The Thrones of Kronos (30 page)

“Lord, Lysanter also reports that the last attempt by the
tempath has apparently begun a very slow, automatic increase in station power.
He has begun analysis to both confirm this discovery and to measure the rate of
increase.”

Eusabian stopped his weaving for a time. “It is well,” he
said as the whisper of the cord finally resumed.

Barrodagh stood in silence, waiting, unable to read his
lord’s mood.

“There is more?”

“Lord, as you planned, the rising resistance on critical
Panarchist planets and Highdwellings is making it increasingly difficult for
the minor houses to combine against you. But there are also indications of
unrest on Dol’jhar, where there are no such distractions.”

He hesitated, and as Eusabian made no further comment,
Barrodagh gave as many details as he judged would not try his lord’s patience.
For once, he wanted to conceal nothing. “The full report has been echoed to
your console,” he concluded.

That report, on which Barrodagh and his minions had labored
long, dwelled in loving detail on the machinations of the lesser Dol’jharian
families and clans, in the hopes of keeping Eusabian busy. His boredom was
dangerous: Barrodagh had been horrified at the extent of the Avatar’s computer
queries revealed by Ferrasin’s worm.

“I need no report to tell me of their ambitions,” said the
Avatar, consonants sharpening with irritation. “They kiss the boot that grinds
their faces down, but their fangs seek unprotected flesh.”

After that, silence for another excruciating interval.

“They are all fools.” The force of Eusabian’s voice made
Barrodagh jump. “The fires of my vengeance will burn forever.”

“Okhash emmer ti
ocha-mi”
—the harsh consonants of the ancient quotation resounded in the
quiet room, mirroring the deep linkage in the Dol’jharian tongue between
revenge and fire and echoing the name of Eusabian’s volcanic patrimony,
portrayed before him: Jhar D’ocha, the Kingdom of Vengeance.

Barrodagh’s nerves jolted as the holovid abruptly changed,
revealing the undying fires of the black hole binary that powered the Suneater.
The flaring light of the vast spiral of matter falling into a destruction more
terrible and final than any human vengeance silhouetted Eusabian’s strong
figure into a dark absence, a man-shaped hole in space.

Who programmed
that
for him?

“What has Dol’jhar to oppose to these fires, which I will
master?” The future-unconditional aspect of the verb deepened Barrodagh’s
anxiety. Lysanter had better continue as cooperative as he’d been lately; in this
mood, the Avatar would brook not the slightest hindrance to whatever was in his
mind. Barrodagh feared for his additional stasis clamps and compute power.

Eusabian turned at last, and seated himself in the large
wing chair positioned with its back to the holovid. “So Jhar Epoim thinks the
time has come to reassert themselves?” he mused, now enhaloed by the stellar
destruction behind him. The dirazh’u writhed rhythmically between his powerful
fingers. “Have they forgotten so soon my lesson?”

Barrodagh doubted it. No Dol’jharian had questioned the need
for revenge following the disaster at Acheront twenty standard years before.
But Sammonyl Epoim, the father of the present head of the clan, had questioned
Jerrode Eusabian’s fitness to lead the paliach following his return from that
debacle. After the resultant clash Eusabian had had Epoim manacled to the hull
of his own shuttle.

“Am I not the Lord of Vengeance?” the Avatar had asked,
invoking the name of the kingdom of the Eusabian clan, and then watched as his
rival was born aloft to expire in the emptiness of space. His vacuum-mummified
body still orbited the planet.

The Bori said nothing, and shortly his lord laid the
dirazh’u down in his lap, his fingers relaxed around it.

“Enough. What of Arthelion?”

Barrodagh tensed. He had to assume that Jesserian and
Ferrasin were as afraid of the truth as he was; the realization sharpened the
sensation of teetering along the knife edge. For bringing the furnishings of
the Panarch’s library to the Suneater had not diminished in the least
Eusabian’s proprietary attitude toward his defeated enemy’s Palace. The Avatar
had even commanded the restoration of the Ivory Hall, destroyed in the failed
attempt to assassinate Brandon nyr-Arkad, that all might be perfect for his triumphal
return when he had annihilated his enemies with the power of the reawakened
Suneater.

