The Thrones of Kronos (31 page)

It was fascinating, but it was also disorienting. Despite
his determination to mark his pathway, he was soon totally lost.

Voices drifted on the currents, like disembodied ghosts.
Some were barely discernible over the fluid hiss of fountains, others seemed to
come from right next to him, the sounds refracted coldly by shining glass.

“. . . endeavor to create a facsimile of her
home, as a gift . . .”

“. . . if you will honor me with
permission—for the sake of discussion—to contradict . . .”

A female laugh, close by, musical as the fountain. “Charm is
of the mind, not the face, which is mere beauty—obvious from the start, but
unchanging. Charm reveals itself little by little. It can conceal itself in
order to appear later and thus provide the kind of surprise that is the essence
of charm.”

“You imply, my dear, that charm is merely another word for
wit,” a man drawled.

“Wit,” another man said, “is merely another word for
weapon.”

The gentle laughter that greeted this seemed to come from
right behind Nik. He whirled around—and saw a waterfall before glass.

“Wit is charming only when it appears spontaneous,” the
woman said, “and not rehearsed. Charm cannot be acquired. In order to have it
one must be naive. But how can one make an effort to become naive? We find the
naive especially pleasing but no style is more difficult to master.”

“And thus with air and grace she conquers your heart,” the
second man said to the third, amid the murmurs of approbation.

Nik took two more steps and the voices vanished.

He plunged down a pathway into a coolly scented air current.
And from behind a mirror-doubled waterfall—it almost seemed she walked through
it—emerged a woman instantly recognizable. Vannis Scefi-Cartano was even more
beautiful in person than she was on the vids, but what sent a spurt of
amusement through Nik was the fact that she was short. Even shorter than he.

She moved with a gliding walk. The tiny chain of gems
threaded through her rich brown hair matched those at her smooth throat and
around her wrists. Her exquisitely fitted gown flowed, made of some kind of
green material that seemed transparent but wasn’t, and the air trailing her
smelled delicious.

Nik squashed down his reaction, diverted by how these Douloi
in their fabulous clothes and fancy gestures were pretty on the vids but
curiously sexless. In person, though, the subtle scents, the hint of well-toned
muscles moving smoothly beneath sensual fabrics, even the timbre of the
pleasing voices, heightened one’s physical awareness.

To use against me,
since it certainly isn’t an invitation,
he thought as she fell in step
beside him.

Her smile was one of greeting, and of recognition. He
grinned back, thinking:
I recognize her,
she recognizes me. We’re both famous; she as the art object, me as its medium.

“Discretion,” she said, “is an integral part of a
relationship that one wishes to be sustained.”

All right, got that.
No names, promise of future dealings—and she wants me as off balance as
possible.
“For the Douloi,” he said. “We Polloi like noise in our
relationships. After all, the more everyone knows, the less we have to hide.”

“And you walk away when it has ended, free of the
consequences,” she said, “your pockets filled with the riches of notoriety.
Supposing, though, that you had something of your own at risk?”

“There’s risk in every relationship,” he said, then winced.
The platitude only set them back to the start.
Well, let her think I’m an idiot. Maybe it’ll get her to the point
faster.

“With us,” she said, “it is frequently a question of
degree.”

“Now, that’s something I’ve always wanted to ask,” Nik said,
smacking his chest. “You have your mates, just like us, legal and non-legal,
life-oaths and non.”

He stopped, and Vannis made a graceful gesture of
concurrence, turning her hand out to invite him to continue.

“You also have marriage, which involves families, property,
and adoption.”

Again the gesture, this time more hesitant. “A
simplification which could lead to disinformation—”

“Different planets have different traditions, I know, but
right now I mean what obtains among the High Douloi,” Nik said.

She gestured concurrence.

“Well, then there are those people who aren’t mates, who
have no official standing, but who everyone knows about . . .”

“For example,” Vannis murmured, “the former Aerenarch
Semion’s companion, Sara Darmara Tarathen. And my own friend from the time
before the attack, Colm Vishnevsky?”

“You mentioned the names,” Nik said, grinning. “I didn’t.”

