The Final Key: Part Two of Triad (17 page)

A dark-haired woman bowed to Eldrinson. She had far too many muscles and towered over him. Her face looked female, but more ascetic than the lush women of his world. Although she had curves, their muscular sculpting would put Dalvador warriors to shame. No doubt she could throw him over her shoulder without working up a sweat. It was most disconcerting. He wished Roca were here.

"My honor at your presence, Your Majesty," she said. "I am Colonel Starjack Tahota."

Tahota! He knew that name. Eldrinson scowled at her. "You came to Lyshriol over a year ago and took away my daughter."

She had the decency to look uncomfortable. "I regret any difficulties that caused."

At least she didn't make excuses. With reluctance, he stood aside so his unwanted visitors could enter. Taquinil stayed close to his side and watched with a concerned gaze.

The colonel bowed to Taquinil. "My honor at your presence, Your Highness." Kindness toward the boy showed in her face, which made Eldrinson warm to her a bit.

Taquinil inclined his head as his parents did when addressed by their tides, except he seemed uncertain he was doing it right, which made the gesture charming rather than formal. Eldrinson held back his smile.

As the officers spread through the house, the colonel walked with Eldrinson to the living room. "How are you feeling?"

"Well enough." He couldn't stop limping, but he did his best not to lean on his cane.

Taquinil walked next to him, hovering. Eldrinson winked at him. I'm fine, Taquinilli.

The boy laughed at the nickname, a play on Nilli, his favorite character in the hologame. Tahota glanced at them, but she didn't intrude.

The colonel's gaundet buzzed. She lifted her arm and spoke into a mesh. 'Tahota here."

"The house is secure, Colonel," a man said.

"Good work," Tahota said. "Keep monitoring the area."

"Is there a problem?" Eldrinson asked.

Roca's people often avoided his questions, assuming his background made him stupid, but to her credit, Tahota answered immediately. "We know what the Chair was trying to tell your wife. Someone attempted to assassinate Imperator Skolia."

Eldrinson stared at her. "How?" "Poison meds." "Will he live?"

Tahota exhaled. "We don't know. He's in a coma."

Eldrinson thought of Althor. If Kurj died, too, what would happen to ISC? For the military to lose its highest commander on the eve of war could be disaster. "Gods pray that he recovers."

"For all of you," Tahota said quiedy.

Her underlying concern came through to him despite the mental barriers they both had raised. She made him self-conscious. This warrior had no reason to care what happened

to him, yet she did. They sat on a couch in the living room, she on one end and he on the other, and Taquinil flopped down between them.

"Have you heard from my wife?" Eldrinson asked Tahota, looking at her over Taquinil's head.

"She's spoken with General Majda," Tahota said.

He squinted at her. "Which one?" ISC seemed to have a plethora of Majda generals.

Whatever his expression, it made Tahota smile. "Jazida Majda."

The General. Eldrinson found Jazida even more alarming than this Starjack. At least his present visitor didn't seem to think he should be locked up in seclusion and never allowed out unless robes and a cowl covered him from head to toe. Pah.

"Your Majesty?" Tahota asked. "What is wrong?"

Eldrinson flushed, realizing his annoyance must have shown on his face. He composed his expression. "I was wondering when my wife would arrive on Diesha."

"Councilor Roca is en route to Safelanding."

"Where?"

"It's a secret place," Taquinil said. "ISC hid it in an asteroid belt Almost no one knows about it."

Tahota stiffened. "Then how did you know?"

"From mother's mesh accounts," Taquinil said.

"You should know better than to play with your mother's console," Eldrinson admonished. He would have scolded the boy more, except he caught sight of Tahota's expression. She was staring at Taquinil and her face had gone pale.

"That information is secured," Tahota told the boy. "How could you find it?"

"It was easy," Taquinil said. "I followed the tangles."

"Tangles?" Tahota asked.

"In the mesh. I untangled them. I found the Epsilon Files."

"Saints almighty," the colonel muttered.

"What are the Epsilon Files?" Eldrinson asked.

"It's secured," Tahota said. She spoke sternly to Taquinil. "You must never mention what you found to anyone."

The boy looked a bit startled. "Yes, ma'am." He hesitated. "Is my Hoshma going to Safelanding, too?"

