Ruler of Naught (17 page)

“That’s horrible!” she exclaimed, barely able to enunciate
the words past the terrible constriction imposed by the bitter flavor.

The High Phanist raised his brows. “The beings of the world
are numberless; I vow to save them all.”

His quotation of the first of her bodhisattva vows was like
a slap in the face.

He smiled gently, and she noticed now that he, too, was
speaking with difficulty, forcing the word through a bitterness almost too
great to be borne. “Surely you did not suppose you drank that for yourself?”

He reached across the table and took her begging bowl. “You
won’t be needing this anymore.”

She lunged across the table, grasping desperately at the
battered brass bowl...

“No!” shouted Eloatri, and she awoke, standing in the
moonlit clearing, clutching her begging bowl with a terrible strength. After a
moment, she forced her fingers to open, and the bowl dropped into the dust of
the trail with a muted clank.

o0o

Sebastian Omilov shifted position, trying without success to
ease the discomfort of being wedged into a small fold-down seat in the galley. Not
long after the incident in the dispensary, Montrose had given him tacit
permission to wander where he willed on the ship, the only caveat being that
he must return if he felt any chest pain, tingling, or shortness of breath.

Almost the moment he had taken his first steps outside the
sick bay he’d met Osri hovering in the corridor. Looking continually this way
and that, his son had brought him straight to the galley. Silent until they
were closed in, Osri then pointed at the console and said, “Father, the captain
of this vessel is a Dol’jharian, and the Aerenarch knows it.”

“So do I,” Omilov murmured, and saw shock on his son’s face.
“I recognized her accent. Brandon certainly did. He had to spend a great deal
of time with Eusabian’s son Anaris, remember.”

“I remember,” Osri said in a flat voice.

“I have not discussed this with Brandon,” Omilov said. “In
fact, I’ve seen little of him, and those visits have only been in the presence
of the doctor.”

The imputation was oblique, but Osri’s cheeks showed a ridge
of color. “I confronted him,” he admitted. “Demanded he do something—or let me
lead.” Osri picked up some kind of tuber, then set it down again, his profile
wretched. “I can’t forget he was abandoning his family—and everything we
believe in—to join these very Rifters before the Dol’jharian attack even
happened.”

Thus making it impossible for him to speak alone to me,
and unlikely he will confide in anyone now.

“He avoids me,” Osri went on. “He’s either in the rec room,
playing with those dogs, or wasting time with the Rifters and their war games. Or
when I’m in the galley he plays around on the cabin console. Half the time he’s
too drunk to talk, anyway.”

Or pretending to be
, Omilov thought.
No one
expects much of a drunk.

“As good a way as any to find out information, that last.”

Osri raised a hand in a tired gesture. “If I could be
certain—if I could trust him.” Omilov was about to speak, but Osri shook his
head. “If you’re about to defend him, spare your breath, Father.”

Omilov shifted again, fighting against the increased
pressure in his chest. Again, he found himself choosing his words carefully to
avoid alienating Osri. “I do not believe her allegiance is to Dol’jhar,” he
said. “It’s clear enough she’s an exile, and from what I know of that planet,
no one gets off without tremendous determination and effort. However, she is
still Dol’jharian. My worry now is not so much what she will do with us, but
what she might do with the Heart of Kronos.”

Osri’s face eased from anger to reflection.

Omilov confided further. “I really don’t know anything other
than what I told you and Brandon the night of the attack. And as you heard,
that is little enough.”

“If the likes of the Dol’jharians want it,” Osri said, “it
has to be some kind of weapon. No one has ever accused them of raiding places
for art.”

Omilov forced a smile, then leaned back, trying to ease his
spine. He had to admit it, he’d gotten up too soon. “Yet art it is, or so the
Guardian said. Or that was how we understood him. But it was also a part of
something larger, a key, or a linking piece. Whether that large thing is a
weapon or not, no one knows, but the fact that some race millions of years ago
saw sufficient reason to put this thing in isolation under the care of the
Guardian made us take any surmises seriously.”

“Though the large thing, weapon or not, is probably long
gone,” Osri said.

“Perhaps. But if it isn’t, then I am in some wise
responsible for it. I would rather recover it, before its use is inadvertently
discovered.”

