The Phoenix in Flight (13 page)

Deralze could not hide his surprise.

“You do know how to find Markham, don’t you? Wasn’t that why
you came? Markham’s message. What better way to answer it than to join him?”

“Yes.” Deralze expelled his breath. “He has a base on a moon
called Dis in the Charvann system.”

“Charvann?” Brandon repeated, his brows up.

But Deralze ignored that, for he was thinking of the jac in
his sleeve, the knife in his boot, and the biostasis sack in his belt pouch. He
spoke slowly. “What I said that day...”

“I was in shock. Not in compliance.” Brandon dropped his
gaze to his empty hands. “You vanished. Not that I blame you. I suspect you
would have been made to vanish permanently, because you were the only witness
who could testify that while Markham and I bent the rules, it was no more than
anyone did. We never broke them. You know that.”

“Yes.”

“And neither of us ever cheated. You know that, too.”

“Yes.”

Brandon’s palms turned out. “In my interview with Semion,
while Markham had to stand up before the entire Academy to be formally
cashiered, my brother made it clear that I could do nothing. He laid out for me
in excruciating detail just how helpless I was, how anything I could say or do
would worsen the disgrace for us both. Deralze, I didn’t know what...” Brandon
shook his head. “We can talk over every step of that hellish day later. Though
there is probably no use in it. It’s past. There is no going back.”

His gaze shifted to his boswell lying on the low table. He
picked it up, weighing it in his hand. “There is no going back,” he repeated.
“The question now is, how safe is this?”

Certainly no Downsider or Highdweller would leave their
lodging without that indispensable link to memories, obligations, and as much
computer access as one’s money or position could buy. Not even Rifters.

Safe
? While Deralze arranged for the ship, he’d also
done some digging into the other Poets. No such group was ever airtight. The
Poets were no exception. Leveraging his key position, he’d found out that it
was hired Rifters who had made the Ivory Hall into a deathtrap, not local
talent.
But not Markham’s group. His request seemed random, but was it?
Again I see a circle—but not a thousand years across this time, merely two
years.

Brandon shrugged and dropped the boswell back on the table.
“There’s nothing in there that would do me any good out there, anyway,” he
said.

He keyed open the concealed drawer in the table and removed
a huge sum in medium-denomination AU, and another in large, this last which he
handed to Deralze, who stared down at the bills. They were the fashionable new
Archaic Style notes from the Carretta Mutual Assurance Sodality; the visage of
Brandon’s ancestor, Jaspar I, founder of the dynasty, stared back at him. Some
trick of the engraver’s art imbued the formal portrait with the hint of a grin.

“You know the Polarities of Jaspar I, don’t you, Deralze?
Begins ‘Ruler of all, ruler of naught, power unlimited, a prison unsought.’ My
well-meaning father has never seen that those are polarized between his
offspring: Semion has claimed the first and third, leaving Galen and me gripped
by the other two.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I find it singularly appropriate
that it’s one of old Jaspar’s Unalterables that will help us leave no trace.”

Deralze said, “The right of sophonts to untraceable monetary
exchanges shall not be infringed.” Otherwise the boswell would long ago have
made cash obsolete, rendering one’s every move visible to the authorities.
And
would have made it easy for Semion’s coverts to catch up with me.
Deralze
drew in a slow breath. “So you want to leave? Now?”

“There isn’t a better time, is there?” Brandon countered.
“Every one of my guardians is at the Palace Major, and none of them know what
I’m doing—”

None of your guardians, or mine. But the search will
begin soon.

Brandon paused and looked back at his boswell.

Deralze said, “What have you recorded in it?”

“I’m not sure,” Brandon said.

Deralze nodded, unsurprised. Brandon had the very best type
of boswell made, and its data capacity was enormous. And it almost certainly
had redundant tracking devices implanted, for the sake of security.

As if reading his mind, Brandon crossed the room to the
disposal and thrust the boswell in. The disposal emitted a warning trill,
indicating the presence of something other than a document.

“Fanfare for a private Enkainion,” he said, and tabbed the
confirm. The muffled whoomp from the shredder fields was only a little louder
than usual. Then he said softly, “Let’s go.”

