A Prison Unsought (10 page)

Whatever the cause, the construction noise from the
Yamazakura wing of the Cloister was impossible to ignore this morning. She
winced as a particularly loud bang echoed, momentarily silencing some of the
morning chatter from the singing toads and the long-tailed tzillis flitting
high up among the trees.

She looked around the verdant little cove in the Cloister’s
central garden where she awaited her guest for breakfast. It was now late
enough morning that the dissonance between the too-short shadows and the early-dawn
quality of light engineered into the radiants had faded. One could almost
believe oneself on a planet, as long as one didn’t look directly spinwards or
antispinwards too often.

Eloatri dropped her gaze to the little console of the
monneplat as it clucked and delivered a strong cup of coffee. There was no time
to be mooning about her exile from Desrien. She had an obligation to discharge
this morning before Sebastian Omilov joined her at table.

She tabbed the console, and a cloud of light over the table
coalesced into Admiral Nyberg’s craggy features. She had been surprised when
he’d approached her at the reception, since their previous meeting upon her
arrival had been formal and minimal, and she’d had no further contact with the
Navy beyond the minimum needed to obtain her testimony at Captain Nukiel’s
court martial.

The acquittal of the
Mbwa
Kali’s
captain apparently meant that the Navy had finally decided to accept
her as High Phanist. Thus Ares commander’s invitation for her to call this
morning.

“Numen,” he began, confirming her
guess. “Thank you for calling so promptly. I regret not being able to visit in
person. Since this line is not secure, I will be brief. I would ask two favors
of you. The first is your attendance at a briefing in the Cap. I’ll forward time,
place, and a pass to you if you agree. I cannot tell you what will be
discussed, only that your inclusion was requested.”

“By
whom? And ‘cannot’ or ‘will not’?” At times like this Eloatri enjoyed the
license for bluntness that was a privilege of the Polloi. “But you’re not sure
what will be discussed?”

“I’m not allowed to be sure,”
snapped the admiral, then held up his hand. “Forgive me, Numen. Time is short.
Will you attend?”

At his end, Nyberg studied the old woman, who frowned as if
she’d lost her wits. No, that was not a stupid face, it was one of deep
conflict. “Forgive me,” she replied, her absent gaze meeting his.
Not stupid at all.
“I am not the
custodian of your conscience,” she said without a shred of animosity. “Yes, I
will attend, although I’ve no idea what I can contribute to a military
briefing.”

Neither do I.
“Thank you, Numen. And the second is to request your assistance in establishing
some independent means of communication with the Eeya’a, as you are the only
person besides the Rifter captain to whom they apparently defer.”

“I doubt that I myself can be of
much assistance. Our communication, such as it is, is highly abstract—more a
recognition of archetypal energies than anything else. But there is someone
under my authority who can, I think, assist your project.”

Nyberg accepted her agreement with suitable Douloi politesse.
Now you’re Xeno’s problem
. “I am
indebted to you, Numen. Captain Phinboul of our Xeno department will be in
touch. I wish you a good day.” He reached to tab off the holo.

“But know you, Admiral,” the High
Phanist said before his fingers reached the tab, “that Telos moves in these
people and those sophonts. They are a hinge of Time and I will do nothing to
imperil the opening of that door, nor allow anyone under my authority to do
so.”

Nyberg lowered his hand carefully to the desk, bits of
Nukiel’s testimony flickering through his mind. This was exactly the sort of
talk he hated—it was impossible to corroborate, or to refute. “My concern is
the safety of Ares and the prosecution of the war against Dol’jhar, Numen.”

Eloatri had seen Nyberg’s expression change. Panic?
Resentment? Fear?
Maybe all three
.

He cleared his throat before continuing. “I trust our paths
will run parallel.”

“I’m sure they will,” she replied.
“I will always be available to you.”

Nyberg hesitated very slightly. “And I to you, Numen. Thank
you.”

His image flickered out.

Eloatri breathed out her frustration, wondering yet again
why it was she who had been chosen.
I do
not like politics, and I know so little of the Tetrad Centrum Douloi.
But
Tomiko had made it clear her wishes were the least of priorities. She saw again
the cup and its terrible liquid, heard again what the dying Tomiko had said to
her:
Surely you did not suppose you drank
that for yourself?

