The Phoenix in Flight (46 page)

“Blit.” Greywing spoke from behind, as she eased into a
seat. Marim goggled at her. The freckle-faced scantech looked drugged to the
eyebrows, and why was she here and not in sickbay? Her fever-bright, watery
blue gaze lifted to Lokri as she said, “Those high-end nicks are never alone from
the moment they are born.”

Lokri
. That couldn’t be it! Was poor Greywing hot for
Lokri? No, it was far more likely she was afraid Lokri would do something to
Ivard, who had a tendency to follow Lokri around like a pet rat.

Anyway, Lokri was ignoring Greywing. Marim tried to deflect
the redhead’s attention. “Whenever he bathed he probably had twenty people
waiting to hand him his clothes.”

Right then Jaim walked in. “What happens when he wants to
bunny?”

“The servants get thrown out
,
”
Greywing said
impatiently.

“And they all watch on hidden vids
,
”
Lokri
added. “Jaim, where did you stash the body?”

Jaim flashed a grin. “That’s about all he was worth toward
the end.”

“Wouldn’t work?” Marim asked, still hoping for some fun.

“Oh, he did what he was told.”

“Chatz! That’s no fun!” Marim exclaimed.

The others laughed, and Jaim said, “But he was moving slower
than that ice extrusion on Dis. Captain took mercy on us both. Said I could
send him back to the rack. We’ll wait until he’s slept himself out, and then
put him to work for real.”

Marim hopped to the monneplat, skidding on the smooth deck
plates that Markham had had treated so they looked like a wood floor. “Augh!”
She scowled down at the soft slippers on her feet. “I hate these
Shiidra-chatzing blunge-wipes!”

Lokri lounged back, his teeth white against his dark face,
and his eyes half-closed. “You want the nicks to see those feet?”

Marim put her hands on her hips and gazed down at her feet.
“So I been gennated. You think they’ll try to fry me?”

Lokri lifted a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “Probably.”

“They’ll report you soon’s they hit the Mandala.” Jaim sank
into his usual corner. If he was missing Reth, it didn’t show, but then he
didn’t show much. Unless he was fighting. “Panarchists don’t like genetic
alteration.”

Marim slipped her small, square foot out of its slipper and
admired it. She had excellent feet. She closed her long toes nimbly around the
slipper opening, and flipped it up toward Lokri’s face, but he nipped it out of
the air as she rubbed her fingers over the velvety black microfibers on the
sole of her foot. “So let
them
try to stick to a wall in free-fall, and
they’ll mouth a different tag.”

Lokri waved a hand in an airy, elegant gesture. Uh-oh, Marim
thought. When he mocked the nicks with those finicky moves of his, he was rasty
for sure. “Vi’ya said to wear those,” Lokri said. “You want to argue, argue
with her.” He threw the slipper back at Marim’s face, but she caught it and
tipped her head toward the galley. “They’ll see Lucifur.
He’s
gennated.”

“He’s not human,” Lokri drawled. “You haven’t noticed?”

Greywing leaned back in her chair, her good hand clutched
protectively over her bad shoulder in its bandages, and breathed a soft laugh.
“Anyway they seen Lucifur,” she said. “Damn cat’s decided to adopt the
Schoolboy.”

“What?” Jaim’s already long face lengthened in surprise. “I
thought he was going to puke when Luce walked over the cook-console, when I
went into the galley mid-shift.”

“Schoolboy hates cats.” Greywing gave them a crooked grin.
“Of course Luce’s gonna pick him as a favorite.” She laughed. “Ignores the
Arkad. He tried to call Luce like a dog.”

Marim crowed with laughter. “Betcha Luce’s gonna try to get
into Schoolboy’s bunk with him.” She pictured the tilt-nosed Osri trying
unsuccessfully to eject the large, noisy cat from his bunk space.

“More than anyone else’d want to do,” Lokri murmured, his
voice lazy but his light gray eyes venomous under their heavy lids. “Hope Luce
sticks to his face. Ought to improve it.”

“Ah, Montrose already done that,” Jaim said. He got up.
“Improved his face, I mean. Shift change, slubbers. Vi’ya’s giving me the Arkad
again when he wakens, so I’d better have things set up.”

Marim laughed. “What are you gonna make him do?”

