Ruler of Naught (6 page)

(Stakes?)
Lokri’s brows quirked slightly.

(Whatever.)
Marim shrugged, then squinted at Lokri.
(Stakes?)

Lokri’s smile was thin and utterly unreadable, but Marim had
bunked with him for years. She knew him better than anyone alive.
We’ve
captured the last heir to the Panarch of the Thousand Suns. Every Rifter in
Eusabian’s fleet will be after him. The Panarchists are going to be hunting him
as well—and he’s ours. He’s ours and Lokri is afraid of him.
She laughed
again, but said nothing out loud.

(Vilarian Negus.)
Lokri’s subvocalization was
reflective.

(Done.)
Marim said promptly.
(Loser pays for
both.)

She pushed away from the bulkhead, nudging Lokri to follow.
(Vi’ya
drop any hints to you about what she plans to do with our captive nicks?)

(Nothing.)
Lokri lifted a shoulder in a shrug.
(She’ll
decide that when we get back to Dis, I expect.)

(
She only mentioned the Dol’jharians and the nicks. She
coulda also said that half the Rift Sodality’s gonna be after us, if they find
out where we were and who we got.)

(Life might get interesting,)
Lokri agreed.

He hated talking about the future, even plans. Marim knew
that.
(Do you think we might—)
she began.

Lokri shook his head.
(I never think.)
His hand
dropped from his wrist and he turned off toward the ladder down to the engine
room. Marim watched him disappear, then sprinted down the corridor to the
dispensary, her bare feet soundless on the deck plates. The hatch was open.

Montrose was
still
there, looming over his console as
he checked readings on the wall console outside the old man’s berth. Music was
playing, a bright and complicated melody, indicating he was there to stay for a
time. That had to mean Schoolboy was in charge of the meals.

At the other end of the room all the berth doors were closed
now, the gee warning still blinking above them.

When Marim stepped inside, the surgeon’s grizzled, ugly face
swung toward her, thick brows rising in question.

Marim grinned at him. “Is Ivard able to have visitors?”

Montrose’s brow beetled in surprise. “Might cheer him some.”

Marim winced. “Is he missing Greywing pretty bad?”

“He’s tranked.” Montrose sat back, his gaze assessing.
“Though ordinarily I would never recommend a wounded dog as therapy, he seems
to find Gray’s presence comforting.”

Marim shuddered as she crossed to the berth where the
youngest crew member of the
Telvarna
lay. She sensed Montrose’s surprise
turning to curiosity, so she nodded toward the next door. “How’s the old man?”

“He’ll live.”

Marim stepped over the gee stripe and raised her hand to the
door control.

“Don’t upset him,” Montrose warned, not looking up.

“I won’t,” Marim said. “I came to cheer him. Promise!” She hit
the tab, waiting impatiently through the gee-shift before the door opened.

The space inside was cramped, despite the fact that the two
berths were still connected. The two beds had been reconfigured into a single
larger one. Ivard lay on his unwounded side, one arm lying across the quiet dog.
Marim could see stitches livid against shaved patches of skin on the animal’s
flank. The animal opened its eyes and tracked Marim as she came around the bed,
and the ear tips flattened.

“I’m a friend,” Marim cooed.

Ivard made low, soothing noises to the dog, whose tail
stirred. The dog let out a snorting breath and closed its eyes. At least the
other dog wasn’t there as well. The berth already smelled of dog, though the
tianqi was set on high.

Marim leaned against the door frame and studied the boy. He
was certainly ugly, with his frowzy red hair, pale, blotchy skin dotted with
freckles, and weak, watery eyes. Though he was barely old enough to shave, his
wound had left him drawn and pinched-looking, like a little old man. The
bandage across back and shoulder was clean, but Marim was sure she whiffed the
sweet-sick smell of burnt flesh as well as dog hair.

With a glance at the dog, whose eyes were closed, she put
out a finger and brushed it lightly along the inside of Ivard’s arm.

His eyelids lifted, and she watched his pupils widen. She
gave him her friendliest smile. “You’re looking a lot better, Firehead. Those
chatzers aim with their nackers, eh?”

Ivard breathed a soft laugh, then winced.

