The Thrones of Kronos (87 page)

Gone were the bodies, and the burned shrubbery and
buildings: all during that first day, after the Aerenarch-Consort had issued
her challenge and they had decided what to do, somehow the adults had found
out, and they showed up in carloads and helped to do what had to be done. Many,
many adults, some of them completely unknown, others judged by whispers as
collaborators, coming out of the houses where they had been hiding. They and
their children appeared, and helped, and no one said anything to stop them.

It was the adults who removed the bodies for proper burial,
and who later brought the heavy equipment to plow the ground under, and who
dropped tons of fresh soil brought from the far extent of the Palace gardens to
cover the blasted ground up to the sandy part of the bay, and who dredged sand
to cover the rest.

But it was the Rats who worked through that day and through
two succeeding nights to shovel fresh soil into the crater that Dol’jhar had
made in the place that the Havroy had occupied for two thousand years. First
they’d used the big ground-movers that Moira had learned from her father how to
operate, and at the last they had used hand shovels, smoothing out a gentle
mound into which, just as the sun crested the eastern horizon that morning,
they planted carefully cultivated seedlings of plants brought from Lost Earth
so long ago, and nurtured and bred ever since by a long line of gardeners.

Moira stared at the little plants stirring in the sea
breeze, until her eyes blurred. How proud her father would have been—but he
would never see them grow.

“Here they come! How do we stand?” That was Theslar, who
sent an ugly look at Moira before adding, “We don’t have any
real
rank.”

“Just line up,” Captain Hayashi said, and he took his place
next to Steward Halkyn—who was only a civilian—with every evidence of pride.

Moira was silent as she stood beside Gweni, who clutched her
little sister’s hand on the other side. Gweni’s sister hadn’t talked since the
day the Havroy was destroyed. Moira wondered if having the Panarch come back
would make Denni talk again, but then she thought, nobody can make my parents
come back, or bring Popo barking and wagging his tail.

She stole one more look at the distant mound on which the
little green shoots could be made out, feeling a little like she was just
wakening from a bad dream, and a little like she was still in one. They were
safe, they didn’t have to be afraid. They had enough food. They had clothes,
and clean beds, and someone made sure the lights were turned out at night.
Someone had even mentioned school again.

But the bad dream was the memory of the things she’d done
and said that made the Aerenarch-Consort angry, and the Masque, and that other
children hated her for—and would probably hate as long as there was memory.

It had been her idea that the Rats make their own rank
according to how many times they’d encountered the Tarkans, because she’d known
she’d come out way ahead. And all the others had gone right along with the idea
until several Rats got killed instigating actions with the guks, just to get
rank points, and now everyone blamed Moira. She had done brave things and
stupid things, and as her family seemed to be dead she was now to be a ward of
the Phoenix House, which meant that the Panarch would eventually sort through
the record—good and bad—and decide where she ought to be.

She didn’t know herself where she ought to be. Her own house
was empty, and she felt empty inside. But one thing she knew, after all those
hours of shoveling and thinking: that she had liked the war more than she
hadn’t, and this was probably one of the reasons why her father, who didn’t
like war, had been so ready to volunteer for that last mission.

“Look up,” Gweni said softly. “That’s him.”

Moira had to blink several times, but then she saw it, at
first a bright pinpoint of light in the mild blue sky that slowly resolved into
the Panarch’s shuttle.

Moira tipped her head back, ignoring the protest from her
tired back muscles, and watched it come, the sunlight making a blaze of the Sun
and Phoenix on the sides. How very different this was from the advent of the
Avatar, of whose descent now no trace remained.

The small ship glided to the beach without fuss and grounded
silently, its hatch precisely aligned with the rows of the Marine honor guard,
the annuncios with their long, golden trumpets, and the assembled Douloi
beyond. The hatch swung down and the trumpets swung up, glinting in the bright
sun as the Phoenix Fanfare pealed out.

