A Prison Unsought (39 page)

“I do,” Brandon said.

Smack! The white curved around the one obvious anomaly and
ticked against a solid ball near a pocket. As Srivashti straightened up, the
ball dropped out of sight.

The Archon smiled. “Details.” He tapped his cue lightly.
“Must stay within bounds, of course, but one might be permitted to ask this
much: has Nyberg taken you into his briefings?”

“Just as much as he is required by
law,” Brandon said.

Snick! Once again the
white ball wound its way between the others, not touching any but its target,
then rolled gently to a stop.

Dead zone? thought Jaim. Or just not strong enough a hit?

With another of those bows, Srivashti stepped back, and
drank with a careless air.

And once again Brandon returned his deference, courtesy for
courtesy. He cocked his head, bent, shot.

It was a bad shot by anyone’s standards. The white caromed
into a cluster of balls, scattering them fanwise. Two of them rolled swiftly to
a stop: he’d found the dead zone, or one of them, at least. The other three ran
merrily through—holo-balls, despite the tick as they rebounded off the side.

Srivashti stepped up to the table. “You are, Your Highness,”
he said slowly, as if his mind were not at all on the game, “in probably the
most difficult position any of your illustrious House have ever found
themselves.” He looked back over his shoulder.

Brandon saluted him with his glass.

Srivashti continued studying the table as he drank. Two
balls were easy shots, but were they real or not? Only a player’s ball could
move a holo; the white passed right through them.

He paused to line up a
hard shot, then sent an apologetic smile at Brandon as he raised his glass to
him, causing them to drink again. “One endeavors to avoid the tactlessness of
the obvious simile.”

Simile?
Jaim thought,
watching Srivashti’s cue strike, swift and sure, sending the white toward a
blue—and through it.

Srivashti finished his
drink with a toss, holding the crystal flute out to be refilled without looking
to see where Felton was. “Sympathetic as I am, that is not the crux of our
dilemma. Until we know, we have merely the ashes of the former government.”

He means the
Phoenix—the Panarch—dead.

Brandon made a random shot. Again he sent the balls
scattering; Jaim tried to watch them all, and thought he saw the white pass
through the edge of one high ball. Three others passed through, or near the
edge of the dead zone—then the timer chimed, which indicated another change in
the gravitic flux.

“But my father is still alive,” he
said.

“Let us drink to that,” Srivashti
responded, raising his full glass.

“We can get him back if a rescue
mission goes to Gehenna,” Brandon said as Srivashti sank another ball.

Srivashti moved around the table. “The prospect of battle,”
he said, lining up another shot, “is the only subject I’ve heard more
frequently than battle reminiscences.”

Brandon said nothing.

“The risks are very real, Your
Highness, as I am sure you are aware.” Srivashti’s smile was reflective. “And
the reminiscences hint at a disturbing possibility.”

Brandon said, “The Dol’jharians possessing hyperwave
capabilities.”

Srivashti’s smile widened—he was not at all surprised to
hear the word hyperwave. “So that was the subject of Nyberg’s secret briefing?”
He tapped the white ball delicately and stood back to watch its slow progress,
bent by a flux.

“Ng and a few of her officers put
together a hypothesis after analyzing battle data,” Brandon said.

The white brushed
Brandon’s two real balls, making them roll inward slightly.

I’ll wager my life
that’s the dead zone,
Jaim thought.

“And nothing more concrete than
that?” Srivashti stepped aside with a graceful gesture.

Jaim reflected that anyone with any kind of connection knew
to the minute how long the briefing had been.

Brandon said with a slight shrug, “Those not involved in the
pertinent battles found it difficult to believe. Wouldn’t you?”

“Did you, Your Highness?”

“I believe nothing without
evidence,” Brandon replied.

Srivashti laughed softly. “The assurance of youth. I,
however, am older, and I have come to give credence to persistent rumors—even
the inconvenient ones. Sometimes those especially.”

“Such as?” With great care, Brandon
shot, and sank one of his balls. He made a second shot, which seemed to go
wide.

“Such as the belief, held by many,
that a government in suspension is more dangerous even than the enemy.”

