The Ruby Dice (47 page)

The team investigating the last attack against Kelric had thought the would-be assassins operated alone. Either they were wrong or else other groups also wanted Skolia's Imperator dead. It was a grim thought. That the killers had known he was here suggested someone high in the government or ISC was involved.

Kelric slowly sat up. His muscles protested with stabs of pain, and he grunted, wishing he wasn't so stiff.

"My greetings," a voice said.

He looked around. Jaibriol was sitting on the rocks behind him, his booted feet braced on the ground, his elbows on his thighs, his hands clasped between his knees.

Kelric maneuvered around, dragging his leg until he was facing the emperor. "How long have you been awake?"

"About an hour." Jaibriol rubbed the back of his neck. "I looked for food, but I didn't find anything that seemed edible."

Although Kelric knew he was hungry, his biomech web muted the pangs by releasing chemicals that fooled his body into thinking he had eaten. It wouldn't stop him from starving, but it eased his discomfort.

"We should search the cabin," Kelric said.

"I did." Jaibriol lifted his hands, then dropped them. "Nothing is left but debris. Not even water. The blast and fire destroyed everything, even the plumbing."

"Water must be here somewhere." Kelric motioned at the forest. "Otherwise this wouldn't grow."

Jaibriol grinned, an unexpected flash of teeth that made him look years younger. "We can make history with our treaty, but we can't find a drink of water. Strange, that."

Kelric smiled. "I guess so." He picked up a staff of wood that was lying next to him. "This wasn't here last night."

"I made it while you were sleeping." Jaibriol rose to his feet with a supple ease that Kelric envied. "If you can walk this morning, I think we should leave as soon as possible."

Using the staff, Kelric struggled to his feet. By putting his weight on his good leg and leaning on the staff, he was able to stand. Jaibriol was right. They shouldn't wait for rescue. That no one else had been with their attackers didn't mean no one would show up. They could just as easily be picked off elsewhere, but at least they would be getting closer to help.

Kelric looked up the hill. "I'd like to go up." He wanted to pay his respects.

Jaibriol seemed to understand. He offered his arm.

"I'll be fine," Kelric said. He took a step—and his leg buckled. Jaibriol caught him before he fell, but Kelric's weight nearly knocked them both over.

Kelric swore under his breath. Then he pulled away and tried another step. He managed by using the staff as a crutch and keeping the weight off his broken leg. On flat ground it worked reasonably well, if slowly, but when he tried to climb the slope, his leg gave out. He couldn't manage even with Jaibriol's help.

The emperor spoke quietly. "I'm sorry."

Kelric couldn't answer; it hurt too much.
Good-bye,
he thought to his guards.
You will be missed.

Jaibriol motioned to a notch across the small valley. "I think we can get out that way, and the land stays flat."

Kelric nodded, already tired. Then he began the painful process of walking. Jaibriol stayed at his side, moderating his stride to match Kelric's speed. It was humbling. It was hard to believe he had ever been young and full of energy. That was the man Tarquine had desired, the prince she had seen in broadcasts. Why she had paid that amorally ludicrous price for a dying man, he would never know.

They made their way through a narrow gap between two hills. Needles and twigs crackled under their feet, and branches rustled overhead, inundating them with the deep scent of pines. It was surreal, walking here with Jaibriol the Third as if the two of them were on a vacation.

Jaibriol's hair shimmered in the early morning light and his red eyes were visible from a good distance away. Anyone who knew anything about Eube would recognize him as an Aristo. Nor could Kelric hide his own offworld heritage. People on Earth didn't have metallic coloring.

After a while, Jaibriol said, "I think those implosions are connected to the Locks."

It took a moment for Kelric to reorient his thoughts. The space- time implosions. He felt too tired to talk. Given what he had done, though, activating the Lock while the emperor was in it, he owed Jaibriol more than silence.

"When my people built the Kyle web," Kelric said, "we knew almost nothing about the Locks. Everything was guesswork. But I'm starting to understand. I think the web strains the interface between Kyle space and our universe. Every time we add another gate, it adds to the strain. The Locks are a balance. When I turned one off, it destabilized the system. If we don't reactivate it, the implosions will get worse." Uneasily he said, "I think it could destroy large regions of space, entire solar systems. Maybe more."

