The Ruby Dice (38 page)

"Go to the Skolians," she said.

"They would never accept the son of Jaibriol II, grandson of Ur Qox, great-grandson of Jaibriol I. To them, I embody everything evil in the universe."

"Teach them otherwise."

"And leave Eube in the hands of whom? You? Corbal? Calope Muze? My joint commanders? What sins against humanity would our empire commit because I was too great a coward to face my own reign?"

"Then endure, husband." Her gaze never wavered. "Endure and never grieve for what you cannot have."

"If I am ever discovered," he said, "you must take our son and yourself to safety, even if you have to go to the Ruby Dynasty. They won't like your Aristo heritage or his, but they won't turn away family." He could never know that for certain, but what he knew of them through his mother convinced him they would help. And they had the means to shield his family.

"I will protect our child no matter what it takes." A fierce light glinted in her eyes. "But I will never throw myself on the mercy of the Ruby Dynasty."

He thought of the power roiling within him, tearing apart his carefully built defenses. "I can't promise we will survive."

"We are Qox and Iquar. We do more than survive." She was darkness and whiskey, mesmerizing. "We thrive. And we conquer."

Jaibriol had no wish to conquer humanity. But the moment he joined the Triad, that possibility had come within his grasp. Even knowing his child would be everything he feared, pride stirred within him, and another emotion as well, one so intense and painful, it might be love. He had within him the power to give his child an empire greater than any ever known.

The events whirling around him had gone beyond his control. He would do anything to protect his son, even if it meant he had to become the greatest tyrant in human history.

Kelric had known the best Quis players on Coba. He had sat in the Calanya of the most powerful Estates. He recognized the hallmarks of brilliance even after years away from Coba.

His son had no parallel.

Jimorla's talent blazed. No wonder Ixpar had been willing to put her Estate into debt for him. Had Kelric not been the Imperator, he doubted the Varz Manager would ever have agreed to trade such a spectacularly gifted player to her greatest foe.

He didn't have the words to tell Jimorla how proud he was of his son. So he put it into his dice. Jimorla responded with a vibrancy totally unlike his enigmatic demeanor. They built structures of Coba. Kelric told his son about his life. He wasn't certain Jimorla truly understood; the culture that had molded his son was so different, Jimorla might never comprehend the life Kelric had known. But the young man's hostility faded.

Kelric's concerns for the Imperialate percolated into his dice. He hadn't intended it to happen, but his worries were too big, and Jimorla was too talented to miss them. His son grasped his concerns exactly as would a Calani playing Quis with his Manager would during a session dedicated to studying problems faced by the Estate. It was a gift of trust Kelric hadn't expected, and it meant as much to him as if Jimorla had spoken words of welcome.

Kelric described the Lock, the Keys, and the history of his people. He modeled what he knew of Jaibriol Qox, their meeting ten years ago, and his suspicion about Qox's mind. As the picture unfolded, Jimorla evolved it with his prodigious Quis. Untouched by anything Skolian, he offered Kelric a view unlike any other Kelric had considered. His son compared the Locks to three great dice, vital pieces in an interstellar game of Quis. He played them in structures that defined which empire gained advantage.

Yet despite Jimorla's luminous talent, his models of the Eubian emperor faltered. He described Qox as Kelric's son. It made no sense. It was impossible for Kelric to have fathered Qox; he had been on Coba fathering Jimorla. Yet his son remained convinced. Kelric soon realized Jimorla knew too little about the Ruby Dynasty to understand what he implied. He had no context. As Kelric told him more about his family, his son's structures changed. Yet still he persisted in making impossible patterns. He developed a convincing model to explain all of Qox's actions given one simple—and terrifying— assumption.

The Trader emperor was a member of the Ruby Dynasty.

Kelric hiked with Dehya up behind his house, and they sat at the top of a long hill that dropped into a gorge. Far below, a river frothed and rushed through the valley.

The walk had tired him. He had never fully recovered from his years on Coba and his escape from the Traders, and he felt his age even more lately in the many aches of his body.

"A void as large as the one you found in Kyle space," Dehya said, "could mean a substantial part of
that
universe imploded."

