The Moon's Shadow (Saga of the Skolian Empire)

by Asaro, Catherine

  “Superb,” Robert repeated. “Including—uh—your statement, ‘The Palace Committee on Ethics and Morals will seek out and remedy irregularities.’ ”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It is rather vague.”

  “Most Highton statements are.”

  “Yes, certainly, you are right.” Robert cleared his throat. “But, uh, it seems the Diamond Coalition has less understanding of such nuances than yourself.”

  Jai squinted at him. “What ‘less understanding’?”

  “It seems they have misinterpreted your statement to mean you will prosecute anyone found tampering with the price of platinum.”

  “Ah, hell.” Jai drew him to a stop. His Razers also halted, far enough away to maintain the distance he insisted they keep. “Let me guess. They want an investigation into my wife’s platinum deals.”

  Robert looked apologetic. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Damn.”

  “An apt evaluation, sir.”

  “Now what do I do?”

  His question had been rhetorical, but Robert answered. “Her Most Beauteous Highness, the empress, might have thoughts on the matter.”

  Jai nearly choked. “ ‘Her Most Beauteous Highness’? Robert, have you ever said that to her face?” He could just imagine her reaction. It would be on par with calling her “pretty” or “dainty.”

  “No, sir,” Robert admitted. “Never.”

  “I would suggest you don’t. She might take it wrong.”

  “I would greatly regret if anyone mistook my admiration.” He blanched. “Especially the empress.”

  Jai thoroughly understood his reaction. “Especially her.”

  “She is quite a woman.”

  “That’s one way to put it.” Jai headed back to the private wing of the palace they had just left. His meeting would have to wait. “Come on.”

  Robert hurried after him. “Where are we going?”

  Jai dryly said, “To see my beauteous wife.”

  High Judge Calope Muze paced in her private chamber, her robes rustling as she walked back and forth. Azile Xir, the Minister of Intelligence, sat sprawled in a smartchair, watching her.

  “The High Court cannot indefinitely avoid an appeal,” Calope said. She would have to let Raziquon’s kin have a hearing. She couldn’t put them off any longer.

  Azile crossed his arms. “Some appeals deserve nothing.”

  Exasperation threatened to make Calope direct. Azile was as fond of Sunrise as his father, and it compromised his judgment. He was also angry that ESComm had kept his father in custody. But he knew perfectly well the situation with his father was different from what Jaibriol had done with Raziquon. Putting the Highton lord in an actual prison was tantamount to treating him like a taskmaker. A slave. They needed proof of Raziquon’s involvement in Sunrise’s abduction and they didn’t have it. Period. Even if they had uncovered evidence, it would be folly to incarcerate a Highton. Jaibriol seemed bent on making enemies.

  Calope knew she had to pardon Raziquon. But then what? If Jaibriol rescinded the pardon, it would further antagonize his enemies. If this kept up, ESComm might take drastic action, seeking to put their own emperor on the throne. Such an upheaval now, after the war, would be a disaster.

  She stopped pacing. “The perfection of the Hightons is in their union of mind and purpose.” The problem with Jaibriol III wasn’t really his inexperience. He wasn’t inept, he was unpredictable.

  Azile unfolded himself from his chair and walked over to her. “It depends on whose mind and purpose.”

  “ESComm has the power to assert both, if it feels threatened.”

  Although Azile frowned, he didn’t refute the statement. “As High Judge, you serve the emperor.”

  She didn’t miss how he phrased it: serve the emperor, not serve Eube or serve justice. But what Jaibriol wanted would only hurt him. If he had any sense, he wouldn’t undermine her efforts to avert a crisis between the palace and ESComm.

  Unfortunately, she feared he had a very different view of the matter.

  Sunrise served Corbal dinner in a dining room of the Xir mansion. While he reclined on plush rugs among scattered pillows, she placed a small table in front of him, black with gold edges, and set it with pastries filled with nuts and covered by sweet sauces.

  Corbal watched her pour the wine. Tonight, she matched her name. The chains on her ankles were dark blue, like the sky before dawn. Their bells chimed. Her skirt, which fit low on her hips, was a translucent blue, as when dawn washed out the night. Under it, her G-string shimmered gold. The chains of her halter were the deep pink of dawn, and she had braided topazes into her gold hair. Her blue eyes matched her skirt and her eyelashes sparkled with glitter. The overall effect took his breath away.