“The reconstruction of the Ivory Hall is proceeding well,”
Barrodagh replied. “Since the preliminary work was completed, and the most
dangerous of the rubble removed, the loss of slave labor to radiation effects
has fallen off sharply, and the work is accelerating.”

Actually it was slower than at first, but that couldn’t be
helped. At first the laborers, mostly naval personnel whose records had been
ripped out of the computers on Lao Tse, had been forced to clear the hall
wearing only the lightest of rad-shields—the bulk of full armor slowed their
work unacceptably. It was deemed easier to replace them as the radiation felled
them.

But then the “accidents” started happening: for every
laborer that died, a gray died or was crippled. Nothing could be proved, making
reprisals useless. And although some of the incidents might have been
perpetrated by the resistance, much of it was the work of the Palace computer,
manifested in ways that cleverly exploited Dol’jharian superstition.

Were it not for the valuable dollops of information the
computer dished out to Ferrasin from time to time, Barrodagh would have had its
links to the planetary network destroyed. Lately that information had proved
almost uncannily handy in keeping the Avatar entertained.

But on Arthelion, the grays were terrified of the center of
the Palace Major, where the ghost most often walked. And the laborers now worked
at their own pace, in full radiation armor.

Barrodagh, uncertain what to say, let time pass unaware
until he was startled by Eusabian’s voice. “There have been no more incidents
in the Throne Room?”

“No, Lord,” Barrodagh said, almost heady with relief at
being able to impart this modicum of good news. “Ferrasin has identified the
relevant circuits and modified them appropriately.”

Of course, the computer grew them back immediately. But just
the same, there had been no more incidents in that awful room, the center of
the Mandala. For no one, not even the bravest Tarkans, who ranged elsewhere in
the Palace Major, went there anymore.

Barrodagh judged the time right to bring up another small
success. “We have restored another artwork to the Ivory Antechamber—”

“And the rest will be destroyed with Ares and Rifthaven,”
the Avatar said, anger in his voice. “Have the chamber entirely renovated. I
will bring the ancestors from Dol’jhar and it will be their abode. Whatever has
been recovered will be their tribute.”

From museum to mausoleum. “It shall be done as you command,”
said Barrodagh, longing to be dismissed.

“What else?” For the first time, Eusabian showed real
interest. The tang of the unexpected.

There was no avoiding it. “Rifthaven is pressing its demands
for reparations for the raid and the ships they lost in action, despite our
disavowal.”

Eusabian showed his teeth in the barest motion of his lips.
“You did not expect them to be so fractious, following Houmanopoulis’ death.”

Barrodagh’s guts churned. At the time, the report of the
triumvir’s poisoning had seemed a blessing, but deprived of Houmanopoulis’
cunning sense of political balance, the other two leaders were becoming
intractable.

“Promise whatever you like. The heir will deal with them.”

The Avatar turned back to the screen, and Barrodagh
withdrew.
The heir. And Morrighon.

Nik Cormoran slapped the door control, impatient at the
micro-hesitation in the controls. The newsroom smelled sour with sweat, old
food, stale tea, and inadequately vented EM fields.

“We got one,” Derith Y’Madoc said. “Big one.”

Nik rubbed his hands, the smell forgotten. “Who?”

“I’m gonna make you guess,” Derith gloated, her dark eyes
narrowed with fun as she swiveled in her pod.

Nik sighed as he dropped heavily into his own pod. “I hate
guessing games. Faseult. Koestler! The Panarch!” He deliberately made the
guesses wild as impatience began to make him edgy.

“Close,” Derith said. “Close enough for kissing.”

Nik’s irritation evaporated. “Not Vannis Scefi-Cartano?”

Derith nodded, her smile grim. “So you see why I had to call
you down.”

“
I’m
not facing
her!” Liet exclaimed from across the room. “She’d fillet me for breakfast, cook
me over a slow flame, and make a fashionable new art form in criticizing the
taste.”

Nik looked around. Everyone grimaced and made gestures of
avoidance. When he turned back to Derith, she said acidly, “And you won’t get
me
over there, not for a ninety-share of
the points.”

Nik sighed. “What’s the catch? Show me her letter.”

“Oh, superficially it tells nothing—of course,” Derith said,
tapping her console.

Nik looked up at the big screen.

