House of the Wolf (Book Three of the Phoenix Legacy) (31 page)

The Bishop stiffened, chin quivering, but refrained from comment, and at that moment Perris returned with Escondo. The barrister was carrying a flat case; he approached the bed hesitantly, his dark skin nearly as gray as his sparse, kinky hair.

“Oh, my lord . . .”

Galinin winced as he turned his head a few degrees.

“Lamet? Is that you?” Then a long sigh; Escondo was on the verge of weeping. “My friend, get hold of yourself. Please. I . . . so little time. Things I must do.”

Escondo, with an effort, got himself under control.

“Of course, my lord. How—how may I be of service?”

“I must make . . . declaration of House succession. No time for . . . fancy documents. A recording. Can you make it proper? Legal . . . whatever?”

Escondo put his case on a chair and opened it.

“Yes, my lord. Recorded testaments or declarations
are
accepted by the courts and Board of Succession. I’ll need two witnesses to the recording. They’ll make statements both at the beginning and end of the tape, and they must have copies made simultaneously, and then—well, your thumbprint sealing the spools. That will make it sufficiently . . . uh, proper.”

Galinin smiled. “Then let me . . . rest a bit while you take care of the preliminaries. You have three witnesses. Doctors Perris and Stel, and the Revered Frer. Might as well . . . use all of them. But, Lamet . . . hurry.”

Escondo hurried, and within five minutes the recorders were activated, he had read a prefatory statement of amazing brevity, considering its legal nature, and the three witnesses had made their statements. For a moment, Stel feared that Galinin had lapsed again into unconsciousness, but when Escondo told him he might now make his declaration, he opened his eyes, seeming perfectly aware of his surroundings, alert and calm.

Perhaps that was why Stel was so shaken by the declaration that followed. He’d have sworn any oath that Galinin was entirely sound of mind at this moment. In fact, he
had
sworn it in his statement as a witness.

“I, the Lord Mathis Daro Galinin, First Lord of the House of Daro Galinin, being without a living son and direct heir, do hereby exercise my obligation to name my successor to the position and title of First Lord of the House of Daro Galinin.” He stopped then for a few breaths, still calm, and Stel’s only concern at that point was for his physical state. The shock was yet to come.

“I hereby name . . . as my successor the Lord Alexand DeKoven Woolf, my grandson by my eldest daughter, Elise Galinin Woolf, and/or the Lord Alexand’s . . . sons and heirs. May the Holy Mezion and the All-God grant him and the House . . . peace.”

Escondo stared at Galinin, but before he could object, Stel caught his eye and stopped him with a shake of his head. If Lord Galinin in the confusion of illness and injury thought his grandson still alive, then let him think it. He was dying. Let him die content in this delusion.

His breathing was increasingly labored. He closed his eyes, exhausted as if he had just completed some demanding athletic feat.

“Lamet . . . the final . . . statements of witness. Let me . . . hear them.”

They repeated their oaths, swore to the veracity of a pain-born delusion. What else could they do? Then Escondo took the four tapes from the recorder and Galinin sealed them with his thumbprint. Escondo had to help him, holding the spools against his thumb until the print was made. Finally, he gave the witnesses their copies with solemn instructions for their safekeeping, then turned to Galinin with the fourth in his hand.

“Do you wish . . . uh, should I . . . ?”

“Give it . . . to . . . Phillip. Lord Woolf. And, Lamet . . .” A long pause while he fought for breath. “Message for him. For Phillip. Tell him . . . to listen. Alexand is our . . . hope. Tell him to—to love his . . . son.”

Stel felt tears scalding his cheeks. He didn’t try to hold them back. Galinin was beyond seeing them now.

Simonidis asked, “Is he finally . . . gone?”

Stel shook his head. “Not yet. He’s unconscious. But perhaps you should go ahead and . . .” He couldn’t speak the words aloud.
Say the Last Rites
.

Escondo was staring at the spool in his hand. He asked of no one in particular, “What should I do with this?”

The Bishop answered with a weighted solemnity that at last seemed fully appropriate, “You will give it to the Lord Woolf, Master Escondo, exactly as your Lord instructed you.”

