Corbal produced a pen and handed it to Vitrex, who handed it to Quaelen, who placed it under the mammary in question. The pen fell down Cirrus’s torso, evoking a ripple of amusement from the bidders. They launched into a discussion of recent advances in suspension engineering, incorporating so many innuendos to Cirrus that Viquara had to smile. The girl sat motionless, her gaze averted. Only Viquara noticed her frozen expression and clenched jaw. The bids rose at a rapid rate, up to 2.8 million.
So Viquara watched, alternately entertained and bored. When the bidders finished their meal, they took Cirrus into the silk-draped bedroom and Viquara found herself aroused as well. Corbal held less interest for her, being her great-grandfather’s age, and Vitrex wasn’t her type. But Kryx Quaelen—ah no, she had to resist that lure to his contaminated line.
Corbal seemed to offer Cirrus genuine affection. Vitrex soon grew bored with her lack of enthusiasm and his bids fell off. It irked Viquara. He had known ahead of time Cirrus came from a stock of providers bred for passivity. Quaelen took the girl with a powerful virility that Viquara didn’t notice. Not at all. She had no interest in the way his big hands moved on a woman’s body, no interest in how his well-developed muscles flexed and tensed as he moved, no interest in how he wrapped his hand in Cirrus’s hair and pulled back her head to kiss her, or in the way he handled a woman with such self-assurance. No, Viquara most certainly had no interest in any of it at all.
It wasn’t until evening spread its shadows over Glory that the three Hightons took their leave of the pavilion. Their bids continued to rise, topped by 8.4 million from Quaelen.
Viquara glanced around her office. Her Razer bodyguards all stood at their posts, severe in midnight blue uniforms. She paged Security and another Razer soon appeared, Lieutenant Xirson, a recent addition to the force. Impressed with Xirson’s military record, Ur had bought him from Corbal Xir and added him to the palace secret police.
Xirson bowed. “My honor at your presence, Your Highness.”
“Bring me the girl,” Viquara said.
After Xirson left, she checked the auction tally. The bids were coming in slower now, as they reached levels that strained even the immense financial resources of their makers. Corbal put in one for 9.6 million and no others followed.
Xirson reappeared with Cirrus, the girl once again dressed in her halter and translucent skirt. As Cirrus knelt in the center of the room, Viquara dismissed the Razers, including her bodyguards. Then she closed the door and went to her desk to check her security systems. Finally she turned to Cirrus. Still kneeling, with her head bowed, the girl shivered in the chill air.
“You may rise,” Viquara said. As Cirrus got up, her arms hugging her torso, Viquara motioned to a velvet cloth on a table. “You may warm yourself.”
The girl’s arms shook as she took the cloth and wrapped it around her body. She spoke in a soft voice. “You honor me far beyond what I deserve, Your Esteemed Highness.”
True, Viquara thought. She settled herself into the big chair behind her desk. “What do you have for me?”
“Minister Vitrex wonders if you know about his son.”
Good. Let Izar sweat. No proof existed that he had contributed to Ur’s death, but she had her suspicions. “What else is he up to?”
“He is planting suggestions that your child is the bastard of another man rather than your husband’s heir.”
It didn’t surprise Viquara. Originality had never been one of Vitrex’s strengths. His timeworn techniques would be easy to counter with her network of far more subtle mudslingers.
“Anything else?” she asked.
Cirrus nodded. “Lord Corbal has finance problems. A long time ago he invested money in guilds that bought from frigates working Allied territory. Since the frigates have been forbidden to harvest providers from Allied ships, he has lost a lot of wealth.”
That intrigued Viquara. Based on the size of Corbal’s bids, she would never have guessed he suffered financial trouble. The besotted old Highton must really want Cirrus. She checked the tally. Only one more bid had come in, 9.8 million from Quaelen.
“What about Minister Quaelen?” she asked.
Cirrus tensed, her face turning red.
“Out with it,” Viquara said.
