A Prison Unsought (12 page)

Osri did not even try to hide his surprise. “Why? Won’t you
be busy enough?”

“Even a figurehead has some free
time,” Brandon said, giving a soundless laugh. “And I’d like to brush up on my
old studies. But if I make it an Official Request—”

“I see, then Nyberg is obliged to
take notice. I can easily get them; my orders came through yesterday.”

“Teaching?” Brandon asked.

“The refugee cadets.”

Brandon grimaced. “So the word from Minerva was bad?”

Osri shook his head, remembering the anger and grief of
older officers gathered at one end of the reception. That was one reason he
couldn’t just leave, all those fathers, mothers, siblings, friends and lovers
of dead cadets. Somehow he’d felt obliged to tell the story of the L’Ranja
Whoopee, even though he knew a moment’s smile would not erase the grief. “Let’s
just say that the new Academy is right here.”

Brandon’s expression mirrored the grief of the night before.
“Did anyone get away?”

“So far, the word is that the
Rifters slagged the planet, using the few escaping craft as target practice.
But there’s hope that’s mostly Rifter boast. Unwillingness to let the
Dol’jharians find out that some got through. The cadets coming in, so far, were
all on ship assignment or on leave.”

Brandon looked down, twisting the ring he was about to
relinquish; Osri had seen him do that over the past hellish weeks, and for the
first time, wondered what it meant. “Anyway,” he said, “I can get those
chips.”

“Thanks,” Brandon said as the tube
slid to a stop at the Cap’s debarkation station.

They stood, and Osri found the silent Marine solarch at
Brandon’s shoulder. The man was preternaturally efficient at vanishing and
reappearing.

Brandon glanced at the solarch. “Lead the way, Vahn.”

Vahn revealed that he was as little oriented in the Cap as
Osri was; he relied on his boswell to lead them via another transtube down a
warren of hallways.

Osri was surprised to discover the Cap reflecting the
Archaeo-Moderne style, familiar from his enforced stay on the
Telvarna
. The utilitarian corridors and
storage accesses had been set into walls with clean, pleasing lines and enough
curves to diminish what might otherwise have been a sterile atmosphere.

They reached the security node as the quiet bell tones
sounded the watch change. A door slid open and several men and women came out,
passing by with a casual salute to Osri. Osri knew it was strictly correct not
to notice the Aerenarch, but Brandon’s apparent invisibility only sufficed to
make the day seem more unreal.

Osri turned his head.
Brandon stood several yards away, his back turned and his head down as he
studied one of the old-fashioned, Mandalic-style access consoles. His dark head
was bare, and his anonymous tunic and trousers marked him as merely a civilian.
So he was making it easy for everyone by participating actively in his
invisibility, which meant that the higher-ups all knew he was there, and were
complicit.

I hate politics,
Osri
thought, his neck tightening. He wondered how they were going to feel when
Brandon ended Anton vlith-Arkad’s career as summarily as his brother’s life had
been ended.

Then Vahn whispered something, and Brandon wheeled,
rejoining Osri in a few swift steps as a tall man with ebony skin approached
from the other direction, on his way to the tube.

Brandon said, “Commander Faseult. A moment, please.”

And Anton vlith-Arkad halted. His heart pounded, and he
could not move, it was as if his feet had been anchored to the deck by a
tractor beam. The ruby in the Faseult ring lanced blood-red glimmers through
his brain as the Aerenarch gestured, bringing with it the future he had
secretly longed for since childhood. And dreaded since the war began and the
influx of horrific report after horrific report made it clear that to be Archon
of Charvann now meant absolutely nothing.

Faseult collected himself and made the salute of a Marine to
a civilian. His last meaningful gesture, he thought ironically.

“May we be private?” the Aerenarch
asked, his voice so light it could not have carried to the Marine solarch, who
remained by the wall console, his eyes averted.

Faseult glanced at the lieutenant, recognizing Osri Omilov.
Whoever had written the report on Omilov seemed to have underestimated his
connection to the Aerenarch.

Faseult took a deep breath and gestured silently at the
small anteroom a few paces away. The three went in, the Marine stationing
himself outside and shutting the door.

