I landed the flyer in darkness. No moon shed its softening rays on the desert, only the cold light of the stars, a multitude that glittered above the parched land. I ran across the rocky ground to a point several meters away. Then I touched a button on the leather guard around my wrist.
A circular section of rock about two meters wide sank into the ground. After it descended for a meter, it swiveled aside, uncovering a metal surface, the safe door for Block Three. Another touch on my wrist guard and the safe door descended silently. Finally it too swiveled aside, revealing a metal staircase spiraling into the darkness. A shaft plunged from my feet down to the top of those stairs. I touched my guard again and a vertical seam opened in the wall of the shaft, uncovering a ladder.
I climbed down to the landing and ran down the stairs. The security airlock at the bottom released to my command. When the inner door opened, light glared in my eyes. Pipes lined the walls and ceiling of the corridor: huge tubes big enough to crawl through, smaller pipes the width of my arm, tiny conduits no wider than a finger. I ran down the hall, my boots pounding the floor. The place might as well have been deserted. I penetrated some of the most advanced security systems ISC had created and not one alarm sounded.
It took less than two minutes to reach Jaibriol's cell. I unlocked it with a laserpick I had set to the light pattern it expected. The door opened into a small room with a ledge along the left wall.
Jaibriol lay sprawled on the ledge, asleep.
He was barefoot, and wore only the grey pants and short-sleeved shirt of a prison uniform. Bruises and welts covered his arms, and the marks of an Espring prong, which gave electric shocks. The lacerations on his wrists and ankles looked as if they came from chains. I wondered how his interrogators justified their methods, given that we had far less violent ways of extracting information. They didn't need torture. Then again, they probably felt no need to justify it, given their prisoner. Vengeance had no use for benevolence.
I ran over and shook his arm. "Jaibriol! Wake up."
He spoke thickly in Highton. "No more."
I grabbed his shoulders. "Wake up!"
He sat bolt upright and struck out with his fist, hitting me in the stomach with a bruising blow that knocked me onto the floor.
I scrambled to my feet. "It's me. Sauscony."
He stood up, looming over me, his fists clenched, his eyes unseeing.
"Jaibriol, it's m—"
"Qox." Although he looked straight at me, his gaze was unfocused. "Jaibriol Qox."
"I know who you are." I grabbed his arm. "Come on."
He shoved me away so hard, I slammed into the wall. I tried not to think of the time rushing by. As he raised his fists over my head, I spoke in as conversational a voice as I could manage. "If this is how you greet all of your potential girlfriends, you must have a lousy love life."
He stopped. "What?"
"Jaibriol, it's me. Sauscony. From Delos."
He stared at me, his face blank. I extended my arms, showing him I carried no weapons. "Remember? We met on Delos."
"Sauscony?" He lowered his arm. "Sauscony?"
"Remember? I was very rude at your mansion. I shot the place up and broke into your bedroom."
His gaze finally focused. "How did you get in here?"
"It wasn't easy. We have to go. Fast."
He looked past me at the open door. Then he broke into a run, sprinting for that sign of freedom. I sped after him, pointing to the right, and he veered that way. He stumbled on his bruised feet, almost falling, regaining his balance, stumbling, but he never slowed. We reached the exit shaft in no time. He ran up the stairs, bare feet thudding on the metal strips. At the landing, he grabbed a rung of the ladder, but when he tried to pull himself up, his swollen hands slipped. He fell, knocking his head against the ladder as he crumpled to the ground. He lay in a heap with his eyes closed.
No! I grabbed his arm, trying to heft him up, but he didn't stir. In his weakened state, the blow had knocked him out. Even with my augmented strength, I couldn't carry someone his size up a ladder. To have made it this far and be stopped by a damned ladder—no! I shook him hard. "Get up."
His eyes opened blearily. He fumbled for the ladder and closed his hand around the lowest rung. As he dragged himself to his feet, I held him around the waist. Then we climbed, with me just below him on the ladder. It seemed forever before we reached the top, but finally we were running across the desert to the flyer. If Jaibriol noticed the dustbite weeds jabbing his feet, he gave no sign. He threw himself through the open hatchway and fell across the deck as I scrambled after him. I slammed the hatch closed and ran to the cockpit.
