So tempting…maybe she shouldn’t have drunk so much wine. “I don’t believe you just talk a few minutes.”
“I promise.”
She meant to refuse, but somehow instead she said, “One minute. We see how well you keep promise.”
He grinned at her. “Come on.” Then he led her across the foyer to a purple glasswood door. It let them into a bedroom with stone walls, floor, and ceiling. Across the room, flames leapt in a fireplace. Throw rugs softened the floor, but the walls were bare except for two crossed swords above the hearth. To the right, in an alcove, tall windows looked out over the mountains, or they would have if their shutters had been open. On the left, quilts and embroidered pillows were piled on a large bed.
“Here.” Eldri drew her into the alcove with the windows. “Be comfortable. The benches are cushioned. I will be right back.” Then he took off across the room.
Roca squinted at him, then settled onto the bench and relaxed against a shutter. The cold from outside seeped through the glasswood. Had she been sober, it might have bothered her, but right now everything seemed warm, even the cold, though if she thought about it too hard, that made no sense. Better not to think.
Eldri reappeared with a carafe and two goblets made from ruby-red glasswood. He gave her one of the cups.
Roca turned the goblet over in her hand. “Pretty.”
“Very.” His voice had gone husky. He poured wine for both of them, then leaned the rim of his cup against hers. “May we weave many profitable and mutually agreeable relations between your people and mine.”
“Yes.” Roca tapped her cup against his, which had nothing to do with any of his customs or hers, but seemed a good idea. Then she took a swallow of wine. “Hmm. Good.”
“Here. Have some more.” He filled her goblet.
She gave him a dour look. “You know, Eldri, is not so easy to make me drunk.”
“You already are drunk, my ice queen.” His grin was so wicked, it was a wonder he didn’t get arrested, though she wasn’t exactly sure who would do the arresting.
She spoke with dignity. “I drunk not. Not drunk, I mean.”
He took her goblet and set it on the floor with his own and the carafe. “There. Now neither of us will be drunk.” Scooting closer, he slid his arm around her shoulders.
Roca pushed off his arm. “We have done our talk. Now I go.”
He put his arms around her waist. “You know, other women long to kiss me. They dream about it.”
She cocked her eyebrow at him. “Your humility astonishes me.”
“Ah, but it is an honor to kiss the Bard…” His voice trailed off as he brought his lips to hers.
Roca fully intended to push him away. But somehow instead she put her arms around his neck and molded her body against his. As his embrace tightened, his kiss became more urgent and his hands wandered to her breasts. Nudging her backward, he stretched her out on the cushioned bench and lay on top of her.
Roca turned her head to the side. “I’m crazy,” she muttered. Then she rolled him off of her body.
“Ai!” A loud thump reverberated through the alcove.
Trying to focus her blurred sight, Roca turned on her side and hung on the edge of the bench, peering down. Eldri was lying on the floor, looking annoyed. He sat up, wincing as he rubbed his shoulder. Then he glared at her. “You are colder than a rain of ice and hail.”
“Hail is ice.” Roca also sat up, wishing she didn’t want so much to go to bed with him. It was wrong for so many reasons, she couldn’t count them. But that was hard to remember when faced with his tousled, appealing person. “We are supposed to talk about relations between our peoples.”
His grin came back. “We were exploring relations.”
“Pah. I give you doubt benefit.” She paused as her node corrected the idiom. “I gave you the benefit of a doubt. Now I go.”
“Doubt benefit?” He folded his arms around his torso. “You know, it really is cold in here.”
“Maybe snow still come down outside.”
He stood up and unlatched one of the shutters. As he cracked it open, snow blew into the room. He shut it hard, grimacing, his shirt already covered with blue powder. Roca crossed her arms and shivered.
Eldri dropped onto the bench next to her. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “I am very, very sorry.” He looked very, very guilty.
She regarded him uneasily. “Why?”
“We cannot go down the mountain in such snow.”
