The Ruby Dice (25 page)

Tarquine on the Ruby Throne. What a terrifying concept. He said only, "The blended government works."

She waved her hand. "That's a non sequitur."

"What, that their government is sound?" As much as he found her canny mind fascinating, she could exasperate the blazes out of him. "How the hell is that a random comment?"

"Well, they are Skolians," she allowed. "I guess one should make allowances for their bizarre notions."

Given that he was half Skolian, Jaibriol decided his blood pressure would remain lower if he changed the subject. He touched his wrist comp and replaced the holo with an image of Barcala Tikal, the First Councilor, who shared the rule of Skolia with the Ruby Pharaoh. A lean man with regular features, he had brown hair streaked with grey.

"What do you think of him?" Jaibriol asked.

She considered Tikal. "Sounder finances in his Line. But he could do a lot better if he paid more attention to his finances and wasted less time on the Assembly."

Jaibriol threw up his hands. "Tarquine, he's the Assembly leader! That's his job, for flaming sake."

She regarded him through sleepy eyes. "We certainly are direct today."

Jaibriol crossed his arms, refusing to let her distract him. "Yes, well, we would also like to be enlightened today, sometime before the sun sets."

Her lips curved upward. "Indeed. About what?"

"Tell me more about Tikal."

She studied the holo of Tikal as if he were a puzzle. "The pharaoh took a possibly fatal risk when she let him live. I doubt he has ever stopped thinking how much safer he would be if the Ruby Dynasty no longer held power." She tilted her head. "Of course, he is Skolian. You never know how they will act."

"That's because they aren't as predictable as Aristos." He didn't say "as unimaginative," but she knew what he meant.

"
Predictable
isn't the word for us," Tarquine murmured. "We're efficient. When methods work, why change them?"

"That assumes everyone shares the same view of what works."

"Oh, they never do," she said. "Consider your Diamond Minister, Izar Gji. He wants to increase commerce. He's far more interested in wealth than in war. The export coalition he and the other Diamonds were putting together had the potential to be highly lucrative. But they needed the Janq Line to make it work. After the Skolians stole the Janq merchant ships and caused such a ruckus, the coalition fell apart."

"The Skolians didn't 'steal' anything," Jaibriol said, annoyed. "They confiscated pirate ships that committed criminal activities in Skolian space."

She waved her hand in dismissal. "It doesn't change the outcome. Now that the coalition has fallen apart, Minister Gji will be looking for other ventures to achieve his goals." She paced in front of the holo, thinking. "Gji wants to expand trade routes. Approached in the right way—" She stopped in front of Jaibriol, blocking the holo of the First Councilor. "The
predictable
way—he may even consider exotic options."

He knew "exotic" meant Skolian. "He didn't seem interested to me," Jaibriol said, remembering his lackluster dinner with the Minister. "Nor is it only Gji I have to convince. I need the support of my Trade Minister." Flatly he added, "And Sakaar sure as hell won't give it to me."

Tarquine's gaze darkened. "Trade Minister Sakaar has many concerns he needs to consider."

Jaibriol thought back to what she had said to Sakaar during their meeting about the Silicate pavilions, her implication that she had discovered a problem in his reports. He had been so rattled by the broadcast about Kelric's unexpected children that he hadn't yet followed up on the Sakaar matter.

"Concerns such as—?" Jaibriol let the question hang.

"Sakaar hides well," she said. "So well, in fact, that he could vanish from almost anyone's sight. Unfortunately for him, he has to deal with me rather than 'almost anyone.'"

Jaibriol didn't envy the Trade Minister. But Sakaar was clever. "He deals well, Tarquine."

"Very well," she murmured. "Astonishingly, extensively, extravagantly well." She waited a heartbeat. "After all, fraud is a form of dealing."

Good Lord. Sakaar's crime would have to be massive indeed if even Eube's unrepentantly corrupt empress considered it astonishing, extensive, and extravagant. "Such dealing," he said sourly, "has been known to give emperors mammoth headaches."

"Heads should only ache if one gets caught," Tarquine said. "You don't need medicine at all." In her dusky voice, she added, "But I do believe Minister Sakaar has a raging pain in his head."

"And precisely what caused this dire health of his?"

