Praise for The Last Hawk

“Well-written, entertaining, classic science fiction fun.”

—The Plain Dealer

“Rising star Catherine Asaro exploded onto the science fiction scene with all the blazing glory of a supernova with her first book called Primary Inversion. Now, in the third tale of the Skolian Empire, we see not only the powerful characterization and intriguing scientific concepts of the first two books, but also an elegant subtlety and a far-reaching sense of destiny that carries her to the highest rank of master storyteller.”

—Romantic Times

“Set in the same universe as Primary Inversion and Catch the Lightning, this intriguing novel combines hard speculative science (Asaro is a physicist) with romantic adventure. Like the other two novels in the Skolian empire saga, it can stand alone.”

—Library Journal

“The Last Hawk is a true gem, with believable hard science, human drama, and people and events that will draw in any perceptive reader. Impossible to put down, The Last Hawk embodies excellence in prose and science fiction, an excellence all too rare in any era.”

— L. E. Modesitt, Jr., New York Times–bestselling author

“Catherine Asaro’s The Last Hawk is not the usual sort of thing, for it hybridizes SF with romance, turns the mix on its head, and makes it all work quite well.… This one’s a winner.”

—Analog

THE LAST HAWK

SAGA OF THE SKOLIAN EMPIRE

Catherine Asaro

To my daughter, Catherine Jr.,

With love

Prologue

The ship’s controls wobbled in and out of focus. Kelric tried to rub his eyes, but his arm refused to respond. The exoskeleton on his pilot’s seat had jammed around his body. When he fumbled for the catches, his fingers scraped over the mesh.

On his fourth attempt, Kelric managed to release the exoskeleton. As it retracted, he fell forward, sprawling across the weapons grid in the cockpit. Red panels glowed all over the controls, bathing the ship in crimson light.

A solitary green light shone among the red. One of his inversion engines still worked. It had saved his life.

“I’m inverted,” Kelric mumbled. The same attack that had crippled his Jag starfighter had also kicked it from the sublight universe into inversion, hurling him away from his attackers before they could blast him into slag.

The medkit above him hadn’t released. He reached for it, but his arm faltered in midair and dropped back onto the grid. Not that it mattered. He needed far more help than a kit could give, more even than provided by his nanomeds, the tiny cell-repair machines in his body.

Pain throbbed in his arm from a bone-deep gash. In the exoskeleton he had felt numb, probably because it injected him with an anesthetic. Or maybe the biomech web in his body released a drug that blocked pain receptors in his brain. It would only give him so much of the drug, though, before its safety routines kicked in to prevent an overdose or brain damage.

His arm hurt too much to move. Even if it intended to stay put, however, his ship was going somewhere, taking him away from the Traders. He had been out alone, on reconnaissance, when a Trader squad caught him. He hoped they all inverted into the gravity well of a star and finished their careers as kindling for the local furnace.

An alarm sputtered. Lifting his head, he saw that the green light had turned yellow. His last inversion engine was failing.

A port. He needed a starport. He had to find a place to land, and fast. Closing his eyes, he tried to clear his mind.

Bolt, respond, he thought.

The node in his spine answered. Attending. Its signal traveled along bio-threads in his body to his brain, where bio-electrodes converted it into neural firing patterns. The process also worked in reverse, letting him “think” to the node.

Status of nanomeds, he thought.

Series G and H functional but depleted, Bolt answered. Series 0 nonfunctional. All other series exhibit decreased function.

Kelric grimaced. He was so far gone, he couldn’t remember what those meds did. Think, he told himself. The tiny molecular laboratories cruised his body, seeing to his health. Each carried a picochip that coordinated with other meds and told them how to replicate. Bolt ran the show. Like the conductor of a symphony, it directed the picoweb, the bio-threads in his body, and the electrodes in his brain. The military had integrated the system into his body fourteen years ago, when he was twenty, the year he received his officer’s commission.

Bolt, he thought. What happened to my biomech?

That last hit destroyed the safeties that protect your link to the ship. It damaged your biomech web. I’m trying to fix it, but I can’t do a full repair. You must proceed immediately to an ISC medical facility.

If he hadn’t hurt so much, Kelric would have laughed. Wish I could. He took a ragged breath. Give me a status report.

Accessing optical nerve. A ghostly image formed in the air health views of Kelric’s body. Bolt highlighted his circulatory system, showing a torn artery leaking blood. This needs the most immediate treatment.

Kelric exhaled. His only hope to speed the healing process more than his meds had already done came from the final component of his internal systems: his Kyle centers. Microscopic organs in his brain made it possible for his brain waves to interact with those of people nearby, letting him pick up their moods. It also allowed him to exert a greater than normal amount of biofeedback control over his own body.

Kelric concentrated, using his biofeedback training. He helped speed the repair of his damaged artery, control his blood flow, and bring in nutrients. When he finally surfaced from his trance, he felt steadier, enough that he could sit up, holding his arm against his chest.

An alarm warned again of the dying engine.

“Navak,” he said. “Take us out of inversion, into sublight space.”

No response came from the navigation-attack node in the ship’s Evolving Intelligence brain.

“Navak,” he repeated. “Initiate navigation mode.”

Silence.

Bolt, give me the ship’s emergency menu, he thought.

A display formed in his mind. The symbol for the emergency engine shutoff showed as a running cheetah turning into a crawling snail. Only one of each animal appeared, a reminder that only one of his four inversion engines still functioned. The cheetah blinked off and on, warning that it too would soon disappear.

Toggle emergency shutdown, he thought.

Nothing happened.

Bolt, toggle it!

A twisting sensation hit Kelric. The effect intensified with a nauseating mental wrench and then stopped.

Bolt? he thought.

We have dropped into normal space, Bolt answered.

Kelric sagged in his seat, swept with relief. Sublight. He was safe.

He was also lost, light-years away from his previous position, drifting in space like interstellar flotsam. Time to find a beach where he could wash up.

“Navak,” he said. “Respond.”

Nothing.

Kelric slid his hand around his waist, searching at the base of his spine. A prong should connect into a socket in his back, linking his bio-mech web to the ship. Apparently when he fell across the weapons grid, it pulled the prong out of his body, breaking it in two.

Maybe a wireless link would work. His socket could also act as an infrared transmitter, a less reliable method than a physical link, but better than nothing.

Activate IR receptors, he thought.

IR nonfunctional, Bolt thought.

Damn. He needed another approach. With his Kyle enhancements, maybe he could contact the ship using his brain waves. It helped that he was inside the ship; Kyle effects fell off with distance. Concentrating, he tried to kick its EI brain awake with his mind.

A ghostly green marble appeared in the air in front of him, casting an eerie light over the cockpit. It took him a moment to recognize it as the default display of a star map.

“Planet,” Kelric said.

Navak’s audio made a scraping noise.

He tried again. “Planet.”

Nothing.

Navak, he thought, desperate. You have to respond.

A sentence formed in the air, green words in Navak’s default font: HAV#%SPOND IS AN UNIDENTIFIABLE COMMAND.

Relief washed over Kelric. Planet, he thought.

PLANET WHAT? Navak printed.

Find me one. Or a base. Someplace habitable we can reach before engine four dies.

SEARCHING.

Kelric waited.

And waited.

Maybe no place was near enough. Or Navak was too damaged to do a proper search. Or the engine couldn’t—

OBJECT 85B5D-E6-JHEO SATISFIES YOUR REQUIREMENTS, Navak printed.

What is it?

DOES ‘IT’ REFER TO OBJECT 85B5D-E6-JHEO?

For flaming sake. What else would I mean?

NO DATA EXISTS ON AN OBJECT CALLED FLAMING S%, Navak printed. HOWEVER, ‘FLAMING’ APPEARS IN LANGUAGE FILE FOUR UNDER PROFANITY. DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE?

What I want, Kelric thought, is everything you have on object—he squinted at the screen—85B5D-E6-JHEO.

IT IS A PLANET. NAME: COBA. INHABITANTS: HUMAN. STATUS: RESTRICTED.

Kelric closed his eyes, hit with a relief so intense, it felt tangible. Inhabitants. Help. He just might survive this mess after all.

Take ship to Coba, he thought.

BOOK ONE

YEARS 960–966 OF THE MODERN AGE

Part 1

DAHL

1

FIRST MOVE: THE GOLDEN BALL

Deha Dahl, the Manager of Dahl Estate, sat playing dice. She placed a cube in the structure of balls, pyramids, and polyhedrons on the table. Her opponent, one of her more intrepid Estate aides, wiped sweat from her forehead as she studied the dice.

Deha had chosen the Coral Room for the game, a round chamber filled with light. Painted a deep rose near the floor, the walls shaded into lighter hues and then into white at the top. Coral mosaics inlaid in the domed ceiling. The room’s three doorways each arched to a point and then curved out in a circle graced with a stained-glass window. Deha insisted on using only the best rooms when she played the dice game of Quis with her aides, her peers—and her adversaries.

Their audience of Estate aides sat in carved chairs around the table. They watched the game in silence, some no doubt wishing they could take the perspiring aide’s place and others grateful it wasn’t them in this duel of minds. They all knew she had called this session to see how her opponent, a younger member of her staff, handled the pressure of playing against a dice queen.

A hand touched Deha’s shoulder. She looked up, surprised to see an aide who wasn’t among the group she had selected to view the session.

The aide bowed. “I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am. Captain Hacha thought you would want to know right away. A craft crashed up in the mountains near Dahl Pass.” She paused. “It doesn’t appear to be from Coba.”

Once Deha would have shipped the bearer of such news off to the setting-sun-asylum. No longer. She stood up. “Have Hacha meet me in my office.” She glanced at her dice opponent. “We will continue later.”

The aide nodded and started to speak. Then she stopped, her gaze shifting to a point beyond Deha. She stood up and bowed, not to Deha but to someone else. Following her gaze, the rest of Deha’s aides stood up in a flurry of moving chairs, and every one of them bowed.

Deha turned to see who evoked such a reaction from her staff. A retinue had appeared in the doorway, soldiers in the uniform of her CityGuard. A girl stood with them, a gray-eyed child on the verge of womanhood, with fiery hair curling around her face and falling in a thick braid down her back. Tall for her age, she looked like the reincarnation of an incipient warrior queen who had transcended the millennia and stepped from the Old Age into the modern world.

Deha crossed to the girl and bowed. “Ixpar. What brings you here?”

Ixpar spoke with barely contained excitement. “I heard about the craft that crashed near Dahl Pass. I came to help the rescue party.”

Deha silently cursed. She would be a fool to let Ixpar join them. Ixpar Karn: it meant Ixpar from the Estate of Karn. Of the Twelve Estates, Karn was the largest, bigger even than Dahl. It also ranked as the oldest. Its Manager not only ruled Karn; as Minister she stood highest in the hierarchy of all the Estates. She had chosen this girl to be her successor. Someday Ixpar would rule Coba.

However, Deha didn’t want to alienate Ixpar, either. The girl already showed skill in the flow of power among the Estates. Rumor claimed the Minister sometimes placed her young successor’s opinions above even those of her senior advisers.

Political prudence won out. “Very well,” Deha said. She raised her hand as Ixpar’s face lit with enthusiasm. “I want you to stay with my escort at all times.” She glanced toward the mountains. “We have no idea what crashed up there.”

In her guest suite, Ixpar changed into hiking clothes: a sweater, suede pants, and a leather jacket. When she finished, she found her two bodyguards outside in the entrance foyer, both armed with stunners.

They joined Ixpar in her walk through the Estate, just as they always did. So often she felt tempted to slip away from them. She resisted the urge, knowing only she would find it entertaining.

Guards or no guards, though, she enjoyed the walk. She found it hard to believe the Estate had once been an armed fortress. Its harsh interior had long ago given way to its present beauty, its stone floors softened with carpets and its formerly barred windows replaced by faceted yellow glass. Some corridors formed the perimeter of large halls, set off from them by widely spaced columns. Just as the ancient queens of Dahl had ruled from the Estate, so Deha and her staff now used it as their residence.

Ixpar left the Estate with her escort and headed through the city. Cobblestone streets wound among buildings of pale blue stone with turreted roofs. Spires topped the turrets and golden chains hung from their tips, strung with metal Quis dice. When the wind blew, the chains swung and clinked, sparkling in the sun. She passed golden temples dedicated to the sun goddess Savina or the dawn god Sevtar, and ball courts filled with players, women and men laughing in the wind. What a glorious day! It felt bright, gusty, and fresh. She wanted to jump. Shout. Get into trouble. Of course she couldn’t, but she enjoyed imagining the possibilities.

Ixpar knew the route to the airfield well; the Minister often brought her to Dahl, a long time ally of Karn Estate. This time Minister Karn had sent her alone. It was about time. Ixpar felt as if she were straining in a harness, yearning to fly in the currents of power among the Estates.

Other feelings also stirred within her, less comprehensible than politics. She felt painfully awkward, tall and gangly, with big feet. She grew so fast lately, like a spindlestalk plant. She thought of the youth Tev, with his lean muscles and curly hair. At night she tossed in bed, reminding herself that a woman should always be honorable in her intentions toward men. It didn’t help. She couldn’t stop thinking up ways to convince Tev that he should let her compromise his honor.

The growl of an engine interrupted her thoughts. The airfield waited beyond the end of the street. She and her guards crossed the last stretch of pavement and walked onto the tarmac. Crews were wheeling two windriders out of their hangars, aircraft painted like giant althawks, with wings of red plumage edged in black, gleaming gold heads, and landing gear as black as talons. They looked ready to leap into the sky.

The rescue party assembled by a hangar. In addition to Deha, it included Rohka, the Estate Senior Physician, and the young doctor Dabbiv, his gaze intense as he spoke with a pilot. Deha’s personal escort waited by the hangar door: Hacha, captain of the escort; Rev, a broad-shouldered man who towered over most everyone else; slender Llaach with her night-black hair; and Balv, the youngest of the four.

Ixpar soon found herself in the same craft as the Dahl escort, with Balv as pilot. He ran his preflight checks as if it were perfectly normal for a man to fly a rider. Well, this was Dahl. Things were different here. Modern.

Hacha sat next to Ixpar. The captain looked like her name, tough and craggy. Following Ixpar’s gaze to Balv, she chuckled. “He’s a pleasant one to look at, eh?”

Ixpar reddened, mortified. “I was just watching his flight preparations.”

Deha settled into the copilot’s seat and leaned back to talk to Hacha, saving Ixpar from more embarrassment. Discreetly, so no one would catch her staring again, she watched the Manager. Deha’s heavy braid of black hair hung to her waist and tendrils curled about her face. A dusting of silver showed at her temples. Her most compelling feature was her eyes; huge and black, they drew attention.

The rider soon lifted off, its wing slats spreading like giant feathers to catch the wind. The dome of the Observatory passed below them, glistening in the sunlight. As the ground dropped away other towers became visible, their spires reaching into the sky. Seen from above, the Estate resembled a sculpture; bridges arched over courtyards, towers glowed like antique gold in the sunlight, and curving walls added scalloped edges to the scene.

The parks of the Dahl Calanya came into view.

Ixpar pressed against the window, straining to see the forbidden Calanya. Surrounded by a massive windbreak, the parks spread in a tapestry of lawns and lakes dotted by colorful flowers. She could just make out a fountain, a hazelle stag rearing on his hind legs. Arches of water curved up from his horns and fell sparkling into a basin.

The view widened to include the city of Dahl nestled in its mountain valley, the pedestrians in its streets no more than specks now. The rider soared higher and Dahl receded until it became a pattern of colors in the panorama of the Teotec Mountains. Ahead, peaks climbed so far into the sky that Ixpar grew dizzy trying to sight their tips; behind, the forested slopes plunged down until, out of sight beyond the horizon, they became cliffs that met a desert whipped by the wind.

It was out there, a day’s ride into the desert, that the strangers had built their starport.

Starport. People from above the sky. Ixpar had seen them years ago when their military commanders came to Karn, imposing women and men with hard edges to their personalities. Skolians they called themselves, even though they looked like Cobans. Their talk of building a port in the desert had troubled Minister Karn. Now Ixpar sensed unease in Deha as well, an apprehension that whatever had crashed in the mountains was not born of Coba.

“There!” Deha had to shout to be heard over the engines. “I saw something below that crag. A glint, like metal.” She glanced at Balv. “Can you take us down?”

He squinted into the glare from the snow. “There’s room behind those rocks.”

The rider descended, its wing slats drawing together like huge feathers. The snowskis unfolded with a grind, sailing over the snow, jolting the cabin when they skimmed over patches of rock. As they shot past a huge drift, Balv snapped the wings in flush to the hull. After they cleared the snow, he opened the metal pinions and braked against the wind until the rider skidded to a stop.

Captain Hacha disembarked first, followed by Balv, then Deha and Ixpar. Llaach and Rev came last. Their weapons startled Ixpar. Not only had they hung stunners from their belts, Rev carried a honed discus in a sling over his shoulder and Llaach had a dagger on her boot.

The second rider landed, bringing more guards and the doctors. With Hacha in the lead, they hiked to a hill of boulders that hid the downed craft. Ixpar clambered up the mound, dislodging rocks in her hurry. She reached the top—and looked out at the wreckage of a starship steaming in the melted snow.

Ho! Incredibly, it looked no bigger than a large windrider. Even as a wreck, hints of its former grace showed, like an alabaster sculpture broken against the mountain.

Hacha reached the ship first. She vanished through a hole in the side, but reappeared almost instantly. “A pilot is in here,” she called. “He’s alive.”

They sped in a sliding run down the hill, their boots kicking up flurries from patches of snow. At the ship, Rev grabbed a twist of metal and shoved it upward, widening the rent in the hull so the others could enter. Chaos reigned inside: crumpled bulkheads, sparks jumping from panels, broken shards everywhere. The pilot lay collapsed across his forward controls.

Rohka, the Estate Senior Physician, leaned over the man. “He’s still breathing.”

“We better get him out of here,” Llaach said. “If those sparks start a fire, the whole ship could blow.”

The doctor called Dabbiv spoke wryly. “I hardly think starships run on petrol.”

“It looks all right to move him,” Rohka said. “We should, just in case.” She glanced at Rev and Hacha, the two tallest people in the group. “Can you carry him?”

Working together, Hacha and Rev eased the man away from his seat. They carried him out of the ship and to a wall of rock that looked thick enough to protect against an explosion, at least any type Ixpar knew. After they set him on the ground, the doctors went to work on his wounds.

Ixpar knelt by the pilot. He resembled metal. His skin and hair glinted like gold. His face could have been a mask of the wind god Khozaar; it had that same flawless beauty. But where myth claimed Khozaar was as supple as the wind, this man was huge, bigger than Rev even, with a massive physique.

She laid her palm on the pilot’s forehead, checking for fever. Despite its metallic cast, his skin felt warm. She wanted to touch him, to stroke his face, but she held back. Instead she helped the doctors untangle him from his torn jacket. They uncovered his biceps—and she dropped his sleeve, gaping at his arm.

Llaach gave an incredulous grunt. “That’s impossible.”

“I don’t believe it,” Balv said. “He’s a Calani.”

Ixpar didn’t believe it either. Yet the man wore three gold armbands on each of his upper arms.

“Three bands.” Rev’s voice rumbled. “A Third Level Calani.”

“For wind’s sake,” Dabbiv said. “He can’t be a Calani. He’s not even from this planet.” He pulled scraps of cloth away from the man’s waist. “They don’t have—hey! Look at that.”

A weapon, huge and black, glittered on the pilot’s hip.

“That’s some stunner,” Llaach said. “What is a Calani doing with a gun?”

Captain Hacha frowned. Then she headed to where Deha and the other guards were examining the ship. Apparently the Manager didn’t believe it might explode; they all kept walking in and out of the wreckage.

Ixpar turned back to the pilot. She wasn’t sure which she found more unsettling: an offworld Calani, whatever that might mean, or a Calani with a gun. She ran her fingers over the engravings on his armbands. “These hieroglyphics are Skolian.”

Dabbiv glanced up from the splint he was setting on the man’s leg. “You can read Skolian?”

“Minister Karn had me learn it.”

“Can you read the name of his Estate?” Balv asked.

“Something about an office,” Ixpar said. “It’s a title—Third Office, I think. Maybe it means his Calanya Level.” She pieced out the inscription. “Jagged Imperial Third Office. No, it’s Officer, not Office. Tertiary Officer?” She studied the glyphs. “Jagernaut. That’s what it says. Jagernaut Tertiary, Kelricson Valdoria. Imperial Space Command.”

“What does it mean?” Llaach asked.

“If we don’t get him to a Med House,” Dabbiv said, “that won’t matter. He’ll be too dead to care.”

Manager Dahl’s voice came from behind them. “This man is an Imperial citizen. You all know their Restriction laws. They forbid us to interact with him. We must take him to their starport.”

Ixpar stood. “He’s hurt. He needs our help.”

“The starport has medical facilities,” Deha said.

Senior Physician Rohka looked up from the leg she was splinting. Ixpar could guess the doctor’s thought; it would take too long to reach the port.

“He will die before we get there,” Rohka said.

Deha considered the doctor. Then she turned to Ixpar. “Would you come with me?”

The Manager led her to an area behind another outcropping. Hacha and Rev both stood there, studying a panel from the wreckage. A symbol glowed on it, a black triangle inscribed by an amber circle. Etched within the circle, the symbol of an exploding sun gleamed gold.

“Do you recognize this?” Deha asked her.

“It’s called the Ruby insignia,” Ixpar said.

“What does it mean?”

Ixpar thought back to what the Public Affairs Officer from the Imperial delegation had told Minister Karn. “Ruby refers to the rulers of an ancient empire that predates the Imperialate. The Ruby Dynasty.”

“I thought an elected council ruled the Skolian Imperialate,” Deha said.

“Now, yes. The Assembly.” Ixpar brushed her fingers across the insignia. “The Ruby Empire collapsed five thousand years ago. Apparently only ruins remain.”

“This symbol is part of his identification.”

Ixpar tried to recall what she knew about the Skolians. “When the Imperialate formed, they decided to use the Ruby symbol for their insignia.”

Deha regarded her uneasily. “This comes from his personal ID.”

That intrigued Ixpar. “Maybe he descends from the Ruby Dynasty.”

“Does that have any significance?”

“I’m not sure.” She met Deha’s gaze. “We better get him to Dahl.”

The Manager spoke grimly. “If he recovers, it won’t be long before he realizes no reason exists for the Restricted status we convinced his military to give us. What if he decides to notify Imperial Space Command?” She shook her head. “Right now they think something is wrong with us. It’s the only reason they leave us alone. Do you really want ISC to start formal assimilation procedures for Coba? You’ve met their military queens, Ixpar. They conquer. Period. The Restriction is our only protection.”

“They aren’t all women. Half their military are men.” Ixpar glanced toward the pilot. “An army like that can’t be harsh.”

“That assumption is based on our culture. Not theirs.”

Ixpar turned back to her. “If we take him to the starport, we’ll be returning a dead man. These Imperial warrior queens you fear aren’t just going to show up, take his body, and forget we let one of their sons die.” She thought of how his skin had felt under her hand. “And just look at him. He’s so beautiful.”

Deha scowled at her. “Just because he’s a handsome young man instead of a craggy old Manager doesn’t make the danger any less.” She looked around the mountains. “As far as Karn knows, does anyone at the port monitor this area?”

“I don’t think so. The port is automated. No people. Every now and then we hear that a ship came in to refuel, but their crews never leave the port.”

Deha spoke carefully. “According to his ship’s log, he was lost when he crashed.”

She understood what the Manager left unsaid; if they buried the pilot and destroyed his ship, their anonymity remained safe. But seeing him brought images of desire and fatherhood to her mind; her instincts drove her to protect him. “Deha, no. What if we take him to Dahl and never let him go? His people sent him out with no protector. It’s their own fault he ended up this way. He’s ours now.”

“He might escape. We can’t risk it.”

Dabbiv came over to Deha. “If we’re going to save his life, we have to leave for Dahl as soon as possible.”

Deha looked at the Skolian. In the sunlight, his skin, hair, and armbands gleamed like gold. Softly she murmured. “He truly is unique.”

Her voice returned to its matter-of-fact tone. “Very well. Put him in my rider. We will take him to Dahl.”

2

FIRST STRUCTURE: ORB’S CIRCLE

An ice forest of blue appeared, its branches like a lacework of filaments.

Gradually Kelric realized the forest was actually a blanket that lay across his eyes. He considered pulling it down. As he drifted in and out of sleep, the idea lodged in his mind until finally it translated into action. His head moved, just barely, but enough to make the blanket slip so he could look beyond the blue.

He saw more blue; a wall, painted sapphire near the floor, shading up through lighter blues until it blended into ivory at the top. Sunlight streamed through a window patterned from diamond-shaped panes of frosted and faceted glass. Breezes rippled the curtains on another window someone had left open, revealing glimpses of blue sky and mountains. A table stood nearby, surrounded by four chairs carved with leaf designs.

A girl moved into his line of sight. He couldn’t register anything about her except the magnificent mane of red hair that cascaded down her.

“Who…?” he asked.

Coming closer, she spoke in accented Skolian. “You are awake?”

“Not sure … Are you real?”

“Very real, Kelricson.” She laid her hand across his forehead. “I am Ixpar.”

“How know my name?”

“Your armbands. They are part of your uniform, yes?”

“Yes …”

She withdrew her hand. “We found you when you crashed above Dahl.”

He wanted to ask what was a Dahl, but it required too much exertion. So he soaked in the warmth of the covers. Ixpar blotted the sweat on his forehead with a cloth.

After a while he said, “Not Kelricson.”

“Kelricson is not your name?” she asked.

A fragment of memory drifted in his mind: he was announced at a session of the Assembly. His heritage gave him an honorary seat and a sense of duty prodded him to attend, but he felt painfully awkward, an oversized soldier out of place among the councilors. Neither politics nor public speaking had ever come naturally to him. He sat silent through the entire session.

“Not-Kelricson?” Ixpar asked. “You are still here?”

He looked up at her. “What?”

“You were telling me your name.”

The man in his memory continued to announce his title, so he repeated it. “Kelricson Garlin Valdoria kya Skolia, Im’Rhon to the … to the Rhon of the Skolias.”

“So many names. Do you wish I use them all?”

“Just Kelric.” His eyelids felt heavy. “In dreams … don’t need baggage.”

The girl smiled. “I will tell Deha you think her Estate is a dream.”

“Deha?”

“She is Manager of Dahl. She led the rescue party that rescued you.”

“Will you tell her something else?”

“Anything you like.”

Softly Kelric said, “Tell her that I am forever in her debt.” Then he passed out.

Darkness alternated with light. Kelric was only vaguely aware of his surroundings; whatever medication the doctors gave him blurred his mind and melted the days into a haze. His nanomeds hadn’t tried to deactivate the drugs, though he had no idea if that was because Bolt had decided the medicine helped him or of the meds had stopped working. Bolt had gone silent.

On a night when warm breezes sifted through the curtains, he drifted out of sleep to see a tall figure standing by his bed.

“Ixpar…?” he asked.

“She sleeps.” The woman spoke Skolian with a heavy accent, in a resonant voice that pleased the ear, and her aura of power penetrated even his drugged haze. Starlight sifted through the window, silvering her slender form. Her robe covered her body without hiding its natural grace. She had regular features, including high cheekbones and a straight nose. Her eyes riveted his attention; huge and dark, with faint lines around them, they looked like black pools, drawing him into their depths.

Kelric concentrated on the stranger, but his Kyle receptors caught nothing more than a name. Day? Deha? Pain sparked in his temples, forcing him to relax his focus.

Deha sat on the bed and laid her palm on his forehead.

“Is hot,” he mumbled.

“Much so,” she agreed. “Your fever refuses to leave.”

“How long been here?”

“One tenday and a bit more.”

“Ten days?” He tried to sit up. “Need to contact my squad.”

Deha nudged him back down. “You need to rest.” She brushed a curl out of his eyes. “Golden Calani,” she murmured.

“Calani?” He fell asleep before she answered.

Straining against the body cast that covered him from chest to toe, Kelric vomited into the basin his nurse was holding. After the spasms eased, he sank down onto the bed again. People crammed the room. His nurse cleaned his face, another nurse took the basin, guards hulked by the door, and doctors conferred in whispers. He wished they would all go away and let him be sick in private.

A man said his name. Looking up, he saw the doctor Dabbiv and the guard Llaach watching him. The doctor spoke again. Although Kelric had learned a few words of their language, he had a long way to go before he could understand even simple sentences. When he shook his head, the doctor slowly repeated the phrase.

Translate, Kelric thought, hoping Bolt’s recovery had continued along with his own.

I can’t, Bolt answered. My transl^%”ó@—+

What?

My library has too few Coban words.

Kelric shook his head at Dabbiv again, hoping the doctor understood the gesture. Dabbiv considered him, then turned to Llaach. After conferring with her, he nodded to Kelric and took his leave of the room.

Llaach lifted a glass of water off the nightstand and offered it to Kelric. He nudged it away, but she persisted in trying to make him drink. They went back and forth for a while, until Dabbiv reappeared with Ixpar.

The girl smiled. “My greetings, Kelric.”

He exhaled with relief. “Can you tell me what they want?”

“Dabbiv says you are deehi—what is the word? Dehydrait?” She took the glass from Llaach and tilted it to his lips. “Dried up.”

Kelric pushed it aside. “No.”

“You should do as Dabbiv says. He is a good doctor.”

“Does he put anything in my food? Drugs?”

She blinked. “Of course not. He brings your medicines for you to drink.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“I think the food and water are what make me sick.”

She frowned. “You would not say this if you knew how much care the cooks use with your meals.”

“I appreciate their efforts. But I’m not Coban. What’s harmless to you could poison me.” Particularly now, when his nanomeds seemed to have gone dormant.

Ixpar conferred with the doctor, then turned back to Kelric. “Dabbiv says he will try to find a better diet. And we can boil your water. Do you think this would help?”

He smiled. “Yes. Thank you.”

Ixpar turned blush red, though he couldn’t imagine why. He had just smiled at her.

“We will right away talk to the cooks,” she assured him. “You should rest. I will tell all these worried-looking people to leave.”

Good luck, Kelric thought. He had tried all morning to make them go.

Ixpar spoke to the others—and they left, every single one. With that, she bowed to him and took her leave as well.

Good gods. Just like that, she cleared his room. What about his young nurse commanded such a response? It wasn’t her appearance, exactly; she seemed awkward with adolescence, all arms and legs. Despite that, she had a quality about her, something indefinable that made her seem larger than everyone else.

In any case, he appreciated the privacy. He lay back, gazing at the ceiling, which was painted blue, with clouds and a flock of birds. Skyroom. He liked it far better than a grave, which was where he would be if these people hadn’t helped him. That Deha and Ixpar both spoke Skolian suggested an Imperial presence on planet. He had to report to HQ. By now Imperial Space Command must have listed him as lost and presumed dead.

A dim image formed in his mind: a floating green sphere. When he concentrated, it faded away.

Retrieve image, Kelric thought.

The memory is degraded, Bolt answered. I will try to improve resolution.

The sphere reappeared, and a blur under it resolved into a line of hieroglyphics. Something about Coba. Restriction. Yes, that was it. ISC had Restricted Coba.

It made no sense. The planet was obviously habitable and Kelric recalled no military briefing about a world called Coba. It seemed a pleasant place, certainly no candidate for quarantine.

Then again, he had only seen one room and a few people. Coba definitely bore investigation. It had gone unnoticed too long.

Kelric managed to sit up with the help of the boy who brought him lunch. He winced as the edge of his bodycast jabbed his chest. Damn primitive, wrapping his body in plaster. Normally his nanomeds did a better job healing broken bones, but after the crash, they no longer seemed to work as well.

Kelric shifted the tray on his lap and waved at the door, continuing his “conversation” with the boy. “You must know what I mean. The guards outside my room, the ones who always sit at that table, gambling or something. I see them every time someone opens the door. What are they doing?” He knew the boy didn’t understand Skolian, but he talked to him anyway. He had little else to do. Although he still slept most of the time, he felt well enough now to stay awake a few hours each day.

The youth regarded him curiously. Dressed in blue trousers and a white shirt, he looked more like a schoolboy than a nurse. Only the medic’s patch and the Dahl suntree emblem on the shoulder of his shirt said otherwise. He poured Kelric another glass of r aw milk and offered it to him, but Kelric shook his head.

When the boy persisted, a laugh came from the other side of the room. “Maybe milk is not so good, heh?”

Kelric looked to see Deha Dahl standing in the arched doorway. She spoke to the nurse in their language and he bowed. He withdrew then, leaving Kelric alone with the Manager.

“My greetings, Prince Kelricson.” She came over to the bed. “Or perhaps you prefer a military title? Tertiary Valdoria?”

His muscles relaxed. “Kelric is good.”

“Kelric.” She inclined her head to him. “Dabbiv says you seem better since we worked out the special menu.”

“Much better.” He hesitated, grappling with the awkwardness that always plagued him when he wanted to express something important—like gratitude to the person who had saved his life. “Manager Dahl, what you’ve done for me—I won’t forget.”

She watched him with a guarded expression. “Do not be so quick to thank me. Almost we didn’t bring you here.”

“Because of the Restriction?”

“Yes.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “When we ask for the Restriction, never did we imagine you would happen.”

“You asked to be Restricted? Why?”

“We don’t want your ISC occupying our world.”

He wondered if she had any idea what their choice had lost them. “As part of the Imperialate, you would have access to our technology, sciences, arts, nearly a thousand worlds—all of it. You gave that up because you didn’t want ISC here?”

“You use loaded words.” She spoke carefully. “Others use words such as military dictatorship for your Imperialate.”

He tensed. “The Imperator is not a dictator.”

She considered him. “Tell me something. You are a prince, yes? Of what?”

“The Ruby Dynasty. But the Rhon no longer holds power.”

“What is Rhon?”

“My family.” He would have preferred to leave the subject unspoken. “That’s what the Skolian people call us.”

“And what do the Skolian people call the Imperator?”

He regarded her warily. “The Imperator.”

“You play games with me. He is your brother, yes?”

Damn. These people were too adept at digging information out of his ship’s wreckage. “Half brother. Kurj and I have the same mother. But he came to his position through work. Not heredity.”

“Kurj?”

“The Imperator.”

“So,” she said. “You call the Imperialate’s dictator by his personal name.”

“He’s not a dictator, damn it.”

“No?”

“No.” He had no wish to discuss his brother’s violent rise to power with this unsettling stranger.

Heart rate and blood pressure anomaly, Bolt thought. It accessed his optical nerve and a translucent display appeared, superimposed on Deha, with diagrams of Kelric’s vital signs.

Don’t bother with the display, Kelric thought. Just give me a summary. Normally he wouldn’t need to ask for brief mode; he had long ago set that as the Bolt’s default. But like him, his node still hadn’t recovered from the crash.

The display vanished. Your hypothalamus is producing certain hormones, which in conjunction—

You can skip the tech-talk. What’s wrong?

Nothing, Bolt answered. Unless you consider sexual arousal a problem.

Kelric flushed. Just what he needed, a voyeuristic node in his spine.

“Kelric?” Deha asked. “Are you all right?”

He scowled. “I’m fine.”

“You look tired.” She brushed a curl out of his eyes.

In pure reflex, he grabbed her wrist. As she froze, his mind caught up with his reaction and he stopped. The bio-hydraulics that controlled his reflexes apparently still worked just fine. They tripled his response time. Any more would require more power than his internal microfusion reactor produced, generating too much heat for his body to dump even with the reflective adaptations of his skin.

Deha sat utterly still, watching him. Flustered, he loosened his grip.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said.

He rubbed his thumb over her palm. “I didn’t mean to grab you that way. My reflexes overdo it sometimes.”

Her face gentled. She withdrew her hand and cleared his lunch tray, setting the remains of his meal on the nightstand. With no further ado, she took a pouch out of her robe pocket and placed it on the tray. “I bring you gift.”

A gift? Intrigued, he picked up the pouch, making its contents rattle and click.

Deha had a similar pouch hanging from her belt. She took it off and emptied a profusion of small shapes onto the tray: balls, cubes, polyhedrons, pyramids, disks, squares, rods, and more, in every color of the rainbow.

Kelric poured a similar set out of his pouch. “What are they?”

“Quis dice.”

He liked the geometrical shapes; they appealed to his love of math. “What do we do with them?”

“Play Quis.”

Kelric thought of his guards outside the room. “Is that a gambling game?”

“Sometimes.” She pushed the pieces to the edges of the tray, then set a blue cube in the center. “Your move.”

He smiled. “If they’re dice, shouldn’t we roll them?”

Deha shook her head. “We say ‘dice’ because many centuries ago the pieces, they have numbers, and these numbers, they tell you what moves you can make. You pick a piece, roll it out, and the number that comes up tells you—” She paused. “What is the word? Elections? No … Options! Yes. This is the word.”

“The number gives you options for doing something?”

“This is right. Options to place your piece in a Quis structure.” Deha lowered her voice, as if revealing a confidence. “Back then, Quis takes less skill. Now we build structures using strategies based only on rules. It takes much more work by the brain.” She grinned. “Still we gamble on who wins. So. Make your move.”

He laughed. “I’ve no idea how to play.”

“Try anything. We see what happens.”

Enjoying himself, he set a bar on her cube. She pushed a purple cube up against her blue one. He placed a purple bar and she responded with a magenta cube.

“You know,” he said, setting a square in the structure. “I have no clue what we’re doing.”

“I explain when we finish.” Deha snapped her fingers. “I forget. We must make a wager.” She considered. “Two tekals. Is reasonable for beginner.”

“What’s a tekal?”

“A coin. One tekal buys you a sausage at market.”

“I don’t have any tekals.”

Deha chuckled. “You owe me then.”

“I might win, you know.”

She set a red cube against her magenta cube. “We see.”

He put a disk on top of her cube. “Your move.”

“Not my move.” She placed an orange cube by her red cube. “My game.”

Kelric squinted at the board. “It is?”

“Very definitely.”

He counted the dice. “You made more moves. Don’t I get to finish the round?”

She regarded him with approval. “Is true, you can finish. But is no way for you to beat me.”

“How did you win?”

“I made a small spectrum.” She tapped her cubes. “Blue, purple, magenta, red, orange.”

This certainly offered a better diversion than arguing about his infamous brother. “What does it mean?”

“A spectrum is like a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Then starts over with red again. Also you can put—what is the word? Interm?” She paused. “Intermediate. You can use intermediate colors if you want, like magenta between purple and red. For small spectrum, the line of dice must be more than four pieces. Grand spectrum is ten or more dice.”

“Suppose I blocked your line of cubes?”

“Ah.” She nodded. “You learn fast. A block would stop me. I must go in another direction.”

“Can you use different shapes?”

“Not in a spectrum. Shape stays the same and color changes. To change shape? Make a builder. For that, color stays the same and shape changes.” She tapped a cube. “Number of sides is the order. Cube has six sides, so it is sixth order.” She made a line of dice on the tray: pyramid, pentahedron, cube, heptahedron, octahedron. “This run follows order so it is a builder. If it follows both color and order, it is a queen’s spectrum.”

He grinned. “If I make a queen’s spectrum, will I win back my tekals?”

Deha chuckled. “Maybe.” She made a sweeping motion of her hand. “Thousands of structures and patterns exist. Spectrums and builders are only a start.”

“I’d like to learn.” He picked up a handful of dice. “If you have time to teach me.”

“We all teach you. Everyone’s Quis has a different personality.” She lowered her voice again. “Really, it is more than gambling. The better one plays Quis, the greater her influence. We … I keep losing the words. Talk? We talk with Quis. It is like a net that spreads everywhere. The better a person plays, the better her position in life.”

That certainly suggested a novel political system. “Is that why you manage Dahl? Because you play Quis well?”

Deha shrugged. “I have some ability. It is one reason the previous Manager chose me as her successor. It works both ways. Managing Dahl gives me knowledge that improves my game.”

“This sounds like more than a game.” In fact, it sounded like fun.

“If you play Quis well enough, it tells stories. I give example with Varz Estate.” Deha set a black dodecahedron on the tray. “Varz is too powerful, second only to Karn Estate. Varz has always challenged Karn for the Ministry. So we must help Karn gain advantage against Varz.”

“Why not help Varz?”

She snorted. “I would help a scumrat before Varz.”

“Ah.” He smiled. “I see.”

“So. I build structures that describe, say, how Varz cheats merchants on import taxes. I sit at Quis with my aides, they sit with their aides, their aides sit with others. Soon my input into the Quis spreads like ripples in pond. It reaches a logger in Viasa and she says to a merchant, ‘You know, I read much in the Quis lately. Much about Varz and all of it bad. It is good Karn has the Ministry.’”

“Which doesn’t sit well with Varz, I take it.”

“Ah, but Manager Varz makes her own ripples.” Deha lifted a handful of dice. “So the merchant tells the logger, ‘You play Quis with dull-wits. If Karn keeps running things, soon we will all pay so much for goods we have no money left for Quis. Then, my friend, you never get paid what I owe you.’”

Kelric grinned. “Who wins?”

“This is the crucial point, yes?” She leaned forward. “Everyone plays Quis. With so many in the game, ripples bounce back and forth, reinforce, cancel, make new waves.” She paused. “That may be our ultimate wager. Power. Control the Quis and you control the Twelve Estates.”

Kelric wanted to ask more, but he was tiring. He leaned back in his pillows to gather his strength.

“Ai,” Deha murmured. “I should let you rest.”

“It’s all right.” He regarded her. “I meant to ask—do you have any news about the starport?”

Her expression turned impassive. “I wrote the Ministry, as you ask. They verify what I tell you. After your people set up the Restriction, they took away their ships. I am sorry. We have no port.”

It made no sense. “We must have an outpost.”

“None.”

“They would have left a base,” he said. “I can find it with the equipment on my ship.”

Her face remained unreadable. “The crash destroyed your ship.”

He didn’t want to believe her, but he feared she told some version of the truth. The EI brain of a Jag starfighter linked with its pilot’s biomech web. When he disconnected from the ship, his mind usually interpreted it as the mental equivalent of turning off a mesh node, what his people used to call computers. Not so now. He felt a void, as if part of him had vanished.

Bolt, he thought. Have you reached the Jag yet?

No. However, at this distance, it is unlikely I will pick up any significant signal.

Surely you can get at least a residual interaction.

It seems I should. However, I detect nothing.

Kelric considered Deha. “If the crash destroyed my ship that thoroughly, how am I still alive?”

“You don’t remember? You ejected.”

Bolt, did the Jag eject me?

It considered that option. My records of the crash are too garbled to determine what actually happened.

Kelric felt grief at the Jag’s destruction, as if someone he knew had died. He wondered if the ship’s designers realized their latest modifications could create that close of a symbiosis between the Jag and its pilot. He needed to report the effect. Deha claimed ISC had left no personnel here for him to contact, no starport, no base, no nothing.

He didn’t believe it.

Prepare Kyle probe, he thought.

Your Kyle centers are injured, Bolt thought.

Kelric tensed. Why didn’t you say anything before?

I didn’t yet have details. I am also injured. As I repair myself, I can better monitor you.

Damn. If the crash had injured his Kyle centers, that meant he had brain damage. Although Kelric had always known a risk existed in linking his ship to his brain, realizing that in theory and facing the reality were two very different things.

Is my brain injured? he asked.

I can’t say for certain. You may have lost some memories or other functions of your Kyle centers.

Kelric focused inward, checking his memory. His Kyle centers were microscopic organs, the Kyle Afferent Body and Kyle Efferent Body. KAB and KEB. Yes, he remembered. The KAB acted as a receiver, its molecular sites activated by fields produced in other people’s brains. The KEB served more as a “transmitter,” strengthening and modulating the fields his own brain produced. Everyone had a KAB and KEB, but in most people the organs were atrophied. In rare cases such as his, the genes that controlled their growth carried a mutation that caused the Kyle organs to develop.

Kelric knew he should remember more, but it all seemed blank. No, wait. It was coming back. Having an enhanced KAB and KEB wasn’t enough to make a Kyle operator. The brain also had to interpret the signals it received. Specialized neural structures called paras carried out that function, aided by the neurotransmitter psiamine. Most Kyle operators could only decode the moods of other people, but a strong operator could pick up a few of their most intense thoughts if they came from nearby, particularly if the sender was also a Kyle operator.

He concentrated on Deha, trying to sense her mood. It felt as if he brushed the outer seawall of a hidden grotto. Bubbles of thought surfaced in her mind: worry for her Estate, desire for him, Quis patterns—

Pain seared his head, vaporizing the link. Blotches danced in his vision.

“So quiet.” Deha watched him with concern. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m just tired.” Given his uncertain situation, he had no intention of revealing his diminished capabilities.

She set aside his tray and helped him ease under the quilt, tucking the covers about his body. Having her so close unsettled him. His last tour of duty had turned into a nightmare of skirmishes separated by extended periods of isolation while he ran reconnaissance. He hadn’t held a woman in a long time and Deha was no ordinary woman.

When the Manager leaned over him, Kelric laid his hand on the small of her back. She stiffened as if a pulse of electricity shot up her spine. She didn’t pull away, though. Instead she looked at his face, her expression gentling.

Then she kissed him.

Startled, Kelric didn’t respond at first. Then he slid his arms around her waist and returned the kiss.

Warning, Bolt thought. Amorous interaction with a potential enemy is unwise.

Bolt, go away.

I am inside your brain. I cannot leave.

Busy with the kiss, Kelric didn’t respond.

After a while Deha raised her head, holding herself up with her hands. She reminded him of someone, though he couldn’t figure out why. He caught a wisp of her mood. Affection. Something else came through as well. Regret? When he concentrated, a headache lanced his temples, and he dropped his arms, his forehead knotting with pain.

“Ai,” Deha murmured. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to take advantage. I should let you rest.” She stood up by the bed, watching him with a gentle expression, one he had never seen her use with her staff. She touched his hair, her hand brushing his curls. When Kelric took her hand and squeezed, she smiled. As much as he wanted her to stay, his fatigue had caught up with him. His closed eyes, and a moment later, he heard the door close.

Bolt, he thought. I need an analysis of this situation.

The analysis is simple. You are indulging in ill-advised romantic activities.

Kelric smiled. I meant an analysis of her claim that ISC didn’t leave a base here.

I will investigate. You need to sleep. I will run calculations while you are down.

He had given up telling Bolt that humans didn’t “go down” like mesh systems when they slept. Bolt had decided his wording was appropriate and that was it. So Kelric closed his eyes and let sleep take him.

This ought to be interesting, Captain Hacha thought. They couldn’t move Kelric to the dice table, so they moved the table to him. An aide had brought a blue lacquered stand with legs no more than a handspan in length. It was easier for Kelric now that the doctors had removed his bodycast and put him in lighter casts that only went to mid-thigh. He sat up in bed and they set the table over his lap.

Six players joined the game: Hacha and Rev pulled up chairs near the bed, Balv and Llaach sat on the matress near the foot of the bed, and Ixpar sat cross-legged between them. Kelric blinked at them all, obviously unsure what to do with so many people.

At least he had shown some modesty and put on a shirt. During the heat wave that descended on Dahl, he had slept barechested, wearing only pajama trousers split up the sides to accommodate his casts. Although watching him that way had its pleasures, Hacha otherwise failed to see why Deha found him so attractive. He was too big, for one. Men shouldn’t be taller than women. The idea of a male warrior repelled her.

Llaach adjusted the pillow behind Kelric’s back and spoke slowly, so he could understand their language. “Are you comfortable?”

He answered in his thick accent. “Yes. My thanks.”

They each picked a die from Hacha’s pouch and Rev drew the highest-ranking piece, an orange heptagon. He opened the session and the game took off.

Hacha built her defense from polyhedrons, creating a wall to block the other players. Her offense thrust forward in a phalanx of wedges. Rev attacked with bar-builders, battling her back and forth across the board. Balv tried to make a spectrum, but it kept running afoul of Ixpar’s defensive walls. Llaach floundered after only a few moves and Kelric placed his dice randomly.

Then Hacha saw it; Ixpar had taken advantage of her battle with Rev to sneak in an attack. Hacha diverted her phalanx toward a weak spot in the girl’s defense. Although Ixpar deflected the attack, Hacha had slowed her down. Turning her attention back to Rev, she trapped him with one of her favorite moves, the hawk’s claw, a ring of dice closing around his highest-ranking structure.

“Heh.” Rev exhaled. “The win goes to you, Hacha.”

Balv smiled. “For a while there I thought Ixpar would get you both.”

Hacha nodded to Ixpar. “You played well.” It felt strange to omit the title Successor Karn when she spoke to the girl. But she agreed with Deha’s decision; they shouldn’t reveal Ixpar’s position to Kelric. The less he knew, the better.

Balv studied the board. “Rev is second and Ixpar is third.” He grinned. “I beat you, Llaach.”

Llaach peered at the pieces. “Pah,” she grumbled. “You did.”

Kelric spoke with halting words. “I am last?”

“Yhee.” Balv looked apologetic. “I’m afraid so.”

“I not understand yhees,” Kelric said. When Ixpar started to answer in Skolian, he shook his head. “Coban, please. So I learn.”

Hacha frowned. “Coba is the name of the world. We call our language Teotecan. Yhee is a formal version of the word yes.”

“The informal form is yip,” Balv added. “But you only hear it in slang.”

Kelric tried the word. “Yhees.”

“Yhee,” Rev said.

“Yheez,” Kelric said.

Llaach laughed. “It’s all right. Say it however you like. Your accent is beautiful.”

“Don’t feel bad about losing.” Balv motioned at Hacha and Rev. “You’re playing with Dahl’s best.”

“Kelric didn’t lose,” Ixpar said. “He made a flat-stack. That ranks over Llaach’s toppled builder.”

What was this? Hacha looked where Ixpar pointed and saw a neat stack of blue disks nestled behind one of Rev’s towers. A perfect flat-stack and she’d missed it. That irked her. She hadn’t expected Kelric even to start a structure.

“I can’t believe I never saw that,” Balv said.

Kelric tapped the table. “Is—” He hesitated, then asked Ixpar something in Skolian.

“Blue,” Ixpar said.

“Table is blue.” Kelric tapped his stack. “Also blue. So it hides.”

Rev’s laugh rumbled. “A camouflage. You’ll do well, Kelric.”

“I don’t believe it,” Llaach said. “I got caught by a camouflage.”

Ixpar smiled. “Maybe you had other thoughts distracting you.”

As the others laughed, Llaach reddened. She spoke good-naturedly. “Blow off, you oafs.”

When Kelric gave Ixpar a questioning look, she said, “Llaach recently took a kasi.”

“Kasi?” he asked.

“Husband,” Hacha said. “Llaach wed the youth Jevi.” It didn’t surprise her that it distracted Llaach, married to a man as handsome and charming as Jevi. He reminded Hacha of her own husband. The similarities between the two men ran deeper than appearance; they both played dice in the Dahl Calanya. She and Llaach had served on the honor guard there for a time, giving them the rare opportunity to court a dice player. In letting her wed a Calani, Deha bestowed her with great honor. Honor didn’t help, though, when she could only visit her husband instead of living with him. It made Hacha crazy. On top of that, she had drawn this disagreeable assignment, guarding Kelric.

“Ask Balv or Rev,” Ixpar was telling Kelric. “They can show you.”

Balv pushed up his sleeve, revealing a gold band around his wrist. “It symbolizes the vow that joins two people. A man who wears the bands is called a kasi.”

Kelric glanced at the bands on Rev’s wrists. “All of you have someone?”

Llaach laughed. “We’ve all been caught.” She winked at Ixpar. “Most of us, anyway.”

The girl smiled. “I’m keeping my options open.”

“You sound like Deha,” Balv said.

Kelric kept his reaction so subtle that Hacha suspected only she caught it. But she had no doubt; the moment he heard the Manager’s name he stiffened.

“Manager Dahl is alone?” he asked.

Hacha spoke brusquely. “By her choice. Deha has loved only Jaym.”

“Jaym is her kasi?” Kelric asked.

“No more,” Balv said. “Jaym died of a fever several years ago. Since then Deha has been—well, different. More distant.”

“She doesn’t want another Akasi,” Hacha said.

“Akasi?” Kelric asked. “Not kasi?”

“Akasi is the title of a Manager’s husband,” Ixpar said.

Hacha concentrated on the girl. Although Ixpar sounded natural when she answered Kelric, Hacha caught the flicker of jealousy on the girl’s face. She’d been around long enough to recognize that look. The Ministry Successor was as taken by this blasted offworlder as Deha.

It meant nothing but trouble.

3

DOUBLE CIRCLE

Deha stared out the window of her office into the Estate gardens.

Maybe she had a fever. Or the weather affected her. Kelric was too different. Too young. And too forward. Several times since she first kissed him, he had initiated a return of affections. In her youth, everyone knew and followed the rules. Women made the advances. Period. These days, everything seemed turned around. Young people had their own rules, few of which made sense to Deha. Besides, Kelric was an offworlder, half brother to the Imperator, for wind’s sake. Who knew what rules he lived by? She might as well heave the old ways out the window for all the help they gave her today.

“Manager Dahl?”

Deha turned to see Hacha in the door arch. “Captain. My greetings.”

Hacha bowed. “Do you have a moment?”

“I was going to see Kelric. Come with me.”

They walked along open halls with high ceilings. Made from stone and lit by high windows, this wing of the Estate remained cool despite the heat.

“I’m concerned about Successor Karn,” Hacha said. “I don’t think it’s wise she spend so much time with Kelric.”

“I didn’t realize she went there that often,” Deha said.

“She translates for him. He knows enough of our language now to manage on his own.”

“Has he done anything to threaten her?”

“No. Nothing.” Hacha paused. “But we should take no chances where her safety is concerned.”

Deha considered the thought. “Tell Kelric she’s been neglecting her schoolwork and can’t visit him as much.”

“As much?”

Although Deha knew she could stop Ixpar from seeing Kelric, she had no desire to antagonize the girl. “Brief visits are all right, if guards accompany her into the room.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

They walked in silence for a while. Eventually Hacha said, “How are you feeling?”

Deha glanced at her. “Fine. Why?”

“Senior Physician Rohka asked me to talk to you.”

Deha scowled. Not this again. Ever since that minor murmur of hers last year, her staff had acted as if she were a blown-glass Quis die. Don’t work so hard, don’t stay up so late, don’t push yourself. To listen to them, a person would think she was a doddering old woman instead of a vigorous Manager in her prime.

“I’m fine,” Deha said.

“Just don’t go playing Quis with ghosts.”

Deha smiled. “I won’t.” She regarded the captain. “How are your Quis sessions with Kelric?”

Hacha spoke grudgingly. “He has talent.”

“My impression also.” It wasn’t only his knack for the game. Deha had never met anyone who learned strategies so fast. At times she had an odd sense, as if he kept a record in his mind of what he learned and paged through it when he had a question.

At the skyroom, she left Hacha outside with the other guards. Inside, she found Kelric asleep, lying on his back in the sweltering heat with the covers thrown off his upper body, leaving his chest bare. She quickly closed the door, giving him privacy.

For a while she just sat on the bed, watching him sleep. Eventually the temptation became too great and she slid her hand across his chest. His gold nipples glittered and felt more metallic than normal skin. Although the hair curling on his chest didn’t feel like real metal, it did have a smooth, cool texture.

Kelric opened his eyes. With a drowsy smile, he slid his arms around her waist and spoke in Teotecan. “My greetings, Manager Dahl.”

Deha leaned over and kissed him. When he pulled her next to him on the bed, she stiffened, silently castigating herself for taking advantage of his condition. But he was so willing. As they kissed, she slid her hand along his side, down to his leg. He wore sleep trousers, well-washed linen that felt downy under her palm. She stroked his muscles through the thin material. Such a pleasure, touching him.

As his kiss grew more passionate, Kelric rolled her onto her back and stretched out on top of her. Put off by his aggressive response, Deha pulled away her head. She eased out from under him and sat up.

Kelric drew himself into a sitting position, his plaster-sheathed legs sliding under the quilt. He spoke in halting Teotecan. “Something is wrong?”

“No.” She put her hand on his. “It’s nothing.”

His face relaxed as she closed her fingers around his. He said, “Jag, news you?”

“I don’t understand.”

He tried again. “My Jag. My ship. News have you?”

So. He ventured into more difficult territory. “We went through every bit of debris we found. I’m sorry, Kelric. The crash destroyed all of its equipment.”

“I need look myself.”

Not a chance, she thought. Although they had blown up his ship, she had no intention of letting him near the remains. Who knew what he might salvage?

He watched her with an odd look, as if he were listening to a monologue he could barely hear. Then he gasped and doubled over, his palms pressed against his temples.

“Kelric!” Deha leaned over him. “What’s wrong?”

His face knotted. “Head … hurts.”

“I’ll get the doctor.”

“No.” He lowered his arms as he sat up. “Nothing she can do.”

The door swung open and Captain Hacha strode into the room. As soon as she saw them on the bed, she stopped. “My apologies.” She left as fast as she had entered, closing the door behind her.

“Kelric, I’m sorry.” Deha slid off the bed. “I shouldn’t have put you in such a compromising position.” She touched his shoulder. “I’ll have Senior Physician Rohka bring you a potion for your headache.”

His gaze never wavered. “What about my ship?”

“We can do nothing.”

“Your words,” he said. “They make tricks of light.”

“What do you mean?”

“Are they part lies? I don’t know.”

You know more than you realize. “You should get some rest.” She kissed him again and took her leave before he came up with more questions.

Deha found Hacha waiting outside the skyroom. She motioned for the captain to walk with her. When they reached the privacy of the vaulted corridors, Deha said, “You wanted to see me?”

“Kelric’s guards gave me a strange report about Ixpar,” Hacha said. “This morning they saw her come out of his room. But they never saw her go in.”

“Probably she went in before they came on duty.”

“They looked at the start of their shift. He was alone. They closed the door and a while later Ixpar walked out.”

“That does sound odd. Check into it.” Deha thought of Ixpar’s political clout. “Be discreet.”

They continued through the halls. Finally Deha said, “What is it?”

Hacha glanced at her. “Ma’am?”

“I know you. You’re worried about something.”

“As captain of your escort, I have no business concerning myself with your private life.”

“Then tell me as my friend.”

Hacha spoke awkwardly. “To use a man for your pleasure, especially one so vulnerable as Kelric—it is unlike you.”

Deha had wondered if anyone would comment on her interactions with Kelric. “What makes you think I have dishonorable intentions toward him?”

“You certainly can’t make him your Akasi.”

“Why not?”

Hacha laid her hand on Deha’s arm, drawing her to a stop. “He isn’t worthy of you.”

“I suspect the Ruby Dynasty would disagree with you as to who isn’t worthy of whom.”

“I’m sorry to be blunt. But how many other women’s beds do you think he’s been in?”

Deha shrugged. “I will learn to deal with his past.”

“What about the rest of it? He’s a Jagernaut. Up until now, he’s been in no condition to do much more than sleep.” Hacha’s hand dropped to the stunner holstered on her belt in what looked like a reflexive move. “He’s getting stronger, Deha. When he realizes we never intend to let him go, his reaction won’t be mild.”

“Everything you say is true.” Deha paused. “But he will be my Akasi, Hacha, regardless of whether or not he stays on Coba of his own free will.”

Scroll in hand, Ixpar knelt in front of the stone wall. The Estate dungeons lay a few paces to her right, damp and unused for centuries. She unrolled the scroll, a copy of the ancient Estate plans she’d filched from the Dahl museum. Ah! Yes, she saw it; the distance between this wall and the nearest cell as shown on the diagram was less than the actual distance she’d just measured on the wall.

Ixpar grinned. She had begun this game years ago when she discovered that the museum at Karn housed copies of the plans used to build the Estate. Comparing them with Karn as she knew it revealed hundreds of inconsistencies. After she accounted for various changes made over the centuries, a few differences still remained. She investigated until she uncovered the secret; hidden passages honeycombed the Estate.

Now the Dahl plans were giving up their secrets. Running her hands over the stone, she found a crumbling niche where the wall met the ground. She dug her finger into it and jarred loose the remains of a switch, clicking it to one side. Holding her breath, she waited. Sometimes the ancient mechanisms had broken or jammed—

The clink of stone hitting stone sounded inside the wall. Ixpar jumped to her feet and leaned her weight into the wall. With a grating protest, as if wakened from a long sleep, a massive block slid inward and scraped to one side. Beyond it, a delightfully mysterious passage stretched into the darkness.

Ho! Ixpar gathered up the scroll and stepped into the tunnel. After she made sure the door worked from inside, too, in case she needed to get out this way, she pushed it back into place, hiding her secret entrance. Lifting her oil lamp, she surveyed the latest addition to her collection of hidden passages.

An unassuming tunnel extended in front of her for a few paces and then turned left. She followed it around several turns, until the passage stopped at a dead end. No worries. Her quick check of the blank wall there uncovered three niches near the ceiling. It took her a while to figure out the sequence for flipping the switches, but finally the clink of releasing pins rewarded her efforts. She pushed the wall, and it slid inward, opening into another passage.

Ixpar walked forward. She recognized this new tunnel; she’d explored it only a few days ago. The light from her lamp threw huge Ixpar shadows on the walls. The tunnel had a barbaric look, as if an ancient queen might step out of the shadows, fierce and vital, gleaming in her bronze and leather armor, ready to challenge the intruder in her domain. With a flourish, Ixpar whipped out an imaginary sword and dueled her opponent up and down the passage, thrusting at the air until she vanquished her invisible foe. She stopped, laughing and gasping for breath.

I should bring a real sword, she thought. It would make the game even better. Then again, how would she explain why she was stalking around Dahl with a sword? Better to bring something she could hide under her shirt, like a blunt-edged discus in a sling. True, she couldn’t fight a duel with it, but discuses were always good for knocking down enemies while you skulked around in the shadows.

Ixpar wondered why the ancient architect built these passages. Secret escape routes, in case an enemy took the Estate? Maybe warriors had prowled down here engaging in Estate intrigues. Or a queen made this passage so she could sneak into the bedroom of her concubine. Ixpar smiled. No wonder her imaginary opponent had fought so hard. She was protecting her lover.

But I won, Ixpar thought. I get to claim the prize.

The tunnel took her to a dead end that she already knew hid a secret door. Easing it open, she peered into the room beyond. Her prize lay fast asleep, unsuspecting of the warrior sneaking into his boudoir, his gold chest rising and falling in deep breaths.

Ixpar smirked, remembering how Kelric’s guards had gaped when she walked out of his room yesterday. She’d greatly enjoyed it. Still, she’d better not to do it again. Hacha was undoubtedly trying to figure out how she managed that feat. Although she doubted the captain would solve the puzzle, she intended to take no chances.

Leaving the door ajar, Ixpar slipped into the skyroom. She stood by the bed, contemplating Kelric’s sleeping form. Faced with the reality of him, she had no idea how to proceed with her courtship. In fact, she kept her approach so discreet, she suspected only she knew she was courting him. Even if she’d known a better way to proceed, she couldn’t pay suit with an audience. Her bodyguards hulked around her whenever she visited Kelric.

Voices outside the room interrupted her thoughts. She strode back into the tunnel, barely managing to close the secret entry before the regular skyroom door opened. With her ear pressed against the wall, she could just hear Deha’s voice as she talked to Kelric’s guards.

Pah, Ixpar thought. If she didn’t make her intentions known soon, it would be too late. Deha was also courting Kelric—and doing a much better job.

4

ORB STARBURST

Morning sun filled the skyroom as Kelric’s nurse pushed aside the curtains. An autumn breeze fluttered the boy’s shirt and rippled through the pants he wore tucked into his sky-blue boots. The gentle picture he made only added more jolt to his words.

“Exploded?” Kelric pushed up on his elbow. “What do you mean, exploded?”

“The fires after the crash blew up your ship,” the boy said. “Like when petrol tanks on a windrider catch fire.”

Kelric stared at him. “Starfighters don’t run on petrol. And if the antimatter engines on my ship hadn’t properly deactivated, they would have taken half the mountain range when they blew.”

“The mountain is still there,” the boy said. “But your ship did blow up. Captain Hacha said so herself.”

The hell it did. His nurse described an impossible situation, unless someone set the blast after the crash. He pulled away the quilt and swung his cast-covered legs off the bed.

His nurse tensed. “What are you doing?”

“Getting up.”

“You can’t get up.”

Kelric leaned on a chair and stood up on his plaster-encased feet. Then he grinned. “Care to bet on that?”

“You have to stay in bed.”

“Why? Every time I get up, you all tell me to lie down. Every time I talk about my ship, the subject gets changed. So I’m going to find out for myself.”

“You can’t,” the boy said. “Not with plaster on your legs.”

“Good point.” Kelric sat down and banged his legs against the metal rim in the bed frame. Plaster sprayed all over the floor.

“Stop it!” The nurse grabbed his leg in mid-swing. “You’ll break the bones again.”

“Not the bones.” He tugged away his leg and unpeeled strips of plaster in powdery chunks. “Just the casts.”

A grating noise came from the wall.

Kelric stopped. “What was that?”

His squinted at the wall. “I have no idea.”

The noise came again. Then a panel in the wall opened and Ixpar stepped into the room.

“Hey!” the boy said.

Ixpar pushed the panel closed, leaving a smooth wall. She spoke to the nurse. “Get the guards. Now.”

As the youth strode to the door, Kelric went back to work, peeling the last chunk of plaster off his legs.

“Kelric, stop,” Ixpar said.

“Not a chance.” He stood up and tried an exploratory step. His legs held up, so he limped across the room to a long mirror with Quis designs etched in its frame. A man in blue sleep clothes looked back at him, a thinner man than he remembered.

When is legs tingled, at first it baffled him. Then he almost laughed in relief. His nanomeds hadn’t deactivated; they had responded to his weakened condition, sending an increased blood flow to his legs.

“What are you doing?” a voice said.

Kelric turned to see Captain Hacha in the door arch. “Standing,” he said.

She used what she apparently meant as a placating voice. “We don’t want you to hurt yourself. Why don’t you get back into bed? I’ll send for the doctor.”

Kelric limped to the door. “I don’t need a doctor.”

“I’m sorry.” She blocked his way. “You can’t leave.”

“Why not?” He looked around as Rev, Llaach, and Balv stepped past her, into the room. “Why are you keeping me locked up?”

“You need to recuperate,” Hacha said.

“No, I don’t.”

The last hint of placation vanished from her voice. “Get back into bed.”

Combat mode toggled, Bolt thought.

Kelric glimpsed Ixpar edging toward the door. With enhanced speed, he lunged forward and grabbed her arm. When all four guards whipped out their guns, he didn’t have time to wonder at their vehement response. Bolt’s reflex libraries took over and bypassed his brain, sending commands straight to the bio-hydraulics that controlled his body.

As the guards fired, he dove to one side, throwing Ixpar into the nurse so that both she and the boy stumbled back into the room. Although he avoided most of the shots, one caught him in the shoulder, and tiny needles punctured his skin.

Alert, Bolt thought. The needles injected sedatives into your bloodstream. Synthesizing possible antidotes.

As Kelric staggered, Rev grabbed him and wrenched his arms behind his back while Llaach leveled a stunner at his chest. Kelric had learned to break that type of armlock in basic training. He easily twisted free, went for Llaach—and his legs collapsed.

Kelric fell, taking Llaach with him. She shoved her gun right up against his chest and fired. Then she went limp, passing out as he choked her. Even as he released her, numbness spread through his torso.

Switching to full hydraulics, Bolt thought.

Kelric’s legs jerked as the hydraulics took control of his body. They kept him moving, like a machine, despite the drugs coursing through his veins. Even as he jumped to his feet, Balv lunged at him. He grappled with the younger man, rolling him over his shoulder and slamming him to the ground. At full strength, the throw would have killed Balv. However, Bolt calculated only the force necessary for a knockout and sent that data to Kelric’s hydraulics, all within a fraction of a second.

Then he was wrestling with Rev and Hacha, crashing back and forth in front of the doorway. He twisted the stunner away from Rev and emptied the last of its charge into the gigantic guard. As Hacha knocked the gun out of his hand, he kicked up his leg and caught her in the stomach, hurling her into the wall. Again Bolt calculated for a knockout rather than kill.

Gasping as his hydraulics faltered, Kelric sank to his knees among the unconscious guards. The nurse also lay in a heap, caught in the cross fire of a stunner.

Motion flickered in his side vision. He jumped to his feet and grabbed Ixpar just before she darted out of the room. Shoving her back inside, he closed the door.

“You’ll never make it out of Dahl,” she said. “Guards are all over the Estate.”

“They won’t shoot.” Kelric sagged against the door. “Not if it means hitting you.” Keeping his attention on Ixpar, he picked up Balv’s stunner and took Llaach’s knife from the sheath on her boot. “The charge needed to knock out someone my size could do you a lot of damage. And I have a hunch.” He straightened up. “I think your safety is a lot more important around here than anyone lets on.”

She met his gaze. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I’ve spent my entire life among people with power, Ixpar. I know it when I see it.” He tilted his head toward the wall. “Where does your secret door go?”

“I don’t know how to open it from this side.”

Kelric pulled her over to the panel. “Open it.”

“No.”

He didn’t bother to argue, he just heaved his bulk into the wall. After being rammed a few times, it cracked and buckled in, revealing a stone passage. He pulled Ixpar inside and limped down the tunnel.

As they walked, he brooded. He had finally figured out who Deha reminded him of. His first wife. An Imperialate admiral many years his senior, Corey had died ten years ago, assassinated by Trader terrorists. One day she had walked the Imperialate halls of influence as a passionate, powerful woman; the next she was gone. Now he had the damn-fool idiocy to see her in Deha.

The tunnel exited into a small chamber at the bottom of a tower. A staircase spiraled up on the right and a door stood on the left. He motioned at the stairs. “What’s up there?”

“One of the storage wings,” Ixpar said.

With his gun poised, he stood to one side and opened the door, revealing an empty garden. Leaving the door open on the left, as if they had gone out of it. Then he pushed Ixpar toward the stairs. “Up. You first.”

She watched him warily, then headed up the stairs. Doors appeared at each landing. The first three were locked, but the fourth opened into a room filled with graceful urns as tall as his waist. Dusty light filtered in a window midway up the opposite wall.

“This is crazy,” Ixpar said as he pushed her inside. “It’s like backing yourself into a box. Why didn’t you go through the garden?”

“It’s the first place they’ll look.” He shut the door. “I want some answers. You can start by telling me why Coba is Restricted. What are you all trying to hide?”

“Nothing.” Her tone never faltered. “Manager Dahl told you the truth.”

“That you don’t like Imperial Space Command? You’ll have to do better than that.”

She clenched her fists. “Did it ever occur to you that our freedom means more to us than your Imperialate? Or maybe conquerors prefer to forget that about the conquered.”

He’d given up trying to convince them the Imperialate didn’t conquer worlds, that Coba was actually an ancient colony of his people that had become stranded over the millennia. Yes, true, Coba would lose its independence if his government absorbed it into the Imperialate. But great rewards came with full citizenship, the advantages of belonging to a vibrant, bustling, star-spanning empire.

“Your people never intended to let me go, did you?” he said.

“You were dying. We had to make a decision. We gave you your life.” She met his gaze. “But we won’t trade our freedom for yours.”

Kelric knew ISC wouldn’t Restrict Coba and then leave it untended. The EI brain in his starfighter had directed his ship to this region of the planet. That suggested ISC had made contact with the Twelve Estates, which meant they would have left a starport nearby. Given the mountainous terrain here, they probably chose an area in the desert at the foot of the range. He needed transportation.

“Where is the Dahl airfield?” he asked.

“Across Dahl. On the other side of the Calanya.”

“What’s a Calanya?”

Ixpar hesitated. “Some parks and buildings. Dice players live there.”

Dice again. He shook his head, then stiffened as pain shot through his muscles. The stun shots were wearing off.

She watched him. “You ought to be out as flat as a Quis disk right now. Four hits you took and that one time Llaach had her gun shoved right into your chest.”

Kelric had no intention of giving away anything about his ability to defend himself. He pulled her to the window and moved to the side, out of sight. “Open it.”

Ixpar pushed its latch, and the window banged open, letting wind rush into the room. As Kelric took off his shirt, Ixpar flushed, her cheeks turning bright red. “What are you doing, taking off your clothes?”

“Making a holster.” He fastened the stunner and Llaach’s knife into the shirt, then tied it around his waist. “We’re going down the tower.”

She stared at him. “Those little cracks in its wall won’t even support me, let alone you.”

“I’ve climbed down worse in training drills.” He grasped her around the waist and lifted her so she was sitting on the sill, facing him. “Turn around.”

Sweat beaded her forehead. But she did as he said with more composure than many adults he knew would have shown, maneuvering around so she was sitting on the sill, staring at Dahl. Leaning out next to her, he saw a courtyard four stories below. Beyond it, Dahl spread out on all sides and the mountains rose beyond the city.

“Where is this Calanya?” he asked.

Ixpar indicated a distant wall across the city. “On the other side of that windbreak.”

Kelric climbed over the sill next to her and lowered himself into the wind, facing the tower. He probed the wall with his toes until he found a foothold.

“You’ll need to face the wall,” Kelric said—and then tugged her off the sill, holding her against the tower.

Ixpar inhaled sharply, but she said nothing as she maneuvered to face the wall. They descended slowly, Ixpar about half a meter above him.

Suddenly an avalanche of pebbles cascaded over him, accompanied by a frantic scraping. Looking up, he saw a toehold under Ixpar’s foot disintegrate. He worked his toes deeper into a crack and clenched the wall with a vise grip that, courtesy of his biomech, would take a powered wrench to release. Even so, when Ixpar slid into him, he had to strain to keep from being knocked off the wall.

She eased her weight away from him. “I’m all right.”

Releasing his breath, Kelric resumed the climb. When he felt packed dirt under his feet, he let go of the wall, then swayed, spots dancing in his vision. As Ixpar slid down next to him, he sagged against the tower. She tried to bolt, but he caught her arm.

“Kelric, listen to me.” She spoke urgently. “You’ll never reach the airfield. Give it up before you rebreak your legs.” In a gentler voice, she added, “We won’t hurt you.”

You have no idea, he thought. His fight with his guards had revealed some of his enhancements, but he doubted Deha and her people realized the extent of his abilities. It left him room to bluff. He had to get help; the longer he went without repair, the more it aggravated the damage to his internal systems.

He drew Ixpar across the courtyard to its gate. A plaza lay outside, bordered by pale blue houses. In its center, a white fountain opened to the sky like a flower, with accents of green and blue that reminded him of a forest. It spumed water into the air, which the wind frothed into a mist of rainbows.

He set off in a limping jog across the plaza, pulling Ixpar with him. On the other side they entered a maze of cobbled lanes that wound among stone houses three and four stories high, many with a wealth of potted plants on their windowsills. As they ran, the crisp mountain air cleared his head. The sound of laughter reached their ears and he drew Ixpar into a recessed doorway. An instant later, a flock of children dashed into the lane, too intent on their game of chase to notice two people hiding in the shadows.

They set off again at a steady run, and soon reached the outskirts of the city. Only a lawn separated them from the wall Ixpar called the Calanya windbreak. The barrier stood as high as three adults and looked thick enough for two people to walk abreast on its top edge. It curved off in both directions for kilometers. Holes sculpted in the stone provided glimpses of the landscaped parks beyond.

“It should be easy to climb,” Kelric said. “We can cut through the parks to the airfield.”

“No!” Ixpar yanked her arm away from him.

Kelric grasped her arm again, startled. That was the strongest emotion she’d ever shown him. “Why not?”

“It is a violation of the Calanya,” she said. “You will contaminate the Quis.”

Contaminate a dice game? He pushed her at the windbreak. “Climb.”

Ixpar scowled. “May a giant hawk pluck you off the mountain and feed you to her babies.”

He smiled. “I hope not.”

The wind grew stronger as they scaled the wall. By the time they reached the top, it was whipping Ixpar’s hair around her body. It died away as they climbed the inner side. At the bottom, a lush carpet of grass sloped down from the windbreak. Groves of trees heavy with gold fruit stood at the foot of the hill, and far across the parks the windows in a cluster of buildings sparkled like diamonds.

Kelric pushed her into a run across the lawn. His limp was growing worse as his still healing legs tired.

“You said dice players live here?” he asked Ixpar.

“The men in a Calanya are expert Quis players,” she said. “You could call them Deha’s advisers. Quis advisers.”

“Quis is power, right?” When Ixpar nodded, Kelric motioned around the extensive, beautifully tended parks. “This isn’t a bad setup just for being good at dice.”

“I suppose.” She had an odd expression, as if she both wanted him to like the Calanya and dreaded it. She said nothing more, and he let it go, needing to ration his breath.

They were crossing a rustic bridge that arched over a stream when they saw the man. He sat on a stone bench on the other side of the stream, relaxing in the sun.

Kelric pulled Ixpar to a stop on the bridge. “Who is that?”

“A Calani,” she said. “A dice player who lives in a Calanya.”

The man stood up, watching them. Slender and well-groomed, with gray hair, he had the look of a scholar. His clothes spoke of wealth: suede trousers and knee boots, a darker suede belt tooled with Quis designs, and a white shirt with embroidered cuffs. Guards made from what looked like solid gold circled his wrists and two gold armbands showed on each of his upper arms.

“Those bands make him look like a Jagernaut,” Kelric said.

Ixpar scowled. “You insult him.”

“Since when is that an insult?” He took her arm and drew her down the bridge to the Calani. He spoke to the man in Teotecan. “You are alone here?”

The Calani watched him in silence.

Kelric glanced at Ixpar. “Why won’t he talk?”

“Calani never speak to Outsiders.” She crossed her arms and glowered at him. “In the Old Age, the penalty for breaking into a Calanya was death.”

“For gods sake.” Kelric neither needed nor wanted another hostage, but he couldn’t leave the man free to sound an alarm. About fifty meters beyond this bench, a low building with wooden eaves and a rustic style basked in the sunlight. It didn’t resemble a house so much as a lodge, which suggested other people could be inside.

He considered the man, then drew his stunner and fired. Surprise flashed on the Calani’s face as he collapsed.

“No.” Ixpar dropped on her knees and felt for the man’s pulse. “How could you do that to him!”

“I’m sorry.” Kelric rubbed his temples. His headache had returned. “I can’t take chances. He’ll be fine.”

Kelric had no wish to knock out people who had done him no harm, but neither could he risk anyone raising an alarm. Even if no one in the building had seen him yet or didn’t soon spot him, he doubted it would be long before someone came looking for the man he had just stunned.

“We have to go,” he said.

Ixpar stood up. Her look could have chilled ice. “We can’t leave him like this.”

“He’ll just sleep for a few hours.” He needed to make sure no one sent a warning. Taking Ixpar’s arm, he headed for the building. Potted plants hung from its eaves and the shutters stood open, revealing windows of gold glass.

He walked through the open doorway with her. “This is beautiful.”

Ixpar didn’t answer.

They followed a hall painted in green and shadow-gray, dappled like a forest glade with sun filtering through the trees. It ended at a sunroom; the walls shaded from amber at the floor into white-gold at the top. An artist had painted the ceiling blue, with clouds half covering a sun.

In one corner, a youth sat at a table playing Quis solitaire. “Get up,” Kelric told him.

The youth looked up as if surfacing from a dive. When he saw Kelric, he blinked and rose to his feet. He seemed more confused than afraid.

Kelric glanced at the meter on his stunner. He couldn’t keep knocking out people; he would soon exhaust the gun’s charge. So he motioned at a papery screen painted with trees and birds that blocked a doorway across the room. “Open it.”

With Kelric and Ixpar following, the youth backed toward the screen. He pushed it aside to reveal a larger sunroom with two huge doors in the opposite wall. In one corner of the room a boy sat listening to the talk of a man with a halo of white hair. In the center, seven men sat at a table playing Quis.

Kelric silently swore. The odds were now eleven to one. When they saw him, they rose to their feet. No one spoke—except Ixpar, who let out a shout loud enough to wake the next planet.

The doors across the room slammed open and four guards strode into the room. As Kelric fired, the stunner sputtered. He managed to knock out the guards, but as soon as the dice players realized he’d emptied his gun, they started toward him.

Kelric grabbed the youth from the sunroom and jerked back his head. “If anybody twitches, I’ll snap his neck.”

The Quis players froze. Kelric pulled his two hostages across the room to the doors. A quick glance at the unconscious guards showed no obvious weapons, and he didn’t have time to search them. He shoved the youth back into the room, then yanked Ixpar outside and slammed the doors. It took only a second to lock everyone inside.

Ixpar twisted in his grip. “You can’t do this.”

“Watch me.” He ran down the hall, pulling her with him. The door at its end opened onto gardens and lawns. Several hundred meters away he saw a line of trees—

Beyond them an airfield tower rose into the sky.

“Thank the gods,” Kelric muttered. He took off in a limping jog, bringing Ixpar.

They had already made it halfway to the trees when shouts broke out behind them. Spinning around, Kelric saw guards sprinting out of the Calanya. He broke into a run for the airfield, and Ixpar huffed for breath as she struggled to keep up. His hunch about her importance proved true; no one fired a single shot at them.

They ran through the line of trees and onto the field. Sprinting across the tarmac, he headed for the first hangar. When he realized it was empty, he ran toward the next one.

An octet of guards burst out form behind the second hangar, running toward him. Kelric stopped so fast it would have jolted Ixpar off her feet if he hadn’t caught her. Looking back, he saw the guards from the Calanya closing in on them. He couldn’t reach the second hangar and he couldn’t retreat, so he backed up toward the hangar they had just passed and came to a stop against its rough wall. The guards surrounded them, forming a semicircle with the nearest of them about ten meters away.

Holding Ixpar with her back against his front, Kelric laid his stolen knife across her neck. “Come any closer,” he said, “and I’ll open her throat.”

Ixpar went rigid, her dismay reaching even his injured Kyle centers. He had no intention of carrying out his threat; he would go into combat mode if he had to fight, relying on his enhancements to avoid capture. But this bluff was might well be his strongest weapon.

The guards parted and Deha walked forward. “Let her go. An Estate Manager will make a better hostage.”

“No,” he said. “Call off your guards.”

“I don’t believe you would hurt her.”

“Are you willing to bet her life on that?”

Deha turned to a guard captain. “Clear the field.”

“Manager Dahl—” one of them began.

“Now,” Deha said, unrelenting.

“You stay,” Kelric told her.

The guards looked like they wanted to leave Deha alone with him about as much as they wanted to eat dirt. But under the force of her stare, they cleared the airfield with remarkable speed. When only he and Ixpar remained with the Manager, Kelric tilted his head at the next hangar. “Over there.”

They moved slowly to the structure, he and Deha watching each other, he pulling Ixpar with him, his knife still against her neck.

It didn’t surprise him that this hangar sheltered a windrider. The guards wouldn’t have converged on it first otherwise. He pulled Ixpar to the aircraft and pushed her at the hatch. “Get inside.”

“Kelric, no.” Desperation tinged Deha’s voice. “She’s just a child. Leave her here and take me.”

Not a chance, he thought. She had an intellect more potent than any stunner, and he had no doubt she posed as much of a threat as her guards. Ixpar made a safer hostage.

He waited while Ixpar scrambled into the rider. He stepped up into the hatchway, blocking Ixpar’s escape while he kept a close watch on Deha.

Strain creased Deha’s face. “Kelric, don’t do this.”

Warning: Bolt thought. The body language of the person below suggests a threat behind you.

Kelric spun around—in time to see Ixpar hurl a blunt-edged discus she must have hidden under her clothes. He dodged, but at such close quarters he couldn’t evade it even with enhanced speed. The discus hit his temple and he plunged into blackness.

5

QUEEN’S SPECTRAL TOWER

Jahlt Karn stood with Deha before the wall of one-way glass. To avoid a glare, they had lowered the lights on both sides of the window. In the dimness, Jahlt’s eyes darkened to jet. Gray streaked the braid of dark hair that hung down her back. Dressed in black trousers, black tunic, and black boots, she blended with the shadows. She stood tall and gaunt, spoke in a quiet voice, and as Minister she ruled the Twelve Estates.

Below them, in the room beyond the glass, Kelric lay unconscious on a bed.

“Imperialate law is clear.” Jahlt turned to Deha. “The Restriction forbids us contact with Skolians. You should have taken him to the starport.”

“He would have died before we reached it,” Deha said.

“All Coba will suffer the consequences of your decision.” Jahlt shook her head. “As long as he lives, the chance exists he might escape. Then what? Neither he nor his notorious family will appreciate our attempts to hold him prisoner.” The Minister regarded her with a steady gaze. “We have no choice. He must not live.”

Deha tensed. “We’ve had no executions in decades.”

“Nevertheless. It is either execution or life in prison, and I see no reason to take chances.”

Deha spoke carefully. “Many forms of prison exist.”

“Meaning?”

“Consider the one institution our ancestors guarded more closely than any prison.”

“Put him in a Calanya?” Jahlt snorted. “You might as well roll a firebomb with your Quis dice.”

Deha had her rebuttal ready. “He would be kept separate from the others. Until he adapts.”

Jahlt studied her. “I begin to wonder if other factors affect your decisions about this offworlder.”

“Such as?”

“He is a remarkably striking young man.”

“I don’t appreciate your implication.”

“Then tell me something,” Jahlt said. “If you swear this man to your Calanya, will he be Calani? Or Akasi Calani?”

Deha crossed her arms. “Whether or not I make him my Akasi is my business.”

“It becomes my business when I think your hormones are impairing your judgment.”

“My judgment is fine.”

“Yet you want to swear a man into your Calanya who can’t play Quis.”

“He can play Quis. He had nothing else to do while he was recovering.”

Jahlt waved her hand in dismissal. “To know the rudiments of dice and to have the talent for Calanya Quis are two very different matters.”

“True,” Deha said. “But consider this: he had no money to bet when he was learning, so he wagered planets instead.” She smiled. “After a few days my escort owned half the Imperialate.”

Dryly Jahlt said, “I’m sure ISC will gladly pay the debt when Captain Hacha shows up to collect.”

“He has no debt. He won back his planets.”

Jahlt shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time a handsome face swayed Hacha into letting a man win.”

“Hacha doesn’t like him. Besides, he’s never won a game against her. But he’s beaten both Llaach and Balv and they’re no beginners. He even beat Rev once.” Deha paused. “I’ve played him myself, Jahlt. He has the gift.”

The Minister put her hands behind her back and paced across the room. “Have you considered the effect he will have on the Quis?”

“What effect do you mean?”

Jahlt turned. “I don’t know. That’s the problem.” She came back to Deha. “And if he escapes? No talent is worth that risk.”

“He won’t escape.”

“The last time you told me that, he kidnapped my successor.”

“It won’t happen again.”

Jahlt’s voice hardened. “It certainly won’t.”

“If we send Kelric to prison,” Deha said, “it will be an abominable waste of his life and his genius. Resurrect the death penalty and we put Coba back centuries.”

The Minister considered her. Then she went to the window and looked at Kelric. After a long moment she said, “I will trust your judgment, Deha. But think well before you make your decision.” Jahlt turned back to her. “If you swear him to the Calanya, he will be there for life, with all that will mean for you, for Dahl, and for Coba.”

Chankah Dahl, Successor to the Dahl Manager, was a young woman, though not so young that the years hadn’t honed her skills in Estate politics. With a position at Dahl second only to Deha, a kasi and two young daughters to her name, and the respect of her peers, Chankah felt well satisfied with her life.

Today she walked along the Ivory Hall with the doctor Dabbiv who tended Kelric. “You should tell Deha your concerns,” Chankah said.

“I have told her,” he said. “She says that under no condition am I to stop sedating Kelric. She’s afraid if he wakes up he’ll try to escape again.”

“Are you sure the drugs poison him? Maybe the dosage is just too high.”

“That’s what Deha said. But the dosage is only half of what a man his size needs.” Dabbiv came to a halt. “It’s all wrong. I have trouble bringing him out of sedation so he can eat. When I do get food into him he can’t keep it down, not even what he could eat before. And his blood has a violet tinge. Maybe that’s normal. Maybe it means he’s dying. I just don’t know.”

Chankah laid a calming hand on his arm. “Did you ask him why his blood is purple?”

“He said something about a chemical reaction of ‘nanomeds’ with nitrogen in the air. It makes no sense.”

“You should talk to Deha again about your concerns.”

“It won’t do any good. She doesn’t take anything I say seriously.”

“Of course she does. Why else would she appoint you to the Estate staff?”

He snorted. “I have no idea. If she had her way, we’d be back in the Old Age and I’d be locked up in a Calanya.”

Chankah raised her eyebrows. “That’s absurd. She practically dotes on you.”

“I don’t want to be doted on. I’m not a pet.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

He scowled. “How would you know? You’ve never experienced it. If I said ‘Deha, the wind is blowing,’ she’d say ‘That’s nice, Dabbiv.’ If you said ‘Deha, the wind is blowing,’ she’d say ‘A profound observation, Chankah. One worthy of my successor.’”

She smiled. “Dabbiv.”

“It’s true.” He took a breath. “That’s why I need your support. She listens to you.”

Despite Dabbiv’s reputation for being excitable, Chankah considered him one of the most promising physicians in Dahl. It had been her own recommendation that Deha appoint him to her staff. If he felt this worried, she ought to speak to Deha. “All right. I’ll need to see his medical records first.”

“You’ll have them. And Chankah—something else.”

“Yes?”

“Are you familiar with the latest medical work being done at Varz Estate?”

“Some experiments with blood composition, isn’t it?”

Dabbiv started to walk with her again. “They say not everyone has the same kind of blood. They’ve isolated several different types. At least three.”

“I wouldn’t take this claim too seriously. Not when it originates from Varz.”

He scowled. “Just because hostility exists between Varz and Karn, that doesn’t make the Varz biochemists incompetent.”

“It’s the uses Manager Varz intends for the research that I question.”

Dabbiv cleared his throat. It sounded like preparation for battle. “I want to send a sample of Kelric’s blood to their labs for analysis.”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

She frowned. “Which reason do you want first? That Minister Karn forbids us to let it be known we have a Skolian here? That Deha would object to correspondence with Varz? Or simply that it would be a waste of time?”

“If Kelric dies,” he said, “none of those reasons will stand up against the wind.”

“Heh.” She felt like an airsack going empty. “You think it’s that important?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see what I can do. But I make no promises.”

“There’s one more thing.”

“Any more and Deha will send me to dig rock on a quarry crew.”

Dabbiv made a frustrated noise. “It’s her health. She won’t listen to anyone. If she has another heart attack like the one last year, it could kill her.”

“She’s sensitive about it. She will think I imply she’s too weak to manage Dahl.”

“If she doesn’t slow down,” Dabbiv said, “she won’t be too weak. She’ll be too dead.”

Chankah exhaled. “All right. I’ll talk to her.”

Usually the Quis patterns engraved on the walls of an Estate hall fascinated Ixpar. Not today. The carvings sped past in a blur as she strode through the Lower Halls of Dahl. Nothing could erase the memory of Kelric’s words: Come any closer and I’ll open her throat. How did she reconcile the Jagernaut who had dragged her across Dahl with the man she had watched learning Quis? It seemed ludicrous now, the way she had courted him.

Tomorrow Jahlt was taking her back to Karn, and in a few more days Deha would swear Kelric to the Dahl Calanya, making him forbidden to her forever. So for the first time, she was going to disobey a direct order from the Minister.

Ixpar went to the tower she sought and climbed its spiral stairs, around and around the cramped turns. At the top she followed the curve of the wall until she came to a window of one-way glass. On its other side, the amber-room glowed, with its gold walls and goldstone floor. Plants in baskets hung about the windows and sunlight sifted through their leaves, creating patterns of light on the walls. Kelric slept in a bed with yellow sheets and a green velvet cover.

Ixpar continued on around the tower until she found the door to the room. An octet of guards stood on watch outside. Captain Hacha bowed to her. “My greetings, Successor Karn.”

Ixpar nodded. “I’ve come to visit Kelric.”

“He’s asleep.”

Ixpar knew he wasn’t asleep. He was drugged senseless. “I still wish to see him.”

Hacha shifted her weight. Ixpar had given her a no-win choice; antagonize the Ministry Successor or disobey the Dahl Manager. After considering for a moment, Hacha pressed a series of small panels on the door handle in a combination. A bolt thumped and she swung the door open. Relief swept over Ixpar; she hadn’t been sure if this would work. As she walked forward, though, Hacha motioned at the other guards and they fell into formation around her.

“You may all wait Outside,” Ixpar said.

Hacha shook her head. “I’m sorry, Successor Karn. We can’t leave you alone with him.”

Ixpar knew Hacha well enough to realize she had pushed the captain as far as she would go. “Very well. Wait by the door.”

Hacha nodded, accepting the compromise. So Ixpar went on alone into the amber-room, with the door still open, and sat in a chair next to Kelric’s bed. She spoke in a voice too soft for the guards to overhear. “I came to tell you good-bye, Kelric. I’m sorry about what we’ve done. But we had to. I wish I could make it better for you.” She swallowed. “I wish I knew how to stop caring about you.”

“Ixpar?” His lashes lifted and he looked at her with eyes like liquid gold.

She leaned closer, too startled even to be embarrassed that he heard her confession about caring for him. “How are you awake? The doctors gave you a sleep potion.”

“Sleep?” His eyes closed. “I thought … poison.”

“Poison? Kelric, no.”

“Ixpar …”

“Yes?”

“Was bluff.” The drugs slurred his speech. “Would never … have hurt you.”

She wondered if he had any idea how much that meant to her. As he sank back into sleep, she touched his cheek. “Good-bye, Kelric.”

Senior Physician Rohka paced in front of Deha’s desk. “I wish you would put him somewhere with fewer stairs.”

“The exercise is good for you,” Deha said. With Kelric asleep in the tower and guards posted on every landing, she felt more at ease. They had come too close to disaster. Who would have guessed Ixpar could search out secret tunnels unknown even to the Estate archivists? If the girl hadn’t been carrying a discus as part of her “quest” game, Kelric would probably be on his way to ISC headquarters.

She regarded Rohka. “Why does he have that limp?”

“One leg healed with a slight twist,” Rohka said. “His bones had so many breaks, it’s a miracle he can walk at all.”

A buzz came from the desk’s audiocom. Deha switched it on. “Manager Dahl.”

