Ruler of Naught, page 12
part #2 of Exordium Series
The date on the piloting ribbon was 955, ten years ago. Osri knew who had won the medal. He’d stood there at the award ceremony when it was pinned on Markham vlith-L’Ranja, just months before the swift, terrible events that saw Markham cashiered and Brandon nyr-Arkad removed from the Academy, supposedly for the unauthorized use of atmospheric craft in war games over the southern continent, but everyone knew it was for cheating.
Everyone knew. Osri turned the medal over. If Brandon was to be believed, that rumor was false. Osri was quick to dismiss his words—of course Brandon would deny cheating. And the rumor had been passed by some very high-ranking names. On the other hand, though Brandon was irritating, irresponsible, utterly lacking in discipline or even a sense of the dignity that should be part of his duty as an Arkad, Osri had to admit that he had never been a liar.
But there was no one to ask. No one in the navy would talk about the incident. Markham had disappeared. His father, the Archon of Lusor, had committed suicide. Osri’s own father had retired from active service, acting for the next ten years as if his life in court had never taken place.
Osri had long ago come to terms with these events, believing them unrelated. He could not believe that the false rumor was a conspiracy cooked up by none other than the Aerenarch Semion vlith-Arkad, against his own brother and the L’Ranja heir. It made no sense—it sounded like one of the jokes in questionable taste that Brandon and his brother Galen had been so fond of.
What galled Osri was his recent discovery that his own father, the most loyal man Osri had ever known, had considered the Aerenarch Semion culpable in all these events.
Osri crushed the silk in his hand, recalling Ivard being carried aboard the Telvarna, his arms dangling over Montrose’s massive shoulder, and the two objects falling from a pocket onto the deck.
Markham might have given the boy the flight ribbon, for whatever reason; the coin, though, had been looted from the Ivory chamber, an act of violation that made him furious.
Osri turned the worn, uneven coin over on his palm. On the one side was a bird. On the verso, the figure resembled a woman in archaic dress. A trace of some kind of script, completely unintelligible, remained here and there. Rubbing his fingers over the warm metal of the coin, he thought about the unknown hands who had made and possessed it unimaginable millennia before, under the light of Sol.
Handling the Tetradrachm gave Osri a sense of peace, a sense of order. And Telos knew there was little enough order in the rest of his life.
A sound outside the cabin made him close his fingers protectively over it. Someone tried to open the hatch.
Osri jammed both objects into place and slapped the light cover back on. Then he hit the lock and retreated to his bunk, scowling.
“I was preparing to sleep,” he began as the hatch opened.
Lounging in the hatch was the rakish, gray-eyed comtech. “On your feet, nick,” Lokri drawled. “Let’s see what you can do with a jac in your hands.”
“I don’t...”
“Now.” Lokri stepped toward Osri, his smile tight with challenge. Osri’s heart hammered. These people are Rifters, and they follow no law but their own whim.
He followed Lokri out of the cabin, tension easing somewhat when he saw Brandon approaching the rec room from the other direction, led by the somber-faced Serapisti Jaim. Though he was still angry enough with the Aerenarch to avoid him whenever possible, he felt a measure of safety in his presence. If they were going to kill him, they’d make a show of it.
The rec room was utterly bare, featureless. Marim, who was waiting, punched the console. The four walls vanished, replaced by an excellent simulacrum of a narrow, grimy street flanked by colonnades dim with shadow.
“Factor’s Way, Port Kedorsay,” she announced.
Did they want Osri to practice backing these scum? From over the buildings on one side the blue-white glare of a booster lift-off briefly illuminated the street. Osri could feel the crackling roar through his feet. The simulation was good but not perfect—Osri’s ears still reported that he was in a small room.
Marim thrust a sim-jac into Osri’s hand. “We’re about to be attacked. Live or die.”
A figure in a garish uniform strolled out from a darkened doorway in the sim and squinted at them. It was a tall man, perhaps forty years old, with a sallow olive complexion and dark hair and brows. His bones were wide and strong under their layer of extra flesh, his expression ugly.
