Crown Of Fire (5 page)

"For decades," Firebird continued, "the Netaian sovereign has been a legal figurehead, standard-bearer for this Electorate. I propose that all electoral seats gradually become figureheads. Advisors. Do this by stages. Shift control of our navy and the Enforcers to the elected Assembly." Judging from the way several leaned away from the gold-rimmed table, they already disliked her idea—as she'd expected. "The Assembly would remain answerable to the Electorate, but if you . . . shift. . . fifty-percent veto power out of your own hands and to the Assembly, voluntarily, that would show unprecedented faith in your people. You would retain checks on the Assembly. I have also proposed that the noble houses be compensated for this loss of influence." Firebird beckoned, and Shel stepped forward to hand her a recall pad. "I encoded a timetable, along with other aspects of the proposal." She'd spent most of the last two months, while Brennen convalesced and retrained, recording every possible simulation and developing the final document. Over a year ago, she'd made the Federate Regional council a silent promise: spare her life, and she would do all she could to bring Netaia into the Federacy. The time had come.

Rogonin clenched his hands on the table, not into fists but into claws.

"You've been given half a year's reprieve," Firebird said. "Please, for our people's sake, use it wisely." She shifted her weight under the long skirt, hardly believing that she had dared to speak to the electors this way. She almost hated to give up her recall pad and let them commence tearing her ideas apart.

"And who," Rogonin demanded, "would compensate our Houses? Does your considerable influence with the Federacy extend to demanding funds to buy out our seats and our ministries?"

"I have no influence with the Federacy at all."
And you know it, Tour Grace,
she wanted to add. "That is one of many details that remain to be worked out. But this is your chance to escape the destruction of a world's way of life. Your estates, your families—-the Shuhr would love to take them away from you."

No one plunged into her silence this time. She hoped they were picturing their grand homes plundered, their children carried off to Three Zed or subjected to unimaginable genetic experiments. "You could guide Netaia through a difficult transition," she called. She dropped her voice. "Or you could all die in a terrible bloodbath."

As wretchedly as they'd treated her, she didn't want that to happen. She laid her recall pad on the gold-banded table.

Rogonin eyed it, pursing his lips with obvious contempt. "If civil war threatens," he said, "we will raise additional troops and build more prisons to hold any rebels we choose not to execute. Netaia's strength is Netaia's future, Lady Firebird." He lowered his voice. "You are dismissed."

His arrogance raked her. He didn't care squill for the common people. No surprise there either, really. Still, she'd hoped . . . "Listen to one more request, noble electors—"

"Dismissed, Lady Firebird." The regent raised his voice.

Incensed, she pitched hers to match his. "For the love of your own children," she called, "do not conscript those troops. If you do, they will be the ones who slaughter you—if the Shuhr don't arrive first!" She whirled toward the door, flaring her long skirt.
Dear Singer, don't let them choose destruction!

She wanted to say so much more. To tell them Netaia's common classes had every reason to revolt. That they deserved privileges that most Federates called rights—the right to earn a decent, stable living, to conduct commerce with other Whorl worlds, to sleep unafraid that city Enforcers might imprison whole families for one member's indiscretions.

But she'd probably said too much already, too forcefully. . . too willfully. Politically, she had probably been utterly ineffective. But maybe a few hearts had listened.

Shel stepped in front of the Netaian door guard. Brennen's eyes flicked back and forth, watching behind Firebird. Uri led out.

Firebird walked with her head upright and her shoulders relaxed, as if she'd chosen to leave, instead of being sent away.

She retired early, exhausted by the time shift, but memories haunted her into the night. Carradee had invited her into these rooms many times. This had been her mother's palace. She lay on her sister Phoena's bed.

It was good to know that Phoena would never torment her again.

She stared at the curtained ceiling, examining the sensation of relief. Finally, she could think about the middle Angelo sister with some ob-jectivity. Despite Phoena's scheming and cruelly, she'd been a sharp stone grinding at Firebird's heart, honing her steel to a sword's point. I f Firebird hadn't battled Phoena for so many years, she might not have found the strength to fight Brennen's enemies, or the evil that invaded her own soul.

