The Thrones of Kronos (90 page)

Silence enfolded them both. They walked away from the cold
marble statue, the eternal struggle of human against serpent now merely a black
silhouette.

Vannis listened to the crunch of their footsteps in the
gravel of the terrace garden. When they neared the golden light of an archway
leading into the Palace, she spoke in her most Douloi drawl: “Unfinished
business.”

Vi’ya laughed.

When Jaim reached the booster field and saw the Marine
guards stationed around the
Telvarna
,
his first reaction was anger. But the guard detail was in full dress, which
indicated a necessity beyond the mere military, and when he reached the
perimeter, he recognized the dyarch in charge from when she’d been a solarch
guarding the Enclave on Ares.

So it was in his mildest voice that he asked, “What’s the
problem here, Abrams?”

“Looters,” she said succinctly. “Or more correctly, curio
seekers. Meliarch Vahn’s direct order is, no one approaches this Columbiad
without permission of your captain.”

Thieves and saboteurs were familiar enough, but the idea of
curio seekers and sight-seers made Jaim laugh. He thanked Abrams and walked on
toward the
Telvarna
, appreciating
Vahn’s having thus circumvented the entire crew being pestered with approaches
from curious (or enterprising) citizenry. Few of these would have the courage
to tackle Vi’ya for permission to snoop aboard her ship.

Grinning, Jaim tabbed the entry code. The ramp dropped and
Jaim guided his valise inside. His mood changed again when he smelled the stale
air and saw the detritus of that last terrible run still littering the deck
plates, and the dried blood from the wounded smeared on the bulkheads.

For of course the
Telvarna
hadn’t been touched since Lokri piloted it down to the booster field from the cruiser.
It wasn’t a naval ship; the Panarch’s protection meant it had been left
strictly alone. This also meant that armies of naval support staff had not
swarmed aboard it, as they had the moment the other naval ships had cooled
enough to make it possible, to clean, restock, repair, and run all the tedious
but necessary diagnostic tests to make the ship ready for action again.

As Jaim walked slowly toward the bridge, he smelled the
faint, astringent aroma of cleaning agents and stopped when he heard voices.
Tat appeared from the hatchway to the dispensary. Her face was sweat-and
dirt-streaked, her expression midway between wariness and apprehension.

“Dem’s got the galley done,” she said. “We’re in here now.”

Montrose appeared behind her. “I’d say we’ve about fourteen
hours of engine and galley prep left here, including stowing the stores I’ve
ordered. Tianqi should have the air completely flushed by then; we can finish
any leftover scrubbing in transit.”

Jaim looked around appreciatively. “Everyone here?”

“Lokri’s down in the engine room with Lar,” Montrose said.
“Sedry’s on the bridge running the diagnostics.”

“I’ll be right there.” Jaim shoved his gear inside his
cabin, then went straight to the engine room, and the hours slid by as they
worked the engines over. At length it was he who called a halt, saying, “The
rest will have to wait for overhaul at Rifthaven—but at least we’ll get there.”

Montrose’s voice came over the intercom: “Coffee’s waiting.”

They all met in the rec room. Montrose was in an expansive
mood, clearly pleased with the results of his lavish interpretation of the
Mandala steward’s invitation to call upon him for stores. As he talked to Lar
and Sedry about his hydroponics, Jaim watched Tatriman cross the room to her
other cousin, who was methodically scrubbing down the walls near the game
consoles.

Dem paused in his work and said something. Tat moved to a
corner to sit down. Jaim helped himself to coffee, watching Lar’s attentive
manner; all three Bori behaved like guests who were not certain of their
welcome.

What was amiss?

Jaim drifted over to Lokri, who looked agreeably tired but
relaxed as he sipped at his coffee. Jaim laughed inside. Whatever Lokri had
been doing—and whoever with—had obviously cleared the last of the war tension from
him, though the shadow of grief was still there in his brow.

Lokri’s light gray gaze turned his way. “Engines took that
last beating against Hreem much better than I’d hoped,” he said. “We really
need a full refit?”

Jaim nodded. “What I have in mind is a complete upgrade.”

Lokri’s brows lifted as he considered this, then he smiled
lazily. “Ah. There is that.”

