"Yes. Fine." He stood up. "Right now the membrane won't let air pa.s.s, but water can diffuse through it just fine. The generator recycles our air, so we don't suffocate. It also seeds the air with nanomeds that take dust out of the air."

Kamoj thought of the firepuff fly that had stuck to the shimmer in her chamber last night. "The curtain lets us pa.s.s through it."

"On this setting, yes. We're easily strong enough to push through it. Your body becomes part of the interface, keeping the seal." He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. "A picoweb within the membrane remembers its original form, so after you pa.s.s, the curtain returns to normal."

"Vyrl, are you sure you are all right?"

"It's just a headache." He pulled a bottle out of his cloak and unscrewed the top. Then he drank deeply, tilting his head back as he swallowed.

Watching him, Kamoj felt a sense of helplessness. Her only experience with anyone who drank this much was Korl Plowsbane. Would Vyrl become that way, decimated and dulled, with no family or friends, only the bottle he loved above all else? She had no idea what to do. She had seen how angry he became if Dazza even mentioned it.

He walked across the cave, his boots scuffing up swirls of iridescent dust. The generator hummed, making its nano-meds to carry the dust out of the air, so it wouldn't kill her husband.

Vyrl turned to her. "That day at the riveryou have no idea. I was so close to going after you. Just one bodyguard you had, to my four stagmen." He raised his hand, palm up. "'But no,' I thought. 'Do you want her to hate you? What of honor? Decency? All that.' So I courted you. Or I thought I courted you." He took another swallow of rum. Lowering the bottle, he spoke with self-disgust.

"Seems I raped you anyway."

"That's not true." How could he be so empathic and not see that she liked him? She had never wanted Jax to touch her, but after Vyrl's gentleness last night even the thought of Ironbridge revolted her.

"I knew, d.a.m.n it!" Vyrl said. "I knew you wanted me to stop last night. You even cried it in your mind." He sat on a hip-high boulder and took another swallow of rum. "Self-delusion is remarkable, isn't it? I convinced myself you wanted me."

"You weren't deluding yourself," she said.

"You think you have to tell me that. Because I bought you." He let the empty bottle slide out of his hand. It hit a half-buried rock and broke into pieces.

Watching her, he said, "You aren't bound to me, Kamoj. You're free. I'll have the Ascendant move our base to some other place. We'll tell your peopleh.e.l.l, tell them what? That I went back to my own 'land' and will send for you. Then we'll send word I've been killed. That way you'll be free of me without being humiliated."

"Killed?" She couldn't believe what he was saying.

"Imperial law recognizes unions made in the colonies, even the rediscovered ones like this. That means we're married by my law as well as yours." He spoke awkwardly. "I'll have someone arrange divorce papers."

How could he speak her language, yet say so much she didn't understand?

Enough made sense, though. He meant to dissolve their merger. The realization stabbed like broken gla.s.s. With news of Vyrl's "death," Jax could claim the widow. Ironbridge would get everything: Argali, the redone palace, Morlin, all of it.

Kamoj went over to him and toed aside the broken bottle. Shyly, she put her arms around his waist. "Stay with me."

His arms went around her. "You don't have to say that."

"I know." She hesitated. "Unless you want to go."

"G.o.ds, no." His hand moved over her hair. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Even after last night?"

"Especially after last night." She tried to recapture her feeling from then, so he would too. Rubbing her cheek on his chest, she inhaled his scent. Then she reached for him with her hand, seeking to give to him what he had given her.

As she held him, he brushed his lips over the crown of her head and stroked his palm down her back, over her curls. After awhile, he pulled off the scarf she used for a belt and helped her fold it around him. Tensing with his release, he exhaled, then he murmured words from an old Argali harvest song: "'So soft is her touch on grain full with nectar . . .'"

Smiling, Kamoj looked up at him. As he relaxed against her, his eyelids drooped. Their metal lashes made a glittering contrast to the dark circles under his eyes.

"Let's lie down," she said. "I'm tired." She wasn't actually, but Vyrl obviously needed to sleep. Why he fought so hard against it she had no idea, but perhaps he would do for her what he wouldn't do for himself.

