The Rifter's Covenant (7 page)

“So someone else in
the government thought he was naïve.” Torigan gave a crack of smug laughter,
fists on his knees.

“The main thing,”
Srivashti said, pulling everyone’s focus back with one of his slow gestures,
“is that there no longer appears to be any evidence of what happened on
Arthelion.” He ended on a note of inquiry as Torigan gestured his wish to
interpolate.

With smiling grace Srivashti
deferred, and Torigan said, “What about the old nuller?”

Hesthar once again
suppressed her impatience. “There is more than one nuller in Service.” She took
great pleasure in stating the obvious, hoping Torigan felt her condescension.

Srivashti added, “I
believe if the Prophetae had any information to offer he would have come forth
by now, would he not? Certainly he might have communicated with me, as we are
distantly connected.”

Ah, Hesthar thought,
that added dimension. Why had her very dear friend Tau not mentioned this
before?

As Torigan muttered
something about nullers, a part of Hesthar’s mind was busy modeling a line of
descent into Tau Srivashti’s history.

Then Srivashti continued,
“Given the lack of new information, I believe we must now endeavor to forget a
lamentable decision and turn our minds to other matters. Our colleagues await
us in the next room. As you might have surmised from the abruptness of my
invitation, I have just today discovered that the mission to rescue the Panarch
has failed.”

Hesthar suppressed
a fierce pang of joy. Gelasaar Arkad dead! She had hoped half her life to see
this day.

“It might spare
us,” Srivashti went on, “a certain amount of wearying effort if we three are in
agreement.”

“On what?” Torigan scowled.
“The young Arkad is not going to have any of us on his Privy Council—not after
we just tried to take the chatzing government from him.”

Hesthar pressed her
lips together. She would not be the one to remind them that she had been
missing from that confrontation.

She said, “He is a
realist, I believe. Except at the end, when Harkatsus lost control, the only
words spoken favored unity. We represent important interests. I do not think he
is foolish enough to harbor resentment.”

“If you will permit
me to amend your very admirable assessment?” Srivashti said smoothly.

Hesthar inclined
her head, gesturing in a deferential mode. Of all the conspirators, only Srivashti
was to be feared; it was debatable whether he was as smart as she was, but he
was adept in getting what he wanted. He had only one weakness.

Her gesture briefly
exposed the edge of the Mark on her arm; no one must see it for what it was,
and yet she exulted in the risk. Of course no one ever saw it fully, and those
very few who had the wit to notice always assumed it was simply body art
blurred by age. Proof, she thought with satisfaction, that she was surrounded
by stupidity.

Inadvertently she
glanced at Felton, who gave her an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Not
yet. She was impatient for the Ritual of Opening, but she must wait.

Unaware of this
covert byplay, Srivashti went on talking. “You are, I trust, correct in
general, but in particular I do not think Brandon will have any of us for his
Privy Council. Any of those of us who confronted him. You, Hesthar—” Srivashti
bowed. “—were prevented by . . . circumstance . . .
from being with us. It is possible that Brandon could be led to believe that
you suffered a change of heart. This, plus your position as heir to your
cousin’s holdings in Infonetics, might place you in the best light. It needs
only one of us to be on his Council . . . who will then benefit
from all of our experience.”

And that was a
warning
.
Hesthar bowed back. Now was
not the time to discuss her manipulations of the outside data that reached the
novosti on Ares. Sufficient that her ochlologists and semioticians were laying
the foundations for a reversal crowd that would engulf the entire station and
pull the new Panarch down in ruin if he proved resistant to her influence.
Whether she included Srivashti in her personal plans remained to be seen.

“Shall we join our
colleagues?” Srivashti suggested.

Hesthar raised a
hand, knowing that it behooved her to tie the three of them together again.
“First I suggest we vow, here and now, to leave Ranor and the Enkainion in
memory, never again to be spoken of.”

Srivashti bowed his
agreement. “Little profit in further discussion, and great danger. I concur.
Stulafi?”

