Shadow of the Swan (Book Two of the Phoenix Legacy) (37 page)

“So you think Mariet’s with her, too?”

“Yes, but Mariet can go into the cloister with her. Lectris can’t.” He wandered to the comconsole and activated a screen focused on the surface; it was the closest thing he had to a window in this windowless world. “Ben, I talked to Jael, and he’s going to deal directly with Amik to put his hounds on the trail of Lectris and Hawkwood.”

“But not on Lady Adrien’s trail—I hope?”

“No. They’ll be told nothing about her. Can you imagine the headprice Selasis will have on her? The Brothers aren’t up to resisting that kind of temptation.”

“And Amik? How much is he being told?”

Alex stared at the screen, the endless dunes stark against the black night sky, the sand moving in slow waves in the double shadows cast by Alpha Centauri B and Pollux.

“Ben, the old thief doesn’t have to be
told
anything. There isn’t much he hasn’t figured out for himself already. But he’s a man of honor, in his own way, and Jael knows the rules. He won’t expose Adrien to any danger from the Brotherhood.”

“Well, thank the God for Jael. We’d be in a hell of a mess without him—
and
his old Ser.”

“I know. And I’m convinced Jael
is
Manir Peladeen’s son. That’s an alternative we must keep in mind.”

There was a short silence, then Ben said warily, “Maybe, although the Directors might not be too impressed with his
paternal
lineage, but I guess with enough pressure they could be encouraged to overlook that. Alex, the Ransom Alternative is still our best choice. Why are you worrying about other alternatives?”

He wasn’t sure of the answer to that, yet the problem of viable alternatives had been much in his thoughts the last two days. Since Adrien’s disappearance. He stared at the moving sand, then turned away abruptly.

“Because I’m mortal, I suppose. It’s never wise to put all your money on one number.” He slumped down on the bed and leaned back to put his shoulders against the chill stone. “Ben, I’m tired. That’s all. What about Eliseer?”

Ben laughed humorlessly. “That’s a good question. If you mean has he given any outward signs that he knows what happened to his daughter—no. But Erica’s been collecting data on him, and she thinks he knows
something
. We’re fairly sure he had a message from Lady Adrien. How it got to him, I don’t know. Maybe the Bond network. I hope so. Hawkwood won’t be so likely to tap into that. Anyway, Eliseer seems to be working from somebody else’s script—at least that’s Erica’s expert opinion—and it’s probably Adrien’s script. If so, it looks like she wants to keep everything quiet for some reason. When Selasis told Eliseer she was sick, Lady Galia was ready to go to Concordia, but he squelched that. He told her in so many words to let well enough alone; he had faith in Orin and Dr. Lassily.”

“How is Selasis explaining Lazet’s absence?”

“For public consumption, Lazet is in a Brothers of Benediction sanatorium in Pesh Lahar; a retreat for his health.”

“I hope you can keep him in good health when—or if—he returns from Lima.”

“We’ll try, but don’t count on it.”

“I don’t count on anything, Ben.” He leaned forward, away from the chill of the rock, and propped his elbows on his knees. “Do you know who Adrien’s stand-in will be?”

“Well, we have a pretty good idea. We’ve been checking death lists. About four hours after Selasis and Karlis got back to Concordia after the wedding, a Bondmaid from one of the Estate compounds died. But there’s no record of cremation or burial for her, and it’s interesting that she matches Lady Adrien’s physical description almost exactly. Her name is Elda Ternin.”

“The Moon Princess,” Alex said wearily, “reigning until the dark of the moon.”

“We’ll try to save her. If nothing else, her face will be damned good evidence when Lazet gets through—” He stopped and went off mike briefly, then, “Alex, I’ve got a call coming in. Anyway, that about covers everything from this end. Anything else I should know about from your end?”

Alex shook his head, then almost laughed. There was no one in this stone cell to see that movement.

“No, nothing more. Just . . . be careful. Damn, I wish you’d pull out of the SSB now. You’re an open target for Ussher there.”

“I’m well covered, both here and at the Cliff, and I’m only staying with the SSB until I get a line on Andreas. Then I’ll pull out, I promise you. So, don’t worry.”

“Sure. The same goes for you.”

Ben laughed at that, then turned atypically hesitant. “Alex, I . . . well, I never was very good with words, but . . . damn it, we’ll
find
her.”

Like they’d found Andreas? Alex stared at the black wall.

“Thanks, Ben.”

