A Prison Unsought (7 page)

Brandon had halted a short distance away. He gazed across
the water, silhouetted against the upcurving lights twinkling in the darkness,
and Jaim, despite a life spent in ships and freefall and Rifthaven, experienced
an unsettling shift in paradigm whose impact was subliminally physical: it
seemed for that moment as if all the constellations of Ares formed a frame
around that single figure.

The notion was fanciful in fact, but symbolically? Jaim was
beginning to fathom how symbolism was used in the Panarchy.
The Douloi do nothing without intention.
Was
awareness of that frame part of this moment for Brandon?

Jaim waited for Brandon to either move, or to speak. But he
stood as water lapped at the shore, and unseen frogs croaked a curious rhythm,
half-muffled by the plash of a waterfall. Finally, he turned away from the lake
and gazed at the brilliantly lit pavilion, a lacework of graceful lines that
could never have withstood real weather, though he took no step toward it.

“It’s time to go,” Brandon said.

An observation or an order? Was it now, on the cusp of Brandon’s
re-entry into the world of the Douloi, that Jaim’s status was to change?

If so, could he accept that?

Time to test. Jaim did not answer, but swept the low bow
that Vahn had taught him, servant to sovereign.

Brandon’s thoughts had run on a trajectory that looped
memory into the present until Jaim performed that deliberate bow, stiff because
it wasn’t yet body memory, but graceful because Ulanshu masters were rarely
otherwise. Brandon sensed the question, and underneath the deeper question of
possible personal betrayal. As with every single move, every breath, there were
a thousand potential paths, and too many of his choices had led to betrayal or
death.

There was only one possible response. Brandon swept the
exact same bow to Jaim, to the same precise degree. “Nothing has changed,
Jaim.” Brandon opened his hand, taking in the station curving overhead. “Just a
bigger prison.”

“So you really can’t get Vi’ya and the
crew out?”

“That is no mere prison.” Brandon’s
brows lifted. “I’ll have you know that Detention Five is a golden cage; among
its more illustrious inmates was one Krysarchei Dalisay, who launched a war
against her father, one of my less savory forebears.”

The reference obviously meant nothing to Jaim, but he took
the intent. “It was as much as I could do,” Brandon continued. “Any more
vigorous attempt might have meant losing all power to help them further.”

“Or yourself.”

“Or myself.” Brandon’s quick smile
deepened the shadows framing his mouth. “All the Tetrad Centrum Douloi practice
Ulanshu, although too many know it only as a thing of will and intellect.”

He saw the meaning strike home, and waited.

“And you’ve not been interrogated,”
said Jaim slowly. “Unless . . .”

Brandon shook his head. “No. You are my sworn man; you would
be told.”

The Rifter echoed his movement, the minor chimes in his
mourning braids singing out. “If you say so.”

“It is part of the dance. And I
don’t know the steps yet.”

Jaim’s chimes sounded again. “Dance? You have to be clear if
you want me to understand. Unless you mean, if you step outside of the ‘dance’
of politics, that frees everyone else to do the same.”

Brandon let out his breath in a gusting sigh. “Yes—friend
and enemy. As yet, I don’t know who is which. But to be plain, to rule I have
to give a first order, and if they refuse to obey it, then I am finished. The
Panarchy is finished. And everyone—” The airy gesture took in the Cap and the
golden pavilion. “And they know it.”

o0o

After she tied off the last stitch, Yenef let her hands
rest in her lap.

The needle fell unremarked from her hand and slithered to
the floor with a quiet
tic
. The
sound, soft as it was, startled her out of the grip of horror.

She slowly held up her handiwork. At any other moment her
dominant emotion would have been triumph, but the memories were too harrowing
for that.

Yenef started again as the annunciator sounded. Vannis took
the gown from her, and slipped it over her head as Yenef hurried to answer the
door.

Though she’d spent weeks aboard Rista Brandt’s yacht, the
woman rushed right past as if Yenef were invisible.

“Vannis, do hurry, the reception
has begun.” Rista tried to catch her breath. Really, every day seemed to become
more like a wiredream. When she saw Vannis, she gasped. “Vannis? Why are you
still not dressed?”

