Schism: Part One of Triad (41 page)

Soz was beginning to understand the weight Kurj and De-hya lived with as the Dyad. They were responsible for a mesh that served thousands of settlements and hundreds of billions of people. Any telop could use the Kyle web, but only Dehya and Kurj could control it. Dehya created the web and ensured it survived. Kurj used it to build ISC into a deadly machine that even the Traders, with their greater resources, couldn’t defeat. He was blunt power: she was subtlety and nuance. He was the Military Key; she was the Assembly Key. They called Dehya the mind of the web and Kurj its fist.

It wasn’t enough.

They were exhausted. Two people, no matter how strong or driven, couldn’t keep up with the growing, ever-changing demands of a voracious mesh that added new networks at billions per hour. And always now Kurj and Dehya were searching to discover how Vitarex Raziquon had infiltrated Lyshriol. The same thought hung like a specter over them all; if the Traders could violate the Imperialate stronghold of Lyshriol, no place was safe. Soz knew the truth no one admitted, that the Assembly kept quiet, that ISC buried in secured systems. No one spoke it aloud, but it terrified them all. The Kyle web was out of control. If they didn’t find a solution, it would collapse under the sheer weight of its success.

And kill the Dyad.

Aftermath

he Dalvador winds ruffled Roca’s clothes and cooled her skin. Iridescent glitter dusted her body and swirled in the wind, curling up into the lavender sky. Streamers of blue clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, with wisps trailing down from the sky to the ground.

Corey Majda walked with Roca to die starport. The Majda queen gazed around at the countryside. “I’ll never get used to how beautiful—and how strange—it is here.”

Roca felt too dispirited for talk about the landscape. She spoke in a low voice. “How is he?”

“Prince Shannon?”

“Yes.” She rubbed a muscle kink in the back of her neck. “He hardly says a word to me when we talk through the web link.”

“He’s been through a lot.”

“Too much.” If Roca could have taken into herself the memories that haunted her son, she would have done it in a moment. But only Shannon could free himself from the prison of his nightmares.

As they neared the port, the reeds petered out into an open stretch of velvety piper-moss. A circular, whitewashed house stood beyond, its turreted roof reminding Roca of an upturned bluebell. ISC had agreed to let Shannon stay in Brad Tompkins’s house for his custody. The boy was under military guard, but at least he was living with a family friend.

The door of the house opened as they drew near. Brad stood mere in jeans and a gray sweater, his belt slung with a

staser. “Roca! It’s good to see you.” He raised his hand in a wave to Corey.

“My greetings, Colonel Majda.”

“Dr. Tompkins.” Corey nodded with the wariness she always maintained toward anyone from Earth.

Inside, the house charmed Roca as much as it had twenty-four years ago when she had first come to Lyshriol. Although it served as the port office, it was also the home where Brad lived with his Lyshrioli wife Shallia and their four children. Green glasswood paneled the living room, with a rustic bar along one wall and blue doors leading to inner rooms. Throw rugs lay about on the stone floor, which was tiled in pale blue and green squares. Paintings graced the walls, landscapes of spindled mountains cloaked in blue snow, actual pictures rather than holoscapes.

Shallia and the children had gone to live with her mother in Dalvador, about a fifteen-minute walk from the port. Roca knew why they had gone, even if neither Shallia nor Brad would admit it, and she felt a debt of gratitude to them. They didn’t want Shannon taken up to the battle cruiser in orbit any more than Roca did. It would traumatize him to be yanked away from Lyshriol, especially now, when his emotions were already so injured. The port was ISC

property, so they could hold Shannon here, but Corey Majda would never have let him stay with Brad’s family. Roca didn’t believe for one moment Shannon was a danger to anyone, and Corey knew it, too. But the colonel always followed procedure. No laughing children filled the living room today, no toys lay scattered over the rugs and tables, and no plump Shallia beamed at them, urging them to have more syrup-filled bubbles. Instead, two guards in dull green-gray uniforms of the Pharaoh’s Army stood posted by the walls.

Shannon was sitting in an armchair at a table with a chess set made from green and gold glasswood. He looked up as they entered and then rose to his feet.

