A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  “So it’s a tradeoff.” Marim whistled, her mind veering back to Brandon’s situation. “So anything the Arkad does . . .”

  “The Arkad,” Vi’ya said, “can look to his own problems. Jaim is observant. Conceal your reactions, for he will be here s—”

  The annunciator interrupted her.

  Marim gulped, slapping her hand across her face. “I’m for the shower,” she whispered, choking down laughter. “When I come out I’ll be fine—I promise.”

  Vi’ya’s mouth curled. “Hurry. I want to see the concourse before it gets too crowded.”

  Marim had little interest in hypothetical hyperwaves; the news about Jaim’s telltale consumed her imagination. The problem, she thought as she faced into the streaming water, was that she found the Arkad even more attractive than she found Jaim. Purely for personal entertainment, she decided she’d have to find out what—if anything—the Arkad was doing with his time.

  But not when Vi’ya was around.

  When she went out, she was under control. Which was as well, because she found not just Jaim but the Arkad. Ivard had appeared from somewhere and babbled eagerly, his nose twitching and sniffing like some kind of rodent, although admittedly he’d somehow turned into a kind of handsome rodent.

  Marim looked past him, to meet Brandon’s smiling blue gaze. She grinned at him, but before either could say a word, Vi’ya hit the door-pad. “Let us go.”

  Mindful of listening ears, Marim stayed silent on the walk. The time it took to get downstairs and to the transtube steadied her; Vi’ya, of course, scarcely spoke at all, and Ivard blathered on about what fun he was having with that crazy old nuller up at the spin axis. Fear was soon replaced by the strong urge to create mischief, but Marim controlled it (she thought) admirably, only permitting herself to add an interesting variety of adjectival opprobrium to any reference to the Navy or Panarchy.

  Obedient to Vi’ya’s wishes, she led them the long way down the concourse so that Vi’ya could see for herself the ways to the ships, and the obstacles that would have to be planned for.

  When they reached the null-gym the game was already in progress, the huge space echoing to the eponymic impact of the thirty-centimeter balls on the fine repel mesh surrounding the playing area. As yet, very few of the players in the cavernous space had balls adhering to them. The two teams were still maneuvering for position among the jump pads and vector cables that permitted the contestants to change direction in free-fall.

  The balls stuck only to each other or the uniforms of the players. They were dispensed automatically by machines within the goal spheres of each team. Eventually the arena would be adrift with floating shoals of balls, posing a serious hazard to any player pushed or deflected into them by an opponent.

  Marim hid her disdain as they made their way toward some seats near the boundary mesh of the arena, their feet firmly making contact with the floor at one standard gee. It was typical of nicks to balance out the gravitors only inside the arena, leaving the spectators under acceleration. Half the fun of splat-ball, in her opinion, was having the spectators jetting around in free-fall, too, trying for the best vantage point as the focus of the two teams shifted. Sometimes the action outside was even more exciting than the game.

  She had decided it might be amusing to flirt a little with the Arkad, and make those listening ears wish they knew something about Rifter fun. When Ivard saw a friend and dashed off, she was pleased to have him gone.

  But somehow—she wasn’t sure how—she and Jaim ended up together, stationed behind the Arkad and Vi’ya. A crowd of enthusiastic spectators separated them: Navy and civilian and non-citizen, packed together in friendly chaos as the cadence of the game accelerated.

  The crowd bellowed with delight as a muscular young woman grabbed an opponent in mid-flight and, pulling him briefly against her body to accelerate their spin through conservation of angular momentum, kissed him mockingly and then whipped him sprawling into a clump of splat-balls, converting him into an ungainly lump of mass that spun helplessly up against the boundary mesh.

  The young woman blew kisses at the spectators, then grabbed a vector cable and spun around to support her teammates’ drive on the opposing team’s goal. Her flight took her across the arena, in front of Vi’ya and Brandon silhouetted against the increasingly frenzied action in the arena.

  Marim tried to edge Jaim closer so she could overhear their conversation.