“Related question,” Jaim said, scanning the room. Dem was
still cleaning; Lar and Montrose had disappeared in the direction of the
hydroponics tank. Sedry and Tat stood talking at one of the game consoles.
“There a problem with the Bori? They changed their minds about crewing with
us?”

Lokri’s smile stretched into his old rakish grin. “Boot’s on
the other foot. Little though you care, we’re famous people now, Jaim. Got as
much clout as any nick lord—we could crew anyone we wanted in Rifthaven, if we
say the word.” He shrugged slightly. “I did what I could, but it’ll have to be
you or Vi’ya who clears their orbit.”

Jaim turned the subject, sitting back and watching the
interactions of the others. Montrose had prepared a meal, and late though it
was, all except Dem ate with enthusiasm. Dem continued scrubbing his way
steadily around the room.

When he came near, Jaim looked into the scarred face, bland
as a young child’s. “You don’t have to keep working like this,” he said.

Briefly Dem’s gaze almost seemed to comprehend Jaim, then
with no change of expression he went back to work.

Tat’s soft voice spoke from behind: “It’s all right. He
likes it—at least, he likes finishing,” she amended. “He can only do work that
has an obvious start and end, and not much variation in between.”

“All right,” Jaim said. “I just don’t want him thinking he’s
a slave for those Dol’jharian chatzers anymore. Before his accident, what’d he
do?”

Tat’s shoulders were up defensively, a movement so automatic
Jaim wondered if she was even aware of it. “He was a cook. Not trained like
Montrose,” she finished on an apologetic note.

“Good,” Jaim said. “Give Montrose someone to train, after we
get through with the medtech on him.”

She took a deep breath.

“Vi’ya hasn’t forgotten that,” Jaim said.

“I know.” Tat gave him a quick smile. “At least, I hoped.”

Jaim indicated a table, seating himself. Tat dropped into the
adjacent seat like an obedient student. “Look,” he said, “our status has
changed, some good, some bad. Good: we’ve probably got unlimited credit, which
means we can get all the upgrades to this ship we’ve ever dreamed of. You’ll be
running comm, so get to know our console and make yourself a wish list. Lar and
Sedry and I will do the same for the engines and weaponry. Lokri’s going to
upgrade nav control. We’re going to have to be fast and smart, because our days
of running after low-rate jackers like Hreem are over—at least for now. Who
knows what’s in the future?”

She nodded, serious and tense. “What’s the bad?”

“We’ll be targets for every worthless blungebag who can’t
make a successful living any other way. Ransom seekers, challengers who want to
drop us for the fame, Rifters from the other side of the alliance who want a
little revenge and don’t have the balls to go after the nicks directly. All
those will sit up and sniff every time we dock. But worse than that is the
reason why we’re leaving soon’s Vi’ya shows up.”

Tat looked perplexed. “They don’t have the right medtech
here on Arthelion?”

Jaim shook his head. “Sure they do. Here’s what matters for
us—and I’m telling you so you and Lar, and eventually Dem, can decide if you
want to stay with us. You know about the pregnancy, right?”

“Sedry told us. She said she had Vi’ya’s permission.”

“You might not have had the time to consider what it means.
If Vi’ya’s baby is mine or Brandon’s, either way we have no real problem. It
incubates, comes here to fosterage when born. But if it is Anaris’s . . .”

Tat shivered. “Can she hide it? Adopt it out?”

“He wants it badly enough to have made a threat that
everyone heard. He
wanted
everyone
hearing. If it’s mine or Brandon’s, we send him the DNA proof and hope he goes
away. If it isn’t, he’d blow up Rifthaven to track it down. Vi’ya’s not
Dol’jharian enough to have it killed this far along, and if she did, he’d come
anyway, for revenge.”

Tat sighed. “The nicks. Won’t they cover us?”

Jaim said, “If Vi’ya asked Brandon to, but that would start a
war from the nick end. That’s why we’re going to Rifthaven, instead of doing
the tech here. Vi’ya sees this as her problem, and she’s going to solve it. If
we crew with her, it becomes our problem. We’re rich, we don’t need to make any
jacking runs—but we are involved in high politics, so high we aren’t Rifters
any longer, or nicks, or anything else easily tagged. Think about this. The
stakes are high. Go or stay, the choice is yours.”

