Ascendant Sun: A New Novel in the Saga of the Skolian Empire (14 page)

Taratus went first, and the guards followed with Kelric. At the table, the Aristos stopped talking and turned to watch. General Marix was sitting across from Mirella. Heeza sat to Mirella's left and Tarquine to Mirella's right. Kelric felt the chasms of their minds, but his empathic reception was muted by the drugs Taratus had given him.
The admiral nodded to the other Hightons and they nodded back, reclining in their loungers. The slaves stood or knelt wherever they had been when Taratus entered, their eyes downcast.
Turning to Kelric, Taratus motioned to the bed. "You can sit over there."
Kelric didn't really want to, but there was nowhere else to sit except the floor. Aware of the Aristos watching him, he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, facing the table. The holos flickering above the mattress flowed around him, leaving traces of glimmering light in the air.
Taratus stood talking to his guests, who remained seated. That subtle distinction marked their roles, Taratus as the seller and the others as buyers. To Kelric's relief, they had stopped looking at him.
After a few moments, Taratus took his leave. Unexpectedly, he glanced at Kelric as he left and raised his hand in farewell.
The Aristos continued to dine. Watching them, he felt his mouth water. Because of his time with the copper girl, he hadn't eaten. He was glad for his interlude with her, though. He wondered if she would miss him. Like most empaths, he tended to blend his physical and emotional responses. He liked her. He couldn't help but miss her, especially after the way their minds had melded.
He glanced around at the eight guards in the room. Each wore a neural blocker in a holster at his hip. Kelric had no doubt this chamber was also packed with systems that monitored his every move, down to the flicker of an eyelash. He wondered where Taratus was now. Watching from some remote monitor, no doubt.
On the far side of the table, Mirella sat back in her lounger and stretched her legs out under the table. Then she glanced at Kelric. "Come over here."
He wanted to refuse. But the sooner they got this auction over with, the better. He went to the table and stood with his arms crossed, towering over the noblewoman. He supposed he could have made himself look more amenable. But he didn't feel like it. He didn't care if it lowered his going price.
"Goodness," Mirella murmured. "So big." She set her hand on the carpet. "Sit with me."
I really don't want to do this, he thought. Feeling awkward, he settled cross-legged next to her lounger, bringing his eyes level with hers. The taskmakers serving the meal blended into the background, so discreet he almost forgot they were there. The Aristos were all watching him. Each had a palmtop, a small console that fit in the palm of the hand. Mirella had set hers on the table, but the others were holding theirs. He tried to ignore their stares. He had never liked being looked at, not when ISC paraded him around for the Skolian populace and not when it was only four Aristos.
Mirella slid her hand into his curls and stroked his hair. She spoke in Highton. "It's a nice color. The highlights glint. Like gold." She rolled a curl around her thumb. "Is it real?"
Kelric answered in Skolian. "What did you say?"
"Can you understand me?" she asked in Highton. When he just looked at her, she frowned. "Our dear Admiral Taratus neglected to mention he was uneducated."
Heeza smiled as if Mirella had made a joke. Then she made an entry on her palmtop.
General Marix reclined in his lounger, holding a goblet of gold wine. "Why would you want an educated provider?"
"So he could understand me." Still stroking Kelric's hair, Mirella studied his face. "But you don't need to think, hmmm?"
Kelric wished they would make their bids and be done with it. Even with his mental defenses and the muting effect of the drugs, he felt the looming sense of their minds. Without the drugs, he didn't think he could have endured being so close to four Highton Aristos.
It made no sense that Taratus helped him muffle his empathic response. Why? If anything, the bidders would want his Kyle senses at their most responsive. All the drugs achieved was to make the auction more bearable for Kelric. Had Taratus shown
compassion
? The idea boggled. An Aristo capable of cruelty one moment and kindness the next. It puzzled him.
Mirella cupped her hand under his chin. "When I saw the holos of you, I thought Taratus doctored them. But you really do look this way." Turning his head to the side, she studied his profile. "Magnificent." She rubbed her thumb over the laugh lines around his eyes. "It's authentic, too. If you had been bodysculpted, these would be gone."
Heeza snorted. "So we have to have him bodysculpted too?"
"I like him this way," Mirella said. "The character adds sensuality."
Marix spoke dryly. " 'Character' is a euphemism for imperfection."
