Carnelians (27 page)

Protocol spoke dryly. “It is amazing how many ways one can find to illustrate one point.”

Jaibriol smiled slightly. “So it is.” The pharaoh just kept saying the same thing over and over, in different ways. “It is also remarkable how a thousand illustrations may offer nothing new.”

“Unless the artist wishes the repetition and lack of depth to be the point,” Protocol said.

“How very Highton,” Tarquine murmured.

Jaibriol wished she weren’t there, watching Kelric. But she was right; the pharaoh did sound like a Highton. Dyhianna Selei was also saying far more than anyone else—except Tarquine—knew.

Jaibriol turned to Protocol. “As always, the insights of protocol add light to the sunset.”

She bowed. “It is my honor to serve, Your Glorious Highness.”

Jaibriol tilted his head, indicating they were done.

Tarquine waited until Protocol left, watching the Minister with her red gaze. Then she strolled over to Jaibriol and waved her hand at the panel. “Would you care to explain that?”

He shrugged. “It’s Pharaoh Dyhianna saying absolutely nothing at great length.”

“I wasn’t referring to her words.”

Jaibriol knew exactly what she meant. Hidden within that holo, the Ruby Pharaoh and Skolian Imperator had sent a very different message than the spoken words.

Quis dice.

“It’s nothing,” Jaibriol said.

“Nothing? An interesting game.”

“I don’t recall discussing a game.”

Tarquine came closer, intruding on his personal space. Her voice flowed like dark molasses. “I’ve heard it said that when the prey plays games with the hunter, such prey is brave indeed.”

Jaibriol resisted the urge to yank her close and forget about Kelric. She was trying to unbalance him, prod him into saying more than he intended. She was too damn good at it, but he wouldn’t give in, not this time.

“Fortunately,” he said, “we have no prey here to play with.”

Her smile curved. “Perhaps. Or maybe my toys are here. Singular, that is.”

“I would have thought you’d outgrown toys.”

The empress touched his nose with the tip of her long finger. “When did you learn to pretend so well, hmmm?” She trailed her finger down to his lips. “Quis dice,” she purred. “All over that table. And here I thought you invented the game.”

He moved her finger away, his hand curling around hers. “You know I didn’t.”

She regarded him curiously. “Did Kelric?”

“No.” He realized he was still holding her hand. He let it go and stepped back, putting distance between his hormone-addled body and his dangerous wife. It was either that or throw her across his big black desk.

Tarquine watched him with her eyelashes half lowered over her sultry eyes.

“Gods,” Jaibriol muttered. She ought to be registered as a deadly weapon.

“Hmmmm?” she asked.

Oh, what the hell. If he didn’t tell her what she wanted to know, she’d twist his libido into knots and then go off, stranding him alone in his big office. “Kelric didn’t invent it. I’m not sure where it came from. His wife, I think. He and the pharaoh are sending us a message with it.”

“He wants you to play Quis.” She switched gears smoothly, from seductive to political, with an ease that never stopped astounding him. He didn’t think she even consciously realized what she was doing. “But you can’t send Quis moves as if you were playing chess by long distance. One message, they can get away with. The gems all over that table look like a deliberate display of wealth. It fits that empty speech of theirs, the way it sounds so Highton. One such display will make no one suspicious. But you won’t get away with more than that.”

He exhaled. “I know.”

A hum came from Jaibriol’s wrist comm. Frowning, he glanced down. It was a page from Robert. He touched the receive panel. “Qox here. What is it?”

“Sire, I received a message from the Iquar Estate,” Robert said. “General Iquar checked himself out of the hospital and returned home.”

“Robert, hold for a moment.” Jaibriol toggled off the comm and glanced at Tarquine. “Barthol recovered enough to do that?”

Her face and mind both became shuttered. “He hates hospitals. It’s an Iquar trait.”

Jaibriol tried to fathom her reaction. This happened every time he tried to talk to her about Barthol’s accident. Had her nephew outwitted her, or did she have nothing to do with his accident? He didn’t see why she would go home to “recuperate” otherwise. He eased down his shields and tried to read her mood, but he caught no more than her curiosity about Quis.

“You seem more relaxed in your relationships lately,” Jaibriol said, probing.

