“History is written by the victors,” Barthol said. “The songs we sing are part of that history, vaunted today.” He regarded Jaibriol steadily. “And crushed tomorrow.”
Robert’s face had gone pale and the Razers were tensed as if ready for combat, their hands resting on their holstered guns.
“Spoken well, with such experience,” Jaibriol murmured. “Those who live with their failed deeds today know what it means to pay the price tomorrow.”
“Ah, but ‘price’ implies a trade,” Barthol said. “Have you noticed, Most Gloried Highness, that those who demand too high a price find themselves with no trade at all when a new day dawns?”
Jaibriol knew if he pushed Barthol any further, the general would withdraw his support for the summit, which was supposed to be about trade relations. So he just inclined his head. “Trade is always complex. It will be our pleasure to see its success.”
Like hell, Barthol thought, with such bitter disgust that it came to Jaibriol’s mind even though the general was the antithesis of a psion. My only pleasure would be freedom from your wretched existence. I failed to kill you once; I won’t again.
Aloud, Barthol said only, “It will be an auspicious day,” and in doing so, he backed away from the edge of their verbal battle before they fell so deep into it, one of them unforgivably insulted the other.
Security protocols activated, Jaibriol’s spinal node thought, hiding his response to Barthol’s thought. I failed to kill you once; I won’t again. With that thought had come a vivid image in the general’s mind of Jaibriol lying in the wreckage of the library where he and Tarquine had nearly died.
Somehow Jaibriol stayed calm as he raised his hand, giving Barthol permission to leave. His Razers escorted the general out, all of them striding through the archway. Inside, rage seared his thoughts.
“Well, wasn’t that rousing?” a throaty voice said behind Jaibriol.
He turned with a start. Tarquine was standing in the archway to their bedroom, leaning against one side of it, her arms crossed, her black hair mussed around her shoulders from sleep.
“How long were you listening?” he asked.
“Long enough to wonder if you and my nephew were about to declare war on each other.”
Jaibriol couldn’t say what he had picked up from Barthol about the attempts on their lives. He glanced at Robert. His aide met his gaze, then unclenched his fist, which had crumpled his mesh screen. He smoothed out the screen, rolled it up and slid it back into its sheath on his belt.
“Your Highness,” Robert said, “shall I prepare a statement on the situation with Tarex?”
Jaibriol nodded, wishing he could crumple something with his fists, anything to ease his tension. “Get as much background as you can on the situation. Lord Tarex is a Silicate Aristo, the CEO of Tarex Entertainment. It’s unlikely the people who kidnapped Prince Del-Kurj were his agents.” Given the verbal slugfest Robert had just witnessed between Jaibriol and Eube’s General of the Army, it wouldn’t be hard for him to figure out where the agents came from.
Robert spoke carefully. “This will make tomorrow’s summit interesting.”
Jaibriol smiled rather wanly. “You’re a master of understatement.” He had a long night ahead of him. “Write a first draft of the statement and mesh it to me so I can work on it.”
Robert bowed to him. “Right away, Sire.”
After Robert left, Tarquine came over to Jaibriol. “He’s a good aide.”
“Yes, he is,” Jaibriol said. “I thought you were asleep.”
“It seems I can’t stay that way.”
More than anything, he wished she were on Glory. Away from this mess. Tomorrow, Kelric and Tarquine would meet in person for the first time since Kelric had escaped from her eleven years ago, after she had bought him at the highest price ever paid for a slave in the history of Eube. Tarquine kept her thought on that subject buried too deep for him to find without mentally breaking her barriers, which he would no more do than he would physically attack her. He didn’t want her to see Kelric, didn’t want Kelric to see her, didn’t want to live with this constant fear that he would never measure up to that golden warlord.
“Jai?” she asked. “Where are you?”
“Your nephew is in a bad mood tonight,” he said.
She spoke dryly. “If the essence of Barthol could be condensed into a mineral, he would be a vein so extensive within the planet, everyone on the surface would be in danger of collapsing into the depths of the crust when he finished mining the ore.”
