Carnelians (35 page)

A hum came from behind Aliana. As she turned around, a wall across the room shimmered into another horseshoe arch. Two Razers stood framed the entrance, with more people behind them, their black hair glittering—

Ah gods. Aliana dropped to her knees, her head bowed.

Footsteps entered, soft on the carpet. A man spoke in Highton. “You may wait outside.”

Was he talking to her? She snuck a look, lifting her gaze a bit but not her head. A man’s elegant black shoes gleamed nearby. More muffled footsteps sounded, people leaving, and the man walked out of view. The room became quiet. It wasn’t empty, though. She sensed another mind.

The man spoke. “You may stand.”

She started to rise, then hesitated. What if he hadn’t meant her?

“Aliana,” he said softly. “Stop kneeling.”

Raising her head, she him a few paces away, the only other person in the room.

Emperor Jaibriol.

He was even more beautiful in person than in the broadcasts. His face was a sculptor’s dream, with high cheekbones, a perfect nose, and large eyes. He was the quintessential Highton, from his black diamond hair to his alabaster skin. His black clothes were cut perfectly for his body, accenting his broad shoulders, slim waist and long legs. Carnelians glinted on the cuffs and collar of his shirt. His red eyes were more the color of rubies than carnelians, vivid and pure red. Most of all, though, he somehow looked
human,
not like other Hightons, who were too icy to be mortal.

And just where had she learned the word
quintessential?

She stood up slowly. Jaibriol just waited. Probably she’d already insulted him unforgivably. The people who had brought her to Glory had barely talked to her at all, let alone offered any clues about how to behave with an emperor. For lack of a better idea, she used one of the first phrases she had ever learned in Highton. “You honor me with your presence, Your Glorious Highness.”

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. “Robert 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

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.