To trust.
Joseph regarded Anna in surprise. She did not run off as she usually did. He watched as resolve formed in her eyes, and he fought not to show his shock. He had been greeting her from the very first when she’d come to them a starved, filthy thing, delirious from dehydration, asking over and over, Is this the midwestern clan?
He had watched these months and seen her shyness was for males, but females, she trusted. That had given the Band pause. They considered her to have been a victim of some kind. But when questioned she just shook her head. Even Bracus, who had found her and established some trust, could not extract the reason for her state upon arriving. What clan did she hail from?
A mystery.
One Joseph wished to solve.
“Yes, Joseph,” she croaked, her voice unaccustomed to being used.
The remaining Band around the fire looked up sharply at the rare sound.
She immediately noticed their attention and faltered, but Joseph said, “Please, tell me what you think upon.”
Anna stood stupidly before him, all thoughts gone save one. “I am cold.” However insignificant the statement, it was what she could say.
Joseph smiled, that he could fix. He extended his hand, sweeping it toward the fire. “Join me by the heat then, Anna.”
She gave the barest of smiles, and Joseph's heart soared to see this quaking female regain a semblance of who she was and giving him the slimmest regard.
They walked toward the fire together, a man of the Band and a female hanging fiercely on to a grain of hope.
CHAPTER 11
Charles and Clara climbed the steps to the Royal Manse, Clara with trepidation, Charles sure-footed as ever. He looked at her rumpled work skirt and blouse, tired from the day in the fields. Her rosy cheeks gave testimony to the outdoor work. The sphere felt cloying with moisture.
“The cleansing is near,” Charles remarked, wiping his brow with his once-white handkerchief. When that time was near, the moisture level became unbearable.
“Yes.” Clara smiled. She was nearly immune to the humidity.
Charles gave her a glower. She looked much fresher than he. His breeches stuck to his body like a second skin.
Clara laughed, her smile fading as Peter swung open the double door, ushering them into the wide foyer. Fading sunlight streamed through the many stained glass windows like fractured rainbows slicing the interior.
“Princess, Olive has your change of attire waiting in your chamber.”
“Thank you, Peter.”
Clara turned to Charles, looking over his sticky breeches and slightly rumpled blouse. He shook his head. “You Princess. She will require formality in her audience, and I am as a bug.”
Clara laughed, and he winked. “You will await here then while I change?”
“Yes.” Charles and Peter watched her climb the great staircase to her chamber.
Peter sighed. “She leads a hard life, our highness.”
“Yes, she does.”
Peter and Charles stood in mutual silence. They were bound by the same laws that governed everyone in the Kingdom of Ohio, pretending their monarch was not ruled by her own selfishness and the ebb and flow of wine.
Peter and Charles continued in amiable quiet. For years, since Charles was a youth, Peter had been at this door. He had seen many things.
An intuitive man, he remarked on Charles's bearing. “What has happened this day?”
Charles hesitated. “Clara's cream field yields a pink wash.”
Peter's face fell. “The Queen will not like this. She will blame the daughter, whether it be her fault or no.”
“Yes.”
“This is why you accompany her?”
“Yes. And with Prince Frederic still about...”
“Yes, a troublesome man, most troublesome.” The older man looked at the younger. A gaze of perfect understanding passed between them.
“It will be good when he takes his leave.”
“Yes, does he not have a kingdom to rule?”
Peter's lips curved into a wry smile. “Yes, that is the way of it. However,” he arched a brow in apparent amused disdain, “I believe whatever ʻrulingʼ there is may be done by King Otto.”
“He is too weak, by far, to rule that sphere.”
Peter only nodded in agreement.
They looked up. Clara descended, resplendent, the day's glow still upon the creaminess of her cheekbones, a dress of the palest pink falling to brush the tops of white shoes. The bruise was the only reminder that hers was not a life of softness, but of survival.
She nodded at Peter. “Where is the Queen?”
“She takes rest in her chamber.” Peter paused. “Princess…” Clara turned, having already begun to make her way to the corridor. “The King and Prince await you as well.”
Clara felt this was worse news. Ada seemed to gather more strength and anger when she had an important audience. At least she had Charles. “Thank you, Peter.”
“You are most welcome, Princess.” Clara knew that it was Peter's way of subtly warning her to be prepared for more than just the Queen's ire. She and Charles walked down the long corridor to Ada's chamber. It felt like the old stories of pirates. When the end had come, one walked the plank. Clara knew how those lost souls must have felt with their lives balanced on the narrow wood.
CHAPTER 12
Bracus looked up, startled. Anna had responded to Joseph with actual words. It was a rare thing when she spoke. As a point of fact, it was Bracus to whom she most often spoke. She was reticent with males.
He observed the two of them say a few things to each other as they walked over to the fire together. Amazing and wonderful. It would be a great thing for that female to find solace and finally reach out to a male. A member of the Band would be especially good. He swung his head back around. Both Matthew and Stephen wore matching expressions of surprise. Even unflappable Philip, usually the one who chose his emotions most carefully, had paused at the scene. He turned and looked at Bracus, his gladness a cloak about his face, shadowed in the twilight that was giving way to night.
