The Rifter's Covenant (6 page)

The second betrayal
had been here, on Ares. All naval officers had been enjoined under the Articles
of War not to speak of the hyperwave that Captain Ng had captured at such
terrible cost from the Dol’jharians. Blackmailed by Srivashti, Sedry had reported
it in detail to him.

Srivashti had
promised that he had the greater good of the Panarchy at heart and that the
chaos to which the former government had been reduced required such unorthodox
action. But instead, the Archon had made an unsuccessful grab for power through
the luckless Aegios Kestian Harkatsus.

The Aerenarch
Brandon, with the help of the Praerogate Omilov, had triumphed, proving despite
detrimental rumor and record that he was a worthy heir. She’d seen then, with
awful clarity, that flawed as the Panarchy might be, it could correct itself,
which Dol’jharian cruelty and violence could not.

Sedry had almost
turned herself in then, but her spiritual confessor had commanded her a harsher
penance: to undo, as much as possible, the damage she had done, before seeking
the catharsis of legal confession and just punishment.

She smiled grimly
as she turned up a secluded path to avoid a group of strollers. She knew
herself unmemorable, in the unlikelihood anyone traced her footsteps here: a
short, plain woman in her middle years, wearing nondescript civilian clothing.
Her one gift was manipulation of dataspace: noderunning. She was one of the
best in the Navy, and Srivashti did not know how closely Sedry had been
monitoring his movements since his political defeat.

Her goal today was
to find out, if she could, the identity of the noderunner whose protections of
Srivashti’s DataNet feeds had so far resisted her. The Archon still retained
enough influence to hold on to several threads’ worth of dataspace on the
couriers that now smuggled information between the Ares Net and the tattered
but still functional DataNet that linked the rest of the Thousand Suns.

But if she could
discover his runner’s identity, the Spelunkenbuch maintained by Infonetics in
the Net might give her enough of a personality profile and style to penetrate
his or her blockade and reach the deepest levels. Given what she now knew of
the Archon’s twistiness, she had no doubt there was much there to severely
damage or even destroy his remaining influence.

She glimpsed a tall
male silhouette, apparently absorbed in tossing food pellets to some ducks.
Grace and latent power were evident in the pose, the hands; a few meters
closer, and she recognized the exiled Archon of Timberwell’s perfectly barbered
silver hair and the chiseled profile.

Once again, betrayals,
but each time I will come that much closer to what I need to destroy you
,
she promised, as she forced herself to
move slowly, her fingers clenched in her pockets.

Srivashti appeared
to be unaware of her until she reached the rock he lounged against, and when he
looked up, his pale, almost yellow eyes were acute in their assessment.

Sedry had never
been able to comprehend the almost telepathic awareness of subtle gesture and
movement that the Douloi were taught from infancy, but she gambled on the shock
of her news overwhelming whatever nervousness he read in her manner.

“The Panarch is
dead,” she said bluntly.

And knew she’d
succeeded. Not that he reacted overtly; a long breath, the widening of his
pupils, were all that she saw, but that was very revealing for a Douloi.

“Tell me more,” he
murmured, his voice, husky by nature, made rougher by suppressed emotion.

“Little to tell,”
she said. “Dol’jhar released the data. One of their rituals. Anaris
achreash-Eusabian—his heir—just arrived on the Suneater with the news.”

The Archon gazed
blankly at the waddling ducks. Sedry withdrew her hand from her pocket and
tossed bits of a dried seedcake. She knew that as soon as Srivashti recovered
from his reverie he would dismiss her like one of his servants. She had to
prolong the conversation if she could.

“Nyberg and the
Naval command surmise the Aerenarch—now the Panarch—will arrive back in four
days.” She knew he could get this information elsewhere, but she wanted to
foster the illusion of cooperation. “Are you still planning to aid him in
making a government?”

Srivashti’s gaze
remained distant, then his eyelids drooped, shuttering his gaze. “Of course,”
he said with a faint smile and one of those unreadable hand gestures they all
made. But she didn’t have to read it to know he was lying to her—or twisting
the meaning so much it amounted to a lie.

She sighed with
relief, and launched into her prepared speech. Now she was lying herself, and
it had to be convincing. “You’ll need help.”

