The Thrones of Kronos (46 page)

He had said nothing, nor did he now. He continued his work,
impersonal and efficient, though the flush through her skin made her wish for
the even kneadings to alter to urgency.

In the room, Ivard, clad only in trousers, sat with his
knees up and his arms clasped tightly round them. His green gaze expressed a
complexity of emotions Sedry could only guess at. Lucifur lifted his great,
spatulate head from Ivard’s pillow and purred, eyes half-closed.

Vi’ya did not move from where she sat on the edge of her
bed, hands on her knees; nor did Jaim, who lay flat, face watchful. From behind
the closed door the Eya’a lifted their high voices in ululating song, and Luce
growled, his fur ruffling round his head.

Then both Ivard and Vi’ya lifted their heads, and the back
wall opened with a quiet hiss.

Alarm, and something that was not alarm, zinged through
Sedry when she saw the tall masculine silhouette in the opening.

It was Anaris, the heir. He stood a single pace inside the
room. Lifting his right hand in a gesture that was an ambiguous blend of
command and appeal, he faced Vi’ya.

Also without speaking, Vi’ya got slowly to her feet. Anaris
stepped back, and Vi’ya walked through the wall-door. It closed abruptly; Sedry
saw Jaim’s long hands grip, white-knuckled, at the sides of his bed.

Ivard shook his head, almost a shudder, and reached to
stroke Luce’s fur. The big cliff-cat slowly stretched out on the bed again,
head on paws, slanted eyes watchful. Lokri and Marim, who had paused in their
games when the wall opened, sat up, clothes rumpled and hair messy. Marim
chuckled, a sound like bubbles in a running stream.

The patient hands stroked lower down Sedry’s spine.

No one had spoken, yet the atmosphere had intensified, the
air charged with expectation.

Again Ivard shivered, and rubbed his hands over his face.
Then he winced, as if from a blow, and laughed, his eyes wide open and
gleaming. He stretched, his head dropping back; his whole body appeared to glow
with inner heat. Inner fire.

Like muted thunder, Sedry’s pulse drummed in her ears. She
sat up, no longer aware of her own nakedness. She could not look away from
Ivard, who straightened up slowly, the embodiment of grace, and youth, and
promise—as beautiful as a young god.

They all faced him, hearts beating in synchrony, flesh
warmed with the flame of Ivard’s desire. The kneading hands on Sedry’s body had
altered their touch, sending runnels of star-fire through all her nerves, and
yet she fought the urgency of flesh yearning for flesh; anticipation, so very
long denied, was delicious.

Marim’s laughter was exultant, and with a gesture she ripped
free of her clothing and stood before Ivard, smooth and round and lovely. Ivard
traced a finger along the contour of her face, and down her throat to her
collarbone in a gesture that was at once tender and a farewell. His hand
lifted.

She reached, but his head had turned, and he did not see.
Beyond Marim stood Lokri, whose extended hand was met, slowly, by Ivard’s. The
fingers entwined and Ivard moved around Lokri and Lokri around Ivard, circle
and circle, sustained as a dance.

Then with a twist of surrender their bodies impacted, a
tangle of strong limbs and smooth muscle; Sedry saw in Marim’s face the anguish
of denial, and nearby another kind of anguish in Jaim, and then she could no
longer see anything but Montrose’s laughing eyes, and his smiling mouth, as his
insistent hands could no longer be denied.

Margot Ng raised her goblet and looked around the
cavernous hall with its banners and holographic mementos of past military
triumphs and tragedies.

Light shone on the crystal gripped in hands young and old,
female and male.

Each person in the room save one captained a ship about to
depart for the Suneater. For once they mixed freely: captains of destroyers
with lieutenants who commanded cutters; battle-worn vessels and armed but
decorative civilian yachts; Panarchist and Rifter.

She saw in the bright eyes and brittle movements, the sudden
laughter and moments of unconscious abstraction, that they were all equally
aware that some would not return.

