Ruler of Naught (43 page)

“You should have found a better tailor.” She grinned as her
eyes strayed down his body. “Though covering up
that
is rather a shame.”

Metellus gave her a smacking kiss. “If I’d wanted to be
captain of a battleblimp, I would have.” Another kiss. “But my deep-laid plot
worked out, and I only got a destroyer squadron in the end.”

He laughed like a serial-chip villain, then began trailing
kisses from her chin down her throat. “So why are we talking politics?” Her
collarbones. “You hate politics, and we always end up at the same place anyway:
the entire system is rotten but we’re sworn to defend it.”

Ng’s head panged with the ghost of a migraine, and she
pulled away a little, the better to search his eyes. She hated the emotional
lability left behind by the Augment session. It felt like a betrayal.

“But politics is the reason why we probably won’t find any
help waiting for us,” she replied. “Armenhaut and his peers weren’t good enough
for the Aerenarch’s private force at Narbon. They were stuffed uniforms on
parade around the Mandala, promoted solely on who their families were, and how
good they looked.”

Metellus tapped her palm, his naval ring glittering on his
finger. “Harimoto was no stuffed uniform. I expect Koestler did very little
better at Narbon when it fell.”

Ng took his hand, turning his naval ring around and around
with her fingers. “You know what I mean. It’s not just Semion’s obvious preference
for the High Douloi scions of Downsider Tetrad Centrum Families that I objected
to.”

No matter where human beings go they rank themselves
.

“I understand the value of the sense of continuity that the
Douloi confer on Thousand Suns society. I have nothing to say to purely social
organization, but the military must,
must
be promoted on merit. Yet
there were too many mysteries like the vlith-L’Ranja boy.”

Metellus leaned back. “That again. Margot, he hankered after
privilege just like everyone else. He just picked the wrong ranker to follow. Everyone
knows the Krysarch was a drunk, lazy, expecting everyone to bend the rules
because he was an Arkad. And one day he went too far. Though I didn’t like
Aerenarch Semion, and some of the rumors about his training practices make my
blood run cold, you have to admit he at least obeyed the rules. It can’t have
been pleasant to cashier his own brother, when everyone knew how important
Arkad prestige was to him.”

“That’s just it. I don’t believe any of it. You didn’t meet
young Markham, but remember, he spent that entire summer under my command when
I was Ops Officer aboard the
Arius
. If he was such a nacker-kisser after
privilege, then why was he first on line no matter what I assigned, first in
every single sim I gave them, first to volunteer even if he’d just come off two
watches of maintenance duty?”

“I remember, I remember. But it’s a moot point now.”

“If we do win, what’s going to happen to us? Will there even
be a government for us to protect?”

Metellus lay back and stared at the ceiling, his forehead
creased. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “If those Rifters were right and the
Panarch lives, then change might not run deep. People embrace the old systems,
historically, if enough of it exists after a war. Better the tame demon you
know than the wild demons of chaos.”

“But even Gelasaar’s reputation is unlikely to survive a
disaster of this scale. Can he impose a new succession? And... if he’s dead?”

Metellus shook his head and said nothing.

Are we going to end up with a military dictatorship, run
by Semion’s admirals?
she thought. Here was the biggest problem of all:
there was no escape from politics if you began to think beyond the next battle.

He toyed with her hand, his gaze abstract.

“Have you heard from Alys?” she asked carefully.

He smiled. “You mean, do I know if she’s alive? No, I
don’t.”

She sighed. Time was when she’d felt ambivalent about the austere
woman Metellus had had to marry eighteen years before. A decade older than they
were, Alys ban-Kerrimac had been philosophical about accepting his relationship
with Ng as part of her marriage with the Hayashi dynasty. At that time Ng was
still struggling to understand the Douloi attitudes toward marriage, love, and
family; there had been moments when it had seemed she would make more sense out
of the Shiidra than these old families with their carefully-modulated voices
and poised bodies.

But she’d come to know Alys over the years, to understand
her as much as their backgrounds, and their interests, allowed, and even to
like her.

“I hope she’s safe,” Ng said, her fingers tightening on
Metellus’s.

