It puzzled Soz that people thought she resembled Dehya. She had even overheard one of her instructors describe her as a robust, sexier version of the pharaoh. Soz just didn’t see it. Dehya’s hair hung straight to her waist, as black as space, whereas Soz’s curled wildly and lightened to gold at the tips. A shimmer overlay Dehya’s eyes, a remnant of the inner eyelids from her father, Soz’s grandfather. Soz had no trace of it. Dehya had an ethereal quality; Soz felt more like the mythical bull-dragon. Personally, she thought Dehya resembled Shannon. Although he was a Blue Dale Archer rather than a Raylican noble, his face had that otherworldly beauty Soz associated with her aunt.
When it came to intellect, Dehya left her in the metaphorical dust. As an unusually sensitive Rhon psion, Dehya had a brain full of extra neural structures, intricate and convoluted. Psions tended to be smart, but Dehya was in a class with no one except her son Taquinil. Legend claimed the Ruby Pharaoh’s mind had gone beyond human. Soz thought it an annoying statement; the pharaoh was human, so how could her mind go beyond itself? Dehya made mistakes like everyone else, forgot where she put her light-stylus, misread moods, became absentminded. But she learned tremendously faster than other people and at an unusually abstract level, especially now with all her biomech enhancements. The few times Soz had pitched wits with her, Dehya had left her so far behind, Soz had felt like a wind had blasted by her mind.
The Ruby Pharaoh ruled through the meshes. Dehya spread her mind throughout the webs of humanity until she became the mind of Skolia. And reign she did, regardless of what the Assembly claimed. Soz doubted Eldrin had any true sense of how far his wife’s influence extended or how deep it went. If he cared that he was consort to one of the most powerful human beings in the history of the human race, he gave no sign.
Now Dehya and Kurj—the Dyad—sat together, though only one of them was physically here. He said something to her and she smiled. Commandant Blackmoor continued his commencement oration. When he finished, he took his seat on Dehya’s other side, and Kurj went to the podium. He spoke only briefly, as taciturn as ever. Then it was time to give out the diplomas. Blackmoor returned to the podium and called the names, and one by one the new Jagernaut Quaternaries came up to receive the antique parchments from Kurj.
When Althor crossed the stage, the audience fell unnaturally quiet. Anyone who hadn’t realized before that he had a kinship to Kurj would have no doubt now. They looked like twins, two gold giants, muscled and square-jawed. Kurj handed Althor his diploma, along with the certificates and medals Althor had earned by graduating with honors. Then the Imperator paused, which he had done with no one else.
Breezes ruffled Althor’s short hair, making the metallic locks glitter. Kurj laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder and inclined his head. Even from so far away, Soz felt Althor’s gratification at the unexpected display of approval. He nodded, his face easing into a smile, and Kurj returned the nod. Then Althor went on, down the stage and back to his seat. An exhale seemed to come from the audience, though it could have been only the wind in the arched colonnade.
After the last senior had crossed the stage, the ceremony ended. DMA had graduated another class of elite warriors, sixteen Jagernauts, all that remained of the thirty-six who had entered as novices. Sixteen new weapons joined the ranks, sixteen of the deadliest, most versatile fighter pilots created.
And Soz watched, wondering. When she graduated, would her ceremony suffer the same lack as this one, the absence no one mentioned but everyone felt, the cavity in the foundation of their family and their love, the one person Soz had heard nothing from since the day she left Lyshriol, the one she feared would never speak to or acknowledge her again.
Her father.
23
A Debt to Vengeance
Gradually Eldrinson became aware of heat on his face. He lay on his back, soaking in the warmth. His legs ached, but only as a distant pain he could almost ignore.
After a while, hunger came. He rolled over and reached to the nightstand for the plate of spice bubbles that the girl Marla often left for him. She was one of the few people he allowed in the room. The other two were Jase Heathland from ISC, and the Lyshrioli healer Channil who had tended Eldrinson since childhood and taken care of Roca during several pregnancies.