  Even now, months after her return, he couldn’t make peace with the sheer intensity of his relief. When she had vanished, the bottom had dropped out of his life. He didn’t understand the ferocity of the emotions that gripped him. Hightons didn’t experience such passions. Having her here now, with him, soothed the unnatural fury that had gripped him since Raziquon had kidnapped her and framed him for treason. Jaibriol had chosen well when he threw Raziquon in prison. Corbal hoped the lord rotted there.

  When he smiled, Sunrise blushed and averted her gaze. Corbal sighed. Why after almost three years, did that simple gesture still have the power to make him want her so much?

  “Shall I dance for you?” she asked.

  “Yes.” His voice was low. “Do that.”

  She rose gracefully and walked to a console, where she chose one of his favorites, a mesmerizing work of music, its beat steady under a haunting melody played by pipes. She seemed to know he wanted to hear it. Perhaps she took it from his mind in that mysterious way of empaths.

  She swayed with the beat, undulating. Her skirt fluttered around her thighs. Watching, Corbal wanted her with a depth that disturbed him. It went beyond desire. She affected him on some level he didn’t understand.

  He spoke hoarsely. “Come here.”

  She padded across the carpets and knelt next to him. Pulling her down on the rug, he kissed her hard. He wasn’t a gentle man; a century of transcending had seared away any capacity he had for tenderness. But he tried not to hurt her as he stretched her out in the pillows. Even knowing she produced synthetic pheromones, he wasn’t immune to those chemical cocktails. It had to be chemicals. That was the only way he could explain her effect on him.

  He wanted to take her the way he had taken providers all his life. But he could never hurt her. He gritted his teeth. He hated feeling guilty. He had a life of privilege. He liked it. He deserved it. He was, after all, a Highton, overlord of the Xir Line and kin to the Line of Qox. He didn’t aspire to be an upstanding member of his community. He had no interest in building his character or developing integrity. He liked being a hedonist, with his relationships no more demanding than this pleasure girl who catered to his every whim. Guilt had no place in his life.

  But damn it all, he felt it.

  Reluctant, he eased his hold on Sunrise. He wondered if he even knew how to be gentle. Not really. But for her sake, he would try in their lovemaking. At least, he thought “love” was the correct term. He had never experienced it before, certainly not with his wife, may her glacial heart rest in peace and never freeze him again. Perhaps he was wrong in thinking he felt it with Sunrise. Maybe he just had indigestion.

  He lifted his head. “Do you know my thoughts right now?”

  “A little.” She traced her finger across his lips. “You’re thinking of making love, yes?” Then she drew him into another kiss.

  Corbal put aside his thoughts and submerged himself in the heady ocean of pleasure she created for him. Later, as they lay in the pillows, he tried to sleep. But he couldn’t forget how Raziquon had hurt Sunrise. Corbal scowled. He should maintain the proper separation of his emotions from his pleasure.

  Separation, hell. He wanted to shove Raziquon inside the th
rusters of a starship and fire up the engines. Someone in the prison ought to make the universe a better place and assassinate him. Corbal doubted it would happen, though; Raziquon would soon go free, now that his appeal had reached the High Judge.

  He had thought Sunrise was asleep, curled against him, but now she spoke sleepily. “His mind opened.”

  He slid his hand across her stomach. “He?”

  “Lord Raziquon.”

  Corbal tensed, knowing how much pain the memories caused her. “You need never worry about him again.”

  She sighed, half asleep. “I felt his mind.”

  “I know.” After she had come home, he had discovered he couldn’t ask if she had spied on Raziquon’s mind, not when it meant she would have to relive that experience. And yet, on her own, she had spoken. He had held her close, offering comfort when she cried. It was a strange experience. He wasn’t used to comforting anyone. She hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know, but it didn’t matter. That she tried for him of her own choice, despite what it cost her, meant more than he knew how to say.

  Sunrise yawned against his chest. “His platinum mine.”

