The Thrones of Kronos (13 page)

Brandon laughed, the long fingers flicking outward in the
gesture of a fencer acknowledging a hit.

Fierin appeared, dressed in a flame-colored walking suit.
“What did I miss?”

“Merely Vannis’s imputation that Eloatri has a fondness for
liquor,” Brandon said.

Fierin choked on the coffee she’d just poured, her eyes
swimming with tears. “Oh! Of course! I can imagine the orgies they have up at
the Cloisters—she and Sebastian Omilov, hordes of lovers, barrels of liquor . . .”

“Food fights . . .” Brandon murmured,
twirling his spoon.

“The latest sex-tech, straight from Rifthaven . . .”

Brandon picked up the image and carried it on, keeping
Fierin in a fizzing stream of laughter. Vannis went on with her breakfast. It
was clear he enjoyed Fierin’s taste for silly jokes—and that he thought of her
as a half-grown puppy.

Vannis contributed enough to appear part of the conversation
while reassessing her own day, trying to determine who among her growing
contacts would be able to provide her with the data she needed to run her
parallel trajectory.

The terrain was laid out, the sides drawing together. In
this kind of campaign, the weaponry was a word, a gesture, subtle and indirect,
for her dear enemy must not divine her intent. There was a seductively
dangerous elegance to it; Vannis thought she understood Tau Srivashti better
now. Aesthetics gradually replaced ethics, as one had the means, and the wit.
How could one step wrongly if everything one did was beautiful?

I must always remember
his fate.

Her crusade now was not merely for her own pleasure. Although
that would be great. Her goal was to save the Thousand Suns and their new
Panarch.

So. Her favorite battlefield was the Whispering Gallery, and
her opening salvo the designated hour of discourse, confined to the subject of
love. Within the context of love she could let drop ideas, and watch them
disseminate through the Douloi—and if she were clever enough, the novosti would
then propagate it throughout Ares.

She smiled as she poured more coffee. And continued to
assess.

In this kind of campaign, facts were also weapons.

Facts:

The attack must be
made on the Suneater soon, and that station must be destroyed.

The Dol’jharians
probably have more ships than the Navy, and most certainly have greater
firepower.

They hold a station
millions of years old, affording unguessable defenses and weapons.

The Dol’jharians hold
the advantage.

“Oh! I must hurry.” Fierin glared at her boswell as if she
could shift time back by sheer will. “Osri gets off duty in fifteen minutes,
and I promised I’d meet him.” Dropping her napkin beside her plate, she bowed
to them both and hurried away toward the trans-tube station.

“Now, that’s a match I never could have predicted, but if it
lasts, it could be the making of both of them,” Brandon commented.

It was a personal remark—one of the very rare ones he had
made in Vannis’s presence since that terrible conversation after Vi’ya’s
departure. She sifted it for hidden meaning. Osri, known foremost for his
uncompromisingly blunt honesty, and Fierin, who had suffered through the
greater part of her life from the worst excesses of Douloi self-interest.

Facts:

Brandon, as Panarch,
will exert himself to draw in as many allies as possible.

He wants to save the
Suneater—ostensibly for Sebastian Omilov, who sees it as an artifact of
unparalleled value, but actually because his beloved Vi’ya is there.

His beloved is not one
of us—she’s a Rifter and a Dol’jharian.

“It will last,” she said. “Their faith in one another grows
daily.”

Conclusion:
When the
Fleet leaves for the Suneater, Brandon must not be with it.

o0o

Derith Y’Madoc stifled a yawn behind closed teeth, although
it made her eyes water. Yawning on an overcrowded transtube pod would net her
at the least a lot of angry looks, and could cause a fight. She was too tired
to endure the former—or to use the latter for news.

Blinking her gritty eyes, she craved a slurp of hot caf. Two
more stops. When the pod slowed, she held in an almost overwhelming urge to
sigh. The doors stayed open an eternity as people fought their way on and off
the pod.

Finally the warning chimed, no one tabbed the override, and
the doors closed. Derith welcomed the swooping sensation of the pod’s
accelerating speed. Now, one more stop.

More people crowded on this time. She stared at the bodies
between her and the door, mapping out an exit course. When the pod slowed, she
yelled, “Leaving!”