“Later, Alex.”

It was curious that the walls seemed to draw closer when that voice ceased. Alex removed the headset, then sat motionless in the stony silence. Finally, he stretched out on the bed, his arm curved over his eyes to shut out the light. He wondered how long it had been since he’d slept. Over forty-eight hours. Since before the wedding, before—

Adrien, where are you? Where are you
?

He felt the thudding of his pulse, and a cold wind breathed on his skin, damp with a feverish sweat; his hands locked in trembling fists. A shadow hovered at the edges of his vision; it was there even in the darkness behind his closed eyes. And a distant rattling, a sinister rustling. Black wings beating in the blackness at their black cage.

Alex, we’ll find her
. . . .

The Phoenix and the Brotherhood were a potent, if unintentional, alliance, and wherever she was, at least she was out of Orin Selasis’s grasp for the moment.

And she would have planned this very carefully.

You’re learning, he thought numbly; you’re learning the special kind of courage demanded by that pledge of faith made at the edge of the icecap. She would make herself as safe as possible. She wanted to live.

He held on to that thought until the unseen shadow, the throb of black wings finally receded. He had no intention of sleeping; it came suddenly, dropping him into the deep sleep of exhaustion before he realized it was upon him.

PHOENIX MEMFILES: DEPT HUMAN SCIENCES:
BASIC SCHOOL
(HS/BS
)

SUBFILE: LECTURE. BASIC SCHOOL 7 MARCH 3252
GUEST LECTURER: RICHARD LAMB
SUBJECT: POST-DISASTERS HISTORY
:
THE MANKEEN REVOLT (3104–3120
)

DOC LOC #819/219–1253/1812–1648–733252

History is, and should be, so much a process of trying to figure out how we got here from there. A great deal of verbiage has been expended on trying to figure out how the Confederation got from the heady heights of the extrasolar colonization period to the catastrophic nadir of the Mankeen Revolt in just twenty years. Since historians who wish to stay on good terms with the Concord can’t very well probe to the real heart of the matter, they tend to focus their attention on Lionar Mankeen.

He’s certainly worthy of attention, since he organized the first large-scale revolution of Post-Disasters history, and since he came so close to precipitating a third dark age.

He was born in 3065, the only son of Fedric, the third Lord Mankeen. The House of Mankeen was a landed House, one of those established by Ballarat’s conquests during the Wars of Confederation, and the first Mankeen Lord, Andray, was one of the “native” Lords, an existing hold ruler who chose to accept and fight for the Holy Confederation, rather than against it, and for his aid to Andrasy in the Ruskasian campaign, was awarded a First Lordship, land grants on a vast area west of the Ural Mountains, including the Volg River drainage, and agrarian franchises for various grains, primarily wheat. Andray Mankeen built his Home Estate and a small city bearing the House name on the Kama River near the Urals, and graciously accepted Bishop Almbert’s priest-soldiers and Mezionism, and even built an impressive cathedron in Mankeen.

Obviously, the House was destined to prosper, and it did. At the death of its third First Lord, Fedric—Lionar’s father—the House had four million people Bonded or allieged to it, and an annual revenue equivalent to half a billion ’cords. Fedric was, from all reports, conscientious, shrewd, likable, and very conservative, so the question arises—how did he get a son like Lionar Mankeen?

Most historians classify Lionar as a sort of genetic rogue, but it isn’t necessary to resort to mutation to explain him. First, remember that he was born in 3065 and that his formative experience was in the waning decades of the thirty-first century when the Golden Age was beginning to seem a bit tarnished to some of those living in it, and a strong dissident element was developing among the Fesh. The middle class was at last contemplating the existing order of things and its allegiance to the Lords in particular, and recognizing it as a form of slavery and the Bonds as true slaves. Not all Fesh reached that conclusion, of course. The aware and vocal minority was confined generally to the University and what was even then called “Independent” Fesh.

Concord textapes have little to say about this prevailing dissident mood, and the names of only a handful of outstanding “revolutionists” are recorded in our histories. Foremost among them is Horris VanZyl, psychosociologist at the University in Victoria, who because he persisted in his “subversive and inflammatory” writings and lectures was finally executed as a traitor in 3090.

Another revolutionist whose renown was extraordinarily wide, considering that he was only a Fesh student—sociology, of course, at the University in Paykeen—was Nikoli T’sian. He was assassinated while addressing a student meeting in 3092, and his killer was never apprehended.

