A Prison Unsought (54 page)

I believe Brandon
wants his father back. That’s where I need to begin.

Osri took two or three quick steps, and with a sense of
relief found the door to the disposers. He wasn’t one of those persons adept at
keeping privacies private.

As the door shut behind him, he hit Brandon’s private code.

o0o

Low clouds drifted over the lake; now it was time for a
nurturing rain. Vannis saw a couple sitting on a secluded sand spit put up an
umbrella, and on a rise above the water’s edge, a man with a sketchpad backed
under a tree.

A cool breeze ruffled through Vannis’s hair and skirts, and
she gestured to Yenef, who touched the console.

A brightly bannered awning slid silently overhead as the
first droplets stung cheeks and arms. Brandon looked down at the ruffling lake
water and the droplets ringing outward to intersect with other rings before
vanishing into ripples. Vannis studied his profile, reluctant to break his
reverie. Guilt and regret pulsed through her again.

Then he moved, draining his glass and leaning companionably
on the railing. “Am I poor company?” he asked with a quirky smile. And lifting
a hand in a gesture of appeal, “Ought I to do my duty by the Masauds?”

Vannis’s attention shifted from the long fingers so close to
her own hand, up to his expectant blue gaze. Again she felt an almost
unbearable urge to blather out the truth. But what could he do?
Nothing. Or he would already have done it.
“Stay,” she said, and gave him her most winsome smile. “Am I so dull?”

“Never.” He caught her hand up and
kissed it, with that mocking grand air that always made her want to laugh. She
curtseyed in the same manner.

Brandon spoke to the air, his back to the railing. “Why
don’t we make this a real party?”

Vannis laughed, relieved and intrigued with his sudden
change of mood. “Of course,” she said. “This is for your pleasure.”

He bowed. Was there irony in the flourish of his hand?
“Jaim,” he said. “You haven’t eaten yet, have you? Come on, don’t let this excellent
spread go to waste.”

The Rifter picked up one of the fine porcelain plates and began
loading it.

Brandon surprised Vannis by walking across the barge to the
concealing Rhidari panels. Pulling them aside, he addressed the musicians, who
looked up in fourfold shock: “The music is superlative, but I can hardly hear
you for the rain. Come out and eat something with us.”

Wordlessly they laid down their instruments and filed out in
a row. Brandon held the panel open until the last of them had passed, then let
it pivot shut. He turned to Yenef. “Dear lady,” he said, giving her a polite
bow. “Please. Will you honor us with your company as well?”

Yenef’s face remained wooden, as a proper servant’s always
must, and even as she made her reverence, her eyes sought Vannis’s. Vannis
helplessly signed back that she was free to do what she liked. Though she still
retained control of the timing, control of the party itself had passed out of
her hands.

So she followed Brandon’s lead, smiling left and right as
the musicians helped themselves to the food, but she wondered if her moment had
slipped by and found her wanting, exactly as she’d felt after that very first
conversation, when he so unaccountably brought up the fate of his brother’s
lover.

She occupied her hands by placing delicacies on a plate,
then stood against the rail as Brandon went from one to the other of the
unlikely guests, asking names, making jokes, asking about past performances and
where they had studied. Thus he bound them together into a party of sorts, with
the musicians finally laughing freely.

Vannis found herself distracted by Jaim, whose smile was
rare and unexpectedly attractive. What was this Rifter to Brandon? The
Aerenarch had not talked about his experiences with the Rifters except in the
most general way. Yet there was some kind of bond: he had taken this one as his
personal liegeman, and another as his cook, and visited a third, the boy who
had somehow annexed the Kelly genome. The only ones he seemed to avoid were the
stone-faced Dol’jharian captain and those hideous white-furred sophonts that
everybody said could kill with psi.

And he had not visited the one in prison, brother to Fierin
vlith-Kendrian.

Jaim ate silently as Brandon’s questions turned into general
conversation. He didn’t speak until the subject veered to music, and then the
breadth of his knowledge was surprising.

Brandon laughed and talked, glancing idly at the lakeside.
Distracted, Vannis also looked out at where three or four young men strolled
despite the rain, one tossing a glowing null-ball into the air and watching as
it ever so slowly drifted back to his hands.

