A Prison Unsought (16 page)

Ivard opened his mouth. His high tenor joined the threnody.
His body remained utterly relaxed while his arm, girdled by the green, glowing
ribbon, snaked up into the air and swayed gently. Vi’ya, too, was swaying, her
body expressive of extreme tension.

Eloatri’s vision blurred. No, the ribbon had twinned, a new
loop twisting up from Ivard’s greenish flesh. Ivard’s back arched and a
terrible cry broke from his lips, but Vi’ya’s voice rose with it, wordlessly
matching it and then, somehow, forcing it back into the music of the Kelly.
Twice more Ivard cried out; pain lanced through the image of the Digrammaton
mirrored in Eloatri’s palm, then vanished as the head-stalk of the Intermittor
darted forward like a snake striking, thrust through the twinned loop writhing
up from Ivard’s wrist, and pulled it free.

The alien song rose to a shout of triumph and joy as the
green ring rotated slowly down the Intermittor’s head-stalk and disappeared
amongst her ribbons, now fluffed out as if by a huge charge of static
electricity. Bands and splotches of color chased across the Intermittor’s body,
accompanied by wafts of complex scents. Eloatri’s eyes watered.

Silence fell, and then the Eya’a keened shrilly, their heads
twitching with inhuman speed from side to side, and Vi’ya’s body jerked in a
clonic spasm.

One of the dogs uttered a high, thin howl; both lay with
ruffs fluffed, their ears flattened.

The Kelly hooted, their head-stalks swiveling. Eloatri
sensed deep surprise. The image of the Digrammaton in her palm thrummed
painfully.

The Eya’a pushed past Vi’ya as her head bowed, her arms
slipping off her thighs onto the floor as if attempting to support a terrible
weight descending on her shoulders. The Eya’a’s twiggy hands danced gently
across Ivard’s slowly relaxing body, stilling in a lacy cradle around his head.

The terrible tension left Vi’ya’s body. Ivard emitted a
whistling snore as he sank into deep sleep. Something rolled from his hand and
hit the floor with a muted clink. Vi’ya grunted with effort, leaned over, and
picked it up.

Eloatri glimpsed the silver of a coin and a crumpled bit of
silk before the Rifter captain tucked the objects into a pocket on Ivard’s
unresisting body. At the sight of the coin, Eloatri’s palm gave a last,
valedictory pang, then subsided.

The Eya’a stepped back. All movement ceased.

This tableau held until the door opened and the Aerenarch
entered, his clothes smeared with mud and grass stains. Mud streaked one cheek.
His guard, the Rifter Ulanshu master, was also marked.

Eloatri felt a pulse of danger, yet Brandon did not betray
the manner of one coming straight from a fight as he turned to Vi’ya, his
expression questioning, even pained. Eloatri watched as Vi’ya forced her head
up, her eyes marked with fatigue: Eloatri recognized a communication in the
lifting of chin, the tension of hands, but then that was gone. Both were too
good at hiding their true selves.

The Kelly flowed toward the Aerenarch. He greeted them in
their signs, but very quickly, then he said to Vi’ya, “Will he be all right?”

“Yes,” she said to her hands. “He will recover.”

The Intermittor danced up and guided the Aerenarch away from
the sleeping youth.

M’liss rubbed her head fiercely. It wasn’t quite a headache,
nor dizziness; she felt like someone had stuffed her skull with batting.

Then shock cleared her mind as she looked around more
closely. “The dogs? Where are they?” They were her responsibility.

The Intermittor turned her way, mellow voice low, but
insistent. “All is well, all is well. Their movements are part of the moral
agency wethree required.”

“Dogs are fine,” Vi’ya said huskily. “Ivard released them.”

M’liss caught the eye of the Xeno officer, whose gaze was
sympathetic. She let out her breath slowly.

Eloatri said to Vi’ya, “You do have a telepathic link to
Ivard, then?”

Vi’ya’s dense black gaze lifted briefly, meeting Eloatri’s,
then shifted. Eloatri felt a curious inner tingle, as if she’d been through a
security scan.

“It is the Eya’a,” Vi’ya said. Her voice was low and soft.
“Through them I can link with anyone, it seems. Even you.” She smiled slightly.

“Though there is a cost, am I right?” Eloatri said. “A sense
of dislocation—vertigo—and a terrible draining of energy?”

