A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  ABOARD THE CORVETTE

  The end came suddenly. One moment the Samedi gleamed sleekly in the light of the IT primary, its radiants flaring, then, as Morrighon watched with satisfaction, a painfully bright point of light blossomed over the destroyer’s bridge, caving in the hull like the blow of an angry god’s fist.

  “The cruiser has lost patience with our Rifter allies,” Anaris said with a smile.

  For a beat, nothing further happened. Then the Samedi’s shields flickered, bits of hull plating flew off, and the missile tube twisted drastically and spun away.

  Ruptor strike, Morrighon thought, his tension increasing. But he dared not suggest their leaving: Anaris manipulated the screens with rapidity, indicating his fascination with the situation. It would only annoy him to point out their increased risk.

  Morrighon turned his gaze back to the Rifter ship, now an expanding ball of plasma. Beyond, the full crescent of the system’s fifth planet gleamed whitely. Two of its moons were also visible, with a third speck that was the Grozniy.

  “They wouldn’t have done that if they didn’t feel certain of finding the Panarch,” Morrighon ventured.

  “Of course,” Anaris replied, still intent on the screen. “A battlecruiser’s sensors are far better than ours. I would guess they heard a distress call. That will serve our purposes as well as theirs.” He tapped at his console, then smiled faintly, as though some thought had just occurred to him.

  “Communications.”

  “Sir.”

  “Hail the battlecruiser.”

  The standard recording squealed out, then Anaris brought the ship about and engaged the fiveskip.

  When they emerged, the fifth planet loomed large ahead, one of its moons off to their port side. Anaris blipped the fiveskip twice more.

  “Communications.”

  “Sir.”

  “Deploy a relay around the moon.”

  The relay launched with a barely perceptible whoosh. Morrighon caught a brief glimpse of it streaking away. As it emerged out of the EM shadow of the moon, the relayed image of the battlecruiser bloomed on the corvette’s screen.

  “Two-point-five-light-second delay,” the Tarkan at Communications stated. “Reply incoming.”

  The com hissed, then a woman’s voice filled the bridge. “This is His Majesty’s battlecruiser Grozniy, Captain Margot O’Reilly Ng commanding.”

  Anaris sat back and laughed. With a return of his earlier nausea, Morrighon recognized this as the ship that had fought so fiercely at Arthelion. There was now no chance Anaris would do the sensible thing and leave.

  An image bloomed on-screen, replacing the stars with the interior of a Panarchist battlecruiser. A small, trim woman sat in the command pod, her Naval uniform impeccable. Anaris gave a sudden, wicked smile.

  Cold terror pooled in Morrighon’s churning guts.

  A slim young man stood behind the captain: curling dark hair, blue eyes, and a bone structure instantly familiar. Morrighon stared at Brandon vlith-Arkad, now heir to his father’s throne. The young man seemed to gaze right back at him, brows quirked. But he did not speak.

  The Panarchist captain said neutrally, “I take it you are Anaris, heir to Eusabian of Dol’jhar?”

  “That was a splendid battle over Arthelion, Captain,” Anaris said. “Juvaszt and the others are still picking apart your tactics.”

  Morrighon counted his heartbeats during the long-seeming delay. Too many.

  “As we are theirs,” the captain returned, her voice still neutral.

  “It seems a shame that so much effort—so much entertainment—went for nothing,” Anaris went on.

  After the delay, the captain lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “So goes war,” she said. One of her hands moved on her chair arm: a command, Morrighon knew. Brandon vlith-Arkad stood motionless, hands behind him.

  Anaris lifted his head. “Still no Naval commission, Brandon?”

  After five seconds, the Panarch’s heir said with mendacious regret, “I’ve so little free time.”

  Anaris smiled, his voice edged like mono-thread, “Allow me to congratulate you on your accession.”

  Morrighon tried to stifle a snort of laughter, and his nose burned. A jab at the dead brothers—no! A jab at the Panarch!

  But after the delay, Brandon’s mouth smiled, but his gaze was steady. “Did you want to swear fealty?”