A strained sense of unreality gripped Deralze, questions
that had haunted him like the shades that would soon depart the Palace Major’s
Ivory Hall. The rest of the plot would go forward, and half a rotten government
vanish in the blast, which would enable Galen to begin anew. That much of
Deralze’s promise he could keep. He owed nothing to the Panarchy.

The only loss would be his, if he didn’t show up on
Rifthaven with the preserved head of Brandon nyr-Arkad for that collector.

Whether it’s a good or bad decision to keep him alive, I
cannot judge. I will have to leave that to you, Markham.

His sleeve brushed the wardrobe door, reminding him of the
weapon concealed there. Feeling as if he watched himself and Brandon on a
vid-screen, he paced beside the Krysarch through the suite.

Brandon whistled, and waited as several dogs including Nemo
bounded through the dog doors. Brandon knelt, face hidden as he ruffled each
dog’s head, scratching along the slight groove on top of their skulls and
running his fingers down behind their ears into their ruffs as he murmured
endearments.

Then he straightened up and snapped his fingers. The dogs
obediently backed away, some sitting expectantly, the younger ones romping off
to play.

“I suspect I will miss them far more than they will miss
me.” Brandon hit the door tab. “Nemo’s managed to seduce at least one friend
per level into feeding him illegal snacks, and I think most of the staff sneak
him bacon.”

Still, he looked grim, closed-in as they took the VIP
elevator down to the maglev transport terminal deep underground.

The door slid open as two high-ranking naval officers
crossed the quad from the military side of the complex. Deralze and Brandon
stilled in the dim-lit doorway until they passed. Across the low-lit quad, through
a line of attractive potted flowering shrubs arranged to screen off the less
elegant portions of the terminal from the eyes of the guests arriving for the
ceremony, personnel oversaw the arrival of the first wave of bejeweled and
beglittered civilian attendees.

Brandon paused, studying the guests gathering, then walked
silently to the VIP sub-tube access. Deralze followed.

Brandon keyed it open with the Family override code, and
inside the pod he stepped into the operator’s booth and activated it with a
quick and experienced hand. Outside, the heavy door slid shut with a subdued
clank as the vacuum lock engaged, and the pod lifted off the rail, humming
faintly.

Brandon punched the drive button and sat back, staring
pensively out the window at the featureless wall of the tunnel whizzing by, as
the pod shot toward the 285-kilometer-distant booster field, part of an older
spaceport now used only by small charter vessels carrying semi-official
incognito traffic.

The ghosts fled down the dim tunnel with Deralze, forcing
him to review his own actions for the past ten years. He’d moved through life
as if asleep, and now, though he felt as if he moved in dream time, his mind
was truly awake.

Brandon’s brooding gaze backwards was that of a man severing
ties.

He remained silent when he paused at a console, and used his
Royal override to erase the record of their journey—not that any record
completely vanished. But in the chaos soon to be unleashed, by the time the
Palace noderunners untangled the interlocking permissions needed to penetrate
the Panarchic override, Brandon and Deralze would be long gone from Arthelion
into untraceable safety.

An automated jitney took them from the private VIP access to
the waiting ship, anonymous among many others. The field’s traffic was heavier
than Deralze remembered, no doubt due to lower-priority traffic diverted away
from the vast complex on the other side of the Archipelago to make room for all
the VIPs arriving for the Enkainion.

“Oversaw the last modifications myself,” Deralze said, the
paralyzing sense of unreality having coalesced into a new reality, one that
gave meaning to their actions.
Brandon never lost faith with Markham, just
as Markham never lost faith with him.

He said, “One- or two-person operation, inter and
intra-system ... everything. Of course, the field comps show it still needs a
week’s work or so.” He glanced up at Brandon. “The booster module’s set for
automatic lift, under ship control—it’ll just be an anonymous blip on the
screens at the Node.” He paused. “They’re probably starting to search for you.”

Deralze looked from that steady regard to the cloud-streaked
sky, and the night birds wheeling over the wide field,
his heartbeat accelerating.

