Carnelians Read online

  Corbal was speaking. “Perhaps the people of Earth are hiding secrets about their borrowed songbird and his music. They would resist hunts by offworlders to uncover such secrets.”

  Tarquine waved her hand, dismissing his comment. “The only thing Earthers hide when the glorious lions come out to hunt is their own meek selves. If their history is any indication, they would rather pretend the lions don’t exist than risk keeping dangerous secrets from us.”

  Corbal answered with an edge. “The lion is native to Earth, Your Highness. Not Glory.”

  She regarded him with her exquisitely aloof Highton gaze. “All beasts come from the same place, Corbal dear, if you go back far enough in our ancestry.” With a voice like whiskey, she added, “Some of us are just more deadly than others.”

  For flaming sake. The last thing Jaibriol needed right now was another fight between Corbal and Tarquine. “General Iquar,” he said to Barthol. “Your knowledge pleases us. Continue.”

  A muscle just barely twitched under Barthol’s eye; if Jaibriol hadn’t looked for such a sign, he would have missed it. He knew what it meant. The general didn’t like being asked to support his implications that the Allieds released the song to insult Eube. Tough. Jaibriol had no intention of sitting back while Barthol started rumors that would damage Eube’s already shaky relations with the Allied Worlds of Earth.

  His headache was growing worse.

  The interstellar mesh wasn’t one system. It wasn’t a million. Not a trillion.

  No one knew how many meshes networked human space; every human being alive operated hundreds, thousands, even millions. The webs permeated cultures, they saturated people, cities, atmospheres. When meshes could be as small as atomic particles or as long as light years, when they infiltrated every aspect of life, even becoming part of human evolution, it was impossible to keep any place touched by humanity free of them. Individual nodes linked into community meshes, which linked into planetary meshes, which formed super meshes within a star system. Those systems communicated with the Skolian psiberweb through the Kyle web, linking across interstellar space. To gain access to the Kyle, the Allieds petitioned or paid for it and the Eubians stole it, until all of human space was connected across the star-flung reaches of three empires into an ever-evolving entity simply called The Mesh.

  As with any form of life, The Mesh could become infected. It developed codes to protect itself. Antibodies. They worked with varying effectiveness, countering contagions it picked up from human civilization or discovered mutated within itself. Usually, an infestation in one network had little effect on another unless they were closely related. It was almost unheard of for an infection to spread throughout settled space, across three empires. A rare, rare phenomenon.

  When it happened, people called it a mind-plague.

  In the year 2288, only months after the historic signing of the first peace treaty between the Skolian and Eubian empires, a mind-plague exploded across the interstellar meshes.

  It was called “Carnelians Finale.”

  VI

  Red

  Aliana didn’t know which amazed her more, that the guy attacked her or that he believed he could actually do her damage.

  She was walking along the lakefront, taking a break from training with Tide. Pebbles and mech-debris littered the shore, either glinting with metallic components or cloudy from composites. Water lapped sluggishly against the rubble, leaving smears of oil that caught prismatic rainbows from the watery sunlight.

  A blow hit her from behind, square in the back. She stumbled a step and spun around. A dark-haired youth in a dingy red jumpsuit was raising a club to hit her again. He was almost her height, with a slender frame. She didn’t have time to see details of his weapon, other than that it ended in a metal ball the size of her fist. Her hand shot out, and she caught the club as he tried to bring it down. With an easy twist, she ripped it out of his hand.

  “Hey!” he shouted, wincing as he pulled his arm against his body.

  “What are you doing?” Aliana asked, more amazed than mad.

  “Give me that.” He pointed to a metal clasp on the collar of her shirt. “Or I kill you.”

  “Really?” She regarded him curiously. “I’m terrified.”

  “Do it!” he said menacingly. Or tried. His voice shook.

  “Why?” she inquired. “That clasp is worth zilch.”

  He clenched his fist, raising it as he stepped toward her.

  Aliana caught his fist and pushed him away. “I could do this all day, hon.”

  He glared at her. “You not Aristo over me.”