I didn't waste time doing checks, I just taxied across the desert, bumping in the starlight, and took off, flying dark and silent. We soared through the night.
And finally, as Base Three dropped behind us, I dared to relax. We had made it. I had done the impossible, stealing the Highton Heir out from under the relentless eye of ISC.
I put the flyer on autopilot and turned to Jaibriol. He had collapsed into the co-pilot's seat and was lying with his head against its back, his chest rising and falling with his ragged breathing.
"I have a counterfeit ID for you," I said. The only disguise he would need were colored eye lenses and hair dye. No one would dream the Highton Heir was walking around free in the heart of an ISC starport.
He opened his eyes and lifted his head. "What are you going to do with me?"
"I'm taking you to Delos. You can ask the Allieds for sanctuary."
He laughed harshly. "Sanctuary? They'll put me on trial for war crimes."
"What crimes?" I grimaced. "Giving bad speeches after Kryx Quaelen drugged you?"
He sat up straight. "How did you know that?"
"I could tell as soon as I saw you speak."
"No one will believe I didn't kill all those people at Tams."
"They will if I vouch for you."
He raised an eyebrow. "And what do you expect in return?"
"That you don't try to kill yourself again."
He snorted. "Don't play with me, Sauscony. What is your price for this so-called 'rescue'?"
I spoke quietly. "That when your father dies, you return from exile to become Emperor of Eube." It wouldn't be easy, but with enough planning he might pull it off. "Try to make peace with us. I mean genuinely try. Not those deceptions your father calls negotiations."
He shook his head as if to push away my words. "The deceptions are yours."
"You think this is a trick?"
His voice was cold. "A clever means of torture your brother has devised, I must admit. Convince the prisoner he is being rescued by a beautiful woman. It should make the reality of my prison all the more painful when we end up back there."
"You're wrong," I told him. Even if I had been working as Kurj's agent, he wouldn't have used such a subtle method. He preferred brute force.
Jaibriol shrugged. "Brute force failed. Why not try subtlety?"
I stiffened. "Why did you say that?"
"It's true, isn't it?"
"Jaibriol, if I were trying to trick you, why are your mental shield already dropping to me, when all Kurj's interrogators, even Kurj himself, couldn't force you to lower them?"
His brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?"
"I didn't say anything about brute force or subtlety. I only thought it."
"I heard you say it."
"You heard it with your mind."
Silence.
I tried again. "Your barriers are activated by stress, aren't they? Or pain, anger, danger? Any situation your mind registers as threatening?"
"That's right."
"So why would they drop with me?"
He watched me with an unreadable expression. Then he laid his head back against his seat and closed his eyes again, his face pale. I waited, but he remained silent. Finally I turned to my controls.
Eventually he did speak, though. "You're the one who will need sanctuary. The Imperator will execute you himself when he discovers what you've done."
"I hid my tracks."
He turned to look at me. "It can't be possible to hide them all."
I met his gaze. "My brother believes your capture was arranged, a trick to get you here. He'll think your people broke you out."
"This would be unlikely, given his security."
I smiled. "It's a lot more likely than me doing it."
His lips barely moved, just the slightest curve upward. But it was a smile. "This is true."
My voice softened. "The Allieds will find a world where you can go into exile. Somewhere unpopulated, with no one to recognize you. A place where you can stay until it's time for you to become Emperor."
"What makes you think I want to be Emperor?"
"You must." I grimaced. "This undeclared war is destroying us. I don't see any way to end it without you. Can you imagine your father and my brother ever making peace? I sure as hell can't."
"Imperator Skolia will never negotiate with me." Jaibriol's voice tightened. "After these past few days, I doubt I could endure being in the same room with him."
"Kurj won't be Imperator forever."
"So you want me to go into exile and return someday to the Hightons."
"Yes."
"No."
