The Thrones of Kronos (9 page)

“I’m . . . Larghior,” he said, hating it. He
wanted to tell them he was Lar Ombric—a Rifter. “The heir assigned me to you.
Your console will summon me.” He pointed to his compad. “Is there anything you
need?”

The small female—no taller than he, if that—propped her chin
on her hand, her curly yellow hair falling in her face. She had a merry,
challenging grin. “First question. Who was the sick-brained chatzer had these
rooms before us? There’s some ba-ad vids still in the console. One real rasty
one with Hreem the Faithless and his mindsnake bunnyin’ with some poor blit
tied to a chair right next to ’em. Wonder what that cost on Rifthaven?”

Lar shook his head. “That was Norio Danali’s private
collection. He died during an experiment just as you arrived.”

Glances passed between some of the Rifters. They knew Norio,
obviously.

“Died, you say?” The man with the braids spoke quietly.

“Yes.” Lar glanced at the console, then said as neutrally as
he could, “Norio’s belongings were distributed. I guess no one bothered to
flush the local node.”

“No, I just did that,” the squat woman said dryly. “Although
I suspect the chips themselves are still around somewhere.” Lar noticed the
little blonde looking her way. “And to replace that data, may I request some
chips on the Dol’jharian language? And sufficient dataspace for them.”

Lar nodded, relieved. They seemed to have picked up his hint
about the spy-wired console. “I think I can get some for you. Any other
requests?”

“The food.” The ugly, bearded one spoke, his voice a deep
rumble. “I am a Golgol chef. The food here offends me. If I may request a few
basic ingredients and be permitted to visit my ship to retrieve some supplies,
I can prepare meals that will maintain Vi’ya’s health, which will be to your
masters’ benefit.”

Lar was on the verge of saying
They aren’t my masters
but caught himself just in time. Seeing
Rifters again made his desire to proclaim his own loyalties almost
overwhelming, but that would be a deadly mistake. Instead, he nodded. “I’ll see
what I can do about the food, but I ought to warn you that what you get is what
we all get. Unless you want to eat Ur-fruit?”

The ugly man looked puzzled, while the blonde laughed and
pounced to tweak at the handsome man’s crotch.

Lar blushed, realizing that the phrase was not as innocuous
in Uni as it was in Bori. “It grows out of the walls. We have to buy it with
extra labor, but some of the flavors are worth it.” He couldn’t tell them about
the addictive ones, not with narks in the walls.

“Sounds rather repellent,” said the big man.

“How does the station get the raw materials?” asked Ivard.
He glanced over at the disposer chamber with the pipes running out of it
through the usual grayed-out hole in the wall and his face lit up. “That’s
nacky. Just like a ship.” Then he grimaced. “But I wouldn’t eat it, anyway.
Can’t we use the
Telvarna’s
supplies,
like Montrose wants?”

Montrose. That’s one
name.
He wished Morrighon had told him more. Then he noticed Vi’ya looking
at him. Had she read that pulse of fear at the thought of the recycling
chamber?

He looked away. “I can only ask,” he replied carefully.

The middle-aged woman spoke, and Lar pivoted in surprise.
She was speaking Bori. “I Sedry be, Larghior. We grateful will be for thing you
conditionally attempt.”

He smiled at her: she had used the written-discourse mode
and mangled the aspect of “do,” but the result was intelligible. He noticed the
big man look at her in surprise as he gave into impulse, and said, “Call me Lar.”

The rest of the crew introduced themselves then, each with a
question or complaint, ending with the Dol’jharian.

“I am Vi’ya.” She smiled faintly. “My request is that the
mind-blur nearest us be turned down. Its presence disturbs me.”

He nodded again. She was different from the station
Dol’jharians, but he was still afraid of her. “I’ll find out about all your
requests. And I’ll be back to tell you.”

“Thank you, Lar,” the squat woman said, and smiled.

Lar made a polite smile back and tabbed the door open. As he
toiled back up the corridor again, he thought over the interview. Tat’s words
returned to him.
Imprisoned on Ares. And
now here.
The only other Rifters on the Suneater. Lar began to feel that he
and his cousin and brother were a bit less alone, and for a Bori, that was a
very good feeling.