Chankah’s voice floated into the air. “Can you come to Kelric’s room?”

“Is there a problem?”

“He woke up,” Chankah said.

Deha glanced at Rohka. “I thought you gave him a sedative.”

“I did. He should have been out until tonight.”

They found Chankah outside the one-way glass in the tower. Inside the amber-room, Kelric was sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes.

Deha activated the com by the window. “Kelric?”

He looked around. “Where are you?”

“Outside. How are you feeling?”

He scowled. “Like I’ve been poisoned.”

She glanced at Rohka. “Could Dabbiv be right about his medication?”

“Dabbiv overreacts,” Rohka said. “The sedative obviously isn’t poisoning him to death.”

“But?”

The doctor spoke grudgingly. “It does seem to bother him.” She thought for a moment. “I have another sleep potion would could try. Normally it doesn’t work as well, but perhaps he could tolerate it better.”

“All right.” Thinking of how Kelric would react to yet another potion, Deha added, “Put it in his tea.”

After the doctor left to get the medicine, Chankah spoke to Deha. “I wish you would reconsider swearing him to the Calanya. Send him to prison.”

“For what? He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

She gave Deha an incredulous look. “He kidnapped Ixpar. He trespassed on your Calanya. Winds, do it for Coba’s safety. For your safety. He could snap you in two as easily as if you were a stalk of grain.”

“He won’t.”

“You don’t know that. At least take precautions.”

“Such as?”

“I’ll show you.”

Chankah took her down to the Old Library. As always, the room soothed Deha, with its shelves crammed full of books, old and new, gilt edged, bound in leather. A display case by the wall held a set of exquisitely tooled Calanya guards as ancient as the Estate.

Chankah opened the case and lifted out the guards. “Give these to him.”

Deha raised her eyebrows. “First you want me to send him to prison. Then you say I should honor him above all other Calani.”

“I don’t suggest this for his honor. These are the only guards we have made in the old way.”

“Meaning they can be locked together?” Deha scowled. “That’s barbaric.”

“We’re talking about your life.” Chankah clenched the guards. “What if he turns violent against you?”

For a long moment Deha considered her successor. Then she exhaled. “Let me think on it.”

The room appeared as a smear of gold dotted by bits of emerald. Kelric tried to focus, but blurred vision apparently came as a side effect of the battle going on inside his body. One species of his nanomeds eliminated chemicals—like unwanted drugs—that his biomech web hadn’t authorized. It theory, it sounded simple: a med locked onto an invading molecule, deactivated it by changing its molecular structure or taking it apart, and then flushed the debris out of his body.

It rarely worked that smoothly. The meds had to find the invaders, identify the danger, and then get rid of them without producing hazardous byproducts. It also took energy, and fighting an invasion this severe drained him. Nor could the meds capture every molecule of the invading drugs. According to Bolt, the sedative molecules that had so far escaped his meds were destroying enzymes he needed to metabolize certain foods. The Coban diet made it worse; the unboiled water contained bacteria that attacked his digestive system, and some of the spices and sauces would have needed his meds to intervene even if he were in perfect health.

Kelric grimaced at the thought. “Perfect” didn’t come close to describing his condition. Bolt had lost some of its function, the transmission in his bio-optic threads had attenuated, his hydraulics had structural damage, and his meds replicated too slowly. Worse, some had replicated improperly, forcing others to treat them like invaders.

The creak of an opening door broke Kelric’s concentration. Two blurs were approaching him. “Hacha?” he asked. “Rev?”

“We brought lunch,” Rev said. As he came nearer, a blur in his hands resolved into a tray. He set it on the nightstand.

Kelric regarded the food without interest. At least they made the Tanghi tea with boiled water. After the guards left, he drank the Tanghi and lay down again, exhausted from his battle with the drugs.

It wasn’t until Kelric opened his eyes that he realized he had fallen asleep. Morning sunshine poured through the window where a moment ago the shadows of late afternoon had filled the room.

“How do you feel?” Deha asked.

Disoriented, he rolled over and saw her standing by the bed. As he sat up, his wrist caught on a blanket. When he pushed away the cloth, his hand slid over metal. Puzzled, he looked down at his wrists.

Guards. Calanya guards. They had welded the gold so cleanly around each of his wrists that its joining blended into the engraved designs. Yanking away the covers, he saw his ankles similarly guarded by gold. He swore, swung around to Deha—and hands shoved him down on his back. He found himself looking up into the bores of guns held by Rev and Llaach.

“Try anything,” Llaach said, “and we’ll put you out like an avalanche on an airbug.”

“Let him go,” Deha said.

Rev released him, but Llaach looked as if she wanted to dump Kelric out the window. When she finally let go, he sat up and regarded them implacably, then gave Deha the same look.

The Manager sat by the bed. “I know you don’t want to be a Calani, Kelric. But winds, it’s better than the alternatives. Most of my advisers think you should be sent to prison. Jahlt Karn almost ordered your execution.”

He stared at her. “The Minister wants me killed?”

“Yes.”

“For what?” He felt as if a cage were closing around him. “Don’t you realize what will happen if the Imperial Assembly learns what you people are doing?”

“That,” Llaach said, “is why the Minister wants you dead.” She touched her gun to his temple. “Dead like that Calani whose neck you threatened to break.”

Deha glanced at her. “Perhaps you and Rev should wait Outside.” She somehow made her last word sound capitalized.

When the guards started to protest, Deha shook her head. They withdrew, but Llaach paused at the door, looking back at Deha. When the Manager frowned, Llaach went out and closed the door.

Deha turned to Kelric. “I’m sorry. They don’t trust you.”

“And you do?” he asked.

“It would do you no good to take me hostage. My guards have orders to stop any escape you attempt even if they have to shoot me.”

“This is crazy. You can’t lock me up.”

“Your Oath ceremony is tonight.”

“I’m not taking any damn oath.”

“Another man will speak for you.” Deha paused. “In the Old Age, Managers always gave the Oath through a surrogate, supposedly because they considered Calani too exalted to speak in public.” Dryly she added, “I suspect the real reason was to avoid questions about whether or not the Calani came there of his own free will.”

He scowled. “That figures.”

“Kelric, I truly am sorry.” She stood up. “I wish it was your choice to stay.”

After she left, Kelric lay back, trying to subdue his vertigo. He wished they would stop with their potions. His head felt strange, like an earthquake fault under pressure. He needed to think, but he kept drifting into a fitful sleep.

That evening, while he lay in a drugged daze, the door opened again. Rev and Balv came in, followed by a boy carrying a pile of clothes. The boy approached shyly and showed him the garments. “For the ceremony, sir.”

Kelric sat up, rubbing his eyes. Rev and Balv had their guns out, but they needn’t have bothered. His battle with the drugs left him too drained to fight anyone. He was tired of lying down, though, and fresh clothes could be useful if he ever woke up enough to try another escape.

With the boy helping him like a valet, he dressed. A gifted tailor had hand-sewn the shirt from burgundy velvet. Its sleeves fit tight around his Calanya guards, then widened out from wrist to shoulder. The collar opened halfway down his chest, but crisscrossing laces held it closed. A gray suede vest went over the shirt, its snug fit accenting his physique. The trousers, sewn from gray suede, were odd. The outer seam of each leg was unsewn but kept closed by small flaps that buttoned across it. Suede knee boots finished off the picture. Kelric was no expert in clothes, but even he recognized the message sent by these: expensive, elegant, and sexually provocative in a subtle manner designed to suggest high social class.

He almost asked for more bland clothes. He already had a pounding headache, though, and he didn’t want to make it worse by getting into a contest of wills.

Balv ushered the valet out of the room, but Rev stayed. The guard spoke awkward. “I wanted to tell you.”

“Yes?” Kelric asked.

“About tonight,” Rev said. “For a normal ceremony you would have chosen an Oath Brother.”

“Oath Brother?”

“Your closest friend.” Rev hesitated. “I know you have no reason to call me a friend. But you shouldn’t have to stand alone.”

The offer caught Kelric by surprise. “You would stand as my brother?”

“Yes.”

Kelric hardly knew how to respond to the generous offer. He did feel a kinship with Rev. Not only were they alike physically, they shared a similar awkwardness with words. But he had assumed his escape attempt blotted out any friendships he had developed with the escort. He felt it most with Llaach, whose hostility pressed against his empath’s mind.

He spoke quietly. “I would be honored to have you stand as my brother.”

Rev bowed to him. “The honor is mine.”

After Rev left, Kelric fell into a half sleep. At Night’s Midhour the escort and four more guards came for him. Not only did they carry stunners, the entire octet wore ceremonial curved swords with hilts inlaid by glistening opaline gems.

No one spoke as he stood up. Captain Hacha stepped behind him, drawing his arms behind his back. Metal pins clinked—and his wrist guards locked together, binding his arms behind him.

“What the—?” He tried to pull apart his arms. “What are you doing?”

No one answered. Instead they escorted him from the room. They descended the stairs that spiraled around the tower, a guard on each side keeping a steadying hand on his arm. At the bottom they walked through halls lit only by torches that sent shadows flickering on the walls. When they reached a recessed archway, Rev pulled back the bolt in its ancient door and leaned his weight into the portal until it creaked open.

A great hall stretched out before them, lit by no more than the starlight pouring through its crystal walls. Radiance shimmered in the air, reflected off the tiled floor, and glimmered in the shadows of a ceiling so high above their heads, Kelric could barely see its vaulted spaces.

A retinue of robed figures drifted toward them from the far end of the hall. Deha walked at its front with a younger woman at her side.

“Chankah,” Rev said, following Kelric’s gaze to the unfamiliar woman. “The Dahl Successor.”

The glistening air, the starlight, and the shadowy retinue all combined with his drugged haze until Kelric felt as if he floated in a surreal netherworld. When Balv prodded him with his gun, Kelric went forward and the retinue parted so he was walking down an aisle of people.

Deha led them to a large dais at the far end of the hall. Designed from black marble and veined with crystal, the disk scintillated in the starlight. The rows of finely carved chairs that circled it held an aura of age, as if they had guarded the dais for centuries.

The retinue withdrew to the chairs and Deha climbed the dais with Chankah. When Balv prodded him up the steps, Kelric stumbled and with his wrists bound behind his back he couldn’t catch his balance. As he fell to one knee, his guards drew their swords. He froze, acutely aware of the honed steel only fingerspans away from his body.

Deha spoke. “Help him up. Gently.”

Hacha slid her hand under his arm, supporting him as he rose to his feet. With their swords drawn, the guards escorted him up the stairs. They took him to a depression in the center of the dais, a circular area about a meter in diameter and a handspan deep. A rail at waist height circled it, with an opening just wide enough for a person step through. In the shadows on the far edge of the dais, a table curved in a semicircle. More guards stood there, and glitters came from the blades of their drawn swords.

Deha spoke. “Ekaf Dahl, approach the Circle.”

A man came forward from the chairs set around the dais and climbed the steps. When he reached Deha, she indicated a place to the right of the circle. “You will Speak from here.” She and Chankah both bowed to him, then turned and walked toward the curving table, becoming blurs as they receded into the shadows.

A moment later, Deha’s voice floated through the air. “Sevtar Dahl, you may enter the Circle.”

As far as Kelric knew, no one named Sevtar stood on the dais. Then Rev nudged him forward. Together, they stepped down into the sunken area.

A pipe began playing, caressing the night with notes as delicate as a lover’s touch. Its melody flowed through the hall, sweet and haunting. It receded, growing fainter, until it vanished.

Deha spoke out of the shadows. “Does one here stand as Oath brother to Sevtar?”

“I stand for him,” Rev said.

“What are your words?”

Kelric realized then just how much Rev’s offer meant. The taciturn giant made no secret of his discomfort with public speaking.

Rev’s voice rumbled. “I speak thus: Sevtar may differ from us, but the quality of his character transcends those differences. His inner strength is as great as his outer. He will honor your Calanya.”

Chankah spoke softly. “Your words are heard and recorded, Rev of Dahl.”

The guard bowed. He stepped out of the Circle then and vanished into the darkness.

A bell chimed, two notes, high and clear, vibrating in the silvery air. Chankah spoke, what sounded like a chant in a language other than Teotecan, verses with an ancient sound, a hypnotic rhythm. When she finished, the bell chimed again, a musical echo of the radiance filling the hall.

Deha spoke. “Hear my words, Sevtar, but before you give them back to me as Oath, know that your life is bound by them.”

Even if Kelric had intended to answer, he was too dazed to think of a response. It didn’t matter. Ekaf spoke. “I hear and understand.”

A glow appeared on the table, a flame in a bowl of oil. Ruddy light flickered across Deha’s face. “For Dahl and for Coba, do you, Sevtar, enter the Circle to give your Oath?”

“I do,” Ekaf said.

“Do you swear you will hold my Estate above all else, as you hold the future of Dahl in your hands and your mind?”

“I swear,” Ekaf said.

“Do you swear to keep forever the discipline of the Calanya? To never read or write? To never speak in the presence of those who are not of the Calanya?”

What the hell? Kelric thought. He said nothing, though, caught by the hypnotic quality of the ceremony.

“I swear,” Ekaf said.

“Do you swear, on penalty of your life, that your loyalty is to Dahl, only to Dahl, and completely to Dahl?”

“I swear,” Ekaf said. “With my life.”

A chime rippled like a waterfall. Deha passed her hand over the oil, and the flame flickered and vanished.

Kelric felt as if he were floating in the shimmering air. Deha and her successor seemed to materialize out of the shadows, walking toward the Circle. Chankah carried a box of carved wood. When they reached the rail, she opened it to reveal two armbands lying on velvet. They looked like solid gold.

Standing just on the other side of the rail now, Deha regarded him. “In return for your Oath, I vow that for the rest of your life you will be provided for as befits a Calani.” She nodded to Hacha. When the captain stepped behind him and lifted his manacled wrists, Kelric stiffened. But she simply released him. Bringing his arms in front of his body, he rubbed his sore wrists.

“Kelric,” Deha murmured. “You need to put your hands on the rail.”

He set his palms on the wood. It felt cool and smooth under his palms.

“The bands I give you are those of an Akasi Calani.” Softly Deha added, “May you someday wear them of your own free will.” She took an armband from the box. Picking up his hand, she slid on the band and pushed it up his arm until it stopped on his biceps. She slid the second band onto his other arm.

“Sevtar Dahl,” Deha said. “You are now a First Level Calani of Dahl.”

6

NIGHT’S MOVE

The escort returned Kelric to the amber-room the same way they had taken him; in complete silence, his wrists locked behind his back, without Deha or her retinue. The journey up the tower seemed endless. He couldn’t even use his hands to lean on the rail as he climbed.

Inside the amber-room, Hacha freed his wrists. She spoke brusquely. “Don’t try to leave. An armed octet will be posted outside at all times.” She turned and walked toward the door, motioning for the others to follow.

Rev spoke. “I’ll stay a while.”

Hacha glanced back and shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She left with the others, closing the door behind her.

Kelric sat on the edge of the bed. “Is she always that abrupt? Or is it just me?”

Rev said nothing.

“Ekaf took the vow of silence,” Kelric said. “Not me.”

Rev sat in a chair by the nightstand. “I have no right to speak with you.”

“Hacha just did.”

“Only because she is now captain of your Calanya escort and Deha allowed it. But she can’t talk with you. Only to you.”

Kelric shook his head. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“You can speak with other Dahl Calani,” Rev said. “And with Deha. But not to anyone Outside.”

Kelric squinted at him. “You do it too.”

“It?”

“Say Outside as if it were a title.”

“It is,” Rev said. “Those within the Calanya are Inside. The rest of the universe is Outside.”

“That leaves a lot of people Outside.”

“Yes. You are one of a very few.”

“Great,” Kelric muttered.

“Kelric, it is considered a great honor among our people.” Rev paused. “I should call you Sevtar now.”

“No you shouldn’t. Who the hell is Sevtar?”

Rev smiled. “He is the dawn god, a giant with skin made from sunlight. He strides across the sky, pushing back the night so the sungoddess Savina can sail out from behind the mountains on her giant hawk. Deha thought it appropriate.”

“What’s wrong with the name Kelric?”

“Kelric isn’t Coban.”

“You’re right, he isn’t. But my name is Kelric.”

“You have a new name now.”

Kelric felt like throwing up his hands in exasperation. This was getting him nowhere. He ran his fingers over his right armband. Akasi? Deha reminded him too much of Corey, his first wife, stirring ghosts better left buried. Corey had been a well-known figure, a hero of the people. During the long days after her death, at the ceremonies and state funeral, all broadcast to a grieving public, he had stood silent in his uniform, a widower when he was barely twenty-four. On display before everyone, he had kept it all inside, how it tore him apart to lose her. In the ten years since, he had gradually regained his equilibrium. Now Deha came along, throwing everything off balance.

It was safer to think of other things. He regarded Rev. “I thank you for your speech.”

“It was my honor.”

“I’m glad someone feels that way.” Kelric grimaced. “I think Llaach wants to heave me off a cliff.”

Rev spoke awkwardly. “There is the matter of Jevi.”

“Jevi? Her husband, right?”

“Yes.” Rev paused. “He is also the youth whose neck you threatened to break in the Calanya.”

Good gods. No wonder Llaach wanted to throttle him.

Across the room the door swung open, leaving Balv framed in its arch with torchlight flickering behind him. He stepped aside—and Deha walked in, her silken robe from the Oath Ceremony rippling in the dusky light.

Surprise flashed across Rev’s face. “Well. Ah.” He stood up. “I will go now.”

As Rev crossed the room, Hacha and Llaach joined Balv in the archway. When Rev reached them, the four guards stood looking at Deha, who had stopped halfway between Kelric and the door.

The Manager smiled. “Do you four plan to stay there all night?”

Hacha regarded her. “Ma’am—”

“Yes?”

Hacha started to speak, stopped, then said, “If you need us, we’re right outside.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Deha said. “Good night.”

The guards shifted their feet, glancing at Kelric. Finally they closed the door.

Deha turned to him. “It seems they don’t trust you.”

He met her gaze. “Maybe you shouldn’t either.”

She came to the bed. “I don’t.”

“Then why are you here?”

She dimmed the lamp on the nightstand until only stars lit the room. Then she sat next to him. “I don’t trust that you would do what is best for Coba if you left. I do trust the quality of your character. You won’t hurt me.”

Of course he wouldn’t hurt her. He wanted to do a lot of things with her, many of them pleasant and none of them involved hurting anyone. He felt too keyed up, though, to say any of that to her. So he said, “How do you know I won’t take you hostage?”

Deha brushed the back of her hand over his cheek in a gesture of intimacy he had come to know well. “I’ve played Quis with you.”

In the starlight her eyes looked like large, dark pools. Kelric took hold of her wrist. He started with a half-formed thought of pushing her away, but instead he drew her into his arms, as he had done so many other times.

Deha ran her hands over his back, then brought them around to unfasten his vest and ease it off his body. Then she undid the laces on his shirt, letting it fall open. Laying her hand against his chest, she murmured, “Your skin is so much like metal. How can that be?”

He stroked his hand over her hair. “My grandfather’s ancestors fiddled with their genetics to make themselves reflective. It helps their bodies discard heat. They lived on a hot, bright planet.”

“I don’t know what genes mean.” A hint of mischief came into her smile. “But the fiddling sounds good.” When Kelric chuckled, she stretched out against his side and kissed him, her tongue tickling his lips.

Eventually, when they paused, Deha spoke near his ear. “You truly are a beautiful man. Your eyes are like liquid sunshine. They grace a face that would shame Khozaar, most handsome of all gods.”

Kelric wished he were more adept at the sort of words lovers spoke to each other. She didn’t seem to expect a response, though. She tugged down his shirt until it tangled around his elbows and then she traced her finger through the hair on his chest. “So beautiful. But you are so tall. Do all Skolian men stand as large as you?”

“Not most.” At six foot seven, two meters, he stood out anywhere, even on Coba where most everyone was tall. He pulled off his shirt, but when she started to caress him again, he caught her hand. “Deha.”

“Hmmm?” She slid down his body until her head was level with his chest. She nudged him to lie on his back, and then she took his nipple into her mouth.

“Ah …” He stared at the shadowed ceiling while she played, kissing his nipple. After a moment he remembered what he had meant to say. “We can’t keep pretending this is a normal wedding night.” Closing his eyes, he added, “Do the other one too.”

She moved across his chest. Eventually he said, “You can’t force me to stay on Coba. ISC will send someone to look for me.”

Deha stopped kissing him. “Not if they think you’re dead.” She slid back up to look at his face. “You are a prince among your people, yes? I have made you one among mine. Is that really so terrible?”

“I have my own life.” He undid her braid, letting her lovely hair pour over their bodies. “I want it back.”

“I can offer you a better one. No more being alone.”

Kelric brushed her cheek with his thumb. Although he had no intention of staying on Coba, at this moment “no more being alone” felt just fine. More than fine. He opened her robe, revealing a satin shift underneath. Her breasts were firm, the nipples erect under the satin. As he rubbed them, her eyes closed. Pulling her forward, he took her breast into his mouth and suckled it through the satin. She made a satisfied noise deep in her throat, somewhere between a sigh and a moan.

When he paused for a breath, Deha played with the flaps on the seams of his trousers. “You are discreet in how you wear these,” she said. “Old-fashioned. I like that.”

He could guess how those less “old-fashioned” wore the style: fasten the flaps looser and the pants revealed a strip of skin from the man’s waist to foot. He wondered if she saw the contradiction in giving him clothes that were deliberately provocative and then expecting him to wear them in a way that hid what they were designed to show. He suspected not; he picked up only desire from her, mixed with relief that he wasn’t as “modern” as she had believed.

It soon became obvious, however, that whoever tailored the trousers had designed them so that a woman who knew what she was doing could make removing them as erotic as she wanted. Deha took her time unfastening the flaps, her hands caressing his thighs and legs until he was so aroused that Bolt started up with warnings about elevated physiological responses. Kelric told the node to shut up.

When he tugged at her clothes, Deha sat up on her heels and slid off her robe, then pulled the satin shift over her head. She had well-toned curves, slender and lean, with long, muscular legs. Kelric trailed his fingertips across her flat stomach. The barest hint of stretch marks showed at her hips, suggesting she had given birth.

“Your body is lovely,” he said. “How do you stay so fit?”

“Morning walk. Evening walk.” Wryly she added, “Arguing with my doctors.”

“Your doctors?”

“They worry too much.” She smiled. “It gives them something to do.”

Deha finished taking off his clothes, then lay next to him and slid her hand up his inner thigh. While she caressed him, he rubbed his hands over her backside and laid his head against hers. She slid on top of his body, straddling his hips, and eased onto him.

They made love slowly, building together. Her touch was skilled, first gentle, then urgent. When he used his Kyle senses to match his response to her emotions, she murmured in Teotecan, her words too blurred to distinguish, just noises of affection.

One time he caught a memory that came into her mind, the image of a man with dark hair and eyes who wore Akasi bands. At that moment she paused, pensive as she raised her head to look at him. Then she lay down again, burying her head against his neck to soothe whatever sorrow the memory gave her.

As they built to their crest, Kelric tried to open his mind to her, to share his pleasure. Then the orgasm broke over him and he lost his senses in her embrace and the silver night.

Later as they drowsed in each other’s arms, he again reached for her mind, with no more success than before. Deha wasn’t a Kyle. Although it didn’t mean he couldn’t love her, it left a sense of incompletion.

Still, he almost felt content. Only a dull throb in his temples kept him awake. It intensified every time he used his Kyle senses.

Kelric watched Deha sleep, wondering how much he should tell her. He had no illusions about why these people feared him. They kept their autonomy because Coba was inconsequential enough that some overworked ISC bureaucrat had let the Restriction stand. The Twelve Estates didn’t merit a status meant for places so uninhabitable or hostile they required quarantine. As soon as ISC took closer notice, Coba’s evanescent independence would evaporate. Absorption by the Imperialate would bring the Cobans advanced technology, but it would also mean military occupation and obedience to Imperial law, as well as opening their world to Imperial use.

No matter how pleasant their wedding night, he felt Deha’s resolve. If he took her hostage and forced his guards to make a choice, let him go or risk Deha’s life, they would follow her orders to stop him—even if it meant killing her.

“No,” he said.

Deha opened her eyes. “You are still awake?” She stretched against his side. “You seemed so tired at the ceremony.”

He smiled, savoring the feel of her skin against his. “I guess you revived me.”

Her face gentled, that expression she gave only him. “You look pensive.”

He chose his words with care. “I have a system inside my body. It’s called biomech. It enhances me.”

Deha pushed up on her elbow. “We wondered, after your fight with the guards.” She watched his face. “Why does that make you pensive?”

“The system needs maintenance.” That wasn’t really the problem, but it came close enough without revealing his weakened condition.

“What will happen if you don’t get what you need?”

“It could injure me.”

She tensed. “Kelric, anything I can do to help, I will.”

He wondered if she realized she was calling him Kelric rather than the Teotecan name they had given him. “You can’t provide what I need. I have to leave Coba.”

She spoke with regret. “We can’t let you go. You know that.”

“Even if refusing causes me harm?”

Her voice caught. “I’m sorry.” A memory jumped into her mind, another glimpse of her former Akasi, this time lying on a funeral bower.

“Ai, Deha.” He touched her cheek. “I won’t die.”

“Anything I can do here to help, I will. I mean that.”

“Let me go home.”

She just whispered, “I’m sorry.”

He pulled her into his arms. “Then with me.”

So they lay together, with no more to say. Eventually they slept. Sometime later he woke again. He opened his eyes, to see her siting up, reaching for her shift.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“No.” She drew the shift over her head. “I have to finish some paperwork in my office.”

“On your wedding night?”

Deha gave him a rueful smile. “Dahl won’t stop even for that.” She pulled on her robe, then leaned over and kissed him. “Sleep well, my Akasi.”

After she left, Kelric lay staring at the ceiling. The throb in his head kept shifting and resettling, as if adjusting to an inner pressure. Finally he got up and paced around the suite. In an adjoining chamber he found a bathtub the size of a swimming pool, tiled in green and gold, with statues of three-legged animals at its corners. He started toward it—and pain blasted through his head.

Kelric gasped and fell to his knees by the pool. In the water he saw the reflection of his face contort in agony. Shocks hit him like blows from a hammer. It went on and on until he wanted to cry out. But he made no sound, no motion, barely even breathed.

Gradually the tremors became farther apart. Their force eased, lessened, died away. For a long time afterward he remained still, afraid to move lest it start again.

A ray of light touched his face. Looking up, he saw the dawn through a window across the room.

Kelric closed his eyes. Bolt.

No answer.

Bolt, what just happened?

I'm not sure. I am d%#&—

What?

I am damaged. The electrodes in your brain are also malfunctioning. You had a seizure because they are misfiring your neurons. I can't ^^^&

You can’t what?

I can't fix it. You must go to a biomech repair facility. If you don't, you may lose all function.

Kelric raked his hand through his hair. Without his biomech, he had even less chance of escaping. If he didn’t escape, he would have to live with brain damage, which could grow worse over the years, perhaps become permanent. He had to make his move now, regardless of his injuries.

He returned to the bedroom and dressed, not in the sexually suggestive outfit from his Oath ceremony, but in old clothes he found in the bureau. He braced himself against the door and sensitized his mind to the guards outside, using his biomech to amplify the signals from his KEB. When his link with the guards faltered, he clenched his teeth against the pain, overrode the safeties in his neural systems, and let a burst of power surge out of his brain.

A cry came through the door; Bolt had miscalculated and applied too much force. With his injuries Kelric couldn’t barrier himself against the shock of the attack as it reflected back to him. It slammed his mind until he groaned and spots clouded his vision. Half blinded by pain, he threw his bulk into the door again and again, until it flew open with a bang.

Outside, his guards lay unconscious on the floor. He limped around them and headed for the stairs.

7

HAWK’S FLIGHT

Deha sat behind her desk, bathed in the early morning sunshine that slanted through the window at her back. Piles of folders waited and a full day faced her: city meetings, Estate conferences, Quis sessions. She reached for the audiocom—

Someone else’s hand reached from behind her and bent back the com switch until the wood snapped with a crack.

Deha spun her chair around—to see Kelric stepping back, a few paces away from her. He held a stunner aimed at her head. Behind him, curtains billowed out from an open window that should have been closed. She stared at him, remembering how he had felt in her arms last night. He looked far different now, his expression closed to her.

“I came for my Jumbler,” he said.

“Jumbler?” It sounded like a description of himself, or at least what he did to her emotional state. How did he escape the tower?

“My gun,” he said. “I must have been wearing it when you found me.”

She thought of the monster weapon he had worn in a holster on his hip. “We left it on your ship. The explosion destroyed it.” In truth, she had stowed the gun in her safe. Her experts said it didn’t work. Nothing happened when they tried to fire the gun. Of course, they were only experts when it came to stunners.

Kelric looked as if he were straining to hear a muttered conversation. Softly he said, “That’s what I needed,” followed by, “Forgive me, Deha.”

Then he fired.

The guards who had formerly watched the amber-room now stood clumped before Deha’s desk. Dabbiv stood with them, his hands in the pockets of his white sweater where he put them whenever he felt nervous.

“Escaped.” Deha stood behind her desk, her head pounding in the aftermath of the stun shots. Kelric had pumped her with enough charge to put her out for the entire morning. “And just exactly where were all of you while he was escaping?”

“Kelric knocked them out,” Hacha said.

Deha stared at them, incredulous. “How could he knock out every guard in the tower, sneak into my office, knock me out, rob my safe, and disappear? My entire City Guard can’t find one man?”

“We have every available unit out searching,” Hacha said. “I also doubled the detail at the airfield. We’ll catch him.”

“You’d better.” Deha turned to Dabbiv. “And you. Insisting we stop his medication. No wonder he escaped.”

“The drugs were poisoning him,” Dabbiv said.

“If he was in such terrible shape, how did he escape? I want him back on sedation the instant he’s found.”

“Deha, no.” Dabbiv pulled his hands out of his pockets. “I can’t even predict what cumulative effect the drugs will have on him. They could kill him.”

She forced out the words. “That may be. But we have no choice.”

Dabbiv’s gaze never wavered. “My calling is to heal. Not harm. I’d rather you put me on a city work crew than ask me to knowingly harm my patient.”

Deha pushed her hand through the tendrils that had escaped her braid. “Fine. You’re no longer on his case. You’re reassigned to the city maintenance crew.” She turned her glower on Hacha. “And I want reports from the search teams every hour.”

“You’ll have them,” Hacha said.

“Very well. You may all go.”

As they left, Deha took a breath, trying to calm the pound of her heart. She steeled herself against the pain that flared in her body, coming from behind her breastbone and radiating into her neck, jaw, and arms.

The departing guards bowed to a woman who had just come to stand inside the arched doorway of the office.

“Chankah,” Deha said.

Her successor closed the door. “Dabbiv told me you sent him to a janitorial crew in the city.” She came to the desk. “What were you thinking? He does good work here.”

“We—disagreed.”

“You really intend to dismiss him from the Estate?”

Deha exhaled as her pulse calmed and the pain receded. “No. No, I don’t. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I will let him know.” She drew in a deep breath, finally getting enough air. “Everything is a mess. If Kelric makes it to the port, we’re finished.”

“He has no way out of Dahl except by air. We’ll catch him when he goes for a rider.” Chankah paused. “When we do, we must put an end to all this.”

Deha regarded her steadily. “Lady Death already stole Jaym from me. I won’t give her Kelric too.”

“He can’t stay here. You know that. Whether he dies or goes to prison, he will be gone.” Chankah spoke in a quieter voice. “I’m sorry. From what I’ve seen, he’s a good man. But that doesn’t change the danger he poses us.”

“So.” Deha crossed her arms. “You would lock him up in the Haka prison.”

“That’s right.”

“And which Estates are strongest, Chankah?”

“I don’t see how that—”

“Answer the question.”

Chankah frowned at her. “Karn and Varz are strongest. So what?”

“Karn and Varz. The two Estates whose relations define the word antagonism. And after them?”

“Haka and Dahl.”

“Haka. Haka.” Deha scowled. “You want me to hand over a Quis genius to the most powerful ally of Varz? What other presents would you give Manager Haka?”

“He’ll be in her prison. Not her Calanya.”

Deha lowered her arms. “A dice player as gifted as Kelric belongs in a Calanya.”

Chankah gave her a dour look. “No Calanya can hold that man.”

“It’s the best guarded institution on the planet,” Deha said. “No Calani ever leaves.”

“They don’t want to. Kelric does.”

“He will adapt.”

Chankah spoke grimly. “You had better be right.”

So I must, Deha thought. Because I can’t sign his death warrant.

Hidden by a moonless night, Kelric leaned against a clump of boulders. Rocks littered a trail that wound down the mountain into a valley with cultivated fields far below. Beyond the fields, Dahl gleamed like a sculpture of spires. Lights on the aircontrol tower blinked in the night, beckoning—and unattainable. Too many guards were out searching for him in the city, on the Estate, everywhere.

Hunger gnawed at Kelric. Although crops flourished below, eating them made him sick, as did drinking water from fountains in Dahl. He still had the Jumbler that hung heavy at his hip, but to activate it required he link his brain to a neural chip in the gun. Designed using his own DNA, the chip recognized his brain waves and biomech web. It allowed only him to fire the gun. Tonight that vaunted safety feature put him in a no-win situation; using his neural implants would further aggravate his injuries, but if he didn’t escape now, he might never have another chance before his biomech damage left him too depleted.

He sent a probe to the gun.

Contact—no, he lost it.

On the second try, his probe clicked into synch with the weapon. It flashed a menu in his mind:

Jumbler function: Particle accelerator

Fuel: abitons particles

rest energy: 1.9 eV

charge: 5.95x10^23 Coulombs

magnet: 0.0001 Tesla

max radius: 0.05 Meters

The menu rippled, came back into focus—and then melted. Gritting his teeth against what felt like a mental version of ripping his tendons, he forced his link to the gun back in place.

Kelric set out for Dahl.

Deha leaned against a rail that bordered the airfield, brooding in the morning sunlight. Hacha stood at her side, watching her guards patrol the hangars.

The captain looked up into the mountains. “He can’t stay out there forever. He has to come back sometime.”

And then? Deha wondered. Kelric was a windstorm they had trapped in a bottle. Cracks kept fracturing the glass, and every time she tried to repair one, two more appeared.

Balv came out of the tower and walked over to them. “Llaach just reported in. She and Rev are still at the Calanya. Everything is quiet.”

Deha nodded, struck by the irony of having Rev guard her Calanya. In past ages, a dice player with his brilliance would have been in it. She had chosen him for her escort because of his Quis expertise. A Manager could learn much from what her bodyguards picked up in the dice game.

Shouts came from across the field, as guards converged on a hangar, forming a semicircle. “That’s it,” Deha said. She took off, flanked by Hacha and Balv.

When they reached the arc of guards, they made their way to the front. Ten paces away from them, Kelric stood backed up against the hangar wall with his huge weapon drawn.

Hacha stepped forward. “Be reasonable, Kelric. We know your gun doesn’t work.”

“It works,” he said. “It shoots abitons. Antimatter particle of the biton. And guess what, Captain. Every electron in your body contains hundreds of thousands of bitons. I shoot, you get annihilated.”

Deha glanced at Balv. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“I have no idea,” Balv said.

Hacha took another step—and Kelric raised his gun.

The Dahl guards fired in unison, and though Kelric lunged to the side, many of the shots hit him. Yet they seemed to have no effect. Holding his gun in both hands, with his feet planted wide, he fired across the ground separating him from the octets. Orange sparkles lit the air in a narrow beam—and where the beam hit tarmac, the ground exploded in a flash of orange light. Rocks and dust flew into the air. In a second, a chasm stretched the length of the field, with debris crumbling from its edges in miniature avalanches.

“Winds above,” Balv muttered.

“And then some,” Deha said. Apparently his gun worked much better than they had thought.

Kelric looked directly at her. “Order the guards inside the hangar to come out.”

“There aren’t any,” Deha said.

He aimed into the building. “You have two seconds. Then I shoot.”

“Wait.” Deha raised her voice. “Unit three, come out of the hangar.”

Three guards walked out.

“All of them,” Kelric said.

“That is all of them.”

“Five more are in there.”

“No one else is inside,” Deha said.

Kelric brought his thumb down on the firing stud.

“No!” Deha raised her voice again. “Unit five out.”

Five more guards appeared. With the other three, they formed a full octet. After they backed away from the hangar, Kelric motioned at Balv. “Send him over here.”

“You can’t leave Dahl,” Deha said. As much as she hoped those were held truth, she feared she would be as wrong about that belief as she had been about his gun.

“Send him over here,” Kelric repeated.

Deha met his implacable gaze. “No.”

Kelric didn’t argue, he just fired at a nearby hangar. His target exploded in a blast of orange light.

Deha swore under her breath.

“I better do what he wants,” Blav said. “Before he starts shooting at people.”

Deha regarded him. “We have to stop him, Balv. No matter what it takes. If you’re in the rider when we catch it—” She left the rest unsaid.

“I understand.”

“All right. Go.” Softly she added, “Wind’s luck.”

He touched her arm. Then he headed toward the end of the chasm Kelric had created, where it narrowed enough for him to cross.

Deha turned to Hacha. “Have the guards block their takeoff. And get the other riders ready to go.”

Hacha nodded. “I have crews standing by.”

“And Captain. If you can’t recapture him—” Deha forced out the words, hating them, hearing them as if another person spoke. “Force his rider into a crash.”

Balv stopped in front of the windrider, acutely aware of the way Kelric loomed over him only a few paces away.

“Put your stunner on the tarmac,” Kelric said.

Balv set down the weapon, never taking his gaze off the gun Kelric kept trained on him.

Kelric motioned to the craft. “Climb in.”

Balv boarded the rider, with Kelric coming behind him. Inside, the cabin seemed cramped, dwarfed by Kelric’s size.

His captor motioned toward the pilot seat. “You fly.”

Balv sat in the pilot’s chair. He looked through the windshield to the left, where the hangar opened out onto the airfield. Guards were guards running along the fissure Kelric had created with his supposedly inoperative gun. By the time Balv finished his preflight checks, several octets of guards had massed outside the hangar. When he started the engines, a line of people solidified in front of the hangar, blocking the rider from leaving.

Kelric stood behind the pilot’s seat, his gun poised near Balv’s head. “Go.”

“I can’t.” Although Balv started the engines and maneuvered the rider to face the hangar exit, that was as far as he could go. “I’ll run over the guards.”

In response, Kelric leaned over him and yanked on the throttle. The rider jumped into motion.

“No!” Even as Balv grabbed the wheel, the people outside scattered in all directions.

Mercifully, Balv regained control of the windrider before it hit anyone. He drew in a deep breath, giving the guards a few more seconds to finish clearing the area. Then he taxied out of the hangar and accelerated alongside the chasm Kelric’s gun had created. Kelric sat in the copilot’s chair, still with his weapon out and aimed.

Balv had taken off from enough small airfields to know how to maneuver in the limited area left by the broken tarmac. Within moments, they had lifted off the ground and soared into the gales of the Teotec Mountains.

Static burst from the radio. “This is the Dahl Sunrider. Come in, Skytreader.”

“Don’t answer,” Kelric said.

Balv clenched the wheel, but he kept his silence. Below them, the mountains unrolled in a jagged panorama. In his side mirror, he glimpsed a flock of craft rising from the airfield behind them. They looked like specks against the cliffs towering over Dahl.

“Skytreader.” Hacha’s voice crackled on the com. “Land now or we’ll force you out of the air.”

“Outrun them,” Kelric said.

“I can’t,” Balv said. A fist of wind grabbed Skytreader and tossed it upward like a child playing with a dice cube. “This is crazy. We have to land.”

Kelric touched his gun to Balv’s temple. “We’re going to the starport that you all claim doesn’t exist.”

“You can’t shoot that thing in here. You’ll destroy the rider.”

“No. Just you.”

“I won’t fly.” Balv swallowed, wondering if he were about to die.

For one excruciating moment, Kelric remained silent. Then he said, “Get up.”

Balv stared at him. “What?”

Kelric flipped over his gun and held it like a club. “Get up.”

“You’ll kill us both.”

“You have five seconds. Then you go to sleep.”

It only took Balv an instant to imagine lying unconscious in a craft flown by someone who had never handled a rider, let alone battled the winds of the Teotecs. Then he slid out of the pilot’s seat. As Kelric took his place, the rider lurched like a drunk gambler.

“Let me take us down.” Balv motioned to a cluster of cloud-wreathed crags below. “I know places we can land.”

“The only place I’m going is home.”

“We can’t make it.” As Balv slid into the copilot’s seat, he looked back through a side window. The pursuing riders had closed the gap enough that he could see the painted eyes and wings on their craft. “You know they’ll catch us.”

Kelric scanned the controls. With no warning, he pulled Skytreader into a vertical climb. Pressure built in Balv’s ears and he had to yell to be heard over the straining engines. “What are you doing? You’re going too high!”

Kelric ignored him, flipping the rider in a dizzying half loop. The horizon careened past the windshield as the craft turned upside down. Just when Balv felt certain that altitude would finish them as surely as a crash in the Teotecs, Kelric rolled the rider right side up and angled into a descent, headed the opposite way from their previous direction. Skytreader streaked into the upper ranges of the Teotecs, leaving their pursuers far behind.

“I don’t believe it,” Balv said. “I mean, you can fly.”

“Starfighter pilot,” Kelric said. “I love aircraft.” He felt silent after that, focused on piloting the windrider.

Kelric went higher into the mountains than Balv had ever flown before. He landed high in a pocket of rock fenced by crags and icy patches of snow, bringing the craft down with a finesse uncanny from someone who had never before flown a windrider.

Balv stared through the windshield at a finger of basalt thrusting into a cobalt sky. “How did you know how to land?” Although Balv had found most of his training as a pilot easy, setting the rider down after a flight had caused him difficulty until he learned the nuances of the process.

Kelric cut the engines. “It’s not that different from antique aircraft I’ve flown.”

“I thought we were going to the port.”

Kelric glanced at him. “So did Hacha. Once she gets turned around, she will have no idea where to find us.”

It almost made sense; most people found locating a craft up here impossible unless the pilot wanted to be found. But Kelric missed one “minor” fact—the starport lay in the desert.

“You’re going to fly me there,” Kelric said. “When it gets dark.”

Balv stiffened. “Fly you where?”

“To the starport.”

A chill ran down Balv’s back. How did Kelric know what he was thinking? “And if I refuse?”

His captor met his gaze. “You won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you want to live.”

Balv had no answer for that.

Kelric loosened the collar of his shirt. “Does this craft carry oxygen?”

“Oxygen?”

“Air.”

Balv knew a weapon might be stored in the cabin locker. He stood up. “I’ll check in back.”

Kelric raised his gun. “Sit down.”

Balv sat.

“No pilot stores emergency air out of reach.” Kelric’s voice rasped. “The air. Now.”

Balv heard the desperation in his voice and recognized the danger in it. “The panel is above your head.”

Laboring to breathe, Kelric ran his fingers along the hull until he found the catch. When he clicked the panel open, a mask dropped out, hanging by a hose. He clamped it over his face and drew in huge breaths.

When Kelric lowered the mask, his tension had visibly eased. He spoke in a calmer voice. “The air is so thin up here.”

“Thin?” Balv had never heard of thin or fat air.

“The concentration of oxygen is low for me.”

“Air is an element. Its composition can’t vary.”

“It’s a mixture of elements, Balv. Oxygen and nitrogen, with traces of other gases.”

Balv had no intention of arguing. “All right.”

“I don’t get it.” Kelric’s voice sounded hoarse. “Your science is only in the rudimentary stages, yet you people can build machines as sophisticated as these riders.”

“You sound terrible. You need a doctor.”

“What I need is the starport.”

Balv had no response. So they sat silent, Kelric periodically breathing from the mask.

After a while Balv said, “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“You are a soldier, yes?”

“That’s right.”

“Who do you fight?”

“Eubian Traders.”

“Why?”

“We have something they want.”

“Why not trade?” Balv wondered what ISC considered worth more than the lives lost to keep it. Wealth? Power? What pushed them, that they ruled so much and still wanted more?

“You think it’s greed?” Kelric asked. “If the Traders had found Coba before we did, your life would be a lot different now. I’ll tell you what we have that they want. People.”

“People?”

“They sell them. You want to be a slave? I’d rather die.”

That made Balv pause. It had never occurred to him the Imperialate lived with its own nightmares. He chose his words carefully. “During our Old Age, the Estates always went to war. Managers made their captives into slaves. They bought and sold Calani like prized goods.” He grimaced. “I am glad I live now and not then.”

“I had the impression warfare was rare here.”

“Now, yes,” Balv confided. “In the Old Age, Managers were warrior queens. They nearly destroyed the Twelve Estates with all their wars. Now we fight with Quis instead of weapons.”

Unexpectedly, Kelric smiled. “Political hostilities submerged into a dice game. Quite an accomplishment.”

Balv had never known any other life. “I suppose.”

Kelric glanced at his wrist. “Is that your kasi band?”

Balv looked down. He had pulled the gold band out from under his cuff and was twisting it around his wrist. “Yes.” He wondered if he would ever see his wife again.

Kelric touched his own shirt where the outline of an armband in his bicep showed under the cloth. “Why are yours on your wrists?”

“It’s not the same thing. The armbands mean you are a Calani.” Balv stopped twisting his band. “Of course, nowadays some kasi refuse to wear these.”

Kelric regarded him curiously. “Why?”

“In the Old Age a kasi was his wife’s property.” Balv pulled down his cuffs to cover his marriage bands. “He wore wrist guards with her name engraved on them. Some men feel kasi bands are a remnant of those days.”

Kelric pushed back his cuff, uncovering his wrist guard with its engraving of the Dahl suntree hieroglyph. “Like this?”

Balv shifted in his seat. “Well, uh—yes.”

“I take it that means I’m Deha’s property.”

“Yes.” Balv felt the need to add more. “Many of us consider the Akasi Laws barbaric.”

“I won’t argue with that,” Kelric muttered. Sweat trickled down his neck.

Balv wondered why Kelric seemed so hot. The cabin felt cold and Kelric wore only flimsy old clothes. He ought to be freezing. He peered at the skin above Kelric’s wrist guard. “Can you roll up your sleeves?”

“Why?”

“I want to check something.”

Watching him warily, Kelric pushed up his sleeve—and revealed an inflamed rash of red dots all over his arm. “What the hell?” He looked at Balv. “What is that?”

“Kevtar’s disease, I think. Most of us get it as children.”

“I’m sick?”

“It’s not serious. You’ll be fine by tonight.” Balv winced. “I should apologize. You must have caught it from me.”

“You don’t look sick.”

“I’m not. But Rev and I were at the Med House this morning visiting his children. All three have Kevtar’s.”

Kelric grimaced. “Thirty-four is a little old for me to catch a child’s illness.”

“Thirty-four?” Balv stared at him. “You can’t be that old.”

“Why not?”

“The way you look—we assumed you were younger.”

Kelric shrugged. “It’s just biotech. And good genes.”

“Oh. Of course.” That made no sense to Balv.

“Little Kelric,” he muttered. His voice sounded like sand scraping glass. “Baby of the Rhon. Youngest and biggest.” He wiped sweat off his forehead. “Gods, I’m burning up.”

By evening Kelric’s rash had spread until it covered his chest and neck. He paced across the cabin, shivering now, his voice even hoarser than before. “I thought you said I would feel fine by now.”

“You should,” Balv said. “I’ve never seen Kevtar’s affect anyone this way. We have to get you to a Med House.”

“Not a chance.” Kelric shifted his Jumbler from hand to hand. “We’re leaving for the port.”

“We don’t have enough fuel to reach it from here.”

“Maybe not. But we have enough to get damn close.” He motioned with the gun. “Get in the pilot’s seat.”

Balv knew this might be his last chance to make a move. He stood up, stepped away from the copilot’s seat—and lunged for the Jumbler.

Kelric jerked away the gun, his movements mechanical, as if he were a puppet acting on reflex. It happened so fast that despite the accuracy and speed of Balv’s lunge, his hand closed on air.

Kelric leveled the Jumbler at Balv. “Sit.”

Balv froze. “You don’t want to shoot me.”

“That doesn’t mean I won’t.”

Balv sat in the pilot’s seat, his mind racing to find a solution. What if Kelric reached the port? Were the tales true, that the Rhon had punished entire worlds for an offense against one of their own? If Kelric was their youngest, the one they felt most protective toward, their wrath would be even greater.

He spoke quietly. “I won’t fly you to the port.”

“Fly or I shoot.”

Balv took a deep breath. “Then you’ll have to shoot.”

“You’re willing to die to keep me here?”

“Yes.”

Kelric stared at him as if he were trying to extract the truth Balv’s own brain. Then he jerked his gun toward the hatch. “Take what you need to survive and get out.”

Balv jumped out of his seat and strode toward the back of the cabin, moving fast, before Kelric changed his mind. Kelric had already taken the stunner from the locker, so Balv grabbed a jacket and a box of flares to signal the search parties.

When Balv heaved open the hatch, chill wind blasted through the cabin, throwing back his hair. He jumped out onto the ice-encrusted rocks around the rider, where the snow that melted during their landing had refrozen.

Within seconds the rider was airborne, leaving Balv alone in the freezing wind.

A burst of static from the com jolted Kelric awake. One glance at the controls told him the craft was losing altitude. As he brought up the nose, the radio crackled again, with a voice buried in the static.

A Skolian voice.

“… identify yourself. You are approach … Restricted zone off limits … identify …”

“I’m a Skolian citizen,” Kelric rasped. His fever had grown worse and he could barely talk. “Do you read? I’m an Imperialate citizen.”

“… off limits to all Coban … identify yourself.”

“Is anyone there?” he asked. “Anyone?”

The message continued to repeat.

The rider faltered, coughing and spluttering. A fast check showed what he had feared would result from his erratic flying; the fuel gauge read empty. He opened the wings of the craft and rode the wind like a hawk, but the desert still sped upward in a blur of red.

Kelric did his best to control the dive, trying to glide to the ground. At the last moment, he hunched over and covered his head with his arms. With a shriek of splintering metal, the rider hit the desert and plowed through the sand. The impact nearly tore him out of his seat despite the safety harness. The craft rolled over, wrenching him from side to side, and the crack of shattering glass blasted through the cabin.

With a final shudder, the rider rocked to a stop. Slow and cautious, Kelric raised his head. The windshield had broken and the cabin looked like a storm hit it. Equipment was thrown all over the deck, the two passenger seats had ripped loose—damn. His Jumbler lay smashed under a crumpled section of the hull. His Quis dice had scattered everywhere, most of them crushed.

Kelric untangled himself from his seat, moving stiffly, from both the injuries he took during the crash and the fever raging in his body. He limped across the cabin, picking his way through the debris. The rider rocked, then listed to one side, leaving the deck at a slant that sent him sliding into the hatch.

The buckled door came loose under his shove and fell out onto the desert. Scorching wind poured into the cabin, accompanied by a rain of sand that insinuated itself everywhere. Raising his arm to protect his eyes, he climbed out into the heat.

Golden desert stretched everywhere under the long rays of the afternoon sun. Nothing but sand, sand, sand, and the towers that reached into a pale blue sky—

Towers?

Kelric squinted in the heat shimmer of the air.

He had reached the starport.

Lift one foot. Put it down. Again and again and again …

The impact of his body against sand jarred Kelric out of his daze. He rolled onto his back and stared at the twilit sky. The stars dazzled. It didn’t matter that Coba had no moon. She had enough stars to light a hundred nights.

“Port,” he mumbled. He climbed back to his feet and resumed his trudge.

Deceptive sands. He had forgotten how a desert could lie. The towers taunted him all day with their distance, coming closer with maddening slowness. But he had almost arrived. He could make out the ISC insignia on the tallest structure. Even in a fully automated port, regulations required at least one shuttle be available for transport.

Fevered thoughts darted through his mind. When he reached HQ, he had to report on Coba. The military would take a long look at the Twelve Estates. Coba obviously claimed rich resources, both in material terms and the harder-to-quantify value of human mind and culture. Had the Cobans been more accommodating in their first contact with ISC, their world might have earned Imperial citizenship. Now he had no idea what would happen. ISC would see their unpredictable behavior as a potential threat.

And Deha? Imperial law recognized marriages on any planet under ISC jurisdiction, including Restricted worlds. Dissolving his union with Deha would require legal action, and if he revealed the circumstances of its formation she would come up on criminal charges. Given his titled position within the Imperialate, she faced serious trouble. He didn’t want her destroyed. Hell, if he were honest with himself, he didn’t want to dissolve the marriage.

He would approach his report with caution, stressing how these people saved his life. He just hoped he didn’t ruin things with his damned inarticulate speech. He could end up destroying the Cobans because he was too clumsy with words to choose ones that would ward off the wrath of ISC and his family.

When this fever cools, you’ll think more clearly, he told himself.

Except—what if he got into space and the fever grew worse? Any shuttle in an automated backwaters port like this would be bottom-of-the-line, with minimal medical facilities. The fever was devastating his body, raging faster than his crippled nanomeds could fight it. If he couldn’t cool down, the shuttle would deliver a corpse to ISC. Then what would happen to Coba?

The growl of an automated crane lifting freight interrupted his thoughts. He was close enough now to see it moving within the port.

Another rumble came from—where? Behind him?

An aircraft engine?

Kelric spun around and stared at the sky. Stark against a crimson sunset, the black silhouette of a rider was growing in size.

“No!” he shouted. “Not now.”

Combat mode toggled, Bolt thought.

Whirling around, Kelric ran for the starport with enhanced speed.

Alert! Bolt thought. Stop running. Your femur, tibia, and fibula hydraulics are malfunctioning. You sciatic fiberoptic thread has a 48 percent loss of efficiency and your auriculotemporal thread just misfired. Estimat&*-3##

The growl behind Kelric swelled into a roar. Then a shadow passed over his head. He shouted a protest, his voice lost in a thunder of engines as a rider skimmed along the ground in front of him. Even before it rolled to a full stop, its hatch burst open and the guards of his Calanya escort jumped out, including Balv.

Kelric tried to veer away. Bolt should have analyzed the terrain, his reflex libraries should have guided his feet, and his hydraulics should have supported the abrupt change of direction. Somewhere the system failed. He tripped and fell forward, slamming into the sand.

As Kelric struggled to his knees in the evening’s fading light, he saw the guards running toward him.

Kyle magnification activated, Bolt thought.

Deactivate! Kelric thought.

Preparing attack.

No! He shouted the thought. You can’t use my brain as a weapon! STOP!

Kelric had pushed his injured systems too far one too many times. The safety protocols failed and an attack exploded out from his Kyle centers, amplified so far beyond what his brain could tolerate that Bolt quit trying to calculate the damage and just flashed red warnings all over a disintegrating display of stats in his mind. Uncontrolled, the attack slammed into the escort with a force only a member of the Rhon could summon.

Kelric tried to stop the onslaught, cut it off, swamp it out, anything to end the nightmare. His damaged systems refused to respond. The signal held true, unrelenting, dragging him further into his mental link with the escort, until their identities merged.

He was Hacha, level after level of personality, each peeling back like a skin: strength, traditionalism, pride in her work, love for her husband and child. Rev’s mind was a complex of dice patterns, shifting, unceasing. He lived Quis, thought Quis, dreamt Quis … Balv thought of flying, of his family, of his job. Impressions of Llaach lanced though the barrage; newest member of the escort, least confident. Deeper down he found her love of her husband: Jevi, Calani.

Like a runaway web virus, Kelric’s amplified signals ate away at their minds. Llaach buckled first, her neurotransmitters going wild, attacking her own brain cells. As she died, Kelric screamed, dying with her, experiencing every instant of it, unable to break the link that bound the five of them together.

And when the other three guards began to die, Kelric finally, in desperation, broke the link by breaking his own mind.

8

THE SQUARE

“The Tribunal of Dahl,” Chankah said, “is now convened.”

She stood in the Hall of Voices, a large room paneled in wood, filled with a sense of antiquity. The polished table in front of her reflected light from the amber-glass lamps overhead. At her back, a rail set off a gallery filled with benches. Empty benches. They had closed this Tribunal to the public.

The Estate aide Corb stood at her side, adjusting his spectacles. About five paces in front of them, the judges were taking their seats at their high bench, behind its gleaming expanse of darkwood. Their robes rustled as they settled into their chairs. For this case there were six judges instead of the usual three: two on defense, two on prosecution, and two neutral, including the Elder Judge.

The Elder regarded Chankah. “Successor Dahl, do you agree to act as Estate Manager until Deha Dahl can once again assume her duties?”

“Yes,” Chankah said. No, she thought. Not this way. But no choice existed. Deha lay near death in the aftermath of a massive heart attack brought on by whatever had happened three days ago, out there in the desert.

One fact remained clear: Llaach had died. Although the Tribunal intended to focus on her death, the ramifications of any decisions made here would go much further. The future of the Twelve Estates was at stake.

“We shall begin,” the Elder said. She waited until Chankah and Corb sat at the tables in front of them, facing the judges’ bench, then said, “Bring in the Tribunal party.”

An Estate aide pulled back the bolts in a door to the left of the bench and leaned her weight into it. With the creak of old wood, the portal swung open.

The Voice entered first, a tall man in a violet robe, his silvered hair swept back from his face. The witnesses came next: guards from the city, airfield personnel, the doctors Rohka and Dabbiv, family and kin of the victims, and Captain Hacha. The captain still looked pale, but she walked with a steady gait.

They brought Kelric last.

Dressed in a black prison uniform, he entered surrounded by an octet of guards. A chain four handspans long joined the iron manacles that fastened around his wrists above the gold of his Calanya guards. Watching him, Chankah mourned. So much was lost, both for Dahl and for Kelric, all because he had the misfortune to crash on a world whose people both coveted and feared him.

The Voice crossed to a table on Chankah’s right and the aide directed the witnesses to the gallery. The Square of Decision stood to the left of the judges’ bench, a chair surrounded by a wooden rail. The guards seated Kelric in the chair and took up posts around the rail.

The Elder spoke. “Before we begin, do any here have petitions that concern this Tribunal?”

The large number of people who approached the gallery rail worried Chankah. How could so many come forward when so few citizens knew what happened? She had kept the incident quiet, backed in her decision by the Ministry. If knowledge spread about Kelric’s identity, it could start a panic. News of Llaach’s death leaked into the Quis, but most people believed she died apprehending a Dahl citizen who had stolen a windrider. Only a select few knew the truth: city elders, top officials, and Deha’s kin.

Four people stood in the first group of petitioners: two women and two men. “Please identify yourselves,” the Elder said.

“I am Yeva,” the first woman answered. “Two decades ago, before Deha Dahl became Manager, she worked in the Children’s Cooperative. During that time she was my primary guardian.”

“I am Tabbol,” the first man said. “Manager Dahl was my guardian in the Cooperative.”

“I am Sabhia,” the second woman said. “Manager Dahl was also my guardian.”

The younger man spoke last. He watched the judges with familiar eyes, huge and black, like dark pools. “I am Jaymson. Deha Dahl is my mother.”

Chankah stared at him. She hadn’t realized how much time had passed since she last saw Jaymi. He wasn’t “Jaymi” anymore. Deha’s son, her only biological child, had grown into a man.

“What is your petition?” the Elder asked.

Yeva read from a parchment she held. “If Manager Dahl dies as a result of her heart seizure, Sevtar Dahl should be tried for her murder as well as that of Llaach Dahl.”

Chankah almost swore. Did they realize what they asked? Whether they acknowledged it or not, Kelric was their stepfather. They saw in him only the conqueror incarnate, a nightmare come to life. They had no idea what they had lost. They would never have the chance to know Kelric now or how his strength of character and incredible dice could have enriched their lives.

“Your charge is severe,” the Elder said. “On what grounds do you bring it?”

“On the grounds,” Yeva said, “that Manager Dahl’s condition is a direct result of the accused’s actions.”

The Elder considered her. “This is not a murder trial. We are met to determine what transpired in the desert, why Llaach Dahl died, and what our response should be.” She paused. “Given the far-reaching ramifications of any decisions we make here, your petition will require a private conference by the Bench.”

“I understand,” Yeva said. “We await your decision.” She gave her document to the Tribunal aide and withdrew with her group.

Chankah recognized the second petitioner: Avahna Dahl, Speaker for the Calanya. The painful duty of telling Llaach’s husband Jevi that his wife had died had fallen to Chankah. When he requested to see the Speaker, she thought he wanted to send a message to Llaach’s kin. Avahna’s presence here came as an unwelcome surprise.

The aide Corb spoke in a low voice. “Will you allow this? What if Jevi demands Sevtar’s life for Llaach?”

“It’s his right to petition.” Chankah exhaled. “Just pray we don’t have to intervene.”

Avahna said, “I speak for the Calani Jevi.”

“What is his request?” the Elder asked.

“He asks,” Avahna said, “that if the Bench acquits the accused, then Sevtar never be allowed to live in the Dahl Calanya. Should this be unacceptable, Jevi asks permission to leave Dahl for the Calanya of another Estate.”

Sympathy gentled the Elder’s face. When she glanced toward the table, Chankah nodded, relieved.

The Elder spoke to Avahna. “You may tell Jevi his petition is granted.”

Avahna bowed. “Thank you, your Honor.”

The final petitioner was a woman with coppery curls spilling down her back. She wore the blue jumpsuit of a guardian from the Children’s Cooperative and looked ill at ease in the severity of the court.

The woman took a breath. “I am Chala Dahl. I represent the Elders of the Dahl residences: the Women’s House, the Men’s House, the Couples’ Houses, the Parents’ House, and Children’s Cooperative.” She shuffled her papers self-consciously, then read from one. “Although we abhor the nature of the events that led to this Tribunal, we feel compelled to make this statement: the Twelve Estates have seen no executions for centuries. If Sevtar Dahl is given such a sentence, it will set us back to an age when violence controlled our lives and culture. For this reason we exhort you to refrain from any such ruling.”

Yeva jumped to her feet. “I object to this girl’s claim—”

“You are out of order,” the Elder judge said.

“Your Honor, I apologize,” Yeva said. “But this girl claims to represent all Houses of the city when in fact she speaks only the naive opinions of a few people.”

Chankah stood up, and the petitioners fell silent. She considered Yeva. “Do you claim to represent the Houses of Dahl?”

“Successor Dahl.” Yeva bowed. “I state only this: the severity of the crimes brought before this Bench require measures of equal severity when dealing with the perpetrator.”

Perpetrator. She spoke as if his guilt were decided. The hearing hadn’t even begun and already they had convicted Kelric. It undermined the foundation of a Tribunal, that the person who sat in the Square of Decision should receive a fair hearing. They needed to cool off the courtroom. Chankah turned to the Elder and the judge nodded, understanding her unspoken message.

The Elder regarded Yeva. “If you wish to present a statement, you may do so in the morning session tomorrow.” She turned to Chala. “We will take your petition into consideration.”

Chala and Yeva nodded. After everyone took their seats, the Elder picked up a mallet and knocked it against a small gong on the bench. “This Tribunal is now in session.” She turned to the Voice. “Evid Dahl, step forward.”

Evid went to stand before the Bench.

“Do you swear to remain impartial when you question the witnesses?” the Elder asked.

“I swear,” Evid said.

“Please call your first witness.”

Testimony of officers from the CityGuard filled the morning, and after Midday recess the airfield personnel were questioned. They laid out a list of Kelric’s actions; fights, threats, assaults, abductions—it all formed a violent picture incongruous with the quiet man who sat in the Square of Decision.

Yeva stood bathed in the rays of the morning sunlight that poured through the high windows in the gallery. “And so the matter before this Tribunal,” she finished, “has no precedent in modern history. As such, it requires unprecedented justice. Yesterday it was claimed we regress to barbarism if we deal with the accused as he dealt with us. I answer with this: if his crimes go unpunished what message will that send? That a person may murder without censure?”

Mutters rumbled among the witnesses. The Elder waited until the noise quieted and then spoke. “No one would deny we must avoid such a message. However, we remind you that Sevtar Dahl has been convicted of nothing.”

“I understand, your Honor.” But as Yeva returned to her seat, others nodded their support to her.

The Elder turned to Evid. “Summon your next witness.”

“I call Dabbiv Dahl,” Evid said.

Dabbiv went to stand before the Bench. The Elder said, “The Tribunal oath requires you tell the facts with truth. Do you swear to do so?”

“Yes,” Dabbiv said.

“Be seated then.”

The Square of Witness, to the left of the Bench, looked much like the chair where Kelric sat. However, no guards stood around its rail. Kelric watched Dabbiv sit in silence, his face shadowed, his gaze filled with what looked to Chankah like grief and shock.

After Dabbiv was seated, Evid said, “Doctor, in what capacity do you know Sevtar Dahl?”

“I was his physician,” Dabbiv said.

“Was? You no longer are?”

“Manager Dahl took me off his case.”

“Why?”

Dabbiv hesitated. “We disagreed about his treatment.”

“Disagreed how?”

“She wanted me to give him drugs that made him sick.”

Evid raised his eyebrows. “Manager Dahl wished to poison her Akasi?”

Dabbiv flushed. “Of course not. The drug was a sedative, a powerful one, but safe with proper supervision. Safe for a Coban, that is. Kelric, I mean Sevtar, isn’t a Coban.”

A prosecution judge beckoned to Evid. He talked with her, then turned back to Dabbiv. “When was the last time you gave Sevtar the drug in question?”

“The day of his Oath ceremony,” Dabbiv said.

“After which he escaped from a locked room at the top of a tower, knocked out all of his guards, shot Manager Dahl, wrecked the airfield, kidnapped a pilot, and flew to the starport?”

Dabbiv reddened. “Yes.”

“Since these events, do you believe the drug had any effect on him at all?”

“I don’t know how he managed to nullify it, but it was poisoning him.”

A neutral judge bent to Evid. He listened, then spoke to Dabbiv. “Could a side effect of this drug be to induce psychosis?”

“It made him physically ill,” Dabbiv said. “Not mentally.”

“But is it possible?”

“I don’t know.”

“Could his adverse reactions, both to food and medicine, be psychological in origin?”

Dabbiv frowned. “I doubt it.”

“Then tell me this.” Evid leaned forward. “Can a change in eye or skin pigmentation dramatically alter the way a person reacts to sedation?”

“I don’t know. It seems unlikely.”

“Yet,” Evid pounced, “the only difference between Sevtar and you or me is his coloring. Why then should a substance that we find harmless poison him?”

“He only looks like us.” Dabbiv thumped his fist on the chair. “How do I make you people see? This man isn’t from another Estate. He’s from another world.”

“Young man,” the Elder said. “Control yourself.”

Dabbiv scowled at her.

A prosecution judge beckoned to Evid. The Voice listened, then turned back to Dabbiv. “Are you still a member of the Estate staff?”

Dabbiv stiffened. “No.”

“What is your position?”

“I’m the medic for a city maintenance crew.”

“Manager Dahl dismissed you from the Estate?”

Dabbiv spoke tightly. “Yes.”

“I see.” Evid glanced at the judges for confirmation, then said, “We have no further questions, Doctor.”

Chankah frowned. The more she heard, the less impartial Evid sounded. She rose to her feet. When the Elder nodded to her, Chankah said, “It should be made clear in transcript that Manager Dahl fully intends to recall Dabbiv in his position as one of her physicians.”

“Very well.” The Elder glanced at the Scribe. He sat to the right in front of the Bench at a Quis table, a stand with round top on a fluted pedestal. The Scribe dipped his quill in ink and turned Chankah’s words into hieroglyphs on his parchment.

Senior Physician Rohka sat as the next witness.

“His reaction was severe,” Rohka said when questioned about Kelric’s bout of Kevtar’s disease. “The night they brought him back here, his fever had gone so high we had to pack him in ice. Without treatment, he would have died.”

“Do you know what caused it?” Evid asked.

“He probably lacks immunities we’re born with.”

“Can’t emotional stress make some people sick?”

Rohka considered the thought. “It’s possible.”

“Could that have led him to attack the escort?”

“It would take more than stress to explain how he killed Llaach Dahl.” The doctor blanched. “The blood vessels in her brain ruptured.”

A murmur rumbled through the petitioners and witnesses. Evid waited until it quieted, then said, “We have no more questions, Doctor.”

After Rohka left the chair, Evid bowed to Chankah. “I now call the acting Estate Manager of Dahl.”

So, Chankah thought. Tribunals almost never required a Manager or her successor to sit as a witness. But then, this was no normal Tribunal.

After Chankah took her seat, Evid said, “Successor Dahl, please describe the events that led to your discovery of the escort in the desert.”

“I was with the two riders that found Balv,” Chankah said. “After he took over as pilot for the second craft, it outdistanced the one in which Manager Dahl and I rode. We found it that night near the starport.”

“And the escort?” Evid asked.

Even though Chankah had known Evid would call her, and she had prepared herself to speak, the painful words still came with difficulty. “Their bodies were on the ground nearby.”

“What was Sevtar doing?”

“Kneeling in the sand.”

“That’s all?”

“He couldn’t do much else. He was catatonic.”

Evid frowned. “Then what caused Manager Dahl’s heart seizure?”

“It happened when she realized Llaach had died. She knelt next to the body.” Chankah steadied herself against the memory. “She said, ‘No, I’m not ready,’ and collapsed.”

“Ready? For what?”

“I think she realized she was having a heart attack.” Chankah spoke quietly. “She meant she wasn’t ready to die.”

“How did Sevtar react?” Evid asked.

“He tried to go to her. But he could hardly move.”

Evid considered her. “Successor Dahl, your statement indicates that besides Manager Dahl and the escort, only Ixpar Karn knew Sevtar well. Since Minister Karn refuses to let her successor testi—”

“Her what?” Kelric’s interruption vibrated in the air.

Silence followed his words. The Elder looked down at Chankah, her face flushed. “Perhaps you should…?”

The request startled Chankah as much as Kelric’s outburst. By law, no witness could intervene with any person in the Square of Decision. Then she understood; as acting Estate Manager only she could speak to a Calani.

Chankah hurried over to Kelric. “Please. You mustn’t disrupt the testimony.”

He clenched the rail in front of him. “Ixpar is the Minister’s heir?”

“Essentially. She is the successor to the Ministry.”

“Why isn’t she here to testify? She could make a lot of difference.”

“Sevtar, please. Now isn’t—”

“My name is Kelric.”

“Outbursts like this only hurt your case.”

He regarded her with the look of a man who expected to die. “What case? They’ve already convicted me.”

Chankah let out a breath and nodded to him. She went to the Bench and spoke in a low voice to the Elder. “We need a recess.”

Corb sat on a bench that circled an alcove behind the Tribunal room, watching Chankah pace across the small room. Sunlight slanted through the arched window and reflected off his spectacles.

“Kelric is right,” Chankah said. “They’ve already decided his guilt. Evid hardly sounds any more objective than the petitioners who want an execution.”

“They’re afraid,” Corb said.

“That doesn’t excuse the charade going on in there.” Chankah stopped in front of him. “Ixpar Karn should be here. Her testimony is important.”

“I don’t see how the Minister can refuse our summons.”

Chankah grimaced. “She’s the Minister, that’s how.”

He adjusted his spectacles. “You should talk with Elder Dahl.”

“Good idea. Check with her aides. See if we can meet before the Tribunal reconvenes.” She went to the window, watching the hawks drift in lazy circles above the city. “Tell me, have you ever seen an althawk?”

“Well, yes. Of course. A lot of them nest in the peaks above Dahl Pass.”

“Not the common hawks. I mean the giants. The beasts our ancestors rode through the skies.”

“How could I? They’re extinct.”

She turned to him. “Legends say a hawk chose one warrior and one warrior only whose touch he would tolerate. He killed anyone else who tried to catch him.”

Corb studied her face. “Why bring this up now?”

“Because the giant hawks aren’t extinct. One came down from the stars.” She gazed out the window again at the soaring hawks above the city. “We caged him with an oath and pinioned him in gold. Now we’re so terrified of what we’ve done, we’re afraid to let him live.”

The Elder lifted her robe off the chair in her chambers where she had draped it during the recess. “To say your suggestion is unusual, Chankah, is an understatement.”

“Who else will speak in Sevtar’s defense?” Chankah asked. “Only Successor Karn, and the Minister forbids it.”

“Dabbiv spoke for him.”

“And Evid did his best to make Dabbiv look like a fool.” Chankah scowled. “We have only prosecutors in this hearing. No defense.”

The Elder settled the robe on her shoulders. “Perhaps because the act has no defense.”

Chankah wondered what had happened to the Elder’s vaunted neutrality. “Or because we wish to see none.”

“Letting Sevtar take the Witness Chair violates his Oath.”

“As acting Estate Manager I can allow it.”

A tap sounded on the door. “Elder Dahl?” a girl called. “The other judges are ready to enter court.”

“All right.” The Elder regarded Chankah. “I must think more on your suggestion.”

They left then for the gallery. When the Tribunal reconvened, Evid summoned Hacha. Watching the captain take her seat, Chankah felt as if a new weight settled onto her shoulders. Hacha’s word carried authority in Dahl—and from the beginning she had despised Kelric. Her testimony would destroy him.

Evid spoke. “Captain, you were the only witness to Llaach Dahl’s death. Can you describe what happened?”

“Sevtar affected our minds,” Hacha said.

“He had a weapon that worked on your brain?”

“No. He did it himself.”

“He attacked you physically?”

“No. He didn’t move.”

“Then how did he kill Officer Dahl?”

“I’m not sure,” Hacha said. “It was an accident.”

Evid frowned. “You mean the deceased ‘accidentally’ burst every blood vessel in her brain?”

“No,” Hacha said. “I mean Sevtar never intended to hurt us.”

“Then why is Officer Llaach dead?” Evid demanded.

“He only meant to knock us out,” Hacha said. “But he couldn’t break his link with our minds. So he broke what created it. He burnt out his brain.”

“Ah.” Evid relaxed. “I see.” He almost smiled. “You believe he used—what is the word? Telepathy?”

Hacha didn’t flinch at his dismissive tone. “I don’t know what he used.”

“Llaach Dahl suffered massive brain hemorrhages,” Evid said. “Isn’t it possible the accused’s weapon affected your brain as well, making you think this mental force existed?”

“He didn’t have any weapons.”

“Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say he had no weapons you recognized?”

The captain snorted. “Is that any less absurd? An invisible gun that explodes blood vessels in the brain?”

Evid leaned forward. “No more absurd than a gun that does nothing until fired by the accused, at which time it tears holes in airfields and disintegrates hangars.”

She showed no hint of backing down. “He didn’t shoot us.”

Evid studied her. “The fact that he let you live must make you grateful.”

“I defend him,” Hacha said, “because he didn’t commit murder.”

“No?” Evid demanded. “A member of our CityGuard—an officer in your command—is dead.”

Hacha leaned forward. “All four of us would be dead if he hadn’t sacrificed himself to save our lives.”

Evid’s voice grew louder. “Murder is no sacrifice.”

“Llaach’s death was an accident.”

“How can you defend a murderer?” someone yelled.

Hacha raised her voice. “I’ll mourn Llaach for the rest of my life. She meant more to me than just a guard in my command. We’d been friends for years. But killing Sevtar won’t make her live again.” She turned to the Bench. “If you execute him, it’s you who are the murderers.”

One of the judges flushed. “You dare make such an accusation?”

“Winds above,” Chankah muttered. Voices rumbled in the gallery, growing louder. Several witnesses stood up, staring at Kelric with a hostility bred by fear. Watching him pull at his manacles, Chankah’s mind formed the ugly image of a mob attacking a man trapped in chains.

She strode to the Bench. “Stop the Tribunal. Now.”

Rising to her full height, the Elder banged her mallet on the gong. A sonorous note pealed out above the din.

“This is Tribunal,” the Elder boomed. “Not a contest of lung power.” When the room quieted, she said, “We are in recess until tomorrow morning. If an outbreak like this occurs again we will close these proceedings completely.”

“So it is our decision,” the Elder finished, “that Sevtar be allowed to make any statement he wishes. Anyone who interrupts him will be expelled from this courtroom.”

Chankah looked out over the gallery. The watchers sat in silence, perhaps subdued by the capacity for violence they had discovered in themselves the previous day.

Kelric walked to the witness Chair with his arms in front of his body, his wrists still joined by the chain. As he sat in the chair, he pushed a curl of hair away from his eyes. His sleeve slipped, revealing both his Calanya guards and the manacles, cold iron paired with gold. Murmurs of dismay came from the witnesses.

Is this how Dahl will become known? Chankah brooded. The Estate that put a Calani in chains?

Kelric took a deep breath. “I come before you with—with great regret.”

His voice came out deep and husky, with a lilting accent. From a normal man such a voice would have captivated. From a Calani, it devastated. Hearing him, Chankah could believe the legend of the warrior who, after coaxing only one word from her queen’s Akasi, became so enamored of him that she committed suicide because he was unattainable.

After his first words, Kelric froze. The Elder waited, then motioned for Dahl’s acting Estate Manager.

Chankah hurried to the Chair. “Kelric, what’s wrong?”

His voice shook. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

“Why not?”

“Speaking in public—I could never do it well. I’m a soldier, not an orator. And now I’m—I’ve a neurological problem. The electrodes in my brain. They’re damaged.”

“I understand electrode,” she said. “But how could you fit something so big in your brain?”

“They’re small. You can’t see them with the unaided eye.”

Chankah wondered at the marvels his people had achieved. But at what price? “You’re talking to me.”

He twisted the chain that joined his manacles. “Public speaking—it makes my tension jump. I can’t—it’s triggering something in my brain that affects the electrodes. They make my neurons misfire. Then I stutter. Or lose my thoughts.”

Although Chankah knew his reaction had no connection to his oath of silence, the instincts it evoked in her went deeper than logic. Every time he stumbled with his speech, it was as if he struggled against breaking his Calanya Oath. It made her want to protect him, care for him, assure him everything would be all right.

It was, in fact, a markedly effective defense.

“Going ahead with this could help you,” she said.

He rubbed his palms on his knees. “I’ll try.”

After she returned to her table, Kelric said, “Manager Dahl and her guards—they saved my life when they rescued me from—from my crashed ship. I have much gratitude for that. I never wanted—I never meant to hurt Llaach. If I could change it—undo it—if only …”

If only, Chankah thought. So many “if onlys.”

Kelric glanced at the petitioners who wanted his death. “Deha is my wife. I would never—how could you believe I would try to kill her?”

Spots of red touched Jaymson’s cheeks and even Yeva looked subdued.

Kelric took a breath. “My mind has injuries. I’ve described it to—to your doctors. It is real. I needed—need even more now—I have to get treatment. And I—the food here. The water. It’s all like poison. I can barely even eat.”

He pushed back his curls, looking like a Calani out of an Old Age legend. “In the desert—the link Captain Hacha described—it was real. I—I malfunctioned. I became the escort.” His face paled. “When Llaach died—I died with her. I couldn’t make it stop.” His voice cracked. “For the rest of my life I’ll live with the memory of that death.”

Then the only sound came from the scratch of the Scribe’s quill.

Chankah wondered if the others realized the full impact of his words. His own mind had imposed a sentence on him worse than any a court could issue. He would live with Llaach’s memories of her own death, and his part in her passing, until the day he died.

When it became clear Kelric had no more to say, the Elder spoke. “This Tribunal is now in recess until the Bench reaches its decision.”

A clang of metal woke Kelric. He lifted his head from the cot and peered into the darkness. A glow lit the end of the hall outside his cell. It came closer, resolving into a guard who carried a lamp. Captain Hacha walked with her.

When they reached the cell, the guard peered through the bars. “I think he’s asleep, Cap’n.”

Kelric sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the cot. The guard blinked at him, then turned to Hacha. “If anyone finds out I let you in here I’ll be in more trouble than a fly in a vat of hot wax.”

“I won’t stay long,” Hacha said.

The guard muttered under her breath. She opened the door, however, and withdrew down the hall, leaving Hacha alone with Kelric.

The captain came into the cell. “Rev and Balv ask that I give you a message.”

“Yes?” Kelric asked.

“They thank you for their lives.” Quietly she added, “As I do for mine.”

He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but this wasn’t it. “Are they all right?”

“Yes. They’re both out of the Med House now.” She sat on the other end of the cot. “Kelric, I don’t understand you. I doubt I ever will. But I know what happened out there. Nothing except the four of us could have stopped you from reaching the starport. To escape Coba, you had only to let us die.”

The same thought had played in his mind over and over, with the same answer every time. “In the past, I’ve wondered how I would respond if I ever faced such a choice. I always assumed I would save myself.” With an edge of bitterness, he added, “I was wrong. Now I’m going to die for it.”

She spoke with an unexpected respect. “My people have a phrase. Chabiat k’in. It comes from an ancient language, older even than the Old Script of our ancestors. The literal translation is ‘the day is guarded, watched over.’ But it is more than that. The ancients used it to mean the life a warrior gives by offering her own to save others.” Lamplight flickered on her face. “That is between us now.”

The guard appeared in the doorway. “We’ve done with changing shifts, Cap’n. You got to leave or I’m in trouble.”

Hacha stood and spoke to Kelric in a low voice. “I won’t forget.”

Then she left and the door clanged shut.

Fatigue creased the Elder’s face as she stood, looking out at the courtroom. “We are met today to issue a decision in the case of Sevtar Dahl.”

Chankah sat with Corb, her hands clenched in her lap. A tense silence filled the hall.

The Elder continued. “It is true that Sevtar’s actions led to Manager Dahl’s injuries. However, he is responsible for neither her heart condition nor her decisions. We thus bring no charges against him for any calamity that results from that illness.”

“No!” Yeva Dahl stood up. Two guards standing by the wall started toward her. She looked from one to the other, her face flushed. Then she sat down.

The Elder waited until the murmurs among the witnesses quieted and the guards returned to their posts and then continued. “We may never fully understand Sevtar’s abilities. We lack the knowledge to determine if he misused them. For our decision in the matter of Llaach’s death, we must rely on the testimony we have heard about his character, and our judgment of his own statement.”

When the Elder paused, Chankah could almost feel every person in the room leaning forward to hear her words.

“It is our conclusion,” the Elder said, “that the accused did not intend to kill Llaach Dahl. We therefore rule her death as accidental manslaughter.”

So, Chankah thought. The penalty for manslaughter varied, but the maximum sentence was a lengthy prison term. It surprised her how relieved she felt to know he would live.

“In deciding sentence,” the Elder continued, “we face an unprecedented situation. If Sevtar ever escapes—no, if Kelricson Garlin Valdoria, third heir to the military rule of Imperial Skolia ever escapes, all Coba will suffer the consequences.” She spoke in a strained voice. “We have no wish to pass sentence on a Calani. Nor do we desire to revive punitive measures unused for centuries. And it is clear the accused is a man of good character.” She sounded as if she struggled under a great weight. “Against our desire for leniency we must weigh the safety of our world.”

Her final words fell into the air. “The Dahl Bench therefore sentences Sevtar Dahl to execution by honed discus, to be carried out on Halften, at Night’s First Hour.”

9

QUEEN’S ARCH

Ixpar walked along the sunhall, soaking in the light that shone through its many windows. An arched door swung open farther down the hall, making a pleasing shape. It closed, leaving Jahlt Karn behind the hall.

“Ixpar.” The Minister waited for her. “I was looking for you.”

She came up to Jahlt. “I just finished my physics tutorial.”

“Good.” The Minister walked with her. “Avtac Varz is coming to visit.”

Ixpar thought of the Varz Manager; a steel-gray woman who knew her power and pitted it against Karn often. “Why?”

“A good question. If you ask Avtac, she will say she comes to discuss mining rights on the Miesa Plateau.” Jahlt snorted. “Her true reason is to make trouble. As usual.”

Ixpar almost smiled, wondering if the Varz Manager said the same to her staff when Jahlt visited Varz. “Is she bringing her successor?”

“Yes, Stahna comes. Manager Varz has suggested you and Stahna exchange Quis.”

“They know I’ve never played Council Quis before.”

“They also know Stahna has twice your age and experience.” Jahlt paused. “There will be no loss of honor if you decline.”

Back down to Varz? Never. “I’ll play.”

Jahlt gave her a look of approval. “Avtac has no idea of your gift with the Quis. You will dice spirals around Stahna.”

Ixpar didn’t know about that, but she intended to spend all her free time in preparation. “Tev will be impressed.”

“Tev?”

“He’s in my mathematics tutorial.”

“Ah. He.” Jahlt smiled. “Tell me about him.”

Ixpar warmed to the subject. “He’s beautiful. His eyes are brown. Like hazel eyes. They almost look gold when the light hits them right.”

Jahlt’s smile vanished. “I thought you left that behind.”

“Left what behind?”

“The Skolian.”

Ixpar stiffened, and silence accompanied them for the rest of their walk.

An Estate aide was waiting in the antechamber at the end of the sunhall. She bowed to the Minister. “A construction forewoman is here to see you, ma’am. Something about a contract for her crew.”

“Ah, yes.” Jahlt turned to Ixpar. “The file on the Miesa mining treaties is in my desk. You should read it before Avtac arrives.”

Ixpar nodded and went on alone to Jahlt’s office, a large room filled with sunshine. Armchairs upholstered in fine old leather stood on the rugs, and bookshelves lined the walls. The top drawer of the desk contained a clutter of quills, two ink bottles, and a pendulum watch. The Miesa file lay tucked into a corner.

As Ixpar took the file, the door opened. She turned to see an aide enter the room.

The woman bowed. “Successor Karn.” She gave Ixpar a letter. “A rider delivered this at dawn. The pilot said it was urgent, to be opened by you only.”

Curious, Ixpar turned over the envelope. The gilt stamp of the Dahl suntree emblem gleamed in one corner. Who in Dahl would send her a secret communication? Kelric? The instant the aide left, Ixpar tore open the letter.

The message, however, came from Captain Hacha.

Jahlt opened the door of her office and found Ixpar staring at her from the center of the room. The girl held a crumpled paper clenched in her fist.

“It’s a lie,” Ixpar said.

Jahlt frowned. “What?”

“A lie.” Ixpar’s usually vibrant voice came out flat with fury.

“What are you talking about?”

“Have they killed him yet? Murdered him for the good of Coba?”

So. Ixpar knew. Whoever caused this trouble would regret it. “Who did you talk to?”

“No one. The Miesa file wasn’t in your desk so I looked for it. I found this.” Ixpar raised her fist with the paper. “Why didn’t you tell me about the Tribunal? I should have testified.”

Jahlt closed the door. “You must accept that Kelric is gone.”

“No! You can’t let them execute him. It’s wrong.”

Jahlt went over and pried the paper out of her fist. It was the letter Chankah had sent after the Tribunal. “Let those with the necessary experience decide his sentence.”

“I know him. Better than any of you.”

Jahlt laid a hand on her shoulder. “You see only what you want to see. The handsome prince in need of a protector. It isn’t reality. It doesn’t even come close.”

Ixpar shrugged off her hand. “What happened to your words about justice? How can I believe you when you don’t follow them yourself?”

Jahlt motioned to a dice table by the window. “Sit down.” She would engage Ixpar in a Quis session. The evolving structures would tell the story of the Imperialate, revealing far better than words what it would mean for Coba to become an occupied world.

They sat down and rolled out their dice. Jahlt set an orb in the center of the table. A gold orb, for Kelric. She watched Ixpar, waiting to see how the girl responded.

Jahlt knew Ixpar would try to convince her, through the dice, that they should let Kelric live. But Ixpar had never faced the full power of her mentor’s Quis. It was no coincidence Jahlt ruled Karn; no one could hold their own against the unmitigated force of her dice, especially not a child. She had hoped to spare the girl the blistering pressure of such a session. But Ixpar was coming of age and the time had come for her to learn the ways of power. She had lived her entire life in freedom and was too young to comprehend what it meant for conquerors to subjugate them. Caught in her infatuation with Kelric, she refused to see the danger.

The time had come for her successor to face reality. Ixpar would then understand why Kelric had to die.

Breathless from running, the aide leaned on the table in Chankah’s suite. “The message came from the air tower. The rider must have broken every known speed record.”

Chankah forgot the dinner she didn’t want to eat and left with the aide. They strode through the city in the falling dusk, and reached the airfield in time to see a windrider descend in a glare of lights, buffeted by angry winds. The craft bore the Karn symbol: a giant althawk with its wings spread in soaring flight.

As soon as the rider landed, the hatch swung open—and the Minister of Coba jumped out into the night.

Leaning against the wind, Chankah crossed the tarmac. She bowed to Jahlt. “You honor my Estate.”

Shadows hooded Jahlt’s face. “The execution. Is it done?”

“No. In an hour.”

The Minister said, “I want to see him.”

Kelric heard the prison door clang open. Boots sounded on stone in the hall. He stood up and gazed out the high window of his cell, at the stars that gleamed between the bars. Good-bye, he thought. He turned to face his executioners.

Chankah was striding down the hall with an octet of guards. An unfamiliar woman accompanied them, a tall and gaunt figure in black trousers and jacket.

After a guard unlocked the cell door, the gaunt woman turned to the others. “Leave us.”

Chankah said, “It’s not safe—”

“Go,” the woman told her. Under the force of her stare, they all retreated down the hall and out the door at its end, leaving her alone with Kelric.

“So.” She walked into his cell. “You are Prince Kelricson.”

It unsettled Kelric to hear his title in Coban. “Yes.”

“I am Minister Karn.”

Gods. Had they all come to see him die? “Is Ixpar with you?”

“Ixpar is not your concern.”

“If she came—I don’t want her to see the execution.”

“You have contaminated her mind enough. I have no intention of letting you do so further.”

“You came alone to witness it?”

“No.” Jahlt regarded him with night-black eyes. “I came alone to meet the man who so affected my successor that she convinced me to grant him a stay of execution.”

At first the words made no sense. He heard them but they meant nothing. Slowly they filtered into his mind and lodged there with a spark of hope. “A stay?”

“I have stopped the execution,” Jahlt said. “Your sentence is now a life term in the Haka prison.”

Part 2

HAKA

10

RUBY WEDGES

Set in motion by the wind, the desert rolled in from the horizon like an ocean of sand and broke in pale waves against the foothills of the Teotec Mountains. As the rider descended, Haka Estate materialized out of the sandstorm, spread out on the desert and climbing into the mountains. The landscape swirled in hues of gold, yellow, and red, as if a pale sunset had poured its colors into the sand. An ancient architect had carved the towers of Haka directly out of the cliffs, with windows that looked out like square eyes. When the rider glided past them, Kelric saw people staring at the rider.

He turned back to the cabin. His guards filled eight of the seats, but it wasn’t them he sought. Deha sat behind the pilot, with Chankah at her side. The Manager gazed out the window, her face pensive. Without privacy, he couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell her how much it meant to him to see her alive. He didn’t know if he even had words that could do justice to what he felt. Her ongoing recovery offered the only light in the darkness of his captivity.

The rider skimmed into the whirling sand and landed at an airfield. Deha disembarked first, followed by Chankah, both of them pulling their jacket hoods up against the blowing sand. The Dahl guards brought Kelric last.

An octet of Haka guards waited on the tarmac, eight giants in yellow uniforms and dusty boots, dark skinned and dark eyed, each with a tasseled scarf wrapped around her head to protect her face from the sand. In addition to the usual stunners, they also wore daggers sheathed on their belts with blades as long as a forearm.

As the Haka guards closed around Kelric, Deha walked to him. Although it was impossible to hear her in the keening wind, he understood the words her lips formed: Good-bye, my husband.

Kelric spoke softly. “Good-bye, my wife. Be well.”

The guards took him away then, into the sandstorm.

Surrounded by the octet, Kelric walked numbly, uncaring of the sand that scratched under his clothes, his armbands and his manacles. The Teotecs rose in huge steps, dominating land and sky. At their feet, lesser peaks alternated with stretches of desert like rocks on a treacherous shoreline. Wind whipped the sand into plumes that sprayed against the crags.

His escort took him to a small peak jutting up from the desert. A metal door in it opened into a tunnel with iron-gray walls. They followed the passage to a huge cavern partitioned into cubicles, with a ceiling so far above their heads it hid in shadow. They ended up in a cubicle where a woman who looked like a clerk waited at a podium.

“Sevtar Dahl?” the clerk asked.

“That’s right,” the guard captain said. She pulled down the tasseled scarf that had protected her face in the sandstorm. “He’s assigned to Compound Four.”

“Any valuables?” the clerk asked.

“Armbands,” the captain said. “Ankle and wrist guards too, but they’re welded on.”

“He’s a Calani?” The clerk gaped at Kelric, then remembered herself and spoke to the captain. “He better leave the armbands here.”

I can’t if I’m manacled, Kelric thought. He held up his wrists. A guard removed his chains, so he gave his armbands to the clerk. He would have preferred to keep them, as his only tangible memory of Deha, but he hadn’t expected them to let that happen.

The clerk gently set the Akasi bands on her podium. She pulled out a gray uniform then, offering it to them.

The captain took the uniform and turned to Kelric. “Take off your clothes.”

Seriously? He stood looking at the guards. They just looked back. Gritting his teeth, he undressed. The clerk and several guards averted their gaze, but the rest of the group watched. When he was done, he waited, sweat evaporating off his bare skin in the dry air.

The captain motioned to him. “Turn around and put your hands against the wall.”

Kelric stared at her. Why the hell did she need to do a search? When he balked, the guards dropped their hands to their daggers. So he turned to the wall, clenching his teeth, and put his palms against the stone.

The captain, a woman about his height, stood behind him and laid her hands on his shoulders. As she rubbed his skin with her fingertips, she murmured, “The gold really doesn’t come off.” She slid her hands down his back to his hips, speaking next to his ear in a low voice only he could overhear. “So this is how a Calani feels. What a waste, to put you in prison.”

Kelric said nothing, just stared at the wall in front of him. He didn’t like what it said about the prison administration, that a guard could take advantages this way with no apparent fear of reprisal. He tried to imagine himself elsewhere. Anywhere else.

The captain spent a long time with her search, as if she could actually find something on his bare skin. Finally she gave him the gray prison uniform and let him dress.

They led him through the cavern to a new tunnel. After various turns and twists, it exited into the sandstorm. A clearing surrounded by crags stretched before them. Several buildings stood in its center, partially obscured by blowing sand, and beyond them the mountains rose into the sky.