  Jaim didn’t move; Brandon had said on their way to D-5, “I want to talk to Vi’ya alone, if I can.”

  The game was exciting, but Marim found the two more interesting, Vi’ya in profile with her hands behind her back, the brilliant glare highlighting one hard-edged cheekbone and her long fall of glossy black hair. The Arkad faced her, the light full on his wide blue gaze so intent on Vi’ya.

  Marim nudged Jaim. “Does he have lovers?”

  “Who?”

  “The Arkad.”

  Jaim’s gray gaze was remote. “Ask him.”

  Marim pursed her lips, studying Jaim. His blank face and unconscious poise were not characteristic. This was not the old stooped, shambling Jaim, who had deferred to Reth Silverknife in everything, and hid his lethal training behind a lazy front. He looked like a bodyguard. He might not count himself a nick, but he is changing. I wonder if he knows it?

  She chewed a thumb as she went back to watching Vi’ya and the Arkad. Something had happened in the brief time she’d looked away. Vi’ya’s stance had not changed, but Brandon had stepped closer, and he gestured once, the tendons in one long hand highlighted by a pouring of golden light from the arena. His face was the same as always: smiling, open, tolerant, but the intensity was still there, in the half-lifted hand, and in compressed breathing.

  He was waiting for something, but Marim could not see what it was; when she tried to edge past Jaim, his elbow stuck in her way, solid as dyplast, as he leaned forward to watch the game.

  Marim sighed and gave up.

  A rasping honk filled the null-gym as the young woman who’d so competently disposed of her opponent speared the goal with her outstretched fist.

  The crowd erupted all around them, exclaiming, shouting, paying off bets. When Marim could see past them again, the Arkad was alone, lounging against a chair as he talked to a small circle of Naval officers, who, from their attitudes, seemed to know him.

  From his days at the nick Academy, she thought. She’d never seen him among friends before; it was astonishing how much he reminded her of Markham, yet they did not look at all alike.

  She was going to comment until she noticed that Jaim had gone. She spotted him behind the Arkad, stolid as stone, just like a bodyguard.

  Vi’ya appeared at her shoulder. “Let us go.”

  Marim held her tongue all the way back.

  Inside their suite, she flung her arms wide. “So?”

  Vi’ya turned, unsmiling. Her stance was a warning, but Marim, crazy with frustrated conjecture, almost yelled: “If you don’t tell me what the Arkad was on about, I’ll . . .”

  Vi’ya was still a long, sickening moment, then shrugged faintly. “Escape,” she said. “He offered me anything I wanted if I’d get him off this station and take him to Gehenna.”

  Marim sagged like a collapsed bellows. “Damn that logos-chatzing telltale,” she groaned. “Can you imagine the money we just lost? Not, of course, that we’d actually do something as idiotic as go to Gehenna, but . . .”

  Vi’ya went to her room and shut the door.

  Marim turned to the wall and slammed her fist against it repeatedly in slow motion, leaning forward until the cool dyplast stopped her forehead. As far as craziness went, she decided, there was little to choose from between nicks and Dol’jharians.

  They deserve each other.

  Maybe Ozip was still free. That was one way to stop thinking about what you couldn’t change.

  THREE

  ABOARD THE SAMEDI

  “I learned skepticism from you Panarchists,” Anari
s said. “I experienced the spectrum of passion without the relative safety of ritual-justified rage as motivation. I learned to laugh.”

  “Yet?” the Panarch prompted.

  “Yet there remain two concepts, both of which I observed with interest, without divining their purpose. The first was your custom of marriage.”

  “That is simple enough to explain,” Gelasaar said. “It is a custom retained from the days of Lost Earth. It provides a venue for continuity both materially and genealogically, for those families who desire it. It has a stabilizing influence on the social fabric.”

  “Yet you yourself stepped outside of the conventions when you made your own marriage: your wife was from an obscure family who—at least on record—refused closer involvement with your network of social alliances. Yet I found that your marriage included vows of monogamy.”

