Ascendant Sun: A New Novel in the Saga of the Skolian Empire (19 page)

Kelric opened his eyes. Fragments of his dream drifted in his mind, but he was no longer Tarquine. Before his memories of her thoughts faded, he had Bolt tag, copy, and file them.
Shadows filled the hall now. The other Aristos had left the dais, but he still lay with his head on Tarquine's lap. Although she was idly stroking his curls, he sensed she was half asleep herself and rather drunk. In the shadowed recesses of the hall, in corners or submerged in piles of cushions, Aristos silently amused themselves. He felt their minds in the alcoves as well.
Closing his eyes, he tried to shut out the mental pain that so many Aristos in one place created. He concentrated on Tarquine, letting her proximity overwhelm the more distant Aristos.
Even half asleep, her mind parallel-processed. Before the advent of computer-enhanced intelligence, the human mind hadn't been able to think along many tracks at the same time. Tarquine had nodes in her spine and brain stem that allowed her to process many problems at once. It was the only way, in the data-thick life humanity lived now, that a person could keep up with the huge influx of information needed to succeed in a star-spanning culture.
One line of thought spinning in her dream-saturated mind involved scenarios for cheating Sapphire Sector out of platinum. She thought of it as "negotiation." Another line included her speculations on how long it would take Eube to absorb Skolia. Yet others involved aspects of her job as Finance Minister. Her sexual images of Kelric played out in dreamy sensuality alongside hard-nosed evaluations of import regulations. He had thought himself experienced, but her fantasies startled him. Did she really believe he could get into those positions? If she thought he would wear those leather-and-chain outfits, she was nuts.
Then he found her files on the plans to redesign his biomech. He would wear his temporary collar only until they reworked his internal web. Although this collar could affect his sight or hearing by accessing his enhanced optics or acoustics, it had no control over his hydraulics. It could only interfere with Bolt's messages. The hydraulics themselves remained quiescent but operational.
It used his microfusion reactor to power chemical reactions in his body. Rather than injecting him with drugs, it had his body make them itself, through sophisticated reaction cycles. It was why he was so tired, and hungry as well; his body was using resources at an accelerated rate.
Some of the drugs were meant to wear down his resistance to captivity. Other muted more aggressive aspects of his personality. Several were aphrodisiacs. Still others were truth serums, which puzzled him, until he realized Tarquine wanted to ensure he gave accurate reports on whatever he picked up from the Aristos. A large number of the drugs were meant to heal him. They treated his anemia, slowed damage to various organs, battled his mutated meds, and prepared his body to accept the regeneration or transplant of new organs.
One medicine treated what they termed his "depressive state, mostly likely brought on by the innate weakness of his empathic mind." Didn't it occur to the idiots that he was depressed because he had been kidnapped and sold into slavery?
As he absorbed Tarquine's thoughts, he tagged them to Quis patterns. Whether or not Bolt could still receive his input and respond, he had no idea. But it was worth a try. After he filed his impressions, he built mental Quis structures of the Aristos and let them evolve. They grew ever more complex, until they resembled fractals, those mathematical constructs that revealed the same repeating patterns of intricacy at ever finer scales. Fractals. Strange. It meant something, he wasn't sure what.
A thought forming in Tarquine's mind registered on him. Her leg felt numb where he was lying on it. He shifted his head to relieve the pressure.
She brushed her fingers across his neck. "Did you sleep well?"
Kelric answered in a low voice. "Yes." He knew what she wanted.
He lifted his head. The dim light softened her face, giving her an elegance that would have taken his breath away had she been anyone other than a Highton. She leaned forward and kissed him, tasting his lips. It was the aphrodisiacs that made his body respond with such intensity. Surely the aphrodisiacs.
Setting her hands on his shoulders, she gave a slight push. He slid away and lay on the carpets, half covered by pillows. As she joined him, he trailed his fingers along her hip, feeling its lean contour through the diamond cloth of her uniform.
