Ruler of Naught (38 page)

Osri lifted his bulb of wine, watching a moiré pattern of
reflected light shift across its surface. Touching the control, he waited for
the thin tube to extrude. He knew he should not drink any more, but clear
thought was beyond him now, and he sought escape from the inexorable shadows of
the past.

Out in the center of the room, Brandon was bombarded with
all the questions his auditors had saved up. For a time he fielded some of
these, and at last he held up a hand. Presently silence fell, and his gaze
moved from one face to another around the circle as he said, “I don’t know what
Eusabian plans for the future. My own plan I will tell you. I want to find
myself a fleet of daring ships and make a raid against Gehenna to rescue my
father.”

On the last word he looked squarely at Vi’ya, laughing
challenge in his smile.

She returned his gaze with unwinking coolness as around them
pandemonium broke out. the Changs cheered, laughed, and several drunkenly swore
to join any expedition that Brandon cared to lead. Granny Chang sat quietly
until the furor had died down some, and then the old woman leaned toward
Brandon, involving him in earnest conversation.

Vi’ya leaned forward to spear a piece of food, as though
nothing had happened. But beyond her, Osri caught a glimpse of Lokri amid his
decorative young audience. As they chattered and laughed unaware, Lokri’s pale
eyes watched Brandon, his mouth thinned in a trace of a smile.

“Here. Catch this!” Someone called to Lokri, and he spun
away, lost in his group as they brought out a smoke-pot and started some
pungent incense.

After this, what?
Osri thought.
Brandon can make
theatrical statements, but that doesn’t mean he intends to lead a fleet
anywhere, any more than these people will remember their vows past the hour
their livers have processed what they’ve drunk.

Granny leaned back and made a signal. Hard-beating music
started up. Here and there people began strapping on reaction modules to join
the dancers.

Osri sat where he was, sipping his bulb of wine as around
him moods metamorphosed into a different kind of appetite. Lokri disappeared with
two or three of the Changs, glancing back at Brandon before he vanished into a
shadowy alcove beyond one of the balconies.

Osri heard Montrose’s voice raised in expostulation as Ivard
launched himself clumsily towards the dancers.

“Marim,” Ivard called. His misjudged leap set him rotating
so that he didn’t see Marim roll her eyes as she pulled Ivard into another of
the alcoves.
You don’t want to find that coin for Ivard. You want it for
yourself.
At Osri’s right, his father had fallen gently asleep. Montrose made
a low-voiced comment to Vi’ya and left.

Now only Brandon and Vi’ya remained: Brandon talking to Granny
and a cluster of Changs, and Vi’ya watching, silent and cool. As Brandon
gestured, a glint on his hand brought Osri’s attention to the ring he still
wore: Tanri Faseult’s ring.

“I hope your honor and duty will always be so simple to
define, and to follow,”
Brandon had said during the argument in their
cabin.

He is forsworn...
Osri shook his head.

A mistake to drink so much—

“Would you like anything more, genz?” a mellow voice murmured
near Osri’s ear.

A young Chang smiled at him. Her mouth entranced him as it
curved invitingly.

“No.” He struggled to make his numb tongue work. He felt a
tug of attraction, followed promptly by alarm.

“Some shakrian to release tension?” she offered.

He tried to decline, but she was already behind him, her fingers
kneading his shoulders. Little zings of release sang along his nerves.

He shut his eyes, wavering between what he perceived as his
duty to keep his distance from Vi’ya’s riffraff allies, and an enticement that
grew increasingly persistent.

Under her steady ministrations the worrisome questions went
away. And so, at last, did his inhibitions, the anger-forged iron control he
had put between himself and the universe since childhood.

When she tugged him from his seat and slid her fingers down
the front of his tunic, he forgot where he was, and among what kind of people,
and buried his face gratefully in her scented cloud of hair.

Marim sighed to signify publicly her regret that the crew
was breaking up at last, and was surprised to feel a real twinge of regret.
It’s
always been this way, she thought. Ever since the crèche. You get used to one
gang, you work to the place you want, and then boom! All gone, and it’s to be
done all over again somewhere else.

Ivard’s thin, feverish fingers stole into hers, clinging.

On the other hand, sometimes it’s a relief.

