Carnelians

by Catherine Asaro

  Jaibriol smiled slightly. “Do I?”

  That was certainly an odd thing to say. Of course he did.

  He indicated something behind her. “Let us sit.”

  Turning, she saw the brocaded sofa flanked by armchairs, gold and blue, with a polished wooden table in front, all on a blue rug with carnelian tassels. Feeling like a trespasser, she went where he indicated and almost sat down. Mercifully, she caught herself in time. She stood waiting as he came over and settled onto the sofa. When he nodded, she sat in the armchair, on the edge of its seat. She was afraid to breathe too deeply, in case he heard and was offended.

  Jaibriol’s wrist comm hummed. He touched a panel and a man’s voice rose into the air. “He is here, Your Highness.”

  “Good,” Jaibriol said. “Send him in.”

  Confused, Aliana glanced at the archway. It had become a solid wall again, but as she looked, it shimmered back into an entrance. Four Razers stood there, dark and big, with black guns on their belts, their eyes like windows into the heart of a machine. They came forward—

  With Tide!

  He walked in their midst, so much like them, they could have all been brothers. Even knowing him as Harindor’s top fighter, far better than all the rest, she had never realized he could look so harsh. He wore no uniform, however, only dark slacks and a blue dress shirt, elegant in its cut. She tried to catch his gaze, but he wouldn’t look at her. She couldn’t understand what terrible thing that other Tide had done, the one who had caused ESComm to kill all his brothers. Why should acting human deserve execution?

  A few paces from the sofa, the Razers stopped and one of them shoved on Tide’s shoulder. He went down on one knee, his head bowed.

  “You may rise.” The emperor sounded bored. Aliana gritted her teeth. Tide deserved better.

  Tide rose, his gaze downcast.

  “The rest of you may wait outside,” Jaibriol said.

  The Razers stared at him, their strict faces furrowing. One started to speak. Jaibriol did almost nothing, just barely raised his eyebrows, but it silenced the Razer. All four bowed at exactly the same time, like machine parts working in unison. Then they strode from the room, dark figures casting shadows on the gold carpet.

  It wasn’t until the archway turned back into a wall that Jaibriol acknowledged Tide. He lifted his hand, motioning toward the other armchair. “You may sit.”

  Tide went where the emperor indicated and sat, his face composed but his jaw rigid. His posture was more tense than Aliana had ever seen from him before, including even the day he came to the embassy to defect.

  The emperor spoke in a low voice. “You look just like him.” His voice had none of the curt snap Aliana associated with Hightons. He sounded shaken. Something else was strange, too, she wasn’t sure what . . .

  “You’re the last of your line,” Jaibriol told him. “All the rest are dead.” With an unexpected bitterness, he added, “All eleven of them.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Highness,” Tide said.

  Aliana couldn’t believe he was apologizing for being alive. Gods! He seemed hunched up mentally, ready to defend himself—or to hear his sentence of execution. He wasn’t a psion, so he wouldn’t feel the pressure of the emperor’s mind, but—

  Wait! That was it. That was what felt strange about Jaibriol. No mental pressure. Even with her barriers in place, she sensed other Aristos like a distant force that would consume her mind if she relaxed her defenses. She felt none of that here.

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” Jaibriol said to Tide. “Hidaka saved my life.”

  Tide gave a start, a barely discernable jerk of his shoulders, but Aliana understood. Hidaka saved my life. The emperor had to mean the Razer whose sin of humanity had resulted in the death of his line. Yet Jaibriol called him Hidaka. By his name. He acknowledged the Razer’s humanity.

  Tide waited, his muscles so rigid that his shirt couldn’t smooth out its wrinkles.

  “I’m assigning you to my bodyguard,” Jaibriol said.

  Tide’s mouth fell open. “Sire! I—did you—I don’t understand.”

  Aliana’s instant of joy turned into dismay. The emperor wouldn’t put a defector on his bodyguard. He was toying with Tide. Or so she thought, until Jaibriol said something even stranger.

  “I appreciate your undercover work at the embassy,” he told Tide. “Your insights on their operations have been of great use.”

