The Ruby Dice (7 page)

What startled him wasn't that the Janq Line sent pirates into Imperialate space; half the Aristo Houses had fleets raiding the Skolians. But they were rarely caught. Of all the ways Tarquine might have brought down the Janq Line, he never would have expected this. For one, it would be difficult to achieve, given how well Aristos protected their fleets. More to the point, it was understood that no Aristo Line touched the "merchant" fleets of another. If Tarquine had aided in the Janq downfall, she had broken an unwritten law of her own people. Why?

"I'm surprised they were prosecuted," Jaibriol said.

"Well, the Skolians caught them in Skolian space with Skolian captives. They had plenty of evidence."

He wanted to demand
How?
but she would never admit any involvement, and he was certain no evidence existed that could link her to the situation. The idea that one of their own would leak such information to the Skolians was anathema to any Aristo—except him. He would have liked to throw all their "merchants" in chains.

He recalled his discussion with Tarquine about the Ivory Sector corporations trying to corner the export market. He spoke warily. "I find myself wondering if the Janq corporation that suffered this setback was involved in the consortium that hopes to attain a monopoly on the Ivory mercantile system."

"Oddly enough," Tarquine said, "they seem to be the major players. Or they were, before this fiasco. With their affairs in such disarray, they've had to step back from the mercantile venture. It appears the consortium will collapse."

"Imagine that," Jaibriol said sourly. He had been preparing for talks with them, to limit their monopoly. "So negotiations with the Janq Line won't be needed after all."

"Apparently not."

"And of course you had nothing to do with it."

If she heard his sarcasm, she gave no hint. "Of course."

Jaibriol sometimes thought she was like a night-panther stalking the palace, sleek and dark, deadly in her beauty. She slipped among the corridors of power as if they were trees in a jungle, her form visible and then gone as if she had never been there. How or when she attacked, he rarely knew. Telling her to stop was like trying to catch a shadow, for no proof ever connected her to the results of her operations.

"Why are you sitting over there?" he asked. It gave him an eerie feeling, as if she would fade into the night, only to reappear later with no blood on her hands, but her lovely, feral eyes glinting with triumph.

Cloth rustled. Tarquine coalesced out of the shadows, walking toward him. She sat on the bed, sleek in her silken black nightshift. "Azile spoke with me today."

"Azile speaks with you many days." Azile Xir was the Minister of Intelligence, after all, and she the Minister of Finance. The fact that they didn't like each other didn't negate their need to work together.

"Some days," Tarquine said sourly, "his words are less sublime than others."

He rubbed his knuckles down her cheek. "
Sublime
is an overrated word."

"Particularly in the matter of reminders."

"Reminders?" He had no idea what she meant, and she had shielded her mind.

"About heirs," she said. "Ours, to be specific." Only a hint of anger touched her voice, but from Tarquine, that was a great deal. "Or our lack thereof."

Jaibriol gritted his teeth. Azile wasn't the first to bring up the matter, not by far. No matter how young Tarquine looked or how good her health, she was well past the age when most women could conceive. She had eggs in cryogenic storage, but she would need the help of specialists to carry a child.

"I've learned to ignore hints about our nonexistent progeny," he said. "Sublime or otherwise."

"You need an heir, Jai. Our firstborn will also inherit my title as head of the Iquar Line." A fierce pride infused her voice. "We must both ensure our successions."

Jaibriol did want to have this conversation. He had avoided it for years. He had spent his childhood surrounded by the warmth and love of his family, and that was what he had imagined for his children. Not the chilly world of Aristos. In his youth, he had looked forward to fatherhood, inspired by the example of his parents; now he never wanted heirs.

He said only, "It isn't safe here."

"We can protect our child. It is well known your father isolated you in your childhood." She waited a beat. "To protect you against assassins, of course."

"Of course." His palms felt clammy. Tarquine knew the truth about him. She kept his secret just as he kept hers, that she had altered her own brain so she could never transcend. It was a change Aristos considered unforgivable. If they knew, they would destroy her. It was also why Jaibriol had married her; she was the only Highton woman he could live with, for she would never transcend with him. It also gave him leverage over her to keep his secret. That over the years he may have fallen in love with his deadly wife was a thought he avoided, for he didn't know how to deal with the idea he could love an Aristo.

