Crown Of Fire (24 page)

Tel flicked a glance toward the kitchens, where Esme hung back, hidden from view but not out of earshot. "She wants to see you healed, Your Grace. She loves you dearly."

"And she shows it this way?" Rogonin sprang to his feet, tipping his chair.

Tel backed away from the table. All around the room, liveried men and women stepped forward, brandishing whatever weapons they held.

Kenhing stood his ground. "If you refuse their help, Rogonin, and frankly I wouldn't blame you, then you will stand trial. . . and we
will
allow Sentinels to give evidence, if there is a charge concerning Her Majesty Iarla and Princess Kessaree—or any damage to Citangelo, including the Federate base." From the scabbard on his belt, he drew his shining dress dagger. He laid it on the table. "Or there is the traditional recourse, sir."

Rogonin glowered at Kenhing. Tel didn't expect him to let any Sentinel into his mind—but if he had only two choices, then for Esme's sake, Tel had to hope—

Then he thought of Firebird and all this man had done to her. To those adorable daughters of Carradee's. He wanted to see this man dead.

Kenhing stood stiffly. "Regardless of your choice, we will abide by the electors' designation of a new regent. Muirnen Rogonin, you are to be praised for your service to Netaia. On behalf of the Electorate, I thank you. But your service to this council has ended."

Two years ago, Tel had heard First Lord Erwin read those words over Firebird as she knelt between two redjackets. Geis orders, requiring her to seek a noble death.

"If you would prefer not to stand trial," Tel said softly, "I can send in your children to say their farewells. But the Sentinels are willing to help you."

Rogonin touched the dagger's hilt. "Traitors," he muttered, "in my own house. Leave this room, all of you." He opened his fleshy hand and seized the dagger.

Jenner Dabarrah, master of the Sentinels' sanctuary, wryly raised an eyebrow at Carradee. Seated on a bench in his medical office, within earshot of the reflecting pool's continual rippling and splashing, he crossed his long arms. "I did offer," he said gently. "Mazo Syndrome is treatable."

Carradee smiled. That syndrome, diagnosed in Firebird and treated on Thyrica, had kept the Angelo women from bearing male children and proved their kinship with the other Ehretan descendants. "Yes," Carradee answered. She reached aside to her husband's mobility chair and squeezed his hand. Yesterday, Daithi had taken a few hesitant steps out on one of the reflecting pool's green islands, where kirka trees were dropping their bud sheaths, revealing sticky, pale green needles. She could smell the fragrant sap from here.

New life was flowing in them all—

"Thank you, Master Jenner," she said. "We were grateful for your offer, and maybe we were foolish not to ask for treatment before we tried to conceive, but we are not disappointed. Nothing and no one will ever take Iarlet or Kessie's place, but we will be delighted to hold another daughter."
Thank you most of all, Eternal Speaker. I promise you, we will raise her to honor you.

"Congratulations, then." Master Dabarrah rocked to his feet, stepped forward, and gripped Daithi's other hand. "You will have the very best of care."

Daithi's smile showed most of his teeth.

Carradee squeezed his hand even tighter. Let the gossips theorize about his chances of recovery now!

After Brennen checked on Firebird, he paused in the forward crew lounge to collect his thoughts. Shel sat watching her charge sleep.
Sapphira
was stable on course, and Engineering assured him it could run at fifteen percent past normal max for at least one shipboard day, pushing their acceleration well into military standards. The Luxian government had invested in an overengineered ship.

Uri emerged from the medical suite, where Terza had just been moved, again wearing her sensory hood. "Hancock's finishing a physical exam," Uri murmured. "Shouldn't take long."

Brennen nodded, listening to the soft drone of engines and ventilators. Twenty-four souls had squeezed on board, and he'd scheduled most of them for at least one daily watch on guard. Terza must be constantly observed by at least two Sentinels.

Uri took four steps back up the corridor, peered into the med suite, then beckoned.

