Ruler of Naught (64 page)

“That’s certainly what rumor said on Rifthaven,” the Aerenarch
agreed, showing no reaction to the oblique reference to the looting of the
Palace Minor by the Rifters of the
Telvarna
. “No controls at all. But
that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“I expect we’ll see a pattern develop as more intelligence
comes in,” Efriq put in. “Loose control in peripheral areas to spread terror
and confusion, and more coordinated attacks on strategic points. The two sector
capitals we have some data on don’t seem to have suffered as much.”

Nukiel set his wineglass down and steepled his fingers.
“Your Highness, do you know what Captain Vi’ya planned to do once the
Telvarna
was safely away from Rifthaven?”

“That was under discussion right before Karroo sent half the
ships in orbit after us,” the Aerenarch said, smiling. “I know they had a
second base, where perhaps they could hide out until things got resolved one
way or the other—or supplies gave out.”

Efriq said mildly, “Did those plans include you and the
Omilovs, Your Highness?”

Vahn knew the Aerenarch perceived how carefully the question
was worded. He didn’t seem unduly worried as he drained his third glass of wine
and reached for the decanter.

One goal of this dinner was certainly to establish whether
the Aerenarch was with these Rifters by accident—or by design. Having spent as
much time as he had with Brandon on the long flight from Rifthaven, he knew the
captain and his XO were unlikely to discover the answer tonight.

“Perforce,” Brandon said presently. He grinned over the cut
crystal in his fingers. “As you doubtless know, one of the other things they
discovered while on Rifthaven was that the Dol’jharian taste for thoroughness
in revenge had inspired Eusabian to put a price on my head worth a few dozen
planets. I get the impression that some of Vi’ya’s crew wavered between the
dreams of trying to collect and the reality of how long they’d live under
Dol’jharian ministrations if they did try to turn me in. Right before your
ruptor finished off their drive, we had just established that Vi’ya was
disinclined to put us down anywhere. Thought we’d be easy targets.”

Which answers the superficial question and sidesteps the
real one,
Vahn thought appreciatively.

He’d been born on Arthelion—both parents had been
Marines—and he’d grown up absorbing the lacework of protocol that dictated life
there. The problem here was a potentially messy one: there was not only the
matter of civilian hierarchy, but military vs. civilian, augmented by the
Aerenarch’s sudden departure from military life ten years before.
If he held
even nominal rank, Nukiel could have ordered him to talk and be protected by
regs.

“True.” Nukiel’s expression sobered. “And she’d be afraid
that you’d lead the Dol’jharians right back to her and her crew.”

“Willingly or not,” Brandon said, again putting a spin on
the direction of the questions. “Sebastian would not live long under one of
their torture machines again, despite their best efforts.”

“So the medics tell us, Your Highness,” Efriq said softly. “Our
CMO has offered him the reconstructive work his heart needs, but the gnostor
insists on waiting until we arrive at Ares. He says his oath requires it.”

A glance went between captain and commander, no more than a
flicker. Vahn knew that the old man was a Chival of the Phoenix Gate, but how
did he think that would help the now-Aerenarch? That rank would be of little
account on Ares, and less here. The interchanges between Brandon and Gn. Omilov
had not offered any clues—they were as opaque as any Douloi interactions Vahn
had ever witnessed.

And there was certainly no clue in Brandon’s face now, still
hard to read under myriad healing bruises, nor in his posture, relaxed as he
watched the play of light on the liquid in his glass.

“But all that must wait until we finish our business here at
Desrien.”

“Ah. Desrien,” the Aerenarch said, looking up. “How did this
side journey come to pass?”

Vahn realized that this was the first time he had asked a
question this evening.
He won’t ask anything that might require Nukiel to
define his status—as citizen or prisoner. What is he trying to protect?

“You appear to have business there,” Nukiel replied. “The
whole matter is still mysterious to me, but the High Phanist was quite clear in
her orders—”

The Aerenarch cocked an eyebrow and Nukiel paused.

“‘Tomiko was on Arthelion’ was what the Numen said to me,”
the captain interjected. “She now has the Digrammaton.”