She shuddered and picked up her coffee, taking a scalding
mouthful to wash away the taste of blood, powerful even as a ghost memory.

So it was that her guest found her in a contemplative mood
and did not have to exert himself to keep the conversation light and neutral
during breakfast. Nonetheless, at the conclusion of the meal, Sebastian Omilov
wondered again if accepting the High Phanist’s invitation to lodge at Cloister
had been his wisest choice. Not that Eloatri was anything but the most
considerate host, and the Arkadic Enclave could hardly be any more pleasant
than this open, airy complex that belied its archaic title.

Replete with a meal exactly to his liking, he leaned back in
his chair. From somewhere behind him floated faint echoes of hammering and
unidentifiable screeches and groans from other tools as a crew remodeled a
portion of the ancient building to house refugees.

But all was peaceful here in the inner garden amid floral
fragrances and the resiny scent of shaggy-barked trees. He’d never seen so many
butterflies and diaphanes outside a nature preserve, festooning the trees and
shrubs around their
tête-à-tête
and
floating erratically overhead, although there seemed to be something keeping
them away from the table and its tempting array of berry tartlets and
butterapple buns.

A shadow flickered across the table from one of the
hang-gliders he’d glimpsed from his bedroom window earlier, now circling
overhead, their bright colors echoing the delicate insects of the Cloister
garden.

Eloatri smiled at how Sebastian’s face relaxed as he watched
the morning scrum overhead. It had seemed mere impulse to offer him a suite
when she heard he his wife had refused to take him in. That, and curiosity.
Sebastian Omilov had lived on board the Rifter ship whose crew included all but
one of the people the Dreamtime had bidden her follow. And a twinge of
responsibility: the Dreamtime had hit him hard. Last night she’d been amply
repaid as he stood by her and gave a running account of whom she was seeing and
whence they came as the Douloi twirled by in their interminable waltzes and
quadrilles.

Still, she could not resist trying to confirm a guess of
hers as to the phenomenal nexus of his vision on Desrien: was it that painting from
which she’d seen him and Osri turn away?

“They’re rather like the ball last
night, aren’t they?” she said. “Thank you again for being my Vergil among the Tetrad
Centrum Douloi.”

Omilov exhibited no sign of recognition. Either Douloi
control, or ignorance? She found the latter hard to believe.

“Indeed,” Omilov murmured. He
cradled his empty tea cup in his hands, the delicate porcelain cool against his
palms. The leaf fragments stippling the bottom of the cup yielded no pattern.
“Although they seem to have but one center. Why do they circle overhead like
that?”

He looked up as the old woman smiled at him from under her
preposterous straw hat. The shade it cast across her round, seamed face did not
hide those observant eyes.

She saw too much, Omilov had already decided. Eloatri often
affected an absent air that was quite disarming, especially given her
grandmotherly appearance, the very model of the nested bushka dolls he’d picked
up on Rodina years ago. The reception last night had changed something in her.

“It’s not the same ones,” she
replied, then chuckled. “Apparently the Cloister grounds generate a lot of hot
air—a thermal they call it—and they use it to help launch themselves. The fees
for their use of our bell tower are an important part of our maintenance
budget.”

“There are doubtless many places on
Ares where such conditions obtain.”

“Indeed. But none has as grand an construction
as we.”

Omilov showed no reaction at the forcible reminder of the
High Phanist’s Polloi origins. She had chosen a dreadfully ambiguous Uni word
to describe the tower. “Ah. And yet is it not your tradition that speaks of the
danger of tall edifices?”

Eloatri laughed. “Yes.
But it’s really a story about power, and the delusions thereof.”

The monneplat chimed, and two cups of a savory digestive
tisane emerged. She began to hand one to Omilov, then hesitated, seeing his
gaze fixed on the little console.

Unbidden—unwanted—memory seized him, a voice chanting softly:

“Through me you pass into the city of woe:
    Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
    Justice the founder of my fabric moved . . .”