The guards took him to the fourth building. Inside, they followed a hall that ended at a massive portal. Opening it revealed a second portal. Only after they ushered him into the room between the doors and locked the first did they open the second. It reminded him of going through an old-fashioned airlock.

The second door opened onto a hall lined by wide archways, with drifts of sand piled against the walls. The captain led him to the third cell. “This is it. Home.”

With that, and not another word, the guards turned around and left. Kelric stared after them, then shook his head and turned back to his cell. Home? He walked through the archway into a sandstone room about ten paces wide. A blanket lay on a pallet by the far wall, and sunlight slanted past the bars of a skylight in the ceiling.

Kelric went back into the hall. The rooms near the airlock showed signs of occupation: a shirt on a pallet, a dice pouch in the sand, and a clay pot in a corner.

A large man with shoulder-length black curls and a thick beard appeared in the archway of a cell. “Got a bone for slithering snakes, heh, crooner?”

“What?” Kelric said.

“This one’s slow in the upper level, heh? And the hum says he’s Calani.” The man laughed. “Croon away, boy. Croon away.” He came forward until his nose was a handspan from Kelric’s face. “Your skin offends me.”

“That’s your problem,” Kelric said.

“Think you’re bigger than the wind, heh, boy?” The man snorted, deliberately turned his back, and walked away, back into his own cell.

Kelric blinked at the once again empty hallway. Even if he’d wanted to respond, he felt ready to drop from exhaustion. So he went to his cell and lay on the pallet.

After only a few minutes, Kelric slipped into a fitful doze. He woke at every sound, never fully asleep, but it was better than nothing.

Toward evening footsteps entered his cell. When his visitor crouched by the pallet, Kelric snapped open his eyes and grabbed the wrist of a hand coming down at his head. Above him, silhouetted against the skylight, he saw the angelic face of a teenage boy.

The boy tugged at his wrist. “Let go. I only came to see what you was.”

Kelric dropped his wrist and sat up. “Now you know.”

The boy shrank away from him. “You’re even bigger’n Zev.”

“Who is Zev?”

“Zev Shazorla. He was here when the beaks brought you in.” The boy made a face. “He’s the one got everyone calling me Little Crooner. Kicks me off mad as a scowlbug for them to say that, but seeing as they’re big and I’m not, that’s my name. It used to be Ched. Ched Lasa Viasa.”

It was the first triple name Kelric had heard. The boy must have been born in Lasa and later moved to Viasa. “Lasa is a Secondary Estate, isn’t it?”

“’Course it is.” Ched squinted in the dim light. “You look like metal.”

Kelric shrugged, tired of the comments on his coloring.

“You from Ahkah Estate?” Ched asked.

“Why would I be from Ahkah?”

“I heard they talk funny.”

“My accent is Skolian.”

“Sure.” Ched laughed. “And I’m Manager of Haka.” He settled by the pallet. “Where you from really?”

Kelric saw no point in arguing. “I was at Dahl.”

“Haka’s boss must be a happy clawcat tonight.”

“Why should my sentence make Manager Haka happy?”

“You slow in the upper level or what?”

Kelric scowled. “Let’s just say my upper level is empty. Fill it up.”

Ched leaned forward. “Haka is a happy clawcat because what brews Dahl brews Karn and what brews Karn strokes Haka pink.”

“For flaming sake.” Kelric wondered if anyone here spoke normal Teotecan.

“How long you here for?” Ched asked.

“Life.”

The boy’s smile vanished. The question What did you do? hung in the air. Then Ched’s mouth fell open. “Hey! Where’s your dice pouch?”

Crushed in a windrider crash, Kelric thought. He regretted losing Deha’s gift. “I don’t have one.”

“Everyone’s got one.” Ched seemed more disturbed by his lack of dice than his life sentence. “And you told Zev you was a Calani. A Calani with no Quis dice. What a croon.” He reached for Kelric’s arm. “I can prove you’re no Calani.”

In reflex, Kelric knocked away the boy’s hand. The motion pushed up his sleeve anyway and his Calanya guard gleamed in the murky light.

“You got wrist guards!” Ched said. “You steal ’em?”

“What would possess me to steal them?”

The boy peered at the gold. “Them’s old. Ancient. Must be worth half an Estate.” He looked up. “Got ’em on your ankles too?”

“Yes.”

“Real gold and old as Haka. You better sleep with your eyes open.”

“They’re welded on. You can’t get them off.”

Ched shrugged. “All the gold on Coba won’t do me no good in this place. But there’s crooners here crazy enough to cut off your hands and feet for those things.”

“Great,” Kelric muttered. “Just great.”

Deha Dahl realized as soon as she and the Haka Manager entered the dining room that her host had spared no effort to ensure her visitor received the finest treatment. They sat at a gleaming table, drank wine from crystal goblets, and dined on cream pheasant. A handsome youth stood ready to refresh their drinks. Deha also didn’t miss the intended message; Haka had more wealth, more power, and more prestige than Dahl.

Despite the excellent meal, Deha only picked at the food. She felt too drained to eat, particularly when faced with the vibrant beauty of the Manager across the table. Rashiva Haka was a desert goddess. She glowed with youth. Her hair glistened like black satin and her large eyes

slanted upward in a face as smooth as java-cream.

“Is the meal to your liking, Manager Dahl?” Rashiva asked.

“Excellent, Manager Haka,” Deha said.

“I’m glad we had this chance to relax.” Rashiva smiled. “Even Estate Managers need a rest sometimes.”

“So they do.” Deha remembered her first years as a Manager. “You will find, though, that the Managing becomes easier with time.”

Rashiva’s smile took on an edge. “I wasn’t aware I found it difficult.”

So much for polite conversation. Deha wished they had already finished this ordeal.

“Would you like to take our drinks in the Kejroom?” Rashiva asked. “The tapestries there may amuse you.”

Deha tried not to think about her doctors and their adamant warnings to avoid liqueur. If she refused the customary jai rum, Rashiva would suspect the weakness of her health. She smiled pleasantly. “Yes, let us retire for our drinks.”

Rashiva Haka, Manager of Haka Estate, felt like a misplayed dice cube. The Dahl Manager’s imposing presence made her acutely aware of her inexperience. As she ushered Deha into the Kejroom, she looked around at the tapestries on the walls, rich with scenes from the Old Age: warriors aloft on giant althawks, Calanya ceremonies, battle scenes. Rashiva wished she could soak up the ferocity of those ancient warriors to help her deal with Dahl’s formidable queen.

Deha walked about looking at the tapestries. “These are beautiful.”

“They were a gift from Kej Estate,” Rashiva said. “A Kej Manager gave them to Haka over a thousand years ago, when the two Estates joined forces during the Desert Wars.”

“Such detailed work.” Deha studied a hanging woven in gold, red, and blue thread. “It’s a pity Kej didn’t survive the Wars.”

Rashiva stiffened, wondering if Deha meant to belittle Haka’s alliance with the ancient Kej. To hide her reaction, she turned to an audiocom on the wall and flipped the switch. “Nida?”

Her aide’s voice floated into the air. “Here, ma’am.”

“Manager Dahl and I will take our jai in the Kejroom.”

“I’ll send someone up right away,” Nida said.

Deha smiled as Rashiva clicked off the com. “Shall we sit down?” The impeccable courtesy of her voice made her host seem inestimably rude to leave her standing.

“Most certainly,” Rashiva said. “Let us relax.”

So they sat facing off in armchairs, anything but relaxed, until a youth arrived with the liqueur. He poured two glasses of jai, then set the decanter on the table between them and withdrew from the room.

Deha picked up her glass. “Well.” She glanced at the Quis pouch on Rashiva’s belt. “Shall we roll a game of dice?”

Game? Rashiva thought. When two Managers sat at dice it was no game. Deha Dahl’s mastery over the Quis was infamous. She would wipe the floor with Haka’s young Manager.

“Perhaps another time,” Rashiva said.

Deha nodded. “Another time. When you are ready.”

When she was ready. The barb stung. Rashiva forced herself to relax. “How are the renovations going at Dahl?”

“Very well.” Deha settled in her chair. “If Minister Karn pardons Sevtar, I will reopen the Akasi suite.”

Rashiva nearly spluttered rum all over the table. Pardoned? Was Deha mad?

She hid her reaction, waiting a moment to regain her equilibrium. She spoke then in a mild voice that hinted at skepticism. “Why would he be pardoned?”

“He no more belongs in prison than I do.”

She wondered what Deha was up to. Jahlt Karn would never pardon Sevtar. Rashiva tried a discreet probe. “Prison does seem inappropriate for a Calani. A waste of his talent.”

“So it is.” Deha sipped her jai. “After all, he mastered Outsider Quis in only a season.”

Rashiva almost snorted. Did Deha think her a fool? “One rarely hears of such talent.”

“True. But then, such talent rarely exists.”

If ever. Yet Deha chose an odd boast to make. What advantage lay in such a claim? If she spoke the truth, Sevtar was a genius, and he now belonged to Haka. Why would Deha want her to know that?

Of course the “genius” was also a killer. Deha would be delighted if Haka rehabilitated Sevtar, taught him Haka Quis, and then sent him back to Dahl. No better way existed for one Manager to gain power over another than by obtaining a Calani versed in her Quis. The question was academic, though. Sevtar was as likely to get a pardon as the desert was to get up and walk away.

But … the documents specified only that he serve his sentence at Haka. They didn’t dictate where at Haka. No stipulation said he couldn’t go into the Calanya.

Rashiva considered the thought. To acquire a Calani from another Estate, a Manager normally paid a stratospheric price for his contract. But suppose she agreed to take Sevtar into her Calanya and teach him Quis for as long as he was in prison? She would pay nothing for his Dahl contract. Of course, if he ever did win that pardon, he would return to Dahl without Deha having to pay for his Haka contract. Considering the nonexistent chance of a pardon, Haka could only benefit from such an agreement.

She chose her words with care. “It is unfortunate Sevtar never had a chance to realize his potential.”

Deha regarded her. “So it is.”

“One could always hypothesize alternatives.”

“I’m not sure I follow you, Manager Haka.”

Rashiva sipped her rum. “Suppose a man is temporarily sworn to a Calanya. Say for the duration of his visit somewhere.” She paused. “Perhaps a visit to prison. Assuming he can be rehabilitated.”

Deha’s careful expression revealed nothing. “Go on.”

“When his prison term ends, he is released from his temporary Oath.”

“Not much of a bargain, if his term is life.” Deha moved her hand in dismissal. “The original Manager is handing a genius to her adversary for nothing.”

“True,” Rashiva said. “But were he ever pardoned, the original Manager would get a Calani from her adversary for nothing. It would be a gamble for both parties.”

For a long moment the Dahl Manager remained silent. Rashiva couldn’t tell if Deha was studying her, thinking, or simply pausing for effect. When Deha finally spoke, her voice became unexpectedly soft. “A worthy gamble, I would say, if it frees him from prison.”

Rashiva stared at her. She hadn’t seriously expected Deha to consider a proposal so weighted in Haka’s favor. So. Dahl’s formidable queen had a weakness. Sevtar. Deha must love him a great deal if, to get him out of prison, she would consider letting one of her greatest adversaries take him into her Calanya.

Rashiva set down her rum. “Perhaps we can discuss this hypothesis in more specific terms.”

Deha met her gaze. “Perhaps we can.”

They penned and signed the documents that night, an agreement that far more benefitted Haka than Dahl. Yet when it was done and finished, Rashiva had an odd feeling, as if Deha had outmaneuvered her.

Kelric awoke into darkness as someone flipped him onto his stomach. Hands pinned down his limbs and a knife touched his throat. Fingers fumbled at his Calanya guards.

“You jus’ lie still,” Zev said. “Cooperate and you won’t get hurt.” He laughed. “At least not hurt as much as if you fight.”

Kelric’s reflexes took control. He knocked out two of his three attackers immediately, so fast that they had no chance even to react. He flipped Zev onto his back and knelt on his chest with his fist raised.

“I didn’t mean nothing!” Zev gasped. “I swear.”

“Ever touch me again,” Kelric said, “and I’ll smash your goddamned head open.” He used his fist then to send the Shazorla man into unconscious oblivion.

An arm flickered in an archway. By the time Kelric realized it was only Ched, he’d already caught the boy.

“Lemme go,” Ched yelled. “Or I’ll shout so loud everyone in Haka’ll hear.”

Kelric released him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Sure. I saw what you did to them.” He peered right and left, then slipped away from Kelric into the shadowed hall. As Kelric followed him, Ched went into another cell, the one where he slept, and knelt by his pallet. A spark jumped in the air. A moment later, he held up a lit candle as if it offered a barrier against intruders into his home.

Kelric stayed in the cell’s entrance. “Where did you get the candle?”

“From Bonni.” Chad retreated and sat against the back wall. “She’s a guard. But she’s all right. Not like Zev an’ them.”

“They come after you, don’t they?”

“None of your business.”

“I’m making it my business.”

Ched hugged his knees to his chest, the candle clenched in one hand. “What am I supposed to do? I’m no giant like you and I don’t know nothing about fighting.”

“Can’t you protest to the authorities? File a complaint?”

“File a complaint,” Ched mimicked. “Sure.”

“If you’ve never tried, how do you know it won’t work?”

“I did try. I won’t do nothing that stupid again.”

“Why?”

Ched scowled. “You ask too much.”

“Why are you afraid to answer?”

“I’m not afraid of nothing.” Ched curled his fist around the candle. “After my first night here, I told the guards I wanted to talk to our warden. They said ‘He’s busy’ and left. One time the top warden came here for inspection. Zecha Haka. Keyclinker for the whole place. When I told her about Zev and them, you know what she said? That I must’ve asked for trouble and me being who I was I deserved it.”

Kelric stared at him. “You deserved it? That’s sick.”

Ched shrugged. “Zev knew I talked. When they was done with me, I was two days in the Med House. They told the guards I fell in the quarry. So don’t tell me to file a complaint.”

The more Kelric saw and heard about the prison, the worse it looked. “If you were beaten that badly, it should have been obvious you didn’t fall.”

“That’s what the meds told Zecha. You think she cares? She hates me. And I got bad news for you, metal man. She hates Calani too.”

“Can’t you talk to Manager Haka?” Kelric asked. “If she’s anything like Deha Dahl, she would be outraged by what you just told me.”

Ched snorted. “Sure. We talk to the Manager all the time. The last Manager never came round at all. I don’t know about the new one.”

Kelric grimaced. No way could he spend the rest of his life in this place.

“You know,” Chad said, “I never saw anyone put out a body fast as you put out Zev and them. Whoosh.” He grinned. “Just like that, they was out flat.”

“I’ve been trained to defend myself in virtually any circumstance.”

“Virchilly. Sir-stance.” Ched laughed. “If your words was pictures you could sell ’em for a lot of money. Real Calani, heh? But you got trouble. One night here and already Zev don’t like you.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Listen,” Ched said. “You need a friend. Someone to let you know how things are here.”

“That someone being you, I take it.”

“I could do it.”

“What is it you want in return?”

“Keep them away from me. Be my protection.”

Deal or no deal, Kelric had no intention of standing by while the others took out their frustrations on the boy. “All right.”

Ched smiled. “You’re not so bad. You get cooped for what somebody else pulled?”

“No. I did it.”

Ched made a show of looking nonchalant. “Did what?”

“Killed a guard on my Calanya escort.”

The light vanished as Ched dropped his candle. “Winds,” he muttered. “Where did that flint go?”

“You left it under your pallet.”

“That’s right.” His voice shook. “Pretty slow of me, heh?”

“Ched, it was ruled accidental manslaughter.”

“You just remember I’m with you. All right?” The boy relit his candle. In its dusky glow he looked scared and vulnerable.

“You’re so young,” Kelric said. “This is no place for a child.”

“Don’t go calling me a child.”

“Why are you here?”

“Why? Because I’m a crooner. That’s why.”

Kelric crossed his arms. “I protect, you talk. So talk.”

“Heh. Don’t get mad.” Ched stood up. “I was a tavern kinsa in Viasa. That was after I left Lasa.”

“Kinsa? What’s that?”

“You really must be from outer space.”

“Ched.”

“I got paid to make the customers happy.”

“Happy how?”

“I was real nice to the women. In private.” Ched squinted at him. “You know.”

“You were sent here just for that?”

“No. I’m here because of a scumrat.” Ched crossed his arms, mimicking Kelric. “See, things was finally going better for me. Feni hired me out of the tavern. Took care of me.” He scowled. “Then she went prowling after that scum. When he came to live with us, he treated me like mold in the pipes. Things got worse an’ worse. So one night I put my hands around his scrawny neck and squeezed till he turned purple. If people hadn’t heard him yelping I woulda squeezed off his head.”

It made no sense to Kelric. He could usually read people well, and Ched didn’t strike him as a murderer. “Couldn’t you just leave Feni? Ixpar told me city Houses will give someone a meal and a bed in return for chores.”

“Well, it don’t always work that way. How would this Ixpar Pixpar know anyway?”

“Her name is Karn.”

Ched snorted. “Sure. Successor Karn herself. Winds, you can croon.”

Sand scattered as Kelric stalked across the cell. He stopped in front of the boy. “I don’t like being called a liar. Understand?”

Ched backed up against the wall. “Y-yes.”

“Good.” Kelric motioned toward the hallway outside the cell. “Come on.”

Ched regarded him warily. “Where we going?”

“Some garbage is sleeping in my cell. I’m going to put it where it belongs. You better stay with me, in case they wake up.”

So Ched came with him. After they carried the unconscious men back to their rooms, Ched settled down on the other side of Kelric’s cell. Within moments he fell asleep, snoring softly.

Kelric lay on his pallet. Bolt?

No response.

He tried various resets, but none worked. His enhanced reflexes had tried to kick in during the fight, so Bolt still functioned. His bio-electrodes must have stopped working, leaving him no way to contact the node. He hoped the system could manage at least a partial repair. He had developed a symbiosis with Bolt these past fourteen years.

Losing the node would be like losing part of himself.

11

ROCK’S WELL

Zecha Haka, head warden at the Haka prison, sat at her desk, tensed like a desert lion ready to leap. The last person she’d expected to show up in her office was the Haka Manager. Rashiva’s doddering predecessor had never come to the compounds.

“The prisoner from Dahl.” Rashiva was sitting across the desk from her. “Sevtar.”

“I sent him out with a quarry crew this morning,” Zecha said.

“You put a Calani on a quarry crew?”

“He’s a convict now, ma’am.”

Rashiva leaned forward. “I want him made into more. Rehabilitate him. And give him Quis instruction.”

Bones and bugs, Zecha thought. “In cases like his, rehabilitation rarely works.”

Rashiva stood. “I have faith in your abilities, Warden.”

After Rashiva left, Zecha brooded. Calani, heh? Lazy dice players who lived in luxury with everything given to them for nothing. She, Zecha, had worked for her position, starting as a nobody. Her mother was a disgrace, a losing dice player who gambled away everything she owned. Her father had been a Lasa kinsa just like that boy in Compound Four. None of that stopped Zecha. She worked at her Quis until she became a power to reckon with. Why should she give favors to a Calani?

“Think the wind only blows for them, don’t they?” she muttered. “We’ll see about that.”

The line of prisoners and guards wound into the cliffs, sweltering in the heat of a sun barely risen above the mountains. Kelric trudged up the path with Ched, holding the hood of his jacket tight against the blowing sand.

Ched grinned. “Like our weather?” When Kelric glowered at him, the boy smirked. “You see Zev this morning? Got him an ugly eye. Black as tar.” His smile vanished. “You better watch yourself today.” He hesitated. “Both ourselves. That’s the deal, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Yiss. Yish.” Ched grinned as he imitated Kelric’s accent. “I’m ready to keep my side of our deal. So. What you want me to tell you?”

Kelric considered. To make escape plans, he had to know what he faced. “About Haka. Is it like Dahl?”

“No way. Haka is home of the Scowl Laws.”

“The what?”

“Scowl Laws. They’re old as the mountains. They say a man can’t smile at a woman unless she’s his wife. Smile at a Haka woman and she thinks you’re a kinsa.”

“That’s crazy.”

“That’s Haka, metal man. Haka men can’t go outside without an escort neither. If they do go out, they have to wear robes that cover them from head to foot, and these woven scarves that hide their faces except their eyes.” Ched snorted. “It’s them Haka women. They spend half their time figuring ways to protect their men’s honor and the other half trying to ruin it.”

“I’ve seen male guards here.”

“Most don’t come from Haka.” Ched nodded at a guard on the trail above them. “Like him. He has yellow hair. Hakaborn have black hair and black eyes.”

“What about the prisoners in the other compounds?”

“They’re from all over.” Ched flipped his hand in dismissal. “They’re in for little stuff. Four is where they put real troublemakers. There’s us on the men’s side, and eleven crooners in the Compound Four women’s coop.” He grimaced. “Those are some big, ugly clawcats. Men’s coop has Zev, Gossi, Ikav, and us. Zev killed a Scribe in Shazorla, and Gossi blew up a Children’s Cooperative at Ahkah. They’re in for life. Ikav stole some Calanya Quis dice. Got ten years.”

“For stealing dice?”

“Calanya dice. He’s lucky that’s all he got.”

Kelric fell silent, turning the information over in his mind. At the top of the trail, they came out onto a plateau. The line of prisoners stretched across it, almost lost in the whirling sandstorm. He and Ched trudged on to the far edge. Turned out, it formed the top of a huge staircase descending into a quarry. Sand cliffs loomed on all sides, jutting into the sky like red fingers. Eons of wind had eroded the cliffs until holes riddled them, bearing eerie resemblance to windows. Gales moaned through the cliffs like a chorus of ghosts.

As they descended the gigantic steps, Ched said, “This place gives me nightmares.”

“I’m not surprised,” Kelric said.

At the bottom of the stairs, a massive man about Kelric’s height stood checking off prisoners. A rough scarf with black tassels hung around his neck. He glanced at Kelric. “Sevtar Dahl?”

“Yes?” Kelric asked.

“What was that?” the man asked.

“Say sir,” Ched whispered. “Yhee, sir.”

“Yhee, sir,” Kelric said.

The man drew a check on his clipboard. “You’ll work on the rim crew.”

So Kelric and Ched hiked across the quarry with their guards, headed for the rim.

“That was Torv Haka making them check marks,” Ched told him. “He’s the Compound Four men’s warden. You call all them keyclinkers ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir.’” He raised his hand as if to strike Kelric. “If you forget they remind you.”

“I thought Haka men had to wear robes.”

“Can’t have our warden running around in robes. How would he keep control over scum like us?”

Kelric grimaced. The warden was his least worry, though. He felt an all-too-familiar nausea. “Ched—if a prisoner needed a special diet, would he get it?”

“You got to be joking. This isn’t a Calanya, you know.”

Kelric blew out a gust of air. “No, it certainly isn’t.”

Zecha stood with Rashiva at the rim viewing station. She indicated a distant line of prisoners winding across the quarry floor. “Down there. The big one with the odd coloring.”

Rashiva looked. Sevtar Dahl stood out like gold among pewter. The quarry, however, caught her attention more. She saw no windbreaks to protect crews from the sandstorms, and the water system looked broken. “What’s wrong with the aqueducts?”

“The sand erodes them,” Zecha said. “The system kept breaking down, so I quit using it. A team of carriers brings water up from the compounds instead.”

Rashiva frowned. “Why hasn’t this been reported?”

“I wasn’t aware the Estate required a report.”

Rashiva considered her. The arrangement that gave full authority over the prison to the head warden made sense; a Manager didn’t have time to run the prison as well as the Estate and city. Zecha had an impressive record. Rashiva doubted the grizzled warden appreciated being questioned on it. Still, she had no intention of ignoring the prison the way her predecessor had done.

“I want a report each quarter.” Rashiva nodded at the quarry. “Have the water ducts repaired and more windbreaks installed.”

Zecha spoke in a neutral voice. “Yhee, ma’am.”

“And Warden.”

“Yes.”

“Keep me posted on your progress with Sevtar.”

Zecha regarded her with a bland expression. “Of course, ma’am.”

A guard issued Kelric a pickaxe, a sentry directed him to a workstation, and a captain warned him about the consequences of trying to use his pick on people instead of rock. Another guard assigned him a trundle in a train of cars that ran through the quarry. His job was simple: cut rock and fill his trundle.

Normally Kelric wouldn’t have minded the work. It was hard but reasonable, at least for someone with his strength. Not today. The first spasm hit him while he was carrying a block of stone. As his stomach lurched, his grip on the block slipped and it crashed to the ground. He fell to his knees, wrapping his arms around his waist.

“Hey!” Ched ran over to him. “You don’t got to lift such big—winds, what’s wrong?”

Leaning over, Kelric vomited behind the block. When the spasm eased he spoke in a rasp. “I need water.”

“They don’t give us hardly none,” Ched said. “The pipes broke.”

Footsteps sounded behind them. Ched spun around, then relaxed. “He’s sick, Bonni. Can he have some water?”

A guard knelt next to Kelric, a tall woman with the dark coloring of the native Hakaborn. She brushed her hand across his forehead. “You’re burning up.”

“Today’s his first day,” Ched said. “He used to be a Calani.”

She smiled. “A Calani? I heard rumors, but I thought that was just a story.”

“It’s true.” Ched pushed back Kelric’s sleeve, uncovering the gold.

“Cuaz above.” Bonni looked at Kelric. “What are you doing here?”

A shadow fell across him. “Trouble, Bonni?” Torv Haka stood over them, a truncheon in his hand.

Bonni stood up. “This man is sick.”

“He’s from Compound Four,” Torv said. “They’ll give you any story.”

Kelric stood slowly, watching the warden. Torv regarded him like a fumigator who had found a bug. “If you think you’ll get high-level treatment because of that gold on your wrists, you’re wrong.”

Kelric gritted his teeth. “Yes. Sir.”

Torv’s voice hardened. “I don’t like your tone, Calani.”

“So choke on it,” Kelric said.

“Cuaz me,” Ched muttered.

Torv’s face twisted into a snarl and he whipped his club through the air. Kelric caught the pole before it struck him, stopping the weapon with enough force to knock Torv off his feet. As the warden fell, other guards in the area ran over. They grabbed Kelric while Torv climbed to his feet. With his face contorted in fury, the warden fired his stunner until Kelric collapsed and blackness closed around him.

Kelric came to in a pocket hidden from the quarry by crags of rock. He was kneeling in front of a boulder with his arms pulled around it and his wrists bound to a ring embedded in the stone.

“So,” a voice said. “You woke up.”

He looked around to see Torv Haka holding a thick leather belt. “Thought you’d knock me around, heh, crooner?” Torv grabbed Kelric’s shirt and ripped it off his back. “You’ll think differently soon.”

12

REOPEN

Kelric lay on his stomach on the pallet in his cell. In the starlight, he could just make out the jug of water as Ched set it next to him. The boy tore a rag from the remains of Kelric’s shirt and dunked it in the pot. Then he went to work cleaning the welts and cuts on Kelric’s back.

“‘Choke on it.’” Ched shook his head. “What gets into you, talking to the warden like that?”

A good question. Kelric said, “I’m not used to someone treating me that way.”

“I think you got too much pride for your own good.” Ched’s frown shifted into a grin. “You got guts, though. It flew round the quarry faster than wind, about you knocking him down. One day and already you’re famous.” With a smirk, he added, “And guess what? Torv put Zev and them on third shift at the quarry. Seems they didn’t feel so good today. All they was doing was complaining.” His smile faded. “Starting tomorrow you’re on three shifts too, for a tenday. You gonna be all right? You was pretty sick today.”

“I need to boil my water,” Kelric said.

“We got nothing here to make heat it up.”

Halfheartedly, Kelric thought, Bolt?

&$unct** degrad$#

He tensed, elated by the response. Bolt, what’s with my nanomeds? Can’t they help make the water drinkable?

Series J has suffered severe depleti^^#

Bolt?

No response.

Kelric exhaled. Series J included the nanomeds best equipped to deal with the bacteria in the Coban water, so its depletion explained why he reacted even worse to the water here than in Dahl. However, as far as he could tell, the meds that repaired his cells, slowing his aging process, still worked. So if he survived, he faced the prospect of several centuries at Haka. Gods, what a nightmare.

“You don’t look happy,” Ched said.

“Has anyone ever escaped from here?”

“It’s a dumb idea, metal man. Even if you got out, which is impossible, the only place you could go is the city. They’d catch you in no time. The next closest place is the starport and that’s way out in the desert.” Ched cleaned a cut on Kelric’s shoulder. “When I first heard about Skolians, I thought it was a big croon. Then Minister Karn said it was real. People from above the sky. Thing is, they won’t let us into their port.” He went to work on Kelric’s arm. “Maybe it really is a croon. I never seen no Skolian.”

“Yes you have.”

“I have?”

“Me.” Kelric smiled. “If I tell you who I am, you’ll really think I’m crazy.”

Ched’s interest perked up. “This sounds like a good croon.”

“My brother commands Imperial Space Command. I’m one of his heirs. Just think, Ched. You’re talking to the future Imperator of the Skolian empire.”

The boy chuckled. “If you plan to take over the universe, you better get some rest. You’re a mess.”

Kelric laughed. “All right.” He closed his eyes.

Sometime later a sound scraped by the pallet. He looked to see Ched kneeling down with a clay flask.

“I boiled water,” the boy said. “With my candles.”

Kelric took the jug the boy offered and gulped the warm liquid, slowing down only when his last swallow of water ran down his throat. He lowered the jug and wiped his mouth. “My thanks. I know how much those candles mean to you.”

“Heh. Well.” Ched shrugged. “It’s not like I’m scared of the dark or nothing.”

“I know.” It hadn’t taken Kelric long to realize the night terrified Ched. “I thank you anyway.”

Night lamps threw a glare over the quarry, cutting the dark with shears of light. Kelric’s pick caught glitters of light as it arced through the air. Where the tip hit stone, sparks jumped and chips swirled in the wind. Swing. Impact. Swing. Impact. His fatigue blended with the monotony, numbing his mind.

“Sevtar.”

Kelric jumped. The guard Bonni stood nearby. As he stared at her, trying to focus, her hand went to the javelin slung across her back. He realized that that he still had his axe raised in the air. When he lowered it, Bonni came over and handed him a foil package.

Kelric opened the foil, wondering what was up, and found slices of meat and spicebread. Dumbfounded, he looked at her. “Why?”

“Ched told me the food in Four makes you sick. He said you could eat this.” Her voice softened. “You’re a miracle for that boy. Without protection, he’d be dead within a year. It’s wrong. He shouldn’t be here.”

The same thought had occurred to Kelric. “It’s hard to believe he tried to commit murder.”

“He talks tough. But he’s no killer. Get past his armor and you’ll see.”

“All right.” He lifted the package. “And thanks.”

Bonni nodded. After she left, Kelric ate some of the food, then slipped the package into his waistband under his shirt. He hefted up a block and headed to his trundle car, hiking past sandblasted water pipes.

As he reached the trundle, a woman called out, “Hey, Goldy. You that color all over?”

He squinted into the wind. On a ledge a few hundred paces away, the Compound Four women’s crew stood watching him. Clumped in a pack, they stood as tall or even taller than him, their hair hanging in greasy tangles around their massive shoulders.

Kelric grimaced. Then he headed back to his workstation.

On his next trip, one of the biggest women was hoisting a block into his car. “Well, looky that,” she said. “Goldy.”

He dumped his blocks in the trundle.

“Where’s the Little Crooner?” she asked.

“His name is Ched.”

“Not on third shift, heh?” She scratched the huge expanse of her stomach. “Too bad. He’s near as good to look at as you.”

“So look somewhere else.”

She laughed, showing a row of gaps and rotted teeth. “I just watch the scenery. I don’t much care whether or not it likes being watched.”

Kelric shook his head and headed back to his workstation, his shoulders twitching under her stare. It felt like her eyes were burning holes in his clothes.

Bonni was waiting for him. “If that bunch gives you any trouble, let me know.”

“It’s no problem.” He smiled. “But thanks.”

She flushed and averted her eyes. It wasn’t until after she left that he figured out why. She was Hakaborn. She probably never saw any man smile except her husband.

The night wore on interminably. When the shout for shift’s end came, Kelric was moving in a haze. His only recently healed legs couldn’t handle three shifts, back to back. He limped after the other prisoners, thinking of sleep. The climb out of the quarry dragged on forever, each flight seeming steeper than the last.

At the top, an unfamiliar octet stopped their crew. The captain came over to Kelric. “Sevtar Dahl?”

It took a moment for the name to register through his daze. “Yes?”

“Come with us.”

Gods, he thought. Now what?

They took him down the mountain and past the compounds. By the time they reached the gatehouse, dawn had tinged the sky. Inside the gatehouse it was dark, but an office glowed with light at the back. A woman there was pouring herself a steaming mug of Tanghi tea. She stood tall, with a lean build and dark red hair wound in a braid on her head. Sun and wind had weathered her face until she reminded Kelric of a rusted pole.

As the guards brought him into the office, the woman turned to the captain. “He make trouble today?”

“None,” the captain said. “Filled his quota and then some.”

The rusted woman nodded at a pouch on the desk. “Quis dice,” she told Kelric. “For you. Take it.”

Baffled, he picked up the pouch. It did indeed feel like dice. Why the blazes she wanted to give it to him, he had no idea.

The rusted woman spoke to his guards. “You can take him back to the quarry.”

The captain stared at her. “Ma’am, he’s done three shifts today.”

“And you just have time to get him back for a fourth.”

“No,” Kelric said. He couldn’t believe it. Did they think he never needed sleep?

The rusted woman turned to him. “I hear a lot about you being a troublemaker, Calani.” She took a swallow of her Tanghi. “I don’t like troublemakers.”

Kelric knew they must have regulations here against working prisoners until they dropped. “I want to talk to the head warden. Zecha Haka.”

“You are.” Zecha turned to the captain. “That is all.”

He gritted his teeth. Further protests would probably get him nothing except more shifts. Clenching his fist on the dice pouch, he went with his guards.

Outside, he fumbled with the pouch, trying to tie it onto his belt. It slipped from his fingers and thudded into the sand.

The captain knelt and scooped up the pouch. “Sevtar, I’m sorry.” Standing, she tied it on his belt. “About the shifts.”

He swallowed. “So am I.”

As they climbed back into the cliffs, he wondered what the blazes he was supposed to do with Quis dice.

13

CONTINUITY

You’ll die here, the voice said. Everywhere Kelric turned, monoliths blocked his escape. No light, no food, no water, water, water, water …

“Winds above, wake up.” Ched shook him. “Come on. I got you water.”

Kelric sat bolt upright in the darkness, knocking down the boy. “What?”

“You don’t got to push me over.” Ched sat up. “You was thrashing around, moaning for water. I boiled some.”

Kelric practically yanked the flask out of Ched’s hand. He swallowed in huge gulps, nearly choking as the water quenched his thirst.

“You feel better?” Ched asked.

Kelric lowered the empty flask, feeling sheepish. “Yes. Much better.”

The boy leaned back on his hands. “Had me a big surprise today. I met my quota.”

“That quota is absurd.” Kelric lay down again, his surge of nightmare-produced adrenaline easing. “I don’t see how you ever meet it.”

“I never do.”

“You just said you did.”

“I should maybe put it different. My trundles was filled when the captain came round to check. It wasn’t me who cut half them blocks.”

“You probably just lost track.”

Ched leaned forward. “So how come you didn’t meet your quota? You cut more than you needed.”

Kelric closed his eyes. “You must have misjudged the amount.”

“You been filling my cars. Winds know, I appreciate it, metal man. But I want you to stop.”

He opened his eyes. “Stop what?”

“Cuaz me.” Ched threw up his hands. “You’re impossible.”

Kelric smiled.

“Well,” Ched said. “I’ll just thank you for filling my cars that you didn’t fill and let you sleep.”

Kelric thought of his nightmare. “Don’t go.”

“Bad dream, heh?” Ched nodded. “I get ’em too. We could play Quis, ’cept you left your dice pouch lying around and Ikav pixed it. You got to be more careful.”

“He can have it.” Kelric closed his eyes. “I’d rather sleep.”

“Now, maybe. But we’ll be off late shift in a few days. You’ll see how boring it gets.”

Kelric opened his eyes. “We?”

“I asked for a third shift.” Ched laughed. “Now the guards really think I’m crazy.”

“So do I. Why did you do it?”

“To get ahead on my quota so you’ll quit killing yourself to fill my cars. Besides, Zev and them are off late shift tomorrow. I don’t want to be here when they are and you aren’t.”

The same thought had occurred to Kelric. What would happen to Ched if he escaped? He could try to break out the boy too, but he doubted Ched would last long on his own. And when faced with Ched’s vulnerability it was too easy to forget he was in prison for a reason.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Ched said.

“I wondered about the man you tried to kill.”

Ched tensed. “What about him?”

“Why did you try to strangle him?”

“What do you mean, why? He was sewer scum. He deserved to have his head popped off.”

Kelric could imagine the effect Ched’s language made at his Tribunal. “What did he do?”

“He didn’t do nothing. Never. Except put drink inside himself.” The boy flinched. “That’s when he decided I needed lessons.” Ched made a fist. “That.”

“He hit you?”

“He said I made him do it. That last time he was trying to kill me.” Ched swallowed. “Seems I fight real good when I’m scared outta my head.”

Kelric stared at him. “Couldn’t you get help?”

“Right. A kinsa. They would’ve laughed in my face.”

“You have the same right to civil protection as anyone.”

“The right to get cooped in a city jail.”

“What about the Children’s Cooperative?”

“What about it?”

“Couldn’t you go there?”

Ched clenched his fist on his knee. “No.”

“Why not?”

“None of your business why not.”

Kelric considered him. “Is there any way you can serve your sentence in a less severe compound?”

“You mean transfer?” Ched laughed. “If I kept ahead of my quotas, if Torv put in a word for me, if Zecha was in a good mood—not a chance.”

“Bonni would put in a word for you.”

Ched blinked. “You know, she might.”

A clang rang through the hall, the sound of the security doors opening. Ched jumped to his feet and ran to the archway. “It’s guards. Bundles of ’em.”

Kelric joined him. Four guards were striding down the hall, the blades of their swords glinting in the starlight. More stood at the doors, keeping watch as Zev and the others appeared in the archways of their cells.

The captain halted in front of Kelric. “Turn around.”

Disconcerted, Kelric turned. Someone locked his wrist guards behind his back—and then tied a blindfold over his eyes.

“What the hell?” Kelric said.

“Leave him alone,” Ched protested. “He hasn’t done nothing.”

“Heh,” Zev called. “Torv planning to work him over again?”

Gossi laughed. “Glad it’s you, Calani, and not me.”

Kelric tensed, disoriented. A guard slipped a hand under his elbow and drew him forward in the darkness. They took him out of the corridor and through the building, leading him by touch. Then they were outside, in the stinging sandstorm where the wind blasted unseen grit at him. He forced himself to put one foot in front of the other, having to trust their guidance. The entire time, he did his best to map his surroundings, at least whatever he could manage without his sight. The more he understood this place, the better he could plan his escape.

Eventually they entered a protected space, walking down an incline. After a short time they stopped and a door clanged shut. Someone freed his hands and removed his blindfold. When his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw a room paneled with amberwood and carpeted by a gold rug.

In the center of the room, Zecha sat at a Quis table.

She motioned to an chair across the table. “Sit down.”

What the blazes? Kelric almost balked, but at least this was better than another shift at the quarry. Watching her warily, he sat in the chair across the table.

Zecha glanced at the captain of his guards. “Where are his Quis dice?”

“Ikav had them.” The captain pulled Kelric’s pouch out of her jacket and set it on the table.

Kelric blinked at Zecha. “You brought me here to play dice?”

“We’ll wager work shifts.” She took out her own pouch. “For each game you lose, you work one extra shift.”

Hell and damnation. “What if I win?”

“You don’t have to work the shift.”

“That’s not much of a bet.” He pushed at the thick curls spilling down his neck. “How about a haircut for a win? A shave for a second win.”

Zecha shrugged. “Whatever.” She set a blue cube on the table. “Your move.”

He felt too tired to change mental gears and play Quis. However, he dreaded even more the prospect of additional shifts. So he poured out his dice and set a blue cube on top Zecha’s die. She added a red cube to the stack.

“You can’t do that,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Red can’t go on blue.”

She snorted. “I thought you knew how to play Quis.”

Bolt, he thought.

SDFJ$(

Bolt, come on. Can you access my files on Quis rules?

FD5A87+-H-++

Kelric gave up and fell back on intuition, placing a rod on the table to distract Zecha’s from the cube stack. She set a sphere near the rod and he added a rosewood arch between the sphere and stack.

Zecha laughed. “My game.”

“Your game?” He looked at the dice, then at her. “It’s not your game.”

“You made a bridge. Both ends touch my pieces. A baby knows better than that.”

Ah, hell. He hadn’t even noticed his arch touched her sphere. By bridging it to the stack, he formed a structure. The combined rank of her pieces in the bridge surpassed his, so she could claim it for the win.

The warden cleared the playing area and set down a dodecahedron. Kelric put a blue triangle on top of it.

Zecha smirked. “Extra shift number two.”

“I lost?”

“Miserably.”

“Why?”

“My dodecahedron has black edges.”

“So what?”

“So you can only play black on it.” Zecha flipped his triangle back to him and left her dodecahedron. “New game. Your move.”

Kelric rubbed his eyes, trying to stay awake. He set a heptahedron on the table.

Zecha laughed. “Shift three for you.”

“I thought he was a Calani,” a guard muttered.

For fucks sake, Kelric thought. He hoped the warden choked on her dice.

“If you can’t give me the reason why you lost,” Zecha added, “you get a fourth shift.”

Kelric wondered what possessed the head warden of the entire prison to drag him blindfolded across Haka in the middle of the night for a Quis lesson. “It’s a continuity law,” he said. But which one? Color? Shape? Dimension. That was it. Dimension.

“I lost on the first move of the last game,” he said. “You opened this new game with the dodecahedron you played before. So continuity holds. I had to fix my losing move from the previous game by properly placing a piece with the same dimension as the one I misplayed before. Which means a flat piece. Two dimensions. But I played a three-dimension piece.”

“Fourth shift,” Zecha said smugly.

He gritted his teeth. “What for?”

“Your piece also had to supersede my dodecahedron.”

“Nothing supersedes a dodecahedron.”

“That’s right.” She took away his die and left the dodecahedron. “Your move.”

Kelric scowled. The more sides on a polyhedron, the higher its rank. In Quis, no polyhedron had more than the twelve sides of a dodecahedron, and in the current structure no other shape could outrank a polyhedron. She had him trapped in an infinite loop of losses.

“Looks like another shift,” Zecha commented.

Behind Kelric, the door opened. A girl came over and spoke to the warden in a low voice. Zecha frowned and nodded.

After the girl left, Kelric balanced an ebony ball on the dodecahedron.

“I’m sorry,” Zecha said. “But that move is illegal.”

His mouth almost fell open. It was the first civil phrase she had ever uttered to him. “It’s legal. I misplayed a three-dimension piece the last game and a ball is a three-dimensional piece.”

“True,” she agreed. “However, it doesn’t supersede a dodecahedron.”

“Yes it does.”

Her polite veneer cracked. “Don’t contradict me. You need a piece with more than twelve sides. You don’t have one. They don’t exist in a normal Quis set.”

He grinned. “A ball has an infinite number of sides. It’s the limit of letting the number of sides on a polyhedron go to infinity.”

With a scowl, Zecha knocked his ball off her die. Then she took her dodecahedron out of the playing area. “Well? You won. So open.”

Kelric resisted the urge to laugh. He put down a pyramid and the game took off, rapidly evolving into a complicated series of structures. After a while something began to tug at him. What…? Yes, there. Zecha had built a snake of green dice and was trying to close the coil.

She drummed her fingers on the table. “Are you going to take forever?”

“No.” He played a blue pyramid.

Zecha shoved a green pyramid into the game. “Your move.”

He smiled. “My game.”

“It’s not your game. Make your move.”

Kelric tapped his finger along a line of pyramids winding through the structures. “Black, brown, red, orange, gold, yellow, green, blue, purple, violet, black. All mine except for the red and green.” He laughed. “Grand augmented spectrum, my advantage. You owe me a shave and a haircut, Warden.”

Zecha glared at him, then turned to the octet. “You can take him back now.”

When he stood up, they locked his wrists, blindfolded him, and led him away.

Zecha leaned against the table in the Interstice room that connected the Estate to the underground tunnels of Haka city. It irked her that Rashiva insisted she hold her Quis sessions with Sevtar here, where a window of one-way glass allowed the Manager to watch. Spying, that’s what Rashiva was doing. Smart idea to put that girl on lookout, to warn her if the Manager showed up.

Across the room, the door opened and Rashiva entered.

Zecha bowed. “Manager Haka.”

“Morning, Warden.” Rashiva chuckled. “He caught you with the infinite-sided polyhedron, heh? And that spectrum was a beauty.”

“You missed his first games. He played like a child.”

Rashiva stretched her arms. “Why did you schedule the session before dawn? If my aide hadn’t seen you come in, I would have slept right through it.”

Zecha had intended to be done with the “lesson” before even the early-rising Manager awoke. “I didn’t want to bother you, ma’am.”

“It’s no bother.” Rashiva sat on the edge of the table. “Do you need to blindfold and restrain him that way? It must be unpleasant for him.”

“If we don’t blindfold him, he’ll learn the route here from the prison. Without restraints, he could break into the Estate.” Maybe she ought to let him loose. If Sevtar knocked around Rashiva’s staff, it might cure the Manager of this rehabilitation nonsense.

“He doesn’t act dangerous,” Rashiva said. “He seems a pleasant fellow.”

“That ‘pleasant fellow’ killed Llaach Dahl.”

Rashiva exhaled. “Yes. He did.” She thought for a moment. “Let him off quarry crew today. He’s obviously exhausted. And give him that shave he wanted. Just trim his hair, though. It’s too gorgeous to cut off.”

Bones and bugs. Rashiva expected her to manicure crooners? “It could be dangerous to let him near a razor. He might go for the blade.”

“Take whatever precautions you think necessary.”

“Yhee, ma’am.”

After Rashiva left, Zecha stood taking stock of the situation. So Rashiva wanted her to coddle Sevtar, heh? No chance. Maybe he expected his beauty to get him special treatment. She’d seen his smiles. His seductive behavior might blind Managers but it didn’t work on Haka’s warden.

Yet no matter how she tried to ignore him, Sevtar somehow crept into her brain. It had been years since she suffered nightmares of people talking in her head. Back then, she had feared she was going insane, until finally she stopped it by putting up an emotional wall that shut everyone out. It made her lonelier than a kinsa lost in the desert, but it kept her from hearing other people’s thoughts.

Now Sevtar came, eating away at her fortifications.

Zecha gritted her teeth. This Sevtar business had gone too far. She had to get rid of him.

When Ched entered the cell, Kelric was holding himself up by the skylight as if he were doing pull-ups far above the floor. He peered out at the blue sky.

“Cuaz and Khozaar me,” Ched said.

Kelric looked down. “What does that mean anyway?”

“It’s just something people say. Cuaz and Khozaar are wind gods, Akasi to the sungoddess Savina.” Ched frowned at him. “You can’t break the skylight bars, metal man. We’ve all tried.”

Kelric dropped to the floor. “Want to play Quis?”

“No. You always beat me.” Ched flopped down on the pallet. “Know what I’d like? A big feast, with lots of wine. Afterward, two beautiful warrior women carry us off and have their way with us.”

Kelric smiled. “Sounds interesting.”

“You ever been in love?”

“Twice.” Kelric sat by the wall. “The first time I was younger than you. Fourteen. Shaliece used to sneak up and watch me swim in the river. One day I saw her. I was so mortified that after I got my pants back on, I chased her all over the woods.”

“What happened when you caught her?”

Kelric laughed. “That, young man, is private.”

Ched grinned. “She got you in trouble, heh? Happened to me too.” His smile faded. “I was thrown out of the Children’s Cooperative in Lasa ’cause of it.”

“Thrown out? Why?”

“I let this girl talk me into stuff.” Ched sat up. “Next morning she wouldn’t have nothing to do with me. But she talked. Pretty soon all them girls was telling stories about me. It was all lies. I wouldn’t touch those clawcats. I only liked that one but she wanted someone else. And you know what? She got him in trouble. To protect him she said I was the father. With all those stories about me everyone believed her.” He swept his hand across the floor and sent sand flying. “So the Cooperative kicked me out.”

Kelric frowned. “They had no business turning you out.”

“That’s why I went to Viasa. No Lasa House would take me. People called me trash.” He shrugged. “Guess they was right.”

“They weren’t, Ched. Never believe that.”

The boy hesitated. “You think maybe different?”

“You’ve a lot of potential. You just need a chance to develop it.”

“Heh. Well.” Ched gave him an embarrassed smile. “You know, you’re all right.”

Rashiva paced across Zecha’s office. “Ched looks so vulnerable.”

Zecha sat back in her chair. “Don’t let his innocent face fool you.”

“Bonni says he’s a model prisoner.” Rashiva stopped pacing. “She suggested transferring him out of Compound Four.”

Model prisoner? Zecha almost snorted. She knew his kind, how they manipulated women. Her father had been Ched’s age when he propositioned her mother. Maybe her mother had been happy with the unexpected result of that night’s pleasure, but Zecha still burned from the childhood taunts: kinsa-born. Whore-baby.

“Ched’s always been a problem,” she said. “He’s kept ahead of his quotas lately, but I doubt it will last.”

Rashiva frowned. “What quotas?”

Bones and bugs. Did Rashiva miss nothing? “It’s a reward system. If prisoners meet certain quotas they get privileges.” As soon as Zecha had realized Rashiva didn’t intend to sleep her way through her reign like her senile predecessor, she’d cleaned out her files. The Manager could have misinterpreted certain records, particularly those detailing how Zecha routed profits from the extra quarry shifts to her own accounts. So she got rid of those documents. Her files were pristine now.

“I can show you the records,” Zecha said.

“All right.” Rashiva thought for a moment. “And go ahead with Ched’s transfer. Put him on another crew. Maintenance maybe. He doesn’t look strong enough to work in a quarry.”

Zecha stiffened. Who was warden here? Still, better to win Rashiva’s confidence on this trivial matter. It would give her a stronger bargaining position on critical issues.

“I can send him to Compound Two,” Zecha said. “They do maintenance.”

“Good.” Rashiva resumed pacing. “How is Sevtar coming along?”

“He isn’t. You’ve seen his record. He started a fight his first night in the compound and attacked Torv Haka his first day in the quarry.”

“Perhaps you should separate him from the others.” Rashiva considered. “Let him concentrate more on Quis. Working in a quarry is a waste of his talent anyway.”

A plan was forming in Zecha’s mind. “I think that’s a good idea.” Yes, an excellent idea.

She might never have to worry about the Sevtar problem again.

Sand stung Kelric’s face as his guards led him through the sandstorm. They stopped at an isolated storehouse far from the compounds. When he saw Zecha waiting at the building’s metal door, his unease grew. She heaved open the portal, revealing that both the massive door and the walls of the storehouse were several handspans thick.

His guards prodded him with their swords, honed points nicking his skin through his uniform. Inside the storehouse, he found a single large room with a pallet and a blanket. A row of barred windows stretched the length of one wall, set so high he doubted he could see out even if he jumped. Puzzled, he turned to Zecha.

“We’re separating you from other prisoners,” she said.

“For how long?” he asked.

Her eyes glinted. “Forever.”

Kelric lunged for the door, but the guards were already heaving it into place. As the portal slammed shut, he smashed into the metal. “No!” He pounded his fists on the door. “NO!”

Only silence came from beyond the storehouse.

14

ROCK’S CHUTE

In the beginning Kelric raged, smashing his bulk against the door and walls that confined him. Each time his fury spent itself, he collapsed to the floor, his shoulders heaving as he gasped in air. He tried climbing to the barred windows, and every time he fell back to the ground, thudding into the floor until his body ached.

His jailers had converted one of the storeroom closets into a bathroom. The other closet held a blanket, a jug of liquid soap, and cleaning rags. Each morning his food appeared in a narrow tunnel cut through the bottom of the storehouse door. After he finished his meals, he shoved the empty bowls and plates back into the tunnel. When he heard someone removing them, he tried to grab their arm, but he couldn’t reach far enough into the tunnel.

He refused to eat, hoping a hunger strike would force them to release him. After several days, when his jailers showed no reaction to his untouched meals, he wondered if Zecha wanted him to die by self-induced starvation.

He quit the strike that night.

Eventually he developed a routine. In the morning he exercised. For the rest of the day he played Quis solitaire. When the light faded into night he escaped into sleep and when dawn trickled in the windows he awoke, every morning of every day, until the days became seasons.

Autumn cooled into winter, with rains that trickled in the windows. Once he caught a fever, becoming so sick he could barely move. In his lucid moments he wondered how anyone would know if he died. After he recovered, he made a cloak out of his blanket, using a shard of rock to cut armholes and fashion a hood. He pushed the remaining scraps of cloth into the tunnel and the next morning a new blanket came with his food.

Winter warmed into spring. His hair grew into a shaggy mane and his beard curled in a red-gold mat on his chest. In the summer, he lay sweltering in the heat. Sand blew in on the hot wind and settled over his body.

At night, dreams from his home world of Lyshriol haunted his sleep. He ran through its plains of silvery grass and the forests of stained glass trees where he had played as a child. In other dreams he held a lover, often Deha, sometimes his first wife, more rarely other women he had known. It felt so real that when he awoke he wanted to beat the walls in protest of the empty spaces that greeted him.

He had always been an introvert, recharged by time alone, but this went beyond all reason. When he became depressed, Bolt released chemicals in his brain, powering up an endorphin high. It helped his mood but didn’t counteract the loneliness, and it strained the already damaged computer, until finally, after several seasons, he lost contact with Bolt. Its silence saddened him; he no longer had even the voice in his head to converse with.

So he talked to the sand, the floor, the food. He named the insects that hummed in the windows. When he found himself giving a funeral to a dead airbug, he knew he had to find a distraction from the loneliness.

Quis became his existence. He covered the floor with structures and made extra dice with cement he chipped off the walls. When the rules grew constraining he added new ones. The Quis he played became his and his alone, with no influence, no history, no cultural memories, no input from any other player. The simple patterns he had learned at Dahl seemed laughable now. He wove his perceptions of Haka, of Coba, of the Imperialate, of the universe, into his solitaire games. The patterns evolved, illuminating the past, predicting the future, revealing hidden mazes in the subconscious corridors of his mind.

His dice took on personalities. Ched was the silver cube. Every pattern he built of the boy’s life in Compound Four evolved into death. He tried to find patterns of hope, but the dice refused to lie. He often found somber dice of mourning around the silver cube.

The obsidian decahedron was Zecha. Sometimes he trapped it in torturously convoluted structures, destroying its rank. Other times he built pattern after pattern, trying to understand why she loathed him. She remained an enigma. For some reason, even thinking about her here, alone in his cell, drove him to barrier his mind. She crept into his brain, negating him like an anti-empath.

Gradually his dice took on more complex aspects. Equations evolved in his patterns: complex variables, differential topology, catastrophe theory, Selenian mystimatics. He created new theorems, becoming so absorbed in his lifelong passion for abstract math that at times he even forgot the weight of his solitude. In his sleep he dreamt Quis equations.

The dice turned introspective, forcing him to relive the scorn of his half brother, Kurj, the Imperator: Mathematics, Kelric? Why frustrate yourself in a pursuit beyond your ability? The Quis showed what Kelric had never understood: his brother’s contempt masked fear.

It wouldn’t have mattered what dreams Kelric pursued, his brother still would have sought to crush his confidence, tearing Kelric down to protect against what he, the Imperator, perceived as a threat to his power. He and Kelric looked, moved, spoke, and fought alike. Kurj saw only himself when he looked at his brother—and having gained his title through violence and death he would never trust his own heir.

That was when Kelric smashed his hand through the dice, throwing them across his cell.

After that he sought fonder memories. He wove patterns of his father, a farmer bemused by the glittering technology of his wife’s universe, a loving man who doted on his family, never dreaming he would someday become an interstellar potentate. The patterns of his mother evolved in warmth and a shimmering gold beauty so great a galaxy bowed before it. She was the sun of home, the warmth of the hearth—and yet she also held sway as a fierce political pundit who walked the halls of Imperial power.

Through his dice Kelric grieved for the loss of his home, his family, his hopes, his future. He lived among the structures, balanced on the edge of madness, unable to remember how it felt to touch another human being, until he wondered if his memories were no more than the dreams of a madman.

15

DESERT TOWER

The Topaz walk spanned the top level of Haka Estate like a tawny corridor of light. Designed from tinted glass, the hallway looked out over a sea of sand. Two figures walked together along the corridor, bathed in its ruddy light.

“I’m sorry to be blunt,” Zecha said. “But bring Sevtar onto the Estate and you will regret it.”

Rashiva regarded her with a puzzled expression. “Your reports make his progress sound excellent.”

Zecha knew she had trouble. It had taken a great deal of time and effort for her win Rashiva’s confidence. Part of that success came from her encouraging reports about Sevtar. In truth, she’d paid little attention to him this past year. Who could have known the Manager meant to take him into her Calanya? It was insane.

“It’s true, he’s made progress in a controlled environment,” Zecha said. He had, after all, done nothing but play Quis. If he hadn’t learned anything by now, he never would. “But I have grave doubts about his mental stability. Who knows what might make him snap.”

Rashiva nodded. “He will be kept separate from the others until we can determine if he’s stable.”

Good. The Manager had her doubts. If Kelric told tales of his time solitary, would anyone believe him? That Rashiva paid much closer attention to the prison than her predecessor would help here. The Manager knew about the delusions suffered by the prisoners in Four. Whatever marginal sanity Sevtar had possessed prior to his solitude was certainly gone now. She could have her prison doctors certify him as insane, a madness that subsided only under their expert care.

Sevtar would soon be back in prison.

The grate of metal scraping on stone woke Kelric. He raised his head and peered into the predawn darkness.

The door of his cell moved.

The portal slowly swung open, like a phantom escape. Instead of freedom, though, it revealed an octet of guards standing outside. They entered the cell like wraiths, shadowy and gray in the dim light. Kelric rose to his feet, unable to speak, surrounded by the Quis structures he had built. Six of the guards took up formation around him and the other two gathered his dice.

Stop, he thought. They were destroying patterns he had worked on for days. But he stood frozen, afraid if he moved the dream figures would vanish.

They filled his pouch and handed it to him, the small sack bulging with dice. Then the captain raised her arm toward the door in a ghostly invitation. He looked from her to the other guards, still unable to absorb their presence.

No one moved. They waited for him. So, taking a breath, he walked out of the storehouse.

They made their way through a daze of swirling, whirling sand, until they reached a door set into a small peak in the foothills of the Teotecs. They took him inside and followed a maze of tunnels that sloped under the desert. Kelric’s sense of direction soon failed him in the sameness of the passages and their many turns. He didn’t bother asking Bolt to make a map; the node had long ago stopped responding to him.

At the junction of two corridors, his guards took him through an archway—into an empty office. The captain picked up a pile of clothes from the desk there: suede pants with sewn seams, a white shirt with Quis patterns embroidered on the cuffs, knee boots the color of sand, and a robe tailored from a heavy yarn with the reddish brown color of stone in the desert. She gave him a scarf as long as he was tall, the piece woven from white yarn with black tassels around its edges. Quis designs adorned it, created in metallic yarns that glittered in the room’s cold light.

After the guards withdrew, locking the door behind them, Kelric stood holding the clothes. He couldn’t comprehend them. For a year he had worn the same gray uniform, washed and rewashed by himself until it drooped with holes.

Eventually he put on the new clothes. The lightweight robe covered him from neck to foot, with loose sleeves that came to his wrists. He had no idea what to do with the scarf, so he draped it around his neck and let it hang down his chest. Then he waited.

A knock sounded on the door, followed by a pause. The captain came inside and walked over to him, then bowed from the waist. She lifted the scarf and wound it loosely around his head, covering his neck and the lower half of his face. She finished by raising the hood of his robe, hiding all of him but his eyes. It felt hypnotic.

The octet took him back into the tunnels and escorted him deeper into the maze. At a rotunda that looked down onto a lower floor, they rendezvoused with another octet, one whose elegant bearing and manner he recognized.

Calanya guards.

Finally Kelric understood. Hallucination. Loneliness had driven him to create these bizarre scenes.

The Calanya escort led him farther into the maze, climbing upward until he felt certain they were above the desert again. The stone under his feet changed into glazed tiles and the tunnels expanded into halls with arabesques sculpted on the walls. Mosaics graced the corridors in geometric designs, with intricate borders around the archways and fluted columns.

He devised Quis rules to describe the patterns.

They came out into a corridor where sunshine poured through floor-to-ceiling windows. It nearly blinded him. By squinting, he could make out the desert far below, sweeping to the horizon.

The archway at the end of the hall looked like the keyhole for a giant skeleton key. Quis designs curved around its edges and the Haka symbol of a rising sun glowed in a stained glass window at its apex.

A suite lay beyond the door. Spice rooms. The walls blended from cinnamon near the floor into gold and then cream at the top. Plants with saffron blossoms stood in vases, and spheres of glass painted with flowers hung from the ceiling on gold chains. After spending the last year in a gray world, Kelric could barely even see all the colors.

The escort showed him through room after room of luxury, until it became too much. Kelric balked at an archway as the captain pulled aside its curtain of reeds.

She smiled at him. “Go on in. It’s yours, after all.”

His? He walked into the room beyond the reeds. Larger than the entire Compound Four men’s wing, it was a bath chamber. A pool fed by fountains filled over half of it.

“Manager Haka had purifiers installed in the wells that serve the pool,” the captain said. “So you won’t get sick if you swallow any water.”

After a year of tolerating barely drinkable water, he couldn’t imagine a room full of water purified so it wouldn’t hurt him. A fountain in the shape of a flower stood at one edge of the pool with water flowing down its sides. Kelric sat on the edge of its basin and looked into the bowl inlaid by green and blue tiles. He traced his hand through the water and it swirled in Quis patterns.

The captain spoke again. “I am Khaaj. My octet will be Outside your suite. If you need anything, open the Outside door and we will summon the Calanya Speaker.”

Speaker? He knew only how to speak to himself.

She didn’t seem to expect a response. “A barber is waiting to give you a shave and a haircut,” she added. “The metalworker will be here later this afternoon to change your Calanya guards.”

Kelric stared into the pool, devising Quis equations to describe its ripples. He didn’t turn as his escort left, he just continued to watch his hallucination of a fountain.

It had finally happened. He had gone insane.

Fresh from his bath, dressed in his new clothes, with his hair cut and his face shaved, Kelric sat on the plush rug in his suite, surrounded by cushions. He left his robe and scarf folded on the carpet next to him and stared at his wrist guards. In all their engravings, he recognized only the Haka insignia of a rising sun. Why give him Haka guards? If his deranged mind needed to create an illusion, why not Dahl guards? His only good memories of Coba came from Deha’s Estate.

“Sevtar?” Captain Khaaj pulled aside the reeds in an archway across the room. “You have a visitor, with Speaker’s Privilege.” She withdrew and a new hallucination appeared.

Kelric just stared. When the silence became strained, the hallucination spoke. “I know I’m under your level now, metal man. But couldn’t you talk to me just this once? Manager Haka gave permission.”

For the first time in a year Kelric spoke to another human being. “Ched Viasa is dead.”

Ched grinned at him. “I guess nobody let me know.” He came across the room, turning around as he walked to take it all in. “I’ve never seen a place this nice. Manager Haka takes good care of you, heh?”

Kelric tried to absorb his presence. “Compound Four—?”

“Bonni helped me get transferred, just like you said. I went to Compound Two.” Ched laughed. “You know what I’ve been doing? Laundry. I haven’t seen that hole in the cliffs for a year.”

“Laundry.” Kelric’s voice shook.

Ched came over to him. “You all right?”

“No.” He fought the tears but they came anyway, running down his face. He wasn’t sure why he cried, whether it was Ched, the suite, the sound of a human voice, or his insane hope it was all real.

Ched sat next to him on the rug. “Heh. Go ahead. I used to cry a lot.”

Kelric wiped his cheeks. “Not much of a metal man after all, am I?”

Ched smiled. “Well, you know what they say. ‘Never iron cold is the touch of gold.’ It’s a saying more about people than metal.”

“I’m glad to see you.” Gods, that sounded trite.

“They let me come because of your being sworn tonight.” Ched hesitated. “Manager Haka talked to the warden—not Zecha, thank Cuaz, but the one in Two. The warden knew Bonni knew you, so she talked to Bonni and Bonni talked to me and I said yip, if it was all right with you, so Bonni told the warden—”

“Ched, wait.” Kelric almost laughed. “I lost track about the time when the warden talked to Bonni.”

“I just don’t want you to think I’m pushing where I have no right to push.”

“Why would I think that?”

“Because you’re supposed to ask.”

“Ask what?”

Ched averted his eyes. “Me to be your Oath Brother.”

Oath? As in Calanya Oath? That made no sense. But he valued Ched’s offer of friendship more than he knew how to say. “Will you?”

“Sure.” Ched grinned at him. “I’ve sure missed you.”

“Do they treat you well in Two?”

“It’s all right. I get to take lessons from a Scribe, reading, writing, stuff like that. To make me smart, for when I get out.” He glanced at the robe Kelric had left folded next to him on the ground. “Can I look at your Talha? I’ve never seen one up close before.”

Kelric offered him the robe, but Ched took only the scarf on top of it. “It’s rolled right sharp, metal man.”

“It’s what?”

“You don’t recognize it, do you?”

“It’s a scarf.”

“That’s right. Haka men have to wear Talha scarves in public. It’s part of the Propriety Laws.”

“Propriety Laws?”

“Scowl Laws.” Ched brushed his fingers over the scarf. “Don’t you remember? Warden Torv wore a Talha at the quarry.”

Kelric dredged up his memory of the Compound Four men’s warden. “I thought it protected him from the sandstorms.”

“That too. A lot of women wear them for the same reason.” Ched gave him back the Talha. “Theirs are just plain, though. The ones like yours are for high-level men.” He nodded. “Manager Haka means you great honor.”

Kelric regarded the scarf, with its gleaming designs and tassels. If Manager Haka meant him so much honor, why had he just spent a year in hell?

The Sunset Hall glowed with light. Stained-glass windows bordered the hall like colorful archways, their lower edges flush with the floor and the tips of their onion-shaped crowns touching the high ceiling. Dark red curtains hung on the walls between the windows and glazed bowls sat on tiled pedestals around the edges of the room. Tendrils of smoke curled up from the bowls, scenting the air with incense. No furniture intruded; the highborn of Haka sat on the floor, among embroidered cushions, the women in jackets and trousers of brocaded silk and the men in robes and Talha scarves.

Bathed in fiery light, Kelric stood with Ched on a small, circular dais near the front of the hall, both of them wearing robes and scarves. A rail carved from golden wood bordered the dais only a few fingerspans distant from them.

Cymbals chimed in a soft rhythm, followed by the beat of a drum and a pipe’s haunting melody. A man’s spectacular voice soared into the music. He sang in an unfamiliar language, one with an ancient sound, evoking images of Estates burnished like gold in the desert. The music swirled in the sunset colors, then faded into silence like a sun vanishing behind the horizon.

A woman’s dusky voice coalesced out of the air. “Ched Lasa Viasa, do you stand as Oath Brother to Sevtar?”

“I do,” Ched said.

“What do you speak for him?”

Ched took a breath. “Sevtar was a better friend to me than anyone else I ever knew. He stood by me no matter what. And he believed in me.” He glanced at Kelric. “Knowing him made me a better person. I can’t think of anyone more worthy for your Calanya.”

Kelric touched Ched’s arm in thanks and the youth nodded to him, only his eyes visible above the scarf.

A young girl spoke. “Your words are heard and recorded, Ched of Viasa.”

Ched bowed, then stepped out of the Circle and withdrew to sit with his guards.

Cymbals chimed again, and the woman with the dusky voice spoke. “For Haka and for Coba, do you, Sevtar, come to the Circle to give your Oath?”

Was this the price of freedom? His betrayal of Deha? Kelric stood mute, his silence stretching out in the gilded topaz light. As murmurs came from the watchers, the curtains at the end of the hall rustled.

A woman appeared.

No. Kelric clenched the rail, trying to anchor himself in its reality. An impossible delusion had just entered the room. Only in a hallucination would he see, on Coba, the fertility goddess Viana from the mythology of his home world. She wore a long white robe that clung to her voluptuous body like fluid rippling in a stream. Graced with perfect skin, her face had a mesmerizing beauty. Black lashes fringed her large eyes and a braid of glossy black hair as thick as a fist fell over her shoulder to her hip. Rubies in her necklace glittered against her dark skin.

She came to stand before him and spoke in a low voice only he could hear. “Do you refuse Haka your Oath?”

Kelric pulled down his Talha, uncovering his face. “Are you the Haka Manager?”

“Yes. I am Rashiva Haka.”

“Dahl already has my Oath.”

“Manager Dahl has relinquished your vow.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why would I lie?”

Why indeed. What possessed his fevered mind to create this mocking vision? He liked Deha, perhaps even loved her. He didn’t want to imagine that she rejected him. He couldn’t fathom why he would conjure a place where a man had so little choice in his Oath that its Manager didn’t even bother to explain his situation before the ceremony. Rashiva acted as if it never occurred to her that he might not agree. Why would he create this bizarre illusion? Hell, he didn’t know. He was insane anyway.

Rashiva spoke quietly. “I can offer you a better life than you will ever have in prison. But I won’t force you to deny Dahl. If it is your wish to return to the compounds rather than enter my Calanya, I won’t make you stay here.”

A vision of his isolation rose in his mind like a nightmare. He spoke in a rusty voice. “How did you force Manager Dahl to allow this?”

She met his gaze. “I forced no one.”

He refused to believe Deha threw him away. He had created this phantasm, driven mad with loneliness, but he would rather live in its grip than return to the crushing reality of his solitude.

He spoke numbly. “Then take my Oath.”

Rashiva raised her voice so the others in the room could hear. Her words took on the quality of ritual. “Hear my words, Sevtar. Before you give them back to me as Oath, know that your life is bound by them.”

After a moment he realized she was waiting for a response. “All right,” he said.

She spoke softly. “You answer ‘I hear and understand.’”

“I hear and understand.”

“For Haka and for Coba,” she continued, “do you enter the Circle to give your Oath?”

“Yes.”

“Do you swear you will hold my Estate above all else, as you hold in your hands and your mind the future of Haka?”

“Yes.”

She watched him with her night-dark eyes. “Do you swear to keep forever the discipline of the Calanya? Never again to read or write? Never again to speak in the presence of those who are Outside the Calanya?”

“Yes.” It made no sense to him, but he would agree to stand on his head if it kept him out of the storehouse.

“Do you swear—on penalty of your life—that your loyalty is to Haka, only to Haka, and completely to Haka?”

“If you want,” he said.

“‘I swear,’” she murmured. “‘With my life.’”

She waited, watching him with her unsettling gaze. So he said, “I swear. With my life.”

Rashiva raised her hand and the chime of a gong vibrated in the air. The colors in the hall were deepening into the crimson shadows of dusk. “In return for your Oath,” she said, “I vow that for the rest of your life you will be provided for as befits a Calani.”

What did that mean? Deha had told him the same. So far, he had known only misery here.

Rashiva reached into the folds of her robe and withdrew four armbands. She first slid on his Dahl bands, white gold engraved with the suntree symbol and other hieroglyphics. They included some of the only Teotecan words he knew in writing, his Coban name, Sevtar Dahl, the first word depicted by the glyph of a man striding across the sky and the second by the suntree glyph.

The second pair of armbands she slid on his arms were a darker gold. They showed his Dahl name followed by a third symbol, the Haka rising sun. Sevtar Dahl Haka.

One other symbol on the Haka bands was familiar, a man with a mane of shoulder-length curls, his head turned to the right and his arm raised, bent at the elbow, with the palm at shoulder height and turned to face the ceiling. Kelric knew its meaning. The turned head symbolized fertility, the long hair denoted desirability, the raised palm acceptance. Husband. She gave him Akasi bands.

His anger surged. For a year he had lived in a nightmare of solitude. Now this siren appeared out of the sunset and lured him with an alien vow of love.

Triumph flickered in her eyes. “Sevtar Dahl Haka,” she said. “You are now a Second Level Calani of Haka.”

16

HAWK’S FIRE

The audiocom refused to stop its insistent buzz. Chankah Dahl rolled over in bed and fumbled for the switch. “Who is this?” she grumbled.

Senior Physician Rohka’s voice snapped out of the com. “You have to come to Deha’s suite. Hurry. She’s had another heart attack.”

Chankah ran barefoot through the halls, her robe flying out behind her. Inside Deha’s suite, she found the doctor Dabbiv pacing in the living room. Grief etched lines into his face.

“Why is she so rock-headed?” he demanded. “Why does she insist on working all night? We warned her, Chankah. Over and over. We warned her.”

Chankah stared at him. Before she could respond, Deha’s son appeared in an inner archway and beckoned to her.

She found the Manager lying in bed, her face pale. Chankah leaned over her. “Deha?”

The answering voice was faint. “I can’t see you.”

Chankah turned up the lamp on the nightstand. “Is that better?”

“A little.” Deha watched her with faded eyes. “Remember all I have taught you. You carry much responsibility now. You are a power among the Estates second only to Karn.”

“Don’t talk that way.” Please, Chankah thought. Don’t die. “You’ll be up sooner than you can whistle.”

“Not this time. Ah—Chani.”

“I’m here. Right here.”

“You must take care of him.”

“Him?”

“Kelric. Get him a pardon. Promise.”

Chankah would have sworn to deliver the wind if it eased her mentor’s dying. “I promise. I swear it.”

Deha’s voice faded. “Don’t mourn … My life has been rich … Good-bye …”

“No. Come back!” Chankah clenched the bedpost. “Deha? Deha.”

No life showed in the eyes of Dahl’s late queen.

Rashiva stood at the end of the Topazwalk, watching an octet come down the tunnel of light. They escorted an elderly Calani, a distinguished man with silver hair and gray eyes. His guards towered around him like refugees from a world less serene than the one he inhabited. Saje Viasa Varz Haka ranked among the elite of an elite, a Third Level Calani, one of the few among the Twelve Estates.

When Saje reached her, Rashiva smiled. “You look well today.”

He nodded his greeting.

She turned to the escort. “You may wait Outside.”

The guards bowed to her and withdrew. When she and Saje were alone, Rashiva moved aside to let him enter the tinted sphere of glass that ended the Topazwalk. Named for the translucent orbs that floated on the tips of hyella reeds, the Hyella Chamber sat at the top of a tower, overlooking the desert. A glass bench ran around its interior wall and a glass Quis table stood in its center.

As they sat at the table, Saje studied her face. “The man from the prison troubles you.”

“I played Quis with him this morning,” Rashiva said.

“And?”

“Deha Dahl was wrong. Sevtar isn’t talented.”

Regret showed in Saje’s eyes. “You are certain?”

She took a breath. “Talent comes nowhere near to describing his gift with the dice. It’s like defining the desert as a grain of sand. Sevtar isn’t a grain. He’s an ocean.”

“Such a gift should please you.”

“Every pattern he makes is sorrow, Saje.” Her voice caught. “He weeps with his dice.”

The Third Level sighed. “Manager Dahl has died.”

“He doesn’t know. I don’t know how to tell him.” She hesitated, swept with uncertainty. “He is her Akasi.”

“Was. He is yours now.”

In name only, Rashiva thought. Sevtar remained a stranger she saw only during their Quis sessions. “I’m concerned about how he will react. Warden Haka thinks he’s dangerous. Her doctors say he is insane.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. He’s like the blank face of a cliff. I need your advice.”

“To give you counsel,” Saje said, “I must know him. To know him, I must sit at Quis with him.”

Rashiva stiffened. “No.”

Saje waited.

“It isn’t safe.” She couldn’t leave a man as fragile as the elderly Third Level to play dice with Sevtar.

Saje continued to wait.

“I can’t risk your life,” she said.

“If you believed him to be that dangerous,” Saje said, “he wouldn’t be here on the Estate.”

Rashiva looked out at the desert where sand swirled in patterns impossible to fathom. Like Sevtar. Saje was right.

The time had come for Sevtar to site at Quis with a true Calani.

When Captain Khaaj and the escort came for him, Kelric balked. They had left him alone in his suite for the past ten days, since his Oath ceremony. He had seen only one other person; Rashiva had come three times to play Quis. They never spoke during the sessions. Apparently she hadn’t found whatever she sought in his dice and now she sent guards to take him back to prison.

He refused to leave the suite. No one forced him; they simply waited.

After an hour, Kelric felt thoroughly foolish. Guards who intended to throw him in a cell didn’t wait with this calm patience. He had grown bored enough that he walked over to the octet. Khaaj responded with a deep bow and then lifted her hand, inviting him to leave the suite. When she simply waited, without pushing, he walked to the exit from his suite.

His escort took him along graceful halls and then climbed the spiral stairs of a tower. They came out into a corridor of topaz-tinted glass that spanned what looked like the top level of Haka Estate. Together they walked through a hall of golden light. The passage ended at a round chamber bathed in radiance, with exquisite etchings of Quis dice in the glass walls.

An elderly man sat at a circular table in the center of the room playing Quis solitaire. He wore three bands on each arm, though over his sleeves rather than under them the way Kelric wore his. A Calanya escort stood outside the chamber, and Kelric’s guards took up position with them. They all stood beyond the range of conversation but close enough to reach the table in seconds. Kelric had no doubt their concern was for the elderly gentleman rather than him.

As Kelric entered the chamber, the man looked up. “Ah. Sevtar. My greetings.” He indicated a chair across the table. “Please. Be comfortable.”

Kelric sat down at the table, wary.

“I am Saje.” The man set a velvet pouch on the table. “Manager Haka wishes to give you this.”

Kelric left the pouch untouched. “I have Quis dice.”

Saje slid it over to him. “These are Calanya dice.”

Kelric turned the bag over several times. He opened it and nudged out the dice. Not only did the bag contain the usual pieces, it also included unusual shapes such as stars, eggs, and boxes with hinged lids. And they were real. The gold ball was just that—solid gold. White pieces were diamond, blue sapphire, red ruby. Some of the gems, like the opals, gave mixtures of colors that sparked ideas in his mind for manipulating color rank within the structures.

Saje rolled out his own dice gems. “Shall we begin?”

“I can’t.” These new dice were strangers.

Saje didn’t look surprised. “Use your other set today. In time you will feel comfortable with the new one.”

Kelric refilled the new pouch. He tied it onto his belt, then took off his ragged bag and rolled out his old dice.

So he played his first dice game with a Calani.

“Stop hovering over me, Rashiva.” Saje eased down among the cushions on the lush carpet in Rashiva’s sitting room. “I’m not a blown-glass Quis die.”

She sat next to him, as tense as a mountain climber’s rope. “How did your session go?”

“Your Sevtar is a remarkable young man.” Saje paused. “But strange. He has no sense of his own genius. He never analyzes. He does it by instinct. We give him dice so he plays Quis.”

Rashiva nodded. “I thought so too. His dice have almost no patterns of the prison, just loneliness and solitude. If I hadn’t known he had been in the compounds, I’d never have picked it up from his Quis. He plays as if he taught himself, with no input from anyone else.”

“I detected a faint reference to the prison, something about the quarry. It was old, though.” Saje lifted his hands as if to show they were empty of dice. “He’s holding back, I think, without even realizing it. And he hasn’t learned Quis properly. He needs to sit with other Calani. He should live in the Calanya.”

“It’s too dangerous. Warden Haka thinks he’s mentally unstable.”

Saje spoke quietly. “His only illness is loneliness. He needs company.”

Rashiva had no answer. How could she risk her Calanya with him when she wouldn’t risk herself?

The days blended together, each a repetition of the last. Kelric played Quis with gems now instead of rocks and his guards brought his meals on silver trays instead of shoving them through the door, but the rhythm of his life otherwise remained unchanged from his time in solitude. He lived in a trance.

One break existed in the pattern; each day either Rashiva or Saje sat at dice with him, their sessions so intense that they needed no conversation. As he learned Saje’s Quis, so he came to know the man, better than if they had exchanged words instead of dice. He discovered Saje’s wisdom and gentle humor, and his sessions with the Third Level became an oasis in his loneliness.

Rashiva remained an enigma, craved but denied. He watched her from the fortress of his mind, hungering to touch his unwanted wife, hating her for tormenting him with her beauty.

His dreams jumbled in confused images. Sometimes he piloted his starfighter, fighting endless battles with no reprieve. Other times he saw Deha lying in death, her heart stopped. He relived Llaach’s death again and again, until the agony felt unbearable. In some nightmares he forced Rashiva to give him what he craved, hating himself for his brutality. In others, ghosts entered his dreams, soldiers he had killed in battle. Every time he bolted awake, his mouth working to release a scream that never came.

Gradually an obsession took hold, a desire to reach the desert, as if its endless space could free him from this agony of solitude, parch him dry until he no longer hurt. A thought worried at his mind like a dog with a bone: he would shatter a window and jump out. He tried with his fists, pounding the glass, but he nearly fractured his hand and still the barrier remained solid. Another night he used a chair. It broke into pieces long before the window weakened, and the noise brought his guards running into the room.

After that, Saje no longer visited him.

Kelric changed his approach, using his Quis to deceive Rashiva. Like everyone else he had met on Coba, including Saje and Deha, she had no idea how to play dice. He hadn’t realized it at Dahl. They were all children with Quis, blind to its intricacies. Rashiva never knew his dice lied. He wanted her to suffer for what she had let the prison do to him, but his Quis told a different story, that he felt content. Her dice reflected back to him what he wanted her to believe, that he had finally adjusted to his new life.

On a night when clouds massed around the cliffs and lightning clawed the desert, an unfamiliar octet came for him. They took him through corridors emptied by the late hour, their boots echoing on the parquetry floors. With a numbness born from too long dreading this journey, he waited for the halls to become tunnels that ended at a barren gray cell.

Instead they stopped in an alcove lit only by a torch set in a gilded claw on the wall. An ancient door faced them. The captain pushed it open, revealing yet another tower with spiral stairs. They climbed up and around, up and around, up and around …

A door at the top opened into a suite that made his own quarters look meager. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, sparkling with colored crystals. Then he realized the “crystals” were gems: diamonds, rubies, topazes. An artist had designed the furniture from a lustrous black wood with red overtones, and upholstered the pieces in dark brocades. Urns as tall as his shoulder stood in corners, glazed with Quis designs, and tapestries on the walls showed desert landscapes. No windows softened the suite, only heavy drapes and walls paneled in rosewood.

After the escort left, shoving bolts into place and locking the door, Kelric wandered through the rooms. In one he found a bed covered in gold brocade, with darkwood posters at its corners and a canopy of red velvet. He took a blown-glass vase off the nightstand and turned it over in his hand. Why this new prison, this cage within a cage? At least his previous suite had windows that let him see the world. Had they moved him here so he couldn’t try breaking the glass? The walls pressed in, confining, suffocating—

The vase snapped in his clenched hand. Its body fell to the floor and shattered on the darkwood parquetry, leaving him holding a shard of glass. He stared at it. Then, slowly, he pressed its jagged edge against his wrist.

Soon he would be free.

In another room, a clock chimed. Sometime later it chimed again.

Kelric dropped the shard. Then he gathered the pieces of glass of the floor and arranged them on the nightstand, taking care to place each shard in its proper place.

Finally he lay on the bed.

“Sevtar?”

Kelric hid in the gray world between sleep and waking.

“Sevtar?”

He doesn’t exist, Kelric thought.

Fingers brushed his cheek. Opening his eyes, he saw Rashiva kneeling on the bed next to him. She wore a red lace robe that came to her thighs and she had freed her lustrous hair, letting it pour over her body.

She watched him with a dark gaze. “The vase—Why?”

“It fell.”

Her voice caught. “Into Quis patterns of death?”

Instead of answering, he put his arm around her waist and pulled her down on the bed. When she resisted, he held her down and rolled on top of her. Taking huge handfuls of her hair, he clenched his fists in the hollows where her shoulders met her neck.

She pushed his shoulders. “Sevtar stop.”

He stroked her breast. “Isn’t this what you came for?”

“Not like this. Not in anger.” Fear turned her voice dusky. “This wasn’t in your Quis.”

“It was easy to fool you. You play dice like a child.” He clenched her breast. “You never asked if I wanted a wife. I don’t. I already have one.”

As soon as she tensed, he knew something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked. When she didn’t reply, just like everyone else here, his anger sparked. “Answer me!”

She stared at him, still silent, but it didn’t matter. Her thought came with such force, even his injured Kyle centers picked it up.

Dead. Deha was dead.

He suddenly heard a rushing noise, one in his head rather than his ears. His voice came through the tumult. “How did she die?”

“Why makes you think—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

She spoke as if the words hurt. “Deha died of the heart sickness. Last season.”

Last season? When did Rashiva plan to tell him? Next year? Next century? A red haze blurred his vision. Had Rashiva gloated over Deha’s death? Had she sat smug in her power over him while he rotted in solitude? He wanted to hurt her so much it burned in his mind. Burned. He lay poised on the edge of brutality, a heartbeat away from violence—

Except he couldn’t hurt her. He couldn’t inflict this violence within him on another person.

Kelric let out an agonized breath. He rolled off Rashiva, onto his back, lying next to her.

The covers rustled, and he looked to see she had moved to the edge of the bed. She knelt there, poised to get up, her hand resting on the nightstand’s com. But she didn’t call for help. Instead she spoke to him. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. I didn’t know how.”

“I don’t want you,” he lied. If he lay with her now, he feared he would hurt her.

“What do you want, then?”

He rolled onto his side and pushed up on his elbow. “To play Quis. Put me in your Calanya.”

She gave him an incredulous look. “After what happened here tonight?”

His fist clenched in the velvet covers. “If you expect me to use sexual favors to get what I want, you can wait until the end of time.”

“Why do you say such a thing?”

“It’s what you expect, isn’t it?”

Softly she said, “I would like you to behave more like a Haka man. Is that so outrageous? I am a Haka woman.”

“I’m not a Haka man.” He reached out and pulled her sash, loosening it until her robe slid off her shoulders, revealing her body underneath, her beautiful skin dark against the red silk. “You better leave, Rashiva. If you don’t, you’ll get what you came for. But you won’t like how it comes.”

Watching him, she shuddered. She slid off the bed and put on a long robe she had draped over a chair. She left the room then, her bare feet padding on the floor.

17

MULTIPLE BUILDERS

“A child.” Rashiva stood in the Hyella Chamber looking out at the desert. “He thinks I play Quis like a child.”

“He only understands Quis solitaire,” Saje said behind her. “He is right about the Calanya. He should be in it.”

She turned to face the Third Level, who was standing by the Quis table. “I can’t.”

“You keep saying this. I can’t. Why not? What has he done to warrant this distrust? Tried to break a window? Is that truly so dire?”

If only you knew, Rashiva thought. Her night with Sevtar would always remain private. What would she have done if he turned violent? Sent him back to prison, an admission of her weakness? No. Never would she let such humiliation become public. She would find other ways to deal with him. And she would deal with this situation.

The intensity of her reaction gave her pause. Despite his obvious wish to hurt her, he had held back. So why did she want to punish him?

Because he had deceived her with Quis. He rejected her. If she did nothing, it would always be there between them, this imbalance that undermined her authority. It would eat away at her self-confidence, make her less of a woman, less in command at Haka.

No. Rashiva took a breath. She couldn’t let this ruin her confidence. Nor could she let it interfere with her ability to run Haka. She had to make her decisions based on what was best for her Estate, not her pride.

Four men sat on the carpeted floor around a low Quis table, comfortable among cushions, intent on their dice game. The room was octagonal in shape, with walls painted in desert hues, and large enough that no one noticed Kelric and Rashiva. They stood in the shadows by the entrance to the Calanya.

Rashiva spoke in a low voice. “This is the main common room.” She indicated an arch in a wall across the room. “Smaller common rooms are through there and an exit to the parks.”

Kelric tried to absorb it. People. “How many Calani live here?”

“Seventeen.” She raised her voice. “Adaar?”

A Calani lifted his head, blinking like a diver coming to the surface of a lake. As the others looked up, Adaar rose to his feet and walked over to Rashiva.

She smiled. “Adaar, this is Sevtar.”

Adaar bowed to him. “Welcome to Haka.”

Kelric nodded.

“Do you know where the others are?” Rashiva asked Adaar.

“In the gardens, I think. I can get them.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

As Adaar left, Rashiva drew Kelric over to the dice table, where the other players were standing up. She introduced him to all three, including Raaj, a First Level with the handsome features of a desert prince. His dark stare grazed Kelric like sandpaper.

A ripple of conversation spilled into the room, followed by more Calani. As they gathered around, talking at him, Kelric felt as if he were suffocating. He had thought he wanted this, but being plunged among so many people was too much.

Rashiva glanced at him, then spoke to the other players. “You can talk to him more later. I’m going to show him his suite.”

More nods, more words, and then he and Rashiva escaped into a private suite. Except for its entrance into the main common room, it otherwise reminded him of his spice suite. He liked it.

“This is where you will live.” Rashiva spoke with awkward formality. “The common rooms are open to all, but no one can come in here unless you invite them.”

“Does that include you?” he asked.

She stiffened. “No.”

Kelric hadn’t meant it to sound hostile. He felt as if he had been suffering a fever, not in his body but in his mind, one he hadn’t recognized until it began to ease. Like a cool breeze, thoughts of life stirred within him, awakening from their slumber, trying to bring him health.

Rashiva raked her fingers through her hair, pulling out strands from the thick braid that fell down her back. They curled around her face, giving her a tousled look despite her elegant tunic and trousers of red brocade.

“I will leave you to rest now,” she said.

Kelric nodded, wishing he knew what to say, or even what he thought of her. The words didn’t come, locked within an anger he had only begun to acknowledge.

After Rashiva left, Kelric wandered through the suite and eventually stopped in the bedroom. For a long time he stood by a window gazing at the desert. He tried to think about Dahl, but he couldn’t imagine it without Deha.

He wept in silence.

The tears started as a trickle and then increased, until they poured down his face. At first they wrenched out of him, agonizing. Gradually the pain eased, just a bit, but enough that he could bear its weight.

After a while he went to the bathing room and washed his face. He returned then to the archway that opened into the common room. When he pushed aside the screen, he saw Saje in a nearby alcove talking to Adaar.

“Ah. Sevtar.” The Third Level gestured him over. “Will you join us at Quis?”

Kelric nodded, trying to relax. Quis he could do.

With Adaar’s assistance, Saje walked stiffly to a table where several Calani sat, analyzing a Quis game. The players all rose, standing until Saje settled into his cushions. After everyone took their seats, including Kelric, Saje nodded to Raaj, the Hakaborn prince. “Will you begin? We will work on the Miesa Plateau.”

Kelric rolled out his dice, wondering what a plateau in Miesa had to do with Quis. Raaj set a gold dodecahedron on the table and the session took off. At first Kelric had trouble following a game with so many players, but gradually the patterns became clear. The structures described an Estate. Miesa? Its Manager was young. Gold. Sun. It came up again and again.

“Savina,” Kelric suddenly said. “The sungoddess.”

Heads jerked up. Raaj scowled and Adaar dropped a cone, knocking over a structure.

“Yes,” Saje said. “Savina is the name of the Miesa Manager. Please do not disrupt the session again.”

Kelric winced. As soon as the game resumed, however, he became absorbed in the patterns. It was as if he circled over Miesa, dropping nearer. It nestled in a valley where the mountains met a plateau that boasted a wealth of mineral deposits. The Manager who controlled the Miesa Plateau controlled the mineral markets of the Twelve Estates and so wielded great power. Varz Estate dominated the patterns, however. The once-wealthy Miesa had declined, until it now depended heavily on Varz.

After the picture became complete, the players projected various futures for Miesa. If a pattern formed with the Karn Ministry dominant, they destroyed it the same way an Outsider playing dice for money sought to destroy an opponent’s advantage. New patterns developed with Varz ascendant.

As they played, Kelric finally began to understand what the Calani did cloistered in their Calanya.

They shaped the future of their world.

Saje ushered Kelric into a private alcove in the Third Level’s suite. They sat among cushions on a carpet so thick that Kelric’s toes sank into the pile.

“Tomorrow,” Saje continued, “I will sit at Quis with Rashiva and build her patterns of the work we did today.”

Kelric saw now what Ixpar had meant when she told him Calani advised the Manager. “What happens then?”

“She plays Quis with selected aides. They play with others. Her input soon creates powerful ripples in the Quis net that spreads across the Twelve Estates.” He slid a cushion under his legs. “It works both ways. She interacts with many high-level players, including other Managers, and then inputs what she learned from them into our Quis. We use the information to find advantage for Haka.”

“But everyone plays Quis.”

“Yes.” Saje leaned forward. “Every woman, man, and child in the Twelve Estates. It is one game. We have been playing it for a thousand years.”

A new pattern unveiled itself in Kelric’s mind. Quis was the Coban equivalent of the star-spanning mesh networks that tied together the Imperialate, the regular electro-optical webs and also the psiberspace webs only Kyle operators could access. Quis formed a third type of web, one the Cobans “accessed” every time they played dice. It gave them a more subjective network, one that depended on fluxes of personality and dice expertise rather than electricity or quantum physics. Its “memory” came from the social, cultural, and racial memory of a people.

“Consider the situation at Miesa,” Saje continued. “We must help Varz stop the Ministry from taking control of the Plateau.”

“Why must we do that?” Kelric asked, intrigued.

Saje snorted. “I should think this is obvious. If the Ministry controls the Plateau, it gives Jahlt Karn more power. She already has too much.”

“She’s the Minister,” Kelric said.

“Varz challenges that claim.” Saje settled his legs on a large, soft pillow. “During the Old Age, Varz and Karn often went to war. Now they battle with Quis.”

“I take it Haka is an ally of Varz.”

“Of course.” Saje tilted his head toward the common room. “At the center of the ripples are the Calani. The more powerful a Calanya, the stronger its waves. Without a strong Manager, however, a Calanya is powerless.”

“Why not just send Calani out into the network?”