Her eyes suddenly ached, imagining Phoena trapped at Three Zed. She wondered if at some point, Phoena finally realized that the Shuhr would not help her, that they would take her life and give back nothing at all.

By the Word to Come, she actually pitied her sister.

Shocked, she swallowed. She rolled off the bed and hurried out into the dressing room, where her tears wouldn't disturb Brenn. She caught Shel pacing along the high windows, several meters away.

"It's all right," Firebird managed. "I'm just—finally—grieving my sister."

"Princess Phoena." Shel stared out one window. "I understand. I'm also recovering."

Firebird wiped her eyes and stared at her bodyguard. This was the first information Shel had volunteered since they met, back at Hesed. "You lost a bond mate?" Firebird guessed.

Shel nodded once without turning around.

"How long ago?"

The Sentinel's voice softened. "Six years."

"I'm sorry." Firebird had been told that bereavement shock was devastating. Half of all Sentinels suffered it. Brenn had said it took his mother two years to recover. Still, Shel was young. "Some time," Firebird said hesitantly, stepping closer, "I mean, I would—"

"No," Shel answered. "I'd prefer not to talk about it."

Six years later, she still was tender in a tough line of work.
Shuhr,
Firebird guessed. Many of the Sentinels killed in action were taken down by their distant relatives, by Micahel Shirak and his compatriots.

Then setting this trap was personal for Major Shelevah Mattason, too. Firebird took a few more steps toward her bodyguard, wondering if some gesture of comfort would be appropriate. Shel didn't respond.

Firebird really didn't know whether she hoped they would catch a Shuhr and attack Three Zed, or return to dig in and defend Hesed. Even with RIA, attacking the Shuhr stronghold would be perilous. The last time, she and Brenn had arrived separately, stealing past Three Zed's fielding satellites with single RIA ships. This time they would have to attack in force. They would face the full terrors of Three Zed's fielding technology.

Even at the Sentinels' sanctuary world, fielding defenders could drive off any intruder by directly producing fear in the intruders' minds, and Sentinels followed high moral standards. She didn't like to think about what a Shuhr fielding team might do.

Shel still didn't turn around. Convinced that the Sentinel preferred to keep her grief private, Firebird tiptoed back to bed.

She paused to touch a tri-D cube at her bedside. That touch made it glow with internal light. Her babies might be waking now—Kiel with that squared Brennen-chin and hair that was thickening to Brenn's light rich brown, and Kinnor with his chin pointed like a sprite, his face scrunched in an impish pout. In the tri-D, Brennen's arms wrapped her shoulders, and their hair mingled in a wind that blew out of the rugged mountains around Hesed House. Staring at the cube, she could almost smell kirka trees—

Brennen pushed up on one elbow. "You're all right?"

Firebird slid beneath a silken cover warmed by soft, embedded mi-crofibers. "I am now," she said. "I've buried Phoena. But I can't sleep." If she ever lost Brennen, could she hope to recover?
Phase, Singer. One of us must die first, someday. I know this is selfish, but let it be me! Brenn is stronger. He could bear it.

She couldn't bring herself to relate Shel's story. "I should've asked you to tuck me in," she told him. "Would you help me get to sleep?"

She sensed epsilon energy focusing at one of his fingertips. When he touched it to her forehead, her stressed alpha matrix uncoiled instantly. She sighed, relaxed against his chest, and slipped into dreamless peace.

Hesed House's skylights had faded, and silver strands in Sentinel Anna Dabarrah's waist-long hair glimmered by candlelight. Anna frowned deeply and answered, "Even if they offered to help, the Fed-eracy would refuse. No one would work alongside a Shuhr search team, even if they honestly didn't harm your daughters—and I doubt that."

Carradee had let Netaia's Federate governor send Iarla and Kessaree to safety on another world, but they never arrived. Not knowing their late . . . that was the hardest part. Even now, Federate teams were searching for them.