With respect to your
recent feature, I highly recommend a stroll through the Whispering Gallery at
the hour of five.

Nik squinted at the console, as if he could see through it
into the sender’s brain.

“Five is the time of that new fad, isn’t it?” Tovi asked.

“You have to talk about love,” someone said from behind her.

“Chatzing game player,” Jumec grumbled.

“We’re all game players,” Nik said. “And it’s all the same
game. Only the rules change. Genz Scefi-Cartano is playing high stakes, and
there’s a message in this fifth-hour biznai.”

Derith nodded soberly. “She knows what we’re holding back,
which means she must know why. So she either wants to help us—”

“Or muzzle us,” Jumec put in, frowning.

“Or muzzle us,” Derith agreed, “but either way, she’ll want
something in return. But this much is clear: this is important to her, or she
wouldn’t have responded to us.”

“And,” Nik said, thinking fast, “she’s got to have something
worth forcing us onto her territory.”

“Something concerning Rifters?” Liet asked. “I mean, aren’t
they the subject?”

“Mmmm.” Nik thrust his hands in his pockets, rocking back on
his heels.

Tovi’s slanted brows rose. “And love is the context.”

“Hah.” Nik rocked again. “Hum! Yeah, I’m on it.”

Nik returned to the crowded domicile he shared with a
variety of other mid-level techs. A part of his attention was, as always, on
the chatter in the common room and in the hallways. Most of the talk was war
speculation, complaint about conditions, stitched together with the eons-old
thread of personal gossip.

It was habit. He had always chosen the busiest concourse
through which to walk, the most populous area in which to live. As he paused
before the door of his tiny cubicle, he realized he had, in a sense, been
living in a Polloi form of the Whispering Gallery all his life.

Isn’t it just a
prettified place to go and hear random gossip—and throw one’s own barbs into
the air? Except they hide their identities, don’t they
? he thought with
disgust.
Typical Douloi!

At least the people around him had the courage of their
convictions; if they were overheard, they could be called on to explain or
defend their words.

He shrugged. Right now he needed to concentrate on Rifters,
politics, and former Aerenarch-Consort Vannis Scefi-Cartano, leader of the old
Mandalic Court and of the newly forming court of the remains of the Tetrad
Centrum Douloi, who were desperate to retain their power and privilege.

He showered, held his ajna, then decided against it. He
dressed in an outfit carefully chosen for its blandness. Each act was a kind of
armoring; the effect he sought was not danger, or wealth, or even influence. He
wanted anonymity. The biggest mistake a Polloi could make, he’d always felt,
was to try to ape Douloi fashions and modes of speech. At best it put one at
the disadvantage any army faced on unfamiliar territory, and at worst it made
one an object of easy ridicule.

As he boarded the transtube, Nik reflected with grim
humor—and the anticipation of a duel that one expects to win—that he wanted
very much for the sophisticated Vannis Scefi-Cartano to see him as a Polloi
cypher.

Late afternoon in the areas frequented by the Douloi meant
few people and lots of space. No signs forbade Polloi to use the transtube, but
somehow within a few stops Nik discovered he was almost the only person still
in the tube not either Douloi or one of their support personnel.

He was the only Polloi who got off at the Jehan Gardens.
None of the other four Douloi who also disembarked so much as spared him a
glance; he could have been alone for all the attention they paid him.

So it was with the few people he encountered on the
pathways. Still, he made himself walk slowly, observing everything and
everyone. The shrubs and flowers he scarcely noticed. He knew the Douloi
conveyed hidden meanings in such things. The placement of each plant, the
blends of colors and scents, each held a message, perhaps several messages. But
that did not engage his attention. He was on the watch for crypto in human form.

No sign marked the building, but he knew it immediately.
Interesting that its dimensions were not easily discerned, nor its shape.

He checked his chrono: five.

As he approached the plain doors, he made certain his
boswell recorder was already on. He didn’t trust her not to muscle-read a
recording command.

The doors slid silently open and he crossed the threshold,
then blinked. He knew the place was a maze, which had suggested twisty tunnels
and shadowy corners. Instead it seemed he had walked into the center of a huge
diamond, each facet a vertiginous combination of geometric lines of crystalline
light, running water, and delicate breeze-stirred fronds.