A Prison Unsought (25 page)

Vahn remained where he was, and with a distinct feeling of
distaste that grew each time he did it, activated Jaim’s monitor.

“. . . interrupt
you?” Jaim sounded loud, god-like.

The Aerenarch’s voice came, flattened slightly. “What, dawn
already? Can’t we arrange to slow the chrono?”

Jaim sighed. “Vahn says there was an assassination attempt.
Last night. Helix. Found it before our return.”

After a pause, Brandon’s reaction surprised Vahn: “Do you
believe him?”

“I don’t see the utility in a lie.”

“There might be several reasons,
but none of them likely. Well, then, there was an attempt. Events are moving
with a speed I hadn’t anticipated. It’s time, I think, to—”

Vahn had seen the visitor code, but ignored it; very few
were on the first perimeter pass list. But this visitor apparently was. As Vahn
cursed to himself at the interruption, Keveth’s voice came over the boswell:
(Former Aerenarch-Consort Vannis.)

Over the link, Jaim said, “You want to be alone for this?”

The Aerenarch replied, “Why?”

o0o

Vannis had dressed with careful simplicity. She had
abandoned mourning white—indicating, she hoped, sincerity—and only wore two
jewels, one to catch up half her hair and the other a clasp on her otherwise
unadorned gown, from which Yenef had skillfully removed the lace and ribbons
indicative of morning at-home. Vannis’s hands were bare, because she’d noticed
that Brandon had worn no jewelry other than the Faseult signet, which (rumor
had it) had been quietly surrendered to Anton Faseult, oaths to come.

The guards at the gate passed her. Surely Brandon’s position
had not become so ambiguous that anyone had instant access.

No. Whatever they were whispering about Brandon, he was
still who he was. She had to be on a privileged list; her heart leapt in
triumph. Maybe this would be easier than she’d thought.

She lifted a hand to put aside a huge frond and found
Brandon standing a meter beyond, leaning in the doorway. She bowed, not the bow
of family but of peers one degree removed; it was for Brandon to make any
acknowledgment of relationship. She smiled at the last, hoping that the
time—early morning—would impel him to drop formality, so that gallantry could
inspire him to the familial response.

He touched her hand, smiled to the same degree, and gestured
her inside. Informal but impersonal, and typically air-brained. “Morning,
Vannis,” he said. “Want some breakfast?”

His clothes were rumpled, as if he’d been up all night, and
his hair, too long for the latest court fashion, still lay tousled on his neck.

She stepped inside the room, casting a quick glance around;
would he, with a freezing urbanity, introduce her to some lover, relaxed on a
sofa in borrowed robes and smiling with pride of possession?

Then her eyes found the tall Rifter in gray. His long face
was marked with exhaustion.
Is that it,
then?
But of course. She remembered that Brandon had been paired with that
L’Ranja heir before they were both kicked out of the Academy. So: men, then.
The question was, men only?

“Coffee, certainly, Your Highness,”
she said. “I take it you have an unlimited supply?”

“Comes with the location.” He made
an apologetic gesture. “And in here, we can dispense with the titles.” Which
dispensed entirely with formality—leaving the way for intimacy.

The Rifter moved with soundless steps to the wall console
and worked there.
But we’re not alone,
Brandon.

Approaching the question obliquely, she sat on a low chair
and arranged her skirts about her as she said, “Semion preferred the amenities
observed whatever the hour or place.”
“Even
in private?” he can say, and I can hint that we’re not private, and thus get
him to send out the lover. Then I’ll know his status.

“He would.” Brandon sat down opposite her and smiled. His
eyes, unlike Semion’s steel-gray ones, were very blue—the same color as the
long-dead Kyriarch’s, who had once been close to Vannis’s mother. “I’ve always
wanted to know something. Did you ever set foot in his fortress on Narbon?”

He had not followed her lead. That steady blue gaze jolted
old emotions, and his unexpected question intensified the effect, but it still
left the way open for intimacy.