“By the captain?” Osri’s breath drew in. “Or by the Eya’a.”
He grimaced. “They knew we had it when we crash-landed on Dis. First thing she
did was take it away from me.” He scowled, flushing with anger. “And Brandon
just sat by.”

“What should he have done?” Omilov asked. “Don’t you
remember Anaris? Not later, when he’d learned something of restraint from the
Panarch, but when he first came to us?”

Osri’s face soured. “You seem to forget—or maybe you didn’t
notice—that Brandon, and Galen, before he was sent off to school, did their
best to make sure I scarcely saw him. I think I exchanged a sum total of five
words with Anaris during all my visits to the Mandala.”

Omilov leaned against the wall, his mind ranging back
through the years to a memory to the week or so after Anaris had arrived on
Arthelion: Galen, tall and weedy at nearly twenty, with a smashed wrist in a
cast, and Brandon, younger and smaller, with a broken collarbone.

Don’t tell Father,
Galen said.
He’ll send him
back, and it will wreck the treaty.

We all learned something,
Brandon added, his laughter
wheezing.
We learned that he’s as strong as a Tikeris—

Weighs as much, too,
Galen put in humorously.

And he learned, or will, that to be civilized you have to
know how to laugh. We‘re going to make sure he learns how to laugh.

Galen’s sleepy smile had turned uncharacteristically grim.
Threatening to kill people every time you see them strains the conversation.

Not to mention trying to carry it out,
Brandon had
added.

Omilov heard himself saying,
But this sounds serious.
Please release me from the bond of silence; I really think I ought to speak to
your father.

Both of the Panarch’s younger sons had shaken their heads.
We’ve said enough, and Anaris’ll get adult tutors in manners. What we’ll teach
him is a sense of humor,
Galen had promised.
From a distance.

But if he goes for you whenever you’re alone—

So we make sure that he never catches us alone,
Brandon
had promised.

Omilov looked up at his son. “With Dol’jharians, as Brandon
well knows, every confrontation becomes a contest of power. The captain seems
civilized, but try not to make her angry.” He hesitated, thinking of Vi’ya’s
straight body, its contours hidden beneath the anonymous dark cloth of the
jumpsuit made tight to throat, wrists, and boot-tops. “And if you do succeed in
enraging her... ” He sighed, echoing Brandon’s words of long ago, “Don’t let her
catch you alone.”

o0o

“Heyo, Serg.” Yeoh Wychyrski dropped onto the bench next to
Rom-Sanchez in the junior officers’ wardroom, her tray loaded with typical
inattention to nutrition.

Rom-Sanchez had chosen to eat alone, rather than joining the
group around the L-4 console. The senior officers had kept them hopping since
the disappointment at Schadenheim, leaving him little time to brood about that
sudden grin in the captain’s face.

But here was Yeoh Wychyrski, her dark eyes avid. He liked her.
She was popular, and good looking—the same height as the captain, she had a
spectacular figure that the uniform couldn’t hide.

“Sit down, Yeoh,” he said—a second after she’d already set
her tray down.

But it was like Mzinga had once said, the problem with
having been young and brilliant is that eventually you aren’t young any more,
and when you are surrounded by other brilliant people, you aren’t that special
any more.

Yeoh still sometimes acted like she had when she entered the
Academy at only fourteen, the youngest cadet in their class. And so, even
though she’d been recently promoted to alpha crew, she was still an ensign
three years after graduation, despite her competence otherwise.

“Why all alone?” she asked. “Someone turn you down?”

That was another thing, she saw romance everywhere. Why
didn’t she sniff after Prettyboy Ammant, like everybody else? He hoped she
hadn’t picked up on his attraction to the captain.

Rom-Sanchez glanced up. The only other solitary officer was a
short female, her tight-curling hair skinned back in a regulation bun. She was
reading the menu by the dispenser, her blunt, broad-nosed features composed
into an abstracted frown. “Warrigal,” he said, hoping Yeoh would take the hint
communicated by sheer unlikelihood.

“Warrigal!” Yeoh repeated, eyes wide with surprise. “She
never talks about anything but her game.”

“How would you know?”
How can anyone so good at SigInt be
so clueless? “
That’s the only place you pay any attention to her. Anyway,
you know we’re connected. Blaosas Highdwelling was freighted by the Warrigals.”

