The Thrones of Kronos (19 page)

Finally the tempath did speak—to tell them to shut up so she
could sleep, because she faced another test the next day. Barrodagh frowned,
wondering again what that strange conversation between Vi’ya and Anaris in the
Throne Room had meant.

This Vi’ya was a lot more dangerous than he’d thought, and
not just because of her considerable tempathic abilities. A Dol’jharian who had
spent years away from the home planet, like Anaris, she had learned the art of
Panarchist dissembling. The only hope that Barrodagh had that she wouldn’t
throw in with Anaris against him was the reward she wanted. That could only
come from Eusabian, if she powered up the station—and of course then Eusabian
would hold the whip hand over everyone.

And so will I,
Barrodagh thought, smiling grimly as the outer door sucked open.

Marim came in alone. A small female—as small in stature as a
Bori—with a quantity of curling yellow hair, she had a sharp, appraising gaze
and an insolent grin.

“Your captain,” Barrodagh said, “has stated her price for
her service. You are here because I want it understood that anyone—anyone at
all—who serves us will be rewarded. You know,” he added, “that we have the
wherewithal.”

It was his standard Rifter speech—mention money, and remind
them who had the power—and he saw, for the first time in any of this crew, a
flicker of interest.

It wasn’t obvious, and her distrust still made itself
manifest in her attitude of bravado, but it was by learning to read those tiny
physical signals—that sometimes people themselves were not even aware of—that
Barrodagh had survived the deadly competition of the Catennach.

“I don’t know anything,” she said, stretching slowly as she
sat back in her chair.

If I thought you did,
I’d have you on the mindripper,
he fumed, further irritated by her
obviously fake yawn. He said, “It is not just information that earns rewards,
but service. As your captain is striving to prove.”

Her pink, pointed tongue moved slowly round her lips, then
she cocked her head. “Service?” she repeated, wriggling slightly.

“What are your abilities?” Barrodagh countered.

“I can run pretty much any pod on the bridge of any ship
under destroyer size,” she said. “Nav not so nacky—not like Ivard. Same with
piloting. But engineering, communications, and of course DC.” She wrinkled her
nose and wriggled slightly again. Barrodagh’s skin crawled. Did she have some
kind of parasite or disease? “But I don’t think I could run Damage Control in
this chatzing hellhole. What would damage even look like?” She grinned—and again
the wriggle.

Barrodagh realized with a stunning amazement that she was
pantomiming sexual invitation!

He laughed, and once he’d started, it was for a long time
almost impossible to stop. Her jaw-dropped amazement sent him into
belly-trembling gusts: just as he could not remember ever having been intrigued
before, he wondered if she had never been turned down before.

Fighting to control the laughter, he sensed the horizon of
hysteria perilously near, and how easy it would be to skim right off the edge.
A brief, unusual spurt of empathy for Lysanter, who had been unable to control
his mirth when Barrodagh had told him that the underlings were afraid of their
disposers, helped him to force the spasms to chuckles, and then the chuckles to
unsteady breathing.

Marim looked as annoyed as Barrodagh must have looked to
Lysanter. “The station is under our control,” he said, gulping down another
breath and forcing his diaphragm to stop fluttering. “But I understand you wish
to be permitted outside your chamber.”

The anger narrowing her blue eyes eased, and she lifted her
chin, revealing wary interest.

“As you may know, we are working extra-long hours to make
the station ready for Lord Eusabian’s control. Our workers do require
recreation time, something I haven’t the leisure to organize. If there were
someone who knew how to make the area assigned for recreation more attractive
for our workers, it would be considered an appropriate service.”

“That’s all?” Marim asked. “Just—get games goin’? No
narkin’, right?”

Wrong,
Barrodagh
thought grimly as he shook his head in mendacious negation.
But I will wait for you to come to me about
that.
He gave her the rec hours and then summoned Lar to take her out
again. She was grinning with anticipation as she left.
And I think you will,
he thought.
If I know anything at all of human nature, I think you will.

His compad bleeped. “Tallis Y’Marmor reporting direct, per
flag order.”

Barrodagh sat up. What was so important that Juvaszt relayed
a direct contact?

Moments later he had his answer.

