“Ten seconds,” someone said.
Aliana wondered if the pharaoh would kneel to Emperor Jaibriol. Probably not. Skolians seemed to think they weren’t slaves. It had shocked Aliana at first, but after what she had seen of Aristos, she rather liked the way Skolians thumbed their noses at them.
“Five seconds,” the tech said. The curving screens that backed both the holo-stage and the emperor’s dais rippled with abstract swirls, gold and black.
Someone else said, “We’re running—now!”
A woman appeared on the holo-stage, seated in a gold chair inlaid with red gems. The Ruby Throne? It looked as real as the Carnelian Throne where the emperor sat. All these chairs named after jewels. As furniture went, they didn’t look particularly comfortable.
The pharaoh was a delicate woman with black hair piled on her head and tendrils curling around her face, as shining as Highton hair but without the distinctive glitter. She had large eyes, green maybe, but with a translucent rosy sheen. Aliana had expected someone hard and stern, not this ethereal beauty. The pharoah had the softness of a provider, but her gaze showed strength rather than vulnerability, contradicting her fragile appearance.
The emperor and the pharaoh regarded each other. The strained emotions in the room built until Aliana felt ready to snap.
Emperor Jaibriol spoke in Highton. “The Line of Qox acknowledges the Ruby Dynasty.”
The woman answered in a melodic voice, speaking Highton with a lilting accent. “The House of Skolia acknowledges the Qox Dynasty.”
“We are gratified to hear of your nephew’s good health,” Jaibriol said.
“It is indeed fortunate,” the pharaoh said, her voice and expression neutral.
For flaming sake, Aliana thought. They had gone to all this trouble and preparation so the emperor of Eube could tell the pharaoh of Skolia that he was glad her nephew wasn’t sick?
“News of his health will gratify my people,” the pharaoh said.
Jaibriol studied her. “I imagine they will also have an interest in news of how he recovered.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But such a matter is private.”
Well, sure, Aliana thought. Despite the odd subject, the pharoah’s response seemed reasonable. It wasn’t anyone’s business how the doctors treated whatever had been wrong with her nephew. Yet for some reason everyone in the room had come to attention, as if the pharaoh had just made a vital offer rather than a bland comment. Then again, Hightons never seemed to say anything like normal people. If Skolians were similar, who knew what this conversation actually meant.
“A worthy sentiment,” Jaibriol said. “It could be intrusive on his privacy to make his treatment public.” He paused. “Or the condition it treated.”
The pharaoh spoke carefully. “Some cultures require confidentiality agreements protecting the privacy of their patients.”
Aliana was enjoying the bizarre exchange. Now they had a confidentiality agreement, and why ever would the emperor care about Skolian medical practices? Maybe they were talking about the loud Skolian prince, and he had lost his voice so he couldn’t sing about Hightons anymore. She discovered she was disappointed with that thought.
“I imagine the terms of such an agreement would be of interest to all those involved,” Jaibriol said.
“A proposal might be considered.” Quietly the pharaoh added, “Even welcomed.”
Someone in the room exhaled. Aliana looked around, noting the relief among the people here. Knowing the pharaoh might welcome a proposal from her nephew’s doctors on how to keep his health a private matter apparently made a lot of Eubian people happy. She tugged on Red’s sleeve. When he glanced at her, she gave him a questioning look. He responded with the barest shrug. He didn’t understand what was going on, either.
The emperor glanced at Robert, who seemed to know exactly what the look meant. Robert bowed and left the dais, walking toward the back of the room. Aliana watched with mild curiosity—until she realized he was headed straight to her and Red. As she stiffened, Robert stopped in front of them.
The aide spoke to Red in Highton. “You will stand on the dais by Emperor Jaibriol. Don’t speak unless he asks you to.” He glanced at Aliana. “You may come, but stay back.”
“Why would they want us up there?” Aliana asked.
Red shot her a warning glance. Then he bowed to Robert. “Yes, sir. Is my honor.”