  Anaris laughed and cut the connection.

  Aboard the Grozniy, Wychyrski reported, “He skipped.”

  “Knot status,” Ng demanded.

  “Margin eighteen percent and falling. Still flattening.”

  “He can make far better speed than we can under these conditions,” said Rom-Sanchez.

  “Does that class vessel have orbit-to-ground weapons?” Ng asked, leaning forward.

  “No, sir.”

  “Then we have to get there before the Panarch lifts off. SigInt, grab that signal back. See if you can punch through a response.”

  Wychyrski tried, then shrugged. “Not from here.”

  “Keep trying, each emergence. Navigation, plot me a minimum perturbation course, to arrive at Gehenna with minimal relative velocity.”

  System FF imposed a delicate balance between the less destabilizing effect of low-frequency, high-tac-level skip, with the high real velocity it imparted, and the more destabilizing effects of low-tac, with its lower real velocity that would leave them able to rendezvous more easily with the shuttle.

  Ng faced the Aerenarch, every cell of her being infusing her words with sincerity: “We’ll do everything we can.”

  He nodded, and the fiveskip engaged, hurling them back toward Gehenna.

  GEHENNA

  “We can’t take much more of this.” Mortan Kree turned away from the screen as the fire from the plasma cannon ceased. “And now there’s nothing to stop multiple assaults.”

  Matilde Ho rubbed her aching eyes. “That ram they’re using is amazingly effective. If they bring up a couple more—”

  “Listen,” said the Panarch.

  They fell silent. Timed with the battering impacts of the ram, they heard a savage chant: “Arrr-KAD (BOOM) . . . Arrr-KAD (BOOM) . . . Arrr-KAD (BOOM) . . .”

  Then the rhythm changed.

  “ARRR (BOOM) KAD (BOOM) ARRR (BOOM) KAD (BOOM) . . .”

  “They’ve brought up another ram,” said Caleb.

  “How much more time do we need?” Gelasaar asked.

  “About an hour or so,” Matilde replied.

  “Can the lock hold that long?” The Panarch’s voice was light, unstressed, as though he were asking about the weather.

  Matilde glanced at Kree, who shook his head.

  The Panarch nodded. “Then that makes it simple.”

  “No!” Yosefina shouted, hands clutched together under her chin.

  Kree’s heart labored under the shock of horror. The savage chant of their attackers left no doubt of Gelasaar’s fate if he stepped outside the ship.

  But Gelasaar hai-Arkad straightened up, decision informing every line of his thin frame. He was in this moment the old Gelasaar. The Panarch had decided.

  “Hear now the words of power, my friends, for in your hands must lie the succession.” He held up his hand to prevent further objections; Kree felt the force of his will as a palpable blow. “The Gehennans will be satisfied with nothing less, and their rage is so great I doubt I’ll have any time to regret my decision. In the meantime, the Navy approaches, and my son still lives. I bind you all to this: bring him these words, that he may wield that which is his.”

  With that, Gelasaar hai-Arkad, forty-seventh successor of the Emerald Throne, began to speak the words never shared before with those not of the lineage of Jaspar Arkad. None of his listeners could look away from that ardent face; the words seared their minds like hot iron, ineradicable.

  Then the Panarch gestured toward the corridor to the lock. “Let us endeavor,” he said.

  Outside the shuttle, the sun had set and the light w
as fading swiftly when the sky flared again; high overhead another star bloomed, faded, and was gone, leaving only the mysterious, ever-brighter wings of light, fluttering like the banners of an army. Londri looked up, rubbing her gritty eyes and wondering what it meant, then looked down into the clearing as the booming of the ram on the metal doors of the ship ceased. The smoke from the fires banked around the shuttle made it hard to see.

  She stepped over the brow of the hill, careless of danger from the ship now that its fire-shooter was ruined. The ram crew was drawing back warily as the doors slid open slightly. A white cloth flapped in the opening until an arrow carried it away.

  “Make them stop,” Stepan hissed urgently. “That is the symbol for a parley.”