“No.” He couldn’t mean that. “We must leave tomorrow.”
“It is too dangerous.”
Roca swallowed. “Is only snow.”
“Up here, snow can kill you.”
She had traveled in every type of weather, but always with modern protections and the knowledge that if the unexpected arose, she would soon have a fix for the problem. Here she didn’t know what to do. “Maybe it stop soon.”
“It could.” He pushed his hand through his hair, pulling it back from his widow’s peak. “It never snows in Dalvador.”
“We can manage the path down.” Roca schooled herself to calm. She had a good cushion of time, over a day before the ship arrived. She could fool with some of the chips in her clothes to see if she could send a message to the port, though she doubted any had the range she needed. But Brad knew her location, assuming he had received her last message. If he could fix the flyer, he could come for her. But no matter what, she had to find a way back even if snow kept falling.
Eldri was watching her, a strand of hair curling across his cheek. He trailed his fingers over her lips. “Can you not stay longer?”
She took his hand in hers. “I wish it is possible.” The depth of her regret surprised her. “But I must go back. Tomorrow, or morning of next day.”
He turned sideways on the bench and extended his leg behind her. While she was trying to figure out why he had done that, he slid his arms around her waist from behind and pulled her close, her back against his chest. Roca knew she shouldn’t let him take liberties, but he felt so very fine. His mind suffused hers with warmth, and she had been lonely for so long. Leaning against him, she told herself it would only be for “a few minutes.”
“We need a plan,” Eldri said.
“When snow stop, we go.”
“The path could be dangerous.”
“Can we manage it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried under these conditions.” He paused. “If we dress warmly, take animals that know the path, and go slowly, I don’t see why we cannot try.”
Roca closed her eyes with relief. “Good.”
He twined her curls around his hand. “I’ve never seen hair this way, like metal but soft. So many hues. Gold, copper, bronze, platinum.”
“Is metal.” Roca paused as her node updated her grammar. “It has metallic components.”
“Why?”
Good question. She tried to remember the answer. “My ancestors make themselves that way. My father, even his skin look metallic.”
“Yours does a little.” He pressed his lips against her temple. “I will find a way to take you back tomorrow.” With difficulty, he added, “After the memorial for my friend.”
“Yes,” she said gently. “After.”
Eldri laid his forehead against her head. He was silent for so long, she wondered if he had fallen asleep. His mind felt quiet, his mood shrouded. Then she felt moisture soaking through her hair, and she realized he was crying.
Eventually he lifted his head. “Perhaps we should sleep.”
It was the first time Roca thought he actually meant sleep. “I go to my room.”
“Don’t leave.” He tightened his embrace. “I will sleep here, on the floor, with a quilt. You can have the bed.”
“You will be cold.”
He tried to regain his earlier mischief. “You could keep me warm.” But his bantering sounded forced.
Roca turned and cupped her hands around his face. “I stay tonight, if it helps. But ple
ase, Eldri, no more love play. I know you feel my mind, even if you say you do not. I cannot hide my loneliness. You must not take advantage.”
“Let me ease that loneliness.”
“It is wrong.”
“But why?”
“I cannot give you promises.”
“I don’t ask for promises.”
“But you will.”
His mouth quirked up. “Now who has no humbleness?”
She flushed. “Is not what I mean. We have…ach, I have not the words. A link of empathy. It make us become too close.”
“Empathy?”
“Here.” She tapped his temple. “In our minds.”
His lips quirked. “It isn’t your mind I want to hold.”
“Eldri.”
“Why do you worry so? If we like each other, you can come back. You will, won’t you?”
Roca hesitated. The better she knew him, the greater her reservations about revealing his mental gifts to her government. If they took control of his life and the colony here, he and his people could end up losing as much as if the Allied developers exploited Lyshriol. And there was Kurj, her son. She dreaded how he might react to a relationship between her and Eldri. She reminded herself of Dayj, the prince everyone wanted her to marry, but all she could remember about him right now was his chilly reserve.
