Jaibriol wasn't exactly sure what Corbal meant, but he thought his cousin was asking if they expected more implosions in the palace. So he said, "One can never be certain."
Gji had his full concentration on Corbal, with a hardness in his attitude he hadn't shown before. "It would certainly hamper repairs to spread damage, whether in a palace or an entire sector of space."
Corbal met his gaze with a guarded expression. "Indeed."
Jaibriol wondered what Minister Gji thought Corbal had done. He didn't think Corbal knew, either. It apparently had some link to a repair. Probing, Jaibriol said, "In the end, though, repairs usually have the desired effect. Improvement."
Gji took a sip of his wine. "Assuming the need for them didn't cause a grounding elsewhere."
Grounding? What the blazes—
Then it hit Jaibriol. Gji meant the scandal with the Janq pirate fleet. The grounding of the Janq ships had dealt a fatal blow to the Ivory Sector mercantile coalition. For some obscure reason, Gji believed Corbal had something to do with that fiasco.
Jaibriol took a swallow of the wine he had barely touched. Then he said, "One could always go to sea somewhere else." It seemed glaringly obvious to him; if they quit trying to sell Skolians as Eubian goods, they could sell Eubian goods to Skolians.
"Sailing to new shores can be a risk," Gji said cautiously. He seemed uncertain how to interpret Jaibriol's remark.
Ilina waved her hand. "Oh, sailing is a pleasure. I do love cruises. Perhaps, Your Highness, you know of some good ones."
"I wonder if we might try new routes," Jaibriol said.
"One can always look," Gji said. He glanced from Corbal to Jaibriol. "However, no reason exists to give up the old." An edge had entered his voice, and in Highton, that had layers of meaning, none of them good.
Corbal was as cool and as unreadable as always, so Jaibriol fell back on his advantage that no other Aristo shared; he probed Corbal's mind. He couldn't lower his barriers much, but it was enough to sense that his cousin understood his idea about trade with the Skolians far better than he let on—and that Corbal didn't like it at all.
With Gji and Corbal both on edge, Jaibriol suspected that if he pushed the idea now, they would reject it. So he said only, "Indeed," relying on that annoying but useful all-purpose word.
Then Jaibriol changed the subject by appearing not to change the subject. "These implosions add many layers to the idea of giving up the old," he said. It meant absolutely nothing, but what the hell. It would distract their attention while they tried to puzzle it out.
Corbal slanted a look at him. "I should not like to see space imploding everywhere, like bubbles popping in froth. Or words."
Jaibriol almost laughed. He knew Corbal meant his words were froth, which was quite true at the moment. "That would be strange," he said. "Five events already, from here to—"
Then he stopped, as the realization hit him.
He knew where the implosions were headed.
Kelric stood with Ixpar by a high window that overlooked Karn. Houses clustered along the streets and down the hills, and plumberry vines grew in a profusion of purple and blue flowers, climbing walls and spiraling up street lamps. So many times he had stood savoring the view from this window.
"I'd forgotten how beautiful it is here," he said.
Ixpar was leaning against the wall across the window from him. "I never did."
He turned to find her looking at him, not the city. She had that quality he remembered well, a serenity that came when she wasn't preoccupied with politics or war. Soon she would be pacing and planning again, her agile mind occupied with affairs of state. But she let him see this reflective side she showed so few people, indeed that few knew existed. She had always been compelling, but the years had added a maturity that made it difficult to stop gazing at her face.
"You look good," Kelric said.
Her expression gentled. "To see you again is a miracle." Then her smiled faded. "But I fear your reasons for coming. What happens now? Will Skolia retaliate against Coba?"
"I won't allow it."
"You can't stop the Imperator."
Softly he said, "Yes, I can."
Her posture stiffened. "You said otherwise ten years ago."
It was hard to tell her. Once she knew what he had become, this bubble that held them would disintegrated. So he said only, "The Imperator has changed the status of Coba."
"We no longer have the Restriction?"
"As of this morning, no. Coba is Protected."
She clenched the window frame, and her face paled. "What does it mean?"
His words were coming out all wrong; he had meant to reassure her, not cause alarm. He tried again. "In some ways it's like Restriction. A Protected world is even harder to visit. But you decide who comes here. You control what happens. And your people now have Skolian citizenship."
She stared at him. "Why would your brother do this thing?"
"He didn't."
"Then who did?"
The world was too quiet. Muffled. His voice seemed far away. "Me."
For a long time she just looked at him. Finally she spoke in a low voice. "Do I say Your Majesty? Or Imperator Skolia?"
Heat spread in his face. "Call me Kelric. Hell, Sevtar."
She started to answer, then stopped as if she had glimpsed something truly strange. "Am I your wife by Skolian law?"
He thought of the Closure he had cancelled. "Yes."