In eight hours, she would emerge from her quarters, dressed
in her formal whites with the sunbursts of the high admiral on her high collar,
sit down on a bridge silent except for the subliminal whisper of data consoles,
with her alpha crew who had steadfastly denied promotion in order to remain
with her. And despite the tianqi, programmed to exude calming ions, every
person there—present and within range of communication—would be poised,
heartbeats accelerated, waiting for her to speak the command that would send
them to battle.

She closed her eyes, her fingers tightening on her goblet.
This was the moment supposedly every commander lived for. Whatever happened,
her name would be inscribed in the logs of history from now until this
civilization had turned to dust.

Should there be
pleasure? There is none.
Anticipation, yes, tempered with the dread of
imminent loss. Even stronger, the determination to win.
This time Dol’jhar will find no mercy.

“Confusion to the enemy!” Brandon Arkad drank off his
champagne, then cocked back his arm and smashed his goblet against the back of
the vast stone fireplace.

“Confusion to the enemy!” voices repeated, some in ringing
tones, others in the whisper of an oath or a prayer as the smashing of glass
rose to a crescendo.

Margot Ng opened her eyes, drank her champagne in one
eye-stinging swallow, and smashed her glass to glittering shards in the very
heart of the fire.

o0o

Osri Omilov, Lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy, gripped his
kit in one sweaty hand and tabbed the shuttle’s lock annunciator. “Lieutenant
Omilov reporting for duty. Permission to come aboard?”

A voice said, “Come aboard, Lieutenant.”

The lock opened, and Osri looked into the blatantly curious
gaze of a young, obviously newly promoted ensign.

Osri saluted, and belatedly the young woman saluted, her
cheeks going crimson. She didn’t falter again, though, as she went through the
age-old naval ritual of welcome.

The rest of his introduction to the
Grozniy
proceeded more smoothly, lulling him with its familiarity.
Finally the door to his cabin slid open, and he stepped in, glancing around,
briefly disoriented at how familiar it was: he could have been standing in his
quarters aboard the
Mbwa Kali
—or on Ares
or Minerva. The proportions were regulation, which meant one knew them whatever
vessel one entered, knew them well enough to maneuver in the dark if the ship
went to emergency power.

Now, for the first time, this might actually happen.
Except I will be serving aboard a Rifter
ship.
Osri shook off the reaction and stowed away his gear in half a dozen
swift movements.

Then he hesitated, looking at his chrono. His own
inclination had been to appear at the last moment, which would place his dealings
with others onto the comfortable basis of regulation interaction. But Fierin
had talked him into going early, to introduce himself informally to his fellow
officers, at least.

“Then I have longer to fumble around sounding and looking
like a fool,” he had said.

She grinned, grabbing his ears to kiss him. “Better that
than they think you’re a snob,” she said.

“Snob?” he’d repeated, totally taken aback.

“Whether you like it or not, you’re known to everyone as the
Panarch’s boyhood friend and confidant, and though rank will make it possible
to work with you, they’re going to stay strictly away unless you make the first
move.”

Osri knew enough of how preference and deference worked
among the Douloi to see the force of what she said. He’d acquiesced—even though
it had cut short, by an hour, their time together.

But their time, however curtailed, had been sweet. Neither
had talked of the future; they were both too much a part of the Douloi world,
wherein words could so easily be misconstrued, or made false by damning
circumstance. Their emotions had found outlet in passion, so strong and abiding
that for once Osri had not felt clumsy, or awkward, or tentative.

He shook his head. Memory of that time was for later.

Now he had to keep his word to Fierin.

He tabbed the door open and made his way to the officers’
wardroom.

o0o

Fierin vlith-Kendrian turned away from the port
overlooking the enormous bulk of the
Grozniy.
She’d imagined herself by Osri’s side on his shuttle, then going aboard the
battlecruiser, then settling in his rooms, which would be exactly like the ones
she’d lived in secretly before Jes’s trial.

But after that her imagination failed her, and anyway, it
was time to go.

She made her way through the crowd seeing off their families
and lovers and friends. Everyone was polite, some distracted. A few betrayed
traces of tears, most in tight little knots, utterly unaware of the little
dramas so similar to their own being enacted within meters on all sides.

