A Prison Unsought (51 page)

Ivard turned so the gnostor couldn’t see him. Vi’ya stood a
few meters away with the Eya’a, her gaze inward. He could smell her tension, as
if she were balancing something almost too heavy to hold; a searingly focused,
unintelligible emotion scoured his brain from the Eya’a. Ivard’s fear spiked. He’d
been as curious as everyone about the Urian thing, but now he wasn’t so sure he
wanted to be anywhere near it.

He tried to calm himself by peering along the spin axis, in
hopes of spotting Tate Kaga. A sour knot of panic welled up in his stomach. He
didn’t want to face the gnostor’s experiment unless his teacher could be there.

The transtube portal hissed open, and out stepped the Kelly
and the High Phanist, who smiled as Ivard ran to them, honking a greeting at
the trinity, which was returned threefold as they patted and touched one
another.

Manderian greeted threm as well.

“Ah,” Omilov said. “Now that we’re
all here, let’s move on before something else happens to slow us down.” He
gestured to the pair of Marine guards at the entrance to the Cap.

His arms intertwined with the head-stalks of the trinity,
Ivard sent a questioning look at the High Phanist. She made a slight movement
with her hands that said as clearly as words: “It’s your responsibility.”

“Uh, gnostor?” Ivard began, but his
words were drowned out by a thunderclap as Tate Kaga’s bubble blurred into view
and stopped outside the dyplast window overlooking the interior of the oneill.
The Marines jerked their jacs up reflexively, then relaxed as the nuller
maneuvered his gee-bubble through a hatch. For once, he was right side up.

“Ho, Little Egg! Are you ready to
lose your self to find it?” Then he spun upside down before the High Phanist,
whose eyebrows had lifted at his comment. “Eh, Numen! Did you think you had a
monopoly on that idea?”

“No, indeed, Tate Kaga,” Eloatri
replied.

Omilov approached, looking harassed. “Your pardon,
Prophetae,” he said, sketching a bow to the nuller. Then to Ivard and the High
Phanist, “We really must hurry.”

When Tate Kaga and Eloatri turned expectant faces Ivard’s
way, Ivard tried again. “I want Tate Kaga there, too. He’s been teaching me
things, things I’ll need.”

Omilov threw his hands wide in a gesture eloquent of frustration.
“Isn’t it enough of a circus already?” he said to the High Phanist. “Perhaps we
should invite the Kitharee to furnish us with incidental music.”

“He has to be there,” Ivard said,
his voice thin.

His entire body heated up with embarrassment; he controlled
the reaction, but he couldn’t do anything about the awful shrinking feeling in
his guts when the gnostor turned to him, tiredness, tension, and impatience
clear in his face.

“Enough, young man. You’ve already
committed a major breach of security. Don’t make it worse. Just come along.” He
faced Tate Kaga. “I’m sorry if Ivard brought you all this way for nothing, but
there’s really no place for you in this experiment. He shouldn’t even have told
you.”

The gnostor turned away and started toward to the Cap
portal.

“No,” said Ivard, his voice
cracking. Even with the physical control the Kelly ribbon had conferred on him
his nerves flashed hot then cold. “I won’t do it without Tate Kaga.”

Omilov rounded on him, astonished.

“You don’t know what I’m like now,”
Ivard said desperately. He could smell the gnostor’s impatience turning into
anger, and, behind it, a dull pain he didn’t understand. “You don’t know how I
think, or how I hear Vi’ya and the Eya’a and the Kelly, or anything about how
it works. How can you decide that Tate Kaga can’t help? I say he can. He will.
Or I won’t.”

Omilov’s anger grew. Ivard tasted it, smelled it, becoming
weak-kneed in reaction. Then Eloatri stepped forward and laid a hand on the
gnostor’s arm. “You cannot force him.”

As if to emphasize her words, the Eya’a chittered softly.

The gnostor tossed his hands up in defeat. “Very well.
Rather than waste any more time.” He walked past the Marines into the Cap,
followed by the others. “Let’s go.”

o0o

It did not take much discernment to perceive that
Aerenarch Brandon vlith-Arkad was annoyed.

Vannis Scefi-Cartano could appreciate this: she was furious.

She’d been
outmaneuvered by the people she’d thought her allies.