"Maybe the strain there is as great as here." As far as he knew, no implosions had occurred in their space-time since he found the void. "I couldn't sense the Lock, just emptiness."

She regarded him uneasily. "If the implosions start again, we may have little recourse without that third Lock."

Frustration welled within him. "I was sure I did nothing more than wake it up. If I hadn't already been a member of the Dyad, I doubt I could have done even that much. But from so far away, it's impossible to tell what happened."

Dehya grimaced. "Gods only know what Jaibriol the Third might do with access to a working Lock."

In that splintering moment, watching her, Kelric knew she suspected what Jimorla had tried to tell him with Quis, that Qox was a member of the Ruby Dynasty. A chill ran through him.

"No," he said.
No.

"
Soz and the previous Trader emperor spent fifteen years stranded together on some planet," Dehya said.

"They weren't stranded together." Damn it, Dehya knew that. "ISC had imprisoned him. He escaped and Soz went after him in another ship." Everyone knew the rest, that Soz had spent fifteen years searching for Qox.

"Convenient how it looked as if they had died," Dehya said. "Yet here they were on some unknown world."

"A planet is a large place to hide."

"So it is." Dehya looked at him, and he at her. Neither of them wanted to think it, what Soz and Qox might have done
together
in fifteen years. Soz couldn't have been anywhere near Qox when ESComm pulled him off the planet, for they would have blasted the entire region to make certain no one survived. By all accounts, she and Qox had never found each other. Kelric thought surely a person could go insane if they spent fifteen years alone, struggling to survive. As emperor, Qox had been reclusive; no one knew anything about him. From all accounts Soz had been single-minded in her pursuit of victory against the Traders in the Radiance War, driven, obsessed even. But insane? It didn't fit with what Kelric knew of his sister's indomitable strength of will.

He and Dehya could never reveal their suspicions to anyone else, for the more people who knew, the greater the chance it would leak and endanger Jaibriol, ending the reign of the only emperor who might actually negotiate with them.

"Jaibriol the Third can't be a psion," Kelric said, a protest as much to himself as to Dehya.

Dehya regarded him uneasily. "His parents
both
would have had to have had the genes. So his grandfather would have had them as well."

"I find it hard to believe even an adult psion could survive among the Aristos. In my time with Tarquine, I could hardly bear to be around her colleagues." Kelric shook his head. "I can't imagine how a child would bear it. He would go crazy."

"Unless he was kept separate from the Aristos."

And there it was. Jaibriol the Third had been secluded throughout his childhood. No one knew he had existed until he was an adult, for all appearances the perfect, ultimate Aristo.

Kelric thought of Tarquine, the only Aristo he had met whose mind didn't exert that suffocating pressure. The empress. Was that why Jaibriol had married here? Kelric knew he and Dehya might be mistaken about their fears; they had no way to tell, not without meeting Jaibriol Qox. But they couldn't take any chances.

And so, in one of the greatest ironies of their lives, they would protect the Emperor of Eube.

"You cannot!" The words exploded out of Barcala Tikal, the First Councilor of the Skolian Assembly. He and Kelric were both on their feet, facing each other across the table on the dais of the Orbiter War Room. Dehya, Eldrin, Roca, Chad Barzun, and Ragnar Bloodmark were all seated, though Kelric thought they were ready to jump up, too, and argue with him. No matter. He didn't intend to change his mind.

"I can," Kelric said. "And if he agrees, I will."

Tikal hit the table with his fist. "No. It's insane."

Kelric planted his fists on the table and leaned forward. "But it's perfectly sane for our armies to hammer each other and slag planets instead?"

"We have no choice," Tikal said.

"We make our choices!" Kelric shot back at him.

"Gentlemen, stop," Roca said quietly. "Sit down. Please."

Kelric and Tikal continued their hostile stares. Then Tikal took a breath and settled in his chair. Kelric stood for a moment, his adrenalin racing, annoyed at Roca for being so blasted
moderate.
Then he grunted and sat down as well.