As a description of how deeply Barthol could undermine their lives, that was certainly apt. “After that incident with the fellow whose children Barthol tried to sell,” Jaibriol said, “I looked more deeply into your nephew’s affairs. It wasn’t the first time he did something like that. Not even close.”
Her expression became shuttered. “Barthol is a Highton.”
“So are you. So am I. So is Corbal. So are a thousand other people. I don’t see them tearing apart families and pushing people to suicide for some stupid, trumped-up offense.”
The empress shrugged. “We are all different.”
“Tarquine, you know this is serious,” Jaibriol said. “If all Aristos treated their taskmakers like Barthol, it would weaken the empire. He owns several billion. If he makes their lives so miserable that they feel they have no reason to live, they’ll rise up against him.” Personally, he would find it sheer pleasure to watch Barthol’s slaves revolt. But then what? If the emperor didn’t put down such a rebellion, the Aristos would believe he was abetting a revolution, which would destroy him. The genocide Del sang about in “Carnelians Finale” was no euphemism. Jaibriol’s predecessors had wiped out entire races, even destroyed planets as punishment for a rebellion. Jaibriol had made inroads in easing the slavery of Eube, including in the provisions of this treaty he and the Skolians were supposed to discuss tomorrow, if it didn’t collapse under the weight of its own divisive existence. But he had a long, long way to go.
“Whatever you may think of him,” Tarquine said coolly, “Barthol is my nephew.”
“Family.”
“Yes.” She paused, watching him, her gaze unreadable. “But not family like our child, Jai. And he will be a son.”
He stared at her, forgetting Barthol. “Then it’s true? You’re pregnant?”
She said, simply, “Yes. I am.”
His first thought was to insist she see a doctor, many doctors, the best in the empire. They couldn’t leave the care of their son to their own treatment, especially not after Tarquine had twice miscarried. Except he knew an even harsher truth, one they couldn’t risk any doctor discovering: the child she carried was barely more than half Aristo. He would inherit half the Highton genes from his mother, but only one-sixteenth from Jaibriol. The Highton Heir would be one-half Ruby.
Jaibriol dreaded Tarquine coming to the summit. When the Skolian public learned the truth about Prince Del-Kurj, emotions would explode. It would be unforgivable that ESComm kidnapped the prince who sang “Carnelians Finale” just after Del’s speech asking people to set aside their anger. The Imperialate would demand justice. The Aristos would inflame the situation with their blatant approval, congratulating Tarex for capturing the provider who had dared shout to the stars that he would never kneel beneath their Highton stares. During all that furor, Jaibriol would have to deal with ESComm attempts to sabotage the summit using the embryonic Kyle technology they had mangled together. And gods only knew what else Barthol had planned.
“Tarquine, go back to Glory,” he said. “Take our son home. To safety.”
“I can’t do that,” she said.
“Why?”
Her voice quieted. “Jaibriol, trust me.”
She was asking for one of the few things he could never give her. Loyal yet amoral, brilliant yet uncompromising, prodigiously wealthy yet never satisfied, the woman who would give life to his son also killed those who stood in her way. How could he ever trust her?
“You endanger our heir,” he said. “My heir. Your heir.”
Her voice turned flat. “My heir is Barthol.”
Barthol. The would-be despot who wanted Tarquine dead so he could inherit her Line, her lands, perhaps even the regency of the Carnelian Throne. She had given him that legacy for Jaibriol. He wanted to say I’m sorry, but Hightons never spoke those words they considered a weakness.
So instead he said, “You gave me honor.”
She looked away from him, out the glass doors of the balcony. “Barthol’s son is here, too.”
Jaibriol barely knew Hazar, Barthol’s eldest child and heir, who had no interest in anything except his own hedonistic pleasure. “I didn’t think Hazar cared about politics.”
Tarquine turned back to him. “He doesn’t. But he will someday rule Iquar.” She grimaced as if she had bitten into a sour fruit. “Let us just say it has been suggested that he at least appear to be learning his responsibilities.”
