The Rifter's Covenant (53 page)

The meeting was
breaking up. Vannis had taken aside the vocat, while most of the others talked
in vibrant voices, giving the sudden laughs of release from tension. Fierin
rose, glad to be going back to Osri’s quiet, safe little rooms. She was
welcome, she could stay. And tomorrow Jes would be free. There were three
things to believe in.

“See you at five
tomorrow morning?” Brandon turned to Osri.

“I don’t think so,”
Osri answered. He gave his funny smile—like it pained him—and added, “I got
what I came for.”

Brandon bowed,
gesturing in the pax-of-brethren modality. Osri’s smile was a real one this
time, and they left.

When they were
alone in the transtube, Fierin said, “I don’t understand. You only went to
those exercise gatherings for a few days. What did you go for?”

Osri frowned
abstractedly, his heavy brow furrowed. By now she knew that expression for
thinking, not anger. “I knew Brandon would manage to diffuse the situation,” he
said at last. “I wanted to see how he would do it.”

She said, “Either
by confrontation, which is crude, or by changing the focus.”

“A very Douloi
approach to controlling a group, isn’t it?” Osri said. “Though not all of them
can do it. I can’t. I grew up with Brandon, in a sense. That is, I saw him frequently
when he was on Charvann to complete his education, and I visited him a couple
of times on Arthelion, when my father was still close to the Panarch.”

Osri rubbed his
jaw. “I scorned Brandon, even loathed him and his jokes and teasing. I thought
him a fool, throwing away his tremendous opportunities with a total lack of
focus. These last few days I watched him in the back of that bay with all those
hostile officers off the
Astraea
and
the other two ships
,
and I saw him draw
their notice, then their respect, and then their, well, affection. All without
issuing any kind of challenge to them or to their captains.”

“And your
conclusion?” Fierin asked. Though his gaze stayed off to the side and his voice
was flat, she sensed intense emotion underlying the discussion.

“Two things.
There’s no magic in it, no rare talent. I never understood until now just what
focus really is. He’s had it all his life: we had much the same opportunities,
but I wasted most of mine, out of laziness, or lack of interest. I’d picked navigation,
and everything else in life I dismissed as useless or irrelevant. He never
dismissed any opportunity as irrelevant, nor any person. And everything he’s
done has been to a goal whose reach was far beyond being the best teacher of navigation.”

Osri looked down at
his hands and sighed. “Brandon could walk into that bay and know he could best
most of those people because of that focus. Not all, because he’d never made
fighting his single focus. But enough so that he understood the principles.
Could defend himself against serious attack. I went, but just to watch—if I’d
tried half those exercises I’d have fallen down in cardiac arrest halfway
through.”

Osri’s voice went
husky, and Fierin held her breath.

“The day we left
Charvann he told me off for not having augmented the remedial physical training
course at Minerva. At the time I thought him an idiot—why would a teacher need
that? Just as he, a Panarch’s son, destined for a life of social brilliance,
hadn’t needed it, either. But after Semion made sure he couldn’t have it, he
got it somewhere anyway. While letting everyone believe he spent days gambling
and his nights in drunken orgies. Maybe he kept up his Ulanshu kinesics in
private, and supplemented them by playing sports when out in public, just as he
kept his mind sharp with L-3 Phalanx tourneys.”

Osri faced her, his
dark eyes serious. “Ever played Phalanx, L-3?”

Fierin shook her
head. “I was good at level one when I was small. Jes and I used to play level
two before, oh, you know.”

Osri smiled, his
mouth twisted wryly. “When we were prisoners on that Rifter ship, while I sat
in our cabin and sulked, he was out there doing Ulanshu with Jaim, and diving
into their computer, and winning them over one by one, not least with his skill
at Phalanx, which was beyond anyone on that ship except perhaps Vi’ya. He does
it by focus on his higher goal—and by humor.”