She pursed her lips. This candlelit dinner table stood near the sanctuary's underground lake, and her husband's mobility chair had been pulled close by. A student-apprentice Sentinel, a
sekiyr,
cut Prince Daithi's umi steak into small bites. Daithi worked manfully to spear them with a fork attached to his hand splint, talcing obvious joy in keeping up with his nephews' physical development. Carradee no longer worried whether he would recover from his injuries.

Mouth full, he didn't respond to Anna, so Carradee stared out over the underground lake. Forced to abdicate in favor of her vanished daughter, she'd slid gratefully into the sanctuary's pastoral lifestyle. Sometimes Hesed House seemed far more elegant than the palace where she'd grown up.

When she arrived here, she hadn't understood why even the evil Shuhr would attack her innocent daughters. She'd learned so much since then, about the Shuhr . . . and her sister Phoena.

The events that followed Phoena's departure from Netaia—the explosion that injured Carradee and nearly killed Daithi, their daughters' disappearance—supported only one theory. Phoena had tried to enlist Shuhr help in a grab for the throne. According to what Brennen's captors told him, though he couldn't remember witnessing it, Phoena had paid for her crimes in agony.

The Shuhr must not be believed or trusted. What had she been thinking? No wonder Rogonin deposed her. "Carradee the Kind," she'd been called, and "Carradee the Good."

"Carradee the Hopeful Romanticist" might be a better title. She arranged a cloth serviette on her lap. One of the Shuhr's announced fields of study was genetic research, and Firebird had proved that one of the Sentinels' distant relatives married into the Angelo line, several generations back. So maybe the Shuhr—

Not even the healing blocks that Master Dabarrah had graciously placed on her grief could strengthen her to finish that thought. She could not envision her precious daughters as research specimens. She would not rest until someone found them. A demand for information had been sent to Three Zed but not answered.

Master Dabarrah leaned over the table. Carradee had grown quickly to respect this psi-medical specialist. He and Mistress Anna supervised Hesed's student-apprentice Sentinels, who in turn helped Carradee care for Daithi and her nephews. This was all the realm she really wanted.

Daithi swallowed his mouthful, then spoke up. "'Dee, Mistress Anna is correct. The Shuhr would be no help. Let the Federates keep their promise. They will find whatever clues can be found." Daithi's diction had almost normalized, thanks to Master Jenner's treatments. He and Carradee often read to each other from the Sentinels' holy book,
Mattah.
That way, they could research their host family's faith while he practiced enunciating.

Back on Netaia, after being injured, Daithi had been under electoral pressure to suicide, leaving Carradee free to marry again. Saving him had been her justification for abdicating. Here, without the pressure to conceive more heirs, they could celebrate each day's millimeter of progress.

Seated on her other side, in side-by-side transport chairs, the Caldwell twins were reaching for bread bits but not quite grasping them— Kiel's fair hair fluffed on one side and Kinnor with a smear of bread crumbs along one flushed cheek. Carradee nudged a bread bit closer to Kiel, who promptly mashed it, then mouthed his hand.

"You're right, of course," said Carradee. "Something about this place makes me too hopeful, I think."

"It was a lovely fantasy," Anna murmured, "but we have no dealings with Three Zed. They are perverse and deceitful. We would attack them in force, except that the Eternal Speaker commands us to hold back until He calls us to destroy them."

Carradee ignored Anna's gloomy analysis and the sideswipe at Bren-nen's current mission. Anna obviously disapproved of the attempt to trap a Shuhr. She claimed that the God they served would provide enough knowledge and power to destroy Three Zed when He issued the call. "Very well," Carradee said softly, wiping Kiel's face with her serviette. "I will wait. But it is hard. I want to hold my own children again."

Fifty-four days had passed since Juddis Adiyn injected the Caldwell-Shirak embryo into Terza Shirak's womb. Waking from a fitful sleep, Terza rolled away from a shipboard bulkhead and pressed one hand to her stomach.
I could almost wish that the Sentinels' god existed,
she moaned silently.
I would order him to smash Juddis Adiyn into sub-biological particles. He owes me. They all owe me.