Moira wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Not, surely, someone
three meters tall with flashing eyes and shoulders two meters wide, like a hero
out of the Tale of Years—but certainly someone more impressive than the man not
even as tall as her dad, though he was dressed all in white and gold. But then
she noticed how every eye turned to him, and she saw in those faces that he
might as well be three meters tall. She felt it herself, though she couldn’t
say what the feeling was, except here was the Panarch. He’d won. He was back.
He was going to keep them safe.

She looked at him so hard, trying to figure out how he made
her feel that way when he didn’t even see her, so at first she barely noticed
the small figure emerging behind the Panarch, not much taller than Moira
herself, dressed in white with the markings of—

“The high admiral,” Gweni said, awed. “It’s the high admiral
herself, with the Panarch, and they’re coming to us!”

Moira stared at the woman who had won the battle of the
Suneater. She was around Mother’s age, ordinary brown of hair and skin, and
even smaller than Moira’s mother. She must have liked war, too, or she wouldn’t
be the High Admiral. And lots of people had lost their lives at her command.
Did she feel their weight on her, as if she was to blame?

Moira straightened up, hoping the high admiral would glance
her way. Suddenly it was very important that Admiral Ng notice her. Admiral
Ng’s eyes squinted against the glare of the sunlight, her gaze slightly
unfocused as if she really didn’t see all the people standing in rows before
her.

They walked closer, and the Panarch tipped his head and said
something too low for Moira to catch, his lips barely moving.

The high admiral looked up and scanned their faces, stopping
when she saw Captain Hayashi. Admiral Ng’s eyes grew wide, and gone was the
military precision, and her face had turned a nasty, pasty color. With a little
wordless cry she sprang forward, toward the man whose harsh breathing and
tear-filled eyes surprised the children around him, and he and the high admiral
locked their arms round each other and stood there for a time in wordless
happiness before the Resistance, and the highest officers of the returning
warriors, and the rest of the Thousand Suns through the ajnas of the novosti
lining the perimeter of the field.

The Panarch spoke, and the Aerenarch-Consort in her
beautiful white gown spoke, and then the high admiral and the Masque fell apart
with a little laughter and spoke, but Moira didn’t hear the words. Through
pride and tiredness came the desolate thought that the last time she had been
with her mother and father and Popo had been not far from this very spot, but
there would be no mother to run to throw her arms around her father, and no
father to welcome her home, and Moira bowed her head and covered her face with
her hands, but Gweni dug her elbow into Moira’s side.

“Stop it.”

“No, Moira,
look
.”
Gweni pointed at the new mound, with the little plants that Moira had put in
with her own hands. A pack of scrawny dogs had appeared from somewhere,
sniffing all over the new earth.

Moira’s breath stuck in her chest when she saw among them an
Arkad dog, its black and brown fur matted, a hairless weal across one flank. “Popo?”

She took a step, then two steps, as the dogs scattered,
noses down, following invisible trails.

Then she ran and threw herself on the earth, for she was
crying too hard to see, until a cold nose thrust itself in her hand, and whuffled
in her ear, and her arms locked around a shivering, thin warm body.

Margot Ng traced the scars on Metellus’s face with her
fingers as they lay together. He took her hand and kissed her palm. “I should
put my head in a sack.” He smiled.

“Don’t,” she replied, shuddering. That’s what the
Dol’jharians would have done, had they caught you.”

“Well,” Metellus said, “that’s pretty much what the
chirurgeons will do when the reconstruction starts. You think you’ll enjoy
making love to something out of ‘The Curse of the—’”

She stopped his mouth with hers. After an endless time, they
drew apart again and she buried her face against his neck, lest he see the
tears in her eyes.

But it’s happiness,
not sorrow. How strange the exigencies of war and peace!
So long had their
relationship endured, moments snatched against the demands of duty, that it
seemed strange to contemplate the months of togetherness ahead. For the
reconstructive surgery on her beloved would be long and painstaking; and for
her, the necessity of close coordination with the new government moored her
firmly to Arthelion and the Mandala for at least as long.

“It’s strange,” she said at last, knowing he would divine
her thoughts if she did not distract him.

“What?”