The Aerenarch blinked, the humor vanishing from his
expression, to be quickly replace by the same bland mask that Vahn had seen
Galen assume whenever discussion of Semion arose.

“In any case,” continued Nukiel, “you, the Omilovs, the
Rifters, the Eya’a, and even the dogs and the cat—who, by the way, spends each
night in a different cabin, so popular is he among the junior officers—are to
be sent down in the Columbiad, I assume for a meeting with the High Phanist.”

The skin around the Aerenarch’s eyes tightened very
slightly—a subtle sign that Vahn wasn’t sure either the captain or the
commander noted, or understood if they did. It momentarily increased Brandon’s
resemblance to his eldest brother.

He’s not pleased, not pleased at all.
Vahn could
hardly blame him. No royal had set foot on Desrien for nearly 150 years, not
since Burgess III at the end of his long reign. He had abdicated in favor of
his daughter, taken the robe of an Oblate, and vanished forever among the
shrines of Desrien. Jaspar Arkad had accepted the nascent Magisterium as one of
the poles of power in his reconstruction of interstellar politics a millennium
ago, but no Arkad was likely to be comfortable with a power that had once
overthrown a reigning Panarch.

“Have you told the Rifters?” the Aerenarch asked.

“I have not,” Nukiel said. “My interview with Eloatri—the
new High Phanist—took place directly before we came here.” He indicated the
table, then turned to Efriq, who looked back with dry humor. “It appears you
have been more successful at communicating with them than we have, Your
Highness. Would you like to be the one to tell them, since you’re visiting Ivard
regularly?”

“I will,” the Aerenarch said slowly. “When do we shuttle
down to the planet?”

“At oh eight hundred.”

And I’ll be with them
, Vahn thought, with no
particular pleasure. What he’d heard about Desrien did not appeal to him at
all.

“Thank you.” The Aerenarch rose. “Perhaps I’d better do it
now,” he said. “So we all get what sleep we can before the ordeal.” His tone
made a joke of the word “ordeal,” which deflected attention—at least
superficially—from the fact that he, and not the captain, had brought the
interview to a close.

As he jeeved out behind Brandon, Vahn reflected on the
Aerenarch’s masterful handling of the interview with Nukiel and Efriq. He
wondered how that skill would serve Brandon on Desrien.

“Beacon acquired,” Lokri said.

Data leaped to Vi’ya’s console in a brief twitter. Montrose
took in Lokri’s hot flush of rage and Vi’ya’s cold fury as she set up their
course.

The rest of their flight down to Desrien was accomplished in
silence. On a viewscreen assigned to the aft imager the massive battlecruiser
dwindled. They fell toward the planet, the stars fading as the glowing limb of
Desrien slowly filled the forward view.

The entire crew was on the bridge, even the Eya’a and the
Omilovs. Jaim stood at the com console, working with Marim to repair the damage
caused by Nukiel’s ruptors. The engineer’s bitter sadness—his mate Reth had
often spoken of making a hejir—contrasted with Marim’s flippant attempts to
hide her fear. For Jaim, at least, there was no other place to be: the captain
of the
Mbwa Kali
had ordered the fiveskip of the
Telvarna
disabled and the engine room sealed shut.

To distract himself from his own ghosts, Montrose looked
around the bridge as the atmosphere of the planet began to whisper over the
ship’s hull. Vi’ya sat still at her console, the unusual precision of her movements
revealing that fury. Nearby the Eya’a stood unmoving, facing her. They paid no
attention to the viewscreen.

Marim kept her eyes away from their destination. Instead,
her attention was divided between Jaim and Ivard, the latter prompting
fascinated disgust.

Montrose sighed. It was unlikely that the boy would survive
to return to the
Mbwa Kali
. The cruiser’s medics, despite their best
efforts, had been unable to arrest the deterioration of his immune system, or
the increasing dementia that the Kelly ribbon had triggered. The dogs had
helped, but the visit of the Aerenarch the night before had been the occasion
of Ivard’s last coherent words. Now he sat on the deck, rocking slightly back
and forth and buzzing to himself from time to time; his skin was almost
translucent, greenish yellow and badly bruised, like that of a victim of a
blood cancer. His arms twitched, fingers and head writhing ceaselessly in
spasmodic movements. Despite this, Trev and Gray remained lying pressed up
against him on either side, their ears twitching uneasily. Gray whined softly from
time to time.