"Let us just say he misplaced the revenue of a few trades. For a little while."

He squinted at her. "What little while?"

"Well, perhaps the last five years."

Five
years
? "What the hell?"

Her lips quirked up. "That was articulate."

"Yes, well, I would very much like you to articulate more on the subject of Sakaar."

She switched into that terrifyingly incisive mode of hers. "Our illustrious Sakaar routed ten percent of the profits from every transaction he oversaw as Trade Minister into a series of hidden Allied financial institutions. He disguised his actions through an exceedingly labyrinthine process. It was brilliant."

"
Every
transaction?" He stared at her. "Tarquine, there are
millions
of those a year, some for millions of credits."

"Indeed. He is a very wealthy man." She paused a beat. "Or he was, before someone froze his assets."

Hell and damnation. "He must be brilliant, to have hidden this from you for five years."

"Actually," she hedged, "the pertinent time span in that case would have a different numerical value."

"Tarquine."

"So to speak."

"What numerical value?"

"Perhaps three."

"He hid it from you for three years?"

She scratched her ear. "Perhaps one might use the word months."

"
Months?
" She had known within three months and said nothing until now? "Then why the holy blazes did it continue for five years?" If she had made some deal with Sakaar, he would have her hide. And a very, very bad headache. "Just when did he find out you knew he was stealing my empire blind?"

"You needn't look so alarmed." She was almost purring. "I let him know at that last meeting we had with him. I imagine he was quite relieved when that broadcast about the Ruby Dynasty distracted you." Satisfaction saturated her voice. "Think of this, husband. A crime committed constantly for more than five years is far more serious than one done for three months. And the more serious the crime, the greater leverage it gives to the discoverer of that peccadillo."

"Peccadillo?" He could only stare at her. She was talking about fraud on a massive scale. He had never heard of anything like this before.

"Don't worry," she added. "I will deal with it."

"When you deal with things, I get hives," he muttered. "I want a report, Tarquine, and it damn well better include the evidence you've gathered. I want everything.
Everything.
"

"Of course," she said smoothly.

Jaibriol wanted to groan. Whenever she agreed that easily, he knew it was time to worry.

The sixth implosion destroyed a gas giant in an uninhabited star system of Sphinx Sector.

Jaibriol strode across the launch hexagon with Robert and his bodyguards. Glory's sun was just rising. Seven of the fourteen moons were in the sky, four of them tiny chips barely visible to the eye. The largest, a huge red disk, glittered on the horizon opposite to the sun. Eube Qox, the first emperor, had surfaced it with ruby and named it in honor of his empress, Mirella. Overhead, the third largest satellite sparkled as a half-moon. Jaibriol's grandfather had named it Viquara after his empress and surfaced it in diamond.

The fifth largest moon was called Tarquine. Jaibriol had altered it both within and without. He surfaced it with a steel-diamond composite, brilliant and hard, but inside it had a beautiful crystalline structure in violet, blue, and white. A geode. It was the most fitting tribute he could think of for his wife.

The fourth moon should have been named after his mother. His father supposedly never had the chance, so Jaibriol inherited the decision. He couldn't call it Sauscony, after a Skolian Imperator, which was undoubtedly why his father had never named it, either. Jaibriol finally christened it Prism, in honor of the world where his family had lived in exile. He let people think it was his father's nickname for his mother. He didn't know how to resurface Prism, though the name cried out for a substance that would split light into its colors. The choice should have been his father's, and it felt wrong for him even to choose the name, let alone decide how to change the moon.

All this business with moons and wives seemed hollow this morning. After seeing Kelric with his family—and knowing his own empress desired the Imperator—Jaibriol felt broken inside. Tarquine would never admit any desire for Kelric; she refused even to acknowledge the huge price she had paid for him. But he had felt her anger at seeing Kelric's imposing wife. Kelric had everything Jaibriol could ever want, and if Eube and Skolia ever found their way back to the talks, Jaibriol would have to meet him at the peace table without letting his envy interfere. Somehow, someway he had to find accommodation with the knowledge that he could never again have what he craved, the love of a family of psions. It was good he had matters to take him away this morning, for he didn't think he could have borne another day of the icy Aristo world that imprisoned him.