Most people obligingly squeezed over, glad to be gaining a
fraction more space. Even the two Douloi—recognizable by some invisible but
discernible aura, though they were dressed in anonymous work clothing like
everyone else—moved, instead of expecting the world to make its way around
them. That was quite a change from a couple months ago. She’d never believed
the Douloi would let go of their irritating sense of privilege.

Though some hadn’t.

With a sigh of relief that turned into a jaw-cracking yawn,
Derith jumped out from the press onto the concourse and wove swiftly through
the waiting queue to a lift.

The lift was slightly less crowded than the pod, but it
stopped at every level. Derith hated the lifts, or rather her body did; she
would never get used the stomach-dropping sensation.

At last, it reached her destination. The corridor was nearly
empty. As she moved forward, fighting another massive yawn, cold, slightly
antiseptic air blew across her face from the tianqi vents. She paused,
breathing in, hoping the chill blast would waken her. Soon enough the corridor
would be filled with people scurrying to the various workstations along the
ever-lit corridor, and the air would thicken into steamy heat. There were too
many people on Ares—far more than the support systems had been designed for.

Not for long,
Derith thought grimly as she palmed the lock to the quarters housing Ares 25
Newsfeed. The prospect of imminent war—a final assault against the Dol’jharian
conquerors and their Rifter fleet—tightened her insides.

But it wasn’t happening yet. So why had her partner yanked
her out of too little sleep on her day off?

She tried to blink away the sting of exhaustion in her
eyelids as she slapped open the door to the workspace she shared with her
onetime rival and current partner, Nik Cormoran. He was there ahead of her,
seated at his console. His boyish, snub-nosed profile turned upward toward a
frozen vid—a model wearing an oversized pendant with a gray, oily-looking stone
instead of a gem on it.

Nik had insisted they sleep with their boswells on, although
for now, anyway, the various political crises seemed to be over and the new
Panarch was fast establishing a stable power base.

“What is it?” Her voice came out sounding scratchy.
“Eusabian of Dol’jhar suing for peace? A coup attempted by Rifters? It better
be something even bigger to bring me in on my rec time—after less than three
hours of sleep—or Chomsky will report on your mangled corpse being found
outside this door.”

Nik looked up. Shock squeezed her chest, boosting her
adrenaline like the strongest caf never would. Nik’s round, cherubic face was
haggard, his friendly brown eyes circled with the bruised skin of exhaustion.
Belatedly she recognized in his grubby shirt and trousers the same outfit he’d
worn the day before: Nik had not gone to bed at all.

She dropped into her own chair, staring at him.

With a wry grin Nik pushed a carafe toward her. “Fresh,” he said.
“Strong.”

The door hissed open, and two of their noderunners came in.
“Priority, Nik? What’s the goom?” Tovi sho-Kalaph exclaimed, flinging herself
dramatically into a chair.

Jumec Uba moved briskly to his console and started it up
with a light punch of his fist. Not given to wasting words, he rolled his eyes
expressively at Derith.

She grinned at him over the rim of her mug.

“We’ll wait till everyone is here,” Nik said, staring up at
the teardrop-shaped stone on the big screen.

He tabbed the vid into motion. A rainbow of color seemed to
well up from the stone’s facets, glowing along the skin of the model. Derith
knew that stone. Didn’t she? The memory was too ephemeral to retrieve.

Nik gazed at the screen, the unaccustomed grimness in his
usually cheery countenance making him seem older. Like his actual age. One of
the reasons he was so successful a novosti was his disarming appearance. Short,
round, boyish, with a pleasant tenor voice, Nik did not look intimidating. But
behind that boyish face was a very shrewd mind with an uncanny knack for
extrapolating hidden motivations and intentions from seemingly innocuous
personal interviews. The combination had made him famous in Reginale Cloud,
where competition among novosti was fierce, and, joined with Derith’s skills,
they had managed to make their way to the top of the Ares newsfeeds.

Despite her tiredness, she felt the old excitement stirring.
Nik was onto something—and this was what novosti lived for.

The rest of their console jockeys arrived in a group. Very
quickly Nik got them quiet, then he pointed up at the screen.

“Anyone recognize this?”

