The Ruby Dice (35 page)

"They're still there," Eldrin said. He gave Kelric a bemused look. "Mother and Dehya are asking your wife about that dice game. It seems Minister Karn plays it rather well."

Minister Karn. The title startled Kelric, for he would always think of her as Ixpar. But to the rest of humanity she was the enigmatic minister who had appeared out of nowhere. The broadcasters knew nothing about her, and Kelric didn't intend to tell them. He had promised Ixpar no one would bother her world, and he meant to keep his oath. With the defenses around Coba fortified even more than before, no one could even go near the solar system without having their ship confiscated.

"Ixpar knows Quis better than most anyone else alive," Kelric said.

"She trounces me all the time," Rohka grumbled.

Kelric couldn't help but smile at her irate expression. "Give it time. You'll see."

Rohka blushed and smiled. Then she took her leave, as charming in her departure as her presence.

After Rohka left, Kelric walked outside with Eldrin. They went higher on the hill, above the house. The weather was, as usual, perfect. They strolled under trees with shushing leaves.

"She's quite striking," Eldrin said.

"Do you mean Rohka?" Kelric asked, pleased. His daughter, it seemed, was brilliant, beautiful, and charming.

His brother glanced at him and grinned. "You should see the look on your face. Yes, she is impressive. Mother is delighted with her, as you've probably noticed." He stopped under a tree and leaned against its papery trunk. "I meant your wife, though."

Kelric rested his weight against another tree. "Ixpar is more than striking."

"Imposing might be a better word."

Kelric thought of the time he had seen Ixpar striding across the Calanya common room, her waist-length red hair in wild disarray, belts of ammunition criss-crossed on her chest, and a machine gun gripped in her hands. "Yes. Much better."

"Your son is—" Eldrin paused. "I want to say reserved, but that isn't right. He seems almost in shock."

It was what Kelric had feared. "He's lived in seclusion his entire life. I'm astonished he was willing to come here at all."

Eldrin was watching him closely. "Those bands he wears on his arms—they're like the ones you have in your office."

"Hmmm," Kelric said.

"Just hmmm?" When it became clear Kelric didn't intend to add anything more, Eldrin spoke curiously. "Does wearing those bands mean living in seclusion?"

"Possibly," Kelric said.

His brother waited. Then he thought,
Kelric?

Kelric kept up his shields. He didn't feel ready to speak about this. It wasn't that he intended to cut out his family; he would tell them about Coba. But it didn't come easy. Although he had always admired Eldrin, they had never been close in his youth. Eldrin was fifteen years his senior and had left home a year after Kelric's birth. Their lives hadn't intersected much; Kelric had joined the J-Force as a Jagernaut, and Eldrin had already been a singer. Only in these last ten years, with both of them living on the Orbiter, he had begun to know his brother.

"I don't mean to intrude," Eldrin said.

"You're not." Kelric exhaled. "I just need more time."

Eldrin smile wryly. "Your son is a lot like you. He won't talk to me at all. To no one, in fact, except Minister Karn. He never smiles, either."

"He doesn't mean it as a rebuff." At least, Kelric hoped not. "A Calani never speaks to anyone Outside his Calanya. And men from the desert never smile in the presence of women, except their wives or kin."

Eldrin was watching him with fascination. "Good gods, did you live like that?"

"For a while." The topic was making him uncomfortable. "I wanted to ask you about the Lock. You were there when Dehya and I came out this afternoon, weren't you?"

Eldrin obviously wanted to stick with the subject of his "little" brother living in seclusion. But he relented and said, "It was eerie. The two of you appeared in the corridor, slowed down. You looked translucent. You solidified as you came through the arch and started to move normally. It was about twenty minutes, though, before your voice sounded normal."

"Did you feel anything? Mentally, I mean."

Eldrin thought for a moment. "When I reached out to Dehya's mind, it felt strange. Disorienting."

"Is it still that way?"

"Not anymore. But something is bothering her." He regarded Kelric uneasily. "She says you and she must talk. That was why I came to get you."

Kelric rubbed his hand over his eyes. "Yes."

Eldrin waited. Finally he made a frustrated noise. "You're a regular fount of information today."