Then there was Lessander Forsite, who used the pseudonym “Sander.” He wasn’t a product of the University, but was allieged Galinin and trained as an executech in the Home Estate in Victoria. He was an electronic gadfly, whose taped treatises were unassailably rational, despite their caustic tone, and widely, if clandestinely, read. When Conpol identified Forsite as the infamous Sander, he seemed doomed to be condemned as a traitor. (Yes, it was called Conpol then, but the “Con” stood for Confederation, not Concord.) Forsite, however, managed to escape, probably into the Outside; illicit tapes continued to be disseminated under the name of Sander, and analysis has shown them to be of the same authorship, but they stopped a few months after the Revolt began, and Sander’s ultimate fate is unknown.

Of course, the temper of the times (or the Fesh) doesn’t explain why a young
Lord
would be infected with the fever of rebellion, and perhaps such things can never be fully explained, but part of the explanation is that Fedric was a doting and tolerant father. Also, he had a real fondness for the land, for the process of wresting sustenance from it, and a strong rapport with those closest to it, including his Bonds. Fedric did not harbor any thoughts about changing the lot of his Bonds, but he didn’t object when his son came into frequent contact with Bonds at an early age, and was obliviously unaware of how telling those childhood encounters were.

Fedric was equally oblivious to the potential effects on Lionar when he hired Lector Clement Troyon as his tutor. Today any serious student of sociology is well acquainted with Troyon. He was one of the few true scientists in his field, and I’m sure he was an excellent teacher. Undoubtedly, he taught his student to think and instilled in him a recognition of the dangers of the status quo and of the need for change. Troyon was not, apparently, successful in teaching the young Lionar that the
means
of change must be cautiously considered.

Another key factor in Lionar’s development as a revolutionary was the untimely death of his father.

Lionar was only twenty-five when he became First Lord. Had he been older perhaps the bitter wisdom of experience would have tempered his ambitions, although I’m not really convinced of that. At any rate, in 3090, at that youthful age, he found himself vested with a great deal of power. 3090 was also of the year of his marriage. The bride was Lizbeth, daughter of Tomas Lesellen, Lord of a landed House whose Home Estate was (and still is) in Bonaires. The marriage was not, from all accounts, a union of love, but it produced four children: Feador, born in 3091; Leo, born four years later; then their only daughter, Irena, in 3096; finally, Julian, born in 3098. It’s said of Mankeen that he was a loving father, especially to Irena, but fatherhood didn’t distract him from his political ambitions.

The Concord refers to his League solely as the
Mankeen
League, as did the Confederation, but Mankeen and his followers called it the Emancipation League. That was his basic intent—to emancipate Bonds and Fesh from allegiance to their Lords,
and
to emancipate Lords from the domination of the Directorate. Unfortunately, the alternatives he proposed were extremely vague. He envisioned an “era in which individuals may seek by choice the level of accomplishment for which their innate ability equips them, without imposed limitations of birth or class.” He also proposed “a government whose authority stems from the will of those governed.” But in both theory and practice, he seemed incapable of coming to grips with the mechanics of realizing these worthy aims.

For example, one of his first acts upon becoming First Lord was to make the Bonds in his House salaried employees. The result was chaos not only for Fesh overseers, but for the Bonds themselves. Since they were being paid, they were expected to
buy
many of the goods and services that had previously been supplied by the House, yet few Bonds could even count past ten, nor could they judge the monetary value of what they bought, and inevitably some Fesh took advantage of their ignorance to fill their own pockets. Mankeen simultaneously instituted a program for educating his Bonds, but education takes time, and after a year of rampant confusion, he submitted to necessity and modified his Bond salary policy so that they received only a small monetary payment, and basic services and goods were again supplied by the House.

He did not, however, give up the education program, and began campaigning actively among his Fesh in its behalf. He was a very attractive man and a convincing speaker, and during the months he spent traveling from one estate to the next talking with his Fesh, his idealistic ambitions struck a responsive chord among many of them, and their devoted efforts succeeded in making some of his reforms at least partially successful, in spite of their shortcomings. Nor did he exclude the Fesh from the benefits of reform. He instituted a profit-sharing plan that of all his House reforms was the most successful. Mankeen also campaigned, in a sense, among his Bonds during this period, and since no other Lord had ever spent time actually talking with his Bonds or showing personal concern for them, it’s natural that they came to regard him as their hero and savior, and ultimately made him one of their saints.