Then Brandon moved to the pavilion, clapping loudly.

“Well put,” he said to one of the
musicians. “I see the influence now. And I thank you, most profoundly.” He looked
to the right and left, then bowed, the formal bow of admirer to artist. “Jaim!”
he called. “Help me remember. When we do return to Arthelion, I’ll want these
players there.” He backed up, his gestures wide and mock solemn, as if he were
drunk.

One of the musicians, flushed with Srivashti’s expensive
wine, snickered like a youth; the others watched as Brandon clowned, describing
in increasingly silly terms his future coronation. “. . . and we
can issue Ysselian roaring flutes to all the children in the procession, and
Foneli nose-trumpets to each temenarch . . .”

Brandon mimicked the sound of the ritual flutes of the Yssel
clans with a hideous droning noise through his nose, alternated with demented
tweets, backing up as he did so. The poler paused, his pole suspended in the
air as the Aerenarch climbed up on the rail, his arms waving.

“And you—” He gestured grandly to
the lead musician. “—can compose a divertissement for strings, winds, and
Karelaisian Mace.”

He snatched the pole from the steersman, tossing it into the
air and catching it with a wide two-handed grip, miming with exaggerated care
the actions of the mace bearer, swaying from side to side while banging the
ends of the pole on the deck.

Jaim snorted with laughter and ducked out of the way as the
pole narrowly missed his skull. Then, as the other end came down, Brandon
seemed to lose his balance. Jaim was fast, moving swiftly to his side, but
somehow Brandon escaped his grasp, falling outward and flailing helplessly with
the pole.

And then—Vannis watched it unfold with dream-like slowness,
helpless to intervene—the end of the pole swept around and smashed into the
control console, which erupted with a flare of light. A wave of nausea swept
through her as, with a buzzing screech, the little geeplane used to stabilize
the barge overloaded and the entire barge slowly upended, dishes sliding down
to crash with musical tinklings against the rail as it tilted with majestic
grace toward the spin axis far overhead. The deck slanted steeper and steeper,
provoking inharmonious bumps and thumps as the musical instruments slid over
the side and splashed into the water.

Two of the musicians screamed and dived after them; the
geeplane gave a final despairing howl and the barge lurched up to a
near-vertical stance and then toppled over, flinging them all, with a mighty
splash, into the cold lake.

Vannis caught her breath before the water closed over her,
and she found herself entangled in the ripped awning. She fought free of that
and then ripped away her skirts, which clung to her legs. Kicking free of her
gown, she swam toward the bobbing, cursing heads.

Screams, high and hysterical, turned out to be Yenef, who
insisted some creature had bitten her. A confusion of wildly swinging lights
and agitated voices converged on them, and suddenly they were surrounded by the
young picnickers, who seemed to have found long rowboats and lights among the
reeds.

A woman gripped Vannis under her armpits and pulled her
smoothly from the water. Vannis let her head drop back against the edge of the
boat as the picnickers helped fish the others out of the water. She gazed
between dripping locks of hair at the distant lights, hovering between tears
and laughter; it was such a spectacular disaster! How would she explain
bringing a soggy wet Aerenarch to the Masaud ball for their damned coup?

What a historic
moment!
she thought, and then:
But
where is Brandon?

She flung back the heavy dripping mass of her hair, and
scanned the soaked figures for Brandon’s familiar person. Now she noticed what
had escaped her before, weapons at the sides of the purposeful men and women.
The short, trained exchanges revealed that they were Marines.

They were all looking for Brandon.

Curse the darkness, anyway! Vannis’s heart thumped painfully
as she squinted over the churned-up waters, dreading the discovery of a
floating body. “Was he caught under the barge?” she asked.

No one answered.

“Might have swum to the shore,
sir,” a man said.

Another answered in a clipped murmur, too low to catch. Then
one of them turned to her, sketched a salute, and said, “Your Grace. With your
permission, we will return to the shore.”

She lifted a hand. “Whatever is best.”

Srivashti will blame
me if he’s drowned.
With desolate certainty:
Not as badly as I will blame myself.

