The Rifter's Covenant (27 page)

As a young girl she
had spent countless hours roaming the crystalline pathways of the Whispering
Gallery, scrutinizing the subtle alterations in the tiles, watching people in
the mirrors and practicing her lip-reading—a skill her mother had insisted on
and which Vannis occasionally found useful—and listening to the sound patterns
until she perceived the whole as a gestalt. The random changes in walls and
doorways were actually comparatively minor, if one could see the place as an
entity in itself.

The same geometry
worked for this Gallery, she had found. Singling out individual speakers
ordinarily held little interest for her. Customarily she paced the cool beauty
of the maze assessing patterns in the social converse. Today she had marked out
a wraith-figure in a rumpled green gown fleeing as if from specters.

Of course her
anxiety had something to do with Srivashti and his refined tastes in cruelty.

“Here we are,” Vannis
said, indicating the narrow path to her villa. “It’s quiet inside, only my
maid, and I can send her off.”

She led the young
woman to an intimate room within the villa. Fierin stood still and tense, her
anxious silvery gaze wandering sightless from object to object in the room.
“It’s all right,” she said, the convulsive smile almost a rictus. She had very
nearly lost all vestiges of control. “Really. I am already late, and Tau will
be worried. . . .”

Vannis captured the
moth-like hands, and made a small gamble. “Tau and I are old friends. You step
into the bain—it’s just beyond there—and rid yourself of the worst part of the
day, and I will tell him you were taken ill at your labors and are sleeping
here. He won’t mind. He knows no harm could possibly come of your being here.”

Fierin turned, her
breath catching, and Vannis smiled. “Go on. I will send him a drop.” She raised
her wrist, fingers poised above her boswell.

Her decisiveness
decided Fierin, whose footsteps diminished rapidly in the direction of the
bain. Vannis sent a drop to Srivashti, who returned a polite answer, as
expected. Then she took the opportunity to opaque the windows to pleasing
designs, establishing an ambience both suggestive of safety and suitable for
intimacy.

When Fierin
reemerged, her color high and her damp hair lying orderly on the borrowed
silken robe, Vannis had a silver service waiting on a low table. She had
extinguished all the lights but one, and the tianqi circulated soft air in
Winter Fireside mode, fostering warmth and comfort.

As Vannis made a
slow business of preparing the hot chocolate, the story of Fierin’s terrible
day came tumbling out.

Vannis listened in
silence, murmuring sympathetic half-phrases only when Fierin looked up for a
reaction. Vannis sensed that something far worse lay underneath the complaints
about overcrowding and Polloi versus Douloi clashes, serious as they were.

When Fierin reached
her entrance to the Whispering Gallery, Vannis moved, setting the gilt-edged
chinois cup and saucer within reach of the young woman’s restless hands.

“And I saw you
once,” Fierin said, picking up the delicate cup with careful fingers. “But
there’s no way to follow someone, is there? We left at the same moment by
accident?”

Her voice threaded
again. Vannis, watching obliquely over the rim of her own cup, saw stark terror
in the waiting eyes. “I left on pure impulse,” Vannis said, smiling before she
sipped.

And watched
Fierin’s eyes close for the space of a long, racheting breath. When they opened
again, the focus was intent. “So you do things on impulse?”

Vannis tipped her
head, considering not the question, but the fear behind the rush of words. “Of
course I do,” she murmured, infusing her calm voice with humor. “The art of
living well requires moments of sudden decision to pique and surprise. But,”
she said slowly, “one must first have the freedom to decide.”

There, it was out.
She hoped it would not provoke a long retailing of Srivashti’s proclivities for
mixing pain and pleasure; sexual confidences were merely sordid.

Srivashti did have
a taste for the young and inexperienced, but his habit had always been to toy
with them for a short time, and then marry them off to his economic or
political advantage. Fierin, inexplicably, he had kept at his side well beyond
his normal span of interest.

She lived with Srivashti;
her brother—long sought for murder—languished in prison. And Srivashti’s closest
associate exerted himself personally to arrange an expeditious trial of this
same brother, ostensibly for high-minded reasons.

There had to be a
connection.

