Ascendant Sun: A New Novel in the Saga of the Skolian Empire (17 page)

"Why are you telling me this?" It surprised him to hear her admission that Aristos found the hostility between their empires as crushing as his own people. The Aristos had always seemed invincible to him, set in their Highton palaces and unyielding views. It had never occurred to him they might feel the same way about Skolia's leaders that his people felt about them.
She turned on her side to look at him. "Your great military heroes, those who inflicted the most damage on Eube, were popular targets. Several of ESComm's top operatives became involved in the game." Quietly she said, "They took it seriously. Eventually they succeeded in removing one of their targets."
He tensed. "Who?"
"An admiral. Corey Majda."
He felt as if she had shot him in the stomach. Knowing Corey died by assassination had always torn him apart. To learn the plot had grown out of a
game
made it even worse. Tarquine was opening a wound he had thought healed long ago.
"Admiral Majda," Tarquine said. "I paid particular attention to that escapade. Would you like to know why?"
"No." His voice rasped.
Corey.
"Her husband," she murmured. "Her spectacular golden Ruby prince. You see, he was my choice for a provider. Not because he was a war leader. I just wanted him. But do you know, he died eighteen years ago."
Kelric couldn't take any more. He rolled off the bed and onto his feet. Without thinking, he went to the bathing chamber, the one place in the suite that would put him elsewhere than Tarquine. He closed it behind him and sank down onto the white tiles. Drawing his knees to his chest, he crossed his arms on them and laid down his head. When his eyes grew hot, he bit the inside of his cheeks to hold back his tears. Damned if he would cry.
The chamber activated on its own, probably prodded by his weight on the floor. Sprays rinsed him, misted with fragrant soaps. He lifted his head and leaned it against the wall while the cleansing warmth enveloped him. When it finished, puffs of air dried his body.
After a while the door shimmered open. At first he thought it was an automatic response to the shower's completion. When the shimmer faded, he saw Tarquine standing in her black shift. She knelt next to him.
Softly Kelric said, "I hope you rot in hell."
"I had nothing to do with her death."
"You might as well have."
She regarded him evenly. "Do we have an agreement?"
He forced out the words. "Yes. I will say nothing to harm your standing among the Aristos." How could he? One word from her would reveal his true identity to all Eube.
"Kelric, listen to me."
"Why do you call me Kelric?" he asked bitterly. "Don't you Aristos take away your slaves' names and give them ones you've picked yourself?"
"I like Kelric." She exhaled. "For your own protection, I will choose another to call you in public."
"Fine." He made himself stop gritting his teeth. "I'm listening. What do you want to tell me?"
"It was my choice to stop transcending."
He stared at her. "What?"
She sat against the opposite wall and stretched out her legs, her toes scraping the wall by his side. "The older you get, the more your mind evolves."
"It's called wisdom. So what?"
"Sometime in my eighties, I can't say exactly when, I started to feel uneasy."
"Why?"
"It was hard to say." Her voice softened. "I had a favored provider then. I liked being with him even when he wasn't doing anything, just sleeping or sitting while I worked. I don't know why."
Kelric snorted. "How kind of you, to let him sit around with nothing to do while you worked."
She ignored his sarcasm. "I suppose I loved him."
He wondered if she even knew the meaning of the word. "What happened to him?"
"I sold him. About ten years ago."
"You couldn't have loved him that much."
"You're probably right." She paused. "But it bothered me."
"What? Loving him?"
"No. Hurting him."
For a long time he just looked at her, certain he had heard wrong, that she would qualify the statement. When she didn't, he said, "It should bother you."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps my brain has aged and muddled my powers of reason."
He made an incredulous sound. "Learning compassion 'muddles' your powers of reason?"
She wrapped her arms around her body. "You can't know what it is like to transcend. Imagine the greatest pleasure you've ever had with a woman and multiply it ten times. But it's more than that. It is as if you ascend to a higher plane, one of sheer, enlightened joy. It truly
is
transcendent."
Kelric wanted to shake her. "You reach this 'higher plane' by
hurting
people."
Tarquine regarded him. "Your suffering elevates you. Inferior beings can only achieve an exalted state through their pain."
"That's sick."
Anger simmered in her thoughts. "And to us, your wish to claim elevation without earning it is
sick.
"
He just shook his head. Her reality was too different. Too alien. "If you feel that way, why did you give up transcendence?"
It was a moment before she answered. "As the years went on, it bothered me more and more to be the agent of that pain. But I knew the pleasure wouldn't go away. As long as I could transcend, I would." Softly she said, "So I made it impossible. I had the Kyle Afferent Body in my brain removed."
He had no idea how to respond. She was still an Aristo. She subscribed to their philosophies, kept slaves, and saw herself as a superior form of life. Yet with all that, she had voluntarily undergone brain surgery to prevent her from exercising what she considered her innate right, a decision that put her in constant danger of discovery, and destruction, from her peers.