Saje gave him a look that Kelric suspected he reserved for the dullest of the dull-witted. “We never speak with, read about, write to, or receive input from Outsiders. They are in no way allowed to contaminate the Calanya. If Outsiders can get to our Quis, they can manipulate it to their advantage. This would weaken Haka at its core.”

The idea of protected web nodes intrigued Kelric. “Doesn’t Third Level mean you lived on two other Estates before you came here?”

Saje nodded. “I was hardly more than a boy when I did my First Level at Viasa. I went to Varz soon after and stayed many years. Then I came here.”

“Won’t your knowledge of Varz and Viasa affect Haka?”

“Ah.” Saje smiled as if he and Kelric were conspirators. “What better way to learn the inner working of another Estate than to obtain one of its Calani?” Quietly he added, “This is why we swear, on penalty of our lives, that our loyalty is to the Estate where we are Calani. It is also why higher Levels are so rare. And so sought after. To bring me here, Rashiva’s predecessor put Haka into debt for years.”

“They buy us?”

Saje shrugged. “It is a matter of negotiation. I needed a desert climate because of my health. I wished to come to Haka, and Haka wished to have me. So. Varz and Haka arranged a trade.” He shifted the pillow under his legs. “The warmth here eases my joints. I wouldn’t leave Haka even if another Manager offered me a Fourth Level.”

Kelric regarded him with curiosity. “I had the impression Fourth Levels didn’t exist.”

“Well, almost. Only one has existed in the last century.” Saje leaned forward. “Mentar. He is at Karn. Akasi to the Minister. Mentar doesn’t make ripples with his Quis. He makes tidal waves.”

Kelric’s mind created a Quis pattern of waves. “Has there ever been a Fifth Level?”

Saje thought for a moment. “In this millennium I believe records exist of two. Legends from the Old Age claim another. But the cost of a Fifth Level settlement is prohibitive to the point of impossibility.”

“What about a Sixth?”

Saje laughed. “A Sixth Level could never exist.” His smile faded. “It is fortunate. The power of his dice could destroy the world.”

18

TOPPLED CHUTE

“Ixpar.” Jault Karn, the Minister of Coba, looked up as the young woman strode into her office. “I didn’t expect you back from Bahvla Estate until tonight.”

“We left early. The pilot was worried about the weather.” Ixpar dropped into an armchair and stretched her legs out to their full length, seeming to cover half the room. Strands of hair had escaped her braid and curled in fiery tendrils around her face. “Manager Bahvla sends her greetings.”

“And how is Henta?”

With a grimace, Ixpar said, “Nosier than ever.”

Jahlt smiled. Henta Bahvla’s penchant for gossip was well known. “Did your visit go well?”

Ixpar leaned forward. “Henta supports a Ministry Wardship of the Miesa mines. I didn’t even need to ask. She told me herself that she thinks Varz holds too much control over the Plateau.”

“Good.” Although Henta’s response didn’t surprise Jahlt, she had long ago learned never to make assumptions about any Manager’s politics. “I’m also fairly certain we have the support of Shazorla Estate.”

Ixpar got up and paced to the bookshelf. “Henta has heard rumors that Ahkah will side with Varz.”

Jalht frowned. “That would be unfortunate.”

Ixpar turned to face Jahlt. “There’s still Viasa.”

“I wouldn’t roll dice on it.” The feud between Bahvla and Viasa had started so long ago, Jahlt doubted anyone even knew its cause anymore. “Viasa always votes against Bahvla. If Bahvla goes with us, Viasa will go with Varz.”

“Viasa does have the new Manager, though.” Ixpar sat on the windowsill. “Even Henta doesn’t know much about her.” She got up and started pacing again.

Jahlt watched her successor, hiding her smile. Ixpar seemed as restless as a caged clawcat these days. “Perhaps it’s time I sent an ambassador to Viasa, to give my regards to its new Manager.”

Ixpar stopped moving. “This ambassador wouldn’t happen to have red hair, would she?”

“Manager Viasa is only a few years older than you. The two of you should have a lot in common.”

“What about my visit to Dahl?”

“Dahl.” Jahlt exhaled. “A difficult situation. It is best we postpone your trip there.”

“I thought Chankah’s support was solid.”

“It is. This is another matter.” Jahlt disliked bringing up the subject. It remained Ixpar’s one weakness. “An offworld matter.”

“Kelric.”

“Chankah wants me to pardon him. It was Deha’s dying request. I must tell her no.”

Ixpar crossed her arms. “Why?”

Jahlt injected a coldness into her voice she rarely used with her successor. “I am surprised you need ask.”

“You know,” Ixpar said. “When one spends time with Henta one hears many rumors.”

It was, Jahlt had discovered, a good reason to spend time with the Bahvla Manager. “Such as?”

“Such as, Dahl and Haka made an arrangement years ago.”

Jahlt scowled. “I know of no agreements between Dahl and Haka.”

Ixpar came over to her desk. “They kept it secret. Kelric is a Haka Calani now.”

Jahlt stared at her. “Deha would never have consented to such an arrangement.”

“Henta seemed sure of her sources.”

Jahlt didn’t like the sound of it. Not at all.

After the formalities were done, the Estate dinner eaten and the speeches given, Jahlt and Chankah withdrew to the Dahl Manager’s private study. Chankah poured out two glasses of jai rum and gave one to the Minister. “Deha would appreciate your visit.”

“She was a fine friend and ally.” Jahlt lifted her rum. “To Deha.”

Chankah raised her glass. “To Deha.”

“Well. Now we must decide what to do with this problem she left us.” Jahlt sat back in her armchair. “What exactly is this contract she and Rashiva thought up?”

“Basically this.” Chankah swirled her rum. “If a time ever came when Rashiva deemed it safe, she could take Sevtar into her Calanya. If he’s ever pardoned, his Oath to Haka becomes void and he returns to Dahl.”

Jahlt couldn’t believe it. “Deha actually signed that?”

“I have an original of the document.”

It made no sense to Jahlt. Deha knew the Ministry would never grant such a pardon. Yet even so she gave her own Akasi to Haka. Why?

And yet—since Kelric became a Haka Calani, the power of that Estate had surged in the Quis. Even more of a concern, an unpredictable factor had entered the Haka Quis, an influence like none Jahlt had seen before, as if it evolved independent of known constraints—which made it even more dangerous. Kelric had lived in the Haka Calanya for only a short time. If he had already made such a marked difference, who knew what heights his dice might reach?

Jahlt found it unacceptable, totally unacceptable that Haka should gain such an advantage.

Damn. Deha had known exactly what she was doing when she signed that contract with Hak. The late Dahl Manager had outplayed them all.

“So.” Jahlt set down her rum. “It is time, Chankah, that we solve this problem Deha left us.”

Columns pressed in on him. Gray columns. He would never escape, never find his way out, never touch another human being …

Kelric sat up with a jerk and opened his eyes—to see the furnishings of an unfamiliar room. As his nightmare-driven surge of adrenaline calmed, he realized he’d been sleeping on a gold brocaded sofa. Across the room, Rashiva stood looking out a window, her body silhouetted against the brilliant red dawn. She wore day clothes, trousers and a jacket sewn from gold silk.

Confused, Kelric rubbed his eyes. The last he remembered from last night, his escort had brought him to Rashiva’s suite. They hadn’t told him why. He must have fallen asleep before she showed up. As he swung his legs off the sofa and sat up straighter, Rashiva turned to him.

“Sevtar.” She spoke awkwardly. “My greetings.”

Kelric pushed his hand through his curls, which had grown longer than he’d ever worn them since his youth. He didn’t really mind. In the military he’d kept his hair cropped close to his head, but that no longer mattered.

“Did I sleep here?” he asked.

“Yes.: She hesitated. “You seemed so tired last night. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Why did you want to see me?”

“I had thought we might dine together.” She came over and sat on the other end of the sofa. “So that we might start over. A Manager and a Calani should not—have antagonism. It doesn’t do well for the Estate.”

Kelric didn’t know how to respond. This didn’t fit his negative picture of her. He wasn’t sure about his impressions anymore, though. Since he had come to the Calanya, living a normal life, interacting with others, eating well and getting fresh air, he felt as if he were recovering from a long illness. She had a point, too, that their stilted relationship affected their Quis.

He spoke carefully. “Perhaps we could start over.”

Her face relaxed into a smile. “Yes, I would like that.” Rashiva stood up. “When I return from my trip, let’s I would like for us to dine together.” A brief flicker of uncertainty crossed her face. “If you would like.”

“Yes, I would.” He paused. “Where are you going?”

She fastened her jacket, winding the silk ties around hooks. “To see Zecha Haka. Then to Viasa for a few days.”

Zecha. The name hit Kelric like ice water. He stood up, rolling his stiff shoulders. “Would you call my escort?”

She stopped tying her jacket. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He went to the door. “I would like to return to the Calanya.”

“Is it the prison? Zecha told me it would bother you to be reminded of it.”

Kelric wondered how he could have conceived, even for a moment, that he might want to become closer to this woman. “How can you live with yourself?”

She came over to him. “I don’t understand.”

He just looked at her. If she felt justified about the way they had treated him, he had nothing to say.

Something seemed off, though. He had an odd sense about Rashiva, like the shifting of an optical illusion. Today she didn’t strike him as the hardened seductress playing with him after subjecting him to a year of painful solitude. Instead, she just seemed young and puzzled, a good Manager but inexperienced compared to someone like Deha Dahl.

“Sevtar?” She hesitated. “Your face changes so fast, it’s hard to follow.”

He spoke quietly. “You have no idea what Zecha does down there, do you?”

“It is natural you resent her. Hate her even.” Rashiva sounded more naïve than anything else. “She was your jailor, after all.”

“You see only what she wants you to see.”

The Manager stiffened. “Do you suggest that you, my Akasi, know more about what goes on in Haka than I?”

Kelric wanted to block his memories of the prison. He doubted Rashiva would listen to a convicted killer with a supposed history of mental instability, particularly if believing him meant she had to admit Zecha duped her.

But he had opened a dam and it refused to close. Although he spoke calmly, the words flooded out. “We worked double, even triple shifts in the quarry. No breaks, no helmets, no goggles, no scarves, no nothing. We weren’t allowed a drink of water. Guards had free rein to beat prisoners. Big convicts abused smaller ones, physically and sexually. Anyone who complained was punished.”

Rashiva spoke uneasily. “I’ve been to the compounds. I know what you describe doesn’t happen.”

He wondered if he could ever speak of his time in solitary. “You live in a world where Quis dice are made from diamonds. It blinds you to the world Zecha created.”

She said nothing, just watched his face. As the moment stretched out, he regretted mentioning the prison.

When finally she spoke, she said only, “I’ll use the smelter’s door.”

Kelric walked through the Calanya parks. The late-afternoon sky made a wash of blue and shadows dappled under the trees, but the day’s tranquility was lost on him. In the three days since his talk with Rashiva, memories of the prison had plagued his thoughts and dreams.

Sand rustled behind him and he turned to see Captain Khaaj. Her presence jarred. Technically he remained an prison inmate even here in the Calanya, which meant his guards stayed with him at all times. Usually they were so discreet, though, he barely noticed them.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Khaaj said. “But it’s important.”

Kelric waited. His year in solitary had reinforced his tendency toward reticence, and his Calanya Oath made his silences acceptable, even expected.

“Have you seen Manager Haka since you dined at her suite?” Khaaj asked.

He shook his head no.

“I brought the Speaker with me,” Khaaj said. “Will you talk to her?”

He considered, then nodded yes.

Khaaj took him to the Calanya building. Ekoe Haka, Speaker for the Haka Calanya, waited for them in the main common room. Khaaj escorted Ekoe and Kelric to the Alcove of Words, a small chamber set apart from the common rooms. She stopped outside, leaving them in privacy as they sat at the Quis table.

Ekoe spoke the formal words. “Manager Haka permits me to be your voice in times of crisis, when it is vital your words be known to Outsiders. Will you Speak to me?”

“Yes,” Kelric said.

“You were the last person to see Manager Haka,” Ekoe said. “Do you know where she is?”

Last person? That made no sense. They had talked three days ago. “She planned a trip to Viasa.”

Ekoe shook her head. “A windrider came in from Viasa today. They wanted to know what happened. Manager Haka never showed up. She also had a meeting with Warden Haka and she never showed up for that, either. No one has seen her for three days.”

Kelric thought back to his conversation with Rashiva. “Just before she left for her meeting, she said something about a smelter’s door.”

“Smelter?” Ekoe’s forehead creased. “What did she mean?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“The back door,” Khaaj blurted out.

Ekoe turned to the captain, who was supposed to be out of earshot, and raised her eyebrows.

Khaaj reddened. “Forgive my interruption. But Manager Haka says she’s going in the smelter’s door when she plans to use a back entrance. It’s because smelters deliver their ingots to the back of an ore shop.”

Suddenly it became clear for Kelric. He didn’t want to believe it, but the pattern refused denial.

“The back entrance of what?” Ekoe asked.

“Compound Four,” Kelric said.

Ekoe stared at him. “At the prison?”

“Yes.” He met her gaze. “She sent herself to prison.”

The only sound in the common room came from the click of dice. Kelric paced past the table where Saje and the others sat playing Quis. He wished someone would laugh. Or yell. Anything to break the evening’s tension.

The fourth time he crossed the room, Saje came over to him. “Why don’t you sit with us for a while?”

“No.”

“Rashiva will be fine.”

Kelric scowled. “I’m not worried about Rashiva.”

“Of course not.” Saje drew him over to the table. “Play Quis. It will calm you.”

“I am calm.”

“Of course.” Saje nudged him down into the cushions.

Kelric tried to concentrate on the session. Somber dice predominated: ebony octagons, purple balls, cobalt blocks. It looked like a study of relations between Varz and Karn. When his turn came, he pushed his Ixpar die against a dome Raaj used to denote the Varz Successor.

Raaj glanced at him with a look close to hatred. He played a black onyx die on top of Kelric’s piece. As the game progressed the patterns became more and more muddled, disintegrating into a morass of hostility. Had it been an actual battle, deaths would have littered the field.

Finally Saje rose to his feet. “I’m afraid I tire more easily than you young people.” He turned to Kelric. “Will you assist me?”

Kelric stood up, relieved to escape the session, and put out his arm. Saje leaned on him, limping as they crossed the common room. The moment they were within Saje’s suite, he herded Kelric to an alcove. “Please be seated,” he said. Following his own advice, he eased himself down to sit among the brocaded cushions.

Kelric sat against the wall, with his legs stretched in front of him. “I thought you were tired.”

Saje scowled at him. “You must learn better control over your dice. Jumbled schemes, conflict between you and Raaj, patterns of Rashiva everywhere—it was a mess.”

“My mind wasn’t in it.”

“You should never have Spoken to Ekoe this afternoon. It disrupted the Quis.”

“I had to talk to her. As for Raaj—” Kelric shrugged. “The conflict is always there. He can’t stand me.”

Sage sighed. “I must admit, it is hard to believe you and he are so close in age. You seem much more mature.”

At thirty-six, Kelric knew he had sixteen years on Raaj. Rather than trying to explain molecular cell repair, he just said, “I am older. My people age more slowly than yours.”

“You are fortunate.” Saje rubbed his legs. “I age more every day. I should take myself to bed.”

After helping Saje to his room, Kelric returned to his own suite. But he couldn’t sleep. At Night’s Midhour, he went back to the common room and sat at a table playing solitaire. When he heard footsteps, he turned, looking for Khaaj—and saw Raaj instead, coming through an archway across the room. The youth stopped when he sighted Kelric and stood like the statue of an ancient prince, tall and unsmiling. Then he left.

The doors of the common room suddenly swung open and Khaaj strode into the room. “She's here,” the captain said.

Kelric jumped to his feet. As soon as he stepped outside, his guards closed around him and they headed for Rashiva’s suite. He found her seated on a sofa in her living room, wincing while a doctor treated a bruise on her face. She wore a ripped gray uniform with the Compound Four label stitched into the arm.

Kelric crossed to her, started to speak, then remembered the others in the room and scowled.

“Doctor,” Rashiva said.

The doctor straightened up. “I’ll check on you later, ma’am.” She and the others made a fast exit, leaving Kelric alone with Rashiva.

The Manager motioned him to the sofa. “Don’t frown so.”

He sat next to her. “Are you insane? What were you doing there?”

“You sound like the chief of my CityGuard.” Rashiva rubbed her temple. “She almost had heart failure when I told her to give me a fake name and send me to prison.”

“She should have told someone where you were.”

“I ordered her not to. I didn’t want to risk warning the prison authorities.”

He looked at the bruise on her face. “Who hit you?”

Rashiva winced. “That one is from the Compound Four women’s warden.”

“Didn’t she recognize you?”

“I’m new enough as Manager that only a few of the prison staff know me in person.” Dryly she added, “One guard did tell me I looked like Rashiva Haka.” She pushed back her disarrayed hair, which fell unbraided and tangled down her back. “Torv Haka knows me by sight. I had intended to find him when I left the quarry in the evening, so I could get out.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t find him. A prisoner knifed him and he’s in the Med House.”

So someone had finally gotten Torv. Kelric felt little sympathy for the brutal warden. “Couldn’t you tell anyone else?”

“I did.” She spoke wryly. “Apparently I’m not the first prisoner to claim she’s me. So after my two shifts in the quarry, I got to see Compound Four firsthand.”

He remembered the women’s crew, and could imagine how they responded to Rashiva. Beautiful and vulnerable, with no street knowledge, she would have been in an even worse position than Ched in the men’s compound.

Kelric lifted a tangle of her hair, wondering who had undone her braid. More bruises showed on her neck and the part of her shoulder visible through the torn uniform.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She stared down at her hands. “I am—fine.”

He felt her emotions roiling: anger, shame, pain. He also felt the lock she put on them and knew she would never speak of the experience. He understood; in that, the two of them had a lot in common.

Rashiva regarded him. “It didn’t take me long to find out no one had seen you for a long time. After my people got me out of the compound, I demanded to see where you had been. Khaaj finally found a guard who knew.” Her voice caught. “Sevtar—so long—in that tomb—”

Don’t ask me to remember, he thought. Don’t ask.

She reached forward and switched a com in the table. A sleepy voice floated into the air. “Nida here.”

“Nida, this is Manager Haka. I want you to begin preparations for an Estate Tribunal.”

Nida’s voice snapped into alertness. “A Tribunal, ma’am?”

“Yes. Notify Warden Haka.” In a cold voice, Rashiva said, “She stands accused.”

Although dawn had almost arrived by the time Kelric returned to the Calanya, he found Raaj waiting. The First Level looked as if he hadn’t slept the entire night. He strode over to Kelric. “Captain Khaaj said Rashiva is back.”

As Kelric nodded, the few pieces of a puzzle fell into place. No wonder Raaj resented him. The Hakaborn prince loved Rashiva.

“Is she hurt?” Raaj asked.

“Some bruises.” As fast as it had formed, the puzzle fragmented. Hadn’t Saje told him Raaj was someone’s kasi? That wouldn’t necessarily stop him from loving the Manager, particularly considering how much attention she paid to him, but it was odd he would be so blatant about it.

His sister. Of course. Rashiva was his sister. He should have seen it before. They looked so natural together.

So why did Raaj’s wife never visit him?

The puzzle snapped together. Kelric looked at Raaj’s armbands and saw the symbols which, had he ever let himself notice before, he would have recognized as identical to his own. Not a kasi. Akasi.

“Sevtar?” Raaj asked. “Why do you stare at me?”

Kelric walked past the Hakaborn prince and kept going, out of the room, out of the building, out into the parks and the predawn darkness. He followed paths without thinking. When a gazebo appeared in front of him, he went in and sat on a bench.

Sometime later Saje came to sit with him. “Raaj is in my suite. He is upset. He thinks you only realized this morning that he is also Rashiva’s husband.”

“He’s right.” Kelric stared out at the darkness. So much made sense now. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

Saje sighed. “So goes the problem of all ages.”

Kelric glanced at him. “What problem?”

“Man has always yielded to woman’s nature.” Saje nodded. “Woman is strength and man is passion. He sees with his heart and she with her mind. Woman leads, protects, innovates, builds, creates life. Man fathers children. So a powerful woman gathers her mates. And so the men she chooses must learn to accept her choices.”

Kelric snorted. “You actually believe that crap?”

Saje frowned at him. “Yes.”

“What the hell for?”

“It is what I have seen all my life.” The Third Level sighed. “The young now, they speak of a new way for woman and man. Perhaps they will find it. But I think they try to change fundamental aspect of human nature, one that cannot be altered.” He watched Kelric’s face. “In time you will come to terms with your life here.”

“That isn’t the problem, Saje. I can accept the Calanya. Hell, I like it, living like a king and playing Quis all day.” Sharing Rashiva was a different story. Each time he thought he might want to know her better, as her husband, something happened to make it impossible.

He said only, “Raaj loves her. Having me here is killing him.”

Saje nodded with regret. “Yes. It is.”

Kelric gazed at the lightening sky on the horizon. No such new beginning waited in his life. The barriers between him and Rashiva were wider than he knew how to cross.

In the Haka Tribunal Hall, the Elder Judge stood behind the high bench. “The accused shall rise.”

Zecha stood within the Square of Decision. Tall and unflinching, she faced her accusers. She would show no weakness, never, no matter how many betrayals they committed. So many betrayals. Witnesses from her staff had come forward, their words halting at first, full of fear, then condemning with more force. More damning than a thousand traitors had been the Calanya Speaker as she gave Sevtar’s statement, first of his days in Compound Four, and then his time in solitude. Zecha could still see the horror on the judges’ faces, still see Rashiva sitting with her head in her hands.

Her rage flared. Did they expect a prison to be pretty? For years she had faced what the rest of Coba wanted to forget. For years she had dealt with the ugliness the world dredged up from its sewers. She couldn’t escape their thoughts. That constant influx, coming from the sickest criminals on the planet, forced her to barrier her mind, condemning her to loneliness. Why? So the rest of them could live in blissful ignorance. This was her reward.

The Elder continued speaking. “We find the accused guilty on all counts. She is convicted.”

Betrayal, Zecha thought.

“From this day forward,” the Elder said, “the convicted no longer bears the Haka name. All employers will forbid her work. All Houses will turn her from their door. All citizens will refuse her haven. She is Shunned.”

Shunned. It was even worse than Zecha had expected. She had no home. No place. No kin. Nothing.

This was Sevtar’s doing. She would remember this evil he caused her.

She would remember.

19

RUBY FIRE

Summer blossoms scented the Calanya parks, and clusters of red-gold flowers bloomed on the jahalla trees. Iridescent insects hummed through their branches, giving the desert a trilling voice. Keltic walked with Rashiva along a gravel path, past tiled pools filled with water that, here in the desert, had a worth equal to the gold around his wrists.

“We changed almost a third of the prison administration,” Rashiva said. “It’s one reason the Tribunal lasted two seasons.” She shook her head. “Zecha baffles me. She truly believes she did what was right.”

She’s gone, Kelric thought. Only that mattered. Giving the Calanya Speaker his testimony had torn apart the calm he managed to maintain after coming to Rashiva’s Calanya, but it had been worth it to see justice done.

He knew Rashiva better after two seasons, coming to see her as a dedicated and soft-spoken Manager. Although they remained formal with each other, their marriage in name only, their tension had eased. Hate no longer drove the desire she provoked in him.

When she took his hand with unexpected shyness, Kelric smiled at her. She squeezed his hand. “You’ve a beautiful smile, my husband. I’ve wondered how it looked.”

That caught him by surprise. Had he never smiled at her before? It wasn’t the Propriety Laws; unlike most Haka men, they had never become habit for him. Within the Calanya he had no reason to think about them, except around his guards, whom he never felt much inclined to smile at anyway.

Rashiva led him through the trees along a hidden path that took them far from the Calanya buildings. Irrigation kept the parks blooming all year, including this forest of gnarled jahalla trees, their leaves plumped full of water. In a private clearing deep within the clustered trees, they sat together on the decade-grass, which took its name from its ability to lie dormant for decades in the desert and come back to soft, fragrant life when given water. Golden flies with gauzy blue wings flitted around them.

With a blush reddening her cheeks, Rashiva cupped his face with her hands and drew him into a kiss. Her mouth felt so full. So soft. The fragrance of spice-soap scented her hair. He wrapped his arms around her and savored the sense of discovery he always felt the first time he kissed a woman.

When they paused, she brushed her hand across his trousers. “You will get grass stains on these handsome clothes.”

He slid his hand up her leg. “You also.”

“Perhaps we should find a way to avoid this problem.”

Kelric smiled, this time using it with full knowledge of the effect it produced on her. “Perhaps we should.”

So they undressed each other, each exploring the other’s body as they shed their clothes. He the felt swirls and eddies of her emotions, and his mind responded to their intimacy like a jahalla to water.

Lying next to him, bare skin against bare skin, Rashiva touched the hair at his pelvis, rubbing a curl between her fingers. “It looks even more like metal than the hair on your head. It even feels like soft metal.”

Kelric tightened his embrace around her. “All my hair is an organometallic alloy.” He winced as soon as he spoke. That had sounded as romantic as a metallurgy text. Gods, he was an inarticulate idiot.

“Hmmm.” Undaunted, she moved her hand through is hair, distracting his thoughts from metallurgy to biology.

At first Kelric kept his caresses reserved, assuming that in love she would be more conservative by Coban standards than Deha. Eventually, though, he rolled on top of her. She felt so very fine, her body firm beneath him, breasts plump and hips curved out from a small waist.

Instead of cooling off when he became more aggressive, she pulled him into another kiss. Her thoughts brushed his mind; she expected him to be passionate, out of control. She took it as a sign of virility. It was why ancient Haka women had created the Propriety Laws; their culture claimed men were fiery vessels of love with no restraint over their desires. Without restrictions, they would drive women to distraction with their unbridled sexuality.

Kelric lifted his head and laughed. “Rashiva, you are such a sexist.”

She blinked, her face flushed with arousal. “What?” Without waiting for an answer, she pulled him back down and sought out his mouth, kissing him deeply.

Secluded among the jahallas, their lovemaking came with an intensity made urgent by the long wait, both of them choosing to forget, for one afternoon, the reasons for their prolonged restraint. Kelric stroked her hips and breasts, tasted the honey between her thighs. For all her arousal, her caresses were shy. He suspected she had never lain with any other man but Raaj, though he doubted she would admit her inexperience. The longer they played with each other, the more her guileless curiosity aroused him.

Finally, as they lay on the soft grass, he entered her. They rolled over, Rashiva on top, then he, then Rashiva, then he. He thrust deeply and she held on to him as they moved together. So they went, until she cried out and stiffened in his arms. He relaxed his control then, losing himself in his own release.

Afterward Kelric floated in a pleasant daze. It wasn’t until Rashiva pushed his shoulder that he realized he had let his weight sink onto her. He rolled onto his back and she rolled with him, coming to rest against his side, her leg thrown over his, her head on his shoulder. As the sun descended below the trees, veiling the clearing with shadows, they lay in each other’s arms, sated and content.

Eventually Rashiva said, “Maybe we made a child.”

He opened his eyes. Child?

“I know I can,” she added sleepily. “My daughter is almost six.”

Unwelcome thoughts of Raaj invaded Kelric’s good mood. The Haka prince was twenty, ten years Rashiva’s junior. If he and Rashiva had a five-year-old daughter, Raaj must have been a child groom. Kelric knew Haka had different laws than his own people, but he couldn’t imagine such a marriage. Then he thought of Shaliece, his childhood sweetheart. Gods, he had loved her. He had no business judging Rashiva and Raaj for their youth.

Given the seclusion young men training for the Calanya lived in, though, Rashiva had to be one of the only women Raaj had ever seen. Kelric needed no telepathy to realize how much it would hurt him if the Manager bore another man’s child.

“You and I come from different worlds,” he said. “We can’t have children.”

“Your parents did.”

“How did you know that?”

“You are a Ruby Dynasty prince, yes? Isn’t it true your mother comes from one world, and your father from another? I have heard this.”

Although he knew the ISC had included information about his family in their discussions with Minister Karn, it surprised him that she knew. Then again, Quis was the ultimate gossip mill.

“My parents have the same ancestry,” he said. “My mother’s people come from Raylicon, the home world of the people who colonized my father’s planet. The two of them share a similar genetic lineage.”

Rashiva stretched her arms. “Ralkon is no world. She is a spirit of wisdom.”

“I doubt it’s coincidence. My ancestors settled this world, too.”

“I’ve heard.” Her forehead creased with puzzlement. “I don’t see how.”

He told her then of their shared ancestry, the first time he had spoken about it on Coba. Six thousand years ago, an unknown race had moved humans from Earth—the birthplace of humanity—to the world Raylicon. Their captors vanished with no explanation, leaving only their ruined spacecraft. Over time, the stranded humans used what remained of the libraries on those ships to develop space flight—and then they went in search of their lost home. They never found Earth, but they established many colonies, creating the Ruby Empire. Based on poorly understood technology, the empire collapsed after only a few centuries, isolating Raylicon and cutting off the colonies from their mother world.

So the people of Raylicon began a long slide into extinction. After several millennia, desperate for fresh genes to replenish their shrinking pool, they redeveloped space travel and went out to reclaim the lost colonies. Two factions formed: the Traders, who turned the slave trade that had tainted Raylican culture into a brutal empire; and the Imperialate, an attempt by the free worlds to stay that way, or as free as possible in a civilization founded on the need for a relentless military to fight the Traders.

In Earth’s twenty-first century, her people finally reached the stars—and found their siblings already there, building empires. Although Kelric’s ancestors apparently came from Earth around 4000 B.C, no civilization from that time matched ancient Raylican culture.

Anthropologists suggested Egypt or Mesoamerica as their birthplace, perhaps the Middle East or North Africa. Rare hints of Christianity and Greek mythology seemed to show up, yet all evidence indicated humans had been stranded on Raylicon four thousand years before the birth of Christ. Genetic drift, both natural and self-induced, introduced the final complication. It all added up to a mystery no one had yet solved. Modern scholars would find the Coba a gold mine, a living remnant of a subculture that had vanished on Raylicon thousands of years ago.

He rubbed Rashiva’s hair between his fingers. “My ancestors had black hair and eyes, and dark skin.”

She opened her eyes. “Hakaborn.”

“Like Hakaborn.”

She touched his skin. “You need only find a mirror to see you are no Hakaborn man.”

“I look like my grandfather.” He paused, at a loss to explain the genetic engineering that had altered his people. “We’ve changed over the ages, maybe too much for you and I to have children.” He thought of Shaliece, and the old grief stirred in his mind, still aching with pain. “Even if you did conceive, the baby might not survive. The mother of the only child I’ve ever fathered had so much difficulty with her pregnancy, she miscarried.”

Rashiva curled her fingers around his. “I am sorry. I never knew you shared bands with another woman besides Deha Dahl.”

“Once. But not with the girl who miscarried.” He still remembered Shaliece’s confusion when he asked her to marry him. His many titles had frightened her. Maybe he could have won her and his parents over, had she not miscarried, but it hadn’t worked out that way. After some time to let him mourn, his parents sent him offworld to the Deishan Military Academy, and a few years later Shaliece wed another young man.

Rashiva had gone suddenly quiet. She watched him with a guarded expression. “This woman named you as the father of her child, but she offered you no kasi bands?”

He brought his thoughts back to the present. “That wasn’t our custom. I offered to her.”

“You offered?”

“Yes.”

She looked as if he had hit her in the stomach. “Was this the only time you offered to—to be free with—”

He tensed. “With what?”

“Yourself.”

How could she, who had two husbands, condemn him for past lovers? “No.”

Rashiva drew away from him. “We should get back. I have matters to attend to on the Estate.”

Kelric felt his emotional defenses coming back, like a wall that clanged down between him and Rashiva. They dressed without looking at each other. Although they headed out of the forest together, he soon stopped. He didn’t want a day of such contentment to end in this cold, silent walk. Better to let her go on alone.

Rashiva stopped and looked back. For a moment he thought she would finally speak. But then she turned and went on, disappearing beyond the jahalla trees.

The screen in the archway of Kelric’s suite rustled. “Sevtar?”

Kelric put down his dice. “Come.”

Saje came in and eased himself down on the other side of the Quis table where Kelric was playing solitaire. “When you didn’t show for dinner I worried you didn’t feel well.”

“I’m fine,” Kelric said.

Saje glanced at the structures on the table. “Red blocks. Red balls. Red bars.”

“I wasn’t paying attention to the colors.”

“Red is often used in patterns of anger.”

Kelric collected the dice and put them in his pouch.

“You came back from the parks alone,” Saje said.

“Rashiva had business on the Estate.” He considered the Third Level. “Saje, do you have children?”

The older man smiled. “Two, born at Varz. They are adults now. They visit me whenever they come to Haka.” Softly he added, “Their mother passed away a few years before I came here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We had many good years.”

“What would she have done if you fathered a child who wasn’t hers?”

Saje’s expression turned cold. “I forgive such a question, Sevtar, because I know you have no idea of the insult you give.”

“I meant no offense. I just—” Just what? Need Rashiva? No. “I guess I’m tired. I should go to bed.”

Saje tried to stand up, then paused, giving Kelric an apologetic look. “Could you assist me to my suite? My bones grow less cooperative each day.”

“Of course.” Kelric suspected Saje suffered from advanced arthritis with spinal complications. He stood and offered his arm, helping Saje rise. He walked slowly with the Third Level out into the common room.

“Can your doctors help your joint stiffness?” he asked.

“Nothing much seems to work,” Saje said. “But I don’t tell them that. One doctor massages my spine and I don’t want her to stop.” He gave Kelric a conspiratorial grin. “She is very beautiful.”

Kelric laughed, his tension easing. “Ah. I see.”

They had just reached the screened archway of Saje’s suite when the Outside doors across the room swung open and Captain Khaaj strode Inside.

Saje chuckled. “My thanks for your aid, Sevtar. I can make it from here.”

Kelric said nothing, his attention on the captain. Instead of going to his suite, she went to another and tapped on the screen. After a moment Raaj appeared, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

Khaaj spoke—and Raaj smiled, his perfect teeth flashing white. Then the smile vanished, doused as the Propriety Laws reasserted their hold. He nodded to the captain and withdrew into his rooms.

“Sevtar, you’re breaking my door,” Saje said.

“What—?” He turned. Saje was trying to pry Kelric’s fingers off the screen of his suite.

“You should come in.” Saje lowered his voice. “I have some contraband. You must help me dispose of it.”

“Contraband?” Kelric turned back in time to see Raaj reappear. The youth had changed into a black velvet clothes, including a shirt with its laces left loose enough to reveal his muscular chest. His Calanya guards gleamed under his cuffs and his hair glistened the way Rashiva’s did after she brushed it. A Talha scarf hung around his neck. As Khaaj escorted him to the Outside doors, he put on the robe he carried and hid his lower face with the Talha.

“Contraband,” Saje repeated. He pulled Kelric into his suite. “Come. I will show you.”

Kelric forced his attention back to him. “What?”

Saje pushed him into the usual alcove where they sat. “Be comfortable.” Before Kelric could object, the Third Level disappeared into an inner room.

Kelric scowled, but with nothing else to do, he sat down, feeling so tense, he thought he might crack. Saje reappeared with a decanter of gold liquid and two crystal goblets. He settled onto his customary cushion, then poured two drinks and gave one to Kelric.

“What is it?” Kelric tilted the glass, watching the golden liquid slosh around.

“We call it baiz.”

Kelric took a swallow. The baiz glided past his lips, eased down his throat, and detonated when it hit bottom.

“Gods,” he muttered. He finished the rest in one swallow.

“You mustn’t tell anyone I have it,” Saje said. “If my doctors knew they would take it away.” He refilled Kelric’s glass. “It settles well, yes?”

“That it does.”

Kelric soon lost track of how many times Saje refilled his glass. He leaned back in a pile of cushions and watched patterns swirl in his baiz. “Too bad you can’t import this stuff. You’d make a fortune.”

“It does have a calming effect,” Saje said.

“I don’t need calming.”

“Whatever happened between you and Rashiva will mend.”

“Beautiful Rashiva.” Kelric shook the baiz patterns, destroying them. “Beautiful intolerant Rashiva.”

“Sevtar—”

“My name is Kelric.”

“Kelric?”

He looked up at Saje. “Jagernaut Tertiary Kelricson Garlin Valdoria kya Skolia.”

Saje blinked. “An unusual name.”

“Maybe. But it’s mine.”

“You are the son of someone named Kelric?”

“No. Someone named Eldrinson.” He took a swallow of baiz. “My parents named my oldest brother Eldrin. Guess they figured Eldrinsonson was overdoing it.”

Saje smiled. “Who is Kelric?”

“Lyshriol spirit of youth.” The room seemed to tilt around him. “They named me that because I was their last child. Littlest Rhon child.”

“Little,” Saje said, “is hardly how I would describe you.”

Kelric stretched out on his back, sprawled on the silk cushions. He tried to drink more baiz and discovered his goblet was empty. “I’ll tell you something, Saje.” He pushed up on his elbow and poured another drink. “My mother had a son long before she met my father.”

“You have a half brother?”

“That’s right. The Imperator. Military dictator of the universe. I’m his heir.”

“This is a joke, yes?”

“No.”

Saje took a swallow of the drink he had hardly touched.

“My infamous brother.” Kelric finished his baiz. “But I’m not his heir anymore, am I? Now I’m a Calani in a cage.”

“Sevtar—”

“I told you not to call me that.”

“Perhaps you should have another drink.”

“I don’t like being in a cage.”

Saje poured him a drink.

“You ever see a Eubian, Saje?”

“Eubian? Is that an animal?”

“That’s right.” Kelric downed his drink. “We call them Traders. Years ago one of their cruisers ambushed our squad and we crashed near their base.” He tried to pour more baiz and discovered the decanter was empty. “My commander died.” He stared into his glass. “In my arms.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Two of us made it out alive. Two. Out of fourteen. Afterward, I got drunk.”

“Their deaths weren’t your fault.”

“I got drunk and went to where the tuners sing.”

“Tuners?”

“Whores,” Kelric said. “What our oh-so-charming Manager practically called me today. I sang all night with a tuner and she helped me forget.” His voice cracked. “My brother told me I’m too stupid to think. But I’m not too stupid to kill, am I?”

“People die in wars.”

“Is that supposed to make it all right?” The decanter slid out of his hand and thudded onto the floor. “Maybe I should just shut up.”

Saje spoke with a great gentleness. “Talk if it helps.”

“Nothing helps.” Closing his eyes, Kelric lay back and gave in to his exhaustion.

Several moments later he felt Saje laying a quilt over him. “Try to sleep,” the Third Level said softly. “Try to forget. It is all you can do now.”

20

QUEEN’S COUP

Autumn winds keened around Haka, audible even deep within the Estate. Rashiva entered her office, and her aide Nida followed, reading from a scroll. “After you see the Modernists’ delegation this morning, you have a Quis session with Adaar. Then Midday meal, then your meeting at the Children’s Cooperative.”

“Have the Cooperative files ready for me to read over lunch.” Rashiva lifted her jacket off a rack made from hyella reeds. “Also, add my dinner with the delegation from Shazorla to the schedule.”

A boy entered the office. “Mail, Manager Haka.” He dropped a bundle on her desk, parchment scrolls wrapped in protective cloth. “The Ministry sent you a letter.”

Just what I need, Rashiva thought. More veiled threats from Jahlt Karn about the Miesa Plateau.

Ekoe Haka, the Calanya Speaker, appeared behind the boy. “Manager Haka, do you have a moment?”

Rashiva pulled on her brocaded jacket. “Not now.”

“It’s the Calani Saje,” Ekoe said. “He wishes to see you.”

Ai. She could hardly refuse the Third Level. She pushed her hand through her hair. “I’ll meet with him in the Hyella Chamber.” That meant she would miss her meeting with the Modernists. Lunch offered her only other free time and she could think of no better way to lose her appetite than by listening to Modernist tirades about sexual oppression. But if she put them off they might make trouble again, sending unescorted groups of men out in public without Talha scarves and robes. They had done it once before and nearly caused a riot.

“Tell the Modernists I’ll see them during lunch,” she told Nida. She stuffed the letter from Karn into her jacket and sped out of her office.

“I realize it is personal,” Saje said. “But it affects the Quis. His anger leaks into every pattern he builds.”

Rashiva stood by the wall of the Hyella Chamber, watching the desert. “I regret what happened. But that changes nothing. I made a mistake when I gave Sevtar the Akasi bands.”

“That he was in prison for murder—this you could accept. Yet you spurn him now as if he committed an unspeakable crime.”

She turned to face the Third Level, who stood by the Quis table. “It’s personal, Saje.”

“He trusted you. After all he has suffered, both on our world and before, he is not one who trusts easily.” Saje lifted his hands and then dropped them. “I’ve watched him heal, Rashiva. I’ve seen a man paralyzed by loneliness come alive again. Don’t turn from him.”

“It isn’t that easy.”

“What has he done that is so terrible?”

“If you were Hakaborn you would understand.”

“He cares for you and you for him. What more is there to understand?”

Quietly Rashiva said, “No woman but my mother ever touched my father. No other woman even saw him smile. Now the Modernists want me to abolish the Propriety Laws and I can’t help but believe they seek to destroy the foundation of all that is right.” She exhaled. “I wish what happened with Sevtar didn’t matter. But it does. I can’t bend that far, Saje. I just can’t do it.”

“Then I am sorry,” he said. “For both his sake and yours.”

When the day finally ground to an end, Rashiva escaped to her suite and crawled into bed. Within moments after she called for a doctor, an aide ushered Senior Physician Jy into the room. The longer Jy examined her, the more she frowned.

“You work too hard,” Jy said.

Rashiva pulled the blankets up under her chin. “I just need one of your potions to settle my stomach.”

“What you need is rest.” Jy closed her bag. “When was your last cycle?”

Rashiva sat up. “You think I’m pregnant?”

Jy scowled. “Lie down.”

“For wind’s sake.” Rashiva lay down. “You’re as ornery as a desert crab.”

“I did a pregnancy test. We will know the results tomorrow. Right now I want you to sleep.”

“Pah,” Rashiva grumbled. “Just who is Manager here?”

Jy smiled and picked up the jacket Rashiva had thrown across the bed. “Did you know there’s a letter in your pocket with the Ministry seal on it?”

“Oh. Yes.” Rashiva reached for the small scroll Jy held out to her. “What do you think Jahlt is scheming about this time? The Miesa Plateau no doubt.” Unrolling the scroll, she peered at its gilded hieroglyphs.

And sat up to read it again.

“What’s wrong?” Jy asked.

“No!” Rashiva stared at the parchment. “She can’t do this. She can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

Rashiva dropped onto her back and threw an arm over her eyes, crumpling the letter in her fist. “Jahlt Karn has gone insane.”

… boy was dying in his mother’s womb. Kelric reached out, to help, to heal …

Kelric turned over in bed. “He’s sick. I have to help.” He opened his eyes into darkness, his head throbbing. “Rashiva?” Closing his eyes, he slipped back into sleep.

The next morning only a trace of the dream lingered. After breakfast, Kelric’s guards took him to a library where tapestries hung on the wall. He sat in an armchair until he got bored, then got up and wandered around looking at the books. He pulled out one that caught his interest and settled back in his chair.

Although he had never formally learned written Teotecan, he had picked up a little in Dahl. He puzzled out the title’s hieroglyphs: Early Desert Games. A few minutes of paging through the book, however, revealed it was actually a text on differential equations. The authors treated the subject like a game, with no indication they realized it had practical applications.

Then it hit him: the book was about Quis. It was all there, in the dice: theories of mathematics, physics, even philosophy.

Like many of the stranded colonies, Coba had apparently slid into barbarism after the Ruby Empire collapsed. However, unlike the others, which continued to backslide, Coba rebounded. The same innovative streak that sparked the creation of Quis also led them to recover lost technology. In recent decades they had even regained air travel and electricity, though Kelric suspected they didn’t fully understand the science involved in either.

Given the way Quis tapped into every facet of their lives, it didn’t surprise him to find their lost sciences buried within the dice game, like old files hidden in an ancient computer network, available only to those who knew where to look. Sooner or later someone would find the link. What a day that would be for Coba. Her people could go from windriders to star travel overnight.

“What are you doing?” Rashiva said.

He looked up with a start to see her standing in the arched doorway, holding a sheaf of papers. “When did you come in?”

“Just now.” She closed the door and came over to him. “You are reading?”

He showed her the book. “Pattern games.”

“What about your Oath?”

His voice cooled. “I wasn’t aware it mattered to you anymore.”

Rashiva exhaled. “At the moment I’m inclined to let you contaminate your Quis however you wish.” She gave him the papers. “If you want to read, try this.”

The glyphs on the document were too complex for him to decipher. He could make out only that the papers referred to a property settlement between Dahl and Haka.

Then it hit him; he was the property.

His voice turned to ice. “So that’s what you consider me.” He thrust the document at her. “Negotiable goods.”

She took the papers. “It refers to your Calanya contract.”

“What’s the difference? Why did you tell me this?”

At first it seemed as if she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—answer. When she finally did respond, she sounded numb. “Minister Karn granted you a pardon.”

He stared at her. “She what?”

“Minister Karn pardoned you.”

The words rolled around his thoughts, looking for a place to stop and unable to find it. “Why?”

Her fist clenched, crumpling the papers. “With the pardon, your Calanya contract reverts to Dahl. Deha knew. She knew what you could become and she knew the Ministry would never tolerate my Estate winning such advantage.”

He had no idea how to respond. He couldn’t absorb it. Go to Dahl? With Deha gone, nothing remained for him there but his memory of Llaach’s death.

Kelric got up and went to a window. The city stretched out below in a jumble of desert colors, with onion towers gracing its architecture. Did he want to leave? He liked the desert, liked Haka, liked the Calanya. The Propriety Laws would have been a nuisance had he lived Outside the Calanya, but they made little difference Inside.

Nothing, however, would ever change the ancient Haka customs. Rashiva compelled him, yes, but the longer he knew her, the more insurmountable the barriers between them seemed.

She spoke behind him. “Sevtar?”

Tell me you want me to stay, he thought. We’ll find a way to understand each other. But you have to bend, Rashiva. I won’t beg for your love.

The silence lengthened. Finally he said, “I take it Raaj is the father of your baby.”

“How did you know I’m pregnant?”

Kelric turned. Until he spoke, he hadn’t realized he knew. She showed no outward sign. He had no idea how to answer, so he said only, “You’ve started to show.”

She spoke softly. “Yes. Raaj is the father.”

On the dawn of an autumn morning, before the reddened disk of the sun raised its rim over the horizon, Kelric left Haka. Surrounded by guards, he walked with Rashiva to the airfield. With their retinue waiting beyond the range of hearing, he and Rashiva stood together, as if they were isolated in a bubble of desert air that shimmered with heat at its edges.

When she looked up at him, Kelric felt moisture in his eyes. He thought he saw tears in hers as well, but if they were there, the wind whipped them away before they fell.

Part 3

BAHVLA

21

PAUSE

Autumn in Dahl turned the suntrees into a splendor of gilt foliage. Kelric sat on a velvety lawn with his back against a tree. Its branches above him bowed under the weight of their gold fruit. He picked up a succulent orb that had fallen nearby and bit into it. Sweet juice ran down his throat.

At the bottom of the lawn that sloped away from his feet, he saw Chankah Dahl climbing toward him. When she reached the top, she flopped down to sit with him in the shade. “Heh. What a hike.”

He took another bite of sunfruit. “It’s good for you.”

“Probably.” Her smile faded. “Kelric—we need to talk. About Jevi.”

He had known this was coming. He still remembered the petition at his Tribunal from Llaach’s widower: The Calani Jevi asks that Sevtar never be allowed to live in the Dahl Calanya. If this is unacceptable, Jevi requests to leave Dahl. Llaach’s widower had eventually remarried, but every time the young man looked at him, Kelric knew Jevi remembered.

“He has his life here,” Kelric said. “I should be the one who leaves.”

“I think it’s for the best,” Chankah said.

“So what do I do? Apply to another Calanya?”

“You won’t need to. Six Estates have made offers for your contract.”

“Six?” He gaped at her. “What for?”

She smiled. “You really have no idea how well you play Quis. And you’ve been in two of the most powerful Calanya on Coba. Two opposed Estates.”

“Which means I know the Quis on both sides.”

“Yes. It is unusual. Valuable.”

“What offer will you take?”

“The choice is yours.”

Kelric thought of Ixpar. “What about Karn?”

“The Ministry isn’t interested,” she said. “Neither Miesa nor any Secondary Estates made offers either, probably because they don’t have the finances to consider a Third Level.”

“I don’t know any other Estate.”

“Haka made an offer.” She paused. “A large one.”

As much as he wanted to forget Rashiva, Kelric’s pulse quickened. “Why? I’d only be Second Level there.”

Chankah pulled up a blade of grass and studied it. “Perhaps her reasons have nothing to do with Level.”

Kelric doubted he and Rashiva could ever come to terms with their differences. Even if they did, Raaj would always be there. With difficulty, he said, “I prefer to go elsewhere.”

Her tension eased. “All right.”

“Do you have any suggestions?”

“I thought Bahvla,” Chankah said. “Its Manager usually allies with Karn despite her friendship with the Miesa Manager.”

Kelric remembered Miesa and its rich mineral plateau from his dice sessions at Haka, but he didn’t recall much about Bahvla. “Does Manager Bahvla want an Akasi?” He had no intention of getting caught in that emotional war zone again.

“No, I’m certain she doesn’t.”

“Do her Calani play Quis well?”

“Not as well as you. But few people do.” She tilted her head. “In terms of Quis, I would rate Bahvla in the tier just below the four strongest Estates: Karn, Varz, Dahl, and Haka.”

“Did Varz make an offer?”

She scowled.

Kelric smiled. “I take it that means yes. And you have no intention of considering it.”

“It would utterly defeat the purpose of getting you out of Haka.”

He shrugged. “Then Bahvla is fine.”

She nodded with satisfaction. “I will contact the Manager.”

22

SUNSKY BRIDGE

Bahvla Estate nestled high in the mountains, in a misty valley at a much greater elevation than Dahl. Its Manager was Henta, a plump woman with graying hair whom Kelric liked immediately. She laughed often and loved to talk. Her husband of many years was Tevon, a male version of herself. Manager and Akasi often sat together in the common room, clucking over their latest gossip.

The Estate had twelve Calani. Just as Saje had been the only Third Level at Haka, so Kelric found himself the only Third at Bahvla. Three Second Levels played Bahvla dice, including Yevris Tehnsa Bahvla. Dark and lean, with brown eyes flecked by green, he reminded Kelric of a gnarled tree limb, one well flexed in exercise. He and Yevris often jogged together across the parks at daybreak or swam in the chill water of the Calanya lakes.

One morning Yevris decided they should climb the sculpted windbreak that surrounded the parks.

“Won’t my escort stop us?” Kelric asked. His pardon came with a stipulation, that he be guarded at all times. His Bahvla escort remained discreet, blending so well with the background that he often forgot their presence. It reminded him of being with his parents; the Imperialate Assembly required they have bodyguards at all times.

“Why stop us?” Yevris said. “I know. Because we’re stupid enough to fall over the top and plummet to untimely deaths.”

Kelric smiled. “You plummet. I’ll climb.”

Yevris grinned and took off. With his lighter build he outran Kelric, who made no attempt to engage his damaged hydraulics, but at the wall Kelric’s greater strength got him to the top first. He climbed onto the top of the wall, which was several handspans thick, stood up—and froze.

The outer side of the windbreak plunged down in a sheer, unscalable cliff. Far below, forested mountains stretched out in slope after magnificent slope. A white mist hung over the world and for once the wind held still. The panorama swept out as far as he could see, a mystical land that faded into fog.

Yevris’s head poked above the wall, followed by the rest of Yevris. He climbed up by Kelric. “It’s beautiful, eh?”

“Yes,” Kelric said.

“I thought you’d like it. It reminds me of you.”

“Me? Why?”

“It’s hard to explain. I’ll build you a Quis pattern for it.” Dryly he added, “Better that than gamble with you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you pulverize me every time.”

Kelric laughed. “We’re Calani. We don’t need to gamble. We have better things to do with our dice.”

Yevris smiled. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who likes Quis as much as you.”

That caught Kelric by surprise. It was true, though; Quis fascinated him.

He turned around toward the parks and looked out across Bahvla to the mountains that rose up in the north, thrusting into an overcast sky. High in the northeast, a cluster of towers stood wreathed in mist. He indicated the distant hamlet. “What’s that way up there?”

Yevris followed his gaze. “Viasa Estate. Tehnsa is up there too.”

“You grew up in Tehnsa, didn’t you?”

“Yip.” Yevris was in motion again, ambling along the wall. “It’s not really an Estate. It’s Secondary to Viasa.”

Kelric followed him. “How is that different from an Estate?”

“Smaller. A Secondary can’t survive independent of its main Estate.” Yevris stopped and cocked his head. “The way Miesa is going, it’ll be Secondary to Varz soon.”

Varz. The infamous Ministry foe. “Can you see Varz or Miesa from here?”

“Too far. But you’ll meet Manager Miesa. She and Henta are friends.” He grinned. “Savina Miesa.”

Kelric laughed. “I detect more than a casual interest here, Yevris.”

“Heh. I’ve no wish to be number ninety-nine. Not that she ever showed any interest in making me ninety-nine.”

“Manager Miesa has ninety-eight Akasi?”

“Well,” Yevris amended. “Maybe I exaggerate. The last I heard she had four. But you see my point.”

“That I do.”

“Besides,” Yevris said. “There is Rohka.”

Kelric stared at him. “Who?”

“Rohka.” Yevris rocked on his heels. “You’ve met her. She comes to see me all the time.”

“Oh. You mean your girlfriend.”

“Who did you think I meant?”

Kelric shook his head.

Yevris scowled. “You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Close up like a treeclam in the rain.”

“It’s just that my mother’s name is Roca.” Although most of the Imperialate knew her as Cya Liessa, the pseudonym she had used in her days as a ballet dancer, her true name was Roca Skolia, along with all of the Ruby dynastical titles that went with it.

Yevris let himself down over the inner edge of the wall. “No way is my Rohka your mother.”

Kelric climbed down after him. As they walked back to the Calanya, Yevris swept his arm up at the sky. “It’s hard to believe people live out there. Very strange, offworlders.”

Kelric laughed. “So my father tells my mother.”

A First Level appeared around a curve in the path. “Sevtar. Henta sent me to find you.”

Yevris grinned at Kelric. “Maybe you have another suitor.”

Kelric hoped not. First it had been a woman on the Estate staff. Then a Calanya guard. Then others. It baffled him why they kept coming to court him. He rebuffed all their advances.

In his suite, he bathed and dressed, then went to the common room where his guards waited. They took him through the Estate to an alcove high in a tower. Inside, Henta and her Akasi Tevon sat at a Quis table.

Henta clucked at his damp hair. “You’re wet.”

“You’ll catch a fever,” Tevon admonished.

Kelric smiled. “My greetings.”

“And ours to you. Come sit with us.” As Kelric settled into a chair at the round table, Henta added, “We’ve an important matter to consider. The Council of Estates meets at Karn in a few days. It is a crucial session.”

“The vote on the Wardship of the Miesa Plateau comes up again,” Tevon said.

Henta leaned forward. “How that vote goes, Sevtar, could depend on you.”

“Me?” He hadn’t expected this. “Why?”

“It’s been deadlocked,” Henta said. “Last year Dahl, Bahvla, Shazorla, and Eviza voted with Karn. Haka, Ahkah, Lasa, and Miesa went with Varz. So we had an even split.”

“That’s only ten Estates,” Kelric said.

“Viasa abstained,” Tevon said. “So its Secondary, Tehnsa Estate, did as well.”

Henta nodded. “Usually Viasa votes with Varz. But Manager Viasa and Ixpar Karn, the Ministry Successor, seem on good terms these days.”

“It sounds like it depends on Manager Viasa, then,” Kelric said.

“It isn’t so simple,” Henta said. “I may abstain this year.”

“I thought you supported a Ministry Wardship of the Plateau.”

“It’s Savina Miesa.” Henta picked up a gold dodecahedron from a pile of dice, then set it down as if she didn’t know what to do with it. “How can I vote to strip her of the Plateau? She may act daft, but she’s not. I believe she can pull Miesa out of its mire without Karn taking over the Wardship. The problem is that Savina lets Avtac Varz intimidate her.”

Kelric thought back to his work at Haka. “Without Varz’s help, Miesa would have collapsed years ago.”

Tevon snorted. “Varz saves Miesa from a crisis Varz created.”

Kelric considered them. “If Manager Miesa is in so much trouble, why is everyone who claims to be her friend trying to take away the mines that support her Estate?”

“If the Wardship goes to Karn, the mines will still support Miesa,” Henta said. “Minister Karn will simply control that support.”

“That doesn’t sound any different from the way it is now,” Kelric said. “Except it will be Jahlt Karn who takes from Miesa instead of Avtac Varz.”

“Karn is not Varz,” Tevon said.

“Jahlt I trust,” Henta said. “Avtac I don’t.”

Tevon set a ruby ball in front of Kelric. “Haka. You know it better than any Karn ally.” He added an opal to the structure. “You also know Dahl. You have the tools to determine why past strategies of Dahl against Haka have succeeded or failed.”

Henta placed a gold ball by the opal. “With your help, I may be able to neutralize Haka in Council, perhaps even swing Viasa to our side.”

An unbidden memory rose in Kelric’s mind: Rashiva’s face lighting up as he entered the room. “Suppose I don’t want to give you advantage over Haka?”

Henta and Tevon exchanged glances.

“Chankah told me it was your choice to come here,” Henta said.

Kelric exhaled. “Yes. It was.” He had given his Oath to Bahvla.

She spoke gently. “We wish no harm to Rashiva Haka. We seek only to protect Miesa. You will understand better after you play Quis with Savina.”

Quis with another Manager? “Aren’t you worried about giving her advantage over your Estate?”

“Yes,” Henta said. “But I must make her see. Avtac Varz is destroying Miesa and Savina won’t admit it.”

“Why have me sit with her?” Kelric glanced at Tevon. “Why not someone who better understands your motivations?”

Tevon spoke. “Because no one else at Bahvla comes close to your expertise at Quis.”

Henta nodded. “Maybe you can help me make some sense out of Savina.” She sighed. “That is no easy task, I tell you. Winds only know what goes on in her mind.”

Among all Estates, Varz stood highest in the Teotecs. It crowned the apex of Mount Skywalk, its towers shearing stark lines against a sky that at this height stayed forever cobalt-blue. The cliffs around it dropped straight down until they disappeared into clouds massed below the fortress.

A windrider knifed toward the Estate, piloted by a grizzled woman from Lasa Estate. Her craft carried only one passenger and that passenger carried only one name.

Zecha.

A trio of riders shot out of the cliff. Painted black, with carnelian eyes, they bore the Varz clawcat emblem on their wings. They escorted the Lasa craft straight to the cliff. The Lasa pilot’s gaze darted back and forth as she flew into a tunnel in that massive wall of rock. Only the lamps in the eyes of the windriders lit the cold shadows.

They soared out of the tunnel and ended up above an airfield. The Lasa pilot landed on the icy tarmac, and the Varz riders set down all around her craft. As Zecha disembarked, Varz guards jumped down from their aircraft.

A Varz captain strode over to her. “Follow me.”

Zecha nodded, acutely aware of what the request lacked. No follow me, please, Warden Haka. She would hear no warden and no Haka, not now, not ever again.

The captain took her to an alcove on the Estate and left her there.

Zecha waited.

An aide appeared and took her to another alcove.

Zecha waited.

The next aide took her to an office. The room had a sparse quality, long and narrow. A window dominated the wall and beyond it the night loomed in a harsh canopy of stars on a black backdrop. A desk stood in front of the window.

Avtac Varz, the Manager of Varz, sat at the desk.

The cold light edged the planes of Avtac’s face, delineating the hollows of her eyes and the bones of her cheeks. Her gaze riveted Zecha. It was as if a miner had dug two chunks of iron from the ground, shaped them into orbs, and set them in the sockets of her face. She spoke in a shadowed voice. “My greetings.”

Zecha bowed. “My greetings, Manager Varz.”

Avtac lifted a narrow hand and indicated a chair by the wall. “Be seated.”

Zecha sat.

“You come from Lasa?” Avtac asked.

“I work on the City Guard there,” Zecha said.

Avtac lifted a scroll from her desk. “Then why does this letter say you seek employment?”

“My abilities are wasted as a Lasa guard.”

“I have heard much about you, former warden.” Avtac set down the scroll. “Perhaps the authorities at Lasa also had ears and this is why you seek new employment.”

Zecha had her answer ready. “Your Estate is known for many things, Manager Varz. Strength. Wealth. Power.” She paused. “One thing it isn’t known for is weakness.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the weak may shun the strong because of fear.”

Avtac steepled her fingers. “Even my closest ally?”

“Young Managers make mistakes.”

“Perhaps.” Avtac picked up a stylus and tapped it against her fingers. “The captain of my hunting unit grows older. She expects to retire soon.”

Zecha tensed. Did Avtac offer her a chance at the position? Varz might starve if it wasn’t for its renowned hunting unit that brought in game from the lower elevations and protected the city from marauding clawcats. Famous for their fierce expertise, the Varz Hunters were both feared and admired throughout the Twelve Estates. Captain of their unit was a position of tremendous prestige.

Zecha spoke carefully. “Many must hope to fill the vacancy.”

“So they do.” Avtac put down her stylus. “A slot is available on my City Guard. You will start tomorrow.” She paused. “When the captain of the Hunters retires, we will see how matters stand.”

The touch brushed Kelric’s mind like a caress. It was the first time in his three years on Coba that he had felt another telepath.

Yevris laughed. “She affects one that way, heh?”

Kelric focused his attention outward, on Yevris, who stood with him in an alcove off the main common room. “What?”

“Manager Miesa.” Yevris tilted his head toward the common room. “That’s who you were staring at.”

Kelric looked and saw a petite woman watching a Quis game in the common room. Savina Miesa? No wonder people used gold dice in Miesa patterns. Glossy gold hair cascaded over her shoulders, spilled down her back, and floated around her waist and hips. Curls drifted about an angelic face as innocent as a child’s. The cut of her blouse drew his eyes as it swelled out to her ample breasts, plunged in to a tiny waist, curved out again at her hips. Gold lace blouse, gold satin trousers, gold suede boots. Golden sungoddess.

“Saints almighty,” Kelric said.

Yevris grinned. “Artwork, yes?”

Kelric thought of Rashiva. “It’s just artwork. Nothing more.”

Yevris leaned against the wall. “What is it with you? ‘Just artwork. Nothing more.’ You ignore every woman who comes to call on you. Is it that you prefer men?”

Kelric scowled. “Of course not.”

“Why else would a healthy—”

“I told you I didn’t.”

“You’ve no reason to get hostile.”

Kelric took a breath. “Sorry. Where I grew up a question like that got your head cracked open.” After he left home, he had fast learned that his parochial upbringing in his father’s culture didn’t match the more general egalitarian society of his mother’s background. Given that one of his many brothers did prefer men, Kelric had spent a lot of time unlearning the customs of his youth.

“I don’t mean to offend,” he said.

Yevris shrugged. “No one cares here, Sevtar. Though I suppose it is less common now than in the Old Age.”

“Why was it more common then?”

Dryly Yevris said, “Our foremothers were too busy killing each other. So the Estates had many more of us than them. It’s why they often took more than one husband.” He rocked on his heels. “Eventually they quit hacking each other to pieces on the battlefield. Many more of them survived then, which meant if one woman had many kasi, many women had none. So the Managers got together and made a law. Only Managers can have more than one husband.”

Kelric snorted. “That figures.”

Yevris smiled. “Yes. It does. But you avoid the question, my friend. Why do you ignore all these women who come courting, hoping to make you their only one?”

Kelric crossed his arms. “I prefer not to discuss it.”

“You always say that.” Yevris crossed his arms in imitation of Kelric. “‘I prefer not to discuss it.’ Maybe if you discussed more you would brood less.”

Henta appeared in the archway and smiled. “Manager Miesa is here, Sevtar.”

Kelric glared at her.

“Ah—hmmm.” Henta glanced from him to Yevris. “Maybe I should come back later.”

Kelric uncrossed his arms. “No. Now is fine.”

As he and Henta walked into the common room, Savina Miesa looked up and gave him a cursory glance. Then she did a double take and stared. Her mental touch brushed his mind like a kiss, stopping him cold in the center of the room.

Savina came over and bowed, her tousled hair making her look like an imp. “Sevtar Bahvla? I am honored.”

Kelric nodded, silent and unsmiling.

An octet escorted them to a private alcove in an isolated tower. The guards took up posts Outside while he and Savina sat at the Quis table. She untied her pouch, glanced at him, and promptly spilled dice all over the table.

“Did you know you’re a psion?” Kelric asked.

Savina reddened. “Hush. The escort will hear. I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“They can’t hear. They’re Outside.”

She tried to make a neat pile out of her dice but the stack kept falling over. Finally she thunked a ruby cube in the center of the table. “Your move.”

“Did you know?” he asked.

“Know what?”

“That you’re a psion.”

“A sigh-on?”

“A telepath.”

“Are you making a joke?”

“No.”

Savina smiled. “You think I can hear your thoughts?”

“No. You don’t have the training. But you are a psion.”

Her look turned mischievous. “Do you sigh-on?”

“I lost most of it.” He hesitated. “But when I felt your touch—maybe it’s not gone.”

Her face went crimson. “Felt my touch? You know what I’m thinking?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She relaxed. “Well. I don’t know what you’re thinking either. So we better play.” She grinned. “Play Quis, that is.”

Kelric set a topaz by her cube and the game took off. For some reason, she played almost exclusively with rubies and sapphires. “You know,” she said. “Blue is a special color.”

He glanced at her. “It is?”

She nodded. “Blue sky. Blue water. Blue.”

“Oh.” He played an emerald disk. “Your move.”

“Pah,” Savina muttered.

Yevris handed Kelric a glass of wine. “Blue? She could have meant a lot of things. Were you making water patterns?”

“No,” Kelric said. “It was about her Estate.”

“Maybe she meant the sapphire mine.”

“I don’t think so.”

Yevris smiled. “Blue is also the color of love.”

“I thought that was red.” Kelric reviewed the game in his mind. “She used a lot of rubies.”

Yevris laughed. “Red, my friend, is for lust.”

“For flaming sake,” Kelric said. “If that’s what it was, the interest isn’t mutual.”

“Sure. And I’m an offworlder.”

Kelric glowered. “You have a perfect word for that. Pah.”

Wreathed in mist, Henta and Savina strolled past the old battlements of Bahvla Estate. “I leave tonight for Council,” Henta said. “I want to get to Karn early.”

Savina pulled her fur-lined jacket tighter around her body. “I have to go to Miesa first. I’ll be at Karn in time for the opening session.”

Henta laughed. “You’ll dash in ten seconds before it starts.”

“I will not.”

“You always do.”

“Not this time.” Savina paused. “Are you bringing any Calani?”

“I might.”

“Which ones?”

Henta recognized the too-casual tone of her voice. “I don’t know, Savina. Who do you think I should bring?”

“Well, that fellow I played Quis with—what is his name? The gold one. He seems quite skilled. At dice, I mean.”

“You know perfectly well what his name is.”

“Sigh-on.”

“What?”

“Sigh-on.” Mischief danced across Savina’s face. “He thinks if he sighs enough he can read minds.”

“Yes? And just where did you get this gem of information?”

“He told—oh.” Savina’s hand flew over her mouth. “Uh. Hmmmm.”

Henta scowled. “What were you doing, talking to my Calani?”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry, pah. You ought to know better.”

“Well, how was I supposed to concentrate on dice with that glorious specimen of manhood sitting across the table from me? Winds, Henta, how could you not make him your Akasi?”

“I don’t want another husband. Besides, Sevtar doesn’t want to be an Akasi.”

“Does he belong to anyone?”

“Yes. Himself. You’ll get nowhere with that one. He’s not interested.”

Savina spoke in a dramatic voice. “It’s his Haka mystique. I can’t resist it.”

Henta gave her a dour look. “What Haka mystique? He’s an offworlder.”

“But he acts like a Haka man. They drive me crazy.” Savina’s face reddened. “The way they go around all covered up except for their eyes. It gets me hot just thinking about what’s under there. And even if they do let you see their faces they never smile. Never. Do you know what it does to me when Sevtar acts that way? Just one smile out of him and I’ll lose control. One smile. You’ll need an octet to hold me back.”

Henta sighed. “Did it ever occur to you that he doesn’t smile at you because he’s not interested?”

Savina scowled. “You’re a cranky old clawcat, you know that?”

23

QUEEN’S SPECTRUM

The Hall of Teotec at Karn Estate seated hundreds when its galleries and balconies filled. Today only Managers and their retinues were present, gathered around the oval-shaped Opal Table that dominated the lower floor. Rainbow ivory and snowstones inlaid its amberwood surface in complex Quis designs.

When Henta entered the Hall, she found many of the Estate Chairs already occupied. Rashiva sat heavy with pregnancy in the Haka Chair. The desert queen’s luster had dimmed into pallor, and fatigue creased her face. An aide spoke to her in a low voice, obviously urging her to retire from the session, but the Manager shook her head.

Henta settled into the Bahvla Chair, her retinue taking seats behind and around her. Her Senior Aide leaned over to her. “Do you want a last look at the files?”

Henta shook her head. “I’m as prepared as I’m going to be.” She had a feeling the Council might not be prepared for Bahvla this year.

The great double doors behind the Ministry Chair swung open and the aide at the entrance announced, “Ixpar Karn, Ministry Successor.”

Henta found it hard to believe the striking young woman who strode into the room was the same gangly child she had known a few years ago. Ixpar brought to mind a painting Henta had once seen, an Old Age warrior queen in bronze and leather armor standing with her long legs planted on a cliff, holding a spear aloft in one hand and a shield in the other, her hip-length hair whipping out behind her body, turned into fire by the sunset.

As Ixpar took her seat next to the Ministry Chair, a flurry of noise came from the entrance, followed by the announcement, “Savina Miesa, Manager of Miesa Estate.” Savina sped into the Hall, conferring with a bevy of aides, and ran smack into the Varz Chair. She reddened, looking around, then made her way over to her own Chair next to Bahvla.

After Savina sat down, Henta smiled. “A dignified entrance.”

Savina caught her breath. “I thought we’d never make it in time.”

The doors of the Hall opened. “Avtac Varz,” the aide said. “Manager of Varz.”

Silence fell over the room. A tall woman entered, bringing to mind steel and stone with her gray eyes, gray braid, gray vest, gray shirt, gray trousers and grey boots. At her left walked a woman with hair the color of rust.

Henta leaned toward Savina. “Who is that with Avtac?”

“Her name is Zecha,” Savina said. “She’ll be replacing the captain of the Varz Hunters soon.”

“Rashiva doesn’t look pleased to see her.”

The aide at the entrance cleared her throat. “Jahlt Karn.” She paused. “Minister of Coba.”

Henta rose with the other Managers and their retinues as Jahlt entered. A single figure dressed in black, Jahlt needed no retinue. Her presence filled the Hall. She went to stand before her Chair and spoke in a gravely voice. “The Sixty-sixth Council of the Ninth Century of the Modern Age is now met.”

A rustle sounded the Managers settled into their Chairs all around the Opal Table and brought out their dice pouches. The Minister placed the first piece.

So began the Council Quis of Coba.

Avtac paced the living room of the Varz guest suite. Zecha waited by the door and several aides hovered in the doorway to an inner room. Stahna, the Varz Successor, stood by the bookshelf.

Avtac stopped in front of Stahna. “Incredible.” She started pacing again.

“It was luck,” Stahna said. “Henta Bahvla has never dominated the Quis like that before.”

“What luck?” Avtac demanded. “Bahvla has a Haka Calani.”

Stahna spoke with distaste, “An offworlder.”

Like a bite of sour fruit, Avtac thought. It made Bahvla unclean and tainted Haka as well. “Rashiva played abominable Quis today.”

“She’s too ill to be at Council,” Stahna said.

“If pregnancy makes a Manager too weak to sit in Council she shouldn’t be a Manager.” Avtac turned to a secretary waiting in the doorway. “Go tell Manager Haka I want to see her.” As the young man sped off, Avtac resumed pacing. “Henta has Savina so confused, Savina doesn’t know a cube from a disk. If this continues, she will vote to give away her own mines.”

“I’ll get her into a Quis session tonight,” Stahna said. “Maybe I can undo some of Bahvla’s damage.”

“A good idea.” Avtac went over to Zecha. “This man Sevtar. Can he affect the dice the way we saw today?”

“It’s possible,” Zecha said. “Haka showed a definite change after he went into the Calanya.”

Avtac frowned. “I fail to understand how Rashiva let herself be duped into that arrangement with Dahl.”

“My recommendation was to leave him in prison,” Zecha said.

“It would have avoided a lot of trouble.” Avtac saw the boy she had sent for Rashiva coming back alone. “Where is Manager Haka?”

He stopped in the archway. “Her aides said she can’t go anywhere tonight.”

“So.” Avtac turned to Zecha. “We will see for ourselves.”

In the antechamber of the Haka guest suite, they found a cluster of aides playing Quis. As Avtac entered with Zecha, the group hastened to its feet. An older woman bowed to her. “Our greetings, Manager Varz.”

“I’ve come to see Manager Haka,” Avtac said.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. She can’t have visitors now.”

Avtac considered the woman. “What’s your name?”

“Chal Haka, ma’am.”

“Well, Chal, I suggest you let Manager Haka make her own decisions as to who she will and will not see.”

Chal flushed, then bowed and withdrew from the room.

“May we get you anything, Manager Varz?” another aide asked. “Some Tanghi? Jai rum?”

“No,” Avtac said.

Chal reappeared. “Manager Haka bids you welcome, Manager Varz. She will see you now.”

Rashiva was sitting up in bed when Avtac and Zecha entered the inner chambers of the Haka guest suite. A handsome youth wearing Akasi bands stood by the nightstand, straightening as if he had just slid off the bed. From his dark beauty, Avtac thought he must be one of the Haka highborn. In the privacy of Rashiva’s chambers he was barefoot, wearing only his trousers and shirt, but his robe lay on a nearby divan and a Talha scarf hung around his neck. Although he regarded her with no smile, Avtac knew he made suggestive invitations with his dark eyes. Haka men were all the same. It was no wonder their women had to keep such close watch on them.

“My greetings, Avtac.” Rashiva touched the boy’s arm. “This is Raaj.”

Avtac bowed to the Calani. “My honor at your presence, Raaj.”

He nodded, still without the forbidden smile, but Avtac recognized the falseness of his modesty by the way his clothes molded to his well-built body.

Rashiva curled her fingers around Raaj’s hand and kissed his knuckles. He squeezed her hand, then took his robe and left with his guards.

Avtac frowned at the Haka Manager. “You and I have business to discuss.”

Rashiva glanced at Zecha, then at Avtac. “The affairs of Haka are not the affairs of one Shunned by Haka.”

“The affairs of Haka are a mess,” Avtac said. “You let Henta dice you into corners today. How is it that an offworlder gives Bahvla advantage over you?”

“You never sat at the Quis table with him,” Rashiva said. “Don’t underestimate him.”

“If his Quis is that strong, you should never have let him leave Haka.” Avtac thought for a moment. “Maybe we can still get him out of Bahvla. My Estate can back your offer. For a high enough price I’m sure even Henta will sell him.”

Rashiva shifted the cushions behind her back. “He doesn’t want to come to Haka.”

Avtac leaned over her. “A strong Manager takes a firm hand with her Calani. You would do well to remember that. Let the wishes of an Akasi become prominent in your life and he weakens both you and your Estate.”

“Avtac, it’s late,” Rashiva said. “This pregnancy doesn’t go well. I will see you tomorrow.”

Offworlder contamination? Avtac straightened up. “Do you carry the Skolian’s child?”

“No.”

“That beautiful boy’s? Raaj?”

“I think so.”

“You think?” Avtac frowned. “Stop brooding over that offworld Calani, Rashiva. Put the pieces of Haka back in their proper patterns and start acting like a Manager.”

Chal Haka breathed in relief when the Varz visitors finally left. Her good spirits vanished when she returned to the bedroom and found Rashiva pulling herself out of bed.

“Manager Haka.” Chal strode over to her. “You mustn’t get up.”

Rashiva leaned on the bedpost. “I’m tired of Avtac’s attitude, that anyone who isn’t her isn’t worth a wooden die.”

“Please.” Chal took her arm. “Go back to bed. Think about the child.”

“I will be fine. I attended Council while I was carrying my daughter and had no problems.” She let go of the post. “See? Why don’t you fix me a mug of Tanghi? I will take it in my study.”

Chal knew arguing would only annoy the Manager. Besides, the Tanghi might make her sleepy enough that she would go back to bed.

As Chal left, she glanced back. Rashiva was sitting on the bed with her head bowed, her skin so pale she looked like a ghost.

Ixpar downed the rest of her cooling Tanghi in one swallow. “That was a long session today.”

“But productive.” Folding her hands around her glass of jai rum, Jahlt relaxed in an armchair in her study. It was an advantage of being Minister; the Council met at her Estate, which meant at night she retired to familiar rooms.

“Who would have thought Bahvla could come through so well?” Jahlt said. “Or Haka so weak? Perhaps we will take the Plateau vote this year.”

Ixpar clunked her mug down on the table. “Only Haka and Miesa stand firm behind Varz.” She got up and paced across the room, stretching her arms. “Near the end of the session I even started to wonder about Miesa.”

“Henta has done good work,” Jahlt said. “But she worries me.”

Ixpar lowered her arms. “You think she means to abstain?”

Jahlt nodded, gratified Ixpar had caught that subtle trend in the Bahvla patterns. “If her Quis stays as sharp as today, though, we could still get a majority.”

“I hope so.” Ixpar rubbed her neck. “That session lasted forever. I get stiff just thinking about it.” She grinned. “What do you say, Jahlt? How about a jog around Karn?”

Jahlt snorted. “You will send me to my grave with your ideas.” But she was not displeased. Ixpar’s vibrant health strengthened the Ministry. In the Old Age, Ixpar would have turned her energy to the battlefield, no doubt becoming a legend among warrior queens. Now, however, no wars existed to calm her young successor’s raging energy and hormones.

“Henta was amazing today.” Ixpar started pacing again. “She obviously has a strong Calanya behind her.”

“‘A strong Calanya.’” Jahlt snorted. “I am not fooled by these attempts of yours to disguise references to Kelricson Valdoria by including large numbers of people in comments about him.”

Ixpar turned to her. “If I want to praise him, I won’t disguise it. Why should I? Didn’t you see anything of the man he is that night you talked to him in Dahl?”

Jahlt got up and went over to her. “I saw a man who could become legend.”

“Then why do you so dislike him?”

“It is not dislike.” Jahlt spoke quietly. “With his dice, he is like a sorcerer given a power he doesn’t understand. What will his Quis do to Coba?” She walked to the mantel and stared into the fire. “I cannot answer that question, Ixpar. None of us can.” She turned to her successor. “That is why I fear it.”

The only sound in the Hall of Teotec came from the clink of dice. Managers sat arrayed about the Opal Table, intent on their Quis. Their successors leaned forward to see better, and behind them the ranks of aides watched.

Ixpar observed from her seat by the Ministry Chair. The Managers looked like a queen’s spectrum, the power of each symbolized by the braid hanging down her back. Youngest of all was Khal Viasa, whose auburn braid had yet to reach her waist. Manager Shazorla’s braid was black sprinkled with gray, Manager Ahkah’s gray sprinkled with brown. Savina Miesa’s hair escaped in a disarray of gold curls that floated around her face.

The Ahkah Manager let out a breath and leaned back in her seat. It started a rustle of motion: people shifted position, sipped from mugs, rearranged piles of dice.

Jahlt spoke. “Perhaps we should take a recess.”

A murmur of agreement answered her. Managers pushed away from the table and conversation trickled among the observers.

Outside in the hall, Jahlt joined Ixpar for a walk. “What do you think of the session?”

“Rashiva’s patterns are stronger,” Ixpar said. “She must have worked on strategies all night.”

Jahlt nodded. “Miesa may go with Varz after all.” She frowned. “We need this vote. Every year Varz succeeds in blocking us, Avtac gains more control over Miesa.”

A shout came from behind them. Ixpar turned to see an aide running up the hall. The woman stopped in front of Jahlt. “It’s Manager Haka.” She gasped for breath. “She was getting up—from her Chair. She collapsed.”

Jahlt strode back toward the Hall, with Ixpar and the aide at her side. “Did you summon Med?”

“I sent for the Karn Senior Physician,” the aide said. “A Haka aide went for the Haka doctor and Manager Dahl sent for a doctor who came with the Dahl retinue.”

Inside the Council Hall a knot of people were kneeling near the Haka Chair. Rashiva lay on the floor, her face the color of old ashes. Jahlt stepped past the others and knelt by the crumpled form. “Rashiva?”

The Haka queen’s lashes stirred. “My baby …”

A doctor strode into the room, the Med patch blazoned on the shoulder of her tunic showing the Haka emblem of a rising sun. Behind her came the Karn Senior Physician, and behind her strode a man wearing the Dahl suntree emblem.

An aide cleared the Hall. Only Jahlt remained with Ixpar and Avtac. They moved back, waiting while the doctors examined Rashiva.

Jahlt indicated the man from Dahl. “He looks familiar.”

“That’s Dabbiv,” Ixpar said. “He was Kelric’s physician at Dahl.”

Avtac frowned. “Dabbiv Dahl? It may be unwise to let him in here. His ideas about medicine are questionable.”

“Manager Dahl thinks highly of him,” Ixpar said.

Shallina Karn, the gray-haired Karn Senior Physician, came over to them. “We’re taking Manager Haka to Med.”

“Will she be all right?” Jahlt asked.

“We’ll know by tonight. The child is coming.”

Ixpar stared at Shallina. “It’s too soon!”

“Her baby,” Shallina said, “doesn’t plan to wait.”

… across the village, Shaliece cried. Kelric ran through the cobbled streets of Dalvador. At the turreted house where Shaliece lived, a midwife stopped him. His son was gone. Miscarriage. Dead …

… Far across a world, Rashiva called to him …

Kelric bolted awake, sitting up in bed. He stared into the dark, the fragments of a dream lingering in his mind. Sweat soaked his shirt. He took the water flask off the nightstand and drank deeply. Then he got out of bed and went into his living room.

When he opened the balcony doors and stepped outside, wind heavy with moisture rushed at him. His balcony topped a tower of Bahvla Estate, its trellised veranda reinforced with struts. Far below, the Teotecs spread out to the edge of the world, where a line of light hinted that dawn might come despite the rain. Sporadic thunder rumbled across the mountains and wind whipped back his hair. A wildness saturated the air, ancient and free.

Even the untamed night couldn’t wipe away the traces of his dream. He went inside and wandered out of his suite, into the main common room. Darkness filled the rooms at this early hour, except for an oil lamp burning in one corner.

Kelric opened the Outside doors. Taul, the captain of his Calanya escort, sat Outside with his other guards, dozing by a Quis table. Kelric left the Calanya and walked down the hall.

“Hey!” Running boots sounded behind him and then his guards surrounded him. Captain Taul drew him to a stop. “You can’t come out here.”

Kelric had no idea what he was doing, he only knew a buried instinct pushed him to go—where?

“I need to go to the Observatory,” he said.

As Taul’s mouth fell open, several guards drew in sharp breaths. Taul’s turmoil showed on her face and Kelric sensed her reaction: should she pretend she hadn’t heard the forbidden words? Would it affect his Quis if she denied a request so urgent that he broke his Oath for it? Would he fight, forcing them to mishandle a Third Level? If she woke someone in authority, would she lose rank, prestige, honor?

After an excruciating pause, Taul said, “We will escort you to the Observatory. But please—don’t talk anymore.”

Kelric nodded. He set off, surrounded by the escort.

When they reached the Observatory, he still had no idea why he wanted to go there. All he could think was that it faced Karn. With his guards, he went out on the high balcony that circled the building. Memories flooded him; Shaliece, her eyes huge and violet, running across the plains of Dalvador with her skirt whipping around her legs, laughing as he caught her and they tumbled into the grass. Shaliece, crying for the death of their child.

Why now? Why did the pain of his son’s death come back to him now, after it had rested for so many years?

In the muted hours before dawn, Ixpar woke from where she had dozed off, sitting on the end of a couch in the alcove outside Dashiva’s Med room. She looked around the room. Jahlt stood by the entrance, in conversation with an aide, and Avtac Varz was sitting in an armchair, leaning back with her eyes closed. Across the room, Henta snored in another armchair.

Jahlt came over to her. “It’s late. You should get some rest.”

“You too,” Ixpar said.

“Heh.” She sat on the couch. “Women have been having babies since time started. Rashiva will be fine.”

“It’s taking too long.”

Jahlt exhaled. “Yes. It is.”

Shallina, the Karn Senior Physician, appeared in the alcove entrance. Dark circles rimmed her eyes and tendrils of gray hair had pulled out from her braid. She said, simply, “It’s done.”

Avtac rose to her feet. “Manager Haka?”

“She sleeps now,” Shallina said.

“What about the child?” Ixpar asked.

Shallina pushed back her hair. “A boy.”

“Mother and son are all right?” Jahlt asked.

“Manager Haka is exhausted,” Shallina said. “But she will be fine. The baby, however, is too weak.” She spoke quietly. “He won’t live more than a few days.”

A shadow appeared behind Shallina, solidifying into Dabbiv Dahl as he came into the archway. “Minister Karn, I’ve seen symptoms like Manager Haka’s before. For her son, we should—”

“We don’t try untested procedures on an infant, young man,” Shallina said sharply.

“It’s tested,” Dabbiv said. “It’s the diet we used—”

Avtac interrupted him. “You want to experiment on Manager Haka’s son?”

Dabbiv shook his head. “It’s not—”

“We’ve already discussed this,” Shallina said. “Getting emotional serves no purpose for anyone.”

Dabbiv made a frustrated noise. “I’m not getting—”

“Young man,” Avtac said. “You should leave these matters to those with the experience to deal with them.”

“Dabbiv is right,” Ixpar said.

Everyone turned to her.

“I should have seen it before,” Ixpar said. “Manager Haka’s symptoms in Council were just like the ones Kelric had at Dahl before we changed his diet.”

Relief filled Dabbiv’s face. “Yes. That’s what I’ve been saying. If we base a formula on that diet, it might increase the baby’s chances of survival. While Manager Haka nurses him, we should keep her on the same diet—”

“The Haka Senior Physician,” Shallina said, “suggests we give the boy mineral baths and bubble water for his stomach.” She regarded Jahlt. “Besides, the baby’s father is not this man Kelric, or Sevtar, or whatever his name is.”

“Kelric was also a Haka Akasi,” Ixpar said.

“We will follow both plans,” Jahlt said. She considered Dabbiv. “Can you see to the diet?”

“I’ll be glad to,” he said.

Jahlt turned to Shallina. “Keep working with the Haka doctor. Do whatever you can for the boy.”

“All right.” Shallina looked around at them all. “We also need a Plan Three.”

“Plan Three?” Avtac asked.

Shallina scowled at them. “Plan Three is that you all go to bed before you pass out.”

Jahlt smiled. “Very well, Doctor.”

So they woke up Henta and then dispersed to their various suites.

Late-morning light poured into the Hall of Teotec through its arched windows. Jahlt looked out over the Managers arrayed around the Opal Table. “Based on the Council recommendations, it is my decision to impose no new tariffs on the Shazorla wines.”

No surprise there, Ixpar thought. As Minister, Jahlt could have vetoed the tariff vote, but she let it stand. The next vote was different; a motion concerned with the support of an entire Estate could neither be overridden by Jahlt nor passed without a majority.

“We now address the Wardship of the Miesa Plateau,” Jahlt said. “Placing a diamond cube is a vote of yea to moving the title of Ward from Miesa to Karn. The obsidian cube is a vote of nay and the crystal ring is an abstain.” She turned to Ixpar. “Proceed.”

Ixpar poised her quill over her scroll. “Tehnsa?”

Instead of placing a vote, the Tehnsa Manager said, “Tehnsa will follow its Primary of Viasa.” When Ixpar called the other two Secondary Estates, Evisa and Lasa, they also deferred to their Primaries.

Ixpar turned to Savina. “Miesa?”

Savina lifted her hand. For an incredible instant it hovered over the crystal ring. Then she picked up the obsidian cube and set it in the center of the table.

No Miesa surprises after all, Ixpar thought, hiding her disappointment. She noted Savina’s move on her scroll. “Viasa?”

Khal Viasa set a crystal ring by the Miesa cube. “Viasa abstains.”

The Tehnsa Manager placed her ring. “Tehnsa follows Viasa.”

Another disappointment. At least Viasa hadn’t voted with Varz. “Ahkah?” Ixpar asked.

The Ahkah Manager placed an obsidian cube. “Nay.”

The Lasa Manager placed her black cube. “Lasa follows its Primary.”

Ixpar was growing worried. If Henta Bahvla abstained, Karn would lose the vote. “Bahvla?”

Henta gave Savina a look of apology. Then she placed a diamond cube on the Table. “Bahvla votes yea.”

Dahl voted with the Ministry, as did Shazorla and its Secondary Eviza. Rashiva’s successor, an adolescent girl, placed the black cube for Haka. After Varz and Karn played their dice, the vote was done; five diamond cubes, five obsidian cubes, and two crystal rings sat on the table.

Jahlt spoke. “The pattern is clear. The vote remains deadlocked.”

Avtac Varz smiled.

24

THE TOWER OF ODANA

When Kelric first heard the clank of metal hitting stone, he thought the wind had dislodged a trellis on his balcony and sent it clattering down the tower. When he pulled aside the curtains, however, everything looked normal.

A large metal hook trailing a rope arced into the air and caught on the trellis.

“What the—?” Kelric went out and looked over the rail. The rope stretched down from the hook to a window far below his suite. Knots appeared at intervals along the cable—and Savina Miesa was hanging on to its end.

“Hey!” Kelric called. “What are you doing?”

She stood balanced on the windowsill with one arm hooked around the leg of a gargoyle while she pulled on a pair of gloves. Looking up at him, she grinned. “Throwing my hook.”

“You can’t come up here.”

Mischief showed on her face. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want you to.”

“Then I’ll hang out here bemoaning my unrequited love until I fall off and smash to an untimely death.”

“For flaming sake,” Kelric said.

Savina yanked on the rope, testing it, and then started to climb. Wind and momentum immediately took over, swinging her out over the abyss of air. She swung back in, scrambling for a grip on the wall, and found a foothold. Then she walked up the tower, holding on to the rope.

When she reached the top, Kelric scowled at her. “Are you crazy or what?”

She vaulted over the trellis onto the balcony. “Crazy with love. You better offer me a good strong drink to calm me down.”

“You look perfectly calm to me.”

She walked past the glazed balcony doors into his living room. “If you’re worried about Henta, she’s down in the city at a meeting.”

Kelric followed her inside. “I want you to leave.”

“I just got here.” Savina dropped onto the divan, her hair spilling in a gold waterfall everywhere. She was all hourglass curves, full and firm in a snug blue jumpsuit, more like an erotic holomovie goddess than a Manager. Kelric stared at her, tried not to stare, cleared his throat, then crossed to the rosewood cabinet and pulled out the first flask his hand touched. He took two tumblers and went to Savina.

“One drink,” he said. “That’s all.”

“Baiz.” Her smile dazzled. “A good choice.”

He looked at the flask. “You want something else?”

Savina pulled him down on the divan. “Baiz is perfect.” She filled one glass and handed it to him. “Just perfect.”

Kelric downed his drink in one swallow. “Why did you pull that stunt?”

“I wanted to talk to you.” She trailed her fingers along his neck. “You’re the only offworlder I’ve ever met.”

“I don’t talk to Outsiders.”

“I’m not really an Outsider.” She refilled his glass. “Tell me about the Imperialate. Do Skolians have Akasi?”

“No.”

Her fingers explored the sensitive skin around his ear. “What do Managers do for love?”

He finished his baiz. “We don’t have Managers.”

“You were telling me about sigh-ons.” She poured him another drink. “Do Skolian men really sigh so much?”

“I’m going to get the escort.”

She leaned close to him, brushing her fingers across his lips while her breasts pressed against him. “You don’t really want to do that.”

He stared at her angelic face. Then he drained his glass again.

“You don’t look so steady.” Savina pushed him onto his back on the divan. “I think you need to lie down.”

He tried to sit back up. “I feel fine.”

“No, you look terribly pale.” She shoved him back down, leaning over him. Somehow she had undone his shirt and was stroking his chest. “Smile for me, beautiful Calani.”

It was too much. Kelric dropped his tumbler onto the floor and pulled her down on top of him, filling his arms with soft, supple Savina and his senses with musky Savina scent. “You should watch where you prowl, Manager Miesa. You don’t know what you’ll find.”

A tap sounded at the screen. “Sevtar?” Henta called.

Savina’s mouth opened in a big O. She tried to scramble off the divan but Kelric refused to let her go, too drunk and too aroused to care about Henta.

“Sevtar?” Henta repeated. “Are you all right?”

Savina managed to twist out of his arms. She jumped off the sofa and ran into an inner room. As Kelric sat up, fumbling with the thongs on his shirt, the screen of his suite moved aside and Henta looked in at him.

“I thought you were at a meeting,” he said.

“It finished early.” Her gaze traveled over the baiz flask, the two glasses, and the disarrayed divan. Then she watched him trying to put his shirt back together. “Sevtar.”

He gave up on his shirt. “Yes?”

“Can’t Savina use the front door like a normal person?”

“Cuaz me,” a voice said from the inner room.

“OUT,” Henta said.

An abashed Savina appeared. “My greetings, Henta.”

“What do you think you’re doing, climbing up towers and getting my Calani drunk?”

“Well—I—uh—how did you know I was here?”

“I’m asking the questions, Manager Miesa.”

Savina looked like a child caught with her hand full of stolen candy. “I came to see Sevtar.”

Henta scowled. “You came to see Sevtar. How nice. How many laws do you think you broke here?”

“Wait.” Kelric stood up. “Don’t call a Tribunal.”

“I ought to,” Henta said.