Vannis’s mother had
spent a fortune raising her under the tutelage of the finest laergist she could
lure away from Court. In the peaceful garden of their estate on Montecielo,
Vannis had grown up in company with the best musicians, artists, and performers
her mother could afford. She was sensitive to every inflection of the complex
Douloi gestural semiotics, and an accomplished lip and muscle-reader. The
consequence was a highly finished mistress of the social arts, peerless even at
Court. Then, fifteen years ago, her mother had disappeared on a religious
quest—a woman who had never acknowledged an interest in religion.

She left behind the
family business, which had been signed over to Vannis’s uncle, and a daughter who
embarked on what had promised to be the most brilliant social career possible
for anyone not born an Arkad.

Now Semion was
dead, and Vannis had no real social standing. Along with him had vanished all
the wealth she had commanded. Vannis had been left with nothing but her
wits—and the dawning knowledge that her mother had kept from her careful
curriculum any real knowledge of political verities.

It was this that
Vannis had sought during these last weeks. Reading far into the long nights,
and pacing about in solitary introspection during the days, she struggled to
gain a clear view of how the Panarchy had come to the present crisis.

In perusal of
recent history she had stumbled on one of the key pieces of her puzzle,
bringing the whole into sharper focus: the Kyriarch Ilara, briefly her mother’s
rival then long her best friend. Recovering childhood memories, Vannis had
realized two things. One: that the death of the Kyriarch at the hands of
Eusabian of Dol’jhar had begun the train of events that precipitated her
mother’s sudden withdrawal from public life.

And two: the most
surprising fact, all that careful training had been to one end—that Vannis was
to be another Ilara.

“. . . no
freedom,” Fierin said, her voice trembling. “This means that one cannot
actually ever act on impulse. There has to be someone waiting, watching, from
just beyond vision—waiting to trap you.” She sipped convulsively at her hot
chocolate, then gasped for breath.

“Slowly, child,
slowly. I made it myself. It’s meant to be savored.”

Once again Fierin
made a visible effort to control herself. Vannis’s neck muscles twinged in sympathy.

“It’s delicious,”
Fierin said, sipping obediently. She closed her eyes, and sipped again.

Vannis suppressed a
sigh at this gallant attempt at recovery. It was time for another tactic. “It
is an interesting subject to contemplate, just how impulsive we really are. I
suspect that, were one to examine every action for motivation and intention, a
subconscious prompt could be found for the simplest act.”

Fierin’s glossy
dark head dipped in a fervent nod.

Vannis sat back,
sipped again. The chocolate was creamy, rich, with a hint of several savory
spices. And well hidden behind the bouquet of flavors, a mild relaxant. She
watched the pupils widen in Fierin’s huge eyes. Against the beautiful dark skin
her eyes seemed more silver than gray, a rare combination much prized for the
dramatic contract. Was the brother this handsome? Someone had told her he was. Time
to get the sordid confession out, and over with. “What I detest is finding that
I have not acted, but reacted—out of fear.”

“Yes,” Fierin
breathed, her pupils enormous.

“Let me pour you
some more chocolate,” Vannis said, offering the polished pot. “I’m quite proud
of my chocolate. The Golgol chefs cannot make it any better.”

Fierin swallowed
the contents of her cup and held it out for more. Vannis bent her head close to
Fierin’s as she poured. She could smell the faint trace of fragrant soap on the
young skin, and the scented water with which she had rinsed her hair.

“There are people
who frighten me,” Vannis said, leaning back slowly, her chin on one hand. “Hesthar
al-Gessinav being one. I learned long ago to avoid any devotee of the
Ultschen.”

“The what?”

“The cult of the
deathsnake. I’m told that they carry what they call the Mark tattooed somewhere
on their bodies. Wherever they were bitten in the ritual, rumor has it.”

“Does she have a
tattoo?” Fierin said doubtfully, then her brow cleared. “Oh, I’ve seen a shadow
on one of her forearms. Is that it?”

“Probably. I’ve
also been told that those with the tattoo hidden are the most dangerous,
especially if they let you see it.”

Fierin sucked in a
breath. “Felton,” she said. “He has one. I saw it once, when he came out of the
bain. I don’t think he knew I was there.”

Vannis’s neck
gripped with chill. “I hadn’t known that,” she murmured. “Two of them here. I
wonder if they know about each other?”