“There is the question of
authority,” Brandon said.

“True.” Srivashti scanned the
table. “But where one is limited, several can carry a point.”

“Belief,” Brandon said, “requires
evidence.”

That’s the second time
he’s said that
, Jaim thought.
A
challenge?

Srivashti flashed another well-bred smile as he made his
shot, and the ball rolled just short of the pocket. “Belief, if Your Highness
will honor me with permission to contradict—” Again the deference, calculated
to the millimeter. “—requires faith. Those who made their Vows of Service swear
to a person, but only insofar as that person symbolizes the polity as a whole.”

Brandon’s countenance had smoothed to the blank, bland one
that Jaim had begun to suspect was only seen when Brandon’s mind was working
fastest. He bent and made three shots in succession.
Brandon doesn’t need to be told what the vows
—Belatedly Jaim
remembered that Brandon had not made his own vows, had skipped out on the
ceremony.

His mind churning furiously, Jaim tried to focus on the
game—and realized that Brandon was, very suddenly, ahead.

“Well done, Highness,” Srivashti
said. “You were quite helpless: I really thought I had you.”

He bent to shoot, his shoulders and arms lined with a new
tension. He took a long minute to line up his shot, and when he made it, even
Jaim could see that it was brilliant. The balls moved in a complex pattern,
some dropped—and he was only one shot behind.

“Good.” Brandon tipped his head,
brows up. “Very good.”

Srivashti acknowledge with a gesture. “You see, there are
some things an old man such as myself could teach you.”

Now it was Brandon’s
turn to make the deferential gesture, but with an airy grace that somehow
indicated humor. “I’ve so many interested in my welfare,” he said. “Nearly half
a dozen tutorials offered since my arrival.”

What the hell does he
mean by that? He can’t be about to tell this chatzer about the Navy lessons?

But Srivashti did not query it. His eyes narrowed, and he
shot, a convulsive movement that unaccountably missed by a thread’s breadth. He
had one ball left. As he stood back, Jaim sensed his reluctance—the man had to
win.

Srivashti raised his glass again, forcing Brandon to drink.
The Aerenarch flexed his hands, blinked a couple of times, bent, and lined up
his shot. He grunted when the white ball veered, making a lazy run that
slingshot past a slow zone and caromed off the Archon’s ball before homing
straight for his own.

It could have been the best shot of the game, for the white
smacked Brandon’s last two balls right in a line. But the white was too slow,
and Srivashti’s ball had been hit too hard; all three reached pockets, the
solid one, quite clearly, first.

The Archon had won by default. Brandon winced and rubbed his
jaw. Srivashti was too controlled to be obvious about his triumph, but his
sharp cheekbones betrayed the faintest color.

Brandon blinked as if his vision blurred.

“Another game, Highness?”

“As you wish,” Brandon said. “I’d
like to recover my honor.”

It was said in the grand style, and Srivashti laughed. “But
there is no dishonor in losing to me, Highness,” he said expansively. “Even
your brother lost to me, and he was one of the most formidable players I ever
faced.”

“My brother,” Brandon said. His
light voice betrayed the faintest slur. “I’ve a question for you.”

“Please, Highness.” Srivashti
indicated for Brandon to shoot first, which he did, a random shot that sent the
balls everywhere.

Brandon hardly seemed to notice. He made several more seemingly
random shots, sinking one ball each time, then he said, “You were my brother’s
ally. You must have had mutual contacts before Eusabian’s fleet blew everything
to fragments.” He shot and missed.

Srivashti winced in sympathy for the missed shot before
bending to line up his cue. “I know very little,” he admitted, “but what I do
know I will place at your disposal if you wish, Highness.”

“Please.” Brandon stood back,
watching Srivashti make another careful, calculated shot that downed a pair of
balls. “I was given to understand that my brother’s body was found in the
singer’s bedroom. But did your sources happen to note what happened to the
singer?”