Roca. Saints, he missed her. He hadn’t seen her face since—well, since before he had traveled across the Backbone, searching for Shannon and finding Vitarex. He knew she came into his room sometimes, especially when she thought he slept. He remembered the day she had come to speak to him. She had left when he insisted, unwilling, he knew. He lived alone now, without her, without his family. They wanted to come. He felt it. But he had made his decision. No visitors. He longed for them to remember the man he had been, not this broken shell that even the boastful Skolian technology couldn’t fix.
He found the spice bubbles and took three. Pulling himself up in bed, he sat against the headboard and crunched the bubbles. They exploded with sweet, spicy sauce in his mouth. Had he been able to see, he could have enjoyed their rose color. He always had before.
After he ate, he rubbed his temples. He thought a seizure had wrung him earlier, but he wasn’t sure. Whatever had happened, he must have slept afterward. No sunlight had slanted across his body then but he felt it now. Someone had opened the shutters in the alcove across the room. The suns must be low in the sky, if they could shine through those windows. For a marriage gift all those years ago, Roca had arranged for glass in the openings here and in Dalvador. Now they could open the shutters on the ceilinghigh windows without letting in the icy mountain air.
A hum came from the nightstand. Eldrinson hinged his hand around another spice bubble, then felt around until he found the engraved circle he sought on the stand. Holding the ball in two fingers, he pressed the engraving with a third.
Jase Heathland’s voice floated into the air. “My greetings, Your Majesty. Did you sleep well?”
Heh. That Jase knew he had awoken implied Eldrinson had suffered an attack. Jase always monitored him afterward and buzzed him when he awoke. Losing his appetite, he set the spice bubble back on its plate. He had been fine for so long. But when he lost his sight and legs, so too had gone his freedom from the seizures. His doctors understood it no better than he did, though they made a good show. Perhaps Vitarex had done more damage than they realized. Eldrinson was a psion. His constant exposure to the Aristo’s brain might have injured his mind. Jase thought his body had changed over the years, until his nanomeds were no longer effective in fighting the seizures, but Eldrinson couldn’t help wondering if the sun gods were punishing him for failing with his children.
Before Vitarex had caught him, Eldrinson had intended to talk to Soz and Althor, to take back his bewildered words of anger from that terrible day when he banished them from their own home. But he couldn’t now. He couldn’t bear to see anyone, neither family nor friend. He had failed his men as well as his wife and children. Even worse, he knew now firsthand what would happen if Althor or Soz were ever captured. His children, his beloved children, would suffer as he had suffered at Vitarex’s hand. Or worse.
No.
He couldn’t bear the thought. Better to deny them all than to accept a pain that went too deep to endure. If he refused to acknowledge his family, he wouldn’t die a little bit more every day trying to understand the terrible beauty of their inexplicable lives. He had nothing left to give them. Let them live free, in the splendor and fury of their new universe, unfettered by their barbarian father.
“King Eldrinson?” Jase asked over the comm.
He mentally shook himself. It was hard to concentrate. He had so few conversations these days. “I am here,” he said, knowing Jase would somehow hear, though he was in another part of Windward.
“How are you feeling?” Jase asked.
He gave the same answer as always. “Fine.”
“Your legs don’t hurt?”
Eldrinson scowled. Why did Jase ask if he already knew the answers?
His machines could tell him anything. A man had no privacy anymore. “My legs are fine.”
“May I come up to work with you?”
“No.” He wasn’t up to “physical therapy” right now. The damn exercises didn’t work. Neither did the mental exercises meant to help him see. He tried concentrating on his eyes until his head throbbed. When it caused a seizure, he quit. He didn’t believe a person could “retrain” the way his brain communicated with his body. His blasted head didn’t even connect to his legs. He didn’t care how many lectures Jase gave him about biomech threads, neural impulses, and synapses, he knew his brain and his limbs didn’t have conversations.
