The Phoenix in Flight Read online

  She’d asked him once, but all he’d said was, “I don’t have to see it.”

  Which really wasn’t an answer at all.

  She dismissed the mysteries, and the exasperations. Time for yet another art, one in which she was especially adept and inventive, and which insured his attention would remain solely on her.

  o0o

  Brandon surrendered gratefully to Eleris’s insistent fingers, aware that the respite was just that.

  White heat flared, then faded to lassitude when Eleris got up to bathe and oversee the last arrangements for her imminent party.

  Brandon lay back on the soft moss, breathing in the astringent scent of the crushed greenery as the lassitude faded in its turn, leaving a sense of regret, and even guilt. “Politics is boring,” Eleris had said when they met. “I live for pleasure.” It was that which had prompted him to accept her invitation for a protracted pleasure cruise, just the two of them, leaving the universe behind.

  But one can’t leave the universe behind, one can only choose which aspects of it to engage with. She had been straightforward about her life of pleasure, so why shouldn’t she take an interest in his Enkainion, and the subsequent life of pleasure he was expected to lead afterward?

  Bringing him right back to...

  The Luxochronus had been realtime on the DataNet since it settled into Arthelion orbit, its cryptobanks discharging and taking on the data that every ship carried between the stars. And among the floods of data being exchanged there had been one simple message, relayed by neural induction to his inner ear, in a voice he’d not heard for ten years:

  Markham sent me. Meet?

  Just four words, and a confirming signature and time-stamp in machine-neutral cadence, but coming now, only a month before his Enkainion, they were enough to blast all Brandon's calculations, causing him to almost mention Markham vlith-L’ranja, once his closest friend.

  You know very well what you will be doing after your Enkainion.

  Except that he didn’t. Was this com an attempt at revenge, further entrapment, or an avenue of escape?

  The voice and signature suggested the first.

  Lenic Deralze.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, memory seized Brandon, shifting him from Eleris’s scattered cushions to the cold, austere hallway outside the Academy cadets’ brig after Markham’s arrest: Brandon was again twenty-three, too shocked to speak as Deralze crossed the invisible line dividing an Arkad from those who served, shoved Brandon up against the wall, and shouted in his face. “You’ll walk away from this like you Tetrad nicks always do, knowing that however you chatz up, the blunge always lands on someone else. Your”—He’d used a vulgar phrase from Rifter argot meaning literally “braided members” to refer to Markham. “—and you said nothing. Nothing!”

  Even more searing was the memory of Deralze’s disgust and loathing as he tore off his blason and threw it at Brandon’s feet. “You can keep your worthless life, and my Oath with it.”

  Why was Deralze contacting him now? The time-stamp indicated the message had been waiting only hours for him. That meant Deralze was already on Arthelion.

  Perhaps entrapment was a better explanation. How else would such a message have gotten through the rings and layers of security placed around him by Semion?

  Brandon rolled to his feet and bent to pick up his clothes as he considered his oldest brother. It had been five years since they’d seen one another last, but Semion still monitored every aspect of Brandon’s life. “Our father ordered me to safeguard you, and so I shall,” Semion had said not long after Galen’s Enkainion.

  Brandon retrieved his shoes and padded across the moss to the bath, which was designed to look like a woodland stream. Semion has to know that any mention of Markham would get my attention.

  The question was, why? And why now? It was ten years since Markham was cashiered—and his family ruined. Ten years since Brandon’s own career had been summarily ended.

  Was this message one more link in the strangling chain that would culminate in his Enkainion? Brandon threw his clothes into the cleaner, then tabbed the control to raise the temperature of the water in the artfully decorated stream. What irony! His Enkainion, everybody agreed, was to be so brilliant that it would be broadcast throughout the reaches of the Thousand Suns, to Downsiders, Highdwellers and lawless Rifters alike.

  He turned the boswell around and around in his hands, fingering the stylized band of interlocked links. Most people would give anything to be born an Arkad; to live in the Mandalic Palace on Arthelion, the central jewel of the Panarchy’s countless planets and Highdwellings; to possess his limitless wealth, his position at the peak of the Douloi social circle.