“I can probably never come back,” she said.
He grasped her shoulders. “Don’t say this.”
Gods knew, she longed to stay. But what she wanted was irrelevant. Too many people would suffer if she shirked her duties. She didn’t want to add to the hurt Eldri was already suffering because of Jacquilar’s death, so she said only, “Perhaps anything can happen in this universe.” She motioned as if to encompass Windward. “This place has magic.”
He spoke in a low voice. “Then for one night, let that magic be real. If I never see you again, gift me with memories of you, the golden woman from above the sky, that I can hold forever close to my heart.”
Roca was more tempted than she dared admit. And Brad was wrong—if Eldri realized they came “from above the sky,” he knew she wasn’t from some other province. Or perhaps she misinterpreted his pretty words, longing to believe he understood the situation and despite that, he still wanted her.
“Is wrong for me to stay,” she said.
“Why is it wrong?” He slid one arm under her knees and the other around her back, then stood up, holding her in his arms. “Never worry about tomorrow.”
“Eldri—”
“One night,” he whispered.
Perhaps if he had continued to tease, she would have resisted. But his intensity caught her. As he walked across the room, Roca couldn’t stop looking at him. When he laid her on the bed, she put her arms around his neck and drew him down with her. They sank into handmade quilts turned soft from many washings.
Eldri was strength and warmth, and he held her with a need born as much from grief as desire. They undressed each other with both urgency and care. Scars covered his body, but whatever battles had left those marks hadn’t injured his heart. Unrestrained in his passion, he cracked the ice that surrounded her emotions. For the first time in years, maybe in decades, she felt no separation, no distance, no sense of standing behind glass, outside the circle of warmth a man and a woman could create.
They loved each other in the dim firelight, isolated in a mountain fortress, pretending for one night that no storms raged beyond their precarious refuge.
5
Son of Stars
Kurj Skolia, son of Roca Skolia, had no equal.
Rumor claimed Kurj was more machine than man. His ancestors had settled a low gravity planet and engineered themselves with larger, stronger bodies than normal humans. He stood seven feet tall and had a massive physique. The military had enhanced his skeleton and muscle system, and he had personally arranged yet more augmentation. The biomech web in his body controlled his enhancements, with a micro-fusion reactor to provide energy. Nanomeds maintained his health and youth. Despite his size, he could move many times faster than an unaltered man. He thought nothing of crumpling a metal block in his fist. When he entered a room, he dominated it by the sheer force of his size.
He was a man of metal.
Kurj had inherited his coloring from his mother, Roca Skolia, who inherited it from her father, Jarac Skolia. His gold skin reflected light. His hair and eyelashes glinted, and his eyes were molten gold. His ancestors had engineered inner eyelids as protection against intense sunlight, and Kurj had inherited them from his grandfather. They covered his eyes with gold films. He could see through them, but to everyone else they were opaque, making him a cipher.
Kurj and Jarac could have passed as twins, if not for the gray in Jarac’s hair. But no one confused them. Where Jarac was kind, Kurj was hard; where Jarac smiled, Kurj showed no emotion. As Imperator, Jarac headed Imperial Space Command, the military. His title was hereditary; he split the actual command among his senior officers. With a proclivity for peace, he chose commanders who understood but didn’t relish war.
Roca was next in line to become Imperator, a title she would someday assume by joining the Dyad, the power link that controlled the interstellar information network known as the Kyle web. Kurj was next after her, though he had far more interest than she in the title. He knew Roca intended to delegate authority much as Jarac did now, and that she shared her father’s preferences for diplomacy over warfare.
Kurj had other ideas.
In his younger days, Kurj had flown a starfighter in the J-Forces, a branch of the military. He had fast become known as a ruthless and versatile pilot, earning rapid promotions until he attained the rank of Primary, equivalent to an admiral or general. At thirty-five, he was the youngest officer to hold such a high position. Now he oversaw all the J-Forces.
He had two obsessions.