She gave her head a shake, conscious of her loosened hair
spilling about her shoulders. Tiny golden chimes on the gem in her hair
tinkled. “Only for certain formal affairs. But I was escorted to the formal
hall, and then straight back to his private yacht. I never saw the Official
Mistress, though I’d hoped to meet her to commiserate.”

Brandon laughed.

She smiled, then said, “You?”

“Oh, yes. Galen and I were both summoned to the Presence.”

She leaned toward him conspiratorially. “What was it like?
Surely he didn’t have a suite for me?”

Brandon nodded, his smile wry. “Brought me out there once.
To teach me discipline, I think. I evaded his watch hounds long enough to take
a tour. His suite was enormous, and right next to it another, twin to his,
complete down to the clothing in the closet and, I realize now, the scents in
the tianqi. All yours.”

“He was always correct when it came to appearance, I must
say.” She put her chin on her hand. “How do you know which scents I like?”

“Distinctive blend of blossoms and spice,” he said. “I noticed
them when we were dancing.”

Now would be the time for him to move, and she was ready.
They were close to the same age, and she’d always thought him attractive. The
easiest way to twine herself into his life would be through seduction.

But he made no move, and from behind crystal rang and silver
clinked quietly on porcelain. The Rifter at work.

Vannis idly ran her thumb over the silken edge of a pillow,
aware of Brandon observing her. Did he like what he saw?

Brandon watched her watching him, and suppressed
disappointment. She was beautiful, and had he a mind for dalliance, it would be
easy enough to respond to her delicate invitation, but was it idleness or
avarice that prompted her?

Vannis decided that it was time for a general question.
If he wants to be personal he’ll bring the
subject back.
“Semion didn’t keep the singer in the servants’ quarters?”

“No. Sara had her own
wing. I don’t think she was ever in his suite, either.” Brandon’s light voice
was very hard to interpret.

He can’t be angry.
She
looked up, startled.

He said abruptly, “Did you know that Galen wanted to marry
Sara?”

Vannis’s expression flickered between surprise and . . .
control, an assumption of pity. “I knew that she had been with Galen first, but
word in Arthelion was that Semion had seduced her away. Which surprised
people—”

She let the sentence drift.

Brandon’s sardonic smile recalled his eldest brother to mind
for a sharply unsettling moment. “I met her at Galen’s Enkainion. She was
probably the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in holo or person, and her
voice made one forget her face. I’m sure Semion found that added inducement,
but the truth was, he forced Galen’s compliance by taking Sara away that night.
They never saw one another again.”

The subject was of little interest to Vannis; she reached
for Brandon’s motivation in introducing it. “So that’s what happened. I
remember that the Panarch was not pleased with his heir, but the only gossip I
could rely on was that Semion was furious when Galen refused the marriage
contract Semion was negotiating for Galen with the Masaud heir.”

Brandon lifted his chin in corroboration. “My dreamy brother
didn’t even seem to be a part of the same universe. Political boundaries were
nothing to him, and he had inherited my father’s predilection for monogamy.”

Vannis watched the long hands, the distracted smile. Brandon
was waiting for something. She said, “And so Semion took her away, and confined
Galen to Talgarth.”

Brandon opened his hand in agreement, and for the sake of
friendship, which he needed so badly, he offered her a truth he had never
intended to tell anyone but Markham once he reached Dis. “I spent most of the
following five years trying to concoct some way of springing her.”

She stared in surprise. His face was still abstracted, his
voice so light it was hard to hear. It was a strange thing to say, and it might
even be true. One thing she was certain of: Brandon was not as stupid as she’d
been led to believe.

But it was time to shift the subject from the dead to what
mattered now.

She said, matching his tone exactly, “You wanted to rescue
Galen’s singer and I wanted to rescue my mother from Desrien.”

As a transition, it was peerless. He could now stretch out
his hand, whether out of pity, or lust, or sympathy, or shared grief, and make
the first move—or what he could think of as the first move, if making the first
move was important to him—and thereafter the subject would be Vannis and
Brandon.

She was pleased with her wording and tone, for these
transitions were an art—a gift—and had never failed her.

But as soon as she saw his face, she knew that it was the
wrong answer.