“Is this an
observation or an offer?”

She pretended not
to hear the condescension in his voice. “I’m a good noderunner. One of the best
here.” She shrugged as she tossed the rest of her cake to the ducks, who dove
after it, quacking furiously. “Thinking of retiring. If I had a good enough
berth civilian side.”

The Archon gave her
a mendaciously rueful smile. “If I had known that even two weeks ago, but alas,
I have recently received the otherwise pleasant news that my staff, inadvertently
separated from me by the war, is safe though as yet inaccessible, but I do
appreciate the offer, and I give you my word I will remember it.” He backed
away a step, his attitude one of dismissal.

“Fair enough,”
Sedry said, and watched him leave, reflecting with a flare of bleak triumph that
she had a military feed from both the Reef and the Douloi processing center, so
Srivashti would not be able to slip his people past her.

All she needed was
a name
.

As Sedry made her
way back to her station in the Cap, Srivashti’s personal shuttle took him back
to his citadel—the fabulous yacht on which he lived.

Deep within the
yacht, Fierin vlith-Kendrian sat on a rock with her hands clasped around her
knees, her face turned up toward the waterfall. She sat close enough to be
bathed by mist, to feel the ruffling of moisture-laden air currents and the
occasional sting of cold water. The air smelled of wet loam and crushed
blossoms.

She closed her
eyes. Seated thus, she could almost convince herself she was on a real
mountainside—on a planet—and not in a metal-and-dyplast ship countless
light-years from home.

She felt
Srivashti’s presence, a slight change in the aural spectrum of the room, a
sense of warmth as he stood in the proximity of assured control, something no
one else on the yacht would ever do. A flicker of alarm kindled inside her. To
hide it, and hide it well, was her first task.

“Fierin. Will you
permit me to disturb you for a moment?”

She smiled up at
Srivashti as she gestured a welcome.

His strange light
eyes searched her face. Interrogation, she thought, though there was nothing
but affection in the husky, low voice as he said, “Intriguing scents you evoke
from the tianqi. What are they?”

“I’m pretending I’m
on a planet,” she said. “Since I wanted to get details right, I used memories
of my home on Torigan.”

He moved with
leisurely grace to sit beside her. His hand rose, the palm cupping her cheek,
warm and protective. “Memory. Will you honor me with a similar exercise?”

“Gladly,” she said,
obediently still. He did not like it when one moved away from his touch, even a
casual touch.

His thumb stroked
down to her chin, then to her neck, moving in light circles. “The courier that
brought you back to me,” he said. “There was a laergist on board. Remember
him?”

Here it is
. Fierin had been dreading this moment—and so had thought out every
possible question, and her response.

She let her
authentic dismay at the arrival of that moment contract her brows, knowing that
Srivashti would misread it. “How could I forget Ranor? He was so polite,
everyone liked him—and to be assassinated just as he left the ship! How could
someone like that have an enemy?” She sighed as the massaging thumb moved down
to her collarbones.

Testing her pulse.

She looked up into Srivashti’s
wide gaze, and made no attempt to hide her worry. Not that she could. “Did they
ever find out why?”

“Did who ever find
out why?”

Fierin gestured
vaguely. “Nyberg. Faseult.”

“The investigation
is still going on,” he murmured. “In aid of their efforts I am conducting my
own parallel investigation. Why anyone should assault a laergist is indeed a
puzzle, one that might take up some of the time that lies so heavily on our
hands while we wait for the return of the Aerenarch.”

Fierin exerted
control over every muscle and nerve in her body, forcing herself to relax into
the pleasurable distraction of the Archon’s thumb moving so lightly, but
consistently, from nerve nexus to nerve nexus.

“Cast your mind
back, if you will, my dear. Did you observe him often? Speak to him, perhaps?”

“He was there at
meals—of course. At first he never spoke at all. I noted him, but he stood
apart from everyone, looking at the viewscreens.” She made a gesture. “Skip-mode
for the screens was cycling through an Arthelion sequence. Shipboard gossip
said that he had lost his mate there.”

“What else did
shipboard gossip say about him?”