And Lord Woolf must be called, Stel reminded himself.

But Simonidis was kneeling to begin the Rites, and Lord Emil and Rodrik and Lady Marcessa were coming in. Perris must have summoned them. They were all kneeling with Simonidis, and Stel could only kneel, too.

After the Rites. There was nothing Lord Phillip could do, at any rate.

Stel glanced at his watch before he closed his eyes in prayer. 19:58. His prayer wasn’t for the soul of Lord Galinin; that he left to the Bishop. His prayer was one of bitter gratitude.

Justice, however inadequate, would be meted out in the Plaza of the Concord within minutes.

The black ’car had no windows.

When the door slid open, a furious rush of wind swept in. But he couldn’t feel it. Only hear it. He looked up and saw a fragment of sky, and knew he had never seen anything so beautiful. Ruby pink and opal orange clouds curdled on azure. A silver sliver of moon danced among them.

Two dark shapes came between him and the sky.

“Come on, you. No good giving us trouble now.”

You. Why didn’t they call him by his name? He had a name now. He knew who he was, where he was, why he was here.

The span of chain between his manacled hands rattled when he raised them for assistance, teeth clenched as the SSB guards pulled him out of the ’car. They weren’t unnecessarily rough, it was simply that the smallest movement, even breathing, even the hammering beat of his pulse, was painful. The SSB psychocontrollers had been given less than eleven hours and a man who admitted himself military commander of the Phoenix.

And now Alexand sagged, doubled over in his guards’ support, and wondered if he could even stand upright.

The wind was a battering roar; it evoked some new shape of fear in him when he thought he knew all its shapes. Yet he couldn’t
feel
it. He could feel the chill of the spring evening, but not that howling wind.

“Can he stay on his feet?” He could barely hear that indifferent question over the wind roar.

Alexand answered it. “Yes . . . I can. . . .”

Rich
—
oh, Rich, help me. Reach out to me. . .
.

Rich had been here, looked out at this world from this place, looked out from within a body flayed with a different kind of pain, looked out at his own death without fear.

The wind beat louder as he straightened, testing his balance, making sure he had both feet squarely under him.

Rich, stay with me; let me see this, understand it, accept it, meet it, with your eyes
.

And the pride that’s my only heritage from my name.

He wore the blue-and-silver uniform the Concord recognized as evidence of one identity. In the SSB DC, when he was ordered to put the uniform on, he didn’t recognize or understand it. He did now.

But he would die as the Lord Alexand DeKoven Woolf.

The helions were on, washing white the red reflections of sunset on the buildings, and the Plaza was a solid sea of humanity.

Concord Day, and the Fesh and Bonds gathered to see their rulers in splendid panoply, gathered to see and cheer, and he wondered why they cheered.

But the Fountain of Victory was stilled.

It wasn’t Concord Day.

And the wind he could only hear, bludgeoning his ears, wasn’t a wind.

The crowd wasn’t cheering on this day. Another sound he couldn’t name; something pounding with brute ferocity. The crowd had become that equivocal entity he had always recognized as potential behind the cheers. He stood in a space of white solitude. Between him and that unkenned entity, a barrier of black shapes, golden-helmeted Directorate guards, a motionless line that, followed to its culmination, brought his eye to the lightless monolith of the execution stand.

Rich, stay with me. . .
.

He took two steps and nearly fell; his aching nerves seemed incapable of conveying his commands from brain to muscle.

I will
not
be carried to that stand. Rich was carried only because he had to be. I can walk. I
will
walk.

I’m not a saint; all I have is pride.

Pride on the one hand, Rich on the other, and Adrien as a presence realized without conscious thought behind every thought, Alexand walked, step by step.

Rich
had
been afraid. Only now did he understand that. Rich had chosen the manner of his death, yet when he crossed this endless few meters, he was afraid.

How could the space take so long to traverse?

At first he tried to count his steps, but after six lost track. The physical act of making them took too much concentration, and the wind . . . no, the crowd. It was an aural centrifuge. He looked out through the barricade of guardsmen. Faces, unique, individual, yet in their open-mouthed, shrieking fury, they forfeited individuality and humanity to become mere fragments in a blurred tapestry.