Marim leaned her chin on the back of her pod and watched
Vi’ya lock in the course. The shudder of the fiveskip engaging shivered in her
viscera, and she turned her cheek, hiding a grin.

Rifthaven.
She didn’t have long to find that coin.
The challenge merely added to the fun.

And she needed the fun. She smothered another sigh as Ivard
squeezed her fingers.
Never again am I going to be anyone’s first.
He’d
been hanging onto her ever since he woke up at Granny’s, did a locate on his
boswell, and found her at Red Mik’s joyhouse. She kneed aside one of the damn
dogs pressing against them both, and urged him to sit at his pod. “I’m right
here,” she said.

Ivard sat down, and the two dogs arranged themselves near
his pod, lying down with their muzzles on their front paws. Ivard had them with
him more and more; Montrose had said it was almost like he was trying to make a
Kelly trinity with them.

Marim looked at their steady brown eyes, then away. Dogs
were strange creatures. It was almost like they were thinking.

Lokri sauntered in, last as always, and sat down at his
console. Not last. Vi’ya was waiting, which meant Montrose would be coming too.

Jaim was already there, standing with his arms folded at the
back of the bridge. Ah. So Vi’ya had worked out whatever came next with Jaim.
Not
good
, Marim thought, eyeing Jaim. It was like someone had taken the old,
easy-going Jaim out of that skin, and inserted something made of dyplast and
stone. Except that the hint of dyplast had always been there when Jaim fought.

Montrose entered. Vi’ya gave that weird Dol’jharian nod that
only came out when she was rasty, and Montrose stationed himself at the hatch.

Angry. She was angry—they were all angry, Marim thought.
Montrose poured it into music and sarcasm. Lokri was like an electrical charge
when he got in a Mood—splash! Then it was gone. But Jaim and Vi’ya, when they
got angry, they were
scary
.

“We shall go to Rifthaven,” Vi’ya said. “The fiveskip needs retooling,
and we can have it done better and faster at Furn’s Refit than if we must do it
ourselves. Lokri?”

Lokri looked up. “DataNet’s full of horror stories, but no
reference to the Arthelion raid or
Maiden’s Dream
. Yet.”

He swept his hand over his board and sat back, the fingers
of his good arm tense. “But that doesn’t mean anything. Lot more ships heading for
Rifthaven than Granny Chang’s. What if those chatzing Dol’jharians have figured
out the Arkad is still alive? Hreem was at Charvann, he’d be able to put him
together with us. And the first place he’s gonna look for us since he blew our
base away is Rifthaven.”

“Hreem can’t be coming after us anyway,” Marim interjected,
looking from Lokri to Vi’ya. “He went to Malachronte, right?”

“Hreem can’t go to Rifthaven.” Jaim looked up from contemplation
of the deck plates. “Sodality Adjudicates have some business waiting for him.”

Marim laughed at the understatement.

“Even if the Arkad’s part in the raid was detected, it will
take the news a long time to reach Hreem at Malachronte, and longer still for
him to then contact any agent of his at Rifthaven. We should arrive well ahead
of that.”

Lokri shrugged, but his body did not relax.

“We will stand off and contact Jucan first,” Vi’ya said, indicating
Jaim, who looked up briefly when his brother’s name was mentioned. “If Eusabian
has posted a reward for Omilov, that news will likely have arrived before us,
but if we lock up the nicks for the duration of our stay, I believe our
anonymity is protected.”

Ivard’s hand stole into Marim’s again.

“Also this. You will want to go to the vendors to sell your
share of the loot from the palace. You must be careful to sell only what is not
so rare it can be recognized as from that collection. Those items will have to
wait until another time. Montrose will identify what is safe to sell now.”

“That go for the Heart of Kronos?” asked Lokri, his voice
challenging.

“It is not for sale,” replied Vi’ya.

“But you’re going to try to find out more about it. I doubt
the old man has told you anything.”

Marim sighed. Lokri could see how rasty Vi’ya was. Why was
he pushing her so hard?

“The Heart of Kronos is not your concern,” said Vi’ya.

“Lokri. Let it rest,” Montrose said.

Lokri shrugged again, a jerky motion unlike his usual grace.

