The Ruby Dice (31 page)

Pull body forward . . .

Lift foot . . .

Lift foot to Lock corridor . . .

Kelric lurched into the corridor and stumbled along its glittering floor. His time sense snapped back to normal, and he heaved in a breath, his chest expanding as he gulped air. Then he swung around. Dehya was inside the chamber, barely visible in the radiance. She had one foot lifted and one arm outstretched, but viewed from out here, her motion was so slow, he couldn't even see a change in her position.

Dehya!

Kelric had a strange sense, as if she strained to answer his mental shout, but her thoughts existed in a slowed time and couldn't mesh with his own. He grabbed the archway and stretched his arm back into the chamber. He felt as if he were pushing through invisible molasses. With maddening slowness, his hand closed around her forearm. He braced himself against the archway, one foot against the wall and the other planted on the floor behind him—and he
heaved.

Dehya came out of the chamber like a child birthed by ancient forceps. Her body solidified and suddenly she was moving at normal speed—straight into Kelric. The force of his pull had already unbalanced him, and as she crashed into his body, he stumbled back, losing his hold on her. She lurched away and slammed into a pillar, her cheek bouncing against its transparent surface. The lights inside the column flashed as if panicked.

Kelric regained his balance like a tree almost felled, but still standing. When he started toward Dehya, she shook her head, warning him away. Her face was pale and her eyes large. She spoke, or at least her mouth moved, but he heard none of her words. He stretched out his arm, pointing to the corridor that should—he hoped—take them to the Orbiter War Room.

Dehya slowly pushed a straggle of hair out of her eyes and started down the corridor. Far in the distance, a point of light glittered.

They walked together.

And walked.

And walked.

For hours.

The point of perspective never came closer. They were in a broken corridor, forever trapped between two universes.

Jaibriol awoke, slept, and awoke again. Robert hovered over him, his face strained, always with Hidaka nearby, like a bulwark.

The next time Jaibriol awoke, he was lying in a new bed. Someone had changed his clothes into silk pajamas with the imperial seal of a Eubian jaguar on the shirt. The small light on a nearby wall illuminated very little, but he could tell this room was smaller than his quarters on the station. Although the hum around him was familiar, he couldn't place it. He lay on his back and stared at a white ceiling curving above his head, so close he could touch it if he lifted his arm.

Eventually it came to him. The hum was an engine. He was on a star yacht. He didn't recognize this cabin, but his own yacht had a bulkhead that arched above the bed this way. As he turned on his side under the silver covers, a beep came from nearby. Undoubtedly a panel somewhere had just notified some person he was awake. He didn't know how the monitors could tell the difference between his turning over while he slept and while he was awake, but they seemed to know.

Sure enough, someone soon appeared; Corbal Xir, his elderly cousin. "Elderly" was relative; Corbal had the health of a man in his prime. Only his eyes showed his age. Jaibriol wasn't sure how to define what he saw in them. Wisdom, perhaps, but other Aristos possessed that trait. A human being could be wise and still be harsh. It wasn't the presence of something he saw, but its lack. No cruelty. His cousin might be avaricious and power hungry, but he wasn't brutal. Jaibriol had no doubt Corbal would manipulate him for gain if he could, but he felt closer to the Xir lord than to any other Aristo except Tarquine.

Corbal walked quietly through the cabin, his pace slow in the low gravity created by the yacht's rotation. When Jaibriol realized his cousin thought he was sleeping, he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Corbal paused, his face unreadable in the dim light.

"Luminos, half power," Jaibriol said. The lights brightened, though not enough to bother his eyes.

"My greetings, Cousin," Corbal said. He came over and sat in a chair near the bed.

Jaibriol rubbed his eyes. "Is this your yacht?"

"It is indeed." Corbal frowned at him. "I thought you had outgrown this penchant of yours for traipsing all over Eube without proper guard or backup."

"My guard is fine," Jaibriol said coolly. "Hidaka sent for more Razers."

"He did. I came, too. I thought you might prefer a yacht to a military transport."

He was right, but he was also evading the point. "How did you know Hidaka had sent for more guards?"

"Why wouldn't I know? Your safety is my concern. Your bodyguards know this."

