Atl-Verazlan Compound, Veraz

Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge

4453.2.24 Interstellar

It was just an arbitrary number, particularly irrelevant on a planet without a day/night cycle, but as the date changed from the twenty-third to the twenty-fourth of the second month, Janus felt an overwhelming pressure to just get out of here and move on. Fury looked up at him, standing at his side. She seemed to sense she needed to be on her best behavior and didn’t get ahead or even pull on her harness.

“This way, honored guests,” one of the house attendants said, bowing and gesturing through the open doors.

Janus had thought the apartments they’d been assigned were richly appointed, but the interior of the family compound’s central block was downright palatial. Massive blocks and sheets of limestone were joined by lustrous copper inlays that reflected warm, yellow light from floating octahedrons.

He stopped to look at one. It was a simple led lamp in a blown-glass case, held up by magnetic suspension and powered, he guessed, by electromagnetic induction.

“Why do you think they did it like this?” Janus asked Ryler as the cultist came back to fetch him.

“Because it would make people stop and look at them,” Ryler said, putting his arm around Janus’s shoulders to lead him toward the others. “And because they could.”

The banquet hall almost made Janus gape. It took up two full stories, with balconies where people on the floor above could spectate while eating and conversing privately. The center of the room was taken up by a long table made of polished stone. It was twenty centimeters thick and inlaid with amazingly intricate copper script and mosaics. It, too, floated, the monolithic slab suspended three-quarters of a meter in the air.

Koni and Tialli, her mother, already stood behind their seats—Tialli at the head of the table and Koni to her right, on the long side. Servants seamlessly guided the team members to their assigned places. Mick was at the far end, taking up one of the two seats at the foot of the table, while Lira was placed near the middle of the banquet hall and opposite Ryler. Janus and Fury were led to stand next to Koni, and while Tialli acknowledged him briefly, she immediately waved to the head attendant. On his cue, all the servants streamed to the far side of the room.

“Excuse me,” Tialli said as she left to greet her guests. As she reached her position as hostess, the large stone doors swung open smoothly, and the nobles and notables of Veraz started filing in, each announced by the head attendant in a loud voice.

“So,” Janus said to Koni as Fury curled up under his seat, “floating table.”

“Do not get me started on the floating table,” Koni said with the ghost of a grin. “Mother used to threaten to cut the power to it when we argued at dinner.”

“Talk about getting caught flat-footed,” Janus said. He did wonder how it stayed in place, though. “What stops it from just drifting off the suspensors?”

Koni chuckled. “An entire twice-redundant computer system and the force of Tialli Atl-Verazlan’s disapproval.”

Guests were guided to their seats, starting at the far end of the table. Mick was sandwiched between an older colonel in the Verazlan rangers and a younger socialite with remarkably white teeth. Janus couldn’t tell which of them Mick was more pleased about. “Have you decided whether you’re continuing with us?”

Koni grunted. “It’s not really my decision. My mother will decide. The drop in the score has complicated things.”

“Because it would have looked better if you’d left the Trials in first place?”

“Because it’s convinced her you’re going to die, and soon,” Koni said. “I know you want to move on. The optics have become complicated. I am trying to barter my compliance to give you every advantage she can afford.”

Janus was touched and not as surprised as he might have been at the beginning of their journey together. He wasn’t convinced that Koni might not self-destruct again if given the chance to strike back at the people who’d killed her husband and son, but he understood that motive. He himself had caused the distribution of forbidden knowledge on Irkalla, partially because it felt like the right thing to do at the time but also to give the people who’d killed his parents the proverbial finger. He’d never imagined it would put his entire planet at risk of being purged. “Thank you.”

“Do not mention it, Janus Invarian,” she said, looking at him, and looking into her eyes, he saw someone much older and wiser than when they’d first met. “After all, as I’ve recently learned,” she said, glancing at Ryler, “it’s the Verazlan thing to do.”

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The table filled up quickly. Guests were brought to their places at a smooth but brisk pace so that the first people allowed in didn’t have to stand long. Janus smiled politely as a Verazlan with gray hair and a missing eye came to stand beside him. He was delighted to find out the woman had been an aspirant thirty years ago. He suspected that Tialli or the head attendant, or maybe the two of them together, had artfully matched each guest to people they would find either pleasant or insightful to talk with.

He wondered if his placement next to Koni was for the same reason or because his status as an Emissary demanded it.

The seat at the head of the table to Tialli’s left remained empty.

Koni followed his gaze. “My uncle Yolotli sits there, but he won’t share a table with his wife. He tries not to be in the same room.”

Janus looked across and down the table where a whip-thin woman in black was glaring daggers at Koni. “Copecki’s mother?”

“Yes,” Koni said. “It will be a long night.”

Tialli returned to the head of the table, and they all sat down for the meal.