“It
is
the Brother!”

That shard of sound caught at him. He stumbled, depending on his guards for support until he reestablished the nerve-muscle sequences that moved his body forward.

“The Brother! It
is
the Brother! The Brother of the Lamb!”

One face loomed out of the tapestry. An old man robed in the green and brown of a Selasid Bond, stretching forward, crying out, while the guardsmen pushed him back.

“It
is
the
Brother
!”

Alexand turned away.

Impossible. Hallucinating. He was hallucinating.

Why did they make this distance so long? Why stretch it when he was so near the end of his strength and will?

“
The Brother! The Brother! The Brother
!”

Bruno Hawkwood used one of the side entrances into the Hall of the Directorate, but the hood of his cloak was back, and he wore no face-screen. He’d have used the front entrance if it weren’t closed, and the Conpol officers and Directorate guards he encountered didn’t concern him.

Orin Selasis would pay any price for Hawkwood’s head, but he didn’t dare seek assistance from the Concord. The last thing he wanted was for Hawkwood to fall into Concord hands. Master Ranes would be charged with procuring his head. He would fail. Like his Lord, he never truly understood human nature, only human weaknesses. Ranes wouldn’t look for Hawkwood here any more than Selasis would.

There was only one guardsman at the entrance, and one inside at the check station. Guard ranks in the Hall had been stripped to fill those outside in the Plaza. Hawkwood studied the screens behind the station desk; the prisoner was being escorted to the execution stand. The volume on the speakers was low, yet something in the quality of that mass roar aroused an ambiguous uncertainty.

Had he read the Signs correctly?

In two hours of alpha meditation, the alignments of the metagraph had yielded the same results thrice times three. Adrien Eliseer Woolf was the Prime Sign. As long as she lived, the Lord Alexand could not die. That was the first link of predication.

The images were wavering. He blinked to clear his focus and reminded himself to make allowances for the poison. It would slow his reflexes.

“Evening, Master Hawkwood.” The station guard greeted him with wary courtesy. “Uh . . . your business here, sirra?” Standard procedure. Still, he seemed reluctant to pry into Bruno Hawkwood’s affairs even so circumspectly.

Hawkwood said for him and the recorders, “I have an important message to deliver to the Lord Selasis.”

The guardsman nodded and waved him to the position marked on the floor in front of the metal detector.

“I’ll have to run you through the scanner, sirra. Any metal on you?”

Hawkwood opened his cloak and let him see the Wheel of Destiny medallion.

“This. And my wedding ring.”

“Um-huh. Right.” He checked a screen on the desk in front of him. “You’re clear, sirra. Thank you.”

The green light went on, and the shimmer of the shock screen barricade disappeared. Hawkwood stepped onto a pedway that carried him toward the center of the Hall.

Perhaps he should wait until the execution resolved itself. That was a key link in the chain of occurrence, one that read dimly. He was only sure that it wouldn’t play itself out as the Concord, and Orin Selasis, expected it to.

Still, he wasn’t a Reader. Perhaps he should—

No. He’d calculated the time and the amount of poison closely. He couldn’t change his plans; this was now Written. Under his cloak, his hand went to his waist and the crucifix of the Dagger of Will.

This was Written.

“
The Brother! The Brother! The Brother
!”

Hallucination. That wasn’t even the same voice, wasn’t even one voice. The black barricade ahead sagged, then with a fusillade of laser flashes and anguished cries, restored itself.

The process of moving his body within the strictures of pain and pummeling sound occupied his mind totally, yet he must free part of it to understand this phenomenon.

The old man. Alexand focused in near memory on that one face. He knew it; he’d seen it before.

“The Brother! It
is
the Brother—the Brother—Brother—Brother—”

New voices. More voices.

Izak. There was the name. Izak, Elder Shepherd of the Selasis Estate Compound B.

Izak had looked at the man named by the Concord and uniformed as Commander Alex Ransom of the Phoenix, and had recognized the Brother. Impossible. The uniform alone would blind Izak to the face of the man in it.

It
is
the Brother.

The emphasis on the verb. Verification of something doubted, but something he’d been led to expect. Izak had been
told
that Alex Ransom was the Brother.