Skolian Empire: The Radiant Seas Part 34

Soz didn't switch anything. Instead she rose to her feet, her gaze hard on the Trade Minister. She had business with this particular Highton. So this was the Aristo who had dared to abuse her husband, to use him as a provider under the guise of being his "mentor."

Quaelen watched her with chillingly perfect arrogance. "The Ministry of Trade greets the Imperator of Skolia."

Protocol spoke over Soz's comm. "This is a severe break with procedure! Switch the line to me. Either break the link or leave the dais."

Soz stayed put, intent on Quaelen. "This Office hasn't acknowledged you as the voice of Qox, Minister Quaelen." In her side vision, she saw Tikal freeze, his gaze fixed on her now.

Quaelen spoke with smug arrogance. "As Imperator, you appear to be acknowledging it quite well."

"Imperator Skolia," Protocol said. "Leave the dais!"

Soz smiled at Quaelen. "I'm coming after you, little Trade Minister. All you Hightons. Take warning. Your days are numbered."

Quaelen stiffened. "Indeed. Your efforts at diplomacy leave rather much to be desired."

Tikal was gesturing at his aides, saying something, swearing, it looked like. In her ear she heard someone say, "I don't care if the line is secured. Cut the d.a.m.n transmission."

"Diplomacy has to be earned," Soz told Quaelen.

His hand jerked at his side, just barely, as if he intended to strike her. "'Earned'? You should be groveling at my feet."

"Saints almighty," a voice in Soz's ear said. Tikal looked as if he were going apoplectic. Then Roca's voice came over her ear comm. "Soz, are you out of your flaming mind? Cut the line."

"Got it!" the telop across the room called. The hum of the screens around Soz stopped, cutting her off from Quaelen. She heard a buzz of voices as Protocol replaced her in the link.

Tikal was striding across the room, surrounded by aides. A telop rattled off data in her ear, something about simulations predicting the effect of what had just transpired. As she left the dais, Tikal intercepted her.

"What the h.e.l.l was the purpose of that?" He almost shouted it at her. "Quaelen is the one who broke protocol. All you had to do was walk away."

Soz kept going. "I wanted to hear what he had to say."

Protocol strode through the doorway, intercepting them. "At what price? Our relations with Eube are already strained enough."

"Strained?" Soz stopped in the doorway, flanked by her bodyguards. "We're at war, Councilor."

"All the more reason for tact," Tikal said.

"What?" Soz said. "You want me to say, 'Excuse me, do you mind if I kill you today'?"

Tikal scowled. "It would have been a h.e.l.l of a lot better than that slugfest back there."

"He pushed," Soz said. "I pushed back."

"To what purpose?"

"'Know thine enemy.'"

"Marvelous," Tikal growled. "And now what do you know?"

"Kryx Quaelen has a weak point," Soz said. "He's afraid of losing position within the Aristo hierarchy."

"Right," Tikal said. "You exchange five sentences with him and you're an expert on his psychology."

"Their position is ensured by their caste," Protocol said. "It's inviolable."

"That may be," Soz said. "But he has a problem with it." She paused. "I will be in the Solitude Room if you need me."

Tikal clenched one fist, then made himself relax it. "Very well."

She found the Solitude Room already occupied. Her father was sitting in the chair. She came up to him, and he watched her, his face guarded. "I wondered if you would come," he said.

"I remembered how much you liked it here." She ached at the sight of him. She could tell he wanted to hug her, but she also felt his uncertainty with this daughter he hadn't seen for so long. As a child, she had always been generous with affection, but adulthood had brought distances that became harder to bridge as their lives grew ever more complex. She hesitated now, trapped in her own reserve.

Then she thought of the fragility of their lives, and she reached out to him, across the blocky arm of the chair.

"Ai, Soshoni." He embraced her then, his love and relief enfolding her mind. When they let each other go, he spoke in a subdued voice. "Emperor Qox looked exhausted."

