“Aren’t they?”
“Millions,” Taratus murmured. “Tarquine just bid ten point nine million for you.”
Kelric stared at him. “That’s appalling.”
The warlord looked amused. “Why ever for?”
“Do you know how many people you could feed with eleven million Highton credits?” Kelric thought of the poverty he had seen on so many worlds. “You could build housing, schools, community programs. For millions of people.”
“Whatever.” Turning back to his palmtop, he said, “Look at that. Mirella: twelve point six. Tarquine: twelve point seven.” He paused. “Mirella: twelve point eight.” Another pause. “Marix: thirteen.” He sounded positively gleeful. “Thirteen million. I’ve never sold a provider for half this much.” He grinned at Kelric. “You did one hell of a job in there.”
Kelric tried not to grit his teeth. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Well, they certainly liked the anything that you didn’t do.” Focusing on his palmtop again, he said, “They’re starting to slow down. The Marix bet is still the last … No, here’s Tarquine, at thirteen point one. Marix: thirteen point two. Tarquine: thirteen point three. Marix: thirteen point four.” He smirked. “They’re going to decimal each other to death.” He glanced at Kelric. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Kelric lied.
“Coperia wants me to thank you.”
“Who?”
“Coperia. My provider. I told her about my deal with you.” In a bemused voice he added, “I think it surprised her that I agreed. She told me she would, ah, make it worth my while.” He smiled. “She does please me, you know.”
Kelric had been sure the admiral lied when he claimed he was tired of Coperia. He was glad to know she would have a reprieve. He hated thinking of her with Taratus, but at least the warlord would be gentle for twenty days.
Taratus returned his attention to his palmtop. “Marix’s thirteen point four is still the last one.”
Kelric grimaced. Given Marix’s military connections, he was the one Kelric least wanted to end up with.
Taratus tapped at his palmtop. “I’m sending out a final call for bids.”
A thought came to Kelric. “Taratus.”
The warlord looked up. “No one calls me that.”
“Admiral Taratus.”
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t you interrogate me for ESComm before putting me up for auction?”
“You’re too old,” Taratus said. “I don’t mean age-wise; you’re younger than I am by at least thirty years. But your biomech is old. It wasn’t worth the trouble.”
Although that made sense, it struck Kelric as strange anyway. It was true that had he been only a Jagernaut, ESComm wouldn’t have discovered much from his dated knowledge or biomech. It seemed odd, though, that the rigid Traders, who operated with meticulous precision, would let even a slight chance slip by that they might discover useful intelligence.
Why else would Taratus spare him from ESComm? Out of compassion? Was that possible?
Taratus glanced down at his palmtop—and whistled. “That old hawk must be richer than a diamond moon. Tarquine: fourteen point zero.” He entered a command, then waited. After several moments he closed the palmtop with a satisfied snap. Leaning back in his huge chair, he swung his feet back up on the desk, put his hands behind his head, and grinned at Kelric.
“Congratulations,” Taratus said. “You just became the most expensive slave in Eubian history.”
13
Revelation
The shuttle was crowded, with Kelric, his six guards, two of Tarquine’s staff, a pilot, and a copilot. Kelric dozed during the trip. He came awake when the vibration in the deck changed. Deceleration pushed them into their seats as they docked. Somewhere.
They disembarked into a decon chamber large enough to suggest they were on a space habitat. White tiles covered the curving walls, and radiance bars circled its girth. They exited into a magcar, though, rather than the hub of a station, which meant this was probably a ship. A big ship. As the car sped on its way, his weight increased. When they stopped, the gravity felt about 90 percent. His intuition suggested a vessel far bigger even than Taratus’s yacht.
They took him through a maze of hexagonal corridors. No one spoke. Diamond tiles covered every surface, and black-diamond arches framed the white tunnels. Brilliant, pure, and sharp, without a touch of color, the icy perfection glittered like a crystalline reflection of its Aristo builders.
