Sword of the Lamb (2 page)

Theron Rovere walked with the cautious gait of the elderly, sedately dignified in his long lector’s robes, gray-bearded chin resting on his chest. His robes were white with edgings of black denoting a lector/professor of the University, the gold stripe around the flared right sleeve of his surcoat indicated that he was a GuildMaster, and the badge on his left shoulder with the lion crest in gold and purple was a reminder that he was born allieged to the House of Daro Galinin. But he hadn’t walked on Galinin ground for many years, and didn’t now. For the last ten years, he had made his home here in the Estate of the House of DeKoven Woolf.

But that, like so many things, would soon be changed.

Lector Rovere sighed and clasped his hands behind his back, noting, as he always did, the faint indentations worn into the slate path by ten generations of DeKoven Woolf footsteps.

Minutiae. . . .

One would think that at a time like this such trivia would escape his notice. A pedantic habit. But even as he considered the irony of it, he was remembering that the dappled shadows on the slate were cast by the eucalypt trees planted by Konan Woolf, the third First Lord of the House, over three hundred years ago.

A light wind, warm with spring, swept the leaves; Octov, and beyond the grove Concordia lazed and buzzed in the crystal sunlight. The acacias were in bloom, their fluffy batons casting a sweet perfume into the wind. Rovere smiled, his eye drawn by a sharp chattering and a multihued flash in the branches above him. A rainbow lorikeet. But he was thinking of the conversation concluded only seconds ago in the small salon off the grove, and remembering the spectacular fury of the Lady Elise Galinin Woolf. It was this memory that brought the smile.

Elise always made him think of spring, and perhaps it was appropriate, their parting at this season. He’d known her since she was a child, been tutor to her and her brother, Lord Evin Galinin. That he thought of her—even addressed her at times—as Elise was indicative of their long and close relationship. No other Fesh would dare address the Lady Galinin Woolf so familiarly, nor even many Elite.

And if she made him think of spring, her wrath could only be likened to a spring rainstorm, quick and turbulent: Elise in a silken, floor-length gown of pale green—a true spring green—drawn to her full regal height, gray eyes flashing, fixed on her husband, her red-bronze hair cascading over her shoulders, glinting as if fired by her angry impatience.

Elisean Titian. The color of her hair called to mind that term.

Minutiae. . . .

He wondered if she knew that women of the Elite and even upper-class Fesh throughout the Concord had among the choices offered by their coiffurers a hair color called Elisean Titian, an unnatural imitation of that candescent hue naturally her own. And he wondered how many of the women who availed themselves of that imitation knew who Titian was.

Elise knew. But Rovere’s special field of study was Pre-Disasters history, and Elise Galinin had been one of his best students.

“Phillip, you wouldn’t deny him an opportunity to tell the boys goodbye!”

Theron Rovere’s gaze moved across the salon with its airy NeoMedit furnishings to the Lord Phillip DeKoven Woolf, who stood gazing out the windowall into the grove, a lean, dark figure clothed in rich, wine-colored hues, a summer night to Elise’s spring day, calling to mind another Pre-Disasters artist. Rovere frowned until he pulled the name out of his memory.

Elgreco.

Phillip Woolf’s countenance was as elegantly aquiline as those long-dead Espanish lords immortalized by a forgotten artist’s hand; his hair was as raven black, his trim mustache and beard followed the contours of his mouth and chin in a similar manner, but his eyes weren’t the limpid black of Elgreco’s lords. They were the crystalline blue found at the heart of a glacier.

Woolf didn’t respond to Elise’s exclamation; he seemed too preoccupied to hear it. Instead, he turned on Rovere.

“Lector Rovere . . .” He paused, black brows drawn. “Damn it, Theron, I respect your scholarly ethics, but I cannot understand why you felt it necessary to take the defendant’s stand on Quiller’s thesis.”

Rovere smiled gently, more for Elise than for Woolf. Mute sadness misted her eyes now, the quick anger passing like the spring rainstorm it evoked.

“My lord, Quiller was a student of mine; I was his sponsor when he entered the Academicians Guild. He’s an excellent historian; a genius, in fact. His thesis may not have met with the approval of the Board of Censors, but it is impeccably researched and profoundly perceptive.”

Woolf began pacing the small room, and Rovere was reminded of the leopards in the Galinin zoological preserve, rare survivors of a species nearly lost.

“Theron, I’m sure Quiller’s thesis
is
perceptive, but why did he try to publish it under a Priority-
Four
rating? Why couldn’t he be satisfied to let it circulate among scholars on a Pri-Three? For the God’s sake, the Peladeen Republic is nearly forty years dead.”

