The Thrones of Kronos (43 page)

Eloatri bowed to Vannis, and walked away.

o0o

The light was fading when Vannis returned from the
Whispering Gallery. She had used the travel time to recover from the shock of
the High Phanist’s abrupt message about her mother. Vannis’s primary reaction
was anger, but she recognized that as a relatively safe vent. Rage obviously
made no difference to Eloatri. It also would permit of no answers, no insight
into why her mother sent that particular message—and through that particular
medium.

In the meantime, there were two facts to hold to: her mother
was alive, and she had, however the form, communicated. This left open a
possible future.

But that is hers. Now
I must secure mine.

Vannis walked slowly up the flagged pathway to the Enclave.
The time had come, at last, to find a way to get Brandon alone.

No one knew his schedule better, and it would have been
impossible to make some kind of appointment, no matter how innocuous the reason
given, without at least half a dozen key people taking note. Vannis nodded to
the Marine guards and stepped into the garden, aware that her only chance was
to exert her considerable skills and contrive some kind of accident that
vouchsafed Brandon and herself a certain amount of time unguarded, without
eavesdroppers either physically or electronically present.

She emerged from the sheltering trees before the glass doors
that opened into the study. A few meters short of them a flicker of golden
light through the trees caused her to turn.

Candles had been lit on the terrace adjoining the gardens.
Running a swift mental review of the Enclave’s social schedule, Vannis wondered
if the formal dinner for the academics on the Privy Council had been moved
outside for some reason—despite the fact that this change would require the
kind of logistical flutter with service that ordinarily Brandon tried to avoid.
Or had Brandon’s eve-of-departure function with the Navy brass been changed?

Setting aside a lacy screen of fronds, she stepped up onto
the terrace and looked for Fierin, who had offered to preside at the academic
dinner, as both Omilovs were to attend.

Fierin was nowhere in sight, nor were any staff. Vannis saw
the small table—silver gleaming and the thin gold-edged chinois dishes waiting
invitingly—set for two.

Brandon stepped out onto the terrace, dressed formally in
mourning white. He was alone; he carried in both hands a dusty bottle.

Vannis stilled, confused, as he squinted at the label in the
soft light of the candles, then brandished the bottle with an air of
satisfaction.

“I knew I’d seen this gold-leaf Locke down there. One of the
last of the supply laid down by my grandfather. Universally maligned for his
manners, morals, politics, friends, and enemies, but never for his taste in
wine. Shall we?” He gestured invitation.

“Were we not hosting a dinner in an hour?”

“Omilov is having it at the Cloisters,” Brandon said as he
eased the cork from the bottle. He poured out a splash of the wine and offered
the goblet to Vannis. “Will you taste it?”

Vannis lifted the glass and swirled the ruby liquid within.
The wine’s aroma reached her nose before she sipped, a complex bouquet that
made her think of molten gold.

We’re alone,
she
thought.
By his design.

And,
He knows.

Her heart pumped a surge of clear fire through her, followed
by the chilly calm of certainty; he had made the opening move in the endgame.

“Delicious,” she said, holding out the goblet.

He smiled as he poured wine for her, and for himself, then
gestured for her to be seated.

She did, and he sat across from her, and both raised their
glasses in a silent toast, graceful and deliberate as a minuet.

“We reached a temporary truce on the question of the DataNet
in military hands,” he said. “The civilians on Council were all quick to point
out that they had nothing against Willsones in person, it was merely the
principle—the tradition . . .”

A brief flicker of vertigo unsettled Vannis, as if the
station had faltered in its spin. Brandon’s conversational tone coupled with
the status report—as if they were carrying further a discussion long familiar
to both—was singularly unsteadying.

Marshaling her wits, she did her best to assume that
familiarity. “For the duration of the war,” she murmured.

His hand lifted in acknowledgment, and he said, “Have you a
suggestion for a likely candidate afterward?”