By now he knew the routine. Again they reached an antechamber, this one hexagonal in shape. Again his guards announced his presence into a comm and a voice told them to enter. Again an Aristo waited inside. Tarquine. One change: This time they entered a personal suite with glossy white walls, black chairs, a white bed canopied in white silk, and black-diamond tables. Rather than the multiple sides of a polygon, the suite had a cylindrical shape. A circle: the ultimate polygon. It had an infinite number of sides.
Tarquine matched her ship. Her black jumpsuit glistened as if the threads were spun from gems. Her hair shimmered, black with a touch of white. And her eyes. Two rubies. They were the only drops of color in this black and white universe.
She was leaning over a console by the far wall, studying its holos. As his retinue entered, she glanced at them and straightened up to her full height, six foot two, an austerely beautiful woman who had more power even than most other Hightons. Finance Minister. That would make her one of the emperor’s top advisers.
She dismissed his retinue. Then she and Kelric were alone. She smiled, a formal expression that curved her pale rose lips into an elegant arch. When she spoke, her voice had a throaty quality, dark and suggestive. “Those clothes do you more justice than what you wore at the auction. You look like the sun.”
The sun? It was no wonder she saw it that way, in her ice universe. He still wore the gold trousers and shirt. Gilter-velvet. The cloth resembled metal rather than sunlight. It matched Taratus’s yacht and contrasted with Tarquine’s gem universe. Did all Aristos pattern their environments after minerals or metals? Those he had seen lived as they looked, more machine than human.
Kelric had no idea if she expected a response. He had none. So he just stood. He was familiar enough with Aristo security to know monitors and defense systems packed the walls, ceiling, floor, furniture, and console. If he made any move toward Tarquine that an EI brain could construe as threatening, he would be stopped.
“In a few days,” she said, “the head of my private staff will show you our routines and answer your questions.” Her gaze took him in as if she could possess his essence through her mesmerizing ruby stare. “For now you will stay here.”
He looked around the spare, beautiful chamber. “Is this your room?”
“Yes. One of my private suites.” She turned back to the console and studied the screen. “I’m having a banquet this evening, ship’s time.” Glancing at him, she spoke in a shadowed voice. “You will attend me there.”
To dine? What of the hours before? After? How long would it be until her chilling beauty became an ugly reality of pain? He didn’t want to know.
After waiting several seconds for him to respond, she turned back to her console. He rubbed his hands along his arms, wondering how he was going to escape this mess.
She flicked her finger through a holo and the console darkened. Then she turned back to him. “Would you like to rest before the banquet?” She indicated the bed. “You can sleep for a few hours.”
“By myself?” Kelric had no idea what he would do if she touched him again. He wanted to blank the auction from his mind, wash his mind clean of that memory.
Tarquine came forward. “I may be back later.” She paused in front of him, watching his face. Then she murmured, “‘A tender wish, a lonely cry to soothe.’” She was quoting a long dead Highton poet whose providers had inspired his verses. Softly she added, “‘More shall you find, than ever did you lose.’”
He answered in a l
ow voice. “Nothing will compensate for the loss of my freedom. Providing least of all.”
She trailed her long fingers along his jaw. “Rest well, my beauty.” Then she walked past him. He turned to see the wall open into an archway. She glanced back, appraising him one last time. Then she left. The wall re-formed into a seamless surface.
Kelric shook his head, far more rattled than he wanted to admit. He went to the wall and pressed his hands against its opaline curve. Cool and polished, it gave a sense of depth, as if he were gazing into a bank of clouds. He found no more sign of how to open it than he had with the walls in his prison on Taratus’s ship. Finally he gave up. He went to study the console, but had no success there either.
Rubbing his eyes, he regarded the bed. Would she really let him sleep? Gods knew, he needed it if he was going to think his way out of this disaster.
He undressed and folded his clothes in a neat pile on a chair. Then he pulled back the velvet covers and slid under the silk sheets. Within moments he had fallen into a deep sleep.