Aliana closed her mouth and followed them, wondering what she and Red could possibly have to do with a nephew of the Ruby Pharaoh and his doctor’s confidentiality agreement. The pharaoh and Jaibriol continued their exchange as she and Red came up to the dais. Aliana hung back, unsure how to act.
Robert nudged Red forward. As Red stepped onto the dais, he averted his eyes, looking at neither the emperor nor the pharaoh.
The pharaoh spoke gently. “Young man, can you hear me?”
Red looked up. “Yes, Your Glory.”
Robert spoke in a low voice to Red. “The pharaoh is always ‘Your Highness.’ ”
Red spoke quickly. “Yes, Your Highness.”
Aliana thought the pharaoh had an odd look about her. No one else seemed to notice. They seemed to see her as a beautiful object, like an exotic vase of great value. They appreciated her beauty but didn’t much like anything else about her. Their thoughts had a hard edge, their anger that this person sat on a throne. However, they had a grudging respect for her Highton speech, which apparently included her ability to say nothing much at all as if it were a profound statement.
Even so. Aliana still thought the pharaoh had an odd look. Maybe no one else saw it because the much greater oddness of having to treat her as an equal with the emperor swamped out everything else. But something was off about the way she and the emperor interacted. Strange, that. Aliana wished she could figure out what bothered her.
The pharaoh was speaking to Red. “You asked my people for asylum.”
“I not mean to offend,” Red told her.
“You gave no offense,” she said kindly. Turning to the emperor, she said, “I understand he has a high Kyle rating?”
“His tests put it at 7.6.” Jaibriol was speaking in Highton, but his style had changed, become more direct, as if they were now discussing business.
Aliana wasn’t sure what 7.6 meant, but the emperor had just lied to the pharaoh. As far as he knew, Red had lost whatever made him a psion, his brain burnt out by his trauma on Muze’s Helios, which as she understood it, would make him zero on this scale of theirs. Jaibriol was misleading the pharaoh and everyone here approved. Except, no, he wasn’t lying. Or she didn’t think so; it was hard to read him from within her mental fortress.
Jaibriol glanced at Robert with one of those silent communications they seemed to know so well. Robert nodded—and took Aliana’s elbow.
What the blazes? No, she couldn’t go up there; that wasn’t in the script. But Robert nudged her forward. With her heartbeat ratcheting up, she stepped onto the dais. She felt exposed up there. It gave her a better view of the media center, however, including screens that showed images of the emperor in his chair with Red next to him. She was standing slightly behind Red, a tall girl with yellow hair, blue eyes, a blue jumpsuit, and a narrow collar around her neck. She hardly recognized herself.
“This girl also asked for asylum,” Jaibriol told the pharaoh.
“I see.” Dyhianna regarded Aliana with luminous eyes. She looked so real. Even knowing it was a holo, Aliana felt as if she were in the presence of the actual person, as if she could reach out and touch the pharaoh. She struck a chord in Aliana, though Aliana couldn’t have said why she found a sense of familiarity with a Skolian.
“She is also a psion,” Jaibriol continued. “A rating of three or four.”
Huh. The emperor was being strange again. Tide said no one here knew she was a psion. So why say three or four? To convince the pharaoh to take her, probably. Aliana had thought Skolians didn’t buy providers, but that seemed to be exactly what they wer
e doing. They would want more than a zero. Maybe the emperor knew the Skolians at the embassy believed Aliana’s rating was nine. If that was true, though, why undervalue it? On the surface, his reason for misleading the Skolians was obvious; they were Skolians, so they deserved to be tricked. Except the summit was about to start, and he would want them amenable to his wishes, not angry because he cheated them.
Of course, if he knew she was a nine and the other Hightons thought she was zero, then he looked good to the Hightons for putting one over on the pharaoh, but he would please the pharaoh by giving her a higher rated provider than he claimed. So he won all around.
Whatever his reasoning, Aliana wished he would finish. Her head hurt. Admiral Muze was watching them from behind a console. Just looking at him made her temples ache.
The pharaoh was speaking. “Two psions, five spies. That split would unbalance a scale.”
“That depends on what you’re weighing on each side,” Jaibriol said.