"The pharoah is on Parthonia," Tahota said. In a reassuring voice, she added, "It already has the best defenses in the Imperialate, and we've upgraded them since what happened on Lyshriol."

"Then why take Roca to this Safelanding?" Eldrinson asked, uneasy. "If Taquinil can find it, so might the Traders."

"They won't find it," Taquinil assured him. "They can't break the codes."

"Then how did you?" Eldrinson asked.

"It was already on Mother's console."

"So you found the information there," Tahota asked. "In her private files?"

"No. I just rewrote her Epsilon spy codes."

Eldrinson wasn't sure what Taquinil was talking about, but the boy had clearly been misbehaving. Before he could ask whether or not his mother knew what he was about, Colonel Tahota made a rather odd sound, like a choked gasp.

"You rewrote the Assembly Key's spy codes?" Tahota asked. "I'm almost afraid to ask how."

"You know," Taquinil said. "The underworld."

"No, I don't know," the colonel said.

"The world under the meshes. Shadow places. Wavefunc-tions that haven't collapsed."

Eldrinson scowled at him. "Taqui, are you making this up?"

The boy flushed. "No, really I'm not."

Tahota pushed her hand through her hair. "I think he is talking about the underlying structure of the web, the quantum processes that make it work."

"Is that wrong?" Taquinil asked.

The colonel spoke with a kindness that surprised Eldrinson, given her imposing presence and the boy's mischief. "You shouldn't play with ISC security. But I think our intelligence people will want to talk with you. You could probably tell them a lot."

Taquinil looked a bit wary. "All right."

"Why can't my wife stay here for protection?" Eldrinson asked.

"General Majda doesn't want too many members of your family in one place." Tahota leaned against the couch, her

elbow resting on its back. She crossed her booted legs with one ankle on her other knee, the way a man would. Eldrinson was growing more accustomed to her, though. She wasn't as cold as he had expected. It occurred to him that he wouldn't have automatically attributed those qualities to a male colonel.

"My children are alone on Lyshriol," Eldrinson said.

"Our understanding is that most are adults according to your culture," Tahota said.

Eldrinson scowled. "They're teenagers." He used the Skolian decimal number, since the Lyshrioli octal count of years tended to confuse his wife's people. Del and Chaniece were a little older and Vyrl was married, but "teenager" would do. "Kelric is nine and Aniece is twelve," he added. "The older ones can take care of the younger, but it isn't the same as having their mother or me there."

"Please be assured," Tahota said. "We will make sure no one in your family goes without protection or supervision."

He felt far from assured. He had been under ISC protection when Raziquon captured him. "How long will this last?"

"We aren't certain. As long as we have reason to believe your family is in danger."

Taquinil paled. "It's my father, isn't it? He's sick."

The Bard tensed and turned to Tahota. "Something hap* pened to my son?"

She answered quickly. "Prince Eldrin ingested some of the assassination meds. But they had almost no effect on him."

Panic edged his thoughts. Another of his sons? " 'Almost?' Is he sick, too?"

Taquinil was listening with an expression Eldrinson recognized, as if every word was a spinning ball he had to catch. "Will he be all right?" the boy asked.

Tahota gentied her voice. "He's fine."

"How did the bad meds get inside of him?" Taquinil asked.

"From a drink. Kava." Tahota glanced at Eldrinson. "You and Councilor Roca were there, also. We're fortunate that neither of you drank the kava."

Well, that explained why ISC doctors had practically dissected him these past few days, supposedly "verifying his

health" before they began his epilepsy treatments. He hadn't believed them; the doctors treating his epilepsy hadn't even been present.

"How did the meds get into the kava?" Eldrinson asked.

"From the auto-kitchen. As to how they ended up in the machinery—" Tahota shook her head. "We don't know yet."

"Will Uncle Kurj get better?" Taquinil asked

The colonel hesitated. "We hope so." She controlled her expressions well, but Eldrinson sensed her disquiet, that the ISC commander lay dying on the brink of a war.

If Roca lost Kurj, too, Eldrinson knew it would tear her apart. And what would happen to the Kyle web? Together, Dehya and Kurj barely kept it alive. If one of them had to do it alone, the work could kill them or the meshes might unravel, negating Skolia's advantage over the Traders.

"What if Kurj never recovers?" he asked Tahota.

