement that unaccountably missed by a thread’s breadth. He had one ball left. As he stood back, Jaim sensed his reluctance—the man had to win.

  Srivashti raised his glass again, forcing Brandon to drink. The Aerenarch flexed his hands, blinked a couple of times, bent, and lined up his shot. He grunted when the white ball veered, making a lazy run that slingshot past a slow zone and caromed off the Archon’s ball before homing straight for his own.

  It could have been the best shot of the game, for the white smacked Brandon’s last two balls right in a line. But the white was too slow, and Srivashti’s ball had been hit too hard; all three reached pockets, the solid one, quite clearly, first.

  The Archon had won by default. Brandon winced and rubbed his jaw. Srivashti was too controlled to be obvious about his triumph, but his sharp cheekbones betrayed the faintest color.

  Brandon blinked as if his vision blurred.

  “Another game, Highness?”

  “As you wish,” Brandon said. “I’d like to recover my honor.”

  It was said in the grand style, and Srivashti laughed. “But there is no dishonor in losing to me, Highness,” he said expansively. “Even your brother lost to me, and he was one of the most formidable players I ever faced.”

  “My brother,” Brandon said. His light voice betrayed the faintest slur. “I’ve a question for you.”

  “Please, Highness.” Srivashti indicated for Brandon to shoot first, which he did, a random shot that sent the balls everywhere.

  Brandon hardly seemed to notice. He made several more seemingly random shots, sinking one ball each time, then he said, “You were my brother’s ally. You must have had mutual contacts before Eusabian’s fleet blew everything to fragments.” He shot and missed.

  Srivashti winced in sympathy for the missed shot before bending to line up his cue. “I know very little,” he admitted, “but what I do know I will place at your disposal if you wish, Highness.”

  “Please.” Br
andon stood back, watching Srivashti make another careful, calculated shot that downed a pair of balls. “I was given to understand that my brother’s body was found in the singer’s bedroom. But did your sources happen to note what happened to the singer?”

  “Suicide, Highness,” Srivashti said without any evidence of emotion, as if they discussed the weather, and bent once more to tap the white. “Her body was found in the bain. A time-honored neurotoxin often employed in suicides and mercy killings: quite painless.” Snick! One, then two balls dropped into pockets, and the Archon smiled.

  “Damn,” Brandon said congenially. “You’ve won again.”

  “Another game?”

  Regret informed Brandon’s deference. “If there were time,” he said. “But I promised to be an official presence at another gala event this evening.”

  They exchanged politenesses as they progressed back through the huge ship to the lock. Then, just before they reached it, Srivashti said, “You enjoy these official appearances, it is to be hoped, Your Highness?”

  Brandon’s brows lifted just slightly. “They’re a habit.”

  Srivashti inclined his head. “I was going to say—if you honor an old man’s well-meant advice. It does people good to see you in the social arena. The chaos we decried earlier creates added tensions. Your presence indicates at least an appearance of things resuming their natural courses.”

  “Thank you,” the Aerenarch said, “for the advice. And for the game.”

  They took their leave then, escorted by the silent Felton. Jaim’s last sight before the lock closed was the man’s unwinking gaze, blank as a statue.

  And as soon as they were on the gig, Brandon said, “He must have downed alcohol neutralizers, or his liver is dyplast and steel.”

  Jaim handed Brandon a tab of neutralizer; Brandon took it and walked straight through to the bain.

  Jaim guided the gig away from the huge ship, thinking rapidly.