A Prison Unsought (31 page)

“Like a small boy with a stick and
nest of
psando
,” one of these latter
murmured, a comment judged in bad taste by certain Douloi who resented the
comparison to those industrious insects whose individuality is subsumed into
the collective whole.

When that simile was relayed to him, Tate Kaga cackled
loudly and said, “Ho! I wish I’d had a bigger stick!”

o0o

“Tate Kaga told me I could invite
anyone,” Ivard said. “I mean, besides Trev and Gray.” He patted the heads of
the dogs at his either side. He’d been training them for days to move in free
fall, with Tate Kaga’s encouragement, in preparation for the party.

Vi’ya sat at the window, looking out as she tried to control
her reaction of unreasonable anger, but Ivard sensed it anyway. Why she should
be annoyed to be invited to a nick party—probably the best nick party
ever—escaped him.

She saw his question, and knew he thought her unreasonable.
But it was reasonable for all that: the party would be held in nick territory.
She didn’t belong in nick territory. Brandon did. It was useless to be angry,
except everything that brought her into Brandon’s orbit made her angry.

“You’ll like Tate Kaga,” Ivard said
pleadingly. “He’s a nick but he doesn’t talk nick. He’s old—old as Granny
Chang, and you like her. Maybe he’s even older. And he’s
funny
.”

“I have work to do.”

“But you can’t work all the time,
and I don’t want to go alone—” Ivard paused as a complex image flickered like
blue lightning through his mind, too quick to follow. It was the Kelly Archon,
that’s all he knew. He was getting used to that happening. “We’ll bring the
Eya’a,” he said. “They’ll like the Ascha Gardens. They ought to see it once.
That’s what Tate Kaga said.”

Vi’ya sat silent for a long time, ignoring the guard escort
waiting quietly by the outer door. Ivard could no longer tell what Vi’ya heard
over the mental connection with the Eya’a, and what she didn’t. In any case, he
was not going to say out loud that he wouldn’t ask Marim.

Pain squeezed his heart when he thought of Marim. He ran his
fingers along the silk stitching on the shirt that Tate Kaga had given him,
when Ivard had admitted that his single good shirt, which Greywing had bought
him on Rifthaven before Markham was killed, was way too tight now.

This new shirt was old, though it didn’t look it. But it
smelled like something someone long ago had loved, with faint scents from
worlds that Ivard had never seen, overlaid with the pleasant aroma that Tate
Kaga had said was real cedar, from the ancient chest in which it was stored.
The colors the shirt had been woven in had faded a long time ago, but still
bright were the animal shapes embroidered at the cuffs and collar, in brown and
black and gold silk, interspersed with red cottonwood flowers of a tree that
Tate Kaga’s ancestors had held to be sacred.

The shirt helped him deal with the hurt. Ivard knew that
people bunked other people out all the time, but did Marim have to talk about
her lovers over meals, as if Ivard had turned into a plant or something?

Ivard’s nose twitched, responding to a scent too faint to
identify, and the blue fire leapt inside his head again. The image this time
was more complete, and he sensed the proximity of the Kelly healer trinity. The
Archon’s images were always clearer when Portus-Dartinus-Atos were nearby.

Then the Eya’a appeared in the doorway to their chamber,
their faceted eyes glittering. So the Kelly had somehow let them know about the
party—though he wondered if they even knew what a party was. They moved to the
outside door and stood with eerie stillness, ignoring Gray, who gave them each
a sniff before padding back to Ivard’s side. Trev only looked, ears turning
alertly.

Vi’ya raised a hand. “You win. Let us go, then.”

She left her console and followed him out, just as she was,
clad entirely in black with her black hair pulled high behind her.

The Kelly joined them at the transtube portal, fluting a
welcome at the Eya’a and the dogs. Trev and Gray beat their tails in welcome,
taking long, excited sniffs at the Kelly ribbons, as the Eya’a chittered on a
high note.

Nobody else got on the tube with them.

When they debarked at the entrance to the Ascha Gardens,
Vi’ya turned her attention to the Eya’a, who stilled, their faces lifted. Their
thoughts flickered too fast for her to follow.

Ivard stood transfixed
by wonder. What he saw here was impossible, frivolous, magnificent, revealing a
kind of elegant humor that Ivard, through the multiplicity of new experiences,
was just beginning to discern, and hadn’t thought a part of the Douloi world.