“Perhaps.” She contemplated him, her face composed. “Five spies who took a prince.”
Jaibriol spoke carefully. “The loss of the Eubian merchants weighs heavily with some, bringing demands of execution. Perhaps it is time to let that weight ease.”
The pharaoh inclined her head. “And in doing so, give more balance.”
Jaibriol returned her nod, which as far as Aliana could tell, meant they were agreed. But on what? Not to kill someone who had misplaced some Eubian merchants? For that and two psions, the pharaoh would give him five spies, all because her nephew had been sick and was well now. Sure, right, that made sense.
Even so, it amazed Aliana how well the pharaoh dealt with the emperor. They were two of a kind. Yes, she knew it was insulting to compare the emperor to a Skolian. But Aliana actually rather liked the pharaoh, at least more than she liked Hightons.
As Robert maneuvered Aliana and Red away from the dais, the sovereigns continued their convoluted non-conversation. Aides, officers, and techs closed in, cutting off Aliana’s view of the proceedings. But the empress, who was standing a bit off from the others, was staring at her, and a chill went up Aliana’s back.
Then they were out of the suite. Aliana looked at Red, and he closed his eyes, then opened them again, watching her. She knew how he felt. It was a relief to be out of there, away from the Aristos, especially Admiral Muze. She had seen it in Red’s mind, flashes of the Highton who had brutalized him with the arrogant cruelty of one who believed it was his exalted right. To live with that every day, to know it would never get better; no, it was far better to scrabble in a slum, starving and freezing, than to live in luxury as a provider.
Four Razers accompanied them to the lift, but only Tide went down with them. As soon as they were alone, Aliana spoke to Red. “Are you all right?”
He nodded jerkily. “Was hard. Seeing him.”
She made a face. “I didn’t like him, either.”
“Aliana,” Tide warned.
“What happened in there?” she asked him. “Are they selling us to the Skolians?”
“Trading,” Tide said. “You two for five agents that the Skolians captured.”
“What was that bit about dead merchants?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Tide admitted. “I think the emperor is saying they won’t demand the execution of the Skolian commandos who killed the Eubian merchants.”
Interesting. “So the Skolians got back their angry prince,” Aliana said.
“Apparently,” Tide said.
“I thought people from Earth take prince,” Red said.
Tide shrugged. “Everyone claims something different.”
Aliana doubted he would tell them any of his theories, but she tried anyway. “Why trade me to the Skolians? And why say I’m ‘three or four’? That means they think I’m a psion, right? But not a very strong one.”
“Well, yes,” Tide said. “That’s exactly what it means.”
“But the emperor was—” She bit off the word “lying.” More carefully, she said, “I thought everyone at the palace believed I wasn’t a psion.”
“You are probably an empath,” Tide said. “They haven’t had time to test you formally, so the emperor may be guessing.”
She thought back over the meeting. “Why was everyone relieved when the Ruby Pharaoh said that her doctor would welcome a confidentiality agreement saying he couldn’t talk about the singing prince being sick or whatever happened before they rescued him from the ESComm soldiers who kidnapped him while they were pretending to be Allied soldiers?”
“Good gods,” Tide said. “You picked up all that?”
“Mostly from the emperor and the pharaoh,” Aliana said. “A little from you just now.”
He stopped looking astounded and went back into Razer mode, which made him a lot harder to read. “The pharaoh didn’t mean a doctor. She was telling the emperor that if he traded you and Red to her for the ESComm agents, she wouldn’t make public what happened to Prince Del-Kurj.”
“Why?” Aliana asked, fascinated. “She’s giving back the agents. Why agree to more?”
Tide shrugged. “Maybe she wants this summit to succeed.”
“They both do,” Aliana said. “Both her and emperor Qox.”
“You think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
Tide looked amused. “You know a lot about the motivations of emperors and pharaohs.”
Aliana flushed. Of course she didn’t know. Actually, she did, but it sounded foolish when she said that, so she kept her mouth shut.
“Why Skolians take us?” Red asked.