  He blinked, realizing she had meant his mine opened. Her mind must have relaxed as she drowsed, letting her remember more. “Raziquon has a mine?”

  “Hmmm . . . platinum.”

  “I didn’t know he had mining interests.”

  “Cheat emperor . . .” She burrowed into the pillows. “Never reported income . . .”

  Raziquon owned illegal mines? He kissed her temple. “Sunrise, you are a gem.”

  Asleep now, she didn’t respond.

  Her news might mean nothing. If Raziquon had failed to include the revenues from just one mine in his financial reports to the government, it would cause little trouble. But then, he had never known Raziquon to do anything small.

  Corbal grinned. This could prove useful.

  The War Room was located in the hull of the Orbiter. Its amphitheatre contained many consoles, VR rigs, and holomaps, as well as robot arms that carried telops throughout the area. High above the amphitheatre, a massive arm suspended a command chair in a dome lit with holographic stars. Conduits from all over the War Room fed into the blocky chair—and into the brain of whoever sat in that great mechanical throne.

  Kelric entered the War Room in the holodome and summoned the chair. The amphitheatre below hummed with activity: officers monitoring ISC forces, telops in the newly birthed psiberweb, aides running errands, cranes moving through the air. When the chair swung over to Kelric, many people looked up. He felt their surprise. It was as if a ghost had entered the War Room. No one had sat in this chair since the death of the last Imperator, his sister, Soz, and before her, his half-brother, Kurj.

  Kelric knew he looked like Kurj. A living ghost.

  Kelric settled into the throne. As it returned to the center of the dome, its exoskeleton clicked prongs into his ankles, wrists, spine, and neck, linking to the biomech web inside his body. Impersonal puzzlement came from the chair as it registered its new user. The hood lowered and extended a spiderweb of threads into his scalp. Data poured into Bolt, the oldest node in Kelric’s spine, and Bolt organized and shunted it to the cluster of new nodes, leaving Kelric free to think. As his mind became sensitized to the chair, and through it, to the webs networking the War Room, he could actually trace lines of thought in the amphitheatre.

  This felt right. He belonged here.

  The chair resembled the one in the Lock. He would never forget. He had met an emperor there who claimed to want peace talks. Kelric found it hard to believe Qox genuinely wished to negotiate peace. The emperor had to have other motivations.

  “Bolt?” he said.

  A voice came out of a comm mesh on the arm of his chair. “My greetings, Kelric.”

  “How do you like the chair?”

  “It is exhilarating.”

  Kelric smiled. Although Bolt was part of his brain, it had arranged to use the chair’s comm when Kelric linked the throne to the biomech web in his body. Bolt hadn’t always been able to perform such feats; over the decades it had reconfigured itself for new tasks and even emotions, though how it managed that, Kelric didn’t know.

  His biomech web also linked to the gauntlets he had found in the Lock and wore all the time now. He had little idea how the gauntlets worked, but he suspected they involved some type of machine intelligence in Kyle space. He couldn’t be sure; his interactions with it came only as undefined impressions. But this much he knew: the gauntlets were at least five thousand years old.

  “What can I do for you?” Bolt asked.

  “I was wondering how the peace talks were shaping up.”

  “Our people are verifying with the Allieds that the talks will go forward even though the Ruby Dynasty is no longer on Earth.”

  That didn’t surprise Kelric. Now that his family was loose again, the Allieds were more determined than ever to have Skolia and Eube talk peace. “Have you found any more information on Jaibriol Qox?”

  “A bit. Apparently he is eighteen, not seventeen.”

  “Why did the news services say he was seventeen?”

  “The error was introduced on Earth, after the war. His high school listed him as five months younger than the age he gives now.”

  “Five months?” Kelric raised an eyebrow. “That would be quite a feat. It would mean he wasn’t born until eleven months after his father disappeared.”

  “Which is impossible.”

  “Not if his mother conceived artificially.”

  “Such a procedure would be contrary to Highton mores.”

  “They store their genetic material, so it can’t be unheard of.” The empress would have been desperate if her husband disappeared without an heir. It could explain the secrecy surrounding Jaibriol III’s childhood. Hell, maybe the Hightons had been playing with genes, trying to make a telepath. Kelric couldn’t shake his feeling that the youth he had met in the Lock had been a psion. He couldn’t imagine the Hightons accepting a provider as their emperor, though.