"I'm not trying to be obscure. I just don't know what to tell you."

"According to Chad Barzun, before you went into the Lock, you looked up those implosions. He thinks it could be important."

"Possibly." Kelric had thought it destabilized Kyle space to have two Locks carrying the load of three, but in trying to reactivate the SSRB Lock, he feared he had damaged it. Whether or not his efforts had eased the strain on the ancient centers, he had no idea, but if they hadn't, he dreaded the results.

"I've never seen Dehya like this," Eldrin said.

"Like what?"

"Scared, but she won't tell me about it."

Kelric understood the feeling. "I'll talk to her."

"Right now you have company." Eldrin indicated the hill below them. Four people were climbing it: Ixpar, Roca and her namesake Rohka, and a robed, cowled figure that could only be Kelric's son, Jimorla.

"First I need to talk to someone else," Kelric said. It was his son who had realized how to pull them out of the corridor.

Jimorla wandered with Kelric through the house, inscrutable in his robes. His cowl covered his head and the Talha hid his face except for his eyes. He had inherited the height of the Valdoria men, but with a slimmer build. Apparently in his youth, he had trouble eating some foods and had to boil his water, following the same diet Kelric had used on Coba. But whatever illness Jimorla had endured as a child, in the end Coba had agreed with him; as an adult, the young man was hale and fit.

When Kelric had caught up with Jimorla on the hill, Roca had taken one look at his face and ushered everyone else off, leaving him alone with his son. Kelric wasn't sure how she managed it so smoothly, but he was grateful. She seemed to realize that without privacy, he and his son couldn't converse.

Jimorla stopped in a doorway. "Is this your office?"

"That it is." Kelric lifted his hand to invite him inside.

Jimorla walked to the desk, which was stacked with jeweled Quis dice. He glanced up, only his eyes showing within his cowl.

Kelric understood his unspoken question. "Those are mine."

His son pushed back his cowl then and pulled down the Talha so the scarf hung around his neck. With a start, Kelric realized his son considered this office the closest equivalent of a Calanya, and therefore a place he might relax.

The light pouring through the window struck metallic glints in Jimorla's hair. His violet eyes were a color never seen in Coban natives. Prior to his son's birth, Kelric had assumed he didn't carry the gene for violet, because it was dominant on his home world and his eyes were gold. But the genetics of eye color had always been convoluted, and his people had altered their own DNA over the millennia, further complicating the patterns of their inherited traits.

"I feel as if I should ask for a Speaker," Jimorla said.

Kelric understood. In a crisis, if a Calani needed to talk to an Outsider, he could do it through the Calanya Speaker.

"You and I are in the same Calanya," Kelric said. "Now that you're at Karn. So we can talk."

"It's true, isn't it?" Jimorla seemed bemused. "I never expected to leave Varz."

"But you said yes." It meant the world to Kelric.

His gaze darkened. "How could I refuse? It would be tantamount to defying the Imperator."

Dismayed, Kelric said, "Is that how you saw this, as an order from me to come here?"

"Isn't it?"

"No. It's your choice. Always."

Jimorla gave no outward hint of his thoughts, but he didn't shield his mood any better than his sister. His mind evoked the aqua waters of a sun-drenched ocean. Thoughts swam below the surface like silvery fish, a flash of color, then shadows. Kelric couldn't follow most of the emotional currents, but he felt Jimorla's resentment. It wasn't only that his son hadn't wanted to come here; the anger went much deeper.

Jimorla? Kelric thought.

The youth tilted his head. "Did you say something?"

Kelric suspected his son rarely mind-spoke on Coba, if ever. Rohka was the only one strong enough there, and his children would rarely have the chance to interact.

"I thought it," Kelric said.

The color drained from Jimorla's face. "Don't."

"My apology." With regret, Kelric raised his barriers. He seem less able to connect with his son than his daughter.

"Why do you want us here?" Jimorla asked.

Kelric searched for the right words. "I hoped we could get to know one another." It sounded so bland for such a great longing within him. He hoped he hadn't acted precipitously by contacting them, that his wish to know them hadn't outweighed his common sense in protecting them.