His first was Eube, that vast empire his people called the Traders. Its aristocratic rulers based their economy on the buying and selling of people. The Trader Aristos enslaved over a trillion people on hundreds of worlds and habitats. Given the chance, they would conquer Skolia and subjugate her people as well.
As a pilot, Kurj had experienced Aristo inhumanity firsthand. The agony of their captives stabbed his empath’s mind, even reaching from one ship to another. He felt Aristos savoring the deaths of the soldiers they killed. When his units had liberated Eubian captives, he felt the suffering behind their traumatized silences. He took it all in, shell-shocked and unwilling, until finally he could bear it no more. He raised impenetrable mental shields, cutting himself off from all emotion. Driven by his memories of a stepfather who had brutalized his mother as Aristos brutalized their slaves, he swore nothing could appease his hatred for the Traders except their destruction.
His second obsession was Roca.
“You lost her?” Kurj slowly stood up behind the massive desk in his office. “How the hell could you lose her?”
Sweat beaded the forehead of the man facing him, an J-Forces officer named Render. “We aren’t sure how the Councilor gave us the slip, sir, but she disappeared two days ago.”
Kurj restrained the urge to grit his teeth. “I want every operative you have on the search. Find my mother. Understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
“And one more thing, Quaternary Render,” Kurj added in a deceptively quiet voice.
Render stared at him. Prior to entering Kurj’s office, the man had held the rank of Secondary, roughly equivalent to a lieutenant colonel in other branches of the military. Kurj had just demoted him to the lowest rank in the J-Force.
“Yes, sir?”
Kurj watched the man through the gold sheen of his inner lids. Render couldn’t see his eyes, only an unbroken shimmer. “If you find my mother—and she is unharmed—you may manage to stay out of prison.”
Render swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Dismissed.”
Render saluted, crossing his clenched fists at the wrists and raising the
m to Kurj, his arms out straight. Then he left—fast.
Alone now, Kurj paced along the window-wall behind his desk. Lost in thought, he only glanced at the spectacular landscape outside, far below his office in the Orbiter, the space station where he worked. Military experts had developed its biosphere to provide an optimum working environment for the powers of Skolia, but today he barely noticed the rolling hills, lush forests, or ethereal city.
Where the blazes had his mother gone? She must have discovered his plans. If she showed up at the Assembly and voted, then those factions that opposed the invasion would win. If he cast her votes for the invasion, he still might lose but at least he had a chance.
It worried him far more, though, that Roca was out there alone. She could take care of herself, yes, but the risk of her traveling without bodyguards was too great.
The true value of the Ruby Dynasty lay not in their heredity, but in their minds. Only Ruby psions could create and power the Kyle web, a computer network in Kyle space, a universe outside of spacetime. Physics as humans knew it had no meaning there, including the speed of light; as a result, the web made instant communication possible across interstellar distances. The Traders had no Kyle web because they had no Ruby psions. The Trader Aristos commanded a powerful military, but their communications were slow. That one disadvantage was all that kept them from conquering Skolia. And Skolia had only five Ruby psions, including Roca. Just five.
Once, after an on-planet battle, Kurj had found a Trader girl huddled in the ruins of an installation. She had been a provider, one of the slaves Aristos tortured for their pleasure. He would never forget her inability to talk, even to move, except to shake. He had wrapped her in a blanket, but she had only cried and struggled to escape. Her mind had been wide open, with no barriers to mute her emotions. Unable to blockade his mind from hers, he had lived her terror. She had no concept of kindness; she expected only cruelty from him.
He had taken her to a hospital, and eventually the doctors had restored her physical health. But they couldn’t heal her emotional wounds. She had remained withdrawn and silent, never able to form normal human relationships. The memory of her lovely face and ravaged mind was only one of hundreds that haunted Kurj. The thought that his mother might fall into Trader hands was more than he could endure. If the Aristos had taken her prisoner, he would annihilate every last one of them even if it took his entire life and all the resources of ISC.