“Neither of my
parents has much of a sense of humor, though Brandon and Galen did their best
to give me one with all their teasing and practical jokes. I didn’t see until a
few days ago how wrong my perceptions were: what I saw as teasing was lessons
in laughter, and I never realized that they laughed at themselves as much as
they did at me. They used laughter as the great leveler, and it works. Brandon
had them all those officers roaring this morning, in a mock duel. Somehow I
don’t see anyone fighting duels anytime soon—not and risk causing snickers among
everyone who was there or who heard about it afterwards.”

Fierin sighed. “I
see. You are blaming yourself for imagined shortcomings?”

The pod stopped,
but neither of them moved.

“They are real,”
Osri said with low-voiced conviction. “I have fumbled through half my life with
a narrow view of the universe, throwing away anything that didn’t fit it. I
spent all those weeks on the
Telvarna
being trained by a first-rate Golgol chef, and all I did was
complain—bitterly—about how lowering it was to my prestige. If Brandon had been
put in the galley, he would have taken up the lessons with enthusiasm. And he’d
be somewhere, right now, preparing a rare meal to impress the hell out of
someone.”

“Stop it,” Fierin
said, raising both hands and stretching them toward Osri’s face, though she did
not touch him.. “Stop. Why do this? You’re not him. So what? He’s not you.”

“Telos be praised.”

“Osri,” Fierin
exclaimed, now thoroughly exasperated. “His Majesty is a fine person, and I’m
glad he’s who he is, but you know, I don’t find him all that interesting,
except in a kind of remote way. He’s so like Vannis, and Srivashti—the good
side of Srivashti—and all the rest of them. I have loved this last few days
more than any time in my life since my parents died—even before—because for the
first time in my life I knew I could believe what I heard. You are honest. You
say what you mean. And . . .”

She hesitated.
After several years of thoughtless sex and physical trespass being the norm,
she had been sequestered with someone who had taken great care not to touch
her. Not just avoidance, but once when she had touched Osri, he had recoiled.

Sensitive to the
chemistry of attraction, she had known at first that he rejected her kind, if
not her personally. Later, she sensed his ambivalence.

Among the Douloi
the game of seduction was conducted by degree, each party stepping forward and
back, like a dance, with nothing direct ever said and no promises given.
Nothing that could create bad memories—or political entanglements. Except that
we are human beings, and the entanglements happen anyway, she thought. Just as I
permitted Srivashti to make my life a nightmare because I thought he’d keep me
safe
.

Though Srivashti
had put a formidable wall between her and the rest of the world, she had never
truly been safe with him, and gradually she had come to believe that safety,
like truth and integrity, were mere myth.

Until she met Osri
vlith-Omilov, in whom she rediscovered all three.

She admired him,
trusted him, and gradually had come to find his person as irresistible as his
mind. What he thought showed in his face; he wore no scents but his own clean
masculine smell. All his awkwardness and fumbling was inexpressibly endearing.

He hadn’t moved
yet—they still sat in the little pod, and she could hear his breathing, Like
hers, fast and compressed. She reached out again, and this time gently cupped
her hands around his face.

He did not recoil,
or move away. His body tensed, but then he brought his own hands up and touched
her fingers.

“I’m glad you don’t
want to get up early,” she said. And half-smothered a laugh when his face
flushed crimson to the roots of his hair.

He peered into her
face, and in spite of the fast breathing, and the flush of honest desire, his
eyes expressed his doubt. “Are you sure it’s
me
you want? I mean, you owe me nothing. You are free to come and
go. I would never . . .”

She pulled him
toward her and whispered into his ear, “But
I
would.” And delicately bit his ear.

He shot upright,
then stared at her startled, and to her delight, very much aroused.

She laughed, and
said tremulously, “This is the first time I’ve ever had a choice. A real one, I
mean. And out of anybody I know, anyone I could have, I choose you.”

The first kiss was
clumsy, desperate. The second, bliss.

o0o

Despite having
been assured of a seat in the Kamera, Vannis arrived early the next day. As was
customary in all Panarchic courts of justice, there was only one public
entrance, admitting Polloi and Douloi alike. Douloi seating had been decided by
preference and deference in deft maneuvers consuming many days of distraction welcomed
by powerful people with nothing better to do. Polloi seating was handled by
lottery.

