The Xillian Trilogy (The Xillian Rebellion)

by Maia Tanith

  As I near the door, I hear steps down the hallway. Rushed steps.

  I pause. Perhaps the guards have been sent back to accompany me back to my rooms. Perhaps my small moment of near defiance has the emperor worried enough to send guards back to me.

  I stand still and wait for them. They do not need to rush. I have only one place to go after here.

  But it’s not the guard that appears in the doorway. It is the old councilman, the one who spoke before I did. Caidgrath.

  He glances out the door, a furtive, worried look, then comes towards me. “I’ve waited a long time to hear you speak that way, my prince,” he says in a hushed voice. His eyes meet mine, and I see a spark of excitement that makes me wary.

  “In what way, councilor?” I ask. I cross my arms across my chest. I may be hated and ignored, but I’m still the prince. People don’t rush to me with frantic whisperings. People bow and speak clearly if they want my attention.

  “You spoke up,” he replies. The excitement in his eyes has not dulled. He steps so close that I can feel his breath as he speaks. “I—we—didn’t think—weren’t sure if you ever would.”

  “No one speaks against the emperor and survives,” I reply, my voice flat. “Least of all his only remaining family.”

  The councilor leans even closer. “There are many of us would prefer to hear the true thoughts of Prince Khan, rightful heir to the—”

  I grab his shoulder and cut him off. “Hush with those words!” I look behind him, at the doorway. “You would have us both sent to the Games with that talk.”

  He frowns. “My prince, I trust you. You will not say a word of this, and neither will I. We will wait until you are ready.”

  I dig my fingers into his shoulder so tightly that he flinches. Still, he does not break his gaze. “I don’t know who this ‘we’ is you’re talking about but tell them to stay away from me.” I grit my teeth, spitting out each word with as much force as I can.

  “My prince, I only live to serve you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I hiss back at him. “I have no desire to hear the words of treason you seem intent on uttering. Stay away from me if you value your life.”

  His eyes search mine, but I glare at him until he finally looks down at the floor. He bows his head. “Your highness, I meant no disrespect.”

  I step back, take a breath to regain my composure. “None taken. A misunderstanding, I’m sure.” Please take this gesture of peace. I’m letting you off the hook.

  He backs away from me, his gaze still on the ground. “A misunderstanding indeed, your Honor. I thought I—” he shakes his head. “No matter. I was mistaken. But know that everyone in this life, whatever path they choose to walk down, will one day have to sacrifice something that is dear to them.” His voice is low, so quiet that I cannot be sure I’ve heard correctly. “We all have a lot to lose, but some of us have yet more to gain.” Then he whirls on his heels and briskly walks away.

  I’m shaken. My hands grip onto the back of the seat that I’m standing next to. My mind is a whirl of words. Treasonous words. Words that can’t be taken back. Words I shouldn’t hear, words I daren’t even let myself think.

  He’s wrong, the old councilor. I have little left to lose. But that little bit is all that keeps me going.

  It takes me a few minutes before I calm down enough to leave the room. I head towards my chambers, but instead of walking down the small passageway that leads to my rooms I head up the stairs, into one of the shorter towers.

  I haven’t been up here in days.

  Outside her door I pause and rest my forehead against the carved wood.

  Then I enter.

  She lies on a bed much too big for her ever-dwindling body. Her eyes are closed, but they open as I step into the room. Her once long golden hair is cropped short, to make it easier for her caregivers to wash her. Her skin is pale from long years confined to her bed. Next to her bed is a trolley of machines: to take her blood pressure, measure her heart rate, monitor the growth of her tumor and who knows what else. A stick of incense burning in the corner does not quite disguise the smell of sickness and decay that pervades the room. Her delicate silk robe, the one my father bought for her when they were first married, lies across the end of the bed. She doesn’t have the strength to wear it any longer.

  “Khan,” she breathes, her voice as soft and delicate as a snowflake.

  “Mother,” I reply.