"We did our best." Her voice caught. "Sometimes that's not enough."

"What will you do now?"

Activate shadowmaker, Soz thought.

Activated, her node answered. Vertigo swept over her, the same sensation that came with her cyberlock. She didn't care. She had much to protect.

"I'm going to get him," she said.

"How?" her father asked. "Short of full-scale invasion, there is no way to penetrate to Glory."

"I know that." Her words sounded m.u.f.fled. Subdued. Belying their import.

He watched her for a long time, absorbing that. Then he said, "ISC hasn't the resources."

"ISC has more than it knows." Softly she said, "I'm going to get him, Father. Whatever it takes."

"You let her needle you." Viquara walked with Quaelen along a glittering diamond hall in the emperor's wing of the palace.

"She's angry," Quaelen said. "It's useful to know. Anger can impair judgment."

"It's no wonder she's angry, if what my operatives say is true, that she's been pursuing him for fifteen years."

"A compelling scenario," Quaelen commented.

Compelling indeed, Viquara thought. That a Ruby Dynasty heir would pursue the Highton Heir with fanatical obsession for fifteen years-this was a tale the Hightons could believe, revel in even, given how their emperor had triumphed in the end. It sounded too convenient to Viquara. She alone knew the rest. Jaibriol and Soz Valdoria were both Rhon. On the same planet? And Jaibriol had at least one child? It didn't take a genius to put the pieces together.

Viquara had used her best people to find Jaibriol. After a ma.s.sive search among the Eubian, Skolian, and Allied webs, one of her hackers discovered a brief note deleted from an Allied network fifteen years ago, a cryptic mention of "Gamma IV." Her people followed up the lead, as she had them follow every lead, however small. And this one bore fruit. An ESComm dreadnought found Jaibriol-and the child. Jaibriol's b.a.s.t.a.r.d son? That the boy wasn't Aristo made it an inconsequential matter, earning heatbar sterilization as a routine precaution. When Viquara ordered them to go back to the planet and do it again, she knew her command appeared excessive. She didn't care. Let them think she was obsessed with Jaibriol's safety. It was, after all, acceptable for an empress overwhelmed by the return of her long-lost son.

Could anyone have escaped that inferno? No. Yet Sauscony Valdoria had been on the planet. If she had been searching for Jaibriol in another region, the sterilization would have missed her. Then who was the boy's mother? Although the reports said the child had yellow hair, the monitors hadn't recorded a good image of him. Sauscony Valdoria had dark hair, only yellow at the tips, but her mother and brothers had gold hair.

Then again, billions of people had yellow hair. And Valdoria was part of the Ruby Dynasty, for G.o.ds' sake. Hardly a candidate for mistress to the Trader emperor, even if he was Rhon. If that boy had been her sp.a.w.n, why wasn't she with him? Of course the woman could have been on a trip or might have left Jaibriol. The only other protection would have been a quasis field, and Jaibriol had no access to a generator. As an ISC Primary, Valdoria did, but stealing one from ISC was no simple matter.

What wore on Viquara was not knowing. The story could be exactly as it appeared. Or not.

She and Quaelen stopped at the emperor's suite. Security verified their ident.i.ties and then slid the door open. Inside, Jaibriol was sitting at a marble table, his head bowed. As they entered, he looked up, a drop of water on his cheek.

Viquara spoke softly. "Tears, my son? Whatever for?"

He didn't answer, just wiped away the betraying moisture. At one time Viquara would have had little patience for such weakness. Now that she understood his true nature, she felt more sympathy. What must it be like for a provider to find himself on the Carnelian Throne? It was no wonder he had needed protection as a child. But did he weep for grief-or because he had just learned that his Rhon mistress, the mother of his son, was alive?

Quaelen bowed to the emperor. "My honor at your presence, Your Highness."

