“How long are thou going to be down here, BZ?” HK ventured, beside him.
“No longer than I have to be,” Gundhalinu snapped, not looking at them, struck by the irony that the only people he was required to address with the personal thou were the ones he felt least close to.
“Thou are welcome at the estates,” HK went on, with awkward insufferabihty. “That is, if thou want to visit father’s ashes, and make an offering. Thou are even welcome to stay, if—”
“I have a place to stay.” He forced the words out, still looking away, amazed at the blackness inside him, the welling up of bitterness and bad feeling that came with the rush of memories he had tried to suppress. Their rigid, tradition-bound father had tried, before his death, to get him to displace his brothers in the line of inheritance. But the youth he had been then had been unable to violate tradition so profoundly, when his own father had lacked the will to do it. … And so his brothers had ruined the family’s fortunes, just as his father had feared—weak, self-indulgent HK led willingly into disaster by SB, who should have made a life for himself decades ago, if he had had any shred of self-respect or character.
And after they were done ruining their heritage they had come to Number Four, where he was stationed, to deliver the final blow to his crumbling facade of control—to tell him how they had lost the estates, sold the family name to some social climber with money for honor. Until then, he had been able to go on functioning, as long as he kept his own dishonor hermetically sealed; believing that his family was unstained by his humiliation as long as he stayed away from Kharemough. But his brothers had destroyed that last hope, and had come to Four to tell him that they intended to buy back the estates by striking it rich in World’s End. He had warned them off, warned them about making what the Fours called the Big Mistake … watched them go anyway. And then when they did not return, he had gone after them; not because he cared about them, but only because there was nothing he cared about anymore, not even his own life.
He had found them … and the stardrive. World’s End had changed his life forever. But it had changed his brothers, too. He had brought them alive out of that soul-eating hell … and then they had ambushed him and stolen the stardrive plasma he had brought out with them, leaving him for dead in a back alley of the Company town.
But he had not died. He had lived, to see them arrested, see that the plasma was delivered into the rightful hands of the Hegemony, and not held for ransom. And then he had used the sudden influence that his “selfless patriotism” had thrust upon him, to reclaim his family’s estates and name.
He had sent his brothers home under a kind of glorified house arrest, with enough money doled out to them by a trust fund—and enough threats of retribution—to keep them comfortably under control. Because blood was still thicker than water. He had told himself the stress of their ordeal in World’s End had made them turn on him; that even though he had never gotten along with them, they weren’t murderers, only fools—and someone had to oversee the estates… .
But now he was back on Kharemough, and the very sight of them was enough to paint everything within his vision black.
“BZ—?” HK said again, and Gundhalinu realized that his brother had gone on speaking, even though he had stopped listening. “Why did thou refuse to let us do it?”
“What?” he said, frowning. The crowd around them seemed settled now; an expectant silence was falling. He realized they were waiting for him to begin the entertainment. He looked at the headset, like a silver crown, clutched between his clenched fists. He forced his hands to loosen, afraid of crushing it.
“The opportunity we had to invest in lightspeed shipfitting? Now that you’ve— now that thou have returned, and the new fleet is almost ready … well, there’s no going back is there? It’s a sure investment. Since thou’re on such good terms with Jarsakh-bhai, thou could still put in a word, couldn’t thou?”
“No,” he said, cutting off the flow of HK’s speech. “Thou get more than a sufficient stipend to cover thy needs. I told thee, if thou ever tried to profit off the stardrive again, in any way at all, I’d have thee up on charges. I meant it. And I’m here, now.”
“Yes, but, BZ, I’m head-of-family—”
SB caught HK’s arm, jerked it, silencing him again. “Drop it,” he said, speaking to HK but looking at BZ. “He’s not interested. He thinks he’s some kind of god. We’ll do it our own way.”
BZ frowned. “If thou cause me any embarrassment, thou will be stripped of all rank and rights. Push me further and there will be charges of attempted murder. Just remember that.” He looked away, and settled the headset carefully onto his head. SB sniggered as if he were crowning himself. Gundhalinu swore under his breath, pressing the contact points until he felt the tingling sensation of on-line seep in through his ears. Whatever was in the box would respond to his emotions, translated into some sort of electronic stimuli, he had been told. Then gods help it, he thought. He shut his eyes, concentrating.
Red-gold incandescence exploded into the air, to the gasps and startled cries of the waiting crowd. Wave upon wave of it spilled out of the box and fountained into the sky like erupting magma, congealed as it struck the stones, thickening, darkening, struggling like vague semi-human forms wrestling to the death, filling their collective vision with fire and blood, Fire Lake—
BZ slammed the controls down on his emotions, astounded and appalled; was relieved to hear a chorus of sighs and a patter of applause from the unsuspecting watchers. He pulled himself together, watching the colors fade and soften as the violence of the exploding material died back into a sinuous outpouring that made him think of fog, smoke, water falling into that molten sea, rising up again in clouds, filled with rainbows, filled with ghosts….
He concentrated now on the artsong he could hear still being played somewhere inside, its graceful, poignant measures and counterpoints like a dance between would-be lovers, stepping forward, moving back, filled with hesitancy and yearning. … He saw the music and his vision of it suddenly begin to appear, in front of him, not quite real, not quite imaginary, like the ghosts he had seen in Sanctuary, like the face he saw in dreams, her face, hazed in blue….
She was there, forming out of the not-quite-matter, not-quite-fog, always reforming and melting away at the same time, her hand held out to him, as he remembered her, as he had wanted to believe she was, waiting for him… .
He rose from his seat, lifting his own hand, oblivious to his brothers’ stares or the murmurs of the crowd as he stepped forward into the vision, to gently mime the touch of his hand on hers, feeling the cold, faint tangibility of the mist from which she took her form as he began to lead her with his thoughts, and with his heart, through the precisely patterned motions of the dance that matched the music. And she smiled and met his gaze, with her eyes the color of mist and moss agate, filled with yearning like his own, and her long, pale hair tendriling about her like fog….
They danced until the music began to fade away; he bowed to her with its final strains, letting her fade back into the mist, into formless swirls of color like a rainbow, like the ribbons of light in the night sky overhead. He turned back to his seat, through a stars warm of applause, already reaching up to lift the crown from his head and pass it on….