“So a closer connection couldn’t hurt, eh? You’re sniffing a
dead trace,” Yeoh said with a sympathetic shake of her head. “Liviu and Ke have
a hundred-sunburst bet going that that uniform is tattooed onto her skin, and whatever’s
under it is neither female or male.”

Rom-Sanchez drank off his caf, hiding his grimace. That was
a bit too close to the bone. He could so easily see a bet about when the poor lieutenant
who was kewpy about his captain would be humiliated.

Yeoh leaned closer. “Since you hang out with her, have you
been able to find out anything about her last post?”

Rom-Sanchez grimaced. “Nobody talks about Narbon.”

Yeoh snorted, the single Serapisti chime woven into her
tight coronet of braids glinting. Regs were strict: hair was to be neat, either
cut just below earlobe level, or else worn high. Regs stretched to ornaments for
religious purposes, although Serapisti chimes had to be silenced at station. Yeoh’s
thick, wavy hair was always elaborate, pushing the meaning of the word ‘neat,’ and
Rom-Sanchez wondered how often she performed a Serapisti ritual.

“She was the top of her class,” Rom-Sanchez said. “And you
have to be smart to be skimmed for Narbon, even if your family is as old as the
Warrigals.”

“Especially, you mean,” said Yeoh. The Warrigals disdained
the ambitious Douloi who gravitated to the Aerenarch. She leaned forward. “And
double if you’re not male. But she probably wasn’t aggressive enough.” She
tightened a fist. “You know what they say about the Aerenarch.”

Rom-Sanchez glanced at Warrigal, who’d been halted by one of
the L-4 players. She stood there, tray in hand, food rapidly cooling, her dark
face brow-furrowed as she seriously answered some question that was almost
certainly a joke.

Rom-Sanchez shrugged. “He prefers men as officers, that’s
about all I’ve ever paid any attention to.”

“My cousin Rafe, whose uncle knows a cook’s mate aboard the
Sobieski
,
said the cook’s mate overheard the Aerenarch saying, and I quote.”Yeoh shifted
to the lugubrious tones of a stiff-strut wiredream officer. “‘I honor my
father’s desire for peace, but we all know the next war will be with Dol’jhar.
And when that comes, I want as my captains men who can kill with their bare
hands on their own bridge. I do not say most women can’t, I’m saying that most
women won’t.’”

Her voice rose slightly. “They say after a year, the
Aerenarch makes his officers pass a red test. You know, kill someone, in hand-to-hand
combat. I’ll wager you a hundred sunbursts—a thousand—that Warrigal funked it.”
Yeoh sat back significantly.

“Don’t be a blunge-head,” said Rom-Sanchez without heat.
“And keep your voice down.” He shook his head. He’d heard some unpleasant
things about duty at Narbon, but that was just ridiculous. And, like everything
else out of the Aerenarch’s planet, third-hand—as though a cook’s mate would be
present to “overhear” anything the most paranoid Arkad in generations said.
Anyway, even Yeoh had to know that someone like Warrigal would be last to spill
any details. She was under a cloud, for sure, and survival meant lying low. He
wondered if her almost obsessive focus on her game-thesis, a piece of academic
work that he had to admit was brilliant, was merely camouflage.

“All right if I sit here, or is a this private
conversation?”

Rom-Sanchez was startled by the quiet voice. He looked up.
There was Warrigal, standing next to the booth with her tray. The rest of the
wardroom had filled up.

“No, not private,” Yeoh said, unabashed. She indicated the
opposite bench. “So, we were just talking. You have any idea what a
port-wriggle is?” She dug her elbow into Rom-Sanchez’s side.

Warrigal paused in the act of breaking her bread. “Our watch
was talking about it,” she said seriously. “The captain stopped in and Koenic
asked if a port wriggle was some sort of code.”

Yeoh dug the elbow again.

“She said that she’s been running a research worm on that
phrase since she was a midshipman. It was part of a wooden warship, but no one
knows what it did.”

“Wooden!” Yeoh repeated, eyes round. “Ohhhhhh, you mean
surface
vessels
.”

Warrigal looked genuinely puzzled. “Surely you had the
history of warfare classes.”