  Faye

  I wake, disoriented. I’m lying on a cold, bare floor. Someone nearby is crying, a high-pitched wailing that goes on and on until it sets my teeth on edge. Poor kid. It sounds like one of the children has been pushed too far, forced to run too fast and for too long, to escape the border patrol.

  Then I remember the light above me, the weird spooky light, and the way it hovered above me. And only me.

  I feel the prickle of sweat in my armpits. Slowly, reluctantly, I open my eyes.

  A huddle of women. A chilly, featureless room. A rumbling background noise. Engines, maybe.

  There are women all around me, waking to the same disturbing reality as I am.

  My heartbeat slows just a little. So, a detention center of some kind. That would explain the cold hard floor and the lack of amenities.

  Then I shake my head to clear my thoughts. No, this can’t be a detention center. The women here, well, let’s just say that only a couple of us could even pass for Hispanic. Next to me is a pale-skinned brunette, and over there are a couple of redheads and even one with hair so blonde it is almost white.

  The muttered words I hear are in English, not Spanish.

  No, as bad as an ICE detention center would be, I have the feeling that I am somewhere worse than that.

  Far worse.

  A prison, maybe? Or maybe we have been captured by a weird religious cult? Kidnapped by a serial killer?

  Just as my imagination starts to run wild with all the possibilities, the door slides open and a figure appears.

  His face is hairy, and his nose elongated into a snout. His features look like they would belong better on a hairy pig rather than on a man. His back is hunched over like he has a birth defect that means he can’t stand up straight, and his skin is covered in hair so thick that it is almost fur.

  In one hand he carries a vicious-looking whip. I shudder at the sight of it. Back in the village where I was born, some of the wanna-be gangsters carried whips a bit like that one. They claimed it was to control the cattle, but everyone knew that was a lie. They used them on anyone who got in their way. I got in the way of one of them once, and I have the scars to prove it. Even the sight of those whips makes me feel sick to my stomach.

  Another figure follows the first. The second one is just as ugly and pig-like as the first. Two of them. Two whips.

  I scuttle out of the way, but not fast enough.

  One of them uncurls his whip and flicks it in my direction. I scream as it whistles past me, catching the woman next to me on the air.

  She looks up, startled, as the blood blossoms on her arm, and then screams with me.

  The second hairy pig man yells at the first to knock it off.

  I can understand them?

  Their voices are guttural and harsh, but yes, their grunts and growls are language. The words have meaning.

  I shake my head again. I don’t know where on Earth I am, but those...those creatures cannot exist. They should not exist. They are not human.

  Then one of them kicks me in the leg. Hard. Just to show me that he can.

  I gasp, but I refuse to cry out. My thigh will be as purple as an onion in a day or so, but I will not give them the satisfaction of cowering. They ought not exist, but they do. And they are as mean as they are ugly.

  “Fucking hurt,” I murmur as the woman next to me lends me her good arm to help me to my feet.

  The hairy pig men look disdainfully around at us. “Take your clothes off,” one of them orders, his hand on his whip handle.


  I kick off my battered sneakers and shrug out of my dusty cargo pants and my grimy t-shirt. After days on the run with little chance to wash, I’m glad to exchange them for some clean ones.

  Some of the other girls are more attached to their clothes than I am and ignore the order. Or they are shyer. Or braver. Or simply more foolish and do not know what damage men wielding whips can do.

  The hairy pig men lay about them with their whips, cutting every woman with a stitch of clothing until blood is dripping on to the floor. Screaming fills the air.

  I want to scream at them to obey orders, to keep their heads down and play along if they want to live, but I do not. Anything I would tell them cannot help them now. I cannot help them now.

  I have learned how to be invisible. How to hide, how to melt into the background, to avoid standing out. I have been hiding my entire life. Hiding is not something you can be told to do, or something that can be taught. You have to learn it. It has to become part of your essence, your way of dealing with life.

  If they survive, these women, too, will learn how to hide in time.