Tarquine knew his grandfather had secluded his father until adulthood because his father was a psion. The Qox Dynasty had wanted a Ruby psion among its ranks, someone who could wrest the Kyle web from the Ruby Dynasty. With Jaibriol's father, they finally succeeding in breeding the psion they wanted—and he rejected Eube. Instead, he sought out one of the few people like him: Soz Valdoria of the Ruby Dynasty. Jaibriol's mother.

He spoke in a low voice. "Our heir will be more you than me." It could never be a psion; Tarquine didn't have the genes. The child would grow up to transcend on the pain of his own father. It was a prospect too gruesome for him to contemplate.

"The longer we wait," she said, "the greater the chance one or both of us will die before the child reaches maturity, or even before its birth. Is that what you want?"

"No." He shifted his weight. "But I would rather have this conversation another time."

"We've avoided it for ten years."

"I know." He pulled her closer. "Tomorrow, Tarquine. We will talk about succession then."

She put her arms around his neck. "Very well. Tomorrow."

He drew her down to lie with him, deep into the silk sheets and the shadows of the night. But as he caressed her soft skin, he felt as if he were drowning. Tomorrow he would put her off again, as he had for years, but someday he would have to decide: sire an Aristo child or die without an heir and leave Eube in the hands of those who would seek to subjugate humanity.

Kelric played dice.

The cockpit of the Skolian scout ship curved around him in bronzed hues. He was traveling in inversion, which meant the speed of his ship was a complex number, with an imaginary as well as a real part. It eliminated the singularity at light-speed in the equations of special relativity. He could never go
at
light-speed, so he went around it much as a cyclist might leave a path to ride around an infinitely high tree. Once past the "tree," he could attain immense speeds, many times that of light. During such travel, his ship needed only minimal oversight, which meant he had little to do. So he swung a panel in front of himself and played Quis solitaire.

He built structures of the Trader emperor. Jaibriol the Third had only been seventeen when he came into power. Kelric could barely remember being that young, let alone imagine ruling an empire at that age. Jaibriol had compensated for his deadly lack of experience by marrying his most powerful cabinet minister, Tarquine Iquar. Kelric knew Tarquine. Oh yes, he knew her, far too well. While he had been serving aboard the merchant ship
Corona,
the Traders had captured it and sold him into slavery. Tarquine had bought him. If he hadn't escaped, he would still be her possession.

Uncomfortable with the memory, he shifted his focus to politics. His structures evolved strangely. They implied Jaibriol Qox genuinely wanted peace. Kelric found it hard to credit, yet here it was, in his Quis.

The peace talks had foundered years ago. He had represented ISC at those talks, a military counterbalance to Dehya. They made an effective team: she the diplomat and he the threat. But for it to work, they had to
get
to the peace table. He had hoped Roca might sway the Assembly away from its current intransigence and back to negotiations. If they and the Traders didn't hammer out a treaty, their empires were going to pound away at each other until nothing remained.

Patterns of the upcoming Assembly session filtered into his Quis. The structures predicted an unwanted result: his mother would lose the vote. He varied parameters, searching for models that predicted a win, and found a few. They relied on her ability to sway councilors outside of the session, with a greater chance of success if he helped her. Which meant he couldn't avoid attending her infernal dinner parties. That put him in a bad mood, and he quit playing dice.

Sitting back, he gazed at the forward holoscreen, which showed the stars inverted from their positions at sublight speeds. He could replace the map with a display of dice and play Quis with the ship's EI. It seemed pointless, though. He had taught it the rules, and it played just like him, but without creativity. For ten years, he had done almost nothing but Quis solitaire. He was starved for a session with a real dice player, a good one. He had wanted to teach Dehya, had even given her a set of dice, but then he changed his mind. She was too smart. When she mastered Quis, she could unravel his secrets from his play. He couldn't trust anyone with that knowledge.