Ten years ago, Sebastian Omilov had believed all the
meaning leached from Panarchic ritual when he was unable to prevent a terrible
injustice. Until very recently, he’d done his best to avoid considering how
deep that sense of betrayal had reached.

Recent months had taught him that synecdoche could be a
dangerous thing: perception of a part of a situation was not always a
trustworthy gauge of the whole.

The restoration of his faith in his old friend, Panarch
Gelasaar hai-Arkad, now deceased, in turn had re-imbued Panarchic ritual with
all its old significance. His heart seemed to swell in his chest as the new
Panarch, Gelasaar’s third son Brandon, placed the Blason de Guerre around
Admiral Ng’s neck.

The short woman rose with an athlete’s neat grace and bowed
to Brandon in the correct degree; his deference in return was a degree deeper
than strict protocol required. Then the other Privy Councilors came forward to
receive her into their number.

As Omilov approached, the blue gaze of the new Panarch,
Brandon hai-Arkad, swept across him, polite but remote.

Omilov’s heart ached with sorrow; he could not suppress a
memory flash of those same blue eyes, neither remote, or polite, or bland
during that harrowing interview in this very same location after the Rifters
had left for the Suneater. At the end the mask had returned, and the light
voice had regained its relentless control, but in the resumption of
protocol—the outward forms of respect—it became agonizingly clear to Omilov
that he had lost Brandon’s confidence, just as Gelasaar had once lost his. He
was still a Privy Councilor, still a valued adviser, but no longer a trusted
friend.

Omilov shut his eyes and indulged in a daydream of escape
and flight on the heels of the Rifters. What was it like? What might he
discover there? Too quickly memory intruded yet again: his brief interview with
Eusabian, then the horrifying experience with the torturer. He shook his head, making
a mental effort to shake away unwanted memory. Little as the Panarchist
military experts valued the Suneater as an artifact, the Dol’jharians would
care even less.

The ceremony ended, and the appearance of gloved stewards
bearing trays turned it into a reception for the new high admiral. All around
him the strict ranks broke into informal circles, the silence of ceremony
giving way to the hum of polite chat. Omilov was surrounded by people, but
rarely had he felt so alone.

With practiced indirection he excused himself and left.

The transtubes grew steadily more crowded as he moved
towards the axis of the Cap, toward the nexus with the oneill. The pod jolted into
motion, with Omilov squeezed among a group of workers returning from a shift.
Most of the faces around him seemed to reflect his own mood: tired, pensive,
tense.

Omilov put back his head, scanning the destination screens
for something to do. Two stops before his he saw “Jehan Gardens” and impulse
made him say, “Leaving!”

When the tube ground to a halt, he emerged onto a pleasant
pathway lined by chime trees and aromatic shrubbery. Some of his depression
lifted. To his right lay the ordered gardens, which sloped away toward the
lake. And to the left—the Whispering Gallery.

As he trod down the path toward the ivy-covered building, he
tried to examine his impulse. Gossip had always left him cold, whether social
or political. He had been to Montecielo frequently during his days in Court,
but he had never had the slightest interest in threading his way through the
Whispering Gallery there.

Omilov had no intention of talking. What he wanted to hear
was if anyone, anywhere, discussed the Suneater—if anyone felt the way he did.
I have been too isolated, by my own choice,
he thought.
Now I want to evaluate my
actions in others’ eyes.

Smiling with self-mockery, he entered, finding himself
surrounded by light and air and soft greenery bracketed by mirrors and glass in
complicated patterns—like facets on a crystal. As expected, he heard snatches
of conversation, but energetically set out in opposite directions to carry
himself out of earshot.

Four, five times he did that, and then he came face-to-face
with a large, white-haired old woman of style and poise.

“Sebastian Omilov,” she exclaimed with sardonic amusement.

Omilov bowed. “Your Grace—”

Uncompromisingly elegant, Lady Britt Vakianos, Archonei of
Kemal, had been a byword in a previous generation. She touched Omilov’s wrist.
“I prefer ‘Aunt Britt,’ dear boy. Or is a Praerogate Overt beyond familiarity?”

Ten minutes ago Sebastian Omilov had felt old and tired. Now
he was reduced to schoolboy blushes.

