A Prison Unsought (41 page)

“Markham,” Vi’ya said. “How do you
think he and the Arkad were betrayed, those years ago in their Naval Academy?
Markham put it together with certain things he was told right before the nicks
exiled him. That bodyguard, the one who died on Dis, carried a telltale in him,
and everything he witnessed was eventually heard by the brother on Narbon. I
thought they would be using the same methods, perhaps for different reasons,
against the Arkad now.”

Fascinated by all the implications, Marim gave in at last to
laughter. “So . . . any plots poor old Brandon tries . . .
or even when he bunnies?”

Vi’ya twitched a shoulder. “If Jaim is there.”

Marim got up slowly, still snickering at vivid mental images
of secret depravities and passions. Her active instinct for self-preservation
was still at work; she whirled around. “What if they find out how the Eya’a spy
for you? That old chatzer—”

“They know.” Vi’ya tipped her chin
in the direction of the Arkadic Enclave. “It was inevitable that Manderian
would find out. Did you notice how much more frequently the Eya’a are going
into hibernation? The nicks have mind-blurs set up in their command areas now.”

“So it’s a tradeoff.” Marim
whistled, her mind veering back to Brandon’s situation. “So anything the Arkad
does . . .”

“The Arkad,” Vi’ya said, “can look
to his own problems. Jaim is observant. Conceal your reactions, for he will be
here s—”

The annunciator interrupted her.

Marim gulped, slapping her hand across her face. “I’m for
the shower,” she whispered, choking down laughter. “When I come out I’ll be
fine—I promise.”

Vi’ya’s mouth curled. “Hurry. I want to see the concourse
before it gets too crowded.”

Marim had little interest in hypothetical hyperwaves; the
news about Jaim’s telltale consumed her imagination. The problem, she thought
as she faced into the streaming water, was that she found the Arkad even more
attractive than she found Jaim. Purely for personal entertainment, she decided
she’d have to find out what—if anything—the Arkad was doing with his time.

But not when Vi’ya was around.

When she went out, she was under control. Which was as well,
because she found not just Jaim but the Arkad. Ivard had appeared from
somewhere and babbled eagerly, his nose twitching and sniffing like some kind
of rodent, although admittedly he’d somehow turned into a kind of handsome
rodent.

Marim looked past him, to meet Brandon’s smiling blue gaze.
She grinned at him, but before either could say a word, Vi’ya hit the door-pad.
“Let us go.”

Mindful of listening ears, Marim stayed silent on the walk.
The time it took to get downstairs and to the transtube steadied her; Vi’ya, of
course, scarcely spoke at all, and Ivard blathered on about what fun he was
having with that crazy old nuller up at the spin axis. Fear was soon replaced
by the strong urge to create mischief, but Marim controlled it (she thought)
admirably, only permitting herself to add an interesting variety of adjectival
opprobrium to any reference to the Navy or Panarchy.

Obedient to Vi’ya’s wishes, she led them the long way down
the concourse so that Vi’ya could see for herself the ways to the ships, and
the obstacles that would have to be planned for.

When they reached the null-gym the game was already in
progress, the huge space echoing to the eponymic impact of the
thirty-centimeter balls on the fine repel mesh surrounding the playing area. As
yet, very few of the players in the cavernous space had balls adhering to them.
The two teams were still maneuvering for position among the jump pads and
vector cables that permitted the contestants to change direction in free-fall.

The balls stuck only to each other or the uniforms of the
players. They were dispensed automatically by machines within the goal spheres
of each team. Eventually the arena would be adrift with floating shoals of
balls, posing a serious hazard to any player pushed or deflected into them by
an opponent.

Marim hid her disdain as they made their way toward some
seats near the boundary mesh of the arena, their feet firmly making contact
with the floor at one standard gee. It was typical of nicks to balance out the
gravitors only inside the arena, leaving the spectators under acceleration.
Half the fun of splat-ball, in her opinion, was having the spectators jetting
around in free-fall, too, trying for the best vantage point as the focus of the
two teams shifted. Sometimes the action outside was even more exciting than the
game.