Jaim scratched his head, thrusting a thin dark braid behind
one ear. “Well, I thought I might have him dismantle, clean, and reassemble the
tianqi in the Eya’a cabin while they’re out playing with that silver ball.”

Marim could appreciate that—they’d had to modify the tianqi
for the Eya’a, and even so the machinery had to work extra hard to keep their
cabin at minus-ten for when they wanted to hibernate. “But we did that on
Rifthaven!” she exclaimed.

Jaim shrugged. “Never know when it might need doing again.”

“I can think of plenty for him to do,” Lokri said,
unsmiling.

Jaim waved a hand. “You’ll get your turn.”

Montrose appeared, and gave Greywing a ferocious scowl.
“You!” He pointed a finger the size of a firejac. “Captain says you’re to
report to sickbay. Now.”

Greywing’s already pale skin blanched as she got up.

“Sleep well,” Jaim said as she passed, and Marim added a
cheery wish.

Greywing paused in the hatch to glance back, but Lokri was
busy at the console, punching up a game of Phalanx. “Marim,” he said. “What
have you got to wager?”

Was
it Lokri? Marim shook her head. No use in
interfering, nobody ever gave you anything but blunge if you did.

Barrodagh leaned back in his chair, trying in vain to ignore
the incessant, melodious chuckle of some kind of bird outside the window of his
office in the Palace Minor. He massaged the bridge of his nose, his sinuses
still outraged by the heady atmosphere of Arthelion.

The irony was as inescapable as it was irksome. He had
expected to be more comfortable here, for the Mandalic Archipelago, with its
mild weather and warm sun, was far more akin to his native Bori than the
austere highlands of the Kingdom of Vengeance that had been his prison for so
long. But Arthelion was merely a different kind of prison, in spite of its lack
of high-gee corridors to afflict his joints and limit his movements. At times
he found himself longing for the simplicity of Hroth D’Ocha.

Especially now. His compad flashed notice of an incoming
real-time com. The irritation flared to anticipatory fury as he tabbed it—and
the window came up blank.

It works just long enough to drive us mad.
Long habit
drove the back of his elbow into the edge of the table he’d taken as his desk,
the familiar nerve-wringing pain dislodging the stupid notion.

Network access was intermittent, that was all. The computer
tech, Ferrasin, whom Barrodagh had plucked from obscurity because he’d done his
doctorate work on the history of the Mandalic computer system, had made it
clear—or as clear as his stuttering permitted—that it was nearly miraculous
that they had any communications at all inside the Palace, apart from the
laboriously-wired secure access points in offices and critical security areas.
“The
whole Palace complex is faradayed: only line-of-sight communications are
possible without the House network, and lower-
chthon
security phages
keep surfacing and shutting down the access points we manage to open.”
Barrodagh
grimaced, remembering the shower of spittle that had accompanied Ferrasin’s
attempt at the word “chthon.”

The compad flashed again. This time the window brought up
Almanor’s name, then went blank. Barrodagh poked at his compad again. Nothing.
He glared at the secure access point on the wall, cabling snaking from it to
the hole in the baseboard. The light was green. Useless. If she’d been in range
of a secure access point, he’d already be talking to her.

It had taken some time to get used to the compads. On
Dol’jhar, the Catennach had been limited to a primitive mix of fixed consoles
and belt communicators both by Dol’jharian paranoia and the reality of their
confinement in low-gee offices and quarters. Not so on Arthelion, where the
exigencies of the Occupation placed a premium on adaptability and mobility—at
least for high-ranking Catennach. Subordinates were still limited to fixed
consoles and beltcomms. But Barrodagh already found it hard to imagine going
back to the old ways.

He got to his feet and grabbed his compad, then lunged for
the door, lurching back on his heels just in time. All of them had bruises on
their faces from walking into doors that refused to open even though moments
before they had swung freely.

He thrust the door open.

“Dula—” He started to call for his secretary, and abandoned
the half-name, the rage intensifying. He hated the necessity of a secretary,
but until he had reliable communications, he had to have one. He’d given
Dulathor that promotion from Rifter ship duty to the Avatar’s service, which
was the highest any Catennach could achieve, and what does she do? Disappear.