The girl wouldn’t look at her. “While he was with me, he was thinking of someone else.”
“Really?” Viquara smiled, fascinated. “Who might that be?”
“He, um, he—I mean…”
“Come on, girl. Speak up.”
“You, Your Highness.”
Viquara blinked. Quaelen had fantasized he was making love to her? This was unexpected.
Cirrus had no more to offer on that, but she provided many other useful tidbits. The girl’s ability to extract information impressed Viquara. Ur had done good work with this one. But then, Ur always did well. Viquara swallowed, remembering his laugh, his hooded eyes, his powerful voice. Gone. All gone.
One more bid came in, 10.1 million from Vitrex. She put out a call for final bids, but neither Quaelen nor Corbal responded. So she closed the auction and regarded Cirrus. “You will go to Vitrex.”
Cirrus nodded, huddled in her blanket.
“You understand our arrangement?” Viquara asked.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Viquara wondered if the girl could actually carry it through. “Repeat it to me.”
“I’m to send psion transmissions about the Vitrex household to your provider Cayson. I should only do it when I’m secluded from other people, especially other providers. So nobody can eavesdrop.” She paused. “And only at the times you said, so Cayson is also prepared.”
Viquara waited. Then she prompted, “What about distance?”
“Oh. Yes.” Cirrus flushed. “I’m to try no matter how far away I am.”
“Good.” The interactions fell off rapidly with distance, so Viquara doubted Cirrus would get much through. But any little bit might help. “As long as you please the Throne, your son will be raised as befits a wellborn taskmaker. He will have an education and a home here.”
Cirrus’s voice caught. “Thank you, Your Highness. You are the most kind and benevolent of all human beings.”
Well, of course, Viquara thought. “It is only fitting. He is the son of an emperor, after all.”
A tear rolled down Cirrus’s face. “Much to my honor.”
“Come.” Viquara stood up. “You may tell the boy goodbye. Then we will get you delivered to Vitrex.”
* * *
They all sat at the conference table in the Strategy Room on the Orbiter: Web Key Eldrinson Valdoria, his son Eldrin Valdoria, First Councilor of the Assembly Barcala Tikal, and the rest of the Inner Assembly: Stars, Industry, Nature, Judiciary, Protocol, Life, Planetary Development, Finance, and Domestic Affairs. And Roca, the Councilor for Foreign Affairs.
“I understand your objections,” Tikal told Roca. “But you’re the only choice.”
Judiciary leaned forward. “Councilor Roca, surely you see this.”
Roca felt trapped. Kurj had chosen three heirs to follow him as Imperator, and all were gone now, two dead and the third a prisoner of war. The Triad needed an Imperator. Roca knew she was no war leader, but who else in the Ruby Dynasty could assume the title?
As First Heir to the Web Key, her son Eldrin had trained to follow his father and had even less experience than she with ISC. The twins Del and Chaniece, her next children after Eldrin and Althor, still lived on their home world Lyshriol. They watched over their father’s farm in his absence and carried out his duties as the Dalvador Bard. At one time those duties included commanding the Dalvador regiment of the Rillian army, but after Althor had ended warfare on Lyshriol, the position became titular. Not that it mattered. Chaniece had no interest in warfare and Del’s experience with sword and lance hardly qualified him to lead Imperial Space Command.
Havyrl, born after the twins, had a doctorate in agriculture. He had earned his degrees from Royal College on the p
lanet Metropoli, without ever leaving home, by attending through the web as a holographic simulacrum, a method possible only to those who could access psiberspace. Content to leave politics to his siblings, he spent the next fifty years farming and making babies with his wife. Soz had been born the year after Havyrl, and then Denric, who taught school to disadvantaged children on the planet Sandstorm. Deni’s gentle nature worked wonders with his students but hardly qualified him to run ISC. Shannon ran off at sixteen with a band of Rillian archers, and Aniece had become the child bride of Lord Rillia by seducing him when she was far too young to know about such things. Kelric, their youngest, had died in combat sixteen years ago.
