Taquinil, her firstborn. In the last war, the Traders had reached the Orbiter, attacking that stronghold, seeking the Ruby Dynasty. To escape, she and Taquinil they had thrown themselves into the spacetime singularity that defined a Lock, and it had transformed their actual bodies into the Kyle, a universe of thought. The immense energy required for that change had nearly destroyed them. She had eventually returned to normal space, coming out in partial waves, but Taquinil had stayed in the Kyle. He existed now only as a quantum wave function of thought.
Dehya had never quite figured out how to greet a son who had turned himself into a wave. You look good. For a, uh, waveform.
A sense of amusement came from him. Thank you.
Taquinil, we miss you.
And I you.
Come home. Meet your brother. He’s almost ten. She and Eldrin had named their second son Althor in honor of Eldrin’s brother Althor, a Jagernaut who had died in the War. Come home, sweetheart.
Maybe someday.
Dehya knew if she pushed, he would disappear. So she just said, I’m glad to see you.
I had to come. Someone tried to kill you.
Don’t be silly. I’m fine.
No you aren’t.
She focused and the scene changed, becoming the green of a sun-drenched forest. Her mind formed an emerald waveform next to Taquinil’s gold. All the while, “Carnelians Finale” played in the background: I’m only a singer; it’s all that I can do. But I’m still alive, and I’m coming after you.
Your uncle Del wrote that, Dehya thought.
Taquinil’s wave flashed with red sparks. Did he try to hurt you?
Del? Good gods, no. Why would you ask such a thing?
He resents the Ruby Dynasty.
Sometimes. But he loves us. Dehya had never doubted it. He would never deliberately hurt his family.
Someone attacked you in the Kyle.
Taquinil, stop. Dehya didn’t know why he kept insisting on that. Her memory felt oddly hazy, but she didn’t want to waste these rare moments with him. That song is his rage over the way the Traders have hurt us, the people he loves.
He released the song onto the meshes. Or it appears that way.
Appears. Interesting choice of words. Show me, she thought.
They descended through Kyle space. It streamed past them, murmuring with the thoughts of millions, whispering at the edges of her mind or flaring with light. People transmitted data, argued, chatted, conducted research, ran military ops, did uncounted other jobs. The deeper they went, the darker it became, until it was lit only by their gold and emerald waves.
They stopped in a pocket of shadows. Dehya absorbed their surroundings. We’re under a military security mesh. An old one.
It’s no longer used, Taquinil thought. A good place to hide.
Access Kelric Skolia’s “module Quis,” she thought to the Kyle. It didn’t answer.
What is that? Taquinil asked. Quis?
Kelric’s top security protocol. He calls it Quis.
His thought turned wry. I won’t ask how you know his secured protocols.
Ah, well . . . Dehya had never found a system she couldn’t crack. Today she was having trouble, though. Something was wrong. She couldn’t reach the ISC programs . . .
Everything suddenly snapped into place. A machine-like thought responded. COMTRACE ATTENDING.
She recognized the name; it was a highly secured military node. Comtrace, access my security analyses codes.
ACCESSED.
Implement code nineteen. Analyze the web for security breaches.
CODE IMPLEMENTED. Then Comtrace added: NO ANOMALIES DETECTED.
Try code fourteen.
CODE IMPLEMENTED.
Dehya waited.
ANOMALY DETECTED, Comtrace thought. PART OF A SECURITY SYSTEM IS GONE. MISSING MOD: FOUR-THREE-B, LATTICE SITE FOUR-TRILLION-SEVEN.
Only that one mod is missing? she asked.
YES.
That sounds like what I found, Taquinil said. For me it manifested as a rip in the mesh. A ragged hole appeared in front of them, like a tear in the fabric of the universe.
Someone could pull data through that rip, Dehya thought.
Or send it in, Taquinil said.
Music curled out of the rip and swirled around her in glowing red glyphs:
I’ll never kneel beneath your Highton stare.
I’m here and I’m real; I’ll lay your guilt bare.
