Carnelians by Catherine Asaro Read Free Book Online

my sister, expecting no others.

    Well, I’m no golden hero in the blazing skies.
    I’m no fair-haired genius hiding in disguise.
    I’m only a singer; it’s all I can do.
    But I’m still alive, and I’m coming after you.

    The music thundered, filling the night, and Del’s voice rose with what even Barthol had to admit was spectacular power:

    I’ll never kneel beneath your Highton stare.
    I’m here and I’m real; I’ll lay your guilt bare.

    As the song reached its climax, he threw back his head and screamed:

    I’ll never kneel beneath your Highton stare
    I’m here and I’m real; your living nightmare!

    Barthol felt ill listening to him. Del held the final note as the song finished in a crashing chord. But the odious song wasn’t done yet. The music began again, dropping into its quieter opening.
    “That was for all of you,” Del told the audience. “This next time is for my people.”
    “What the hell?” a tech said in the recording. “My people? Isn’t that all of us?”
    Del sang again—this time in perfect, unaccented Iotic, a dead language spoken by only the Skolian nobility. As he repeated the song, the audience screamed their approval. But Barthol saw the silences, too, people staring with shock as they realized this wasn’t a show. It was real.
    A woman was moving around the edge of the stage toward Del. She wasn’t in a uniform, but Barthol knew a military officer when he saw one. The prince’s people were probably having heart-failure as he sang in a language that blasted his identity to an interstellar audience. A man was coming from the other side of the stage, a giant in military fatigues. Arden kept singing, soaring to a pitch well above a man’s normal vocal range. He held the last note even longer this time, with an incredible control of breath.
    When Del released the note, the music dropped into the ominous chords of its opening. Del glanced right and left at the military officers, then stalked to the edge of the stage above the shouting, clapping, dancing crowd. One more step and he would fall into them. Barthol thought it was probably why no one had stopped him yet; the crowd might have rioted, and if he fell off the stage, the devil only knew what would happen to him in that seething mass.
    Del raised his head and shouted, “ This is for you, Jaibriol Qox. ” As if he hadn’t yet inflicted enough on the universe, he went through the entire song again, this time bellowing his repugnant lyrics in Highton. Gods, no wonder Tarex had whipped the youth.
    Barthol smiled. Kryx had done well.
    He had given Barthol the weapon he needed.

V: Plague
    V
Plague

    “We need the Skolian and Trader delegates to meet in person,” Kelric said.
    Dehya stared at him. “You must be joking.”
    They were in a conference room of chrome and platinum hues, at a table with tech-mech panels disguised as gleaming metal artwork. Kelric sat sprawled in a big chair. “How else will we work out the treaty?” he asked. “Everyone and her sister’s uncle is trying to undermine the damn thing.”
    Dehya traced an arc on the chromed table with her graceful finger. Kelric wasn’t fooled. Yes, his aunt looked fragile. But in her mind and character, she was one of the strongest people he knew. Although her face had a childlike quality, she was almost the oldest living human, second only to her ex-husband, a retired admiral on Earth. Her stratospheric intellect coupled with the knowledge she had accumulated throughout her life, all one hundred and seventy years of it, had turned her into a greater force than any of his military commanders or the political strategists in the Assembly. To the rest of humanity outside her family, she was a reclusive legend who never appeared in public, Dyhianna Selei, the enigmatic and powerful Ruby Pharaoh.
    Right now, though, she was just being obstinate.
    “I need your support to make my idea work,” Kelric said.
    “It’s not an idea,” she said. “It’s a bout of