Not that he said, or did, anything overt. He smiled, but the
politesse was back, the Douloi mask that shielded thoughts and motives, leaving
her farther outside his personal boundary than she had ever been.

Inside that mask, Brandon hid the sharp disappointment. Vannis
seemed to need, or want, a lover, and he needed, and wanted, an ally. Gesturing
at the trays Jaim set before them, he said, “Breakfast?”

As she leaned forward to choose among the gently steaming
delicacies, she acknowledged her disappointment while refusing to regard this
visit as defeat. But though she strove mightily during the rest of the
interview, using smiles, charm, and even—briefly—a return to the subject of the
dead singer whom Galen had loved, Brandon did not re-emerge from behind the
superlative mask of Arkad politesse.

It was subtle but ineluctable. They conversed over a number
of topics. She exerted herself to be entertaining, and found that his interests
ranged wide indeed, that in fact he had not wasted all of the ten years since
his expulsion from the Naval Academy in drink, smoke, and sex, as it had
appeared from the outside. She had often professed a fondness for history, but
she was hard put to recognize names and quotations that came so easily to his
tongue, and twice she sensed he would have initiated a debate but she had not
the facts or the background to rebut, and she floundered, laughing out loud
against the early hour—against her own laziness—but inside she railed against
her own ignorance.

In truth, though she had not gained what she came for, she
was not bored; in fact, the visit ended well before she was ready. And again
there was nothing overt, no sign or signal that she could point to, but she was
aware of the Rifter again—he had never gone—and Brandon’s patient but tired
face, and she found herself rising to leave, protesting that the day was
advancing and she would be late for promised appointments.

Brandon also rose, which he did not have to do (and Semion
had never done), and he smiled—but he let her go.

As she trod back down
the garden path, she breathed deeply of the misty air, looking about her at the
splendid gardens without really seeing them. Her mind was back an hour,
sorting, sifting the reason for the regret, almost a sense of loss.

I love a challenge,
she thought as she turned away from
the slide walk and chose a secluded garden path.
If he’d come to me when I
beckoned, it would not have been half so fun. And I’ve learned much this first
visit, for it is only the first.

She counted up the things she’d learned: she knew that he
was not stupid. She knew that he had detested Semion as well, but he’d loved
his middle brother. She knew he read history, that he was familiar with the
writings of his forebears, that he loved music—they had come back, time and
again, to music.

She knew that rescuing his brother’s lover had been
important to him and that she had missed a cue in not perceiving why.

Regret. It was the very first time she had felt this
particular response.

She stopped on a little rise. A breeze ruffled the folds of
her gown. Clasping her fingers about her bare arms above her elbows, she
remembered his words about the tianqi on Narbon:
a distinctive blend of blossoms and spice.

She wished that she had identified the tianqi scents in the
Enclave, then remembered there weren’t any, that the doors stood open to the
garden and the air moving over the lake. As for Brandon’s personal scents, she
had not been close enough to him to identify them.

Her hands slid up her
arms to her shoulders, and she stood there hugging them close, her chin pressed
hard against her wrist. She fought an urge to turn around and look back toward
the Enclave, to see if the tall, slim, dark-haired figure would be lounging in
the doorway again.

He won’t be.

This, too, she acknowledged, and then walked on with brisk
steps.

Anaris laid aside his dirazh’u and sat back. “Do you
believe your prophecy?”

The alteration in the Panarch’s countenance was subtle, no
more than a change of the light reflecting in his eyes as his chin lifted a
fraction.

“My predictions to your father?”
Gelasaar asked, humor relaxing his face. “One of the first topics of discussion
when my advisers and I were reunited was the end of that interview.”

“You don’t remember it?”

“Not that portion. From my
perspective, the shock collar was effective.” Gelasaar’s neck was marked with
the still-healing purple scars. “But to answer your question: I don’t know. I
think I told you, did I not once? that my mother twice dreamed about war just
before an incursion by the Shiidran Hordes. Yet she admitted that she’d also
dreamed, before she implemented my conception, that she would bear a daughter.”
His eyes narrowed with amusement. “What do you think?”