The new Trade Minister has none of Kryx Quaelen’s savvy. Quaelen’s death left a hole in the Trade Ministry, one that leaks funds into far too many enterprising hands …
The soft tapping of someone working on a console woke Kelric. He tried to orient on his surroundings. He was lying down, yet a moment ago he had been sitting, reading a screen about … who? Kryx Quaelen? The name meant nothing to him.
Actually, it did mean something. He seemed to know a great deal about the mysterious, and quite dead, Quaelen. The man had been the Eubian Trade Minister, the most powerful of the emperor’s advisers. Not only that, he was also the consort of Viquara Iquar, the dowager empress. He married her after the death of her husband, Emperor Ur Qox.
Kelric knew them all. Ur and Viquara were the parents of Jaibriol II, the last emperor. Quaelen, Viquara, and Jaibriol II had all died two months ago, in the final battle of the Radiance War, when ISC attacked Glory, the Eubian capital. The battle had been more successful than Skolia realized, crushing Glory’s defenses, shredding their webs, and decimating their stockpiles of valuable minerals, including almost their entire store of platinum.
Kelric blinked. How did he know all that? Eighteen years ago Ur Qox had been alive and well, and no one knew he had a son named Jaibriol II. Everything Kelric had just “remembered” happened after he crashed on Coba. Yes, of course, he had heard about the Radiance War on Edgewhirl and the Corona. But all this? Impossible.
He was lying sprawled in bed with his head against a woman’s bare thigh. Tarquine was sitting next to him, dressed only in a short black shift made from silky lace. He had one arm stretched out under the cushions that pillowed his head and the other wrapped around her leg, his fingers resting on her inner thigh. She was working on a lap console, with its flexible screen unrolled in her lap. Holos danced in the air above the screen.
Had he picked up all that from Tarquine? In his sleep his mental defenses sometimes relaxed. And Tarquine was close enough to him that their neural interaction was at its greatest. But still. He rarely picked up such a vivid sense of another person.
He lay still, not letting her know he was awake. He had learned the technique long ago; when people thought you were less alert, they became careless. Something felt wrong to him, or not wrong exactly, but out of kilter. He couldn’t isolate what bothered him, though.
Financial graphs rotated in the air above her console. As she studied the holos, she laid her hand on his head and absently stroked his curls. He watched the 3-D plots. They looked like studies of import profits for the thirty-one sectors of the Eubian Concord. Sphinx Sector was struggling and the Platinum Sectors were also in bad shape, hit hard by the war. Sapphire Sector, on the other hand, topped everyone in revenue.
After a while Tarquine deactivated the console and rolled it into a rod as slim as a light pen. As she set it on the nightstand, Kelric closed his eyes. He felt her slide down next to him. Opening his eyes, he gave her a drowsy look, as if he had just awoken.
“My greetings,” she murmured. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes.” It was true. He had needed the sleep. In fact, he would have liked a great deal more. He doubted he was going to get it, though.
Tarquine brushed her lips across his, and his drugged body responded. His reaction was less intense than before; the influence of the aphrodisiacs was beginning to fade. They still drove him, though. He resisted, pulling back from her. He didn’t want to feel this desire. But as he started to roll away, a thought came to him. If she enjoyed this, she might be less inclined to transcend. Anything that could put off that future was worth trying.
Kelric slid his hands over her body, pushing her shift up to her hips. Again he felt a strangeness—something beyond this bizarre situation itself, that he was about to lie with the Highton Finance Minister. More was off balance here, but he couldn’t say what.
He eased Tarquine’s shift over her head, then dropped it on the floor. Holding himself up on his hands, he gazed at her. Now, alone with her, without the demands of three other people overwhelming him, he had a chance to look. She had a long body, firm and athletic, with no trace of fat. Although he usually preferred more voluptuous women, her graceful lines stirred him. Or maybe it was the drugs. Whatever the reason, he wanted her.
Lowering his body onto hers, he stroked his hands up her sides and cupped her breasts. The drugged intensity of his reactions had blended into a more natural arousal now. Trying to stir an answering response in Tarquine, he kissed her, nudging her lips open for his tongue. He spent a while with the kiss, until she began to respond.