Up until now, Tarquine had been silent. Now she glanced at Marix. "Tell me something. If you wanted a gem of great quality, what would you do? Choose a synthetic stone that had been designed to perfection? Or a real one that had formed in the earth over the eons?"
"The real one, of course," Marix said. "The flaws add value. But a provider isn't a gem."
"Isn't he?" Tarquine murmured. "When you can have perfection any time you want, which is more valuable? Authentic beauty or false perfection?"
For crying out loud, Kelric thought. He glanced around the table. Heeza was leaning forward, her round face entranced. Marix looked bored. Mirella picked up her palmtop and flipped it open.
"However," Tarquine added, "some of it is fake."
Mirella's ginger hovered above the palmtop. "Fake?"
Tarquine motioned to Kelric. "His coloring. The rest of his appearance is authentic, but his hair, skin, and eye color are some cheap tattoo job."
He almost swore. How had she known? Were Hightons that used to scrutinizing modified humans?
"Tattoo?" Heeza looked intrigued. "I had no idea. I wonder what it hides." Her lips parted. "Usually the
highlights
are the natural color. And his are gold." She beckoned to Kelric. "Come over here."
Gritting his teeth, Kelric stood up and went over to Heeza. As he sat next to her lounger, she leaned back and studied him.
"Gold?" Mirella smiled. "Taratus will like that." She indicated the gilded room around them. "His entire yacht is like this." Then she entered a bid on her console.
Marix shrugged. "So why didn't Taratus reverse the tattoo job?" He gestured at Kelric. "Besides, he limps."
Tough, Kelric thought.
"If he limps," Heeza said, "he will just have to spend more time lying down, hmmm?"
Not with you, he thought.
Heeza spoke to him in Skolian Flag. "Are you really a Jagernaut?"
"Yes," he said.
"Why don't you know Highton? Don't you Jagernauts study it as part of your training?"
"We learn some words and phrases."
"Have you understood anything we've said?" she asked.
"Not really."
Heeza leaned forward, her lips parted, and stroked a curl off his forehead. For all her bodysculpted beauty, she was cold, like an ice sculpture. Her mind pressed against his, suffocating. His mental barriers flowed and dissolved, too damaged to stay intact. Pain sparked in his temples and radiated outward in his head.
"Ahh ..." The satisfied murmur came from someone at the table, Kelric wasn't sure who. It made him ill, that his pain gave them pleasure.
He couldn't stop staring at Heeza. Her eyes mesmerized. Clear and well shaped, with glittering black lashes, they were undeniably beautiful— and undeniably
red.
He had always thought that if he saw an Aristo up close, he would find their eyes were brown with a red tinge. But no doubt existed. They were pure red.
"You look like a wild animal caught in a trap," Heeza said with affection. She sat back, breaking the provider-Aristo link she had been building with him. Then she made an entry on her palmtop.
Kelric swallowed, struggling not to lose his last meal. Given how long it had been since he ate, he would have the dry heaves anyway.
Marix spoke. "I don't think he likes you, Heeza."
She shrugged. "He doesn't talk much."
"Why would you want him to talk?" Mirella asked. "I often have their tongues removed."
By the time Kelric's mind caught up with his reflexes, he had already turned to Mirella in disbelief.
Dryly Heeza said, "She wasn't serious." Then she added, "At least, I don't think she was serious."
"So he does react," Mirella murmured. "I had begun to wonder." She entered another bid on her palmtop.
"He also lies," General Marix said.
Damn.
Kelric wanted to shake himself for his stupidity. Mirella had spoken in Highton.
Tarquine had been watching in silence. Now she spoke to Kelric. "You understand us better than you let on, don't you?"
Kelric met her gaze but said nothing. He knew her only as an older relative of the late dowager empress, Viquara Iquar, who died during the Radiance War. Where Viquara had been renowned for her beauty, Tarquine's face was hawklike in its aspect, attractive in its own ascetic way, with high cheekbones, an aristocratic nose, and a strong chin. Viquara had been sensuous: Tarquine was calculating. Viquara had been voluptuous: Tarquine was long and gaunt, with an austere beauty no one would call pretty. White dusted the hair at her temples and threaded the thick black braid that hung over her shoulder.
Under different circumstances, she would have fascinated Kelric. He had already experienced one shock today, when he realized Taratus could act human. Now he had a second shock: he was capable of finding a Highton Aristo attractive, even compelling.
"Come here," Tarquine murmured.