“‘Naïveté,’” Vannis said in the voice one uses when quoting,
“‘is an affectation which falls between the high and the low style, and is so
close to the latter that one has difficulty continually skirting the danger of
vulgarity—’”

“‘—which is the essence of surprise and suspense,’” Nik
finished.

Vannis laughed and clapped her hands lightly. The fountain
behind her looked just like molten light; Nik wondered, if he put his hand into
it, if it would be near the point of freezing.

“These individuals were not our mates,” Vannis said. “Do you
really believe most of the range of human experience is not common to us
all—Douloi, Polloi—”

“—Rifter and Dol’jharian?” Nik added.

“Exactly,” Vannis said, her eyes reflecting the green of a
sheltering fern as she turned about and chose another direction. “I kept Colm
with me because he was amusing, and he stayed because I paid his expenses. Sara
Darmara remained with Semion . . . for different reasons, none
of which have to do with the subject of our discourse.”

“Which is love,” Nik said, making a gamble.

Her eyes narrowed to pinpoints of reflected light as cold
and diamond-brilliant as the fountain she stepped past. “To consider your
initial question,” she said, “there is an additional complication to the
variety of relationships—what might be termed an orthogonal division. It is a
question,” she gestured, “of degree.”

“Or in plodding Polloi terms,” he said, “social and
political.”

And, startling Nik, a whisper came from somewhere behind
them, “. . . Polloi and their predilection for riot . . .”

Whatever I say can be
heard, and misconstrued.
Why had she picked this place? A jet of water
struck some hidden chimes. In a weird sense they were equals, in being forced
to talk obliquely, but he wondered if his boswell was recording—he strongly
suspected that this place was a dead zone.

Vannis turned her hands over, palms up, in a gesture of
studied grace. “Always,” she said, “within our shared context.”

Now we’re to it,
he thought.
So if some of them do know
about the Panarch and Captain Vi’ya, it’s been considered a social thing,
meaningless. And since she’s assuming I know, she’s as much as telling me that
there’s a political angle.

She said, “When individuals also function as symbols for
groups of people, personal decisions affect not only those groups but actions
that might be taken for the good of the groups. This makes questions of
marriage, mates, and love . . . problematical.”

Nik took a deep breath; his palms were sweating.
Which is about the Rifters and the Suneater,
or I’ll eat my ajna. But does she mean the Panarch wants to go after them?

“Such as chasing a lover straight to the mouth of hell,” he
said, then added, “Only works in the vids.”

“Sometimes it does not work at all,” she observed, trailing
her fingers in a shallow pool rilling at waist height.

“A threat?” Nik said, watching the water plunge into a deep
fall out of sight, and when she did not answer, he faced her, biting hard on
the desire to demand she drop the game. Talk like an adult.
At least she
is
talking. And if I threaten
her
,
she simply walks away.

Vannis regarded him for several seconds beyond what at best
was an uncomfortable pause, then said gently, “Permit me, genz Cormoran, to
quote the same source you recognized earlier: ‘Let us consider antithesis;
antithesis of expressions is not concealed, as is the antithesis of ideas. The
latter is always clothed in the same manner, the former changes at will; one is
varied, the other is not.’”

He swallowed, heeding the warning. Whatever was behind this
weird conversation, he was not going to find out by coercion.

“Antithesis as in opportunity?” he said.

Her hand opened, as if offering a gift. “There is also
surprise.” She smiled. “As you found once, did you not?”

Is this reminder of
the bombshell she dropped on us the day of the trial merely that, or a hint of
something of equal magnitude?

“I love surprises,” he said hopefully.

“I invite you,” she responded, “to view our putative
relationship through the Douloi perspective.”

Discretion:
she means
for us to sit on the story
. He swallowed again. “For how long?”

“Until we meet again, and discuss its . . . antithesis.”

“The Polloi way is openness,” he said. “It is a great
equalizer.”

She gestured again, the open palms. “When the subject is
love,” she said, “and one contemplates its antithesis, what is concomitant with
equalization?”

