The door to the bathing room opened.
Jai froze. Tarquine entered the bedroom, a tall shadow with lithe grace. Jai suddenly didn’t give a damn what the EI thought; he wanted to see her. “Lumos up,” he said in a low voice.
The light increased enough to show Tarquine clearly. She wore a robe similar to his, but red. The velvet rippled along her angular curves as she moved, and her hair shimmered around her shoulders. Her face was perfect, unmarred by any flaw, making her seem more like a statue than a human being.
The empress met his gaze. She stopped at the other side of the bed and stood, her eyes dark in the muted light. Her throaty voice evoked thoughts of whiskey. “Good evening, Your Highness.”
Warmth rushed to his face. “Good evening, Wife.” If she kept looking at him like that, he was going to drag her over here right now. Flustered, he lifted the decanter. “Would you care for a drink?”
She sat on her side of the bed. “You may give me one.”
He smiled. “Thank you for the permission.”
Her lips slowly curved upward. He didn’t know how she could be so icily aloof and yet look so seductive, as if she would incinerate him with her sensuality.
Distracted, he filled two glasses. On Earth he had never seen anyone drink liqueur from tumblers, but then, few other Highton customs were familiar to him, either. Sliding into the middle of the bed, he sat against the headboard. In the smoky moment, with a slow burn of alcohol warming him, he let his mental barriers ease.
An image of what Tarquine saw jumped from her mind to his: he was sitting sprawled against the headboard, his long legs stretched across the covers, pillows tumbled around him. The robe accented the breadth of his shoulders and his narrow waist and hips. On the outside, she was ice; on the inside, he excited her more than she would ever admit.
The eroticism of knowing she found him that desirable was more inebriating than any liqueur. Jai offered her a drink. Her gaze became heated, as if he had propositioned her. He caught another image from her mind: himself, extending the glass, his hair tousled, his gaze half lidded, nothing at all like a properly remote emperor. It aroused her in a way Highton reserve could never have done.
She moved closer and took the glass. As she sipped her drink, he gulped his, then realized what he was doing and stopped. At this rate, he would get himself drunk before she felt anything.
“An interesting day,” she murmured. Her ruby eyes, large and slanted upward, were half veiled by the black fringe of her lashes.
Jai wondered if she had any idea what she was doing to him. He tried to think of a suave response, but all he came up with was, “I didn’t expect our wedding to cause so much commotion.”
She laughed, as cool as the snowmelt of a river. “Indeed, Your Highness.”
“Jai.”
She tilted her head. “Jai?”
“That’s my name.”
“Jai.” Her voice caressed the word.
He finished his drink in one gulp. Then he took her tumbler, prying it out of her hand, and reached across the bed to set both their glasses on the table. He felt her surge of desire as she watched him stretch out, his robe shifting to reveal more of his legs.
Sitting up, Jai grasped her arm and spoke in a dusky voice. “Come here.”
Tarquine gave him an appraising stare, as if she knew exactly how flustered he felt. Nudging him back against the headboard, she leaned forward and brushed her lips over his. So controlled. If Jai hadn’t been an empath, he would have never known how much she wanted him. He pulled her across his body as she kissed him, her tongue teasing apart his lips. He tried to match her control, but what he really wanted was to throw her down on the bed.
When she tugged his robe off his shoulder and began to stroke his chest, he gave up. The hell with control: he rolled her over and stretched out on top of her, pulling open her robe. Like him, she wore nothing under it. Gods, she was so long. Her legs went on forever. As he moved his hands on her body, hungry for her, a thought in the back of his mind warned against losing himself this way. He pushed it away, too ravenous to listen.
“So eager,” Tarquine murmured, her voice like molasses.
Then she flipped him over.
Jai barely had time to grunt before she had pinned him on his back. Straddling his hips, she bent over him, holding down his wrists, one on either side of his head. Then she gave him a long, slow smile.
Jai tried to yank his hands away, but he couldn’t. He struggled harder, but he still couldn’t free himself. She had to have enhanced skeletal and muscular systems; even a weight lifter couldn’t have held him down this way without the help of bio-augmentation.
