A Prison Unsought Read online

  As the Bori’s speech went on, something about fealty, she covertly studied the ring of silent viewers in the room.

  The new Aerenarch stood a little apart from the ranked officers, a straight, slim figure whose reputation largely condemned him for depravity, stupidity, and cowardice. Would he pretend outrage, while hiding relief that he was not there with them? Or would he hide behind the Telos-cursed Douloi wall of politeness, a wall that masked corruption and rot at least as lethal as this Dol’jharian seated on the throne?

  A gasp from nearby brought Sedry’s attention back on the holograph. “Bring the beasts first,” Eusabian said as black-clad soldiers herded a Kelly trinity forward.

  Interest flashed through Sedry at hearing the enemy’s voice for the first time, then shock radiated through her as Eusabian held up a ball with something fluttering in it and said, “This is all that remains of your Archon,” and dashed it to the floor.

  Tarkans with huge broadswords then strode forward and cut the unmoving Kelly down.

  The viewers around Sedry reacted with twitches and gasps of horror. She was aware of her own sorrow and rage, and under it all, fear.

  Everyone else in her cell had died after the Dol’jharians swept in; she was the only one highly placed enough to win free, and she had turned and fought with renewed passion against the conquerors.

  Nights she had worked the computers, removing every trace of her plans, old and new, and every reference even to the dead. Haunted by how they had been so successfully used . . . no . . . that was not it. . . .

  In the holo, the horror went on as eight or ten men and women died under the Dol’jharian swords, until the floor pooled with blackly congealing blood.

  I am haunted by how easily Dol’jhar identified us to trick us. Had our government known about us as well?

  She had fought without regard to personal consequences, to cauterize betrayal. It had taken rescue, removal, and rest to assess how her position had altered: having subsequently received rank points and two decorations for bravery, she’d gained the respect of her peers that had never seemed possible while caught fast in administration in Highdwelling Shelani.

  In those first few heady weeks after rescue, it had seemed as if the revolution had happened, after all: everyone, Downsider and Highdweller, Douloi and Polloi, reveled in the freedom and exhilaration of change. They had only the Dol’jharians to defeat, and government would begin anew. And with the Aerenarch Semion and his chokehold on preferment gone, anyone could be a part of it.

  Or so it had seemed.

  She sustained another shock. The tenth person she recognized: it was old Zhach Stefapnas, Demarch of the community of Highdwellings in which Sedry had grown up. She was not surprised to see him shake badly, hesitate, then prostrate himself before the Dol’jharian monster.

  A voice that did not belong to him said, “I swear loyalty to you, O Lord Eusabian. . . .”

  With a wince of distaste, Sedry blocked out the false litany. She wondered if his horrible sister, Charite-Pius, probably now dancing or drinking with those damned Douloi in the Ares pavilion, had any notion of what had happened to her brother, and wished viciously that she could see this.

  After the Demarch, the rest of the Panarchists responded with a similar cowardly refrain: Sedry knew that for a few of them it was expedience, and a desire to fight against the supposed new masters, that prompted them. Her interest wandered, probing at her own fears, like probing an open wound.

  Her attention sharpened when the line reached the instantly recognizable remainder of the Panarch’s Privy Council: all venerable with age and experience, the tallest of them Padraic Carr, the High Admiral of the Fleet. Bile clawed at her throat at the way he moved. What had they done to him? Somehow it was worse that no marks showed.

  With a gesture of contempt the Dol’jharian conqueror motioned them away. Then he spoke, but it was just more rhetoric about power, and her mind arrowed back to the startling whisper that came out of the gloom late after a shift: Sedry Thetris, of the Seven-Eyes Cell. Wasn’t your password “When the bough breaks”?

  Her sweaty palms turned clammy, and memory of the tall, gold-eyed man was replaced in the holo by the Panarch, brought to stand before Eusabian.

  “It seems,” Eusabian said coldly, “neither your prayers nor your priorities did you much good.” He waved a hand, indicating the dead and the living, now herded along by the sword-bearing soldiers. “Nor your loyal subordinates.”