Guide us, Holy One,
Brennen prayed.

Uri settled on one of three stools alongside Terza's cot. Another guard sat near her feet. Over her head, a row of instruments gleamed with life signs. The corner readout indicated that a restraining field had been activated.

Med Adamm Hancock stood beneath the instruments, crowded against the inner bulkhead. His ash gray uniform looked rumpled from the hurry to board and launch. "Good general health," he told Brennen. "Mid first-trimester pregnant, as you said, with a female fetus. Are you sure you don't want me to administer a blocking drug?"

Brennen took the stool between Uri and the guard. Dispersing his shields, he felt a whirlpool of sensations—Terza's reluctance, chased by suspicion, anger, and dread.

"No drugs," he repeated. "If the child is in any danger, alert us."

The med nodded.

Brennen watched Terza's eyes for any sign of deception. "Is the child yours, too? Or a monoclone?" A male could have a monoclonal daughter if gene techs used two X-gametes.

"She is mine," Terza whispered.

Brennen exhaled, disgusted by their cruelty to her. "Sentinel Harris will breach," he said. "I'm sure you know I've been disabled."

"So we've been told," she said, "but no one believes it anymore. Not after. . ."

After several seconds, Brennen asked, "After what?"

"The Hall of Charity." She stared straight up. "She's alive. Unless that was
her
doing."

"How could it be?" Brennen demanded. He opened fully to Uri and sensed the gentle probe Uri was passing over Terza's alpha matrix, looking for natural flaws. It was easier and kinder to breach for interrogation that way, and this time it was also safer. Only the One knew what she might do by reflex if provoked.

"Polar's research," she answered.

Brennen frowned. "I don't recall much of Polar's research. I remember nearly nothing that happened at Three Zed."

"You'll see, then," she said, closing her eyes. "You know I was watch-linked. We're out of range, but I don't know what else was done to me."

More cruelty! No wonder the woman defected.

"Talumah probably placed other traps for you," she continued. "He is a master. But he never found my inner shields. I've kept them secret from everyone. I'll open them to you. If you stay inside that perimeter, you're probably safe."

"Thank you," Brennen murmured. Some Sentinels also had inner shields, but a skilled interrogator could find and break them.

Uri leaned away from her and drew a deep breath. Brennen took a moment to compose himself, too.

"There are already a number of rough breaches," Uri muttered.

"Surprise." Terza's bitterness came through strongly.

Brennen winced, observing,
Shirak, you may have doomed your own world by treating her this way.

Uri leaned forward again. "Look this way, please," he said. "Can you open those shields?"

Brennen felt him stroke aside her bitterness and doubt, entering her alpha matrix on his first modulated thrust. She stared bleakly at Uri's eyes. As Uri maintained the breach, Brennen sent a follow-on probe. He swept gingerly over her surface emotional state, confirming her intention to leave her people, a motive so powerful that even their newer countercompulsion hadn't stopped her. Then he penetrated her memory and confirmed her claim to that hated name.

He saw how the girl-child was created and implanted, and he confirmed that the gamete carried his genes. This was a laboratory child, conceived not in love but in cold calculation—but his child nonetheless. Aware of Uri's intimate presence, he internalized Terza's shame, and how it intensified her latent wish to escape.

He'd felt the savor of Shuhr before, but that time he'd been the subject under scrutiny. Terza did not resist as he and Uri studied her personality. Now he sensed the shields, a protective secondary matrix surrounding his probe. They were unbelievably dense. On the Ehretan Scale of a theoretical hundred, this woman probably blasted off any cap. 110,115?

The ones who'd done this to her were just as powerful. Her impulse to leave them was consistent with lifelong lines of character and intention. She'd always struggled with the demands placed on her. Her single desire now was to save the child she'd been forced to carry.

She had fixated on him, particularly. Once, she'd hoped to help Micahel kill him.

