The Sardonyx Net (48 page)

Rhani nodded. “I was not supposed to be in it. That addition was Binkie's idea. He hoped I would die in the fire, and that with my death he'd be free.”
 

“Where the hell is Michel A-Rae now?” Yianni said.
 

Rhani smiled. “No one knows. The Abanat police are searching for him. He's still on Chabad. According to Ramas I-Occad, he has one more scheme to set in motion, something special he has prepared for me. I want you to help me find him, Imre.”
 

It was like watching a masque or a play, so that, even as he caught his breath in fury, Zed saw himself listening and reacting as if he were one of the players. He did not move. He found himself contemplating Michel A-Rae's motives with an almost intellectual passion. I wonder what it was that disturbed him, he thought. Could someone he knew—a friend, teacher, lover—have been a slave?
 

Then a slave opened the door. Stepping into the reverberant silence unnerved her; she fumbled, and dropped a plate. The clatter made them jump. Zed felt something break in his mind. His dark self, released, writhed. He wanted, simply, to kill Michel A-Rae.
 

The blood burned in his eyes, so that he saw the room, Rhani, the Kyneths through a true red haze. His hands clenched, every tendon and muscle curling. Then he felt an unexpected pain in his left hand; it jolted him from his murderous state. He opened his fist, grimacing. He had been holding a spoon, a piece of fine silver, as all Kyneth tableware was. He was still holding it, but it no longer looked like a spoon, and it was bloody. He had driven its edges into the flesh of his hand.
 

He picked the mess from his left hand with his right and deposited it upon the table. As he reached for a cloth napkin to staunch the bleeding, Aliza exclaimed. “Zed! What—Lela, get a cloth from the medical kit, and hot water.”
 

“Just bring a clean cloth and a gel bandage,” Zed said. “I'll attend to it later.”
 

“It needs more than that,” Yianni said. Slender, swift, a redhead like all the Kyneth children, he came forward, napkin in hand. Zed recalled—he was the Kyneth who was studying to be a medic. He pulled a candle close to Zed's chair and went down on one knee, reaching for the injury with unconscious grace.
 

Zed's system shrieked. “No!” he said shortly. He pulled the hand back. Yianni looked up, still kneeling, startled. Then, without comment, he laid his napkin in Zed's lap and returned to his chair.
 

The slave, Lela, brought a sterile cloth, hot water, and gel. Zed fixed a rough bandage.
 

Imre said, “Zed, do you need a tourniquet? Surgery? Perhaps a cast?”
 

Zed laughed. It eased the tension. “No, I'll live.” He glanced at Yianni. “Thank you.”
 

Aliza said, “Your sister has a fine sense of drama.”
 

Zed smiled. As always, pain, whether his or another's, had sharpened his senses. He sipped the wine, admiring the play of light on Rhani's hair. Yianni Kyneth was studying him over the rim of his own goblet.
 

Imre said, “Rhani, I will of course do everything in my power to help the Abanat police locate Michel A-Rae. How much of this do you intend to make public?”
 

“As little as possible,” Rhani said. “The confessions of the ex-police are, of course, already public. And I expect the Abanat police to make public their warrant for A-Rae's arrest.”
 

“Imre,” said Aliza, “what if the Chabad Council were to offer a reward to persons assisting the Abanat police in that endeavor?”
 

Imre cocked his head at Rhani. “What do you think, my dear? In this matter, you are the most injured party.”
 

Rhani said, “The A.P. might find it somewhat demoralizing. But I suppose, if they haven't located him in a few weeks, we might.”
 

“Who is Henrietta Melones?” Margarite said. Imre shot his daughter an approving glance, and then answered her.
 

“No one we need be concerned with,” he said. “My sources on the moon tell me that this is the highest Federation rank she has ever held, and that there is no chance of her being named captain, as opposed to acting captain.”
 