Vannis stared back at Rista, whose round, pleasing figure
was enhanced by a glittering gown of pale lavender, sprinkled across by
diamonds,
kauch
-pearls, and deep
violet
tizti
stones, her pale hair
dressed high, circled by a coronet of faceted tizti. Delicate filigree
bracelets encircled her charmingly dimpled arms and her neck.

Vannis treasured Rista’s uncomplicated friendship, but
sometimes thought that Rista still dwelt in the peculiar mental landscape of
their shared youth. Vannis said, “Did you not see the vid from Arthelion?”

The young woman raised her hand, reddish fires flickering in
the hearts of the tizti stones set in the filigree around her boswell. “Oh,
that. So revolting! I only watched a part. NorSothu says it’s completely fake,
nothing more than Dol’jharian—”

Rista stopped as she realized that Vannis was not, as she
had assumed, half-dressed: that what she’d taken as an under-gown was in fact
what Vannis intended to wear. Though a cook-servant would scorn to wear so
plain a thing.

Well, if a cook-servant could afford those diaphanous layers
of silk, or hire someone to achieve that fit. Rista had to admit that the plain
white gown suited Vannis’s warm cinnamon complexion. Her heavy brown hair was
swept up simply, bound only with a thin strand of pearls. Tiny as she was, she
looked like a girl.

“What have you
done?
” Rista demanded, her jeweled shoes clattering on the parquet
floor. Then she gasped, and clutched at her neck. “You haven’t heard
something—that is, they haven’t gotten word from the Panarch? About formal
mourning?”

“Of course not,” Vannis said
soothingly, pitying anyone who would give NorSothu nyr-Kaddes’s chatter
credence.
They want that atrocious vid to
be fake, so they will pretend that it is until someone has the bad manners to
contradict them
. “Your appearance is entirely correct, since no one
directly connected to you is dead, and official mourning has not been
declared.”

Rista sighed, plumping down onto a chair. “That’s what Matir
Masaud said, but it could always have been a mislead, to make trouble.” She
blinked at Vannis. “Really, there’s never been anything like this before, has
there?” She frowned. “But what you’re wearing!” She gestured, her rings flashing.
“What does it mean?”

“Personal mourning. Rista, whether
true or false, the vid corroborates the fact that we are at war. Is it not time
to retrench?”

Rista bit her underlip, then breathed a soft laugh. “If you
carry this off, NorSothu will be furious. I hear she’s brought out some
embroidered thing she had made for their Archon’s funeral. It will be the most
elaborate gown there; the cost, Matir said, was ruinous. Her brother’s got a
Hopfneriad wig—complete with butterflies in mourning white.” Rista’s hands
fluttered about her head. “But Vannis, we’re going to be late, which I know
wouldn’t matter, except aren’t you one of the hosts?”

Vannis could have said several things about her supposed
co-hosts, but she confined herself to: “That’s just it, we agreed there would
be no host, since we pooled our resources, and the Burgess Pavilion itself is
understood to belong to the Arkads when in residence. The focus, quite
properly, should be on Brandon.”

Rista said, “You say that so naturally, ‘Brandon.’ None of
us have ever met him—and he has such a reputation!”

Vannis let her talk on as they walked out. She covertly
glanced at her boswell, which relayed the imager straight to her retina.
Brandon was still standing there by the lake as thought he’d completely lost
his wits. He had to have a full complement of functionaries—were they unable to
keep him sober?

Not that it mattered. He moved at last, and walked straight
toward the Pavilion. At least he was arriving alone, for she again discounted
the tall man at his side.

So she must arrive alone. But here was Rista, from a minor
Douloi family far outside the Tetrad Centrum, intending to attach herself to
Vannis once again.
I’ve given you
prestige ever since our arrival.
She owed Rista that much for saving her
life, however inadvertently.

She and Rista stepped out onto the lamp-lit slide walk. An
aromatic breeze riffled through their hair and clothing as the slide whispered
its way toward the pavilion halfway around the lake. Vannis checked her boswell
twice while Rista’s royal gossip wandered to how that horrid Basilea, Risiena
Ghettierus, had refused to take her husband into her quarters after he’d
revealed he was not to live at the Arkadic Enclave.

Vannis laughed along with Rista; she had found out by
careful listening to lower-level Naval flunkies well plied with liquor that the
gnostor Omilov had been invited to take up residence with the High Phanist.

