A Prison Unsought Read online

  “They’re gonna take my ribbon,” Ivard said to her, and held up his skinny arm with the startlingly bright green ring in the skin.

  On his other side, Eloatri observed his hand gripping tightly on something small—she spotted a tuft of silk protruding beyond his little finger.

  “Wethree can only take from you the genome,” the Intermittor said in her reedy voice. “The Archon now is part of you, and you of threm. That was accomplished far from here, and not by any art we know.” The other two blatted agreement, their headstalks writhing in a complex pattern.

  Ivard sat up on his elbows, and asked in the half-cocky, half-frightened manner of adolescents everywhere: “Will it hurt?”

  The Kelly trilled laughter. “Perhaps a little, but only briefly. Wethree shall bear you up, O small seeker.” The Intermittor pranced behind Ivard while the other two Kelly disposed themselves in front of the youth, making the three apices of an equilateral triangle around him.

  The dogs wormed in against Ivard’s sides.

  At a gesture of invitation from the Intermittor, Vi’ya knelt between the two Kelly in front, facing Ivard. The Eya’a remained behind her, their faceted eyes glinting in the now subdued lighting.

  Everyone stilled. Gradually Eloatri became aware of a low hum. As it intensified, the voices blended and separated in hypnotic harmonics. The head-stalks of the three Kelly undulated in a slow, compelling pattern, the fleshy lilies of threir mouths oriented on Ivard, who began to blink, as if fighting sleep. His eyes closed.

  The alien threnody resonated in Eloatri’s chest, rhythms syncopating within the polyphonic drone. The light dimmed until the ribbons of the Intermittor glowed with a subtle phosphorescence that fluctuated in synchrony with the crooning of the Kelly. The poignant sound evoked a complexity of emotions; Eloatri wondered if her response corresponded in any way with what the Kelly were experiencing.

  Ivard’s ribbon also glowed, fluctuating in the same rhythm as the sound deepened and intensified, catching Eloatri up in a dizzying current of emotion. The palm of her hand tingled, the burn inflicted by the Digrammaton after its impossible leap vibrating in time with the swelling rhythms of an impossibly complex harmony; it sounded like an entire choir of Kelly. Eloatri found herself swaying. She let go of fear, let go of self, though she sensed the proximity of a million-year precipice as she peered back and back into the natal history of a people civilized before humankind achieved speech.

  Ivard opened his mouth. His high tenor joined the threnody. His body remained utterly relaxed while his arm, girdled by the green, glowing ribbon, snaked up into the air and swayed gently. Vi’ya, too, was swaying, her body expressive of extreme tension.

  Eloatri’s vision blurred. No, the ribbon had twinned, a new loop twisting up from Ivard’s greenish flesh. Ivard’s back arched and a terrible cry broke from his lips, but Vi’ya’s voice rose with it, wordlessly matching it and then, somehow, forcing it back into the music of the Kelly. Twice more Ivard cried out; pain lanced through the image of the Digrammaton mirrored in Eloatri’s palm, then vanished as the head-stalk of the Intermittor darted forward like a snake striking, thrust through the twinned loop writhing up from Ivard’s wrist, and pulled it free.

  The alien song rose to a shout of triumph and joy as the green ring rotated slowly down the Intermittor’s head-stalk and disappeared amongst her ribbons, now fluffed out as if by a huge charge of static electricity. Bands and splotches of color chased across the Intermittor’s body, accompanied by wafts of complex scents. Eloatri’s eyes watered.

  Silence fell, and then the Eya’a keened shrilly, their heads twitching with inhuman speed from side to side, and Vi’ya’s body jerked in a clonic spasm.

  One of the dogs uttered a high, thin howl; both lay with ruffs fluffed, their ears flattened.

  The Kelly hooted, their head-stalks swiveling. Eloatri sensed deep surprise. The image of the Digrammaton in her palm thrummed painfully.

  The Eya’a pushed past Vi’ya as her head bowed, her arms slipping off her thighs onto the floor as if attempting to support a terrible weight descending on her shoulders. The Eya’a’s twiggy hands danced gently across Ivard’s slowly relaxing body, stilling in a lacy cradle around his head.