The matriarch’s eyes narrowed, and she pulled him toward a
bench screened off by ferns. The soft plash of a waterfall over glass muted
their voices. “Your mother is well, though she remained at Chernakov,” she said
low-voiced. “I think she has finally forgiven you for withdrawing from Court.”

Omilov laughed, feeling equal parts amusement and pain.

“You know why we did not leave after Tared’s suicide,” she
went on, hands folded and voice as direct as her gaze.

“I thought—” Omilov stopped, shook his head.

“You thought we concurred. No, it was just the opposite. Why
do you think Semion avoided Court so assiduously? He was afraid to face those
of us who understood very well what he was about. And when Gelasaar finally
discovered what Tared had done, he needed us there around him.”

Omilov breathed out, facing the last of the grim truths. “I
was not the only one who lost faith.”

Her face reflected his pain, looking old and worn. “Tared
did, at the last, lose faith in his boy. In his defense, you know what a storm
that adoption caused, his passing over several promising youth in the family
connections. But to believe that Markham, perhaps led by the Krysarch, had not
just broken those sacred Academy rules that everyone else seemed to wink at,
but cheated on tests on material that he found simple when he was twelve . . .”
She shook her head. “And when the decree
ex
gratia regis
came through in Gelasaar’s name, Tared did not wait for either
Markham or Gelasaar to explain themselves. You probably did not know that Ujio
was there when the young man arrived just barely ahead of Semion’s ‘safety
net,’ in order to tell his father what truly had happened, only to discover
that he was too late?”

“No. I did not,” Omilov said, though he knew that she knew.
But it seemed necessary to admit obliquely that he had refused communication
from her, from his Uncle Ujio, from everyone.
Just like Tared shutting everyone out.

“That, Sebastian, was the worst tragedy of all.” She daubed
her eyes with a handkerchief, then gave it a snap. The moisture wicked away in
sparks, restoring the square to pure white as she tucked it back into her
pocket. “No one could help Markham. He wouldn’t risk anyone else, he insisted,
but Ujio said it was as if he’d died along with Tared. Then he slipped away,
and Semion’s Marines arrived in force and tore the entire estate apart looking
for him. No one ever saw Markham again, but Ujio later received a message that
he’d made the Riftskip, and who could blame him?”

“Not I,” Omilov said, wincing. “I was not there for Gelasaar
nor Tared.”

“But it seems you have paid, twice over, my dear.” She
smiled. “Old politics can wait for another time. There’s enough to discuss in
the new. But first, what brings Sebastian of the Steadfast Heart here at this
hour?”

Omilov hesitated, then said, “I don’t understand.”

“It’s just past nineteen hundred—late afternoon in
Highdwellings and planets with days close enough to Standard. Socially the
deadest hour, until recently.” She laughed. “This is more like you. Did you not
know about the latest fashion? The Cartano girl has decreed that the hour of
five in the Whispering Gallery is to be given entirely to discourse on themes.
The current one is love.”

It was so unexpected—so much the opposite of what he had
expected—that Omilov had to laugh.

The Archonei’s eyes quirked with irony. “After war, death,
and destruction, it appears people still have a taste for the purely frivolous.
Young Vannis has reestablished my faith in human nature.”

Omilov also smiled, but he did not know what to say to that,
so he changed the subject. “You know that the Prophetae Anton Ramanujan is
here? Though he goes by ‘Tate Kaga’ now.”

“It is he who summoned me,” the Archonei said. “And the
difficulties in getting here would require another long hour in the telling.”
She chuckled under her breath. “Skipping in and out with Rifters on our
radiants . . . suddenly it seems eighty days ago, and not eighty
years, when we scrambled over the rocks at Petrov, a jac in each hand, trying
desperately to fend off the Shiidra.” She shook her head. “It really does seem
a short time ago. But so does your youth, when you and Ilara and Gelasaar
staged operas at the Palace Minor, and Brandon and Galen were scrubby brats
running about teasing the life out of that black-browed little bully Dol’jhar had
sent us as hostage. And now we are old, and they—the two who remain—are the
main players in the game.” She slapped her hands on her lap. “Though we still
have a few tricks left. I’m here to help Gelasaar’s boy pull together a fleet.
We’ve called in all our ships: if we win it, we rebuild, and if we lose, we’re
ruined anyway.”