The Moon's Shadow (13 page)

Silver’s gaze softened as if he had spoken aloud. She raised his hands and pressed her lips against his knuckles. With a sigh, Jai pulled her close, filling his arms with her soft curves.

“Come home with me,” he said against her hair. “To my palace on Glory, in the Jaizire Mountains.”

She drew back enough to look up at him, regret dimming her luminous gaze. “It would be an incredible honor.”

“Why are you so sad?” He spoke in a low voice, aware of his Razers under the trees. “Would leaving here give you sorrow? I won’t take you away if you want to stay.”

“I have only joy at the thought of pleasing you.” Her smile was tremulous.

Sensitized to her empath’s mind, Jai picked up her mood through his defenses; Kaliga would never let her leave. If Jai pushed enough, he could force the admiral to let her go; few Hightons would deny the emperor. But Silver would come to him at the price of what little goodwill he had left with the Line of Kaliga.

“Fare you well, dear Jai.” Silver touched his cheek. “You deserve the best of life’s intangibles, those gifts that wealth and power can never measure.”

Jai swallowed, wondering if Kaliga had any clue his provider was so articulate. In revealing herself to him, Silver had given him one of those intangible gifts.

He kissed her for the last time, holding her as if she were a fading light within an encroaching darkness.

N
o ornamentation adorned the marble walls of the High Judge’s courtroom. Its austerity surprised Jai, given the rich decor everywhere else in his palace. He did see one similarity: this room had an octagonal shape. He couldn’t recall seeing a square room anywhere in the palace. They were all round or octagonal. Here, the judge’s bench stood along one wall, and octagonal tables were arrayed before it. The courtroom was too small to hold an audience.

Tarquine Iquar sat with her counsel at one table. Tall and composed, she fascinated Jai, with her aquiline beauty and aura of power. Azar Taratus and his people had another table. Sprawled in his chair, the lanky Taratus watched the room with a sardonic gaze. Legal aces from ESComm occupied two tables, and agents from the insurance bureaus took up two others. Razers stood posted around the walls. Jai sat at an table on a dais to the left of the judge’s bench. Several members of his staff sat with him, including one Highton—Azile Xir, his Minister of Intelligence. Jai barely knew any of them, except for his aide, Robert Muzeson.

The hum of voices filled the courtroom as the various parties conferred. Jai just watched, his head throbbing from the presence of so many Aristos. It was excruciating; the proceedings hadn’t even started and already he longed for them to be done.

A door opened behind the bench, and High Judge Calope Muze entered, wearing the gray robes of her office. Everyone except Jai rose to their feet. Tall and imposing, Calope stood behind her high bench, surveying the court. She bowed deeply to Jai, her white head inclined. It made him acutely self-conscious to receive such deference from someone so many decades his elder.

After Jai nodded to her, Calope sat in her high-backed judge’s chair, and everyone else in the room resumed their seats. Calope was the only other Aristo that Jai had seen besides Corbal who had white hair. As High Judge, she oversaw the Eubian courts and served as chief justice in the Qox palace, giving her a status equivalent to that of Jai’s ministers.

An obsidian mallet lay on the bench next to a small gong with a gold octagonal disk. Judge Muze tapped the gong, sending a clear note throughout the chamber. So the proceedings began.

And went on.

And on.

And on…

If Jai hadn’t sat through every excruciating minute, he wouldn’t have believed a hearing could be so interminable. He listened to each side present its purportedly noble cause and accuse everyone else of perfidy. Although the circuitous arguments weren’t quite as abstruse as Highton social discourse, it took forever for anyone to make a point.

Jai’s head ached. Even with his table set apart from the others, their minds pressed on him, crushing. Having Azile Xir at his side multiplied the effect; Corbal might not transcend, but his son did. Jai was exhausted before the hearing even started. He would go catatonic with this much exposure to Aristos. Much as he wanted to be here in person, to pick up mental undercurrents, he was beginning to think he would have no choice but to retreat to his private rooms and set up a virtual link to this hall. It would let him attend the rest of the sessions as a VR simulacrum.

Listening to another endless speech, Jai grimaced. He would go catatonic all right—from boredom. If Hightons approached all official matters this way, he didn’t see how the government managed to function. They ought to throw Taratus in prison and be done with it. ESComm should concentrate on fixing the hole in their security that this mess had revealed. And the bureaus owed Tarquine Iquar. She had met their exorbitant fees; now it was time for them to pay up.