  The terrible tension left Vi’ya’s body. Ivard emitted a whistling snore as he sank into deep sleep. Something rolled from his hand and hit the floor with a muted clink. Vi’ya grunted with effort, leaned over, and picked it up.

  Eloatri glimpsed the silver of a coin and a crumpled bit of silk before the Rifter captain tucked the objects into a pocket on Ivard’s unresisting body. At the sight of the coin, Eloatri’s palm gave a last, valedictory pang, then subsided.

  The Eya’a stepped back. All movement ceased.

  This tableau held until the door opened and the Aerenarch entered, his clothes smeared with mud and grass stains. Mud streaked one cheek. His guard, the Rifter Ulanshu master, was also marked.

  Eloatri felt a pulse of danger, yet Brandon did not betray the manner of one coming straight from a fight as he turned to Vi’ya, his expression questioning, even pained. Eloatri watched as Vi’ya forced her head up, her eyes marked with fatigue: Eloatri recognized a communication in the lifting of chin, the tension of hands, but then that was gone. Both were too good at hiding their true selves.

  The Kelly flowed toward the Aerenarch. He greeted them in their signs, but very quickly, then he said to Vi’ya, “Will he be all right?”

  “Yes,” she said to her hands. “He will recover.”

  The Intermittor danced up and guided the Aerenarch away from the sleeping youth.

  M’liss rubbed her head fiercely. It wasn’t quite a headache, nor dizziness; she felt like someone had stuffed her skull with batting.

  Then shock cleared her mind as she looked around more closely. “The dogs? Where are they?” They were her responsibility.

  The Intermittor turned her way, mellow voice low, but insistent. “All is well, all is well. Their movements are part of the moral agency wethree required.”

  “Dogs are fine,” Vi’ya said huskily. “Ivard released them.”

  M’liss caught the eye of the Xeno officer, whose gaze was sympathetic. She let out her breath slowly.

  Eloatri said to Vi’ya, “You do have a telepathic link to Ivard, then?”

  Vi’ya’s dense black gaze lifted briefly, meeting Eloatri’s, then shifted. Eloatri felt a curious inner tingle, as if she’d been through a security scan.

  “It is the Eya’a,” Vi’ya said. Her voice was low and soft. “Through them I can link with anyone, it seems. Even you.” She smiled slightly.

  “Though there is a cost, am I right?” Eloatri said. “A sense of dislocation—vertigo—and a terrible draining of energy?”

  Vi’ya shrugged, but did not deny it.

  Eloatri said, “I ask because I believe I can help you.”

  Vi’ya looked up quickly, her lips parting in surprise—but her gaze was wary.

  Eloatri smiled, doing her best to project reassurance. “Telepathy is indeed rare among humans, though it apparently wasn’t always so. Certainly it was not rare among your own people of the island—the Chorei—before they were annihilated by the mainlanders.” Eloatri paused. Vi’ya said nothing, but Eloatri knew she had her attention. “Among the refugees arrived at Ares are some of my own colleagues, from the College of Synchronistic Perception and Practice. For a number of reasons, they are still living aboard their escape ship. One of their number is a Dol’jharian, a descendant from your Chorei. I can ask if he would be willing to work with you.”

  Vi’ya still said nothing.

  She has not refused. Eloatri knew when retreat was the best tactic.

  “I’ll be in contact,” she said, and went out. She was inclined to smile, but then she remembered that brief, intense moment when Vi’ya and Brandon met gaze to gaze. I shall have to be very careful.

  The excitement of the Eya’a seared Vi’ya’s mind as she watched the High Phanist depart. Their t
houghts were incomprehensible, the images reminiscent of their excitement back on Dis when the Arkad had arrived bearing the Heart of Kronos, now lost to Eusabian.

  But their import was clear.

  Now the Battle of Arthelion made sense. Somehow, the growing linkage between Ivard, the Kelly, and the Eya’a had triggered awareness in the little sophonts of the presence of another Urian mechanism, less powerful than the Heart and thus previously unsensed, here on Ares. The Eya’a, who did not build machines, had no idea what it was they’d sensed, but Vi’ya the ship captain did.

  Now the Battle of Arthelion made sense, the lives and ships so freely spent in a way she knew was not Panarchic. The hyperwave truly existed. Not only that, the Panarchists had captured one at Arthelion.