“She’ll do something worse,” Savina said. “She’ll lecture me.”

“Out,” Henta said.

Savina retreated out of the suite, followed by the glowering Bahvla Manager.

“No.” As far as Henta was concerned, that concluded the conversation. She turned to watch a group of children splash in a fountain on the other side of the plaza where she and Savina stood, ending up here after their walk through the city of Bahvla.

“Why not?” Savina said.

“He is Calani,” Henta said.

“Since when can’t Calani have visitors?”

“You aren’t a visitor. You’re an Estate Manager. Besides, what makes you think Sevtar wants you to visit?”

“He does. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

The children suddenly realized who shared the plaza with them. They stopped playing and gaped at the two Managers.

Henta smiled. “Apparently we’re more interesting than a fountain.”

“They probably see Managers about as often as they see Calani,” Savina fumed. “Not that someone seeing a Calani every now and then would cause any harm.”

“I told you no.”

“Why not? You think big brutal me will commit nefarious acts against helpless Sevtar?”

Henta turned to her. “Many ways exist to hurt a man. Leave him alone.”

Savina swept out her arms. “You’re denying the expression of true love.”

“Pah.”

“Pah yourself.” Savina put her hands on her hips. “How do you know I’m not in love with him?”

“You’re always in love. Aren’t four husbands enough? You need a fifth?”

“You know Miesa could never afford a Fourth Level.”

“I see. You just want to use my Calani and then leave him unhappy.”

“I do not.”

“Pah.”

“I really wish you would stop saying that,” Savina grumbled.

With a wild rush of air, the rider skimmed over Kelric and Yevris a second time. As they sprinted for the cover of a snowfir grove, the craft descended, flattening grass and whipping tree branches into a frenzy.

Kelric skidded to a stop under a tree. “It’s landing.”

“In a Calanya park?” Yevris lifted his arm to shield his face from the blast of air. “I can’t think of anything more illegal.”

The rider set down on a nearby lawn. Its hatch swung open and the pilot jumped out onto the grass.

“Cuaz and Khozaar,” Yevris said.

Kelric laughed. “No, not the Akasi. What we have here is the sun-goddess.”

Savina walked toward them, a stunner in her hand.

“Let’s leave,” Yevris said.

“Why don’t we see what she wants?” Kelric said. Better yet, steal her rider and go to the starport.

“It’s you she wants.” Yevris tugged his arm. “Come on. You don’t have to take this insult.”

“You can let him go, Yevris.” Savina stopped in front of them. “He’s not going with you.”

Kelric regarded her with curiosity. “Why not?”

“You and I are taking a trip,” she said.

“You can’t kidnap me.”

Savina drew her stunner. “Want to roll dice on that?”

Kelric knew the gun was a bluff. If she stunned him, she could never drag him to the rider and lift him into its cabin. She only stood as tall as his chest and he had more than twice her weight. Stealing her rider would be easier than playing Quis with a baby.

He glanced at Yevris. “Well, I don’t want to get shot. I better do what she wants.” Across the parks, his guards were running toward them.

Savina followed his gaze. “Hurry up, Sevtar.”

As Kelric headed for the rider, he heard Savina behind him. He reached for the hatch—and spun around to grab her gun. She had no time to react after he lunged. Yet before he even finished turning, she had already pumped five stun shots into him. The only way she could have done it was by shooting before he made his move. He collapsed onto the grass, barely conscious, unable to move or speak.

She dropped next to him. “I’m really sorry about that.” Suddenly she looked up and fired the stunner again. He heard Yevris swear, followed by the thud of a body hitting the ground.

Savina disappeared. An instant later the grind of a grain-loading machine started in the rider. She reappeared and pushed a sled under his body, working with frantic speed as she secured him onto it with ropes. With Savina pushing and the grain-loader pulling, Kelric found himself hoisted into the rider.

As soon as she had him inside, she slammed the hatch and spun around to the copilot’s seat. She had rigged the chair so it tipped down to the deck. As she untied Kelric and struggled to slide him into the seat, his head rolled to the side. Through the window, he saw Yevris picking himself up from the ground. Behind the Second Level, guards were closing on the snowfir grove.

Savina grunted. “Winds, you’re heavy.” She shoved Kelric upright in the chair and turned it around to face the rider’s windshield. Next she bound his arms to the armrests and his ankles to a bar on the deck. Then she slid into the pilot’s seat. Just as his escort reached the grove, she taxied across the lawn. She soared into the sky and the guards stared after them, disbelief on their upturned faces.

“It worked!” she exulted. “It actually worked.”

I don’t believe this, Kelric thought.

As the stun shots wore off, he worked his mouth to loosen the muscles. “Do you always go around kidnapping people?”

She glanced at him. “I’m sorry about tying you up.”

Kelric scowled.

“You’re a lot bigger than me,” she said. “I knew you might go for the rider. It wouldn’t have done any good, though. I only put in enough fuel to get where we’re going. If you tried for the starport you’d never have made it.”

“Then you can’t reach Miesa either.”

“We’re not going to Miesa. It’s the first place Henta will check.” She navigated through a bank of clouds. “Besides, if I show up with a Bahvla Calani, my staff will have collective heart failure.”

“So where are you taking me?”

“A fortress higher in the mountains. A Tehnsa Manager built it during the Old Age to hide an Akasi she stole from Viasa.” Savina grinned. “Appropriate, heh?”

“You can’t keep me locked up in a fortress forever.”

“I probably can’t keep you more than a few days. Henta will be furious.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

Mischief danced in her eyes. “I’m powerless to resist you.”

“For gods sake,” he said. “This is nuts.”

She had no answer for that gem of truth.

They reached the fortress in the dusk, after the sun had slipped behind the mountains. As the rider descended, eroded towers and crumbling battlements took form out of the shadows. Savina landed behind the remains of a parapet. When she cut the engines, it left a silence filled only by the moan of the wind. Somewhere an animal howled.

“Charming place,” Kelric muttered.

Savina got out of her seat. “I fixed up a room inside. It’s not so bad.” She came over to untie him, but then stopped, an impish smile spreading across her face. Leaning forward, she kissed him in the lips.

Kelric pulled his head away. “Stop it.”

“Come on,” she coaxed. “Smile for me.”

He glared at her.

“Come on.” She kissed him again. “One little smile.”

I don’t want to like you, he thought. It’s not safe.

Savina played with the laces on his shirt, then slid her hand along his arm. When he tried to lean away from her, she caught his chin and kissed him a third time.

Kelric jerked away and yanked against the ropes that bound his arms to the chair. “Untie me, damn it.”

“Oh, but I can’t.” She stepped between his knees and sat on his leg, sliding her arms around his neck. As she kissed his ear, her breasts rubbed against him.

“Cut it out,” he said, with less conviction than before. He tried to pull his arms free, telling himself he intended to push her away rather than embrace her. The golden waterfall of her hair poured over his arms. Many Coban women had beautiful hair, but Savina beat them all, with curling tresses so thick, soft, and glistening he would never have believed it was real if he hadn’t felt it himself.

Savina sighed. Raising her head, she gave him a guilty look, her eyes glossy with desire. “I am a beast. I don’t mean to take advantage. But ai, Sevtar, it is so difficult to hold back when faced with your incomparable self.” She stood up, which left his leg feeling cold. After loosening the ropes on his arms, she backed up into the cabin. “You better get the rest. I don’t trust myself.”

After Kelric worked his arms free, he untied his feet. When he stood up, his returning circulation felt like pins poking his limbs. He turned to see Savina aiming a stunner at him. She threw him a jacket and motioned at the hatch.

The gales that hit him as he jumped out of the rider were even stronger than those at Bahvla. Mountains loomed above the fortress in a stark landscape of snow and bare rock. Even with supplies and climbing equipment he doubted anyone could survive for long this high in the Teotecs. It was no wonder the Cobans had invented the windrider ahead of its time. Between Estates, it offered the only survivable mode of travel and communication.

Savina jumped down next to him. When she spoke, the wind whipped away her words. He shook his head, so she motioned to the turret of a nearby tower with a jagged hole in its side. He ran to it with her and ducked his head to climb through. It was quieter inside, but pitch-dark. He stumbled over a clutter of debris.

“Wait,” Savina said. “I have a lamp.” A sphere of light appeared around her, revealing the ruins of the fortress, blocks of stone and fallen columns broken on the ground. “It’s safe,” she said. “I’ve already tested it.”

Right, Kelric thought. He just wanted some place warm. He could worry about escape once he knew more about his situation here.

Their trek through the ruins took them down crumbling stairs and along collapsed halls, most of it barely visible in her lamp’s lonely radiance. Finally they came to a room someone had restored, with oil lamps glowing in readiness for their visit. Cleaned tapestries hung on the walls and a canopied bed made with silk and velvet stood on a dais at one end. The rosewood Quis table in the center of the room had a candle on it and a decanter of rosewine with two crystal goblets.

“It’s not so bad, is it?” Savina said. “I fixed it up.”

“It’s beautiful.” The restoration astounded Kelric, revealing an unexpected side of the Miesa Manager. The work must have taken her many days of painstaking labor. He ran his hand over the carved rosewood flowers on the edge of a chair. “I’m surprised no one has taken this furniture away. It’s gorgeous.”

“Nobody comes up here. I doubt even Manager Tehnsa knows about it.”

“How do you?”

“I used to take a rider and go exploring when I was young.” She indicated a stack of logs by the fireplace. “I put a flint in the little bureau by the bed and supplies for you in the cupboards.”

“You’re leaving?” It disappointed Kelric more than he wanted to admit.

She nodded. “I left just enough fuel here for a return trip to Bahvla.”

Kelric regarded her uneasily. Without Savina, he would be stranded in the ruins with no supplies. He could easily overcome her and make her tell him where she hid the fuel, but he didn’t want to hurt her, besides which, what good would it do? His lack of experience in a rider made his flying erratic, a problem the ripping gales of upper ranges would exacerbate. He would use up the fuel long before he reached Bahvla. At best, it would strand him in the mountains; at worst, he would crash and die.

Savina had chosen this site well. He was beginning to understand what Henta had said, that the Miesa Manager was far more savvy than most people realized.

She was watching his face. “I know how all this looks. But I really do intend right by you. Henta just wouldn’t listen to civilized arguments.”

“Right by me? What do you mean?”

“About Rashiva—”

He stiffened. “I don’t recall mentioning Rashiva.”

“I just wanted to say—I don’t know why she turned from you but I can guess. It was ‘honor,’ yes? Well, it doesn’t matter to me if offworld ways are different. I respect your honor.”

That’s a cultural minefield, Kelric thought. He didn’t want to get blown up again.

She hesitated. “Will you have a glass of wine with me before I go?”

His face relaxed into a smile. “All right.”

“Ai. So beautiful.” She sighed. “It lights up your whole face.”

“It?”

“Your smile.” She came over and put her arms around his waist. “Your beautiful smile.”

Don’t do it, Kelric warned his arms. Hold her now and I’m lost. His arms ignored him and wrapped around her lovely body.

“Ummm.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her cheek against his chest. “Shall I make a fire?”

“All right.”

While she worked at the fireplace, Kelric sat down and poured the wine. “What will happen when you get back to Bahvla?”

Savina came to the table. “Henta will threaten and rage and swear.” She sat across from him. “But she won’t call a Tribunal. Summoning one against an Estate Manager is too serious a matter.”

“You kidnapped me just to make her mad?”

“No. I hope to make her understand.” She hesitated. “Maybe I’ve been a fool. I don’t even know—if you …”

Caught off guard, he told the truth before he could stop himself. “Yes. I want you to visit me.”

“Ai.” She sighed. “Sevtar. God of the dawn. It fits you. I can almost believe what I heard, that you are Rhon.”

“I am.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t act it.”

“How does Rhon act?”

“I just imagined they were—different.”

Kelric recognized her reaction. “Cruel? Arrogant?”

“That was before I knew you.” She paused. “I once heard a Skolian saying: ‘Across the stars the Rhon may trod, but still the gods of Kyle are flawed.’”

“We aren’t gods. We’re people.”

“Not normal people.”

He reached over and took her hand. “To be an empath—it means we absorb it all: people’s hopes, fears, dreams, hates. In love it’s a gift. But in so much else it’s a nightmare. A barrage. We build barriers to shut it out.” For some reason an image of Zecha came into his mind. Then he thought of his half brother, the Imperator. “Some cut it off so completely that they smother part of what makes them human.”

Savina curled her fingers around his. “A barrage. I feel that way sometimes.”

“I’ll bet you also have a remarkable memory for conversations.”

“How did you know? It makes Avtac crazy.” Savina chuckled. “She says I ‘conveniently’ remember whatever fits my needs.”

“Empaths remember conversations well because we recall the feelings as well as the words.” He stroked her knuckle with his thumb. “You also almost always know when someone is lying.”

Her gaze widened. “I never told anyone about that.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“Even if it is, that doesn’t mean I hear thoughts.”

He tried to think of an example she would accept. “Why did you shoot me in the Calanya park?”

She look turned guilty. “I really am sorry. But you were about to hit me over the head and steal my rider.”

“How did you know?”

“How? You went after me.”

“You fired before I did anything.”

She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “Sometimes, well—it does seem like I feel what others feel. Avtac says I’m oversensitive.”

He snorted. “Maybe it’s Avtac who lacks sensitivity.”

“I don’t want to be Rhon.”

“You aren’t. You are a Kyle operator, though.” Kelric took out his dice and made two parallel lines of cubes on the table. “Kyle traits come from mutated genes. Recessive genes. Unless you get them from both parents, the traits don’t manifest.” With a sweep of his hand, he whisked away one line. “A person can carry all the genes unpaired and never show a single trait.” He removed some dice from the remaining line, then put down other dice to pair several cubes still on the table. “Someone like you only carries a few Kyle genes, but with pairings, so you show some Kyle ability. The Rhon—my family—carry every one of the genes paired. That’s why our Kyle abilities are so strong.”

Savina picked up a cube. “It sounds like those strange ideas the scientists at Varz have about blue eyes being weaker than black.”

“They probably mean blue is recessive to black.”

“Avtac supports the research because she wants something to turn up and give her advantage over Karn.” She shrugged. “Really, it’s all games.”

Kelric lifted a lock of her hair. “What color hair did your parents have?”

“Yellow.”

“What about their eyes?”

“Gray. Both my mother and father.”

“You think it’s coincidence that you have yellow hair and gray eyes?”

“Well, no.” She put down the cube. “A lot of people look like their parents. But not everyone.”

“The genes are still there.”

“Not always.”

He smiled. “Always. Really.”

She started to answer, then stopped.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I—it’s about Rashiva.”

His smile vanished. “What does Rashiva have to do with it?”

“Her baby.”

Don’t ask, he thought. But the question came anyway. “How is he?” He? Why he? No one had told him Rashiva had a son.

“Jimorla nearly died at birth,” she said. “But he’s much better now. He’s a beautiful child, as dark as any Hakaborn. But he has violet eyes. That never came from Rashiva or Raaj.”

The spell of firelight shattered for Kelric. At first he just stared at her. Then he stood and went to the fireplace.

Savina came over to him. “Sevtar? What is it?”

A spark flew up from the fire and winked out, leaving an ember to drift onto his hand. “It’s late, Rashiva. Maybe you should go.”

She spoke quietly. “My name is Savina.”

Kelric exhaled. “I’m sorry.”

Silence stretched between them. Finally she said, “You should be safe here. This wing of the fortress is sound. It’s probably wise not to leave it, though.”

“All right.”

“Well.” She hesitated. “I guess I’ll go.” She lingered a moment longer. When he made no response, she left.

Kelric continued to watch the fire, but instead of flames, images of his boyhood flickered in his mind. He kept seeing his father, a well-built man with large eyes.

Violet eyes.

Violet. Like the eyes of all Lyshrioli natives.

My son, Kelric thought. Rashiva, he is my son.

25

RUMRUNNER’S GAMBLE

When Henta disembarked from the rider and saw her aides waiting on the airfield, her hope surged. She hurried over, puffing from exertion. “The other search party found him?”

“I’m afraid not,” her Senior Aide said. “But guess who’s in your office? Manager Miesa.”

Henta scowled. “How nice of her to visit.”

“I have guards ready to take her to jail.”

“Good.” Henta headed for the Estate. She posted the octet at her office outside and then stalked into the room.

Savina was standing by the window. “My greetings, Henta.” She sounded subdued.

“I can’t believe you had the audacity to show up alone.” Henta slammed the door. “Where is he?”

“Safe.”

“Safe? With you? A false friend who abuses my trust?”

“You wouldn’t listen to civilized arguments.”

“Civilized,” Henta sputtered. “I don’t know where you get the gall to talk about civilized after you steal my Calani.”

“I only—”

“No excuses. I want him back. Now.”

“Not unless you agree to let me visit him.”

“You really are crazy.” Henta waved her arms at the Miesa Manager. “You want to be stripped of your name? Shunned? Sent to prison? What has blown into your head to make you act this way?”

Savina swallowed. “A Calani blew in. I can’t get him out.”

Henta wanted to shake her. “All you think about is yourself. What about him? Or maybe you don’t care how he feels.”

“I love him.”

Henta snorted. “You love him. Don’t make me laugh. He deserves better than your infatuation with his physical beauty.”

“It’s not infatuation.” She pushed her hands through her hair. “Maybe it was at first. Or maybe it was the challenge of him. It’s gone beyond that. He’s in my head and I can’t get him out.”

“You hardly know him.”

“Visitation. That’s all I ask.”

“And what will you ‘ask’ after that? No. Bring him back or I’ll call a Tribunal.”

“I know you won’t.”

“You’re wrong. You’ve gone too far this time.” Henta opened the door and spoke to the guards. “Take Manager Miesa into custody.”

“Wait,” Savina said.

“Put her in jail,” Henta told the guards.

“Henta, stop,” Savina said. “Hear what I have to say.”

As the guards surrounded Savina, Henta held up her hand. When the captain gave her a questioning look, Henta responded with an exasperated grunt, one meant for Savina.

“Wait outside,” Henta told the guards.

After the octet withdrew, Henta shut the door and crossed her arms. “This better be good.”

“What do you want for Sevtar’s Calanya contract?”

Henta closed her eyes. When she opened them, Savina was still standing there with a perfectly serious expression.

“You’re irrational,” Henta said.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Miesa could never afford a Fourth Level. Especially one like Sevtar.”

“Just answer the question.”

“The question is demented.”

“How much?”

“Ten million denai, five First Level Calani, and two Second Levels.”

Savina gaped at her. “That’s absurd.”

“It’s very reasonable. The only ludicrous proposition here is yours.”

“Miesa doesn’t have two Second Levels.”

Henta went over to her. “Neither does Miesa have anything close to ten million denai in assets. And I hardly think seven of your Calani want to leave. You only have nine, for wind’s sake. Have you forgotten four of them are your Akasi? Not to mention that you only made two of them Calani because you couldn’t marry them otherwise. They can’t play Quis worth spit. Whatever possessed you to think Sevtar has any desire to be husband number five? Are you crazy or what?”

“I don’t want to hurt my Akasi. But you don’t understand. You think I glut myself on love but you’re wrong.” Savina spoke awkwardly. “They aren’t happy with me. Winds, Henta, they would be glad to leave Miesa, to find a woman who loves them. No matter how much I try, no matter how much they try to love me, I need something they can’t give. All my life I’ve looked for it and I don’t even know what it is.” She swallowed. “Now I’ve found it. It’s in Sevtar, in his mind somehow, in his heart.”

“I’m sorry. It’s impossible.”

“What if I gave you a trade equal to the Second Levels?”

“You don’t have anything worth two Second Levels.”

“I do.” Savina took a breath. “The Wardship of the Miesa Plateau.”

In the stillness that followed the words, a rush of images jumbled in Henta’s mind: Bahvla victorious over both mighty Karn and Varz, Bahvla alive with new vigor, Bahvla flushed with the power and wealth of the Plateau.

Then the images faded, replaced by memories of her friendship with Savina. “I can’t let you cripple Miesa.”

Savina grimaced. “I’d rather you had the Plateau than Karn or Varz. Your Estate has the assets and experience to manage it, so they won’t have grounds anymore to take it. And Henta—I’ll have a Fourth Level who’s a true genius.”

“He doesn’t want to be your Akasi.”

“What if he does?”

What then? The question stopped Henta cold. Although Sevtar seemed content at Bahvla, she knew he wasn’t truly happy. If he wanted to go with Savina, and if she meant what she said about loving him, Henta would feel like an ogre to stand in their way. She knew she should refuse, but Savina dangled an inestimable prize before her with the Wardship of the Plateau.

Henta blew out a gust of air. “If Sevtar asks to go to Miesa, then—and only then—will I consider the trade.”

Kelric spent the morning wandering through the fortress, thinking about Rashiva’s son. His son. He tried to stop brooding. He wished he could forget Rashiva existed.

Eventually he returned to his room and sat on the bed. He built a Quis structure of the fortress, then transferred its layers onto the quilt and studied the architecture, learning the nuances of this latest prison. The castle had stories buried in the arch of its flying buttresses, the placement of its crenelations, the sweep of its staircases. It told him about the ancient queen who had ruled from this keep, an atavistic warrior who bequeathed to her descendants a ferocity that still lurked beneath the civilized facade of the Modern Age. He became so absorbed in the patterns he barely noticed when day faded into night.

“I’ve never seen structures like that,” Savina said.

With a start, Kelric looked up to see her in the doorway. “How long have you been there?”

“A few minutes. You were concentrating so hard, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Did you talk to Henta?”

Savina walked to the bed. “My plan backfired.” She winced. “I’m lucky Henta didn’t throw me in jail. She said absolutely no visitation. If you aren’t back in Bahvla by morning she will call a Tribunal against me.”

Her news punctured the sense of well-being he had built while playing Quis. She had breached the battlements guarding his heart and now she came to tell him it was all a mistake, that she had no way to follow through on her promises of love.

No. He didn’t care. He wouldn’t be hurt again. “When do we leave?”

“Sevtar—”

“What?”

“You aren’t sorry it turned out this way?”

He gathered up his dice. “I didn’t ask you to drag me up here.”

“But last night—I thought—”

“Are you going to take me back or not?”

“You were so warm last night. Now you’re like stone.”

Stone never cries, he thought. “Why did you bother with a kidnapping? Why not just buy me from Henta? That’s the way it’s done with Calani, isn’t it?”

She paled. “Don’t say that.”

Kelric knew if he stayed any longer his painfully built defenses would collapse. Ignoring Savina, he got off the bed and strode out of the room, into the night-black corridor. Debris rattled at his feet.

His only warning, as he stalked down the hall, was the groan of cracking stone—and then the floor collapsed. He hurtled downward with a shower of debris and dust, landing on a pile of rubble. He wasn’t sure if a rock hit his temple or if he hit his head, but he felt blood run down his face, tasted it on his lips. He lurched to his feet and took off again, limping through the dark ruins.

Several times he heard Savina calling him. He evaded her voice as he would evade an enemy soldier, until the calls faded in the distance.

It was the air, or lack of it, that finally forced him to stop. The atmosphere was too thin. In a room where wind whistled through broken walls, he sagged against a pile of rubble and slid to the floor, hugging his knees to his chest as he heaved in labored breaths.

A furry body scuttled across his feet. Outside of the castle a prowler howled.

Sometime later more rustles came from across the room. Whatever approached loomed much larger than the previous rodent. Kelric tensed, preparing to defend himself.

The prowler spoke. “Sevtar?” She sounded exhausted. “Are you here?”

She had called him stone. He would be stone.

Savina materialized out of the darkness. “Thank the winds.” She knelt next to him. “I was afraid you were lost.”

Stone …

“Sevtar—what you said about buying Calani—it isn’t that way. It isn’t.”

He swallowed.

“Don’t hate me,” she said.

“Hate you?” It was impossible.

“I asked Henta if I could bring you to my Calanya. As my Akasi.”

“For what price?”

“Your agreement.”

“Just my agreement?”

She paused. “Also a settlement between Bahvla and Miesa.”

“I’m not for sale.”

Her eyes glistened in the starlight trickling through the ruined ceiling. “I would give all of Coba for you. If it took the stars I would pull them out of the sky. Is that so wrong?”

“To be only one of many—I can’t love that way.”

“You wouldn’t be one of many.” A tear ran down her cheek. “To bring you to Miesa would mean giving up my other Akasi.”

That gave him pause. “You would turn from them for me?”

“Yes.”

Kelric felt his defenses crumbling. When Savina put her arms around him, he laid his head against hers. As she stroked his hair, her hand slid over the gash in his temple.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“It’s just a little cut.”

“This is no little cut.” She stood up. “I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the shadows.

Kelric waited, too tired and too winded by the thin air to follow her. His shoulders felt cold without her arms.

She reappeared. “I found a place where you can lie down in the next room. I’ll go upstairs and get the med kit.”

“I’m fine.”

Her voice softened. “I know. But humor me.”

She took him through the ruins to a bedroom with starlight and chill mountain air pouring through its collapsed roof. Sitting him down on the bed, she said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

After she left, he lay on his back. Soon after he closed his eyes, he felt her cleaning the gash on his head.

“Full circle,” he mumbled.

“Sevtar? You are awake?”

He looked up at her. “I must have made a full circle through the fortress.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Aren’t we under my room?”

“We’re on the other side of the Estate.”

“But you just left.”

She started bandaging his wound. “It only seems that way because you fainted.”

He glared at her. “Jagernauts don’t faint.”

“What do they do?”

“Pass out.”

Savina smiled. “You passed out then.”

She finished with the bandage. Then she stretched out next to him, her hair spilling over his body. Kelric put his arms around her and they lay together in the predawn dimness. She smelled of soap and a sweet Savina fragrance that needed no help from any perfume.

Pressing against him, she rubbed his chest, banishing the chill in the air. She kissed his Adam’s apple, then his chest, then his stomach. Then she undid the laces on his pants and went lower. Kelric lay with his eyes closed, savoring the feel of her lips on him and her silken hair brushing his thighs.

Eventually she eased off his clothes. He sat up and pulled her close, between his legs. As he undressed her, he stroked her body. Even with his large grip he couldn’t hold all of her breast, but when he put his hands around her waist his fingers met on her back. The curling hair below her belly was softer than he expected, and as gold as the curls that floated around her face. Her face was even more beautiful in the predawn light.

He touched her cheek. “How can you look so angelic and be so devilish?”

Savina laughed softly. “I’m incorrigible.” She didn’t sound incorrigible, though. She had a voice like honey.

When she nudged him down on his back, he pulled her with him. Rolling over on top of her, he watched her face, trying to gauge her reaction.

She looked up at him. “What’s wrong?”

“You don’t mind this?”

“Why would I mind it?”

He thought of Deha and Rashiva. “I’m holding you down, on top of you. Isn’t that taboo here?”

Savina sighed. “So many rules. Women do this, men do that. I don’t care.” She pulled him down and kissed his ear. “I just want to feel you inside.”

So he nudged apart her thighs and accommodated her wishes. She molded to him as if they were two parts designed to fit together. They made love in the rosy dawn filtering through the ruins, teasing each other almost to a peak and then pulling back at the last minute, again and again, in a tantalizing play of love.

When the crest finally pulled them over the top, he wasn’t sure if the orgasm he felt was his, or both of theirs together, for in those few moments their minds merged.

Savina brought the rider down onto the Bahvla airfield in the day’s blazing light. Guards were running across the tarmac. She tried not to look at the copilot’s seat where Sevtar sat, staring out the windshield. He had given her no sign, no hope he would come to Miesa. He hadn’t even spoken.

What possessed her to make love to him? It was like torture, to have him for one morning and then lose him forever.

Then they were down on the airfield, with ranks of guards converging on the rider.

Sevtar suddenly turned to her. “Yes.”

She almost jumped. “Yes?”

“Yes. I want to go to Miesa.”

The hatch burst open and guards erupted into the rider. As they dragged Savina out of the cabin, she looked back at Sevtar—and his smile blazed like the dawn.

Sun poured through the large window behind the desk. Savina squinted into the glare, barely able to distinguish the woman sitting there.

“Ten million denai,” Avtac Varz said. “You ask a lot.”

“I can raise a part of it,” Savina said.

“How much?”

It unnerved Savina to talk to someone she could barely see. “Maybe one million.”

“One million.” Avtac leaned back in her chair. “And you think my Estate has nine million just lying around for you?”

Savina twisted the edges of her belt. “There must be an arrangement we can make.”

“All for this Calani.” Avtac shook her head. “Savina, you are a perfect example of how too much time with Akasi weakens the mind.” She shifted a paper on her desk. “Why should I lend you more denai? Your Estate already owes mine so much it will be years before I see it again. If ever.”

Savina stiffened. “I’ll repay every tekal I owe you.”

“So you claim. Yet your debts grow larger every year.”

“Avtac, you’re the only one I can turn to. Name whatever terms you want.”

The Varz Manager picked up the paper lying on her desk. She glanced over it while Savina shifted her feet. “An arrangement may be possible. However, the matter of collateral concerns me, now that the Wardship is no longer available.”

“Anything you want,” Savina said.

Avtac looked up at her. “Your Estate.”

“What?”

“Your Estate and the city of Miesa will be collateral for the loan.”

Savina stared at her. “I can’t agree to that.”

“Very well.” Avtac set the paper on her desk and folded her hands. “The matter is closed.”

“There must be something else—”

“I said, the matter is closed.”

“No. Wait.” Savina went closer to the desk so she could see Avtac better. “If I agree to your terms, how will they bind to my successors?”

“Your successors?” Avtac snorted. “And when will the loan be repaid? In a millennium? No. The term of the loan is your term as Manager. If at your death the debt remains outstanding, Miesa becomes part of Varz.”

“I can’t gamble with an entire Estate and city.”

“You are a young woman. You have decades to repay the debt.”

Decades. Savina’s thoughts circled around the proposal. A lifetime was a long time.

But. Her Estate already tottered on the rim of disaster. If she agreed to Avtac’s terms, she put the literal existence of Miesa in jeopardy.

But. Miesa would have a Fourth Level. A brilliant Fourth Level, one unmatched among the Twelve Estates.

She took a breath. “I accept your terms.”

Avtac slid the paper across the table. “Sign on the line under my name.”

The Morning Hall sparkled like the interior of a lightbeam. Sunshine scintillated through the crystal dome, glistening on the Miesa dignitaries seated around the dais in the center of the Hall. Kelric felt their anticipation as he stepped with Yevris into the Circle of the Calanya. He saw Henta Bahvla with her retinue in a position of honor. When he nodded, she smiled, the lines around her eyes crinkling in that way he had always liked.

Pipe music danced into the air. Three girls sat on the dais steps playing a set of reeds, their melody sparkling like sunshine.

A door opened at the end of the Hall and Savina entered, dressed in a long yellow robe that fluttered around her body. She walked to where Kelric waited in the Circle and looked up at him with mischief. “This is where I tell you, with great pomp and ceremony, to enter the Circle. Except you’re already in it.”

He grinned. “Your Miesa thugs brought me here.”

Her laugh glistened. “I will tell my aides you called them thugs.”

As he reached across the rail to take her into his arms, Yevris grabbed him. “For wind’s sake,” the Second Level said in a low voice. “Not here.”

Savina smiled at them. Then she walked to a table on the dais and stood there with her Senior Aide. She spoke—and her voice resonated, deep and full, carrying to every edge of the Hall. “Sevtar Bahvla, you come today to the Circle of Miesa.”

The power of her voice stunned Kelric. Suddenly she was no longer a tousled-haired imp, but the Manager of an ancient and once-powerful Estate.

“Is there one here who stands as Oath brother to Sevtar?” she asked.

“I stand for him,” Yevris said.

“What are your words?”

“I have been honored to know Sevtar,” he said. “No other is like him. If you look at stars in our sky, you will see a hint of him. He is dreams and light, the promise of dawn’s first fire, and he will honor your Calanya.”

Kelric blinked. Poetry, from Yevris? The Second Level grinned at him.

The Miesa Senior Aide spoke. “Your words are heard and recorded, Yevris of Bahvla.”

Quietly Savina added, “And Miesa is honored by the Speech of a Bahvla Calani.”

Yevris bowed, then stepped out of the Circle and left the dais.

In the light of the Morning Hall, Savina gave Kelric the Oath, and for the first time the words had meaning to him. With the ceremony came a sense of closure. On a world that had saved his life and then taken his freedom, he had unexpectedly found, in Savina and the Quis, the dreams denied him as a Jagernaut. Savina had nearly crippled her Estate to bring him to Miesa, an enormous gamble with sobering stakes. But he saw what so many others missed, that her beauty and flighty manner masked a dynamic intellect. All Coba underestimated Miesa’s Manager.

It baffled Kelric that Coba’s people, even its powerful queens, understood so little of the Quis. But he saw. With the knowledge of four Estates, from both sides of the political hierarchy in the Twelve Estates, he would handle the dice as never before. The challenge exhilarated him. Together he and the woman he loved would reshape the future of Miesa.

When the Oath was done, she came to the Circle. Looking up at him, she said, “The bands I offer you are those of an Akasi. Will you accept?”

He smiled. “Yes.”

She slipped the circlets on his arms, making them the fourth pair he wore. “Sevtar Dahl Haka Bahvla Miesa, you are now a Fourth Level Calani of Miesa.”

This time when Kelric reached across the rail, Yevris wasn’t there to stop him. He held Savina, her lips meeting his as he bent his head. Ignoring the shocked murmurs in the Hall, they kissed each other, bathed in the streaming sunlight of a new beginning.

BOOK TWO

YEARS 971–976 OF THE MODERN AGE

Part 4

MIESA

26

ENDGAME

Lightning stabbed the thunderclouds with brilliance. The night descended again and thunder came with it, booming through the windrider. Neither person in the small cabin spoke as the pilot fought her grim battle with the storm.

The woman in the copilot’s seat gripped the armrests. I refuse to die, Jahlt Karn thought. I have too much still to do with my life.

The Elders of an Estate sat high in its hierarchy of power. As the senior advisers to the Manager, they followed only the Estate Successor and Senior Aide in rank. Highest of all the Elders on Coba were the Seven of Karn.

They found the woman they sought in an alcove. She stood with her back to them looking out over the city, her fiery hair held in a thick braid that fell down her back to her waist. At twenty-six years of age she already carried an aura of authority, a self-assurance that hinted at future greatness.

Elder Solan, First among the Seven, spoke. “Ixpar.”

The woman turned, her face lighting with welcome. “My greetings.” She looked at the array of Elders. “Is Jahlt back from Shazorla already?”

Solan went to stand with her in the afternoon’s waning light. “Jahlt will not be returning.”

Ixpar smiled. “So she decided to stay for that wine festival after all, heh?”

“No.” It seemed to Solan that someone far away spoke with her voice. “She left Shazorla this morning.”

Ixpar’s smile faded. “I don’t understand.”

“A storm hit. They had no warning.”

Ixpar froze. “And?”

“The rider crashed in the mountains.” Solan stopped, deserted by the words she needed. Outside the window a small althawk glided by, its shadow wheeling across the alcove.

“Solan,” Ixpar said. “Go on.”

“A Viasa logging crew found their remains this morning.”

“No.” Ixpar stared at her. “It can’t be.”

The Elder shook her head. She knew nothing else to say. The shock went too deep.

Ixpar turned away, looking out at the city. For a long time she stood motionless. Finally she spoke. “A funeral must be arranged.” She turned to face the Elders. “All of Coba will know how we honor the memory of Jahlt Karn.”

Solan bowed and spoke words she had not thought she would say to this woman for many years to come. “As you wish, Minister Karn, so we shall do.”

27

ALCHEMIST’S GAMBLE

“I can’t tell you,” Savina said. “Then it wouldn’t be a surprise.”

After seven years of living with Savina, Kelric had given up trying to outguess her. “So where is this mystery?”

She pulled him through her suite and into a study she used for storage. The boxes and old furniture had vanished. Fresh paint brightened the walls, shading from sun-yellow at the floor into white at the top. A sun peeked out from behind puffs of cloud on the ceiling and a rainbow arched across one wall. Lacy curtains billowed about the windows, revealing glimpses of the mountains.

Kelric looked around the room. “If this is for me, it’s, uh, well, it isn’t a paint job I would have chosen.”

Savina laughed. “It isn’t for you, dummy. It’s for the surprise.”

“Dummy?” Kelric pinned her against the wall and kissed her nose. “Don’t you call me dummy.”

She dimpled. “Have you figured out the surprise?”

“You found a ton of paint and threw it at the walls.”

“No. This surprise we both made.”

He brushed his lips over her hair. “I don’t remember making anything.”

“We made love. Then the surprise came.”

He stopped kissing her. “You’re pregnant?”

Her face dimpled with her grin. “Surprise.”

“Are you sure?” It was too much to believe. They had been trying for seven years to have a child.

“Positive, certain—heh, what are you doing?” Savina laughed as he swung her around in a circle. “What would you like? A girl or a boy?”

He set her on her feet. “Either. Any. Both.”

“Twins. A little you and a little me in the Cooperative.”

Cooperative. It hit him like cold water. “If she goes to live in the Cooperative, how will I see her?”

Savina sighed. “It is the difficulty for Calani, yes? But she can visit the Calanya.”

“It’s not the same. I lived with my parents when I was a boy.”

“To isolate her from the other children is not our way. What do we say when she asks why we keep her apart?”

Kelric absorbed the words. His child was Coban. She would probably see separation from the other children as a punishment. Unlike other Coban parents, however, he couldn’t choose to live in the Cooperative.

“She can stay here for the first few years,” Savina said. “When she does leave we will work it out. You will see her as much as you want. I promise.”

“Even so.” Many adults he didn’t know would have a hand in bringing up his child. “I want to see the Cooperative, the grounds, guardians, tutors, all of it.”

She looked as if he had just asked her to eat Quis dice. “Visit the Cooperative?”

“Yes.”

“It would be an anomalous thing for a Calani to do.”

He smiled. “I’m an anomalous Calani.”

“I had better send an aide to warn them. Our visit will create a stir.”

By Midday they were ready to leave. As they walked through the city, the wind fanned his Calanya robe out behind him. He had brought the Talha scarf he still sometimes wore, but he let it hang around his neck, enjoying the crisp breezes on his face.

I have an update, Bolt thought.

What’s up? Kelric asked.

Nanomed series J just reached critical population. It is no longer in danger of becoming extinct.

Good work, Kelric thought. It had taken Bolt seven years to reestablish the series.

He glanced at Savina, watching the wind play with her curls. Since coming to Miesa, he had healed, his depleted meds renewed by his improved lifestyle. Savina wasted no effort in ensuring he had the food and medical attention he needed to survive. His biomech and Kyle senses had also improved. The gentle touch of her mind was a healing balm. He had no doubt a scientific reason existed for her effect on him, a combination of the positive influences of happiness, along with sympathetic resonances between his neural activity and hers. He didn’t care about the why. He knew only that he loved her.

An octet of guards accompanied them on their walk. Savina obeyed to the letter the condition of his pardon, taking no chances she would lose him back to prison. Miesa’s citizens fell silent when he passed and children stopped their games to stare. Each person he looked at bowed to him.

“The city will hum with news tonight,” Savina said as they crossed a plaza. “People will say, ‘I saw him. The Fourth Level!’ They will remember it for the rest of their lives.”

“Not much to remember,” he said.

She smiled. “To you, maybe not. To everyone else, absolutely.”

The Cooperative was a circle of whitewashed houses facing on a courtyard. The cluster of women and men waiting for them in the yard looked like a handful of sky brought to the ground. They all wore white shirts and blue vests, with darker trousers tucked into sky-blue boots.

A statuesque woman with a braid of auburn hair came forward. “My greetings, Manager Miesa.”

“It’s good to see you, Jasina.” Savina presented the woman to Kelric. “This is Jasina, Senior Guardian of the Children’s House.” She indicated the others. “Her staff.”

They all bowed to him. Jasina said, “You do us great honor with your presence.”

Kelric nodded, silent.

They visited the parks first. Toys clustered everywhere: sculpted boulders, giant Quis structures to climb on, huts tucked away in the trees. As they walked along a lake, Jasina indicated a large building across the water, hidden among trees, a house with a peaked roof and blue shutters. “That’s the Parents’ House. Parents may choose to live there, in a suite in the Cooperative, or in a Common House in the city.” She spoke to Savina, respecting the custom that set Calani apart, but Kelric knew she meant her words for him. Savina needed no introduction to the Miesa Cooperative. She had lived here as a child.

“Parents who stay in the city are still expected to visit the Cooperative at least twice a day,” Jasina said, “for their children and for their work detail.” She glanced at Kelric. “Except for Calani, of course.”

He wondered what she would think if she knew how much he wanted to forgo that exception.

The Children’s House was a low building with many windows and playrooms, designed on the same plan as a Calanya, with suites arranged around common rooms. The younger children lived in skyrooms or sunrooms, but the older ones decorated their rooms themselves, with a wide range of styles, particularly for the teenagers. Although the Cooperative was large enough so every child could have a private suite, many chose to share a suite with friends or kin. Interspersed with the children’s rooms were suites occupied by parents or Cooperative guardians.

In a playroom filled with toddlers and sunshine, Jasina paused to describe how they supervised the children. A boy toddled over and peered up at Kelric. After considering the matter in great depth, he sat next to Kelric’s foot and proceeded to unload dice from his toy cart onto Kelric’s shoe.

Jasina’s face blazed red. When she reached for the child, Kelric touched her shoulder and the guardian straightened up with a snap, as if his touch had sent a shock through her body.

Kelric picked up the boy himself, feeling awkward, worried that his huge grasp might frighten the toddler. The child nestled comfortably in his arms. “Lani?” he asked.

Savina spoke gently to the boy. “Yes. Calani.”

He wiggled in Kelric’s arms. “Dow.”

Smiling, Kelric set him on the ground. The boy reloaded his cart, companionably patted Kelric’s shoe, and then ambled away, pulling his cart behind him.

A spurt of angry voices erupted in the hall. Two teenage girls stalked into the room, their clothes muddied and their hair disheveled. The bigger one waved her fists at the smaller one. “I saw you change that dice stru—”

“Call me a cheater again,” the second girl yelled, “and I’ll—ai!” Her mouth dropped open as she saw Kelric. Both girls gaped until Jasina cleared her throat. The brawlers remembered themselves and bowed, bumping into each other in the process.

Savina’s mouth twitched upward. “Our greetings.”

The duo stammered in unison. “We are honored, Manager Miesa.”

Jasina spoke. “Perhaps you two can settle your quarrels in a more civilized manner than using your fists?”

“Yhee, ma’am,” they answered.

Kelric grinned at Savina. As Jasina ushered the girls to the door, he spoke to the Manager in a low voice. “Do they remind you of someone?”

She glared at him. “I never got into fights.”

Jasina came back over. “Would you like to finish the tour privately, Manager Miesa?”

At first the question puzzled Kelric. Then he realized Jasina was offering to withdraw so he and Savina could talk if they wished.

Savina nodded. “My thanks, Jasina. We appreciate the time you gave us.”

“It is our pleasure, ma’am.”

So Savina took Kelric on her own tour, his guards walking far enough away so he could converse with her. They strolled in the sunlight that slanted through the windows, talking about their childhoods. Eventually they came to a foyer where a youth sat reading a book.

He looked up. “Manager Miesa. We’ve been expecting you.” He opened a door in the inner wall of the foyer. “She’s in the dayroom.”

Plants and sun filled the room beyond. An old woman sat by the window, dozing in a wicker chair. Savina bent down and kissed her cheek. “My greetings, Nonni.”

Nonni opened her eyes, blinking. “Little Vina?”

“I brought Sevtar to see you.” Savina smiled at Kelric. “Nonni was my nurse when I lived here.”

The wrinkles around Nonni’s eyes crinkled as she looked up at him. “Such a big fellow.” She peered at Savina, then Kelric. “You have to watch that one,” she told him. “Wild clawcat, she was. Always getting into fights.”

Savina turned red. “Winds above.”

“You keep her behaved,” the nurse told Kelric.

Kelric smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

The nurse’s eyes widened. “He spoke to me, Vina.”

“I heard,” Savina said.

Nonni patted his hand. “A Fourth Level at Miesa. This Estate hasn’t seen one for over a century.” She nodded her head. “The last would have been Mevryn Miesa. He died before I was born.”

They stayed with Nonni until the sun dipped behind the roofs outside the window. When they headed back to the Estate, evening had brought a chill down from the mountains. People thronged the streets as day shifts came home and night crews left for work. Kelric didn’t know if it the cold or the crowds that bothered him, but he felt ill at ease until he fastened his robe and wound the scarf around his head. So they passed through Miesa, a shield of guards around a tall figure hidden in robe and Talha.

At the Estate, an aide hurried out to give Savina a letter. “A rider came in with this, ma’am. The pilot said it was urgent.”

Savina waited until she and Kelric reached the privacy of her suite before she read the scroll. When she finished, she went to a window and stared at Miesa, her brightness muted, her smile gone.

“What is it?” Kelric asked.

She turned to him. “Jahlt Karn is dead.”

Rashiva Haka sat on the carpet in her suite, playing Quis with Jimorla, her seven-year-old son. Raaj lay next to them, studying the dice. When Raaj set a truncated cone into one structure, Jimorla looked up in bafflement, blinking his violet eyes. Rashiva smiled and kissed his forehead, evoking an embarrassed blush from the boy. Raaj tousled the boy’s hair.

A knock sounded on the door.

Rashiva sighed. Not now. She treasured these moments with her family. But as Manager, she had no choice. She went to the door.

A guard waited Outside. “I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am. This came in by rider.” She handed Rashiva an envelope. “The messenger called it urgent.”

“Very well.” Rashiva nodded to her. “You may go.”

After the guard left, Rashiva read the letter. Then she exhaled, her hand with the parchment dropping by her side.

Raaj came over to her. “What’s wrong?”

“Jahlt Karn. She’s dead.”

Avtac Varz despised her seasonal tour of the research facility. Boring people, messy labs. They waste my funds, she thought. If they don’t produce useful results soon I will put them on maintenance crews.

Today she visited the chemists. When her retinue arrived, Avtac saw Iva and her assistant Senti leaning over some contraption on a table. Avtac stopped in the entrance, regarding the room with distaste. Bottles crammed the shelves. A hood overhung a ledge along one wall and air hissed from a hose by the sink.

When Avtac’s aide knocked on the door, Iva looked up. “Manager Varz.” She hurried over. “My greetings, ma’am.”

“I understand you have a demonstration for me,” Avtac said.

“That I do. I’m working on a synthesis. We’ve just set up the distillation.” Iva handed her a pair of safety glasses and ushered her over to the contraption. Avtac listened while the chemist explained her work. It sounded like she was just boiling dirty water. Games. All games. Useless. She should put them both on maintenance.

Mercifully, the demonstration soon ended. With relief, Avtac took her leave of the chemist and her dull assistant.

“Thank Khozaar that’s over with.” Senti settled onto a stool by the distillation apparatus. “We won’t have to see that podbag for another season.”

“Senti,” Iva admonished.

“Do you want me to keep labeling these bottles?”

“Yes.” Iva frowned as oil sputtered in the pan on a hot plate under the distillation apparatus. A clamp held a round flask partially suspended in the oil.

“Where is the thermometer?” Iva asked. “This oil bath looks too hot.”

Senti glanced up, a bottle of white crystals in one hand and a label in the other. “It’s on your desk.” She held up the bottle. “What’s this?”

“Potassium nitrate.” Iva turned down the hot plate, then went over to her desk. “I don’t see a thermometer.”

“It’s on the shel—ai!”

A crash punctuated Senti’s cry, and Iva looked in time to see the nitrate bottle Senti had dropped smash into a bottle of sulphur on the lab table. Brilliant yellow powder flew across the nitrate while the broken bottles spun in circles. As Iva ran across the room, squeezing between the lab benches, one bottle crashed into the hot plate and knocked over the pan, sending hot oil flying over the mess.

“Senti,” Iva shouted. “Get away from there.”

Flames erupted in the oil, tongues of fire that ate away the supports of a shelf above the table. An edge of the shelf slipped and bottles of charcoal absorbent toppled, raining dark powder everywhere. Just as Iva reached Senti, the entire shelf collapsed, slamming into the fiery chaos, creating a great pressure—and the table exploded with a force that hurtled them into the wall.

Zecha Varz, Captain of the Varz Hunters, found Avtac taking a glass of jai rum in the library. The Manager was reading, as she often did in the evening. The text surprised Zecha. Chemistry? The subject bored Avtac stiff. It seemed only good for causing lab accidents. Iva and her assistant were lucky they had survived that explosion with treatable injuries. Now here was Avtac, reading about potassium nitrate, of all things.

Avtac glanced up at her. “Yes?”

Zecha handed her the letter. “This came in by rider.”

After Avtac read the scroll, she leaned back in her chair, a thoughtful expression on her angular face. “So. Untried youth replaces experience.”

“Untried youth?” Zecha asked.

Avtac smiled. “Jahlt Karn is dead.”

28

THE COLUMN OF TIME

Torch in hand, Elder Solan led Ixpar through the maze of catacombs beneath Karn, until they reached a dead end where engravings covered the stone wall. Solan pressed the symbols there in a complex pattern, and the clink of stone tapping on stone answered her. When she leaned her weight into the wall, a tall block slid inward and scraped to the side, revealing a cubical chamber that made Ixpar think of a hollow Quis die.

The Elder turned to Ixpar. “Jahlt told me about this room as a precaution.” She spoke with difficulty. “In case anything happened before she brought you here herself.”

Ixpar nodded, trying to keep her face composed. For two tendays, since Jahlt’s death, she had held in her grief, afraid that if she let go, it would overwhelm her. She lifted her torch, peering into the cube. “What is it?”

“All I know is this. Jahlt taught you a rhyme when you were a child, one about a hawk—I don’t know the words. Do you remember?”

“I think so.”

“Then you know how to open the door.” Solan bowed to her and then left, her robes whispering as she disappeared into the catacombs.

Ixpar exhaled, unsettled by the Elder’s behavior. Jahlt must have impressed on her the necessity for her successor to do this alone. Why?

She walked into the stone chamber. Directly across from her, a portal of old iron stood embedded in the wall, like an ancient sentinel. Feeling rather foolish, Ixpar went to the portal and said the nursery rhyme:

From desert to peak,

The great hawk did fly,

He came far to seek

A war queen on high.

Well, nothing happened, no surprise there. She peered at the door. Although engravings covered it, none of them showed a desert, peak, hawk, or anything vaguely resembling a war queen.

From desert to peak. What did it mean? Haka to Varz? Haka hadn’t existed when her ancestors built these catacombs. From Kej to Varz, then. So. Why would one of the giant hawks, which were now extinct, seek a war queen? It could be for the bond that supposedly formed between bird and human. On high probably referred to warriors riding hawks through the skies.

Ixpar studied the engravings. Squares. Circles. Lines. A dot above a circle, two slashes over a rectangle. Ah! Now she saw. Those marks resembled the accents used in the ancient language Ucatan, sometimes called Tozil, which predated even the Old Script of the ancient Cobans. Ucatan had started as a purely hieroglyphic language, but over the centuries its glyphs became stylized, breaking into two parts, a Quis shape and an accent. Jahlt had insisted Ixpar learn Ucatan even though almost no writings survived in that long dead script.

Dot. It meant blue. Slash indicated higher dimension. Dot and slash over circle could be the lapis lazuli ring of a seeker. The engravings presented Quis patterns, cruder than modern glyphs but readable. She saw the topaz octahedron of Kej and the obsidian of Varz. From Kej to Varz. The room itself, the oversized cube, symbolized the word “great.” Yes, she saw now, the entire rhyme was depicted on the wall in Quis symbols.

Except nothing denoted a war queen. Maybe the portal served as the final symbol, standing to protect whatever lay beyond. Ixpar pressed the engravings, using the pattern outlined by the rhyme. A series of clicks rewarded her efforts, but when she pushed the door nothing happened.

She studied the symbols. One looked like a forest, another like a mountain. Or a mountain cat—

Clawcat! Of course. The ancient warriors fought with the ferocity of those huge mountain beasts. She pressed the cat pattern and the clink of stone hitting metal came from inside the wall. This time when she pushed, the door slid inward with a grating protest and creaked to the side. A gust of stale air assaulted her nose.

Curious, Ixpar walked into the circular room beyond the door. Some ancient builder had designed it from white marble veined with black. Tiles covered the floor, alternating black and white diamonds. Had Jahlt left a message here for her? The thought made her eyes burn with unshed tears. If only she could have said good-bye to Jahlt, perhaps she could bear this huge, unassailable grief.

Ixpar searched the room but found no hidden niches or exits. Finally she sat cross-legged on the floor and rested her chin on her hand, trying to fathom the purpose of a room made like a hollow cylinder. Cylinder on flat tiles; in Quis, that structure indicated the passage of time, with the past portrayed by the flat base of the cylinder and the passing of time by a column reaching up to the future.

Ixpar looked up.

Far above her, the ceiling vaulted to a point. Black and white tiles shaped like althawks inlaid its surface, with a larger gray hawk in the apex. The tiles made interlocking circles around the center; as she looked away from the apex, the pattern displayed circles of smaller and smaller hawks, until at the edge where the ceiling met the walls the birds were no more than dots.

Hawks. She tried to imagine the architect who built the room. What did hawks mean to her? The future. Travelers found it difficult, if not impossible, to navigate the Teotec Mountains on foot. Only the giant althawks allowed them to visit other Estates with any regularity. Without them, civilization would have disintegrated into independent city-states with no connection.

As it did, Ixpar thought. When the althawks became extinct, the wars among the Estates ended. Peace endured in this era of windriders because the centuries of isolation established Quis as the dominant means of conflict. The Estates learned to fight through the dice game, which could travel through the treacherous mountains far more easily than conventional warfare. It only took one person and a pouch of dice.

Ixpar ran her hand over the floor. Why diamonds for the past? The shape didn’t imply anything obvious to her. Maybe it meant the crystal itself, hardest of all substances, enduring for the ages, as the past endured regardless of the future. And the colors? Both white and black ranked high in the hierarchy of Quis dice, with white as the mixture of all light and black as its absence. Past and future? Without one, the other had no meaning.

Our ancestral memories live in Quis, Ixpar thought. And Quis leads us into the future. Coba had become a dice game, always evolving from what came before. She smiled. Maybe the ancients intended this room to remind Ministers that they were just Quis players with a fancy title.

She considered the gray althawk in the ceiling. Gray: a blending of black and white. Maybe it represented the present, where the past met the future. If the floor was the past, though, and the walls the passage of time to the future, then the present should be down here, where the floor met the walls.

Ixpar studied the tiles, rubbing her hands over them—

The tile directly below the ceiling’s gray hawk moved.

Ho! She pushed harder and the tile slid into the floor. Outside the room, a clink came from the cube chamber, followed by the grinding noise of gears. Startled, she jumped to her feet and ran to the door.

Her knee hit its lower edge.

“Hey!” When she entered this cylinder room, the door had been flush with the ground. Now, while she watched, the floor sank away from it.

As Ixpar lifted her foot, intending to climb back into the cube room, a grate of stone on stone came from inside that chamber. Across the cube from her, the door where she had first entered the chamber crashed shut, leaving a blank wall. Beneath her, the floor of the cylinder room continued to sink.

“Winds above.” Ixpar dropped her torch and grabbed the bottom of the door. The floor dropped out from under her and left her hanging with her feet dangling in the air.

Now what? If she let go, she would fall into a slick well of marble with unscalable sides. If she climbed into the cube, she was putting herself in a sealed box with smooth walls. What if it didn’t open from inside? She saw no air vents in the chamber and only Solan knew she was here. She could suffocate long before the Elder came looking for her.

Several clicks came from inside the door, followed by the ominous grind of gears. Then, with Ixpar still hanging from it, the portal began to swing closed. She braced her legs on the wall, straining to hold the portal open, but she couldn’t stop its inexorable motion.

She had to decide what to do—and fast.

With a deep breath, Ixpar let go of her grip. She dropped through the air and hit the floor with a jarring impact. The torch rolled away from her, down the slanted floor of the chute.

Slanted?

A clang vibrated through the tiles as the floor hit some sort of bottom, throwing Ixpar forward as if she were a wayward Quis die. Flailing for a handhold, she tumbled down the slanted surface, which had ended up flush with a Minister-sized hole. The torch slid under her body, scorching her back until her weight smothered the flame. She hurtled through the hole and into darkness.

The walls around her drew in closer, slowing her passage, until she feared she would wedge to a stop, neither able to climb up the glassy chute nor continue to its end. Then she shot out over a ledge and flew into space. An instant later she hit bottom, her head banging on stone.

Her last thought was that she had no successor to take her place.

Intent on their dice, Miesa’s nine Calani sat at a table in the main common room. To aid their study on lowering Miesa maintenance costs, Kelric built patterns about other Estates: Bahvla insulation, Haka aqueducts, Dahl oil lamps. Miesa history also molded the structures, as they searched out flaws in past methods of running the Estate.

The longer they worked, the more the session foundered, until finally Kelric pushed back from the table. The others stirred, looking around, clothes rustling, chair legs scraping the floor.

“I’m a bit tired,” Kelric said. When they nodded to him, he left the table, but instead of going to his rooms, he walked through the Calanya building, headed out to the parks. He needed to think.

When Kelric first came to Miesa, he had been one of only five Calani. He had expected they would immediately delve into studies on how to improve Miesa’s position among the Twelve Estates. Instead, the others sought his advice. It fast became clear why Miesa was in so much trouble; her Calani had no idea how to play Quis. Awkward with the role of mentor they cast him in, but confident in his dice, Kelric taught them Quis as he knew it, at the highest level he had mastered, from every Estate where he had lived.

Eventually the Calanya formed a coherent unit with him as its focal point. They reached out then, seeking to improve Miesa. How much difference they had so far made, Kelric wasn’t sure, but he had noticed a change for the better in the patterns Savina brought back from Outside.

Yet for all that work, he had become more and more aware over the past year that some problem hampered their efforts. At first he couldn’t define it, but as it grew worse, he understood.

He was the problem.

The pad of feet sounded in the hall behind him. He turned to see Hayl, a thirteen-year-old boy who had been in the Calanya for less than a season.

“I felt tired too,” Hayl said. “Can I walk with you?”

Kelric nodded his assent. It was odd to see the boy without Revi, his constant companion. Revi was huskier than Hayl and five years older, but the two boys otherwise seemed like brothers, with the gold hair, gray eyes, and angelic looks common among the Miesa people.

Outside in the parks, rain drizzled from a gray sky, saturating the gardens with a sense of wildness. Kelric and Hayl followed a path overhung by vines that protected them from the weather. It wasn’t until a fat drop rolled off a leaf and splattered on his nose that Kelric realized he hadn’t even spoken.

He looked at the boy. “How’s Revi?”

“He’s fine.” Hayl took a deep breath. “Sevtar—what is it? What did we do?”

“Do?”

“To make you angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Do you dislike us?”

Kelric blinked. “Of course not. Why do you think that?”

“Lately you hardly talk to anyone. And you just walked out on a Quis session.” Hayl hesitated. “Revi says it’s because we’re such a minor Calanya. I know we’re not good enough for a Fourth Level, especially one like you, but we’re trying.”

“Hayl, no. Not at all. I left the session because I made it into a mess.” He considered the boy. “When you were in the Preparatory House, you learned subjects like Miesa history as well as Quis, yes?”

“Well, sure. Of course. Didn’t you do that at Dahl?”

“No. I never studied in a Preparatory House.”

The boy gaped at him. “Never?”

“I taught myself Quis.”

“Calanya Quis?” Hayl looked far too impressed. “I didn’t think anyone could do that.”

Kelric shrugged. The more he learned, the more he realized how little he understood. Years ago he had presumed he knew Quis well, but he saw now that he had barely touched its potential.

“I’m glad you came to Miesa,” Hayl said. Admiration swirled from the boy’s thoughts. “Someday I’m going to play dice like you.”

“Thank you.” Kelric thought the boy could do better. Hayl had a natural gift and could become a great strategist. He seemed young, though. “What made you decide to join the Miesa Calanya?”

“I never wanted to go anywhere else.” Hayl raised his hands as if to say Why would I? “My Quis mentors wented me to try for the big Estates, though, so I asked them to write Varz and Haka. Manager Varz said no. Haka said I was too young, but to write again in a few years.”

Kelric could understand why Rashiva suggested the boy wait. As far as he could tell, eighteen seemed the minimum age for a Calani. “Why did you apply so soon?”

“Revi wanted to leave the Prepatory House.”

“And Savina took you both?”

Hayl nodded. “At first she just bid for my contract. After she met us, she decided to take Revi too. She said Miesa needed more Calani.”

It didn’t surprise Kelric. Savina had a kind heart. Once she met the boys and saw their bond, she could never have split them up. Miesa needed experienced players, however, not children. Although Revi was competent and someday Hayl would be brilliant, at the moment neither played high level Quis. Nor could they supply what the Miesa Calanya sorely lacked, a knowledge of other Estates. Except for himself, every Calani came from Miesa, all First Level.

Kelric returned with Hayl to the common room, but instead of resuming the Quis session, he heaved open the Outside doors. The Calanya escort sat at a dice table, playing Quis.

Captain Lesi looked up at him. “Do you want the Speaker?”

Kelric shook his head.

“Manager Miesa?” she asked.

He nodded.

Lesi called Savina on the wall com, after which the escort took him to her office. As soon as the guards left, Savina grasped his hands. “What’s wrong? Lesi said you were upset.”

“Not upset. Annoyed, at myself.” He scowled. “I’m damaging your Estate.”

“Winds, Sevtar, why do you say that? Don’t you see the effect you have?” She let go of his hands and spread her arms as if to encompass Coba. “Word spreads when the Quis of an Estate gains power. For the first time in decades skilled guildspeople are coming to Miesa instead of leaving. Merchants, weavers, metalworkers, all new in the city, first a trickle, now a steady flow.” She radiated enthusiasm. “And Sevtar—I’m holding my own in Council now. Next year I’ll dice those clawcats into corners. It’s incredible! Together, you and I can do anything.”

He couldn’t help but smile. “If I were Coba, I would melt at your feet. But I doubt my Quis can have the effect you want. I lack too many of the basic tools other Calani get as children.”

That made her pause. After a moment, she said, “One tends to forget, when faced with your gift, that you haven’t studied Calanya Quis all your life.”

“I should go to the Preparatory House.”

She gaped at him. “What?”

He paced her office, gesturing with his hands to accent his points. “More and more lately I’ve felt the lacks in my education. Any one of your First Levels could give you a better picture of your Estate’s history, character, and culture. I need that education.” He came to a stop in front of her. “I have to go to the Preparatory House.”

“A grown man? A Fourth Level?” She laughed. “If I sent you there, my Senior Aide would commit me to the setting-sun-asylum for the rest of my days.”

“Savina, I’m serious. My Quis dominates the Calanya, which means my deficiencies do as well. It didn’t matter for the first few years because we had so much catching up to do. We’re ready for more sophisticated work now and I’m holding it back.”

She considered him as if she were sifting his words through her mind. “I could bring mentors and teachers from the Preparatory House here to the Estate. For you.”

He liked her solution better. It would save him the embarrassment of taking classes with children. “Yes. That would be good.”

“So.” She nodded. “Your Quis will become all the more formidable.”

Ixpar awoke in darkness. When she moved, pain flared in her shoulder. She pushed onto her knees, trying to figure out where in a dice cheater’s hell she had landed. She found the torch, but had no flint to light it. Further exploration revealed she was trapped in a round cavity. By standing and stretching up her arms, she could just reach the chute above her head. Its edges and walls felt like glass, impossible to climb.

“Great,” she muttered. What had possessed Jahlt to send her here? She could starve or suffocate, which hardly made it a sensible place to dump your successor.

Ixpar explored the cavity, searching for a way out. She was running her fingers along the wall at waist height when she touched an engraving. She spelled out the Ucatan glyphs by touch: So to Karn comes the ward of lives.

Ixpar scratched her chin. So to Karn comes the ward of lives: that oath appeared on the Ministry seal. Just as a Manager swore to protect her Calanya, so the Minister swore to protect her people. She ran her fingers over the script again. Then she stopped and felt more carefully. It wasn’t the Ministry Oath, at least not as she knew it. This read: To you, Karn, comes the ward of lives.

To you? Historians believed the name Karn derived from carn-ahi in Old Script, which in turn probably came from the chabi glyph of the more ancient Ucatan language. It meant “to guard, care for, or watch over.” Had Karn instead been a person, someone who lived lived millennia ago in the shadowed years even before the Old Age, a time of darkness and barbarism?

Well, maybe. It didn’t explain why the oath appeared in this damn cavity. This chamber formed a sphere, the highest-ranking Quis die, a symbol of continuity, of the womb where life began, or of completion. Great. Death served quite well as the completion of life.

“No, wait,” she said, to no one in particular except herself. This chamber didn’t present as a true sphere. It had a gap. She examined the opening above her head, this time feeling for any mark rather than just a handhold. At the edge where the cavity met the chute she found a line, hardly more than a scratch. She recognized the pattern from her childhood games in the hidden tunnels of Karn. Scraping her fingernails into the line, she pushed its switch.

Old gears rumbled into action and an arc of metal slid out, nudging aside her hand. As she felt along the arc, she realized it had formed a lid, closing to complete the sphere.

“Winds damn it!” Ixpar grabbed the metal, intending to pull herself into the chute. Then she paused, bracing her hand on the edge of the chute, straining to keep the lid open. She couldn’t hold it much longer. If she hoisted herself out, where would she be after the lid closed? At the bottom of an unclimbable chute. Even if she did manage to reach its top, the cylinder room remained unclimbable. Hell, its floor might have risen back to its original position.

Ixpar let go of the lid, and with a clang it hit the side of the chute. The grate of the gears changed pitch, faltered, started again—and stopped. She stood in the darkness, breathing raggedly, waiting for something to happen.

Silence.

“No,” Ixpar said. “You can’t break.” The darkness felt heavy, claustrophobic. She banged on the lid, hoping to jar it into motion. Next she pounded the walls, methodically covering the entire sphere. Finally she dropped to the ground, knowing that the more she moved, the faster she used up her air.

Jahlt, why did you send me here? Is this a test I’ve failed? Maybe the ancient test had failed, its machinery crumbling with the passing of time.

Suddenly the gears faltered into life again and the sphere rotated like a giant ball bearing, rolling her over in a somersault. When the cavity stopped, its lid had become the floor.

The moment the lid began to retract, Ixpar grabbed its edge and lowered herself through the widening hole. She hung in the air, kicking out her legs, trying to find a foothold. The lid finished opening, taking her handhold, and she dropped like a rock through cold darkness.

Ixpar hit a flat surface with a thud that shoved out her breath. As she groaned, the torch clattered down next to her. With her flight of fight response at full tilt, she jumped to her feet, waving her arms in front of her. Nothing. She took an exploratory step, and still nothing happened. No gears grated in the silence and no barrier stopped her. Another step—

Her foot hit a post. Moving forward, she checked ran her hands along the object. Actually, it felt more like a table leg than a post. A sweep of her hand across the table sent a small box clattering to the floor. She scrambled after it and her hand closed around a flint.

Good! Ixpar relit her torch, never before so glad to see the old-fashioned light source sputter into radiance. As she held it up, the torch revealed that she stood in a small room. A row of torches hung along one wall, and Ixpar shadows flickered on the stone. In the opposite wall, a closed door waited, bands of old metal holding it together.

“Gods, I hope you’re the exit.” Ixpar went over and opened the door.

And then she simply stood, staring in disbelief.

The room beyond the door stretched out long and wide, larger even than the Hall of Teotec where the Managers of the Twelve Estates met for Council. Her first impression was of shadows and glitter. As her eyes adjusted, she saw what threw the torchlight back to her with so many gleams, sparks, and flashes.

Riches spilled everywhere, from boxes inlaid by glistening stones, stacks of vases, bolts of metallic cloth, and chains of precious metals. Finely tooled shields lined the walls. Urns sparkled, heaped full with jewels, and gilt chests overflowed with coins. Weapons lay in great stacks: swords, honed discuses, shotputs, jeweled daggers, marble bolos, and javelins honed to glinting sharp edges.

For a long time Ixpar just looked, stunned. When she finally walked forward, she found a set of ruby-inlaid Calanya guards on a table by the door. She picked up one of the guards and ran her thumb over the althawk seal engraved on it above the original Karn Oath; To you, Karn, comes the ward of lives.

A parchment penned in the ancient Ucatan language lay under a pane of modern glass within the table. As Ixpar pieced out the words, she could almost hear them spoken by a warrior who lived before the Old Age, more than two thousand years in the past, an antediluvian queen with an articulate voice in an age when almost no one even knew what “written language” meant, let alone could write:

Mourn not my death, Karn. It is the honor of a warrior to die defending that which is hers. I leave here my legacy. Learn you well from these memories. See our triumphs and our failures.

This I bid you: choose from among our tribe’s children she who is ablest, fiercest, most intelligent. Train her to succeed you as I taught you to follow me. As I have done for you, so must you someday leave for her those memories that best tell her what we have been and what we can become. Build our people into more than a wandering tribe that fights for personal gain. Let your battles be for the future, to give those of our blood more than barbarism for their legacy. Bring back the glory of the lost Raylikarns, our Ruby ancestors who descended from the stars on pillars of fire.

Make us more than we are.

This is my dream, Karn. As l must die, I entrust it to you.

The document was signed Avaza Teotec.

A chill went up Ixpar’s spine. Avaza Teotec. The ages of time had erased all other records of this ancient queen, yet the greatest mountain range on Coba bore her name. This parchment laid the foundation for the birth of modern civilization, the dream of an ancient chieftain who envisioned far ahead of her time the world that Coba had become.

Ixpar turned over the wrist guard. It wasn’t a Karn guard, it was the Karn guard; the first, made for the Akasi of a woman named Karn who founded the first Estate on Coba. Bring back the glory of the lost Raylikarns, our Ruby ancestors who descended from the stars on pillars of fire. Gods almighty, a memory of the Ruby Empire remained alive here, in Karn, still intact after five thousand years.

She wondered at the word Raylikarns. Had the name Karn derived from this remnant of the Ruby Empire? Near the Calanya guards, she found a box lined with velvet. Two armbands lay inside, engraved with the name Jimorla Karn. A plaque lay next to them etched with the likeness of a youth. The inscription read: In honor of the Akasi Jimorla, born of Kej, who became my husband in the Twelfth Year of the Reign of Karn.

The Reign of Karn. Now they called it the Old Age. She felt as if an ancient breeze had blown across her face, whispering secrets long vanished from the rest of Coba. These armbands came from the twelfth year of an age that had lasted 1032 years.

Ixpar walked down the hall, stunned by the heaped treasures, a wealth far more than just gold and jewels. Each Minister had left a legacy of her reign: scrolls and dice, texts and documents, the feather of a giant althawk embedded in glass. A Minister Shaba commissioned the construction of a miniature Estate and inscribed the rooms with phrases lauding the beauty of an Akasi named Kozar. Kozar? Had the mythology of Khozaar, most handsome of all the gods, originated with this man?

Like Kelric …

Stop it, Ixpar told herself. Why did she still think of him after so many years? It truly was an exercise in futility.

She continued down the hall, and history unrolled before her. New Estates rose: Kej and Varz, Haka and Miesa. Weapons became rarer and Quis more prominent. More scrolls mentioned the dice expertise of a Minister’s Akasi. Gradually a new word came into use, the title Calani, given for a previously unheard of position, men in a Calanya who weren’t Akasi, but gifted Quis players.

At the end of the room, an arch opened into a second hall. It was there that Ixpar found the Oath of Olonton, the original parchment believed lost a thousand years ago. It lay preserved under modern glass, signed by the Managers of every Estate in existence on that First Day of the First Century of the Modern Age. Its message—short, simple, and visionary—set the pattern for modern Coba: On this day let it be sworn; a new era is born, the Era of Olonton. Of the Heart. The Era of Quis. May bloodshed never again break the Oath we make here today.

So the wars had ended.

Ixpar continued into a third hall. Toward its end, a model of the first windrider stood on a table with steel legs. Farther on she saw armbands that had belonged to an Akasi of Jahlt’s predecessor. Then she found a document written in Jahlt’s own hand, Council proceedings, with the last entry from the previous year. She stopped there, unable to continue, hit with a surge of grief. Her eyes burned from unshed tears.

Ixpar drew a ragged breath, unable to look at Jahlt’s calligraphy, so familiar to her. Leaning against the table, she looked away. When she felt a card under her hand, she turned back. A portrait lay near the scroll, the drawing of a child. A girl.

Herself.

She remembered sitting for the picture, which a well-known Shazorla artist had painted. She picked it up to look at the back. An inscription there read: In honor of my Successor, Ixpar Karn. Signed, Jahlt Karn, Fifty-third Year of the Tenth Century of the Modern Age.

Tears brimmed in her eyes. She set the picture on the table, by the model of a recording machine. Then she realized the recorder wasn’t a model. She pressed its switch—and Jahlt’s voice floated into the air:

“If you are listening to this, Ixpar, you must now be Minister. Yours is a unique destiny, to lead our people during the era when we must learn to coexist with those who came to us from the stars.

“In these halls you will find an aid to that destiny: the Memory of Karn. Beyond the Memory is a spherical chamber with no apparent exit. It is actually the end of an entry designed by an ancient chieftain to test her successor, Karn Teotec. Ministers in the Old Age used the entry to challenge the worthiness of a successor. In the drawer of this stand, you will find diagrams that describe its various rooms. I advise against trying the actual entry; the machinery is ancient and may fail.”

So. Jahlt had never meant for her use that entry to the Memory. These halls must have another entrance, one Jahlt hadn’t yet shown Solan. How much time had passed since anyone used the secret entry? Decades? Centuries?

Jahlt continued. “Most people think of the Minister as she who makes laws. But two parts exist to our office, Ixpar, and the setting down of law is, to my mind, only our secondary function. We are first the primary builders of Quis. The wealth of the Memory looks staggering, but its true value lies in its distillation of all that has formed our world. Learn it well. It will give you an understanding of the Quis shared by no other Manager.”

Jahlt’s voice softened. “If my Akasi Mentar outlives me, please give him the letter I have left in the drawer. When his time comes, I ask that you to place his armbands and Calanya guards here with a plaque to honor his name.”

And then: “You mean as much to me as a daughter, Ixpar. If the pattern of our lives continues after death, my love is with you even now.”

Ixpar bent her head. A drop of water fell on the recorder, then another, and another. Her tears flowed with gathering force as her pent-up grief finally found outlet in the lost Memory of Karn.

Ixpar didn’t know how much time passed before she stopped crying. It felt like forever before straightened up and wiped her face. “Good-bye, Jahlt,” she murmured. “Rest well.”

The letter for Mentar lay next to a scroll with diagrams of the secret entry, along with interpretations of the Quis rooms by various Ministers, some similar to her own thoughts on the puzzle.

As Ixpar replaced the scroll, a sparkle in the drawer caught her attention. She reached for it and pulled out a medallion. When she held it up, the medallion dangled by its gold chain, glittering in the torchlight, a solid platinum triangle inscribed with an exploding star. Her breath caught; with this one memory, Jahlt offered perhaps the greatest contribution here of any Minister. The Skolians had given her this medallion when they first came to Karn. You are our lost children, they said. We come from the stars. And so they had changed Coba forever.

Ixpar set the medallion on the table and then looked around. She had reached the end of the Memory; only a few empty tables remained, waiting for whatever contributions she and her successors would someday give them. Beyond the tables, she found a door that opened onto a spiral staircase. She climbed the stairs up and around, level after level, until she reached a landing with engravings on its wall. When she pressed in the sequence given by the ancient rhyme, a door opened in the wall.

Ixpar walked out into the private suite of her predecessor.

29

TOPPLED QUEEN’S SPECTRUM

Starlight shone through the windows, pouring across Sevtar. Savina lay next to him, tracing a finger along his biceps.

“Hmmm.” He stirred. “Thought you were asleep …”

“I’m thinking about our baby. She needs a name.”

He opened his eyes. “How about Roca? It’s my mother’s name.”

“Rohka Miesa.” She considered the name. “It has a good sound.”

He closed his eyes. “That it does.”

“Sevtar?”

“Hmmm?”

“What is she like? Your mother, I mean.”

“You look like her. Except she’s taller.” He looked ar her again and smiled sleepily. “Actually, you look like the native girls on Lyshriol, my father’s world.”

“Lyshriol.” She rolled the word on her tongue. “A pretty name.”

“For a pretty world.” He rolled onto his side and pushed up on his elbow. “I want to take you there.”

That threw her like a tossed dice cube. “Take me off Coba?”

“Don’t you ever wonder what’s beyond your world?”

“It is forbidden to us.”

“Not to me. And you are my wife.”

She tried to imagine him as a Jagernaut, but the image was too foreign. He was Calani. Akasi.

Yet he had the mark of a warrior. She touched a scar that cut across his shoulder.

“It’s from a laser carbine,” he said.

“Lai Zher? Is that a place?”

“A gun. The shot didn’t actually hit me, just came close. Even then, it burned the bloody hell out of my skin.” He sounded subdued. “I could have had the scar removed. That seemed false somehow, though, as if I were denying what happened.”

“It sounds painful.” She hesitated. “In your heart, too.”

He didn’t answer at first. Then he said, “My CO sent me to a therapist. I didn’t want to go, especially after he told me I had something called PTSD.”

“What is that?”

“Post traumatic stress syndrome.” He grimaced. “I loved being a pilot, but gods, Savina, I don’t miss the killing. I’m glad it’s over.”

She wished she knew how to soothe the nightmares that haunted him. A Calani shouldn’t have such memories to darken his life.

Sevtar sat up, pressing his palms against his temples, as he did when his Kyle headaches came. He got up and left the room, pulling on his robe as he went. Puzzled, Savina threw on her own robe and followed. She found him standing by a window in her den.

“Sevtar.” She went over to him. “What is it?”

“I’m not what you think I am.”

“You are the Miesa Fourth.” She laid her hand on his arm. “My Akasi.”

“You only see what you understand.” He turned to her. “The darker side won’t vanish just because I play Quis now instead of killing.”

“That doesn’t negate the side I see.” To herself, she thought, I wish I knew how to ease your memories.

He touched her cheek. “You ease them more than you know.”

Anthoni Karn strode across the courtyard with Tal, his hair tossing in the autumn wind. He found it hard to believe a full season had already passed since the two of them had won the coveted apprenticeships on the Ministry staff.

“I’ve never seen Elder Solan this worried,” Tal continued. “Minister Karn missed all her appointments yesterday. No one can find her.” She hurried with Anthoni up the wide steps of the Estate. “I’m sure the Elder knows something. She keeps going down to the catacombs.”

Anthoni slowed as they entered the building. “I hope Minister Karn is all right.”

Tal snorted. “I’ll bet you do.”

He glanced at her. “Why do you say it like that?”

“It’s the way you fawn all over her, displaying yourself. Just look at the way you dress.”

Anthoni had given up discussing this with her. He acted and dressed like all the other aides. If Tal had a problem with the way he filled out his clothes, she could learn to deal with it. He had no intention of hiding himself in robes and a Talha, like a Haka man.

When they reached the junction of a hall that led to the suite of the late Jahlt Karn, Tal froze, staring down the cross hall. A ghostly figure was coalescing out of its shadows, as if the dead Minister had returned to possess the Estate. The “ghost” came nearer—and resolved into Ixpar Karn. Gashes caked with blood covered her arms and dirt smudged her face.

Anthoni gaped, then remembered himself and bowed, followed by Tal. “Greetings, Minister Karn,” he said.

Ixpar pushed a straggle of hair from her eyes. “Have either of you seen Elder Solan?”

“Yhee, ma’am,” Tal said. “She’s looking for you.”

“Go tell her that I will meet her in my office.” The Minister turned to Anthoni. “Have a crew prepare the Minister’s suite. I want to move in as soon as possible.”

“Right away,” he said.

As Anthoni and Tal strode off, they exchanged glances. So! They had great news for the rest of the staff. It would silence those who claimed Ixpar Karn would never truly be Minister until she could bring herself to live in the suite of her late predecessor.

Far out on the Miesa Plateau, the mineral flats baked under the sun. Hot springs released fumes into the late-afternoon haze and vapors blew across the ground in gritty streamers of yellow and purple. As the rider skimmed low over the flats, Avtac Varz stared out the window.

In the seat next to her, Zecha sat watching the flats unroll beneath them. “Ugly place,” she commented.

Avtac scowled. “That ugly place is making Bahvla rich.” Her expression became thoughtful. “However, the sulphur down there is cheap.”

Bones and bugs, Zecha thought. Why Avtac’s sudden interest in chemicals? First potassium, then carbon, now sulphur. She couldn’t fathom why those noxious chemicals fascinated the Varz Manager.

The cluster of Miesa aides stood in the sitting room outside Savina’s bedroom, talking in whispers and trying not to stare at the Fourth Level who paced on the other side of the alcove. Kelric ignored them, too worried to care if they gawked.

The inner door of the room opened, framing Behz, the Miesa Senior Physician, in its archway. The elderly doctor looked out with faded blue eyes and beckoned to Kelric.

Inside the darkened bedroom, Kelric found Savina dozing under a mound of quilts. He sat on the bed and took her hand.

“Sevtar?” she murmured.

“How do you feel?”

“Better.” She opened her eyes. “Avtac will despise me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She will think me weak to become so sick from carrying a child.”

“What Avtac Varz thinks doesn’t matter.” He stroked her hair. “That you can have my child at all is a miracle.”

“Rashiva did.”

Kelric stiffened. How did she know he had fathered Rashiva’s son?

Savina curled her fingers around his hand. “She brought him to Council. Few people have ever seen you, so most don’t see the resemblance. He also has to stay on a special diet. Like yours.” She closed her eyes. “Rashiva had trouble, but not like this.”

Kelric thought of the primitive state of Coban medicine and the room seemed to darken around him. “I need to get you a better doctor.”

“Behz is the best.”

“For Coba, yes, Behz is good. I can get you better elsewhere.”

Her eyes opened. “Go offworld?” She pushed up on her elbows, panic in her gaze. “Your Rhon would take my baby. They would say I am not good enough to be the mother of their grandchild.”

“Savina, no. My parents would love you.” He lifted her into his arms. “Come home with me.”

She held him close. “If you left Coba you would no longer be Sevtar.”

“I would love you no matter what my name.”

“I couldn’t bear it if you rejected your Oath.” She touched the outline of his armbands under his shirt. “The highest love is that of a Manager for her Akasi.”

He set her back and held her shoulders so he could look at her. “I don’t have to be Calani to love you.”

She spoke softly. “I’m not sure I can say the reverse.”

He refused to believe it. “I could make you happy.”

“Your ISC would punish my people for making you stay here. They would occupy Coba. Take away our Restriction. Use our world. Disrupt the Quis.”

After living here for twelve years, Kelric had come to love much Coba, just as he loved Savina and Quis. He had no more wish to see his people disrupt this unique civilization than did her own people. He wasn’t sure he even wanted his old life back, with its vicious political intrigue.

Savina’s pregnancy, however, changed everything. “I’m worried about the baby. And you.”

“I can’t risk my world for the lives of two people.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “Not even for my own child and myself.”

Rain drummed against the walls of Dahl Estate. The clock in Chankah’s office chimed Morning’s Second Hour, but still she sat at her desk, absorbed in work. When a tap came at the door, she looked up with a start. She went to the entrance and found the doctor Dabbiv outside, his face flushed from running.

“What’s wrong?” Chankah asked.

“You have to see!” He tugged her arm. “Come see.”

Dabbiv hurried Chankah to his lab. A solitary lamp burned in one corner, and an odd device sat on a table there. It consisted of a brass tube clamped to a mount that let the tube incline at an angle. He had fastened a small platform with a hole in it below the tube, and set a concave mirror under the platform. The setup reminded her of the toys that hobbyists used to magnify insects and leaves. Those contraptions were notoriously faulty, though, with lens aberrations that gave blurred or false images.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I’ll show you.” Dabbiv took a flask off the table. “This is a sample of the contaminated water you asked me to analyze.”

“The plant engineers claim it’s not contaminated,” she told him. “They couldn’t find anything in it.”

Dabbiv waved the flask at her. “Nothing they could see.” He dabbed water from the flask onto a square Quis die made from glass and set it on the table. “I’ve been working with an optician, minimizing lens aberrations.” He handed her a magnifying glass. “Try this.”

Chankah peered through the glass at the water. A pink speck darted across her field of vision. “It moves too fast.”

Dabbiv took a vial of slow-syrup and let a drop fall into the water. “Now try.”

This time the speck drifted in a circle while a second one floated lazily into view. “I think I see something. It’s hard to make out, though.”

“A single lens doesn’t magnify it enough.” Dabbiv tapped his brass tube. “So I put several together, like in the tubes that sky watchers use to look at stars.” He gestured with his hands. “If you get the distances between lenses just right, the image from one forms an object for the next. It gives much better magnification.”

“But aren’t the images terrible?”

Dabbiv gave a wave of dismissal. “Lens toys make blurry images because glass bends the different colors in light by different amounts. But if your ‘lens’ is achromatic, that is, if it’s really a series of lenses, you can compensate. It took me a long time to find the right shapes and glass. But I have it now! Its shows little things, micro-sized. So I call it a microscope.” He set the glass Quis square on the platform below the tube and switched on a light in the mount. “Just look, Chankah.”

She squinted into the eyepiece. “I see a black cord.”

“A cord?” Dabbiv looked like a windrider that had just smacked into a cliff. “There shouldn’t be a cord.” Leaning over, he peered into the eyepiece. “Ah. So.” He whisked a hair off the tube. “Now try.”

Chankah squinted into the eyepiece and saw a clump of pink blobs. “It’s blurry.”

He touched the screw on the mount. “Use the focus.”

She turned the screw—and the blobs resolved into a cluster of translucent oval bags with hairs waving about their edges. Little rods darted through the cluster.

“Well, I’ll be a Quis cube.” Chankah looked up at him. “What are they?”

Dabbiv grinned. “Some kind of tiny animal. I think a whole universe of little animals exists for us to see.”

His success gratified Chankah. Once again he proved wrong the many critics who insisted his ideas would never work.

Kastora Karn possessed a wealth of mahogany hair that she wore swept into a roll on her head. Ixpar had known her since their youngest days in the Cooperative. Although Kastora was a few years older, in their childhood she had followed Ixpar’s lead in everything, from sports to boys to school. Ixpar valued her loyalty, her hard work, her keen intellect, and her good sense. So when she became Minister, she appointed Kastora as her Senior Aide.

Today they considered funding requests from Karn scholars. Kastora handed her a file. “These are from the science labs.”

Ixpar recognized most of the proposals. At the back of the folder she found a surprise. “Bahr Karn wants research funds? I thought she was a professional gambler.”

Kastora chuckled. “With Bahr you never know. A few years ago she applied to the Calanya.”

“I remember. To say it offended Jahlt is an understatement.” Ixpar scanned the proposal. “‘Quis Models of Elemental Structure.’ What do you suppose she’s doing?”

Kastora shrugged. “Playing pattern games.”

“This idea she describes, a Quis chart for chemical elements—I’ve heard something like it before. I can’t remember where.”

“Maybe she suggested it to Jahlt.”

“No …” Ixpar finally caught the memory, recalling it from half her lifetime ago.

Periodic chart, Kelric had said. Atomic structure.

Quis Wizard Bahr sat on the cobblestones in the market, her low table set up on the flagstones, her dice out and ready for challengers. She leaned against the wall of the building behind her, soaking up sunshine. Stalls stood everywhere in the plaza and lengths of metal balls clinked and clanked on their roofs. People thronged the square, come to trade or watch the street artists.

A lyderharpist set up his stool by a nearby sausage stand and soon people were gathering to listen as he charmed lively notes from his harp. Some of the listeners came to sit at Bahr’s table and try their luck with a Quis Wizard. They were challengers in name only, but she let a few of them win just to keep people coming back.

Not such a bad day after all, Bahr decided. She hadn’t felt like setting up at market this morning, but she couldn’t spend every day working on pattern games in her suite. After a while she started talking to the dice. Besides, she had to eat. She made her living with Quis, and as Wizard of the Karn Quis she lived as high as the living came. It was no coincidence the former Minister (the goddess rest Jahlt’s cast-iron soul) often asked her to the Estate for Quis. Bahr grinned at the memory. Those had been some games.

Her good mood dimmed. Too bad she threw it all to the wind, asking to apply to the Calanya. The look on Jahlt Cam’s face had said, plain as dice, that a certain Bahr Karn had overstepped the bounds of decency. After that, the Minister no longer sent her invitations for Quis.

Pah. She just wanted to play dice. Good dice. Outsider Quis was too easy, as boring as filling out census forms. Still, she couldn’t help but smile as a daydream formed; Bahr wakes up with half-dressed Calani all around her: tall ones, small ones, big and muscled, lithe and supple, stormy or sunny—

“Heh,” a voice said. “You won’t make a cental if you sleep all day.”

Bahr opened her eyes and scowled. Rhab Karn was leaning his well-built self against the wall. “Go away,” she said. “I’m not in the mood for Modernists today.”

Rhab grinned, his teeth flashing white. It irked Bahr to no end. She had long ago decided Modernists were Modernists because they looked so ugly no woman would glance at them twice. Rhab’s existence continually confounded her conclusion. He wasn’t really that handsome, not in a classic sense, but she couldn’t deny that something about him disrupted her equilibrium.

“Go sell your pots,” she grumbled.

He sat next to her. “My apprentice is watching the stall.”

“You come to preach to me again about melting down Calanya armbands? Having men Managers? It’ll never happen, Rhab.”

“Sure it will. Maybe not this year or the next. But it’ll happen.”

She leaned close to him. “You know what you need? Some Manager to put you in a Calanya and make you behave. Get all these ideas out of your head.”

“You won’t lock me up in Calanya guards.”

“Nobody locks Calani anymore.”

“Maybe not their wrists or ankles.” He tapped his finger against her temple. “In here we’re all just as locked and guarded as in the Old Age.”

“I’m not.”

“I wasn’t referring to you. Only to half of Coba. The male half.”

“Pah.”

“Pah yourself. Unlike you, not all of us want to be Calani.”

Her face burned. “Where did you get the dumb idea I wanted to be a Calani?”

Rhab laughed. “Tell you what, Bahr. I’ll give you wrist guards and you can be my Akasi.”

“Khozaar above.” She looked around, fast and furtive. “Don’t talk so loud. Someone might hear.”

He stretched out his legs, his tame brown boots nicely accenting the flaming red of hers. “Looks like you bought new boots.”

“Sure did. Got ’em to match my hair.” Bahr angled a look at him. “Got me new rooms in the Women’s House too.” Her mind made a fantasy of Rhab in her rooms; the sexy Modernist condemns her advances until she overcomes his resistance and he gives in to her. Then she had an odd thought; it would be nice to have Rhab’s company even if he didn’t succumb to her amorous overtures. “Maybe you can come over and see them.”

“Prowling after Modernists, heh?”

She reddened. “Prowling, pah. I’d rather go after offworlders.”

“I hear they’re all Modernists. Matter of fact, I hear their military commander is a man.”

“Just shows how gullible you are.” But Bahr had caught wind of the same rumor. It was in the Quis. All sorts of news waited there to read, from the growing legend of the Fourth Level at Miesa to the mysterious goings-on in the Varz labs. Strange undercurrents ran through the dice, offworlder ideas, subtle and confusing, detectable only to a Quis Wizard.

“Heh,” Rhab said. “Look at that.”

Bahr looked. A retinue had entered the market, sending excitement rippling through the crowd. “I wonder who it is,” she said.

“The Ministry Senior Aide, looks like.”

“Kastora? Cuaz me. It is.”

“She’s coming over here.”

Bahr snorted, primarily to hide the fact that important people made her knees shake. But Rhab was right. Kastora was coming their way.

The Senior Aide stopped in front of Bahr’s dice table. “Quis Wizard Bahr?”

Bahr scrambled to her feet, aware of how Kastora towered over her. “Yhee, ma’am. I mean, that’s me.”

“Minister Karn sends her greetings.” Kastora handed her a letter.

Bahr read the letter, then gaped at Kastora. A nudge from Rhab’s foot started her tongue working again. “Uh—yhee ma’am. Tell her I will. I mean, tell Minister Karn I will be honored to meet with her.”

I’ve no reason to be intimidated, Bahr thought. Ixpar Karn was just a person, hardly older than Bahr herself. Even so, she recognized the late Jahlt Karn in the woman who faced her from behind the large desk. Ixpar had that same aura of power. She also possessed a quality Bahr had never detected in Jahlt, a ferocity just below her civilized exterior.

Not intimidated, Bahr reminded herself.

“I wish to know more about the work you describe in your proposal,” the Minister said.

Bahr rubbed her sweating palms on her trousers. “I want to understand elements. Chemical elements, I mean.”

“Why?”

“Well—ah—” She had never thought about why. “It’s interesting.”

“I see.”

Bahr knew she sounded like an idiot. But she couldn’t quit now. She wanted the funds too much. Sure she boasted about her great life, rolling dice and making pots of coins. Truth was, she didn’t like gambling. Nor did she care about parlaying her skill with the dice into power and prestige. She just wanted to play Quis. Real Quis. Like a Calani. Like a man. She could hear the laughter; Not much of a woman, heh, Bahr? Well, she would learn to take it. She had to. She needed support if she wanted to play pattern games full time and she didn’t see any other way to get it than by asking for the Ministry to fund her studies.

“I’m trying to find a Quis pattern that describes the elements,” Bahr said. “Actually, I already found one. But it has problems.”

“Problems?” Ixpar asked.

“I think we’re missing some elements. A lot of them.” Her fascination with the project jumped in and kicked away her jitters. “My pattern predicts periodicity in the elements. It all fits. It’s beautiful. Except some elements it predicts aren’t in any chemistry scroll I’ve found. And a few elements listed in the scrolls don’t fit my pattern.”

“Which ones?” Ixpar asked.

“Water. And air.” Bahr knew any respectable scientist would laugh her out of the room. But she had to see this through. “I don’t believe water and air are really elements.”

“I see.” Ixpar picked up a folder on her desk. “These are your tutorial files from the Cooperative. You have an unusual record.”