  Aliana’s mouth dropped open. Tide was a spy? She would have never guessed. In fact, watching Tide, she was certain he would have never guessed, either.

  “I, uh—thank you,” Tide said.

  “Since the ESComm raid disrupted your work at the embassy,” Jaibriol continued, “we are pulling you off that assignment. You will join our palace guard, instead, and accompany us to Delos.”

  Aliana didn’t know what she had expected, but this sure as flaming stars wasn’t it.

  Tide was trying not to look confused. “The Allied planet Delos?”

  “That’s right,” Jaibriol said. “For the summit with the Skolians.”

  Tide finally recovered enough to form a complete sentence. “You do me an incredible honor, Your Most Esteemed Glory.”

  For one instant Aliana had the ridiculous sense that the emperor wanted to say You’re the only one in three empires who seems to think so. Of course he didn’t make such a bizarre statement.

  Instead, Jaibriol turned to her. “You will also come to Delos with us.”

  She stared at him blankly. She couldn’t imagine any reason why he would want Aliana Miller Azina in even the same galaxy with him.

  “One more thing,” he told her. “You will never leave this suite without my authorization. You keep off the meshes, out of sight, out of mind. Do you understand?”

  Startled by his vehemence, she blurted, “I promise, I won’t, I mean I will, Your Highness, Your Greatness, Your Glory—” She shut her mouth when Tide gave her a stop babbling glare.

  Jaibriol sat considering her. The silence stretched out. Just when she thought it would become unbearable, he said, “The staff at the Skolian embassy thought you were a psion. However, none of my people detect the slightest Kyle ability from you.” He paused. “Oddly enough, they can’t verify that boy is a psion, either, even though he was previously registered with a rating above seven.”

  Aliana didn’t know why they didn’t find whatever they expected. All she could think was that the emperor must know what had happened to Red. Please, please, don’t say he died. She remembered his touch, strong and gentle at the same time, his soft words, his dimple when he smiled. Desperate to know what had happened to him, she imagined her mental walls thinning, just here with the emperor, to find out what he knew—

  Warmth! Gods, so much power.

  Jaibriol’s expression didn’t change the slightest bit, yet Aliana had the oddest sense, as if he had gasped inside his mind. Then the warmth was gone. Completely. He was a cipher, unreadable, his mind a blank. Confused, she imagined her mental fortress intact again.

  “This boy,” Jaibriol said to her. “The one you call Red.”

  Her pulse surged. “Yes, Sire?”

  “Did something happen to his brain in Muzeopolis?”

  “I don’t know,” Aliana said. “When I met him, he was starving.”

  “That shouldn’t affect his Kyle ability.” Jaibriol’s gaze bored into her. “I’m going to leave him with you. I want both of you to stay here, out of the way. Out of sight.”

  She was going to see Red! “Your Most Glorious Highness, yes, we will, I promise.”

  Tide was watching her with an odd look. She couldn’t read his carefully composed expression, but she sensed . . . envy? Of Red? That made no sense. The emperor had just given Tide a far greater honor, more than his life, more even than his previous job. Tide was to be a personal bodyguard of the emperor himself. He had no reason to envy a couple of low-level slaves confined to their rooms.

  The emperor turned back to Tide. “Rob
ert Muzeson will process your transfer to the palace guard when we finish here.”

  “Thank you, Your Highness,” Tide said. “I won’t disappoint you.”

  To Aliana’s unmitigated surprise, Jaibriol said, “I know,” in a far gentler voice than she had heard from any other Aristo. Then he rose to his feet. “That is all.”

  Aliana and Tide jumped up. She caught a flash of mortified panic from Tide; they weren’t supposed to sit if the emperor was standing. Well, if he stood up without telling them, how could they help it? Honestly, Hightons were strange, with their protocols and procedures. But Jaibriol was going to let her be with Red, and he had let her see Tide, and that meant everything.

  The emperor summoned his guards back into the room. As the Razers entered, Aliana shuddered. What she felt from their minds was neither the pain of an Aristo nor the warmth of a psion. They were . . . inaccessible. They gave her a darkened sense, more of night than day. Would Tide become like that? She didn’t know what it would mean, but it was better than his death.