Faseult had spent a sleepless night endlessly reviewing
every detail of the previous night’s scene, wondering what it meant. He waited,
knowing he was not ready for the answer now.

Then Brandon bowed to him in the mode of sovereign to archon
heir presumptive and held up his hand with the signet ring. Osri’s heart
clenched as the commander’s face distorted into a kind of wild grief, all the
more terrible for its soundlessness, before the man exerted tight control.

“It was my promise to your brother
to carry this to you, and to give it from my hand to yours,” Brandon said. His
voice had taken on a curious cadence. “The Archon Tanri died in honor, and when
my father returns, that honor will pass to the next Faseult Archon, whose
family motto is
Volo, rideo
.”

“‘I will, I laugh,’” Osri whispered
to himself as the familiar ache gripped him again. His father’s friend for most
of two decades, Tanri Faseult had been a larger-than-life figure, a hero. The
laughter had given him a sense of balance, he’d often said: he who could laugh
at himself could laugh at the world, and not fear it.

Osri had learned that lesson too late. His eyelids burned as
he watched Anton drop to one knee, his palms out in the ancient
noble-to-royalty mode. The signet stone flashed, the carving standing out in
relief: a smiling charioteer drawn by the two sphinxes. And then the ring was
on the commander’s finger, and Brandon was raising him to his feet.

“Commander vlith-Faseult,” he said—stressing
the military title. “When my father is free, you must come before him to take
your oath.”

The commander made a quick, convulsive gesture, but as if to
forestall any response, Brandon said, “Later we can tell you more of the battle
over Charvann. Your brother got in some priceless zings at Hreem the
Faithless.” He glanced toward Osri and added gently, “The gnostor Sebastian
Omilov, father to Lieutenant Omilov here, was there at the end.” Brandon’s blue
eyes narrowed, and Osri wondered if he hadn’t slept at all.

But Brandon’s glance stayed steady, and Osri understood the
signal. “Your Highness,” he said, “I have to report for duty.”

Brandon nodded, hit the door control, and they went out,
Osri believing they left the commander to grieve in private, and Brandon trying
to determine if that moment of naked emotion he’d seen in the man had been
guilt, satisfied desire, or regret.
Maybe
all three.

o0o

Jaim studied the coffee swirling in his cup, trying not to
betray his impatience as Montrose fussed over his former patient, in Sebastian
Omilov’s suite in the Cloisters.

Montrose in his capacity as physician would never be
hurried. Even though they had fallen into the hands of the Panarchists. Even
though Omilov’s position should gain him the right to Ares station’s best
medical aid possible, a word from Brandon ought to have assured it.

Jaim’s cup contained real coffee, brewed from beans grown
and roasted right there in the station. Another sign of the limitless wealth
and power available here, not that everyone at Ares Station could get coffee
anytime they wanted. Vast as the place was, there was a limit on how much space
could be given over to the production of luxuries. Perhaps there were people on
Ares who never tasted coffee, and some who got it rarely. For the Arkadic
Enclave, though, there was an unending supply.

Jaim resorted to Ulanshu breathing in an effort to release
the muscle contractions of impatience.
How
long do we have, before the Arkad finishes his business up at the Cap?

“You’re better than I expected,” Montrose said finally. “But
that still puts you far below what I would consider safe to be walking around.
You need that heart repair now.”

“Thank you,” Omilov said in that pleasant Douloi voice that
revealed nothing. “And so I shall, when events release me from duty.”

Montrose’s tone was unsettlingly reflective of those Douloi
cadences as he echoed, “Duty?” He cast a glance around the quiet garden.

Omilov made one of those oblique gestures, then said, “If
you would honor me with your forbearance, I would request you to permit me to
continue under your care.”

“Mine?” Montrose said, his thick brows rising.

He glanced around the quiet garden, the only sound the
sweet, sometimes melancholy notes from hidden wind chimes, and below that the
hum of bees. But as if he saw answers there, he said, “Is this related to why
you aren’t living with us?”

Omilov bowed slightly.

The exchange reminded Jaim of the days aboard the
Telvarna
, when the two would play chess.
Never had Montrose’s Douloi background been so clear as when they bantered over
the carved figures.