  Brandon snorted in rueful amusement at the turn of his thoughts: chains, strangulation. He tossed the boswell down onto the silky blades of grass beside the stream. What if the message really was from Markham? He’d taken the Riftskip, fleeing his Douloi roots into the chaos outside Panarchic law.

  Why would he contact Brandon now? It made no more sense than Semion concocting some elaborate trap, when he already controlled nearly every aspect of Brandon’s life.

  Brandon shook his head, and stepped into the hot water. He could endlessly consider all the possible implications of this message, but three were certain.

  One: he couldn’t trust that the message was from Deralze. The former bodyguard might know how to get around the Palace codes, but Semion wouldn’t have to.

  Two: he couldn't trust the goals of whoever had sent the message. If it wasn’t one of Semion’s moves, the fact that it had reached him at all indicated deeply-compromised security. If Brandon responded, he could be made to disappear altogether.

  Three: none of that mattered, for his disappearance was foreordained. If he went through with the Enkainion, and the plans so carefully laid for a life of social brilliance, he would symbolically disappear forever, replaced by a simulacrum engineered by Semion.

  Brandon smiled bitterly, savoring the irony. Two lives removed from ultimate power, but here and now, virtually no choice.

  He reached for his boswell, and began to compose his reply.

  TWO

  PARADISUM

  Verin Palmar, youngest invested member of the family-owned Rifter ship Bloodknife, stalked through the terminal, dodging easily through the throng of travelers. Far above her, crystal panels glinted as they shifted to follow the bloody light of Ouroboros in red eclipse of its companion star Ophis.

  “... ever eating its own tail. But in fifty thousand years or so the resulting expansion will vaporize Paradisum and the Shrine Planet with its mysterious Guardian and the even more mysterious artifact known as the Heart of Kronos.” The pompous voice broke her train of thought, and Palmar glared at the Tiklipti tour group milling about in her path. Their rotund guide’s green-dyed face was a garish black in the red light flooding the Paradisum spaceport.

  Like a vacuum-eaten corpse, Palmar thought in disgust as she pushed her way through the group.

  Fifty thousand years. So what! She’d be long dead when the dying star swallowed Paradisum. She snorted as she neared the ParcelNet console. The red giant and the ring of fire ripped from its surface by its now-eclipsed companion, Ophis, dominated the yellow sky. Still, she thought, I’ll be glad when we skip out tonight.

  Paradisum and the Shrine Planet were the only Doomed Worlds Palmar had ever visited, and if she had her way, it would be the last. What kind of race had the Ur been, to make an art form of destruction, on a scale that required a multimillion-year perspective to appreciate? And if they’d been powerful enough to remake solar systems, what could have wiped them out so completely?

  She snorted in disgust. Granny would kick her through the lock into vacuum if she admitted it, but that chatzing Shrine Planet and those crazy Bugs had given her the shillies. Verin Palmar hated insects. The memory of the Guardian towering above her, frozen by the gas bomb, made her unconsciously speed her pace and lose the sense of her surrounding
s long enough to collide with a man in elegant clothing, his hair and eyes dyed a muted silver, forming an elegant contrast with his dark skin. She ignored his apology, despising him for his singsong Douloi accent as he apologized. Good-looking enough, but just another strutting highborn nick.

  Only one of the consoles in the ParcelNet bank was free, and the screen lit as it sensed her approach. “Virtwandhi?” The word scrolled slowly upward on the screen as the com spoke.

  “Speak Uni!” Palmar snarled, jiggling with impatience to get this over with. “D’ya think I’m a stinking Paradeezer?”

  “Your pardon, genz,” replied the singsong voice, not sounding sorry or anything else. “Your parcel’s destination?”

  “Qoholeth, insured.”

  “Value?”

  “Contract, cash.”

  “302.2 AU, please.” The port below the screen dilated and accepted the box and the sunbursts Palmar threw after it. She was glad to get rid of it. The mirror-sphere she’d stolen from the bugs —why do they call it a “heart,” anyway?—was the weirdest-feeling thing she’d ever handled. Even a Downsider would notice the dissonance between the sphere’s heft and its apparent lack of inertia. Like most Rifters, Palmar had a fine-tuned sense of mass and acceleration, and handling the sphere had made her more than a little queasy.