Bahr’s face flamed. Unusual was a polite term for a truant who’d been too busy playing dice to bother with her lessons. Of course the Minister wondered how someone like Bahr had the gall to challenge established patterns of science.

“It isn’t exactly an impressive file,” Ixpar said.

“No, ma’am, it isn’t.”

“Were you bored?”

The question threw Bahr. “Bored?”

“With your lessons.”

Bahr had no idea how to answer. She’d never paid enough attention to remember the lessons. “I don’t know.”

Ixpar considered her. “Atomic structure.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.” Ixpar closed the folder. “A man once said those words to me while trying to explain the chemical elements.”

“What does it mean?”

“I want you to tell me.” Ixpar tapped her stylus against her fingers. “You will have to move onto the Estate.”

Bahr was getting confused. “Estate?”

Ixpar leaned forward. “Understand me, Quis Wizard. I would never let a woman loose in my Calanya nor tolerate the suggestion of such. But you will take the Oath and live as a Calani. Mentors from the Preparatory House will instruct you.” She paused. “I assume you will put more effort into your studies now than you did as a child?”

The room whirled about Bahr. “Calani? Me?”

“I want you to study it all with your Quis: physics, chemistry, elements. Full time. I want you to tell me what is atomic structure.”

Bahr gaped at her. “I’ll be blown over a bubble.”

The Minister smiled. “Then you are interested?”

“Yhee, ma’am,” Bahr said. “That I surely am.”

Kelric closed his eyes, trying to soothe throbbing headache. Usually the pain eased when he sat this way in his favorite armchair in the main common room of the Calanya, as he often did after dinner. Hayl sat on the floor in a nearby alcove strumming a lyderharp, with Revi lying on his back next to him. As Hayl played, Kelric brooded. The question of taking Savina offworld had become moot; she was too sick to travel and too far into her pregnancy for him to bring a doctor in time even if he could go offworld. Their child’s life rested in the hands of Coba’s doctors.

Hayl began “Song of the Snowprince,” a ballad about a Varz Akasi from the Old Age who died when he was caught in a blizzard as he fled from the stone-hearted Manager to the arms of the woman he loved. Although Kelric usually enjoyed Hayl’s playing, tonight even the music couldn’t soothe his headache.

In the seven years since he had come to Miesa, his brain damage had gradually healed. Until now. Suddenly his Kyle centers were reactivating with a vengeance, an uneven resurgence that felt like shards of glass driving into his head. How could Savina’s gentle touch evoke such an intense response?

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the link he shared with her. With his Kyle senses so alert, he picked her up more easily than ever before. Her presence grew more distinct—and then split. One part remained a dim glow, warm and familiar. The other blazed like a blue giant star being born.

Being born.

Kelric jumped to his feet and strode past a startled Hayl to the Outside doors. Heaving them open, he looked at the escort. “I have to see Savina.”

Captain Lesi dropped her pouch, scattering dice across the floor. One of the guards jumped, knocking over a Quis structure, and another sputtered Tanghi tea across the table.

“For gods sake,” Kelric said. “Do you think someone cut my vocal cords?” He headed out into the hall. If they planned to gawk, he would find Savina himself.

Within seconds, the guards had surrounded him, their stunners drawn. He forced himself to stop. Being knocked out would get him nowhere.

“Manager Miesa is sick,” Captain Lesi said.

“I need to see her.”

His voice shook them up more than anything else he could have done, short of jumping off a tower. Lesi motioned six of his guards into formation around him and sent the seventh running ahead.

Senior Physician Behz waited for them at Savina’s suite. Kelric walked straight past her. As he entered the darkened bedroom, he heard Lesi order someone to put down the gun. His back itched, waiting for a stun shot, but it never came. Inside the bedroom he paused, halted by the sight of Savina’s small form curled under the quilts.

Behz came in and closed the door. Drawing him aside, she spoke in a low voice. “If she gets any worse she will lose the baby. Can’t this wait?”

He shook his head no. She studied his face, as if searching for an answer. “You will take care with her, yes?” When he nodded, she bowed to him and withdrew, leaving him alone with his wife.

Kelric sat on the bed and rested his hand on Savina’s abdomen, so near now to full term.

“Is Avtac here…?” she asked.

“It’s me,” he said.

Her eyes opened. “You look scared to death.”

“Savina, it’s the baby. She’s a more powerful psion than I realized.”

“Psion?” She closed her eyes. “Sigh for me, Sevtar.”

He didn’t know how to convince her that she would never find the help she needed on Coba. He could just imagine her reaction if he told her that the quantum wave functions of her brain interacted with both his and the baby. Through that three-way link, he and Savina already gave their child love on a level deeper than conscious thought. But a baby had no control over its Kyle organs. During the trauma of birth, its mind could hit Savina with a neural overload. A Kyle birth usually gave the mother a headache or at worst caused a convulsion. It might have no effect if the mother knew how to release neurotransmitters to block the receptor sites affected by the overload.

Except their child was no ordinary Kyle.

“The baby doesn’t know she can hurt you,” he said. “My mind is like hers. I can protect both you and her.”

She spoke drowsily. “You worry about the oddest things.”

“I have to be with you when she’s born. Kyle effects fall off with distance, so the farther I am from you, the less I can help.”

She opened her eyes. “I would like for you to be here. I wanted to ask, but I wasn’t sure how. Some men feel uncomfortable in the birthing room.” She sighed. “Avtac will protest, of course.”

“You mean Avtac Varz?”

“She comes to help Manage Miesa while I am sick.”

“Can’t your staff take care of it?”

“Yes.” She regarded him with the iron will that underlay her soft exterior. “But not as well. No one is as skilled as Avtac. I appreciate her help.”

Kelric scowled. “I don’t trust her.”

“You’ve never met her.”

“I don’t like the Quis patterns I’ve seen of her.”

“I know she intimidates people,” Savina said. “But she has always been a friend to me. Harsh and demanding, but also steadfast.”

The door opened, making a line of light in the dark. “Manager Miesa?” Captain Lesi asked. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine,” Savina said. “We’re good.”

After the captain withdrew, Savina smiled at Kelric. “You must have shaken them up.”

“I wasn’t exactly being a model Calani.” He smoothed her hair. “They’re right, though. I should let you rest.”

She curled closer to him. “Don’t leave. I feel better when you’re here.”

So he lay down and held her while she slept. His own thoughts refused to let him rest. How could he have known Savina carried the full set of Rhon genes, mostly unpaired, hidden and recessive? No wonder he loved her. Far down, in a place deeper than conscious thought, like had recognized like. Her unexpressed genes had paired up with his and produced a child of phenomenal strength.

Their daughter was Rhon.

Avtac Varz locked her valise and straightened up, fastening her jacket to ward off the predawn chill. She considered stopping by Hettav’s apartment in the city to say good-bye before she left for Miesa, but decided against it. The time had come to end her arrangement with him. Young and handsome though he was, he had ceased to please her.

In fact, last night Avtac had found herself seeking out Garith, her only Akasi, the father of her five children. A tall man with a muscular build and eyes like the sky, his beauty had once stunned her. The decades had streaked his gold hair with gray and added lines around his eyes, but even after so many years she still enjoyed his company.

Hettav wanted too much. He should have realized she would never make him an Akasi. He gave away his virtue too easily, besides which, he played terrible dice.

An aide appeared in the archway, shivering in the cold. “The rider is ready, ma’am.”

“Good.” Avtac handed her the valise. “Take this out to the rider.” She headed to her office for one last—but most important—meeting. Zecha should be there by now.

Avtac knew some of her advisors doubted her decision to appoint Zecha as captain of her hunters. Before making that choice, she had gone over every detail of Zecha’s methods at Haka. The former warden hadn’t understood the subtleties of power and so abused it. But for a Manager who knew how to utilize her strengths and control her excesses, Zecha made an excellent, and loyal, officer.

She also saw why the Haka Bench reacted with such severity in Zecha’s case. It involved a Calani. At times Avtac felt convinced the sungoddess Savina had created men as punishment for some perceived misdeed of womankind. Either handsome and seductive, with few redeeming qualities aside from the obvious, or else plain and querulous, they forever caused trouble.

At her office, she found Zecha waiting with the chemist Iva. Although Iva had recovered from the injuries she took during the lab accident, a scar marred her cheek. It struck Avtac as inappropriate that Iva wore the mark while the clumsy assistant who caused the accident came out unscathed. The accident itself, however, intrigued Avtac.

Sulphur, nitrate, charcoal.

Avtac spoke to Iva with no preamble. “I’ve read your research proposal.” She moved her hand in dismissal. “Pattern games.”

Iva had her arguments prepared. “Working out Quis patterns of inorganic syntheses has great potential to improve our lives, Manager Varz. It could lead to uncountable new compounds.”

“Whatever,” Avtac said. “I’m giving you the funds.”

A surprised smile jumped onto Iva’s face. “You won’t regret it, I assure—”

“With one stipulation,” Avtac interrupted. “I want you to complete a project first.” She took a folder from her desk and handed it to the chemist. “You will work with Captain Zecha and a crew of metal-shapers she selected.”

Iva glanced through the file. “Metal Quis dice with chemicals in them?”

“That’s right. The chemicals will propel them out of a metal tube. Can you do it?”

“Well—yes, I think so.” Iva looked up at Avtac. “I’m not sure they will have much use. But I can do it.”

Papers, Savina thought. She regarded the piles stacked all around her on the bed with a marked lack of enthusiasm. How could a tree remain anywhere on Coba? People had cut them all down to make papers Savina Miesa must read.

At least since Avtac’s arrival yesterday, Savina had more time to rest. She felt less easy knowing that Captain Zecha had flown down from Varz today to report to the Avtac. Although Savina found nothing specific about Zecha she could point to and say “This bothers me,” Zecha disturbed her, like a pressure against her mind.

Savina dropped the folder she held onto the bed. As she lay back, a cramp caught her like a vise. With a gasp, she reached for the com on the nightstand. The added weight of her pregnancy gave her more momentum than she expected, and she lost her balance. She rolled forward, tumbling off the bed, and landed on the floor with a thud.

“Ah—no …” Savina cried out as a full-blown contraction clenched her. “Behz! Someone!”

The door burst open and people ran into the bedroom. As Behz knelt next to her, another contraction hit Savina, shooting firebrands up her spine. She gazed up at the doctor, mutely imploring her to make the pain stop.

After a quick exam, Behz turned to the nurses. “We will need clean sheets. And boil some water.”

“No.” Savina groaned as they lifted her onto the bed. “The baby hasn’t even turned yet.”

As much as Behz tried to hide her concern, it radiated off her like heat off an ingot. “That may be. But your child is coming. I can’t stop it.”

Avtac paced the living room of Savina’s suite while a cluster of aides spoke with hushed voices across the room. Zecha waited by a window, staring at the city, her face drawn as if she hadn’t slept the entire night.

Suddenly the outer door of the suite swung open and Captain Lesi of the Calanya escort strode into the room.

“Is there a problem in the Calanya?” Avtac asked.

Lesi bowed to her. “The Calani Sevtar wishes to be with Manager Miesa.”

Avtac could imagine the consequences of letting a high-strung Calani into the birthing room. “Tell him no.”

“He’s already here, ma’am. I could barely convince him to wait in the alcove.”

The lack of discipline at Miesa appalled Avtac. Savina indulged this Fourth Level far too much. “Take him back.”

The Miesa Senior Aide came over to them. “Savina wants him with her, ma’am.”

That gave Avtac pause. “She spoke to you about this?”

“I think she and Sevtar just made the decision.”

“Did she give orders?” Avtac said.

The Senior hesitated. “Not yet.”

“Yet?” Avtac wished the woman would be more specific. “So she told you she intended to give orders?”

“No,” the Senior admitted. “But she did intend to.”

Avtac appraised the Senior. Did you have her own agenda here, or did she truly believe Savina wanted this excitable Calani hovering around while she labored? Avtac had never asked for Garith in the five times she gave birth. His presence would have been an intrusion.

A nurse opened the door of Savina’s bedroom. “Manager Varz?”

Avtac went over to him. “How is Savina?”

“She’s had several convulsions, we aren’t sure why. And the baby is in the wrong position.” Quietly he said, “Behz doesn’t know if either she or the baby will survive.”

No, Avtac thought. Savina, be strong. “Has she asked for the baby’s father?”

The nurse shook his head. “She sleeps between contractions and isn’t coherent during them.”

“Do you think it would help her for him to come in?”

The nurse spread his hands. “We don’t know.”

Avtac suspected if Savina had said nothing this far into her pregnancy, she didn’t want Sevtar there. Unfortunately, with Savina you could never be sure what went in her odd, albeit engaging, mind. And promptness had never been one of her strong points.

Avtac went to the window where Zecha stood. It startled her to see the lines of fatigue on the captain’s face.

“You knew this man Sevtar at Haka,” Avtac said.

“He isn’t stable,” Zecha said. “Let him in there and you could have a disaster.”

Avtac motioned for the Calanya captain. When Lesi came over, Avtac said, “Do you believe Sevtar might lose control of himself in the birthing room?”

“Not at all,” Lesi said.

“He never behaves in an erratic manner?”

The Miesa captain hesitated.

“Answer with care,” Avtac said. “Your Manager’s life could depend on what you say.”

Lesi exhaled. “I can’t guarantee he’ll do nothing unexpected.”

The Miesa Senior Aide joined them. “Sevtar is steadier than a rock.”

A guard opened the outer door of the suite. “Captain Lesi? I don’t know how much longer he’s going to wait.”

“Bring him,” the Senior said.

Avtac spoke to the guard. “You will do nothing until you have my permission.”

The guard hesitated, looking from Avtac to the Senior. Then she said, “Yes, ma’am,” to Avtac.

Zecha drew Avtac to one side. “I would think before you let him in there. It’s well-known what you have to gain if Savina Miesa dies.”

Avtac had no wish to see Savina die. The Miesa Manager was one of the few people she actually liked. And Zecha had it right; if she appeared to seek Savina’s death, the political ramifications could turn ugly. However, if she refused the Fourth Level and it turned out Savina had actually wanted him there, the consequences could be just as serious.

A bead of sweat ran down the side of Zecha’s face. She wiped it away with a distracted motion.

“Are you sick?” Avtac asked.

“It’s the tension. Can’t you feel it?” Zecha pressed the heels of her palms against her temples. “It’s like being in a mulch compactor.”

Avtac frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Zecha’s face took on an odd expression, as if she had closed and shuttered herself. “It’s nothing.”

“Manager Varz.” Captain Lesi stepped over to them. “We need to decide.”

Avtac considered her, then turned to Zecha. “I need your best opinion, Captain. One untainted by anger.”

Zecha stiffened and Avtac saw that her implication wasn’t lost on the captain. If they made the wrong decision, it would reflect on Zecha now as well.

The captain rubbed her temples again, her face drawn as if she were listening on a barely heard conversation. Then, with complete certainty, she said, “Manager Miesa wants him with her.”

Kelric’s awareness of the foyer faded as he concentrated on the force being born in the other room. His daughter reacted in instinct, innocent of the knowledge her miraculous power could kill. Kelric buffered Savina, easing the onslaught, but holding his link with her proved difficult from two rooms away.

The foyer door opened, framing Captain Lesi in its archway. “I will take you to Manager Miesa.”

Somehow, through his tension, he managed to nod. He wound the Talha around his face and pulled up the cowl of his robe, secluding himself from watching eyes so the covetous reactions of people to his appearance wouldn’t disrupt his concentration.

As soon as they reached Savina’s bedroom, he slipped off his robe and Talha and went to the bed, standing back from the gathered medics. Savina strained with another contraction and his mind reeled with the intensity of her effort. He deepened his concentration, spurring her brain to produce chemicals that blocked its pain receptors.

After the contraction finished, Savina dropped back on the bed. At first he thought she had passed out, but then she opened her eyes. “Sevtar,” she whispered. “Come help. Please.”

When Kelric started toward her, Behz laid her hand on his arm. “Be careful.”

He nodded. They helped him to kneel on the bed behind Savina and showed him how to support her during the contractions. He was so close to her now that both she and the baby glowed in his mind.

Again and again Savina strained in his arms, her body wrung with her exertions. The day ground into night, blending into a haze of exhaustion. As her strength ebbed, their child’s mind began to fade. Kelric refused to admit that his wife and daughter were dying in his arms. He poured his support into Savina, barely even realizing only he kept her and their child alive. She had stopped thinking, giving all her remaining strength to the agonized labor.

Suddenly Behz cried, “She’s coming!”

Kelric heard the doctor through a daze. With his consciousness focused inward, the room had blurred around him until he could no longer see.

Suddenly Savina screamed, her body going rigid as if she were struggling back from the threshold of death for one final effort.

A baby wailed.

With a curiously gentle sigh, Savina sagged in his arms. Incredibly, for the first time in hours, perhaps even days, she looked up at him with recognition. Her voice was a whisper. “She lived because of you.”

Tears ran down his face. “And you.”

“I’m so tired …”

“Savina.” He rasped her name. “Savina, don’t.”

She smiled, her face blurred in the room’s dimmed light. “I love you, Sevtar.”

Then her eyes closed.

30

THE TOWER OF SOULS

The torch on the wall flickered, gilding the corridor with antique light. Avtac walked in silence. At the end of the hall she stopped before an archway and stood with her palm resting against the door, the only concession to her crushing grief she would ever reveal. Then she unlocked the door and entered the room where a legend waited.

He was sitting in a window seat, staring out at Miesa far below the tower. He turned—and she saw that the legends of his beauty were indeed false. The reality of him was not less, as she had expected, it was more, far more. His flawless face, the symmetry of his form, the beauty of his skin—he was perfect. Utterly perfect.

Instead of the midnight-blue cloak of mourning, for some reason he wore black: boots, trousers, shirt, vest—all black. The only color came from the gold of his wrist guards glinting under the edge of his cuffs.

So. This was the man who had destroyed an Estate.

Sevtar turned away from her and stared out the window at Miesa. No, not Miesa. Varz. It was hers now, all of it, and a Fifth Level as well, but it came at a bitter price.

She spoke quietly. “Your daughter survived, Sevtar.”

He looked at her, for the first time showing a spark of life. Avtac wondered at his reaction. Calani such as he were another species, erratic in their emotions. Still, perhaps it would be kind to let him see the infant.

Within moments after she sent for the child, a nurse appeared with a small bundle wrapped in blankets. When Avtac nodded, the youth approached Sevtar and bowed, then offered him the bundle.

The transformation that came over Sevtar astounded Avtac. He cradled the tiny infant in his massive hold with a tenderness incongruous to his violent reputation. Then he murmured a name.

The nurse jerked back and Avtac motioned for him to leave. Despite the jolt of hearing Sevtar break his Oath, Avtac understood his lapse. It wasn’t his fault men of great beauty lacked moral strength. Today he needed to mourn. She would leave Calanya discipline for another time.

She wondered about the name he spoke. Rohka. Had he and Savina picked it for their daughter? She sat next to him. “Rohka will have the best care we can offer.”

Sevtar looked as if he were trying to answer. But words failed him. Instead he bent his head over the child and repeated her name in his husky accent, making it sound like Roca. As a tear ran down his face, he added words that made no sense:

“No longer am I the littlest Rhon child.”

Varz stood alone, high in the mountains, ancient and immutable, a solitary garrison with the grandeur of the Teotecs stretching away on all sides as far as a hawk could fly. The riders landed on the airfield in the icy shadows of dusk. Cowled and hidden in robes, surrounded by their escorts, Kelric and Hayl descended from the center aircraft and walked across the frozen tarmac like ghosts.

They gave their Oath at Night’s Midhour in the Hall of Souls, a place of shadowed spaces hung with sable curtains. Kelric stood alone, encircled by an ebony rail on an obsidian dais, his heart as dark as the hall where he swore loyalty to Varz. The words felt like dust in his mouth.

After he gave his Oath, Avtac Varz appeared from behind a curtain, a statuesque woman in ash robes. He watched numbly, uncaring that in moments she would make history.

She asked no questions as she placed the Akasi bands on his arms. “Sevtar Dahl Haka Bahvla Miesa Varz,” she said. “You are now a Fifth Level Calani of Varz.”

Part 5

VARZ

31

SWITCH: BLACK ONYX

Ixpar slid open the stained-glass doors of her suite and walked onto the patio. In a distant garden she saw Bahr at a table, intent on her dice. The gambler resembled a Shazorla gypsy: huge hoop earrings, yellow scarf tied in her red curls, blue trousers, yellow shirt, and those spectacular red boots. Nearby, her friend Rhab was bent over his potter’s wheel, hard at work.

Ixpar smiled. They made quite a picture: the Quis Wizard who lived as a Calani and her Modernist friend who came to pay suit the same way a woman would court a Calani, though neither of them admitted Rhab was courting anyone. Jahlt would have had a fit.

Ixpar sometimes wondered why she had done it. Supporting Bahr in the full style of a Calani was no meager investment. The arrangement drew constant criticism from the Elders. Yet the gambler’s unusual mind, brimming with its plethora of odd ideas, fascinated her. She wanted Bahr to play Quis with her Calanya, and for that stratospheric privilege, Bahr must keep the Oath for the rest of her life.

A man appeared in another garden, his brown hair whipping in the breeze as he strode down a path. When he neared, Ixpar recognized him as Anthoni, one of her most promising Estate aides. He came over and bowed. “I have a message, Minister Karn.”

“Who sent it?” Ixpar asked.

“Skybird.”

Ixpar tensed and motioned him into her living room. When they came inside, she closed the doors and pulled the curtains. “Who actually gave you the message?”

“A pilot. The name on the delivery sheet said Levi Karn.” Anthoni kept his expression neutral, revealing nothing, but Ixpar sensed his excitement. He had figured out that he carried more than a normal report. This wasn’t the first time she’d noticed his ability to read subtle events with speed and accuracy. It reflected well on his work.

“Did this pilot ask for your name before she spoke to you?” Ixpar said. When Anthoni nodded, she asked, “Who else knows about this?”

“No one. I came straight here.”

“Good. What did Levi tell you?”

“This: ‘The sky bird flew high and now roosts well. His nests are clean.’”

Excellent! Her spy, a man named Jevrin, had chosen Skybird as his code name. The message meant he had established himself at Varz with a position on the City Guard. Given Avtac’s views on the unsuitability of men for such positions, Ixpar hadn’t been sure he would make it this far. However, Avtac’s inflexibility also worked to Ixpar’s advantage; the iron-hard Manager was less likely to suspect a man as a covert agent, given that it required traits she associated only with women, especially the ability to disguise his true identity in his Quis.

A considerable portion of Jevrin’s training had gone into Quis, to ensure he didn’t reveal himself. He couldn’t use the dice to send messages to Karn. No matter how well he secured his work, a Quis Wizard might still pick up the patterns.

“Did the message say anything else?” Ixpar asked.

Anthoni nodded. “‘The sun is extinguished.’”

“What?”

“That was the message. ‘The sun is extinguished.’”

She felt as if she had slammed into a stone wall. “You’re certain? You didn’t hear it wrong?”

“I’m sure.”

Ixpar took a deep breath. “Thank you, Anthoni. You’ve done well.”

After Anthoni left, Ixpar sank into a chair. How could it be? The sun is extinguished.

Savina Miesa was dead.

The sun Manager. Ixpar had always thought the air seemed to glow when Savina entered a room. She had never doubted Savina Miesa’s talent at Quis or the fierce heart that burned under her innocuous exterior. Savina had been well on her way these past years to proving wrong those who underestimated the Manager of Miesa.

Except Miesa no longer existed. Varz now owned the Estate. Ixpar’s fist clenched as she thought of what else belonged to Varz.

Kelric.

32

RAVAGED TOWER

The days passed Kelric like ghosts, ten of them, then twenty, then more, all in a dark, silent procession. Winter’s blizzards raged outside the Varz Calanya, but he barely noticed. He lived in a universe of numb silence.

In such a large Calanya he had company even tonight, when he wandered through the common rooms after most of Varz slept. Two men conversed at a Quis table and another sat absorbed in solitaire. As always, each person he passed stopped what he was doing and nodded to him, silent and deferential.

Fifth Level. He felt abnormal. The other Calani treated him the way Outsiders treated all Calani. No one intruded on his solitude and he talked to no one. Even Avtac had the decency to leave him alone, despite the Akasi bands. He had finally, today, changed from the black of mourning into normal clothes, but what he wore made no difference. The shadows inside him remained.

The main common room was dark except for a night lamp in one corner. Kelric tapped at Hayl’s screen, but no one answered. As he turned to leave he heard a faint noise within. Crying? He hesitated, reluctant to trespass, yet knowing that were Hayl his own son, he would try to help.

The crying came again, almost inaudible. So he went into the suite. He found Hayl in a darkened alcove, lying on the rug among several cushions. Like most Miesans, the boy had never grown very tall; hidden in shadows he looked even younger than his fourteen years.

“Are you all right?” Kelric asked.

Hayl looked around with a start. “Sevtar?”

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to intrude. I thought I heard crying. Can I help?”

“No.” The youth wouldn’t look at him. “I want to be alone.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.” Kelric turned to leave.

“Sevtar, wait.” Hayl sat up. “Stay. Please.”

Kelric settled on the rug among the cushions. “Is it Revi?”

Hayl nodded, wiping tears off his cheeks. “Do you know what my mother told me once? When I was a baby and Revi was five, I wouldn’t go to sleep unless he carried me around the nursery in the Cooperative.”

“Avtac probably didn’t realize.”

“She knew. The Miesa Senior Aide told her.” Hayl’s voice caught. “Manager Varz doesn’t care. She just wanted the best of us and a good price for the rest.” He wiped his palms on his trousers. “Someday I’ll be a Third Level. At Haka. With Revi.”

“Perhaps you will.”

“You know Haka. Do you think Revi likes it there?”

“I did. The desert is beautiful.” Although he doubted Revi would like the Proprietary Laws, they wouldn’t really affect him inside the Calanya.

“Tell me about it,” Hayl said.

Kelric described the good parts of his life in Haka, leaving out the prison and his difficulties with Rashiva. Hayl’s spirits gradually recovered. Although they skirted the subject of Savina’s death, Kelric felt Hayl’s grief and knew the boy understood his. It helped in some way, sharing their silences about her.

Later, when Kelric returned to the main common room, he saw Qahotra, the captain of the Calanya guard, waiting by his suite. She had come with Kelric’s “valets,” Tak, Thek, Netak, and Katak. Kelric could never get their names straight, so he just thought of them as “The Taks.” With diplomacy, or perhaps duplicity, Avtac chose to call them “servants in honor of his position.” Given that all four men wore stunners, were larger even than Kelric, and had martial-arts training, they seemed about as much like valets as machine guns.

When Kelric saw what Qahotra carried, his heart leapt and he forgot the Taks. He strode over and accepted the blanket-swathed bundle she offered. He cradled his daughter in his arms, gazing at her beloved face as he instinctively swayed from side to side, rocking her.

When he finally looked up, he found Qahotra watching him with a smile. Even the Taks looked like they might actually crack a pleasant expression.

“We’ll be back in an hour,” Qahotra said.

After the captain left, the Taks sat around a Quis table in the common room and played dice. Kelric settled into an armchair a distance away with Roca in his arms. He murmured nonsense words to his daughter, and she watched him with wide blue eyes. Someday they would turn gray, gold, green, or violet, he had no idea which. She felt so small, so vulnerable. He wanted the world for her. Hell, he would have given her worlds, literally, had he been among his people.

When he asked Avtac if Roca could live with him in the Calanya, the Manager hadn’t responded, she simply stared as if he were demented. The next day when he and Avtac sat in a private Quis session, he introduced patterns of Roca into his dice, trying to make Avtac see what his daughter meant to him. She said nothing then either, but the next day Qahotra brought Roca up from Miesa for her first visit. Since then he had seen her every one or two days.

The hour went by far too fast. Kelric wasn’t sure how he looked when Qahotra returned, but she gave him another hour. When she finally took the baby, she spoke gently. “She’ll be back for another visit soon. I’ll see to it myself.”

After the captain left, Kelric went to his suite and sat in his living room, struggling to blank his mind. If he let his thoughts surface, they would turn to Savina, to a grief far too deep and far too great. If he let it pull him under, he would drown. For Roca, he had to stay on top of his life. He would make the Varz Quis soar as it never had before, turn this Estate and its dependents into the gilded land, give Roca the best world within his power to create.

Several hours later a tap came at his screen. He found Qahotra outside again, this time with both the Taks and the rest of the Calanya escort. Kelric blinked at them. Really? Eight guards? What did they expect, that he would turn into a raging madman because, oh he didn’t know, maybe he didn’t like the weather?

They said nothing, and neither did he. The Calanya Oath suited him just fine; he had no desire to speak to any of these people, except perhaps Qahotra, because she understood about his daughter. She lifted her hand, inviting him to accompany them, so he stepped out into the hall. Better a late night Quis session than brooding alone with his thoughts.

They took him through the Estate, along ancient halls emptied by the late hour. Lamps shaped like clawcats adorned the halls, the only light in these isolated corridors. Eventually they ascended a tower, climbing its spiral staircase. He realized then he wasn’t going to play Quis.

Kelric recognized this journey. He had taken it three times before, once in a drugged daze at Dahl, once in incomprehension at Haka, and once in joy at Miesa.

They left him locked in a suite that gave reality to the age and wealth of Varz. Chandeliers designed from diamonds hung above rugs so thick, his toes disappeared into the pile. The antique furniture looked priceless. Gold, ivory, ebony, silk; it was an Akasi suite unparalleled by any other he had seen.

The suite had no windows. He wandered through the rooms, glad to discover none of them contained Avtac either. In the bathing room, he went for a swim in the pool. When he finished, he dried off with a plush towel someone had laid on a bench, and he dressed in the robe he found there. Then he sat by a fountain, watching rainbows flicker in the cascade of water. When his eyes refused to stay open any longer he went to the bedroom, relieved to find it still empty. Apparently unexpected business kept Avtac away.

He folded his robe on a chair and went to bed. Within moments he fell asleep.

A tiring job, this merger of two Estates, Avtac thought as she lit a lamp in the living room of the Akasi suite. Well worth the trouble, though; since absorbing Miesa, the power of Varz had surged. Perhaps she had judged too harshly Savina’s decision to acquire Sevtar. The man played Quis like no other Calani. He was extraordinarily gifted. But neurotic. What bizarre notion had prompted him to dress in black for so long? She found it hard to believe he mourned Savina. He hadn’t shed a tear since her death.

At least he had finally changed into normal clothes. Whatever his capricious logic, she couldn’t let it appear as if she violated his mourning. The wait had made her impatient.

She found him in the main bedroom. Asleep, he was even more provocative than awake. He lay on his back with one arm behind his head and the other thrown out across the bare sheets, his fist clenched in the silk. Light crept in from the living room and curled glowing fingers around his body. The quilts had ended up on the floor and the sheet bunched around his waist, leaving his bare chest in view.

She sat next to him and explored his chest, satisfying the curiosity that had tugged at her since he came to Varz. His skin felt like a metal alloy, warm and flexible.

His eyes opened and he grasped her hand. “Avtac. It’s late.”

“So it is.”

“I’m tired.”

His reluctance whetted her desire. When she tweaked away the sheet, uncovering his body, he avoided her gaze. Given his past, she doubted his modesty was real. But it was far more fitting behavior for an Akasi than for the youth she kept in the city, who made no secret of how much he enjoyed her company.

She spoke gently. “Sevtar, turn over. I will help you relax.”

He considered her, his face guarded. Then he rolled onto his stomach. Still dressed, Avtac straddled his hips and massaged his back, working deep into the stiff muscles. After a while, he sighed, murmuring a sleepy thanks. She ran her hands along his arms, then lifted his wrists and brought them together.

With a click, she locked his Calanya guards behind his back.

“Wha—?” Sevtar looked back, blinking sleep out of his eyes. “Why did you do that?”

“Shhh, dawn god.” Sweet submission. He excited her even more than she had expected. She stretched out on top of him, caressing his sides with long strokes as she rubbed her pelvis against his buttocks. While she moved on him, he stared at the wall across the room, his expression numb. He was hers to own and enjoy.

Her pent-up desire a made her rise happen so fast she barely controlled it. When the release came, it hit her with a shuddering intensity.

After a while, when her breathing calmed, she rolled off him and lay on her back with her eyes closed, one leg stretched out and the other bent.

“Are you done?” he asked. He sounded like he was gritting his teeth.

Avtac looked at him, his perfect face, his long lashes, his gold curls. She traced her finger along his cheek. “You are a great beauty, Sevtar.”

“I can’t sleep with my arms like this.”

In her youth, she might have spent the rest of the night with him, but she felt too drowsy now. Come morning, all would be new again, a time for full lovemaking. She wanted him well rested. So she unlocked his wrists.

As soon as he was free, he turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Avtac removed her clothes and set them in a neat pile on the nightstand.

Then she rolled over and went to sleep.

33

KING’S SPECTRUM

Kastora Karn, Senior Aide to the Minister, studied the metal dice on the table. They had an odd shape: cylindrical at one end, pointed at the other. She glanced at Ixpar. “These are for Quis?”

“It would seem not.” Ixpar put a packet of dark powder next to the dice.

Kastora poked at the packet. “What is it?”

“A mixture,” Ixpar said. “Charcoal, sulphur, nitrate.”

“What does it do?”

“Normally, nothing.” She paused. “Under pressure, it explodes.”

Kastora withdrew her hand. “Is it for the quarries?”

Ixpar shook her head. “Jevrin, the agent I have at Varz, smuggled it to me. The powder goes in the dice.”

“Rather odd dice. What does one do with them?”

“Apparently,” Ixpar said, “one puts them in a rifle.”

Kastora’s forehead creased with puzzlement. “A rifle?”

“A gun.”

“Why put dice in a stunner?”

“A rifle is different than a stunner,” Ixpar said. “It propels the dice out again.”

“Whatever for?”

“To damage the target, I assume.”

Kastora stared at her. “What targets?”

“That,” Ixpar said, “is what I would like to know.”

“So you see,” Bahr finished. “By putting the dice structure in a high level and controlling how it evolves to a low level, the pattern models a chemical that glows with a single color of light. Like red light.”

Ixpar relaxed at the table where she and Bahr had been dining. Bahr’s outrageous ideas never ceased to fascinate her. “What would one do with this red light?”

“You could use it to decorate the Calanya fountains.” Bahr took a spice muffin. “Thing is, I wouldn’t know bread from cheese about how to make a real device that does what my Quis pattern predicts.”

“I can have the labs look into it.” Ixpar sipped her wine. “What do you call this light-making pattern of yours?”

“I haven’t decided.” Bahr washed her muffin down with wine. “You see, what actually gives off the light are motes I call atoms. When a mote goes into a high level, it emits light if it drops to a lower level. For the patterns I’m working on, you have to kick the mote to make it relax to the lower level. So I was thinking of calling it a kicked-mote emitter.”

Ixpar could imagine the reaction Bahr would get to a Quis structure called kicked-mote emitters. “What you’re doing is modeling a system that amplifies light by stimulating the emission of radiance. Why don’t you abbreviate that?”

“Albsteor?” Bahr grimaced. “It sounds like a rock.”

“Maybe if you just used letters from the main words. Alser. Laser. Sailor.”

“Sailor? Sailing light.” Bahr beamed. “Yes, that sounds better.”

Ixpar laughed. “Sailing light? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Sure it does. The light sails out of the device.”

“All right.” Ixpar smiled. “I will see if the labs can make you a light-sailor.”

“Come on,” Hayl said. “Wake up. You said you would run with me this morning.”

Kelric opened one eye. Beyond a window in his Calanya suite, he saw dawn tinging the sky. He closed his eye and pulled a pillow over his head.

“Sevtar.” Hayl tugged away the pillow. “You promised.”

Kelric grimaced. Most Cobans found the concept of jogging as strange as eating Quis dice, but in Miesa he had talked Hayl into running with him in the mornings. Now he wished the boy hadn’t taken to it with such enthusiasm.

Waking up to run, though, was better than waking up to Avtac. Mercifully, she had been at Council the past few days. Otherwise she sent for him almost every night, for “love-making” that left him emotionally bruised. He hated her touch, her arrogance, the dishonor she did to his memory of Savina, and her conviction that she could do whatever the hell she wanted to him regardless of how he felt. He wondered how she would react if he turned violent. No, he could guess. He’d end up in an even worse situation. Better to wait until she tired of him. Given the rumors about how fast she went through her boys in the city, he doubted it would be long.

However, he did miss one aspect of Avtac. Her Quis. No one could match her brilliance. If a man’s love were measured by his desire for a woman’s dice rather than for the woman, then he would have loved Avtac with a passion like no other.

Right now, his only passion was sleep. He had promised Hayl, though. He rolled out of bed and limped to the bureau where he kept his running clothes. After he dressed, he went into his living room and found Hayl waiting, along with the Taks, who were lounging in chairs. The “valets” followed him and Hayl out to the ice-covered parks and stood out of earshot, watching them warm up, their breath condensing into puffs of white under a sky of leaden clouds.

“I know they’re your servants and all,” Hayl said. “But I wish they would go away.”

“At least they quit trying to run with us.”

Hayl smirked. “They’re too lazy.” He leaned forward and pulled a hair off Kelric’s head.

“Why did you do that?” Kelric asked.

Hayl gave him the hair. “Your first gray one.”

Kelric rolled it between his fingers, then let it float away on the wind.

“Don’t look so depressed,” Hayl said good-naturedly. “Everyone gets gray hair.”

“Come on.” Kelric stood up. “Let’s go.”

As they ran, taking a path to the lakes, Kelric made a listless attempt to reach Bolt. The node remained silent, as it had since Savina’s death. It didn’t matter; he knew what happened. The nanomeds in his body had stopped doing the cellular repairs needed to slow his aging. The trauma of Savina’s death had sent his still healing biomech web into shock, and his grief, combined with his life at Varz, made his condition worse. That the primitive state of Coban medicine had left him with a limp—that he could live with. Losing a century of his life was another matter altogether.

They returned to the Calanya to find the common rooms filling up, as Calani trickled out from their suites looking for food, conversation, or Quis. While the Taks sat at a table to eat, Kelric continued across the room with Hayl.

A Second Level named Jev intercepted them. “Some of us are having Tanghi in Orttal’s suite,” he said. “We wondered if the two of you would like to join us.”

Kelric almost declined, until he saw the anticipation on Hayl’s face. So he said, “Thanks. We’ll be over as soon as we clean up.”

As he and Hayl continued to their suites, Hayl smiled. “Maybe we won’t be so much like Outsiders here anymore.”

“Maybe not,” Kelric said.

“Sevtar—”

“Yes?”

“It might help if—well—they might like us better if you were friendlier.”

Kelric squinted at him. “Sorry. I’ll try.”

Inside his suite, he bathed and dressed. As he pulled on his shirt, his Varz wrist guard twisted and he winced. Neither of his guards fit properly and both irritated his skin, but getting them fixed meant going to Avtac. He had no intention of humiliating himself with a Manager who seemed to take pleasure in making him uncomfortable.

Rummaging through his bureau, he found an old cloth. He ripped off a strip and worked it under his guard to protect his skin from the metal. Then he left his suite.

Orttal answered when Kelric tapped at his screen. He held the higher rank of the two Third Levels at Varz, yet he bowed to Kelric as if he were an Outsider compared to his Fifth Level guest. Hayl had already arrived and settled on a divan in living room. He sat talking to Mox, a restless First Level who looked ready to burst into somersaults.

“It’s a matter of timing,” Mox was saying. He juggled three Quis dice, then gave them to Hayl. “Give it a try.”

As Kelric entered, all conversation stopped. Orttal ushered him to a Quis table, giving him the position of honor by the window, across from the Second Level Jev. Everyone was watching him except Hayl, who kept trying to juggle Mox’s dice.

The gems clattered to the floor. “Pah,” Hayl muttered.

Mox laughed and scooped up the dice. “Try two first.”

Conversation flowed again. The others tossed sentences back and forth with an ease that fascinated Kelric, who had never mastered the art of talking to people he didn’t know well. Mox’s energy and Jev’s quiet confidence impressed him, but it was Orttal who commanded attention. A husky man with gray-streaked hair, the Third Level reminded Kelric of the contained power in a starship engine.

Jev was speaking. “You have to admit, Orttal, refusing to play Quis so you can make a point about Modernism is extreme.”

Hayl stared at Orttal. “You’re a Modernist?”

“Don’t get him started,” Mox warned.

Jev smiled. “He doesn’t foam at the mouth.”

“I just don’t see why he joined a Calanya, that’s all.” Mox frowned at Orttal. “If you thought it was all so repressive, you should have stayed Outside.”

“People change,” Orttal said. “The Oath, however, is for life.”

“Why would you want to leave?” Hayl asked. “What more could you want than what we have here?”

“Just the freedom to control my life, that’s all,” Orttal said. “Look at the price we pay to use our intellects; submission to an Oath that binds us like chains.”

“You don’t need to read or write,” Mox said. “You have Quis.”

Orttal leaned toward him. “As usual, you miss my entire point.”

“I thought Modernism was illegal,” Hayl said.

“Why would it be illegal?” Jev asked.

“Because,” Hayl said. “It isn’t—I don’t know. It’s immoral.”

“What’s immoral about parity?” Orttal demanded.

“Modernists tear down people’s values,” Hayl said. “Like trying to convince kasi not to wear bands or Calani not to take Oaths. Modernists are frustrated because they can’t be Calani and no woman wants them as her kasi.”

Orttal raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

Hayl looked at the kasi inscriptions on Orttal’s Calanya guards and reddened. “I guess not all of them. It’s still wrong. Women and men are different. There’s a natural way of things. You can’t change it.”

“Brainwashed,” Orttal said.

“I am not,” Hayl told him.

Mox grinned at the boy. “How’d you like to have a Calanya? Ten female Akasi all to yourself.”

“You don’t have to be rude,” Hayl said.

Mox laughed. “Avtac must love him.”

“What Avtac loves,” Orttal said, “is controlling people.”

Mox grinned. “You ought to hear what she says about Modernists.”

Orttal regarded him with a scowl. “I have.”

Jev said, “She can’t be that hostile toward you, Orttal, considering how much she paid for your contract.”

The Third Level made a frustrated noise. “I’m a human being. Not a commodity.”

“You’re talking into the wind,” Mox said. “You’ve been a Calani all your life. How could you live on the Outside? It’s easy to complain when you don’t have to give this up.”

“You haven’t a clue what I’m talking about,” Orttal said. “Tell me, what would you do if you were an Estate Manager?”

Mox grinned. “I’d get me a slew of gorgeous women Akasi and spend the rest of my days juggling.”

“Seriously, Mox.”

“Why would I want to Manage an Estate? It would give me a headache.”

Orttal glanced at Jev. “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” Jev said. “A Calani is all I’ve ever wanted to be.”

“I think I could do a good job,” Orttal said. “But that doesn’t matter, does it? None of us will ever get the chance to manage anything.”

“You wouldn’t be happy if you did,” Hayl said. “It’s a woman’s job. You can’t change biology.”

Orttal threw up his hands. “You are impossible.”

Hayl turned red. “Why? Because I’m happy being what I am? I don’t hate women.”

“Neither do I,” Orttal said. “What I hate is being told I’m inferior because I’m a man.”

“If men were like women,” Hayl said, “then men would be Managers. But they aren’t. Because of biology.”

“I’ll tell you how biology comes into it,” Orttal said. “Patterns of reproductive dominance permeate our social structure.”

Hayl blinked. “What?”

“He said women control sex,” Mox said.

Hayl reddened. “Is that all you think about?”

“Why shouldn’t he?” Orttal demanded. “I’ll tell you why. Because we have something women want, something they can only get from us, and they don’t like that. The more control we have over our own sexuality the more it threatens the Avtacs of Coba.”

“So what would you do?” Hayl said. “Run around fathering children everywhere? And you claim Modernism isn’t immoral.”

Orttal regarded him with exasperation. “I never said that. How can you be so gifted at Quis and so blind when it comes to patterns preset for you by society?”

“They aren’t preset,” Hayl said. “It’s the nature of womankind.”

“Womankind?” Orttal snorted. “Is that supposed to include me or what?”

“You know it does.” Mox juggled his dice. “Orttal, if we put you in charge of Varz, the Estate would fall apart. We’d be at war with Karn in a year.” He waved his hand at Kelric without missing a single die. “Just ask him about the Imperialate. Wars, wars, wars, and their Imperator is a man.”

“Actually,” Kelric said, “the first Imperator was a woman.”

Mox blinked and dropped his dice. Every head in the room turned to Kelric.

Orttal leaned forward. “A significant fraction of the Imperial leaders are men, though, aren’t they?”

“About half,” Kelric said.

“Then what do you think?” Orttal said. “Could a man manage an Estate?”

They were all watching him as if they expected him to say something profound. Since Kelric had nothing profound to offer, he just said, “Ideally, yes.”

“Ideally?” Orttal looked ready for battle. “What does that mean?”

“As far as ability goes, yes, of course a man can manage an Estate,” Kelric said.

“But?” Jev asked.

“A leader can only be effective if people are willing to follow him.”

“And you don’t think people in the Twelve Estates are,” Orttal said.

Kelric considered the thought. “It depends which Estate. In a place like Haka or Varz, no. But somewhere like Dahl, yes, I think so. Someday maybe even here, given enough time.”

Hayl gaped at him. “You really think that?”

Orttal laughed. “Don’t look so shocked.”

A tap came at the screen. Orttal went over and pulled aside the reeds, revealing a guard.

“Manager Varz is ready for the Quis session with you and Sevtar,” the guard said.

Kelric stood up. He hadn’t even realized Avtac arrived back from Karn.

Their escort took them through the Estate to an elegant chamber that topped a tower with arched windows that looked onto the sky. While the guards stood Outside, Kelric sat with Orttal at the Quis table. A moment later Avtac strode into the room, flushed as if she had come in from the raging winds of Varz. She must have just landed. She nodded to him, treating him as she always did in public, with an impersonal respect that acknowledged his Level.

Once they started the session, he forgot everything else and saw only her glorious dice. They worked on strategies to address issues that had come up during Council, a sophisticated weave of patterns designed to shift opinion to favor Varz. It required a delicate balance: too obvious, and the patterns could backfire on Avtac when she introduced them into the public net; too modest and they would have little or no effect.

The longer the session progressed, the more Kelric detected a subtle perturbation no one else seemed to notice. He wasn’t even sure how to define the effect.

That afternoon, after they returned to the Calanya, Kelric stayed in his suite and studied structures from the session. Finally he set aside his dice and went to visit Orttal. When he knocked, the Third Level called for him to enter. Kelric found him in his den, standing by a comfortable armchair. A wooden cabinet stood next to the chair, its doors closed and locked.

Orttal motioned to another armchair next to his. “Can I get you some Tanghi?”

“Thank you. But no.” Kelric sat down. “I wanted to talk to you about this morning’s session.”

Orttal settled into his chair. “An engrossing one, yes?”

“Yes. But Orttal—it felt wrong somehow.” He searched for the words. “Like one of us had played Quis with a Calani from the Old Age.”

The Third Level laughed. “I hope you don’t think I sat at dice with a dead Calani.”

“Not sat with one. Read about one.” He nodded to the wooden cabinet. “Is that where you keep your books?”

Orttal stiffened. “You seem to think Five Levels gives you the liberty to insult people.”

“If I’m wrong, I apologize.”

Orttal got up and walked to a window across the room that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. He stood silhouetted against the skyscape, watching clouds drift past the glass. “Your Quis tells me much about you, Sevtar.”

Kelric stood up. “Such as?”

Orttal turned. “Such as perhaps you understand me more than the others.”

Kelric went to stand with the Third Level. “I’ve lived in different cultures. I may see patterns that someone who grew up here misses.”

Orttal considered him. “Yet you like being a Calani.”

“In some ways.” In Miesa he had loved it. In Quis terms, his situation at Varz was even better. Without Savina, though, it all felt like dust.

“And if you knew a Calani had broken his Oath?” Orttal asked. “You are Akasi.”

“I won’t tell Avtac, if that’s what you mean.”

Orttal let out a long breath. The Third Level went over to unlock the cabinet. He withdrew a book and brought it to Kelric. “I was reading this when you knocked.”

Kelric took the book. The title, stamped in gilded letters on a suede cover, read: Legends from the Kej. Gold edged the parchment pages and the hand-drawn hieroglyphics were artwork, especially the symbol that started each page, a large glyph drawn in gilt inks, with vines curling around it and intricate borders.

“It’s gorgeous,” Kelric said. He’d be tempted to break his Oath, too, to read such a book.

“My wife, Naja, smuggled it to me on her last visit. It’s about the reign of the last Kej Queen.” Orttal returned the book to the cabinet and locked it away. “I thought I had kept it out of my Quis. I should have realized one can hide little from a Fifth Level.”

“Our Oath serves a purpose,” Kelric said. “Outside influence contaminates the Quis.”

Orttal snorted. “Maybe it should be contaminated.”

Kelric wished he knew the words to make Orttal see. It mattered to him that the Quis favored Varz: if Avtac’s Estate thrived, so did Miesa. Savina’s legacy. Against Orttal’s honed verbal skills, though, he had no chance of convincing the Third Level.

Perhaps he had an even more powerful tool. He indicated the Quis table. “Will you join me at dice?”

“Of course.”

Kelric began with structures of ancient Kej, and Orttal responded with patterns of his book. They brought in a sense of the Old Age, how Kej would have solved the problems they had tackled that morning with Avtac. At first the ancient and modern patterns developed along similar lines; Varz had remained closer in attitudes to the Old Age than any other Estate except Haka. Then Kelric extended the patterns, showing how ancient Kej solutions to modern Varz problems ultimately failed.

Finally Orttal set down his dice. “You need go no further. I understand what you’re trying to tell me.” He pushed his hand through his hair. “I’ve no desire to weaken Varz. But I am starving. I want to consume all the literature of the world yet I am forbidden to read my own name.”

Kelric surfaced from the Quis with the disorientation he often experienced after an intense session. “Perhaps if you asked to be released from your Oath—?”

“Few Managers would release even a First Level.” Bitterness edged his voice. “But yes, I asked. Avtac refused. I asked to be traded. She refused. I saturated my Quis with Modernism hoping to make her want to be rid of me. It backfired. She retaliated.”

“Retaliated? What do you mean?”

Orttal picked up one of the amber blocks he used to represent their guards. “She sent an octet for me at night. They moved me all over the Estate, never letting me sleep. Other times she refused to let me see Naja.” He touched the opal ball he used for his wife. “This visitation marriage—I am no good at it. I want to live with Naja, see her every day, wake up with her in the morning. I hate it when I can’t be with her.”

“So you gave in to Avtac?”

“Yes.” Orttal’s voice tightened. “I gave in.”

“Your Modernism patterns may be more subtle now, but they’re still there.” Kelric suspected Calani like Orttal represented the future of their world.

“We all put ourselves into the dice.” Orttal regarded him with a steady gaze. “The more powerful the Calani, the more it happens.”

34

TOPPLED NESTED TOWER

Winter blanketed Varz deep snow. Hayl looked out at drifts as high as his waist and wondered if Revi liked the desert. At least here he had Sevtar. Brilliant, strong, solid, respected by all Calani; the Fifth Level had no equal. Hayl had feared that once Sevtar assimilated into the Varz Calanya, he would tire of having a boy tag after him, preferring the sophisticated company of Orttal and the others. Yet despite his new friendships, Sevtar remained steadfast to the old.

Today frost iced the parks. Hayl’s breath turned into misty puffs as he and Sevtar sat on a bench, lacing up the soft shoes they used for running. When Sevtar rolled up the cuff of his trousers, abrasions showed around his ankle guard.

“You should tell Avtac about that,” Hayl said. “She can have your guards lined with something soft.”

Sevtar shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

Hayl tied his other shoe. “At Miesa, my first set of wrist guards didn’t fit. Savina fixed them right away.”

A snap broke the morning stillness, and Hayl looked up to see Sevtar holding a broken shoelace. The Fifth Level swore, then tied what remained of the lace and stood. “Let’s go.”

Hayl bit his lip. For that one instant he’d forgotten Savina’s death. Although Sevtar never spoke of it, Hayl knew he never stopped thinking of the late Manager.

A crew had cleared snow from the path where they ran every morning, though ice still feathered the flagstones. Sevtar set a grueling pace and Hayl soon tired, leaving the Fifth Level to sprint up a hill alone. At the top, Sevtar skidded on the ice. He fell backward and rolled down the hill, somersaulting through the snow until he piled into a grove of icefirs and hit the trunk of a tree.

“No!” Hayl plowed his way uphill, through billows of snowy powder. He found Sevtar buried in a drift, breathing in labored gasps as if he couldn’t pull in enough air. While Hayl knelt next to him, footsteps crunched behind him. He looked up to see the valets gathered around them, all wearing stiff meshes on their boots that let them walk on the snow.

Netak turned to the others. “Go get a tank of air.” While they took off, Netak crouched down and cleared the snow around Sevtar’s body. Sevtar tried to sit up, then fell back again, struggling to breathe.

Within moments a guard appeared, running toward them with an air tank. As she neared them, Hayl recognized her as Zecha, captain of the Varz Hunters. Her presence unsettled him. Three times now she had come to visit him, and the last time Avtac gave her Speaker’s Privilege.

Zecha went to Netak and tilted her head toward the group of Calani gathering at the bottom of the hill. “Keep them away. Let Doctor Shyl through as soon as she gets here.” She glanced at Hayl, her face gentling. “You go wait with the others.”

He couldn’t leave, not until he knew if Sevtar was all right. He retreated, but stopped when he moved out of Zecha’s sight. He saw her put the air cup over Sevtar’s mouth—but she didn’t switch on the tank. Although Hayl thought he was out of earshot, he clearly heard her words.

“You need air?” she murmured. “Beg for it, crooner.”

Sevtar swore and grabbed the tank, his fingers scraping across the metal. Dismayed, Hayl ran up the hill, his passage through the icefirs snapping off needles with loud cracks.

Zecha spun around. “I told you to keep away!” She switched on the tank so furtively that had he not known it was off he’d never have noticed her turn it on.

Suddenly Doctor Shyl strode past him. As she knelt next to Sevtar, he lay back, drawing in huge lungfuls of air from the tank.

Zecha walked over to Hayl and spoke in a gentler voice. “I’m sorry I shouted at you.” Looking down at him, she trailed her fingertips along his cheek. “You shouldn’t surprise me that way.”

Hayl backed away, turning so he could watch the meds help Sevtar to his feet. He wished Zecha would leave him alone.

As soon as Avtac received the message, she strode to the Calanya. She found Sevtar sitting on the bed in his suite, still breathing from the tank but otherwise apparently fine. Hayl hovered nearby, looking worried, and Doctor Shyl stood a few paces away conversing with the Speaker.

Avtac drew the doctor aside. “Why can’t he breathe?”

“Nothing is wrong with him,” Shyl said. “He told the Speaker something about the air being too thin.”

“Thin air?” Avtac asked. “As opposed to what? Fat air?”

Shyl smiled. “I didn’t ask. I gave him a sleep potion. It should calm him.”

Avtac nodded. Sevtar’s eyelids were drooping already. She waited until he lay down, then dismissed everyone from the suite. When they were alone, she sat on the bed and watched him sleep. What possessed him to careen across the ice with no care or caution? And why hadn’t he told her about the problem with his Calanya guards? It was fortunate Shyl noticed. Had he let it go much longer, the abrasions could have become infected.

She sighed. One never knew with Calani. Illogical behavior seemed innate to their nature. She touched his lips. So warm. The smell of him drew her, made her want to hold him, cradle his head in her lap, surrender to his masculine warmth.

No. Avtac stood up. Never would she let him make her weak. Never would she let him do to her what he had done to Savina.

The blizzard pounded the night like an enraged warlock. Hayl tossed in bed, unable to sleep. Bizarre fragments of nightmare flickered in his mind: desert landscapes, a quarry, Zecha in a warden’s uniform. Outside the wind shrieked and sleet battered the window. Lightning stabbed the room, followed by thunder loud enough to split Varz from the mountain. He pulled the quilt over his head.

“Hayl?” a voice asked.

He almost jumped out of bed. Then he realized it was just Sevtar standing in the dark. “Heh. Where’d you come from?”

“I’m sorry about the nightmares,” Sevtar said. “I didn’t mean to keep you awake.”

Keep him awake? Sevtar didn’t cause his dreams. “I can’t sleep either with all that noise out there.” Hayl turned on the lamp on his nightstand. “You should stay.”

“All right,” Sevtar said. “I’ll be right back.”

It surprised him to see Sevtar awake this late. The Fifth Level tired more easily now than he used to, though Hayl couldn’t see why. Nor was the accident today the first time Hayl had seen him struggle for breath.

Sevtar returned with a decanter of baiz and sat in an armchair by the bed. He poured them each a drink, baiz for himself and Tanghi laced with baiz for Hayl. While the wind roared Outside, they sat drinking and talking, covering everything from snow to politics to starships. By the time Hayl finished his drink he had forgotten the storm.

“Hmmm …” He peered into his tumbler. “Makes you float away. Wish I could do that to Zecha.”

“You and me both.”

“She asked Avtac to give me to her.”

“Give you to her?” Sevtar sounded if Hayl had said Avtac wanted to torture him. “What do you mean?”

“Kasi.” Hayl sat back against his headboard. “They set the ceremony for my fifteenth birthday.”

“Saints almighty, Hayl.” Sevtar stopped himself. “Unless—is this what you want?”

Hayl grimaced. “When I think about rolling the red die with her, I want a bath.”

“Rolling the red die?”

“Mox’s favorite subject. Sex.”

Sevtar laughed. “Ah, yes.” His smile faded. “I take it that means no, you don’t want to marry her.”

“I’d rather fall through the ice on a frozen lake.”

“Tell Avtac how you feel.”

“I tried. She never listens.” Hayl hesitated. “Could you—I mean, with you being her Akasi—”

“Yes. I’ll talk to her for you.”

Relief swept over Hayl. “Thanks.” He regarded the Fifth Level. “Why is Zecha angry at you? Why wouldn’t she turn on the air tank?”

Surprise flickered across Sevtar’s face. “How did you know that?”

“I heard her.”

“You were too far away.”

“I know. But I heard her.”

Sevtar considered him. “I’ve thought for a while that you show traces of Kyle reception.”

“What is that?”

“It means you have a few Kyle genes paired.” He paused, as if looking for the right words. “You’re like a receiver. You can pick up a little of what others feel, especially when they’re speaking or dreaming. They have to be empaths, though, to make a signal strong enough for you to register.” He tilted his head. “I’ll bet Revi is an empath. It’s probably why you two are close. Kyle genes seem more common in pure Miesan stock.”

Hayl sat up straight. “Does that mean Zecha is an empath?”

“Hardly.”

“You said I could hear what empaths think. And I hear her all the time. So she must be one.”

Sevtar stared at him. “Good gods, you’re right.”

Kastora pushed open the tavern door and walked inside with Ixpar. At such a late hour, the youth who usually sang on the stage had gone home. Ixpar indicated a booth in one corner. After the waiter took their orders, she said, “Did you find anything?”

Kastora rested her arms on the wooden tabletop. “I dug up every record of a Fifth Level. In the entire Modern Age only two others besides Sevtar Varz have existed.”

The waiter reappeared with their mugs of ale. Ixpar waited until he left, then said, “What were their contracts?”

“After the earthquake of two hundred thirty-two destroyed Hahvna Estate, the survivors went to Ahkah. So the Hahvna Fourth Level became an Ahkah Fifth.” Kastora took a swallow of ale. “In the year five hundred seven, a Bahvla Manager fell in love with a Varz Fourth and brought him to Bahvla as a Fifth. The price of his contract was the Bahvla Calanya.”

Ixpar’s eyebrows went up. “She agreed to that?”

“And more. Varz took all profits from the Bahvla lumber industry for the next century.”

Ixpar let out a whistle. “What about in the Old Age?”

“During the Desert Wars, Kej captured a Karn Third and held him prisoner as a Fourth. He escaped and received asylum from Dahl as a Fifth.” Kastora set down her ale. “A few centuries later an Ahkah Manager kidnapped a Viasa Fourth and made him her Akasi.”

Ixpar spoke dryly. “I suppose I could resort to abduction.”

“Are you really thinking of Fifth?”

“We have to do something. Varz is too strong.”

“The only living Fourth is Mentar,” Kastora pointed out. “He’s already in your Calanya. You would have to arrange for a Third to go to another Estate, stay there long enough to soak up its Quis, and then come here. Even that would do no good. The price of a Fifth Level would wipe out Karn.”

“Varz is already wiping us out.” Ixpar clenched her fist around her mug. “It is unjust. Sevtar has reached the highest Level a Calani can attain, become a legend, had songs written about him, yet he is denied happiness.”

“His wife died. Of course he’s unhappy.”

“It’s more than that.”

“How can you know that?”

“It’s in the Quis.”

“You’re the only one who sees it.”

“It’s there.”

Kastora leaned forward. “You know what you need?”

“What?”

“An Akasi. Someone to keep your mind off Avtac’s husbands.” Kastora thought of the tavern singer. His voice stirred her heart and his slender physique stirred the rest of her. “A warm fellow to curl up with at night. It settles a woman.”

Ixpar laughed. “You should see your face. Gone courting, heh?”

“Of course not.” In truth, she hadn’t yet summoned the courage to make her interest known to the singer. “A Minister, however, should have an Akasi.”

Ixpar shrugged. “There is no Calani I wish to wed.”

The ancient dilemma, Kastora thought. The law required a Manager to declare vows with a Calani, the higher the Level the better, particularly for the Minister. Most chose a Second or Third Level from another Estate, often arranging the marriage after seeing the man only once or twice.

“Jahlt probably felt the same way,” Kastora said. “But look how well her arrangement with Mentar worked out.”

“I’m not ready to take an Akasi. I’m only twenty-seven, for wind’s sake.”

Kastora downed her ale. “Well, someday.”

“Someday,” Ixpar said.

Standing in the snow-covered park under an icefir, Kelric watched Garith. The Second Level sat about twenty meters away, relaxed on a high-backed bench with his eyes closed and his face tipped back to savor the winter sun. A tall man, though not as tall as Avtac, he had classic features, with the blue eyes and yellow hair so rare and so prized among the northern Estates. Although Kelric knew he looked much younger than Garith, the two of them were actually the same age, in their late forties.

Kelric walked over to him. “May I join you?”

Garith opened his eyes. “No.”

Although Kelric inwardly winced, he plowed ahead anyway. “Garith, we need to talk. This affects our Quis.”

“Talk about what?” Garith stood up. “I never say a word about her boys in the city. What good would it do? When she brought that First Level here I kept my mouth shut. She got bored and traded him to Shazorla. Now you’re here and you won’t be leaving. So what do you expect me to say? That after all these years, I like being pushed aside like an old dice pouch?” He shook his head. “I have no wish to talk to you.” He turned then and walked away.

Damn. So much for his diplomacy.

Kelric went back to his suite and stood at a floor-to-ceiling window in his bedroom watching clouds nudge the glass. The thick pane was set into a cliff that plunged down until it disappeared in the mountains below. If he could just step out …

Stop it, Kelric told himself. What would Roca do without her father? Her next visit wasn’t until tomorrow and her absence left him empty and lonely.

Kelric settled into his favorite armchair and dozed, waking at intervals to check at the tall clock across the room with its swinging pendulum. The afternoon passed in numbing dullness.

Toward evening, someone pushed aside the screen of his suite. He opened his eyes to see Hayl in the arched doorway.

“Yes?” Kelric asked.

The youth hesitated. “I got worried when you missed dinner.”

Kelric stayed slouched in his chair. “I wasn’t hungry.”

Silence stretched between them, and Hayl looked around as if searching for a way to cheer Kelric up. When he saw Kelric’s boots by the window, he smiled. “I figured out how to open the cliff windows. They have pattern locks worked into the carvings on their frames.”

Kelric sat up straighter. “Hayl, it’s not safe.” Somehow the boy had picked up his interest in the windows. On some sides of the Estate, the outer walls were cut straight from a cliff and decorated with bas-relief. A person could conceivably climb out to a ledge and creep along the wall to the city using projections for handholds. Of course they could also fall, a drop of nearly a kilometer.

However, in this region of the Calanya, no decorations graced the sheer wall of stone that dropped into the clouds. Kelric had no doubt the reason was historical, dating from the Old Age when Managers often held Calani against their will. The architecture still served its purpose, trapping him.

“I don’t want you to open the windows,” he said.

“Not even the ones in my suite?” Hayl asked. “They just open onto the parks.”

Kelric couldn’t help but smile. “You figured those out too?”

“They were easy.”

Hayl’s knack with such puzzles impressed him. A locksmith had designed the mechanisms with tiny bars and knobs you had to push, pull, and turn in patterns that seemed random to Kelric. Some quirk of Hayl’s brain allowed him to solve the pattern every time.

“Just be careful,” Kelric said. The drop from Hayl’s windows to the parks was only a few meters, but it could still cause injury. “Don’t hang out of them.”

“I won’t,” Hayl promised.

After the boy left, Kelric sat back and stared at the ceiling. It had been several days since he talked to Avtac about Hayl’s kasi ceremony. That attempt had ended with a resounding failure. He had to give it at least one more try.

He went to find the Taks.

Avtac waited until the Taks withdrew from the den in her private suite. Then she said, “I hope this is important, Sevtar. I have a lot of work to do.”

Kelric detested sparring with her, but he had given Hayl a promise. He stood facing her across the expanse of the desk, where she sat in her big chair.

“It’s Hayl,” he said.

“This better not be about his kasi ceremony again. That matter is none of your affair.”

He leaned forward, his hands braced on the desk. “Can’t you see how he feels about it? You’ll ruin his life.”

Avtac took off her reading glasses. “I am tired of this vendetta you have against Captain Zecha. It is jealousy, yes? Right now you are the most important person to that boy. You don’t want to lose him to Zecha.”

“This has nothing to do with Zecha and me. Hayl doesn’t love her. He doesn’t even like her. And he’s a child, for wind’s sake. He’s too young to be anyone’s kasi.”

Annoyance edged her voice. “Maybe if there weren’t so many ‘modern’ men today, women wouldn’t have to seek half-grown youths to find an unsullied mate.” She considered him. “But then, I’m not telling you anything new.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

She put her glasses back on. “You should know. You’ve been with half the Managers on Coba.”

He scowled. “So find yourself a ‘cleaner’ Akasi and leave me alone.”

“You should be grateful I was willing to overlook your past.” She got up and walked around the desk to him. “This isn’t Miesa. Savina may have let you meddle in Estate business, but I will tolerate no such interference.”

Kelric felt as if she had kicked him in the stomach. “Let Savina be.”

Avtac spoke in a gentler voice. “I don’t mean to hurt you.” She laid her hand on his arm. “I realize you cannot help your nature.”

It was too much. Kelric snapped up his arm to throw off her hand. With no warning or reason, his enhanced strength kicked in and he literally flung her into a bookshelf. As the shelves toppled, she jumped away and smacked her palm against a com on the wall.

Gods no, Kelric thought. He stepped toward her. “Avtac, I didn’t mean—”

She grabbed a beam from the fallen shelf. “Stay back.”

Combat mode on, Bolt thought.

What the hell? Mode off! he thought.

Running feet pounded behind him, and he spun around to see his valets and also the Calanya escort. As Netak drew his stunner, Kelric struck the gun out of his hand, his speed enhanced by the malfunctioning Bolt, which for some bizarre reason had interpreted a domestic quarrel as a combat situation. Could he actually be that traumatized at Varz? The combination of his neurological damage with stress must have pushed his already erratic biomech even further out of kilter.

The escort tried to stun him, but despite the damage to his systems, his hydraulics kept him moving and his biomech synthesized an antidote. Finally the Taks managed to pin him against the wall. While he struggled, Qahotra appeared with a straitjacket. They wrapped it around his torso and fastened him into it with his arms pulled across his chest.

“Take him into the bedroom,” Avtac said. “Be careful. I don’t want him hurt.”

Combat mode off, Bolt thought.

No! Kelric thought. Reactivate! Now, when he needed Bolt’s help, the damn node deserted him.

The Taks half carried, half dragged him into the bedroom. As they held him down on the bed, a nurse tried to force a pill down his throat. When he spat it out, Doctor Shyl bent over him with a syringe.

Avtac grabbed the doctor’s arm. “What is that?”

Shyl showed her the syringe. “It injects the medicine into his blood. It’s much faster than a potion.”

“I won’t have you experimenting on him.”

“It’s safe,” Shyl assured her.

Kelric redoubled his efforts to escape. With the Taks holding him down, however, Shyl managed to administer the shot. In just moments, his muscles went lax and the voices became muffled, as if he had sunk underwater.

Avtac leaned over him. “He’s calmer now.”

Shyl’s face appeared. “What set him off?”

“He’s always high-strung,” Avtac said. The rest of her answer faded into blackness.

When Kelric awoke, groggy and disoriented, twilight filled the room. A blur sat on the bed and spoke with Avtac’s voice. “Can I get you anything?”

He wet his lips. “Water.”

Lifting his head, she tilted a glass to his mouth. “It will be fine,” she murmured. “The medicine will help you.”

“Not sick,” he mumbled. Then he passed out again.

The next time he awoke, sunlight streamed through the windows. Someone had removed the strait jacket and bathed him. Turning his head, he saw an orderly sitting in a chair by the bed.

She looked up from her book and smiled. “Feeling better? I’ll call Manager Varz.”

Before Kelric could protest, the orderly had commed Avtac. The Manager appeared in just minutes and dismissed the orderly. She sat then on the bed and smiled at Kelric. “I’m glad you are feeling better.”

Better from what? Her emotional abuse? Regardless of how he felt about Avtac, though, he hadn’t meant to attack her. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “We will speak no more about it.”

Why the hell not? Did she think the problem would vanish if they remained silent? Even so, he said nothing. Silence offered his only defense against words that cut deeper than steel. Anger edged his thoughts, mixing with the Quis patterns in his mind. He tried to suppress it, to keep his rage out of his dice. If he didn’t take care, his Quis could scorch Varz, Miesa, and the Twelve Estates.

It came as only a glimpse, a flash of yellow hair high on top of the icy windbreak that surrounded the Calanya parks. Kelric almost called Savina’s name—and then realized the distant figure was one of his guards. He turned his head and continued his walk through the snow-deep park, uncaring where he went.

“… all right?” a voice said. “Sevtar, by the winds, what the hell is wrong?”

Kelric stopped. Orttal stood in front of him, silhouetted against an overcast sky. The Third Level started to speak, then stopped, looking past him. Turning, Kelric saw the juggler Mox running to where Qahotra stood in the next park. He skidded to a stop in front of the Calanya captain and waved his hands as he talked to her. She listened, then took off in a spring for the Calanya buildings.

Kelric and Orttal walked over to the juggler. “What’s going on?” Orttal asked.

“It’s Hayl.” Mox gasped, breathing hard from his run. “I didn’t even know he was playing with it—then he leaned out—he saw a bird or something—I don’t know what.”

Not again, Kelric thought. Hayl’s game with the windows in his suite had continued unabated. Even if Hayl had fallen, though, he couldn’t be too badly hurt. Had the boy been in pain, Kelric knew he would have felt it.

“I told him to get back inside,” Mox said. “I told him.”

“Mox, slow down,” Orttal said. “What happened?”

“He fell. Fell.”

“Is he all right?” Kelric asked.

“In my suite—he figured it out—I don’t know how. I didn’t even know those cliff windows opened.”

Kelric’s sense of calm shattered. “The what windows?”

“The cliff.” Mox’s voice cracked. “He fell over the cliff.”

No. It couldn’t be true. If Hayl died he would know. Kelric took off for the Calanya, his mind creating nightmare images of Hayl plummeting down the mountains, as if he saw his own son hurtling to his death.

When he reached Mox’s suite, he pushed past the crowd in the door arch. Avtac was already inside the bedroom and Zecha had gone to the tall window that stood open like a door of glass. Chill wind whispered past it as a cloud seeped inside, curling tendrils of mist around her.

Kelric walked to the window, past Zecha. He stood in the opening and looked at the cliff plunging down from his feet. Hayl, he thought. Come back. His mind conjured up unwanted scenes: Hayl skidding on the cliff, Hayl tearing through trees, Hayl caught in a cage of roots.

Zecha spoke in a low voice. “He told me yesterday he wanted to impress you.” Incredibly, tears showed on her face. “And now he’s dead.” She took his arm to draw him back into the room. In the same moment that he pulled away from her, she dropped her hand, her face numb, as if she didn’t care whether he fell or not. As a result, he gave his pull more momentum than he needed, lost his balance—and stumbled out the window.

“No!” Avtac shouted. “Stop him!”

The sky careened past Kelric as he toppled into the abyss of air. His biomech toggled on and he grabbed the sill as he dropped past it, yanking to an arm-wrenching halt. With hydraulic-driven strength, he vaulted back into the room.

Dimly he heard people shouting and felt them pulling him away from the window. The shock of Hayl’s death together with his biomech-enhanced drive of adrenaline kicked him into combat mode. He lashed out with his fists, catching a guard, then another, then Zecha. His escort kept firing their stunners, until he sank to his knees on the floor.

As his adrenaline calmed, Bolt took him out of combat mode. Kelric looked up to see aides and Calani staring at him in disbelief. He stared back, too stunned by his own reaction to move.

Night gathered in Avtac’s office. She stood alone in the dark, gazing out a tall window at the stars.

How did it happen? So few cliff windows even opened and those that did locked with intricate patterns. Only a trained smith who knew the combination could release them. Hayl could never have solved a puzzle that would stymie even her, the Manager of Varz. Harsh, bitter luck had caught him. Somehow he’d stumbled on the sequence, a fluke that cost his life and almost took Sevtar’s as well.

Why did Sevtar jump? Why did he change his mind? Why did he go berserk? She still felt the horror of seeing him lunge to his death, still felt that terrible sense of loss that hit her like an avalanche. After he vaulted back into the room she had wanted to sob with relief.

She was losing control.

It was unacceptable. She couldn’t let Sevtar take control over her life this way.

Zecha claimed he destroyed everything he came near. Doctor Shyl believed he suffered from some traumatic stress disorder complicated by grief and loneliness. What fucking trauma? He lived a life of luxury. He showed no signs of grief. And how could he be lonely? She spent almost every night with him.

Her desk com buzzed. Avtac flipped the switch. “Yes?”

“Captain Zecha is here, ma’am,” an aide said.

Avtac turned on the lamp, letting her office fill with harsh light. “Send her in.”

A muted Zecha entered and bowed to her. “My greetings, Manager Varz.”

“How are you?” Avtac asked.

“I’d like to return to duty.”

Avtac knew work would heal Zecha better than sitting in Med. “All right.”

The captain hesitated. “The searchers—have they—”

Avtac wished she knew words to console the captain for her loss. “They haven’t found his body yet. Be assured, they will keep looking, even in the storm.”

Zecha nodded. “And Sevtar?”

Avtac went to the window and stared out at the night. “Still in Med. Shyl felt it best to keep him sedated until we know how to treat him.”

In a soft, ugly voice, Zecha said, “Is he worth it, Avtac? Are his Five Levels worth the grief they’ve brought you?”

Avtac continued to stare out the window. She answered to no one and that included the captain of her Hunters. Was Sevtar worth the grief of losing Savina and Hayl? She would never allow anyone to know her answer to that question.

Yes. He was worth it. Nothing would ever convince her to let him go.

Nothing.

In the freezing darkness, thick flakes of snow whirled about a gnarled tree that clung to the cliff face, its roots buckling out of cracks to form a basket. Hayl huddled within its precarious embrace, shivering violently, starting a slide of pebbles that fell and fell and fell, their clatter fading in the wail of the blizzard. He listened to the wind shriek, knowing that at any moment his added weight on the tree could rip its roots away from the cliff.

The search parties would look for his body at the base of the cliff. Not here. He had no food. No water. No protection. No chance of rescue.

He could only wait to die.

35

QUEEN’S GAMBLE

Jevrin Karn, alias Jevrin Varz, flew his rider on instruments through the blizzard. The route he took down from Varz hugged perilously close to the cliff, hiding him from the few other craft also out in the storm.

The limbs of a tree leapt into view and he barely managed to sheer away from the branches in time. Incredibly, as the tree careened past the windshield he saw what looked like a boy clinging to its roots.

Impossible. He couldn’t have seen a person. And yet, the image of the boy’s terrified face stayed with him, until finally he circled back. By folding in the rider’s wing slats, he managed to pull closer to the tree—and this time he distinctly saw a figure huddled within its roots.

Jevrin swore. How in a dice cheater’s hell did a boy get out there? More important, how did Jevrin get him out? Although the rider had extra airfoils to stabilize it in high winds, putting it on autopilot during a storm would be madness. Unfortunately, if he went back to Varz for a properly equipped rescue party, they would catch with a rider he had no business flying, with a cargo he had no business carrying. He could reach Karn, but the boy would probably be torn away from the cliff long before he brought back help from that far away.

With a prayer to the wind gods, Jevrin locked in the autopilot, jumped out of his seat, and ran to the back of the cabin. As he grabbed a hook and rope from the locker, the rider pitched like a Lasa drunkard. He made it to the pilot’s seat in time to steady the craft. He tied one end of the rope to the chair and the other to the hook, and then flew back to the tree.

When Jevrin sighted the boy, he hit the autopilot and ran to the hatch, playing out the rope so it pulled taut from his hand to his seat. As he heaved open the hatch, wind rushed at him, threatening to knock him over. Hanging on to the rope with one hand, he hurled the hook into the night.

The throw went wild, nowhere near the boy. Jevrin yanked it back in, and then scrambled for the pilot’s seat as the rider swerved and shuddered. Coming around for another try, he changed the camber of the airfoils and the arch of the wing slats, trying to stabilize the craft.

This time when he heaved out the hook, it flew through the blizzard and caught in the tree roots. The boy grabbed at it—

And the entire tree ripped away from the cliff.

A scream tore through the night. In the same instant, the rider bucked and Jevrin had to jump for the pilot’s seat. He had no time to see if the boy was hanging onto the rope that had pulled taut out the hatch. As soon as he regained control of the craft, he spun around and hauled on the rope.

Miraculously, a wildly tousled crown of curls appeared in the hatch—and dropped from sight again. Jevrin swore and pulled harder, frantic. No one could hold on for long while the rider pitched in the storm.

He kept pulling, struggling to haul in the boy. The rope slipped in his hands and he almost lost control. With a gasp of desperation, he gave an extra yank—and heaved a body into the cabin. The boy sprawled across the floor, breathing in huge sobs. Just before Jevrin whirled back to the controls, he saw what gleamed on the boy’s arms.

Calanya bands.

As Jevrin struggled to steady the rider, he heard the hatch slam closed, leaving an abrupt silence. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the Calani huddled against the hull. With tears streaming down his face, the boy mouthed two simple words: Thank you.

Jevrin nodded awkwardly, wondering if his guest would feel so grateful when he found out his situation. He couldn’t take the Calani to Varz; it would incriminate him as a spy. He had no choice but to bring the youth to Karn, making the rescue into an abduction.

Jevrin indicated the copilot’s seat. “You can sit here.”

The boy rose unsteadily to his feet in the pitching rider and stumbled to the seat. As he sat down, Jevrin peered at his armbands. “Hayl? Is that your name?”

The Calani nodded.

“How did you get out there, Hayl?”

When Hayl pantomimed a fall, Jevrin realized he must be the Calani that rumors claimed went over the cliff. Relief swept him. No one would guess he’d kidnapped Hayl. As far as anyone knew, the youth had plummeted to his death.

Hayl pointed to the altimeter registering their drop in altitude, then gave Jevrin a puzzled look and motioned upward.

“We’re not going to Varz,” Jevrin said.

The boy touched the Varz insignia on his wrist guard.

“I know,” Jevrin said. “I’m sorry, Hayl. But you aren’t going back.”

Hidden among jutting crags, Ixpar’s rider crouched in an abandoned quarry. The shadow of a second craft slipped through the night and settled next to her craft like a giant bird. When the hatch of the rider opened and Jevrin stepped out in the wind, Ixpar opened her hatch and joined him.

Jevrin bowed to her. “Minister Karn.”

She nodded, concerned by his lateness. “Did you have trouble getting here?”

He told her about the Calani he had rescued. “I brought him with me.”

They climbed inside the darkened cabin of his rider and he set screens over the windshield, then turned on the lights. The Calani sat in the copilot’s seat watching them with large eyes, his gaze wary. Lithe and slender, he reminded Ixpar of a hazelle colt.

Jevrin presented her to the boy, respecting the custom that gave a Calani social rank above even a Minister. “Hayl, this is Ixpar Karn.”

Hayl stared at her, then turned to his rescuer.

“I’m from Karn,” Jevrin said.

Hayl pointed to the Varz badge on Jevrin’s uniform.

“I know,” Jevrin said. “But I work for Karn.”

The boy gave him a look that plainly said traitor. He turned away from them both and stared straight ahead, gripping the arms of his seat.

Laying a hand on Jevrin’s shoulder, Ixpar tilted her head toward the hatch. He switched off the lights and they stepped back out into the wind, where they could talk in private.

“You have news?” Ixpar asked.

He reached inside the hatch and took an object from where he had lashed it to a bulkhead. Ixpar recognized his cargo; her newly formed ArmsGuild was also making rifles.

She tested the gun’s balance. “What do they say is its purpose?”

“To hunt,” he said. “It could be true. The winter this year was worse than usual. Lack of game makes the big cats desperate. They’re even coming into the city.”

The strain in his voice concerned Ixpar. “Is Varz in danger?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

She watched his drawn face. “What is it?”

“They had trouble in the Calanya, something with the Fifth Level.”

Ixpar tensed. “Go on.”

“I’m not sure what happened, but he’s in Med.” Jevrin shook his head. “Rumors are flying through the guards. It isn’t pretty, and it’s getting worse. Apparently now they’re ‘treating’ him with electroshock therapy.”

Ixpar felt like a band pulled too far. So it was true, the ugly hints she picked up in the Quis. Her advisers claimed she imagined it, but she knew better. “Avtac has no right.”

Jevrin met her gaze. “Sevtar is her Akasi. She has every right.”

Ixpar knew no Estate would support her if she challenged the Akasi Law of Ownership, which should have been banished to the history scrolls long ago. The Managers would never tolerate such an intrusion into their private lives.

Ixpar cocked the rifle and braced it against her shoulder.

“Raise arms against Varz,” Jevrin said, “and every Estate on Coba will be set against you.”

She sighted on a boulder. “Varz invented the rifle. Not Karn.”

“If you kidnap Sevtar, the Council will hunt you down. You’ll start a war.”

Her grip on the rifle tightened. How could she, who presumed to lead a world, think to destroy a peace that had lasted a thousand years?

She lowered the gun. “No one will support me if I challenge Avtac over this. No trade exists for a Sixth Level. If I take him by force, I start a war I can’t win.”

“I’ve tried to think of a solution.” Jevrin spread his hands. “I don’t see any.”

“Do you know the third passage from Roaz?”

“Something about virtues, isn’t it?”

“‘I seek three virtues,’” Ixpar said. “‘The strength to face my enemy, the courage to face my fears, and the wisdom to face my failures.’”

“Which do you seek now?”

She handed him the gun. “The one Roaz missed. The brains to find an answer.”

Stahna Varz, Successor to the Varz Manager, set the letter on Avtac’s desk. “This came today from Karn.”

Avtac glanced up from her papers. The letter looked, from its thin size, like the usual request for verification of Varz attendance at Council. “You have authority to respond to Ministry communications.”

Stahna spoke quietly. “Not this one.”

Avtac picked up the letter. “What is it?”

“An offer for Sevtar’s contract.”

“Are you making a joke, Stahna?”

“No.”

“So Ixpar Karn is making a joke. A childish one.” Avtac pushed the letter across the desk. “Throw it away.”

“Perhaps you should read it first.”

Avtac considered her. Then she opened the letter. The message consisted of one sentence.

She read it.

And read it again.

Avtac took up a quill and parchment. The note she wrote was brief. She rolled it into a scroll, tied it with a strong, sealed it in wax, and handed it to Stahna.

“Send this to Karn,” she said.

All of Karn watched the flock of windriders land. People peered out of towers, climbed up on housetops, scaled every wall of every building of the city. Like vines growing fresh on the roofs, spreading leaves in a profusion of life, the people crowded out to watch. After today, Coba would change forever.

A Sixth Level was coming to Karn.

Ixpar waited in the Hall of Teotec, watching from a window above the airfield as the Karn escort disembarked from the central rider. A tall figure, robed and cowled in black, stepped down. The escort walked with him across the tarmac and crossed the gardens outside the Estate. When they disappeared from view, she left the window and faced the great double doors of the Hall.

Moments later the doors swung open and a retinue swept in, followed by a double column of aides. The Calanya escort entered next, with the cowled man in its center.

Suddenly it seemed to Ixpar that the Hall would burst with people. With a motion of her raised hand, she dismissed everyone: retinues, aides, guards. They looked at her in consternation, but when she met their gazes with silence they left.

So she stood alone, on the dais in the great Hall where the Council had convened for two millennia. At the far end of the Hall the robed figure watched her. When he pushed back his cowl everything seemed to stop; the winds no longer blew, the dice no longer rolled, and her heart ceased its beat.

Incredibly, at first he looked no older than on that day his ship made its flaming descent into the mountains above Dahl. Then she saw the gray in his hair, the dulled sheen of his skin.

Kelric.

He walked down the Hall, his cloak billowing out behind his body. She drank in the sight of him, still so familiar after so many years. He climbed the dais and came to the Circle, never smiling, never taking his gaze from her face. When he stepped down into the Circle, his eyes were level with hers. The Oath waited for their voices to give it life, to raise it to a power greater than ever before known.

Ixpar spoke. “For Karn and for Coba, do you enter the Circle to give your Oath?”

“Yes.” The burr of his accent was still strong.

A chill ran up her back. “Do you swear to keep forever the discipline of the Calanya? To hold my Estate above all else, as you hold in your hands and mind the future of Karn?”

“Yes.”

“Do you swear, on penalty of your life, that your loyalty is to Karn and only to Karn?”

His impassive expression never changed. “Yes.”

“In return for your Oath, I vow that for the rest of your life you will be provided for as befits a Calani.” Silently, she added: No one will ever hurt you again. On penalty of my life, I swear it.

Finally, she spoke the question she had waited half her life to ask. “Will you accept the bands of an Akasi?”

When he said nothing, only looked at her, Ixpar died inside. Fumbling, she reached into her pocket for the other armbands, those with no Akasi inscription.

“Yes,” Kelric said.

It was one word, one sound, but it had the power to change a world. She swallowed, then put back the armbands and took a pair out of her other pocket. Akasi bands. She slid them onto his arms, making them the sixth pair he wore.

“Kelric Sevtar Karn,” she said. “You are now a Sixth Level Calani of Karn.”

For a long moment he just looked at her. Then he spoke in a husky voice. “What price a Sixth Level?”

Silence echoed in the Hall. Her words fell into it like stones. “The rule of a world.”

Part 6

KARN

36

SUNSKY BRIDGE DENIED

Ixpar drummed her fingers on her desk, wondering what demented ancient had thought up the custom that made a Manager wait half her wedding night before going to her Akasi. Did Kelric really need all that time to prepare? It seemed more likely he would get bored and go to sleep.

She got up and paced around the office until she came to the mirror. She hardly recognized her reflection; the unfamiliar lace blouse and velvet pants were foreign to her usual plain trousers and shirt. She had freed her hair from its braid, letting it fall to her waist. Tendrils curled around her cheeks.

Would he think her attractive? Was she? The mirror just showed Ixpar. She had no idea if her appearance pleased. It had never occurred to her to worry about it. Beauty didn’t rank on the list of qualifications for a Minister.

No, not Minister. Manager. All her life she had taken for granted that she would rule Coba. Now the title was gone, for her and for all future generations of Karn. Would history curse her for what she gave to Varz? When she and Kelric were buried, what would it matter that a Sixth Level had existed?

It matters, Ixpar thought.

She had wrestled with her decision. Who truly ruled Coba: Minister or Quis? In the past those two choices had been the same. Now the patterns were in upheaval, re-formed in ways no one yet understood. The Quis of a Sixth Level combined with the hidden Memory of Karn: they would form a power never before known on Coba. Kelric’s legacy would survive for millennia. But could it swamp even the might of a Varz Ministry?

Ixpar didn’t know the answer. Faced with that uncertainty, with Kelric’s situation at Varz, and with the danger of his growing rage in the Quis, she had made the best decision she could. Only history would know if she had chosen the right one.

She picked up an amberwood box from her desk and lifted its polished lid. A statue nestled inside, an althawk carved from wing-ivory. She had commissioned Karn’s most renowned carver to make it ten days ago, when she learned Kelric would come to her Estate.

The clock on the wall chimed. Ixpar jumped, startled by its announcement that Night’s Midhour had arrived. Gift in hand, she left the office and went to her groom.

The Akasi suite was dark. Kelric’s dinner sat untouched in the dining room and the bed was empty. Ixpar wondered if the escort had somehow made the absurd mistake of taking him to the wrong suite. Then she saw a trickle of light in a hall. She followed it and found him sitting in a dimly lit alcove.

“Kelric?” she asked.

He didn’t look at her, he just stood up and walked past her into the hallway. A few more steps and he entered the bedroom. Sitting on the bed, he began to unlace his shirt.

Ixpar watched from the door arch. “You are so silent.”

He finally looked at her. “I wasn’t under the impression that talk was what you wanted.”

No. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. “Would you prefer to be alone?”

“Yes,” he said.

She suddenly felt ludicrous, an ex-Minister dressed up in silly clothes. “I will call for the escort. They can show you to your Calanya suite.”

For the first time a response flickered across his face. Relief.

“Before you go—” She swallowed. “Would you answer a question?”

He said nothing, just waited, and it made the asking all the more difficult. But she had to know. “Why did you accept my Akasi bands?”

He spoke in an emotionless voice. “You paid a high price for your Sixth Level. Obviously you expected more than Quis in return.”

Ixpar inwardly reeled. Yet what else should she have expected? What made her think that after all he had suffered he would want to lie with a virtual stranger? Why should he? It was only she who had harbored a secret love for half her life.

After he left, she set her gift on the nightstand and then sat on the bed with her head buried in her hands.

Hayl set his octahedron next to Bahr’s cube. “My game.”

“Pah,” the Quis Wizard grumbled. “Aren’t you supposed to meet an escort?”

“Ai! I forgot.” Hayl scooped up his dice and hurried to the entrance of his suite, trailed by Bahr. They found his guards Outside talking to the Karn Calanya escort.

Captain Eb of the Calanya escort bowed to Hayl. “Shall we go?”

Hayl nodded uneasily. His own escort could take Bahr to her suite. But he accompanied the Calanya escort with misgiving. He feared Ixpar meant to put him in her Calanya as a prelude to forcing a Karn Oath on him.

When Hayl had first refused to play Quis at Karn, Ixpar seemed to understand. He had given his Oath to Varz. He soon grew restless, though, until finally he agreed to sit at Outsider Quis with Bahr. The gambler didn’t seem like a real Calani. He wondered now if Ixpar had intended those games to soften his resistance.

He tried to resent his abductors, but it became harder as time passed. He’d never met anyone like Ixpar Karn, who had Avtac’s power and Savina’s humanity. If Avtac found out he was here, she would be within her rights to call a Council Tribunal. They would “rescue” him and punish Karn, probably with fines, tariffs, and embargoes. Worse, Karn would lose influence in the Quis. Despite his Varz Oath, he had no wish to see harm come to Ixpar. Besides, as long as he remained “dead,” Zecha couldn’t touch him.

The escort led him through unfamiliar halls—and they stopped in front of two huge portals with gold handles. The Karn Calanya. When Eb opened the doors, he balked.

“It’s all right,” the captain said. “We’re only visiting.”

Hayl stayed put. He couldn’t resist looking Inside, though. Light slanted through stained-glass windows in the common room, making patterns of color on the hard wood floor. The serenity drew him. When Eb opened the door wider, he ventured forward. Some of the Calani glanced up and nodded, then went back to their dice.

For some reason Eb urged him to an archway, where she tapped at the screen. A moment later a man drew aside the screen— and Hayl’s mouth fell open.

The man smiled, holding up his hand to invite Hayl into his suite. As soon as they were alone, Hayl said, “Sevtar! What are you doing here? Winds, you’ve got six bands. Six.” He closed his mouth as the import of it hit him.

Six Levels.

“So it’s true.” Sevtar watched him with a gentle gaze. “You’re alive.”

“A tree caught me.”

“Gods, Hayl.” Sevtar’s voice cracked as they embraced. “It’s good to see you.” He set Hayl back from him and smiled, a drop of water glistening in his eye. “Will you play dice with me?”

Almost giddy with seeing him, Hayl pulled off his pouch.

It wasn’t until long afterward that he realized just how thoroughly he had broken his Oath.

37

THE BRIDGE OF OLONTON

Summer in Karn lasted longer than in the upper ranges. Autumn gusted with chill winds and the winter snows came softly, wafting from the sky. Spring unfurled in a multitude of purple, pink, and blue blossoms on the plumberry vines. Kelric watched the seasons from his suite, where the interplay of sunshine and shadow in the rooms shifted with a grace that spoke eloquently of the architects who had built this, the first Estate.

On a morning in early spring, he walked across the parks to a secluded lake far from the Calanya. Sitting on a knoll that overlooked the water, he bowed his head. The tears came slowly at first, running down his cheeks. He cried in silence, finally releasing his grief from the prison he had built around his heart in Varz and slowly dismantled as the seasons in Karn passed. He sat by the lake and wept in the gilded afternoon.

Ixpar sat by a window in her study, warmed in a pool of sunlight. While she ate her midday meal, she went through the last of the Ministry documents still at Karn, filing them to send to Varz. It had taken well over a year to shift the Ministry, but soon the transition would be complete.

She lifted a page off the pile. This was the conclusion, the final document she had signed as Minister. It wasn’t world-shaking, simply a pardon for a young man in the Haka prison, a bookkeeper in Compound Two. Ched Viasa. She wondered how he would feel if he knew he was the last person touched by the reign of Karn.

