Carnelians (8 page)

“Hey.” Aliana jogged after him and caught up in a few paces. She grabbed him around the waist and pulled him to a stop, her arms wrapped around his lithely muscled body, holding his back against her front, pinning his arms to his sides.

“Calm down,” she said. “You didn’t do nothing. It’s the singer, not you.”

“Let go,” he said, straining to throw her off. His mind blasted panic.

“Come on.” She kept her hold on him. “You got to calm down. You’ll make your heart pop.”

After a few moments, his struggle eased. Then, gods blast it, he started
crying.
It was silent, and she could barely tell with his back against her front, but with her head alongside his and her cheek against his hair, she saw the tears slide down his face and his expression contort as if he were struggling to hold them back.

“Ah, shoozers,” Aliana muttered. “Come on. Don’t cry. Here. I’ll get you food, okay?”

“I not cry,” he said sharply.

“Yeah, I know. I never cry, either.” If he could lie about it, so could she.

“Let go me.”

“You gonna run away if I do?”

“Maybe.”

“I can’t feed you if you run off.”

“Let go!”

“All right.” Aliana felt the panic running out of his mind like water swirling down a drain. She relaxed her arms and let him go. He stood there, tensed as if he expected a blow. When nothing happened, he brushed his dirty red jumpsuit as if he were trying to neaten it up. He stepped away and regarded her sideways.

“Look at me,” she said gently.

He looked at her, then flinched and averted his gaze.

“Huh.” Aliana wondered what had happened to him. She used to act that way with Caul, her stepfather, when she thought he would hit her. She realized something else, too. As filthy as he was, covered in dirt, he didn’t smell, other than the loamy odor of soil. He didn’t have the stink of someone who didn’t clean himself. In fact, all that dirt
hid
him. No one looked at him. Maybe he did that on purpose. Of course she couldn’t come out and ask what was the deal, not yet. It wasn’t done that way. But she’d find out.

“So are you coming?” she asked.

He considered her for a moment. “Yes. I go with you.”

So they set off together, headed to her home, the cubicle Harindor had given her to live in.

“The question,” Dehya said, “isn’t how many people have seen the holo.” She paced across the parquetry floor of her living room. “It’s whether anyone is left who
hasn’t
seen the damn thing.”

Kelric was leaning against the edge of an arched entrance to the room. Eldrin, Dehya’s husband and Kelric’s older brother, was standing by the holo-stage near the wall, watching the holo of Del silently wail “Carnelians Finale.” Their mother Roca stood with him. She shook her head, and her hair rippled around her shoulders like liquid gold.

“We have to talk to Del,” Roca said. “Convince him to help us put this under wraps again.”

“It’s impossible.” Kelric said tiredly. Nothing could contain this plague.

Dehya paced past him, a diminutive figure is a soft blue dress that swirled around her knees. “We hid that song with best security we have. What happened?”

“Why is it always this way with Del?” Eldrin said. “We always end up talking about how we have to fix whatever he did.”

“Del didn’t do anything.” Dehya stopped and regarded her husband. “He cooperated with us nine years ago when we suppressed the song. I doubt he has anything to do with it resurfacing.”

“He
sang
it,” Kelric said. “He knew how politically inflammatory it would be.”

Roca spoke quietly. “It’s magnificent.”

“What, you’re supporting this mess?” Kelric growled.

“Of course not,” Roca said. As Foreign Affairs Councilor in the Assembly, she advised the two rulers of the Imperialate—the Ruby Pharaoh and the First Councilor—on how to defuse situations exactly such as this. She had won her Foreign Affairs seat by running for election like any other citizen. Combined with her lesser hereditary seat, it made her one of the most influential Assembly councilors. No matter how much she or any of them might like “Carnelians Finale,” they had to do their best to counter its effect.

“It’s too late to lock it down.” Dehya said. “We need damage control.”

“How?” Kelric asked. He hoped she had an idea, because he sure as hell didn’t.

“Can you get it off the Kyle network?” Eldrin asked Dehya. “You know the meshes better than anyone.”

“I can do some deletions,” she said. “Especially if you help me. But it’s gone too far to erase it the way we did nine years ago.”

