The Phoenix in Flight (64 page)

Lokri sprang to check Greywing. There was nothing to be done
for her. Vi’ya bent over the boy, who rolled slowly back and forth, his breath
wheezing. She pinned him down and held him with one hand. With the other, she
pulled an ampule out of her pack and jabbed it into Ivard’s arm.

Ivard jerked, his pupils dilating as the drug took effect.
“It burns,” he moaned, the fingers of one hand crawling over his body, not
toward the jac-hit but toward the arm where the Kelly ribbon had attached
itself.

Lokri’s guts crawled. The ribbon no longer had an edge. It
had sunk into Ivard’s skin, melding with it somehow. “C’mon, Firehead. We’re
going to do a little running,” he said softly.

“What happened?” Brandon jerked his chin at the fallen
guards.

“That’s my question for you,” Lokri said. “What happened?
You just stood there holding the damn dog.”

Vi’ya ignored Lokri. “Without the Eya’a I couldn’t sense them
until we were upon them,” she said tersely, her brow tight with anger. And, to
Lokri, “Attend to his back.”

Lokri rolled the still-writhing boy over, and the captain
popped open a pack of gel-flesh over the oozing, blackened groove across
Ivard’s back. The half-alive symbiont spread out and melted into the damaged
flesh, sealing it against the air. As Lokri worked, he tried to get control of
his anger.

He recognized this impulse to blame others for disaster. If
Vi’ya couldn’t sense those guards, or bring them down, then a spoiled nick who
probably had never handled a jac in his life wouldn’t be able to, dog or no
dog.

And why should he care? Greywing was ugly, annoying with
that judgmental stare of hers, and she hovered over the damn boy, keeping him from
growing up. Yet his gut felt hollowed out, and his head burned with fury.

It was easier to aim that fury at this fool of a Krysarch,
born to power and privilege, protected from the random injustices that everyone
else had to endure... Lokri stood up, needing movement as an outlet for his
anger. He slipped another charge into his weapon and holstered it, then picked
up one of the guards’ jacs. It took him a moment to locate the charge
indicator. Full. He set it to wide aperture.

“Get him up,” Vi’ya said.

Lokri hauled Ivard to his feet. Ivard’s pupils were dilated,
his face drawn. “Greywing...” he whispered, groping toward his sister.

“She’s gone, boy,” Lokri said. “We have to get out of here.”

Ivard choked on a sob and wrenched himself free, showing more
strength than Lokri would have imagined the boy had, even when whole. He
dropped on his knees beside his fallen sister, and Lokri moved to restrain him,
but Vi’ya caught his arm.

In silence they watched Ivard turn Greywing carefully over,
then his fingers plunged into Greywing’s inner pocket, coming up with a handful
of fine jewels and a round metallic object covered with blood. Not from the
jac-bolt, which had hit the center of her chest, but from the still-healing
flesh of her earlier burn.

Ivard flung aside the jewels and clutched the medallion.
Then Vi’ya reached forward and took him by the chin, jerking his head up. “Now
we leave. She will be angry if you follow her to the Hall of Ancestors so
quickly.”

Ivard blinked, his eyes wild. Vi’ya slapped him lightly.
“Run.”

They started forward a few steps, Ivard stumbling. Lokri
flung out his free arm and pulled the boy’s thin body against him, stopping
when Vi’ya paused beside Brandon, who stared at the heavy steel door where the
guards had stood.

“Who were they guarding?” Brandon demanded.

“Someone sleeping,” Vi’ya said, her eyes squeezed shut, her
face contorted with pain. “We cannot stay to find out. It would take too long
to burn through.”

Brandon looked at the door, then down at the dog in his arms.
At his knee, the other dog whined. He gave a short nod, and then they started
running again. Lokri took as much of the boy’s weight as he could, and to his
surprise Ivard slowly managed to gather some strength.

“Doesn’t hurt—much,” Ivard mumbled. “Cold. But this
thing...” He waved his green-banded wrist. “Burning.”

“Vi’ya shot you with a painkiller,” Lokri said, trying to
sound light. In case the boy’s shock broke. “That’ll keep you going until we
get back to the ship. But stay out of the front line, eh?”

Ivard gave him a weak grin just as the sounds of their
pursuers drifted up the corridor behind them.

“Exit?” Vi’ya said.