“Suicide, Highness,” Srivashti said
without any evidence of emotion, as if they discussed the weather, and bent
once more to tap the white. “Her body was found in the
bain.
A time-honored neurotoxin often employed in suicides and
mercy killings: quite painless.” Snick! One, then two balls dropped into
pockets, and the Archon smiled.

“Damn,” Brandon said congenially.
“You’ve won again.”

“Another game?”

Regret informed Brandon’s deference. “If there were time,”
he said. “But I promised to be an official presence at another gala event this
evening.”

They exchanged politenesses as they progressed back through
the huge ship to the lock. Then, just before they reached it, Srivashti said,
“You enjoy these official appearances, it is to be hoped, Your Highness?”

Brandon’s brows lifted just slightly. “They’re a habit.”

Srivashti inclined his head. “I was going to say—if you
honor an old man’s well-meant advice. It does people good to see you in the
social arena. The chaos we decried earlier creates added tensions. Your
presence indicates at least an appearance of things resuming their natural
courses.”

“Thank you,” the Aerenarch said,
“for the advice. And for the game.”

They took their leave then, escorted by the silent Felton.
Jaim’s last sight before the lock closed was the man’s unwinking gaze, blank as
a statue.

And as soon as they were on the gig, Brandon said, “He must
have downed alcohol neutralizers, or his liver is dyplast and steel.”

Jaim handed Brandon a tab of neutralizer; Brandon took it and
walked straight through to the bain.

Jaim guided the gig away from the huge ship, thinking
rapidly.

On the surface, the visit had been pleasant and agreeable.
Brandon’s reaction was mute evidence that Jaim’s instincts were correct: some
kind of battle of wills had just taken place, though who had won was impossible
to say.

It was the first indication Jaim had that Brandon was not,
after all, steering his tranquil course wide of the maelstrom of reforming
government.

Indication but not evidence.

Yet Jaim had learned to listen and to evaluate not just what
was said, but what was left unsaid.

Jaim had assumed that Brandon, in finding himself back
within Panarchic governance, merely made the best of it with his habitual
grace, contenting himself with convivial company, a continual round of parties,
and in quiet hours a resumption of his old studies.

To him, Brandon talked freely about food or drink, about
games, navigation, archaic forms of music, the difficulties of retuning a drive
cavity when the fiveskip has gone down: all the minutiae of daily life,
even—with an objective moderation that rarely failed to entertain—the people he
met during a day’s course in that life, but never about those whose energies
were expended primarily in shaping, guiding, or destroying the destinies of
whole planets. He never confided in anyone, or talked of the things that
mattered.

Once he had confided in a person, in Markham vlith-L’Ranja,
Jaim reminded himself. Then Markham was taken away, and by the time Brandon
caught up with him, Markham was dead.

Jaim reviewed the conversation, counting up what had been
said and what had not been said.

The Vows of Service: the Archon had made them, that was
said, and what was not said: Brandon had not. Implied: he’d run away.

Said: the Dol’jharians have hyperwave capability.
Srivashti’s lack of surprise meant he already knew about something the Navy was
keeping a tight lid on, and but what did his smirk mean? That Brandon is a fool
for his careless mention?

Said: the government
is falling to pieces, needs authority. Not said: the Panarch must be declared
dead before Brandon can be that authority.

“Until we know . . .”
Adrenaline boosted Jaim’s heartbeat. He’d missed the second meaning of that
comment: not just knowing about the Panarch, but about the truth of his last
remaining son’s escape from the mass murder at his Enkainion.

But that accentuated the point of the whole conversation,
summed up in its last part.

Said: that Brandon ought to make more social appearances.
Not said: Brandon ought to take Srivashti’s advice. No, his orders. And leave
government to those who knew what they were doing.

Jaim turned around when Brandon dropped into a pod, his
forehead sweat-lined, eyes closed, his face drawn. Jaim comprehended that two
separate conversations had taken place, and began to suspect that Brandon had
lost both games deliberately.

Jaim rubbed his jaw,
wishing he could recall the exact sequence of shots in the first game; he was
convinced now that the apparently random shots—sometimes at real balls,
sometimes at the faux—had even conveyed some kind of meaning.

It wasn’t a
conversation, it was a duel.