“True, my lord, but it existed for seventy-five years and functioned quite successfully.”

“I’m well aware of that, but it’s a matter of indifference to me at the moment. Even if you believed in Quiller, to take full responsibility for his thesis, to call it your own . . .” He stopped, searching Rovere’s face. “You knew the inevitable consequences for you.”

Rovere took a deep breath. “Yes, my lord, but I’m an old man. Quiller, as I said, is a talented young man. We need such men; the Concord needs them.”

“And what kind of man is he to let you shoulder the burden of
his
error?”

“An unhappy man, but I boxed him in very neatly. Don’t blame him.”

“Then I’m left with no one to blame but you.”

“True. So was the Board of Censors.”

Woolf returned to the windowall, his mouth a tight line as he looked out into the grove. A stray shaft of sunlight caught on the Crest Ring on his right hand, flashing crimson from the depths of the great Mogok ruby, its table incised with the Eagle Crest of the House. Only a First Lord wore such a ring. He took it from his father’s dead hand and wore it for the remainder of his life until his first born son took it from his dead hand. Rovere thought of the thirteen Woolf Lords who had borne that blood-hued burden, and of Alexand, who would be the fourteenth.

Lord Phillip’s thoughts were still on Quiller.

“
Independent
Fesh,” he pronounced bitterly. “This is what comes of giving young zealots like Quiller too
much
independence. He hasn’t the maturity to foresee the results of his enthusiasm.” Then he turned and studied Rovere soberly. “I can’t shield you now; it’s out of my hands. If you’d come to me before the Board—”

“No, my lord. I made my choice, and my only regret is that it might reflect badly on you or Lord Galinin, to whom I’m still allieged, however ‘independently.’ ” He looked at Elise, her spring-rain wrath now entirely dissipated. “No, I have
two
regrets. I’ll miss Alexand and Richard. Serving as teacher to them has been both a privilege and pleasure.”

She turned away, tears shining in her cloud-colored eyes. “Oh, Theron . . . Theron. . . .”

“Now, Elise, you mustn’t worry about me. Please. I’ll be treated well at the Detention Center. I’m sure your lord husband will see to that.”

“Phillip, you
will
see to it?
Promise
me.”

His glacial eyes seemed to thaw as he turned to her. Few people saw that tenderness in Phillip Woolf’s eyes; it was reserved for only three people: Elise and his sons.

He said quietly, “I
have
seen to it. He’ll be treated with due respect. It was all I could do.”

She sighed her relief, then a spark of anger revived.

“And can’t you allow him a little time with the boys before he’s . . . taken away? I doubt he can contaminate their minds in a few minutes. I’ve detected no hint of corruption in nearly ten years.”

Woolf sighed and turned to Rovere. “They’re waiting in the viewpoint pavilion. I intended to tell them myself that you’d be leaving them.”

“Shall I tell them, my lord?”

He hesitated, then, “What will you say?”

“Not the truth. I’ve no intention of inflicting any gratuitous pain on them, particularly not on Rich.” He saw the fleeting shadow of sorrow in Woolf’s eyes. “I’ll simply tell them I’m retiring.”

Woolf nodded mechanically. “Very well, Theron.”

“Thank you, my lord. Elise . . .” He waited until she looked around at him. “Goodbye, my lady. Waste no tears on this old man. You’ve given me so much happiness, I wouldn’t like to think I repaid you with grief.”

She mustered a smile that seemed to catch the spring sunlight and dispel the shadows in the room.

“Goodbye, Theron. Go in peace.”

The windwheels hanging in the trees chimed softly with the quickening of the breeze. The slate path divided. Rovere stopped and looked down the narrower walk to his right. It crossed a footbridge over a stone-strewn white rush of water, then wound a few meters farther to the glass-walled wing that had been his domain for ten years: the school.

A single spacious room housing facilities for almost any endeavor from sculpture to biochemistry, with a comprehensive computer console, direct inputs to Concord University System and Archive memfiles—an array of education tools that would be the envy of any Fesh Basic School, and all for two students. But these were very special students, and the Concord could be grateful that Lord Woolf was so deeply concerned with the education of his sons.

At least—Rovere sobered as he continued along the left-hand path—at least for Alexand.

Alexand was the first born, heir to the First Lordship of DeKoven Woolf with its commutronics franchises and its seat on the Directorate, a virtually hereditary position. And he was the grandson of Lord Mathis Daro Galinin, who held all Solar System energy franchises as well as the Chairmanship of the Directorate, the most powerful man in the Concord of the Loyal Houses.