He expected Jaibriol to be incredulous, ask a question, something. When the emperor had been quiet for too long, Kelric glanced at him. Jaibriol's face had gone pale. His fear hit Kelric like a bright light.

"What is it?" Kelric asked.

"The SSRB has no Lock." Jaibriol drew him to a stop. "When Hidaka fired at the colonel, we were inside that octagonal room that houses the singularity."

Kelric felt as if his pulse stuttered. "Are you telling me your guard fired a laser carbine inside the Lock chamber?"

Jaibriol nodded. "It missed me. But not much else."

"Ah, gods." Kelric suddenly felt bone weary.

"We've had no implosions I know of since then."

"Maybe it eased the pressure when I activated the Lock," Kelric said. "But I had the impression it only operated for about a minute."

"Yes." Jaibriol rubbed his neck again, a mannerism Kelric suspected came from the constant tension he lived with. "Three Locks. For a Triad."

Kelric resumed his painful limp. "As far as I know, the Triad doesn't require three Locks to exist."

"Then maybe neither does the Kyle. It had two Locks and two Keys. Now it has two Locks but thr—" He stopped abruptly, then spoke carefully. "If the Kyle once again had three Keys, maybe the two Locks would be enough."

"Maybe." It was plausible with what Kelric knew. He hoped it were true. In every way, the survival of his people depended on this young man. The emperor had gone to great lengths to attain the treaty, and Kelric had no doubt he wanted it. But if he changed his mind, he had within his grasp the ability to create a Kyle web for ESComm, negating the advantage Skolia had over Eube, the technology that kept them a step ahead of the Traders. Jaibriol didn't need a Lock to build such a web. The Triad Chair wasn't in the chamber, it was on a dais at the start of the corridor, well removed from the singularity. Jaibriol had been sitting in it the first time Kelric had seen him, ten years ago.

Back then, Kelric hadn't thought Jaibriol knew anything about the chair. Maybe that was still true. He strengthened his mental shields, blurring them, too, so Jaibriol wouldn't realize he had cut off his thoughts. Then he said, "You need the Lock to build a Kyle web."

"I don't have a Lock," Jaibriol said.

Kelric probed his mind as discreetly as he could manage. Jaibriol had no idea what to do with a Triad Chair. He just thought it was an uncomfortable throne. Nor did he comprehend what it meant to be part of the Triad. He only wanted free of its presence. He didn't know he could never leave the powerlink. Neurological changes had begun in his brain the moment he became a Key. To withdraw now would cause fatal brain damage.

Kelric didn't know how Jaibriol would survive among Aristos. His mind was a furnace, burning with power. Unless he learned to hide it better than this, the Aristos would soon realize the truth. Then what? They would have a Key. Jaibriol might have no interest in learning how to create a web, but if the Hightons turned their combined intellects to the problem, they would learn. And they would force him to build it for them.

"Kelric?" Jaibriol was watching him.

It startled Kelric to hear his personal name spoken by the Emperor of Eube. "Yes?" he asked.

"Your sister—" He stumbled over his words. "She was Imperator before you, wasn't she?"

Softly Kelric said, "Yes."

"Was she happy?"

"The last I saw her was almost thirty years ago." Kelric spoke with care. "Jaibriol, how could your mother teach you to splint a broken leg with tree branches?"

"She was good at—" He suddenly stopped, and panic flared in his eyes.

"That's an unusual skill for a sheltered Eubian empress," Kelric said.

Jaibriol turned his head away, and Kelric knew then that the young man could never speak the truth. It was locked within him by emotional scar tissue.

Kelric continued with the utmost gentleness. "When Soz was young, she loved to swim in a lake near our house. She would go up there when she wasn't supposed to be out and get into trouble when she came home."

Jaibriol gave an uneven laugh. "I can imagine."

Kelric remembered how Soz had laughed and teased, how she could grin one moment and glare the next. Seven brothers and one Soz, and they had never been a match for her. He smiled with his memories, though they hurt. "When I was eight and she was seventeen, we went hiking in the Backbone Mountains. We got caught in a storm. It frightened me, the lightning, the rain, the hail. It so rarely happened in the lowlands where we lived."

