The Ruby Dice (44 page)

Kelric's guards were also securing the area. With all these precautions, he doubted a bug could get past them. On a solo mission like this, though, he still had significantly less protection than if ISC had been involved.

While Najo and Strava checked the rustically opulent cabin, Kelric sat at a desk built from knotted wood and unrolled his mesh screen. Axer stood behind him, solid and silent, but Kelric felt his agitation. His guards hated this trip.

He scanned Earth's public meshes in their military, government, academic, and entertainment spheres. It was interesting from a cultural standpoint, but he couldn't concentrate on the entertainment sites and the rest offered nothing his security people hadn't told him in greater detail.

Kelric put away the screen and took the dice pouch off his belt. He played Quis solitaire for a while, but he couldn't focus on that, either. His structures kept evolving in patterns of tension, which was hardly eye-opening, or else predictions of his execution. Too much could go wrong, and his dice kept portraying every possible way. He finally stuffed them back in the pouch and sat back in his chair, rubbing his eyes.

Strava walked into the room. "Sir?"

Kelric looked up with a start. "Yes?"

"You have visitors." Her face was pale.

Kelric stood slowly, aware of Earth's uncomfortably heavy gravity. "Where?"

She tilted her head toward the front of the cabin. "They're on the forest road that leads up here."

"Do you have an ID?"

"Nothing," she said grimly. "We can't crack their system."

He met her gaze. They both knew what that meant. His guards had the best sensors available to a Skolian Imperator. None could match them—except those for a Eubian emperor.

"Keep me posted," Kelric said.

"I will, sir." Strava went to a window and edged aside the curtains so she could look out into the night. It wasn't necessary; she could have monitored the approach from within the security room she and Najo had set up within the cabin. But Kelric appreciated her presence and Axer's. He was more nervous than he wanted to admit. What if instead of Qox, a murder squad showed up? He had defenses, but so would they. Qox knew Kelric had come here alone, in secret, without ISC backup.

Kelric joined Strava and pulled back the curtains. Outside, pine trees rustled. The night otherwise had that deep silence of a land that knew no cities. Knowing his silhouette would be visible from outside, he let the curtain fall back, in case killers arrived instead of Qox. Strava stood at his side with the poised look of a fighter ready to shoot someone, preferably a Trader, he had no doubt.

Kelric paced restlessly across the room. He was a fool to trust Qox. He had to be wrong. No psion could survive among the Aristos, not and retain his sanity.

One thought haunted him. When Jaibriol Qox had lived on Earth, the school authorities there had incorrectly recorded his birthday, listing him as a few months
younger
than his true age. The Qox Palace had fixed the mistake. The date on Earth had to be wrong; otherwise, Qox would have been conceived
after
his father "died." The previous emperor hadn't died, he had been lost on an unknown world, but he could hardly have impregnated his empress from there. Many people assumed she had used sperm stored by her husband to become pregnant after he disappeared. It went against Highton mores, however, which would explain why the palace found the "error," so Jaibriol didn't suffer the supposed shame of such a birth. Kelric had come to fear it hid a far greater bombshell, that Jaibriol's father had sired him while stranded on that planet.

Stranded with Kelric's sister, Soz.

He didn't want to believe it. Qox couldn't have forced her; she had been a Jagernaut Primary, one of the most versatile killing machines alive. But she would never have willingly birthed the Highton Heir. Unless . . . Qox had been a Ruby psion.

He pressed his fingers into his temples. The idea so disturbed him, his head throbbed. Usually the nanomeds in his body could fix a headache, but tonight even they didn't help. He felt disoriented, off balance.

"Sir?"

Kelric jerked. Turning, he saw Najo standing nearby. He focused his blurred vision on the guard. "Are they here?"

"About half a mile away." He watched Kelric with concern. "Are you all right?"

"My head hurts."

Najo tensed. "Sir! It's a trick!" His hand dropped to the Jumbler on his hip.

Kelric smiled slightly, aware of Strava and Axer watching. "The Traders often give me a headache, but I don't think we can accuse them of a nefarious plot because of it."

They regarded him dubiously.