"Jaibriol—I'm not making it a condition on freeing you. But please consider it." I let out a tired breath. "What will happen if Skolia falls to the armies of your father or the next Emperor or the one after him? Without us, the Allieds won't last a decade against your military. Is that what you want? An entire galaxy controlled by Hightons?"
"No."
"Then you—"
"No." He held out his arm. ""If I go back to them, this is what waits for me."
Although the sleeve of his shirt hid the top of his upper arm, the rest was bare. Bruises covered his forearm, also welts, cuts, and Espring burns. Torn skin crusted with blood surrounded his wrist in an ugly bracelet.
I raised my gaze to him. "You mean interrogation?"
"No. Look closer."
Puzzled, I looked again. Most of the marks were fresh, but older ones showed, too, white marks that looked like healing welts or scars. I touched a line that snaked down his palm. It had been there far longer than Jaibriol had been Kurj's prisoner.
"I don't understand," I said. "You didn't have these scars on Delos."
"No. I didn't." He sounded as if he were gritting his teeth.
"How did you get them?"
His gaze was hollow. "How do you think?"
"I don't know."
"You should. You've been there. What was his name? Tarque?"
I stared at him. "You've been a provider?"
His laugh was harsh. "Of course not. I am the Highton Heir. No one would dare even harbor such a thought about me, let alone try it."
"It was Quaelen, wasn't it? Kryx Quaelen, the Trade Minister."
His fist clenched on the arm of his chair. "He did what he felt necessary to train me."
"Gods, Jaibriol, didn't your father stop him?"
"He didn't know." His voice tightened. "My father cannot endure my presence. Perhaps he hates me, for my failures. I don't know. I don't think I care anymore."
"Maybe he doesn't come near you because he can't bear wanting to hurt his own son."
Jaibriol flexed his hands, opening and closing them. "He told me never to make a mistake, never to falter in any way that would reveal a hint of my deficiencies. But I can't be a perfect fortress all the time. It is impossible."
sNo one could. My brother came as close an anyone I knew to walling himself away from human contact, but even he had his needs. And Kurj didn't have to live among Hightons.
"As Emperor, you could make more tolerable conditions for yourself," I said. He could get rid of Quaelen, for starters. "Work with taskmakers instead of Aristos."
"I don't know." He leaned back and stared at the bulkhead above him. "Quaelen is powerful, even more so than I am as Heir. Removing him wouldn't be easy." He looked at me. "Neither of us need to be bound to our heritage, Sauscony. Come with me. We'll find a place where we never have to worry about Kryx Quaelen or anyone else."
Come with me. Just like that. Throw away everything I had worked for.
Alone in my rooms earlier today I had been sure of what I wanted. Now, faced with Jaibriol, my certainty crumbled. Like knew like. I turned back to my controls, unable to look at him. The flyer was fine on autopilot. Its routines for maneuvering in traffic were kicking in as we approached the city. A few more minutes and we would be at the starport.
"Sauscony?"
I continued to study the controls. "I can't go into exile."
He didn't say any more. Instead he made a picture in his mind, the two of us making love in a field of waving grasses.
"Stop it!" I swung around to him. "We can never have that."
"Why not?"
"You know why!"
He gave me an incredulous look. "You never asked to be the Imperial Heir. You don't have to martyr your sanity to it."
"Don't make it sound like some high-minded sacrifice. I want to be Imperator."
"Maybe."
I scowled at him. "What does that mean?"
"You think you have a responsibility. That you can't run away from it."
"What I think is my business."
"If you try to make yourself responsible for every Skolian alive, the pressure will kill you."
My anger flared. "So you want me to run off and fuck in the flowers for the rest of my life?"
He didn't back down. "Belittling what you want won't change how much it means to you."
The flyer's node spoke. "We are receiving a signal."
I glanced at the controls—and the blood drained from my face. A light glowed that I had prayed would remain dark.
"What's the matter?" Jaibriol asked.
"I'm not sure." I switched on the neutrino transmitter, cycling through the ISC channels. Kurj's voice suddenly cut into the air.
"—south of the city in a class 4B or 4C flyer. Stop all craft fitting that description. I repeat, stop all craft of that description."