She had known of the debate, though not of the truce.
Thinking rapidly, she put forward a couple of names. Brandon appeared to
consider them and nodded in approval.

And so it went; as the silent stewards appeared, served, and
disappeared, in the friendliest manner Brandon gave her a status report on
every department of the forming government. Most of it was known to her, though
not to so immediate a degree. Her methods for uncovering some of the data were perforce
labyrinthine and time-consuming.

Then there were the things she had not known, had as yet
found no way of knowing, told in that bland voice, his manner assuming a
long-shared confidence.

She listened with care, and when she spoke, it was to the
point, and usually responded to with agreement, approval, or at least interest.

The game so far was to him. His attitude of professional
intimacy, the data he shared, all were an unexpected gambit. But not a defeat,
not at all. He knew of her plans—and therefore he knew that at any moment she
could release Nik Cormoran to make public his story about the
Telvarna
going to the Suneater. And that
would effectively keep Brandon here where he belonged.

She sensed that all this preliminary chatter (setting aside
its pertinence to the political realities) had to be leading to some kind of
final move. She had only to see it and to check it.

And then mate.

They finished the bottle and the dinner. As they sipped
coffee, faint melodic sounds drifted through the darkness from across the lake.

Vannis was distracted by its familiarity. For a sickening
moment she thought it might be Eloatri’s religious message yet again, but the
melody very soon twisted away into a minor key, still familiar, still from
half-remembered childhood, but not at all the same words.

“. . . and that brings us around again to the
Council,” he said. “Have I covered everything?”

Her heart thumped painfully. “Nearly,” she said. And because
he was watching her—because she was not ready—she said, “What is that singing?”

Louder now, in it she could distinguish many voices, all
singing in unison.

“The Vigil of the Lightbearer,” he said. “You have not had
any family members in the service the eve of a planned action.” He rose,
setting down his cup. “Come.” He held out his arm.

She placed her fingertips on his sleeve, conscious of the
contour of muscle beneath the fine fabric. In spite of his relaxed manner, she
sensed the tautness of alert as they walked to the other end of the terrace.

He tapped his boswell and the wall slid open. Brandon
gestured invitation toward an air car.

He did not touch her again as they took their places side by
side in the air car. With a quick, familiar hand he manipulated the controls.
The engines gave a muted whine. Vannis pressed back into her cushioned seat as
they rose above the Enclave.

Brandon said, “Look.”

He swung the air car about and the engines hummed as it
hovered in the air above the lake. Vannis leaned forward, and her breath caught
in her throat when she saw the river of flame winding slowly around the
perimeter of the lake.

Brandon tabbed a control and they dropped several hundred
meters. The golden river resolved into hundreds—maybe thousands—of candles,
each held by an individual. Warm halos of light lit the lifted faces: adults of
both sexes, children, older people, all singing.

Brandon keyed another control, and a window slid open. Air
currents ruffled coolly through Vannis’s hair and across her flesh, carrying the
pungent scent of herbs and beeswax. The song, shared by so many voices, seemed
an immutable force.

“They will continue until their candles burn out,” he said.

Tiny threads of aromatic smoke rose to wreathe the air car
like ghostly, supplicating fingers.

The window closed, and quiet settled over them, rendering
Vannis acutely aware of the man seated close by, so close she could hear his
breathing.

She turned her head to meet his direct blue gaze. She let
her own gaze roam over his curling dark hair, and across his fine-boned face,
to the straight-cut mouth, with its curve of humor that, she suspected, even
death would not eradicate.

He said, “Will you marry me?”

At first the words were mere sound, without sense.

Then a maelstrom of strong memory-infused emotion ripped
through her consciousness, and she lost all sense of time and place.

It was not a long reverie. Her mind worked swiftly to
assimilate it, then identify the impetus for shock. She had been married once,
though it had been negotiated from a distance, and she had thought herself
experienced in every type of intimate experience: lighthearted and serious,
languid and intense, with men and women of every degree.