Vi’ya shrugged, but did not deny it.

Eloatri said, “I ask because I believe I can help you.”

Vi’ya looked up quickly, her lips parting in surprise—but
her gaze was wary.

Eloatri smiled, doing her best to project reassurance.
“Telepathy is indeed rare among humans, though it apparently wasn’t always so.
Certainly it was not rare among your own people of the island—the Chorei—before
they were annihilated by the mainlanders.” Eloatri paused. Vi’ya said nothing,
but Eloatri knew she had her attention. “Among the refugees arrived at Ares are
some of my own colleagues, from the College of Synchronistic Perception and
Practice. For a number of reasons, they are still living aboard their escape
ship. One of their number is a Dol’jharian, a descendant from your Chorei. I
can ask if he would be willing to work with you.”

Vi’ya still said nothing.

She has not refused
.
Eloatri knew when retreat was the best tactic.

“I’ll be in contact,” she said, and went out. She was
inclined to smile, but then she remembered that brief, intense moment when
Vi’ya and Brandon met gaze to gaze.
I
shall have to be very careful.

The excitement of the Eya’a seared Vi’ya’s mind as she
watched the High Phanist depart. Their thoughts were incomprehensible, the
images reminiscent of their excitement back on Dis when the Arkad had arrived
bearing the Heart of Kronos, now lost to Eusabian.

But their import was clear.

Now the Battle of Arthelion made sense. Somehow, the growing
linkage between Ivard, the Kelly, and the Eya’a had triggered awareness in the
little sophonts of the presence of another Urian mechanism, less powerful than
the Heart and thus previously unsensed, here on Ares. The Eya’a, who did not
build machines, had no idea what it was they’d sensed, but Vi’ya the ship
captain did.

Now the Battle of Arthelion made sense, the lives and ships
so freely spent in a way she knew was not Panarchic. The hyperwave truly
existed. Not only that, the Panarchists had captured one at Arthelion.

If they find out I know
about their hyperwave, I will never escape. Assuming they let me live.

She glanced at the Kelly, still dancing threir conversation
with the Arkad, wondering if they knew—and if threy’d tell him if threy did.
She also wondered how much had the High Phanist understood of those last
moments, after the genome had twinned from Ivard.

The images from Desrien welled up from memory, pushing past
barriers weakened by the onset of a staggering headache, and she pushed back
viciously. Eloatri had no psychic talents, Vi’ya was sure, but she saw far more
than most. Behind her slight figure loomed the unknown powers of the
Magisterium; after Desrien and the vision of the Chorei she had experienced
there, and had discussed with no one, Vi’ya could no more discount the reality
of those powers than that of her own heartbeat.

But she’s right. The
link with the Eya’a is becoming more than I can handle
. The awareness vexed
her, but what was, was. She would do what she had to do: a greater mastery of
their link, and the new strengths lent by Ivard and the Kelly, could only
advance her plans. The nicks would not hold her long.

Her stillness, her tension caught Jaim’s attention. While
the Kelly and Brandon exchanged their dance-like conversation, Jaim hunkered
down beside Vi’ya. Her black gaze struck his nerves.
Is she angry with me? Why?
There had been no trace of anger when
they’d met the preceding hour.

Her first question took him by surprise. “Why is he here?”
She lifted her chin slightly in Brandon’s direction.

“Wanted to check on Ivard.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I came at his
command.”

She did not look away, but somehow it was easier to return
her regard. Jaim felt as if a vise had eased from his brain; either he was more
tired than he’d thought, or else her talents were gaining in magnitude.

“Are you then his
creature?” Once again the slight lift of the chin toward Brandon.

That’s the cause of
the anger. “I am no one’s creature,” Jaim said. “The Fourfold Path leads me,
and for a time I must be his shadow.”

She understood—it was the Ulanshu way.

She said, “I wish you would train Ivard.”

Jaim glanced at the sleeping youth. “Forgetting how to live
in his body?”

“Exactly.”

Jaim hesitated. “Why don’t you train him?”

Though her expression did not change, he sensed that she did
not like the question. Old memories made fear prickle down his arms, but he
stood his ground, and forced himself not to react.

She said only, “The Eya’a occupy most of my time.” Her lips
twitched, a change of expression not quite a smile. “And you know how heavy my
kind are. I might slip and crush him.”