No! Not now. Not when we were so close.
Only a few seconds of listening told it all. Kurj knew Jaibriol had escaped. A planet-wide cordon had snapped into place, every flight grounded, every passenger suspect. As Kurj reeled off commands, I yanked on the flystick and veered to the east, away from the starport.
We had almost made it. But almost hadn't been enough. What gave us away? One of my aunt's watchers on the mesh? Maybe a guard had decided to check on Jaibriol, or I had tripped alarm I hadn't known about. Whatever had happened, my plans were shot to hell.
Kurj's transmission continued, coordinating search units. At least they were looking for Trader commandos instead of me. We were over the suburbs, immersed in traffic, one among hundreds of flyers that fit the description Kurj gave. But I knew ISC efficiency. Once Kurj set his machine into motion, even I couldn't escape. No place could evade his inexorable grip.
Except one.
I brought the flyer around in a tight circle, the city pivoting below until we headed north. The suburbs soon thinned out, giving way to desert.
An ISC flyer appeared on my holomap, matching our course and speed. A voice crackled on the comm. "Identify yourself."
"Read your monitor, mister," I said.
"Sorry, Primary Valdoria. ID verified. Go on through."
"Are you on the city cordon?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Any luck finding them?"
"We think they're headed for the starport."
"All right. Carry on."
We were hailed twice more before we reached the mountains, and as we flew into the foothills, another flyer intercepted us. I hadn't expected Kurj to waste craft out here, given the extensive systems already guarding this range. They protected the palace, the only dwelling within thousands of square kilometers. Hundreds of installations watched us from peaks and valleys. Satellites sailed in low orbits overhead, one after another, in a pattern designed to cover the area at all times. All to guard one empty building.
As the mountains closed around us, my comm crackled with a female voice I would have taken for human if I hadn't known better. "Please identify yourself."
"Transmitting ID," I said.
"Greetings, Sauscony," the computer said. "Welcome home."
We continued on, passing through the best safeguards the Imperialate had to offer. Not one stopped us. Why should they? I was one of the people they were supposed to protect. But even where we were going—the Imperial palace—we wouldn't be able to hide long.
Sooner or later, Skolia's mighty Imperator would come home.
My bedroom in the palace made even my apartment on the world Forshires look plain. The door knob was gold, like the old fashioned key that unlocked it. The room was blue: ceiling, walls, carpets, and the bed on the raised dais. Gold filigree scrolled around the windows. Tall vases stood against the walls, priceless works of art from some ancient civilization on a planet with a name I couldn't remember. The closet was as big as a living room. Dresses hung there, soft sexy things I had never worn. I suspected the room was more my idea of what I was supposed to like than what actually made me comfortable. It wasn't that I didn't appreciate its beauty. It pleased me as much today as the first day I had seen it finished. But it had never felt as if it were mine.
Jaibriol limped wearily across the carpet and climbed the dais. As he lay on the bed, its silk coverings rustled under his weight. I sat next to him, my Jumbler dangling in my hand. The weapon was useless here. All my training, my years of experience—what good was it now? Yes, the last place anyone would think to look for Jaibriol Qox was the Imperator's home. But sooner or later, ISC would search even the last place.
"I'm sorry," I said. "All I've done is delay the inevitable."
He touched the Jumbler. "At least this way I don't have to die slowly."
"I'm not going to shoot you."
"Even if our only other choice is recapture? We can't escape. Your brother will execute us."
I stared at the gun. Then I dropped it on the floor. We had come so close. Just a little more time and we would have made it off-planet. But close wasn't good enough.
I stretched out on my stomach next to Jaibriol. Lying on his back, he trailed his finger along my cheek. "When I saw you in my cell, I thought it was another of my dreams."
"Dreams?" I asked.
"After we met on Delos—whenever I was lonely, I dreamed you came to me."
So I wasn't the only one who had struggled with the memory of that night. It helped, knowing that. I turned on my side and propped my head up on my elbow as I gazed at his face. I had forgotten how handsome he was, even by Highton standards. It wouldn't surprise me if Ur Qox had ordered doctors to fine-tune his appearance when Jaibriol was a boy. Anything to further enhance his son's image as a hero of the Traders. Anything to draw attention away from Jaibriol's inability to function as a true Highton.