An aide tapped at the door arch. “Ma’am? Captain Eb would like to see you.”

“Send her in.” Ixpar stretched her arms, wondering what Eb wanted. She had scheduled no Quis sessions today, feeling a need to be alone while she concluded her final acts as Minister.

Eb entered and bowed. “Sevtar wishes to see you, ma’am.”

A ticklefly fluttered in Ixpar’s stomach. “Very well.”

While the captain went for him, Ixpar paced a bit, then stopped by a window and watched children playing in a courtyard below her suite. Kelric had never before sought her companionship. He sat at dice with her and played a miraculous Quis like none she had ever known, but that remained their only contact. She felt no closer to him now than the day he had taken his Karn Oath.

“Ixpar?”

She turned with a start. He stood in the archway, glimmering in the sunlight like his Coban namesake, the god of the dawn. Her voice tied itself into knots and left her mute. Watching him, she again felt the guilt that came every time she remembered how little success she had so far in gaining custody of his daughter for him from Varz.

Kelric came over to her. “I wanted to tell you.”

“Tell me?”

He hesitated. “About that night—”

“Night?” So close to him now, she found herself incapable of coming up with intelligent responses.

“In the Akasi suite.”

“The Akasi suite.”

“About the—you see, what—ai, Ixpar, I don’t know how to do this. I am no good with words.”

She thought of her sparkling responses in the past minute. “Right now, neither am I.”

He smiled. “The infamous Orator of Karn is tongue-tied?”

His expression caught her off guard, a full smile, not his usual slight curve of the lips. His teeth flashed, lighting his entire face. It made it even harder for her to say what had to be said. “It was wrong for me to push the Akasi bands on you. If you wish to be only Calani, I will release you from your vow.”

“Ixpar, no. That wasn’t what I meant.” He took her hands. “You were so beautiful that night, a warrior goddess in velvet and lace. And I’ve never told you how much I appreciated your gift of the ivory althawk.”

A curious sense came over her then, as if she floated above their bodies looking down in the slanting rays of the sun at a private moment captured in amber. She stepped forward and Kelric came into her arms.

That afternoon, they joined together in the simplicity of her own rooms rather than the opulence of an Akasi suite. Afterward they lay in the rays of a setting sun that left a faint glow in the room. A hint of fiery light touched Ixpar’s face as she drifted to sleep.

38

MULTIPLE PHALANXES

“Karn cheated Varz.” Avtac walked through the Estate gardens with her successor. “Ixpar lied.”

“She signed the papers,” Stahna said. “You are Minister.”

Avtac opened her fist, revealing her Karn octahedron, a diamond that threw splinters of colored light into her hand. “No one can touch her Quis. No one even comes close.” She dropped the die and it thudded onto the dirt path. “With her Sixth Level she holds Coba in a stronger grip than when she was Minister.”

“Does it matter?” Stahna retrieved the diamond. “Ixpar and Sevtar won’t live forever. Varz will. And the Ministry with it.”

Sevtar. During the tenday before he left for Karn, Avtac had wanted him constantly, knowing he would soon be gone. She could still see his golden body stretched across her bed, driving a hunger she never satisfied. She had thought sending him away would quench her desire, give her back control, but instead her craving grew worse. She hated herself for that weakness, tried to bury it with her work, with Quis, Garith, a new youth in the city. Nothing worked.

Sevtar was hers. He belonged to Varz.

Henta Bahvla sat glowering at her desk. Any aides who ventured into her office received a cold stare until they retreated.

“Why doesn’t she just send copies?” Henta said to the empty room. “Why bother with a new letter every time?” Beneath the formal jargon, every one of Avtac’s messages said the same thing: Miesa was now Varz and that included the Miesa Plateau.

Only in a dice cheater’s hell, Henta thought. None of this rolled well with her. Ixpar had been a good Minister. More than good. Brilliant. Avtac was iron. The unrelenting power of Varz boded nothing but trouble.

“She’ll not get the Plateau,” Henta said. “Not if I can help it.”

Rashiva always enjoyed her dinners with Jimorla. Tonight they celebrated. News had come this morning; ten-year-old Jimorla ranked well in his exams and the Preparatory House accepted him to study for the Calanya.

He grew so fast, this son of hers, like a steeplestalk, with the creamy dark skin of the Hakaborn. Like Raaj. Only when the sun hit his skin just right did it reveal that telling gold shimmer.

Jimorla watched her from across the table. “Why are you so quiet?”

“I was thinking about Raaj. He’s very proud of you.”

His face brightened. “Father wants to come to the ceremony at the Preparatory House. Do you think he can?”

“Of course.”

It pleased Rashiva that the bond between Raaj and Jimorla had grown so strong. Afraid to break that tie with the weight of a legend, she had never told her son that his father was the Karn Sixth Level.

Yezi Lasa, freight hauler extraordinary, or so she styled herself, jumped from her rider onto the Karn airfield and eyed the young man with the inventory sheets. Strange world it was nowadays, when they had boys out greeting the pilots.

“Well, looky you,” Yezi said. “Manager Karn send you to make us pilots happy?”

He handed her the clipboard. “You can sign for your cargo here. A freight crew will load it.”

Yezi peered at the board, looking for his name. “Heh. Anthoni.” She angled a look at him. “What’re you doing on the docks, Anthoni? Maybe looking for company, hmmm?”

“I’m an Estate aide,” he said.

“My winds.” Yezi signed the clipboard and handed it back to him. “An Estate aide.”

“Your crew is on dock six,” Anthoni said.

“Righto.” Yezi wondered if the fellow always acted this sullen. Least he could do was turn out a smile to please a tired pilot.

As Anthoni went to the next rider, a voice behind Yezi said, “You there.”

Yezi turned to see a burly pilot who also flew the Varz/Karn route. “Heh, Aka.”

The other pilot tilted her head at Anthoni. “Nice.”

Yezi grimaced. “I think he’s a Modernist.”

Aka took out a tin of tas and rolled the leaves in a paper. “Modernists on the docks is nothing compared to what I’ve heard lately.” She lit her tas stick. “Seems there’s a rumor about a dead Calani that isn’t dead.”

“Sure, Aka.”

“It’s true.” Aka blew out a stream of smoke. “Varz Calani. Boy fell over a cliff right into Ixpar Karn’s lap.”

“How’d you know what goes with high-level folk?”

“You want to check it, roll the dice.” Aka puffed her tas. “It’s in the Quis if you know how to read it.”

Yezi snorted. Still, the tale intrigued her. A right good story it was, like in the Old Age. Now those were days to be alive. No modern men back then. She smiled, imagining her circle of listeners. She had one gutsy tale to take to Varz.

Chankah Dahl stood in Dabbiv’s lab, surrounded by his gadgets and scrolls. “You went to the starport? And no one stopped you?”

“No one is there,” Dabbiv said. “A robot told me to leave but it didn’t do anything.” He shrugged. “It’s probably because the buildings all have locks. All I could do was walk around the streets.” He gave her a guilty look. “I did find a few broken locks, though. So I went in and, uh—”

Chankah recognized that look. “Yes?”

“I filched some books.” His face changed, lighting up as fast as wind. “They’re amazing! You can change the glyphs into any style you want and the books make three-dimensional pictures. They even talk.”

She stared at him. “Are you mad? If you get caught, ISC will haul you off to prison.”

“Am I supposed to pretend it isn’t there? Think what we could learn.”

Chankah could imagine how it must frustrate a scientist that such great knowledge lay so close, yet beyond his grasp. “Were the books interesting?”

He grinned. “I can’t tell you. It’s Restricted.” When she glowered at him, he laughed, then unlocked a drawer in his desk and pulled out a text with a metallic cover.

She peered at the title. “You can read that?”

“I taught myself Skolian.”

“What does it say?”

“‘Proceedings of the Eighty-sixth Conference on Circulatory Pathology.’ It’s a collection of papers given at a meeting of Imperialate doctors.”

“Do you understand it?”

“Not yet,” he said. “But I’m learning.”

Hayl strolled to the entrance of his suite, trying to look nonchalant as he watched his escort gambling Outside. Nesina, the youngest guard, looked up at him and smiled. She was twenty-three, eight years older than him, with dark eyes and hair.

Somewhere within the suite, a pot banged on glass. Hayl followed the noise to his sunroom, where a breeze gusted through an open window, ruffling his hair and jostling a hanging plant by the curtains.

How did the window open?

It wasn’t until the wall blocked his view that he realized he was backing out of the room. He made himself stop, reminded himself he could step out the window and reach the ground with his feet while he straddled the sill.

It had been worse when Ixpar first brought him to Karn. She imprisoned him in the logical place to hold a captive: at the top of a tower. He hid his fear, never speaking of the nightmares that splintered his sleep, but somehow Ixpar guessed. After that, she moved him to this suite on the ground level, where he could fall no more than the length of his own body.

Bracing himself, Hayl walked to the window and reached out to close it.

Hands grabbed him so fast he barely realized what happened before someone threw him into the wall. Hayl spun around in time to see a bulky figure vault over the sill. He lunged back to the window, but by the time he looked out, the courtyard Outside was empty.

Hayl scowled and went back to the entrance of his suite. When the captain of his escort looked up, he pointed toward the sunroom and mimed a person climbing in the window. As the other guards went to investigate, Nesina came over to him.

“You look upset,” she said.

He shrugged. Compared to his fall over the cliff, a peeper in his suite wasn’t much to get excited about.

She took his arm. “You should lie down.”

Although he didn’t feel like lying down, he very much liked her attention. She kept pulling him toward the bedroom, so he went with her. Inside, she paused in front of the mirror over his bureau while she stood behind him. Taller than him, she looked over his shoulder at their reflection. She slid her hand through his hair. “You’ve beautiful curls.”

Hayl reddened. No woman had ever touched him in such a familiar manner. It felt good.

Nesina nudged him to the bed. “You lie down. I’ll get something to calm your nerves.”

His nerves felt fine. He lay down anyway, too intrigued to object. Nesina disappeared and returned with a decanter of wine.

By the time they finished the wine, he felt remarkably calm. So calm, in fact, he had a hard time remembering why he was lying on his bed in a locked room with a guard sitting next to him. And Nesina had locked the door. Even from across the room, he could see the bolt pushed in place.

“You look pale,” Nesina said, her voice slurred. “We should make you more comfortable.” She unlaced his shirt and pulled it off his shoulders.

Hayl tried to sit up and she eased him back down. “Relax,” she said. “Try to forget what happened.”

Nothing had happened. In fact, the only “happening” was here, as Nesina slid her hand along his leg. He tried to roll away, afraid she would see his erection, but she coaxed him to stay put instead.

“I won’t tell, Hayl,” she promised. “You’re ready, a man now. I won’t feel differently about you tomorrow.”

While he fumbled with his thoughts, Nesina fumbled with the flaps on his pants. He tried to marshal arguments about why she should stop, but it was more interesting to feel her take off his clothes. She undressed herself next, giving the word “interesting” a whole new meaning. When she stretched out on top of him, he slid his arms around her waist, unsure how to proceed.

Nesina kissed him, first gently and then with more passion. She guided him with her hand, her touch so arousing that almost as soon as he was inside her, he reached his peak. As his breathing calmed, he realized she had just started and he had already finished.

Hayl flushed. “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be.” Nesina lifted her head. “Your voice is beautiful.”

Winds above. What was wrong with him, getting drunk, making love to his guard, and breaking his Oath? He ought to be appalled with himself. Actually, though, he was quite pleased.

Nesina slid off and stretched out against his side. They dozed for a while in each other’s arms, until he started to explore her body again. As she opened her eyes, he said, “This time I’ll hold on longer.”

She smiled, then nudged him onto his back, rolling with him. Pushing up on her elbows, she looked down at him. “It was your first time, yes?”

He nodded.

“I’m glad you let it be with me, Hayl.”

He pulled her down on top of him. “Me too.”

Seven women and one dark-haired man made up the Varz octet. They stood side by side, each with a rifle over her shoulder. As Avtac walked along the line, Zecha called out orders and the guards obeyed in unison: right, left, poise, aim, relax.

Avtac stopped in front of the man. “What’s your name?”

“Jevrin Miesa Varz, ma’am.”

“Think you could shoot a clawcat, Jevrin?”

“I have, during city patrol last winter.”

Avtac glanced at Zecha and the captain nodded.

After Zecha dismissed the guards, Avtac frowned at her. “A unit of elite hunters is no place for a man.”

“He’s a good marksman,” Zecha said.

“I do recall a boy in the Miesa Cooperative named Jevrin. He would be about this man’s age.” Avtac paused. “He had yellow hair.”

“I can run another check,” Zecha said.

“Do it.” The Minister walked to a rack on the wall and lifted out a rifle. “I want no leaks. If any have opened, plug them.” She sighted along the gun barrel. “Permanently.”

“We searched the entire Estate.” Senior Aide Kastora walked with Ixpar along a cobbled street that crooked between two buildings. “Whoever broke into Hayl’s suite escaped.”

“Did they steal anything?” Ixpar asked.

Kastora shook her head. “His guards think a peeper wanted to see a Calani.”

“I hope that’s all.” Ixpar grimaced. “If she came from Varz, we’re in trouble.”

They turned into a lane that ended at a building dating from the Old Age, its turrets and spires silhouetted against a blue sky puffed with clouds. The sign that hung on its door, however, was new. It read THE KARN INSTITUTE.

They found Ekina bent over a clutter of equipment in her lab. The physicist straightened up, smoothing out her smock. “Minister Karn. I didn’t expect you.”

“Manager Karn,” Ixpar said.

Ekina reddened. “My apologies, ma’am.”

Ixpar wondered if the title “Manager” would ever feel right. “Bahr is curious to know how your work goes on her light-sailor.”

“Not so well.” Ekina motioned at an apparatus on the table, a helical tube wrapped around a red stone. “I’m using a ruby crystal. I managed to get a light pulse, but when I try to pump out a steady beam of light, I overheat the ruby.” She lifted her hands, then dropped them. “Every time I solve one glitch, I run into another.”

“Suppose I put my Calanya on it?” Ixpar asked. “They’re amazing with these pattern games Bahr comes up with. Maybe they can help figure out what you need here.”

From Ekina’s look, Ixpar might have suggested she stand on her head and eat Quis dice. “Calani help design equipment?”

“Let’s see what they can do,” Ixpar said.

The escort left Bahr alone in the Coral Chamber. She sat at the Quis table reminding herself she wasn’t nervous. She wasn’t. Every time she heard a sound she jumped like a shylark.

The door opened and a man walked into the room.

Bahr nearly fell off her chair. “Winds above.”

Sevtar smiled and sat across the table from her. “My greetings.”

Ai! What a voice. He was a prince of Calani, no doubt about that. For days she’d prepared for this, her first session with the Sixth, and now she would make a fool of herself.

Once they started, though, Bahr forgot everything except the dice. Sevtar knew. He understood her patterns. His Quis exhilarated, challenged, offered a true matching of wits. She barely noticed when a guard slipped in and lit the hawk-shaped lamps.

Eventually Sevtar pushed back from the table. “Perhaps we should take a break.”

She blinked. “Heh?”

“A break. We’ve been here all day.”

Bahr peered out a window. “Well, I’ll be a pog on a pole.” Night had fallen Outside. Stretching out her legs, she discovered that her feet, encased in their fine red boots for this special occasion, had gone to sleep. She got up and hobbled around the room, grumbling as her circulation returned.

When Sevtar laughed, Bahr squinted at him. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re just not how I imagined Coba’s leading theoretical physicist.”

“Physicist? I’m a Quis Wizard.”

“That you are. Your Quis is brilliant.”

Bahr smiled. “Heh. Well. You too.”

That night after Bahr returned to her suite, she sat down with her dice to review the session with Sevtar. He understood her new pattern, the one she called a hot-light sailor.

“Quis Wizard?” a voice said.

Bahr jumped. A guard was standing in the door arch. She almost told the woman to go away, but then she remembered her Oath.

“You have a visitor,” the guard said. “Shall I bring him?”

Him? Maybe it was Rhab. Bahr nodded and stood up.

The guard reappeared with the potter Rhab. She said, “Manager Karn grants this visitor Suitor’s Privilege,” and then closed the door, leaving Bahr and Rhab alone together.

“Suitor’s Privilege,” Bahr sputtered.

“It means I can talk to you,” Rhab said.

“You always talk to me.”

“Apparently I’ve always been your suitor.”

“Like grub you have.”

He squinted at her. “It’s true. Manager Karn told me tonight that Suitor’s Privilege is the only way a woman in my position can visit a man in a Calani.”

“She never told me that.”

Rhab came over to her. “She waited because she thought we needed a while to adjust to the, uh, unusual circumstances.”

Bahr squinted back at him. Sure, sometimes she fantasized that a sexy fellow like Rhab reversed the roles and pursued her. In real life she didn’t feel comfortable with it. If any courting happened, she should be doing it. Just how she’d manage that, though, remained a mystery. She couldn’t even leave her room without an escort.

She regarded the Modernist warily. “You come to pay me suit, Rhab?”

“I don’t know.” He grinned. “Is it safe?”

“Probably not.”

He took her hands. “I’m willing to risk it.”

His forwardness flustered her. She tried to think of something to say. “I played Quis with the Sixth Level today.”

He looked suitably impressed. “What was it like?”

“Rhab, it’s like flying. He helped me with a new idea I have for my light-sailor. I’ll bet we could make one that gives off enough energy to burn a hole in wood.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

Bahr blinked. She hadn’t thought about reasons. “Campers could start campfires with it.”

“Seems it would be easier to use a flint.”

“Probably,” she admitted. “But I’ll tell Ixpar anyway.”

It was late when Ixpar left her office, numbers from freight inventories still reeling in her head. She took the long way to her suite. It went through her favorite room in the Estate, the Atrium, an airy hall two stories high filled with plants, its walls and dome designed from tinted glass. A staircase swept up from its floor to an indoor balcony. Halfway up the stairs, she lingered, watching a winter storm lash the glass, knowing an empty bed waited for her. Kelric had an early Quis session in the morning, so he had slept in the Calanya.

When Ixpar reached her suite, a line of light under the door greeted her. In the bedroom a lamp glowed on the nightstand and a fully dressed Sixth Level lay fast asleep on the bed.

She sat next to him. “Kelric?”

He stirred. “Hmmm…?”

“I thought you were sleeping in the Calanya.”

“Axis,” he mumbled.

“Do you know where you are?”

“On the Z-axis.”

Ixpar smiled. She undressed him and herself, then slipped into bed. As she reached for the lamp, he walked his fingers across her outstretched body. “Have you had dinner yet?”

“Dinner?” She dimmed the lamp and slid into his arms. “A long time ago.”

“What time is it?”

“Morning’s Second Hour.”

“Second Hour? I must have fallen asleep.” He motioned at a strange dice structure on the nightstand. “I was working on an equation for Bahr. I guess I fell asleep.”

It took Ixpar a moment to isolate why his response seemed odd. He repeated himself. Not that repetition was all that unusual; he just never did it. “You sound tired.”

“Not that tired.” He pulled her into his arms.

In the morning, he missed his Quis session because she couldn’t wake him. She almost called for the doctor, but when he finally did awake, he seemed fine.

In her excitement, Zecha strode straight into Avtac’s library. The Minister stood by a bookcase, intent on a book she was reading.

“The rumors are true,” Zecha said. “My agent saw the whole setup. Hayl is at Karn! He’s been there the whole two years he’s been gone. Jevrin kidnapped him.”

Avtac raised her eyebrows at the interruption. “And have you found Jevrin?”

“Not yet.” The Karn spy had disappeared the night after Avtac inspected the hunting unit, just hours before Zecha’s people broke his cover. Even knowing she had incurred Avtac’s displeasure didn’t dim Zecha’s mood. Hayl lived. Besides, she knew what bothered Avtac most about Jevrin; he had been clever enough to figure out the Manager suspected him.

“What about the other hunters?” Avtac asked.

“I ran checks and double checks,” Zecha said. “We’ve no more spies.”

“There better not be.” Avtac closed her book. “So. Ixpar Karn adds thievery of Calani to her list of crimes.”

“What will you do?”

“A good question.”

Zecha waited, knowing Avtac would speak when she came to a decision. One fact was obvious: the longer Hayl stayed at Karn, the more chance Sevtar had to contaminate the boy’s Quis. They locked her out, the way they shared that quality, that sameness of their minds.

No. She gritted her teeth. They shared nothing. Comparing Hayl to Sevtar was like comparing fresh linen to soiled laundry. Yet the innocence Sevtar lacked and Hayl possessed—was it more than sexual? Whenever Sevtar had looked at her, both here and at Haka, he seemed to say: I know you.

Avtac slid her book onto the shelf, revealing the title on its spine: Strategic Pattern Games of the Old Age. She turned to Zecha. “Ixpar Karn may have defrauded me out of a Fifth Level, but she dressed it up in documents to make it look legal.” In a deceptively soft voice she said, “Now she has given me justifiable cause for action.”

Kelric awoke with a sense of lethargy. He had fallen asleep in a window seat of his suite. Rays of afternoon sun slanted across his body and traces of a dream lingered in his mind, an impression of Zecha like a sour aftertaste.

With the clarity of hindsight, he understood. As with many empaths, the same genes that gave rise to Zecha’s Kyle abilities had probably hurt her. Some of the mutations associated with the genes also caused harm. He suspected Zecha suffered from a subtle, but devastating birth defect. Her brain couldn’t produce sufficient concentrations of kylatine, a chemical that blocked receptors in the neural structures that helped her read other people. She couldn’t block emotions.

Most empaths learned to produce kylatine blockers at least on a subconscious level, and Jagernauts could order their biomech webs to make the chemical. Genetic therapy could repair the defective genes that prevented kylatine from forming, but it also reduced the empath’s abilities. Most people either took the treatment or else withdrew from human contact. Zecha never had the chance to do either. Worse, as warden of Coba’s only prison, she had lived with the ugliest side of human nature that her world had to offer. Without protection from that onslaught, it was no wonder her mind had warped.

Nor did it surprise him that she loved Hayl. He was her opposite, sheltered all his life from the dark side of human nature. He must have soothed her like water in a desert.

Avtac was another story. Kelric doubted she even understood the concept of empathy. What malediction had the power to describe his last days at Varz? She never told him why his doctors stopped the electroshock therapy meant to “cure” him. Instead she let him believe that only as long as he pleased her would he remain free of it. Until the moment he left her Estate, he didn’t know he was going to Karn.

He hoped she rotted in a dice cheater’s hell.

You dwell too much on the past, he thought. He looked for a better memory and eventually found one: the jeweled world of his childhood. It glistened like a bubble isolated in encroaching darkness.

39

HAWK’S CLAW

Ixpar found Kastora on the outside balcony that circled the Observatory. Mild breezes of the morning blew back the Senior’s hair, She was looking at the polished box she held, with its two jeweled dice.

“Those look like Suitor’s Dice,” Ixpar said.

Kastora glanced up with a start. “What gave you that idea?”

Ixpar chuckled. “Does he have a name?”

The Senior smiled. “You know the singer in the tavern where we go?” She paused, her gaze shifting to the sky. “Look at that.”

Ixpar turned to see a pair of windriders above the northern mountains. As they drew nearer she made out the black Varz clawcat on their wings. “They’re going to miss the airfield.”

“There’s no place to land in the direction they’re headed,” Kastora said.

“Yes there is.” Ixpar scowled. “The Calanya parks.” She spun around and ran, calling back to Kastora. “Send two octets to the Calanya. And stay on com.” With that, she took off running down the tower.

At the Calanya, Ixpar found most of her Calani in a dice session. The Fourth Level Mentar rose from the table and came over to her. Gray-haired and gray-eyed, he reminded her of the Scribe who had been her father.

“You look concerned,” he said.

“Varz riders are headed for the parks,” she said.

“Why?”

“I wish I knew. Where is Sevtar?”

“He sleeps in his suite.”

That surprised Ixpar. “Is he sick?”

“I don’t believe so. Just tired.”

Eb, captain of the Calanya escort, appeared at Ixpar’s side. “Two octets from the City Guard just arrived Outside.”

“Post one in Sevtar’s suite,” Ixpar said. “We’ll take the second out to meet the riders.”

The windriders wrecked the Calanya sculpture garden when they landed. A trio of Varz guards disembarked and bowed to Ixpar. “Manager Karn,” a thin woman said. “I am Ahva Varz.”

Ixpar frowned. “Trespassing on Calanya grounds is illegal, Ahva Varz.”

“I apologize, ma’am. We bring a message from the Minister.”

“If Avtac has something to tell me, she can do it without breaking the law.”

“It seems a problem exists.” Ahva handed her a scroll. “I believe this explains.”

Ixpar unrolled the scroll. Its message made no sense; written in legal jargon, it just restated the contract she and Avtac had signed when Karn relinquished the Ministry.

I will put these damn people in jail, Ixpar thought. Did Avtac actually expect her to let such an intrusion pass? Of course she would protect her Calanya.

Ixpar froze. Of course she would waste time with intruders. She thrust the scroll at Captain Eb. “Lock up these people.” She took off running back across the parks.

When Ixpar reached a com outside the Calanya, she slapped her hand against its switch. “Kastora!”

Her aide’s voice came out of the speaker. “Kastora here. What’s wrong?”

“Get as many octets as you can to Hayl’s suite. Get him out of there!”

Without another word, Ixpar set off running again. She reached the gardens around Hayl’s suite in time to see three Varz riders descending, the rumble of their engines swelling into a roar as they set down on the lawns, tearing up grass and destroying fountains. As she raced toward Hayl’s patio, Varz guards burst out of the craft—all armed with rifles.

Hands yanked Ixpar to a stop. Twisting around, she found herself staring up at Borj, a gigantic captain on her City Guard. She shouted over the noise of the riders. “Let go of me!”

The rumble of engines drowned out Borj’s answer, but her grip stayed firm. Ixpar struggled with the massive captain, then gave up and wrenched around in Borj’s hold in time to see Karn guards converge with the invaders on Hayl’s patio. Even the thunder of the riders couldn’t smother the blast of rifle shots. Defenseless against the bullets, the Karn defenders dropped everywhere.

A Varz captain spotted Ixpar—and fired. Borj threw her to one side and the bullet missed Ixpar’s chest, thudding instead into her shoulder. Spurred by her rage, she wrenched free of Borj and ran for Hayl’s suite, ready to attack the invaders with her bare hands. As she passed a glass table on the patio, it shattered under the impact of a bullet.

Boots pounded behind her. “Manager Karn!” Borj shouted. “Get down.” The captain tackled her and literally threw her over a retaining wall. Ixpar twisted around, but Borj dove over the wall and held her down. She wrestled furiously, almost pulling free despite her gunshot wound. She felt no pain at all.

Borj shouted for help and another guard jumped over the wall. She grabbed Ixpar’s legs and together with Borj managed to pin Ixpar to the ground. Helpless, Ixpar could do nothing but watch the Varz raiders.

They smashed the stained-glass doors fronting Hayl’s patio and ran Inside. Gunshots rang out and the Varz guards reappeared, dragging Hayl. The boy fought hard, hitting with his fists, kicking with his legs, biting and scratching the guards as they dragged him to the riders.

A formation of Karn guards burst out of Hayl’s suite and opened fire with their stunners, sending a slew of the intruders to their knees. The Varz guards answered with rifle shots and the Karn unit lunged for cover.

Motion flashed in Ixpar’s side vision. Turning, she saw Kastora striding across a garden. Time seemed to slow down as the Senior Aide grabbed the stunner of a fallen guard. Even as Ixpar shouted for her to get down, Kastora sighted on the guards carrying Hayl. In the same instant she fired, a rifle discharge cracked like thunder—and Kastora collapsed, blood splattering out of her torso.

The intruders reached their aircraft. They hoisted Hayl inside and within seconds the craft sailed into the sky.

A sudden silence filled the gardens. When Borj and the other guard relaxed their hold, Ixpar shoved them away, then vaulted over the low wall and ran to her Senior Aide.

“Kastora!” Ixpar knelt by her aide and lifted her wrist, trying to find a pulse. “What were you doing out in the open like that?” Her voice cracked. “Kastora, answer me.”

Her Senior Aide stared with sightless eyes at the sky. Blood no longer seeped out the wound in her chest.

Borj crouched next to Ixpar and checked for Kastora’s pulse, then pulled back her eyelids. After what seemed like an eternity, she turned to Ixpar. “I’m sorry, Manager Karn. We can’t do any more for her.”

“No.” Ixpar bent over her friend’s body, pressing her hands against the wound as if that would fix it. When she pulled the stunner out of Kastora’s grip, the aide’s hand fell to the ground. Her other hand was clenched around some object. Ixpar pried open the fist, revealing the box of Suitor’s Dice.

Gone. Kastora was gone. Her friendship, her wisdom, her dreams. All gone.

Standing up, Ixpar looked around at the carnage in the gardens. An ancient instinct rose inside of her, burning so hot that a red haze clouded her vision, like a fog of blood.

A hand touched her shoulder. Spinning around, Ixpar almost socked a Karn medic in the jaw.

The woman paled. “I—I just meant—well, that.”

Ixpar looked where the medic pointed. A hole in her shoulder was pumping out blood. While Ixpar blinked, the medic began to clean the wound. Ixpar knew she should feel pain, but only her anger felt real.

Another aide appeared, Anthoni, the fellow she had recently promoted to the top level of her staff, making him the first man in Karn history to hold such a high position.

“I just came from Hayl’s suite,” he said. “The meds are treating his guards.”

“How are they?” Ixpar said.

“Alive. They’ll be in Med for a while. Nesina took it the worst.” He shook his head. “She went crazy when they grabbed Hayl. She wouldn’t stop even after they shot her.”

Ixpar swallowed. Guards trained to fight with stunners often plowed on after being hit, trying to do as much damage as possible before they passed out. She and Kastora had reacted the same way. Against rifles, that strategy was suicide.

Elder Solan came up to them, her lined face drawn and pale. “I cannot believe this happened. We must demand a Council Tribunal against Varz.”

Ixpar disengaged her arm from the medic, putting up her hand when the woman protested. She drew Solan to the side. “Varz will refuse to convene a Tribunal.”

“She can’t refuse.” Solan swept her arm out at the gardens. “Not only was this outrage a criminal act, it was stupid.”

“Avtac never makes stupid moves.”

“No Estate will support her after this.”

“No?” Ixpar regarded the Elder. “What institution would you guard with your life, fight to the death to protect?”

“The Calanya, of course.”

“The Calanya. Solan, I kidnapped Hayl. I had him playing Quis with Karn Calani, including a female Calani and the Karn Sixth, for wind’s sake. Avtac’s allies probably consider her use of force justified.”

“Justified for what?” Solan watched an aide lay a blanket over Kastora’s body. “All Varz had to do was demand a Tribunal against you.”

As the orderlies lifted Kastora onto a stretcher, Ixpar spoke in a subdued voice. “It makes perfect sense. Hayl didn’t want to go back to Varz. For many reasons, not the least being he knows what Avtac did to Kelric. Given access to a Speaker and a Tribunal, winds only know what he would say. Avtac needed a reason to justify attacking Karn and I gave it to her.”

“You believe this attack had more than one purpose.”

“Do you know what the riders that landed in the Calanya brought me? A copy of Sevtar’s Calanya contract.” Ixpar exhaled. “Only one reason and one reason alone exists why Varz doesn’t control Coba. Kelric. Avtac means to get him back and she can only do that by force.”

“Then she hasn’t rescued a Calani.” Solan paused as the orderlies carried Kastora’s body by them. “She has started a war.”

The Karn Sky Walk arched into the Teotecs, ending at the Sky Orb, a hollow hemisphere of tinted glass high in the mountains. Sunlight diffused through the polarized walls of the Orb, gilding the chamber. As Ixpar walked up the Sky Walk, she saw Kelric standing in the Orb, staring out at the sky like a metal statue bathed in amber light.

As she entered the Orb, he turned to her. His gaze raked over the sling on her arm. “What happened?”

She paused just inside the chamber’s entrance. “I got in the way of a bullet.”

“I thought you only had stunners for guns.”

“Things … change.”

“And Hayl?”

“He went back to Varz.”

A cloud drifted by the chamber, making a shadow inside the sphere. Kelric spoke in a flat voice. “I’ve given you war.”

“We’ve always had it.” Dryly she said, “That’s all we used to do during the Old Age.”

Kelric cupped his hands together. “Think of the Oath: ‘You hold within your hands and mind the future of Coba.’” He dropped his arms. “Your world is a Calanya and the Restriction is your Oath. When I crashed here, I broke that Oath. Hell, Ixpar, I shattered it.”

She couldn’t let him blame himself. “You didn’t create our aggressions.”

“I’ve never known a people as quick as yours.” He came over to her. “Coba has begun to tap the knowledge buried in the Quis. It’s going to break out like water through a collapsing dam, with my influence warping the flow. You have to take me out of the Calanya. Get me out of the Quis net.”

“I need you now more than ever.”

His intensity never wavered. “I won’t be responsible for the destruction of a world.”

She met his gaze. “We are responsible for ourselves. That we’ve suppressed our violent tendencies doesn’t mean they went away. It’s time we faced that truth.”

He touched her sling. “I can see what I’ve given you.”

She spoke quietly. “You could have ruined Deha Dahl’s life. You didn’t. You could have brutalized Rashiva Haka. You didn’t. You could have devastated Varz. Instead you played magnificent Quis. Even now, when you work with me to give Karn advantage over Varz, you marshal your dice to favor Karn rather than hurt Varz.”

“I don’t see your point. Why hurt Deha or Rashiva? They never wished harm against me. And why would I make tens of thousands of people in Varz suffer because their Manager is an abusive monster to her Akasi? It’s not their fault.”

“All those years ago, you could have escaped Coba.” Ixpar would never forget his first days at Dahl. “You sacrificed your freedom, almost your life, to save the Dahl escort. Yes, you’ve put yourself into the Quis. Your decency, your strength of character, your courage.” Softly she added, “Your incredible capacity to love.”

His face gentled, crinkling the age lines around his eyes. He took her hand and for a while they just stood together, watching the sky that arched around the Orb like an ocean of blue.

Far to the north the speck of a rider appeared above the mountains.

“Not another!” Ixpar strode to the com panel where the Skywalk met the chamber. Then she paused, her hand poised over the com. The rider looked odd …

The craft drew nearer.

Nearer.

Nearer.

Its wings swept the air in an impossibly huge arc.

A chill sped down Ixpar’s back. “It can’t be.”

Kelric glanced at her. “You think this one also comes from Varz?”

“Not Varz. Much higher in the mountains.”

“There are no Estates higher than Varz.”

“I know.” She pressed her palms against the glass of the chamber as she stared at the flyer, “It’s an althawk, Kelric. A giant althawk.”

The bird glided closer until they could see it clearly, a beast with huge, glorious wings, their span outdoing a windrider. Brilliant red feathers edged its black wings like tongues of fire, and the gold plumage on the rest of its body gleamed in the sunlight. Ixpar could almost feel the gale that accompanied every sweep of those massive pinions. Talons as long as a man’s arm curved under its body.

“Gods,” Kelric said. “It’s beautiful.”

“We thought they were extinct. It’s the only one to come down from the mountains in a thousand years.”

“Maybe it’s the last of its kind. Searching for a mate.”

After so long? Had loneliness driven this magnificent hawk from his home, come to search the world for a mate he would never find?

Kelric touched her shoulder and pointed at the city. Tiny figures were running in the streets, waving at each other and the hawk. At the airfield, two riders were preparing to take off.

Ixpar switched on the com, and an excited voice burst into the air. “Tal here!”

“Tal, this is Manager Karn. Ground those windriders.”

“But an althawk is up there. A real one! They’re going to catch it.”

“Tell them to let it go.”

Tal paused. “Ma’am?”

“They aren’t to catch it,” Ixpar repeated. “I’ll have anyone who tries thrown in jail.”

The aide spoke in a disappointed voice. “Yhee, ma’am.”

Kelric watched as she switched off the com. “You’ll probably never see it again.”

“I know.” She came to stand with him. “It would die in captivity.”

The bird sailed closer until his shadow filled the sphere. For one instant he looked directly at them with his ancient gaze, his gold eyes hooded and inscrutable, so close now that had if they could have reached out, they would have touched his feathers.

He swept over the Skywalk and wheeled away into the freedom of an intensely blue sky.

40

JAHALLA’S DEFIANCE

Rain drummed throughout the night on the windows of Hayl’s suite. He sat in the corner of an alcove while the memory of his “rescue” marched through his mind. They had shot Nesina. Shot her. Riddled her through with burning metal dice.

Everyone at Varz had been so kind. So solicitous. It made him sick. Zecha had held him while he cried and the doctors talked with Avtac in low voices about the supposed trauma of his experiences. He doubted they would be so understanding if they knew he cried because he had seen them try to kill his lover.

Avtac refused him the comfort of his friends. He still heard her voice: You cannot return to the Calanya yet. We must avoid contamination to the Quis. Not that it stopped her from trying to wring out every last bit of Karn Quis he had absorbed.

A door creaked. As Hayl looked up, Zecha appeared in the archway of the alcove. She came to sit by him, taller than him by almost a head.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” she said.

Hayl said nothing, acutely aware that she came with no introduction of Suitor’s Privilege. The fact that she rarely requested it made him feel as if he wore an invisible gag.

Zecha poked her finger inside one of his curls. “I never thought I’d take a boy with yellow hair as my kasi.” She sighed. “It’s Haka, you know. In the desert, if a man smiles at a woman it’s considered an invitation to his bed. But you yellow-haired boys from the north, you smile so easily. It makes a woman think the wrong things.”

I ought to tell her about Nesina, he thought. Maybe then she would leave him alone.

Zecha took hold of his chin, turning his face up to hers. Then she kissed him.

Hayl stiffened and tried to pull away. When she wouldn’t let him go, he struggled, but with her stronger muscles she easily held him.

“So modest.” A hard edge grated in her voice. “Or is this the pretense of innocence? I’ll take you no matter what happened at Karn.” She fumbled with the laces on his shirt, undoing them with deft fingers.

Hayl tried to twist away, but she had trapped in the corner. When she opened his shirt and groped at his chest, he nearly gagged. Working his arms up inside her embrace, he hit his fists against her shoulders. She caught his wrists and held them together while she fondled him with her other hand. He kept fighting to escape, with no success.

After several moments the captain paused and considered him. “Maybe you aren’t so worldly as rumor claims.” She stroked his curls. “You must learn not to smile at other women, Hayl. It gives the wrong impression.” She let him go and stood up. “Try to sleep. You need the rest.”

The moment Zecha left, Hayl ran to the bathing room, peeled off his clothes, and dove into the pool. He soaped his body, cleaning every place where she’d touched him. Afterward, he put on the warmest clothes he could find and returned to the alcove.

The time had come to make plans.

Avtac believed she had him secured. This guest suite jutted out from a corner of the Estate, with two sides facing the vertical cliffs that made Varz such an isolated—and forbidding—fortress. His escort guarded the other two sides. One of the cliff windows had a lock, but even had anyone been crazy enough to think Hayl would dream of opening it, Avtac didn’t believe this one unlocked and she assumed his previous success had been a fluke.

He formed a simple plan: open the window, climb out, and creep along the ledge below it until he reached a place where the wall turned a corner and he could climb down to the city. At this late hour most of Varz slept and the rain would keep anyone else inside. No one would see him running to the airfield. Once there, he would find a way to pay passage to another Estate. He could gamble for it. He didn’t care that he had no idea how to survive Outside. He’d rather spend the rest of his life as a beggar than stay at Varz. Only one problem remained for him to surmount before he could reach his freedom.

He had to climb out the window.

So he sat in the alcove, far more securely trapped by his terror than by the guards Outside his suite.

When Hayl heard a clock chime Morning’s Third Hour he knew he had almost run out of time. Steeling himself, he crossed to the cliff window and went to work. Every time he heard a board creak, the wind groan outside, or the rattle in the Estate, he tensed, afraid a guard was coming to check on him.

Finally the last pin clicked free.

Hayl froze, his palm lying flat on the door of glass. With shaking hands, he pulled it open. Wind rushed in, splattering him with rain—he was going to fall, fall, fall, icy air slashing past as he hurtled faster, faster, faster …

With a gasp, Hayl cut off the image. He clung to the wall, struggling to subdue his terror. He had no time to be afraid. Taking a ragged breath, he drew himself up to his full, albeit not so tall, height. Then he carefully let himself out over the windowsill, turning so he faced the cliff, his breath coming in gasps. As he lowered himself into the night, wind buffeted his body. He hung from the sill, paralyzed with fear, unable to move.

You can’t just hang here, he told himself. He slid down his foot, searching for a toehold in the bas-relief of the wall. With excruciating care he descended. Rain made the stone slippery and wind played havoc with his balance. Once he lost his grip and slid an arm’s length before he found another handhold. He had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from screaming.

He kept climbing.

Eons later he reached the ledge. Built as a decoration, the shelf was too narrow for a boy’s foot. He slid his toes along it and used wall projections for handholds. Bit by bit, fraction by fraction, he made his way, praying he didn’t reach a point where he had nothing to hold on to, or the ledge ended, or was broken, or—

His foot slid out over empty air.

Hayl nearly panicked. He had reached the end of the wall and a gap too big to step across separated him from the windbreak that surrounded the city. Turning his head, he looked along the tortuous route he had just traversed. He had stiffened too much with cold and fear to retrace his steps. Breathing in raspy gulps, he turned back to stare at the way forward. He tried to reach his leg across the break, but the gap was too wide, only a bit, but that small amount made the world of difference. He couldn’t go back, he couldn’t go forward, and soon his fingers would become too numb to grip the wall.

So he jumped.

Hayl overestimated the distance and hit the windbreak in a jarring impact. Flailing for a handhold, he slid downward along its surface until his foot caught on a gargoyle and he flipped over its head. Grabbing for the statue, he caught a horn and wrenched to a stop, hanging in the air, his body swinging in darkness lit only by starlight.

Struggling against panic, he probed for a toehold on the wall. He found one, another—and then he was climbing. Using drilled holes and grinning statues for support, clutching the wet stone, praying his hands didn’t slip, he clambered up the windbreak.

When he reached the top, he slid stomach-down across the wall, not even trying to stand. As he climbed down the inner side, he started to laugh. He didn’t have far to go to reach the garden on this side. By the time he stepped to the ground, he was shaking uncontrollably. He huddled against the wall, his laughter heaving out in huge breaths until it turned into sobs.

Eventually the sobs trailed into silence. With a final gulp of air, he looked around. A cobbled street stretched out beyond the patch of flowers where he stood. An empty street. No one had heard him.

He pulled down his sleeves to hide his wrist guards and took off running for the airfield.

Ixpar walked around the rider, scrutinizing it in the bright daylight. The gun turrets and cannons gave the craft a bristling appearance, like an angry hawk. Captain Borj stood in the hatch, her massive frame filling the opening.

“How did the test flights go?” Ixpar asked.

“It has good speed and acceleration. It doesn’t take g-forces well, though.” Borj jumped onto the tarmac. “Do you really plan to use these combat riders?”

“If I’m forced to.”

Anthoni appeared from behind the craft. “We just got a message from the airtower, Ixpar. A Varz rider has requested permission to land.”

Finally, Ixpar thought. Although she knew Avtac would refuse her demand for a Tribunal, she called for it anyway, knowing it would provide invaluable information. In a Council Tribunal, the Managers sat as judges. The Quis Council chose six judges, two each for prosecution, defense, and neutrality. So in response to the call for the Tribunal, every Manager gave her preference as a judge. It meant stating where they stood on the hostilities between Varz and Karn.

In the tenday since she had sent out the call, every Estate but Varz had responded. Both Dahl and Bahvla pledged full support to Karn. Viasa chose neutrality, as did its secondary Tehnsa. The surprise came from Shazorla, usually a Karn ally. For this Tribunal, its Manager declared neutrality, followed by its secondary Eviza. Ahkah and Lasa confirmed their close ties to Varz with a pledge of support for the Ministry.

The biggest surprise came from Haka. Varz’s staunchest ally chose neutrality.

Ixpar and Anthoni walked to the airtower and stood inside to watch the Varz rider land. As soon as it was down, a Karn octet armed with rifles surrounded the craft. The pilot opened the hatch and spoke with them, then handed the captain a scroll wrapped in gold suede and tied with a black cord.

As the rider lifted off, the captain brought the scroll to Ixpar. Tooled into the suede, the snarling clawcat of Varz crouched next to the Ministry insignia, a combination that jarred Ixpar as much now as it had the first time she had seen it. She sent Anthoni after Elder Solan and walked back to the Estate alone. Inside her office, she stood by her desk reading the scroll.

Anthoni spoke from the doorway. “Elder Solan is here.”

Ixpar glanced up. “Send her in.”

Solan entered and closed the door. “Anthoni said you received an answer from Varz.”

“Avtac refuses to convene a Tribunal,” Ixpar said.

Solan didn’t look surprised. “Refusing a Manager’s call for a Council Tribunal will set an unpopular precedent. That could damage Varz credibility.”

“I don’t know what to think.” Ixpar handed her the letter. “Tell me if it makes any sense to you.”

As Solan read the scroll, her face furrowed. “Is this a joke?”

“I have no idea.”

The Elder looked up at Ixpar. “Where would Avtac get the bizarre notion that you abducted Hayl again?”

“I’ve heard rumors he committed suicide.”

“Winds, I hope not.”

“You and I both.” Ixpar paused. “It’s the oddest thing, Solan—I think I caught a trace of him in the Quis. It’s so faint, though. I may be grasping at a ghost.”

“Where is this phantom?”

“Viasa.”

Solan frowned. “Why would Avtac send Hayl there?”

Ixpar grimaced. “Maybe she asked Khal Viasa to hide him while she accuses me of abduction again. It gives her a reason to refuse my demand for a Tribunal.”

“If Manager Viasa has decided to support Varz,” Solan said, “we have serious trouble.”

“I know.” Ixpar indicated the letter. “Take this to the other Elders. I’ll meet with all of you at Evening’s Hour to discuss it.”

After Solan left, Ixpar sat at her desk and rested her forehead on her hands. She longed to talk with Kastora, to hear her counsel. She thought of her mother, the late Atlena Karn, a tall woman with blazing red hair who managed the largest Common House in the city. Ixpar could still hear her voice: Look to the Quis, child. Unveil its secrets.

Ixpar left her office and went to the Blue Alcove in her suite. From there, she descended from into the Memory of Karn. Walking through its cool halls felt like stepping into the past. The identity of a race lay hidden here, just as it lay buried within the Quis.

Tonight she found no answers in its history, only the record of a people plagued by their own violent nature.

Revi Miesa Haka walked next to the Calanya windbreak, using its shadows as a shield against the sun. After three years, he still loathed Haka. No lush mountains here. Just heat. And sand. It drifted through sculpted holes in the wall, blown by the keening gales Outside, the forever keening wind, until he almost believed he heard voices in its eerie song.

Revi stopped. That was a voice. It called his name.

He looked through an opening in the windbreak. At first he could only make out the clouds of swirling sand, like a ruby-topaz powder veiling the land. Then he saw the woman. Dressed in rough trousers and jacket, with her hood pulled up against the storm, she looked like a freight hauler from the docks.

He drew away from the wall, insulted. When she called him again, though, he paused. How did she know his name? He looked out the hole again.

The woman came closer. “Revi?”

He regarded her.

“Don’t you recognize me?” she asked.

He shook his head.

She pulled back her hood—and she was a he.

“Hayl?” he asked. “Is that really you?”

“I’ve come every day for half a season, hoping to see you.”

“Winds, Hayl! I can hardly believe it.” Revi grinned. “Climb on over! Get yourself in here.”

“Someone might see.”

“No one’s around. Come on!”

Hayl clambered up the wall and half slid, half climbed down the inner side. The instant he jumped to the ground Revi threw his arms around him.

“Winds above.” Hayl’s voice came out muffled against his shoulder. “You sure got big.”

Revi laughed, then grinned, then got choked up on his breath and had to stop. When he caught his breath, he grabbed Hayl’s arm and drew him over to a grove of jahalla trees. They sat on the lawn of decade-grass in the shade—and Revi listened while Hayl told him everything that had happened since Avtac separated them.

“So I got a ride to Viasa by playing lyderharp for the crew on a merchant rider,” Hayl finished. “In Viasa I gambled at market. It was easy. Outsiders can’t play Quis worth spit. I used the money I won to buy passage here.”

“Is that what you do now? Gamble?”

Hayl shook his head. “Men aren’t allowed to gamble at the Haka market. Even if they were, I couldn’t risk it. Someone will figure out I’m a Calani. I shouldn’t have done it at Viasa.”

At sixteen, Hayl looked almost as vulnerable as the first time Revi had seen him, when he was five and Hayl an infant curled in his crib. “How do you live?”

“One of the Men’s Houses took me in,” Hayl said. “They give me meals and a room in return for chores.”

“What if someone sees your Calanya guards?”

Hayl pushed up his sleeve, revealing a bandage that hid his guards. “I say I burned myself. I know I have to find a way to take off the guards. But once they’re gone—it’s final.” He dropped his hands in his lap. “I hate it Outside, especially here. People act like I’m pole-dung because I have yellow hair. A kinsa-boss wants me to work for her and she won’t stop bothering me. I used to be a Second Level Calani and now I’m nothing.”

“Ask Rashiva for asylum.”

“Manager Haka?” Hayl laughed harshly. “She’d pack me off to Avtac faster than you can roll your dice.”

“Not if you tell her what you’ve told me.”

“Not a chance.”

“Hayl, I’m serious.”

“You trust her that much?” When Revi nodded, Hayl exhaled. “You better be right.”

Aka Karn piloted her rider with the ease of long familiarity. Soaring above the Teotec Mountains, she savored the sunlight pouring through the sky all around her. She looked forward to selling her cargo of spices in Bahvla.

To starboard, Aka sighted an octet of riders flying in formation. Feeling gregarious, she switched on her com. “This is Karn Greenbird, calling octet north by east. Beautiful day, heh?”

The com crackled. “Varz Nightrider here. You’re violating our airspace, Greenbird.”

Violating their airspace? What did that mean? “I’m headed for Bahvla.”

“The Bahvla lanes are closed,” Nightrider said. “Pull off, Greenbird.”

“Cuaz and Khozaar,” Aka muttered. She flew in a large arc that took her away from the octet. Maybe she better approach Bahvla along a different route.

The com spat static. “Pull off, Greenbird! This is your final warning.”

“Pull off? I am pulling off. Pull off where?”

With growing apprehension, Aka realized the riders were closing on her. Somehow Nightrider released a metal hawk from under its belly. When it became obvious the bird planned to commit suicide by flying smack into her rider, Aka tried to veer off. The hawk grazed Greenbird's wing anyway—and an explosion rocked the craft.

“Nightrider, are you crazy?” she shouted into the com. She struggled to keep her veering craft under control.

In response, Nightrider launched another false hawk. Aka just barely brought up her craft in time to avoid it.

Then she ran like the wind back to Karn.

Rashiva Haka paced across her den. “It gets worse and worse. Abductions, accusations, and now this.”

Her Senior Aide stood by the fireplace. “I would advise against giving Hayl asylum. He broke his Oath. Winds, he pulverized it. Avtac should deal with him.”

Rashiva stopped in front of her. “I can’t send him back to Varz. Not after what he’s been through.”

“If you keep him here you will antagonize the Minister.”

“If I send him to Varz I will antagonize my conscience.” Rashiva leaned one hand against the mantel and stared at the flames crackling in the fireplace. “There are times when I wish Ixpar ruled in Varz and Avtac Managed Karn. It would make this matter of alliances more palatable.”

The Senior spoke in a low voice. “Take care, Rashiva. You never know who might hear.”

The Manager looked at her. “Avtac has my loyalty, not my soul.” She straightened up. “Hayl stays here.”

Ixpar walked out of the hangar with Captain Borj. “Who is the pilot?”

“A merchant named Aka Karn.” Borj unhooked her flight jacket. “She had already left Karn when we found out about the blockade. Greenbird barely made it back in one piece.”

Ixpar scowled. “I want armed riders on patrol along the perimeter of Karn airspace.”

“I’ll see to it.”

As Ixpar headed to the Estate, she brooded. So. Varz had blocked every route into Bahvla, cutting Karn off from a crucial ally. Worse, Avtac’s noise about Hayl’s supposed reabduction had convinced Shazorla, normally a Karn ally, to speak in support of the new Ministry. That meant Ahkah, Lasa, Shazorla, and Eviza all stood behind Varz. Whatever Rashiva’s personal feelings toward Avtac, Ixpar knew the Haka Manager put a high value on loyalty. In a confrontation, Haka would support Varz.

Viasa and its secondary Tehnsa still claimed neutrality. Unfortunately, the centuries of feuding between Bahvla and Viasa didn’t bode well for Karn. If Manager Viasa broke neutrality, she wouldn’t side with a Bahvla ally.

It all added up to a gambler’s roll of dice with odds Ixpar didn’t like one bit.

Captain Tazza Varz piloted her craft with pride, soaring through the sky. They were two parts of a whole, she and Nightrider, and no craft could best them.

A buzz came from channel six on com, a line open only to the riders in her unit. “Varz Sun here, Cap’n Tazza. Two riders are coming up on port side. Looks like Bahvla.”

Tazza looked over her control screens. “I have them on scan,”

A voice crackled on channel two of her com, the line open to all riders within range. “This is Bahvla Cloud Dancer. You’re blocking our travel lane, Nightrider.”

“These lanes are under Varz authority,” Tazza said. “Go back to Bahvla.”

Cloud Dancer’s pilot swore. “You people have no right to hold an entire Estate prisoner.”

Just try to get past us, Tazza thought. She almost regretted it when the Bahvla riders headed back to their Estate like furpups cuffed by their dam.

That evening, while sunset blazed across the sky, Tazza spotted a Karn octet on the Bahvla-Karn perimeter.

A man’s voice came over channel two. “This is Jevrin Karn, flying Silverhawk. Acknowledge, Nightrider.”

Tazza laughed. Ixpar Karn must be desperate, sending boys to do a woman’s job. “You’re playing in Varz airspace, Silverhawk. Pull off.”

“We’re headed to Bahvla,” Jevrin said. “Suggest you pull off yourself, Captain.”

Tazza scowled, annoyed by his tone.

A woman spoke on channel two. “Captain Borj here, Nightrider. We don’t recognize your authority to block this lane.”

Tazza’s com buzzed on six, a secured message from one of her riders. “Cap’n, this is Varz Sun. Shall we take them out?”

“Only on my order.” Tazza switched to line two. “Borj, this is your last warning. Pull off.”

In response, the Karn riders dipped together and crossed into Varz space.

“That’s it!” Tazza said on six. “Take them.”

Her riders sheared toward the Karn octet. She sighted on Silverhawk—hold steady—there! She fired on his craft. He tried to dodge, but her gunfire ripped his wing. Just one more shot and—

A blast shook through Nightrider. Ho! These Karn birds had guns! Nightrider pitched and went into a dive, losing altitude at an alarming rate. Tazza fought with the wings, playing the slats in and out until finally they caught the wind with a jolt, slowing her plunge. She lowered the landing gear and aimed for a clear hill in the forest.

Nightrider hit the ground with a force that crushed Tazza against her safety harness. The screech of buckling metal pierced the air as the craft tore along the ground, until it slammed into a boulder, flipped over, and jerked to a stop, leaving her hanging from her seat. She unbuckled her harness and dropped to the overhead bulkhead, which had become the “deck.” As the rider teetered, she made her way to the upside-down hatch.

Tazza shoved open the hatch—and saw flames racing along the fuselage. Throwing caution to the wind, she jumped to the ground and broke into a run. As she reached the top of the hill, an explosion roared behind her. A second later the shock wave flung her into the air like a leaf on the wind. She hit the ground and tumbled down the other side of the hill until she thudded into a mound of dirt.

Tazza lay trying to focus her thoughts. She tried to move, but her body didn’t respond. She could do no more than listen to the flames consuming Nightrider. Another small explosion came from the wreckage. A drone filled her head, but it wasn’t until Varz Sun flew overhead that she connected the hum to an engine.

Varz Sun bumped into a landing farther down the slope. Turning her head, Tazza saw its pilot jump out and sprint up the hill. As soon as she reached Tazza, she dropped to her knees. “Cap’n? Thank the winds!”

“Did you get the Karn riders?” Tazza asked.

“Six, maybe seven.” The pilot slid an arm under her shoulders. “One dodged by us, but it took several hits. Another went back to Karn.”

Tazza struggled to her feet. “And ours?”

In a subdued voice the pilot said, “We lost three.” She helped Tazza limp to the Varz Sun. “Starbird went back for crews to douse the forest fire.”

Before now, keeping riders out of Bahvla had been a game to Tazza. No longer. It had become all too tangible, a grim reality brought home by the deaths of her crews.

The pilot helped her into the Varz Sun. After they took off, Tazza looked down at the forest, where the blaze of Nightrider’s demise raged through the trees. She would fly again. The deaths of her pilots wouldn’t be in vain.

“No!” Henta Bahvla faced Jevrin from behind her desk like a fighter squaring off with an opponent. “Don’t we have trouble enough? I can’t get a single rider out of Bahvla and you’re the only one who has made it in since the blockade started. Do you have any idea what that means? We don’t have many farms up here. Just trees, trees, and more damn trees. I have a fortune in lumber rotting out on the docks while my city starves.”

“Then you must give me the riders,” Jevrin said. “I can show your guilds how to build guns and missiles. We can break the blockade.”

“At what cost of lives? You limped in here with one rider and you left Karn with eight.”

A shadow descended on his face. “They died for your Estate, Manager Bahvla.”

She spoke with respect. “Bahvla honors their memory. But how many more will die if I give you what you want? You may not define it as such, but you’re asking for an air force. Bahvla hasn’t flown into war in a thousand years.”

“You may have no choice. Not unless you renounce Karn and give in to Varz.”

Henta blew out a gust of air. “I will give you an answer tomorrow.”

After Jevrin left, Henta sank into her chair, weighing her thoughts:

I will not be a party to war.

I will not let Bahvla starve.

I will not submit to Varz.

Then just what would she do?

What?

Long after the sun had set, she sat brooding. She thought of Sevtar as she had once seen him, an isolated figure standing on the Calanya windbreak, staring out at the Teotecs with the wind blowing his hair. Now an entire world balanced on the verge of battle over this legend, though he wanted nothing more than to be left alone.

When Borj’s rider limped into Karn, the only craft of an entire octet to return, Ixpar mourned, both for the lost pilots and for the dying of a peace that had lasted a millennium. In the year since Kastora’s death, Ixpar had come to recognize the violence that surged within her, a beast kept in control by a thin veneer of civilization. Now she saw that same rage in Borj, who had seen six, maybe seven, of her riders go down in flames.

Avtac Varz would regret the violence she had unleashed on Coba.

41

THE RISING TOWER: SOULS ASCENDANT

Captain Borj stood with Ixpar in the warehouse she had chosen for the demonstration and slid a gun belt over Ixpar’s shoulders. Ixpar found it hard to believe only a season had passed since the captain’s octet of riders had gone down in flames, a victim of the continuing Bahvla blockade. The captain had worked relentlessly since that day, preparing for the next time she met the Varz forces.

Borj handed Ixpar the new gun, one larger than a rifle. “As long as you keep the lever depressed, the cartridges continue to feed in.”

Ixpar examined the gun. Damn heavy, but she could hold it if she used two hands. At the far end of the warehouse, Anthoni was arranging a line of empty canisters, and closer by Tal stood holding a clipboard.

“Ready,” Anthoni called.

Ixpar waited until he moved out of range, then lifted her gun. Sighting along its barrel, she pressed the lever—and a roar of shots erupted, its echoes vibrating in the cavernous warehouse like thunder. Canisters flew into the air, riddled by bullets. Despite the teeth-jarring recoil of the gun, Ixpar continued to fire until not one container remained intact.

And then only the clink of one canister rolling into another broke the silence.

“Cuaz above,” Tal said.

Ixpar looked at Borj. “It works.”

Borj watched her with a bleak, hard gaze. “So it does.”

After they finished the tests, Ixpar walked back to the Estate with Tal and Anthoni, carrying the gun slung over her shoulder by its strap. She deeply missed Kastora’s counsel. Although Solan had done well serving as both Senior Aide and Elder, the arrangement was temporary. She needed to train a new Senior Aide.

As they crossed a courtyard on the Estate, Ixpar glanced at the aides with her. Tal perhaps? She had considered Tal as a possible successor, but concluded she lacked the necessary leadership qualities. As a Senior Aide, though, she might do well.

Anthoni is better qualified, she thought.

Ixpar halted, envisioning the backlash that would erupt if she chose a man to train for the top position on her staff. She had traded the Ministry for an Akasi, and bards wrote embarrassing songs praising her purportedly passionate soul, but if she made a decision as sensible as choosing Anthoni for her Senior Aide, it would outrage all Coba.

“So what,” Ixpar said.

“Manager Karn?” Tal asked. She and Anthoni had been waiting while Ixpar stood absorbed in her thoughts.

Ixpar handed Tal the gun and its belt. “Lock these in my safe and notify the ArmsGuild to set up production as we discussed.” She turned to Anthoni. “I’d like to see you in my office tomorrow morning at Second Hour.”

“Yhee, ma’am,” he said.

While her aides went to the Estate, Ixpar headed for the Karn Institute in the city. She found Ekina’s lab dark, and at first she thought the physicist had left. Then she saw a dim red glow emanating from a table. As her eyes adjusted, she made out Ekina standing at the table, surrounded by a cluster of students.

Ixpar tapped on the door, and the physicist looked around. “Manager Karn.” She beckoned her over. “I hoped you would come today.”

Ixpar went to the table. “Anthoni gave me your note.”

Ekina grinned. “Just wait until you see.”

The students drew back, revealing a glass tube stretched between two mirrors, one of which was only partially silvered. Light from the tube went through the partial mirror, forming a faint red beam made visible by the dust particles in the air. It ended in a small red dot on a screen a short distance away.

“Ah—what is it?” Ixpar asked.

Ekina looked as pleased as a chub cub after a feast. “That, Manager Karn, is a helium-neon-gas laser.”

“Laser?”

“What Quis Wizard Bahr calls a light-sailor. We thought laser made more sense.”

“Well, I’ll be windblown,” Ixpar said, evoking a ripple of gratified laughter from the students. “How did you get it to work?”

“It’s the helium.” Ekina tapped the tube. “With only neon gas we couldn’t get enough atoms into high energy levels. Helium is easy to excite. So we pump up the helium and it pumps up the neon.”

Ixpar grinned. “Bahr will want to see this. I’ll have the escort bring her.”

“I’m curious to meet her,” Ekina said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the ideas she sends the Speaker to tell us.”

“Try me,” Ixpar said.

“Have you ever heard of metal changers?”

“They were popular in the Old Age, weren’t they?”

“That’s right. Claimed they could change iron into gold.”

Ixpar laughed. “Winds, Ekina, I hope Bahr hasn’t got you started on that.”

“She thinks she can do it. She calls it atom cracking.”

Atom cracking? That sounded like Bahr. “How does it work?”

“You change the number of neutron and proton dice in an atom by splitting its nucleus. Crack it apart, so to speak. Bahr claims if a nucleus has more than two hundred nine nucleon dice, it splits spontaneously. This morning she sent me a Quis pattern for cracking uranium two hundred thirty-eight.”

“Why would you want to crack uranium?” Ixpar had no clue what uranium even was, other than that Bahr’s patterns predicted it existed.

“It could produce energy,” Ekina said. “A lot.”

“Do you think it will work?”

Ekina shrugged. “I’m not even sure how to test for it.”

Ixpar drew the physicist aside, away from the students. “What about her idea for lighting campfires? Can you build me a hand-carried laser that burns things?” She paused. “Like buildings.”

Ekina stopped smiling. “Are you sure?”

Ixpar thought of Kastora’s death. “Yes. I’m sure.”

It was a moment before Ekina answered. “I’ll see what we can do.”

After Ixpar left the lab, she went to the Calanya to see Mentar. They walked out to the parks together while she described the laser to him.

“You should tell Sevtar,” Mentar said. “It might put him in a better mood.”

“He is upset?”

“I’m not sure.” Mentar motioned toward the Calanya building. “Earlier today he was standing by a window in the common room. Then he cursed and went into his suite. He hasn’t come out since.” He lifted his hands, then dropped them. “One never knows with him.”

After she and Mentar returned to the Calanya, Ixpar went to Kelric’s suite. When she tapped, though, no one answered. Just as she was about to leave, he pulled aside the screen. He simply looked at her, then left the screen pushed aside and walked back into his living room, to the liqueur cabinet. As Ixpar followed him, closing the screen, he poured himself a glass of baiz.

“If you want to play Quis,” Kelric said, “you’ll have to come back another time.”

“Mentar thinks you’re angry.”

“Why should I be angry?” He turned to face her, holding his baiz as if he wanted to throw the glass. “I’m impressed. Astonished. It’s remarkable how fast you people learn. I’ve never seen anything like it. From knives to machine guns in one generation.” He downed his drink in one swallow. “What’s next? Nuclear warheads?”

Suddenly she understood. “You saw me in the courtyard with the gun we tested today.”

He came over to her. “I hate being the cause of this.”

“Ai, Kelric. It’s not your fault.”

He let out a breath as if he were trying to release more tension than he could ever let go. He set his glass on the table next to them and drew her into his arms. “Just be careful with what you invent,” he said in a low voice. “You have no idea what you could unleash.”

“We will.”

As they held each other in the fading sunlight, she realized no solace waited even here in the Calanya, neither for her nor for Kelric.

The door of Ixpar’s office slammed open and Anthoni burst into the room. “Two Varz riders—over the airfield—shooting.” He heaved in a breath. “The tower is blind and the city com lines are dead.”

Ixpar was on her feet before he finished. “Get on Estate com.” She ran to the vault and grabbed the machine gun. “Sound the alarm and have our defenses armed.”

Anthoni caught her arm. “You can’t go out there. You could get killed.”

“Let go of me.”

“Ixpar, for wind’s sake—”

“Get on that com.” She yanked her arm away, then slung the gun over her shoulder and ran out of her office.

It took only minutes for Ixpar to cross the city. She heard the boom of Karn’s defense cannons as she was running through the factory district near the airfield. The area around her lay in ruins: smoke roiled in billows, fires flared, cracks rent the pavement. Two Varz riders swept into view, flying in a strafing run, their blistering attack spurring an explosion in a nearby warehouse.

Karn Snowhawk, a pride of Ixpar’s air force, appeared in the sky, climbing above the smoke. It went at the Varz riders like an althawk defending its territory. As the aircraft engaged, Ixpar ducked into the meager shelter of an awning.

One of Snowhawks missiles caught a Vaz rider dead center, setting it off like a firebomb. As debris rained out of the sky, the second Varz craft fired. Snowhawk tried to veer off, but the missile caught its wing, blasting the slats. Snowhawk careened into a burning warehouse. The shredded remains of its wing caught an upthrust column of wood, swinging the rider around like a toy on a stick. It slammed into a blazing wall and detonated in a plume of orange fire and roiling black smoke.

Ixpar’s lips drew back in a snarl. When the surviving Varz rider swept low over the awning where she had sought cover, she stepped out and brought up the machine gun. Standing with her legs planted wide, she braced the gun against her body and fired at the craft’s belly. Bullets stabbed its engines reckety-reckety-reckety, so loud that even in the chaos of the burning district the noise deafened her. The Varz rider lurched into a roof and met its death in a roaring balloon of fire.

The only sound then was the crackle of flames.

Ixpar stood tensed, half expecting another rider to materialize. As her adrenaline slowed, the foolhardy nature of her actions soaked into her mind. People were emerging from the shelter of nearby buildings, staring as if she were the ghost of an Old Age warrior. She looked back at them in silence, fighting an inner war only she would ever witness, as her mind recoiled from the knowledge she had just killed another human being.

And yet—the beast within her burned, its rage whetted, its thirst for vengeance unquenched.

When Kelric and Mentar sat at dice, the entire Calanya watched. Quis between a Sixth and a Fourth Level; before now, no one had ever even imagined it could happen. The audience would have distracted Kelric, but the session so exhilarated him that he forgot everything else. Mentar played dice like no one else he knew.

The Fourth Level set an onyx rod into a column-of-time structure he used to represent Karn. Kelric placed a sapphire rod, the color of foresight, on top of the column. The structure persisted in evolving into a Karn Ministry despite their making it implicit in the session that Varz claimed the Ministry now, rather than Karn.

Mentar studied the structures. “You play more like a man my age than yours.”

Kelric glanced up. “We’re almost the same age.”

Mentar smiled. “You flatter me. I was fifty-six last season.”

And I? Kelric thought. He had been thirty-four when he crashed on Coba. How long had he lived here? Fourteen years? No, that wasn’t it. He had been at Karn for over three years now, so he had lived on Coba for sixteen years. He was almost fifty-one.

The Outside doors slammed open and Ixpar strode into the room, fiery hair flying around her face, her clothes streaked with ashes, a belt of ammunition crisscrossing her chest, and a massive machine gripped in her hand.

Everyone gaped at the Manager. As Kelric stood up, Ixpar stopped in front of him and spoke with no preamble. “If Varz ever succeeds in breaking through to the Estate, the first place they will come is here, looking for you. I’m moving everyone, but I want you to stay in my suite.”

“Then give me the machine gun,” he said.

She stared at him like an oncoming tank that had run into a wall. “What?”

“Give me the gun. So I can defend myself.”

“I can’t do that. You’re a Calani.”

“For flaming sake, Ixpar. I used to be a Jagernaut.”

She shook her weapon at him. “We only have one.”

“Then give me a rifle. Hell, a sword. Anything.”

She paused. “A rifle. Yes.”

“Good. Why do you want me to stay in your suite?”

Ixpar drew him aside, into an alcove where they had privacy. She spoke in a low voice. “My suite has access to underground halls that would be safe even if Karn were razed to the ground. I realize you may prefer not to share rooms. That what you feel—don’t feel—” She faltered, then said, “I know I can never replace Savina. If you prefer I live in another suite while you stay in mine, I understand.”

“No, stay.” Kelric had no desire to be alone in her suite. “I do have a condition.” He brushed dried blood off a gash in her arm. “What do you think happens to an army when its commander fights on the front lines?”

She crossed her arms. “You’re as bad as Anthoni.”

“Karn needs your leadership. You, Ixpar. Not the Elders or your staff or your air force. You. You’re irreplaceable.”

Her scowl would have done justice to the wildest Kej warrior. “You want me to hide while Varz attacks my city?”

“Yes.”

She started to speak, her gaze heating with anger. Then she stopped and regarded him with an odd look. “If I had a successor you would also advise me to keep her protected, yes?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Then why did Imperator Skolia—your brother—have you fighting on the front lines?”

The question caught Kelric off guard. “He had his reasons.”

“The idiot lost his successor because of them.”

His years on Coba had allowed Kelric to forget the deadly game of political intrigue that stalked the Imperial court. “My half brother chose three heirs: one of my older brothers, one of my sisters, and myself. Only one of us can succeed him.”

Quietly she said, “The one who survives.”

“Yes.”

“He is a fool.”

“He is many things, but a fool isn’t one of them. He wanted the strongest of us for his heir.”

She spoke without hesitation. “Only a fool pits kin against kin and throws away a man like you.”

A childhood memory came to Kelric; his mother standing on a balcony, radiant as she waved to him, with his half brother Kurj towering next to her, the case-hardened dictator who had, incredibly, once been a baby in her arms. It was only through playing Quis that he finally realized Kurj sought to tear him down because he feared Kelric would someday surpass him. It never occurred to his brother that Kelric had absolutely no desire to follow his half brother’s violent path to power.

Elder Solan, First among the Seven Elders of Karn, leaned toward Ixpar from her seat at the crowded conference table. “This decision of yours to make Anthoni Senior Aide is unacceptable.”

“Preposterous,” Elder Fourth said.

Murmurs of agreement came from the others. Elder Second’s sonorous voice rolled out. “I fail to understand, Ixpar, why you do not pick someone better qualified than a boy.”

“For wind’s sake,” Ixpar said. “He’s not a boy. He’s older than I am. And no one else is better qualified.”

Elder Fourth puffed on her pipe. “You possess a staff of highly percipient aides. Surely you can find a more appropriate choice.”

Percipient? Ixpar wondered if Elder Fourth ever talked like a normal person.

“He’s unreliable,” Solan added.

“I’ve always found him reliable,” Ixpar said.

“He is too nice,” Elder Sixth said. “He hasn’t the necessary authority.”

“Deficiency also exists in his diplomatic skills,” Elder Fourth said. “This could cause acrimony.”

Ixpar snorted. “He’s simultaneously too nice and not nice enough? That’s a feat.”

“Consider how your staff will react,” Elder Sixth said. “How he deals with them. It is crucial. As important as his competence. If they mistrust his judgment it weakens his authority. Weakens the Estate.”

Ixpar felt like throwing up her arms in frustration. “Give him a chance to prove himself before you all bemoan the fall of Karn.”

“And then what?” Solan demanded. “Perhaps you have a boy in mind for the Karn Successor too?”

“I don’t have anyone in mind,” Ixpar said. “I haven’t found a suitable candidate.”

Elder Third spoke. “I find another matter of more concern. Your proposal to build ground-based artillery in the city disturbs me.”

“We have to do something,” Ixpar said. “If Varz breaks our defenses again, they may go after people instead of factories.”

Elder Fourth relit her pipe. “It seems to me the prudent course of action would be to increase the number of riders on patrol and forestall Varz from reaching Karn in the first place.”

“We don’t have enough riders,” Ixpar said.

Solan frowned. “We have as many as Varz.”

“It isn’t just Varz,” Ixpar said. “Ahkah and Shazorla also have to be considered.”

“Shazorla fly against Karn?” Elder Second rumbled. “Never!”

“We also have this matter of the perpetually disappearing Hayl Varz,” Elder Fourth said. “Manager Shazorla seems to believe he is here.”

Elder Fifth snorted. “I’ll bet any roll of the dice Avtac knows where he is.”

“We need to prove it,” Elder Sixth said. “Prove she hides him. Then we might turn Shazorla from Varz. Back to Karn.”

“What about Rashiva Haka?” Elder Seventh asked. “She still claims neutrali—”

“Meaningless,” Elder Second rumbled. “If it comes to the test, Haka will remain loyal to Varz.”

Elder Fifth leaned forward. “We have other allies. Dahl. Bahvla.”

“Chankah Dahl has pledged a rider fleet,” Ixpar said. “We still have no word from Bahvla.”

“It has been a year since Borj’s unit went down,” Elder Third said. “If any of her riders made it to Bahvla, we should have heard by now.”

“How?” Elder Second demanded. “Any messenger would have to come on foot. Winds only know if they could make it through these mountains or how long it would take.”

Elder Fourth put down her pipe. “The situation appears to be this: we presently have only one viable ally whereas Varz has three at the very least, five if you include secondary Estates, and possibly seven should the alignment of Viasa and Tehnsa become manifest.”

“In other words,” Ixpar said, “we’re screwed.”

42

GOLDEN NESTED TOWER

Rohka Miesa Varz poked her head around the big clock at the entrance of the Children’s Cooperative. No guardians in sight. She padded to the door, nudged it open—and then she escaped, trotting across the starlit plaza.

Tonight she would find the Magic. It lived in a place called Galerunner’s Tavern on Juggler’s Lane. Rohka wasn’t sure what tavern meant, but she knew Magic lived there by the way Guardian Jasina lit up when anyone mentioned a singer in the tavern named Tomi. The glow filled Jasina, a warmth in her mind that spread to Rohka and made her glow too.

While her mind danced with bright pictures of jugglers skipping over cobblestones, Rohka trotted through Miesa-Varz to Juggler’s Lane. When she reached it, though, she saw no jugglers anywhere. All the shops looked dark except for a place at the end where colorful lights and music spilled into the street.

After pondering, Rohka headed for the building with lights. When she came closer, she saw two fierce and burly women looming at its entrance.

Rohka hesitated. She hadn’t expected giants to guard the Magic.

“Well, I’ll be a Quis cube.” One of the giants crouched down to look at her. “Where did you come from?”

Rohka blinked, suddenly shy.

The woman smiled. “What brings you out here so late?”

“I came to hear Tomi sing,” Rohka said.

The other giant laughed. “She may be young, but she appreciates true art.”

“Come on back to the kitchen.” The first woman said. “We’ll get you a glass of tawmilk.”

“Can I see Tomi there?” Rohka asked.

“The cook won’t mind if you peek into the lounge.” She spoke with the other giant in a low voice. The second woman nodded and set off toward Miesa Square.

“Is she going home?” Rohka asked.

The woman took her hand. “No. Just on an errand for me.” She led Rohka around the tavern. “Do you have a name?”

“Rohka.”

The giant smiled. “I’m Chal.”

Warm air and good smells filled the kitchen. Pots bubbled over the fireplace. In the door of a big icebox, Rohka saw her own reflection, a small girl with tousled yellow curls and a smudge on her cheek. She wiped at the smudge with her hand.

A plump woman in an apron bustled over to them. “What brings you back here, heh, Chal? No clawcats making trouble tonight?”

Chal grinned. “Caught me a clawcat cub.” She nudged Rohka forward. “Instead of bouncing her out, though, I thought I’d bring her back for some tawmilk.”

“Well, looky you.” The cook bent over Rohka. “What a beauty. And those eyes. Never seen gold eyes before.”

Rohka blinked at the woman. “My greetings, ma’am.”

The cook chuckled. “My greetings to you, little cub.”

While the cook went for the tawmilk, Chal led Rohka to a half door and lifted her onto a stool. From her perch Rohka could see over the door into a room full of people and tables. A man on the stage was singing.

The cook brought Rohka a glass of warm tawmilk. “So.” She settled her bulk on a stool next to her visitor. “What do you say, little one? Is Tomi a right fine sight?”

“I guess so.” Rohka’s interest in the Magic was dimming. This place had no jugglers or magicians, just a smoky room and a man who sang songs she didn’t understand. She wanted to go home. It was such a long way, though. Maybe they would let her sleep here tonight.

Rohka curled her hands around her glass and drank the tawmilk. When she yawned, the cook picked her up and settled her into her ample lap, humming a lullaby as she rocked back and forth. Rohka closed her eyes and snuggled in the woman’s arms.

A commotion woke Rohka. She peeked over the cook’s elbow to see Guardian Jasina hurrying in with the giant who had gone on the errand.

“Winds above, child.” Jasina bustled over to her. “Do you know how much we’ve worried? What are you doing here?”

“See Tomi,” Rohka said drowsily.

The cook chuckled. “She came to woo your intended, Jasina.”

The guardian lifted Rohka into her arms. “The last time she went exploring we found her trying to stow away on a rider to Shazorla.”

“Shazorla?” the cook said. “Whatever for?”

“Someone told her that suntrees there have real suns for fruit.” Jasina smiled. “She wanted to see.”

“Sunny trees,” Rohka mumbled. She could feel Jasina’s love for the singer. The Magic had come back and now she knew why. It was Jasina and Tomi together. Their warmth spread everywhere, making her safe and secure …

A gust of cold air woke Rohka. Chal was carrying her through the streets of Miesa, with Jasina walking at her side.

“… unusual for a child her age to find her way around the city so well,” Chal was saying.

“She’s remarkably bright,” Jasina said. “She has some odd ideas, though.”

“Odd how?”

“Well, for one, she used to ask me why people thought one thing and said another.”

Chal shifted Rohka in her arms. “Sounds like a good question to me.”

“The thing is, she really believed she could hear people think.”

Rohka remembered how she had tried to stop hearing thoughts after everyone told her it was impossible. She still picked them up, though, like when Jon broke his toe and his yell bounced around her head as clear as if she stood right next to him instead of halfway across Miesa.

A rumbling swelled above them. When Chal stopped to look at the sky, Rohka looked, too, and saw three riders flying toward the airfield. A moment later, a big noise and a burst of light came from across the city. More noises boomed and the light got brighter.

“Cuaz above,” Chal said. “They’re shelling it.”

“Why is the sun coming up over there?” Rohka asked. “It’s in the wrong place.”

“It isn’t the sun, honey,” Jasina said. “The airfield is on fire.”

“Why?”

Jasina drew them under a shop awning. “Not now, Rohka.”

“Are we hiding?” Rohka asked.

“Just until they go away,” Jasina said.

“Look.” Rohka pointed up at the mountains and wiggled in Chal’s arms, trying to get down. “I see more.”

The new riders sped over the city, following the ones that had made so much noise and light. Jasina waited until long after they had vanished before she stepped into the street again.

For the rest of the trip back to the Cooperative, no one spoke. Rohka caught a wisp of thought from Jasina about the riders coming from Karn. It confused her. Adults said Karn was bad and Varz was good, but they didn’t always think that. They feared someone named Avtac, and Avtac ruled at Varz.

Rohka knew Karn was important. Her father played Quis there as a Calani. She wished he lived at Miesa. She didn’t understand why the evil people at Karn took him away or why everyone said her mother left on a long trip when in their minds, they knew Savina Miesa had died.

Sometimes Rohka imagined the sungoddess Savina carrying her away to a magical cloud where the Akasi Sevtar lived. Suns grew on the trees and jugglers ran laughing down the cloud streets. In that place, where food never made you sick and gold eyes were normal and no one told you hearing thoughts was wrong.

In the predawn dimness, Captain Borj walked with Ixpar across the Karn airfield. She pulled off her helmet, a bronze headgear shaped like the head of a clawcat. “The Varz defenses were too strong. We only managed one run over the airfield before they ran us off.”

“Any casualties?” Ixpar asked.

“None.” Borj paused. “We didn’t lose any riders at Miesa either.”

“Miesa? What were you doing there?”

“When we hit Varz, they brought in reinforcements from the Plateau. So we snuck out over Miesa while her defenders were at Varz.” Borj tugged off her gloves. “We put out their airfield. Miesa won’t be sending support to Varz for a while.”

Although Ixpar knew the move made tactical sense, it disturbed her. Miesa barely claimed enough riders to support itself, let alone anyone else.

For the rest of the morning, Ixpar sat in her office reading reports from her commanders. At Midday she climbed up to her suite for a Quis session with Kelric. When she found him asleep in the bedroom, an uneasy feeling came over her as she watched the rise and fall of his chest.

She went back to the entrance and spoke to Eb, the captain of his Calanya escort. “Does Sevtar always sleep this much?”

“Usually,” Eb said.

“Why? What makes him so tired?”

“Can’t rightly say I know, ma’am. He spends most of his time playing Quis.”

Ixpar frowned, then left the suite and went down to Med. She found her Senior Physician reading in the medical library.

“So,” Shallina said. “Have you finally come for the physical I ordered?”

“This is about Sevtar,” Ixpar said. “He sleeps too much.”

Shallina spoke dryly. “There is no harm in sleep. You should try it sometime.”

“Not this much. It’s not normal.”

The doctor closed her book. “I will look at him.”

That evening Shallina came to Ixpar’s office. “He’s exhausted,” the doctor said. “I don’t know why. I found nothing wrong.” She paused. “To be honest, I don’t know what is wrong or right for a Skolian.”

Ixpar put down her quill. “What do you suggest?”

“Well, um …”

“Yes?”

Shallina cleared her throat. “I think you should, ah—ask Dabbiv Dahl to come here.”

That threw Ixpar like a handful of Quis dice. Shallina’s conservative approach to medicine usually had her denouncing Dabbiv’s work. “Why?”

“Don’t mistake my meaning,” Shallina said. “I don’t subscribe to these off-pattern ideas of his. But he is the only doctor on Coba who has experience with offworlders.”

Ixpar sent an octet of riders to Dahl that night.

Three days later, while Ixpar sat listening to her advisers argue in the Hall of Teotec, Anthoni brought her a message. She slipped out of the meeting and hurried with him to the airfield, reaching it in time to see her Karn riders landing, accompanied by a Dahl craft.

The heavyset man with gray-streaked hair who jumped down from the Dahl rider looked like a stranger. The moment he smiled, however, Ixpar recognized him.

“Dabbiv.” She grinned. “Welcome to my Estate.”

The doctor bowed. “You look well, Manager Karn.”

“Did you have a good flight?”

“For the most part. We had a bit of trouble near the end.” Dabbiv adjusted his glasses. “For some reason an Ahkah patrol decided we were in their way.”

Damn. Not Ahkah, too. “What happened?”

“Not much. They shook us around some, your Captain Borj shook them around some, and that ended it.”

She lifted her hand, inviting him to accompany her to the Estate. “I know the risks you took coming here. You have my deepest thanks.”

“I’m honored you think I can help.”

They walked to the Estate with Anthoni and a retinue of guards. While Anthoni showed Dabbiv to his suite, Ixpar returned to the Hall of Teotec. Her commanders were still arguing, but they had migrated from the Opal Table to the wall map. Colored pins covered the map: red for enemy, blue for ally, gray for neutral. Red dominated; in the east it showed on Ahkah and Lasa, in the northeast on Varz and Miesa, in the west on Shazorla and Eviza. Karn made a splash of blue in the center, as did Bahvla to the north and Dahl to the south. Gray showed on Haka in the southwest and on Viasa and Tehnsa in the northwest. Air lanes networked the chart in blue, gray, and red.

Ixpar went to the map and pushed in a pin to mark the skirmish between Dabbiv’s escort and the Ahkah patrol. Its red encroached on the blue of the Karn/Dahl air lanes.

Elder Solan scowled. “At this rate, red will soon surround Karn.”

Ixpar pulled out the red pin at Shazorla and replaced it with a blue one.

“Wishful hopes,” Solan said.

“Soon to be fact.” Ixpar regarded the Elder. “Whether Shazorla likes it or not.”

Kelric sat in the Blue Alcove thinking Quis thoughts. In another part of the suite a door opened. He looked up, expecting Ixpar, but instead saw the Calanya Speaker and an unknown man. After introducing the man as Dabbiv Dahl, the Speaker withdrew.

Dabbiv bowed. “My greetings.”

He wondered why Ixpar allowed a stranger to intrude on his privacy.

“Kelric?” the man said. “Don’t you recognize me? Dabbiv. I was your doctor at Dahl.”

Kelric did recall an intense young fellow there. This man looked too old to be the same person.

Dabbiv hesitated. “Would you prefer I come by later?”

He had no wish for more doctors to poke at him. Even so. Ixpar must have gone to a lot of trouble to bring Dabbiv here. For her sake, Kelric would consent to another exam.

Ixpar found the person she sought in the office she had provided him, bent over the microscope he had invented.

“Dabbiv?” she asked.

He jumped to his feet, then grabbed some folders and slapped them on the desk. “Manager Karn.”

“Captain Eb told me you finished examining Kelric.” Ixpar went over and pushed aside the folders, uncovering several texts with Skolian titles. She picked one up. “Cardiopulmonary Anomalies in Gamma Physiology.”

“Ah—” His face paled. “Yes.”

“What does it mean?”

Dabbiv spoke awkwardly. “Gamma refers to the breed of humans Kelric belongs to. Cardiopulmonary means heart and lungs.”

“Imperialate hearts and lungs.”

“Yes.”

Ixpar set down the text and covered it with folders. “You should keep a neater office. You never know who might walk in.”

The color eased back into Dabbiv’s face. “I’ll do that.”

“How is Kelric?”

“I need more tests,” he said. “It will take a few days. I’ve never tried these procedures before, so I need to study them.”

Ixpar tensed. “You want to experiment on my Akasi?”

“The tests aren’t experimental. Skolians use them all the time.”

“You aren’t Skolian.”

He regarded her steadily. “If I don’t determine what’s wrong with Kelric—and believe me, something is wrong—it will do him far more harm than my tests ever could.”

His words quashed Ixpar’s last hopes that her worries had no foundation. “All right. Be careful.”

Four days passed while Dabbiv ran his tests. On the fifth evening Ixpar found him waiting in her office, sitting at a table with his fingers steepled together.

She sat across from him. “What did you find?”

Dabbiv rested his arms on the table. “Kelric differs from us in far more than his physical appearance.”

Ixpar dreaded his words. “We take every precaution for him. Special diet, purified water—you’ve seen what we do. You even suggested our methods back at Dahl.”

“You can’t change the ecosystems of an entire world.” He spoke quietly. “Coba has poisoned him day by day, year by year, weakened his heart, digestive system, lungs, liver—everything. This world is far more hostile to him than we realized. He has miniature biochemistry labs in his body, nanomeds. Coupled with something—a thing called biomech—they’ve kept him alive. Except they haven’t worked right for years, maybe not since he crashed. It’s gotten worse, until even the meds themselves poison him.”

Ixpar watched his face. “And to heal him?”

For a long moment he looked at her. Finally he said, “If we had access to the resources of a full ISC medical facility, I think most of the damage could be reversed.”

The room suddenly seemed too quiet. “Nothing on Caba even remotely resembles a full ISC medical facility.”

“Ixpar, I—I’m sorry.”

“No.” Her mind refused to understand. “No.”

“I’ll do all I can.” Softly he added, “But it’s like trying to stop a flood with a cup.”

No. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t.

“I haven’t told him,” Dabbiv said. “I thought it might be better if it came from you.”

“How long?”

“It’s hard to know exactly, with—”

“How long?”

A sadness tinged his words. “I doubt he’ll live past this winter.”

And though he continued to speak, Ixpar heard nothing else.

Two seasons.

Two seasons remained for the legend who changed her world.

That night, while the rest of Karn slept, she walked through the city, neither seeing nor caring where she went. She didn’t return to the Estate until the night had sunk deep into the silent hours before dawn.

In the living room of her suite, an eerie Quis structure spread across a table. The longer Ixpar stared at it, the more patterns became visible, multiple threads woven together with an intricacy almost impossible to follow. The designs curled in haunting symmetries that whispered of precognition. She traced a thread in black, the pattern of a long, slow dying, and a chill breathed on her neck.

“You look tired,” Kelric said.

Ixpar looked up to see him standing in the bedroom archway, dressed in a robe. “Did I wake you?”

“I’m glad you did.” He came over to her. “Sometimes, when I’m falling asleep, I feel—strange.”

Her eyes felt hot with unshed tears. “Strange how?”

He stroked her hair as if it were a treasure he valued. “I wonder if I’ll wake up again.”

Ixpar’s voice caught. “If you could have any wish, anything at all, what would you ask for?”

“Anything?”

“Yes. Anything.” She waited for him to ask for the one gift she couldn’t give: his freedom.

“To see my children,” he said.

Later, while Kelric slept, Ixpar slipped out of his arms and went to the com in the Blue Alcove. She roused Captain Borj from her sleep and told her what she needed.

Then Ixpar descended into the Memory. As she walked through it, tears ran down her cheeks, leaving behind truths she had too long denied. She could give up the rule of a world for Kelric, wage the first war Coba had seen in a millennium for him, but she could no more make him love her, truly love her, than she could contain the spirit of a wild hawk.

43

DOUBLE NESTED TOWER

Rashiva walked with her retinue through Haka. A letter lay crisp in her pocket and crisp in her mind. New Ministers, Sixth Levels, war between the Estates, and in the midst of it all Ixpar Karn bid for the Calanya contract of a boy—a Haka boy—far too young to leave the Preparatory House.

Sevtar wants to see his son. From Ixpar’s viewpoint, it would have been easier to ask that Jimorla visit his father. Although the Preparatory House barred Outsiders from contact with its students, no one could refuse such a request from a Sixth Level. Or considering everything else that had happened, it wouldn’t have surprised Rashiva if Ixpar sent warriors to kidnap Jimorla. Instead the Karn queen chose the way of honor, making an offer for his Calanya contract.

Rashiva’s Senior Aide walked at her side. She touched Rashiva’s arm as they passed a street leading to the airfield. In the distance, a battered rider rested in a repair bay.

“It comes from Shazorla,” the Senior said.

Rashiva grimaced. “Several limped in yesterday also.”

“Crippling Miesa wasn’t enough for Ixpar Karn.” The Senior’s voice hardened. “Now she adds Shazorla to the list.”

Although Rashiva would never admit it aloud, she considered Ixpar’s tactics inspired. Shazorla was a traditional Karn ally, a city and people Ixpar knew well. She had worked subtle patterns into her dice, swaying Shazorla’s already wavering citizenry to favor Karn rather than their uncomfortable new Varz allies. So at crucial times, crucial people in Shazorla looked the other way. By the time Rashiva figured out from the Quis what Ixpar was doing, it was too late; Karn agents had sabotaged every maintenance bay, fuel tank, oil refinery, and rider-related factory in Shazorla. It nullified the Shazorla airforce without the loss of a single life.

“Karn grows more audacious each day,” her Senior Aide said. “How much longer will you wait before you send support to Varz?”

“Until Varz needs it,” Rashiva said. “Right now Avtac is doing just fine without my help.”

“She lost Shazorla.”

“And Karn lost Bahvla.”

“No one attacked Bahvla.”

Rashiva scowled. “What do you call a blockade that cuts off an Estate from its food supply for over a year? Starvation, of an entire city. It appalls me.”

“Miesa and Shazorla—”

“Lost their airfields. Shazorla has farms. Miesa has Varz. Bahvla has lumber. You can’t feed people with wood.”

The Senior had no answer, and she fell silent as they approached the Preparatory House. The Elder Mentor waited at the arched entrance, cowled and cloaked, his face hidden behind a tasseled scarf. He bowed to Rashiva and preceded her into the House while her retinue waited Outside. They walked through the ancient halls together, the Mentor’s robe whispering on the cold stone floors.

The Mentor halted at the Visitation Room, leaving her to enter alone. Inside, a thirteen-year-old boy stood poking at a mobile of metal spheres that bobbed on the mantel. He stood unusually tall for his age, with the athletic poise of an acrobat. Black curls spilled into his violet eyes.

Rashiva closed the door behind her. “Jimorla.”

Her son turned around, his face lighting in welcome. When he came over and hugged her, Rashiva smiled. “You grow so fast. Soon you will go through the ceiling.”

“Do you want tea?” He stood up straighter. “I’m an Initiate, so I can have a Novice bring some.”

“Tanghi would be nice.”

Jimorla opened a side door and spoke to a younger boy outside. While the Novice went for tea, Rashiva sat with her son on the sofa, talking about his life in the Preparatory House.

“My Mentor thinks I’ll be ready to apply to the Calanya in six years,” Jimorla said as the Novice returned.