He wondered how they would all feel when they discovered her escaped “property” was a Ruby prince who had ascended to the Skolian Triad. As far as he knew, ESComm had found no trace of Kelric yet. It gave Jai hope that his uncle had escaped.

Jai wished he could have told Kelric why he valued their meeting. But his dream of peace between Eube and Skolia seemed more distant every ceaseless minute he spent among the Hightons. The more he learned during these proceedings about Kelric’s failing health, the more it astounded him that his uncle had even reached the Lock. It was harder and harder to believe Kelric would live long enough to assume his place as Imperator.

When Judge Muze finally called a recess, Jai could have wept with relief. He stood, and everyone else in the chamber followed suit. With a nod to the High Judge, he gave his sanction to end the session.

As Jai’s retinue prepared to leave, his gaze went to Minister Iquar. She moved with a feline grace, her sleek curves discreet but visible in the starkly conservative black jump suit she wore. When she caught him staring, she didn’t look the least intimidated. Her lips curved and she quirked an eyebrow. Mortified, Jai inclined his head, struggling for that chilly Highton indifference. Then his retinue swept him out of the chamber, using the door behind the bench, giving him the privacy available to only one other person, the High Judge.

Calope was already in the small antechamber. She bowed to Jai. “My honor at your presence, Your Esteemed Highness.”

Relieved to escape the pressure of the Hightons in the courtroom, he gave a friendlier nod than usual. “It pleases me to meet you, Cousin.”

Her smile was reserved, but he sensed no hostility. He spoke briefly with her, and was surprised to enjoy the moment. It wasn’t until he had taken his leave that he realized why her presence hadn’t bothered him.

Her mind exerted no mental pressure against his.

Jai stood in his darkened study watching the holostage, where a recording of the hearings was playing. It was hard to believe they had begun only this morning; he felt as drained as if they had been going for weeks. He couldn’t stop staring at Tarquine Iquar. All that power and menace. She was like a black puma, smooth and muscled, sleek and deadly. He ran his finger around the collar of his high-necked tunic, wiping the sweat from his neck.

Pah. Jai tried to clear his mind. He jumped ahead to another section of the recording where Tarquine was only in the background. During the hearing, the speeches had seemed tangled in snarls, but now that he could concentrate, he realized they had a surprising coherence. The Iquar legal team was inexorable; Taratus’s people were brazenly confident; ESComm put on a virtuoso display of misdirection; and the insurance bureaus were geniuses at obfuscation.

Jai was beginning to understand their speech. He had thought he was fluent in Highton, but he realized now that his knowledge only skimmed its surface. Hightons spoke in more than one dimension; the structure, cadence, and tangents conveyed as much as the words themselves. Gestures and posture were integral to the language, and Hightons also said a great deal with what they left unspoken. Ironically, the very thing that made it hard for him to bear the presence of Aristos—his telepath’s mind—also gave him some facility in Highton, letting him discern hidden meanings he wouldn’t have picked up otherwise.

Calope Muze surprised him. Beyond her cool reserve, he saw wisdom. Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise him; Eube would never have thrived so well if Aristos weren’t so thoroughly adept at running their empire. He had seen brutality and vicious pride among them, but also intelligence, artistic genius, and insight. Yet that only made him feel worse. He had assumed their cruelty was instinctual, a genetic trait they could no more change than they could stop breathing. If they could choose otherwise, it made their brutality that much harder to bear.

The wall comm next to him buzzed. Jai flicked his finger through the receive holo. “Yes?”

Tomjolt, his personal EI, answered. “Your Highness, Azile Xir requests permission to speak with you.”

“Put him on audio.” Jai knew his facial expressions and body language gave away clues about his thoughts. He tried to mask his reactions, but he had little experience guarding himself that way, whereas Hightons had raised the process to an art form, both in hiding the hints their own behavior gave about their thoughts and in reading those clues in others.

Azile’s deep voice came out of the comm. “I most humbly thank Your Esteemed Highness for granting this audience to the Ministry of Intelligence.”

