A Prison Unsought by Sherwood Smith, Dave Trowbridge Page B

what happened.”
    Srivashti’s eyelids shuttered.
    The rainbow spoke again, this time with less drawl, “That’s
Ranor. My mother had him trained.”
    Srivashti smiled her way, which amused Vannis. So he still has a taste for youth and
inexperience.
    “Will we be seeing this laergist
among us soon?” Rista asked, her carefully modulated tone betraying her
awareness of her exalted company. “He might have a report of other survivors.”
Those who knew her murmured appropriate words of sympathy, as all of Rista’s
maternal family lived on Arthelion. Had lived there?
    “I’m afraid not.” Charidhe flicked
a glance at a silent servitor, who began refreshing coffee cups. “There are
apparently several stages, or relays, or whatever the military calls them.”
    Someone else spoke up. “Among last night’s other new
arrivals were some Kitharee, and there’s talk about whether they will establish
a chantry here . . .”
    In response to Caroly’s signal, servants brought out a
succession of trays and set them on the sideboard. This signaled a general
rising, and a recombining of groups as they moved to load the waiting plates.
Vannis eeled skillfully between knots of talkers, using the opportunity to
triage the drops that had accumulated since her arrival. No one of note. She
shunted most to Yenef to deal with as talk turned to entertainment—who was
here—who was hiring them—Vannis noting who turned her way to speak, and who
listened to her response. Preference her position as relict assured her, but
last night’s coup re-established her claim to deference.
    Still nothing from Brandon. He hadn’t said much the night
previous, a point in his favor. Fools ought to remain silent. However, if he’d
surrounded himself with fools the way Semion had gathered militarily minded Tetrad
Centrum Douloi and Galen had gathered artists, it was her duty to guide him.
    Srivashti appeared at her shoulder. “I can offer you
something better afterward.” His long, beautifully manicured hand dismissed the
array of hot drinks.
    His tone was ambiguous; she returned an ambiguous smile as
musicians struck up from a hidden alcove. Vannis recognized by the slight
fixity to her smile her hostess’s chagrin. She
thinks I’m bored. Vannis found this misperception on Caroly ban-Noguchi’s
part interesting; the woman had kept her distance from Vannis since her arrival
on Ares. Until last night.
    Vannis altered her path so she passed by Caroly’s chair, and
leaned there, asking what she’d thought of that horrible vid the Navy had
released, and assumed a listening pose as if Caroly’s opinions mattered. Caroly
was married to a Naval captain who, Vannis knew, would not disclose to her wife
anything of real strategic importance.
    The room took up the topic, expressing appropriate shock,
dismay, anger. Vannis paid no heed to claims the vid was false or true. No one
here could possibly know for certain. Far more interesting was who echoed whose
opinions, indicating possible shifts in social—political—alignment.
    She herself uttered echoes of Charidhe’s opinion, which
succeeded in smoothing the tension in Charidhe’s thin brows. It was stupid to
anger a gossip when ten words sufficed to charm her.
    She sat down at last, exerting herself to issue a compliment
to every person there; before she was done, she became aware that Srivashti had
disappeared. Vannis did not see his departure, but she saw its effect in the
pout on the face of the rainbow girl, who betrayed her own privacies as she
looked about for him. In vain.
    o0o
    Highdwelling dawns were just wrong, Eloatri concluded, the
morning after the reception.
    It didn’t help that she had a bit of a head from the one
glass she’d allowed herself last night. Either the Fleurdelys frosh had been
double-spiked, or the Tetrad Centrum Douloi en masse were intoxicating.
    Whatever the cause, the construction noise from the
Yamazakura wing of the Cloister was impossible to ignore this