His silver eyes had a hunted look, with dark circles marring his pale skin.

His white-gold hair shimmered in the light from the overhead lamps.

Roca wished she could reassure her son. But he had grown more distant these past years as he navigated the boundary between youth and manhood. He wasn’t the first of her sons to withdraw from her during adolescence, becoming taciturn and noncommittal with his mother. The other boys had come out of it after a few years and relaxed with her again. Shannon was in the middle of that time now, struggling to define himself, and she didn’t know how to reach him.

He looked so much like a Blue Dale Archer. He wore the clothes they had given him, a moss-green tunic that reached to midthigh, thick leggings that would keep him warm in the northern mountains, and dark green boots. He lacked only his magnificent bow, the quiver of arrows on his back, and his sword with its jeweled pommel. His ethereal beauty, upward tilted eyes, and silver gaze made him seem a creature of myth more than a human boy.

He watched her like a wild iyrine ready to bolt. “Mother.”

“My greetings, Shannon.” She almost called him Shani, but it felt wrong here.

Shani was a boy. She faced a man, the killer of a Highton Aristo.

Her son averted his gaze, his lashes hiding his eyes in a white-gold fringe that glinted.

Hai! He had picked up her thought. She spoke softly, painfully aware of everyone in the room. “I am glad to see you.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“Shannon,” she murmured. Gods, she wished these people would leave. Even under normal circumstances, talking to Shannon wasn’t easy. With an audience, she felt too constrained to speak at all.

Brad came over to the chess board and gave Shannon a rueful smile. “I guess I can finish losing this game another time.”

“You played well,” Shannon said.

“You played better.” Brad glanced quizzically at Roca.

“Perhaps you could come back later with Colonel Majda to finish the game,”

Roca said, hoping he would take the hint. They couldn’t “come back” unless they left. Majda

wouldn’t dismiss the guards, but she might at least take them outside.

“Perhaps we could.” Brad turned to the colonel. “Did you still want to check on the landing field?”

“The field?” Corey glanced from Brad to Roca. “Oh. Yes. Let’s do that.”

Thank you, Roca thought, though Corey wasn’t a psion. Now if she could just convince Corey to take the guards, too. When the colonel met her gaze, Roca tilted her head slightly toward the guards. Corey just looked puzzled.

“We could use some help checking the field,” Brad said.

Roca could have hugged him. Corey considered him, started to speak, then seemed to change her mind. Instead she turned to the guards. “You two will aid Dr. Tompkins.”

The taller of the two scratched his chin, seeming perplexed, which didn’t surprise Roca; even if Corey and Brad really were going to check the field in some way, they hardly needed the two lieutenants. But he just said, “Yes, ma’am.”

Roca watched as they all left the house. Brad raised his hand to her, then closed the door.

She turned to Shannon. “I’m sorry. About the guards.”

“They never intrude.” His voice chimed softly.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Fine.” He rubbed one hand over his cheek in a gesture he had used all his life, since he was a little boy in his crib. It made her ache to see him do it now, for it had always meant he felt scared.

Shannon, talk to me.

He gave no indication he heard her thought, though she directed it with enough strength and clarity to reach him. He had barriered his mind to her, probably to all of them. It broke her heart to see both Eldri and Shannon withdraw this way, shutting out the people who loved them.

“Would you like to sit down?” she asked.

“All right.” He settled into his armchair and she sat across the table from him in Brad’s chair.

Shannon moved his green chessmen to their squares along his side of the board.

“Would you like to try a game?”

Roca touched one of the gold pawns on her side. “Aren’t you and Brad playing?”

He shrugged. “I was about to checkmate him.”

She wondered if she knew this son of hers at all. “I hadn’t realized you could play chess.”

He continued to set up his pieces. “When I worked at the port last year, Brad and I used to play after my shift.”

Roca had encouraged her children to try part-time jobs here, when Brad allowed. He put them to work maintaining the flyer or monitoring the consoles.

It was a good experience beyond their farming chores. They learned what it meant to earn credits they could use to purchase Skolian goods or services.

