The Thrones of Kronos (84 page)

“Then it’s up to us to make the salvage as effective as
possible.”

As the fiveskip hummed to life, Ng glanced one last time at
the strange image frozen on-screen, wondering what that glimpse of stars had
meant. Then she put the thought aside. That was for the future to deal with.
For now, she had enough to do.

o0o

For a long time, neither Brandon nor Vi’ya spoke.

But presently the devouring sunfire of desire dwindled to
two tired human beings, lying side by side.

Brandon studied Vi’ya’s dark-lashed eyes, the extravagant
spread of blue-black hair across them both, and wondered if he would ever
become accustomed to the sight. Her eyes were open, and clear.

She smiled. “What are you thinking?”

“Wondering what the hell Anaris meant by that last.”

There was no mistaking the genuine confusion in her eyes. “I
don’t know. Unless he’s angry because I have Tatriman and her cousins, but they
signed on with me free and clear.” She made a dismissive gesture.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, just for the pleasure of
hearing her speak.

She smiled, a sudden transformation that took his breath
away. “Hreem is dead,” she murmured. “Markham is avenged.”

“Then let us celebrate him.” Brandon held out his arms.

And so, in silence and unmeasured time, they employed arts
learned from the same beloved as a master musician employs all the harmonic
elements at his command, and cauterized the passion of anger. And then, having
erased the borders of self, they shared together the passions of tenderness,
and sorrow, and laughter, and joy.

Vannis Scefi-Cartano emerged from her private suite into
the informal antechamber where, in the old days, she had interviewed staff and
service.

There she found a waiting crowd, just as in the old days,
except these were not polite, deferential servants in their elegant but subdued
livery. She saw three governmental staff members, two Palace officials, and a
young military attaché.

Is Brandon’s reach
already so powerful?
she thought.

For she knew their deference was not to her but to the
Panarch they assumed she represented, even though, since the failure of the
hyperwave that had announced the end of the war, he could issue no further
orders until he himself reached Arthelion.

That in itself was a measure of the future she could expect,
for she knew Brandon would not hesitate to exploit this perception of her
position, and so her place was secure.
My
place with respect to the new government, and old society. But what about my
place in his life?

That would have to wait. In the meantime, there was much to
be done.

As she offered refreshments to those who had waited for her,
she reflected that she was glad she had resumed her old chambers, twin to the
Aerenarch’s.

She’d debated this on the long journey from Ares,
contemplating the implications of several courses of action. By the time of her
arrival, the Mandala had been secured. Luckily Steward Halkyn numbered among
the survivors, and on Vannis’s arrival, almost her first order was to turn over
to him the task of reordering the Palaces Major and Minor. With the frenzied
energy of pent-up hatred, Halkyn and his army of workers—which grew each
day—labored to remove all traces of the Dol’jharians.

At her orders, her staff reopened the Aerenarch-Consort’s
suite. Nothing had been touched; all her clothing was there, and after
consideration she resumed wearing the fashions previous to the attack.

It was the right thing to do. Everyone who had known the
Palace before the war seemed to be relieved to go back to the old rooms, and
old ways, as much as possible. Vannis listened to many stories, most of them
tragic, a few triumphant, about who was killed out of hand that first terrible
day, and during the subsequent nightmare, and who had managed to escape and
how. There were also anger-fueled whisperings of collaboration with the enemy.

Only the personal areas of certain people still remained
untouched, except by the roaming dogs, pending orders directly from Brandon:
Gelasaar’s wing; the suites of all three of his sons; and the Ivory
Antechamber, which was still unsafe to visit for more than a few minutes.

Vannis had, with Halkyn’s aid, evolved a daily schedule.

As the business of dispensing food and drink ended, Vannis
sat down in her chair as the crowd sorted itself out with polite deference.

