Schism: Part One of Triad (7 page)

Soz wondered what brought on this pensive mood. “Not yet. I would feel that way if I married Lord Rillia.”

“Don’t give up your dreams.” He looked at her. “You have a gift. It deserves a chance to develop.”

She grimaced. “A gift for what? Annoying people?”

“For military strategy.”

She finally asked the question that filled her thoughts now. “Do you think we’re going to war?”

“Gods only know. From what I’ve heard, the Traders have been preying on our ships lately even more than usual. They either kill die crew and passengers or sell them as slaves.” jk “How can they get away with that?” a-t “They claim our ships go into their territory.” ‘ “Do they?”

“No.”

Soz felt cold. “Can we prove it?”

“No. They keep or destroy the stolen ships, with all dieir records.” His gaze darkened. “They get more and more daring, baiting us, trying to goad us into attacking first. That would make us the aggressors and help them win allies.”

Her anger sparked. “They are the ones that sell and torture people. They’ve already ‘attacked.’”

“Slavery is legal for them.” He regarded her intently. “None of this has to do with heroics, Soz. Never forget that. Being a Jag pilot is one of the worst jobs in ISC.”

She could barely hold still. “I know.”

“It’s why the academies are so tough on their cadets.”

“An academy is a place. It’s people who are tough on other people.” She put her fists on her hips. “You going to give me a hard time at DMA, you being a senior when I’m a novice?”

His cocky grin came back. “Upperclassmen get to help train the new cadets.”

She snorted. “Right. Make our lives hell.”

“You’ll do fine.”

“What time are you and Tahota leaving today?”

“Probably this evening.”

“You going to fly that Jag?”

His gaze smoldered. “Hell, yes.”

Soz made a show of looking dubious. “Is it safe for me to ride widi you? What if something happens? Maybe I need to know more about the ship. Just in case.”

Altiior laughed. “I’m not going to let you fly my Jag, Soz.”

Oh, well. Althor knew her better than she wanted to admit. “I’ll sit in the copilot’s seat”

He answered amiably. “Give yourself a few months before you take DMA by storm. You don’t have to do everything the first day.”

“I know mat.” In truth, Soz was impatient to get on with matters. She wanted to fly a Jag so much, it felt tangible in her life. “Ah, hell, Althor. Just let me sit in the pilot’s seat for a few minutes.”

His smile crinkled his eyes. “All right”

“Hey.” Soz beamed at him. “Great.”

But first she had business to take care of here.

Shannon ran for over an hour. He fell into a trance, his feet beating a rhythm on the plains, reeds brushing his thighs, clouds of filmy spheres in his wake, He wished he could ride Moonglaze through these plains, never stopping, never feeling. It hurt too much to feel. Lately the girls in the village giggled at him all the time,

playing flirting games he couldn’t fathom. Maybe he wouldn’t fathom Blue Dale girls, either, but at least he wouldn’t feel so out of place. Except the Archers no longer existed. They had all vanished in the high northern mountains. The youths his age were always going off to hunt, sneak around alehouses at night, or generally get into trouble. His brother Denric used to understand, before books took him away. Now all Denric thought about was literature and going to college. No one else just wanted to run in the wind.

After a while Shannon slowed down. Finally he stopped and flopped on his back, reeds bowing over him, their stems supple and translucent, silvery green. They resembled me glasswood columns of the trees in the Stained Glass Forest, except these were much thinner and more flexible. Bubbles drifted off their tips and popped, showering him with glitter. Soon more reeds would grow from that sparkling dust.

Shannon closed his eyes. He didn’t know why he stayed in Dalvador. No, he did know. It would sadden his parents if he left. The Valdoria children were dispersing like glitter on the wind. Eldrin, the firstborn, had gone offworld and married the Ruby Pharaoh. Althor had gone to DMA. Soz probably would, too.

Vyrl had married and moved to a farm outside of Dalvador, but at least he stayed here. Denric would go offworld to the university. Aniece wanted to marry Lord Rillia and become an accountant by attending an offworld university as a virtual student, like Vyrl. Kelric already talked about seeing the stars. If Shannon left, too, what would that do to his parents? He couldn’t desert them.