But that left the Arkadic Enclave with exactly one inmate,
as servants and staff did not count.
Why
is Brandon still alive, when all rumors point to everyone else at his Enkainion
dead?

She stared across the dark landscape at the Enclave, an
elegantly rambling enlargement of the manor of the Temenarch Ghodsi Illyahin,
who had willed her oneill to the Navy eight hundred years before as housing for
the occasional visits of Panarchs and Kyriarchs.

I wish I’d bedded
Brandon in spite of Semion
, Vannis thought. Brandon was by far the best
looking of Arkad sons, and he’d shown an interest in her ten years ago, but
Semion had been very clear on the subject.
You
will stay away from my youngest brother
, he’d said in that cold,
dispassionate voice. He’d added with faint distaste,
He’s stupid and lazy, and what’s worse, a drunken sot. I will not have
the Family made a target for the coarse-minded.

A drunk could not be trusted for discretion, and anyway the
idea that that handsome face had no wit behind it had killed her interest. Some
might have a taste for beautiful dolls, but that was not one of her vices.

The slide walk stopped and they stepped off before the huge
arches of the pavilion. Music drifted out, below laughter and the tinkling of
crystal. The sounds of impending battle. Vannis smiled in the darkness. The ballroom
was her theater of war. Another quick check on her boswell: her timing was
perfect.

So far.

Now for my deflection.
Who? Vannis scanned the main antechamber as she and Rista crossed the polished
marble. Ah! Vannis recognized a Chival from Octant Sud with whom she’d once had
a flirtation.

“My dear Joffri!” She advanced on
him, hands out. He stopped, his companions deferring as Vannis pressed his
hands in the mode of intimates. “I am so glad to see you safely arrived. Do you
know Rista?” She introduced them both by title, gave them long enough to see
that their rank was matched, then uttered a little cry of dismay. “Do go on
ahead, both of you?” She touched her boswell. “A crisis—I promised my aid—and
you know how unforgivable it is to deal with these things once inside. Do not
let me keep you even later!”

Joffri gallantly offered his arm, Rista took it, and Vannis
was rid of them both as Joffri rejoined his group and performed introductions.

While they were safely immured in polite chatter, Vannis
skirted the curving wall of aromatic shrubs screening the entrance to the
ballroom. As the steward grounded his mace, announced in a hieratic voice
His Highness the Aerenarch
and rolled
out all of Brandon’s names, she approached the huge carved doors now wide open
against the walls. The interior flowed naturally into a visual theme
complementing that flowering outer wall, creating a pleasing sense of
invitation.

The steward grounded his mace, and over the chimes called,
“Her highness Vannis Scefi-Cartano.”

Her highness
—no
Aerenarch-Consort
. There was a new
Aerenarch now: the steward’s announcement confirmed the official acceptance of
that vid.

Vannis straightened her back as faces turned in her
direction.

Her sense of timing had not failed her. Brandon was not
twenty paces ahead of her. He and all the Tetrad Centrum Douloi paused, waiting
to see whom he addressed first. He turned at Vannis’s name. Was he postponing
the political implications of that first greeting?
Is he smart enough to consider that, or is he simply lost in a sea of
strangers?

A stupid sot he might be—his brother had certainly called
him that—but she had never heard that he exhibited Semion’s penchant for
cruelty. She knew the risk she took in so direct an address, and yet, if she
did not triumph now, she was finished in the social theatre of war.

She risked it all by extending her hands in a gesture half
of welcome, half of question.

He smiled back. And answered by waiting.

Jaim, at Brandon’s shoulder, thus got a full view of a
straight-backed, diminutive figure gowned in unrelieved white. The contrast was
startling; framed by the splashes and glitter of complicated color around her,
the simplicity of her white gown, its hem rilling like sea foam at her feet,
seemed to enhance the smooth lines of her body, the dusky shade of her skin
crowned by coiled, glossy brown hair.

(Vannis Scefi-Cartano,
the former Aerenarch’s consort,)
Vahn said, in case Jaim had missed the
announcement.

She moved like a trained dancer, so light and elegant she
seemed to be a holo rather than real. Reth Silverknife had moved with similar grace.
The memory struck Jaim in the heart and he could not look away; he heard the
rustle of her gown as she walked straight to Brandon’s side.