We will leave the
Aerenarch to you.
Vannis gripped her lower lip between her teeth as she trod with
Brandon down the grassy path toward the lakeside, her slippers damp from the
recent rain. High overhead the diffusers shed a silvery light, simulating a
full moon; reflections danced on the rippling surface of the lake. Brandon’s
voice gave no thoughts away, but his arm beneath the smooth fabric of his
sleeve was merely there, as a prop for politeness. It forced on her a memory,
those arms around her, the blend of strength and tenderness—

She jabbed her teeth further into her lip. As she and
Brandon paused for the Rifter bodyguard to go ahead onto the barge and scan it,
she faced the fact that she had been sidelined.

By being the decoy keeping Brandon away while the coup took place,
she would not be present when the rest of the cabal spontaneously nominated one
another as the new council. All those compliments at Kestian’s about how she
was crucial to the plans—pivotal—had been heady at the time, but after, when
she had leisure to contemplate what had been said, and not said, she saw the
truth. She was a dupe. As Brandon was shortly to become.

She revisited the same inward argument that had kept her
awake all through the previous night: should she risk all and tell Brandon
about the coup?

Even if he believed her (it was sickening to contemplate his
skepticism) then she would reveal herself as a double traitor: to her
once-allies, and of course to him for sleeping with him while all this plotting
was going on.

She strongly suspected that it had been Hesthar’s idea that
she must be the decoy.

Wasn’t there some way
to ensure that Brandon would win? Then she could have both her ambitions, to
rule as she had been trained all her life to do, and by his side. That part had
only become important in the last days, but was now compelling, almost
overwhelmingly so.

Only three days left.

She resisted the impulse to touch her boswell. Strange, how
she had misjudged Fierin vlith-Kendrian. Because she was so much younger than
most of the cabal, it had been easy to assume she was oblivious. “I’ll sidetrack
the Aerenarch, if you prefer,” Fierin had said. “I don’t mind. There’s nothing
more for me to lose.”

And she’d handled the offer so skillfully, the timing
perfectly managed, in transit between one party and another, when no one else
was looking their way.

Vannis had been severely tempted. But even if Fierin could
have sidetracked Brandon (which she hadn’t the rank to do), the cabal would
probably have found some other excuse to decoy Vannis. In retrospect, it was
very clear that there had been a meeting of the inner cabal before Kestian’s,
and all the plans laid.

There might still be some way out.
Three days
, she thought, tension panging in her forehead.
In three days the Panarch is beyond us.
Either the cabal gains enough power to forbid any rescue missions, or else it
and its opponents mire one another in three days of squabbling, and then it
will be too late. . . . Either way, the cabal wins—and Brandon
loses what he wants most: a chance to rescue his father.

“Checks fine, Highness,” Jaim said
when they reached the pier.

Vannis’ attention was caught by the Rifter’s flat voice, his
long, curiously attractive face. Though he moved softly enough, he did not
affect the selfless blank stare of the trained servant. He met one’s eyes
straight on, his stance correctly deferential but his gaze intelligent and
dispassionately assessing.

Brandon smiled at Vannis,
his hand opening: Your move.

He couldn’t know,
could he? No, or he wouldn’t walk so blithely into the trap.

They entered the barge, Vannis stepping carefully so as not
to mar her pretty slippers with the splashing wavelets against the lowered gangplank.
She kept up some easy chat about the disaster at the Ascha Gardens party, and
how the Garden was being redesigned.

A quick glance around showed that the barge, at least, was
everything that rude, battered old vice-admiral had promised. Willsones had
made clear her dislike of the frivolous Douloi civilians by charging a stinging
price, way beyond Vannis’s present means.

The vessel was a relic of a bygone era, when sneaking off
for stolen time with one’s adored was in fashion. The design fostered intimacy;
the details, from brocaded couches to the graceful pattern of dancing dolphins
carved into the low rail—a pattern that never repeated, yet still evoked the yin
and yang—were perfect. In keeping with its air of fantasy, it even had a
geeplane drive, making it capable of slow and dreamy flight if the lovers’
impulses so demanded. For tonight Vannis had engaged a steersman to pole the
barge along the lake; the techs had set the geeplane to merely stabilize the
barge.

“I borrowed a chef,” she said. No
need to mention that this chef was Srivashti’s. “Shall we see what she has to
offer us?”