  I kick my clothes away from me and into the growing pile on the floor. I’m not sorry to see them go.

  I was hoping for some clean items to replace my dirty rags, maybe even some water to wash with, but no such luck.

  Instead, we are marched, buck naked, out of the room. The girls are all silent, wary, afraid now. We know now what the hairy pig men will do to us if we do not obey.

  The passageway is made of glass and I stare out at the night sky as I limp my way in convoy with the others. The stars outside look unfamiliar to me. I cannot use them to get my bearings at all.

  Am I even on Earth anymore?

  Are those hairy pig men not men at all? Not humans?

  We are herded into an open area behind a set of rope barricades. I huddle in the middle of the group, doing my best to be inconspicuous. My stomach growls loudly. I haven’t had the chance to eat much for several days. Or drink a lot, either. My throat is parched and I’m starting to feel light-headed.

  My head is swimming and I’m almost ready to pass out when someone else stalks in. The hairy pig men immediately stand to attention. I can feel the nervousness rolling off them in waves.

  I’m not surprised they are nervous. It’s a seven-foot-tall muscle man who has walked in. No, not a man. Sort of a man. Almost human, but not quite. He’s way taller than most humans for a start—as tall as a pro basketball player. But not lean like a basketball player. No, this guy is seriously jacked. Despite his size, his features are remarkably feminine: high cheekbones, dark eyes, and a sweep of luxurious hair that falls over his shoulders in a shining wave. His hands, though. Claws. Long, wicked-sharp claws coming out of his knuckles. He extends them, examines them idly, and then retracts them again.

  I know what that movement is. It is a warning. He has claws, and he isn’t afraid to use them.

  Yep, he’s definitely a pretty boy. Superficially, anyhow.

  He may look nice on the outside, but I don’t like his claws. Even less do I like what I sense of him on the inside.

  I know that walk of his. That don’t-mess-with-me-or-I-will-fuck-you-up swagger. He stalks in like he owns the place and we are a bunch of cockroaches beneath his notice.

  He acts like it, too.

  With a bored voice, as if he is quite disgusted by the lot of us, he chooses one of the women. A frail-looking redhead. She looks young. Barely out of her teens. He snaps a collar around her neck, and she whimpers as he pulls her along after him.

  I fill my lungs with air, about to heave a sigh of relief that I am not chosen.

  Bad move.

  He turns to face me. ”On second thoughts. I’ll take those two as well,” he says, putting a clawed hand on my neighbor with the whip cut on her arm, and then on me.

  In no time at all, we are collared as well. The collar has spikes on it that burn if they prick you. They are training us like you would train a dog. Do as you are told, or there will be pain.

  He doesn’t necessarily want to hurt me, but he wants obedience. The collar demands obedience.

  There is no way to fight against a collar like this. Like it or not, I am caught.

  Shit.

  I may not know where I am, but I know the sort of transaction I have just witnessed. This is a slave market and I have just been bought by the nastiest alien on the planet. Maybe in the entire galaxy.

  Delia and Hannah. That’s what my fellow captives are called. Hannah is the one with the whip cut on her arm. She’s strong. Terrified, but strong. Delia looks like a strong wind could blow her over. I don’t think she believes what is happening to her. Not yet.

  Hell, I hardly believe it myself, and I’m living it alongside her. Kidnapped by slave trading aliens who look like hairy pigs and then sold off to a vicious claw man?

  The claw man brings us food and water.

  Delia tries to turn her head away and refuse, but she needs the food even more than I do. I am used to going hungry and I know I can last.

  I put some of the food—a bland-tasting porridgy substance—in her hand and encourage her to eat. “You need to stay strong. Who knows when we’ll get more.”

  She does as I tell her without protest.

  I worry about her. Will she have the strength to remain invisible? To survive?

  Then, despite everything, we sleep.

  Hannah is the first to be taken away. Delia protests, but a blow from the claw man knocks her to the floor and she lays there, her eyes wide and terrified, her fingers cupping her bruised cheek.