"All right." He straightened his clothes, then stood up and swung off his cloak.

It swirled through the air and settled on the ground. As Kamoj sat on it, he watched her like a greengla.s.s mesmerized by night lamps on a coach. "So pretty . . . your dress. That color. What d'you call it? Rose? 'S nice the way you fill it out" He suddenly turned red. "Ai. I'm rambling. What an idiot you married."

Kamoj couldn't help but smile at his boyish expression. "No, you aren't. Don't ever say that." She patted the ground. "You lie down. I'll rub your head."

"Won't argue with that." He lay down and put his head in her lap. As she ma.s.saged his temples, his eyes closed. Within moments his breathing had settled into the steady rumble of sleep.

Watching Vyrl sleep, Kamoj wondered how to understand him. He spoke like a highborn man, dressed like a farmer, carried a t.i.tle, had a laborer's callouses, moved like a dancer, and had a stagman's gift with greengla.s.ses.

The silver in his hair and the lines around his eyes suggested he had reached his forties, yet he had the powerful physique and vigor of a younger man. His wide-open emotions and beguiling flashes of mischief made him seem almost boyish.

Beneath all that, though, buried also under his mood swings, his drinking, and his tormented dreams, she sensed a slumbering satisfaction with life that came from well-advanced years, not for everyone, but for some. He obviously wasn't happy now, yet for some reason she believed she picked up a deeper contentment, the kind it took a lifetime to form. Was she imagining it?

"Vyrl, what are you?" she murmured. Elderly, middle-aged, or young? Prince or farmer? Athlete or stagman? Drunkard or wise man? Or all of that?

Brushing back his hair, she decided she would simply try to accept him for himself.

After a while she moved out from under his head and lay down beside him.

Outside a quetzal called and another answered. Branches creaked in the wind. She could imagine the woods, ancient trees nodding together, their heads lifted high above the ground. If she were a bird, she could rise out of the forest and see it rolling in wave upon iridescent wave through the mountains, beneath the limitless violet plain of the sky.

Sword And Ballbow.

Perturbations.

A shudder racked Vyrl's body, waking Kamoj. Deep in his dreams, he made a strangled noise, his face clenched. She pushed up on her elbow and ma.s.saged his head until he calmed.

When he was resting well again, she went outside and stood watching the forest. Morning had pa.s.sed, bringing them into early afternoon. Overhead an "engine" rumbled. She wondered if it knew Vyrl was here.

When she returned to the cave, she found him sitting up. Although fatigue still lined his face, he looked more rested.

"Is there anyone out there?" he asked.

"I heard an engine. I didn't see anyone, though." She sat cross-legged in front of him. "May I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"What are you a prince of?"

He shrugged. "Nothing, really. I'm just a citizen of the Skolian Imperialate.

It's about nine hundred worlds governed by an a.s.sembly of elected counselors."

"You are not a prince?"

"I've the t.i.tle. But it doesn't mean much." He considered her. "Tell me what you know of Balumil's history."

She thought of the stories she had learned as a child. "Long ago the Current gave light and warmth to our houses. And voices." Like Morlin, she realized.

Vyrl had given the Quartz Palace back its voice. "Sailors brought the people here on ships that flew above the sky."

"That fits."

His response surprised her. She would have expected him to smile at their fanciful tales. "How does it fit?"

He rubbed his neck, working out the kinks that came from sleeping on the ground. "The ancient Ruby Empire established this colony. That's why I know your language."

It didn't surprise her that their language had remained constant enough for him to understand. Her people never changed anything. Change brought upheaval, upheaval threatened revolution, and revolution was anathema.

But still, it had been a long time. "The sky sailors vanished five thousand years ago."

"That's when the Ruby Empire collapsed. Five thousand standard years ago."

"Standard years?" That sounded like the scroll in Jax's library.

"About the length of the year on Earth, or on the world Raylicon. Just a bit more than one of your short-years." He stretched his arms. "Originally we all came from Earth."

Earth. The word had an odd familiarity, in the same way as did the pupils of Vyrl's eyes. "What is Earth?"

Softly he said, "Home, Kamoj. For all of us. Green hills, blue sky, sweet fresh air."