Schooling his face to hide his unease, he went over to her. As he sat down, she spoke in Highton. "What color are you under that tattoo job?"
He quit pretending he didn't understand. "Gold."
"I thought so." A slight frown touched her ascetic face. "It's a shame Taratus didn't have it reversed. I would like to know what I'm bidding for."
As far as he had seen, she had yet to make a single bid. He couldn't help but wonder what they were offering for him. Did Taratus really expect it to reach a million renormalized Highton credits? That seemed absurdly high.
Mirella sniffed. "I've no intention of bidding on how he
might
look."
Tarquine gave a slow smile. "Then we should see how he looks." She pressed the fastener at the neckline of his jumpsuit. As she moved her long finger down the front seam, the garment fell open, revealing his chest. She tugged on the shoulders and the jumpsuit fell around his waist, leaving his upper body bare, except for his lower arms. Despite his intent to remain impassive, his face reddened.
"Pull out your arms," Tarquine said.
Stiff with embarrassment, he pulled his arms out of the sleeves. She continued to look at him, but the other three bidders were making entries on their palmtops.
"You don't like this, do you?" she asked in a voice only he could hear.
"Jagernaut," Marix said. "Come here."
Kelric froze, staring at the general.
"Look at that." Heeza laughed. "He likes you even less than the rest of us, Marix."
Behind the Aristos, Kelric saw his guards drawing their weapons. Stiff with tension, he stood up. He walked around Tarquine and sat down between her and Marix, facing the general, but so close to Tarquine that his back was against her lounger.
A rustle came from Tarquine's seat. She leaned against him and draped an arm over his shoulder. "Marix dear, I do believe he prefers me to you."
The general considered him. "What is your security clearance?"
Kelric froze. He felt the odd blurred sense his mind produced when Bolt activated the nanomed series that prevented him from responding to an interrogation.
Still watching Kelric, Marix said, "How old is your biomech?"
Again Kelric sat in silence.
Mirella spoke with amusement. "He
really
doesn't like you, Marix."
"ISC conditions them," Marix said. "He can't answer my questions." In a chilling voice he added, "Yet."
"Whichever one of us buys him will have to have his biomech web redesigned," Tarquine said.
Marix sipped his wine. "And studied, of course."
Kelric was growing more and more uneasy. He had assumed Taratus meant to sell him as a provider. What if Marix also wanted an ESComm investigation? Taratus had to know his biomech web was twenty years out of date. Would ESComm still consider it useful to question him? If they subjected him to a full interrogation, they had a good chance of discovering his identity.
"I don't think he can talk much at all," Heeza said. "Maybe his brain was hurt in the war."
"Was it?" Marix murmured. Still focused on Kelric, he said, "Well, Jagernaut? What about intelligence?"
He knew the general was trying to rattle him. It was working. Kelric had held a high-level security clearance. Even after eighteen years, he knew things ESComm would find useful.
"Look at him," Heeza said. "He just sits there, staring at Marix like he's hypnotized."
"I'm not interested in how well he talks." Tarquine laid her palms on Kelric's shoulders, then slid her hands down his biceps. Leaning close to his ear, she added, "I think you should go sit on the bed again."
Kelric flushed. He had trouble reading Aristos, particularly when he was guarding his mind from them, but he almost had the sense she had intervened to stop Marix. Then again, maybe she was just impatient. As he rose to his feet, her hands slid along his body, stroking his arms, hips, and then legs. He walked to the bed and sat down. Mirella was coming toward him, and the others were standing up.
Watching them, knowing what they wanted, knowing he had no choice, he felt a surge of panic. "I can't do this," he said. He was surprised how quiet his voice sounded.
Mirella sat next to him, on his left side. "Do what?"
Heeza sat on his other side and Tarquine walked around the bed. Turning to look, Kelric saw her climb onto the air mattress. Marix also sat down on the other side of the bed, watching them as he leaned against the post at the foot of the mattress.
Mirella turned Kelric around to face her. "Heeza and I have a bet that her uncle doctored that holo of you with the provider. I say yes, Heeza says no. You have to show which of us is right."
"I can't," he repeated in a low voice. The thought of being with even one Aristo was too much. Four at once was beyond reason. Yet his traitorous body, still full of aphrodisiacs, was responding to her touch.
Tarquine moved so she was kneeling behind him, her head next to his. She draped her arms over his shoulders. "It would be far less appealing, sweet man, if you