She laid a hand on his skinny ribs and brushed it slowly up to
his cheek. “Don’t make it worse. We’ll have time later to laugh lots. Would you
like that?”

Ivard nodded, a hopeful quirk to his brows. His eyes flicked
to the med console.

He’s worried about Montrose finding out.
Well, she
wasn’t about to tell the boy that bunnying was one thing Montrose was
guaranteed not to listen in on, and wouldn’t interfere in any case. But getting
Ivard out of the dispensary was the first step.

“Not here. But once you’re healing up and are back in your
cabin...”

Ivard blushed.

Marim leaned gently against the bed, wary of the dog, and
smiled at him. “How much you remember what happened?”

“Mandala,” Ivard whispered. “Didn’t just dream that? We
looted... big room, then the Krysarch found another room, radiation—”

Marim touched his hand. “Forget that. Wasn’t it fun, being
the only Rifters, ever, to loot the Panarch’s palace—and get away with it?”

“Greywing didn’t,” Ivard muttered, his smile vanishing.

“She died quick and clean, in action,” Marim said. “Isn’t
that the best way to go?”

Ivard nodded, but the gleam in his eyes gathered liquidly,
then tracked down either side of his face. Marim bit her lip, hoping that
Montrose was not watching Ivard’s vitals.
What will cheer him?

“So, what kind of loot did you get?”

Ivard pointed with two fingers at the locker at the foot of
the bed. “Montrose... put my share there,” he breathed.

“Lokri said you two got some for me.” Marim asked, smoothing
back his hair.

Ivard began to nod, then winced as if that much movement
hurt. “Lots. Greywing put some of them back... ” Ivard’s eyes narrowed as he
mentioned his sister’s name. “I couldn’t run, see. So you can choose any of those
for your one to keep. The rest can go in the crew pile. I know what I want to
keep. Greywing picked it. Said it’s one of a kind.”

“She had a good eye. She’d find something priceless,” Marim
murmured.
Greywing was always a strange one—right to the end, I guess.

“Her coin.” Ivard’s hand moved restlessly. “She took it,
said it had a greywing on it. I had it, I know I had it....” His fingers
tightened briefly into a fist. “Montrose said it isn’t with my things. I must
have dropped it.”

“Coin?” Marim repeated, trying not to show too much interest.
“If it’s on the
Telvarna
, I’ll get it for you. But you have to tell me
what it looks like, so I don’t take someone else’s thing.”

Gratitude smoothed his face. As he explained in halting
words, she was amazed. It was better than she’d thought.
An artifact from
Lost Earth? Find the right collector, and we’d be able to buy and sell whole
planets.

She bent forward and kissed Ivard’s cheek. “I’ll find that
coin,” she promised. “Now. Why don’t we look at the other things you got. You
can help me pick the one I’m keeping...”

Captain Pham Anderic ran a finger along the inlays in the
arm of his pod, glorying again in the command center of the ship that was now
his.

In the main viewscreen Arthelion bulked huge beneath them,
with the jeweled chain of the Highdwellings arching far above as the ship
approached the terminator. Only a few of the monitor pods were active, for much
of the crew was enjoying liberty on one of the Syncs given over to them.
Anderic smirked as he imagined the reaction of Douloi Highdwellers to the
swaggering new aristocracy of the Thousand Suns: the Rifter allies of Eusabian
of Dol’jhar.

But for him, every benefit the victory of the Avatar had
delivered was right here, a gift of the savage whim of the new ruler of the
Mandala.

Anderic gently fingered the tender flesh around his
still-inflamed right eye, remembering the interview with the Avatar, under a
sky made bright by the destruction of the Node during the pursuit of the
fleeing Krysarch.
“Take one of Y’Marmor’s eyes and give it to this one.”
The aftermath had been even worse, when Barrodagh denied anesthesia to Tallis
during the operation. Anderic had been unable to refuse Barrodagh’s invitation
to watch, fearing that to show any sign of weakness might be fatal. He
shuddered. He didn’t want to think about what it must have felt like.

The recovery from the eye transplant had been bad enough. A
week in the tank, alternating between dreams of drowning and agonizing neural
alligation sessions. The visual migraines that too often warped the world into
glittering tessellations and sometimes even drained the meaning out of words.
And the first time he’d looked in a mirror after the dressing came off...