His words evoked a sense of ancient mysteries, of mythical quetzals without scales flying in an eggsh.e.l.l blue sky. "If home is a place called Earth, why are we on Balumil?"

Dryly he said, "Many people would like the answer to that." He pushed a lock of his hair behind his ear. "About six thousand years ago, around 4000 BC, an unknown race moved a population of people from Earth to the world we call Raylicon." Antic.i.p.ating her next question, he said, "We don't know why. They disappeared without so much as a 'Sorry about this.'" He shrugged. "My ancestors eventually developed interstellar travel and went searching for their lost home. Although they never found Earth, they built the Ruby Empire." A grin flashed on his face. "But Earth found us. Just a few centuries ago."

"Is that how your people were able to return to the stars?"

He scowled, obviously offended. "Of course not. We relearned interstellar propulsion ourselves, well before anyone from Earth showed up." Then he laughed. "Ai, Kamoj, what a great surprise it must have been. When Earth's emissaries reached the stars, they went looking for alien cultures and found us instead, their own siblings, busily rebuilding empires. Gave 'em one h.e.l.l of a shock."

Smiling, she said, "You look quite smug about that." When he chuckled, she asked, "And Balumil was a colony of your Ruby Empire?"

"That's right. We've been reclaiming the old colonies and settling new worlds.

We call ourselves Skolia now, though, or the Skolian Imperialate."

She tried to fit it together. "How are you a prince?"

Vyrl shifted his weight. "My mother descends from the Ruby Dynasty."

"Ruby Dynasty? From the Ruby Empire?"

"That's right. The House of Skolia."

"Skolia is your family name?" When he nodded, she spoke quietly. "You are a great man, to rule nine hundred worlds."

He looked uncomfortable. "It's a meaningless t.i.tle. My family hasn't ruled anything for thousands of years. I'm just a farmer."

She sensed unspoken subtleties in his words. "Dazza's people hold you prisoner because you have value to them."

He stiffened. "I'm not their prisoner." When she just looked at him, he said, "They have their reasons."

"Good reasons or bad?"

The question seemed to surprise him. "Valid reasons."

"Why?"

After a pause he said, "The Ruby Empire had a thriving slave trade. My ancestors in the Ruby Dynasty outlawed it. That was one reason the old empire fell. The Traders went to war against my family." Tiredly he said, "Now it's all started up again, even worse than before."

She tensed. "Is that why you are a prisoner? Is Dazza a slave trader?"

He appeared taken aback by the question. "Good G.o.ds, of course not. Dazza Pacal is a colonel in the pharaoh's army, the oldest branch of Imperial s.p.a.ce Command, the Skolian military. The army dates back to the Ruby Empire.

One of my ancestors, the first Ruby Pharaoh, founded it."

Relief washed over Kamoj. "So it is your people who are holding you captive."

"If you mean, did ISC bring me here, the answer is yes." He shifted his weight.

"I wouldn't use the word 'captive.'"

"Then why won't they let you go?"

"Members of my family have neural structures that make our brains more sensitive to certain atomic and molecular interactions. What I told you last night. Our ancestors were designed that way." At her puzzled look, he said, "It means we can power Ruby machines that have survived the millennia. We haven't relearned the tech yet, but we can use what we have."

"This is a thing of value?"

"Very much. It allows us to access universes with different laws and characteristics than the s.p.a.cetime we inhabit. Relativity as we know it has no meaning there."

She gave him a dubious look. "These odd-sounding things have value?"

Vyrl smiled at her expression. "Indeed. They make possible almost-instant communication. Signals are otherwise limited by the speed of light."

"You mean by the Current?"

"That's right." His grin flashed again. "We can beat the Current, Kamoj. It gives ISC a speed and precision the Traders can't match." His smile faded.

"It's the only reason we've survived against them."

That he could beat the Current impressed her. No wonder his family had such great value to his people. "But where is the rest of your family?"

This time his silence stretched out so long she wondered if she had given offense. Finally he said, "My father came from another of the rediscovered colonies." He spoke with difficulty. "He was a simple man. A farmer. But he was also that one in a trillion, a Ruby psion." Anger leaked into his voice.