At the fire-control console, sealed and dark, Brandon sat
looking down at the ring on his hand, ignoring Lucifur cheek-stropping one of
his boots and purring loudly. The two Marines assigned to accompany them stood
against the bulkhead, alert and silent.

Sebastian Omilov sat at Ivard’s station, his eyes closed,
his aspect tired. Beside him his son stood, radiating distrust.

Montrose looked up at the viewscreen, feeling curiously
empty. It was as though the planet now filling the viewscreen had sucked some
vital essence from him. Bleakly he realized that alone of all those on the
bridge, he knew that there was no limit to the changes this planet could ring
on the human spirit.

For Tenaya, his wife, had been a haji. He had seen the
change in her, in the few short weeks they’d had together between her return
from her pilgrimage and her death. She had been different, vastly different:
even more loving and vital, yet somehow distant, as if ever hearing some music
that was inaudible to him. They had had too little time for him to fully come
to terms with that: he would never know what life might have held for them
after she was touched by the Dreamtime.

He blinked, fighting back memory. A once-familiar voice
whispered in memory,
But in the Dreamtime there is neither past nor future...

The ship shuddered and the plasma jets whined to life as the
Telvarna
entered aerodynamic flight, arrowing across the face of Desrien
toward their unknown goal.

o0o

As the engines spun down into silence, Vi’ya cleared her
board with a swipe of her hand. Then she stalked off the bridge toward the
mid-ship hatch. Osri moved hastily aside as she passed him. He didn’t have to
look at her face to know how angry she was.

Everybody was angry, except poor Ivard, who seemed beyond
human emotions entirely.

One thing they all shared: no one wanted to be here.

One by one the others followed the captain, the two Marines
shadowing the Aerenarch.

The ramp whined down and thumped onto the ground, and a
brisk breeze whirled into the open lock, bringing with it the scent of grass
and damp earth, overlaid with a heat smell from the hull of the
Telvarna
,
pinging softly as it cooled. At first no one moved, then Lokri snorted and
pushed past Marim. He trotted down the ramp, the metal booming underfoot.

Outside, the sky was a rich blue-green between towering
clouds, gray underneath and blinding white above in the light of the
yellow-white sun. Before them a long meadow stretched up toward a hill crowned
with a few twisted trees. A racing cloud shadow sped across the slope toward
them; the air chilled Osri as the sun vanished.

The opening of the lock seemed to have focused Ivard
somewhat. He got to his feet and approached the lock. The dogs began to follow,
but then bolted past him down the ramp with a scrabble of claws, giving the
high-pitched bark that hitherto they had only used to greet Brandon. Lucifur
swarmed after, vanishing into the riot of greenery behind the dogs.

Ivard gave an incoherent shout, and Marim cursed. Everyone
else was quiet and wary. The only sound was the wind, and then the soft booming
of the ramp as the others slowly began to debark.

o0o

The ramp of the
Telvarna
thudded open. The rich
smells of Desrien crowded into the lock and shouted in Ivard’s skull. The blue
fire around his wrist pulsed in delight; images fountained from two faceted flames
nearby, quicksilver brightness, multiple flashes that broke through the veil
that hung between him and the world he had once known. The muttering pain
slashing across his back hung red behind him, pushing him forward.

The two small flames on either side of him flashed by,
followed by another, smaller one. He called out to them, but they vanished
swiftly. He felt incomplete, isolate, but the blue fire rose up in him and his
distress dwindled somewhat.

The other, taller flames around him moved, and he followed.
Their anxiety and fear clawed at him, borne outward by the complex stew of
chemicals they generated without a trace of control.

He tasted the clangor of metal. One of the flames spoke;
this time the words broke through to Ivard.

“New Glastonbury.”

Ivard didn’t know what that meant, but the blue fire leapt
higher, a shimmer of satisfaction welling from it. Around him small flames
flickered in a web of life and movement, slow and fast. Around the base of one
of the tall flames—he’d exchanged life-stuff with that one—some of the tiny
flames changed color, some flickered out. He danced a protest, but received no
response.