The only other choice was Taquinil, Dehya and Eldrin’s son. A brilliant economist, he had once calculated futures with such uncanny accuracy that the dismayed Office of Finance actually passed a law forbidding him to work the stock market. But he was already Crown Prince to the Ruby Throne, besides which he had no military experience. And a more serious problem existed.
When Dehya and Eldrin finally gave in to the demands of the Assembly and had a child, their son Taquinil suffered the price of inbreeding. Born of two psions already at the limit of what humans could endure in empathic sensitivity, he couldn’t block any empathic input. As a boy, he lived in an unending onslaught of emotions, until finally his personality shattered. Confused and terrified, he hid his many personalities from everyone, including other telepaths, even himself. He was in his teens by the time his condition became too severe to hide any longer. So began his long healing. Fixing his defective genes would have destroyed his Rhon ability, so instead he took biomech in his body, to synthesize the kylatine and neurotransmitters his brain lacked. With help he eventually reintegrated his personalities, but he was in no position to assume command of ISC.
Nor were military and emotional suitability the only factors to consider. Whoever joined the Triad as Imperator needed a mind having the least possible overlap with Dehya and Eldrinson. Roca’s sons Eldrin, Del, and Havyrl were too much like their father. Taquinil and Aniece were too much like Dehya. Chaniece was more like Kurj, but neither Del nor Chaniece could even read and write. Roca didn’t know about her sons Denric or Shannon; they had always been different, Denric with his sweet nature and penchant for books, and Shannon as the fey archer with white-gold hair. She suspected they were throwbacks to more distant ancestors, with no telling what would happen if either went into the Triad.
Which left her. She resembled Kurj not only in physical aspects such as her gold coloring, but also in her mind.
Roca spoke quietly. “For a decision like this, Dehya should be here.”
“She sent me a message this morning,” Eldrinson said. “She agrees with the Assembly that you should become Imperator.”
“How could she agree with us this morning?” Tikal asked. “We just made the decision.”
No one answered. Roca suspected they had given up trying to fathom Dehya. She pushed her hand through her hair. “I’ll let you know soon, Barcala. I need time to think.”
But she saw no good answer.
17
Cirrus stood at the glass doors in her bedroom and gazed out at her garden, with its neat lawns and flower beds, and the tangled woods beyond. The crescent of G4, the Unnamed Moon, graced the portion of the afternoon sky visible from where she stood. She wished her son Kai could be with her to see this beautiful place. She missed him. Kai had given her a family, something she never had before.
She had been raised by Silicate Aristos, in a crèche designed to produce human merchandise. Her education consisted of learning how to serve Hightons. The Silicates also taught her how to look aesthetic while kneeling in a corner for long periods of time, a pastime that topped her list of stupid tasks.
When she reached physical maturity, they sent her to a pavilion, where she spent all her time learning what she would do for as long as genes and technology made her beautiful, which was giving Aristos pleasure. Before the Silicates sold her, they cheated and made her back into a virgin. They did it so well that the palace bodysculptors verified it and Emperor Qox paid a great deal more for her. So she lost her virginity three times: once just before she went to the pavilion, when a Silicate boy pulled her into a closet; once just after she went to the pavilion, in a ceremony with her instructors; and once when the emperor laid her across his glacial bed.
She never learned to read, write, or do numbers. She was never allowed to play as a child. She had no friends. She knew the word “love” only in reference to her training in the pavilion. Aristos decreed she should be grateful to them, but as far as she was concerned they could all fester with the plague.
At first she had thought her pregnancy was a bizarre new phase in the bodysculpting they were always doing on her body. Then she realized what was going on. She liked being fat. She had always wanted to be huge and wear hideous clothes.
The bodysculptors put her breasts back to normal. After Kai’s birth, she saw why; the first thing he did was suckle, which he could never have managed with her enlarged nipples. Perhaps the emperor felt put out by the changes. She hoped so. For months he left her alone, except to visit the baby, who tended to spit up on him, which amused Cirrus no end, though she never let on.
