Resolution (61 page)

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Good. Then follow me, and let’s see what occurs.’

The young nobles looked at each other. There were shrugs and a few giggles before they followed Lord Velond between the stalls and congregated near the garment seller.

The cloaks hanging from the racks looked like discarded fabric that Malkoril, in the Palace kitchens, would have decreed should be used only to wipe floors, and only then after a drone had done the major cleaning work.

‘Do you remember,’ said Lord Velond to the vendor, ‘that you sold me a tunic two tendays ago.’ It was worded like a question, but the intonation said something different.

Lady Sylvana, in her peasant garb, was round-eyed with surprise, and scarcely noticed the two common-born youths at the far side of the market who had stopped to stare at her perfect face. Instead, Sylvana turned round to Tom and whispered:

‘Didn‘t Velond say he‘d never been here before?’

Tom nodded. Viscount Humphrey, who had been frowning at them for not staying silent, looked thoughtful, then grinned.

What is Lord Velond up to?

Lord Velond, despite his faded green surcoat, appeared commanding as he straightened, and looked the vendor in the eye.

‘W-what?’ said the vendor.

‘I’m not saying you will have to pay me the full dozen minims.’ Velond tilted his head a little. ‘The garment was unsatisfactory, but credit where credit is due. I know you are an honest trader.’

The vendor’s hands trembled as he reached behind the stall. Then he stopped and stared at Lord Velond. ‘I don’t...’

His will was already crumbling when Lord Velond issued the final hidden command: ‘These twelve or so folk will see you return my minims. You will feel so much better, I’m sure, when you’ve given me my refund.’

As though afflicted with palsy, the vendor shook as he dropped the cred-spindles into Lord Velond’s cupped hands. Then he gave a sick, weak smile, and backed off, wiping sweat from his face.

‘And good day to you, sir,’ said Velond.

He
commanded
the stallholder.

Then Lord Velond gave a short bow, turned and walked away through the group of students. They parted as if repelled by a magnet, then followed along, drawn into his wake.

Forced him to hand over the credit.

Tom remained for a moment, regarding the vendor who had been cheated of his credit. The thing was, Lord Linski had talked about the theory which they had seen Lord Velond applying here.

‘Ilse different intonation in the key words,’ Linski had told them. ‘Embed a directive inside what
appears
to be an innocuous sentence, even a sentence whose surface meaning is the opposite of your intended meaning. Be subtle in your use of posture, sparing in your use of touch.’

Rationally, Tom knew which of the words must have been commands:
will, pay me, dozen minims,
so forth. But Lord Velond had not even had to tap the vendor on the shoulder - a common technique - in order to shock him into a different state of mind.

I
couldn‘t hear a difference in the tone.

Tom knew what Velond had done. He did not know
how
he had done it.

The rest of the group was following Lord Velond, drawn along by his personal magnetism, or a desire to be like him ... or perhaps in response to a hidden command which made sense only to a Lord, to someone whose noble-house upbringing brought a certain sensibility to attitude and intonation.

By study and hard work (solo at first, then under Mistress eh’Nalephi’s tutelage), Tom had accumulated merit-points. Each new accreditation earned merit-points which allowed him to access more eduthreads. But since starting at the Sorites School, he no longer had to use merit-points, save for additional study modules purchased from the Palace AIs. Recently, Tom had converted some of his bonuses into cred-spindles.

He spent them at crystal shops whenever he could, buying ancient dramas and logosophy texts and anything else that snagged his interest.

Now, Tom dug inside his waistband, found four spindles, checked their values. Four spindles, containing three minims each. The vendor had handed exactly twelve minims over to Lord Velond.

Is that a coincidence?

The hairs prickled on the back of Tom’s neck.

Or is Lord Velond playing a manipulative game with me, too?

Either way, it did not matter. Tom walked over to the garment vendor, who was staring into space and ruminating. He jumped a little at Tom’s approach.

‘Did you really,’ Tom asked, ‘owe credit to that tall man who was here just now?’

‘I... Yes. No ... Well, I don’t think so.’

‘But you handed it over.’

‘He ...’ The vendor swallowed. ‘He expected me to, like.’

‘Even though the credit wasn’t his. You hadn’t sold him anything.’

‘Well…’

‘And if he had bought a garment from you, and wanted a refund, he would have brought the original tunic back, wouldn’t he?’

‘I... guess so.’

Tom waited, then realized he was torturing the poor fellow with uncertainty and self-doubt. ‘My Lady Darinia’ - Tom adopted the patrician tones he heard every day in the Palace - ‘will be pleased to know she has such a loyal subject. And of course you should not be out of credit. Here.’

Tom handed over the cred-spindles, all twelve minims’ worth.

Then he strode quickly away, heart beating fast as he sped up, knowing he was in trouble if he did not rejoin the group before they reached a ceiling hatch and ascended to the next stratum ... But somehow he doubted that Lord Velond would leave him behind.

Tom found them sitting outside an eatery, sipping daistral and eating boljicream cakes, all purchased with Lord Velond’s ill-gotten minims. As Tom joined them, Lord Velond snapped his fingers, and a servitrix brought Tom a goblet, handed it over with a polite curtsy, then withdrew.

The others, young Lords and Ladies all, were laughing, enjoying the joke they had seen played out in the marketplace, talking over the high points, trying to work out how Lord Velond had accomplished it.

Tom raised the goblet in a silent toast, and the gleam in Lord Velond’s eyes was both mocking and understanding as Tom, still standing, drank the daistral which in some sense he had paid for himself. He did not expect Lord Velond to reimburse him for the twelve minims.

But you, my Lord, have given me the greater gift.

On another occasion, Sylvana said to Tom: ‘To you, logosophy is a
weapon.
’

And neurolinguistic rhetoric was the most subtle weapon he could possess.

That was seventeen Standard Years ago.

Now shadows shrouded the empty conference chamber. Night winds whispered in empty skies that bore the terraformer aloft, and perhaps Tom heard the spirit of the Oracle he had knifed to death in this place. Then, he had thought that Gérard d’Ovraison, an Oracle who could bring his consciousness into normal timeflow and wield considerable charm, was scarcely human. Now, the Oracle’s words were haunting him.

‘If you could remember’ -
Gérard d’Ovraison had spoken in ice-cold tones -
‘the moment of your own death, your outlook, too, would change.’

For Tom
had
seen his own death, and no longer knew whether it guaranteed victory or defeat in a world that had already fallen to the Enemy.

Tactical models hung over the table, cast a muted glow, denoting comms-webs and military dispositions; fallen realms; regiments who still fought back, on the surface and far below. Holo images failed to show the hard reality of hand-to-hand struggles in half-lit tunnels: epic battles which history would never record but which for the participants were mortal.

We‘re losing.

There was no other interpretation.

One hundred and thirty-seven terraformer spheres now housed refugees: some were civilians, others were trained military. Many were broken and defeated, their families abandoned in realms that had already been subsumed by the Anomaly. Everyone they had known was now merged into that single, dark entity whose cognitive processes were as far removed from human thought as logosophy was from a microbe’s chemical tropisms.

Some of the refugees - too few, perhaps - burned with the need for vengeance.

It’s time.

Finally. If there was a purpose to life, if Destiny was anything more than a single sloping path down which time tumbled, this was it.

It’s
my
time.

The weapons of manipulation which Lord Velond had allowed Tom to glimpse so long ago were what he needed now.