  Jaibriol spoke to Aliana. “Remember what I told you. Stay out of sight.”

  With that, he left the room, striding out with Tide and his night-souled bodyguards.

  XXI

  Labyrinths of the Mind

  Dehya? The name swirled through the blue mist.

  Blue. She was in the Blue, shrouded in formless silence.

  Aunt Dehya? The words came like a distant thought.

  Del? she asked. Is that you?

  . . . on a ship. Don’t know where . . .

  Dehya tried to orient on him. Mist curled around her, obscuring any path. She was in a formless universe. The Blue.

  Imagine me standing here, she thought. Then imagine yourself next to me.

  A blur wavered ahead. She walked forward, and it resolved into an impression of Del in blue trousers and a white shirt, his outlines melting into the fog.

  Dehya, listen, he thought. Axil Tarex . . . my neural scans . . .

  Do you mean Lord Tarex, the CEO of Tarex Entertainment? He had held Del prisoner nine years ago. Del! Is he the one who has kidnapped you?

  . . . not Tarex . . . his ship? . . . Allied . . . Tarex could fake . . . all fake . . .

  Fake what? Dehya kept walking, but Del was fading into the fog. Wait! Come back.

  His thought drifted . . . two-thirds Earth gravity . . . air smells like vanilla . . .

  Then he was gone.

  Jaibriol stood in his darkened suite, thinking he should tell the lumos to come on. But he was so tired, even that seemed an effort.

  Aliana was a psion—and that was an understatement of magnificent proportions. She had been reading him even when they both had mental fortifications so strong, they were blocking every Aristo within kilometers. When she lowered her barriers, clumsily trying to probe his mind, it was like a sun had gone nova. He had felt that kind of power only once in his adult life, when he and Kelric had met on Earth. This girl had that same golden, blazing warmth.

  Not only that, but with no training, she was protecting the boy Red so well that no hint of his ability had registered with any Highton here or on the ship that brought them to Glory. According to the reports, Red had picked her at random in a clumsy robbery attempt. Jaibriol didn’t believe for one moment that choice was arbitrary. Even if the boy hadn’t consciously oriented on Aliana because of her mind, he must have sensed her luminous power. Incredibly, no one else had a clue. He had checked every record he could find. Aliana had never been tested. She had been hidden in one of the worst slums on Muze’s Helios, so thoroughly disguised by her poverty and inconspicuous existence that no one had guessed.

  She had to be a Ruby heir. She had their golden metallic beauty. Was she a full Ruby psion? If not, she was damn close. What the blazing hell was he going to do with her? She could be the most valuable human being alive in Eubian space, a Ruby Dynasty hostage worth her weight in fortified platinum. Except it was more like having a vial of nitroglycerine in his pocket. One wrong step and it could blow him up.

  A drowsy voice murmured in the darkness. “Are you going to stand there all night?” Dim light appeared, cast through the red and gold shade on an antique lamp across the room. It stood on a black lacquered nightstand next to the canopied bed. Tarquine was sitting up, reclined against the headboard, rubbing her eyes. The bed covers had fallen down to her waist, leaving her shapely torso uncovered, her lithe curves covered by flimsy red lace.

  Jaibriol exhaled. After this excruciating day, he knew what he needed. He stalked across the room, undoing the high collar of his shirt. As he climbed the dais where the bed stood, he unfastened the carnelian links that held his shirt cuffs closed. Tarquine watched him, her long lashes half-closed over her eyes.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his shirt. As he leaned down to kiss her, he grasped her silken lingerie and yanked. It ripped easily, pulling away from her body, a scrap of lace in his fist. Tarquine kissed him with her palm cupped on his cheek, her long fingers curving around his jaw. Pulling her under his body, he let himself submerge into her hypnotic sensuality. She knew exactly how to touch him, yet she no idea what she did; she was simply being Tarquine, a draught of potent whiskey, a drug he would crave for the rest of his fractured life, the deadly creature he loved at his own peril. For some unfathomable reason she wanted him, not only the coldly unassailable emperor of Eube, but also as the passionate, idealistic youth who had grown up with nothing but his family’s love in the wilderness of an uncharted world.