Dehya followed the music through the rip, deeper into the Kyle mesh. Eventually the path turned upward. She followed the song through more layers, each lighter than the last, always upward, until she was no longer in a secured space. The path merged with civilian routes, becoming a road. Eventually it reached systems for the Allied Worlds of Earth. Although she kept following the trail, she knew where it would lead. To Earth. To Del. Supposedly.
You don’t believe it, either? Taquinil asked.
Actually, I do.
Why?
Someone accessed Del’s mind. She submerged tendrils from her mind into the trail. When the threads had soaked up as much as they could absorb, she integrated them with her thoughts. They inserted a virus into his brain that affected the firing of his neurotransmitters, creating fake thoughts as if they were his own. So it appears he used his mind to dump “Carnelians Finale” into Kyle space. He had no idea it happened.
Are you guessing? Taquinil asked. Or are you sure?
Almost certain.
If someone can affect our minds that way—that’s terrifying.
Yes. Dehya didn’t want to imagine a universe where terrorists could hijack their telepathic ability. If someone figured out how to control the mind of a Ruby psion, it would give them immense power over the dynasty, and by extension, over the Imperialate.
We don’t have anything resembling the technology to do it, she thought. If Ruby psions can’t, how could anyone else?
It should be impossible, Taquinil thought.
She probed more deeply into the trail of Del’s operations on the net. That’s odd. Del released the song twice. The first time was a while ago, when it first hit the mesh and turned into a cyber-plague. Then he released it again, a second time. That’s why we’re picking it up. She let her thoughts swirl around Taquinil, showing him what she had found.
I see, he thought. The second release happened at the same time you were attacked.
Attack. He kept saying that. A strange sensation rippled through Dehya, as if someone were trying to pull her out of this place.
No, she thought. Stop.
Mother? What’s wrong?
I have to go! With a gasp, she whisked away from Taquinil. A tether was dragging her through the mesh so fast, its layers blurred.
Far away, so very far, someone else was calling her. Come back. Come home . . .
Dehya opened her eyes. She was curled in a fetal position under the covers of a bed. Someone was sitting on the edge of the mattress, holding her hand, his head bent, his eyes closed. His dark red hair had fallen around his handsome face, and a hint of freckles were scattered across his nose. Tears wet his cheeks.
“Dryni?” Her voice had an eerie quality, as if she were far away.
Her husband’s eyes snapped opened. “Dehya?” His hand tightened around hers.
“Why are you crying?” Her voice was almost inaudible.
“Are you here?”
“I always was.” Only her mind had gone into the Kyle. “What happened . . . ?”
“You’ve been buried so deep, no one could reach you. The techs took you out of the chair, but you still didn’t come out.”
“Not possible . . .”
“No, it’s not.” He managed a shaky smile. “But you were doing it anyway.”
“I’m always there . . . partly.” Nothing seemed real anymore . . .
“Dehya, stay with me.”
She breathed deeply and slowly uncurled her body. It hurt. Groaning, she stretched out under the silvery-blue sheet. Softly she said,
“Our son was there.”
Eldrin stroked the hair off her forehead. “Is he all right?”
“Fine. Well, if you call existing as a waveform ‘fine.’ ”
Eldrin gave a wry laugh. “He always was different.” His smile faded. “Dehya, don’t go back. I can’t lose you both. And Althor needs you.”
She squeezed his hand, wishing she could live like everyone else, that her mind wasn’t so painfully sensitive. Only her family kept her anchored here. Eldrin and Althor were more than her husband and son, they were a part of her mind. Every time she saw Althor, she felt an immense gratitude that he lived. She and Eldrin would never have more children. The danger was too great, given their close relation. It was a wonder either of their sons had survived. Taquinil had such an extreme telepathic sensitivity, he couldn’t endure the normal universe. Althor had been born with so many physical defects, it had taken years to make him whole, and then only with large parts of his body designed from biomech. The Assembly had forced her to marry Eldrin because they wanted more Ruby heirs, but the price it exacted from their children was too high . . . too high . . .