She regarded him blandly. “I’m always relaxed.”

“Right,” Jaibriol said. “And I’m always Highton.”

“You are the ultimate Highton,” she said, as if it were the ultimate compliment.

He tried a different tack. “So is Barthol.”

Tarquine made an unimpressed sound, like a brief gust of breath. “Barthol is the ultimate Barthol.” She turned back to the holo of the pharaoh and Kelric. “You should replicate that Quis game on the table.”

It was exactly what Jaibriol intended to do. He also didn’t intend to let her change the subject. “You don’t think Barthol is the ultimate Highton?”

Tarquine slanted him a glance. “If you are the ultimate, husband, there can be no others.”

Sparring with her was getting him nowhere. It rarely did. This much he knew: if she had wanted her nephew dead, Barthol would be in his grave.

And yet . . . Barthol was an Iquar, thoroughly and without remorse, as brilliant and as hard as diamond. Had he outwitted Tarquine? It would be the first time Jaibriol had seen anyone manage that feat. Or the Quis could be wrong. Maybe Tarquine had discovered it wasn’t Barthol who had tried to kill them. If the dice could be that convincing and be wrong, he didn’t dare use Quis to help him with Kelric. Too much was at stake.

Jaibriol touched the receive toggle on his wrist comm. “Robert?”

“Here, Sire,” his aide said.

“Keep me posted on General Iquar’s condition.”

“I will.” After a pause, Robert added, “We do have a complication.”

Jaibriol wanted to groan. Was there ever
not
a complication. “What happened?”

“One of the med-techs tried to discourage the general from leaving the hospital.” Robert cleared his throat with the self-conscious scrape Jaibriol recognized. He wasn’t going to like whatever came next.

“I take it the general didn’t approve,” Jaibriol said.

“No, sir. He confiscated the tech’s three children and put them up for auction.”

“What the
hell?
” Jaibriol stared at his wrist comm as if it had sprouted two heads.

Robert plunged on. “Sire, I fear the father may do something drastic.”

“Like what?”

“Suicide.”

“For flaming sake.” Jaibriol wanted to strangle Barthol. “Send the children back to their father, and transfer him and his entire family to my staff at the palace.” Barthol would be furious at the interference, but damned if Jaibriol was going to let him destroy the man’s life over nothing.

“Right away, Your Highness.” Robert sounded relieved.

“Let me know when it’s done,” Jaibriol said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Yes, Sire.”

Jaibriol toggled off the comm and scowled at Tarquine. “Your nephew ought to be thrashed.”

Her face was completely neutral. “He’s an excellent commander.”

Jaibriol’s patience was evaporating. “Yes, well, our excellent commander will be furious when he finds out I stopped his petty retaliation against the med-tech for having the audacity to, oh-my-God, show concern for your dear nephew’s unexalted health.”

Tarquine smiled slightly. “I suspect Barthol considers even his illnesses exalted.”

“He’s not ill,” Jaibriol said. “He was hurt. In an
accident.
”

“So he was. Fortunate that he recovered.”

Blast it, he couldn’t read her at all. She had become too damn proficient at shielding her mind. Most Aristos never learned. The only psions the typical Aristo knew were providers, who had no idea how to use their abilities. However, after eleven years of marriage to a Ruby psion who knew all too well how to spy on her mind, Tarquine had become remarkably adept at hiding.

Jaibriol lowered his shields further, enough that he picked up distant impressions of Aristos like painful mental jabs. He reached for Tarquine . . . probing . . . something about Barthol . . . a cold anger . . .

The jabs grew worse until he inhaled sharply and raised his barriers.

Tarquine was watching him with her smooth forehead just slightly furrowed, which from her was a look of blatant puzzlement. “You shouldn’t let Barthol upset you. He’s not worth it.”

“It’s not that,” Jaibriol said. “My head just hurts.”

“Your nanomeds should be fixing it.”

“They can’t fix my being emperor.” He turned back to the holo of the pharaoh and the Quis dice. “It’s true, I could play that game using their patterns. But should I rely on what it tells me? If the dice are wrong, I would be a fool to depend on them for strategy.”

Her voice took on a shadowed quality. “Depend on them, Jaibriol.”

A chill went up his spine as he turned to her. “And if they mislead?”