I almost wish the
Dol’jharians had attacked us,
she thought as she waited in line for a
transtube. It would have to be better than this terrible, deliberate parting.
It’s like they’re going to their execution,
and they know it.

She winced away from the thought and welcomed the press of
people on the trans-tube. It felt safe, to be pressed in a crowd. It felt . . .
normal.

The ride was short and oddly quiet. Very few people spoke.
Fierin had been glad to join the crowd, but she was just as glad to leave it.
She had never considered herself sensitive, but it was too easy to fancy the
pain of separation felt by each of the people there multiplying into a kind of
vast desolation.

She knew she already missed Osri’s touch, his clean, masculine
smell—for just as he employed none of the Douloi arts to mask or deflect
emotions, he wore no jewels or personal scents. He was who he was: stiff,
awkward, utterly honest, with a quirky sense of humor and solid as a planet in
space.

She did not want to think about a future without him in it.

A sob, hastily suppressed, and a low murmur of voices caught
her attention. Impulse made her strike off the walkway and take a shortcut
across the lawns, giving the unseen their privacy.

She reached the Enclave a short time later; even the
ever-present guards seemed more solemn than usual.

Inside, music greeted her, the slow, sustained harmonics of
an opera whose words came from Lost Earth centuries before Exile. Fierin, who
had studied music in school, was familiar with the tragedy of Troilus and Criseyde.

Alone in the study Vannis sat, her profile absorbed, her
thin hands gripping her upper arms. It was so revealing a pose—so
uncharacteristic of Vannis—that Fierin was shocked.

She stopped in the doorway, wondering if she should make her
way to another entrance. But Vannis, ever sensitive, must have felt the air
currents shift, for she looked up, and when Fierin lifted a hand in wordless
question, she said, “Stay with me.”

The shock turned to ice running through Fierin’s veins, but
she asked no questions. Instead, she sat down on the couch next to Vannis and
put her arm around the older woman—noticing again how small Vannis really was.

Vannis’s head dropped back against Fierin’s shoulder, the
subtle perfumes in her hair refreshingly pleasant. Vannis tightened her arm and
shifted her hip so they fit more comfortably together, and Fierin stared at the
flaring candles, wondering what in a tragedy about a woman with two loves could
mean so much to Vannis now.

Before long she was caught up in the opera, and time
diminished into one of those rare stretches of infinity. Peace, at least on the
surface. In sound: the music interspersed with the plashing of one of the
ubiquitous fountains, and closer, their own breathing. In sight: the quiet room
with its harmonious mixture of ancient and modern furniture, somehow masculine
in feel, but maybe that was because she had first come to the room with Brandon
as its master. His presence was invoked by little things, and Vannis’s by
little things, the whole softened into dream by the light from twin candles on
the low glass table.

Will I remember this
in future days?

Her thoughts drifted, to be absorbed again into the music.
Presently she shut her eyes, dream images guided by the pure voices singing out
their tragic lives, until Vannis moved.

It was a slight move, no more than a tightening of muscles,
but Fierin was instantly alert.

The room had gone even dimmer; only one candle remained, its
flame a tiny flicker of blue.

What was wrong? The music played on, unheeding; somewhere in
the interval, the opera had ended and begun anew.

Vannis brushed her lips softly against Fierin’s forehead,
and then rose.

A nyghtyngale,
upon a cedir grenë,

Under the
chambre wal ther as she ley,

Full loudë song
ayein the moonë shenë . . .

Fierin saw a tall figure in white cross the terrace to the
open doors, and Vannis went to meet him.

Brandon reached the doors, and though it was too dark to see
his face, Fierin knew at once that he recognized the music, and it made him
stop, his head lifted. What did it symbolize to them?

Vannis said, her hands going out, “Your question can wait
for my answer. There is someone you must ask first.”

Brandon murmured, almost too softly to hear, “I must go.”

Vannis said, “You have three hours.”

And as she slep,
anonright tho hirë mettë

How that an
egle, fetherëd whit as bon,

Under hirë
brest his longë clawes settë,

And out hire
herte he rentë, and that anon . . .