“I do,” Liet Imza spoke up. The youngest of Ares 25 grinned.
“My first assignment was to do a story on the Arkad Treasures on the Mandala.
That one is easy to remember. It’s called the Stone of Prometheus, and it was
found in the wreckage of an alien spacecraft in the Ndigwe Oort Cloud several
centuries ago. Its provenance is unknown, its makers never identified. Lady
Spaenghule, the Demarch of Cloud Bistani, gave it to the Panarch Anatinus as
part of the Concordat of Viogne in 559 A. A.”

Halfway through Liet’s recital, the memory worked its way to
Derith’s consciousness. “And it’s here on Ares. Or was, anyway. Didn’t the
Panarch give it to the
Telvarna
Rifters?”

“He gave it to their captain.” Nik swiveled around in his
chair to face them. “A Rifter and a Dol’jharian. Which is an anomaly no one
seems to be able to explain.”

“What’s there to explain?” Derith said. “It was the little
DC-tech who told us about it. The Panarch—Krysarch then—promised them a hefty
ransom if they’d take him to the Mandala. They did, so he let them raid the
treasures. Said he’ll buy them all back soon’s he can. I don’t seen an anomaly
here.”

“Marim said he gave it to the captain,” Nik corrected.

Liet Imza, sitting near Nik, laughed. “I’ve been following
her trace on this story. From what I heard I wouldn’t necessarily believe
anything Marim said.”

“Yeah,” Tovi said, yawning. She plopped her chin into her
hands, adding, “And he had to get off the planet again, seeing’s how Eusabian
seemed to have gotten there first. Sounds more like a bribe than a gift.”

Several people snickered at this. Nik waited, then said, “So
he got off the planet and made it to Ares. Why didn’t he buy the treasures back
then?”

“Maybe he delayed buying the loot until the Rifters were
free again,” Derith said. “So it wouldn’t look like he was forcing the people
who saved his life. Didn’t a 99 story mention the treasures not sold at
Rifthaven were being held in escrow at the Promptuary?”

Nik nodded. “Right. But Omplari here did a little diving for
me in the Promptuary nodes.” He turned to the noderunner.

“The conservator’s data’s pretty easy to get at,” Omplari
said, then was caught by a fierce yawn. “They’re more concerned with physical
security. Anyway, I snagged the escrow inventory of all the Mandalic treasures.
Stone of Prometheus is not listed.”

Nobody said anything.

“And consider all the other anomalies,” Nik continued. “When
they arrived here, some of these Rifters were put in Detention Five, while the
Panarch kept two others with him at the Enclave—one as a personal bodyguard,
the other as a cook. Then they all apparently were dispatched on some sort of
military mission from the
Grozniy
—at
least, the
Telvarna
turned up missing
after the mission to rescue the old Panarch left, and returned long after
Grozniy
did. All we know about that is
it had something to do with the Suneater, since Omilov, the Praerogate Overt
who aided the Panarch to the throne, was with them.”

“That was because of the brain-burners.” Tovi waved a hand.

Derith ignored that as an unrelated item of information
connected. “Another odd thing. Rumor is that Omilov is in disgrace.”

Nik smiled. “Right. I’ll get to that.”

“That’s just more 99 blunge,” Tovi sneered.

“Right,” Jumec muttered. “They’re the ones that suck up to
the Douloi, so they ought to know.”

“Anyway,” Nik cut in, “despite putting the Rifter captain in
detention, the Panarch then apparently opens the Ares Net to her on a deep
level. At least she was one of the noderunners who blew open the Kendrian
murder case and in the process exposed—and destroyed—his deadliest enemies.”

“And then he gave her and her crew an all-expenses paid
vacation on the Reef, where Faseult stuck them for safekeeping after the
riots.” Tovi chortled. “Some reward for helping zap Hesthar al-Gessinav and
those two Archons.” She sauntered to the dispenser and shot some caf into a
mug. “She’s earning her keep, they say, narking newcomers with her tempathy.”

“Yeah,” drawled Nik sarcastically. “That was a gem of a
story 99 UL’d. Complete with dark hints at what else she might have found in
the Net that made it necessary to isolate her. Nice and neat. Real neat. So
neat, 99 didn’t bother to cross-check.”

“But there’s no trace of them on Ares,” Derith objected.
“Every one of their records reads ‘Transferred: Refugee Processing Center.’”
She looked up at Nik. “Come on, spill it.”