On Coba, he had sat at Quis with many Calani, saturating their culture-spanning game with his military influence until the war erupted. Ixpar claimed that capacity for violence had always been within her people, that in the Old Age, queens had warred with one another until they nearly destroyed civilization. Finally, in desperation, they subsumed their aggression into the Quis. He believed her, but he also saw what they had achieved, a millennium of peace, one that ended when he came to their world.

Kelric would never forget the windriders battling in the sky or Karn roaring in flames. In that chaos, he had stolen a rider and escaped. By then, he had known all too well why the Cobans wanted the Restriction. If he, only one person, could have such a dramatic effect, what would happen if the Skolian Imperialate came to Coba in full force? He had sworn that day to protect his children, Ixpar, and Coba.

Which was why he had to go back.

The voice droned on the ship's comm. "Identify yourself immediately. This world is Restricted. Identify yourself . . ."

The automated message kept repeating, an eerie reminder of the day, ten years ago, when Kelric had flown to this starport so he could escape Coba. It was the only warning anyone received, either in space or on-planet. The port was fully automated and usually empty. ISC didn't care who landed as long as they stayed in the port. Any Skolian who entered the Restricted zone, which consisted of the entire planet outside of the port, essentially ceased to exist. Kelric doubted anyone in ISC bothered to keep track, though. It would matter only if the Cobans held someone against his will. Unfortunately, they had done exactly that with him, for eighteen years. It had nearly killed him.

Had ISC discovered the Cobans had imprisoned a Ruby prince, they would have considered it an act of aggression subject to military reprisals. They would have put the Cobans under martial law, prosecuted the Managers involved, absorbed Coba into the Imperialate, and never realized until too late, if ever, that they had destroyed a remarkable culture. He had the authority now to prevent the military actions, but he couldn't stop his family from turning their relentless focus here if anyone discovered his interest—which they might if the port recorded his landing. So he wouldn't go to the port.

"Mace," he said. "Get a map of the Coban Estates from the port. Hide your presence from the mesh system there."

"Accessing." Then Mace said, "The files are locked."

"Use my keys." His security should top any port safeguards.

"I have the map," Mace said.

"They're keeping Jeremiah Coltman in a city called Viasa," Kelric said. "It's in the Upper Teotec Mountains, the most northeast Estate." He was fortunate it was the Viasa Manager who had bought Jeremiah's contract. Kelric had never been to Viasa, and his inviolable seclusion in the Calanya of other Estates meant that none of Viasa's citizens had ever seen him.

"I've identified a city that fits your description," Mace said. "But it's called Tehnsa."

"Oh. That's right." He had forgotten. "Viasa is below Tehnsa, near Greyrock Falls and the Viasa-Tehnsa Dam."

"I have the coordinates," Mace said.

A holomap formed to Kelric's left, a dramatic image of the towering Upper Teotec Mountains. The winds in those peaks were brutal. His ship was a Dalstern scout, designed for flight in planetary terrains as well as space, but it would need guidance. At least Coba had aircraft beacons. Although their culture had backslid during their millennia of isolation, they had redeveloped some technology even before ISC rediscovered them. Their windriders were small but respectable aircraft.

"The dam has a beacon that can guide us," Kelric said.

"I can't find it," Mace said. "And this map is wrong. We're passing over what appears to be Tehnsa, but the map places it southwest of here."

Kelric frowned. Although Mace continuously updated the holomap, it could only calculate the changes as fast as the scout's sensors could provide data about the mountains.

"How are you handling the winds?" Kelric asked.

"So far, fine. They're increasing, though, as we go lower in the atmosphere." After a pause, Mace added, "This port map is appalling. It hardly matches the one I'm making at all."

"Can you find the beacon?"

"So far, no."

"Keep looking."

"I'm getting a signal!"

Relief washed over Kelric. "From the dam?"

"No. It's a mesh system."

What the blazes? "Cobans don't have mesh systems."

"It's from Viasa," Mace said. "Not a guidance beacon. It's a general comm channel."

He couldn't imagine where the Viasans had obtained equipment to produce such a signal. He toggled his long-range comm and spoke in Skolian Flag, which was used by his people as a common language to bridge their many tongues. He didn't want to reveal he knew Teotecan, the Coban language, unless it was necessary.