They undressed each other in the shadows. Kelric ran his hands over her body and she arched, smooth and firm under his touch. Rather than the exaggerated curves of a provider, Tarquine was long and sculpted. Her well-formed body belied her claim of being over a century old.
She stretched out on top of him, sliding her hands down to his hips. Kelric rolled her onto her back in an instinctual drive to cover her body. With the collar monitoring the aphrodisiacs in his body, his arousal felt more natural now, less wrenching than his response to the copper provider. He wondered if Tarquine thought she needed the chemicals to make him want her. Maybe she was right. He didn't know. He didn't care. Dazed, drugged, and half drunk, he submerged into the sensuality.
So they came together, almost fighting as their bodies strained against each other. Yet they made no sound. An unspoken protocol existed among the Aristos: if no one could hear, the act was acceptable in public. He lived an exquisite agony of pleasure, a drug-augmented ecstasy that Tarquine stoked ever higher. In his rare moments of lucidity, he hated her for making him crave a Highton. Most of the time he knew only the incredible heights Aristos created out of human pleasure.
When he finally climaxed, the orgasm affected his entire body, which was sensitized by the drug cycles spinning within him. His peak lasted longer than normal, and with greater intensity, until in one agonizing moment of rapture he genuinely thought it would kill him.
He didn't die, though. Instead the waves of pleasure gradually eased. His breathing calmed. He and Tarquine were lying on their sides against the table, their limbs tangled. Eyes closed, she rested her head against his shoulder as she pulled in deep, shuddering breaths.
So they lay, too exhausted to move.

"Minister Iquar." The girl's trembling voice was soft. "Please, most honored one. I humbly beg for your sublime attention."
Grumpy with his disturbed sleep, Kelric opened his eyes halfway. A dark-haired, dark-eyed provider was kneeling by Tarquine, her face anxious as she tried to wake the Minister without raising her voice. Kelric and Tarquine were still entangled on the dais, but someone had covered them with a white fur.
The girl looked terrified. "Please," she entreated Tarquine. "Most exalted lady, please forgive my imprudence and speak to me."
Kelric shook the Minister's shoulder. "Tarquine," he muttered. "Wake the hell up." From the girl's aghast look, he gathered his method of addressing an Aristo wasn't standard procedure.
Tarquine sighed and turned toward him. "Hmmm?" With a drowsy smile, she put her arms around his waist. "Again?"
"Someone needs to tell you something," he said.
She frowned, then rolled over to the provider. Her voice came out in an icy snap. "What do you want?"
"Please, most exalted Minister," the girl whispered. "I beg your forgiveness for my intrusion. But Lord Hizar, he— he—"
"He what?" Tarquine asked impatiently.
"On the holovid." The girl motioned with a shaking hand. "It is a broadcast, ma'am. Lord Hizar wanted me to tell you."
Tarquine sat up, letting the blanket fall to her waist. With the fur draped around her hips and her upper body bare, she brought to mind the marble statue of an austere goddess.
Kelric looked to where the provider indicated. At the other end of the hall, the room's lights had been raised. Most of the Aristos were up and dressed, seated at tables, watching the holostage. The news holo there showed the Hall of Circles in the emperor's palace on Glory. Corbal Xir was standing on the dais, intoning about something or other, though whatever the future emperor had to say, Kelric couldn't hear and didn't much care.
"No palace broadcast was scheduled," Tarquine grumbled. Without another word, she tossed the fur to one side, uncovering both Kelric and herself. She got up and dressed, pulling on her uniform and boots. Then she left the dais and strode across the hall to join her guests, leaving Kelric alone with the provider.
He sat up and regarded the girl. "Do you know what it's about?"
She shook her head, averting her gaze. Her lustrous skin was as dark and smooth as java cream. Rosy blooms colored her cheeks. She had an angelic face, so sweet and pretty it made his breath catch. But it wasn't natural. Her black eyes were enhanced, large even by bodysculpting standards, framed by a thick fringe of black lashes. Impossibly luxuriant black hair cascaded in curls over her shoulders, arms, back, and hips.