  He didn’t finish undressing; he just pulled open his trousers and drove deep within her. She raised her hips to meet his. He wanted her hard and fast, with a fire no Aristo would ever admit to feeling. Nor could she hide from him; her arousal saturated his mind with the same forbidden intensity. Her fingernails scraped his shoulders, leaving marks the nanomeds in his body would repair. He arched his back and groaned, shoving deep into her, pinning her to the bed.

  Jaibriol felt the animalistic craving within her, shadowed and buried—that drive to brutality that Aristos called transcendence. She had exorcised her ability to transcend because she believed it was wrong, but her desire for that sublime ecstasy was still there. Every time they made love, he felt what she wanted to do to him, what she held back. Every time he lay with her, he balanced on that edge of her darkness. He was never safe, but it never stopped him from needing her, even now, when he was as angry as he was aroused, when he took her with an edge of violence himself, using passion to vanquish the Ruby powers that threatened his mind, his ability to rule, even his sanity.

  Jaibriol lay on his back, one arm thrown over his head on the sable pillow. Tarquine lay next to him, her eyes closed. Her breathing had slowed and her mind drowsed. Sated.

  Eventually he said, “I received a response from Pharaoh Dyhianna.”

  “Hmmm . . . when?”

  “A few hours ago.” He stared up at the velvet curtains of the bed, which were held back by braided cords. “I’m surprised your security people didn’t catch it.”

  “You distracted me,” she said, her voice low.

  Jaibriol put his arm around her. As long as she was distracted, she wouldn’t ask him about the tall girl with gold skin. He would have to disguise Aliana’s coloring.

  “What did our Skolian queenling say?” she said. “Or perhaps I should ask about her dice.”

  Jaibriol rolled onto his side, facing her. “She offered a solution for convening the summit. I think I’m going to accept it.”

  Her lashes lifted, revealing her red gaze, suddenly awake and intent. “What solution?”

  “We meet on the world Delos.” Jaibriol propped his head up on his hand, resting his elbow on the bed. “Our people build half of the summit hall and theirs build the other half. We have control of whatever we build and full rights to inspect whatever the other side creates. The Allieds will monitor it all with their security.”

  “No. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Anything will be dan
gerous. Hell, Tarquine, we could be killed in our own home.”

  She studied his face. “Delos is that world the Allieds call sanctuary, yes? I have heard what they say. A place where ‘Eubian and Skolian may walk side by side, in harmony.’ It is balderdash.”

  The room seemed too quiet. He had checked its security, and he knew she had protected their privacy with her own systems, which outdid even ESComm’s best. They were truly alone here, no one listening, watching, recording. Still, he feared to speak the answer on his lips.

  “What is it?” Tarquine asked.

  “My parents met on Delos.”

  He waited for her to tell him the lie, that his sainted mother, the gods exalt her soul, was the Highton woman all Eube assumed had birthed and raised him, an Aristo of the revered Kaliga Line. She knew the truth, but neither of them ever spoke it aloud.

  Instead, tonight she simply said, “How did they meet?”

  It was the most dangerous conversation he had ever had. Even here, he couldn’t go further than that one sentence, My parents met on Delos.

  Tarquine waited. When he didn’t answer, she murmured, “No sanctuary exists for those flawed gods who rule the stars.”

  “We aren’t gods, no matter what Eube Qox claimed.”

  “We are what we need to be.” She traced her finger across his lips. “Let no blasphemy cross these, husband. This fickle universe worships its deities one day and reviles them the next.”

  He closed his hand around hers and lowered it to the bed. “We are going to Delos.”

  “It is astonishing,” she said, “how well the nanomeds we carry in our bodies can monitor our health.”

  “And you bring this up because . . . ?”

  “Be certain what you choose for this summit. If you choose wrong, we could all die.”

  “ ‘All’ suggests many people. Who?”

  “Three. You. Me.” She placed his palm over her stomach. “The son we created tonight.”

  He went very still. “You can’t know already.” Given her age, she required special medical treatment to conceive. Yes, she could prime her body for it. But nothing could be certain within only an hour after they made love.