Jai scowled. “Let me up.”
“Now, why would I do that?” She kissed him again.
He meant to resist, to pull away, but the warmth of her lips made it hard to remember that. He kissed her back, still straining to free his wrists.
She raised her head. “So sweet.”
Ai! Not “sweet” again. He tried to sound rugged. “Let go of my arms.”
She gave him a drowsy look, her hair falling around her face. “Why would I want to, Your Delectable Highness?”
“I’m not your dessert.” Jai finally succeeded in freeing his wrists. Grasping her around the waist, he rolled her over and pressed her into the bed, his pulse surging as his desire for her built.
So they tangled together, wrestling, touching, burning within, Tarquine’s ice transformed into a devouring flame. She introduced him into her darkling universe of sensuality, and he lost himself in her fire until it consumed him.
A long time later, Jai stirred. Tarquine was dozing next to him, but when he moved, her lashes lifted. Her smile formed like the embers of a conflagration, barely perceptible now, but ready to ignite. She trailed her long, elegant finger down his cheek. “Now you are mine.”
“You can’t own me.” He had meant to sound firm, but the words came out dusky and provocative instead.
She just smiled and closed her eyes.
That night, as Tarquine slept, Jai watched her—and wondered what force of nature he had unleashed by making her the empress.
Mist curled around a circular table made from stone. It stood alone, incongruously, on a shelf of rock high in the mountains. On one side of the shelf, a cliff sheered down in a vertical wall; on the other three sides, cliffs rose up into the fog. Admiral Xirad Kaliga waited by the cliff behind the table. His bodyguards had faded into the mist, but he knew they remained nearby.
An engine rumbled. A flier was coming down, veiled by fog, landing on a field Kaliga’s personal security people had carved out of the mountains nearby. Laser-based defense systems protected these pockets and shrouded them from monitors. Even ESComm had no record of this place.
Three figures coalesced out of the mist: two bodyguards and the hefty form of General Kryx Taratus, the other Joint Commander of ESComm.
Kaliga nodded to his counterpart. “Taratus.”
“Hell of a time to meet,” the general grumbled. “Damnable fog.”
“Veils have their uses,” Kaliga said.
Taratus waved his hand. “Everything has its use. If not, then I say dispose of it.”
Kaliga suppressed his frown. Taratus often balanced on the edge of insult by direct speech. But Kaliga was used to it. He sat at the table, facing the general across the stone disk. “Even if something has a use, one may want to dispense with it.” Like their tiresome emperor.
Taratus lowered himself onto the curved bench. “The plans for peace talks with Skolia continue to progress.”
“A shame.” This time Kaliga did frown. “One could imagine instead the great heights Eube could achieve if we chose to seize the initiative over the Skolians.”
Taratus snorted. “It takes a great leader to seize such initiative.”
“So it does.” Kaliga paused. “I understand that an assassination attempt was made against the emperor on his wedding day. I am aghast.” It truly had appalled him; he
would have thought Taratus’s people could have done a better job. “May the emperor live a long and glorious life.”
“Glorious, indeed,” Taratus muttered. “It is fortunate the Line of Qox has support from the Line of Xir.” He drummed his fingers on the table, revealing his sarcasm. “Failures come in many forms, including uncooperative dawns.”
Thinking of Sunrise, Kaliga scowled. “The dawn seems to shed its light on the Line of Raziquon.” It disgusted him. The emperor had treated Raziquon worse than Kaliga would have expected even if the palace had found evidence against him—which they hadn’t. Convicting Raziquon on the testimony of a provider was an unspeakable outrage. Jaibriol’s decision to throw Raziquon in prison was made even worse by the contrast with how well ESComm had treated Corbal Xir while he was in custody.
“Appeals can chill the dawn.” Although Taratus sounded detached, the rhythm of his words indicated his anger.
Kaliga nodded. Of course Raziquon’s kin had appealed the prison sentence. The incarceration of their lord was the true crime. Questions of legality in Sunrise’s abduction were unimportant; if ESComm needed such an action, it became acceptable.