Jaibriol had no answer. As much as he disliked Barthol, he knew the general was capable of leading the Iquar Line. It would be a brutal rule, but the Iquars would prosper. Hazar was another story. When Tarquine had named Barthol as her heir, she had ceded power to a branch of her family that might someday irreparably damage her Line.
Jaibriol couldn’t fix what his treaty had cost her. So he gave her the only exchange he had to offer, his acceptance of her refusal to leave. “When you take your place at my side in the summit,” he said, “the empire will know the great value I place in your counsel.”
She inclined her head, accepting his unspoken apology.
The graceful response now would be to let the matter drop. Yet something kept tugging at him. “Tarquine—have we ever talked about the Skolian Jagernauts?”
“We talk about Skolians far too much,” she said. “I am quite thoroughly tired of them.”
“I suppose.” He felt the same way. But it was odd the way he had so easily picked up Barthol’s thought. It made him think of the Skolians. “You know they have mech-enhanced telepathy.”
“You believe that little myth of theirs?”
That surprised Jaibriol. She knew it wasn’t a myth. She probably had more intelligence on the Jagernauts than ESComm, not only because she kept her own dossiers, but also because she had once owned one of the most important Jagernauts alive. She knew the implants in their brains could boost their neural activity. Something felt wrong here. It wasn’t her response, more her lack of one.
“Other people besides Jagernauts use the technology,” he said.
She raised her sculpted eyebrow. “And I should care because . . . ?”
Why, indeed. He wasn’t even sure why he was pushing it on her. “Anyone who can afford the procedure can have a brain implant that enhances neural activity.”
Exasperation flashed on her face. “Yes, my most gloriously talkative husband, anyone can. People can put anything they want in their brain, plant flowers, mine for ore, play tiddle-widdle. Why anyone would wish to do so is an entirely different question and one which I have no idea why, at this particular moment, we are discussing.”
“It can change how a telepath picks up their thoughts.” He thought of his Razers with their metallic minds, hard to read, different than human.
“Maybe it does,” she said. “Why do you care?”
Because I picked up your nephew that way, he wanted to answer. But he couldn’t speak such words. Instead, he said, “We have no idea what tricks anyone might try tomorrow. They will have Jagernauts there.”
“I’m sure ESComm is prepared.”
Even though her response seemed genuine, it felt off. She had perfected the art of verbal deflection so well that even he, a psion, had trouble reading what lay beneath her Highton exterior. She was hiding something and had been since Barthol’s accident. He wanted to believe the general had recovered because Tarquine had stepped back from murdering her own nephew. Or maybe she had tried and failed, as impossible as it seemed. He didn’t believe she had discovered Barthol had no link to the death of their son, not after what he had just picked up from the general.
Then it hit him. He had been refusing to acknowledge another obvious choice, the one that was so very Highton. Tarquine and Barthol could have joined forces.
Jaibriol suddenly felt ill. It couldn’t be true, that his empress would enter into a pact with Barthol to reclaim the rule of her Line, perhaps even of all Eube, without having to slaughter her own kin. Tarquine carried the Highton Heir now; she no longer needed Jaibriol to ensure her legacy.
“What is it?” Tarquine asked. “Why do you stand there so silent?”
“It is nothing,” Jaibriol said. He could say no more.
If Tarquine had betrayed him, it would destroy a piece of him that could never be repaired.
A piece of what made him human.
XXV
Traders
The Flagstorm battlecruiser known as Pharaoh’s Shield—the pride of the Skolian Fleet—rotated majestically in space. As the transport carrying Del approached the cruiser, he floated in an observation bay, looking out a wall-sized view screen, awestruck. The cylindrical body of the great ship was twelve kilometers long and one kilometer in diameter. A giant tube extended down its center, circled at intervals by huge rings. Spokes extended from the rings to the cylinder’s rim, allowing the ship to turn and so create a sense of gravity for the thousands of people who lived within it. Lights flashed on its outer hull or ran across it like trains of radiance, a testament to the never ending activity within the antennae, pods, cranes, and flanges on its myriad surfaces.