  “What will you do when the Fleet arrives?” The Panarch’s voice sounded weak in the vast room. Only Dol’jhar’s could be heard clearly, from his position of command.

  “Your concern for my travails is touching, Arkad, but your grasp of my power is faulty. . . .” He went on to brag about the Urian missiles to the unbelieving Panarch.

  Old news. Why would Dol’jhar broadcast this? He must be having trouble controlling his Rifters, Sedry thought.

  Her mind reverted to her own problem: the former Archon of Timberwell, who had somehow found out about her betrayal, and now threatened to reveal her.

  I admire you, the suave voice had whispered, husky with amusement. You’ve done well for yourself in the shambles. There will be a place for you in the new government if you are intelligent enough to recognize when to fight and when to defer to those with greater experience.

  Anger churned in her guts. The Douloi did not lie—he did have the power. It didn’t matter how she’d managed to slip up in covering her tracks. He knew, so she either got him what he wanted—or died. The decision was to be made here, right now.

  I want to know what Nyberg is hiding, he’d said.

  She tightened her grip on her hands, her boswell still recording. At any moment she could turn it off.

  But if she did do the noble thing and die, he’d merely find another more willing tool—someone who might not work against him should it be necessary.

  “So, Arkad,” the Bori’s gloating voice broke into her thoughts, “are you curious to know your fate?”

  Sedry’s gaze shifted to the new Aerenarch, standing so still before the holo. Rumor whispered of expedience, and of cowardice, in his own survival. Was that true? His actions since were puzzling: he had not had his father declared dead and started up another government. If he was waiting, was it for this?

  She studied his profile, expecting to observe that Douloi mask of privilege, as if they stood above mere human emotion. But there was no mask. Pale with nausea, his eyes crimped with pain, he watched unblinking as the Bori brought forward two boxes and set them down.

  “I’m sure you’ve spent twenty years devising something bloody, and nothing will stop you now. . . .” the Panarch said, still in that weak voice.

  Eusabian smiled. “I need not exert myself to kill you—not when the denizens of Gehenna will do it for me.”

  A murmur, quickly stilled, rose up from the ring of watching officers. Sedry watched the Aerenarch’s hands flex once, then drop to his sides.

  The Bori said something gloating, and the Dol’jharian responded. Sedry knew herself poised on the brink of her own precipice.

  The Bori made a flourish and lit the boxes: mounted inside them, plainly to be seen, the heads of the former heirs. The Dol’jharian spoke, but the words went past Sedry. It was all meaningless ritual now, the triumphant conqueror parading his prize prisoner in order to ensure obedience in his lower-ranked new subjects.

  Striking to her heart was the grief in the Panarch’s face, twinned, amplified, in the Aerenarch’s before her. But where the Panarch managed to smooth his features, assuming once again the detestable Douloi superiority, the light in Brandon Arkad’s eyes gathered, brimmed, and with an impatient hand he dashed away the tears before they could fall.

  “Has your famous wit deserted you?” Eusabian sneered. “You, who have lost your Fleet, your heirs? You, who were never able to penetrate the secrets of the Ur? I have, and I control the powers of the Ur as easily as that controls you.”

  The Bori
triggered the shock collar, forcing the Panarch to drop to his knees, then after an agonizing time, prone, at the feet of his conqueror.

  The holograph faded out, replaced by another scene entirely: the Navy’s planet Minerva under fire, making it clear that no one had escaped.

  Nyberg gestured, and the holograph ended.

  “Thank you,” the Aerenarch said huskily, and went out, followed by Vice Admiral Willsones.

  Silence gripped them for an indrawn breath, then burst as the room filled with voices: angry voices, excited ones, voices filled with bravado as oaths of vengeance were sworn.

  Sedry cut off her recording and straightened out her sleeve before letting her arms drop to her sides.

  You’ll get your secret, Tau Srivashti, Sedry thought grimly, memory of the grief in the Panarch’s face, and in his one living son’s, still before her eyes. Perhaps you are strong enough to defeat this monster. And then . . . and then . . .