But Tate Kaga is a
nick, and this is his party.
The blue fire flared up inside his mind with the
Kelly equivalent of a chuckle, and Ivard understood that the nicks were as
complicated and different from each other as Rifters—and that the Ascha Gardens
was just as much a part of the nick world as the blank-faced politeness he’d
always associated with the Douloi.

The formal garden stretched away under the faux night sky of
Ares, looking at first glance like any Downsider garden cradled in the safety
of planetary gravity. Its measured stateliness lulled the mind into an
expectation of deadly symmetry, framed by gravel pathways and marble stairways,
with sinuous balustrades along terraces rising up in gradual steps toward the
fragile construct at the Gardens’ center. But the stairways continued rising
until they attained impossible angles, some vertical, sideways, even upside
down, framing in a disorienting tangle a bubble of free-fall at the center.

Walkways, balconies, platforms, and portals snarled around
the central edifice, and everywhere adults and children alike walked,
gesticulated, drank, ate, danced, ran. Their heads pointed in all directions;
Ivard saw two Douloi talking to each other from different staircases, each
upside down with respect to the other. Nearby, a gang of children raced about
in a demented game of tag, jumping from wall to floor to ceiling. There had to
be gravitors everywhere to maintain multiple gravitational planes.

From one of the landings at right angles to the surface of
Ares, far above, someone launched into the free-fall zone. For a painful moment
the null-gee grace of the diver seemed familiar, but then he saw that the
diver, with blue hair flagging behind her, was his own age. He watched as she
joined a crowd of others on a platform in one corner of the free-fall section
of the Gardens.

A sudden breeze ruffled his new shirt and the Eya’a looked
up at something over his head. Ivard smelled the welcome scent of pungent herbs
and smoke. “Tate Kaga!”

The nuller brought his bubble to rest at head level, right
side up for once. “Ho! Little Egg. I see you brought the Listener.”

Ivard caught a hint of something—a scent?—from Vi’ya. She
regarded Tate Kaga, her face as ungiving as always.

“Welcome, Vi’ya,” he said to the
Dol’jharian, and for the first time Ivard heard the voiceless “th” in her name
from someone else’s lips. “Welcome, I say again. Convey the same to your two
friends. May you hear only what you need to.”

This time Ivard was sure of the extra . . . scent?
Taste? Tate Kaga’s comment had startled and irritated her. She didn’t show it,
but Ivard could taste her reaction. The blue fire whirled briefly behind his
eyes, and Portus, the Intermittor of the Kelly trinity standing nearby, honked
a brief confirmation.
That’s using your
tongue,
was the sense of it.

The transtube hissed open, discharging a swarm of new
people. After greeting their host, they joined the crowd making its way toward
the gardens. Ivard noticed that they split into two groups as they approached
the central tangle, but not into Polloi and Douloi.

Instead, one group—they had to be Downsiders—shied away from
the improbable geometries of the fragile edifice, eddying in small sets around
the periphery, their shoulders tight and elbows drawn in close. The others,
Highdwellers no doubt, strode without hesitation toward the gravitic maze.

Another pod arrived, and Ivard saw the High Phanist among
its Polloi passengers. She looked up at the maze, a trace of nausea tightening
the skin around her nose.

“Ah!” Tate Kaga brought his bubble
to rest over her head, upside down. “Need something for your stomach, Numen?”

Eloatri breathed a low chuckle. “I’ll be just fine, as long
as you don’t sling me into that gravitational obscenity over there.”

The nuller cackled. “Mudfoot, eh? You need to come flying
with me someday, like Little Egg has done.”

Ivard did not see Eloatri’s reaction to this invitation. His
attention was caught by the arrival of another group, Douloi this time,
centering on a gray-haired man with wolfish yellow eyes. His stance and the way
he moved reminded Ivard of Jaim, but he was dressed like a high-end nick, and
everybody else in the group seemed to move around him, as though he were the
sun and they the planets.

Trev and Gray pressed up against Ivard’s sides, on guard.

The breeze coming from Tate Kaga’s gee-bubble changed
subtly; Ivard’s new Kelly sense of smell revealed that the nuller didn’t like
this new arrival any more than the dogs did. Another waft told him the feeling
was mutual. But there was more. He sensed a link between the two. The blue fire
pulsed within, a whisper on the edge of intelligibility.

The man’s indifferent gaze swept across Ivard, who shivered.