A flotilla of smaller ships accompanied the cruiser: Starslammers and Thunderbolts; razor-edged Scythes; unfolding Jack-knives; bolts, masts, tugs, and booms. Jags shot through the fleet, luminous and brilliant, the flotilla vanguard, all of it set against a dazzling backdrop of nebulae. Del’s only experience with star travel had been as a civilian, usually on a commercial star liner or yacht. The Firestorm took away his breath.
A man spoke behind him. “Incredible, isn’t it?”
Del maneuvered around to see Mac floating in the open hatch of the bay. His manager looked much better than the last time Del had seen him, twenty hours ago, when they had woken up in the crammed cabin of a Jag starfighter just moments after it had rescued them from the racer determined to blow them up. In a startling act of compassion for an AI, the racer had knocked them both unconscious in preparation for the destruction.
Blackhawk Squad had thrown the racer into quasis in the instant it detonated, freezing the molecular structure of the ship. The racer’s molecules didn’t stop vibrating or whatever molecules did, but they couldn’t change their quantum configuration, which as far as Del understood, meant the ship had been in a sort of suspended animation. Secondary Panquai, the squad leader, had eased off the quasis enough to extract them before the racer blew. Waking up from that drugged sleep to find himself alive had definitely been one of the better moments in Del’s life.
He grinned at Mac, holding a grip in the bulkhead, floating in the microgravity. He was glad to see Mac up and around; his manager had been spacesick during most of the past twenty hours, while Blackhawk squad brought them to this transport and the transport brought them here.
“Can you believe my brother commands that!” Del gestured at the battlecruiser. “I mean, I knew he was the Imperator and all, but nothing ever brought it home like this.”
Mac pushed off from the hatch and drifted toward Del. “It’s hard sometimes with family to see their lives away from how we know them.” He grabbed a handhold by the screen, and he and Del hung there together, watching as Pharaoh’s Shield grew larger.
A half-sphere capped the far end of the cylinder, but the end they were approaching was open to space. Gigantic thrusters circled its perimeter, each many times the size of the transport. Their small ship sailed past as a docking tube opened ahead, like a bud unfurling its petals. They flew into the pod and the petals closed behind
it, cutting off Del’s view of space.
“Kelric and I have argued so much,” Del said. “Especially when I was younger.”
“You and he are very different,” Mac said. “But Del, even a bystander like myself can tell that for all that you two may have diametrically opposed personalities, your brother loves you.”
“It’s hard sometimes to believe.” Wryly he said, “It’s ironic, you know. The thing I’ve done in my life that they most hate, my being a rock singer on Earth, is what gave me enough confidence to believe that I was, if not worthy to be in this family, at least worthy of their love.”
“Of course you’re worthy!” Mac said. “You don’t have to be a war leader or a politician. Be yourself. That’s a unique, remarkable feat.”
“Well, it’s unique, anyway.” Del sensed someone behind them, a strong psion. Maneuvering around, he saw Secondary Panquai in the hatchway. The Jagernaut’s close-cropped hair reminded him of a bristle-brush, except it looked a lot sexier on the lean, muscular warrior, the perfect complement for her black leather uniform. Del had never been comfortable with military officers, but he’d let Panquai take him anywhere she wanted. Well, not really. His wife Ricki was even more dangerous than this Jagernaut. He missed her. At least ISC had let her know he was all right.
“Hey, Panquai,” he said.
She nodded, as calm and stoic as ever. “Ready to board the cruiser, Your Highness?”
“Sure,” Del said, though apprehension replaced his good mood. He would have to face Kelric soon. Even when he’d done nothing wrong, he felt intimidated by his brother.
They disembarked from the transport into a spherical decon chamber with the ubiquitous Luminex walls. As they floated there, the chamber checked them for every contaminant known to humanity and probably a few more. Apparently they were clean, because a portal soon opened, allowing them to drift into a tunnel with blue rails along its sides. Del thought they must be in the central tube of the cylinder, the axis it rotated around, because he was still floating. The ships he usually traveled in were designed to minimize any perceived discomfort of their passengers, including microgravity, and he had never realized how much fun it could be to float around like this. Mac looked a little green, though, so Del kept quiet.
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