A Prison Unsought Read Online Free Page A

the Aerenarch intends to use
the ring as leverage?”
    “What better time than tonight?”
    Nyberg could see his question hit home.
Willsones nodded slowly.
    “Either he’s as subtle as his
father—and his reputation does not bear that out—or he’s hiding,” she said. “Or
sulking. Or senseless in some orgy. It doesn’t really matter. What does is my
fear that he’s a dissolute cipher who will need to have a privy council imposed
on him, and there are already those on this station who should never grasp the
reins of power.”
    A yellow ophidian gaze flickered through Nyberg’s memory:
Tau Srivashti, once Archon of Timberwell. “I don’t suppose . . .”
He gestured at her compad.
    “For a time,” she said, “we could
probably phage the vid if it’s released, but it’s going to leak, probably
sooner than we would like, and then we incur howls about suppression. We can’t
purge memories or immobilize tongues.” She glanced down at her compad, and gave
a soft grunt. “As I thought. Archetype and Ritual strongly recommends releasing
it immediately, and Volkov at Moral Sabotage just now sent me a comm that they
concur. You know what they say about rumor.”
    A weapon with no
handle and no defense. Deadly to public order and perhaps the most powerful
weapon of Douloi politics.
    Nyberg gave his head a shake, then thumbed his eyes, as if
that could remove the images he was certain had been burned into his retinas.
“I don’t know what to do.” The words were wrung out of him.
    “This isn’t the Battleblimp I know,”
Willsones said, trying for a semblance of humor.
    “This isn’t the Ares I know,” he
retorted. “It’s not even the Thousand Suns I knew. I sat in on Nukiel’s court
martial yesterday, listening not to orderly testimony from technical experts
and military witnesses, but to the High Phanist of Desrien. And it was her
testimony—full of unprovable . . .” His hands groped in the air.
“Preposterous mystical rhetoric . . .” He faltered, unable to
express his loathing, unable to admit it hid an even deeper fear.
    “I know. I was there,” Willsones
said calmly, her cool tone more effective than the tianqi. “But it’s hard to
argue with the Gabrieline Protocol, whether or not you believe any of Desrien’s
mystical claims. And I find I can’t argue against the fact that Mandros Nukiel,
who is one of the most honest, and least outwardly religious men of my
professional acquaintance, risked his entire career in order to heed a vision.”
    Nyberg let his breath out. “Did you see her hand?”
    “Whose hand?” Willsones’ brow
cleared. “Ah, the burn of the Digrammaton on High Phanist Eloatri’s palm. I
didn’t. There are many who insist she put it there herself, except that doesn’t
account for the Digrammaton’s presence here, or its radioactivity.” Her upper
lip betrayed her discomfort as she added, “It’s unlikely to be a forgery, given
what happened to the Second Anti-Phanist when he wore a counterfeit.”
    “Desrien.” Nyberg made a warding
motion. “It’s useless to talk about it. ‘To speak of the Dreamtime is to enter
the Dreamtime,’ and right now this nightmare—” He opened his hands. “Is enough
for me. Nukiel’s acquittal means we have to accept that woman as High Phanist,
but for now let us deal in facts. Beginning with the two inescapable ones that
hold me helpless between them. One, I seem to have become the de facto ruler of the Panarchy, while
the de jure ruler is on his way to
Gehenna and his only remaining heir sits in the Enclave under suspicion of
treason.”
    “Not treason .” Willsones’s recoil was instinctive. “Even if the
Aerenarch skipped out on his Enkainion, he broke no law that constitutes
treason. What he did was contravene tradition.”
    “At best,” Nyberg said. “At best,
he flounced away in a childish gesture to flout his brother. At worst . . .
In here we may as well use the words we mean. It would be