Jaibriol spoke softly. "You could have taken shelter in a cave."

A pain jumped within Kelric, a stab of loss and mourning and something else that felt like bittersweet joy. That hadn't been a guess about the cave. Jaibriol knew.

"Yes," he said. "A cave. We huddled in it while lightning cut the sky and thunder shouted. We were afraid. It comforted us to merge our minds. A full Rhon merge." Only Ruby psions could join minds that way, but they rarely did, for it was too powerful a link for most people to endure and too intense to sustain. But in those few moments, he and Soz had blended their thoughts down to a deep level. From that day on, he had shared a bond with her stronger than with his other siblings.

"Anyone fortunate to share such a bond," Jaibriol said unevenly, "would value it forever. She might—might even share the treasured memory with her children."

Kelric put his hand on Jaibriol's shoulder. "I can't help you leave the Triad." When alarm flared in the emperor's gaze, Kelric said, "Just listen. You don't have to admit anything." Softly he added, "You cannot return to Eube in your condition. I've been protecting your mind, but when we part, it will all come back, the agony, the loss of control, the pain. You'll be wide open to the Hightons."

"Don't," Jaibriol said.

"You must learn to control it."

"I can't," he whispered.

An idea was coming to Kelric, forming with the clarity of jeweled Quis dice in the sunlight. He looked around for support. A nearby deciduous tree had a thick branch, almost a second trunk, that grew horizontally a few feet above the ground. He limped over and leaned against it, half sitting, half standing. Then he untied the pouch from his belt. For a moment he stayed that way, looking at the worn bag bulging with dice. He had carried it for almost thirty years. The dice were as much a part of him as his limbs, his thoughts, his heart. They shaped his life. To part with them would leave a hole he could never fill even if he had a new set fashioned with identical pieces.

Kelric extended his arm with the pouch. "Use these."

Jaibriol's forehead creased. He came over and took the bag. Turning it over in his hand, he said, "What is it?"

"Dice."

The emperor opened the sack and shook a few gems into his palm. They flashed in the sunlight slanting through the trees and sparkled as if they were bits of colored radiance caught in Jaibriol's hand.

"They're beautiful." He looked up at Kelric. "What do you do with them?"

"Play Quis," Kelric said. "When pressure from the Hightons becomes too much, when you can't take any more, when you fight for control and can't find it, play Quis. It will calm your mind, help your control, perhaps even ease the pain."

Jaibriol looked bewildered. "I don't know how."

In the short time he had with Jaibriol, Kelric knew it would be impossible to teach him Quis at a high enough level to help. But he did have a way.

Kelric took a breath. "If you meld with my mind, I can give you the knowledge. Store it in your spinal node to study at your leisure." He felt as if a part of him were dying. If he joined his mind with Jaibriol, the emperor would probably pick up more than Quis from him no matter how hard Kelric tried to limit their meld—including how to use the Triad Chair to create a Kyle web.

"You would offer me this trust?" Jaibriol asked.

Kelric nodded.

"What if it injures my mind even worse?"

"You have to trust me. Just as I must trust you."

Jaibriol clenched the pouch until his knuckles turned white. "I cannot."

"You have to trust someone."

"I don't trust my own wife. Why would I trust you?"

"You came here to see me," Kelric said. "I can think of no greater show of faith."

Jaibriol's voice cracked. "I can. Asking me to let you into my mind."

Kelric waited. The decision had to be Jaibriol's; if the young man felt pressured, they couldn't create the blend. They stood in the early morning with sunshine filtering through the trees, a fresh green light that softened the day. Butterflies flashed orange and black among the foliage.

Finally Jaibriol said, "Yes."

Kelric released his breath. "Good."

"What do I do?"

Kelric spoke gently. "Nothing." Then he closed his eyes.

Bit by bit, Kelric lowered the barriers he had developed over his lifetime. He didn't have the crushing mental defenses Jaibriol used; his were more layered shields that had become so integral to his personality, he wasn't certain he could lower them enough. He concentrated on his memories of Quis. He also accessed files in Bolt where he had stored Quis concepts, rules, ideas, strategies. When he had been a Trader prisoner, he had even tagged his interpretations of their customs with Quis structures. He readied it all for Jaibriol.