She had decided it might be amusing to flirt a little with
the Arkad, and make those listening ears wish they knew something about Rifter
fun. When Ivard saw a friend and dashed off, she was pleased to have him gone.

But somehow—she wasn’t sure how—she and Jaim ended up
together, stationed behind the Arkad and Vi’ya. A crowd of enthusiastic
spectators separated them: Navy and civilian and non-citizen, packed together
in friendly chaos as the cadence of the game accelerated.

The crowd bellowed with delight as a muscular young woman
grabbed an opponent in mid-flight and, pulling him briefly against her body to
accelerate their spin through conservation of angular momentum, kissed him
mockingly and then whipped him sprawling into a clump of splat-balls,
converting him into an ungainly lump of mass that spun helplessly up against
the boundary mesh.

The young woman blew kisses at the spectators, then grabbed
a vector cable and spun around to support her teammates’ drive on the opposing
team’s goal. Her flight took her across the arena, in front of Vi’ya and
Brandon silhouetted against the increasingly frenzied action in the arena.

Marim tried to edge Jaim closer so she could overhear their
conversation.

Jaim didn’t move; Brandon had said on their way to D-5, “I
want to talk to Vi’ya alone, if I can.”

The game was exciting, but Marim found the two more
interesting, Vi’ya in profile with her hands behind her back, the brilliant
glare highlighting one hard-edged cheekbone and her long fall of glossy black
hair. The Arkad faced her, the light full on his wide blue gaze so intent on
Vi’ya.

Marim nudged Jaim. “Does he have lovers?”

“Who?”

“The Arkad.”

Jaim’s gray gaze was remote. “Ask him.”

Marim pursed her lips, studying Jaim. His blank face and
unconscious poise were not characteristic. This was not the old stooped,
shambling Jaim, who had deferred to Reth Silverknife in everything, and hid his
lethal training behind a lazy front. He looked like a bodyguard.
He might not count himself a nick, but he is
changing. I wonder if he knows it?

She chewed a thumb as she went back to watching Vi’ya and
the Arkad. Something had happened in the brief time she’d looked away. Vi’ya’s
stance had not changed, but Brandon had stepped closer, and he gestured once,
the tendons in one long hand highlighted by a pouring of golden light from the
arena. His face was the same as always: smiling, open, tolerant, but the
intensity was still there, in the half-lifted hand, and in compressed
breathing.

He was waiting for something, but Marim could not see what
it was; when she tried to edge past Jaim, his elbow stuck in her way, solid as
dyplast, as he leaned forward to watch the game.

Marim sighed and gave up.

A rasping honk filled the null-gym as the young woman who’d
so competently disposed of her opponent speared the goal with her outstretched
fist.

The crowd erupted all
around them, exclaiming, shouting, paying off bets. When Marim could see past
them again, the Arkad was alone, lounging against a chair as he talked to a
small circle of Naval officers, who, from their attitudes, seemed to know him.

From his days at the
nick Academy,
she thought. She’d never seen him among friends before; it was
astonishing how much he reminded her of Markham, yet they did not look at all
alike.

She was going to comment until she noticed that Jaim had
gone. She spotted him behind the Arkad, stolid as stone, just like a bodyguard.

Vi’ya appeared at her shoulder. “Let us go.”

Marim held her tongue all the way back.

Inside their suite, she flung her arms wide. “So?”

Vi’ya turned, unsmiling. Her stance was a warning, but
Marim, crazy with frustrated conjecture, almost yelled: “If you don’t tell me
what the Arkad was on about, I’ll . . .”

Vi’ya was still a long, sickening moment, then shrugged
faintly. “Escape,” she said. “He offered me anything I wanted if I’d get him
off this station and take him to Gehenna.”

Marim sagged like a collapsed bellows. “Damn that
logos-chatzing telltale,” she groaned. “Can you imagine the money we just lost?
Not, of course, that we’d actually do something as idiotic as go to Gehenna,
but . . .”

Vi’ya went to her room and shut the door.