Brandon lumbered forward, breathing harshly, the second dog
trotting at his heels, muzzle lifted. “Here,” the Krysarch said hoarsely,
stopping before a set of double doors. He turned around and pushed backwards
through them.

o0o

Gelasaar hai-Arkad welcomed the dream, though a distant part
of his mind ached at the sharpness of sensory memory: he knew it for a memory,
one he visited often. He sat on the sand, the sun warm on his back and glinting
in Ilara’s wind-teased hair as she looked out over the bay past the Havroy and
the scattering of blossoms floating on the water. He listened as she retold the
story of her first visit to Arthelion as a girl, never thinking she would one
day live there...

Ilara brought the boys down to the bay every year for a
picnic. She always said it was for them, but Gelasaar knew it was for him:
Ilara made over this day each year for them all to be together, away from
court, servants, the inexorable weight of thousands of planets and
Highdwellings dragging on his psyche... Those picnic memories were now his most
precious belongings in a world where he had lost everything else. And so he
relived every moment, every detail: Semion a young cadet, trying to hide his
impatience... Galen listening intently, hands clasping his knees... Brandon
throwing a piece of driftwood for the dogs to chase, their tails flying...

Voices.
Jac-fire?

Gelasaar started out of sleep, his heart crowding his chest.
The door to his cell was thick, but he was sure he heard voices. His ears
strained to make out the words. A familiar timbre in one of the voices sent a
surge of joy and hope through him.

Then he came fully awake and clamped down on his emotions.
No doubt it was another one of Barrodagh’s mind games. One night they had
played back a recording of Ilara’s last meeting with Eusabian. His throat
clenched at the memory of her dying shriek. Another night he’d heard Semion’s voice,
the words cleverly altered to transform whatever the conversation had really
been about into loathsome perversions. Sometimes he heard pawings at the door,
and the whine of dogs, throwing him back to childhood, and the constant
presence of Nemo’s Line. That was somehow the most subtle torture of all,
because it was the most immediate and believable.

He wasn’t even sure that Eusabian knew about these
diversions of his aide-de-camp. He had indeed misjudged the depth of Eusabian’s
hatred, but nothing in the man’s character indicated a taste for this manner of
pointless pettiness.

The voices ceased. After a moment, Gelasaar rolled over onto
his side and tried to summon back the dream of his beloved and his boys,
forever young...

o0o

Brandon plunged through the double doors into the large,
automated kitchen of steel and dyplast, all but a few of the gleaming food
generators silent and dark. The Rifters crowded behind him.

“Wait!” Vi’ya called with low-voiced urgency.

At the other end of the long room a gray-clad Dol’jharian
soldier pushed through another set of double doors, carrying a tray with a
carafe and several cups.

The man gaped at Brandon, then past him at the Rifters.

He dropped the tray with a crash as a bolt from Vi’ya’s jac
caught him in the chest. He fell back through the door, giving them a glimpse
of more soldiers before the door swung shut again. From beyond the barrier of
the door, Brandon could hear chairs overturning and exclamations in
Dol’jharian. From the corridor they’d just quit, he heard more voices.

Trapped.

Brandon looked around and spotted the mechwaiter hatch he’d
been aiming for since he’d realized where they were under the Palace. He’d
intended to send the wounded dog off on a mechwaiter while he and the Rifters
continued to the transport tunnel. But now it might be their only means of
escape.

The hatch, a little over a meter high, was in the wall
between two bulky refrigeration units. He closed the distance, his arms and
shoulders aching with the weight of the dog. Behind him he heard the Rifters
diving for cover.

He laid the dog down—it was nearly unconscious now—and tried
the hatch. It was locked. He found Ivard next to him, slumping down woozily.
Ivard jerked up and winced when his back touched the wall.

On the other side of the kitchen,Vi’ya checked the charge on
her jac.
(Now where?
) she asked. Then,
(Lokri, cover the far door.
I’ll cover the one we came in through.)

Brandon straightened up.
(Ivard, wait here,)
he
boswelled. Aloud, he said “
Plahtz
” to the unwounded dog, which promptly
dropped to its stomach, head up, ears alert.

Brandon had ended up on the wrong side of the room. The main
kitchen console was on the opposite wall. Before he could move toward it, the
double door the Rifters had entered through swung open and a guardsman rolled
through on the floor. He came up with his jac poised to fire.