Jaibriol regarded him, then stood up and walked to a window across the room. Seeing him there, Viquara tensed, even knowing he had no way to escape. It had been easy to modify the defense systems that made the room impregnable from the outside. Now Jaibriol could no more go out the window than an intruder could come in. The emperor was firmly secured within this suite that const.i.tuted his universe.

A muscle twitched in Quaelen's cheek when Jaibriol ignored him. "Concerns have been expressed in regards to your safety, Your Highness."

The emperor continued to stare out the window. The moon G5 made a crescent high in the late afternoon sky, with the slightly smaller crescent of G7 below it. Two moons without names, fourth and fifth largest in the satellites that attended Eube's Glory, numbered for their distance from the planet, waiting to honor the fourth and fifth Eubian empresses.

Jaibriol pushed against the glimmering quasis screen overlaying the pane, and the tip of his finger flattened. "My safety from whom?" He turned to them. "My enemies, my allies, or my family?"

Quaelen gave him an odd smile, almost hungry in its aspect. It made Viquara uneasy. He reacted to Jaibriol much as he had to the slave girl Cirrus. When he joined Jaibriol at the window, her son faced him without even the twitch of an eyelid. But something in Jaibriol's posture reminded Viquara of the way her provider Cayson flinched if she startled him. Was Jaibriol's tension simply a response to his circ.u.mstances, or did it reveal something more about his relations.h.i.+p with Quaelen?

As Jaibriol's mentor, Quaelen was the only one besides Viquara who, fifteen years ago, had known Jaibriol as more than a distant acquaintance. In private, with accomplished innuendo, Quaelen had revealed to her that he knew Jaibriol was now a prisoner, rather than a reclusive emperor who chose his seclusion. Faced with exposure, Viquara became his uneasy ally. As it turned out, he offered sound advice. He had been right about putting the slave cuffs on Jaibriol; in addition to monitoring the emperor, they provided a means of control via the neural threads they extended into his body. That and the drugs they used worked well in convincing the emperor of the wisdom in their suggestions as to how he should behave.

Quaelen pushed up Jaibriol's sleeve, revealing the sparkling cuff. "It is for security, you understand," he said. "The closer we monitor you, the better we are a.s.sured of your continued well-being."

Sarcasm grated in Jaibriol's voice. "I'm touched by your concern."

Quaelen removed a needle from a tube on his belt, clicked it into the cuff, twisted it around, and pulled it out again. When he slid the needle back into its tube, lights blinked on his palmtop.

Viquara joined him. "Any problems?"

Quaelen studied his palmtop. "Nothing at all." He glanced at Jaibriol with a subtle condescension Viquara saw only because she was looking now for irregularities. Jaibriol watched him as if they were fighting a battle, one where they both knew Quaelen a.s.sumed he had the superior position. Viquara was beginning to fear she had a more serious problem with Quaelen than she had realized. Just what did he know?

Jaibriol wouldn't meet her eyes. So beautiful, this son of hers. Except he wasn't really her son. With his eyes downcast and his cuffs glittering, he looked the truth of his heritage. A beautiful slave. Her slave. It disquieted her that she reacted to him as if he were Highton, but it troubled her even more that Quaelen reacted as if he were a provider.

She touched Jaibriol's arm. "Kryx and I have business to attend. We will check on you later."

Jaibriol just nodded, with the same ambiguous response he always had to her, as if he wasn't sure whether to hate or love his own mother. Quaelen raised his eyebrows. He knew he and Viquara had no business they hadn't already scheduled. But he bowed to Jaibriol and they took their leave of the emperor.

Viquara was silent as they walked through the halls. Quaelen paced at her side, hands clasped behind his back. Four of her Razers and four of his secret police accompanied them, two in front, two behind, and two at each side.

Viquara and Qualen withdrew into her office, leaving the guards outside. She went to the window and gazed out at the gardens with their marble columns, trimmed lawns, and weeping-star trees, all bathed in glittering cold light from her namesake, Viquara, the Diamond Moon.