Marim turned to the
wall and slammed her fist against it repeatedly in slow motion, leaning forward
until the cool dyplast stopped her forehead. As far as craziness went, she
decided, there was little to choose from between nicks and Dol’jharians.

They deserve each other.

Maybe Ozip was still free. That was one way to stop thinking
about what you couldn’t change.

“I learned skepticism from you Panarchists,” Anaris said.
“I experienced the spectrum of passion without the relative safety of ritual-justified
rage as motivation. I learned to laugh.”

“Yet?” the Panarch prompted.

“Yet there remain two concepts, both of which I observed
with interest, without divining their purpose. The first was your custom of
marriage.”

“That is simple enough to explain,” Gelasaar said. “It is a
custom retained from the days of Lost Earth. It provides a venue for continuity
both materially and genealogically, for those families who desire it. It has a
stabilizing influence on the social fabric.”

“Yet you yourself stepped outside of the conventions when
you made your own marriage: your wife was from an obscure family who—at least
on record—refused closer involvement with your network of social alliances. Yet
I found that your marriage included vows of monogamy.”

“All true,” the Panarch said. “And the exchange of rings,
both of which are very old customs from Lost Earth.” He held up his hands, and
on the ring finger of each could be seen pinkish worn skin: one from his
wedding ring, and the other from his personal signet.

“So you did not, in fact, make an alliance for the good of
society in general.”

“No, I chose to please myself.”

“Why a marriage, then, if there was no advantage to your
social infrastructure? Why not a mate match, as is common at all levels in your
society? You Douloi would say ‘consort,’ which I understand is a concubine with
legally constituted rights.”

The Panarch’s eyes lifted contemplatively, then he said, “If
you had known Ilara, you would not need to ask. In your researches, did you
discover any criticism of my choice of Kyriarch from those who had direct
contact with her?”

“Only my father,” Anaris said, his dirazh’u lying quiescent
in his hands.

The Panarch inclined his head. “It is not completely true to
say that I chose to please myself. I hoped that some measure of her brilliance
would invest our offspring.”

“And?” Anaris asked, amused.

“And there was nothing of her in my oldest son, who is a
mirror for my grandfather. There was too much of my reclusiveness in my second
son, leaving room only for Ilara’s humor, her acute sensitivity to the arts.
But in Brandon . . .” He lifted his hands. “The one who never really
knew her, the best of us both is blended.”

Anaris burst out laughing.

Vannis had only worn gowns at the most formal state events,
so all her exquisite formal wardrobe had been left at the Mandala. For her
journey with Rista she had brought the fitted robes of less formal evening
attire, the drapes popular for select intimate events, and of course the
layered shirts and trousers for daily wear.

‘Gowns’—a word that connoted gender specificity—hearkened
back to a time unimaginable, when genders moved in different spheres, except in
carefully delineated social exchange.

She rather liked the form-fitting upper half, the gravitas
of the train whispering behind her; and above all, she loved knowing that the vapor-soft
silks that constituted her two new gowns had been fashioned from bedroom
curtains.

She had saved the newest one for this private gathering deep
in Tau Srivashti’s glittership. She chose a position from which she was framed
by a spectacular backdrop of stars. The silk reflected the faux light in
runnels along the braid-vine silver embroidery over her shoulder, around
wrists, along hem.

As she leaned on balustrade, she glanced from right to left:
to either side of her a white-capped expanse of water spilled over an invisible
edge, disappearing into the infinite void below. The room appeared open to
space; the circular black couch below, sunk into the floor between two streams
of running water with the tianqi generating a salt-tinged ruffling breeze,
created the fantasy of a boat sailing under the stars at the edge of the
ancients’ flat world-disc.

She affected an attitude of listening to the conversation
going on below, but as it was all superficials, she reviewed her own situation.
Yenef had proved to be a treasure, her eye as clever as her fingers, and Vannis
had heartily approved her slow-growing side-business of altering clothing for
those who had the means but no access to the better tailors. In a startlingly
frank conversation that would never have happened in the old days, Vannis and
Yenef had discussed who would be favored with Yenef’s discreet business, and
how much credit was to be wrung from them.

Unfortunately it was not nearly enough.