  “Hey, asshole, you’re the one that hit me.”

  He pointed to her clasp. “Need that.”

  “Whatever for? It’s a piece of junk.”

  “Sell. For food.”

  Aliana looked him over. He wasn’t just “slender,” he was skeletal. “You don’t have any credits, is that it? No way to eat?”

  “I fine.” He tensed as if to fight, then squinted at her and apparently changed his mind. “Hungry,” he added.

  “Well listen, mesh-mole, I’m gonna help you. I don’t know why, but what the hell.” She jerked her head toward the street beyond the rocky beach, about fifty meters away. “Come on. I know a place near here. With food.”

  “No go with you.” He backed farther away. “You hit.”

  She stiffened, angry. She wasn’t like Caul. “Suit yourself.” She dropped the club and strode toward the street. Over her shoulder, she said, “You can come, run away, or grab your little club and try bashing me again.”

  Footsteps sounded behind her. “Not little,” he said.

  It was true; if he had known how to wield the club, it could have been dangerous. She didn’t believe he really wanted to hurt her, though. Why she thought that, she couldn’t have said, except that it was easier to pick up his mind than with most people. She had no idea why she was helping him, except that it bothered her to see someone hurting. She knew how that felt.

  Aliana kept going, with her would-be attacker following. When they reached the street, he came up beside her, acting as if he didn’t notice she was there. He hadn’t picked up his club, though. Either he trusted her more than he should or else he didn’t know much about weapons.

  They walked along the street while armored bug-vans rumbled past, grey and windowless. When they were deeper into the city, an unexpected growl of voices came from a plaza ahead. Uneasy, Aliana stopped at the edge of the open area. Grey and red buildings surrounded it, most with armored plates instead of windows, one-way screens that served as spy portals looking out onto the plaza. A crowd of taskmaker slaves had gathered across the square, watching a giant holo projected on the side of the only building that sported a working screen. She couldn’t hear much from this far away except the driving beat of drums.

  “Loud,” her new friend in the red jumpsuit said.

  She glanced at him. “You got a name?”

  He ignored her, watching the crowd.

  “I have to call you something,” she said. “How about Red?”

  He continued to pretend he was interested in the crowd.

  She motioned at the people. “You want to go see what’s up?”

  He flinched. “Aristos come?”

  Aliana doubted anyone here had ever even seen an Aristo. “Don’t worry. They never come to this sleazo slum.”

  “No Aristos,” he said.

  “No Aristos. You got my word on that.”

  He glanced at her. “I go with you.”

  “Good.” She headed across the plaza with Red at her side.

  No one paid them much attention, other than a few disinterested glances. She soon saw why everyone had gathered here. The holo showed a gorgeous man in black leather with red hair. He was singing in some language she’d never heard, his head thrown back, his fists clenched, his powerful voice full of fury.

  They stopped at the outskirts of the crowd. “Mad,” Red said at her side.

  �
��Yeah, no shit.” Something bothered Aliana about the singer. He looked familiar, but she knew she’d never seen him before. She would remember a guy who looked that good.

  “Provider,” Red said suddenly. “Want to go.”

  “What?” She glanced at him. “You think that guy is a provider?”

  “His arm.” He pointed at the holo. “Got e-spring burns.” He backed away.

  “Hey.” Aliana pulled him back. “He’s somewhere else, not here.” He was right, though, the singer did have welts, cuts, and burns on his arms. It was part of the show, right? Why else would he go on stage like that?

  “Red, look, he doesn’t have wrist guards or a collar,” she said. “He’s not a slave. And he sure as blazes isn’t an Aristo, not with that hair.”

  “Skolian,” he said, pulling his thin arm out of her grip. “Singing in Iotic.”

  Aliana snorted. “Yeah, right. How would you know the language of Skolian royalty?”

  “Iotic,” he insisted as the man wailed the climatic line of his song.

  “I wonder what he’s saying,” a man nearby said.

  Aliana considered Red. “Can you really understand him?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t know Iotic. Just recognize it.”

