Carnelians (26 page)

“Ward of—of state.” It wasn’t hard to stutter; she was scared enough to make it real. “I fix—things. Carry things. Work with labor-bots. Move, carry, dig.”

The female soldier looked Red over. “You don’t look strong enough for a labor detail, pretty boy.”

“I her brother,” Red said.

“They sound like idiots,” the other soldier muttered.

“Neither of you has a Skolian accent,” the officer said. “You’re Eubian.”

Red regarded him with his large eyes. “Me Muze property.”

Damn! He had just given them away. Almost immediately, though, Aliana realized why. If these soldiers thought they were lying, they would be suspicious, and obviously neither she nor Red could convince anyone they were Skolian.

“Everyone on this planet is Muze property,” the officer said. He frowned at Lensmark. “Why are you hiding them down here? Did they come with the Razer you’re holding?”

No.
Aliana felt ill. They must have found Tide. Had they killed him?

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lensmark told the officer.

“Don’t play games,” he said. “We have the Razer upstairs.”

“This embassy is Skolian territory,” Lensmark said. “Your actions are in violation of the Paris Accord between Eube and Skolia.”

“Tell it to Admiral Muze,” the officer said curtly. “During your trial for sheltering a traitor.”

“I have diplomatic immunity,” Lensmark told him. “That protection extends to any refugees who seek shelter within the walls of this mission.”

The officer snorted. “You have no immunity. You’re military, not a diplomat.”

She regarded him steadily. “The Paris Accord extends immunity to military personnel attached to an embassy. That includes me, Major. You’re the only one breaking the law.”

To Aliana’s unmitigated surprise, the officer looked uneasy. The few ESComm soldiers she had seen in the city had always been striding with authority, always unassailable. These seemed markedly uncomfortable, as if they weren’t sure they could get away with this. This business of embassies was more complicated than she had realized.

“You’ll have to come with us,” the officer told Lensmark.

“Where is Ambassador Shazarinda?” Lensmark asked.

“You can direct whatever questions you wish to our legal authorities.” He spoke to Aliana and Red, slowing down his words. “You will come now. Come. With us.”

“None of us are leaving this embassy,” Lensmark said sharply. “Good gods, man, do you want to be responsible for such a serious diplomatic incident?”

The officer flushed, his ruddy face turning even redder. “You should have thought of that before you sheltered a traitor.”

“If you wish to extradite someone within this chancery,” Lensmark said, “channels exist for negotiating with the diplomatic mission embodied by this embassy.”

Aliana blinked. She wasn’t even sure what the Secondary had just said.

The officer scowled at Lensmark. “This embassy may enjoy privileges of extraterritoriality, but you are in the jurisdiction of Lord Orzon Muze and his family, who own
everything
on this planet, including the embassy. That’s Eubian law, Secondary, and you’re in Eubian territory.”

“We won’t agree to leave,” Lensmark said. “Do you plan on dragging us out? Shooting us?”

The officer pushed his hand through his hair, his face strained. “We’ll contact Lord Orzon. And you
will
come with us, or we’ll drag all three of you.”

It was all Aliana could do to keep from clenching her fists. At least no one was paying much attention to her or Red. That was fortunate, because if Red came to the notice of Lord Orzon’s father, Admiral Muze, who still owned Red, they would be in even deeper trouble.

The soldiers took them up to the embassy through a chute similar to the one they had come down. As they walked through the wide halls above, Aliana snuck a closer look at their captors. All three had reddish eyes, like Caul, her stepfather. They made her queasy, as if they were a void that could have suffocated her if she hadn’t protected herself. Their intense focus on Lensmark made her suspect they knew the Secondary was a psion. Aliana wanted to expand her mental fortress to include Lensmark, but that would mean dropping her defenses, revealing that she and Red were psions. Lensmark had told her to protect them both. And Red was so vulnerable. He had no idea how to shield his mind. Maybe it was true, what she had heard, that Aristo bred providers that way, so the Aristo could feel their pain more easily. And these were the “exalted beings” she was supposed to worship? What garbage.