The Archon of
Torigan swiveled around to grin up at Hesthar, challenge obvious in his heavy
face. “I never look back at mistakes,” he said.

You fool
,
Hesthar thought, meeting Felton’s gaze
over Torigan’s head.

o0o

Fierin
vlith-Kendrian decided it was time, a full hour after Srivashti had departed.

She had planned for
this moment with infinite care, mapping out in her imagination every move,
every step.

Anyone spying on
her—she had to assume at least one pair of eyes watching at any time—would
merely see her going to her daily volunteer work.

She bathed and
dressed with care, making certain of the datachip that she had worn against her
skin all these weeks, and in her hair when he required her to strip. She knew
she never would have been able to hide it if he hadn’t a weakness for style
even during his chastisements: when he was in that mood, he required her to
present herself to his chamber dressed in nothing but diamonds.

When he’d first
taken her aboard his yacht as a grieving teen, he had promised that obedience
would earn partisanship, and for the longest time it had seemed that he kept
his word.

But she had learned
to be afraid when her will diverged from his. She had hoped she could find a
way to break with Tau Srivashti, but she had learned that no one ever broke
with him. When he tired of his young lovers, he married them off to advantage.

And so it had come
as no surprise since her arrival at Ares that her belongings had been searched
down to the smallest seam. She also must assume that she was spied on by either
human or mechanical means on Srivashti’s yacht, alone or in company: he not
only knew exactly when she left and arrived, but what she said, even in the
privacy of her room. So she had taken care never to touch the chip unless she
was in absolute darkness.

Dressed at last,
she called for a shuttle. Felton usually attended Srivashti when he left the
ship, but she must nonetheless assume that he would shadow her when she
departed from the yacht.

Memory chilled her,
but she fought the impulse to rub her arms. She had only tried once to visit
Jesimar in detention. Srivashti had smilingly warned her against it when she
first arrived, but he had also promised to use his influence to get Jes freed.

She’d waited for
him to keep his word until the day after the
Grozniy
had departed on its mission to rescue the Panarch at
Gehenna. Vannis Scefi-Cartano had stepped to her side as they walked along the
lakeside to a picnic. “Torigan is having your brother tried for murder,” Vannis
had whispered, her voice low and eyes otherwhere. “With Srivashti’s
concurrence.”

Vannis, it was
rumored, had once been one of Srivashti’s lovers. Her care not to be overheard
intensified Fierin’s anxiety as much as the news of Tau’s betrayal.

She had used the
first opportunity to slip away to visit Jes, but just before she reached
Detention One, Felton had appeared from somewhere, bowed, and unsmilingly held
out his arm to escort her back.

Being mute, he
could not speak. Afterward Srivashti did not refer to the incident, but he’d
summoned her to his inner chamber for one of his reminders of who had her best
interests at heart. It had lasted a very long time.

Fear made Fierin’s
heart bang painfully as the shuttle arrived. She tabbed her boswell, and making
certain she had her breathing under control, she spoke a loving message for Srivashti.
Everything must be just as usual, with no variation. She then sent orders
concerning the repair of a gown she wished to wear to a social event that
evening.

On the short ride
from the yacht to the oneill she composed herself for the imagers, gazing
outward. She gained no pleasure from the spectacular sight of the immense
cylinder glinting in the roseate light of the nearby red giant, and the cloud
of ships surrounding it. Behind the mask of her dreamy pose she reviewed again
her plans.

The shuttle nestled
up against the lock, and when the hiss of air subsided and the light turned
green, she slipped inside. Beyond the lock a transtube waited, held by the
priority on Srivashti’s shuttle, despite the fact she’d docked at a Polloi
lock. It was already crammed with people, many frowning at her. There was
nowhere to sit, but she did not want to wait for the next, which might be just
as crowded.

In an effort to
distract herself, she listened to the voices around her. What she heard was
little comfort: short rations, crowded dorms, and the steady increase in
brawling and petty crime.