His brother Eldrin was watching him with a puzzled frown. "Interstellar leaders never meet in person even when they are allies," he pointed out to Kelric. "For you and Jaibriol Qox to meet, even through the Kyle mesh, would be unusual. What makes you think he would ever agree to a face-to-face meeting?"

"He might very well refuse," Kelric admitted. "But we'll never know unless we ask."

"Oh, I don't know," Ragnar said lazily, tapping a light-stylus against his other hand. "Our Imperator seems to have no trouble meeting with the wives of interstellar leaders."

Kelric gritted his teeth. Years had passed since his meeting with Tarquine, and still Ragnar wouldn't let it go. She had contacted him during the initial peace talks and requested the private conference, using the Kyle connection that Skolia had set up for Eube. When Kelric met with her, she claimed she wanted to know his intentions, whether or not his people honored the Eubian emperor's "desire for peace." It was absurd, and Kelric hadn't believed her, but he had spoken with her anyway. Why? They had each been taking the measure of the other. The Allieds had a phrase for it: Know thy enemy.

Although neither he nor Tarquine had committed a crime, it took no genius to see that a meeting between the Skolian Imperator and Eubian Empress—who had once been lovers—could be considered improper, to put it mildly. He had secured their communication, but it hadn't surprised him that Dehya found out. Unexpectedly, Ragnar had also broken his security and recorded the meeting. The admiral hadn't trusted him since.

Dehya spoke tiredly. "Ragnar, let it go."

"Why should he let it go?" Tikal demanded. "It has a direct bearing on this discussion."

"The problem," Roca said, "isn't some long ago meeting where nothing happened." She regarded Kelric. "What you want to do goes against every diplomatic protocol. Those protocols exist for a reason. They make it possible for our governments to deal together without destabilizing our already volatile relations. What you suggest endangers that balance. As Foreign Affairs Counselor, I strongly advise against this meeting."

"I also, as commander of the Imperial Fleet," Chad said. "Even if Qox did agree, where would you meet him? Certainly not in Eubian territory. It would be impossible for us to guarantee your safety. If the Eubians tried to capture or kill you, it would start the very war you say this meeting is meant to avoid. The only way ISC could assure your safety would be for Qox to meet you in our territory. And of course he won't, for the same reasons you can't go to him."

"Then we'll meet on Earth," Kelric said.

"That's even worse!" Tikal told him. "The last time you went to Earth, they wouldn't let you go."

"That was during a war," Kelric said. "They held onto the members of the Ruby Dynasty who sought refuge there because they didn't believe ISC had the resources to pull us out. They were wrong then, and they know they would be wrong now, even more so, given our current military strength. They aren't stupid, Tikal, and they want a war even less than the rest of us."

Chad leaned forward. "No one 'wants' the destruction and death of war, but it can be far preferable to the alternative—Aristo dominance over the human race. Jaibriol the Third is a Qox. A Highton. The descendant of a line of despots. Talking to him in person won't change that."

"You also have to consider your safety in another sense," Ragnar said. "It's only been a few months since someone tried to kill you, Imperator Skolia. We don't know yet whether or not a more extensive conspiracy exists."

Unfortunately, he had a good point. Kelric looked up at Najo, who was standing near his chair. "Has any evidence surfaced to indicate a larger conspiracy?"

"As of yet, no," Najo said. "However, security hasn't finished their investigation."

Kelric knew they would keep on looking unless he told them to stop. To Ragnar, he said, "I admit, it's a risk. But some risks are worth the danger."

"Not this one," Roca said. "Kelric, I fear it will
increase
hostilities. The Traders know what that vote in our Assembly meant, that it handed you more support for ISC. We need to convince them we're interested in treaties rather than battles. If you ask the emperor to meet with you under the conditions you describe, it is going to look more like a threat."

"I have to agree," Chad said. "If anything happened at that meeting to you or their emperor, it would inflame both sides. That's why we never have two rulers meet this way."

Tikal spoke tightly. "Lord Skolia does
not
rule the Imperialate."

"No, he doesn't." Dehya spoke for the first time. "Nor does he have any wish to undermine either of us, Barcala."

Tikal scowled at her. "I haven't heard you objecting to this madness."

"Perhaps because I don't consider it madness," she said.