Montrose said, “Then you will be put on a strict diet, and
you will get out every day and walk. You realize that it would be easier to
continue your care if you lived with us. You could even help with that damned
console. Just this morning, while I was making the breakfast rolls, Brandon got
a hundred and forty-nine drops—and those are just the ones the discriminators
let through. Someone is going to have to deal with those.”

“I am certain that Brandon will
find a way to deal with his mail,” Omilov said.

Jaim had been considering the unspoken currents in the
conversation. ‘Duty?’ What was Omilov’s duty? Wasn’t he a retired teacher from
some minor college? How would any duty perceived by such an individual keep him
here, much less prevent him from getting that heart rebuilt?

He decided it was time to test the invisible limits. “So
what is it you’re not saying? The mail has to be dealt with by high-end nicks
because we wouldn’t understand their lies?”

Omilov’s smile was rueful. “You mean the Tetrad Centrum Douloi?
No, for to lie outright is a sign of vulgarity—of stupidity to some—carrying
with it the risk of being caught. But you must always remember that they don’t
always tell the truth, either. They rarely say in public what they think. What
you will usually hear is what they want you to think they think. And the deep
ones will say something that may mean one thing to you and another to your
neighbor, and something else again to both of you a week later.”

“Srivashti and his tailor,” Jaim said. “I get it. Not lies,
but code.”

Montrose’s eyes narrowed, and Jaim remembered that Montrose
had come from Srivashti’s archonate.

Omilov said, “One of our oldest, and most powerful,
families, the Srivashti. They were Jaspar Arkad’s backbone, in action and in
materiel, a millennium ago. Srivashti, the present Archon, is a very . . .
complicated individual.”

“I know he ruined Timberwell,” Jaim
said with another glance at Montrose’s hard, angry face.

Omilov nodded soberly. “As was his right, so far as the
government was concerned. They could not interfere.” He sighed, and got to his
feet. “A subtle man, Srivashti,” he said. “He was a loyal and powerful ally to
the former Aerenarch. I hope devoutly he will be a friend to the present one.”
He paused, inclining his head courteously. “Thank you for attending me. Send
your list of foods, and I shall abide by it.”

“I’ll send it before the watch
change,” Montrose said, and joined Jaim, who swallowed the last of his coffee
before setting the cup carefully on the stone table.

Now it was time for them to head for the meeting that Vi’ya
had signaled during her walk through the ballroom. As they threaded along the
flower-bordered path in the garden, Montrose eyed Jaim’s somber, downward gaze,
and said, “What do you make of that?”

“He doesn’t trust the medical staff
here.”

Montrose waved that away. “He knows it’s excellent. Better
than I, most likely,” he admitted, a rare humble moment that cause Jaim to
smile briefly. Montrose rumbled a soft laugh, then spat out the word,
“Politics.” He tipped his head.

Jaim said, “I don’t get how duty requires him to sit here
out of the way, and risk dying of heart failure.”

Montrose laced his fingers together as they walked, and
turned them outward. “The fact that he said as much as he did surprised me. The
Magisterium at least seems to guarantee freedom from surveillance, and so we
can have this conversation.”

Jaim said, “I got that much. Does he think these non-lying
Douloi might try to kill him? If so, why?”

“No, no, no. For some reason, he
perceives his duty to lie outside of both poles: that represented by the Arkad
and that of the Navy. If he reports to the station medical teams, you can
guarantee whatever they find will reach Nyberg’s desk. His proximity to the
Arkads guarantees that. Which, in turn, might keep him from being included
among their councils.” He waved a hand, as the greenery widened into a lawn
edged by ferns. “So. We know we weren’t listened to, which means you and I were
permitted that much autonomy. Now, let us further test our physical limitations
by seeing if they permit us to get all the way to Detention Five.”

Jaim paced beside Montrose, half-expecting a Marine to pop
up and halt them, or at least question their destination. As soon as they
reached the transtube path outside the Cloisters, Jaim said, “You’re going to
duff Srivashti.” It wasn’t even a question.

Montrose gave him a piratical grin. “It’s called justice, my
boy. Justice. You heard the good gnostor: the nicks won’t do anything about
Srivashti. According to their rules, they can’t. This is precisely why I
rejoice in my status as a Rifter.”