Kelric's smile faded, for he knew if anything went wrong, he may have condemned these three to stand trial, even to die. For ten years, they had guarded him. They were more than officers; they had become an integral part of his life. They were willing to put their lives on the line for his hopeless dream of peace, and that meant more than he knew how to say. But he had to try.

"I want you all to know," he told them. "Whatever happens, I—" He stumbled with the words. "I thank you. For everything." It sounded so inadequate.

Najo said, "We wouldn't have it any other way, sir." Strava and Axer both nodded. They seemed to understand, feeling it from his mind if not his awkward speech.

Suddenly lights flashed on their gauntlets, which linked their biomech to the cabin security. Najo went to the door, standing to one side with his Jumbler up and ready. Strava returned to the window and nudged aside the cloth with her mammoth gun. Axer took up position by Kelric with his weapon drawn. Their tension filled the cabin, and Kelric feared they would jumble the first person that walked through that door.

"Put down your weapons," he said.

Strava turned to him, incredulity on her face. "Sir!"

"All of you," Kelric said. "Lower the guns."

"We can't do our job if you restrict us," Najo told him.

"If it were me coming here," Kelric said, "and we walked into a room full of Razers who had their laser carbines aimed at us and Jaibriol Qox standing behind them, what would you do?"

Najo regarded him steadily. "Defend you. Shoot, if necessary."

"That's my point," Kelric said. "Lower the guns."

Strava blew out a gust of air. She was clenching her Jumbler so tightly, her knuckles had turned white. Najo exhaled as well. Then he said, "Weapons down."

As the Jagernauts lowered their guns, an engine rumbled outside. Kelric's head felt as if it were splitting apart, but he knew now that nothing within his body caused the pain. It came from someone on the other side of that door.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the porch. The metallic sense of a mind came to him, one so augmented, it didn't feel human. The hair on Kelric's neck prickled. He hoped he hadn't made a mistake having his guards lower their weapons. A great deal could happen in the fraction of a second it took to raise a Jumbler.

Someone pushed the door. Perhaps they had expected it to be locked; Kelric didn't know. It opened slowly, swinging past Najo, who gripped his Jumbler, but with his arm straight down by his side, the tendons standing out along his tensed limb.

A giant stood framed in the doorway. A Razer.

Kelric had seen them on broadcasts. They served as the emperor's secret police and bodyguards. This one towered, his harsh features clenched. He did indeed hold a laser carbine—

Down by his side.

Kelric let out a breath, more relieved than he would ever admit. The Razer entered the room, his boots clanking on the wooden floor. Strava flanked his steps, matching him in height if not mass, her gauntlets flashing with so many warning lights, it cast an eerie red glow over her and the Razer.

Another man appeared in the doorway.

The moment Kelric saw him, he knew just how much the VR simulation had edited Qox's appearance. This man wasn't the perfect, untouched emperor. Jaibriol the Third stared at him with haunted eyes, his face haggard. But what Kelric felt most of all, undeniable and inescapable, was the raging Kyle pain in Jaibriol's mind. It was so huge, he wondered the cabin didn't catch fire and burn with its heat. No psion could miss it; he saw his own horror mirrored in the faces of his Jagernauts.

Incredibly, the Razer still didn't raise his weapon. He looked from Kelric to Jaibriol, his gaze far too perceptive.

Kelric found his voice. "Come in. Please."

Jaibriol entered the cabin, his gaze fixed Kelric. He spoke in that deep, spectacular voice that people all across the stars heard every time he appeared in broadcasts. It hadn't been doctored; he truly possessed that resonant voice—just as had Kelric's father, the Bard of Dalvador.

"You look the same as in the simulation," Jaibriol said.

Kelric blinked, startled. Of all the openings he had expected—an abstruse Highton greeting, stilted diplomacy, or questions—none included that statement. Jaibriol hadn't changed his appearance, either; physically he was the same. But no EI was here to edit out the agony in his gaze.

"I don't usually alter my appearance," Kelric said.

Jaibriol nodded stiffly, as if he didn't know what else to say and had been as caught off guard by his comment as Kelric.

Three more Razers entered, until the room was bursting with guards. Kelric felt how much it strained his own to keep their weapons down; the slightest hint of a threat, and they would fire. He didn't like the odds, either, four Razers and three Jagernauts. Despite the augmentation of the Razers, however, he suspected the Jagernauts were more formidable. But he doubted they cared a whit about their specs compared to Qox's bodyguards. They just wanted to shoot.