Skillfully using
precedence to cut through the already formidable crowd, Vannis selected a seat
at a modest remove, from which she could watch everyone. The raucous shouts of
the crowd waiting outside as each lottery number was announced reached well
inside the central chamber.

The audience on the
Douloi side comprised a higher rank than fashion would have decreed: normally
few Douloi attended any trial concerning a rank below theirs. But among the
Tetrad Centrum Douloi, Vannis did not see any Vakianos connections, which was doubtless
perceived as a bad sign for the Kendrians. Of course Torigan’s clients and
connections were out in force, and the Archon himself sat right in front, knees
wide, fists planted on them in self-assured challenge. He plainly expected to
triumph.

Those Polloi
fortunate in the lottery filed in one at a time, some clutching handvids with
which they had been watching the novosti coverage of the trial while waiting.

No Douloi would
commit such a solecism, although more than one boswell had been surreptitiously
tuned to the audio feeds. But none of those devices could access the DataNet
from within the chamber during a capital trial; by long tradition, messages in
and out would be carried only by messengers. Only the judges could access the
DataNet while the trial was in progress. Boswelled privacies would still be
possible, but only within the chamber.

At the defense
table, Tovr Ixvan spoke quietly to Kendrian, whose ritual black and white
harlequin tunic hung loosely on him. Vannis noted with interest that they sat
on the Polloi side of the courtroom, in symbolic repudiation of Kendrian’s
Douloi origins. The entire crew of the
Telvarna
sat near the defense, except for the Eya’a. The Kelly trinity
Dartinus-Portos-Atos was also there. Vannis spotted two other Kelly trinities
positioned in the chamber. She hadn’t noticed them at first—which indicated how
little relative importance they held in the social hierarchy on Ares.

Vannis’s gaze
arrowed to Vi’ya’s tall, straight-backed figure in the midst of her crew. Her
profile was severe, the ubiquitous tail of shiny black hair lying like midnight
against the space-dark clothing. Vannis thought of their brief conversation the
night before.

“We will leave
directly after the trial,” Vi’ya had said, while Brandon was busy talking to
Artorus Vahn and Jaim.

“How can you get
away so easily?” Vannis had wondered if she had successfully hid her surge of
relief, even pleasure. She’d tried to.

“We’re to perform
an experiment for Gnostor Omilov,” was the calm reply. “There will be no
problem with civilian or military authorities.”

“Does Brandon
know?”

“He does not.”

“Ah. So my part is
what, to deflect him if there is a need?”

“Please.”

“What am I to tell
him if he discovers my complicity?”

“Whatever you
will,” the Dol’jharian said with the faintest air of surprise, and Vannis, the
experienced social fencer, wished she had not used the word “complicity.”

She knows, Vannis
thought, watching the calm, untroubled profile in the courtroom. After all her
careful preparations, her efforts to shield her true motivations, she was probably
as opaque to Vi’ya as clearest crystal. No wonder people loathed tempaths.

Yet Vannis
acknowledged that the woman had done absolutely nothing with her knowledge.
Used to the subtle ways Douloi manipulated their connections with those of
higher rank, the complete lack of a gloating tone was astonishing. Were
Dol’jharians so alien to normal emotion? Or did a liaison with a ruling panarch
really mean nothing to a Rifter?

Except her whole
crew was not in on this plan, Vannis realized, looking along the row. There was
the little blonde, her merry face wreathed in smiles as she whispered behind a
small hand to Ivard and pointed at someone across the room. That was Marim, the
one who talked so much to the novosti, who everyone said was a cheat and a
liar.
The fact that Marim had not
been present at either conference at the Enclave indicated that some things
were kept secret even from Vi’ya’s own crew.

If Vi’ya did not
care at all, then why did she stay the entire night at the Enclave? Because
Vannis knew she had; she’d made her own plan, using the excuse of pre-trial
nerves, to try to contact Brandon once everyone had left the Enclave, only to
get the code that indicated he was not wearing his boswell.

Vannis had
squandered most of the rest of the night finding out, through labyrinthine
methods, that Vi’ya alone had not gone back to Detention Five—or to her ship,
where she had been sleeping of late.