They soon entered an unfamiliar room, a place nicer than Harindor’s best pleasure palace. His fanciest rooms were rife with big red pillows, purple curtains, and scrolled decorations on the walls, arches, ceilings, and anywhere else he could put the overdone artwork. In contrast, this room was elegant. Paintings decorated its ivory walls in pastoral scenes of deep green velvet trees draped with rosy streamers, all nestled in lush hills dotted with blue-stone outcroppings.

Ambassador Shazarinda was already here. Aliana recognized him from her visit to his office two days ago, when she and Red had officially requested asylum. Tall and slender, with black eyes and a hooked nose, he had impressed her from the moment she met him. She wasn’t sure of the right word to describe him. “Gracious,” maybe. She had never known anyone with that personality trait before, so she wasn’t sure she had it right. Now however, with two ESComm soldiers flanking him, he mostly looked stiff. He nodded to Lensmark, a brief motion, strained and controlled.

Then Aliana saw Tide.

He was standing in the corner, his face so deliberately neutral, she knew he was scared. Two soldiers stood with him and it felt like a punch in the gut to see him trapped that way. Aliana wanted to tell them to leave him alone, but she saw the warning in his eyes, that look he had so often given her when he was training her to control her impulsive anger, the one that meant,
Stay back, stay quiet, stay cool.

The ESComm officer with Lensmark said, “Ambassador Shazarinda.”

“I want it on record,” Shazarinda said. “You entered the grounds of this diplomatic mission without permission, and no one here has waived immunity.”

“Tell it to Lord Orzon.” The officer indicated a console by one wall. “We can contact his offices from here.”

Aliana looked at Red and he stared back at her, his gaze stark. As of yet, no one had bothered with the two rough and supposedly slow-witted children, but if they contacted the Muzes, someone would soon ask questions. She was scared for herself, desperately afraid they would learn the truth about Red, and terrified for Tide.

XVI: Simple Messages

XVI
Simple Messages

Millions of transmissions every hour came into the communications hub of the Urbanech Medical Complex on the planet Metropoli. The message from the Steward Medical Center was buried in the deluge. It landed during a shift directed by Calli Bascel, the only human component in the hub. She was scanning the flow of three-dimensional data with her enhanced vision and optical nerves, which processed the input at mesh speeds and picked out messages that might need human attention. She wouldn’t have even noticed the Steward message, except it set off an alarm.

“How bizarre,” she said. It was a simple request for analysis of the data from a blood test. Any med-tech could do it. Then she saw the holo-stamp of origin. Ah. A Skolian embassy in Trader space. That was what had activated the alarm. It wasn’t unusual for embassy personnel to request a Skolian analysis rather than using a local center run by the Traders. One never knew what Traders might do. Sometimes they blocked Skolian petitions to use their facilities. Even if they honored the request, they didn’t always have the proper facilities to analyze Skolian tests. Rumor had it that they sometimes faked Skolian results, which led to health problems, even deaths.

Calli was about to send the message to an appropriate med-tech when it vanished. A line of words glowed on her screen:
Test results forwarded.
She spent several seconds trying to discover where the results had gone. In the meantime, thousands of messages piled up. She finally gave up and turned her attention from the minor request. Wherever it had gone, they could worry about it there.

General Barthol Iquar hated hospitals. He narrowed his gaze at the med-tech examining him.

“Please focus on my index finger,” the tech said, holding it near Barthol’s nose.

“I see your finger fine,” Barthol snapped. “Finish the test.”

The med-tech lowered his hand. “My apologies, General. I didn’t mean to offend.” With deference, he added, “Because of your great value to the empire, sir, we want to do everything possible to ensure your health and well being.”

“My health and well being would be a lot better out of this hospital,” Barthol said irritably. This idiot was just a tech, not even an important taskmaker. “Get my clothes.”

The man flushed, his face turning red. “Sir, please, I’m terribly sorry, but you can’t leave.”

Barthol’s voice turned to ice. “What did you say?”

“The empress t-told us.” He stumbled over his words. “She said to give y-you the best treatment. Absolute best. That if any less was provided, we would suffer. She s-said you would want to leave before you should, and we weren’t to—to let that happen.”

Tarquine
ordered him confined? Barthol realized he was clenching the smart-sheet that covered his lower body. He uncurled his fingers and spoke in a slow, deliberate voice. “I told you to get my clothes.”