“Alys is a canny one,” he said. “She has ears with ears. My
guess is she would have had enough warning to get out. And the Shiidra hits are
still recent enough in memory that evacuation plans were kept up-to-date.”

“This war is going to hurt business,” she said, tracing
patterns on his palms.

“It will hurt everything,” he said. Adding fiercely, “I’m
glad it is us who will be fighting at Arthelion. Though I know we can’t win.”

“We will win,” she said, smiling. “Even if we all get blown
to hell, so long as one of our couriers gets that hyperwave to Ares, we win.”
She glanced again at the chrono and sighed. “Ten minutes. Hadn’t we better—”

Instead of freeing her hand he gripped it and pulled her
over on to him, his mouth seeking hers fiercely.

She reveled in the ready flare of desire and then
reluctantly pulled away. “We have to meet them in thirty minutes... ”

“Margot,” he breathed, his palms on either side of her face,
his eyes steady and smiling. “We have thirty minutes.”

She laughed.

o0o

Montrose guided Ivard into the Chirurgicon, which was
crammed, as always, with a variety of raffish individuals, most of whom had
suffered recent wounds, and here and there a soberly-dressed trader whose
distant travels advertised themselves in more exotic conditions. Montrose
steered Ivard well away from a man obviously suffering from Dyrjwarsian
Nose-fungus. Ivard glanced back several times at the colorful parasite
squirming on his face. He caught a nasty tang in the air and decided that the
woman sitting alone in a corner with the empty seats around her must have come
down with Mirkwudi Stenchrot. Those were two of the more common symptoms of
human interface with totally alien biology, and he smiled as he thought of the
equally exotic cures that made them both popular forms of revenge.

A tremor in the bony wrist under his grip meant that Ivard
was shivering again. He’d counseled him to keep his sleeve over the Kelly band.
Ivard had acquiesced without argument, just as he had with the dogs, on the
bridge. This disturbed Montrose. Usually Ivard queried everything, showing what
Montrose considered a healthy interest in what was going on around him (as
well as an adolescent distrust of anyone’s skills besides his own). Lately,
though, he seemed more interested in whatever crazy fumes the damned Kelly band
was pumping through his brain, behaving with such docility it worried him even
more than the continual light fever he ran now.

“May I help you, genz?” came the melodious voice of the
Szefteli healer who worked with the Chirurgicon’s doctors.

Montrose pointed at Ivard’s shoulder cast. “Burn. Want
Atropos-Clotho-Lakisus to look at it.”

The Szefteli blinked her golden eyes. “Threy are in the
midst of a long gene-repair process. Perhaps you would like to have a burn
specialist on al-Ibran’s staff see it?”

Montrose knew that mere burns did not warrant the attention
of the Kelly trinity, who usually worked with more exotic problems.

“He was exposed to some type of, ah, parasite, before we
were able to get to him,” Montrose said quickly. “I brought such a case to
Atropos-Clotho-Lakisus before, and threy said to consult threm first if it
ever came up again.”

She nodded. “There will be a wait,” she warned. “What is the
parasite? And your name?”

Montrose hesitated. Here was where he had to be careful. He
and the Kelly physician did know one another, but there had been no such
interaction between them.

“Tell threm Hendyln,” Montrose said, naming a very obscure
Kelly disease he had once read about. “And Montrose.”

“Hendyln,” the Szefteli murmured, looking puzzled. “I’ve
never heard of a human with it.”

“Now you have. But I hope Ivard won’t for long.”

She bowed, accepting the hint with a slightly pained air,
and withdrew.

Within a very short space of time another staff member appeared.
“Montrose?” he called. “Montrose.”

Montrose touched Ivard, who had fallen into a reverie while
slumped against his side. He jolted awake and tried to rise, then staggered,
wincing as though dizzy. One of his hands fluttered spasmodically.

Supporting the boy’s light body, Montrose followed the man
through a narrow warren of corridors in what had once been a luxury yacht and a
prefab naval medical lab now welded together.

They reached a huge cabin partitioned into cubicles. The
tianqi spread a cool, slightly astringent scent through the air.

Ivard sniffed and straightened up, his eyes as wide as if
he’d received a stimshot.

“Who’s there?” Ivard said. “I smell—” He broke off, blinking
in confusion. Montrose felt queasy.