“Emperor Jaibriol probably released it,” Roca said. “Given what he must be dealing with from the other Hightons, he probably regrets ever seeing that treaty. How he convinced his Joint Commanders to sign it is beyond me.”

“He didn’t release ‘Carnelians Finale,’ ” Kelric said, keeping his mental barriers strong. He had no mental finesse; he was just blunt force. It was frustrating when he needed to pick up nuances from someone’s mind, but no one alive could get past his barriers, not even his family. He hid what he knew about Jaibriol.

Roca was watching him. “What’s wrong?”

Damn.
Her inability to pick up his thoughts didn’t stop her from using her too perceptive mother’s intuition. He glared at her, mainly to throw her off track. “What
isn’t
wrong?”

“We’ll do what we can in the meshes,” Dehya said. “Roca, you talk with the Allieds.”

“Governments aren’t the problem,” Eldrin said. “No matter how much any of ours may want the treaty, it will fail if the citizens of three empires turn against it. With Del riling everyone up, that’s what we’re looking at.”

“Then we have to calm them down,” Dehya said.

“How?” Roca said.

Dehya exhaled. “I wish I knew.”

Jaibriol found the lights dimmed when he walked into his bedroom suite at the palace. It was a relief; after his day, he needed refuge.

Suite
was a subdued word. Even in the dim light, the walls gleamed, gold and ivory with platinum moldings, all the materials authentic, none created in labs. Chandeliers glittered, heavy with diamonds. An antique lamp with a ruby shade stood near his bed casting dim red light. Dark red drapes canopied the bed, held back by braided gold ropes, and red and gold pillows of gleaming satin were heaped against the headboard. But all that rich, sultry beauty dimmed compared to the woman who lay atop the covers, asleep in the smoky light, long and sleekly curved, wearing nothing more than a black lace shift that barely covered her torso and hips. Her hair shimmered, falling across her face, and her lashes lay long on her cheeks, black against her alabaster skin. Even with no make-up, her lips were red. Her face was soft in repose, the only time his empress looked vulnerable. He never told her; if she knew, she might never again let him see her asleep.

Jaibriol mounted the dais and sat on the bed. He slid his hand over her hip.

Tarquine rolled onto her back, still asleep, her hair falling back from her face, revealing her classic Highton profile, which not only looked like it belonged on a coin, but did in fact grace one. Jaibriol had commissioned it years ago as a peace offering. That was after he had blocked her subtle and exasperatingly illegal attempts to control the market in exotic imported fabrics using her inside knowledge as Finance Minister. He had never realized how much wealth shiny cloth brought into his empire until his brilliantly amoral wife had turned her attention to the subject.

As if Tarquine needed more money. She was already one of the wealthiest human beings in the history of the human race. In fact, including the finances at her disposal as empress, she might be the richest. So why did she need to commit fraud on an interstellar scale? Keeping watch on her was a major headache, and it didn’t help that she was so blithely unrepentant.

Yet for all that, she lacked the cruelty inherent to most Aristos. Several decades ago, she had destroyed her ability to transcend. Despite what Aristos vehemently claimed—that transcendence was their exalted right—she had come to the conclusion it was nothing more than animalistic brutality.

“Are you going to sit there all night?” she asked. She raised her eyes halfway, her eyes glinting like red gems under her black lashes. She languidly traced her finger across his thigh.

Jaibriol slid down next to her. As he pulled her into his arms, she undulated against him with an unconscious sensuality. He knew she didn’t realize it because with Tarquine, he could lower his empathic barriers. That such a powerful, alluring woman had so little idea of her own eroticism made her even more addicting. Eleven years of marriage had done nothing to dull his desire.

Later they lay together, tangled in the satin sheets. Tarquine dozed in his arms like a deadly wild animal momentarily subdued, until she awoke and resumed prowling. He knew the truth he wanted to deny: he would always be prey to her. She could no longer transcend, but the drive was buried so deep within her that it survived even if the act no longer brought her the ecstasy that had turned the entire race of Aristos into sadists.

The drive that the child they hoped to make would inherit.

“Well, this is it,” Aliana said, ushering Red into her home. “It’s not much. But it’s mine.”