Most of their questions she was able to resolve: the
disposition of an influx of refugees; the testimony of the two officials
against their supervisor, who they said had compromised with the enemy; and the
construction of a new boost field, as the departing Dol’jharians had blown up
the old one as their last gesture—probably in retaliation for the abortive
attempt on the part of the Resistance to grab their hyperwave while they were
in the midst of their withdrawal—unaware, in terrible irony, that the device no
longer worked.

The story of compromise she saved for last, and when the
room was empty, she said to the expectant pair, “These questions must wait for
the Panarch. I suspect, from the message sent to Rifthaven, that there will be
general amnesty for all those who were not oath-sworn. For those who were, it
will be a matter for the Justicials.”

Without speaking they bowed and retreated.

Given this unexpected respite—previous days had seen upwards
of five or six solid hours of petitioners—she retreated to her inner chambers.
Passing the carved door connecting to the Aerenarch’s rooms, she paused
briefly. Would it be locked? Or open? She laid her hand on the door, then took
it away again. It didn’t matter anymore. Semion had never once opened that door
himself. When he had wanted to issue orders to Vannis, he had summoned her to
him, and then the door would be unlocked. She remembered how, when they were
first married, she had found this locked door perplexing—and then sinister.

Now she smiled with a regret she could scarcely define and
passed on to the discreet door that the servants used. The hall beyond was
empty, except for the tick-tick of canine toenails as one of the roaming dogs
went about its business. She’d never been able to figure if the animals roamed
randomly, or on some type of patrol. She’d always meant to ask the Panarch Gelasaar,
but she’d seen him alone so seldom, and those times, she’d never remembered the
dogs.

Accessing the House computer once more, she obtained
directions to the old Hegemonic detention area and found a lift. As she
followed the directions, she wondered at the easy compliance of the computer. Some
of the requests she’d made since her arrival should have bounced, for her
access level was not high enough. Yet she had encountered no problems. She had
heard rumors of strange goings-on involving the computer, and had even queried
Metellus Hayashi, leader of the Resistance, but he had been unable—or
unwilling—to enlighten her.

As the lift arrived, she put the problem aside. It was not
really important. What was important now was this, her own private quest, to
trace Brandon’s steps that day when he raided Palace with his Rifters. She
wanted to do it quickly, before any remaining traces were removed by the
indefatigable cleaners.

Her first stop had been to the Ivory Antechamber, to view
the empty places where once had been displayed—some for hundreds of years—the
artifacts taken by Vi’ya’s crew. Longest she paused before the plaque on the
wall where the Stone of Prometheus had hung. She tried to envision where
Brandon had stood, and where Vi’ya, and his manner as he gifted her with the
priceless artifact.

Challenge? Humor? Promise? Vi’ya’s manner as she accepted it
would, of course, be cold and impassive, as befitted a Dol’jharian, but
underneath that, what had been her emotions—if she had any?

I don’t know either of
them well enough, or I should be able to see it as it was.
Vannis moved
away.

Her goal was the subsidiary kitchen, where they had battled
the Dol’jharians before their retreat to their ship. The area was deserted, the
air still. She spotted the pretty mosaic-inset wall consoles. She tapped out a
query. And was on her way, the House computer complying instantly.

It was a shock to discover how very close Brandon had been
to the room where Gelasaar had been imprisoned. Perhaps he had even passed down
the same hall. Did Brandon know it? She wondered if, after his return, he would
retrace his own movements that day.
Will
he do it alone, or with Vi’ya?

She turned away from the plain door indicated by the
computer and walked down the silent hall to the kitchen.

Halkyn’s cleaners had not yet penetrated this far underneath
the Palace. The Dol’jharians had cleared away the bodies and the ruined
machines, but the burn marks still remained, and here and there corners or
crevices displayed a dried crust of greenish material.

She walked slowly through the silent room: here Brandon had
hidden, at this console. And the others? She envisioned the Dol’jharians at one
side and the
Telvarna’s
crew at the
other. At the back the mechwaiter door where they had made their escape. She
was about to open it when her boswell alerted her to an urgent message.