Anger flashed on Jimorla's face. "Why would you want to meet me now, after ignoring me for twenty-seven years?"

"I had no choice on Coba. I wasn't allowed to see you."

"You didn't have to leave my mother."

That felt like a blow to the chin. "She said I left her?"

"No. She didn't say anything."

"She turned away from me."

His son looked incredulous. "Why would she do that?"

"She didn't want me."

"Yes, she did." Now Jimorla seemed bewildered. "Why else would she refuse to fight in the war?"

That
was unexpected. In military terms, Jimorla's mother had been the strongest ally of Ixpar's greatest foe. "I didn't know she refused."

"She was in love with you." Defiance sparked in his voice. "But she loves my father more."

My father.
The words cut like blades. With difficulty, Kelric said, "Raaj is a good man."

Jimorla hesitated. Then he spoke in a quieter voice. "Why did she turn away from you?"

Kelric wondered if the young man had any idea of the knives he was turning. But he owed his son the answers. "She didn't like my past."

"That you had been in prison for murder?"

"No. She could live with that."

"What else could it have been?"

"Tell me something. Have you ever kissed a woman?"

Deep red flushed Jimorla's face. "Of course not."

"Have you ever smiled at one? Besides your kin."

"No. You know I'm not married." His voice tightened. "Why do you ask these insulting questions?"

Kelric couldn't imagine living the constrained, controlled life of a Haka nobleman since birth. It had been hard enough for just one year. "I don't consider them insults."

"And that offended my mother?"

"In a sense. I had lovers before I married her."

Jimorla stared at him for a long moment. When he found his voice, he said, "Oh."

Kelric had no regrets for the women he had loved. But in the rigid culture of the desert Estates, it was illegal for a man even to smile at a woman. Even now it angered and bewildered him that Jimorla's mother had been able to look past the fact that he had killed someone, but not that he had lovers outside of marriage.

Jimorla could have reacted many ways, most of them negative. Rather than offended, though, he looked puzzled, perhaps because he had lived away from the desert long enough to adapt to less restrictive customs. But he seemed unable to fathom his own father having such freedoms.

After a moment, Jimorla said, "When I was thirteen, my mother said you wanted to meet me."

Kelric nodded. "I always did. But it wasn't until then that the Managers agreed to let you visit me."

"What changed?"

It was almost more than Kelric could bear to talk about those days. But he forced out the words. "I was dying. By the time the doctors figured it out, I had only a few months to live."

The tense set of Jimorla's face softened. "I didn't know."

"The war started before you and I had the chance to meet."

"Everyone thought you died in the fires."

"It was better that way."

"Why?!" Jimorla's anger surged. "Why was it better for us to grieve for your death?"

Kelric spoke grimly. "I caused the first war your people had seen in a thousand years. It tore Coba apart, and as long as I was part of your culture, that would continue. I wouldn't—I
couldn't
be responsible for more death and misery." Quietly he added, "Especially not of my own children."

Jimorla breathed out, his face strained, but he didn't dispute Kelric's words. As a Calani, he had to know the truth; it saturated the Quis of Coba.

"You waited ten years to come back," Jimorla said. It was an accusation more than a statement.

"It took that long to make certain I could protect you." Kelric wished he were better with words. "I haven't always been Imperator, Jimorla. And having a title is no guarantee of power. Had I revealed Coba when I had no power base, it could have done great harm to your world. I can stop that from happening now. I couldn't when I first escaped."

"You could have found a way."

"I did," Kelric said quietly. "That is why you're here." He lifted his hands, then dropped them. "I'm no good with explanations. I'm sorry."

He feared his son would find that answer a poor excuse. Instead, Jimorla said, "I've never been good with words, either." He glanced at Kelric's dice. "But with Quis . . ."

Kelric exhaled. Technically, they were in the same Calanya. So they could sit at dice. In reality, Kelric was as far Outside as a man could go, and Jimorla's Oath to Ixpar forbid him to play Quis with Outsiders. Yet here he stood, waiting, and Kelric could no more turn down his son than he could cut off his arm.

Forgive me, Ixpar,
he thought. He gathered up his dice and indicated a table. He and Jimorla sat across from each other.