Dark circles rimmed his eyes, though. His hair was rumpled. Shimmering black Highton hair. It was so odd to see it on someone so unlike a Highton. I touched his lips, running my finger over the top one, then the bottom. They felt chapped. Dry and cracked. Also warm. So warm. Rhon lips, full and inviting. I lowered my head, bringing my lips to his—
Jaibriol pushed me away.
I flushed. What was wrong with me, trying to seduce a man who had just spent days subjected to a brutal interrogation supervised by my own brother? "I'm sorry."
He just stared up at me. Across the room, the old spire-clock ticked softly, tick-tick, marking off seconds. Then Jaibriol slid his arm around my neck and pulled my head down. I could smell him, a musky scent, heady and masculine. I closed my eyes, letting my lips linger on his mouth. It felt as good as it looked, warm and inviting. He lay tense under me, though, more like a plank of wood than a man with a woman he desired.
I lifted my head. "What's wrong?"
He pushed up on his elbows, bringing his eyes level with mine. "It's not you. It's anyone."
"Any lover?"
"Yes. No. No lovers."
"You mean you've never had one?"
"That's right."
"I'd have thought every eligible woman among the Hightons would be throwing herself at you."
"I didn't want a Highton lover." He grimaced. "Would you?"
"No." With his barriers dropping to me, I recognized that same aloneness in him that I had felt the night on the docks, in the cover of the sea-lapping Delos night. He was lonely—achingly, bruisingly lonely. The wound had become even deeper, scarred around the edges, raw in the center.
"Couldn't you take a provider?" I asked.
"I didn't want one." He pressed his palm against my chest, between my breasts, as if he were keeping me at bay. "Let someone that close and you become vulnerable."
"How could a provider hurt you?"
"By recognizing me." Softly he said, "By recognizing herself in me."
I exhaled, understanding. "You had no friends at all?"
His face twisted. "I had Lord Quaelen, my 'beloved' mentor and guide. He didn't like my showing attention to anyone." Hatred sparked in his voice. "If I did, he found a reason to punish me."
"Couldn't you get rid of him?"
"He's a master at Highton intrigue, even better than my father." Jaibriol's voice cracked. "Quaelen is empty, like a hole waiting to swallow me up. They're all that way—my father, my so-called mother the Empress, all of them."
"I'm sorry." Gods, that sounded trite.
He watched me, concentrating, as if he could absorb me into himself. Then, with no warning, he pulled me down and rolled me onto my back, bringing his mouth down on mine. My lips parted and his tongue came into my mouth, first questing, then probing with more urgency. But it felt wrong. Not him, but me. I wanted to jerk away. What was the matter with me?
He made a soft, aroused sound as he moved his lips to my ear. "Sweet Sauscony." His voice murmured in a familiar cadence, a soft rhythm I recognized . . .
And the memory came to me, what I had so often heard it in my mind during combat, thoughts like acid that poured over me: Die, sweet Jagernaut. Die.
Ah, hell. I sat up so fast, my fingernails scraped the scabs on his arms. He sat more slowly, emotions washing across his face: surprise, embarrassment, desire. "What's wrong?"
I took a shaky breath. Of course he acted Highton. He was Highton.
"It's only cultural," he murmured.
"I'm all right." Across the room, the spire-clock ticked loudly.
"Try this." Jaibriol nudged me onto my stomach. I lay warily, tensed and stiff as he straddled my hips so he was sitting on my bottom with his knees on either side of my waist. Then he started to rub my back.
"Oh." I closed my eyes. "Oh, yes." It felt heavenly.
In a few moments, though, he quit. I looked over my shoulder. "Why did you stop?"
His lips quirked upward. "I'm looking."
"At my backside?" I snorted. "What's so interesting about that?"
Jaibriol smiled, a full one this time. "Maybe it's not to you." He rubbed my behind, his motions more like caresses than a massage. "That's because you can see it any time you want."