"Doesn't that make me the Imperator's consort?"
The answer welled up within him, one word he had waited so long to say. "Yes."
"Winds above," she murmured. "I am honored. But Kelric, that changes nothing. Your empire can still destroy us."
He knew she would never have allowed Jeremiah Coltman to study them if she had felt all offworld influence would bring harm. "Change will come. You can't hide forever. Must it be for the worse?"
Her gaze never wavered. "We would be just as wrong to deny the danger now as we were when we took you into the Calanya."
Kelric knew her fear. He shared it. Then he thought of the Assembly vote that had strengthened his position. "I control ISC now. My influence becomes more established every year. I can set it up so no Skolian ever sets foot here." He struggled for the words. "A parent has to let a child become an adult. Coba can't live protected all its life."
She regarded him dourly. "We are not children."
He suspected he would make it worse if he continued these inarticulate attempts to express himself. So he said, "Play Quis with me."
Ixpar placed the first die.
They sat at a table by the window and played dice at its highest level. Ixpar had always been brilliant, and the years had added even greater depth to her Quis. She wove patterns of other Managers into her structures, other Calani, other Estates. She synthesized a world into her Quis with a virtuosity that took his breath. Her patterns spoke of how the war had drenched Coba in violence and ruin. The recovery had taken years, but they were healing. He would destroy their hard-won stability.
Kelric molded the structures to portray positive offworld effects. New technologies. Better educations. Health care. The mothers of his children had received nanomeds from him and passed them to his son and daughter; they would all live longer, healthier lives as a result. All Cobans could have those advantages. He wove patterns of Jeremiah; in allowing an offworlder here, Ixpar had dared take a chance. He had expected Jeremiah to create turmoil, but the youth's Quis had told another story, how he benefited Coba.
Ixpar turned his patterns into comparisons of Skolia and Earth, symbolized by Kelric and Jeremiah. One aggressive and large; the other gentle and scholarly. One overwhelming; the other seeking friendship. Jeremiah would never hurt anyone; Kelric was the military commander of an empire.
He saw himself through her Quis and wasn't sure he knew that man, one with great strength of character, but also one who wielded a power so immense, he could crush them without realizing it. He created patterns
showing her how he would work with the Managers of Coba. He would sit at Quis with them. Ixpar's eyes blazed as she played fire opals, garnets, rubies. Angry dice. Never would she agree to have her Calani play Quis with other Managers! Her vehemence startled him. That he sat in the Assembly as Imperator—that she could deal with. But for him to reveal his Quis to other Managers went against every principle she held true.
So he showed her harsher reality: someday the Imperialate would find Coba. Without his intervention, it could do them great harm. Or perhaps, despite his best attempts to prevent it, the Traders would conquer her world and enslave her people. Coba should join the interstellar community on their terms. They should open or close their world according to their choice. They needed a gatekeeper. Him.
Ixpar countered with jagged patterns of destruction, of his life on Coba and the upheavals that followed. Her dice never accused, never damned. She blamed Coba. But he knew the truth. He had left terrible wounds here.
Kelric paused, subdued. This intense session, with someone he hadn't seen for ten years, drained him. She believed that to protect Coba, they should strengthen its isolation until they could survive even if he died. He took a breath and continued the session. With the utmost care, he molded new patterns. All the finesse he lacked in the blunt power of his mind and body, he put into his dice. He had been a prisoner before, on Coba, with neither the understanding nor opportunity to control his effect on the Quis. Now he and Ixpar had that knowledge. Together they could make a better world.
Her Quis called him idealistic. Her patterns revealed the deep differences between his people and hers, his way of life and that of Coba. Skolia would saturate the Quis until it swamped Coba's unique, irreplaceable culture.
It doesn't have to be that way, he answered. He sifted a new idea into his dice: Quis was like the mesh his people had created in Kyle space. To open a gate to the Kyle, they needed only a telop, or telepathic operator. The most gifted telops managed the star-spanning net that wove the Imperialate into a coherent whole. The Dyad created and powered that mesh.
Quis was a web. It, too, linked a civilization. Cobans communicated and took information from the world-spanning game; the more adept players acted as operators; the rare geniuses who dedicated their lives to Quis defined its highest levels. The best players read moods, even thoughts, from the dice. With both Quis and the Kyle, it became hard to tell where the web left off and the mind began. Intellect and emotion; technology and art; communication and intuition: it all blended. If Coba and Skolia combined their remarkable cultures, with care, they could achieve great marvels. At their best, they could produce a civilization greater than the sum of the two alone.
And at their worst? Ixpar asked.
He made no false promises; she could pick up nuances in his Quis he never meant to reveal. She knew his doubts, which had never left him. But she would also recognize his belief that he could protect Coba. She would have to choose which to trust.