When Jai had first come to Glory, a few weeks ago, he would have assumed the greeting was meant only to stroke his ego. He still thought it had a measure of that, but he realized now the phrasing was itself a message. What it meant, he wasn’t sure, but the reference to the Intelligence Ministry implied a problem had come up with security.

“The Line of Qox appreciates your ministry,” Jai said.

“I thank you,” Azile said. “Your office is known for its generosity.”

Generosity?
Hardly. Maybe he ought to speak to Azile on a comm channel that couldn’t be monitored. Unfortunately, that eliminated every channel in the Eubian Concord. But Jai thought his private study, in his own palace, was probably more secure than a comm line.

“Have you ever tasted Taimarsian wine, Minister Xir?” he asked. “I’ve a fine vintage here. Perhaps you might attend me this afternoon, at sixth hour.” The hearings wouldn’t resume again until tomorrow. In this season, nights in the Jaizire Mountains lasted six hours, which meant daylight lasted ten. The people on Glory counted hours from sunrise; today, sixth hour came in early afternoon. Jai thought it made timekeeping absurdly confused, given that they had to recalculate the time every day. Then again, maybe that was why Aristos liked it.

“Your Highness is most gracious,” Azile said. “It would be my great honor to attend you.”

“Very well.” Jai thought Azile sounded wary, but he couldn’t be sure. As much as it relieved him to be isolated from other Aristos, it limited his ability to discern their thoughts—and his well-being, freedom, even his life, depended on how well he could gauge their intent.

Azile barely touched his wine. The minister’s agitation was strong enough for Jai to sense even through his barriers.

“ESComm is admirable in their attention to detail,” Azile said. He was standing by a window, facing Jai, his glass in his hand. Beyond him, in the bleached evening sky, the crescents of several moons glowed. “My father has always commented on their steadfast dedication to their work.”

To our misfortune,
Jai thought. Right now Azile’s father was the object that dedication. “Your father has always been a man of great intelligence.” He hoped Azile understood his question: Had ESComm’s intelligence people found any evidence linking Corbal to the security break at Kaliga’s home?

“He has long valued persistence,” Azile said. “It was a trait witnessed by every dawn.”

The dawn. Azile had to mean Sunrise. His use of the past tense made Jai think they hadn’t found any leads in her disappearance. Mercifully, he found no indication of her death in Azile’s mind. He couldn’t lower his barriers around Azile, but surely if she had died, the minister would be grieving deeply enough that Jai would feel it through his defenses. Azile liked Sunrise, maybe even more than he liked his own Highton mother. Jai didn’t know if Aristos could love, but if they did, he thought Corbal and Azile both loved Sunrise, each in his own way.

It had to be maddening for Corbal, unable to help in the search. Technically, ESComm hadn’t imprisoned him; incarcerating a Highton was almost never done. They detained him in an opulent mansion owned by the military while they investigated the situation. Corbal could neither leave nor have visitors, except ESComm officers, but he otherwise lived in luxury. Jai could have seen him if he wanted, but it was impractical to the point of impossibility; ESComm had taken him to another planet and Jai had far more duties here on Glory than he could handle.

Jai didn’t understand what Azile meant by every dawn having witnessed Corbal’s persistence. Perhaps Sunrise had mentioned his tenacity, or maybe she had seen something she shouldn’t have. How that connected to her abduction, he had no idea, but he could tell Azile feared for her life. Jai couldn’t bear to think of her being hurt, and he wanted Azile to know the investigation would remain a top priority.

“Minister Xir,” he said. “Please be assured we will do our best to ensure that the joy of the new day isn’t lost. I will see to it myself.”

Azile studied him, so closely that Jai wondered if he had said more than he intended. Then the minister bowed. “You are most wise and generous, Your Esteemed Highness.”

Most wise? If there was any adjective Aristos didn’t associate with him, it was wisdom. Jai hoped he hadn’t just promised more than he could deliver. Perhaps he ought to quit trying to talk like a Highton, before he landed himself in trouble. He wished he could consult Corbal, the only Aristo who would speak with him in a comprehensible manner. Not that he trusted Corbal either, but at least they had the same goal: Jai’s survival.

Corbal, however, could no longer help him.

The pressure felt as if it were driving broken glass into his temples. It was the only way Jai could describe the minds of the Aristos in the courtroom. They felt even worse than yesterday, when the hearings had begun. His mental defenses were weakening under the strain.