A row of mirrors opened before them. Light refracted and
refracted into infinity, nearly making him dizzy.
War. Destruction. She means if we talk too soon . . . it
has something to do with the war.

He had to get out.

“Destruction,” he said, his voice sounding husky. He cleared
his throat, then said, “I prefer surprises.”

“Each better than the last.” She dipped her chin in a
graceful nod, almost a bow, of agreement—promise.

His heart began to slam. They paced two steps, three, and he
risked a glance to meet her steady gaze: she was waiting for him to promise,
without words, his cooperation.

He jerked his head in agreement.

She touched his hand, and turned down a side corridor. He
heard the whisper of her skirts on the tile path. He stood where he was, trying
to still his heart, then plunged after—and the whisper became the hush of a
fountain into a wide pool.

There was nothing in sight but glass, and mirrors, and water
so lit it looked like running flame.

He spotted a discreet door; five steps, six, he reached it,
and plunged into air and freedom. He let the door shut behind him and hustled
through the garden and away.

He waited until he was in the transtube to review the
recorded conversation, but when he activated his boswell, he heard nothing but
the sound of falling water. Yet he was willing to wager his life that by the
time he returned to Derith and the others, there’d be a drop waiting, handing
them a scoop that the other novosti would kill to get. What a life!

He threw his head back on the seat and laughed.

o0o

“Are you sure you want to attend this thing?” Osri turned
to Fierin, his heavy brows a straight line over his dark eyes.

Fierin slipped her arm through his and smiled. “It won’t
last long. I know this is stupid—I’m sure Houmanopoulis and my brother have
never once met—but watching him brings me closer to Jes somehow. Rifthaven has
been his home for the last fifteen years.”

Osri felt obliged to demur. “Dis was his home. Though I
don’t know for how long. And that place was destroyed.”

“But he spent time on Rifthaven, and it was his heart-home.
Like ours is the Mandala.” Fierin hesitated, then dropped her gaze. “I can’t
explain well. But I want to watch.”

‘Then we’ll watch,” Osri said, consciously abandoning the
subject. A flutter of self-mockery behind his ribs accompanied the awareness
that not so long ago he would not have been able to resist arguing the point.
Fierin’s emotions were more important to him than faulty logic—and he had
discovered that the heart has its own logic. “My father said he’d save us a
good spot.”

Fierin’s silvery-gray eyes widened in surprise. “Then the
Privy Councilors are not a part of the ceremony?”

“Just Brandon, Admiral Ng, and the High Phanist.”

Fierin thought that over as the trans-tube took them to the
Circle. “Where did they find a precedent for this ceremony?” she asked as they
entered. “Surely they won’t welcome him as a head of state, as though the
Rifters were rediscovered exiles?”

Osri frowned, considering. “I suppose not,” he replied.
“Although,” he added in an undertone that made her wonder if it was addressed
to her or merely an audible thought, “that’s a pretty good description of them,
I suppose. Ah. There’s my father. He sees us.”

A short time later they wedged into a crowd of titled Douloi
and fairly high government functionaries.

When the ceremony began, Fierin could scarcely hear the
words, but she didn’t care. They’d be meaningless anyway. She watched the
people, letting herself get caught up in the stylized unfolding of the ritual.
It was so very much like a dance, only one that told a story. Something seemed
odd; after a short time, she realized what it was and said, “No mention of
time.”

Osri turned his head, looking perplexed. “What’s that?”

“No mention of when he came. It’s an official welcome, but
there’s no pretense he just arrived.”

Osri said with an ironic lift to his brows, “That would be
stretching credulity even for an official function.”

On her other side, Sebastian Omilov murmured, “You imply
these functions are meaningless.”

“Well, aren’t they?” Osri asked.

“In the immediate sense, perhaps,” his father replied. “But
even pragmatists acknowledge the place of symbolism.”

Fierin said, “They can’t pretend he just arrived—not after
the Ares 25 story about Houmanopoulis being on Ares. And all that spew from 99
about Rifter atrocities. Everyone knows he’s here. Which is why I thought there
might be something important about this function.”