Nobody moved.

The dining-room doors burst open and a flurry of jac-bolts
sizzled through, followed by several guards. The first guardsman ran for cover,
shouting loudly—the others stopped firing—the two sets of attackers had just
enough time to recognize one another before Lokri and Vi’ya popped up and began
shooting. Lokri had set his stolen jac to wide aperture, which produced a
spectacular spray of white-hot metal fragments wherever it hit. Lokri whooped
with exhilaration.

The survivors scattered and took cover with a flurry of
return fire, halting when someone shouted from beyond both doors.

Then silence. In the middle of the floor a wounded guardsman
was moaning and twisting, crawling painfully toward his concealed fellows.

Brandon took in the tension in Vi’ya’s face, which smoothed
when she became aware of his gaze. Insight came:
What does violent death
feel like to a tempath?
He understood why she had set her jac to minimum
aperture: it either killed quickly or left a clean wound with minimum burns.

Ivard’s feverish gaze roamed restlessly over the ceiling,
his mouth agape as he breathed fast. Next to him the wounded dog panted. Pain,
guilt, rage... Greywing’s arms flying up as she dropped dead... the Ivory Hall:
personification of the greater defilement.

Ivard’s head turned. His eyes met Brandon’s, their
expression one of pain-hazed expectancy. The boy was waiting for him to lead
them to safety.

Need. Purpose.

Another of his worm-shadows flitted across a wall. Vi’ya’s
jaw clenched, and from beyond the barriers came a harsh susurrus of Dol’jharian
mutterings.
That worm is a lot more active than I remember programming it
,
Brandon thought
. It’s almost as though it’s following us.

(Ideas?)
Vi’ya’s voice came.

(This hatch opens on a bot tunnel for supply delivery and
remote food service,)
he replied.
(If I can get it open, we can get out
from between these squads and back on our way to the transport tunnel.)

(We won’t be able to move very fast in there,)
Vi’ya
objected.

(We’ll need a diversion.)

Ivard was plucking fretfully at the Kelly ribbon embedded in
his wrist. Brandon realized whose ribbon it had to be.
The Archon.

Fueled by fatigue and adrenaline, memory seized him: his
first meeting with Lheri, Mho, and Curlizho as a boy, his fascination with the
eccentric (to humans), ebullient sophonts, and later, the wonderful series of
record chips venerated by the Kelly. Some were so old they were monochrome, of
a venerable art form practiced since before the Exile. The ancients had called
it by a name he couldn’t recall—it sounded like some sort of hand weapon for a
martial art—and but Galen and Brandon had loved it.

And I can use it now
, he thought, assurance singing
through his nerves. It was an utterly appropriate weapon against the Archon’s
killers.

He did not know he was grinning, he could only feel the
sting of tears, until Lokri spoke in his inner ear from across the room.
(We
could all use a laugh right about now.)

(I think I can arrange a suitable entertainment to keep
our Dol’jharian friends occupied,)
Brandon replied.
(Cover me.)

o0o

Barrodagh’s comm chimed again. “What is it now?”

“This is Kyltasz Jesserian. We have the intruders cornered
in a service kitchen near the detention area. We took a number of casualties,
including the two Tarkans guarding the Panarch.”

Barrodagh jerked upright in his chair, horror seizing him.
Had he misjudged the aim of the intruders? Had the looting been a diversion?
Maybe it was a Panarchist rescue attempt. “Is the Panarch secure?”

“Yes, I have now posted squads at either end of the Green
Corridor, and am sending more to support the conscript forces that have trapped
the intruders. The other high-rank Panarchists are secure. The intruders appear
to have had no interest in them.”

“Then what is their goal?” Barrodagh only realized he’d
spoken aloud when the kyltasz hesitated. Barrodagh could sense unease in his
scarred features.
Is he seeing the shadows, too?

“Senz-lo Evodh, his assistant, and their Tarkan guard are
also dead,” Jesserian continued. “They were killed by an unknown weapon of
great power.”

“What kind of weapon?” Barrodagh demanded.

Annoyance tightened Jesserian’s hard mouth. Barrodagh
reminded himself that despite the soldier’s acceptance of him as a professional
equal, he was still dealing with a Dol’jharian noble. He molded his face into
an expression of respectful interest.