  “All true,” the Panarch said. “And the exchange of rings, both of which are very old customs from Lost Earth.” He held up his hands, and on the ring finger of each could be seen pinkish worn skin: one from his wedding ring, and the other from his personal signet.

  “So you did not, in fact, make an alliance for the good of society in general.”

  “No, I chose to please myself.”

  “Why a marriage, then, if there was no advantage to your social infrastructure? Why not a mate match, as is common at all levels in your society? You Douloi would say ‘consort,’ which I understand is a concubine with legally constituted rights.”

  The Panarch’s eyes lifted contemplatively, then he said, “If you had known Ilara, you would not need to ask. In your researches, did you discover any criticism of my choice of Kyriarch from those who had direct contact with her?”

  “Only my father,” Anaris said, his dirazh’u lying quiescent in his hands.

  The Panarch inclined his head. “It is not completely true to say that I chose to please myself. I hoped that some measure of her brilliance would invest our offspring.”

  “And?” Anaris asked, amused.

  “And there was nothing of her in my oldest son, who is a mirror for my grandfather. There was too much of my reclusiveness in my second son, leaving room only for Ilara’s humor, her acute sensitivity to the arts. But in Brandon . . .” He lifted his hands. “The one who never really knew her, the best of us both is blended.”

  Anaris burst out laughing.

  ARES

  Vannis had only worn gowns at the most formal state events, so all her exquisite formal wardrobe had been left at the Mandala. For her journey with Rista she had brought the fitted robes of less formal evening attire, the drapes popular for select intimate events, and of course the layered shirts and trousers for daily wear.

  ‘Gowns’—a word that connoted gender specificity—hearkened back to a time unimaginable, when genders moved in different spheres, except in carefully delineated social exchange.

  She rather liked the form-fitting upper half, the gravitas of the train whispering behind her; and above all, she loved knowing that the vapor-soft silks that constituted her two new gowns had been fashioned from bedroom curtains.

  She had saved the newest one for this private gathering deep in Tau Srivashti’s glittership. She chose a position from which she was framed by a spectacular backdrop of stars. The silk reflected the faux light in runnels along the braid-vine silver embroidery over her shoulder, around wrists, along hem.

  As she leaned on balustrade, she glanced from right to left: to either side of her a white-capped expanse of water spilled over an invisible edge, disappearing into the infinite void below. The room appeared open to space; the circular black couch below, sunk into the floor between two streams of running water with the tianqi generating a salt-tinged ruffling breeze, created the fantasy of a boat sailing under the stars at the edge of the ancients’ flat world-disc.

  She affected an attitude of listening to the conversation going on below, but as it was all superficials, she reviewed her own situation. Yenef had proved to be a treasure, her eye as clever as her fingers, and Vannis had heartily approved her slow-growing side-business of altering clothing for those who had the means but no access to the better tailors. In a startlingly frank conversation that would never have happened in the old days, Vannis and Yenef had discussed who would be favored with Yenef’s discreet business, and how much credit was to be wrung from them.

  Unfortunately it was not nearly enough.

  Seated below, with the exquisite Fierin close by his side, Tau Srivashti could appreciate the lovely picture Vannis made as he waited for the right moment to get to his purpose. On the surface, this was merely a dinner for friends. The location, a central room on the yacht seldom seen by any but Srivashti’s intimates: only here could he feel certain of not being overheard, not even by his own staff.

  He wondered what Vannis was thinking, and if she had divorced herself from the speculation about Brandon Arkad’s miraculous escape from the dirty bomb in the Ivory Hall because she was bored, or because she knew more truth than she was admitting.

  He looked forward to teasing it out of her.

  But before then . . . how long would the others present hoot questions at one another that no one could answer?

  Stulafi Y’Talob leaned forward, his massive form intimidating. “Did he say anything to you during this game in which you so thoroughly trounced him?”

  “Very little of interest,” Srivashti said. “The Aerenarch is an intriguing young man. Very pleasant, really. His manner reminds one occasionally of his mother.” He gestured. “Joking with the hands.”