“You did well to report this, Captain,” Barrodagh said
finally. “It will be remembered.” The words did not seem to cheer Tallis, nor
did Barrodagh expect them to; he knew that Tallis was no more loyal than any
Rifter. Only fear sufficed to rule them.

Barrodagh tabbed off the connection and DL’d the vid into
his compad. He would have to tell Eusabian immediately, which actually was all
to the good. It would balance the demonstration Lysanter had arranged, which
was next on his agenda.

Feeling almost cheerful, despite the fear he’d learned to
live with, Barrodagh locked down his console and left.

It wasn’t often one got such a direct view of the struggle
for succession.
And Morrighon won’t be
there.

o0o

The smoke from the incense rose in a straight column
through the still air, its sweet-sour scent hanging heavy in the room. Subtle
curves and flutings twisted in its diaphanous substance, drawing Anaris’s eyes
upward until they met the empty gaze of his grandfather’s skull above the
family altar.

But this time he was not kneeling before it, nor had he done
so since his elevation to heir. He wondered if some whisper of his Chorei
evocation of Urtigen’s ghost, in the
Fist
of Dol’jhar
above Arthelion, had reached his father’s ears.

He has to know.
Eusabian, garbed in the black vestments of the
eglarrh hre-immash
, knelt in meditation as the ceremony drew to its
conclusion. The ceremony to placate Urtigen’s restless ghost, whom the Avatar
had murdered in his struggle for the succession, was a central pillar of his
father’s authority. Delegating it to an acknowledged heir would grant too great
an advantage in the aftermath of that evocative incident.

Especially now. This time the
eglarrh
coincided with the prolepsis of the Karusch-na Rahali.
Anaris sensed the heightened emotions of the Tarkans around him; in truth, he
felt it himself.

Eusabian rose and bowed over the glowing coals in the copper
sacrifice bowl before him. Then he poised the sacrificial lancet over his left
wrist and began the penultimate invocation.

“Darakh ettu mizpeshi,
Urtigen-dalla. Darakh ni-palia entasz pendeschi, pron hemma-mi ortoli ti narhh.
Visit us with your mercy, great Urtigen. Visit not with vengeance your lineage,
take instead this my blood that once was yours.”

He plunged the lancet into the vein, twisting it to release
a stream of dark blood into the bowl. Pungent smoke puffed up from the coals
with a hiss, writhing about the skull of Urtigen. The smell of burning blood
reached directly into the forebrain of every man and woman present, evoking a
complex of emotions. To Anaris it defined what it was to be Dol’jharian,
causing an ambivalence he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, resolve.

The stasis-clamp control console in the far corner of the
chamber began to issue clicks; the clamps were installed as thickly as in the
Avatar’s own chambers. Anaris heard someone’s breath catch as the floor
trembled and the dense tapestries that disguised the surfaces of the Suneater
rippled.

Eusabian did not react overtly, but Anaris saw wariness and
anger in his sudden stillness; anger intensified, the heir was sure, by the
fact that no one uttered the ritual words that had greeted his own TK evocation
of Urtigen’s ghost:
Urtigen mizpeshi!
The mercy of Urtigen.

No, everyone here
knows it is the Suneater.
Or the karra, as the Tarkans present no doubt
believed. If anyplace was likely to be infested by the omnipresent demons of
Dol’jharian myths, the Suneater was it. Morrighon had told him that the grays
called it the Maw—no doubt the Tarkans thought the same, but their discipline
ensured that none would utter the word.

But what had caused this latest manifestation? Was the
station somehow sensitive to the emotions of those present? It had, after all,
ingested three tempaths so far. Two and a half, anyway. Norio’s head had been
cut off and thrown into space.

Anaris laughed inwardly: a tempathic Suneater might make the
Karusch-na Rahali rather interesting. He brought up the mental image of Vi’ya,
tall, strong, and fearless, evoking a different type of anticipation. She would
make it even more interesting.

Eusabian spoke the words of dismissal. “
Chupkun immashen enach t’gall. Etarr!
The sacrifice is accepted.
Go!”

The Tarkan commander Chur-Mellikath rose with his
subordinates, bowed, and filed out. The solemnity of their departure was marred
by an especially rude sound from the door as it opened.

Anaris, too, rose, but paused at a gesture from his father.

