A Prison Unsought Read Online Free

The last time she’d seen him, he’d
been a mischievous boy, staring out at the world from his mother’s gray-blue
eyes.
    Now, bearing a reputation as a sot and a wastrel, he was
immured in the Arkadic Enclave in the oneill portion of Ares. The vid’s false
proclamation of his death was perhaps the least of its lies, but it would lend
more force to the unanswered questions about Brandon vlith-Arkad’s escape ahead
of the Enkainion atrocity, which had spared him his brothers’ fates.
    She pressed her hands to her face, struggling to dismiss the
mental image of that obscene vid. “Frankly, given the priority the Dol’jharians
put on broadcasting it, I’m surprised a copy hasn’t arrived before now. While
we can sit on the contents of the ship’s cryptobanks as long as we please,
there are refugees besides Harkatsus at the staging point with more preference
than poor Licrosse can handle. He’s not going to want to hold them any longer
without specific orders.”
    “I can’t say I’m not tempted to
suppress it,” Nyberg replied slowly. He knew he would have to release the vid
eventually, but the timing was terrible.
    Willsones said, “Is it not today that the Douloi are holding
their reception for the Aerenarch?”
    “Burgess Pavilion, 1800,” Nyberg
corroborated; this was the occasion that would see Brandon vlith-Arkad leaving
the seclusion of deep mourning, a polite fiction that both he and the Navy had
colluded, unspoken, in propagating.
    Willsones pursed her lips. “The timing really doesn’t
matter, does it? Even without the vid’s confirmation of the rumors about
Semion’s and Galen’s deaths, you can’t keep Brandon vlith-Arkad sequestered if
he wants to enter public discourse.”
    “No,” Nyberg said. He untabbed his
collar. “But the sight of those bloody blades is going to work as a metaphor to
the meanest intelligence.”
    “Yes,” she said precisely. “The
Dol’jharian rape of Arthelion has wrecked the careful machinery of our
governance as effectively as the Dol’jharian executioners’ blades dealt with
the Panarch’s high counselors in the throne room.”
    The habits of Tetrad Centrum Douloi usage urged him to turn
from such distasteful bluntness. But turn as he would, he would still face the
same mental mirror, reflecting the truth: Ares was now the de facto capital of the Panarchy.
    Willsones went on inexorably. “With no constituted
government, the influx of Douloi refugees from the war is going to transform
Ares from a smoothly regulated starbase into an aristocratic madhouse.”
    And no one could stop it. Nyberg’s temples began to throb,
and he tapped the tianqi to a pelagic spring evening mode, the lighting subtly
adjusting to the new scents in the air flow.
    “Have you ever visited Charybdis?”
asked Willsones. The subdued lighting struck silver highlights from her white
hair as she tapped her compad. “Their Equinoctial is a whisper at first, like
that maelstrom of intrigue and venom building up around the Arkad boy.”
    “He’s hardly a boy.” Nyberg’s tone
betrayed rising impatience, and he made a quick, apologetic gesture.
    “No,” she replied, and because they
were alone, and he had drawn her into this conversation, she must honor them
both with the blunt truths so rare and risky among Douloi. “A boy could grow
out of a regency. Has he issued any commands?”
    “Not yet.”
    She heard hesitation in his reply. “But?”
    “The Faseult seal ring that he’s wearing.
He won’t talk about it—an obligation of the Phoenix House, he said during the
debriefing.” Nyberg shook his head. “Anton is already completely overloaded,
and there’s worse to come as more refugees arrive. He doesn’t need this
complication.”
    She’d missed that detail. Anton Faseult,
now heir to the Charvann Archonate after his brother’s brutal murder on
Charvann by Eusabian’s Rifter allies, was head of Security for the entire
station, military and civilian.
    “You think