But the loneliness would starve him.

Eldrinson sat in the alcove of the master suite on a cushioned bench.

Windows reached from the bench to the ceiling. Outside, a golden day graced the plains, and Dalvador basked in the amber sunlight. He picked a melody out on his drummel, composing a song for a festival that had been held in Starlo Vale an octet of days ago:

The planters jumped high,

They jumped so high.

They sang their news,

Sang their news.

Sang their news.

Three times they told,

Three times they sang

Three times they sang

Their tales of plenty;

Their crops of twenty.

Twenty bushels, piper-reeds ripe and true; Twelve only, bagger-bubbles so few.

Thirty-four sure, sweet-spheres, gold and blue.

Six octets total, bubble squash full and clean, Every color, red, yellow, orange, blue, and green.

He stopped, frowning, unsure about the rhymes. Usually for a rhyme scheme, he kept the number of syllables equal in the rhyming lines, but that didn’t work here. Still, he liked the way the harvest tally fit the music. It worked.

A knock came at the door. He lifted his head. “Come.”

The door opened, revealing a familiar, beloved, exasperating sight, Soz in the blue leggings, gray tunic, and soft gray boots of an archer. Boy’s clothes. It wasn’t that they weren’t lovely on her. But they were for boys.

Not girls.

Still, it gladdened him to see her. He beamed, pleased she had sought him out.

They argued so much lately. He wished he could find a way to talk with her, to regain the easy warmth they had shared when she was young.

“My greetings, Soshoni,” he said.

She stood awkwardly in me doorway. “May I come in?”

“Of course.” He set the drummel on the bench next to him. “Come sit with me.

Tell me why you look so pensive.”

She came to the alcove and sat on the cushioned bench near his drummel. “I wanted to talk to both you and Mother.”

Her strange mood unsettled him. These past few years as she had turned from a girl into a woman, she had become

more distant, but he could usually judge whether she was happy, angry, sad, or full of energy. Right now, he couldn’t tell, and that made him uneasy. He didn’t intrude on her privacy as an empath; it would have been like entering her room without knocking.

“Would you like me to get her?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It’s best if I talk to you first”

Eldrinson felt a chill. “What is wrong, Soshoni?”

“A few months ago, I took the preliminary exams for the Dieshan Military Academy.”

He froze. No. Not now. He needed more time. He spoke more stiffly than he intended. “You know how I feel about that”

“Father, listen, please.” She watched him intendy, her eyes so green, so unlike Lyshrioli eyes. “I passed the tests. I even did well. Really well.”

“Why do you waste your time with such things?” He didn’t want to hear.

Couldn’t hear. “It serves no purpose. You cannot go to Diesha. I won’t sign the forms.”

She regarded him steadily, not angry, not growling, different today, composed in a way that frightened him. “If I stay here, my spirit will wither and die. Surely you see that I have to go.” Her voice caught. “You have to let go.”

His thoughts whirled. “Why does it matter? It will be a year before you need to worry about it”

‘Tve already been accepted.”

No. No. He had to barrier his mind from this news. But he couldn’t do it; he lived in the moment, unable to cut himself off from those he loved. He could only say, “That cannot be.”

“It is.”

“But you said you took only preliminary exams.”

She nodded in that quiet way she had today, so odd, so unlike her usual fire. “I did better than I expected. They want me to enroll now.”

“Now? NO!” He rose to his feet, filled with the fear of losing her, of her death, of the violence she could meet out there in a harsh universe beyond his ken. “I will not allow it! You cannot go.”

“You can’t stop me.” She stood up as well, defiant now. “They will accept me without parental consent.”

“What? No! They can’t do that.” Skolians claimed young people didn’t reach their majority until three octets plus one year of age. Eldrinson thought it absurd; in Dalvador and Rillia you became an adult at two octets. It didn’t matter. By their own definition, Soz was a child. His child. They couldn’t take her away from him. He wouldn’t allow it.

“I don’t want to go without your consent.” She was using her quiet voice again. “I would ask you please, Father, give me your blessing. Please understand.”

A terrible foreboding settled over him. “Who gave you permission to do this?”

“The DMA admissions office.”