Quaelen came up behind her, standing too close. "You wanted to talk in private." He stated rather than asked it.

"A thought has occurred to me. In regards to Hightons. And Silicates." Viquara paused. "And providers." She waited, letting implications occur to him. Highton and Silicate: it was his own heritage. Highton and provider: she would see what he made of that.

"An interesting combination." Quaelen rubbed her hair between his fingers, his hand just below her ear, his knuckles brus.h.i.+ng her skin. "Some combinations condemn more than others."

"I have found it prudent to take care in offering condemnation."

"Prudence is always wise." He trailed his fingers along her jaw. "Such beauty," he murmured. "Highton beauty."

"Yes. Highton." Whatever you sense in Jaibriol, she thought, did not come from me.

With night darkening beyond the window, she could see their reflections in the gla.s.s. He looked down at her hair. "Imagine what a travesty it would be if a Highton-particularly one of intelligence-tried to pa.s.s a taskmaker child as his own."

G.o.ds. Quaelen knew about Intelligence Minister Vitrex's b.a.s.t.a.r.d son? What didn't he know? She kept her voice cool. "It would indeed be a travesty if he, or his wife, attempted such a deception."

"Indeed." Quaelen had both hands on her now, letting them slide down her arms. "I can think of no greater crime." He bent his head and spoke against her ear, his breath stirring her hair. "Except a provider on the Carnelian Throne."

Viquara closed her eyes. He knew. Quaelen knew.

Opening her eyes, she watched his reflection. "Tell me, Kryx. Have you ever heard the tale of the Diamond Prince?"

"A child's tale." He slid his hands up her arm, brus.h.i.+ng her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Stories of beautiful women and handsome men."

"Ah, but that is only glitter on the surface. The real story is the moral. The Diamond Prince fell to the Hightons, as was right and proper." She paused. "But he was mistreated and so the spirits avenged him."

"I have wondered about the telling of such stories to children. The idea of vengeance for a slave has a subversive cast."

"Hightons protect their slaves." She tried to ignore the way he was stroking her arms.

He moved his hands to her neckline. "So we do."

"Care for them even. As a mother would care for a son."

"A son." He undid the catches at her neckline, and the velvet gown fell open, revealing the black lace camisole she wore under it. He drew her gown off her shoulders, pulling the sleeves down her arms. She wanted to tear away from him, but she feared to move.

Softly he asked, "Do you wonder, Empress Viquara, why I have never taken a wife?"

After a deliberate pause, she said, "A man of your esteem must be selective." She knew the true reason: he wanted only the highest of the highborn for his bed, a woman to counteract the stain on his line. Many Highton women would honor the chance to join a man of such power, but they came from lesser lines, more concerned with their own elevation than the taint to his name.

"Selective." He peeled off her camisole and dropped it on the floor. Her reflection showed a woman with a velvet skirt draped from her hips to the ground, clinging to her cla.s.sic form. Her upper body was bare, marble smooth, like a statue. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s gleamed, not the exaggerated charms of a provider, but the subtle sculpted perfection of a Highton.

Quaelen slid his hands over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "A man deserves a wife who is his equal."

Viquara tried to ignore the beat of her pulse, the unwanted response Quaelen evoked from her. "As does a woman, with her husband." And he wasn't. Never would she call Kryx Quaelen consort.

He unfastened her skirt. One tug and it slid to the ground, leaving her in a floor-length underskirt of black silk. "There are many forms of elevation, my lovely empress," he murmured, sliding his arms around her waist. "And many forms of debas.e.m.e.nt as well. Cart you imagine? Someday Vitrex's son will marry. His wife will call him Highton, lay with him, bear his children."

She forced out a plat.i.tude. "The Line of Vitrex is an old and powerful one. It has great honor."

Quaelen kissed her neck. "Great honor." His tongue tickled the ridges of her ear. "Few houses have greater. Except the Line of Qox. Or it once did."

"The Line of Qox has risen again," Viquara whispered.