  Londri gestured at the herald, who raised his horn to his lips and blew a brief glissade. Again, the battlefield grew silent save for the crackle of fires, the screams of the wounded, and the ever-closer pandemonium of the battle with the Tasuroi. The soldiers around the shuttle drew away from the line of fire from the slightly opened doors, taking up flanking positions.

  Then a voice came from the ship—not booming like the first, unmagnified by the arts of the enemy. “I wish to discuss the terms of my surrender.” The voice carried a ring of authority despite its faintness, along with a slight singsong tone.

  Stepan’s breath harshened. “That is his voice,” he whispered.

  “Can we trust them?”

  Stepan frowned, then brought his chin down in a slow nod. “Whatever else one may say of him, he was always a man of his word.”

  Londri strode toward the shuttle, followed by Stepan. The soldiers around the battered vessel kindled torches from the dying oil-brush fires; their flickering light painted the shuttle in tones of blood. She stopped before the doors, awed despite herself by the mass of metallic wealth looming above her.

  “I am Londri Ironqueen,” she said, addressing the unseen listeners within the machine. “Lord of the Kingdoms of Gehenna and all the lands within the Splash.” She drew her sword and held it before her face. “By the bright steel that is my birthright, by the courage that has sustained us for seven hundred years against your hate, and by the wisdom of our mothers and their mothers’ mothers, I demand to see you face-to-face.” She pointed at the partly opened door with her sword. “I will not speak to a crack in a door.”

  From within sounded a quiet laugh, then the doors opened and a man emerged, jumping lightly to the ground despite his age. His outline was blurred by wreaths of smoke; Londri stared and lowered her sword. This was the Panarch of the Thousand Suns? Absolute ruler of more people than there were grains of sand in the deserts beyond the mountains?

  The man was slight in stature, and silver-haired. Old. Older than Stepan. But with the eyes of a ruler herself, she discerned the lines that the exercise of power and responsibility had graven in his face.

  He walked between the ranks of soldiers drawn up to either side, and stood within reach of her steel. He returned her gaze with grave steadiness.

  A mutter of anger rose from the surrounding host. Gath-Boru flexed his massive hands, and his breath rasped in his throat. For the first time in Londri’s life, she felt the helplessness of a leader who has used the emotions of her followers all too well.

  The man bowed, with the courtesy of one sovereign to another. There was no trace of fear in his demeanor, no intimation that his fate depended on anyone but her.

  Then, at her side, Stepan moved. The Panarch glanced his way, then he looked back, his eyes widening with shock. “Stepan? Stepan Ruderik? What are you doing here?”

  The words shocked Stepan like cold steel to the heart. How dare he mock me! He took a step, then stopped, his anger faltering at the sincerity evident in Gelasaar’s shocked gaze.

  The Panarch reached out to grasp his hands, then stopped, dropped his arms, and shook his head, pain and confusion on his face. “I don’t understand, Stepan. I never signed a Warrant of Isolation for you. How . . .?”

  That voice, never forgotten, brought back full force the memories of Arthelion so long ago, and Stepan remembered that, whatever else might have happened without his knowledge, Gelasaar had never lied to him—had never, he was sure, lied to anyone.

  And then the truth crashed in on him, the reality behind the sneering hints his Abuffyd jailers had dropped on the long journey to isolation here, their mocking revelation of the secret of Gehenna, and he knew that, no matter that he had transgressed politically, so long ago, it was not Gelasaar who had summarily condemned him to this hell. Whether it had been Semion or a different enemy, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the man he had sworn fealty to had not, after all, forfeited his love and respect.

  Stepan stumbled, weeping, and embraced the man he had never truly been able to hate.

  After a time Gelasaar held him out at arm’s length and looked searchingly at him. “But why are you here?”

  Stepan shook his head, conscious of Londri’s anger and impatience, and the ever-growing clamor of the Tasuroi—it sounded like Comori’s forces were being driven back upon the clearing.

  “There’s no time, Gelasaar.” He indicated the Ironqueen, with Gath-Boru looming at her side. “You must speak for your life now.”