“Are you coming with me? I always regarded you as backup I
could trust. I’d like to have you with me,” Brandon said lightly.

“I’ll stick by you, Highness,” Deralze said.

“Then call me Brandon. I’ve heard they don’t use titles
where we’re headed.”

For the first time in ten years, Deralze laughed, though it
came out sounding strangled. He followed Brandon up the ramp.

Inside the silent vessel, Deralze watched, pleased, as
Brandon looked around slowly at the yacht’s neat proportions, then breathed in
deeply, as if tasting the new-smell that lay with its own peculiar promise in
the as-yet uncirculated air.

“A possible change in plan. There is one person who didn’t
come today who I wanted to say good-bye to,” Brandon said. “And as it happens,
he lives on Charvann. I can’t resist the symmetry. Mind if we make one stopover?”

Deralze shrugged. “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

Brandon accessed the navcomp to load his destination. The
boost light on the console came on, and a faint green light washed the field
briefly before the viewscreen blanked, and the booster launched them toward
radius and the untraceable freedom of the fiveskip.

The novosti Leseuer wasn’t sure when it happened, but
partway into the Enkainion’s elaborate pre-ritual party, the last of her
egalitarian cynicism vanished, and she knew that whatever her planet Ansonia’s
decision, she was now and forever a Panarchist.

All around her, the fulgent panoply of a wealthy, ancient
and complex civilization blended in a synergy of color and sound and scent.
Exalted, she walked among the men and women mingling and conversing in the
exquisite pavanne of courtesy and grace that was second nature to the Douloi.

(You’ve gotten quite good at this.)
Leseuer flushed
slightly as the boswelled voice of Ranor, her tutor from Archetype and Ritual,
interrupted her thoughts. There’d been a time when she’d thought she would
never master the art of
ajna
-imaging. It was so subtle and hard to
control compared to the primitive vidcams used back home.

(Hush!)
she subvocalized back to him.
(It’s hard
enough without you chattering in my ear.)

(Not your ear, love.)
He chuckled and fell silent.
She glanced at the boswell on her wrist, careful not to move her head. Neural
induction still felt like magic to her, despite a year of practice.

She panned slowly across the tall stained-glass windows of
the Hall of Ivory. The last light of a long summer day modulated by slow cloud
shadows lent animation to their colors and brought the tapestries on the walls
to polychromatic life. High above her head the chandeliers, elegant structures
of glass and metal hovering without visible support, flamed and sparkled in the
sunset light. A beam of light lanced through a window and splashed against the
massive doors guarding the entrance to the Throne Room, picking out in bold
relief the riotously complicated abstract mural inlaid in them: the Prophetae
Gennady’s
Ars Irruptus.

But the richness of the room paled in comparison with the
sumptuous clothing and glittering decorations of the Douloi assembling to pay
honor to the Krysarch Brandon nyr-Arkad. The traditions of a myriad of cultures
and centuries of history were represented here, for the collective memory of
the Panarchy reached back to a planet forever beyond recovery.

A hush descended on the Hall as the huge inlaid doors opened
slightly, barely wide enough to admit one person. It was time for the first of
the Three Summons.

Leseuer triggered the
ajna
on her forehead to a
narrow focus on the doors, feeling its delicate pull on her skin as the
semi-living lens adjusted. Her boswell briefly flashed framing lines across her
vision; she was pleased to see that her target was already centered.

The floor in front of the doors cleared as the Laergon of
the College of Archetype and Ritual strode forward with a measured pace. His
arms were extended rigidly overhead, firmly gripping the glittering Mace of
Karelais: the ancient scepter of the first kingdom to indite the Covenant of
Anarchy that ushered in the Jaspran Peace. His gold-trimmed purple robe of
state swirled around his stout figure as he stopped before the door.

Behind him, the representative of the Polloi, stark in her
uniform of black and white, her features hidden by a shimmermask, held aloft
the golden manacles of Service on an ebon tau-shaped staff with a silver snake
twined around it. The music that had formed an unacknowledged background to the
gathering now changed, becoming slower, measured, laden with tonalities
evocative of time and the long chain of lives that linked them all to Lost
Earth.