Jaibriol wasn't fooled. His bodyguards didn't trust Corbal any more than he did. "They wouldn't tell you if they thought I was in danger. For all they know, you plotted with Colonel Muze, another of my dear relatives." He scowled at Corbal. "Your spies are nosing into my affairs again. I want you to cut it out."

His esteemed cousin looked as if he didn't know whether to feign offense or astonishment. "I cannot 'cut out' what I haven't done."

"You know what I mean. How did you get past Tarquine?"

Corbal crossed his muscular arms. "I fail to understand why I would need to pass the empress."

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because her spies are watching your spies watch me to make sure they report nothing back to you that she doesn't want you to know about me."

Corbal snorted, and this time his annoyance sounded genuine. "Your wife has a high opinion of her intelligence. Someone should remind her that the point where self-confidence becomes folly is closer than most people realize."

Jaibriol had long ago learned never to underestimate the force of nature he had married. "I'm glad to hear you say that. It eases my mind to know you won't let it happen to you."

Corbal raised an eyebrow. "You might warn the empress of the same. Otherwise someone might turn her merchant fleets over to the Skolians."

Well, hell. So he also suspected Tarquine of helping the Skolians catch Janq pirates. Corbal would never accuse her without proof; otherwise, the accusation would do him more harm than Tarquine. And they both knew that if Tarquine had leaked covert information to the Skolians, she would never leave a shred of evidence.

Jaibriol thought of his dinner with Diamond Minister Gji, the one where Tarquine had never shown up and Corbal had come instead. "I can well imagine what might happen if an Aristo Line lost its fleets and believed the wrong person had caused it."

Corbal's voice hardened. "I would like to believe that the throne supports its allies."

"Well, you should believe it," he said, irritated Corbal had misunderstood his warning. He wasn't the one Corbal needed to fear. "I can't promise, however, that those who sit next to that rock-hard chair of mine don't have their own agenda."

Corbal raised his eyebrows. "Your Glorious Highness would never accuse, without proof, those who sit next to him."

"Well, guess what. I wouldn't accuse her
with
proof. Maybe I'm just worn out with the two of you bickering all the time."

Corbal shook his head at the direct speech and didn't respond, but Jaibriol could tell he appreciated the warning even if the craggy Xir lord would never make that admission.

"It pleases me to see you well," Corbal said instead. "The Line of Muze has much to answer for, but at least murder isn't among their crimes. Not that a lack of success makes the attempt any less of a betrayal."

If you only knew,
Jaibriol thought. He said only, "Indeed." He had to admit, that word could come in useful.

"Muze's sentence fit his crime," Corbal said. "But now we will never know what he could have told us. Others may have plotted with him."

Dryly Jaibriol said, "Along with how many other Aristos who don't consider me fit to rule?"

"Of course you are fit to rule. The Emperor of Eube is exalted beyond and above all humanity."

"Corbal, don't." He wasn't up to listening to the standard Aristo line. It didn't help that most of his trillion subjects believed it, and even many Aristos, those who weren't convinced he was going to bring about the fall of Eube through his youth and "eccentric" notions of peace.

"Don't what?" Corbal said. "You must never express doubt. It only invites more such incidents."

He knew what his cousin meant:
Don't slip up.
But today Jaibriol could barely maintain his façade; his mind was too thick to form coherent thoughts. If Corbal ever learned what had happened, he would do everything within his prodigious power to use Jaibriol as a member of the Triad. Jaibriol felt ill when he contemplated the potential interstellar ramifications. He didn't even know why the Lock had awoken. The words he had thought while sitting in it hadn't felt like his own. Nor did he know what it meant to join the Triad. Should he sense the other two people in the link? He prayed the destruction of the Lock hadn't also killed them.

"How long have I been out?" Jaibriol asked.

Corbal had an odd expression, as if Jaibriol were a riddle for him to solve. "About six days, planet time. Ninety hours."

Jaibriol leaned against a bulkhead. "What do the doctors say is wrong with me?"

"Well, that is a problem."

That wasn't what Jaibriol wanted to hear. "It is?"

"The captain of your Razers says you gave him an Imperial order. No doctors. He says he will kill anyone who violates your order."