A green Kelly trinity danced into the wide chamber, fluting
and blatting. “Montrose, what is this? Hendyln is impossible for humans to—”

Montrose had wondered how Atropos-Clotho-Lakisus would react
to Ivard’s band, but he never expected what he saw. The two tall Kelly, Clotho
and Lakisus, stiffened, their headstalks writhing wildly. Atropos, the
Intermittor of the trinity, emitted a low, weird hum, and then all three
swarmed toward Ivard, who quivered, his nose twitching. He swallowed
convulsively, then licked his lips again and again as the Intermittor ran its
head-stalk up and down his body while the other two patted his head and
shoulders and moaned in polyphonic discord.

Montrose watched in astonishment.

As the Intermittor’s headstalk reached his wrist Ivard’s
eyes closed and without warning he crumpled, but the two tall Kelly bore him up
gently, carrying him into one of their cubicles.

Atropos blatted reedily, “The Archon. Wethree thought threir
phratry dead forever, but threy live, in this Ivard.”

The Archon of the Kelly? Montrose whistled, long and low. No
wonder the Kelly were so excited: according to his datachip on the Kelly, the
Archon’s ribbons carried racial memories reaching back to the very beginnings
of Kelly sentience.

“Threy live, but for how long?” Montrose grated. “His body
is trying to adapt, and it’s killing him.”

The Intermittor bowed, tapping Montrose lightly on face and
arm. “So it is, so it is, and wethree can do nothing without killing the
Archon’s phratry. But there is somethree who can help you.”

“Here?” Montrose sustained a surprising surge of hope.

“No.” Clotho and Lakisus returned and the Kelly twittered
and blatted, then Atropos said, “Who have you told of this?”

“Only my shipmates know about the band, and no one knows
whose it was.”

“It is a charge,” the Kelly said. “A sacred charge. Wethree
will help him as far as we can, and we will protect you as far as we can, if
you will convey him to Portus-Dartinus-Atos, whose subphratry can incubate the
Archon’s genomes.”

“If I can,” Montrose warned. “Where?”

“We do not know, but wethree will find out. Leave him here.
He will be safe with usthree.”

Montrose sighed, relieved despite his conviction that Vi’ya
would not change her plans just to accommodate Ivard.
Her mind is running on
death and revenge, not on saving Kelly phratries.

But he’d try.

First he’d have to get back to the ship and find some of his
own and Ivard’s artifacts to sell, for Ivard would need money to pay his
medical bill. And later—when he’d done everything Vi’ya asked—he would find the
most expensive joyhouse in Rifthaven and sink mind and body into oblivion.

o0o

Most of the Syndics and their seconds were present when the
door slid open and a short bald man entered. Lyska-si’s stomach churned.

Giffus Snurkel’s age was impossible to guess. He favored
long dangling earrings, and was robed like a devotionist Oblate.
He wears
the robes to gain respect
, her mother had said. He nodded greetings at the
other Syndic chiefs and their seconds as he passed to the empty seat at Lyska’s
side.

Lyska-si knew that her mother detested Snurkel almost as
much as she did, but disgust gave way to a faint sense of foreboding when
Lyska-si glimpsed Snurkel’s primly folded lips as he smoothed his robes fussily
and sat down. She knew the little slimecrawler well, for that had been her
mother’s first order to her shortly after she’d pulled her from the rat-wars
and informed her that her training in Karroo was about to begin.

Always find out your rivals’ vices,
her mother had
said to her.
And you will have made the first hit past their defense.
Giffus Snurkel craved a respect he had not earned, and he also had a taste for
youth, boys or girls didn’t matter: the younger, smaller, and more reluctant
the better. So Lyska-si’s job was to keep him entertained, and she had, until
a sudden growth spurt had made her weedy body longer than Snurkel’s. Since then
she’d taken care to supply him with volunteers from her own rat-pack, usually
disguised, and good at pretence. He never recognized any of them, convinced as
he was that they came to him innocent and scared.

Lyska-si’s lip curled as she stared down at his bald head,
shiny with a sheen of oil and sweat. Having come to Rifthaven as an adult, he
had yet to realize that no rat left the nest innocent—and eventually you had
to pay for your fun.