“Urtigen mizpeshi,”
Eusabian said, his gaze narrowed and intense. When Anaris said nothing, only
returning his gaze unflinchingly, the Avatar continued, “Not this time, I
think.” Then he laughed, a single expulsion of breath. “Nor the last.”

Oh yes, he knows.
The confirmation unsettled Anaris, which Eusabian had apparently anticipated.

“Come.” He gave Anaris no chance to reply as he strode to
the door. “Lysanter has something that will interest you.”

There was no further opportunity for Anaris to balance his
father’s revelatory thrust with any sort of response, for the door sloonched
open to reveal two Tarkans, Eusabian’s honor guard, most honorable of positions
among those unquestioning soldiers. They were never far from him—no more than a
door ever separated the Avatar from their ferocious loyalty.

And any hint of Anaris’s Chorei nature in their hearing
would undo all of his careful work to suborn them.
Which was probably the point of Eusabian’s comment
, he thought
wryly.

When they reached Lysanter’s lab, the scientist ushered them
into a small adjunct chamber as the Tarkans took up their stations inside its
door. Barrodagh was waiting, along with two other humanoid figures, bulky and
utterly still. These had to be the two Ogres Barrodagh had brought in from
Hreem’s ship.

The sensory bulbs and clusters that formed their heads had
been sculpted into fearsome masks of enraged idiocy, like insane children given
to wrenching the limbs off insects. Except these were designed to slaughter
larger prey: Shiidra.

A further surprise was recognizing that they had been
fashioned in the form of the kipango, the karra of Dol’jharian legend who
looked forward and backward at the same time, and could, like the Ogres, spring
on their victims in either direction. Anaris decided to have Morrighon find out
if Eusabian had ordered them fashioned in this form, or if the Barcans had done
so for their own reasons.

He sensed disappointment from Eusabian at his lack of
reaction. But Eusabian only turned to the scientist. “Your demonstration.”

Lysanter began a step, caught himself and performed a bow.
Anaris could feel his impatience at the necessity, and wondered if his father
did.

Lysanter then went to the sole console in the chamber. “I do
not yet judge it safe to fully engage their programming, Lord,” he said. “I
will demonstrate under the command of the station arrays. When I am finished,
they will obey your voice alone.” He held up a small, jewel-like object on a
chain. “Tags like this can be issued to those you wish the Ogres to ignore.”

The Urian specialist tapped at the keys. A faint whine
emanated from the left-hand Ogre; flickers of light sifted through its bulbous
sensors and two of them glowed red, giving the appearance of eyes. The Ogre
stumped back and forth across the chamber, its armored limbs articulating in
uncannily human fashion, the whine-thump of its progress very much like that of
powered armor. “That is the terror mode,” said Lysanter. He tabbed his console,
and the Ogre continued its movement without sound. “And this the covert mode.”

“And your modifications?” asked the Avatar.

Lysanter’s lips parted, his eyes wide with excitement. “Yes,
Lord. I’m quite proud of this.” He tabbed his console again; the first Ogre
froze in position as the other pivoted with surprising grace and laid the palms
of its oversized hands against the wall of the chamber, close together. Veins
of bluish light webbed out from its fingers, and as it pulled its hands apart,
a hole opened in the wall. Then it pulled its hands away and the hole slammed
shut with a loud eructation. The Ogre returned to its former position and froze
into immobility.

Anaris heard a harsh inhalation behind him and realized that
Barrodagh had been holding his breath.

“Stasis clamps in their hands,” said Eusabian. “And their
feet. Excellent. With these the fabric of the Suneater itself will obey my
commands.”

Anaris altered his stance as if to observe the Ogres more
closely, but his real interest was in Barrodagh, who had blanched paler than
ever, his jaw rigid.
So the secretary as
well as the heir is warned.
The Ogres would make Jerrode Eusabian more
autonomous than any lord in history.

Autonomous not just of the Tarkans, but of his secretary.

Lysanter said, “Shall I demonstrate further, Lord?”

Eusabian indicated with a flick of his hand that he was to
proceed, and in a dry voice, Lysanter went on to describe the complicated
weapons systems. Anaris was impressed.
Morrighon
will have to provide a full report on their capabilities, and limitations—if
any.
The Ogres seemed more versatile—and more deadly—than rumor had made
them out to be.