  The image of grief-stricken Arkad faces blocked out the hallway as she followed her fellow officers out. Convinced that she had seen her own death warrant in there, she felt a strange, almost giddy sense of release. Eventually she would be brought to justice, either by Timberwell or by herself.

  But first she had a goal: she would exert herself to bring about justice for those who had died before her.

  o0o

  “You’d better see this,” Vahn said to Jaim.

  Commander Nyberg had released the vid to the Aerenarch’s security team at the same time it was viewed in the briefing room. Side by side, Vahn and Jaim watched the vid on the main console, Montrose and the rest of those not on duty behind them.

  No one spoke until it ended.

  Vahn’s tight expression matched the angry disgust burning inside Jaim. “The Navy is releasing that?”

  “They will soon, probably before the reception.”

  Jaim shook his head, his mourning chimes tinkling.

  A short time later Willsones appeared, escorting Brandon. With formal salutes—somehow the moment required nothing less—she left the Aerenarch with Vahn and returned to the Cap to report her total lack of success to Nyberg.

  Brandon vanished without a word into his suite. Jaim followed, in case he wanted anything.

  Presently Jaim was back.

  Vahn said, “Did he say anything?”

  “Nothing.” Jaim stared back at that closed door, then shook his head. “I better get ready.”

  Brandon had left the design of Jaim’s formal livery to Jaim, who had chosen the gray of stone, of steel, of compromise between light and darkness. Jaim retreated to his quarters to change, wondering what would happen if Brandon didn’t come out of his room for this party. But when Vahn bozzed Jaim that the tailor had emerged from the anteroom, Brandon emerged from the bedroom and stood still as the tailor eased the coat up over his arms, fastened it herself, and smoothed its perfect lines.

  Two minutes was all it took, then she stepped back. Brandon expressed his thanks in a voice devoid of expression; she ducked her head, and withdrew.

  They had half an hour left. Vahn and his team had already taken up position along the two fastest routes, each of which would get them there in five minutes.

  But Brandon said to Jaim, “Ready? I’d like to walk.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s go,” the Aerenarch said; over his connection, Jaim heard Vahn contacting Roget, who headed the outer perimeter, and her orders shifting the teams.

  o0o

  In a small but centrally located villa on the other side of the lake, Vannis Scefi-Cartano, Aerenarch-Consort to Brandon’s eldest brother Semion (now deceased), faced the biggest crisis of her life: she had nothing to wear.

  She ripped out one outfit after another, scrutinizing it in growing hopelessness, then throwing it on the floor. Vannis was peripherally aware of her maid Yenef’s silent reproof, as they both knew who would have to clean up the mess, but Vannis was too angry, and too desperate, to care.

  Yenef stood against the far wall, her attention divided between the desk console and her mistress, aware that she had made a drastic error.

  “Half an hour. Half an hour until the reception,” Vannis said, her voice low and melodious even in the extreme of anger. “No sign of the new Aerenarch?” The word ‘new’ prefaced a word Vannis had come to hate in the years she’d spent married to Semion.

  “No, highness,” Yenef said.

  Two things will keep you safe, the Aerenarch-Consort’s Head Steward had said to Yenef when she was hired a mere four months ago. Silence, and silence. The first, when you are in their proximity. Say nothing unless you receive a direct question. The second, when someone tries to hire you to spy for them—and you will receive these offers, we all have—you do not respond, but turn it directly over to Security. The Head Steward had added drily, They will find out anyway, and anyone stupid enough to break that rule disappears, by direct order of Aerenarch Semion.

  To? Yenef had asked, appalled.

  The Head Steward had shrugged. Who knows? I don’t, and I don’t care. What I expect from the Aerenarch-Consort’s personal staff is loyalty. If you cannot give us that, consider my words as advice in self-preservation.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Vannis murmured, flinging down a dainty, fragile lounging outfit made entirely of spider-lace.