  As she waited impatiently for the machine to process the parcel, a fanfare of trumpets caught her attention, and she glanced up at one of the vast public viewscreens above the bustle of the terminal.

  “... at the center of the Mandala, where only a P-month from now the youngest son of His Majesty will step into the Ranks of Service.” The novosti’s face creased in exaggerated excitement as he gestured at an image of the Hall of Ivory behind him. “Though Krysarch Brandon is the last Arkad of this generation, it is said that this Enkainion will be the most brilliant of those for all three royal sons. For not only will it be the premier social event of the year, there will be important concerns in the political realm. Genz Leseuer?”

  Palmar glanced up at the female novosti grinning stupidly down at them, the weird third eye of an ajna imager open on her forehead. Who would see her broadcast?

  “Who cares?” Palmar muttered, resisting the impulse to bang her fist on the machine, as if that would hurry it any.

  “Thank you, Genz Vu,” the female novosti gushed. “For the people of Ansonia, Krysarch Brandon’s Enkainion will mark the first official participation of our republic in the political ritual of the Panarchy, as negotiations for our inclusion approach their...”

  “Ha!” Palmar snorted. First and last, most likely, if the chatter about an attack is true.

  “... and we’ll be there, to bring you all the brilliance and excitement of this historic moment.”

  Palmar blew air through pursed lips in dismissive scorn. More nick-strut blunge, yammering on as if...

  The machine blipped. On the ParcelNet screen appeared the words: “Jiji Byron, care of Martin Cheruld, Aegios Prime, Qoholeth Anachronics Hub, backup routing to General Delivery with passphrase ‘green phalanx noiseless.’”

  “Correct. Timing?”

  “Estimated 30 days, 11 nodes plus or minus two, SPC variance 0.15. Confirmation required?”

  “To maildrop.” Palmar fed the machine the one-time card she’d been given, then scooped her change out of the hopper and turned away as the machine singsonged its meaningless thank-you.

  The yellow, cloudless glare of Paradisum’s sky oppressed her as she headed for the field tubes. Ophis was subject to vicious flares, so Paradisum had no Highdwellings or any inhabited orbital facilities. It would have made more sense for Bloodknife to take the package to another system so none of her crew would have to waste time at the bottom of a well. But that slug Barrodagh had given them no choice.

  “From the Paradisum spaceport,” that pale-faced Bori had insisted. No doubt the one-time card had sent the timing confirmation to his local agent, although what good that would do them she couldn’t figure out. Even Downsiders knew that data and packages moved at the same speed.

  Palmar shrugged. There was a lot about this mission that didn’t make sense, starting with why Barrodagh hadn’t mentioned the weirdness of the sphere. She got it that he was running some kind of attack against the nicks somewhere, and that if the Bloodknife family completed their mission, they would get to be a part of it. But why send this thing by ParcelNet? Barrodagh orders us clear across the Thousand Suns to steal this sphere from the Bugs, complete with passcode for the Shrine Planet Quarantine Monitor, no less, and then he has us entrust it to his enemies for shipment!

  Palmar had asked her mother about it after they got the assignment, while Granny was busy. Mother was always reading chips, or noderunning after dirt that others didn’t want dug up. Until their recruitment by Barrodagh, Mother had made a tidy sum on the RiftNet databourse. “I don’t know,” Mother had said, and Palmar had forgotten about her question until Mother yanked her awake this morning, looking thoroughly spooked.

  Palmar grimaced. Even that enormous bug hadn’t been as disturbing as the sight of Mother spooked. “This is way more crazy-bad than I’d thought,” Mother’d whispered, shaking her head.

  “But the Syndics are backing us,” Palmar had protested. “I thumbprinted the orders from the Second myself. Full Rift Sodality Assurance.”

  “But we thought that little slug Barrodagh was just some rich collector with a grudge against the nicks somewhere.”

  “It is for some collector,” Palmar argued. “The Syndic Second said that Barrodagh is the collector, and if we do well, we’ll be in on his raid. So?”