“You’re psions,” Tide said. “That makes you valuable to them.”
“You’re coming with us, aren’t you?” Aliana said. “Like you were going to defect?”
Tide spoke harshly. “I was on a mission. I would rather die than defect to the Skolians.”
Aliana suspected he was protecting himself. Maybe he meant it, maybe not. She had thought she knew Tide, but there was far more to him than the enforcer who had worked for Harindor.
“Admiral Muze not want emperor to give us to Skolians,” Red said.
Aliana stiffened. “No! He can’t stop us.”
“Actually,” Tide said, “ESComm has to approve the exchange. They haven’t yet.”
That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “They’ll let it happen, won’t they?”
“I wouldn’t presume to know their thoughts,” Tide said, in full Razer mode.
Aliana felt queasy. If the exchange didn’t go through, she and Red could both end up as providers. The Skolians would reveal what happened to their prince and the summit would—
Would what?
She didn’t want to find out the answer.
XXVI
Island of Sanctuary
The building called the Amphitheatre of Leto resembled a great galleon constructed from crystal. Trees surrounded it, aqua and sea-green, sculpted like waves and tipped by foamy white blossoms, each a spray of petaled tubes that sang when the wind blew across them. The Allieds had raised the amphitheatre within only days, working with both Skolian and Eubian architects. On a clear winter morning in the hills above New Athens, the Trader Emperor and the Ruby Pharaoh came in person to the same planet, the same city, the same building. No such meeting had ever before occured. More protections were in place than had been seen at any other summit for any the three major civilizations that comprised the trillions strong population of humanity.
So began the first day of the Delos Summit.
Birds were flying outside the floor-to-ceiling window of the chamber where Kelric stood. He had never seen such a species, bright red with blue wings. He enjoyed watching them soar in the violet-tinged sky. This chamber was in a “mast” of the building, a tower room with its narrow window-wall offering a panoramic view. In the distance, New Athens sprawled across the land, a city of wide streets and airy markets that were mostly empty now in the burning heat of the day. Beyond the city, the ocean waves cras
hed against the reefs.
It seemed fitting to Kelric that the summit was here on a world of sanctuary instead of on Earth. This peace they sought would join two bitterly estranged branches of Earth’s lost children, who had been sundered long before they rediscovered the legendary home of their species.
A note chimed behind him, high and clear. Turning, he saw Dehya coming through the archway of the chamber, a slender woman in a simple white dress. Her black hair was piled high on her head, caught by slender braids.
“Is it time?” Kelric asked.
“We have a few minutes.” She joined him at the window. A cloud floated below the glass, and birds arrowed through it, streaks of red.
“World of sanctuary,” she murmured.
“Perhaps,” Kelric said. They could hope.
She looked up at him. “That girl on the dais was Aliana.”
“So they claim.” He shook his head. “She had normal hair and skin. Blue eyes. No gold.”
“Kelric, she looks like you. But with her coloring disguised, it’s hard to make the connection unless you’re looking for it.”
“I hope that’s it.” It had shaken him to see a girl who might be his kin wearing Trader slave restraints. Did Jaibriol suspect the girl’s identity? When they had suggested the exchange of the ESComm agents for the two psions who asked for asylum, Kelric had feared ESComm would refuse. The youth was a valuable provider. If Dehya had agreed to take only Aliana, it would have looked like an absurdly unbalanced exchange, drawing exactly the attention to the girl they were trying to avoid. Although he was gratified that their plans for the trade had so far worked, they were nowhere near completion. He wouldn’t believe Aliana was safe until they had her away from Delos.
Dehya spoke quietly. “We should join the others.”
He let out a breath. “Yes, let’s go.”
They left the chamber together, Kelric limping. His leg ached more than usual, perhaps because of the heavier gravity here. Compared to the vibrant youth of Jaibriol Qox, he felt aged and slow. Dehya seemed so small. His job was to protect the Ruby Pharaoh, not put her in a building full of Aristos. Still, they had made the best decision they could, given the situation. Besides, Dehya only looked fragile. She had a strength of will like a steel rod.
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