  If they find out I know about their hyperwave, I will never escape. Assuming they let me live.

  She glanced at the Kelly, still dancing threir conversation with the Arkad, wondering if they knew—and if threy’d tell him if threy did. She also wondered how much had the High Phanist understood of those last moments, after the genome had twinned from Ivard.

  The images from Desrien welled up from memory, pushing past barriers weakened by the onset of a staggering headache, and she pushed back viciously. Eloatri had no psychic talents, Vi’ya was sure, but she saw far more than most. Behind her slight figure loomed the unknown powers of the Magisterium; after Desrien and the vision of the Chorei she had experienced there, and had discussed with no one, Vi’ya could no more discount the reality of those powers than that of her own heartbeat.

  But she’s right. The link with the Eya’a is becoming more than I can handle. The awareness vexed her, but what was, was. She would do what she had to do: a greater mastery of their link, and the new strengths lent by Ivard and the Kelly, could only advance her plans. The nicks would not hold her long.

  Her stillness, her tension caught Jaim’s attention. While the Kelly and Brandon exchanged their dance-like conversation, Jaim hunkered down beside Vi’ya. Her black gaze struck his nerves. Is she angry with me? Why? There had been no trace of anger when they’d met the preceding hour.

  Her first question took him by surprise. “Why is he here?” She lifted her chin slightly in Brandon’s direction.

  “Wanted to check on Ivard.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I came at his command.”

  She did not look away, but somehow it was easier to return her regard. Jaim felt as if a vise had eased from his brain; either he was more tired than he’d thought, or else her talents were gaining in magnitude.

  “Are you then his creature?” Once again the slight lift of the chin toward Brandon.

  That’s the cause of the anger. “I am no one’s creature,” Jaim said. “The Fourfold Path leads me, and for a time I must be his shadow.”

  She understood—it was the Ulanshu way.

  She said, “I wish you would train Ivard.”

  Jaim glanced at the sleeping youth. “Forgetting how to live in his body?”

  “Exactly.”

  Jaim hesitated. “Why don’t you train him?”

  Though her expression did not change, he sensed that she did not like the question. Old memories made fear prickle down his arms, but he stood his ground, and forced himself not to react.

  She said only, “The Eya’a occupy most of my time.” Her lips twitched, a change of expression not quite a smile. “And you know how heavy my kind are. I might slip and crush him.”

  Jaim grinned. “I’ll teach him.”

  Vi’ya lifted a hand. “Fighting?”

  “Just movement control at first,” Jaim said. “Until he regains his strength. No hurry. There’s certainly no danger here—” He stopped when her eyes narrowed. “Is there?”

  When she spoke, it was with apparent reluctance. “The Eya’a heard it last night, when we passed through that room of chaos,” she said finally. “There is no identity—they still cannot sort humans unless they know them—but there are those who want your Arkad dead.”

  My Arkad?

  He was going to ask more, but heard Brandon’s quick step.

  Vi’ya turned away and joined the Eya’a, who chittered on a high, ear-torturing note. Ivard muttered in his sleep, and the Kelly added their voices in a weird counterpoint.

  What’s going on?

  No one was going to tell him, obviously. Brandon flicked his gaze around, coming to Vi’ya last. She kept her back to him.

  He said to Jaim, “Let’s go.”

  o0o

  About the same moment Yenef invited the Aerenarch to leave a message for Vannis, Vannis herself was led inside Tau Srivashti’s glittership. As she trod behind the sinister steward along the noiseless corridor, she wondered if her reluctance to trust Yenef with her destination was going to prove one of her more stupid decisions.

  Like going aboard Rista’s ship with a newly-hired maid about whom she knew nothing.

  The silent, black-clad servitor indicated a plush chair in the private sanctum deep within the glittership, and as Vannis looked around the subtle shadings of steel and silver and bone white, the room quiet as an ancient tomb, she could not help but think that in this ship, no one could hear you scream.

  She didn’t need to check her boswell to know that connection to the rest of Ares was muted (or monitored by Srivashti’s unseen staff), and she straightened her spine, annoyed with herself.