“They must,” Fierin
said. “When Felton is there for parties, they watch each other. I didn’t
understand it before.”

“Well.” Vannis inclined
her head as she lifted her cup. A quick assessment: far from relaxing, Fierin
seemed all hunched bones and tangled nerves.

Fierin took a deep
breath. “If.” She looked around. “Is there—” She twisted her fingers together.

Vannis set her cup
down with a clash and reached to touch Fierin’s hand. “There are no spyvids
here,” she said. “I scanned the place myself. It was something I gained
practice in, being married to Semion vlith-Arkad,” she added with irony.

Fierin did not even
smile. This was it, Vannis thought, as Fierin said, “If you were to hide,” she
said slowly, so softly Vannis had to bend forward to hear, “where would you?”

“That depends,”
Vannis said. “On who I had to hide from. And what I was hiding.”

“What you said. About
Hesthar,” Fierin whispered.

“Does this concern
your brother?” Vannis asked. “The trial?”

Fierin shook her
head, real grief tightening her face. “No. I can’t find out anything to help
Jes. Felton—watches me.” She gulped for breath, then shook her head again.
“It’s not that. It’s—something worse. Much worse. I don’t know what it means,
except . . . .”

The pure cold fire
of triumph scoured from Vannis’s skull through muscles to nerve endings. “Tell
me. If I can help, I will. If I can’t, I will tell you—but I will not betray
you.”

“You won’t tell Srivashti,”
Fierin whispered.

Vannis said acidly,
“I promise. I assure you I have no fondness for Tau Srivashti.”

Fierin’s trembling
attempted at a smile expressed more pain than humor. And then to Vannis’s
surprise, she pulled her hairclasp free, so that her dark hair tumbled down
around her elbows. Then she opened her hand, and disclosed beside the expected
hair clasp a datachip.

“I have been hiding
this chip since the laergist Ranor gave it to me. He was murdered right
afterward,” she said. “It was made at the Aerenarch’s Enkainion. It shows the
bomb, and everyone dying. And it shows Hesthar and Srivashti and the Archon of
Torigan backing out of the room right before the bomb went off.”

That same bomb
seemed to detonate behind Vannis’s eyes, leaving her skull as empty as a blown
egg, and her heart beating fast against her ribs.

Her days of
contemplation had fashioned a single resolve: that she would take her rightful
place at Brandon hai-Arkad’s side. She had been trained from birth to be a
Kyriarch. Ever since the night Brandon had spent with her—out of friendship and
kindness, with his bright skein of laughter and tenderness, and pleasure—every
day since she had desired more strongly to bind him to her with her own silken
ribbon.

He was back from
his quest, no longer heir but Panarch in his own right. That night had not been
repeated. She suspected that to him, she was merely the socialite who had
weakly allowed herself to be used by the cabal. She had no claim on him but
kindness.

She would not beg
at his door. He already had hundreds of people doing that. She must prove
herself as his political equal, and the rest would fall into place. All she
needed was a way—and unexpectedly, Fierin had just offered it to her.

“I know what to
do,” she said, and watched the relief relax Fierin’s tense face. “For now, you
must say nothing. Leave the chip with me. Or keep it, as you think best,” she
amended, seeing the convulsive movement of Fierin’s fingers.

“Whom do I tell? I
promised Ranor that I would give it only to Commander Nyberg, but Tau has
stopped me both times from trying to reach him, and I couldn’t bear . . .” She
closed her eyes, swallowing painfully.

“No.” Vannis took
her hand. “Only one person: the new Panarch.”

Fierin gasped. “But
if I even try to send him a drop, Srivashti would find out.”

“You won’t send him
anything. He’s surrounded by people filtering visitors and drops. Any one of
them could be on Tau’s payroll. He will have to be told in person.”

“But how can I get
a private interview? Tau would find out if I tried.”

Vannis held
Fierin’s thin, tense fingers. “No, and no. The time to talk to Brandon
privately is in the most public place possible.”

Fierin’s eyes were
wide. “His Accession?”

Vannis smiled,
lifting her hand to the girl’s smooth cheek. “Just leave it to me. I promise
you will have your chance, and you will be safe.”