  “You used to work in an Aristo’s mansion or something?” It was the only way she could imagine that he might have heard such a high language.

  Red wouldn’t look at her. “Or something.”

  The music calmed as the man let go of his final note. The viewpoint of the holo moved out to show his audience, a crowd in some big plaza that dwarfed this little square. Aliana didn’t recognize it, but she’d never been anywhere besides this city, Muzepolis, named for its owner, Orzon Muze, the son of Admiral Erix Muze, one of ESComm’s Joint Commanders.

  Suddenly the singer shouted in Highton, the language of Aristos. That Aliana knew; anyone with any sense learned enough Highton to jump to it if an Aristo ever gave them an order. Besides, languages came easy to Aliana. She could almost feel what a speaker was trying to say.

  “This is for you, Jaibriol Qox,” the man shouted. He sang blasphemous words, soaring on the notes until he reached the end, excoriating the highest of the high, the gods of Eube:

  I’ll never kneel beneath your Highton stare

  I’m here and I’m real, your living nightmare!

  Gasps sounded as people backed away. Others stood with their mouths open, staring at the singer as if it his vocal cords had suddenly turned into laser cannons shooting them.

  “We go!” Red spun around and sprinted away, his long legs eating up distance.

  “Hey.” Aliana jogged after him and caught up in a few paces. She grabbed him around the waist and pulled him to a stop, her arms wrapped around his lithely muscled body, holding his back against her front, pinning his arms to his sides.

  “Calm down,” she said. “You didn’t do nothing. It’s the singer, not you.”

  “Let go,” he said, straining to throw her off. His mind blasted panic.

  “Come on.” She kept her hold on him. “You got to calm down. You’ll make your heart pop.”

  After a few moments, his struggle eased. Then, gods blast it, he started crying. It was silent, and she could barely tell with his back against her front, but with her head alongside his and her cheek against his hair, she saw the tears slide down his face and his expression contort as if he were struggling to hold them back.

  “Ah, shoozers,” Aliana muttered. “Come on. Don’t cry. Here. I’ll get you food, okay?”

  “I not cry,” he said sharply.

  “Yeah, I know. I never cry, either.” If he could lie about it, so could she.

  “Let go me.”

  “You gonna run away if I do?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I can’t feed you if you run off.”

  “Let go!”

  “All right.” Aliana felt the panic running out of his mind like water swirling down a drain. She relaxed her arms and let him go. He stood there, tensed as if he expected a blow. When nothing happened, he brushed his dirty red jumpsuit as if he were trying to neaten it up. He stepped away and regarded her sideways.

  “Look at me,” she said gently.

  He looked at her, then flinched and averted his gaze.

  “Huh.” Aliana wondered what had happened to him. She used to act that way with Caul, her stepfather, when she thought he would hit her. She realized something else, too. As filthy as he was, covered in dirt, he didn’t smell, other than the loamy odor of soil. He didn’t have the stink of someone who didn’t clean himself. In fact, all that dirt hid him. No one looked at him. Maybe he did that on purpose. Of course she couldn’t come out and ask what was the deal, not yet. It wasn’t done that way. But she’d find out.

  “So are you coming?” she asked.

  He considered her for a moment. “Yes. I go with you.”

  So they set off together, headed to her home, the cubicle Harindor had given her to live in.

  “The question,” Dehya said, “isn’t how many people have seen the holo.” She paced across the parquetry floor of her living room. “It’s whether anyone is left who hasn’t seen the damn thing.”

  Kelric was leaning against the edge of an arched entrance to the room. Eldrin, Dehya’s husband and Kelric’s older brother, was standing by the holo-stage near the wall, watching the holo of Del silently wail “Carnelians Finale.” Their mother Roca stood with him. She shook her head, and her hair rippled around her shoulders like liquid gold.

  “We have to talk to Del,” Roca said. “Convince him to help us put this under wraps again.”

  “It’s impossible.” Kelric said tiredly. Nothing could contain this plague.

  Dehya paced past him, a diminutive figure is a soft blue dress that swirled around her knees. “We hid that song with best security we have. What happened?”