Brandon cast a look over the beautifully arranged
delicacies. Mouth-watering drifts of spices and herbs blended with cream pastry
tickled her nostrils. She had not eaten all day, but when Brandon passed by the
food and walked to the rail, she, too, turned away.

“Something to drink?” she asked.

Brandon rested against the rail as the barge gently moved
away from the landing. “Please.”

Vannis moved to the monneplat, busying her fingers with the
list of available wines. These, too, had been provided by Srivashti; more
gentle hints of the bonds of political bedfellows. Leading the list was an
exceptionally old crespec, the strange, costly liquor that Srivashti was known
for serving to honored guests.

Running her eyes down the list, she said, “I have two
respectably aged Charvannese reds and a promising Locke.”

“Whatever you prefer,”
Brandon said courteously.

My move, yes. Well,
how will I move?

Though Yenef stood by, silent and ready to serve, and Vannis
knew that the Rifter could order and pour wine, she decided to do it herself.

And ambivalence nearly paralyzed her.

Aware of the lengthening of the silence, but unable to think
of entertaining talk, she glanced at Jaim, who brought his chin down in a
fractional nod. Of course all the wines were safe. She opened the Locke and poured
out two glasses.

As she joined Brandon at the rail, the barge began its slow
circuit of the lake, and on prearranged signal the quartet—two strings, two
winds—concealed behind a finely carved set of antique Rhidari panels in the
draped pavilion at the stern, began playing KetzenLach’s “Variations on a Theme
by De Blaukerln.”

“So tell me,” she said, touching her glass to his, “how did
you get that diamond from Charidhe?”

His smile was slightly preoccupied. As tension increased its
vise grip on her skull, she cast a quick look over the lake, and was startled
to see a head above the shrub in front of a well-lit gazebo on the shore—but
then the barge moved farther along, and it was only a tall young woman,
absorbed in feeding some ducks.

“I admired it,” Brandon responded,
shrugging slightly as he watched the woman with the quacking, waddling ducks.
“And then I asked her if I could borrow it.”

“So simple!” Vannis laughed. “I
guess it serves as another indication how things have changed.”

“How is that?” he replied.

“To borrow jewels would have caused
a scandal not so long ago,” she said, humoring him with the obvious. At least
he was talking.

He bowed slightly, smiling, and she realized that he would
have borrowed those jewels, anyway, careless of the results, back in the old
days.
And he’s an Arkad, so he’d get away
with it.

She dared a glance into his face; his gaze was almost a
palpable blow.
He does know something’s
amiss.

She suppressed the urge to start chattering like a child.

What held her back? The visceral thrill of his title and
proximity to power was almost as strong as her own physical response to Brandon
himself. He would soon be relegated to mere figurehead—her old status. The strength
of her regret nearly paralyzed her.

o0o

The bustle of activity in the Situation Room faltered and
died as Sebastian Omilov led his unlikely troupe through the hatch. They’d
turned off the mind-blurs.

First the Eya’a drifted inside, then Vi’ya, then Ivard and
the Kelly, Eloatri, Manderian, and finally Tate Kaga, his bubble squeezed down
to minimum size. With each succeeding entrance the room became quieter, and
Omilov felt himself the focus of several dozen pairs of eyes under the vast
hologram of the Thousand Suns glimmering overhead.

“Wait here,” he said tersely—an
unnecessary instruction. During their passage through the heavy security
surrounding the project, he had instructed them in the procedure that he and
Manderian had worked out. All of the participants would wait outside until
called; Vi’ya and the Eya’a, as the psychic focus of the experiment, would
enter last.

“Once they see the hyperwave, their
actions will be unpredictable, and perhaps uncontrollable. Attempting to
restrain them at that point could be fatal,” Manderian had said.

That thought, and its corollaries, weighed heavily on Omilov
as he approached the hatch with the Marine guards to either side, beyond which
lay the Urian hyperwave. He barely noticed the security scan, wondering if it
could read the knot of fear curdling in his stomach. He’d reviewed the
interrogation chip from the
Mbwa Kali
,
with the descriptions, by the Rifters who’d rescued him, of the carnage the
Eya’a had left behind in Eusabian’s torture chamber underneath the Mandala. And
his own College of Xenology had similar data in its records, replicated here on
Ares.