The service was as impressive as it was efficient. Each guest ate at their own pace, and yet Janus never felt like he was waiting or being hurried. Part of it was his excellent conversation partner and the occasional exchange with Koni, but after a moment, he noticed that the order in which the plates were delivered and the size of the portions were all being adjusted on the fly to keep the meal moving forward together.

“Tialla Atl-Verazlan-teuctli runs the finest table in Veraz,” the old aspirant said with a sly smile. “One thing you get a feel for on the Trials is when things are running smooth and when they’re about to break.”

Janus nodded. If this dinner taught him one thing, it was that nothing was allowed to break in Tialli’s house, including her daughter, and that’s why Koni was sent away.

The food was great, though. It started with a range of fruit and raw fish in small dishes, each of them sweet, salty, tangy, and spicy in different ways. Then came heaping plates of vegetables and tuber, each prepared in different ways and with several sets of dipping sauces. The table got quiet as everyone dug in, and Koni seemed more comfortable and at ease than she’d been during the whole trip, even with her aunt-in-law glaring daggers at her and barely touching the food.

Janus wondered if Koni’s serenity was from being home or because she’d always had to fake it here.

She tapped his foot with the side of hers. “You’re staring. Try the pickled Zu.”

Janus chuckled and served himself from the dish she’d pointed him toward.

The third and fourth courses were slices of roasted game seasoned with a dizzying array of spices, and Janus was starting to get full. He heard Mick laugh loudly as he reached for seconds or thirds of the Mahua—a ground bird prized for both its meat and bright plumage.

Keep eating, Lira said to him over her wrist comm. This is a test.

Janus was about to respond when Tialli said, “No wrist comms at my table, young man. Anything that needs to be said in this company can be said aloud.” She looked at him with the amused smile of a mother and the flinty eyes of a predator.

Janus smiled broadly. “Forgive me, Honored Elder. My team’s diplomat was just reminding me of how vigorous the Verazlan are and that it would not be rude to have more of this incredible food than would be polite where I come from.”

“And where do you come from, Emissary Invarian?” a sharp-looking Verazlan with a hook nose and heavy bracelets on both arms asked. “There’s quite some speculation about your origins. None of my contacts among the coldsiders have heard of you.”

The volume of the conversations died down. People had obviously been waiting for this question to be asked.

Janus took a bite of white, savory meat from a small land lizard. It was generously peppered. “I come from a settlement called Prometheus Base. It was small, compared to Veraz, but quite similar to the Motragi clan in its pursuit of science.”

“Was?” the old one-eyed aspirant next to him asked.

“Unfortunately, Prometheus Base was destroyed by a rival settlement, and I spent the next twelve years as a refugee.”

“I’d like to hear about that,” Koni said. “Your life, I mean. Before you were an aspirant.”

Janus caught a warning look from Lira, and he knew that while the secret of their extraplanetary origins wasn’t perfectly kept, it was still something he needed to be careful about for these people’s sakes. So he told them stories about growing up in the outsiders’s district, Sector Six, and about working two shifts, one in the vacuum and one in a recycling plant. It was good to talk about those days, and it gave him an excuse to pick at his food rather than have to stuff himself. From the looks of it, Lira and Mick had taken his cue and were doing the same. Janus couldn’t see Ryler from where he was and wondered what the cultist would choose to do.

People started waving down the staff and sending each other drinks—which was apparently the custom and part of the reason the meal was so heavy. Janus sipped a fruity cocktail his neighbor had ordered for him, and then a server placed a goblet in front of Koni, and Janus’s hazard indicators went wild.

“Don’t drink that,” Janus said, grabbing her wrist. He activated his wrist comm—manners be damned—and found traces of at least three natural venoms in the cup.

“It’s all right, Janus,” Koni said, gently removing his hand from her wrist and taking the cup. “This is a gift from my aunt. I’m obliged to drink it.” Koni raised the goblet to her aunt and knocked it back in six long swallows.

A smattering of applause came from the dinner desks.

“What in the void?” Janus asked.

“It’s a tradition,” the elderly aspirant to his right explained. “The law doesn’t permit feuds within families, but custom allows for this specific drink to be given as a sign of spite. It’s quite painful to drink.”

Janus looked at Koni and saw that beads of sweat had broken out on her forehead.

A server removed the empty goblet and replaced it with another.

The table fell into stunned silence.

Tialli spoke to Citalmina across the table, her tone hard and cold. “Be careful, sister, or you will find yourself drinking from the same cup.”

“It’s fine, mother,” Koni said, picking up the goblet. She raised it. “The first was for you, Aunt Citalmina. The second is in recognition of what we have all lost.”

She drained the cup as steadfastly as the first.

This time, the applause was fiercer, and several members of the table ordered cups of spite for themselves to join in the toast.

Copecki’s mother never flinched and never looked away. She merely gestured, and a server brought another goblet to replace Koni’s empty one.