  Mother spat over her shoulder, and made the sign of warding. “Yeah. But you know who’s behind Barrodagh? He’s only a front. He’s run by those crazy Dol’jharians. In fact, he’s no less than the front for their king, or chief, or whatever ‘Avatar’ means—Jerrode Eusabian. And it’s for one of their revenge customs.”

  “Revenge?” Palmar had asked, wondering how in the Five Hells you got revenge by stealing a ball from a bunch of bugs.

  “What we’re doing, right now, this is what the Dol’jharians call a paliach,” Mother had gone on to say. “It’s a formal vengeance, where the enemy has to symbolically take part in his own destruction. Using the ParcelNet is probably part of it, too, since the nicks run that, so it’s sort of like having the Panarch deliver it himself.” Mother cackled. “Not that this Avatar is really taking much of a chance. Even the Spider and her Invisibles can’t intercept something on the ParcelNet.”

  “You’re talking like somebody in a chatzing wiredream,” Palmar had interrupted, really queasy by her mother’s uncharacteristic furtiveness.

  Instead of slapping her for talking back—which disturbed Palmar even more—Mother had looked around, as if wondering about telltales in the middle of their own ship, then whispered even lower, “We’re gonna wish it was if we chatz it up, or vary from instructions by a finger.” Mother held up her own finger. “Those Dol’jharian lords don’t like being crossed even a tiny bit, and they have a thing called a mindripper that can take weeks to kill you. And that’s why I don’t like this revenge thing. Because everyone in the way of their vengeance gets...” She drew her finger across her neck. “And that’s if you’re lucky.”

  “Well, we won’t chatz it up,” Palmar had snarled.

  And she hadn’t.

  Palmar glanced back at the ParcelNet console, ready to make an obscene sign at any lurking spies or however Barrodagh—or those Dol’jharians, if Mother was right— kept watch. She had followed the instructions exactly. I’ve done what they wanted. Now we get the new gear Barrodagh promised—whatever it is, the Syndics guarantee it’s gonna get us more sunbursts than we ever seen before, and better yet, it’s bad news for the nicks. And afterward?

  Rifthaven, here we come, she thought happily, and the doors closed behind her.

  o0o

  Suomo ban-Lennikani stepped out of the ParcelNet line and watched the young Rifter woman
stride off from a console a few positions away. He’d felt the strength of her body when she collided with him—he’d always been drawn to muscular women, an unfashionable taste among the Douloi of his far-away Highdwelling—and the ferocity of her expression had fascinated him even more. Her raiment was a jarring combination of expensive material and a flagrant lack of taste typical of Rifters, adding to her allure, which was why he’d decided to follow her and watch, daydreaming pleasantly. He’d never had a Rifter lover—although under present circumstances it might not be very politic...

  As if summoned by the thought, Eduor’s voice sounded in his inner ear. (Sumi, where are you?) Without waiting for a reply, he rattled on. (You’ll never guess who I found in the High Concourse, waiting oh so impatiently for us. Tani says she’s been here most of a day...)

  Suomo gritted his teeth, glad he’d set his boswell’s sensitivity too low to transmit the sensation, and let Eduor’s chatter flow past without attention, a talent he’d been developing more and more lately. Tani again, he thought, after flexing his wrist to cut off his boswell’s subvocal pickup. Flaunting the speed of her new yacht as the two of them danced attendance on Eduor vlith-Fregomec from system to system across the Thousand Suns. You come back with the Fregomec family alliance, his mother had said, and his father had added, Or don’t come back at all.

  With a regretful glance at the Rifter woman, Suomo continued on his interrupted walk back to the High Concourse, chuckling as he caught up with the sense of Eduor’s words.

  (...but I said I like it slow, and she said...)

  Just like that, an idea flowered. Speed was one thing, but knowing one’s way around—whether a lover’s body or interstellar space—that was better. He would bet his pilot’s navigation against Tani’s any day—she was over-proud of her nav training and tended to meddle with her pilot, which was why she couldn’t keep them—and he’d overheard where the Rifter woman was sending her package. Qoholeth!