Panic showed on the man’s face. He knew the choice Barthol offered him; defy the General of the Eubian Army or defy the Empress. “Sir, please—” His voice cracked.

Barthol didn’t believe for one instant that Tarquine was concerned about his welfare. She was trying to assert dominance over him. Bitch. He touched the comm panel on the rail of his bed.

“My greetings, General Iquar,” a woman said. “What may I do for you?”

“One moment,” Barthol said. He spoke to the med-tech. “What is your name?”

The man swallowed. “Ren Haquailson.”

“Do you have any children?” Barthol said softly.

The blood drained from Ren’s face. “Sire! I’ll get your clothes.” He spun around.

“Get back here!” Barthol’s voice cracked in the air.

Ren whirled back faster than he had turned away. “I’m sorry. Your Lordship, Your Glory, great esteemed General, I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry. Whatever you want, I’ll do. I swear.”

Keeping his gaze fixed on the tech, Barthol spoke into the comm, his voice clipped. “Send the following message to my head of security. The children of Ren Haquailson, a med-tech on the hospital staff, are to be auctioned to a buyer on another planet.”

“Please,” Ren begged. “I’ll do anything you want. Don’t take them. They are my life.”

Barthol met his gaze with firm knowledge of his righteousness. “They are no longer anything to you. They will belong to whoever buys them.” His voice hardened. “Remember that the next time you think to defy your masters. Now get out of my sight. Now!”

After the ashen tech left, Barthol swore. Damn Tarquine! She was the bane of his life. He could take her Iquar title, but he could never own either her power or her sleek, sensual body. If he had to obliterate the entire Qox Dynasty to right that unforgivable wrong, he would rip it apart with his own hands.

The Minister of Protocol, a willowy Highton with her hair cut in a bob, spoke to Jaibriol. “The message came in this morning, Your Highness. We cleared it as fast as possible.”

Jaibriol was standing up, leaning against his black desk, which reflected the colors he had chosen today for his office. The walls glowed with the sunset over the Kayzar Sea, a line of red, rose, and gold in a dark blue sky with several moons, including carnelian Mirella, gold Zara, and of course silver Tarquine. He had decided to have an octagonal room today, with rounded corners between the walls, floor, and ceiling. The domed ceiling was the deep blue of twilight, lightened by the orb lamp that hung from its center. Nanobots laced the gems that dripped from the lamp, allowing him to tune the crystals to a vibrant blue color that shaded into rose and then gold at their tips. People assumed he chose those hues for the sunset theme, but it was actually a tribute to his mother, Soz Valdoria, the former Skolian Imperator, whose dark hair had turned rose and then gold at the tips.

One of the wall panels, however, showed a far less aesthetic display than Glory’s haunting sunset. Protocol had used it to play a message from the Skolians, their response to Jaibriol about the summit. The playback had finished with an image of the Ruby Pharaoh seated in an elegant wooden chair next to a table. Kelric stood behind her chair, the Fist of Skolia, a massive war god with a square chin and powerfully handsome face. Seeing his uncle always left Jaibriol feeling inadequate. He was acutely aware that Tarquine was in the room, standing several paces away, watching. He could never forget she had owned Kelric for a short time before Jaibriol had met her. The warlord of his enemies had been his wife’s lover.

Deal with it,
he told himself.
She is your wife. Not his.

Jaibriol spoke to Protocol. “I find myself pleased by Ministry diligence.”

She inclined her head, acknowledging his approval of her work.

“An intriguing display.” He motioned at the image. “It invites the commentary of an expert on alien codes of behavior.”

Protocol, the only acknowledged expert on alien codes of behavior in the room, went to the panel. As she walked by him, he felt as if he were losing his balance under the force of her Highton mind.

You’re gritting your teeth,
his node thought.
Should I relax your jaw?

Yes,
Jaibriol answered.
Thank you.

Protocol tapped several panels disguised as arabesque designs on the wall. The display showing the Ruby Pharaoh shifted to earlier in the message and began a replay. The pharaoh was saying, “We agree that we must select a neutral place of meeting, regardless of how we are met.”