  Vannis’s enormous personal staff on Arthelion would have known this for a rhetorical question, but Yenef, though exquisitely trained in the arts of tailoring, was new enough, and stung enough, to respond, albeit with downcast eyes. “I did tell you, highness.”

  At one time any servant who spoke back would have been instantly dismissed. But this one maid was all Vannis had. “You merely informed me that the Navy said that naval stores are reserved for military purposes.”

  “So it was, highness.”

  “You did not tell me until this morning—this morning—that . . .”

  Vannis halted there, hearing a memory of her mother’s smooth, precise diction: There is never a time, or an excuse, for bad manners, followed by her governess’s practical tones: Treat your servants like human beings, and they will be loyal; treat them like machines and they will plot against you.

  Vannis forced herself to pick up the trousers of the lounging outfit, smooth them, then the paneled over robe, and last the chemise that went under the robe. When she had finished this, she spoke again. “You are new, so I can’t expect you to understand the political implications of the Navy’s stricture against sharing stores with anyone but the ruling family.”

  Yenef was surprised into pointing out, “But highness, you are a member of the ruling family.”

  Vannis suppressed a hot surge of anger. “I was. A member of the ruling family. You surely know that no married partner of any Arkad is adopted into the Arkad Family until his or her spouse becomes a ruling Panarch or Kyriarch.” When Yenef bobbed her head in agreement, Vannis went on. “You might be forgiven for not considering what that means.” And the words came unbidden, “I did not consider what that means. But it appears others have. Thus your observation to me this morning that you thought the messages gone astray, the unaccountable delays that my peers have all put down to the chaos of refugee life and communications blunders, the promises of the loan of a tailor and team that never materialized, were obfuscations, came too late.” Her voice did not rise, but her consonants sharpened.

  Yenef responded once again. “I was not certain . . . and I was afraid.”

  Vannis could hear the tone of conviction in Yenef’s low voice, and saw it in the maid’s tight mouth.

  I don’t have time to educate her, Vannis thought—but if she didn’t do something, all she would have would be time. For the Douloi accumulating on Ares, the only people who mattered, would know that she was a relict. A nonentity.

  Anger gave way to a spasm of regret that she had only this one newly-hired maid with her. Though Vannis had dared not contravene Semion’s orders that she attend Brandon’s tedious Enkainio
n in his place, she had taken steps to at least guarantee a pleasant journey to Arthelion. Her friend Rista, too indolent to have political leanings, but rich enough to possess a small, fast yacht designed for comfort, not capacity, had enabled her to slough off the security; choosing Yenef to accompany her meant the least chance of divided loyalty.

  Unfortunately, while Rista was wealthy enough to possess such a ship, its maintenance and proper crewing had apparently strained her resources. The fiveskip failed—beyond the ability of the crew to repair—three days real-time from Arthelion.

  No regrets. That disabled skip had probably saved their lives, for the long approach under gee-plane meant they’d discovered from the safety of deep space that the entire universe had gone mad rather than by skipping into the middle of it.

  Vannis looked up at Yenef, who stood in a submissive posture, her shoulders rigid, and her hands pressed stiffly together.

  Disarm with the truth, or some of it.

  “Your area of expertise is clothing. You know how long it takes to make court clothing,” Vannis said carefully.

  Yenef said, “Yes, highness.”

  “But I do not.” Vannis spread her hands. “You understand that the very reason why the Tetrad Centrum Douloi are never seen in any machine-made piece of clothing is that our apparel must be unique, that our wealth itself is not on display, but what it gains us. I, as Aerenarch-Consort, fully expected to appear in Arthelion the day of the Enkainion, give you and the waiting staff an order for a new gown, and have it ready by evening. How many of you would that have taken?”

  “Anywhere from ten to thirty. The embroidery is the most difficult,” Yenef said.

  “See, I did not know that. I give the order, and the work is executed somewhere out of my sight. I give an order for a ball tomorrow evening, with a rain-shield, a complete display of fireworks, a live orchestra, a twelve-course meal for 500—a breakfast for twelve on a barge the next morning—and it all happens. Wealth is the power to make it all happen.”