  “Why is it always this way with Del?” Eldrin said. “We always end up talking about how we have to fix whatever he did.”

  “Del didn’t do anything.” Dehya stopped and regarded her husband. “He cooperated with us nine years ago when we suppressed the song. I doubt he has anything to do with it resurfacing.”

  “He sang it,” Kelric said. “He knew how politically inflammatory it would be.”

  Roca spoke quietly. “It’s magnificent.”

  “What, you’re supporting this mess?” Kelric growled.

  “Of course not,” Roca said. As Foreign Affairs Councilor in the Assembly, she advised the two rulers of the Imperialate—the Ruby Pharaoh and the First Councilor—on how to defuse situations exactly such as this. She had won her Foreign Affairs seat by running for election like any other citizen. Combined with her lesser hereditary seat, it made her one of the most influential Assembly councilors. No matter how much she or any of them might like “Carnelians Finale,” they had to do their best to counter its effect.

  “It’s too late to lock it down.” Dehya said. “We need damage control.”

  “How?” Kelric asked. He hoped she had an idea, because he sure as hell didn’t.

  “Can you get it off the Kyle network?” Eldrin asked Dehya. “You know the meshes better than anyone.”

  “I can do some deletions,” she said. “Especially if you help me. But it’s gone too far to erase it the way we did nine years ago.”

  “Emperor Jaibriol probably released it,” Roca said. “Given what he must be dealing with from the other Hightons, he probably regrets ever seeing that treaty. How he convinced his Joint Commanders to sign it is beyond me.”

  “He didn’t release ‘Carnelians Finale,’ ” Kelric said, keeping his mental barriers strong. He had no mental finesse; he was just blunt force. It was frustrating when he needed to pick up nuances from someone’s mind, but no one alive could get past his barriers, not even his family. He hid what he knew about Jaibriol.

  Roca was watching him. “What’s wrong?”

  Damn. Her inability to pick up his thoughts didn’t stop her
from using her too perceptive mother’s intuition. He glared at her, mainly to throw her off track. “What isn’t wrong?”

  “We’ll do what we can in the meshes,” Dehya said. “Roca, you talk with the Allieds.”

  “Governments aren’t the problem,” Eldrin said. “No matter how much any of ours may want the treaty, it will fail if the citizens of three empires turn against it. With Del riling everyone up, that’s what we’re looking at.”

  “Then we have to calm them down,” Dehya said.

  “How?” Roca said.

  Dehya exhaled. “I wish I knew.”

  Jaibriol found the lights dimmed when he walked into his bedroom suite at the palace. It was a relief; after his day, he needed refuge.

  Suite was a subdued word. Even in the dim light, the walls gleamed, gold and ivory with platinum moldings, all the materials authentic, none created in labs. Chandeliers glittered, heavy with diamonds. An antique lamp with a ruby shade stood near his bed casting dim red light. Dark red drapes canopied the bed, held back by braided gold ropes, and red and gold pillows of gleaming satin were heaped against the headboard. But all that rich, sultry beauty dimmed compared to the woman who lay atop the covers, asleep in the smoky light, long and sleekly curved, wearing nothing more than a black lace shift that barely covered her torso and hips. Her hair shimmered, falling across her face, and her lashes lay long on her cheeks, black against her alabaster skin. Even with no make-up, her lips were red. Her face was soft in repose, the only time his empress looked vulnerable. He never told her; if she knew, she might never again let him see her asleep.

  Jaibriol mounted the dais and sat on the bed. He slid his hand over her hip.

  Tarquine rolled onto her back, still asleep, her hair falling back from her face, revealing her classic Highton profile, which not only looked like it belonged on a coin, but did in fact grace one. Jaibriol had commissioned it years ago as a peace offering. That was after he had blocked her subtle and exasperatingly illegal attempts to control the market in exotic imported fabrics using her inside knowledge as Finance Minister. He had never realized how much wealth shiny cloth brought into his empire until his brilliantly amoral wife had turned her attention to the subject.