Activating it, she recognized Nik Cormoran’s voice:
(Where are you? We have the day’s propaganda
to arrange.)

Propaganda.
(On an
errand. I will meet you in the audience chamber in half an hour.)
She ended
the connection in case he tried running a locate on the signal.

He would probably find his way to these rooms sooner or
later, for more of the lurid stories his subscribers liked, but for now, on
matters touching Brandon personally the House computer cooperated only with
Vannis. That, too, was strange. Her skin prickled as she looked around the
deserted kitchen. The shadows suddenly seemed menacing. Autonomous behavior?
And what of the Ban? Perhaps there were secrets to the Mandala that only the
Panarch knew. And maybe those secrets had died with Gelasaar.

Resolutely suppressing remembered fragments of history chips
on the Adamantines, Vannis left the kitchen, turning her thoughts to Cormoran
and the problems he represented.

Because they had dealt well enough in the past, and because
he and his team had managed to get on the same Ares transport, Vannis had asked
Cormoran and Y’Madoc to serve as novosti liaison with the first wave of
Panarchists returning to the Mandala.

They had agreed promptly, and for the first days, it had
been fun combing through the daily courier reports to put together broadcasts
meant to reassure the Thousand Suns of the efforts to reestablish order.

Prompted by this cooperative spirit, she had experienced an
impulse to appoint Nik and Derith her official spokespersons, but was glad she
had not given in. Of late Nik questioned more and more of her decisions, and
Vannis found evidence of Derith’s data excavations.

Vannis felt compelled to hide more and more data from
them—all of this being a reversion to the normal give-and-take of political
life. It was not in Nik’s or Derith’s natures to be mouthpieces. They would
want to resume providing the Thousand Suns with their view on the truth, and
they were honest enough to tell Vannis first.

Honest enough and pragmatic.
They must know they are probably going to be the wealthiest of their
kind once they start sending out what they already have stored up.

But in the meantime, it would take months to find out what
was happening elsewhere in the Thousand Suns—the DataNet was horribly
fragmented. In lieu of news from elsewhere, the novosti would perforce
concentrate on the Mandala. And the reestablishment of the government, and
Brandon’s coronation, were, in a very real sense, the most important news of
all, for they would serve as the cement to rebuild the foundations of the
Panarchy.

Composing her thoughts—and considering what to say and what
to hide—she retraced her steps.

Manderian stood next to the High Phanist as the whirling,
writhing, graceful but profoundly alien sentients termed Kelly by human beings
danced mournfully about the floating biers carrying the bodies of
Portus-Dartinus-Atos, killed aboard the
Telvarna
by order of Anaris Eusabian. Their path took them between two rows of Marines
in full-dress uniforms drawn up before the tripod of Kelly ships in a landing
bay on the
Grozniy
, an honor guard
ordered by the Panarch.

The Kelly’s threefold voices raised in alien song sent
shivers through him, body and spirit, emotions heightened by the knowledge that
these Kelly, whose names to humans were Shtoink, Nyuk2, and Wu4, in homage to
the ancient human comedians they called the Blessed Three, held memories
reaching back to the beginning of their race’s sentience.

No wonder, Manderian thought, that even when they spoke in
Uni, he found it difficult to understand them. He had decided that their
communication was based on a fundamental synesthesia that he could appreciate
on a theoretical level, but which slipped away from his comprehension somewhere
in his brain between the imagistic and linguistic centers.

So he composed himself to absorb what little he could from
this ceremony—at least honoring the dead by his attendance—and contemplated the
swift series of surprises that had taken place since his arrival on the
Grozniy
. For so very long reality had
been measured by hours, and days, of waiting for news: first on Ares, then in
space, when Eloatri declared that she would need to rendezvous with the
Grozniy
on its return in triumph to the
Mandala.

They had seen Eusabian’s horrifying end, and knew from the
failure of the hyperwave that the war was over, the Dol’jharians driven from
the Suneater, but little else.