Silence descended. Aliza rose, a pillar of light in the dark room. “Yianni, get the light, please.” Yianni rose and vanished into the darkness. The overhead chandelier came on. “Is there more, my children?”
 

Zed tensed. He watched his sister, suddenly afraid that she would tell the Kyneths about her alliance with Ferris Dur. But she simply shook her head.
 

“Good,” said Aliza. “Then—since we have all received enough shocks to our nervous systems to make sleep imperative—I, at least, am going to bed!”
 

Imre rose from his chair. “I always go to bed with my wife,” he explained.
 

Zed walked to Rhani. She held out her hand and, when he laid the bandaged one upon it, she drew it to her lips. “Can you forgive me for that?” she said.
 

Zed said, “It isn't incapacitating.”
 

Behind them, Yianni Kyneth coughed. “Excuse me,” he said, “but are you sure, Zed, that you won't need help in tying that?”
 

“I can manage,” Zed said. He put his arm around Rhani as they walked from the room. As he escorted her up the stairs, he regretted that he could respond to such overtures only in his own devastating way.
 

He rummaged in the Kyneths' vast medikit: spray anesthetic allowed him to stitch the deepest cut. Re-covering the hand with gel, he went to the room he'd been given. Through the window drape he saw lights in the sky: the city was giving the tourists a fireworks display. No wonder the children had been quiet, he thought. He watched as the night sky over the Barrens sported a white-hulled ship with indigo sails, a gold-and-purple dragon, and a green kerit. For a finale, a great silver wheel bloomed in the sky and burst in a shower of glittering sparks. In the adjoining bedroom, someone produced a series of muffled shrieks which turned into giggles. He wondered what it would have been like to grow up in a house filled with siblings, permitted to yell, to giggle, to argue with one's parent. He wondered how he might have turned out if he had grown up a Kyneth.
 

He walked down the hall, to say good night to Rhani. But the guard at her door said, “She's asleep, Commander. She turned the light out ten minutes ago.”
 

“Thank you,” said Zed. Feeling cheated, he returned to his room. He had just taken off his shirt when a tap sounded on his door. He opened it.
 

His visitor—I should have known, Zed thought—was Yianni Kyneth.
 

“I want to talk to you,” he said. His eyes were hard and direct.
 

Zed said, “Come in.” He gestured to a chair—the rooms in the Kyneth house always seemed to have lots of chairs in them. Yianni shook his head.
 

“I don't want to sit. I want to know what happened tonight,” he said firmly.
 

“What happened?”
 

“Between us. There was something.” His gaze was like a knife. “I won't let it sit and fester. I don't do things like that. If we talk, perhaps we can discover what it is.”
 

Zed said, “I know what it is.”
 

Yianni stared at him, perplexed. “Well, out with it!”
 

Zed drew a breath. Oh, hell, he thought. “Better sit down first,” he said grimly. He told it clinically, as he had told very few people—not even Sai Thomas, who would have listened and tried to understand. Jo Leiakanawa knew. So, of course, did his victims. And there were two telepaths who knew, on Nexus. Yianni listened. He kept his eyes on Zed's face. At one or two points he grew a little white about the mouth. When Zed finished, Yianni cleared his throat.
 

Zed said, “You don't have to say anything.”
 

Yianni said, “I do.” There were tears in his eyes. “I—oh, mother, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made you speak.” He rose. “I'll go.”
 

“Wait,” Zed said. He stepped forward, not knowing himself why he made the request. Yianni waited. Zed reached out with his right hand, the good hand. Yianni straightened, a lift of the shoulders; he was steeling himself. Gently Zed touched his cheek. It was rough with a day's beard.
 

“Don't apologize,” he said. “It was right. I needed it. Thank you—though I warn you, I may never be able to look at you again. But you're going to be a fine medic, I can see that. And if things had been different, you would have made a fine friend.”
 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Seventeen

 

 

The next morning there were dark shadows beneath Zed's eyes.
 