The girl’s resilience had surprised him, but her silence also revealed Corbal’s secrets. Too many defenses protected her mind. True, an Aristo could train or adapt his providers to resist interrogation, but the law allowed only limited protection, precisely for this reason, in case ESComm needed to question the provider.
Sunrise obviously had protections beyond the legal limit. That Kaliga’s agents had found no evidence of an ESComm operative working for Corbal Xir suggested Xir had trained her himself, which made it even worse. He was a Highton. For him to teach his provider how to resist other Hightons was treason.
Kaliga understood what motivated Xir; he had been tempted to give Silver similar safeguards. But he resisted the weakness that drove him to betray his Highton lineage by giving his favored provider illicit protections. Corbal Xir should have done the same.
After Kaliga had pondered in silence for several moments, Taratus grunted, a most un-Highton sound. “I’ve heard it said silence is worth more than platinum. Apparently we only have a shortage of the metal.”
Kaliga raised his eyebrow. For Taratus, that was an unexpectedly clever joke, with Sunrise as the “silence,” and Kaliga, too. The double meaning surprised him; Taratus generally had a much cruder wit.
“One wonders how High Judge Muze will hear the Raziquon appeal,” Kaliga said. Her ruling could go either way. Common sense and Highton decency said she should pardon Raziquon, but her kinship with the emperor could motivate her to support Jaibriol. “The political landscape changes.”
“For the worse,” Taratus grumbled.
“Evolution is an ongoing process.”
“Perhaps we ought to evolve it more to our liking.”
Kaliga leaned forward. “You have a suggestion?”
“Consider the Skolians.”
Kaliga moved his hand in dismissal. “If ever I wondered about the mental stability of the Ruby Dynasty, I no longer doubt their insanity. The only intelligent thing they have done in the past five hundred years is to overthrow that Assembly of theirs. Only a government run by providers would come up with the idiotic notion of giving the Assembly back half its power. What the hell kind of coup is that?”
Taratus laughed. “One could compliment the Ruby Pharaoh on her originality.”
“Your tact is laudable.” Kaliga would have liked to do many things with the Ruby Pharaoh, but complimenting her originality wasn’t one of them.
“Eubian tact always is. We aren’t Skolians.”
“Were Eube ever to engage in activities similar to those of the Skolians, we would follow a more elevated course.” If ESComm overthrew the Qox Dynasty, Kaliga damn well wouldn’t hesitate to execute Jaibriol III and install his own emperor.
Taratus drummed his fingers on the table. “Fortunately, our government is more stable than that of the Skolians.”
There was that, unfortunately. The people of Eube practically worshipped their emperor. Even most Aristos maintained a certain awe, though that was more because the Qox Dynasty had extended its political and economic hooks into the affairs of every Aristo Line, manipulating fates and finances. And the populace favored Jaibriol III, the handsome, charismatic youth who had appeared at Eube’s greatest hour of need. It would be virtually impossible to garner support in ESComm for an overthrow of the Qox Dynasty.
“You are right, of course,” Kaliga said. “We are fortunate to have a superior government.” He gave Taratus a thoughtful look. “The only way I can imagine such an upheaval would be in the unlikely event that our emperor turned out to be a fake. We are lucky such could never happen.”
Taratus looked as if he had eaten a sour fruit. “I am so pleased we all accepted his imperial DNA.”
Indeed. They had all seen the proof of Jaibriol III’s claim to the throne. His genetics had been verified and reverified. They had little hope of convincing anyone the emperor was a fraud. Jaibriol II had sired Jaibriol III, just as Jaibriol III would probably soon produce his own heir.
Kaliga’s mouth quirked upward. “Maybe the imperial hormones will do the trick. Distract him from his job.”
Taratus smirked. “Of course we all wish the emperor well in his marriage.”
“A truly matchless pairing.” Kaliga couldn’t believe Jaibriol had the effrontery to marry one of his ministers. The job of an empress was to look aesthetic, not hold the most influential financial position in the empire. Hell, Jaibriol would do better with the aesthetic duties than his hard-edged wife. Kaliga didn’t know which gave him worse heartburn, the idea of Corbal Xir as the power behind the Carnelian Throne or Tarquine Iquar practically in the throne.