And Richard, the second born . . .

Rovere pulled in a long breath. Rich would never take part in the grand games of power. Not that he’d have a large part to play as the second born, a VisLord. Still, any son of DeKoven Woolf could make his presence felt in the half-feudal world of the Concord.

But, at thirteen, Richard DeKoven Woolf was dying.

It began with the epidemic that ravaged the Two Systems nine years ago; an aberrant virus striking with the terrible democracy of disease, cutting down Elite, Fesh, and Bond alike. Most of its victims died with the initial viral invasion, but Rich had the best medical care available, and he survived.

His family’s relief at that was short-lived when it became apparent that the disease had unexpected side effects: it disrupted the chemistry of his neural system so violently that the damage was irreversible and continuing. His body turned upon itself, a kind of chemical cancer gradually sheathing the spinal cord with inert sclerose tissue, cutting off the vital electric link between brain and muscle. It began with his legs and worked its way toward his heart and lungs, day by day, year by year. But with good medical treatment, Dr. Stel assured Lord and Lady Woolf, Rich might live to Age of Rights. Twenty.

The Woolfs took little comfort in that, either as loving parents or as First Lord and Lady of the House. It was a well kept secret, and Rovere was one of a trusted handful who knew the real nature of Rich’s illness.

His measured tread brought him out of the grove onto a grass-covered hillock topped by a small, circular pavilion. Only here did it become apparent that the whole miniature forest, the streamlets, and the grassy hill were built on one of the roof terraces of the vast Home Estate of the House of DeKoven Woolf.

From this point one could look down on this sprawling, multileveled edifice that was a palace in the sense of being a lordly residence, the citadel of a feifdom to which six million Fesh and Bonds were allieged, and an administrative complex for an industrial empire encompassing every aspect of communications throughout the Concord, including the PubliCom System vidicom network. Rovere could trace the Estate’s growth over three centuries in the materials comprising its sheer walls and jutting wings—from white marble to luminescent marlite—and in the variety of architectural styles, although it had a coherence of design that always amazed him in view of its long history.

The Estate occupied a ridge forested with eucalypts and fernwood like an exotic extension of rock, and overlooked a small city that was an extension of itself. Tiered up the flanks of the ridge were the apartments of the Woolf Fesh, their opulence increasing in ratio to their proximity to the Estate. At the foot of the ridge was the commutronics factory with its huge, blank-walled assembly buildings and warehouses dominated by three fifty-meter beamed-power receptors. DeKoven Woolf wasn’t one of the landed Houses; it was an exclusively industrial House, and this factory complex was only one of fifty throughout the Two Systems.

Beyond the factory were ten compounds, each housing ten thousand Bonds, and beyond them, stretching south as far as the eye could see, lay Concordia, the city of lights, capital of the Concord, governmental nerve center of the Two Systems, lying in the shadow of, but too vast to be overshadowed by, snow-flecked Mount Torbrek. The Woolf Estate was sited at the city’s edge, but was still part of it and only one of hundreds of similar minicities making up the grand whole; more than half the Houses in the Court of Lords had estates in Concordia, and many of them were Home Estates.

And at the white, shining center of the city, encompassing the blue-green scallop of Phillip Bay, was the Concord administrative complex; five million Concord Fesh and Bonds lived and worked there. On this clear day Rovere could pick out the towering Hall of the Directorate and even the slender triple spires of the Cathedron.

It was a vista to make one pause, and his pace slowed. It was the last time he would see it.

The sound of laughter drew his attention to the pavilion. Rich sat on one of the benches lining the perimeter, looking down at a small chessboard, while Alexand stood with one foot propped on the bench, a hand resting on a chess piece. They were too intent to hear Rovere approaching, and he didn’t hurry his pace. He was thinking of a
Post
-Disasters artist this time. Kelly Song, whose portraits of Patric Ballarat assured his fame with the general public—or, rather, with the Fesh and Elite, who were exposed to Song in history textapes—but whose exquisite eye for composition assured his immortality among artists. Here was a composition for Song, these two figures arranged among the slender marble columns, the clear light casting barred shadows warmed with reflected colors, their shirts, with the full, gathered sleeves—the kind of sleeves worn by people who didn’t have to concern themselves with practicality—making strong, graceful shapes in white, foils for their dark heads and the elongated brushstrokes of legs encased in dark velveen. Alexand was wearing boots, Rovere noted; he wore them more and more often now. The mark of the adult male Elite. Or their military and police minions.