  Srivashti’s tense. No, he’s angry, Vannis thought. What did he ask Brandon for? Whatever it was, he did not get it.

  “I think the Aerenarch’s attractive.” Fierin smiled, toying with the archon’s fingers.

  “A cogent reminder,” Srivashti said, lifting her palms up to kiss them, one then the other. “Even those without tangible ambition can charm followers when they choose.”

  Amusement flickered through Vannis at Srivashti’s rare show of weakness. Did he really see subtlety in Fierin’s callow statement?

  Is he smitten, then? His dalliances were usually with the young and inexperienced, as she herself knew very well, and always with some political end in view. Fierin vlith-Kendrian was at the outside of his age interest, and she had no political clout whatever. Superficial but not stupid, Vannis had decided on meeting her; at first it had seemed foolish for Fierin not to take over her family’s title and assume legal custody of their considerable holdings. After observation, Vannis had come to the conclusion that Fierin knew what she was doing—she got a great deal further on the sympathy engendered by her unorthodox handling of her faintly sordid past.

  The surprise was Srivashti keeping her so close, as if to protect her from the world. It amused Vannis that Srivashti should exhibit a sentimental streak at this late date.

  Unless, of course, there was more to the Kendrian situation than met the eye.

  The Harkatsus Aegios spoke for the first time. “The Aerenarch seems remarkably reclusive.”

  The rider, unspoken, was clear: Despite what one has heard.

  “But he’s giving this concert,” Fierin said. “I was told that he’s managed to get the Kitharee to perform with that consortium from the Akademia Musika. Don’t the Kitharee have some religious ban on making music with outsiders? I don’t believe they’ve ever done that before.”

  “They will this time.” Srivashti looked around at the others. “I understand that His Highness has recruited the Navy Band as well. And that the program will be music of his choosing.”

  “Charm indeed,” Fierin said, smiling brightly all around.

  “It’s the title,” Kestian Harkatsus put in with a trace of impatience, his handsome face less handsome behind a pout. “Who will gainsay him?”

  “The Kitharee could,” Srivashti reminded him gently. “They forswear loyalties to anyone outside their Jephat when they join. And even an Aerenarch has little authority over the Navy
unless commissioned first.”

  “So he has bestirred himself at last, for purposes of entertainment,” Stulafi Y’Talob said. “The question is: has this anything to do with the deadline?” The Archon of Torigan’s voice was harsh. “We found out only because we have sources. Would they tell him how long it will take for the Panarch to be ditched at Gehenna?”

  “We should assume as much.” Srivashti sighed. “As for his entertainment, will you honor me with your forbearance if I invite you to consider the point again?”

  Y’Talob bowed a deference, but his heavy face and folded hands conveyed his disdain. “I suppose it is possible he will propose a Privy Council in between concerti and rastanda on the program.”

  It’s how he did it, fool, Vannis thought, watching Srivashti.

  Then the old Archonei from Cincinnatus squinted around the circle, her voice cracking. “A successfully arranged concert is not necessarily a sign of leadership ability. However, the timing gives one pause. How many of us know this young man well?”

  Gestures of deferential disavowal presaged exchanges of glances, a few of which slanted upward toward Vannis—who knew that her removal from the circle had signified her detachment from the subject. In reality, she did not want Srivashti’s pale, shrewd gaze discerning her ambivalence.

  But the question pulled her in again; she was, they all knew, the only one among them who had lived at the Palace on Arthelion with the then-Krysarch for brief periods over the past few years. “We had so little contact,” Vannis said, informing her pose with polite regret.

  Her manner effectively invoked Semion. The power of his memory could speak for her, and they all understood. Or thought they did.

  Srivashti sat back, his countenance benign. “Semion vlith-Arkad was a strong leader, and in the normal course of events would have been a strong Panarch. It is to be expected that an heir twice removed would find it difficult to learn, in days, the vision necessary to one who assumes authority. The new Aerenarch needs allies who are lessoned in command.”