"Oh." Jaibriol couldn't recall giving the order, but it was a good one. "I didn't trust anyone on the station."

"You are no longer on the station."

"Razers are very literal."

Corbal was studying him. "They are designed like machines. Yours, however, seem to have more personality."

Jaibriol had no intention of letting Corbal interrogate him about his bodyguards. Hidaka had saved his life in more ways than he could count, but it also put Jaibriol at risk. It wasn't like with Corbal and Tarquine; he knew secrets about them as damaging as what they knew about him. They kept their silence to protect themselves as well as him. He had nothing, however, to ensure Hidaka never revealed him, and the Razer held an even greater secret. Corbal and Tarquine knew he could join the Triad; Hidaka knew he had
done
it. That the Razer hadn't yet tried to blackmail him offered no guarantee it wouldn't happen.

An image tugged at Jaibriol's mind: the light in his room reflecting off the Razer's gunmetal collar. He realized then his mistake. He kept forgetting his bodyguards were taskmakers. He saw them as free men, deserving of the same respect as every human. But they always knew: he could turn them off, reprogram them, kill them with impunity. Even if he forgot that ugly truth, they never would. No Razer would blackmail the emperor. In Highton culture, it would be an immediate death warrant. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have realized that sooner.

Nor could a guard betray him to another Aristo in the hopes of furthering himself. The Aristo might go along with it until he learned the emperor's secrets, but then he would destroy the Razer. Hidaka should have let Colonel Muze take Jaibriol prisoner. He should have served as a witness. Instead, he defied a lifetime of conditioning to protect the emperor, choosing fidelity over the brainwashing that had defined him since birth. Why, Jaibriol didn't know, but it was finally soaking into his overwhelmed brain that Hidaka genuinely wanted to protect him.

Jaibriol exhaled as if he were a balloon losing air. It was good his guards looked out for him, because he felt too dazed to do it himself. He closed his eyes and slumped against the wall.

Corbal spoke quietly. "You should see a doctor."

"I'm only tired." Jaibriol lifted his eyelashes halfway, just enough to see Corbal. "I will speak with you later."

His cousin obviously wanted to object. But even he couldn't defy an Imperial dismissal. "As you wish, Your Highness." He rose and bowed, then took his leave. At the doorway, though, he paused to look back. Jaibriol met his gaze with no encouragement in his expression or body language, and after a pause, Corbal nodded with reserve and left the room.

Jaibriol slid back down into bed. He wondered if he would ever feel normal again. Did all Triad members live with this vertigo and sense of mental displacement? He hated it. And what good did it do him? He had no idea how to build a Kyle web or anything else. If he could have left the Triad, he would have done so in a second. But Hidaka had sacrificed the Lock to save him, and no one knew how to repair the ancient, arcane technology. If Jaibriol needed it to stop the implosions, he was out of luck, because that Lock would never again operate.

The dreamlike universe of the Lock corridor was neither space- time nor the Kyle, but somewhere in between. Kelric and Dehya walked in limbo. When Dehya mouthed words, he couldn't decipher them. Their thoughts interfered like waves and cancelled each other out. The too-bright corridor sparkled until it hurt Kelric's eyes.

Bolt, he thought. He had an odd sense, as if his node responded, but the firing of its bioelectrodes was out of phase with his brain. Its thoughts were waves whispering against the shores of his mind.

He and Dehya walked and walked and went nowhere.

Kelric became aware of a tug on his thoughts. Dehya? he thought. Is that you?

Nnnnnnnn.

He wasn't certain if that came from her, but he took it as
No.
An image flickered in his mind . . .

A Quis die?

That
didn't come from Dehya. Kelric focused inward, and the image of a topaz octahedron intensified. It was the piece he used to symbolize Haka Estate, where his son had grown up. A second image formed: a gold octahedron. His daughter. He wasn't forming the images; they came from outside of him.

Rohka? he thought.

Come hooooome . . .

The thought originated from beyond this corridor. It coiled like a rope, and he grabbed it with his mind. He grasped Dehya's shoulder to ensure they didn't get separated in this endless place, his huge hand covering her from neck to upper arm. Dehya glanced up at him, but she didn't object.