After a while he slid down her body and kissed her breasts, taking first one, then the other, into his mouth. Eventually he went lower, to her stomach, pressing his lips against her alabaster skin, tickling her navel with his tongue. Even the triangle of black hair between her thighs shimmered. It was softer than he expected, like velvet against his cheek and the palm of his hand. Somehow that seemed incongruous with her being an Aristo.
From her mind, he felt her arousal and knew she enjoyed his lovemaking. She gave almost no outward indication of her pleasure. But she simply lay on the bed with her arms idly thrown over her head and her eyes closed. He spent a long time exploring, caressing, and kissing her body, trying to arouse the passion he had enjoyed with the provider, and indeed with most of his past wives and lovers. Finally he gave up. Tarquine had no intention of letting herself lose control.
He didn’t mind. He was a telepath. For all that she kept her outward control, he knew what she felt. She liked the way he touched her. More than liked. She craved him and he knew it, even if she tried to hide her response.
His mind reacted as it always did when he made consensual love; he picked up her pleasure, made it his own, and fed it back to her, along with what he felt. It was an instinctual response. That had unsettled a few of his lovers, the ones who thought they had to satisfy the Ruby prince regardless of their own pleasure. His telepathic eroticism almost always aroused them, even if he couldn’t incite the cooler ones to the hot response he liked. Tarquine was cool, very cool, but only on the outside.
Sliding up her body, he pulled her arms around his waist. She did react a bit then, nuzzling his neck. Kelric entered her easily, finding her ready, and she finally made a sound, a quiet sigh.
“Tell me what you want,” she murmured.
He bit at her neck. “You.”
In a husky voice she said, “Tell me what you want to do.”
From her mind, he picked up what she wanted to hear. He didn’t normally use explicit language when he made love, or even talk at all. But right now he didn’t much care. He spoke, his lips against her ear as he told her what he desired. She sighed and arched against him, stroking his curls.
“Again,” she murmured.
Kelric kissed her ear, running his tongue over its ridges. Then he told her again, in detail, first in Highton, then in Skolian and Eubic. Why it turned her on, he had no i
dea, but there was no mistaking the surge in her desire.
They moved together, and he began to build toward a climax. The suppressant was wearing off. As they made love, his physical sensations took on an enhanced intensity. His body fought the fading suppressant, which didn’t want to let him come even now. So he kept building, always on the verge of climax, closer and closer, until his arousal itself was far more intense than any normal orgasm he had experienced.
He rolled onto his back, pulling Tarquine with him, pressing her hips hard against his, his hand splayed across the curves of her behind. He rocked her body with his until she gasped for breath. She said something, her voice dusky, but he could no longer focus on her words. He had a strange sense that something was missing—and yet not missed. He kept on moving with her, always trying to forget he held an Aristo. His enemy.
Kelric didn’t know how many times they turned over on the bed, or how many positions they tried. Somehow they ended up sitting together, kissing deeply, Tarquine’s legs wrapped around his waist. He let himself collapse onto his back, pulling her down with him. She straddled his hips, her hands on his shoulders, watching his face while she rode him. Her unbound hair swung through the air. Still he kept building, his response multiplied by his long hours of forced denial. He flipped her onto her back, and she groaned, losing the last vestiges of her control as he flooded her mind with his drug-augmented passion.
Finally he buried himself in her with a huge thrust, shoving her hips deep into the mattress. His orgasm exploded over him, almost unbearable, obliterating his thoughts.
Kelric didn’t know how long it was before he began to think again. Tarquine was lying on her back at his left side, one arm flung across the silk sheets, her other hand clasped in his. She had her eyes closed, but he didn’t think she was asleep.
His mind floated. Sometime later he said, “Tarquine?”
Lazily she opened her eyes. Her expression gave new meaning to the word sated. A smile spread across her face, still constrained, as were all her expressions, but warmer than any other look he had seen from her. In a husky voice she said, “You’re worth every credit.”