Osri recognized him as the man Tanri had shown them on the main screen of the defense room in Merryn—Hreem the Faithless.
“Markham’s killer.” Did he hear the whisper? In the reflected light of the simulation Brandon’s face betrayed grief, then the Aerenarch turned away, fingering the jac in his hand.
Osri remembered the quotation Brandon had made, that day in Merryn: “—and a pyre will I make of my enemy’s works.” The Sanctus Gabriel had acted at a nexus in history where justice and vengeance came together. For the first time doubt assailed Osri. Could he lay claim to the same justification?
“Handsome little chatzer, ain’t he?” Lokri laughed.
“What’s that on his boots?” Osri asked. “The metal things.”
“Heel-claws,” replied Lokri.
“Looks like they’re only useful if your opponent is lying down,” Brandon commented.
“That’s Hreem’s character in a quantum.”
“Hreem chatch n’far,” Marim cursed, making an obscene gesture at Hreem’s face before she snapped her fingers and triggered the action. “Go, Lokri!”
Hreem whipped out his weapon and fired as Lokri crouched and shot.
Evil-faced assassins appeared on rooftops, beside the decrepit buildings, or ran from doorway to doorway, firing frequently. Lokri ducked and whirled, trying to zap the phantoms before they fired on him. This went on for several minutes, then the figures disappeared and Marim hit the console.
“Not bad!” She peered at the readout. “Burned twice, three wounds, zapped seventy-three percent of ‘em.”
Lokri made a noise of disgust as he and Marim switched places. The little Rifter was fast on her feet, but reckless: she ran out of charge in the middle of a firefight. From the chaffing she took, this was not unexpected.
Jaim was next. As one would expect from a master of the Ulanshu Path, he was very fast and very accurate. Marim clapped, and Lokri watched with that speculative air. Then, with a self-deprecating gesture, Jaim gave way for Brandon to take his place.
Brandon ranked about the same as Lokri. His aim was better but he made the same sort of tactical errors that Osri then made in his turn—errors which, Osri reflected bitterly as Marim crowed about their poor scores, were to be expected from people who did not make violence their way of life.
Brandon sat on the edge of a console, smiling across the room at Marim. “You have to remember,” he said, “we’re trained to try everything short of jacs to resolve differences.”
“You’ve noticed,” Lokri retorted in exactly the same tone, “that the Dol’jharians do not make the ballroom floor their battleground.”
Jaim was studying his hands, his long dark braids swinging close to his face.
Marim said, “We all need to be better when we face Hreem next.”
Osri said, “I take it you expect us to be a part of this quarrel?” As all faces, Rifter and Aerenarch, swung his way, he hated how tight and angry his own voice sounded.
“Might not be a choice.” Lokri’s voice was mild but his narrowed eyes reflected some of Osri’s own anger.
“Does your captain practice with you?” Brandon asked.
“Group actions, she does,” Marim said with a grin. “On Dis. We sometimes play for days. On Telvarna she runs alone.”
“She was a dead shot long before she joined up with us,” Jaim put in, looking up at them. “Had to be.”
“Come on, let’s try the group run,” Marim suggested, and punched the console.
Brandon stepped obediently to the middle of the room, so Osri did as well. The three Rifters moved apart in a well-trained unit as a score of villains appeared. Osri saw Brandon fall behind, and he took up a position to his left, recalling a lesson from his Academy days. When we were trained, there was little expectation we would ever use such knowledge, he thought, and then there was no time for thought.
Osri fell into the remembered patterns of defense classes, keeping focused and alert. When the program ended and the space shifted back to normal, he was surprised by a mild sense of regret.
Lokri punched up drinks. Marim put a hand on Osri’s and Brandon’s shoulders and shoved them toward seats. Brandon complied without comment, so Osri sat where indicated. Perhaps he expects to hear something of import.
Lokri handed out the drinks. Brandon wiped damp hair off his brow and raised his glass. “The dead salute you.”