Besides, they weren’t his legs or eyes. They were some sort of machines that mimicked being human. He was no longer Eldrinson Valdoria. It was a horrendous thought, as if he had lost parts of his soul. The legs felt like his old ones. Jase and his assistants claimed they had grown more of his own skin to cover the rebuilt limbs. Nor did his eyes feel different. He didn’t care. No matter how much they disguised reality, he knew the truth.
“Are you there?” Jase asked.
Eldrinson had the feeling the doctor had been speaking while his mind wandered. “Yes. I’m here.”
“Does your head bother you?”
“My head is fine.” The throb from earlier today had receded. Frustration crackled in Jase’s voice. “Talk to me.”
Eldrinson didn’t see the point. “Why?”
“So I can help you heal.”
“I’m fine.”
“What about your elbow?”
His elbow? “What about it?”
“You bruised it during the seizure. I wondered if it was giving you any trouble.”
So he had suffered a seizure. It disheartened him that he couldn’t even tell anymore. Maybe his mind was disintegrating from these changes. He certainly felt dissociated from everything.
Now that Jase mentioned it, though, his elbow did ache. But he could ignore it. “My elbow is fine.”
“Eldrinson, listen.” Jase spoke with that inexhaustible patience of his.
“We need to do more tests if we’re going to understand why you aren’t responding to treatment.”
“Jase, you listen. You’ve had plenty of days to do tests. It doesn’t work. My mind is flat. My head doesn’t chatter with other parts of my body. The seizures have come back. It’s time you gave up and went away so I can have peace.” He stopped, running out of words.
Silence. Then Jase said, “It hasn’t even been quite a year yet. You need more time.”
“What time?” Eldrinson wondered if Jase had heard anything he said.
“Althor told me that he could use his biomech the day they turned him on.” It appalled him to imagine ISC switching his son on like a piece of equipment. “Are you saying some people take a year?”
Jase paused. “Every person is different.”
Pah. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Another silence. Finally Jase said, “No, I’ve never heard of it taking a year.”
It surprised him to hear the doctor admit it. Lately even Jase evaded his questions. “How long does it usually take?”
“It depends.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Jase exhaled. “If it isn’t immediate, it usually takes a few days for the person’s brain to integrate with the neural threads.”
“A few days.”
“Yes.” Jase sounded subdued. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Eldrinson told himself he wasn’t dying inside, that he didn’t care.
“I’m sorry it is taking you longer.”
“No, that’s not why you’re sorry.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. You’re sorry because I will never walk or see again.”
“Damn it, Eldrinson, that’s not true.”
“Come up here where I can sense your mind. Then tell me it’s not true.”
“Fine.” Jase sounded annoyed. “I’ll be there, five minutes.”
Too late, Eldrinson realized the doctor had maneuvered him into doing exactly what Jase wanted. Eldrinson scowled. “Never mind. I changed my mind. Don’t come up.”
No answer. Either the doctor was already on his way or else he was pretending he could no longer hear his patient. Eldrinson grabbed a bubble off the plate and crunched down hard, chewing angrily.
Sure enough, his door soon creaked open. A familiar tread crossed the room.
“So you’re here,” Eldrinson said. “You can go now.”
The footsteps stopped near the bed. “Eldrinson,” Jase said.
“What?”
“Your wife is in the foyer outside.”
“The answer is no.”
“I didn’t ask a question.”
“Yes you did. You want to know if I will see her.” Why did they torment him this way? How many times did he have to say no?
Jase spoke tightly. “I never would have guessed a man like you could show such cruelty.”
Eldrinson clenched his fist in the covers. “Go to hell.”
“She loves you. This is killing her.”
“Get out of here,” Eldrinson said. “As of today, I’m no longer seeing you, either.”
“I’m your doctor. You can’t refuse to see me.”
“Yes, well, didn’t you know, I’m the King of Skyfall.” He couldn’t keep down his anger. He hurt inside and Jase was making it worse. “I rule the whole planet. Not that anyone lives on most of it and never mind that someone else actually rules Rillia and Dalvador, not me. You offworlders want me to be the King of Skyfall. Fine. I’ll be a king. I order you to leave.”