Finally he said, "It's a start."
"A start?"
He leaned his head against the wall. "Maybe someday, if more Aristos come to feel as you do, your people and mine might find a measure of peace."
"If."
He thought of Taratus, with his glimmerings of compassion. The admiral was about the age when Tarquine said she had begun to question her way of life. "Are you the only one?"
"I don't know." She wound her hair around her fingers, gazing at the white streaks. "I've wondered once or twice." She suddenly sat up straight. "You can tell!"
"How could I miss it?" He grimaced. "You talk of how I can never appreciate the 'sheer, enlightened joy' of transcendence. Well, think on this, Tarquine. You can never appreciate the sheer, horrific despair your minds inflict on us. The stronger the psion, the stronger the reaction. You know what I am. I could no more miss the lack of that horror than I could stop breathing."
"No other of my providers is that sensitive." She leaned forward. "You can tell if any other Aristos are like me."
"On a one-by-one basis, maybe. But not in groups." He thought of the auction. "Even with drugs to blunt my reception, I can hardly bear the minds of just three Aristos."
Tarquine frowned. "I expect more than fifty Diamonds at the banquet. It's a meeting for the finance leaders in various sectors."
Kelric stared at her.
Fifty?
Diamond Aristos attended to commerce, production, and banks. In the Aristo hierarchy, their caste ranked below Hightons, who controlled the government and military. The Silicates, who ran the entertainment industries and supplied providers, were the third of the three Aristo castes, also below the Hightons. But for all of them, their defining characteristic— their ability to transcend— was the same. The massed impact of fifty would be more than he could endure.
"I can't," he said.
"Of course you can."
"No." He tried not to think of the auction. "Why do you want me there?"
She settled herself against the wall. "I want you to pick up what you can from their minds, in particular about the upcoming finance meeting on Glory. Also let me know if you detect other Aristos like me. Not only today, but anywhere."
That wasn't what he expected. "You want me to spy for you?"
"Of course. Who else has a Ruby psion at her disposal?" She gave him a satisfied smile. "They will know I'm bringing my new provider for more than show. With your barriers so patchy, all will feel your power. But none will guess the true extent. As far as the rest of humanity knows, Kelricson Valdoria is dead."
"You knew who I was."
Her smile gentled. "How could I forget? You lived in my fantasies for years. Decades. I'm older than most Hightons. After thirty-five years, I doubt anyone else will suspect. The idea would simply be too absurd. Even I wasn't sure when I saw the holos that Taratus sent us. But I wondered. He said he would take the four highest floor bids. So I put in one for three million."
He couldn't believe it. "The bidding
started
at three million?"
"Actually, it was four. That was Marix's ground bid."
Kelric didn't know which stunned him more, that they could waste so much wealth on one person or that they would go to such lengths to own another human being. But it changed nothing. "If you put me in a room with fifty Aristos, I'll go catatonic."
She sighed. "Some of my more sensitive providers react this way also. But you will cope. You're strong."
He wondered if she had any idea what she expected him to "cope" with.

Tarquine reclined in a cushioned chair, watching while a techman studied the collar around Kelric's neck. Resplendent in a black-diamond jumpsuit, the Minister glittered.
The techman straightened up. "It's solid gold, ma'am." He set his gauges on the table next to the stool where Kelric was sitting and turned to Tarquine. "The collar has no picotech at all, nothing anyone could use for surveillance on you or your ship. The gold is high quality, however."
"So Taratus just threw it in as a gift." Tarquine snorted. "That is unlike him."
Kelric could guess why Taratus had included the collar. Anything to alleviate Tarquine's anger when she discovered he cheated her. He doubted it would help.
The techman picked up his tools and went to work again. He tested Kelric's wrist guards, then knelt to examine his ankle guards. "These are completely different. They're almost a thousand years old." He rose to his feet. "You did well, most honorable Minister. The guards are far more valuable than the collar. For their antiquity."
Tarquine considered Kelric. "Did Taratus give you those?"
He shook his head. "My ex-wife."
"If she is your
ex
-wife, why do you still wear them?"
He started to give a nonresponse, then changed his mind. He wouldn't dishonor Ixpar with any answer but the truth. "Because I still love her."
"Oh." Tarquine obviously neither expected nor understood his reply. Her reaction washed over him. She surprised herself with her anger. Why would she begrudge one slave the devotion of another slave? For her to envy his ex-wife was like envying an animal.
"Shall I remove the collar and guards?" the techman asked.
"Yes." An edge came into her voice. "Melt down the guards."
Kelric held back his protest. He had already known she would remove them. Without picotech, they had no use as restraints. He would rather she melted than sold them. Better they become ingots than end up on display in a Eubian museum or worn by someone else.
"He will need a collar with picotech controls," she told the techman. "The same for his wrist and ankle cuffs. After we reprogram his biomech web, I want it interfaced it with the restraints." She rubbed her chin. "That will take a while, though. For the banquet, install a temporary collar, one that suppresses his enhancements. Make it gold. You can leave the guards for now."