Her gaze never wavered. “They do not.”

Since Tarquine’s miscarriage, a deep anger had pulsed within him. It surged now, pushing at the cage of his self-control. She still believed Barthol had killed their son.

“Come,” Tarquine said. “Let us play this game the Skolians offer us.”

“Very well.” Perhaps with Quis she could say what she wouldn’t tell him aloud about Barthol. “Let us sit at the dice.”

Headquarters City on the planet Diesha served the Skolian military. The command centers for ISC were spread throughout the Imperialate, so that even if many were destroyed, it wouldn’t cripple the military. But HQ City hummed with the heartbeat of ISC, its largest and most active center. In psiberspace, it manifested as a huge network in the Kyle mesh.

A medical transmission flashed into the HQ mesh, whisking along like a spark of light. It stopped at no console. No human operator saw it. Only automated AI sentries registered its presence. They read the layers of security code the message had accumulated, processed the data those codes provided, and added their own layers. After the transmission accreted more security codes, the ISC system calculated a new destination for the message and hurtled it back into the web.

So a simple request for an analysis of a blood test continued on its way.

XVII: One Last Night

XVII
One Last Night

Mac Tyler had nothing to do while he waited for security to check the building, so he settled into an armchair in the VIP waiting room and read. He had the latest draft of the book a biographer was writing about Del. Mac knew the story backward and forward; he had been Del’s manager well before the prince had become famous—or some might say infamous—for singing “Carnelians Finale.” The biographer had done a more reasonable job with this draft, toning down the hyperbole. The story was still all there, how Prince Del-Kurj Arden Valdoria Skolia never used his full name. His billions of fans knew him as Del Arden.

The biographer rhapsodized at great length about how Del sounded as good if not better when he sang live as he did in recordings. He spent so much time describing how Del could sing without technological fixes that Mac wondered if the fellow realized vocalists were
supposed
to know how to sing. It was certainly true, though, that at first the critics hadn’t believed Del’s talent was genuine. It was only when his producers at Prime Nova brought them in and had Del perform for them live, up close and personal, that they acknowledged his astonishing virtuosity was genuine. His dazzling quality, depth, and six-octave range were real.

Those closest to Del knew he had grown up on a rural world that eschewed technology. Although he’d had access to such advantages if he wanted them, it had never occurred to him to enhance his voice. He simply trained, almost from birth, though he hadn’t realized he was doing it. He just sang all the time, doing exercises he made up. No one on his home world liked holo-rock, including his family, the Ruby Dynasty. It wasn’t until he sang on Earth, in their lucrative and cutthroat world of entertainment, that he discovered people actually wanted to hear him. His ancestors had been genetically engineered to develop their voices as instruments, but it was the years of never-ending training that gave him what critics called “the voice of an unparalleled rock angel.”

The biographer seemed more interested in Del’s charisma, however, than his talent. Like many youths on his home world, Del had learned a form of martial arts called
mai-quinjo.
It left him with a dancer’s lithe grace and musculature, which for him translated into an erotic grace, not only when he moved, but even in his still postures, his hips tilted, his body relaxed and lean, as if he were about to melt into a sensual dance. It mortified Del; he never wanted anyone to see him dance. But after Prime Nova had coaxed him into working with a choreographer, his sales had soared.

It was no wonder people fell in love with Del. He looked like a misbehaved angel, with large eyes fringed by ridiculously long eyelashes. When he sang, his face could go in a heartbeat from unbearably beautiful to the snarl of passion. In his black leather, he was the ultimate pretty bad-boy, the rock god everyone wanted in their bed.

“What are you reading?” a man asked behind him.

Mac turned with a start. Del was standing there, watching him curiously. Mac held up the holofile. “The latest version of your biography.”

Del winced. “I hope it isn’t as embarrassing as the last one.”

“He’s toned it down.” Mac set the file on a table by the chair and stood up. “Ready for your speech?”

“I’m trying.” Del paled, which accented the freckles across his nose. “How many people do you think are out there?”

Mac had wondered himself. He flicked through a menu on his wrist comm. “According to the latest figures, twelve thousand are gathered in the plaza and surrounding streets. Broadcasters are estimating the interstellar audience in the tens of billions.”