But she had learned recently that she had never before been
in love. And here was the person she loved above all others proposing the
position she had been trained for since birth, for which she had worked with increasing
passion since his return to Ares.

She said, “Why?”

His hands drifted across the controls, his profile pensive.
As the air car circled slowly down toward the Enclave, he said, “Ever since I
found myself in this position, I have been forced to learn its prerogatives and
pitfalls at an accelerated pace, yet there you have been, a shadow at my heels,
matching my pace, and I think, mostly with the same goals in view. There is no
one better equipped to take the place of Kyriarch than you.”

It was more than she would have had with Semion, who had
made it abundantly clear that after Panarch Gelasaar died her job would be to
reign over the High Douloi’s eternal social season, but she was not to meddle
with the military or government, which would be strictly his domain. Brandon seemed
to be implying that they would be partners in ruling as well as reigning—just
as his parents had been.

But it was not like Gelasaar and Ilara after all. That had
been a love-match.

Vannis took a deep breath, then another, and because they
were alone, suspended between the faux sky and ground of this spinning cylinder
in space, she said, “What about Vi’ya?”

He brought the air car over its pad and landed it with a
gentle thump, and the engines whined down into silence. One last tab and the
console went dark, so all she could see was the glow of his tunic against the
darkness behind, and the silhouette of his head. But she knew his voice, and
heard the care with which he kept his tone even instead of revealing—amicable
instead of intimate—as he said, “I do not know if Vi’ya would agree to the
constraints of being Kyriarch. If we see one another again, my hope is that we
will be mates. But I cannot leave you here as my enemy, Vannis. The government
is too new, the situation too fraught, for you to be anything but my ally, to
guard and to guide while we see this war through.”

Not all those years of training could prevent a human
reaction. “You mean,” Vannis said, “while you throw everything away to chase
this Rifter who likes your bed but not your board.”

Brandon sighed, leaning his head back on the cushioned pod.
“‘What human beings want, in the highest and spiritual sense, are the
lineaments of satisfied desire.’ You didn’t listen to the messages behind the
speeches when we welcomed the Rifthaven delegation? Some of that was meant for
the High Douloi—for you.”

So Eloatri was again
right.
She caught her lip hard between her teeth, and made no answer.

“Before I left Arthelion the day of my Enkainion, I had it
in mind to find the Rifters and win them, if I could, to our side. Vi’ya knows
this, just as I know that if she thought I was capable of throwing away my
responsibilities to chase a bed-mate, she would bunk me out so fast I’d be left
breathing vacuum. This is someone who had been actively planning to break her
crew member Lokri out in her own way if Panarchic justice had failed him. Or
die in the trying.”

Vannis thought of the teams of highly trained Marines
guarding the formidable security areas and remembered Vi’ya’s cold black eyes,
the trace of Dol’jharian consonants in her voice, and shuddered.
Yes, Vi’ya was very capable of walking
deliberately into life-threatening danger.
What Vannis had not known is
that she would do it motivated by loyalty, and not just from a taste for violence.

“So why did she leave?” Vannis asked.

“She doesn’t think I can change the Panarchy enough to make
room for the Rifters. No . . .” He looked up, his profile etched
against the matte-black wall behind the air car. “She won’t let herself hope I
can do it. In all her life there has been little to trust. Shall we go in?”

They left the pad, and the featureless wall closed
soundlessly behind them again. Brandon led the way out onto the path, and
Vannis heard once more the rise and fall of the tireless voices at their Vigil.
The candles, seen through a latticework of century-old ferns, made a rain of
sifted light.

With aching eyes she watched the slow, serpentine circle.
Again she assessed her roiling emotions, foremost a vast anger that had at its
center desolation. She had lost sight of the game, but he hadn’t, and in
proposing this marriage alliance he had completely outmaneuvered her.

He had made his offer clear. She would be Kyriarch, but not
mate. There would be no ancient wedding ceremony, complete with vows of eternal
devotion and rings to seal them, as Gelasaar and Ilara had made.