Lokri grinned. “We’ll do another tomorrow. If ya want to stay alive, you’re going to need some work.”
“How do you keep track of Hreem?” the Aerenarch asked.
“Sodality maintains a pipeline on the DataNet, like any other organization—the Infonetics blits don’t care,” replied Lokri, “so long as the fees get paid.”
“Lot of merchants and even Service types subscribe to the RiftNet, ‘cause the info’s so good,” added Marim.
Osri leaned back in his seat, considering yet another dissonance between his assumptions and reality. This was what his father had been talking about once: that no one on Arthelion seemed to realize just how much a part of the Thousand Suns the Rifter overculture was, despite its lack of any official recognition. They’re all over the Thousand Suns and beyond, he’d said, and not being planet-centered like Downsiders and even Highdwellers, they’ve got a different perspective on things. Osri remembered having ended the discussion by referring to lawlessness.
“So that means Hreem can use the same sources to gather information on his enemies? Like you, for example?” Brandon went on.
“Yep.” Marim wiped her sleeve across her mouth. “But Hreem’s made a lot of enemies, and some of those sources don’t work so well for him.”
“He can’t even get near Rifthaven anymore,” said Lokri, “since some of his gang shot up Varli’s Refit Emporium a couple of years back. Only the fact he wasn’t there himself—and paid the wergild with the heads of the ones who did it—saved him from all the Syndicates going after him.”
“And anyway, we have Vi’ya.” Jaim waved a long hand in the direction of the bridge.
Osri saw a brief exchange of glances between the Serapisti and Lokri. Brief, and completely uninterpretable.
“You mean her tempathic abilities?” Brandon asked.
“Nah.” Marim’s nose wrinkled. “That doesn’t do her much good out here—strictly up-close stuff. She says she merely uses the info to project patterns, and makes plans from there, but she’s a hot one at strategy and tactics.”
Lokri finished off his drink and lounged to the hatch. “My watch now.” And he strolled out.
Brandon said, “Did Vi’ya ask you to run us?”
Jaim shook his head, his braid-chimes tinkling.
Marim said, “Was our idea. You, Arkad, are pretty quick on the fly—we saw that back on the Mandala. But Schoolboy...” She shrugged.
Brandon was watching Jaim, who studied his hands. What was going on?
Brandon said, “I know Hreem killed Markham, but Vi’ya said he was betrayed. By whom?”
Jaim looked up quickly.
“Chatzing triple cross,” Marim said. “I still don’t know the whole story—I was on the other base when it happened—but you can ask Vi’ya. If she’ll talk, which isn’t often. Or you could ask Lokri. He knows all about it.”
Brandon’s gaze remained on Jaim. “Maybe I should cultivate your captain. I notice she’s not unfamiliar with the Ulanshu kinesics. When does she practice?”
“Only with me,” Jaim said. “She masses a lot—their bones are thicker than ours, and she’s strong.”
Marim shivered theatrically. “Don’t spar with her—she’ll break your arm without even trying. Jaim’s the only one can manage with her.”
“Their?” Osri asked.
No one answered him. Marim stretched, then wandered over to dial something more to drink. Jaim got to his feet and walked out.
Brandon also rose. Osri followed him out, and then said again, “Their?”
Brandon looked back, his gaze absent. “Dol’jharians.”
SEVEN
DESRIEN
Night had fallen, and Eloatri was lost. The realization brought her to a halt in the middle of the trail, just short of a clearing illuminated by the magenta glimmer of the rising moon. She stood among the shadows of the trees, their white trunks ghostly in the half-light. Around her the forest was silent, save for the whisper of a mild breeze and the occasional call of a night-bird. As she inhaled, the cloying sweetness of nerisa wafted to her from the clearing.
All day a certain weight had been descending on her, a formless dread with no object. She had let the feeling have its way, knowing that grasping at it would only perpetuate it. But now her back crawled with the diffuse fear of the dark that she had not experienced since childhood.
“The goal of a hejir is to go where the Hand of Telos guides one.” True, but I thought that...