Her people did fear him. Some of them had started to seriously consider the prophecies given by Ehretan shamarrs. Respect for those prophecies had shaped so much of Brennen's life that it startled him to realize the Shuhr were just starting to believe.

And they did want him alive. Any Shuhr who destroyed him now would suffer excruciating consequences.

He sensed a call from Uri and drifted across her alpha matrix to recent memory.

Eldest Modabah Shirak had ordered Talk's attacked, in response to their suspicions about himself and Firebird. The order had gone out on the DS-212 messenger ship that was racing along, two hours ahead of
Sapphira.
They did suspect the Casvah mutation, and that it gave rise to exceptional power in the Angelo line.

Tempted to rush to the command deck, Brennen clung to his stool. He could not warn Tallis from slip-state. Instead, he double-checked their conclusions about the Angelo line. Terza had made the intuitive leap herself.

He couldn't fault her for observing and analyzing events. He probed deeper along that line of thought, into the complex web of long-term memory. The Shuhr did mean to seize other worlds, ostensibly to offer physical immortality. Wealthy Netaia would be first. . . .

In a laboratory, she'd seen evidence of Netaia's ruling family and its members' fates. The four-year-old queen and her sister were dead, just as she claimed. And Phoena . . . he'd forgotten watching her die, but his captors had taunted him about having failed to save her. Now Brennen saw her current status. Hideously crippled, skeletal muscles torn loose from their attachment points, she was incurable even by Shuhr technology, alive only by medical convention. Her physical brain could not recover. Held in cold stasis, at least she was not suffering.

Chilled, Brennen abandoned that thread and went deeper yet, beneath Terza's memory, to see if anything could be read at depth. Down here, the asphyxiating otherness of her core personality stole his breath, and he knew this was making her excruciatingly uncomfortable, too.

Studying the layer at depth, he found knots of suggestion—sabotage, deception, murder—a minefield strung with trip threads. Touching any locus at this depth would activate a deep, treacherous programming that would override any other intention, whether or not she truly hoped to escape. Neither he nor Uri had the skills to help her. Only psi-medical masters like Dabarrah or Spieth might make her safe.

Brennen pulled back, for her sake as much as his own. His chest ached with pity. His ancestors had created the skills that had allowed all this. His own people would have turned to domination just as surely as hers, without the Codes holding them back.

How many other Shuhr had doubts like Terza's?

Not many, maybe. She let him examine her inner shields at depth, where they arose. Now he understood how she'd hidden the compassionate side of her nature in order to escape Polar's vicious culling processes. Behind those shields he found a woman he could respect.

He withdrew for a moment, tiring. He would have a daughter. A half sister for Kiel and Kinnor.
Guide us,
he pleaded again.
Can I destroy her people in good, conscience?

As if in response, his epsilon carrier flickered out.

He opened his eyes, afraid Terza had attacked him. She reclined on the cot. Hancock attended to the flickering life-signs board, and Uri sat with eyes closed. Only the guard raised his head, catching Brennen's glance. Nothing seemed to have changed. . ..

Then he felt a nudge at the edge of awareness. This Voice never shouted but waited to be heard.

Brennen shut his eyes again.
Tes?
he asked urgently.
Tes?

The Voice spoke in darkness this time, without giving him visual cues.
Take comfort in this,
Brennen heard.
There are no innocents in that city. Its iniquity is complete. Destroy them completely. You shall be a sword in my hand.

The confirmation he'd wanted—the assurance he craved! He was free to attack evil in good conscience.

But...

Holy One, I am inadequate. Please restore what I was before. Crippled like this, I cannot serve you well.

The Voice answered,
I am strong when you are weak. Only in seeming death will you begin to live.

Seeming death? In
Dabar,
that Ehretan term referred to physical death, which his people euphemistically called "the passage Across."
Is that my own call, then? To die at Three Zed after all? Show me, if I can bear it.