She wore no clothes. The ring of rubies around her neck sparkled in the dim light, as did the ruby guards on her wrists and ankles, the ruby rings in her nipples, and the chain of rubies slung low on her hips. Her waist was too small, her breasts too large and firm, to be real. He couldn't stop staring at her beauty, even knowing, gods help him, that the Aristos had made her this way to please themselves.
Then he realized more than her physical appearance affected him. Her mind suffused his with Kyle power, sweet and vulnerable. She was at least eight on the scale, possibly nine. Her fragrance captivated him, enhanced with pheromones. She also exuded Kyle pheromones targeted for other psions. From the haze of arousal in her mind and the dilation of her eyes, he knew she was as pumped full of aphrodisiacs as him. Her sensual desire flowed over him and her arousal blended with his own, driven and heightened in both of them by chemicals.
Before he realized what was happening, she had slid into his lap and was straddling his thighs.
"Now stop that," he said, his voice slow from sleep and drugs. He put his arm around her waist, intending to move her off his lap. She gracefully bent back until she was arching over his arm with her breasts straining upward.
"I can't ..." As he stared at her, he forgot what it was he couldn't do. Lowering his head, he closed his mouth around her breast and suckled, tugging on her huge nipple while he tongued its ruby ring.
Even as he gave in to the drugs and the girl, though, a question hovered in his mind. Why had the Aristo who owned this phenomenally seductive provider picked her to tell Tarquine about the broadcast? She seemed an odd choice to send the Finance Minister.
The girl sighed with pleasure and cupped her hands under his elbows. The feather touch of her fingers made his thoughts waft away into nothing, like fog blown on the wind. Her head hung back, her silken hair pouring over his legs. She was also caressing his shoulder—
His shoulder?
Wait a minute. How could a girl bent over his arm this way be stroking his shoulder? He lifted his head— and found a second provider at his side, a twin of the girl in his arms, except this one had gold hair, blue eyes, and sapphire gems. Her mind washed sweetly over his, as far up the Kyle scale as the sultry goddess in his arms. As he stared at her, she leaned forward and kissed his ear.
"Oh, Lord," Kelric said. This was too much. Just the thought of a third person in the room when he made love disconcerted him. In that sense he had always been conservative. This went so far beyond his normal style, he would have told them no if he hadn't been drugged out of his mind.
The gold girl slid behind him and wrapped her arms around his chest. Nibbling his neck, she pressed against him, soft as a dream.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked. Glancing across the room, he saw an Aristo lord watching them. When the Aristo realized Kelric had noticed him, he turned back to the broadcast. On the screen, Corbal Xir, the Emperor Presumptive, was intoning on in the usual interminable Highton style about some supposed Highton triumph. His oddly white hair glittered like ice.
Murmuring in Kelric's ear, the gold girl stroked his chest and thigh. No, that couldn't be her touching his leg. It had to be the sultry one. Except she was still holding his elbows.
He looked down and found a third provider lying at his side, a beautiful youth with gold curls, a lithe build, sapphire eyes and restraints, and a sapphire ring in one ear. He gave a lazy, drugged smile and put his arms around Kelric's waist.
"Now, wait a minute," Kelric said. "Stop that."
The gold girl tickled his ear with her tongue. Startled, he turned to her, and she kissed him, her lips tasting of nanogels. So warm. So soft. Almost without conscious thought he kissed her back, all the while stroking the body of the girl in his lap. When the dark one murmured, he stopped kissing the gold one and turned back to her.
His mind hazed, he took the sultry girl's breast into his mouth again. The gold one moved against him in a sensual rhythm, her hair drifting over his shoulders and arms. The youth reclined along Kelric's side, caressing him with a skilled touch. Right now, in his daze, all he could think was that if for some strange reason these three spectacularly beautiful people wanted to make him feel good, who was he to argue?
Still suckling, he slid his hand between the dark girl's thighs and played with her soft folds, so moist with her wanting him. Yet even as he pleasured her and himself, he kept remembering how the Aristo had watched him. Smug bastard. What did he want?