She pulled a cover over her head. Darkness held off the inevitable queasiness. It would catch her once she moved, but she didn't want to choke down breakfast while the crew watched and smirked.

If Brennen Caldwell had simply died on Three Zed, this never would have been suggested, even as one of her father's infamous options. The implanted embryo and its supportive membranes couldn't be safely removed, except by childbirth.

She kept to herself on board her father's transport. Beautifully appointed, it might have served the Federacy as a luxury transport before her people took it. From the opulent, enhanced-wavelength shimmer of its corridors to the generously appointed stateroom where she ate and slept, it was a magnificent craft.

On this morning—ship's time—before they were scheduled to arrive on Netaia, she stood for most of an hour inside her vaporbath cubicle, stroking water across sore and swelling breasts. She despised the symptoms that developed as her body adapted to this new role as a container. All her glands seemed to be responding to the half-foreign tissue graft. She'd already learned an important lesson in her chosen field, that the womb-bank was an unspeakably wonderful gift to womankind.

She finished bathing and slipped into formfitting civilian shipboards in a subtle charcoal gray. Superbly ventilated, the shipboards clung to her like a fond dream.

They wouldn't flatter her figure for long.

Abruptly overcome by the completeness with which her life changed with one tissue injection, she dropped onto her bunk and let herself cry silently behind her secret inmost shields. Cursed with the reflective temperament, Terza felt the loss of her freedom, the loss of her few friends at Cahal and in the City. She might have—no, she
would have
been culled in training for her temperament, if not for those inner shields. Even Director Polar hadn't detected them. Discovering them had been an accident, when as a seven-year-old she'd been in danger of severe discipline.

She ought to report them to Juddis Adiyn, who was always looking for new epsilon abilities. He bred them carefully into the next generation. Still, self-preservation was mightier than scientific curiosity.

Her door buzzer sounded. "Go away," she whispered, but it buzzed again.

She rocked to her feet. She checked her dark hair, pulled conservatively into a holdfast, in a freshing cabinet mirror. Then she touched a tile that opened the door.

Her half brother Micahel, cleft-chinned with strong cheekbones, shoved something that looked vaguely edible into her hand.
Come,
he ordered subvocally.
Father wants to meet you.

That thought no longer delighted her. Terza shoved the doughy lump into her mouth.
Why now?
she asked in the same way.
I'm barely awake.

His eyes, like her own, were so dark they nearly looked black. She and Micahel also had the same extremely fair skin, but his hair made a thick cap of curls on his head, while hers hung limp over her shoulders.

He smirked.
You have an order. Better come.

She followed him up the ship's shining passways to a guarded door and stepped into an enormous stateroom. All its walls—she couldn't think of these as bulkheads—were mirrored, reflecting endless rooms in all directions. The ceiling reflected images, too. So did the floor, though it yielded like soft carpet as she walked forward.

The tall man she knew from tri-D images as her father, Modabah— barely gray at his temples and oddly stooped—stood at the crux of a row and a column of reflections. Terza inclined her head and dissipated her habitual epsilon-energy shields, proper signs of submission.
I am honored to meet you, sir.

He returned the gesture, dropping his own shields. She expected him to speak aloud. Instead, a blast of epsilon power gusted through her. Something in the smell of that wind was familiar and self-like. Something else came across as unbalanced, insane, inhuman. As she cowered against the assault, discontinuous images flashed through her mind—scenes from unfamiliar military bases—satellite images of a world she knew as Tallis, the Federates' regional capital—

Voices surrounded her, too. Her father's: "No feints, this time. Cripple them before they can use RIA anywhere except Thyrica or Hesed." Her brother, answering: "I've said it all along. Kill him. Kill the whole family." Her father again: "After we find out how they escaped." His voice drew closer. "Lure him to us, little Terza. Bring him in."

Threads of her mind tore loose. The presences scrutinized and re-wove her thoughts and memories. Their otherness thrust deep into her mind. She screamed, and screamed . . .