The door from the foyer creaked open, followed by a painfully familiar voice. “And when you’ve sent everyone away?” Roca asked. “Then what? Will you wallow up here in self-pity until you die of thirst and starvation?”
Eldrinson froze. “Get out.”
“No.” Then she said, “Doctor, if you would leave us please.”
Eldrinson felt rather than heard Jase’s stunned silence. The doctor hadn’t expected her to come in this way. He said only, “Of course.” His footsteps receded across the room. The door scraped on the stone floor and closed again.
“Roca, don’t do this.” Having her come here hurt too much. He could be nothing for her now. He had always known he was crude, far less than the type of man she could have married if he hadn’t been a Rhon psion. He had spent some incredible years with her, but now, faced with what he had become, he could no longer ask that she tie herself to him.
Don’t make it so hard, he thought.
It doesn’t have to be hard, she answered.
No. He closed his mind to her. “Go, Roca. Leave Lyshriol. Find a man you deserve.”
“I don’t want anyone else.”
“Go,” he said. “Don’t come back. Ask the people who do Skolian laws. They can make documents to free you.”
“Eldri, stop.” Don’t say things now you’ll later regret.
I regret it now. But I mean it.
You are a Ruby consort.
D“Ij until til your legal people arrange otherwise.
I don’t want otherwise.
You shouldn’t have come in here.
Don’t shut me out. She didn’t hide her loneliness; he felt how much it would hurt her if he dissolved their union.
Eldrinson exhaled. He loved his wife more than his life. He couldn’t cause this pain. Hell, he couldn’t even keep his mental barriers in place against her. He spoke tiredly. “I want you to go. If you keep pushing me, I will divorce you. I’m sorry. But I can’t take this.” His voice cracked. “Go away, Roca.”
“Eldri—”
“Go,” he whispered. “Please.”
She said nothing more. The door creaked and scraped closed.
He was alone again.
Shannon ran through the plains. Scents of Dalvador came to him: dusty glitter; the tart smell of the crushed reeds that bounced up after he passed; the pungent
scents of the hummer-flits that looked so pretty but preyed on the darters, tiny animals that whizzed through the air like needles. Moisture saturated the air here compared to the mountains. A gauzy flock of shimmer-flies dipped on the wind and their iridescent wings glistened in the sunlight.
He ran until he could go no longer. Then he collapsed into the reeds and let them sway above him, hiding him from the sky, the shimmer-flies, and the eyes of any searching parent who might seek him out. No, not parent. Mother. His father no longer wanted anything to do with him.
He rolled onto his stomach and laid his cheek on the flattened reeds. The tubules felt smooth under his skin. He closed his eyes, knowing he should go do his studies. But he no longer cared. His father would have sent one of his brothers out to find him. But Father was gone. Maybe forever.
He was too listless to move. The lethargy had often come over him since he stabbed Vitarex.
Murderer.
Prior to that night, Shannon had never fathomed what it meant to take another life. He knew his brothers Eldrin and Althor had ridden into battle, each when they had lived only two octets of years. Eldrin had killed three people, one with his bare hands. He came home a hero—and deeply troubled. He lost control of his temper more and more often, turning to violence. In the end, when his rages had threatened even his own safety, their parents had sent him to the Orbiter, where experts helped him deal with his conflicted life and emotional scars. He had also learned to read and write. The Orbiter had been good for him. Finally he had begun to heal.
Too bad the Assembly had ruined everything by forcing him to marry. At least Eldrin seemed happy now. He certainly loved his little boy. Shannon thought of Varielle and ached. He had initially wondered if he liked her because she was the first woman of his own kind he had met. He knew now it was her, just her. But he hadn’t seen her since that terrible night he had gone into Vitarex’s camp. No one would ever love him now. He would never win Varielle, never have a family, never have children.