Rhani noted them when he came to her room to give her his morning greeting. “Zed-ka,” she said, holding out both hands. He mirrored her. She had forgotten about the bandage on his left hand and the sight of it gave her a small shock. He kissed her cheek.
 

“Good morning,” he said.
 

Something was wrong with him. She watched him circumnavigate the room. He ended up by the window. He lifted the drape, frowned, let it drop. It's odd, she thought; I pace to order my thoughts, Zed paces when he doesn't want to think, or at least, to speak. “Now it's my turn to ask you,” she said, gently teasing. “Did you sleep?”
 

“Not very well.” He made another restless circuit of the room, again stopping at the window. “Rhani—” he paused. It was not like Zed to start something, even a sentence, and not finish it. “Rhani, I want to go to the estate.”
 

For a moment, she thought nothing, nothing at all. Then she thought: It's come then. She had been braiding her hair at his entrance; now, remembering, she felt behind her head for the braid. It had loosened. She pulled the thick strands tight and wrapped a sequined elastic band around the end. Zed was a blocky shadow against the window drape. “What will you do there?” she asked.
 

He said, “Walk in the garden. Read. Sleep.”
 

“How will you get there?”
 

“Rent one of the bubbles from the landingport.”
 

She imagined him walking across the lush garden lawn. I wish I could go too, she thought. I hate being here, in a house not my own. We could go back together, the four of us, Dana and Corrios too. Timithos would be glad to see us.... She remembered that she had not spoken with Cara and Immeld, though she had told Nialle to call and reassure them.
 

“Rhani? May I go?”
 

Zed's voice recalled her. She gazed at him across the pink room. “Go,” she said. “You need it. If I need to talk with you, I'll call you. And please, Zedka—” she remembered what Binkie—Ramas—had said, that Michel A-Rae hated him. “Please be alert.”
 

“If I see any bubbles without markings coming toward me, I'll turn around and come back.”
 

They hugged. His mouth tasted of sesame. Rhani thought, He breakfasted already. Probably he is already packed, not that he has much to take with him. She wondered what had occurred between last evening and this morning to disturb him.
 

She would
not
ask him about Darien Riis.
 

Nialle had sorted through her mail but had tactfully not opened anything: she was, after all, a borrowed secretary, her wage paid by Family Kyneth. Rhani went to the tray of mail. Most of the letters were sympathy notes, more variations on an inevitable theme. One was a communication from Christina Wu which said, tersely, “
Obviously our appointment must be postponed. I am sorry about your house. Call me
.”
 

Rhani frowned. She had forgotten that she had an appointment with Christina for the morning of the party—which, she thought ironically, would have been today. That was what she needed a secretary for, to remind her of such things. Binkie would have remembered.... Her hands clenched, and the thick notepaper creased. She did not want to remember Binkie.
 

Nialle came in. “Good morning, Dom—Rhani-ka.”
 

Rhani smiled at her. “Good morning. Thank you for sorting my mail.”
 

“It's my job, Rhani-ka,” the secretary said.
 

“I know. But I appreciate it. Would you be so kind as to connect me with Christina Wu's office. I'd like to speak with her, if she's free.”
 

“Certainly, Rhani-ka.” Nialle pulled the com-unit from the wall and sat in the plastic chair. “There is a call here for you, Rhani-ka,” she said.
 

“From whom?”
 

“From Domni Ferris Dur.”
 

Ferris.... Rhani sighed. She knew what he would say. He would offer his sympathies upon her loss of her house, and whine because instead of coming to him she had chosen to shelter with the Kyneths. He would then ask her how the contract arrangements were proceeding. As if she did not have other things on her mind! Ah, well. She had said she would marry him, and she would, there were good reasons to do it.... At least, she thought, marriage no longer carries with it the certainty of a sexual relationship.
 

Nialle said, “Domna Rhani, I have Advocate Wu online.”
 

Rhani went to the screen. “Christina,” she said to the small woman with the heart-shaped face who gazed at her, “you could have called me back.”