Terza looked up, disoriented, not sure whether she'd fallen on the mirrored floor or still stood upright. Her father and brother hovered over her. She felt their probes thrust through her again, examining their work. . . .

Then another probe, like a garrote, choked her memory. It squeezed off the moments she'd just experienced. She struggled, but she didn't dare think about using her inner defenses. The memory danced away, faded, and was lost.

Her father helped her onto her feet, gently holding her shoulders until she felt steady. "You must have fainted," he murmured. "Have you eaten breakfast? This room has an odd effect on many people the first time."

Sorry, sir.
She nodded respectfully. Her father's epsilon shields seemed to sparkle in the mirrored cabin.

You have accepted all my requests,
he subvocalized, spending epsilon energy in a formal greeting.

As... willingly as can be,
she answered in the same way. She felt oddly weak, dizzy, as if something more than the strange mirrored room had struck her. Something had just happened. Something strange— something she ought to remember . . .

The tall, handsome man raised a dark eyebrow.

I serve our people,
she said,
as you do.

"Show me your thoughts," ordered her father.

For some unremembered reason, Terza felt that his probe ought to feel like a wind. Instead, it pierced like a knife, stabbing through her alpha matrix, cutting multiple breaches.

She struggled to keep looking his way, focusing on his real face instead of his many reflections. She slowed her breathing and straightened her back.

She scarcely remembered returning to her cabin and falling onto her bunk. Hours later, she awoke sick and dizzy again.

She lay on the broad bunk and stared, shrouding her despair and humiliation under a layer of hatred, but hatred only amplified the gnawing pain in her gut. She must have missed a meal. She couldn't do that anymore.

She swung her legs over the side of her bunk and waited for light-headedness to pass. Like it or not, she carried her enemy's genetic offspring between her hipbones.

Her enemy. . . her prey. She almost pitied him. Like Caldwell, her destiny had been determined before she was born. Her life had been choreographed by others, and now even her body wasn't her own—or her mind! What had her father just done to her, there in his stateroom? She knew enough about memory blocks to know one had been placed. She dug as deeply as she could manage, wishing she could escape this predicament.

A new thought brought her head up. What if the disquieting new theory was true? RIA technology was disturbing enough, but another rumor had surfaced just before they left Three Zed. It was suggested that Caldwell had developed some terrifying new epsilon skill, something that killed Testing Director Dru Polar. Now it wasn't just justice that required them to take him down. There was also fear—

But that rumor couldn't be true, to her way of thinking. Caldwell had already been epsilon-crippled by the time Director Polar died . . . and besides, it was dangerous to harbor seditious thoughts and fears. Her father might send quest-pulses up and down the corridors, checking the thought life of others on board.

But would Caldwell help her escape? The idea would not go away. What if somehow she could shield her fetus from her supervisor's inevitable experimentation, even deliver it offworld? Give it—give her—a life in some other place, where she might grow up happy and unafraid . . .

Her? That disgusting fifty-day tissue
blob
had become female in her mind?

Stop!
she commanded herself, panicking.
Don't even think such things!

The Shiraks' landing shuttle set down in a rural area not far from Netaia's capital, three hours after local midnight. Within two more hours, Micahel Shirak stalked into Ard Talumah's topside apartment and took a good look around.

Netaians did not live underground. Outside Talumah's windows, stars glimmered, distorted by a blanket of air. It wasn't as thick or as moist as Thyrica's, but it still looked eerie to Micahel's senses. Inside, poorly cured duracrete was daubed with orange paint. The apartment smelled musty and was furnished with cheap sling chairs.

At least it was half a klick away from the elegant midtown flat where a dozen of his father's lackeys were unpacking. As soon as they arrived, one of Modabah's crewmen called Talumah to get a preliminary report, since he'd been living on-site. Couched in his answer was the offer of a spare room, and after eleven days in close quarters with his father, who was constantly dithering about his half-made plans—and too close to that pitiful, pregnant half sister—Micahel jumped at the offer, even though he barely knew Ard Talumah.