Her mind stopped. Shock flooded her as she heard the chattering inner voice that discipline and meditation had stilled threescore years before. What was happening to her?
Eloatri felt adrift, as if she had stepped off the Eightfold Path into spiritual chaos. She grasped vainly at the centering mandala she learned from her master so long ago, but her mind chattered on.
In the seeing there should be just the seeing, in the hearing just the hearing, in the thinking just the thought...
Then the weight descended on her in its fullness, the Hand of Telos sundering her from the moment. Eloatri groaned wordlessly and crumpled into the lotus position, a measureless sense of loss welling up in her.
“I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Law, I take refuge in the Community,” she said aloud, but the crowded trunks of the trees around her returned her words in mocking echoes, fragments of the life being stripped from her: refuge, Law, Community, take, take, take.
She scrambled to her feet and hurried down the trail, and her third step took her out of the world into the Dreamtime.
“Here,” said Tomiko, touching her elbow and indicating a table next to the street. The High Phanist smiled as they sat down and motioned to a waiter. The young man hurried over, and Eloatri tried not to stare at his atavistically pale skin and blazing red hair. On his hand she noted a large emerald ring.
Eloatri leaned her staff against a vine-entwined roof support next to them and placed her begging bowl on the table. Its battered brass clanked against the glass surface. At a nearby table a strong-shouldered, dark-visaged man stared at her for a moment before turning back to the woman with him, whose physiognomy echoed his. With them were two white-haired children.
Eloatri didn’t hear what Tomiko ordered for them, but the waiter returned only moments later with two goblets and placed them carefully before them. Eloatri felt vaguely disappointed. Would they not eat?
Tomiko picked his goblet up and rotated it meditatively in one hand. Its metallic surface gleamed with condensation, the tiny droplets scattering rainbow flickers of light across his broad face and high cheekbones.
He raised the goblet to her and drank. She picked hers up and drank also, suddenly conscious of a tremendous thirst. A moment later she choked, slamming the goblet back on the table with a discordant crash: the taste was appalling, a compound of thick metallic heat and something so bitter that for a moment she couldn’t speak. From the goblet now came the odor of blood.
“That’s horrible!” she exclaimed, barely able to enunciate the words past the terrible constriction imposed by the bitter flavor.
The High Phanist raised his brows. “The beings of the world are numberless; I vow to save them all.”
His quotation of the first of her bodhisattva vows was like a slap in the face.
He smiled gently, and she noticed now that he, too, was speaking with difficulty, forcing the word through a bitterness almost too great to be borne. “Surely you did not suppose you drank that for yourself?”
He reached across the table and took her begging bowl. “You won’t be needing this anymore.”
She lunged across the table, grasping desperately at the battered brass bowl...
“No!” shouted Eloatri, and she awoke, standing in the moonlit clearing, clutching her begging bowl with a terrible strength. After a moment, she forced her fingers to open, and the bowl dropped into the dust of the trail with a muted clank.
o0o
TELVARNA: ARTHELION TO DIS
Sebastian Omilov shifted position, trying without success to ease the discomfort of being wedged into a small fold-down seat in the galley. Not long after the incident in the dispensary, Montrose had given him tacit permission to wander where he willed on the ship, the only caveat being that he must return if he felt any chest pain, tingling, or shortness of breath.
Almost the moment he had taken his first steps outside the sick bay he’d met Osri hovering in the corridor. Looking continually this way and that, his son had brought him straight to the galley. Silent until they were closed in, Osri then pointed at the console and said, “Father, the captain of this vessel is a Dol’jharian, and the Aerenarch knows it.”
“So do I,” Omilov murmured, and saw shock on his son’s face. “I recognized her accent. Brandon certainly did. He had to spend a great deal of time with Eusabian’s son Anaris, remember.”
“I remember,” Osri said in a flat voice.
“I have not discussed this with Brandon,” Omilov said. “In fact, I’ve seen little of him, and those visits have only been in the presence of the doctor.”