“Dehya, don’t let go,” Eldrin said. “Don’t fall back into wherever you were.”
She struggled to focus. She had found something odd, something about Comtrace, the military node most linked to the Imperator.
“Where is Kelric?” she asked.
Eldrin stiffened. “Why do you ask that?”
“Something is wrong.” She reached out to his mind, but he had his shields in place, which he never did with her. “Dryni, tell me. What happened?”
After a moment, he said, “He’s here, too, in a neural unit of the hospital.”
“It got him, too?”
“What got him?”
“Something used our minds against us.” She rolled onto her back, stiff and sore. “I hardly know how to explain. Like someone hijacked our neural processes and used them to hurt us in ways only we could do to ourselves.”
“That doesn’t sound possible.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so.”
He spoke uneasily. “You need to talk to ISC.”
“Is Kelric all right?”
“He’s fine, oddly enough.”
“Why oddly?”
“Before he was fine, he was dead.”
“What?” She sat up, then winced as pain shot thought her muscles.
“Dehya, stop.” Eldrin tried to nudge her back down. When she scowled at him, he smiled, the color coming back into his face. “Now you look like my stubborn wife.”
“Ah, well.” He had a point. “What do you mean, Kelric was dead?”
“Well, if you’re right, that something caused the you and him to do these things with your own minds, then technically, he killed himself.”
She pulled off the sheet. “I have to talk to him.”
He tugged the sheet back over her. “You have to lie down.”
“I’m fine.”
“Of course you’re fine,” he said with exasperation. “You sound just like Kelric. You two are always fine, even when you’re killing yourselves to prove it.”
“He and I need to talk.”
Eldrin met her gaze. “I’ll set it up if you both promise to stay in your chairs and not jump up to go work, telling me how fine you are.”
She smiled. “All right. Deal.” In truth, she was already tiring. But she and Kelric had to figure out what had happened before anyone else was hurt.
Tarquine’s hospital bed was empty.
Jaibriol stood in her hospital room like a shadow, dressed in black, staring at the bed with its pristine, perfectly arranged smart-sheets. “Where is my wife?”
Doctor Qoxdaughter’s face turned ashen. “She was here just minutes ago!”
“Her body couldn’t just disappear. Where the blazes are her guards?”
“Your Highness.” That came from one of Jaibriol’s usually silent Razers, a black-haired man with brown eyes, pure brown, no trace of red. No Aristo blood.
“You’ve found her?” Jaibriol asked.
The Razer lifted his gauntleted wrist, showing him its comm screen. “She’s in the palace library with her guards.”
Air seemed to flood back into the room. She wasn’t dead. She hadn’t passed away while he was in his office, toiling to catch up with the endless work that had piled up. He had resumed his duties today, two days after the attack, over Qoxdaughter’s protests, but he hadn’t expected Tarquine even to be awake, let alone up and gone.
“Take me to her,” Jaibriol said.
The contents of a library even as large as the one in the emperor’s palace could fit onto one mesh chip. However, this repository had what few others could claim: real books. Bound in leather, with parchment pages, some were so old that only restoration treatments kept them from falling apart. As much a museum as a library, it housed thousands of the treasures. Jaibriol particularly liked it because the carved archways, ornate moldings, and vaulted ceilings created a serenity that usually calmed him.
Today he wasn’t calm. He strode with Qoxdaughter and his Razers into a room where lamps in wall scones shed antiqued light. Four wingchairs upholstered in dark gold were set around a table carved with vines. A woman sat in one chair, her eyes closed, her head leaning against its high back, her dark clothes part of the shadows.
Tarquine.
Jaibriol stopped at the table, filled with an immense gratitude at seeing her that Highton custom forbid him to show. She was breathing regularly and her eyes moved under her lids, whether from a dream or waking thoughts, he couldn’t tell. Quis dice lay scattered on the table in front of her. He had left her a new set in her hospital room, hoping the dice would amuse her enough when she awoke that she would stay put, but apparently nothing could keep his restless empress confined to a hospital.