“We only had the hyperwave for a couple of months, but in that
short time we became so dependent on it, it’s now like being deaf and blind.”

Metellus laughed. “Right. Imagine Nelson having it to chase
down the French on the way to the Battle of the Nile, then losing it before
Trafalgar.”

She raised her head, astonished. He’d never before
volunteered a simile based on her fascination with ancient naval history.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking! But—”

Metellus laid a finger across her lips. “I have a surprise
for you.” He reached over her body with one long, muscular arm and tabbed the
bedside comp. A voice spoke.

“A port wriggle is a corruption of a term from the era of
wooden warships on Lost Earth. The correct term, port wrinkle, is a small
awning-like wooden projection over the gun port of a wooden warship, designed
to prevent water streaming down the hull from running into the ship.”

Astonished, Ng sat upright in bed.

“Twenty-four years, thirty-six days, four hours, fifteen
minutes,” Hayashi crowed. “I win!”

But through her astonished delight at the conclusion of her
long search for the meaning of that obscure term, Ng shivered. The voice! She
had heard it before. Where? It was not that of a living man. “Who was that
voice?” she asked.

Metellus’s face abruptly lost its smile. “Who, indeed?” he
said, and his tone made her shiver again. “Jaspar Arkad.”

“What?”

The frisson of awe and fear intensified as Metellus related
the strange story of the Palace computer and its assumption of the identity of
Jaspar Arkad. When he finished, she was silent for a long time, still sitting
up, her arms wrapped around her knees.

“Is it still . . . here?”

“I suppose so. I didn’t want to bring it to the attention of
the authorities—although I believe Vannis Scefi-Cartano suspects. It’s
something the Panarch will have to deal with.”

Then he pulled her down on top of him and ran his fingers up
her back, their pressure increasingly urgent. “Never mind that. We have more
important things to consider. Like this, and this, and this—”

Despite the warmth flooding through her, she squirmed away from
his insistent kisses and looked him in the eyes. “Just one other thing, Captain
Hayashi!” she said in mock umbrage. “No more surprises, AyKay?”

“Surprises?”

“Like the welcoming ceremony. It was wonderful, but I would
have liked it better if it had been private.”

Metellus shook his head. “Couldn’t be. Look, one thing this
war has taught me is the effectiveness of ritual and symbol.”

Ng nodded, remembering the vid of his confrontation with
Juvaszt and the hostage Panarch over Arthelion.

Ng closed her eyes. She experienced a brief flash of pity
for Brandon Arkad, who would have even less privacy than she for the rest of
his life.

“But I draw the line . . .” said Metellus, his voice
suddenly mischievous.

“At what?”

“At this!” he said, and she shrieked with laughter as his
tongue suddenly and unexpectedly tickled a particularly tender place. “All
those trillions can build their own sex legends. They’ll have to do without our
example.”

“They’ll never know what they’re missing,” she laughed, and
gave herself up to the pleasure of a love she thought forever lost.

o0o

Sitting back in his chair, Montrose looked out the window
of his room in the Palace Minor into the terraced garden and reflected on the
irony of his being here—in the Mandala—as a Rifter. Had he remained a minor
Douloi on Timberwell, it would never have come to pass.

Eh! It was too pleasant a day, and the surroundings too
fine, for dark thoughts. No, even mildly ironic thoughts were not an
appropriate way to treat luxurious surroundings, and as a connoisseur of
luxury, he knew his responsibility. He’d been working assiduously at it for
three highly enjoyable weeks.

Montrose closed his eyes in order to concentrate on savoring
the first sip of the coffee he had just made. The rich blend was precisely the
right temperature, the exact proportion of grind to water—pure, distilled
water—and the flavor lingered on his tongue.

The door opened behind him, and he recognized Sedry’s quiet
step.

“There is nothing,” he said, “that enhances the flavors of
things like a sudden outbreak of peace.”

He liked the sound of that and glanced at Sedry to see if
she enjoyed his essay into wit.

She smiled, but it was perfunctory, and her eyes were
distracted as she began tidying her clothing.