“What’s life like anywhere?” Tat said in a subdued voice.
“We always been Rifters—sudden wealth, sudden want, sudden death. Never seen a
steady crew all my life. It’s why my pa and my sister Lut skipped out.” Tat
made the age-old pact gesture. “But we like this crew. If you want us, we
stay.”

Jaim’s hand met hers and gripped. She left soon after, and
Jaim made his way back to the bridge, which was now empty.

He stood looking around, not at the sweat smudges on the
consoles and the litter along the perimeter. For a blurring, unsettling moment he
saw the ghosts at the consoles—not just Marim’s, but Greywing’s and Norton’s
and Reth Silverknife’s and Jakarr’s and in the captain’s pod the laughing blond
man who had brought them all together, and made them a kind of family: Markham.

Sudden wealth, sudden
want, sudden death.

His gaze went to the patched place near the communications
console, where the inactive hyperwave had been removed. Had it still been
operational, tomorrow would have found them in fivespace already far distant
from Arthelion, watching Brandon’s coronation. Instead, they would watch from
orbit.

Jaim looked up at the screen and envisioned not the figure
on the mighty throne, listening to oath after oath, but the small figure
standing to the Panarch’s right. He could imagine her browny-green eyes
watching with pride and compassion, her brown hair elaborately dressed, her
graceful body adorned in a gown of blue and white and silver, like frozen
flame.

Since his arrival on Arthelion Jaim had been aware of Vannis
Scefi-Cartano’s attention not once or twice, but several times, and though she
had not spoken, he had felt the impact of her speculation. She had changed from
the first time she looked him over, there at the Aerenarch’s welcoming ball on
Ares; even as her steps had brought her to political triumph, Jaim knew that her
heart had suffered profound defeat, for he, too, had been watching in silence
from afar.

He knew that she had been taking instruction from Eloatri,
and it was possible that Jaim might yet return to Arthelion when Vannis was
ready to make that postponed pilgrimage to Desrien, and thus neither of them
would go alone.

The Flame wanders
where it will.

For the first time he saw the truth of the words he had
uttered thoughtlessly for his whole life. He sensed his place—all their
places—on the vast wheel of the universe, their path foreordained, yet chosen
freely, the flame lighting their way when they faltered or stumbled.

Reth?
He sent the
mental call out into the universe.

There was no answer, but he accepted the burden of the
finite laboring just out of perception of the transfinite. He moved at last,
opening the storage bin to pull out cleaning materials. As he bent over the
nearest console and started to work, he felt a profound, enfolding sense of
peace.

o0o

Brandon touched the door control and slid into the service
entrance leading to the Ivory Antechamber.

Tomorrow he would take his father’s place on the Emerald
Throne. Until this night he had postponed Gelasaar’s first request to him, spoken
not from living man to living, but from a holograph made in blind faith to a
troublesome third son whom Telos might have brought to power:

“. . . But first, in the library of the
Karelian wing of the Residence you will find Jaspar Arkad’s Testamentary. Each
of your forebears has viewed it from that same room, as have I…”

Brandon had made his pilgrimage to that library, to find it
stripped bare, the chip that had been handed down to nearly a thousand years of
Arkads destroyed. Brandon had an idea that its information was not lost, and it
was to ascertain this that he now quested.

But first a private quest.

The air was still in the closet off the antechamber.

He stepped through and paced silently along the perimeter of
the antechamber. Once he’d sat on the stairs and watched a group of strangers
loot his family home, but that was in reaction to the knowledge that an enemy
had already taken control. He had promised himself since then that he would
restore, if he could, the looted artifacts. Most of them had been recovered.

He paused before an exquisitely carved jade lion, its edges
muted by age—the latest one to come back to its place, bringing new meaning
with it.

Brandon paused before each blank plaque or display, now few
in number. As a gesture of goodwill the triumvirs had returned those that had
found their way to Rifthaven. Another completely unexpected cache of them had
been found in a corridor below where he stood now, probably a quick stash by
one of the
Telvarna’s
crew. Brandon
touched one of the blank plaques, bemused to have found them still there. Perhaps
Eusabian, in his arrogance, had assumed that he would recover them all; Brandon
still could not comprehend a mindset in which vengeance required destroying the
life of your enemy and then reveling in possession of his material things.