As Glory's small sun edged above the horizon, Jaibriol boarded his yacht. Robert sat next to him, and his bodyguards took other seats, with Hidaka as the pilot. They blasted off into a dawn of splintering clarity. Their destination: Sphinx Sector Rim Base. Jaibriol's purported intention: to discuss with the commanders there the possibility that the implosions could be a weapon of Skolian design. It could be coincidence that the path of the events pointed roughly toward the SSRB, but neither Jaibriol nor ESComm intended to take chances.

Jaibriol kept to himself the real reason for his visit. He didn't believe the Skolians had anything to do with the implosions. He feared a more ancient intelligence was at work, one he neither understood nor had reason to believe intended good will.

The Lock.

The War Room on the Skolian Orbiter served as one among several centers of operations for the Imperialate military. It was a Skolian counterpart to the Eubian SSRB complex. In the War Room, the Skolia's commanders planned strategies against the Eubian military.

Today the amphitheater in the command center thrummed with energy: officers worked at consoles, telops focused on the meshes, pages ran errands, and cranes with console cups swung through the air. High above the amphitheater, a massive arm held a command chair under the dome of holostars. Conduits from all over the War Room fed into the blocky chair and sent data directly into the brain of whoever sat in that technological throne.

Kelric entered the War Room in the holodome, far above the busy amphitheater, striding along a catwalk that stretched to his chair. Yesterday he had walked the Promenade with his wife and children on the planet Parthonia; today he brought them to the Orbiter to see where he lived. He tried to forget they had to return to Coba. As much as he wanted them here, they had lives elsewhere; Ixpar ruled on Coba, his daughter was her successor, and his son a high-ranked Calani. But they were here now, and perhaps, just perhaps, they would consider staying.

The rest of his family wanted to know where the blazes he had acquired a wife and children. He had so far said little, except that he spent eighteen years on Coba. He intended to tell them more, but neither words nor expressing emotions had ever come easy to him. He needed time to answer their questions.

Dehya left him alone, patient with his silences, though he had no doubt she was investigating Coba. Roca also understood he needed time. She would have gone to Coba if he hadn't forbidden it and had a military force to back up his wishes. But in other ways her response was gentle. He remembered her pleased surprise:
You named your daughter after me?
Well, of course he had. Roca had been the greatest female influence in his youth. Surely at least part of the reason he loved so deeply was because his parents had loved their children that way.

The rest of his kin took their lead from Roca and waited, trying to be patient, but their frustration felt like a cloud of smoke. It was another reason he had come to the Orbiter; he needed time alone with his family. He and his children needed time to adjust to one another before he could open up to everyone else.

As Imperator, he also had to work. So today he had come to oversee the roaring, star-flung military known as Imperial Space Command, squeezing in a few hours while Roca spent time with the daughter-in-law and grandchildren who were so new to her.

Holographic starlight from the dome silvered his blocky throne. As he settled into the chair, it folded a mesh around him and clicked prongs into his ankles, wrists, spine, and neck, linking to his biomech web. The hood lowered, and a spider-web of threads extended into his scalp. Data poured into Bolt, and the node organized the input, leaving Kelric free to think.

He laid his arms on the rests and sat back. This chair was almost identical to the one in the SSRB Lock command center. He would never forget. He had met an emperor there. He was almost certain Jaibriol the Third was a telepath, yet that was impossible; Hightons had deliberately eliminated the DNA from their gene pool. Gods help humanity if that had changed, and the Eubians created their own Kyle web.

Three Locks had survived the fall of the Ruby Empire. The Orbiter was one; this space station had drifted in space for five millennia before Kelric's people found it. Although modern science couldn't replicate the Locks, they still operated. They had opened Kyle space to humanity. A person didn't physically enter the Kyle; they accessed it with their mind. The laws of physics didn't exist there, including limitations imposed by the speed of light. The content of someone's thoughts determined their "location." As a result, the Kyle mesh, or psiberweb as some called it, gave telops instant communication across interstellar distances. ESComm's military inventories and personnel dwarfed ISC, but ISC could outmaneuver, outcalculate, and outcommunicate ESComm. The Traders lumbered and Skolia sailed. It was the only reason Kelric's people survived against Eube.