As Kai grew, he pushed her parenting. She was unsure how to respond. He was the emperor’s child, after all. When he yelled, “No!” did she give in? She soon discovered that such an approach made life miserable. So she set limits, and no lightning struck her for scolding a child with Highton blood. As had uncounted empaths before her, she reached in instinct for his mind, using empathy to love and understand him. That he grew into such a well-adjusted child at first puzzled her, seeing him so different from herself at that age. Then she decided, so what? He was happy and so was she.
But as Kai grew, she sensed a lack in his life. More and more he asked about his father. She wished he had someone other than Ur Qox to model his behavior on, but she had no way to offer or even define “more.”
Kai knew when his father died. He cried while Cirrus rocked him in her arms. Then Empress Viquara separated them, much as she might sell one of two exotic vases in a matched set.
So Cirrus went to Vitrex. As it turned out, she bored him witless in bed. Not that she would ever suggest such a condition applied even when he was vertical. The nights he “allowed” her to provide for him were inescapable. After he satiated himself with her screams, he murmured endearments and fell asleep embracing her, a travesty of affection that left her emotions in an echoing place of emptiness.
What inspired him to pay so much in the auction, though, had as much to do with her abilities as a spy as anything else. So today he came to her suite.
“It is simple,” he said as he folded his lanky body into a soft white lounger. “You do the same with Althor as with anyone else.”
“But I don’t know anything about interrogation,” she said.
“You don’t need to.” He sprawled in his seat with his legs stretched long across the white carpet. “Bring me wine and I will explain.”
So Cirrus brought a carafe and knelt at the lacquered table, where she filled his diamond goblet with red wine.
“Althor has neural blocks in his brain that keep us from finding out what he knows.” Vitrex took the goblet and sipped from it. “He can’t help us even when he tries.”
She sat back on her heels. “What would you like me to do?”
With a smile, he cupped his hand under her chin. “What you do best, my love.”
* * *
A panel glowed high in the cell, shedding dim light over the prisoner who lay sleeping on the cot, on his stomach, his fists clenched at his sides.
Softly Cirrus said, “Wake up, beautiful gold man.”
He jerked, then lashed out with his fist as his eyes snapped open. The blow was brought up short by the chain that stretched from his wrist cuff to a ring in the wall. Vitrex had warned her about how Althor woke up, so she had stood out of range, a few
paces from his cot.
He stared at her, his eyes bleared with sleep, and spoke in a hoarse voice, his throat torn raw. “Who are you?”
“Cirrus.” She twisted the sash on her thigh-length robe of yellow Hesterian silk. “Minister Vitrex sent me to you.”
He pushed up on his elbow. “Why?”
“As a reward. Because you are trying to cooperate.”
“I doubt that.”
“It’s true.” She hesitated. “May I come closer?”
He jerked on his chain. “How do you know I won’t try to strangle you with this?”
She lowered her gaze. Apparently Skolians weren’t so different from Hightons after all.
“Ai. Don’t look like that,” he rasped. “I didn’t mean it. Come here if you want.”
Wary, she went over and sat next to him. Up close, she saw that he was drugged, in a daze. Feeling his hazed pain, both physical and emotional, she wanted to reach out to him. But she also felt the coiled danger in his massive body.
He was lying on his side, propped up on his elbow. “I know why you’re here,” he muttered. “Won’t work. The more you try to steal, the less there is to take.”
“To take?”
“Memories. My web is erasing them.”
“Good memories or bad?” She had many of her own she wished to lose.
The question seemed to confuse him. “Neither. Just data.”
“Are you sorry to lose them?”
He lay down on his back. “Do you really want to do something for me?”
“Yes.” She set her palm on his chest, feeling the rough weave of his shirt and the powerful muscles under it. “Whatever you would like.”