  I wonder if my terror can be seen on my face just as easily. “I wonder where they are taking her?” I whisper to Delia.

  I was so close. So so close to escaping my village, to escaping the increasingly insistent attempts by Mateo to ‘take me on a date’. Everyone in my village knew what that meant. It meant being delivered back to your home three days later, bloodied, bruised, and beaten. It meant shame and never being able to hold your head up in the village again. It meant being known as one of Mateo’s whores.

  So my aunt helped me to run, and one of my cousins drove me as far as he could in a single night. I travelled alone, staying small and invisible, eating what I could find, until I met with the men who promised to take me across the border.

  So close. So close to being able to live in peace, without the fear that Mateo and his strong men would come to take by force what I was unwilling to give them.

  So close to safety.

  In a sudden burst of fury, I draw back my fist and punch the wall as hard as I can.

  My knuckles split and blood drips onto the floor. I have nothing to mop it up with.

  In a strange way, the pain grounds me again. It anchors me to this place, to this reality.

  Delia looks at me with pity in her pale eyes. “I thought I was dreaming, too, so I pinched myself, but I didn’t wake up. It hurt a lot less than breaking my hand.”

  The absurdity of it all breaks over me and I laugh. I laugh until tears are rolling down my face and my side aches. I laugh until I am crying, and Delia laughs alongside me.

  We may be hysterical, but we are still alive.

  Alive.

  Right now, that is all that matters.

  It is almost a relief when a stooped old figure appears in the doorway and points to me. “I’ll take her.”

  I let out a whimper of pain as the claw man guard snaps a leash on to my collar and the old claw man jerks me forwards.

  I throw Delia one last anguished look. “Stay strong,” I mouth, as I am led away.

  Knowing my fate has got to be better than staying in endless suspense.

  I walk after my new captor, my head down. He doesn’t speak to me. It is as if I am a goat or a mule. Not a sentient human being, but a tool. He seems to take no pleasure in his cruelty to me, but he makes no effort to be kind, either. I am nothing to him but a task he has to accomplish. A slave to be bought and transported. As far as he is con
cerned, I have no feelings worth considering, and no needs to be met. I am to follow orders or be punished. He does not care which path I choose.

  I follow his steady footsteps through a series of passageways to the outside.

  As we walk through to the fresh air, my knees buckle under me. Only the spikes of the collar digging into my neck keep me upright.

  I know it for sure now. I am not on Earth. This strange planet with its thick spicy air is nothing like Earth.

  And that huge red thing up in the sky? That is definitely not our Sun, either. It takes up almost half the sky, making everything look red.

  Red like blood.

  I shudder. Red is the color of death, not of life.

  I feel it like a blow to my soul: this planet is soaked in blood.

  A sense of knowing washes over me.

  Blood and death.

  Paradoxically, this gives me courage of a kind. If I am fated to die here, then so be it. If being invisible isn’t possible, then I will go down fighting.

  I draw in a deep breath and lift my head up. I may be a slave here, but I will not go to my death like one. “Where are you taking me?” I ask my captor, as we walk out onto the red sand of the landing ground. It is already uncomfortably hot beneath my bare feet, its dark color soaking in every ray of the sun’s warming power. I stand in spots of shade where I can.

  My captor takes no notice of me other than to tug on the leash when I am not walking fast enough, digging the spikes painfully into my neck.

  I shrug. I will find out soon enough.

  My feet and neck are not the only parts of me that are hurting. My hand aches and two of my fingers are swollen into tight red sausages. I wish now that I hadn’t punched the wall quite so hard in my temper. Delia is right. It would have been better to pinch myself.

  My captor leads me over the landing ground and into another ship. This one is quite different to the one I was brought here on. No featureless walls here and endless blank corridors here. No banging and clanking of engines or whirring and whining of machinery either. There is nothing utilitarian about this ship—it stinks of wealth and power.