  Not for being fanciful. Memory flooded back, and she shivered, viscerally aware of the danger of this visit. If Srivashti wanted he could make her disappear, and she suspected even Nyberg wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

  Even if he cared. Who would care, really? That’s what brought me here, the fact that nobody cares, because I am one step from powerless.

  All right, then, so the former Archon of Timberwell was still powerful, and always had been dangerous. But she had her wits. Use them.

  Srivashti himself appeared, dressed in dark colors with accents that drew attention to his pale, almost yellowish eyes, contrasting with the mahogany shade of his skin.

  The silent man in black brought in a beaten gold tray on which was set a formal tea service as fine as anything she had possessed on Arthelion.

  “Thank you for meeting me,” Srivashti said, and served her himself.

  She accepted the tiny chinois cup, from which steam curled languorously, filling the air with a curious scent, sharp, a little like bergamot and honey and musk, with a hint of cedar smoke on a wintry day. She lifted the cup, watching him over its gilt rim as he tasted the brew, his mouth relaxing minutely in approval.

  She sipped, her mouth filling with a complexity of flavors nearing the extreme of toleration: hot, but not quite too hot, sharp, but not quite too sharp, an underlying sweetness that just avoided being cloying.

  He sat down next to her, his proximity evoking memories—as, she sensed, he was very well aware.

  “What is this?” she asked, indicating her drink.

  “It is sometimes called Cambrian tea,” he answered. “A harmless enough name for a brew that, apparently, the Shiidra find intoxicating.”

  She controlled her reaction, having expected something of the kind. Srivashti always liked to keep people off-balance. So she wouldn’t let it happen. After all, it can’t be so very poisonous to humans, since Shiidra can—and do—eat humans, she told herself. She swallowed off the cup, and set hers down a moment after he finished his own.

  He smiled in appreciation, the muted lighting in the cabin heightening the yellow in his eyes as he leaned forward to refill her cup; his proximity stirred up old memories, and she found herself distracted by the shape of his arm beneath the fine silk of his shirt, the slow measure of his breathing. “Now,” he said, “to business. In light of that truly lamentable vid that shocked us all yesterday, I believe the time has come to cease waiting for someone to do something. As a first step, I propose that we join forces, you and I.”

  “Join forces?” she repeated, suppressing t
he brief spurt of triumph. Of course it was not so simple; she was offended that he would think she would believe it to be. She wouldn’t let him see either reaction.

  He gestured largely, his signet ring glittering blood red. “The leaders of the two most powerful families in what remains of our polity—either of us . . .” He raised his brows. “. . . eligible heirs, should we lose our two remaining Arkads.”

  “It has its advantages,” she said with neutral politesse.

  “Of course it does. Even if our alliance is only temporary, each of us can help the other—and if we were to find it to our advantage to ally, ah, permanently . . . who is there to gainsay us?”

  Marriage? No, impossible. He’d always said he would never marry until he was old, to prevent tiresome heirs from breathing impatiently down his neck.

  He opened his hand in appeal, then brushed his thumb along the inside of her wrist. The brief touch seared her sensitized skin, evoking muscle memory: her wrists pressed against a pillow, the lessons in pleasure and pain.

  He doesn’t want me. He wants me to think he does. She knew his tastes ran exclusively to the young and inexperienced; did he actually think she would respond?

  Let him think it. He’ll reveal more.

  She was aware of a tingling in her lips, the warmth circulating lazily through her body that had nothing to do with the ambient air: the Cambrian tea. She smiled. “Do let us consider it. But you must have something more immediate in mind.”

  He smiled back, delighting in the flush beneath her skin, the wariness revealed in the flare of nostril, the contraction of pupil in her glorious eyes. He remembered lessoning a very young Vannis, and though he hadn’t set out to seduce her now, he found himself stirred by warmth. Her spark of resistance added enticement to the moment, opening to equally enticing possibilities. “Immediately—we will jointly give a reception for the conquering hero.”

  “Brandon?”

  “Has he conquered anything, except a record for longest orgy? You must have seen the feeds’ speculation about what, if anything, has been going on behind the closed doors of the Enclave.” He poured out more of the tea, and picked up his cup, cradling it in his long fingers. “I refer to the hero of the Arthelion battle, Captain Margot Ng. Wouldn’t you like to hear about that engagement? I would, very much. And of course we must invite Brandon as well. He will need friends.”