Althor and Soz had spent many hours here. Shannon had been less interested, but he had tried it. Perhaps he had really come to play chess. It hadn’t occurred to her to suggest the Earth game to him, but now that she thought about it, she could see its appeal. Although he had trained as a warrior, like her other sons, he had always seemed more interested in strategy than the actual fighting. Chess would intrigue him in the same way.

She set up the gold pieces on her side of the board. If Shannon could beat Brad, he would trounce her; she knew little about chess beyond how to move the pieces, and she wasn’t even sure about mat with a few of them.

“Gold goes first,” Shannon said.

Roca slid one of her pawns forward. “Is ISC treating you well?”

“Yes.” He picked up one of his pawns. “Fine.”

Roca looked up at him. “Shannon, you have to stop blaming yourself for what happened to your father.”

He jerked and dropped the pawn. It hit another chessman and the two statuettes spun off the table. A flush touched his cheeks.

Ai! Roca wanted to kick herself. She leaned down and gathered the fallen pieces. When she straightened up, Shannon was still sitting, staring at the board. His face had gone pale. Roca started to speak, but men stopped, afraid she would only make tilings worse. She wished she knew how to talk to this son of hers, half man, half boy, half Archer, half Rillian.

She felt his mood, strained and uneasy, but it didn’t do much beyond letting her know she had to tread with care. Sometimes being an empath made it harder; she could feel when her children hurt, but that didn’t tell her how to help.

She put the two chess pieces back on the board. Shannon looked at them for a moment, then set down his pawn in another square. Roca had no idea what strategy to use. She liked the castles in me corners, but her pawns were in the way, a whole row of the little foot soldiers. She moved another one forward.

Within a few moves Shannon was taking her pieces right and left. Another few moves and he had won, neady trapping her king in one corner.

Roca smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid I’m not much challenge for you at tins game.”

He continued to stare at the board. “I used to play with Father.”

Roca chose her words with care, taking it obliquely this time, as he had done, “The day I met your father, he had come here with his cousin Garlin to play chess with Brad.”

Shannon looked at her. “Garlin plays better than either Brad or Father.”

Roca smiled. “So Brad tells me.” Garlin, Eldri’s former regent, lived on a farm some kilometers distant, but he still often visited.

“I can beat Father sometimes. But never Garlin.”

“I hadn’t realized you enjoyed the game so much.”

He shrugged. “I don’t play much now. I did more when I worked here.”

She wondered if he felt a loss at mat. “You could challenge your brothers or sisters.”

“Soz is the only one who really knows the game.” He looked rather alarmed.

“She plays like she’s in a war. Even Garlin can’t beat her. She doesn’t win, she obliterates.”

Roca couldn’t help but laugh. “I can imagine.”

Shannon smirked. “I think Lord Rillia escaped a grim fate.”

“Shannon.”

“It’s true. Besides, Aniece wants him. And she will like being the queen of Rillia.”

“What?” That caught Roca off guard. “Aniece is too young to have such thoughts.”

“She doesn’t know that. She wants to marry him.”

In truth, Roca agreed that when Aniece grew up she would make a far better match for Lord Rillia man Soz. For all that the marriages of the Ruby Dynasty and other Skolian nobles were often arranged for political reasons, Roca had never been able to make herself insist when her children balked at the plans their elders hatched for their marital state.

She regarded Shannon curiously. “How about you?”

He stiffened. “What about me?”

“I just wondered if you had anyone.”

His face turned red. He mumbled, “No,” but his thought was so strong, it came to her despite his barriers, me image of a lovely young Archer, a woman with a superb bow made from glowing red glasswood and nocked with a gold arrow.

Roca held back her smile. She doubted Shannon would feel gratified to know his love interest charmed his mother. “Well,” she said, setting up her chess pieces for another game. “I’m sure you will meet someone someday.”

He made a noncommittal sound and put his own pieces in place. “You can go first,” he offered.

Their second game lasted a few moves longer than the first. Roca even figured out what to do with the pieces that resembled warriors on lyrine, what Shannon called “nights” in English, though she wasn’t certain why. The game had no “days.” In the end he captured her queen, which looked like an ancient Ruby Pharaoh and had a similar level of power in the game. Then he checkmated the Pharaoh’s consort, or king.