Other noises filtered in as her shock dissipated: Yenef
sobbing; one of the musicians bemoaning the loss of his instrument; the hiss of
machinery, the mess of floating dishes, instruments, and cushions from the
barge, with heads bobbing up and down as Jaim and the Marines dove over and
over in a fruitless search. Vannis peered at the black waters, seeing
greenish-blue lights shifting around underwater.

“I’ll have to replace the barge,”
Vannis said, wondering how she would pay for it.

No one answered. If they even heard her, they didn’t care.
The world had gone crazy—almost enough to make that strange, desperate laughter
return. Until they reached the shore, and Vahn, the Aerenarch’s Marine chief of
security, ran down the path and slammed Jaim against the landing rail. “Where
is he?”

Jaim shook his head, his long braids splattering water on
Vahn’s immaculate uniform. “I don’t know,” he said, hands out wide.

For a moment it looked as if Vahn would gut the Rifter right
there, and Jaim just stood, chest heaving, making no effort to defend himself.

Vahn released Jaim, addressing the Marines in a clipped tone:
he never once looked Vannis’s way. They established that everyone else was
accounted for, and then they started the short walk toward the Enclave.

o0o

Brandon waited until the door slid shut behind him,
melding seamlessly into the wall. He glanced around: bed neatly made, bedside
console dark. The bain was empty, and the wardrobe. He had already found and
disabled ancient imagers set into the walls. A touch to his boswell, and he was
satisfied they were still dead.

He moved to the wardrobe, stripping off his wet,
dank-smelling clothing, then hesitated before the shower; using anything might
signal Vahn’s guard in the kitchen alcove.

Grinning, he pulled out fresh shirt and trousers. Whatever
was to come next, he would go to it smelling like a swamp.

His boswell flashed,
an unfamiliar ID. He tabbed the accept.

(Young Seeker, look
you for a bolt-hole?)
Though he’d only heard it twice, he recognized the
laughing voice immediately: the ancient Prophetae, Tate Kaga.

(No,)
Brandon said.

The oldster’s laughter echoed weirdly through Brandon’s
bones.
(So! You have chosen to end your
long sleep, eh? But first there’s one here to waken. Will you come?)

Brandon pulled on his
last boot and ghost-stepped back through the bedroom, pausing before the pile
of sodden clothing.

(You’ll have to tell
me more than that, Old One. I’ve just skipped one trap, and am probably on my
way into a bigger one.)

Once again Tate Kaga laughed.
(Makes-the-Wind never sets bars, but breaks them! I have here the body
of
Telvarna
’s captain. Her spirit is
elsewhere. Come! Summon her back. Her last word was “Arkad.”)

The communication ended.

Brandon paused before a window, looking up at the lights
that hid the Cap. It seemed he had one last chance to bridge that gulf, and he
knew he had to take it.

So he turned his back on the Cap, rummaged in a drawer
beside the bed, then signaled the hidden transtube access to open.

A small portal opened
in the mosaic-decorated wall before him. Looking around the tiny pod with its
dusty, still air, Brandon wondered which of his trusting ancestors had had
these private egresses built into the Enclave—and why. Making a mental note to
search the archives more thoroughly when he had time, he sat down and keyed the
destination for the spin axis. All those years exploring the Palace Major had
taught Brandon and Galen that ancestors inclined to secret passages were also
fond of secret records.

If I lose, there might
be nothing but time.

He had known from the moment he told Lenic Deralze that he
would go through with his escape from Arthelion that the consequences would
eventually catch up with him, but the reasons had outweighed the risks.

The problem was, by the time he had reached Charvann, the
reasons, and the risks, had changed forever. Yet the action would still exact
its price—as it had from Deralze.

o0o

Vahn stopped when one of the guards ran down the path.

“He’s just been inside,” the man
gasped. “And now he’s gone.”

o0o

Osri would not have blamed Brandon for skepticism or even
total disbelief. He knew he would have responded with the latter.

Brandon had thanked him and signed off before Osri could respond.
That was fine. Osri didn’t need to know more; the conviction that he had acted
right cleared his head like a week of sleep during better times. He touched his
boswell again, this time activating the direct link Captain Ng had given him.