Micahel's late trainer had called Micahel a renegade, with unpredictable tactics that made him almost a liability. Maybe he shouldn't cultivate Ard Talumah, but he didn't care shef'th about the long-standing ill will between his and Talumah's families. Talumah's deep mind-work specialty put him outside the Shiraks' chain of command. That made them more or less equals.

As for this survey mission, those ludicrous options, and the shifts in policy from his grandfather's regime to his father's, Micahel only cared that he would see Brennen Caldwell stripped of any RIA intelligence he still remembered, or had relearned, and then lulled in a creative manner. He prided himself on artistry.

He glared at an electronic ceiling grid. "What's that?"

Ard Talumah waved a hand, dismissing his concern. "It's taken care of." He pointed at a subtronic device that sat on a scarred table. "Local enforcement looks in now and then. This shows what they want to see." To Micahel's surprise, he used the Federate trade speech, Old Colonial.

"They spy on their citizens?" Talumah was probably right to use Colonial, in case someone might be listening. The rich, ancient tongue of Ehret could give them away.

Talumah nodded. "Here in Citangelo, they do. They can only check one in ten thousand, but the risk is enough to keep some people in line. This way is the kitchen."

Micahel followed Talumah into the last room, with a servo area along one wall and a table on the other.

"I've taken in lodgers before." Talumah backed away from his servo, holding a slender blue bottle. He had the long face of many Eh-retans, with a pouting lower lip and long, nondescript brown hair. He sat down on a high stool, opened the bottle, and sipped. "Help yourself, if you want. The local wines aren't bad. I recommend the joy-blossom."

Micahel shook his head. According to Modabah, Ard Talumah had lured the local princess Phoena to Three Zed. Traveling as a trader in rare commodities, he had also fired the blast that ripped open a certain missing shuttle as it emerged from slip-state. Queen Iarla Second and her infant sister, Kessaree, were as dead as deep space. For now, Modabah forbade releasing that information. Keeping information from his enemies gave him more options.

Modabah's dithering kept him paralyzed, to Micahel's way of thinking. It was time to take the next bold step. The Carabohd family was his rightful prey, and this pair humiliated him at Thyrica. His most vivid memory of the late director Dru Polar was a scornful subvocalization:
Undone by a pregnant woman. Shame, Micahel.

They had disgraced him again at Three Zed, escaping before he could return from Cahal to the Golden City. There would be no third escape.

"So." Micahel took a sling chair. "You've lived here a year—"

"Two years," interrupted Talumah.

"What do you think of Netaia?"

Talumah pulled on his bottle. "Open air. Resources to waste. We've survived for a century taking goods from the Federacy. Why not take a planet?"

"Well put." He liked Talumah's practicality. Adiyn and his aging cronies could babble about serving humankind by giving them immortality, but their starbred ancestors created the superior genes. Their own kind would rule the new civilization.

Talumah gestured toward the cold cabinet, and Micahel shook his head again. The unbound starbred did not trust their most gifted young people. Only a few potential leaders were ever conceived, and they learned not to turn their backs. Until he felt sure he could either trust Talumah or dominate him, he would avoid recreational depressants. He dug into his duffel and pulled out a scan cartridge. "I assume you saw this?"

Talumah loaded the cube into a tabletop viewer, read a few lines, and laughed. "Oh, dear," he exclaimed. "Talk's promises military retaliation . . . unprovoked attack on the Federate world of Thyrica . . . Sun-ton destroyed . . . new technology. . . Micahel, you're famous."

Another scoffer. "Evidently you didn't read the part under 'new technology' carefully enough."

Talumah waved a hand. "Believe me," he growled, "I've read every release on RIA technology. I could quote them all."

"We need to get it. And stop Tallis from using it."

Talumah shrugged. "I think we can take Netaia peacefully, from inside, without leaving a single crater. We'll have to discipline Tallis, though." He sent Micahel a subliminal nudge, replete with respectful undertones.