Their session lasted hours. He had to return to Parthonia, yet long after he should have left for the starport, they continued to play. Their guards kept anyone from disturbing them. The people of Karn surely knew by now their Minister was playing Quis with a Calani returned from the dead. Windriders would carry the news to other cities.
Within days, all Coba would know: the Minister had sat at Quis with the Imperator.
Afternoon had melted into evening by the time Kelric and Ixpar pushed back from the table. He stood up, his joints creaking. "A good session," he said. More than good. It was worth ten years of solitaire.
"So it was," Ixpar murmured. She rose to her feet, and they stood together at the window above Karn. Long shadows from the mountains stretched across the city.
Leaning against the wall, Kelric gazed across the window at his wife. She looked as fit today as ten years ago. And as erotic. Quis with her had always had a sensual undercurrent.
"It's been a long time," he said.
She regarded him with smoky eyes. "Too long."
Kelric heard the invitation in her voice. He grasped her arm and drew her forward, into his embrace. But she resisted, her palms against his shoulders.
"I have a thing to say," she told him. "You should know."
That didn't sound good. "Know what?"
"I remarried."
Kelric stiffened. Had he misinterpreted her mood? His voice cooled. "You said you had no Akasi."
"I don't." Sadness touched her voice. "He passed away."
"Oh." Idiot, he told himself. "I'm sorry."
"It's been several years." Her face was pensive. "After the war, the Council felt I should remarry. As expected."
As expected. By law, the Minister had to marry a Calani, preferably the man with the highest level among the suitable candidates. "You mean Mentar?" As the previous Minister's consort, the Fourth Level had been more than twice Ixpar's age.
She nodded. "Together, he and I knew more of the Quis than anyone else alive. We had much in common."
He heard what she didn't say. "Did you love him?"
"I always had great affection for him."
"More as a father figure, I thought."
"I loved him." She paused. "In a quiet sort of way."
Kelric told her about Jeejon then. When he finished, Ixpar spoke with pain. "We have each done as we should. But sometimes, I wish . . . we hadn't lost so much."
"I, too," he said.
Ixpar took his hand. Then she led him to a private door of the Rosewood Suite.
That evening, in the last rays of gilded sunlight slanting through the windows, they lay in the rosewood bed where they had loved each other so many years ago. Outside, in the city below and the world beyond, life continued, people working, bargaining, playing Quis. Beyond Coba, stars shone, worlds turned in their celestial dance, and ships streaked among the settlements of thriving humanity. They were all oblivious to two people, neither of them young, who had lost so much in their lives, but for a brief time in each other's arms, found a bittersweet happiness.
XIV
Cathedral
Jaibriol was working at his private console when Tarquine strolled into their bedroom. Her windblown hair was tousled around her shoulders, and she had on a violet jumpsuit and boots suitable for weather far colder than here in the seaside capital.
"Where have you been?" Jaibriol asked.
She came over and leaned down to kiss him. "My pleasure at your company as well, my esteemed husband."
"Tarquine, don't."
She straightened up, her face composed as if she had just been out for a moment rather than slinking into the room three hours late. "You look tired. Perhaps you brood too much."
Jaibriol sat back and crossed his arms. "And I imagine you must be hungry, my dear wife, since you missed dinner."
She went to the antique wardrobe against the wall and took out a silken black nightshift. "I'm sure I'll satisfy my hunger," she murmured.
Jaibriol flushed, and tried not to stare as she changed into the shift. She had a beautifully toned body, long and lean, with flawless skin and legs that could wrap around him in ways that right now he didn't want to think about.
"I'm not as distractible as you think," he said, though she never deliberately played such games. Just being herself, she affected him even after ten years, perhaps more now that he knew what waited for him under the velvet bedcovers. But he couldn't let her sidetrack him. "Where were you tonight?"
She smoothed her shift into place around her thighs. "You could have asked Corbal to that dinner with Minister Gji." Her gaze darkened. "I'm sure he would have been pleased to join you. He's always happy to insinuate himself."
"He's my kin. And as a matter of fact, I did ask him."
"You trust him too much."
"Do I now?" He narrowed his gaze. "For some inexplicable reason, the Diamond Minister seems to think our good Lord Corbal is responsible for exposing the Janq merchant fleets as pirates."
Her response was barely detectable, j
ust a quirk of her eyebrow. But Jaibriol noticed, and he dropped his barriers in time to catch a flicker of her hidden emotions. She hadn't expected him to figure out the business about Corbal.
Tarquine came over with that slow walk of hers that made his throat go dry and sweat break out on his brow. At times like this, he thought she ought to be required to register it as a deadly weapon.
She leaned against the console, her gaze languorous. "You seem flushed."
Jaibriol spoke coolly. "Corbal Xir is one of the savviest people I know. He's too smart to let someone divert blame to him for something he didn't do. No one could manage it." He paused. "Almost no one."