Fierin counted three
breaths as she considered the question, three levels: what she should say, what
Srivashti was seeking, and what she could do to further relax as he now used
all his fingers, moving ever lower, persistent, raising distracting sensations.
She sighed. “Not much. At least, that I remember. He was on the periphery of
interest, you might say.” She opened her eyes and looked up at Srivashti. “I
did have an encounter with him once.”

Was that the
faintest hesitation in his touch?

“And?”

“It was that horrid
man Gabunder. Persisted in trying to kiss me, sometimes even grabbing me. Kept
threatening suicide if I wouldn’t go with him.” She gestured distaste. “It was
the laergist who found us—I’d gone down early for a meal—and intervened.
Afterward I thanked him, and he said it was his training, and that was that.
Subsequently I ate in my cabin to avoid Gabunder, and saw neither of them.”

“So he never came
to your cabin?”

Impossible to
prevent a sudden quickening of her heart, and she knew the questing fingers had
noted it. “Once.”

“Ah.”

“He was very
drunk—”

“The laergist,
Fierin. He is the subject of our discourse, is he not?”

“Oh. Yes.” She
sighed again. “It’s hard to think when you give me that shakrian. At least, I find
it hard not to think of something very different from that poor laergist and
that loathsome drunk.”

He smiled, and
after one last caress lifted his hands. “And so?”

“No.” Now she could
hide the racing of her heart in a slow, deliberate stretch. She leaned out so
that the water could pound on her hands, then she looked back at Srivashti. “I
don’t think Ranor had any interest in one such as myself, with a tainted name.
His social focus at meals was on those with precedence—the Aegios Hamamura and
Emma vlith-KilDophnik.” She named two people of some social rank who had
disappeared mysteriously soon after the laergist died.

“So he never talked
to you? Offered you anything?”

Fierin straightened
her back and neck, her attitude the haughty rejection of intimacy offered by
inferiors. “I never invited privy attentions of any of them,” she said.

A hint of
impatience at her misunderstanding of his wording contracted his brows, but he
said nothing. Instead he rose to his feet. “Thank you, my dear. I will leave
you to your imaginary garden.”

“Will you tell me
what you discover?” She still smiled, leaning closer to the fall. Cool water
drummed her skin, wiping it clean of the sensory memory of those demanding
fingers.

He bowed
compliance, but his gaze had gone distracted, and she saw no threat in his
pose. When he had gone, she turned her own face up to the water, still hiding
her reaction in case she was watched. She did not touch the seam under her arm
where a chip rested, snug against her skin, as she exulted: He believed me
.

o0o

“Fierin knows
nothing,” Tau Srivashti said a short time later, as he tossed a chip onto the
low, black table before him. The motion drew the gaze of the other two Douloi present:
Hesthar al-Gessinav and Stulafi Y’Talob, Archon of Torigan. “We have been
through every other person on that courier, which forces me to conclude what
had seemed impossible: that a laergist could indeed be a political naif and
that there was only this single chip.”

“Ruined by the
chatzing neurojac,” Torigan grumbled. “Why didn’t you have your assassin use a
knife?”

Hesthar permitted
herself a deep, pleasurable breath of triumph, the first since she heard that
the laergist who had been at the Ivory Hall bombing was on his way to Ares.

Srivashti lifted a
shoulder. “I told him it had to be quiet. A knife seemed the obvious choice to
me.”

Because his own
bondsman used knives and poison
,
Hesthar thought, looking across the room at Felton, the silent, lank-haired
servant who was seldom very far from Srivashti these tense days. If Felton had
been ordered to assassinate the laergist Ranor, there would have been no
mistake. Except Srivashti had not wanted to risk having Felton seen.

“It is entirely
possible,” she said, “to be socially adept yet politically naive. We have among
us a living example.”

Torigan shifted his
massive body and squinted up at Hesthar, then grunted. “Vannis Scefi-Cartano,”
he said. “Correct. Probably better trained in the social nuance then any
laergist, but politically . . .”

Hesthar detested
people who stated the obvious. Too often it was, if not a sign of stupidity, certainly
one of condescension. But Torigan was useful, and had been for years. At his
pause she said, “We must remember that Ranor was assigned to the Petition of
Governance from Ansonia, a planet of no importance whatever.”