She met his gaze, her own stark. "Hope that he does."

He understood now why they were hiding Roca. They might soon need her in the Dyad. Given the threat of war, that could make her the single most valuable human being in the Skolian Imperialate at this moment in history.

"Could you put Roca in the Dyad link now?" Eldrinson asked.

Tahota shook her head. "If a third person tries to join while Imperator Skolia lives, it will probably kill the Imperator."

Eldrinson saw then the enormity of the decision they faced. When Kurj had joined the Dyad decades ago, it had killed his grandfather. Kurj's mind had been too much like his. The link couldn't support them both. His grandfather had relinquished his hold on life so that bis grandson could live.

Now the Assembly and ISC had to choose. They needed the Dyad. If they put in Roca, making it a Triad, Kurj could die. Her mind wasn't as close to Kurj's as his had been to his grandfather's, but they were similar. The Traders had gambled with their assassin meds and hit a jackpot. No matter how the Ruby Dynasty responded, they would suffer. If Roca didn't join the Dyad, the weight of supporting the entire Kyle web alone could destroy Dehya. If the pharaoh survived, the web would probably still collapse, leaving Skolia vulnerable.

Taquinil's thoughts hovered at the edges of Eldrinson's mind. The adults around him tried to shield their minds, but Eldrinson had already realized his grandson picked up far more than anyone told him. He knew his parents were in danger.

The Bard put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "I will be here for you. Remember that. No matter what happens, I am here."

Taquinil spoke shakily. "And me for you, Grandfather." Tahota watched them with compassion in her expression— and great sadness.

The energy spike registered in six different power stations that orbited the planet Parthonia. Techs at four of the stations recorded it in their logs. Two of them alerted ISC security on the planet. One even sent notification to Diesha. After the Dieshan report cycled through many layers of security, it was forwarded to a team investigating the attack on the Imperator. The officer in charge had assigned a battery of Els to look for patterns in the behavior of every system that served the palace. It was an exhaustive search which had so far yielded nothing useful, but they were nothing if not thorough.

A match came up: energy spikes similar to the one at Parthonia had been observed three times on Diesha in power grids, all late at night when energy usage was low enough that it didn't swamp out the spikes.

The major in charge of the investigation widened the search. Two hours later, another match came up: such spikes had also been observed roughly two years ago at the starport on the planet Lyshriol, home to the Valdoria branch of the Ruby Dynasty.

The major sent a priority message to Jazida Majda, the acting Imperator, who was currendy on the Orbiter. It arrived in the middle of the night. The EI secretary at her residence in City noted that the message was tagged with a Priority One flag and routed it to the private console in her bedroom, where she was sleeping. The console hummed, buzzed more loudly when Majda didn't awake, and then sounded a siren. Majda sat up fast, still half asleep, and smacked the receive

panel on the console by her bed. She came awake immediately when she heard the major's report. Its concluding recommendation consisted of one sentence:

We must get the Ruby Pharaoh and Assembly off Parthonia NOW.

10

Starliner Drop

On a cool, windy morning, the yacht carrying Eldrin landed in the Admiral Starport, a military facility in Selei City. Dehya met him on the tarmac, guarded by eight Jagernauts, all members of the Abaj Takalique, the elite bodyguards who had served the Ruby Dynasty since before the Ruby Empire. Seven feet tall with black hair and eyes, hooked noses, and black uniforms, they had the timeless quality of a race that had called Raylicon home for six thousand years.

An attendant rolled a morph-stair up to the yacht. Eldrin could have requested it change into a lift that would ferry him to the ground, but he preferred to walk down the stairs and stretch his legs, which felt shaky after his sickness. He had disliked the way his bodyguards hovered over him on the ship and how the doctors insisted he stay in bed after he felt better. From their minds, even through their shields and his own, he had picked up their worry about him being a Ruby heir. Eldrin knew they had to protect him, but they were going overboard about this whole business. It was only a minor illness.

His need to drink bothered him far more. The medicine that the ship's doctor had given him eased his craving, but it didn't fill the hollow spaces he had to face when he was sober. Only phorine helped. He hadn't taken it on the yacht, but he would need another dose soon. Without it he felt as if he were dying. Several times the doctor had asked about the treatment for the seizures Eldrin had suffered as a youth, and