Some insisted that the conscripts and Bori who had vanished
were being murdered by a nascent resistance, but Barrodagh suspected she’d
gotten a taste for... for what? Certainly not sex. Nor money—the smallest trace
of a monetary trail would lead straight to the mindripper. Anyone who ran would
know Barrodagh would not stint to find them. Perhaps it was simply the
knowledge that, unlike Dol’jhar, with its crushing gravity and extreme climate,
on Arthelion one could just walk away.

The replacement. What was his name?
Danathar
.
Ordinarily, Barrodagh would never have promoted such into his personal
service—his Uni was not fluent, he argued with Ferrasin and his techs, but most
of all he never seemed to be actually
there
. But Barrodagh’s trusted staff
was already stressed with the burden of extra, unexpected duties.

That was it, the unexpectedness. Barrodagh glared around the
outer office. Danathar’s desk was scrupulously tidy, but he himself was absent.
Again. The urge to consult his compad to locate Danathar was like an itch he
could not scratch.

Barrodagh pushed through the outer door. Even the
intensely-conservative Dol’jharian lords accepted the efficiency of automatic
doors, except in their personal quarters. Why did the Panarchists insist on manual
ones everywhere? As far as he could tell, there wasn’t a single automatic door
in the Palace, unless one counted the little hatches that served the bots and
dogs alike.

Just as he poked his head into the hallway Almanor
approached, one hand tapping at her compad, her forehead lined with irritation
as she looked up, then past Barrodagh.

The patter of steps from the opposite direction announced
Danathar, who halted, saying breathlessly, “Forgive me, senz-lo Barrodagh. I
got lost again.” His gaze flickered as he bowed obsequiously, and Barrodagh
thought,
He’s lying
. But there was no way to prove that—not without
assigning yet more overburdened staff to the task. And Danathar knew that.

“Senz-lo Almanor,” Danathar went on. “We’ve lost contact
with the detention area.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Almanor said to Barrodagh.

She was in charge of the sections where the Panarchists were
housed: communications to all those areas were highest priority.

“Is it—” Barrodagh began, then shook his head. Useless to ask
the question of two whose ignorance was as apparent as his own.

Anything even remotely having to do with those prisoners
must be investigated by Barrodagh himself. He started off toward the lift to
sublevel one, Almanor beside him.

“Should I...” began Danathar.

“Stay there. Monitor the office,” Barrodagh called over his
shoulder, and to Almanor, “Do you have your map?”

“I have
a
map,” she said, her fingers bringing it up.
“Ferrasin’s techs made it for me. But it’s useless, as we can’t get access to
the sensors to locate us on it, and the bots remove the location signs as fast
as the grays put them up.”

Obviously she didn’t know her way around any better than he
did.

Barrodagh felt a snarl twisting his lips, and bit hard into
the side of his cheek as he looked away. Almanor closed her compad and dropped
it to swing at her belt as they ran to the nearest lift.

Barrodagh struggled against the acidic fury lapping at the
back of his throat. It was useless, it only made him feel sick, and he had to
regain, and stay in, control. But so much constant irritation—so many small,
insignificant things—the doors, the insistent mindless bots, the growing lack
of discipline, the general recalcitrance of the palace systems... and the
damned dogs. The Avatar took affront at every puddle of urine or dog turd he
encountered in his peregrinations about his new demesne, regarding them as a
blot on the triumph of his paliach.

Paliach. Then there were the sudden heart-lurches, the sharp
pangs of remembered terror that still caused Barrodagh to jerk awake at night,
drenched in cold sweat from dreams of Hreem’s gloating face. “One of the
Panarch’s sons is here...”

Barrodagh bit his cheek again, hard enough to cause the
copper-taste of blood and forced his mind to the moment.

They reached the lift after one false turn. It functioned
fine, its cables undisturbed, but as soon as the doors slid open at sublevel
one, the sounds of hammering and other machinery reached them. In the pause
between one set of machine noises and another, someone cursed heatedly,
offering the names of at least three demons. As Barrodagh and Almanor followed
the sound of the voices, a voice rose in disgust. “This time they chewed it up
and
pissed on it.”

The work party of grays paused in their work at the sight of
them, then turned to the Tarkan in command. She raised a hand and said,
“Senz-lo Barrodagh. It appears the damage is being done by dogs.”