Such a beautiful smile. I had forgotten the way it lit up his face. In that moment, he wasn't the embittered heir to an Empire. Instead, he looked like what he should have been if his heritage hadn't ruined his life, a healthy young man enjoying his first experience with a woman. I sighed and laid my head on the pillows.
Jaibriol kept massaging, his hands moving in firm, sensual circles. My muscles relaxed, and I basked in the sensations, soaking in his musky scent, that tantalizing scent that made me want him to rub more private places. He lay on top of me and took hold of my thighs, one hand on each leg, his erection pushing the cloth of his trousers against my behind—
Like Tarque.
Combat mode on, my spinal node thought.
For flaming sake. "Jaibriol, stop!" That would certainly be romantic if I hefted him onto the floor. Combat mode off, I thought.
He lifted his body, holding himself above me. "What's wrong?"
I rolled onto my back. "It's all right." To the hell with Tarque. I wasn't going to let that damn Aristo ruin my life ten years after he had died. Jaibriol and I only had a few hours left, hours far too precious to waste.
I cupped my hands around his face and pulled him into a kiss. His smell wafted around us, even stronger than before. Even though I knew the Rhon produced different pheromones than other humans, I wasn't prepared for the intensity of it. His scent evoked reactions from my body far stronger than I had ever before experienced.
Jaibriol turned his head to kiss my palm. Then he sat up on his knees, straddling me, and put his finger between my breasts, poking it inside the magnetic seam that closed my jumpsuit. As he slid his hand down my front, the jumpsuit fell open, leaving my skin bare. He rubbed his palms over my breasts, and my nipples hardened, sticking up like an invitation.
We undressed each other slowly, exploring. He dropped my boots off the bed, and the heels clanged on my Jumbler. We slipped under the covers, between the silken sheets, bare skin against bare skin. I reached down, guiding him—there. As he moved inside of me, I closed my eyes, murmuring in his ear, meaningless noises. And finally we merged into a full Rhon meld, our minds blended, a joining even stronger than the one on Delos. It built as we built, stronger, higher, closer—until I surged into my peak, the release coming with gratifying intensity.
It didn't stop there. Jaibriol was still going, his mind part of mine. I kept building with him even after my own body had spent itself in orgasm. His excitement pulled us higher until I couldn't bear it any longer. But I couldn't stop. Then his climax burst over us both, wringing our bodies with spasms that felt so good, I quit thinking altogether.
Sometime later, I became aware again. Jaibriol was lying on top of me, his cheek against mine. Sweat trickled off his chest and down my breasts. When I stirred, he lifted his head and kissed my closed eyelids.
"That was worth waiting for," he said softly.
"Yes. It was." What a monumental understatement.
"How long do you think before . . .?"
I opened my eyes. "Before Kurj finds us?"
"Yes."
"Maybe tonight. Probably a few hours." I wasn't sure what Kurj would do when he realized just how thoroughly I had betrayed him. It wouldn't be pretty, and I doubted it would be over quickly.
"Sauscony." Jaibriol looked down at me. "I don't want them to do to you what they've been doing to me." He leaned over the side of the bed—and came with my Jumbler. He laid it between my breasts and lowered himself onto me so the gun formed a cold lump between our bodies. Taking my finger, he set it against the firing stud.
I felt as if I couldn't breathe. "No."
"We'll die anyway. You know that." His voice cracked. "We both know what it's like to be tortured until you wonder how you can endure anymore. I don't want to die like that. At least this way it will be in love instead of pain."
I clenched the gun. He was right, but my instinct for self preservation was too strong. I couldn't do it.
He spoke against my ear. "I can't fire it. Only you can."
I nudged off the safety and set my finger on the firing stud. Just one push—
A knock sounded at the door.
I jerked out from under Jaibriol and off the bed so fast that the covers flew into the air. I moved by reflex, grabbing Jaibriol's shirt and yanking it over my head, I didn't want to face our captors in the vulnerability of my nakedness. I raised the Jumbler, aimed at the door—
And when it opened, I almost shot my own father.