Vi’ya’s eyes narrowed as she tracked the tall man, whom Tate
Kaga had addressed as Young Tau; no, she was watching the thin, neutrally
dressed man with long black hair who followed at the wolf-eyed man’s left
shoulder, like a bodyguard. Ivard sensed deep unease in her. He drew in a breath
in the funny way he was learning made taste and smell work better. Then he
snorted all the air out, trying to expel the wrongness-scent of Srivashti’s
bodyguard. Trev and Gray growled softly, their hackles rising.

The Kelly honked agreement.
Death breathes through his nostrils
.

Before Srivashti moved into the Gardens, Ivard sensed from
his haughty countenance that he was a Downsider and didn’t like the distorted
parts. But he didn’t avoid them.

The transtube opened once more. Brandon and Jaim stepped out.
Jaim wore gray, which Ivard wasn’t used to. Brandon was dressed like a high-end
nick, but otherwise he was the same Brandon of the days on
Telvarna
; he grinned at Ivard as Vahn stepped up and took Jaim
aside.

“Hau! Now my party is a success!” Tate
Kaga sketched a formal deference within his bubble. The fact that he was
hanging sideways made Ivard snicker.

Brandon smiled. “You don’t need me to make your parties a
success, Old One. And I’m certainly not the first Arkad you’ve hosted.”

“No!” Tate Kaga cackled. “Old
Burgess was a wild one. Ha! Never missed my parties.” The nuller’s face assumed
a thoughtful mien. “Until Desrien took him.”

Ivard smelled discomfort in Brandon, who said, “No more
would I miss your party.”

A number of liveried servants filed out of the pod bearing
numerous wooden objects, ornate and bizarrely twisted. Ivard was about to ask
Jaim about the objects, but then the blue fire surged up with almost blinding
intensity, and Portus-Dartinus-Atos swarmed forward, honking so fast that Ivard
couldn’t follow their speech. The Aerenarch greeted them with Kelly-sign, and
the voice of Portus, the Intermittor, rose above the melodious blatting of the
other two, who began patting and stroking the wooden things.

“A trinat! Your Highness, this is
threesomely unexpected. Two-thirds three threes of years on Ares wethree’ve
been, and haven’t seen one.”

“It was in the Enclave, buried in a
storeroom. The comp indicated the room hadn’t been accessed for over a hundred
years.”

“What’s a trinat?” Ivard asked Jaim.

“I think it’s a musical
instrument,” he replied. “It’s in pieces and still has to be put together—the
computer didn’t know how.” He looked around. “Where’s Vi’ya? Vahn said she came
with you.”

“There!” he said, pointing.

But Jaim didn’t follow his finger; he was distracted by Vahn
again, who needed help dealing with the confusion forming around the trinat.

It was Brandon who gazed into the Gardens, watching Vi’ya’s
straight, dark-haired figure accompanying the Eya’a in an invisible bubble of
space as they moved among the other guests.

“Come!” Tate Kaga said. “Let us go
inside.”

Vahn jeeved as their host ushered Brandon to the center of
the Gardens, where he began to mingle with the guests. The nuller shot off to
talk to the newcomers who had arrived behind them.

Drifts of music echoed from every surface, adding to the
disorientation caused by the presence of various shrubs and trees, some of them
obviously quite old, growing at odd angles.

Vahn might have found it all amusing—anywhere else, any
other time. But the Aerenarch had decided to come, despite (or maybe because
of, Roget had pointed out) the non-exclusivity of the guest list. It was a
gigantic party, in a weird setting. A perfect place, Vahn reflected grimly, for
the unknown poisoner to try a little personal mayhem. But “try” was not going
to keep Brandon cowering in the Enclave. Worse luck.

Ivard eeled away from them all. Here he was at last! The
Ascha Garden looked even better than Tate Kaga had promised, and the old nuller
had also said, “You will find friends there.”

Friends? He liked most of his crewmates, but he hadn’t had
friends since he was small, before he and Greywing escaped starvation on Natsu.
He passed straight in, drawn toward those his own age, the dogs trotting at his
heels.

Brandon wandered in another direction, pausing under the
central free-fall space as a crowd closed around him. He chose, Vahn was glad
to see, a well-lit, open area. Several weird pathways led to it, including one
that gave a view of a long concourse that jutted off upward at an acute angle;
Vahn motioned his team to take their places, aware from short, stressed
subvocal commentary that they could not get line of sight both with one another
and Brandon, especially in that crowd.