She lived in a hive of hexagonal units stacked up in a hexagonal building. Her home was about halfway up the structure. Its only entrance was a door shaped like an elongated hexagon. Inside, she had a combined living room and kitchen, with food processors along the right wall and a media smart-center on the left. The ceiling and floor were horizontal edges of the hexagon, and the walls on either side sloped into points. A table with a few semi-smart chairs stood by the wall, and a couple of cheap recliners were arrayed around the media smart-center.

Smart, bah. Calling the center’s tangle of filaments a brain was generous. As Aliana entered with Red, the center started some propaganda holo about the greatness of Muze Aristos. Of course she would never say
propaganda
out loud. She wasn’t important enough that anyone would bother to bug her home, but you never knew what words might tip off some generic monitor in the tech that Aristos sold low-level taskmaker slaves.

The Muze Line owned her. Not that she ever saw them. She doubted any of them even lived fulltime on the planet, despite its name, Muze’s Helios. The only person who “owned” her was Harindor, even if he wasn’t the one who put the collar around her neck and the guards on her wrists. He had far more say in her life than the supposedly godlike Muzes, given that she had never even seen one exalted hair on their exalted butts.

Red looked around at her cubicle. “Small.”

“Yeah, well, it’s better than what you had,” she said, suddenly defensive, knowing how paltry it all looked. “Don’t diss my home, drill-boy.”

Red swung around to her. “No call me that!”

“Hey, sorry.” She flushed.

He hesitated, his glance flicking to the kitchen. “Food?”

“Sure.” Aliana went to a wall panel and punched in a meal order. She didn’t have much, just the usual, but it was all right.

“You not provider,” Red said behind her.

Bemused, she turned around. He was standing in the center of the room. It startled her to realize she had trusted him enough to turn away; on principle, she never showed her back to anyone.

“Of course I’m not a provider,” she said. “Most people aren’t.” Only a few thousand providers existed. Most of Eube’s two trillion citizens were taskmakers, all slaves, but with complicated hierarchies. Taskmakers at the top had a great deal of wealth or power; those at the bottom, like her, were nobody. Providers weren’t in the hierarchy. Their entire reason for existence was to please their Aristo owners. They lived in incredible luxury, but she doubted it was worth it. Pain for your entire life? No thanks.

Red hesitated. “You provider. Aristos just not know.”

She gave a snort. “I’m too ugly to be a provider.”

“Beautiful. Pretty gold skin.”

Right, sure. The wall beeped at her, and she said, “Time to eat.”

“Stay away from Aristos,” Red persisted. “They find out.”

“Don’t worry.” She pulled two trays of food out of the delivery module. “I’ll avoid that big crowd of Aristos hanging around here.” She set the trays on the table. The pseudo-steaks smelled great, and the vegetables lit up the white tray with sprays of green, red, orange, and blue.

Red dropped into a chair, his gaze avid. She laid a knife, scoop, and fork next to his tray, but he just picked up the steak with his hand and tore a huge bite out of the meat, eating so fast he hardly seemed to chew.

“Hey, slow down. You’ll make yourself sick.” Aliana pushed his hand, making him plunk the steak back into its dish. She stuck the fork into the meat. “You know how to eat civilized, right?” She offered him the knife. “You know, cut up your food, use a fork.”

He stared at the knife, then at her, then at the knife. Whatever bothered him must have been big, because he stopped trying to eat.

Aliana spoke awkwardly. “Red, I seem to freak you every other minute, hell if I know why. I mean, is it really that crazy for me to think you can use a fork and stuff?”

“Knife.” His face paled. “Me not touch. Get punished.”

“Why?”

“Not allowed weapon. Not ever.”

A terrible feeling was growing in Aliana. She sat next to him and cut a piece of his steak, then speared it with the fork and offered it to him.

Red took the fork and ate the meat.

“Okay,” Aliana said. “We’ll do it this way.” As she sliced up his food, she said, “You need better clothes than that jumpsuit.”

“Clothes fine.”

She finished cutting his meat. “There. All done.”

With no further hesitation, he dug into his meal. He practically inhaled the food, never even pausing to drink his water.

Aliana ate more slowly. “So. About your jumpsuit.”

He finished his last bite. “Not need clothes.”

“Yes, you do. Yours are filthy. You can borrow a pair of my trousers and a shirt.” She touched his arm. “You might have to roll up the shirt sleeves, though. They’re probably too long.”