  The Panarch turned to Londri, his face again composed. “Will you accept my life for theirs?” he asked, gesturing behind him at the shuttle. He nodded skyward. “My son approaches, and I would have them carry to him the means of his inheritance, and the rescue of my subjects from an evil greater than any you can imagine.”

  The Ironqueen remained silent, reflection of the fires leaping in her eyes. Stepan sustained a shiver of awe as the wings of the numinous brushed him: under a flaming sky, ringed by flickering torches, a young woman in blood-red armor faced an old man in prison gray, but to his eyes, they were sacraments of the archetypal energies of Totality, bridging the gap of seven hundred years of isolation, uniting two sundered branches of humanity too long held apart.

  He held his breath as the Ironqueen raised her sword and pointed it at the Panarch’s throat.

  Her voice was quiet, as controlled as the man she faced. “I can imagine no greater evil than the one you and your forebears have committed, condemning those who never transgressed your laws to this hell.” She stepped back, waved her sword in a half-circle parallel to the ground, taking in all who stood around, watching.

  “Look around you, Gelasaar hai-Arkad, and see how the hand of your justice rests upon my people.”

  The man’s eyes moved in obedience to her command, and the Panarch took in the twisted limbs, distorted features, skin cancers, cataracts, and all the panoply of the genetic struggle against a world not made for humankind.

  “Revenge is a kind of wild justice,” said the Panarch finally. He spread his hands, exposing his body to her sword. “This is little enough to satisfy such an indictment, but it is yours, if you will but permit me to fulfill my last responsibility to my subjects.”

  “And what of my responsibilities?” replied Londri. “What if I claim more than mere revenge and take wergild as well for the lives you have wasted? She raised her sword and pointed past him at the shuttle. “With that we can escape your prison.”

  The Panarch shook his head. “No, you cannot. This vessel cannot fly between the stars. You would merely exchange this prison for a slightly larger one.” He turned his head toward the shuttle. “My people there will not give you even that. Rather than surrender the vessel, they will trigger the engines to destruction.”

  “Then,” said the Ironqueen, “at least I will deny your son his inheritance and obtain your death, and the metals of the ship as well.”

  “No,” said Stepan, recognizing that he was the only one present able to bridge the gap of understanding between the two rulers. “Your pardon, Majesty,” he said to Londri, “but the engines of this vessel dispose the energies that light the stars. There would be nothing left for leagues around; Comori Keep itself might not survive.”

  A mur
mur rose from the listeners, and soldiers glanced nervously at the shuttle.

  From beyond the hills horns blew, rising above the noise of battle. Gath-Boru raised his head, then motioned a herald over.

  Londri and the Panarch faced each other, unmoving, as though alone on the battlefield.

  “Listen to me, Your Majesties,” Stepan continued. “My College insists that there are no accidents when the Archetypes move among us. You two have been brought together.” He faced the Panarch. “My presence here clearly shows that isolation has too long served not your justice, but others’ private ends.” He gestured upward. “And the secret of Gehenna is broken forever. Will you not end it, in exchange for your life and your son’s inheritance?”

  Another murmur rose, attended by movement and the clatter of weapons. The herald next to Gath-Boru blew a long interrogative on his war horn, but Stepan paid it no mind. He turned to the Ironqueen. “It lies in your hands to culminate your mothers’ long-held dream and end the isolation of your people. Will you forgo revenge and obtain true justice instead?”

  During the pause that followed, the light from the sky flared on the faces of two sovereigns and those around them, dimming the torchlight.

  Then the Ironqueen spoke. “‘For then the best may be to cede desire.’” She sheathed her sword. “So be it. I give you your life and your succession. Will you give me justice?”

  “There will be no more Isolates,” said the Panarch, “and Gehenna will join the worlds of the Thousand Suns in full equality. I pledge it on the honor of the Phoenix House.” He stepped forward and held out his hand. Londri gripped it for a long moment.

  And Stepan’s exultation turned to abject horror as, almost in the same moment, a horn call rang out and a wood-fletched arrow sprouted in the Panarch’s shoulder. Tasuroi!