He felt a deep love, a weight of eternal humor and terrifying sovereignty. Whether from the Holy One or his own imagination, he pictured the debris left from a terrible space battle. Pieces of a Thyrian Light-Five fighter tumbled, blasted open to space. He recognized a dead-on missile hit.
Even then,
said the Voice,
I will not forsake you. You are never alone.

Brennen gulped air, naked before the Eternal. He remembered Mari's dream-vision, and the pronouncement that had been made over her, as the specter of wreckage drifted through his mind. Out of respect for the Presence, he strangled his terror of darkness and enclosed spaces and his very real, very human fear of dying. Of course the Holy One would not forsake him, even in physical death. But he'd hoped . . .

He could create other hopes.
I'll go wherever you lead,
he responded,
but please send Man home to be a mother to our sons. Spare her from grief. Sustain her in your mercy.

I will be all things to her,
answered the Voice.

Terza had easily distinguished Lieutenant Colonel Harris's brisk, efficient probe from Caldwell's. Caldwell had a depth, an earnestness that settled the nausea of mind-access. After Caldwell's presence vanished, Harris withdrew almost immediately. She stared at them both, dissipating her own shields. Harris's confusion was easy to read and understand, but whatever was happening to Caldwell, it was nothing she'd seen before.

After several seconds, he opened his eyes, startling her. From this angle, there seemed to be a light behind his irises... an afterimage of something incomprehensible, something supernatural.

He moved his head, and the light vanished.

Maybe it was a reflection from the overhead panels.

"Are you all right?" Uri asked urgently.

Brennen nodded, though he felt more stunned than comforted. He wished he hadn't asked to be shown. Maybe his death would change the Federacy's attitudes toward his kindred. It was not necessary to understand, only to accept the holy call, and its cost—just as he'd gone to Three Zed.
You're certain I can bear this?
he prayed. "We're called," he murmured. "He . . . spoke to me."

Uri sat up straight, smiling as he lowered his eyebrows fiercely. "Was there more?"

"Not. . . yet. Go on," Brennen urged, to distract Uri. "We need to map Three Zed and find out how they mean to attack."

Uri adjusted his stance. "Terza," he said firmly.

The Shuhr woman's stare focused on Brennen just a little longer, long enough for him to understand that she'd seen something she couldn't comprehend.

Then she squinted at Uri again.

Brennen managed a turn. He felt Uri breach with one efficient probe. Piggybacking again, he drifted alongside Uri into a deep, golden city. . .

And he recognized it.

The nugget-textured corridors, the magnificent central chamber, the ancestors' hall... he knew them. Without hesitating, he led up a northbound corridor to the fielding station. They had not taken him there, but he'd heard them refer to it.
This way,
he cued Uri.

An instant later, Uri seemed to be peering over his shoulder.
How did you know?
Uri subvocalized.

Brennen whispered, "I remember." Again he pulled out of access. Had the Eternal One granted his prayer, restoring everything he'd been? He spotted a writing stylus beside Hancock's elbow. His hand shook as he focused epsilon energy, then willed the stylus to rise.

It rolled, but it didn't lift.

He clenched his hand and dropped it in his lap. He'd received the confirmation he wanted, and an assurance that his attack would not kill the innocent alongside the guilty. Now he remembered that no children lived in the Golden City. They were raised in outlying settlements. His other memories from that place would be vital for the upcoming attack.

He did remember Polar's research now. He understood Terza's reference. He knew why pulsing red lights carried the terror of Three Zed: His cell door had been ringed with them.

He also remembered Phoena Angelo, writhing out her life in a pale yellow gown, sprawled on the glassy floor of a chamber full of exotic artworks. He recalled the unsettling temblors that had felt like distant explosions.

Rejoining Uri, now he saw areas where he had not been admitted. Terza knew little about its military sites, as he would expect, but enough to show heavy bombers where to strike. Enough that he and Mari should be able to find the fielding operators and blast them with fusion energy.