Maybe Jaibriol could be discredited. His reign so far had been anything but glorious. With all his mistakes and bizarre decisions, he confused people as much as he annoyed them. Isolating him from Corbal had been a stroke of genius; without the Xir Lord’s advice, Jaibriol had alienated an impressive number of people. In fact, it wasn’t the emperor they had to discredit; given the chance, he would do it himself. Corbal and Tarquine were the ones to focus on. Without them, Jaibriol would be easy prey.
“Silence and platinum,” Kaliga mused. “It appears our empress has experienced a shortage of neither.”
Taratus’s posture indicated interest. “Not that the Line of Qox would use its power to destabilize the economy by allowing the empress to corner the market on platinum.”
“Of course not,” Kaliga said. “Any rumors to the contrary must be false.” He rested his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand. “So, too, must be rumors suggesting Corbal Xir has violated both imperial law and Highton decency by training his provider to protect her mind.”
Taratus grinned. “Terrible, isn’t it, the way rumors start?”
“Terrible indeed.”
“It is fortunate for us that Raziquon has no platinum mines.”
Kaliga blinked. How had Raziquon come into this? Not knowing what Taratus was about, he gave a generic reply. “Many possibilities exist.”
“Consider a scenario, purely hypothetical of course.”
“Of course.”
Taratus leaned forward. “Suppose a Highton with no link to ESComm has reason to interrogate the provider of another powerful Highton. Trained as a spy, she ‘listens’ to his mind even as he questions her. Suspecting as much, he puts false information in his thoughts.”
That intrigued Kaliga. It would be like Raziquon to let Sunrise “overhear” a false story. He would have had to take care, though, lest she also pick up his intent to lie. It would be a difficult undertaking, but Raziquon could probably pull it off. It was why Kaliga paid him so well; irritating though he was, he was also thorough.
“He could plant disinformation in the camp of his adversary,” Kaliga said.
Taratus laughed. “He might even make her think he owns illegal platinum mines.” Kaliga fr
owned. “So what?”
Taratus could have taken offense at the blunt question, but he chose to overlook it. “False accusations, Admiral. Such as shame for the accuser. If he’s caught.”
Kaliga mulled it over. False accusations were the blight of an Aristo. They could be valuable currency, but if the accusers were caught, they suffered severe repercussions: shunning, civil suits, even criminal charges. If Corbal accused Raziquon of owning illegal mines and was proved wrong, it would weaken his standing among Hightons and could cause him legal problems. For one thing, Raziquon could sue him for defamation of character. In a culture where appearance and reputation were everything, no Aristo would tolerate such an offense. Of course Corbal wouldn’t risk an open statement—unless he had reason to believe it posed him no risk.
Kaliga weighed the possibilities. Minister Iquar did have questionable investments in platinum. With her marriage, she and Corbal became kin. If Corbal falsely accused Raziquon, and then his own kin were proven guilty of the same misdeeds, it would stain the Qox name as well as the Line of Xir.
Another idea came to Kaliga, a way to deal with the emperor’s disgraceful pardon of Jafe Maccar, the captain of the Skolian merchant vessel. ESComm couldn’t openly censure the pardon; the emperor could retaliate by revealing how Taratus’s fool brother had ignored the Halstaad Code of War and auctioned Kelric Val-doria, the weapons officer on that vessel. Nor did they want to draw attention to the fact that Valdoria—now the Imperator—had walked off right under their noses.
But suppose the emperor’s kin committed an even worse violation of the Code than that perpetrated by Azar Taratus? It would give ESComm ammunition against the palace.
Kaliga rubbed his chin. “I am gratified to know that no ships owned by our illustrious emperor prey on Skolian vessels.” In truth, he had no doubt the Line of Qox owned numerous pirate ships that raided the Skolians, though the emperor was probably too naive to realize it.
Taratus waved away the comment. “You’ll never trace any pirates to the emperor. His predecessors were too careful.”
The Moon's Shadow (Saga of the Skolian Empire) Page 21
