Free Carnelians by Catherine Asaro Page A

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.
    As if Tarquine needed more money. She was already one of the wealthiest human beings in the history of the human race. In fact, including the finances at her disposal as empress, she might be the richest. So why did she need to commit fraud on an interstellar scale? Keeping watch on her was a major headache, and it didn’t help that she was so blithely unrepentant.
    Yet for all that, she lacked the cruelty inherent to most Aristos. Several decades ago, she had destroyed her ability to transcend. Despite what Aristos vehemently claimed—that transcendence was their exalted right—she had come to the conclusion it was nothing more than animalistic brutality.
    “Are you going to sit there all night?” she asked. She raised her eyes halfway, her eyes glinting like red gems under her black lashes. She languidly traced her finger across his thigh.
    Jaibriol slid down next to her. As he pulled her into his arms, she undulated against him with an unconscious sensuality. He knew she didn’t realize it because with Tarquine, he could lower his empathic barriers. That such a powerful, alluring woman had so little idea of her own eroticism made her even more addicting. Eleven years of marriage had done nothing to dull his desire.
    Later they lay together, tangled in the satin sheets. Tarquine dozed in his arms like a deadly wild animal momentarily subdued, until she awoke and resumed prowling. He knew the truth he wanted to deny: he would always be prey to her. She could no longer transcend, but the drive was buried so deep within her that it survived even if the act no longer brought her the ecstasy that had turned the entire race of Aristos into sadists.
    The drive that the child they hoped to make would inherit.
    “Well, this is it,” Aliana said, ushering Red into her home. “It’s not much. But it’s mine.”
    She lived in a hive of hexagonal units stacked up in a hexagonal building. Her home was about halfway up the structure. Its only entrance was a door shaped like an elongated hexagon. Inside, she had a combined living room and kitchen, with food processors along the right wall and a media smart-center on the left. The ceiling and floor were horizontal edges of the hexagon, and the walls on either side sloped into points. A table with a few semi-smart chairs stood by the wall, and a couple of cheap recliners were arrayed around the media smart-center.
    Smart, bah. Calling the center’s tangle of filaments a brain was generous. As Aliana entered with Red, the center started some propaganda holo about the greatness of Muze Aristos. Of course she would never say propaganda out loud. She wasn’t important enough that anyone would bother to bug her home, but you never knew what words might tip off some generic monitor in the tech that Aristos sold low-level taskmaker slaves.
    The Muze Line owned