Then, suddenly, Kelric knew. He lifted his head, evoking a protest from the girl in his lap. He knew exactly what the Diamond lord wanted. Didn't the Aristos ever stop trying to cheat one another? He had no doubt that in normal circumstances, the lord would have to pay dearly for the service he hoped Kelric would give now for free. He probably threw in the boy as inspiration, in case Kelric's interests made him less inclined to perform with the girls.
Stunned into a semblance of rationality, he nudged away the gold girl and the youth, gently, but leaving no doubt what he meant. Then he lifted up the sultry girl so she was no longer arched over his arm. He intended to put her away from him too, but she came up straddling his hips— and he groaned as she slid onto his erection.
"No," he protested, even as he pulled her closer. Against her ear he said, "You're incredible, a lonely man's dream. But I won't have a child of mine born into slavery. Not with either of you."
He wasn't sure if they were past the point where they could understand, too far gone in an induced sea of eroticism. The gold girl put her arms around him again and the boy resumed his caresses. The pheromones of the three providers, the Kyle resonances between their minds and his, and their sheer sexualized beauty magnified his reaction. He began to move with the dark-haired girl, his resolve fading.
Then he felt it. On her back. Gently he moved aside her hair and looked down her body. And he froze. Within the last hour, someone had taken a belt to her, leaving swollen welts.
"Ah, no, I'm sorry," he whispered. His Kyle link to the girl jarred her out of the protective mental cocoon she had created to repress the incident. He felt the echoes of her pain. Rocking her back and forth, he murmured
I'm sorry
over and over. She said nothing, only buried her head against his neck and held on to him as if he were an anchor.
After a while he lifted her off his lap, freeing her before he gave her his seed. "I can't do it," he said as he moved her to his side. "I'm sorry."
In a just universe, she would have never wanted him after what had so recently happened to her. It was a cruelty of their owner that he drugged them past rationality, augmenting their desire and appeal until neither they nor Kelric could control their responses. He had no doubt the two women were also primed on fertility drugs.
The dark-haired girl slid her arms around his neck and he drew her close to his side. She hid her head against his shoulder as she pressed along his body. Holding her around the waist, he slid his leg between hers. She clasped her thighs around it and began to move, trying to find her release that way.
Then the youth folded his hand around Kelric and took up where the girl had left off.
"Stop that." Kelric didn't know which disconcerted him more, having the fellow touch him or having his body respond.
The youth looked up at him. "Whatever you want, tonight you can have."
The gold girl slid down alongside the boy, her front to his back. Regarding Kelric through her long lashes, she put her arms around the boy's waist. "Do you prefer to watch? Him and me?" She nodded toward the other girl. "Or me and her?"
"Saints almighty." His face flamed with his blush. "Behave yourselves." Even more embarrassing than her suggestions was the way his body reacted with such enthusiasm.
The gold girl slid across the boy and stretched out so she was lying between Kelric's legs. Then she kissed him where he most wanted to feel her touch.
"Ah ... don't do that." He didn't know how much more of this he could take before he lost what little restraint remained to him.
"Shhh," she said. "We'll tell him we did what he wanted. He won't know we didn't." Softly she added, "You've been kinder to us in these few minutes than he's ever been. Lie back, beautiful man. There are ways that won't leave either of us with your child." She tilted her head toward the Aristos. "Just for a while let us forget
them
and find comfort with one another."
Just for a while.
He stared at her, mesmerized, his arm around the dark girl. The gold one lowered her head and took his erection into her mouth, exactly the way he wanted, as her empath's mind sensed his reactions and responded in kind.
He was a son of the Ruby Dynasty and the Imperial noble Houses, raised in the most conservative sector of Skolia, his interactions constrained by six thousand years of history. He had just spent eighteen years in an even more conservative culture. With such a history he could never have done this. Under normal circumstances.
But their sweet hunger poured over his mind. He gave that same sensual comfort back to them, multiplying it by his own Kyle strength.
It seemed that sometimes, just sometimes, life offered solace in unexpected ways.