A movement at the navigator’s console drew his attention.
Sho-Imbris quickly dropped his gaze. Anderic thought he knew why, the same
reason he now avoided his own reflection: one blue eye and one brown. He
snorted, feeling both revulsion and amusement—Tallis was a part of him now, for
the rest of his life.
I wonder what he feels when he sees my face.

Sho-Imbris looked up again, addressing a point somewhere to
the right and above Anderic’s head. “Fifteen minutes to terminator, Captain,”
he reported. “We’ll be at minimum altitude at that point, as ordered.”

“Very good. Get me a status report from the lock crew.”

The monitor bent to his console with gratifying alacrity, proof
that Barrodagh’s action had been more than the casual cruelty that common
knowledge ascribed to Dol’jhar and its minions.
They do everything with a
purpose, even inflicting pain.
Certainly the crew of the
Satansclaw
had been on its best behavior since Anderic posted the vid of Tallis’
operation, as the Bori had suggested.
And they remember it every time I look
at them.

“Lock crew reports ready. Discharge will take place along
the axis of the skip accelerator, as you ordered.”

Anderic nodded. In a few minutes he’d be enjoying a little
entertainment he’d devised, while at the same time ridding the ship of some of
the chatzy furnishings that had represented elegance to its former captain,
Tallis.

“Very good. Have them stand by.”

He took a deep breath. There was only one leak in the seal
on his contentment, and now he would have to confront it. He couldn’t put it
off any longer, for without the aid of the cold intelligence illegally embodied
in the ship, he’d be unable to create the display that he hoped would finally
win Luri as his consort.

Anderic looked around the bridge. No one was watching him.
He began to tap out the code sequence that would awaken the logos that Tallis
had installed.

His hand trembled. A logos was the embodiment of evil to one
raised on Ozmiron, but not only was its assistance necessary for the coming
entertainment, its concentrated experience of warfare was also the only thing
that would permit Anderic to captain a warship safely through the
disintegrating Panarchy.

Fascinated, almost terrified, he watched as the main
viewscreen sprang to life with words and diagrams overlaying the view of
Arthelion and the approaching darkness beyond the terminator. He could hardly
credit the fact that no one else could see them, but sure enough, there was no
reaction from anyone else on the bridge.

“COMMAND TRANSFER ACKNOWLEDGED. AWAITING ORDERS.” Anderic started
as the dispassionate baritone of the logos sounded inside his head. He blinked,
trying in vain to shift the migraine crosshatching crowding into his vision.

The buck-toothed little toad named Ninn at Fire Control gave
him a puzzled glance, then hunched over his console.

Anderic almost turned the logos off. It was worse than he
had imagined: the dead voice of a never-alive intelligence, cousin to the
horrifying Adamantines, whose coldly calculated assaults could only be stopped
by acts of planetary genocide.

But the memory of Eusabian of Dol’jhar’s harsh face, his
casual cruelty, restrained Anderic’s hand. He had no illusions about his fate
if he defied Eusabian—by comparison, a logos might even be a reasonable
partner.

Warily he sub-vocalized his instructions to the logos. He
arranged his fingers over his console and carefully followed the commands
illuminated there to rearrange the main screen for the best view of what he’d
planned. How had Tallis managed to hide it as long as he did? Barrodagh’s
advice to explain it as a Dol’jharian revenge custom was going to help there.

Moments later, all was ready. He dimmed the bridge lights
and tabbed his comm. “Luri, I’ve got a surprise for you. Come up to the bridge.”
The shakiness of his voice surprised him, and he cut the connection without
waiting for a reply.

He spent the intervening time in careful breathing, trying
to recall and use some of the meditation exercises of his youth under the harsh
discipline of the Organicists.

The visual aura retreated somewhat as he slowly relaxed,
then came the quiet tick-tick-tick of heels on the deck, and a wave of heavy
scent as Luri stopped directly behind his pod. Her heavy breasts radiated a
sensual heat as they pillowed the back of his head. Anderic exhaled as her cool
fingers stroked his temples, traced around his ears, and drifted down to begin kneading
the muscles in his shoulders.

“You wanted Luri?” The emphasis she used on the word
“wanted” aroused the Rifter even more than her touch.