  “It is improbable but not impossible that she conceived artificially,” Bolt acknowledged. “In any event, his official age is eighteen.”

  Kelric rubbed his chin. “Let me see if I have this straight. Nineteen years ago Ur Qox was emperor of Eube. His son and heir, Jaibriol the Second, secretly married and sired a son, Jaibriol the Third. Before the boy’s birth, Jaibriol the Second was supposedly killed trying to escape our military. Fifteen years later, Ur Qox dies. Not long after that, Jaibriol the Second miraculously reappears. About two years later Jaibriol the Second dies in the war. A few months later, his son, Jaibriol the Third, shows up to claim the throne.”

  “That about sums it up,” Bolt said.

  “It’s a bizarre story.”

  “But valid, apparently.”

  “You know, if the Traders weren’t such fanatics about verifying their bloodlines, I wouldn’t believe all these Jaibriols were the real thing.” He pushed his hand through his hair. “We know too little about Jaibriol the Third. If we misjudge his motivations, the talks could fail.” They would probably fail anyway, but he wanted at least to try.

  “I had the impression he was sincere when you met him in the Lock,” Bolt said. “Why would he let you escape, otherwise?”

  “I don’t know.” Kelric thought back to his meeting with the youth. “He didn’t talk to me the way Hightons talk with one another. He was too direct.”

  “He would consider you a provider. Not an equal.”

  “That’s why it was so strange. He treated me like an equal.” Kelric thought of the other Hightons he knew. “He’s hard to fathom. Highton brains work differently than ours. Their thought processes are like fractals.”

  “He might not think like other Hightons,” Bolt pointed out. “He grew up in isolation.”

  “That assumes their thought patterns are cultural rather than genetic. My guess is that it’s both.” Kelric tapped his finger on the comm. “B
olt, widen your search. Check every web you can reach no matter how small. Do a running comparison of him with our files on other Aristos. Look for patterns I can use to predict his behavior and motivations.”

  “I will need to access interstellar webs, trillions of them, many still off the psiberweb. It will take time.”

  “You have until the peace talks. About a month.”

  “I can work with that.”

  “Good.”

  Bolt’s mention of the psiberweb gave Kelric pause. Only two people now powered the former Triad that created the web: himself and Dehya. Although it had been many tendays since the death of his father, and though they had all known the span of his life was coming to an end, Kelric still found it hard to accept that he was gone. Eldrinson Althor Valdoria had passed away quietly, from old age, surrounded by the people who loved him, his wife and children. It meant more to Kelric than he knew how to express that he had been able to see his father before Eldrinson died. Now Kelric would carry on for him, protecting the family, their people, and the Skolian Imperialate.

  So Kelric went to work, integrating his mind with the War Room. If Skolia and Eube found their way to peace, he might never need this room in its full capability. Yet as much as he hoped they could establish a treaty, he doubted it would happen. If they had to go to war again, he would mourn the lost peace—but he would be ready.

  24

  Secrets

  Lake Mirellazile stretched like a silver sheet in a forested valley of the Jaizire Mountains. The sun burned in the stonewashed blue of the sky. Centuries ago, this rocky planet had supported no life, but Eube Qox had seen its promise. Biosculpting had produced a fresh, crisp world well suited to humans.

  A beach of glittering black sand curved along the lake. Jai sat on a metallic blanket there, watching breakers roll into the shore. On a world like Eube’s Glory, with its fourteen moons, even the lakes had wild tides.

  The body of water took its name from Mirella, the largest moon as seen from Glory. Right now Mirella hung near the horizon, bloodred. Eube Qox had named the moon for his wife, the first empress, and surfaced the satellite with synthetic carnelian. It wasn’t actually the largest moon; that distinction went to Zara, named for the second empress, the wife of Jaibriol I. In her honor, he had surfaced it in gold. Although Zara was four times farther away than Mirella, it appeared half the size in the sky. Right now it hung above Mirella, almost full. They made a startling pair, gold and red against the blue sky.