When no one else spoke, Vi’ya went on, “What you all must
now consider is your next destination.”

She’s bunking us out,
thought Marim, considering the
future beyond Rifthaven—and her fortune—for the first time. Marim wasn’t
choosing to leave, she was being tossed out. And Montrose and Jaim didn’t seem
surprised, which meant they
knew
. She shook her fingers free of Ivard’s,
and crossed her arms.

“We got to go to the other base.” Ivard’s voice rose
anxiously. “And hide.”

“We can’t hide out at the other base,” Marim said, barely
hiding her irritation. “Hreem blew away
Sunflame
. What you want to bet
he scanned the comp first?”

“Agreed,” Vi’ya said. “The other base is nothing to us now.”

Chill and challenge tingled through Marim.
Rich at
last—and nowhere to go!

Lokri smiled grimly. “Who says,” he drawled, “that we have
to do anything? What about the nicks?”

“They are mine,” Vi’ya said. “I will dispose of them as I
deem proper, in a way that will not lead our enemies to us.”

Ivard had reached for Marim’s hand again. She patted it,
then recrossed her arms, her attention on Lokri and Vi’ya.
I wonder if Lokri
hears the warning in that.

Montrose grunted. “Then you’ll have to kill them. Anything
else, anything at all, will lead our enemies right back to us.”

“There is another alternative,” Vi’ya said calmly. “You will
be safe enough.”

Lokri was silent.
He hears the warning, all right.

Vi’ya went on, “I will leave Rifthaven as soon as the
engines are refitted.”

So we’ll have maybe a week to find another bunkhole and
get our stuff off this ship,
Marim thought.
Means I got a week to get
the gilt I want, then ditch my red-topped parasite here.
She patted Ivard’s
hand again and smiled at his ugly, freckled, weak-eyed face.

o0o

Osri shut down the spy-eye he had found in stolen moments on
the galley console. His hand went reflexively to his wrist, bare of boswell
again after they left Granny Chang’s. But what he’d heard didn’t need recording
to be seared into his memory.

The three Panarchists were crowded into the galley, with
Lucifur winding in and around their legs, making his racheting purring noise,
and one of those irritating dogs sitting at Brandon’s feet, its tail thumping
as Brandon reached down absently to toy with the animal’s ears.

Osri’s anger finally forced him to speak.

“’Have to kill us.’ I never supposed we could expect any
better.”

His father and Brandon exchanged one of those looks that had
long irritated Osri.

“I think that was a request for information, and he seemed
satisfied with the captain’s answer.” said Omilov. “These Rifters have been
together for a long time, and are capable of subtlety as great as most Douloi.”

Osri remembered his father’s comment about the cachets he
had found through the console.

“So you believe Montrose intended that conversation to be
overheard?”

“I think he and Vi’ya play a deep game.” Omilov shook his
head. “I am more concerned about the captain’s intent concerning the Heart of
Kronos.”

He grunted as he levered himself to his feet. “In any case, I
suppose I had better get back to the dispensary so we can avoid awkward
questions.” He left.

Brandon leaned on his forearms, staring into the console as
if reading a hidden message there.

Irritated by his silence, Osri r returned to the chopping
block and began to slice the vegetables that Montrose had laid out.

Perhaps the knife thudded more sharply than he’d meant it to,
for Brandon blinked, his eyes distracted. “She knew we were listening, too,” he
said.

“You think she would have told them what she intends to do with
us—and where—if we hadn’t been listening?”

“No.” Brandon picked up an onion and hefted it absently in
his hand. “Not if they’re disbanding. Protect everyone that way. In any case I
think what happens next depends on what she finds out on Rifthaven.”

Osri looked from Brandon’s meditative smile to the onion
bouncing gently on his palm. “The Heart of Kronos again.”

Brandon’s chin lifted in acknowledgment, then he stood up
and stretched. “She didn’t mention the Eya’a,” he added.

Osri frowned, ready to dismiss this as irrelevant. But he
controlled the urge, and scraped his chopped vegetables into the simmering
sauce.

Brandon seemed to notice what he was doing for the first
time. “That smells good,” he said.

Osri snorted a wry laugh. “Unwilling and untalented, I seem
to have acquired an amazing amount of Golgol chef skills—”