Kelric knew he was running out of options. As a Jagernaut, he had studied these massive Highton cylinder ships. Once the techman installed the permanent picotech collar, Kelric would become part of the ship, so intertwined with its systems that he couldn't leave without Tarquine inputting an authorization to his redesigned biomech web. If he meant to escape, it had to be soon. But how?
The techman replaced Taratus's "gift" with a temporary collar that clicked a prong into Kelric's neck socket. Then he went to work on his palmtop, sending IR signals to the collar's picoweb, which sent commands to Kelric's biomech web through the prong.
At first Kelric felt nothing. Then, with no warning, he went blind.
He grabbed the edges of his stool. "What happened?"
"Kelric?" Tarquine said. "Can you hear me?"
He made his voice calm. "Yes."
"Try another channel," Tarquine said. She sounded annoyed.
He sat in the dark, wondering what the hell they were doing to his optic nerve.
Suddenly the room reappeared. A heavy silence surrounded him. Tarquine's mouth moved as if she were speaking, but he heard nothing.
The techman appeared in front of him and spoke, exaggerating his words so Kelric could read his lips:
Can you hear me?
"No," Kelric said. At least, he thought he said
no.
He couldn't hear his answer.
The techman worked on his palmtop, then glanced at Kelric. "Now can you hear me?"
With relief, Kelric said, "Yes."
"Good. Please stand up."
The techman put him through a series of exercises, doing various tests. The collar blocked signals sent from Bolt to Kelric's hydraulics and so prevented him from using his enhancements. He had forgotten how heavy and slow he felt without the augmentation. As far as he could tell, though, the hydraulics were still functional, as was the microfusion reactor in his body that powered them.
Finally the techman packed his tools in his black valise. Then he bowed to Tarquine. "My honor to serve you, Minister Iquar."
She nodded, still comfortably ensconced in her chair. She had watched Kelric exercise with an appreciative silence, as if he were providing erotic entertainment instead of doing biomech tests. He stood near the wall now, breathing heavily, which he wouldn't have been doing if he had use of his enhancements.
"Do you have any more checks to suggest?" Tarquine asked the techman.
He shook his head. "Not yet. I need to study the data I've accumulated. His systems have a lot of damage."
She didn't look surprised. "Let me know the results."
"Yes, ma'am."
"What about the rest of what came with him?"
"Ah." The techman set his valise on the stool and reopened it. He withdrew Kelric's gold armbands and the pouch of jeweled dice. "These have no picotech. They're valuable, though. Some of the bands are as old as the guards. The others are more modern, but all of them are at least four or five centuries in age. The jewels are natural, not synthetic. Unusually high quality. They're worth far more than their synthetic counterparts."
Her curiosity flickered. She indicated the nightstand. "Leave them there. I will look at them later."
The techman did as she said. With various bows and accolades to Tarquine, he withdrew from the room.
The Minister stretched, then stood up and walked over to Kelric. She wore glossy black boots with square heels, adding another two inches to her height, bringing her eyes almost level with his. "Come. Let us meet my guests."
"Tarquine—" He wondered if he would always experience this soul-splintering pull, simultaneously hungering for her and wanting to curse everything she represented.
She laid her palm against his chest. "You will be all right. In time, you will heal."
Again she surprised him. Did she mean his physical injuries would heal? Or his grief? Neither made sense. As far as he knew, her medics hadn't yet examined him. When it came to the emotions of others, such as grief, Aristos were like anti-empaths. He doubted she could see how he hurt, nor did he think she would care, more than in an abstract sense of wanting her provider at his best so he could better serve her.
"Heal?" he asked.
Dryly she said, "Our gleefully amoral Taratus is not so clever as he believes. I never had any intention of registering a false claim. I reported the full fourteen million." A slow smile spread across her face. "Now Taratus has a problem."
Surprised, Kelric said, "You know about my condition?"
"Yes. All of it."
"How?"
"I suspected right away. So as soon as you entered my shuttle, its spy scanners began to check you." She motioned to the bed. "When you were sleeping, my medics examined you."
"I'm surprised you're not angry."
"Ah, well." A cold smile touched her lips. "If I report Taratus to the authorities, he will find himself in more trouble than even he can dismiss. If I say nothing, then he owes me. 'Big time,' as the Allieds would say. It will prove extremely useful." She rubbed her palm along the plush velvet of Kelric's shirt. "And he has no idea what he really gave me."
He wondered if Hightons spent their entire lives plaguing one another with these intrigues. As Tarquine slid her hand along his chest, he held back the urge to embrace her. He had thought the aphrodisiacs no longer affected him. But they must still be in his body. It was the only explanation for why he would want to hold a Highton.
"So you won," he said.
She gave him an appreciative smile. "Indeed."