Rashiva waited until the boy poured them each a mug of tea and left. Then she said, “Suppose someone made an offer for your contract now?”

Jimorla gave her one of his looks, the one that said, Quit thinking I run on air when I barely walk on the ground. “Mother, stop.”

“I’m serious.”

“Why in a year of windless wogs would anyone do that?”

Rashiva smiled. “It happens.” She took a swallow of tea. “Say Karn made an offer.”

He laughed. “I’d take a sword and go fight them.”

“Jimi, I mean it. What would you do?”

“I’d never go to Karn.”

“Why not?”

“Because. It’s Karn. Besides, Manager Karn cheated Varz. She used tricks to control the Quis.”

Rashiva snorted. “I doubt Sevtar’s Calanya contract forbids Ixpar Karn from playing dice better than Varz.”

Jimorla considered her. “Sometimes I think you don’t much like Minister Varz.”

She sipped her tea, then said, “Estate politics are complicated interdependencies. A Manager must retain objectivity.”

“You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Talk like a law scroll when I say something you don’t want said. And you know Manager Karn is worse than a dice cheater. She stole Hayl Varz. Twice.”

“She did?”

“Well, he isn’t at Varz.”

“You have been there to check?”

“It’s in the Quis,” Jimorla said. “Someone stole him.”

“That’s right. Me.”

He gaped at her. “You?”

“Hayl ran away from Varz. He asked me for asylum and I gave it to him.”

“He’s at Haka?”

Rashiva nodded.

Jimorla squinted at her. “Then why does Minister Varz blame Karn?”

How did she explain Avtac to a child? “It’s complicated.”

“Are you going to talk like a scroll again?”

“Jimi, Manager Karn may not be our ally but she is an honorable woman.”

“Why do you keep trying to make me like her?”

“Because she bid for your Calanya contract.”

He gave an uneasy laugh. “This is a joke, yes?”

“No. She offers you a position coveted by Calani with many times your age and experience.”

“It’s a trick, then.”

“I’m sure it is an honest offer.”

“I don’t believe it.” He shifted his weight. “What would Manager Karn want with me?”

Rashiva got up and went to the mantel, where the spheres of the mobile drifted in circles. This conversation was even harder than she had anticipated.

“Mother?” Jimorla said.

She turned to him. “Manager Karn wants to bring you to her Estate so you can meet your father.”

“But he’s here.”

“No, Jimi. He isn’t.”

“I just saw him yesterday. He didn’t say he was going anywhere.”

“Raaj isn’t—” She stopped as the words caught in her throat.

“Isn’t what?” Jimorla asked.

She pushed out the words. “Raaj isn’t your biological father.”

At first he showed no reaction. Then he gave her an uncomfortable smile. “Your jokes are strange today.”

“It isn’t a joke.”

“You’re right. It isn’t funny. Father wouldn’t think so either.”

“Raaj knows all of this.”

“You’re making it up, yes?” He watched her with a heartbreaking look, as if willing her to tell him it was a story. “The mentors asked you to do it. This is some kind of test.”

She spoke gently. “Your skin, your features, even the way you walk—it’s just like him.”

“Him?”

“Sevtar. The Sixth Level.” She took a breath. “Your father.”

Jimorla stood up, his fist clenched. “It’s not true. Why are you doing this?”

“Who else has skin that shimmers like yours?” She went over to him. “Not Raaj.”

“Father is my father. I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Ai, Jimi.” Rashiva reached out to him. “I don’t want you to be hurt.”

He pushed her away. “Are you going to force me to live at Karn?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t.”

“Perhaps we could arrange a temporary visit for you.”

“To meet him?” Despite his anger, anticipation leaked into his voice. “The Sixth?”

“Yes. The Sixth.”

“And afterward I can come home?”

Relief poured over her. “Yes. You can come home.”

A clamor woke Rohka. Everything was confusion. People yelled in the dark and a big rumbling roar shook the Cooperative. She scrambled out of bed and ran out of her suite, straight into a flock of other little girls in woolly nightgowns who looked as scared as she felt.

A hoard of monsters poured into the corridor.

They were terrible, all leather and bronze, with metal faces like fierce beasts. As the monsters wrestled with the grown-ups, shouts filled the air. In the confusion, Rohka found herself trapped in a corner. She made herself little and flat against the wall, praying no monsters saw her.

Someone screamed and Rohka saw a monster scoop up a girl with yellow hair.

“Check her eyes!” someone shouted. “They’re gold.”

Rohka’s confusion turned into terror. Only one girl had gold eyes. She bolted down the hall, trying to escape the turmoil.

Suddenly hands clamped around her arms. A monster hollered, “I found her,” hoisted her up into its burly arms, and shoved its way through the melee.

Cold air blasted Rohka’s face as they ran out into the night. Across the plaza, two riders crouched on the ground like sly birds ready to pounce.

“Let me go!” Rohka yelled. The monster’s face looked like a helmet now, one covering a woman’s head. She pounded her fists against the metal. “Avtac Varz will squash you flat. Flat, flat, flat.”

“Feisty little cub,” the monster muttered. She reached the first rider and swung Rohka up to a woman in the hatch. The woman bundled Rohka into a seat while the monster jumped in and slammed the hatch.

A voice crackled from the com. “Skyarrow, this is Windstar. Scan shows two octets coming down from Varz. We’ve got to run.”

“No problem, Windstar,” the pilot said. “We have what we came for.”

The riders lifted into the sky. In dismay, Rohka saw her home, Miesa, recede into a scatter of tiny lights in the mountains.

When Kelric awoke in the morning, he found a mug of Tanghi steaming on the nightstand. He put on his robe and took the mug to an alcove that overlooked the gardens. While he sat drinking, Quis patterns evolved in his mind.

A new pattern evolved, one that had slowly taken form over the last three years, woven in with the other shapes and forms of his life. He looked at the unexpected pattern and found it as clear as a mountain spring. When next he saw Ixpar, he would tell her of it. What difference it would make to her, he didn’t know. Nevertheless, he ought to tell his wife that he loved her.

The tramp of soldiers below his window fragmented his thoughts. They crossed the garden, one carrying a small sleeping girl with masses of gold curls tumbling down her back. Watching the girl, he felt a sense of familiarity, though he couldn’t say why. Her image stayed with him, tangled with his endless Quis thoughts.

Later another commotion drew his attention. A Calanya retinue passed below his window, escorting a figure in the robes and Talha of a Haka Calani. It had to be a trick of light; no Haka Calani would be in Karn. He was the height of an average man, but slender like a boy.

A boy?

Kelric froze, suddenly understanding his reaction to the girl, Like knew like. Even a Kyle operator with a mind as injured as his own recognized the life given by his own seed.

His children. Ixpar had brought his children to Karn.

A sense of urgency came over Kelric, a feeling that if he didn’t go to Ixpar now he would forever lose the chance to tell her how much this meant to him and how he felt about her. He went to the Outside doors and made his escort understand what he wanted.

Captain Eb spoke to one of his guards. “You wait here. If Manager Karn comes, tell her the four of us took Sevtar to look for her.”

44

KING’S FLIGHT

Ixpar sat in the hatchway of her rider, looking out at the Calanya parks. She had stripped her craft to essentials, turning it into a runner designed for speed. It could easily reach the starport on one tank of fuel.

If Kelric stayed on Coba he would die. If he left, he would live. Kastora, what counsel would you give me? Ixpar thought. Kelric wasn’t the same man who, seventeen years ago, had intended to bring ISC down on them. What would happen if she set him free? Could she convince him to keep Coba’s secret, to protect its anonymity? Her decision would affect the future of her entire world.

Shivering, Ixpar turned her face to the sun. Far in the north a flock of birds arrowed toward Karn. It was odd to see them migrating in summer; they didn’t usually come until autumn.

Very odd.

She jumped down from the rider and looked eastward—to see another cloud of dark forms headed for her Estate.

“Damn it!” Ixpar took off running across the park. When she reached the Estate, she smacked her palm against the first com she found.

A voice floated into the air. “Tal here—”

“Tal, this is Manager Karn. Put Karn on alert. This isn’t a drill! Do you understand? Full alert.”

Tal’s voice crackled over the com. “I’m on it.”

“Get me Commander Borj, Anthoni, Captain Eb, and Elder Solan on com. Contact Ekina at the Institute and tell her to meet me outside my office with the carbine. She’ll know what I mean.”

“Right away.” Then Tal said, “Commander Borj on three.”

“Good. Out.” Ixpar switched to three. “Borj, fleets are coming in from the north and east. Go to the command center below the Atrium and put Code Four into action.”

“On my way,” Borj said.

“Good. Out.” Ixpar switched to line one. “Tal, do you have Anthoni yet?”

“Line two.”

Ixpar switched. “Anthoni, start the evacuation procedures for Karn. You’re in charge.”

“Understood,” Anthoni said.

“Out.” Ixpar switched to one. “Tal, what line is Captain Eb on?”

“I can’t reach her at your suite. I have Elder Solan on four.”

Ixpar switched. “Solan, this is Ixpar. In the Blue Alcove of my suite you’ll find an engraving that matches the lock sequence I taught you. The door it opens leads to an underground hall. Take the Calanya and Bahr down there.”

“Understood,” Solan said.

“Out.” Ixpar switched back to line one. “Tal, have you got Eb yet?”

“Only one guard is at your suite. She said the others left with Sevtar to look for you.”

Ixpar swore. “Get on every line, contact every guard, whatever is necessary—but find him.”

“Yes, ma’am. What shall we do with Jimorla Haka?”

Winds above. “Manager Haka’s son is here? Already?”

“He arrived early. I just sent an aide to tell you.”

Rashiva must have learned of the Varz attack plans after the boy left Haka. If any harm came to Jimorla, nothing would stop Haka’s wrath. But the only truly safe place on Karn was the Memory where she had sent the Calanya. How could she reveal, to the son of a hostile Manager, a secret kept by the Ministers of Karn for two millennia?

He was Calani. Almost Calani. He was also a hostage worth his height in jeweled Quis dice. “Send Jimorla with the Calanya. Tell everyone it’s a storage room and have Jimorla kept under guard. I don’t want him wandering around down there.”

“And Rohka Miesa?” Tal asked.

“Saints almighty, Tal. She’s here too?”

“Yhee, ma’am.”

“Send her with Jimorla.”

“Right away,” Tal said. “I have Elder Solan on six.”

“Out.” Ixpar switched. “Solan, what’s going on?”

“I’m at your suite,” Solan said. “We found the chambers and took the Calanya down. We’re waiting for Sevtar now.”

“Any word on where he is?”

“Not yet. I sent more guards to look for him.”

“Let me know as soon as they find him. Out.” Ixpar switched to one. “Tal, do you have Commander Borj?”

“Line three.”

Ixpar switched. “What’s the situation, Borj?”

“The fleet coming from the north is Varz,” Borj said. “East is Ahkah, with support from Lasa. Altogether, they outnumber us about two to one.”

Ixpar grimaced. “Where did Avtac get so many riders?”

“I’d bet she pulled them off the Bahvla blockade.”

“Any word from Bahvla?”

“None.”

“What about Dahl?”

“The Dahl forces stationed here are up with our riders,” Borj said. “I sent a runner for reinforcements, if they have any, but it won’t reach Dahl before tonight.”

“Any sign of a Haka fleet?”

“Nothing so far.”

“Keep me posted. Out.” Ixpar switched to one. “Tal, have they found Sevtar?”

“Not yet,” Tal said. “But Ekina is at your office. She says she has what you want.”

Where was Kelric? “All right. Go to the command center and stay on the com. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Ixpar found Ekina in front of her office, holding a monstrous gun with cooling coils around its barrel and a heavy metal stock. A power pack sat at her feet.

“Is it accurate?” Ixpar asked.

Ekina’s face was flushed from running. “Accurate? We’ve hardly even tested it yet. I never expected this monster to come out of those Calanya patterns.”

Ixpar took the laser carbine, hefting its bulk in her hands. “How do I use it?”

Ekina strapped the power pack around her waist and indicated a button on the gun. “Push that and it fires.”

Ixpar slung the gun’s strap over her shoulder. “You better go to the command center. You’ll be safe there.”

“You’re coming, aren’t you?”

“As soon as I get a look at the situation.” Before Ekina could protest, Ixpar took off again.

She went to the balcony that circled the Observatory dome. In both the north and east, the sky had turned dark with windriders: Varz and Karn, Ahkah and Dahl, all engaged in battle. Nowhere did she see the Haka emblem of a rising sun. To the west, lines of people wound into the Teotecs as they evacuated Karn.

A shadow cut across the steepled roofs of the city, a lone Varz rider arrowing for the Estate, the first to break through the Karn defenses. With her lips drawing back in a snarl, Ixpar raised her gun, sighted on the craft—and fired.

The violent flare of light produced by the carbine bore no resemblance to the harmless red beam she had seen in Ekina’s lab last year. This pulse streaked to the rider and exploded the craft in a blast of light. An instant later the sound wave of its detonation slammed against Ixpar.

“Spirits help us,” she whispered as molten metal showered the empty streets.

Sunlight diffused through the Atrium, falling across Kelric and his escort as they walked past the plants and waterfalls. The serenity felt oddly fragile, like blown glass.

A guard ran into the hall. “Captain Eb!” She gasped in a breath. “Varz fleet—coming in—get to Manager Karn’s suite.”

Kelric immediately turned with his guards and they ran for the staircase that swept up from the Atrium. In the north, he saw a hoard of riders swarming toward Karn.

Two Varz warcraft suddenly soared out from behind a nearby tower and skimmed low over the Atrium, breaking its glass with the vibration of their passage. An explosion blasted through the balcony above them, destroying the top of the staircase. Kelric and his guards spun around and raced back into the Atrium. At the bottom, they ran to the landing of a stairwell that descended to a more protected floor.

When the whistle of falling bombs pierced the air, only Kelric recognized the sound. His warning shout was smothered by an explosion and the floor heaved under his feet. As he fell, one of his armbands caught on the staircase banister, wrenching him to such a fast stop, his shoulder nearly pulled out of its socket. The band yanked off his arm and he fell down the stairs, with glimpses of rails and steps flashing by as he tumbled. At the same time that another explosion rocked the stairs above him, he slammed into the floor at the bottom of the flight.

As Kelric scrambled to his feet, a curtain of flame swept across the staircase. Behind and within it, he could make out the frantic forms of his guards trying to smother their burning clothes and escape the inferno.

“Sevtar!” Captain Eb shouted. “Get out of here!”

Kelric had no intention of leaving them to die. He beat at the flames, shielding his face with his arm as he struggled to reach the guards. With a deafening crash, the landing above him collapsed. The steps crumbled next, toppling in succession as the area disintegrated in a thunder of falling walls. Chunks of debris shot into the air, mixing with clouds of plaster. Kelric staggered, coughing, eyes watering, skin blistering, forced away by the searing heat, until he backed through the door arch behind him.

It was cooler in the marble corridor outside the stairwell. He sagged against a wall and slid to his knees, gasping in huge breaths. Then a rumble swelled behind him. Twisting around, he saw the walls of the corridor toppling inward like a wave running up a pipe.

Kelric lurched to his feet and took off, racing past burning archway after burning archway, trying to outrun the destruction. When he found a stairwell untouched by fire, he took its steps three at a time. At the top he pulled open the door and a gale shoved him in the chest like a giant hand. Leaning into the wind, he pushed his way onto a balcony—and looked over a nightmare.

Karn roared in flames.

The darkening sky boiled with riders in the chaos of battle. Ashes swirled in the air, whipped into a shower of powder by the wind. Smoke billowed out windows, rolled across lawns, rose in great oily clouds that spread a gray pall of crackling soot over the city.

Kelric clenched the balcony rail. “No,” he said. “I won’t be the cause of this.” He raised his head and shouted at the riders battling in the sky. “Do you hear me? I will not be the cause of this.”

The rail burst into flame, tongues of fire consuming the wood. Within seconds the entire balcony ignited. Racing the flames, Kelric backed away and ran down the stairs, out again into the marble corridor. He kept going, past arches that opened onto debris, until finally they turned into smooth stone walls that went on and on, as if they doomed him to run down the tunnel forever while Karn burned.

Instead he came out into a foyer he recognized; he was near the old Calanya. He kept running, following familiar halls this time.

Inside the Calanya, he found tables toppled and screens hanging in shreds. Every room was empty, but when he neared the exit to the parks he heard voices. He slipped outside, hiding behind a hedge. Across the gardens, an octet of Varz warriors stood gathered by their riders, towering women in bronze and leather armor with beast helmets over their heads.

Nearer by, an empty Karn rider sat on a lawn. Sleek and stripped to essentials, it had the streamlined grace of a runner built for speed.

Staying low behind the bushes, Kelric crept toward the runner. When he reached the end of the hedge, he paused—and then sprinted into the open.

Shouts erupted behind him and a bullet whizzed past his arm, kicking up the dirt ahead of him.

“Don’t shoot, you idiot!” someone shouted. “He’s a Calani!”

“Six bands!” another voice yelled. “That’s him.”

A stun shot hit Kelric’s arm, numbing his burns, and another caught him in the knee. His breaths came in labored gasps but he never broke his stride. He would rather die from heart failure than go back to Varz.

The open hatch of the rider loomed into view. Kelric vaulted into the cabin, and boots pounded behind him. He spun around, planted his foot in the armor-covered chest of the warrior reaching for him, and shoved. As she flew over backward, he slammed the hatch.

The rider’s weaponry was crude but recognizable: two cannons at about 20 millimeters and two machine guns at 12 to 13 millimeters, though he couldn’t be sure given how little he knew Teotecan units. Although it could take a payload of one bomb, its bay was empty, another indication that someone had stripped this runner for speed.

He taxied across the lawn, jolting on the uneven ground until he gained enough speed to lift off. As he soared into the sky, he looked down and saw the warriors staring up at him, helmeted faces blurring as they receded into dots. They could probably no more imagine a Calani flying a rider than they could picture life without Quis.

It wasn’t until he came back and swept low over the gardens, strafing the bushes, that they dove for cover behind a retaining wall. He came around again and riddled their riderless riders into oblivion.

Kelric wasted several moments looking for the runner’s neutrino transmitter before he realized the Cobans had yet to develop the technology. He understood the screen that showed moving Quis dice; it offered the Coban equivalent of radar.

That realization saved his life. In the same instant he interpreted the pattern, it changed to show a Varz rider coming at him from behind. Kelric threw his rider into a roll and then a flat turn, a desperation move to evade the oncoming gunfire. Then he pulled into a steep climb.

The other craft passed only a few hundred meters from him, at an angle that allowed neither of them a good shot. It had the Varz clawcat and the name Nightrider emblazoned on its hull, followed by a Quis symbol for resurrection. Nightrider Resurrected.

Kelric kept climbing, taking advantage of his better speed. At the lower altitude, Nightrider made such a clumsy turn that Kelric wondered if the craft had taken damage, but as they climbed Nightrider gained on him.

As soon as Kelric realized he faced a fighter better equipped than his for high altitudes, he rolled his aircraft, the sky and horizon careening past his windshield. When he pulled on the stick, the rider arced through the air in a reversed half loop and spots danced in his vision from the g-forces.

The loop brought him down on the tail of his pursuer. But he had only flown a rider once, hadn’t piloted anything for sixteen years, and had never flown a craft without a computer. He misjudged and came out to Nightrider’s port side, so that his gunfire only riddled its wings. Nightrider spread its slats like giant mechanical feathers, letting the shots pass through them instead of hitting solid material.

They had moved out from the city, soaring above the mountains. Nightrider came at him again, in a half loop to reverse its course. Still above the Varz rider, though just barely, Kelric went up in a half loop as well. At the top, he flipped his runner over and went into another half loop. The g-forces nearly knocked him out, but his biomech took over and moved his hands, rolling the rider right side up at the top of the loop.

The Varz craft followed his first loop, but when it tried to reverse direction and chase him into the second, it stalled. As the craft floundered, losing speed, Kelric went into a dive, coming in on its tail. Dead-on target this time, he fired with everything he had—and Nightrider exploded in a billow of heated gases and flame.

Kelric stared after the remains of Nightrider as they showered out of the sky. Then, adrenaline still pounding, he took his rider south, out over the Teotecs.

Gradually, as Karn disappeared in the mountains behind him, the pound of his heart calmed. Finally he absorbed what had happened.

He was free.

45

QUEEN’S FIRE

The ruins of the Atrium lay open to the sky. Ixpar stood at their edge, staring at the destruction, the laser carbine hanging from her hand. The Varz riders that destroyed the command center below the Atrium had been too accurate for luck; they must have known its location.

“Ixpar.” Borj beckoned from a side hall. “I found a working com.”

She strode over to the com. “Ixpar here.”

“Manager Karn!” Tal shouted. “You’re alive!”

“Where are you?” Ixpar asked.

Tal spoke in a calmer voice. “In the Lower Levels, in generator room six. We’ve set up here the best we can. Most everyone from the command center made it here. But we can’t find Borj.”

“She’s with me. What’s the situation?”

“The Varz air units are withdrawing.”

Considering how Varz had so far pulverized Karn, they had no reason to retreat. “Any reports of foot soldiers?”

“From everywhere. They’re swarming the city.”

Ixpar grimaced. So. Varz was moving in to occupy Karn. Intact, even partially, it was a far greater prize than reduced to rubble. “Tal, have units posted on the Estate perimeter. I’ll send Borj to coordinate. We have to hold the Estate.”

“Understood, ma’am.”

Ixpar and Borj took off, then split up when Ixpar went down to the lower levels. She found Tal in the generator room taking reports: casualty lists, damage, sightings of Varz soldiers. Elder Solan hadn’t sent word, but that might not mean anything; the Memory had no com. Ixpar had to believe that silent meant safe.

“Manager Karn,” Tal said. “Message from Commander Borj.”

She leaned over the com. “Ixpar here.”

Borj spoke flatly. “The Haka fleet has arrived. And it’s damn big.”

Ixpar sank into the chair behind her. Karn’s last hopes had just gone up like chaff under a firebomb. “Are they landing soldiers?”

“Actually, no.” Borj paused. “It’s odd.”

“Odd how?”

“Their air force is holding over the mountains. No, wait—one rider broke away. It’s headed for the Estate.”

Ixpar glanced at Tal. “Have that rider escorted to the Calanya parks.”

Borj spoke over the com. “It could be a trick.”

“I have to trust my instincts.” Ixpar turned back to Tal. “Have two octets meet me in the Calanya parks.”

The aide stared at her. “You can’t go out there.”

“This is something only I can do.”

Ixpar took off again, back to the ground level of her Estate. She reached the Calanya parks in time to see a trio of Karn fighters circling in the sky. On a lawn below, Karn soldiers stood on guard around a Haka rider. Ixpar jogged toward them, past the wreckage of several riders near where she had left the runner. Whatever destroyed the Varz warcraft had apparently caught her runner as well.

When Ixpar stopped in front of the Haka rider, its hatch opened and a Haka aide jumped to the ground. “Manager Karn.” She bowed deeply. “We request a pattern of truce.”

It was an ancient request, coming from the Old Age. The pattern of truce; a temporary ceasing of hostilities long enough for foes to negotiate.

“Pattern granted,” Ixpar said. She had no doubt the rider carried a diplomat to negotiate Jimorla Haka’s release. They had wasted their time. She had no intention of giving up the boy. He was all that stood between Karn and defeat.

Rashiva Haka appeared in the hatchway.

Ixpar stared at the Manager. Had she lost her senses, coming onto hostile territory during a battle?

The desert queen jumped to the ground. “Manager Karn.”

Ixpar nodded. “Manager Haka.”

Rashiva didn’t bother with formalities. “My son?”

“He’s safe.”

“Take me as your hostage,” Rashiva said. “Let Jimorla go.”

She asked for a reasonable exchange. Unfortunately, Ixpar couldn’t risk unsealing the Memory in the midst of battle. “I can’t do that.”

Rashiva stiffened. “If he isn’t released within an hour, my fleet has orders to join Varz. You know Karn will have no chance then. Let him go.”

“You better give your people new orders,” Ixpar said. “Because neither you nor Jimorla are going anywhere.”

For a long moment Rashiva looked at her. Then she said, “To stop their attack I must talk to them.”

“You can do that from the Estate.” This had to be a trick. Rashiva would never let them capture her so easily. Ixpar turned to a Karn captain. “Make sure this Haka craft vacates the parks.” She tilted her head toward Rashiva’s aide. “She goes with it.”

The aide said nothing. Ixpar had seen the fierce loyalty of the Haka staff to their Manager. If this one let Karn take Rashiva so easily, she must have ordered them to do so. Why?

Ixpar gestured to Rashiva as if she were ushering the Manager to a Council function rather than making her a prisoner of war.

Rashiva came quietly. Surrounded by Karn warriors, she and Ixpar crossed the parks to the Estate. At the entrance to the Lower Levels, Rashiva paused. She stood dark and proud, watching her captor. “Ixpar.”

“Yes?”

“Jimorla’s father—?” Rashiva stopped, her silence broken by the distant sounds of artillery.

Then Ixpar understood. A promise bound Rashiva, one as strong as her allegiance to Varz. In return for your Oath. With those words, she had sworn to Kelric a vow she still honored. Incredible as it was, Rashiva apparently believed protecting Kelric meant keeping him free of Avtac. The Haka Manager let herself be captured so her fleet could refuse to fight without losing honor.

“Sevtar is with his son Jimorla,” Ixpar said.

Rashiva nodded. “Thank you.”

After the octet took Rashiva to the Lower Levels, Ixpar activated a wall com.

“Tal here,” a voice said.

“This is Manager Karn. An octet is bringing Manager Haka to you. Warn all units. No one is to fire on them.”

“Then it’s true? Manager Haka really is our prisoner?”

Ixpar blinked. “You already knew?”

“We intercepted a signal between Haka and Varz,” Tal said. “Varz wanted to know what’s going on. Haka said they couldn’t do anything because you had their Manager.”

Let Avtac puzzle that one out. “I’m coming back down—”

Ixpar never had a chance to finish. A blast shook the hall, caving in the entrance to the Lower Levels and knocking her to her knees. Shielding her face with her arm, she squinted into the dust and saw an Ahkah octet striding toward her. Helmets protected most of them but those with bare faces wore looks of triumph, like hunters who had trapped the ultimate prey.

“Take her alive,” someone ordered.

I refuse to be Avtac’s prize. Ixpar raised the laser carbine—and fired.

In the confined hall, the light blinded her, the noise deafened, and the heat seared her skin. When her vision cleared she saw only fused slag where a moment before a corridor full of warriors had stood. Stunned, she struggled to her feet. When she heard the rumble of boots nearby and voices with Ahkah accents, she slung the carbine over her shoulder and took off in a limping run, wincing from the burns on her legs.

Ixpar lost the soldiers in a maze of halls she knew like a well-worn Quis pattern. Smoke filled the corridors. The ancients had built Karn primarily from stone, which meant the fires came from furnishings, drapes, and paneling as flames gutted her home.

Varz had penetrated the Estate defenses. Given that Karn soldiers carried rifles, a few even machine guns, either the Varz troops were better trained or else outnumbered hers. Based on what Jevrin and her Quis spies had picked up about Varz and its allies, she suspected Karn had the edge in military strategy. That meant Varz took its advantage in numbers.

She came across evidence of fighting: bullet-ridden walls, smashed statuary, broken windows. More sobering were the corpses, two from her own troops and one from Varz. She knelt next to them, silent, in honor of the lives they had given up.

Then she ran on, looking for an unblocked entrance to the Lower Levels. Instead, she found an operational com. She smacked her hand against its switch. “Tal?”

Commander Borj’s voice snapped out. “Winds above, Ixpar, where are you?”

“Near the Hall of Teotec. What’s the situation?”

“Anthoni got a message through,” Borj said. “They completed the evacuation before Varz broke our defenses. The people are safe. In the city, the worst damage is to the airfield, the factories, and the guild warehouses.”

“What about Haka?”

“Still holding in the mountains.”

“Any word of the Calanya?”

“Nothing—what?” Borj paused. “Tal is getting a message from the Varz fleet.”

Smoke seeped into the alcove and swirled about Ixpar’s legs. “What message?”

Tal answered. “It’s for you. It reads: ‘If you surrender immediately and release Manager Haka, we will spare Karn. Refuse and we will raze your city. Be reasonable, Ixpar. You have lost. Avtac Varz.’”

Ixpar grimaced. “Borj, how much longer can we hold out?”

“The Varz troops on the ground are pushing our forces back. They haven’t yet breached the Lower Levels of the Estate, but it won’t be long. The rest of our defenses are gone. The Varz ranks are almost as depleted, but not quite.” Borj made a frustrated noise. “If we just had fresh troops and riders, we could beat them back.”

“Then find fresh troops and riders.”

“We don’t have them.”

Ixpar clenched her fists. “Avtac can’t have taken Karn.”

“She must have used every rider she had,” Borj said. “Took them off the blockade, off Ahkah, even off Varz. She gambled—risked leaving her flank undefended and threw everything she had at us. And she won.”

“She hasn’t won yet.”

“Ixpar, we have no choice. We must surrender.”

“While I live,” Ixpar said, “I will never yield to Varz.”

Borj sounded relentless. “Then you condemn Karn to destruction. We don’t even have enough riders left to protect the evacuees.”

No. Ixpar wanted to shout the word. Yet if she refused to surrender, a people and a city with a history over two millennia old would be destroyed in one day.

She forced out her words. “Very well. Ask for terms of surrender.”

Tal answered in a subdued voice. “Yhee, ma’am.”

“Refuse to tell them what happened to me. When they pressure you, ‘give in’ and reveal that I escaped the Estate.”

“We’ll make it believable.” Quietly Borj added, “And you had better make it truth. Fast.”

“Yes.” Ixpar took a breath. “Out.”

She switched off the com and limped into the smoky hall. Borj was right; she had to get off the Estate. Although Avtac had apparently given orders to take her alive, Ixpar had no doubt the Minister intended to execute her, in public, for all to see.

Boots sounded nearby. Ixpar slipped into an alcove just before a Varz octet entered the hallway. After that, it became a deadly game of hide and run as she evaded the troops that had come to secure her Estate. At one point she stood trapped behind a door, a handspan away from a Varz captain talking on com. What she heard made her teeth clench: Karn had fallen. Varz had secured the Estate, city, and citizens. Soon the conquering Minister would come to take possession of her prize.

After the captain left the alcove, Ixpar slipped into the small room and scraped her fingers along the seam where one wall met the floor. She found the niche she sought and pushed its switch. A clink of pins answered from within the stone, just as it had done all those years ago when, as a child, she searched out the secret tunnels of the Estate, never knowing that game would someday save her life.

You haven’t won yet, she thought to Avtac. As long as I am free, you can never rest. I will raise a new army to destroy you.

Without a torch, Ixpar had to feel her way in the dark. At the end of the tunnel she nudged open its stone door, verifying the area was clear. Then she walked out onto a balcony filled with amberwood chairs. The Hall of Teotec lay below her, intact.

Heat puffed across her back. Turning, she saw flames advancing toward her across the wooden balcony. What in a dice cheater’s hell was going on? According to what she had heard from the Varz captain, they had secured the Estate for occupation and doused its fires.

As the flames pushed forward, she backed into the balcony rail. Behind her, the great double doors in the Hall rumbled open. She spun around to see a Varz octet striding past the great portals. Her first thought was that they had trapped her; she could neither go down into the Hall nor retreat through the flames.

Then she saw who strode among the guards.

Avtac.

Ixpar knew then that something had gone wrong. Avtac would never have come onto the Estate if her forces believed danger existed, either from fires or enemy queens.

Ixpar raised her carbine and fired at the ruler of Coba.

The instant she moved, the Varz octet saw her and lunged toward Avtac. The blazing flash of the carbine filled Ixpar’s vision. Her sight cleared to reveal the flames that roared below, consuming tapestries, furniture, and the wood paneling on the stone walls of the hall. The timbers supporting the balcony burned as well, listing to one side—

The entire balcony tore away from the wall.

Ixpar fell, aware of a lurid glare on all sides. For one instant she floated. Then she smashed into the Opal Table and it cracked in two with a great moan of burning wood. She struck the floor with agonizing force, pain searing her arms, back, legs, especially her thigh where a burning shard gashed it. Struggling to breathe, she pulled her feet underneath her and stumbled toward the Calanya dais. Made from bare stone, it was the only place in the Hall that wasn’t burning.

“Hold,” a voice commanded.

She froze. Above her on the dais, Zecha Varz stood wreathed in smoke, her rifle aimed at Ixpar’s head.

Ixpar lunged at the dais, wrenching her body around in midair. The blast of a gunshot cracked so close that it creased her arm. Then she slammed into Zecha and they fell to the ground, wrestling for the gun, rolling over and over on the dais, Zecha under her, on top, under, on top. They both had the rifle now, each gripping its stock, straining to gain control of the weapon caught between their bodies.

Ixpar worked her finger onto the trigger. She pulled it and the rifle barked, its recoil shoving the stock into her hip.

Zecha swore, grabbing her knee. Then she gave a giant heave and yanked the gun out of Ixpar’s hands. The captain scrambled to her feet, but when she tried to stand, her leg crumpled and she lurched forward, teetering on the edge of the dais.

Then she fell.

Like a toppling pole, Zecha pitched down the steps and rolled into the inferno that had been the Opal Table. Engulfed by fire, she screamed and thrashed while her clothes burned. As Ixpar staggered to the edge of the dais, heat slammed her in waves. Stumbling on her injured leg, she fell to her knees, sweat pouring down her face while flames roared all around her.

Zecha rolled across the floor and out of the blaze on the far side of the Hall, into a tiled area the fire couldn’t reach. Her movements had smothered the flames, but she lay still, silent and crumpled, an eerie contrast to her previous frantic motion.

“So we add murder to your crimes,” a voice said.

Ixpar turned her head with a start—and looked up into the bore of her own laser carbine. Far up the length of the gun, Avtac watched her like an iron statue brought to life.

Ixpar spoke hoarsely. “Kill me and you’re the murderer.”

“Kill you? And make you a martyr? I think not.” Crimson light edged the planes of Avtac’s gaunt face. “When my Tribunal finishes with you, this warrior-goddess image of yours will be slag. Then you go to the guillotine.” She prodded Ixpar with the carbine. “Get up.”

Ixpar climbed to her feet, a straggle of hair falling into her eyes.

“Where is Sevtar?” Avtac said.

“Where you won’t find him.”

“Don’t be obstinate, little girl. It will be less painful for you if my search is short.”

Ixpar gritted her teeth. “Go rot in a Lasa whorehouse.”

A muscle under Avtac’s eye twitched. Then she swung the carbine and slammed the barrel into Ixpar’s injured leg. With a gasp, Ixpar reeled backward to the edge of the dais. The steps dropped away beneath her and she fell, tumbling toward the Opal Table, almost into the crackle of flames and heat.

Avtac walked over and planted a foot on either side of Ixpar’s hips. She raised the laser, holding it like a club. “Now. Sevtar.”

In her side vision, Ixpar saw flames ignite a chunk of wood. “All right.” As she spoke, she heard a distant rumbling. “I’ll tell you where he is.” She grabbed the blazing chunk and hurled it at Avtac’s head.

The Minister easily dodged but her motion made the carbine slip and her thumb hit the firing stud. Ixpar clamped her eyes shut, then opened them to see melted stone clattering down from a jagged hole in the hall’s vaulted ceiling. While Avtac was still blinded by the flash, Ixpar jumped to her feet and ran to the Calanya dais.

The rumbling she had heard swelled in volume, its thunder filling the hall. What the hell? Avtac would never have come onto the Estate unless her troops had ensured it was safe, yet it sounded like the destruction had begun again. Above the clamor, she heard the unmistakable roar of riders above Karn. Fighting. Fighting? It was impossible.

The rumbling on the Estate grew louder, until it drowned out even the riders. The entire Hall of Teotec was shaking. Plaster flew off the walls and windows cracked. As Ixpar stood in the Circle of the Calanya, her feet planted wide to keep her balance, the far wall of the hall bowed inward. In a nightmare of slow motion, it collapsed, peeling away like a giant wave. Pillars toppled, one after the other, massive stone trunks crashing over in clouds of debris.

Avtac stood in the midst of the chaos, staring upward as, with formidable majesty, the Hall of Teotec thundered down around her.

Dropping to her knees within the Calanya Circle, Ixpar shielded her head with her arms. Debris richocheted off the rail above her and dust swirled around her body, thick with ashes as the collapse of the hall roared like the judgment of an avenging deity.

Gradually the thunder lessened. Became a growl. A rattle. A trickle.

Amid swirling clouds of dust, Ixpar rose to her feet. Ruins surrounded her. In the entire hall, only the Calanya dais remained intact.

She still heard the riders. With the collapse of the hall, she could see them now as well. They filled the sky, far more aircraft than she had thought either Karn or Varz had left. With the dust and tears in her eyes, she couldn’t see well enough to make out the symbols on the craft. Ixpar had no idea what rider belonged to what Estate.

That didn’t change the miracle.

The riders flew in circles, loops, rolls, dives, other combat maneuvers. They weren’t fighting.

They were playing Quis.

Ixpar found Avtac’s body beneath a mountain of rubble. She knelt by the late Minister, her head bowed, listening to the roar of the dice game above her. Why the battle had started again or how her forces had managed to recoup, she had no idea. Only one fact blazed in her mind. They had switched from death to dice.

The patterns were obvious. Each windrider identified itself as a particular Quis piece. They probably kept it all straight using a com channel open to everyone. She could only imagine the multitude of transmissions going on as the they coordinated the session. Soaring in perilously close formation, the riders flew the same moves they had used to shoot each other out of the sky, but now instead of firing they let the combat maneuvers represent structures. Even without access to their com chatter, she recognized many of their patterns.

Afternoon faded into evening and still the battle continued. Only when twilight deepened did they bring it to an end, with the same awe-inspiring display of aeronautical skill that had marked the entire session.

Still Ixpar continued her vigil by Avtac’s body, hidden in the encroaching night that shrouded her Estate. A dusty mist seeped into the ruins of the Hall and softened the contours of destruction.

Some time later footsteps approached. Ixpar raised her head to see a wraith coalesce out of the mist and shadows, a figure cloaked in veils of dust.

“Manager Karn?” Anthoni asked.

She spoke numbly. “You should be with the evacuees.”

“It is you.” Anthoni clambered toward her over the debris. “We’ve been searching everywhere. Manager Viasa even—”

“Manager who?” Ixpar asked.

“Manager Viasa. And Jevrin.”

Ixpar tried to absorb his words. “Jevrin?”

“He’s been in Bahvla. He brought the Bahvla/Viasa fleet.”

“A Viasa/Bahvla fleet?” Her mind began to function. “I’ve never heard of Bahvla and Viasa cooperating on anything.”

“It’s a first.” Anthoni reached her, stumbling on piles of broken stone. “Apparently Manager Viasa felt that starving a city, even Bahvla, was an outrage. She had mountain climbers smuggle in supplies. Jevrin helped both Estates arm riders and train pilots. When Varz pulled off the blockade, Viasa and Bahvla launched their air forces.”

“Those were the riders I heard fighting?”

“Yes.” He took a breath. “The previous battle had decimated the Varz forces, more even than we knew. With the reinforcements, we gained advantage. Varz knew they had lost.”

She heard the hesitation in his answer. “But?”

“Our numbers and theirs were close. Too close.”

“Meaning?”

His spoke grimly. “To win, we needed to wipe them out. We would have lost most of our forces as well. It would have finished as a massacre on both sides.”

“So they played Quis. In the sky.”

“Yes.” He lifted his chin. “Karn far outplayed Varz.”

And so Varz saved face, allowing its forces to back down, without humiliation, from a battle they all knew would end in mutual carnage. “A worthy combat.”

Anthoni spoke quietly. “We had a report that Minister Varz came onto Karn before news of the reinforcements reached her fleet. We’ve found no sign of her.”

Ixpar met his gaze. “You can stop looking. She’s here.”

“Here?”

The words felt like dust in her mouth. “Yes. Here. Buried. Dead.”

Anthoni exhaled. “Varz is finished, Ixpar. We won.”

She looked at the ruins of the Hall from where she had once ruled Coba. “Did we?”

46

THE TOWER OF OLONTON

When the voice first crackled over the com, it sounded almost unintelligible. Nearly two decades had passed since Kelric had heard his own language. The message repeated again and again, distant, impassive, remote.

“… identify yourself. This zone is Restricted. Starport grounds are closed to natives. Please identify—”

“I’m a Skolian citizen,” Kelric said. “Do you read?”

The recording continued to repeat, an automated message from an automated port. His rider arrowed through the dusk unchallenged by more than a mechanical voice.

Towers rose out of the desert like obelisks. No defenses surrounded them, only a low wall. He landed by an outcropping of rock and jumped down from the rider, warm wind ruffling his hair.

Then he simply walked to the starport.

It didn’t even have a gate, just a wide gap in its wall. He stopped short of the opening and stared at the sand-covered street on the other side. Wind brushed sweat from his forehead and whispered across the desert.

Kelric looked back at the mountains. Up there, hidden in the peaks, an Estate had raged in flames because of him. He could never undo what he had rent here. But he could give Coba a promise.

Protection.

He would say nothing that might bring ISC to this world. For as long as he lived, he would keep his silence, in deed, in word, and in mind.

He guarded more than Coba: he also protected his children. He had to make a choice; trust Ixpar with them or take them into the life-and-death intrigues surrounding the Imperial dynasty. He could never undo the damage that dance of interstellar politics had wreaked on his life. Nor could he know what would happen when he returned, almost two decades from the dead, to face his half brother, a man who murdered his own father for the rule of an empire and would see Kelric dead if he perceived him—or his children—as a threat.

Kelric had never met Jimorla and had spent only one winter with Roca, yet they had forged a link so strong that even here he felt them, alive and secure. Part of him wanted to go to them, to return to Karn, though it meant giving up his life. Another part wanted to leave Coba and return with backup regardless of the Imperial attention it would bring to this world. And it would draw notice—if his family and the Assembly still survived. He had no way what he faced, given that his people had been at war when he disappeared.

Until he knew what his own future held, his children were safer here in anonymity. Knowing it was in their best interest to stay didn’t make it any easier for him to leave them. Perhaps the time would come when he could return with a title no one would dare defy. Imperator.

No matter what happened, someday Coba would have to face the Imperialate. Protected here, Roca and Jimorla could grow up strong and self-assured, ready to face their heritage rather than diminished by it, two miracles hidden in obscurity where none of his opponents would think to look. Should the Imperialate ever descend on Coba, Roca could claim her right to the line of Rhon succession; her DNA carried indisputable proof of her identity.

“Ixpar, protect them. Make them strong.” His words swirled in the wind and a tear ran down his face. “Take care of them for me.”

Then he stepped across the invisible line that separated Coba from the Imperialate.

Anthoni found Ixpar as she was preparing to enter the Dawn Chamber. Silent and grim, he handed her a ring. Turning it over, she saw the inscription: To Captain Eb Karn, for her years of service to the Ministry.

Ixpar swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. “Where was it found?”

“In the runs near the Atrium.”

Her fist closed around the ring. “And Sevtar?”

Anthoni pulled a Calanya armband out of his pocket.

As Ixpar took the partially melted circlet, she saw the name. Sevtar.

A roaring filled her ears. “There would have been more gold than this.”

“There was.” Anthoni struggled to speak evenly, but his voice caught. “All melted.”

She stared at him. “It could have come from anything. A vase. A molding. The stair banister.”

“Ixpar, I—I’m sorry.”

The roaring cut off, leaving her in dead silence. She turned numbly and limped into the Dawn Chamber.

They had all assembled, the Managers of Coba, gathered around a makeshift Opal Table: Dahl, Haka, Shazorla, Eviza, Ahkah, Lasa, Bahvla, Viasa, Tehnsa. Only the Ministry chair remained empty.

Ixpar went to stand at the Karn chair. When she was in place, a door opened across the chamber and Stahna Varz entered, a tall figure dressed in the cobalt blue of mourning. She took her place before the Ministry chair and swept her gaze over the gathered Managers.

“We meet today,” Stahna said, “to end this war of Estates. We begin with the Council’s call for a ballot of confidence. The ivory cube supports the Varz Ministry, the ebony cube a Karn Ministry.”

A ballot of confidence? “I was not informed of this,” Ixpar said.

“Perhaps.” Stahna didn’t look like she believed a word of Ixpar’s denial. “In any case, the law forbids the two of us to vote. Do you protest this?”

“No.” It made no difference. Even if the vote went in her favor, Varz would never relinquish the Ministry.

Stahna spoke. “Dahl?”

Chankah set a black cube on the table. “Dahl supports Karn.”

One by one Stahna called the roll and one by one the Managers played their dice: black from Bahvla, Viasa, Tehnsa, Shazorla, Eviza. The Estates Haka and Ahkah set down white cubes, but in an unprecedented move the Lasa Manager voted against her primary, placing a crystal ring of neutrality.

Ixpar heard their voices, saw their dice. None of it registered. Her mind had gone numb.

When the vote finished, Chankah Dahl spoke. “The ballot favors Karn.”

Stahna Varz watched them with the same iron gaze that had made her predecessor infamous. “A trade was made in good faith by Varz. A Sixth Level for the Ministry. So. Sevtar is at Karn. The Ministry stays at Varz.”

Ixpar spoke. “No Sixth Level is at Karn.” She took the armband from her pocket and set it on the table. “He is dead.”

In the silence that followed, the only sound came from the tall clock ticking by the door.

Finally Henta spoke. “Ixpar, I—I’m sorry.”

Chankah swore. Then she turned to Stahna. “End this. Return the Ministry to Karn.”

“I will relinquish the title,” Stahna said. “If a condition is met.”

That caught Ixpar by surprise. She would never have expected Varz to give up what had cost so much to attain. “What condition?”

“That for your successor,” Stahna said, “you choose a girl born, raised, and educated at Varz.”

“That’s absurd,” Henta Bahvla said.

“You might as well demand that Karn hand the Ministry back to Varz after one generation,” Chankah said.

“It’s worse than that,” Khal Viasa said. “Such an agreement would also give control of Karn to Varz after one generation.”

Rashiva spoke. “Then let it be. Varz gained the Ministry in a fair trade, one instigated by Karn. The title belongs where it is.”

Chankah leaned forward. “A Varz Ministry has no support.”

“My condition stands,” Stahna said.

Henta snorted. “Do you honestly believe we would allow such a condition?”

The Ahkah Manager spoke. “And do you honestly believe this Council can rob Varz of its rightful title?”

“The condition is an insult,” Chankah said.

“An outrage,” Henta said.

“Ludicrous,” Manager Shazorla put in.

Ixpar listened to them argue. When the debate ebbed, she said, “I accept the condition.”

Silence.

Then they all spoke at once, their voices piling over one another. The debate raged on, but Ixpar neither wavered nor explained. Late that night, with the Council as witness, she signed the documents and once again became Minister.

As Ixpar left the Chamber, Rashiva joined her. They walked together through the scarred halls of Karn.

Rashiva broke the silence. “Sevtar will be mourned by many.”

Ixpar couldn’t answer. The grief went too deep. For the rest of her life she would wonder why he had chosen to leave her suite that day. So instead she said, “I will have Jimorla brought to you.”

Rashiva’s shoulders relaxed. After a moment she said, “The boy Hayl is in my Calanya. Fourth Level, if you are willing to grant him a Karn Oath for his years spent here.”

So. It the rumors were true; Hayl had gone to Haka. Knowing that wouldn’t have prevented the war. Hayl had only been an excuse Avtac used, one she would have bent to her purposes regardless of what Karn claimed. Had Rashiva intended to negate Avtac’s strategy she would have done so long ago.

In any case, it wasn’t Hayl’s fault he had become a pawn. “Yes,” Ixpar said. “I will grant him a Karn Oath.” Eighteen years of age and Hayl would become, after Mentar, the ranking Calani among the Twelve Estates.

“Captain Zecha survived,” Ixpar said. “My Tribunal sentenced her to prison.”

Rashiva raised her eyebrows. “Varz will demand her freedom.”

Ixpar suddenly felt tired. “And Karn will challenge Varz.” She doubted the irony was lost on Rashiva, that as long as the Council fought over Zecha’s fate, the captain would remain locked in the prison she had once controlled.

They parted at the Haka guest suite, Rashiva going to await the return of her son, a sign of good faith, while Ixpar went on alone to the North Tower. She climbed the spiral stairs of the Tower and paused at the top, aware of the guards there watching her. She opened the door to the sole room at the top of the tower.

Inside, a Hakaborn boy sat in a window seat gazing at Karn. As soon as Ixpar saw him, her heart leapt: the shimmer of his skin, the cast of his features, the way he rested his elbow on his knee—it was so hauntingly familiar that the tears she had fought all day surged against her defenses.

He turned with a start, then rose to his feet, tall for his age, already the height of a grown man. Emotions rippled across his handsome face: curiosity, apprehension, shyness. True to the ways of the desert, he gave her no smile. In him, she already saw the Haka mystique that evoked such fascination from women throughout the Twelve Estates.

“Jimorla.” Ixpar bowed. “Your mother’s escort waits for you.”

Relief washed over his face. As he crossed the room, she reached to open the door. Her hand halted at the handle. She couldn’t make herself take this final step that would cut her last tie to Kelric.

The boy hesitated. “Manager Karn? Are you all right?”

Although Jimorla had yet to take an Oath, Initiates rarely spoke to Outsiders, let alone the Manager of a hostile Estate. Hearing him, the familiar lilt of his voice, was too much. Ixpar’s voice caught. “You look so much like him.” She took a deep breath. “Jimorla, my offer for your contract stands. I would like you to come here. As my Calani.”

“I haven’t finished my studies.”

“I can wait.”

He hesitated. “I have to talk to my parents. To my mentors.”

“I will write them.” Ixpar made herself open the door. As Jimorla stepped outside, his escort surrounded him in an implacable bulwark and he watched her from behind that fortification like a cipher. His guards swept him away. Just before he disappeared down the stairs, he looked back—and for the briefest moment his smile flashed.

Then he was gone.

Ixpar slowly exhaled. One final visit remained before she could retreat to her rooms, to face her grief in private. She went down the stairs, crossed several halls, and entered another suite. As she closed the door, a small girl with glorious golden hair came padding into the living room. She stopped and regarded Ixpar with large eyes that shimmered like gold.

“Who are you?” Roca asked.

“Manager Karn.”

The girl bit her lip. Then she went to an alcove. She climbed up on a ledge and sat looking at the floor, her legs dangling in the air.

Ixpar sat next to her. “Roca? What is it?”

The child blinked as tears gathered in her eyes.

“Are you upset with me for taking you from Miesa?” Ixpar asked.

The girl blinked harder.

“Ai.” Ixpar felt like an ogre. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Minister Varz got hurt.” Roca looked at her. “She got killed.”

How could the child know? “The fighting ended.”

“But why my father? Why is he gone?”

“I—I wish I knew.”

Two big tears rolled down Rohka’s cheeks. “He had the Magic with you, Minister Karn. With you and me and the boy.”

“The Magic? What is that?”

“Like Jasina and Tomi. The Magic that makes you warm.”

“I don’t understand, Roca.”

The girl watched Ixpar with her huge eyes. “I felt it everywhere. Before he was gone. His thoughts filled up the whole world.”

His thoughts? Then Ixpar realized Roca had called her Minister Karn. Not Manager, but Minister. Yet the child had never known her as Minister and only the Council yet knew the title had reverted to Karn.

Ixpar spoke gently. “Is hearing thoughts the Magic?”

“No.”

“Can you explain it to me?”

“The Magic makes people want to say I love you.’”

Ixpar’s eyes burned with tears. “You think your father had that with me?”

“I felt it.” She spread her small arms as if to encompass the world. “Everywhere.”

Ixpar ached to believe her. Could it be true what Kelric had believed, that his daughter was a telepath? Rhon child, he called her. Rhon. Child of a House that ruled an interstellar empire.

Through his daughter, Kelric had left them a priceless legacy. Ixpar had seen it the moment Stahna Varz stated her condition for relinquishing the Ministry. In that instant Ixpar had chosen her successor.

Stahna believed Varz had triumphed, but in truth all of Coba had won. The Restriction wouldn’t last forever. Someday the Imperialate would come. But Coba would be ready. The conquerors would find this world ruled by a golden-eyed woman who bore the right to claim her place among the Rhon.

For she who will lead my people, Ixpar thought, is heir to the stars.

Appendix I

THE ESTATES

Quis Rank:

First tier: Karn, Varz

Second tier: Haka, Dahl

Third tier: Ahkah, Bahvla, Viasa

Fourth tier: Miesa, Shazorla

Fifth tier: Eviza, Tehnsa, Lasa.

First tier Estates have the strongest Quis and thus the most power. Second tier Estates are also powerful forces. Third tier Estates has less clout, but still considerable influence. Fourth tier has respectable Quis with moderate influence. Fifth tier is weak. Prior to its destruction, Hahvna Estate placed in the third tier. Kej Estate was destroyed before Quis became prominent, but historians considered it First tier Estate on par with Karn or Varz.

Primary Estates, in order of influence: (Kej), Karn, Varz, Haka, Dahl, Bahvla, Viasa, Ahkah, (Hahvna), Shazorla, Miesa. The Haka/Dahl and Viasa/Bahvla rankings are close and hotly contested.

Secondary Estates, in order of influence: (Primary in parentheses): Eviza (Shazorla), Tehnsa (Viasa), Lasa (Ahkah).

Estate symbols:

Ahkah: A stalk of silkcorn grain crossed by a needle threaded with blue silkcorn yarn.

Bahvla: A rosewood tree: black bark, rose highlights, emerald leaves.

Dahl: A suntree: gold bark, pale green leaves, gold fruit.

Eviza: A jahalla tree plumped by water: yellow bark, green-gray leaves, red and yellow flowers.

Hahvna: Two children holding hands, a girl and boy, each in blue pants, a white shirt, and gray boots.

Haka: A large red-gold sun rising over a red desert.

Karn: A giant althawk in flight, with black wings edged by red feathers and gold eyes.

Kej: A warrior’s spear with a jahalla shaft and stone spear-head.

Lasa: An airbug.

Miesa: The sungoddess Savina in her sky-blue althawk, pulling the gold chariot that carries the sun.

Shazorla: A crystal carafe edged with gold and full of rosewine.

Tehnsa: A grayrock castle high in the mountains, wreathed in mist.

Viasa: The Grayrock Falls, a spectacular mountain waterfall.

Varz: A clawcat on a mountain cliff, silhouetted against the sky.

THE ESTATES (IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER)

Ahkah: a sprawling eastern Estate with a large population. Its Managers are infamous for their business acumen. Primarily agricultural, Ahkah is also known for its garment industry and pleasant climate. It allies with Varz.

Bahvla: a small northern Estate in a region of dense forest. It derives most of its support from its lumber industry, in particular the sale of rosewood. Bahvla and Viasa are the only Primary Estates within visible distance of each other and maintain a long-standing feud, though no one remembers exactly why. Bahvla is a strong Karn ally.

Dahl: an attractive holding about midway between Shazorla and Ahkah. Known for its lovely climate, it supports a number of industries including orchards, carpentry, and tourism. A powerful Estate, on par with Haka, it has long been Karn’s strongest ally.

Eviza: a small agricultural holding near Shazorla, with a population similar to Haka but less conservative.

Hahvna: formerly northwest of Dahl. An earthquake destroyed Hahvna in year 422 of the Modern Age. Most survivors went to Dahl, a few to Bahvla. Until its demise, it was the largest exporter of ceramics and goods for Children’s Cooperatives. It allied with Karn.

Haka: a desert holding legendary for the ferocity of its Old Age warrior queens and the mystique of its men. Haka is the largest exporter of silicate compounds and is famed for its exquisite stained glass. The most conservative Estate, it still enforces laws from the Old Age. The Hakaborn, those with a long Haka lineage, top its social hierarchies. The black eyes, glossy black hair, and smooth, dark complexion of the Hakaborn is considered a Coban standard of beauty.

Haka is a powerful Estate, on par with Dahl. In the Old Age it allied staunchly with Kej Estate. After Karn destroyed Kej, Haka swore allegiance to Varz, which was just beginning its rise to power and its millennia-long challenge of Karn.

Karn: a large cosmopolitan Estate generally considered the center of civilization. It is known for scholars and accomplished Quis players. Karn exports most of the machinery used among the Estates, and draws many tourists. Its autumn foliage displays spectacular colors, and in the spring, it plumberry vines cover the city in flowers.

Year One of the Old Age dates from the year Karn was built. Its Manager also serves as Minister and as such rules the Estates. Throughout history, Karn and Varz have faced off as bitter enemies.

Kej: an ancient holding south of Haka, the only Estate ever built entirely in the desert. At its height, Kej surpassed all other Estates in power. It existed in an almost continual state of warfare and fought Karn in a savage series of battles known as the Desert Wars. They ended in Year 632 of the Old Age, when Queen Odana Kej kidnapped a Karn Akasi and made him her husband. In retaliation, the Karn queen raised one of the largest armies ever known among the Estates and burned Kej to the ground.

Lasa: a small holding near Ahkah. Notorious for seamy gambling houses and corrupt Quis, it is considered the least desirable Estate.

Miesa: a small northern Estate. One of the oldest Estates, it dates from the early Old Age. Miesans tend to be small and are known for their beauty, with yellow hair and blue or gray eyes. During the Old Age, warriors often came down from Varz to raid Miesa and kidnap its men, though prisoners were often released after a few days. The raids continued well into the Modern Age, until finally Miesa appealed to the Quis Council. After passage of the Consent Law, which made raiding illegal, the harassment of Miesa’s men by Varz’s women tapered off.

Miesa serves as Ward of the Miesa Plateau, which supports the Jatec Mineral Flats, a main source of minerals and inorganic chemicals among the Estates. In the Old Age, Miesa controlled the Plateau’s output and claimed great wealth; in modern times Varz has gradually taken control. Miesa allies with Varz.

Shazorla: a large holding famed for its vineyards and rosewine. Although most geographers classify it as a desert Estate, it is actually in the Shaza foothills of the Teotec Mountains. It tends to ally with Karn, more rarely with Haka.

Tehnsa: a small holding above Viasa known for fine rock sculptures and frazzled Managers.

Varz: a northern fortress on the apex of Mount Skywalk, at the highest altitude of any Estate. Infamous during the Old Age for its armies, Varz remains known for fierce hunters. Strict immigration laws, and a climate that is colder in summer than some Estates are in winter, hold down its population. Its citizens tend to fair coloring and are tall even for Cobans, women and men both averaging well over six feet. In the Old Age they were even taller and looked more like the Hakaborn, but centuries of raiding the Miesa Men’s Houses introduced Miesa traits into the population.

Varz does a strong commerce in goods: stunners, knives, honed discuses, javelins; furs from snowtigers, clawcats, and silver talopes; and lumber from icefirs. Second in power only to Karn, it has long disputed Karn’s right to the Ministry. After the fall of Kej, the most violent Old Age battles took place between Karn and Varz.

Viasa: a northern holding above the spectacular Grayrock Falls, in a dense forest known for perpetual mist. As Ward of the Viasa-Tehnsa dam, it has sole rights to sell electricity, making it one of the wealthiest Estates despite its small size. Viasa has no strong political ties but leans toward Varz. Its feud partner, Bahvla, can be seen in the southeast when the fog lifts.

Appendix II

GLOSSARY

Unless otherwise specified, words are in the Teotecan language. Italicization of a word within a definition indicates it also appears in the glossary.

Abbreviations: Arch.—Archaic; Io.—Iotic; Lysh.—Lyshrioli; Myth.—Mythology; OS.—Old Script; pl.—plural; Qs.—Quis; Sk.—Skolian; sl.—slang; Uc.—Ucatan. The various languages are defined below.

advantage Qs. Having the highest-ranked dice within a structure. The player with advantage takes possession of the structure.

airbug Small insect with blue wings.

airplant Diurnal mountain plant topped by a blue airsack.

airsack Pouch on an airplant. In the day it fills with air, raising the head of the plant to the sun. At night, the pouch loses air and the head bows over.

Akasi OS., pl. Calani who is also a Manager’s husband.

alchemist’s gamble Qs. A risky move intended to convert one structure into another.

amberwood Rich gold wood from Dahl suntrees.

ascendant Qs. Situation where player gains advantage.

atom cracking Nuclear fission.

augmented spectrum Qs. Spectrum that includes not only all the colors, but also white, gray, and black dice.

Avtac Myth. Goddess of Iron.

bar-builder Qs. Builder made with bars arranged by length as well as by order, both traits increasing together.

blown-glass Quis die sl. Fragile person or thing.

bone sl. Fondness for something. Got a bone for slithering snakes: likes to spy on people.

Borj Myth. Ancient race of giants that lived in the desert. A Borj stood as tall as twelve human women standing on each other’s shoulders.

brews sl. Upsets, causes agitation or anger.

bridge Qs. Dice structure joining two other structures. The player with the highest ranked dice in the bridge wins all three structures.

bridge of Olonton Qs. Sunsky bridge made to offer another player sanctuary.

builder Qs. An unbroken curve of polyhedrons, all the same color, arranged according to order.

Calanya OS., pl. Calanya 1. Group of Calani living in seclusion. 2. Buildings and parks where Calani live. 3. Arch. In the Old Age, a male harem.

camouflage Qs. Any dice structure hidden by other structures or surfaces of similar appearance.

carn-abi OS. One who guards or wards. Also Abi-carn or Abi-karn. Derives from the Ucatan word chabi: to care for, watch over, guard.

Chabiat k’in Uc. “The day is guarded” or “the day is watched over.” 1. A spiritual quality, a guarding of life. 2. The life a warrior gives in battle by offering her own to save another.

Chankah Myth. Goddess and harbinger of change.

circle Qs. Ring of dice that captures a structure by enclosing it.

clawcat 1. Giant mountain cat known for ferocity. 2. Female warrior. 3. Feminine woman.

clawcroon sl. Female chauvinist. Combination of clawcat and croon.

Coba Myth. Goddess of eternity. Mother of Jahlt, Mox, Avtac, and Hayl.

color Qs. Dice attribute. Color determines rank according to the optical spectrum, with red lowest and violet highest.

column of time Qs. Cylindrical structure that represents the passage of time. Its flat base is the past and the cylinder is the progress of time from past to future.

continuity law Qs. 1. Applies when player loses a game in one move due to playing a piece with the wrong color, dimension, or order. If his opponent opens the next game with the same piece she ended with in the last game, he must fix his previous move using a piece that (a) has the same attributes as his misplayed die from the previous game, and (b) outranks his opponent’s die. 2. sl. Dilemma with no solution.

cream pheasant Large bird with ivory plumage marked by gold spots that resemble eyes. Prized for its tender meat.

crooner sl. Crazy person who tells stories, usually a convict.

Cuaz Myth. Wind god known for his capricious nature. See Savina.

descendant Qs. Situation where player withdraws from play, either by leaving the game or by making moves that don’t affect the main dice structures.

Deha Myth. Goddess of air and storms. Craftiest of all deities. Deha is also the mother of Cuaz and Khozaar, both of them sired by Mox.

desert tower Qs. Tower made with “desert” colors: ruby, topaz, and gold. Although generally lower in rank than a tower with more colors, it generally ranks high compared to other structures with only desert colors.

dice cheater’s hell Myth. Underground cave where people who cheat at Quis go when they die. They are made into human dice and used by fog spirits to play Quis.

Dice Queen 1. Estate Manager. 2. Woman who plays superior Quis; a dice wizard.

dimension Qs. Dice attribute. Rods have one dimension, flat dice have two, other dice have three. The rank of a die increases with its dimension.

dismantle Qs. Capture another player’s structure in a way that requires she remove it from the playing area.

double circle Qs. Circle made by one player to prevent a second player from encircling a third player’s dice.

drumbug 1. Slow-flying bug with round, flat body. Makes a booming noise at twilight. 2. sl. Dull-witted person.

Elder Mentor Male teacher in charge of a Preparatory House where boys train to become Calani.

flat-stack Qs. Stack of flat dice, all with same shape.

grand spectrum Qs. Spectrum with ten or more dice.

halften Fifth day of a tenday cycle.

hawk’s claw Qs. Structure shaped like a talon. The player who owns the closed claw also owns any structure within its grip.

hawk’s fire Qs. Hawk’s claw that captures a tower. Player making the capture can topple, dismantle, or ravage the tower, or leave it intact. See ravaged tower and toppled builder.

hawk’s flight Qs. Half arch. It has a high rank because it is difficult to construct a stable arch that is supported on only one side. Gives advantage over any structures below it.

hawk’s rage Qs. Hawk’s fire that ravages a tower.

Hayl Myth. God of the hearth. Son of Coba and Sevtar.

hazelle OS., pl. hazelle 1. Long-limbed animal with gold antlers and white hooves. Known for speed and beauty, the hazelle live in the mid to upper mountain ranges and are prey to clawcats. 2. Desirable man.

hazelle colt 1. Young hazelle. 2. Desirable youth.

Henta OS. Matchmaker.

High Quis Sessions played by Estate Managers and the Minister during the Quis Council. It is considered the highest form of Quis. Some scholars believe Quis among high-level Calani equals High Quis, but the claims can’t be verified because Calani live in seclusion. Modernists suggest the Oath is used to deny Calani the influence commensurate with their Quis expertise.

hot-light sailor Laser carbine.

hyella Pale blue reed found near desert oases. An iridescent orb floats on the tip of a mature hyella.

icefir Tree found at high altitudes, with needled branches that resemble frozen lace. Named for ability to survive ice and snow.

Initiate Boy in a Preparatory House who has qualified to study Calanya Quis. See also Novice.

inverted tower Qs. An upside-down tower, with the lowest rank pieces at bottom and the highest at top.

Iotic Io. Ancient language from Ruby Empire now spoken only by scholars and Imperial nobility. Skolian.

Ixpar Myth. Goddess of War. Unlike most Coban myths, which date from the Old Age, tales of the war goddess predate known Coban history.

jahalla Sparse angular tree with yellow bark. Given water, its leaves and limbs expand with stored moisture and its flowers blossom. Its seeds are used to make java-cream.

jahalla’s defiance Qs. Structure that challenges the patterns established by dominant players in a session.

Jahlt Myth. Goddess of silence.

java-cream 1. A smooth, rich, dark cream used in cooking and beverages. It is made from javalla beans, which are the seeds of the jahalla tree. 2. Exceptionally beautiful skin, used only for the Hakaborn. 3. Anyone with dark, beautiful skin, often used to imply they are among the highest levels of a society.

kasi OS., pl. kasi Husband. Derives from Akasi.

Kelric Lysh. God of youth and hope on the planet Lyshriol.

Khal Myth. Spirit of water holes and fog. Daughter of Avtac and a mortal man, Edarque of Kej, renowned for his strength and intellect.

kinsa Male prostitute.

kinsaborn Having a kinsa for a father.

kinsa-boss Female pimp.

Khozaar Myth. Wind god known for his great beauty. See also Savina.

kicked-mote emitter Laser.

kya Sk. Title meaning “born of the House of.” Used by Imperial nobility. “Kelricson Garlin Valdoria kya Skolia, Im’Rhon to the Rhon of the Skolias” literally translates as “Son of Kelric, named in honor of Garlin, descended from the Valdor’s line, born of the House of Skolia, heir to the Imperator and the Ruby Throne.”

Lady Death Myth. Spirit who takes the living through the fog portal between the realms of life and death.

Lyshriol Lysh. Home world to the Valdoria branch of the Rhon. The term Lyshrioli refers to the people or language of Lyshriol. See also Skyfall.

metal changer Alchemist.

Mox Myth. God of spices and love, father of Cuaz and Khozaar by Deha. Known for causing mischief. She’s bedeviled by Mox: she’s in love.

multiple builder Qs. Structure consisting of several builders, made by players working in cooperation.

nested tower Qs. Tower shielded within another tower. The larger tower protects the smaller regardless of who owns it. A player captures a nested tower by toppling the protective tower or building a bridge to it.

Night’s First Hour One hour after sunset. See temporal calendar.

Night’s Midhour Halfway between dawn and dusk.

Novice Boy in Preparatory House who is not yet an Initiate. A Novice who fails his Initiate exams usually leaves the House.

Oath of Olonton Document in which the Estates pledged to settle political conflicts with Quis instead of warfare. See also Olonton and Old Age.

Old Age Millennium when the Estates came into being. Characterized by constant warfare. The Old Age ended with the signing of the Oath of Olonton.

Old Script Hieroglyphic language used in the Old Age.

Olonton Uc. 1. Peace, in particular that which came when Quis replaced warfare. See Old Age. 2. Arch. Heart.

orb’s circle Qs. Circle that captures an orb by enclosing it.

order Qs. Number of sides on a Quis die. The higher the order, the higher the rank.

Pattern games Qs. Quis used to solve equations.

pattern of truce 1. Qs. Pause in a session so opponents can negotiate. 2. Arch. Pause during battle so foes can negotiate.

phalanx OS. Structure made from wedges and used to penetrate an opponent’s defense.

podbag Withered air sack.

pog Small amphibian with mottled green, pink, and blue skin. Lives in mountains at high altitude. I’ll be a pog on a pole: I’m amazed.

pole-dung Excrement from scumrat.

Post-Quis Deconstructive Thematics Scholarly theory of modernist criticism that claims Quis is used to control male aggression and sexuality by sublimating it into the dice network. The women on the Quis Council consider the theory seditious. However, it creates less controversy than might be expected, mainly because no one can figure out what “Post-Quis Deconstructive Thematics” means.

Preparatory House Elite boarding school that trains boys for the Calanya. See Initiate, Novice.

Primary Estate Self-supporting Estate with an independent vote in the Quis Council.

pug Sk. Skolian cussword.

queen’s coup Qs. Any strategy a player keeps hidden until its implementation, at which time it gives the player significant advantage.

queen’s fire Qs. Hawk’s fire made from queen’s spectrum.

queen’s gamble Qs. The ultimate rumrunner’s gamble. Most queen’s gambles have a high enough rank to capture even multiple towers.

queen’s spectral tower Qs. Vertical queen’s spectrum. Outranks any horizontal structures it touches, such as a starburst or spectrum.

queen’s spectrum Qs. Spectrum made with five or more polyhedrons arranged by number of sides, as in a builder.

Quis Council Coban governing body, composed of the Minister and all Estate Managers. The Council meets at the Minister’s Estate.

Quis net Network formed from all dice players on Coba. Users access it by playing dice.

Quis table Small round table supported by fluted pedestal. It may have carvings or mosaics around edges, but the playing area is always unadorned. She has no Quis table: She is eccentric.

Raaj Myth. Desert god of the earth and all growing things.

Ralkon Myth. Goddess of wisdom.

Rashiva Myth. Goddess of fire.

ravaged tower Qs. Tower that is harmed during capture but kept as a tower rather than converted to a new structure. Considered a truculent move, the ravaged tower offers no advantage over gentler moves, such as keeping the tower intact, or toppling or dismantling it.

Raylicon Io. Planet. Birthplace of Ruby Empire and Imperialate.

reopen Qs. Reenter a Quis session after leaving it.

Rhon Sk. Descendant of the Ruby Dynasty who carries a full set of paired Kyle genes.

Roaz OS. Old Age philosopher whose writings are considered a source of wisdom.

rock’s chute Qs. Rectangular rock’s well. Although difficult to capture due to its stable architecture, it is low in rank because players can continue moving pieces that are trapped inside the well, thus possibly gaining their release.

rock’s well. Qs. Hollow cylinder built from stone dice.

roll Qs. Take out dice for a Quis session. Rolled right sharp: Looks good, is good. Roll the red die: Have sex.

rosewood A glossy black wood with red highlights that comes from the darkrose tree. Also called darkwood.

Ruby Empire Sk. Fragile interstellar empire that rose and fell five thousand years before the Skolian Imperialate. Ruled by the Ruby Dynasty. Founded the colony on Coba that in later millennia became the Twelve Estates.

rumrunner’s gamble Qs. Any structure built with great risk and substantial potential payoff. Rumrunner’s folly: A failed gamble.

sailing-light device Laser.

Savina Myth. Goddess of the sun. Savina rides a blue althawk that pulls a gold chariot carrying the sun. She has two Akasi, the wind gods Cuaz and Khozaar. See also Sevtar.

scowlbug 1. Beetle with elongated mandibles. 2. sl. Angry person.

Scribe 1. Scholar who records Estate affairs. 2. Historian.

scumrat Small animal with greenish fur and buck teeth that lives in sewers.

Secondary Estate A small Estate that can’t exist without the support of a Primary Estate. Secondaries have no independent voice in the Council. They must ally with their Primary or abstain during votes. See Appendix I.

Second Season Winter.

Sevtar Myth. God of the dawn. A giant with skin made out of sunlight. He strides across the sky, pushing away the night so Savina can bring out the sun.

shylark Small bird with feathers the color of a human blush.

Skolia Sk. 1. Family name of the Rhon. 2. The Imperialate.

Skolian Sk. 1. Imperialate citizen. 2. Imperialate language used as an interstellar standard, also called Skolian Flag.

slither sl. Spy on someone.

slow-syrup Sweet syrup made from suntree sap.

snowfir Tree with white bark and blue-green needles, found only at high altitudes.

Speaker’s Privilege Granted by Manager to let someone talk with a Calani. Usually only given to his kin or an approved Suitor.

spectral tower Qs. Vertical spectrum.

spectrum OS. Five or more dice of the same shape arranged in an unbroken curve according to the colors of the rainbow.

starburst Qs. Star-shaped structure that breaks a circle. The star’s spokes extrude into the circle and “burst” it.

strokes sl. Pleases. Strokes Haka pink: pleases Haka.

Suitor’s Dice Jeweled dice given by a woman to a man to initiate courtship.

Suitor’s Privilege Granted by Manager to let a woman court a Calani.

sunsky bridge Qs. Bridge made from yellow, gold, and blue dice. Used by one player to suggest a cooperative venture with another.

suntree Deciduous tree with gold bark found in the mountains around Dahl Estate. Produces a gold fruit prized for its sweet taste.

switch Qs. Any dice move that takes a player to a new stage of play within a session.

talope Hardy deerlike animal with silver fur.

tas OS. Leafy plant found around Shazorla. Tas stick: cigarette made by rolling tas leaves in colored paper.

taw Large plant with a succulent stalk.

tawmilk Sweet milk made from taw stalks.

temporal calendar Calendar that specifies the exact time, every day of the year, for various moments throughout the day. Used by Cobans, who measure hours relative to sunrise and sunset.

Teotecan Uc. Modern language spoken in the Estates.

Teotecs Uc. Mountain range where most Estates are located.

ticklefly Iridescent green fly with fast-beating wings.

toppled builder Qs. Tower laid flat by an opponent, making it a builder (and thus lower in rank).

toppled chute Qs. Chute laid flat by an opponent, making it horizontal rather than vertical (and thus lower in rank).

toppled spectrum Qs. Toppled spectral tower.

tower OS. Vertical builder. Dice are stacked in decreasing order, with the highest order piece at the bottom.

tower of Odana Qs. Tower of red dice meant to initiate seduction, built by a woman for a man. Although it is considered scandalous for a man to build the tower for a woman, it has become less controversial in modern times.

tower of Olonton Qs. Structure that transcends all others, yet causes no harm. Considered the most difficult structure to build, it is rarely seen even in high-level Calanya Quis.

tower of souls Qs. Tower of black dice. Dismantles any structure within a distance of one dodecahedron.

Tozil Uc. Some scholars claim this is the correct name for Ucatan. The origins of both words were lost in the chaos prior to Old Age.

treeclam Mollusk that lives on trees in the lakes region around Viasa. Considered a delicacy by gourmets.

Ucatan Uc. Hieroglyphic language predating Old Script.

upper level sl. Brain or mind. Slow in the upper level: Stupid.

Valdoria Lysh. Family name for Lyshriol branch of Rhon.

Valdor: Bard or singer.

Viana Lysh. Goddess of fertility, beauty, and love on the planet Lyshriol. Her hair is the night sky.

wing-ivory Ivory made from the bones of a small althawk.

yhee OS. Formal form of word yes, often used to indicate respect, yip sl. Informal form of the word yes.

Appendix III

CHARACTERS AND FAMILY HISTORY

Boldface names refer to Ruby psions. All Ruby psions use Skolia as their last name. The Selei name indicates the direct line of the Ruby Pharaoh. Children of Roca and Eldrinson take Valdoria as a third name. The del prefix means “in honor of,” and is capitalized if the person honored is (or was) a Triad member. Most names are based on world-building systems drawn from Mayan, North African, and Indian cultures.

= marriage

Lahaylia Selei (Ruby Pharaoh: deceased)

= Jarac (Imperator: deceased)

Lahaylia and Jarac founded the modern-day Ruby Dynasty. Lahaylia was created in the Rhon genetic project. Her lineage traces back to the ancient Ruby Dynasty that founded the Ruby Empire.

Lahaylia and Jarac had two daughters, Dyhianna Selei and Roca.

Dyhianna (Dehya) = (1) William Seth Rockworth III (separated)

= (2) Eldrin Jarac Valdoria

Dehya is the Ruby Pharaoh. She married William Seth Rockworth III as part of the Iceland Treaty between the Skolian Imperialate and Allied Worlds of Earth. They had no children and later separated. The dissolution of their marriage would negate the treaty, so neither the Allieds nor Imperialate recognize their divorce. Her second marriage is to Eldrin, a member of the Ruby Dynasty. Spherical Harmonic tells the story of what happened to Dehya after the Radiance War.

Dehya and Eldrin have two children, Taquinil Selei and Althor Vyan Selei.

Taquinil is an extraordinary genius, particularly in economic theory, but he pays a price for his brilliance. His mind is too sensitive as an empath, making it difficult for him to operate in normal human society. He appears in The Radiant Seas, Spherical Harmonic, and Carnelians.

Althor Vyan = ’Akushtina (Tina) Selei Santis Pulivok

Althor and Tina appear in Catch the Lightning, which was expanded and rewritten as an eBook duology Lightning Strike, Book I and Lightning Strike, Book II. Althor Selei is named after his uncle, Althor Valdoria (who is named after his father, Eldrinson Althor Valdoria).

The short story “Avo de Paso” tells of how Tina and her cousin Manuel go to the New Mexico desert to grieve the death of Tina’s mother. It appears in the anthologies Redshift, edited by Al Sarrantino, and also Fantasy: The Year’s Best, 2001, edited by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber.

Roca = (1) Tokaba Ryestar (deceased)

= (2) Darr Hammerjackson (divorced)

= (3) Eldrinson Althor Valdoria

Roca is the sister of the Ruby Pharaoh. She is in the direct line of succession to the Ruby throne and to all three titles of the Triad. She is also the Foreign Affairs Councilor of the Assembly, a seat she won through election rather than as an inherited title. A ballet dancer turned diplomat, she appears in most of the Ruby Dynasty novels, in particular Skyfall.

Roca and Tokaba Ryestar had one child, Kurj (Imperator and Jagernaut). Kurj married Ami when he was a century old, and they had one child named Kurjson. Kurj appears in Skyfall, Primary Inversion, and The Radiant Seas, and in more minor roles in many other books.

Although no records exist of Eldrinson’s lineage, his DNA indicates he descends from the ancient Ruby Dynasty. He is a bard, farmer, and judge on the planet Lyshriol (also known as Skyfall). His spectacular singing voice is legendary among his people, a genetic gift he bequeathed to his sons Eldrin and Del-Kurj. The novel Skyfall tells how Eldrinson and Roca met.

Roca and Eldrinson have ten children. In order of their birth:

Eldrin (Dryni) Jarac: bard, opera singer, consort to the Ruby Pharaoh, Lyshriol warrior

Althor Izam-Na: engineer, Jagernaut, Imperial Heir

Del-Kurj (Del): rock singer, Lyshriol warrior, twin to Chaniece

Chaniece Roca: runs Valdoria family household, twin to Del-Kurj

Havyrl (Vyrl) Torcellei (farmer, doctorate in agriculture)

Sauscony (Soz) Lahaylia: covert agent, military strategist, Jagernaut, Imperator

Denric Windward: teacher, doctorate in literature

Shannon Eirlei: Blue Dale archer

Aniece Dyhianna: accountant, Rillian queen

Kelricson (Kelric) Garlin: mathematician, Jagernaut, Imperator

Eldrin appears in The Final Key, Triad, The Radiant Seas, Spherical Harmonic, The Ruby Dice, Diamond Star, Carnelians, and Lightning Strike, Book II/Catch the Lightning. See also Dehya.

Althor Izam-Na = (1) Coop and Vaz

= (2) Cirrus (former provider to Ur Qox)

Althor is one of the three Imperial scions Kurj chose as his possible heir, along with Soz and Kelric. He distinguished himself as a Jagernaut in the J-Forces of Imperial Space Command. He has two daughters: Aliana Miller Azina, born to a Trader taskmaker, and Eristia Leirol Valdoria, born to Syreen Leirol, a Skolian actress turned linguist. Coop and Vaz have a son, Ryder Jalam Majda Valdoria, with Althor as co-father. Vaz and Coop appear in Spherical Harmonic. Althor and Cirrus also have a son. Althor and Coop appear in The Radiant Seas.

Del-Kurj = Erica (Ricki) Varento

Del-Kurj, often considered the renegade of the Ruby Dynasty, is a rock singer who rose to fame on Earth after the Radiance War. His story is told in Diamond Star. Del also appears in The Quantum Rose, Schism, Carnelians, and the novella “Stained Glass Heart.”

Chaniece is Del’s twin sister. They come as close to sharing a mind as two Rhon empaths can do without becoming one person. Chaniece appears in Diamond Star, Schism, and The Quantum Rose.

Havyrl (Vyrl) = (1) Liliara (Lily) Torcellei (deceased)

= (2) Kamoj Quanta Argali

Vyrl is a farmer who married his childhood sweetheart Lily and stayed on Skyfall for most of his life, until he became a pawn in the political intrigue following the Radiance War. He is also an accomplished dancer. The story of Havyrl and Lily appears in “Stained Glass Heart,” in the anthology Irresistible Forces, edited by Catherine Asaro, 2004. The story of Havyrl and Kamoj appears in The Quantum Rose, a science fiction retelling of Beauty and the Beast that won the 2001 Nebula Award. Analog magazine serialized an early version of the first half in the May–July/August issues in 1999.

Sauscony (Soz) Lahaylia = (1) Jato Stormson (divorced)

= (2) Hypron Luminar (deceased)

= (3) Jaibriol Qox (aka Jaibriol II)

Soz is one of the three Imperial scions Kurj chose as his possible heir, along with Althor and Kelric. A strategic genius, she became the one of the greatest military leaders known in the Skolian Imperialate.

The story of Soz’s experiences as a cadet at the Dieshan Military Academy is told in Schism, The Final Key, and “Echoes of Pride” (Space Cadets, edited by Mike Resnick, 2006). The Final Key tells of the first Skolian-Trader war and Soz’s part in it. The story of how she helped rescue colonists from the world New Day and met her second husband, Hypron, appears in the novelette, “The Pyre of New Day” (The Mammoth Book of SF Wars, edited by Ian Whates and Ian Watson, 2012). The novella “Aurora in Four Voices” (Analog, December 1998; also the anthology of Ruby Dynasty stories titled Aurora in Four Voices) tells how Soz and Jato met. The story of Soz and Jaibriol II appears in Primary Inversion and The Radiant Seas. They have four children: Jaibriol III, Rocalisa, Vitar, and del-Kelric.

Jaibriol Qox Skolia = Tarquine Iquar (aka Jaibriol III) Trader Empress, Finance

Emperor of the Minister, and Aristo queen Trader Empire of the Iquar Line

Jaibriol III, the eldest child of Soz and Jaibriol II, becomes the emperor of the Eubian Concord, also known as the Trader Empire. As such, he must hide his true identity, that he is also an heir to the Ruby Throne. The story of how Jaibriol III becomes Emperor at age seventeen is told in The Moon’s Shadow. The story of how he and his uncle Kelric deal with each other as the leaders of opposing empires appears in The Ruby Dice and Carnelians. Jaibriol III also appears in The Radiant Seas as a child and a teenager.

Denric is a teacher. He accepts a position on the world Sandstorm, at an impoverished colony, to run a school for the children there. His harrowing introduction to his new home appears in “The Edges of Never-Haven” (Flights of Fantasy, edited by Al Sarrantino). He also appears in The Quantum Rose.

Shannon is the most otherworldly member of the Ruby Dynasty. He inherited the rare genes of a Blue Dale Archer from his father, Eldrinson. He left home at age sixteen and sought out the Archers, believed to be extinct. He appears in Schism, The Final Key, The Quantum Rose, and as a child in “Stained Glass Heart.”

Aniece = Lord Rillia

Aniece is the most business-minded of the Valdoria children. Although she never left her home world of Lyshriol, she earned an MBA and became an accountant. Lord Rillia rules a province including the Rillian Vales, Dalvador Plains, Backbone Mountains, and Stained Glass Forest. Aniece decided at age twelve that she would marry Rillia, though he was much older, and she kept at her plan until she eventually achieved her goal. Aniece and Lord Rillia appear in The Quantum Rose.

Kelricson (Kelric) Garlin = (1) Corey Majda (deceased)

= (2) Deha Dahl (deceased)

= (3) Rashiva Haka (Calani trade)

= (4) Savina Miesa (deceased)

= (5) Avtac Varz (Calani trade)

= (6) Ixpar Karn

= (7) Jeejon (deceased)

Kelric is one of the three Imperial scions Kurj chose as his heir, along with Soz and Althor. He is a major character in Carnelians, The Ruby Dice, “The Ruby Dice” (novella, Baen’s Universe 2006), Ascendant Sun, The Last Hawk, and the novelette “Light and Shadow” (Analog, April 1994). He also appears in The Moon’s Shadow, Diamond Star, “A Roll of the Dice” (Analog, July/August 2000), and as a toddler in “Stained Glass Heart” (Irresistible Forces, edited by Catherine Asaro, 2004).

Kelric and Rashiva have one son, Jimorla Haka, who becomes a renowned Calani. Kelric and Savina have one daughter, Rohka Miesa Varz, who becomes the Ministry Successor in line to rule the Estates of Coba.

The novella “Walk in Silence” (Analog, April 2003) tells the story of Jess Fernandez, an Allied Starship Captain from Earth, who deals with the genetically engineered humans on the Skolian colony of Icelos.

The novella “The City of Cries” (Down These Dark Spaceways, edited by Mike Resnick) tells the story of Major Bhaaj, a private investigator hired by the House of Majda to find Prince Dayj Majda after he disappears. It is also the first section of the novel Undercity.

The novelette, “Children of the Dust,” tells the story of Bhaajan’s youth as a teen in the Undercity and her enlistment in the army.

Appendix IV

TIMELINE FOR SKOLIAN IMPERIALATE

Dates are given in Earth years for ease

of comparison with Earth history.

Circa BC 4000 Humans moved from Earth to Raylicon.

BC 3600 Ruby Dynasty founded.

BC 3100 Raylicans achieve interstellar flight.

Rise of the ancient Ruby Empire.

BC 2900 Ruby Empire declines.

BC 2800 Last interstellar flights. Ruby Empire collapses.

·

·

·

Circa AD 1300 Raylicans begin to regain lost knowledge.

AD 1843 Raylicans regain interstellar flight.

AD 1869 Aristos created in Rhon genetic project

AD 1871 Aristos found Eubian Concord (aka Trader Empire).

AD 1881 Lahaylia Selei born.

AD 1904 Lahaylia Selei founds Skolian Imperialate.

AD 2005 Jarac born.

AD 2111 Lahaylia Selei and Jarac wed.

AD 2119 Dyhianna (Dehya) Selei born.

AD 2122 Earth achieves interstellar flight.

AD 2132 Allied Worlds of Earth established.

AD 2144 Roca Skolia born.

AD 2169 Kurj Skolia born.

AD 2203 Roca marries Eldrinson Althor Valdoria (Skyfall).

AD 2204 Eldrin Jarac Valdoria born (Skyfall).

Jarac Skolia, Patriarch of the Ruby Dynasty, dies (Skyfall).

Kurj Skolia becomes Imperator (Skyfall).

Death of Lahaylia Selei, the first modern Ruby Pharaoh, followed by the ascension of Dyhianna Selei to the Ruby Throne.

AD 2205 Major Bhaajan hired by House of Majda (“The City of Cries” and Undercity).

Bhaajan founds Dust Knights (Undercity).

AD 2206 Althor Izam-Na Valdoria born.

Major Bhaajan solves second case for House of Majda (The Bronzed Skies).

AD 2207 Del-Kurj (Del) and Chaniece Valdoria born.

Major Bhaajan solves third case for House of Majda (The Vanished Seas).

AD 2209 Havyrl (Vyrl) Torcellei Valdoria born.

AD 2210 Sauscony (Soz) Lahaylia Valdoria born.

AD 2211 Denric Windward Valdoria born.

AD 2213 Shannon Eirlei Valdoria born.

AD 2215 Aniece Dyhianna Valdoria born.

AD 2219 Kelricson (Kelric) Garlin Valdoria born.

AD 2220 Eldrin and Dehya marry (“The Wages of Honor”).

AD 2221 Taquinil Selei born (first son of Dehya and Eldrin).

AD 2223 Vyrl and Lily elope as teens, creating a political crisis (“Stained Glass Heart”).

AD 2227 Soz enters Dieshan Military Academy (Schism and “Echoes of Pride”).

AD 2228 First declared war between Skolia and The Traders (The Final Key).

AD 2237 Jaibriol Qox II born.

AD 2240 Soz meets Jato Stormson (“Aurora in Four Voices”).

AD 2241 Kelric marries Admiral Corey Majda.

AD 2243 Corey assassinated (“Light and Shadow”).

AD 2255 Soz leads rescue mission to colony onNew Day (“The Pyre of New Day”).

AD 2258 Kelric crashes on Coba (The Last Hawk).

AD 2259 Soz Valdoria and Jaibriol II meet and go into exile (Primary Inversion and The Radiant Seas).

AD 2260 Jaibriol III born, aka Jaibriol Qox Skolia (The Radiant Seas).

AD 2263-73 Rocalisa, Vitar, and del-Kelric Qox Skolia born (The Radiant Seas).

AD 2274 Aliana Miller Azina born (Carnelians).

AD 2275 Jaibriol II captured by Traders and forced to become puppet emperor of the Trader Empire (The Radiant Seas).

Soz becomes Imperator of the Skolian Imperialate (The Radiant Seas).

AD 2276 Radiance War begins, also called the Domino War (The Radiant Seas).

AD 2277 Traders capture Eldrin, and the Radiance War ends (The Radiant Seas).

AD 2277-8 Kelric returns home from Coba and becomes Imperator (Ascendant Sun).

Jaibriol III becomes Trader Emperor (The Moon’s Shadow).

Dehya stages Imperialate coup (Spherical Harmonic).

Jason Harrick crashes on planet Thrice Named (“The Shadowed Heart”)

Vyrl goes to planet Balimul and meets Kamoj (The Quantum Rose, Part I)

Vyrl returns to Skyfall to lead planetary protest (The Quantum Rose, Part II)

AD 2279 Althor Vyan Selei born (second son of Dehya and Eldrin).

Del sings “The Carnelians Finale” and nearly starts a war (Diamond Star).

AD 2287 Jeremiah Coltman trapped on Coba. (“A Roll of the Dice” and The Ruby Dice)

Jeejon dies and Kelric returns to Coba (The Ruby Dice).

AD 2288 Kelric and Jaibriol III seek a way to work together (The Ruby Dice).

AD 2289 Imperialate and Eubian governments try to negotiate peace (Carnelians)

AD 2298 Captain Jess Fernandez goes to Icelos (“Walk in Silence”)

AD 2326 Tina and Manuel return to New Mexico (“Ave de Paso”)

AD 2328 Althor Vyan Selei meets Tina Santis Pulivok (Catch the Lightning; also the duology Lightning Strike, Book I and Lightning Strike, Book II)

The eBook versions of most of the books are rewritten and polished from the originals.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the readers who gave me input on this book: Dr. Lynne Deutsch, Dr. Steve Goldhaber, Dr. Margaret Graffe, Dr. Kate Kirby, and Dr. Malcolm LeCompte. I give special thanks to the above because they were the first ever to see my fiction and their insights helped me learn to write. My thanks also to Dr. Joan Slonczewski, to my agent Eleanor Wood and ebook editor Kris Bell, both of Spectrum Literary Agency, to Scovil, Chichak, and Galen, and to the staff at Tor, in particular Tad Dembinski and David G. Hartwell. A loving thanks to my husband, John Kendall Cannizzo, for his care and support.

About the Author

Catherine Asaro is the author of thirty books, ranging from thrillers to science fiction and fantasy. Her novel The Quantum Rose and novella The Spacetime Pool both won the Nebula Award, and she has been nominated for multiple Hugo Awards. Asaro holds a doctorate in chemical physics from Harvard; her research specializes in applying the mathematical methods of physics to problems in quantum physics and chemistry.

Asaro has appeared as a speaker at many institutions, including the Library of Congress, Georgetown’s Communication, Culture, and Technology program, the New Zealand National ConText Writer’s program, the Global Competitiveness Forum in Saudi Arabia, and the US Naval Academy. She has been the guest of honor at science fiction conventions across the United States and abroad, including the National Science Fiction Conventions of both Denmark and New Zealand, and served as president for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She can be reached at www.catherineasaro.net and has a Patreon page at www.patreon.com/CatherineAsaro.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997, 2020 by Catherine Asaro

Map by Ellisa Mitchell

Cover design by Ian Koviak

ISBN: 978-1-5040-7957-0

This edition published in 2022 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10038

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THE SAGA OF THE SKOLIAN EMPIRE

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Prologue

BOOK 1: Years 960–966 of the Modern Age

Part 1: Dahl

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Part 2: Haka

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Part 3: Bahvla

21

22

23

24

25

BOOK 2: Years 971–976 of the Modern Age

Part 4: Miesa

26

27

28

29

30

Part 5: Varz

31

32

33

34

35

Part 6: Karn

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

Acknowledgments

Appendix I

Appendix II

Appendix III

Appendix IV

About the Author

Copyright