The captain of Tarquine’s Razers came over to him and bowed deeply, as Jaibriol had told him to do instead of kneeling. Jaibriol spoke in a low voice. “No one must see her like this.” They had kept the assassination attempt a secret, and he intended for it to stay that way.
“We’ll make sure of it, Your Highness,” the Razer told him.
Jaibriol nodded and went to sit by Tarquine while Qoxdaughter and the Razers moved back, giving them privacy.
Tarquine opened her eyes. “My greetings, husband.” Her voice was low. Throaty.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “You should be in the hospital.”
“I shall die from boredom in that place.”
Jaibriol didn’t doubt it. He wanted to ask her how she felt, talk to her, give and take comfort, anything to fill the holes in their marriage. But he knew her too well to offer any hint of affection when other people were present.
“I’ve read the security report on the assassination attempt,” he said.
She spoke wryly, “And who almost won the lottery of killing our beloved personages?”
Lottery indeed. If an assassin ever succeeded against them, more than a few Aristos would rejoice. And why? Because of all the evil Jaibriol hadn’t perpetrated on the human race.
“They traced it to a leak in the palace Security division,” he said. “Or what looked like a leak. Further investigation shows the attempt probably came from the Red Point Diamond Aristo Line.”
“A Diamond Aristo?” She raised an eyebrow. “How insulting. I would have thought it would take a Highton Aristo to kill us.”
He smiled slightly. “Perhaps it does. We are still alive.”
She considered him, seemingly relaxed, or more accurately, worn out. But her gaze burned. “And yet supposedly a Red Point Diamond nearly succeeded where everyone else has failed.”
“Security found a back doorway that someone snuck into our intelligence networks.”
“How clever of Azile Xir.”
Jaibriol couldn’t tell whether she truly believed that Azile, the Minister of Intelligence, had anything to do with this, or if she brought him up only because she so disliked Azile’s
father, Corbal Xir. Given that the elderly Corbal was Jaibriol’s kin, his advisor, and the closest Jaibriol had to a friend, he wished Tarquine would try to get along with him better.
“Azile is under investigation,” Jaibriol said. Tarquine wasn’t the only one who suspected the Intelligence Minister had framed both the Red Point Diamonds and the Security officers. Azile had means and motive. As Intelligence Minister, was he well placed to create the necessary breach in security, and if Jaibriol died without an heir, Azile’s father became emperor and Azile was first in line to the throne.
Except Jaibriol didn’t believe it. Although he could never be sure of anything he gleaned mentally from an Aristo, given all the protections and mental scar tissue in his own mind, he didn’t feel hostility from the Intelligence Minister. If anything, Azile had always shown him a grudging respect, and it had deepened over the years. He just didn’t see Azile plotting an assassination.
Jaibriol had spent the last eleven years doing his own intelligence work. He knew secrets about all of his advisors. Azile was illegitimate. Corbal claimed Azile was the son of his late Highton wife, who had passed away years ago, but Azile’s mother was actually Sunrise, one of Corbal’s pleasure girls, the only one he ever spent time with. Of course Corbal would never admit he was in love with a slave. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t hide the truth from Jaibriol’s Ruby mind. Corbal had committed a crime almost as great as Jaibriol, passing off his half-Aristo son as a Highton. For all that it violated every definition of Highton “decency,” it was, Jaibriol suspected, one reason Azile seemed more human to him than most Aristos. He was only half Highton.
Corbal was a more likely suspect than Azile. Jaibriol had used Corbal’s secret to blackmail him into signing the peace treaty. That one act had nearly destroyed the precarious bond they had built up over the past decade. And yet . . . Corbal couldn’t hide the truth from Jaibriol. He didn’t want to be emperor. And as much as he hated what Jaibriol had done with the treaty, he didn’t hate Jaibriol. Incredible as it seemed, Corbal cared about him.