The crèche burgeoned
with noise and rambunctious children, but Fierin was used to it. She liked the
noise of happy children. She nodded to the Navy officer at the front desk who
logged her in, then she made her way through the wide, well-lit central area.

The crèche was laid
out in a circle, with living areas built around the circumference. Work and
play spaces lay within the circle. Fierin headed for the older children’s work
space. In the center of the circle rose a complicated edifice reminiscent of
the Ascha Gardens, although its gravitational conformation was far simpler.
Children climbed, crawled, swung, and bounced through it, appearing and
disappearing, only their voices a constant, sounding like gulls over a beach.

Fierin stepped down
into the work area. Efficient dampers high overhead reduced the noise to a
soft, distant murmur. Hidden tianqi encouraged alertness with Downsider
Summer’s End, a comfortingly familiar scent to Downsider and Highdweller alike.

Young teens sat
absorbed in the row of consoles and simbooths. Fierin’s supervisor, Chlarmon,
an older woman dressed in mourning white, finished her circuit of the consoles
and headed Fierin’s way, her face relieved.

“I’m glad you’re
here,” she said softly. “We have to move again. I’ve got to go supervise.”

“Move?” Fierin
repeated, chill spreading through her as she jolted back into her own problem.
Where could she herself move to be safe from Srivashti?

“. . . and
those two cruisers came in with even more civs,” Chlarmon was saying. “We’ve
been reassigned to the new domiciles over by the citrus groves.” She sighed,
hands on her hips. “We adopted two children out yesterday—but took in
twenty-four more. All orphans for all practical purposes, until we’re fully
linked back into the DataNet again.”

She chattered on
while Fierin murmured appropriate words. These poor children would wait a long
time for that. The effort of gathering intelligence from the DataNet, and communicating
with the burgeoning resistance movements throughout the Thousand Suns, would
hold top priority until the war was over. Reuniting families was going to have
to wait.

Fierin said all the
right things, and then volunteered to check and catalog a stack of new
educational and entertainment chips brought in on one of the cruisers.

Chlarmon gave her a
tired smile. “Thank you! I expect the school chips will probably sit there, but
they’ll be wanting the entertainment vids.” She rolled her shoulders as she
glanced at the children. “Until we can establish who is responsible for whom,
most of them use their lack of ties to avoid schooling as much as possible.”

Chlarmon left.
Fierin made herself do a slow circuit of the consoles, in case anyone needed
her help. Not once did she look beyond the confines of her area; it was enough
to envision Felton out there, watching. Then she sat down at the control
console and reached for the stack of chips. Her heart hammered, and her palms dampened.
How close could Felton get? Nausea crawled inside her: she would never know
until it was too late.

She had planned
this so carefully that she found her hands moving almost automatically, selecting
a handreader, pushing and popping one simpleminded educhip after another, and forcing
herself to watch lengthy segments. She did not know how long Ranor’s chip was.
After a time the familiar images and slow voices held no meaning for her.

Several times she
stretched and ran her fingers through her hair before she slid the chip between
two fingers, and palmed it in one hand as the other picked up several more ed
chips.

She rose to make
another circuit of the children, still carrying the handset carelessly in one
hand, and the chips in the other. She sat down again at a station that put her back
squarely to a thick climbing wall full of rowdy five to eight year olds.

She yawned as she
pretended to take her chip off the pile she’d set next to the console, and
inserted her chip, at last to view what no one now alive had seen—not even the
Aerenarch.

The impact of the
Ivory Hall in the Mandala hit hard, an invisible blow to the chest. Pausing the
vid, she forced her breathing to slow, and her face to assume a calm, slightly
bored expression as she turned around to watch a little boy pick at a scab on
his arm, and a little girl kick repeatedly at the wall before launching herself
up the handholds again.

Then she turned
back to her task.

Very soon she
recognized that this was raw data. The unknown artist with the ajna had not had
time to edit it, for the views of famous and powerful people circulating about
the great Hall were interspersed with private talk between Ranor and the woman,
both unseen—Ranor because he watched from another vantage, and the woman
because the ajna was in her forehead.