Jaim grinned. “I’ll teach him.”

Vi’ya lifted a hand. “Fighting?”

“Just movement control at first,”
Jaim said. “Until he regains his strength. No hurry. There’s certainly no
danger here—” He stopped when her eyes narrowed. “Is there?”

When she spoke, it was
with apparent reluctance. “The Eya’a heard it last night, when we passed
through that room of chaos,” she said finally. “There is no identity—they still
cannot sort humans unless they know them—but there are those who want your
Arkad dead.”

My Arkad?

He was going to ask more, but heard Brandon’s quick step.

Vi’ya turned away and
joined the Eya’a, who chittered on a high, ear-torturing note. Ivard muttered
in his sleep, and the Kelly added their voices in a weird counterpoint.

What’s going on?

No one was going to tell him, obviously. Brandon flicked his
gaze around, coming to Vi’ya last. She kept her back to him.

He said to Jaim, “Let’s go.”

o0o

About the same moment Yenef invited the Aerenarch to leave
a message for Vannis, Vannis herself was led inside Tau Srivashti’s
glittership. As she trod behind the sinister steward along the noiseless
corridor, she wondered if her reluctance to trust Yenef with her destination
was going to prove one of her more stupid decisions.

Like going aboard Rista’s ship with a newly-hired maid about
whom she knew nothing.

The silent, black-clad servitor indicated a plush chair in
the private sanctum deep within the glittership, and as Vannis looked around
the subtle shadings of steel and silver and bone white, the room quiet as an
ancient tomb, she could not help but think that in this ship, no one could hear
you scream.

She didn’t need to check her boswell to know that connection
to the rest of Ares was muted (or monitored by Srivashti’s unseen staff), and
she straightened her spine, annoyed with herself.

Not for being fanciful. Memory flooded back, and she
shivered, viscerally aware of the danger of this visit. If Srivashti wanted he
could make her disappear, and she suspected even Nyberg wouldn’t be able to do
anything about it.

Even if he cared. Who would care, really?
That’s what brought me here, the fact that
nobody cares, because I am one step from powerless
.

All right, then, so the former Archon of Timberwell was
still powerful, and always had been dangerous. But she had her wits.
Use them.

Srivashti himself appeared, dressed in dark colors with
accents that drew attention to his pale, almost yellowish eyes, contrasting
with the mahogany shade of his skin.

The silent man in black brought in a beaten gold tray on
which was set a formal tea service as fine as anything she had possessed on
Arthelion.

“Thank you for meeting me,” Srivashti
said, and served her himself.

She accepted the tiny chinois cup, from which steam curled
languorously, filling the air with a curious scent, sharp, a little like
bergamot and honey and musk, with a hint of cedar smoke on a wintry day. She
lifted the cup, watching him over its gilt rim as he tasted the brew, his mouth
relaxing minutely in approval.

She sipped, her mouth filling with a complexity of flavors
nearing the extreme of toleration: hot, but not quite too hot, sharp, but not
quite too sharp, an underlying sweetness that just avoided being cloying.

He sat down next to her, his proximity evoking memories—as,
she sensed, he was very well aware.

“What is this?” she asked,
indicating her drink.

“It is sometimes called Cambrian
tea,” he answered. “A harmless enough name for a brew that, apparently, the
Shiidra find intoxicating.”

She controlled her reaction, having expected something of
the kind. Srivashti always liked to keep people off-balance. So she wouldn’t
let it happen.
After all, it can’t be so
very poisonous to humans, since Shiidra can—and do—eat humans
, she told
herself. She swallowed off the cup, and set hers down a moment after he
finished his own.

He smiled in appreciation, the muted lighting in the cabin
heightening the yellow in his eyes as he leaned forward to refill her cup; his
proximity stirred up old memories, and she found herself distracted by the
shape of his arm beneath the fine silk of his shirt, the slow measure of his
breathing. “Now,” he said, “to business. In light of that truly lamentable vid
that shocked us all yesterday, I believe the time has come to cease waiting for
someone to do something. As a first step, I propose that we join forces, you
and I.”

“Join forces?” she repeated,
suppressing the brief spurt of triumph. Of course it was not so simple; she was
offended that he would think she would believe it to be. She wouldn’t let him
see either reaction.