Omilov made an effort and shook off the memory.

He took the tea cup from the High Phanist, but the
unfamiliar glyphs on the monneplat’s console shimmered distractingly at the
edge of his vision. It was certainly no delusion that as a Praerogate Occult,
he had only to speak a few words here, or anywhere within range of a computing
device, to make himself master of Ares. No, the delusion was more likely that
he would recognize the right moment when it came, if there even were to be a
right moment. If he misjudged, than his blow would yield only wind.

Worse, he could not assume himself to be the only Invisible
on Ares. The Worm would answer to any of them. And the Dol’jharians knew their
identities now, having mindripped them out of the Spider, Nahomi il-Ngari;
could their technology of pain turn a Praerogate? Having experienced that
technology himself, Omilov was not sure it couldn’t. Any incoming refugee might
be such.

He became aware of Eloatri’s gaze. “Forgive me,” he said.
“My thoughts strayed to the refugees arriving daily.” A partial truth was
always safe.

Eloatri nodded; time to try again. “Ares has become an unexpected
way-point in many journeys. I certainly never thought to occupy these
quarters.”

Another shadow flickered across the table, but this time its
departure took Omilov’s cautious good mood with it and the darkness stayed. An
internal whisper repeated the words he’d read in the cathedral, on that
painting, before his . . . seizure:
“Midway through my life’s journey I found myself in a dark wood, the
true way wholly lost.”

He was sure her use of the journey metaphor had been
deliberate. The knowledge brought not fresh anger but a kind of relief, as it
strengthened his conviction that his mind had been deliberately manipulated in
some manner in Desrien’s cathedral. Had they done something similar to Brandon?

Contrite, Eloatri watched her words strike home, evoking
memory of the breathing of that vast unseen predator, passionless and without
parts, that had stalked her in the fog of Desrien. Why should she expect
whatever Sebastian Omilov had been found by on Desrien to be any less
terrifying? “Of course, you could say that of all of us, and even more so of
those we’ll be housing here—God knows we have enough room, more than we’re
allowed to use, in fact.”

Seeing the signs of discomfort in Omilov’s demeanor slowly
ebb, Eloatri continued. “I have spent virtually all my free time since arriving
on Ares exploring the Cloister, and I still cannot fathom the mind or minds
that designed it. Starting with the fact that it was originally the
private chapel
of the Illyahin family.
Can you imagine? It’s practically as big as New Glastonbury Cathedral!”

He answered with a smile, but she sensed that it was
politeness, not interest. She sighed. She was too new to her position, let
alone her lodgings, and events had taken her away from Desrien before she’d
even fully recovered from the spectacularly unconventional way in which she’d
become High Phanist. Eloatri’s hand panged and she winced, reflexively rubbing
it, and noting Omilov’s gaze flickering away. She put her hands in her lap,
stretching out the scar tissue as she had been instructed by the chirurgeon.

Eloatri did not suppose that she would ever be entirely free
of the pain of the burn inflicted on her by the Digrammaton in its inexplicable
leap across the light-years between Arthelion and Desrien. Not that she often
had time to reflect on that: her time since then had been spent in learning a
radically new—and often uncomfortable and even distasteful—religious tradition,
and in seeking the persons the Dreamtime had bidden her follow. Except one,
still unidentified, all had come to Desrien, had been seized by the Dreamtime,
and now were here, with her, on Ares.

Now what?

It was with some relief that Eloatri saw her secretary Tuan
approaching with a bit more urgency than he usually displayed, his undyed
woolen tunic immaculate as always, in contrast to his wild hair. He had that
hint of a crooked smile that warned her of another manifestation of the holy
fool; Tuan was a Nazirite Woolgatherer. She sighed. She’d inherited him with
the Cloister and could no more discharge him than remove one of the gargoyles
that leered from unexpected perches throughout the Cloister, especially since
he’d been appointed by Tomiko, her predecessor.

Tuan could barely contain the bubble of amusement behind his
ribs as he reached them. He wished he could have arranged to spring on the
gnostor without warning what had just been delivered, but seeing the man’s face
upon the telling would have to do.