“I see. And who let them do such a thing.”

Soz hesitated. “I don’t know.”

Eldrinson barely kept his anger in check. “Could it by any chance be your dear half brother, Kurj, the Imperator, who tried to shoot me dead the first time he met me? Who would see me in my grave rather than acknowledge I am his stepfather? Is mat who gave you permission to defy his own laws and turn your back on your family?”

Soz drew in a deep breath. “Father, listen.”

“I have heard too much.”

“Kurj chose his heirs.”

“I don’t care what Kurj has done. You will not leave.”

“Listen to me!” Her eyes blazed. “Kurj designated Althor and me as the Imperial Heirs. Don’t you understand what that means? Someday one of us will be Imperator.”

Eldrinson was dying inside. He had spent years trying to make peace with his warlord stepson, to no avail. It was painful to live with Kurj’s scorn, his barely disguised contempt, even hatred, but he had never expected this, that Kurj would rip his children away. He could live with Kurj’s loathing because Kurj was in another place, distant, unable to affect bis life. Now Skolia’s mighty Imperator reached out his long arm to take what Eldrinson valued above all else, even above his own life—his children.

.’-‘ “No.” He was whispering now. “You cannot do this.” It was a betrayal beyond his ability to comprehend.

“Ah, Father.” Soz’s anger vanished, replaced by a pain she didn’t hide. “It isn’t what you think. He has to choose heirs. The Assembly has insisted, regardless of his feelings about your marriage to Mother. He has all of Skolia to worry about, nine hundred settled worlds and habitats, hundreds of billions of people. He must train Rhon psions to assume his position.”

This couldn’t be true. Kurj couldn’t take his daughter and send her to die in war. Or worse. “You cannot go.” He would repeat those words a million times until she heard them.

“It’s the information networks that stretch across the stars.” She spoke as if urging him to see what she meant. “Only the Rhon can control them. Without them, interstellar civilization as we know it couldn’t exist.”

‘It makes no sense.” Roca had told him this, that instantaneous interstellar communications were possible only through some universe outside spacetime, someplace where light speed had no physical meaning. It meant nothing to him.

Light was light. It had no speed. They expected him to believe this bizarre place existed that only people with Rhon minds could tolerate, a place that made speech among the stars possible? It was stories, fables. That Kurj would use this insanity to take his children—no, he couldn’t accept this betrayal.

He spoke slowly, measuring his words. “If you leave, you are no longer my daughter.”

“Father, don’t.” A tear ran down her face, so unusual for this daughter who hid her gentler side. “Don’t ask me to make that choice.”

Somehow he kept his voice steady, though surely it would break soon. “My daughter is a woman of Lyshriol.”

“But it is all right if your sons leave?” Bitterness edged her voice. “Althor is your glorious son, coming down in a pillar of flame, but I am betraying you?”

“Is it not bad enough that he leaves? Must you go, too?” He despised himself for his bewildered tone. “If you go now, Sauscony, do not come home again. You will have no place here.”

Another tear ran down her face. “Neither Althor nor I are what you think, Father. We may break your heart, but remember this—always, for both of us, we love you. You gave me a wonderful childhood, one full of love. You can disown me when I leave tonight on that ship, but I will always love you.”

With that, she turned and left the room. For a moment he simply stood, frozen.

Then his shock cracked open like a dam breaking, water flooding, rushing, bursting through the cracks and past the jagged edges of his thoughts.

Eldrinson crossed the room in a few strides. He yanked open the door and strode out to the hall that stretched the length of the house. He was running by the time he reached the top of the main stairs. He pounded down them, coming around their curve—and collided with Roca.

“Eldri, what’s going on?” She caught her balance. “Soz told me you just disowned her. Then she went off. She won’t talk to me.”

“Your son never gives up, does he?” He couldn’t stay calm. “You stopped him from killing me. You stopped him from having me declared incompetent. You stopped him from having me caged in a lab while they studied my brain. Now he retaliates by taking my children.”

Roca stared at him. She didn’t try to deny his words; they both knew the extremes Kurj had taken in his attempts to end their marriage. “That was a long time ago. He’s changed.”

Eldrinson struggled to breathe. “Apparently not much.”