Jaibriol's splintered pain tore at Kelric. The emperor was struggling to hold the monstrous barriers he must have lived with every day of his life for the past ten years. But nothing could cut him off from Kelric, not when they were face to face. The mental defenses Jaibriol had built crumbled without Kelric doing anything. How could they help but come down to him?

The Triad knew its own.

Kelric knew then that matters were far worse even than he and Dehya had feared. Their nightmare had been given reality. Jaibriol Qox had become the third Key.

Qox stared at him with eyes that had seen more than anyone his age should have endured. "Father in heaven," he whispered.

In Iotic.

"Sire!" The Razer captain stepped toward the emperor as if to protect Jaibriol from himself. Strava jerked as if she had been struck. Najo gaped at Jaibriol, and Axer's confusion jolted over Kelric. Jaibriol had spoken the language of Skolian nobility, what Kelric would have taught his children had he raised them. Yes, certainly, the emperor knew Iotic, just as Kelric knew Highton. But what Eubian emperor would revert to perfect, unaccented Iotic under stress?

Jaibriol looked around as if he were trapped. Watching him, Kelric felt certain that if he bolted back to Eube without aid for his traumatized mind, he wouldn't survive. He needed help far more desperately than Kelric had ever guessed.

Strava cleared her throat. "Shall I close the door?"

Kelric started, as did everyone else. Then he glanced Jaibriol. The emperor took a deep breath and nodded.

"Yes, go ahead," Kelric told her.

They all waited while she swung the door shut on rustic but well- oiled hinges. Qox shifted like a thoroughbred racehorse ready to spook at the wrong word, the wrong gesture—or the wrong thought. Kelric could have mind-spoken to him; the emperor's Kyle strength filled the room. But it had a fractured quality, and Kelric feared to do more damage. How any psion could survive with such injuries, he had no idea. Jaibriol had to have a phenomenal strength of will. Kelric had known only one other person with that tenacious, enduring strength. Soz.

After another strained moment, Qox spoke in Highton, aloof and cool. "Well, we are here. Perhaps now you will tell me the reason for this."

"I needed to meet you in person," Kelric said.

A muscle twitched in Jaibriol's cheek. "Why?"

Kelric looked at the captain looming next to Jaibriol, his arms flickering with lights, except the Razer had no flesh and blood arm under all that tech.

Jaibriol glanced up at the Razer, then at Kelric. "What you have to say to me, you say to Hidaka. My guards remain."

Najo regarded Kelric, his gaze dark and tense.

"Stay," Kelric told the captain.

Relief flashed across Najo's face. He would have refused an order to leave, and Kelric had no intention of putting either himself or his guards in that position. But having so many people present hobbled him. He couldn't reveal Jaibriol in front of their guards.

Jaibriol ran his finger around the collar of his black tunic. "It always was hot and humid here in the summer."

Kelric almost smiled. Talking about the weather he could handle. "Is this where you lived while you were on Earth?"

"Not anywhere near here, actually. But the mountains around Seth's home are in the same range as these."

Kelric nodded. By "Seth," he had to mean Admiral Rockworth, the man who cared for Jaibriol and three other children during the two years of the Radiance War. Kelric wanted to ask him so much, especially if he was related to the other children, but he feared to push, or even nudge the emperor, lest it drive him away.

"Would you rather walk outside?" Kelric asked. From the alarmed expressions of their guards, he might have suggested he and Jaibriol throw themselves in front of a speeding magtrain.

Qox made a visible effort to relax his shoulders. "That would be good."

Strava scowled at Kelric, but when he gestured at the door, she stalked over and opened it. As he stepped forward, every guard in the room lifted their gun. Sweat gathered on his palms but he didn't wipe them on his slacks. As he came up next to Jaibriol, the emperor tensed, and the Razer he had called Hidaka clenched his half-raised carbine.

With care, Kelric lifted his hand, inviting Jaibriol to the door. The emperor inclined his head, and a line of sweat showed at his hairline. Together, they left cabin, accompanied by seven guards, all wound as tight as coils. Najo also had his Jumbler up and ready, but neither he nor Hidaka had aimed at anyone.