“Joseph has cracked her, I see,” Stephen said derisively.
Bracus frowned at him. “It is a good thing that she responds to anyone. You should be glad of it. She is not an egg, dolt.”
Matthew smiled, calm as always. “You just wanted her for yourself.” He clapped Stephen on the back. Stephen slapped his hand away.
“I care not. There will be females aplenty when the sphere is penetrated,” Stephen said.
“I caution you. President Bowen has only authorized a negotiation with this Princess. It is no guarantee that they will wish to help us in our plight. After all, it is obviously not theirs,” Bracus said.
Stephen grimaced. “That may be. But as I see it, if the negotiations fail,” he paused for effect, “I, for one, will be inclined to sway them to see reason.”
Bracus saw a vision of the Princess, being coerced into cooperating by force. He did not like it. He was managing his emotions again. Something as foreign to him as imagining life as a sphere-dweller. When he clamped down enough to not let his emotions show, he responded, “That would not aid us. If we are to convince the sphere-dwellers to come to our aid, coercion and violence will not be the way of it.”
Matthew looked between the two of them. He was the least volatile of the three. “Perhaps you are both in the right.”
The two Band members looked at him in surprise. He was as steeped in logic as twenty bags of tea.
“Do you now?” Bracus quizzed.
“Do listen. If the Princess is disinclined to assist us, we may be able to persuade the other sphere-dwellers with logic.”
“She as hostage?” Stephen intuited, and Matthew nodded.
“It is the same,” Bracus argued.
“Do you not see? She will either say yea or nay. If she does not, we go to her sphere and tell them any matter of thing that we wish. And they may be so inclined to acquiesce, knowing that
we have her. As you are well aware, they presume us primitive.”
Stephen said, “Only you. I, on the other hand, am naturally sophisticated.”
Bracus gave Stephen a sound punch in the arm. “Say Captain! Why do you strike me?”
“Your voluptuous laziness in the field today. Nary an ounce of sophistication was in evidence then.”
“He speaks true,” Matthew said.
They laughed together for the moment. Soon enough, Bracus imagined tensions would run high. The time drew near to acquire the Princess.
The guard watched the shy female with Joseph. He kept his smirking to himself. His time would come. A female would not be his weakness. He would bend her to his will. This slobbering obsession with protecting the females and groveling before the sphere-dwellers in the hopes of acquiring their females made his blood boil. His patience was a manufactured thing. It was his greatest weapon. No one was as sly as he. He would use their emotions and weakness towards females against them. No female would ever be important to him again.
Bracus took stock of the Band, all in attendance by the great fire. He had not spoken with three of his team: Joseph, Jacob and James. He would wait for tomorrow. He did not wish to disturb Anna and Joseph with their fragile bond forming before his eyes, sitting at the huge log worn smooth from a hundred years of fire watching. Joseph dwarfed her form. She was less than half his size. Joseph was a good hunter, fighter and protector.
The clans were not always on good terms with one another. Bracus's face darkened. He wished that all the Bands could see the strength of uniting. President Bowen did.
*
“Before the Earth Breathed Ash, Bracus, there was a force such as the one I am proposing, named the Police. Their sole job was to serve and protect,” President Bowen stated.
“We are a different people.”
“Not so different, warrior.”
“I have read the accounts. They were civilized. They gave people trials. There was much time spent on proving innocence when guilt was guaranteed.”
“It was flawed, however. We are as well. I accept that. But our strength lies in that which the Evil Ones gave us. This physical manipulation was initialized for a reason. You were bred to protect. It is physical. It is instinctual. We must come together and embrace that purpose.”
“We do have a cooperative with some clans,” Bracus said.
“Not all. That is the goal. I endeavor to acquire the Princess. The negotiation being successful may create a positive ripple, one that instills a sense of hope in all the clans. Once they see there is a possibility of a future for our peoples, they may be more willing to listen.”
Bracus nodded. Much of what Arthur said made sense. But Bracus understood human nature, and where there was not reason, fear would do as a handy substitute. He had seen the evidence.
*
He snapped out of his reverie as Jacob and James approached. They were cousins. Many of the Band were related, some distantly. They looked as different as two men could be. One was fair haired and skinned with blue ice chips for eyes, cheeks a ruddy mask. The other had ink black eyes, dusky skin, and hair that blended in with the surrounding night.
When James spoke, his teeth flashed in his mouth. “We see that Joseph has managed to get Anna to speak.”
The three men and Philip, who had added himself to the group, smiled and nodded. Stephen was the only one with a stony expression. They hung back at the edge of the forest clearing, enjoying the fire at a distance.
Jacob said, “A good thing, that.”
The Band nodded. With the ratio of males to females a dismal fifteen to one, any match was celebrated. Births were greeted with a feast.
“I would give much to know of this clan she comes from. That they would give up a female...” Jacob began.
“She was not given up, cousin. She escaped,” James said.
Bracus pressed hands to his hips, legs planted far apart. “What say you? She has not mentioned any detail, nary a one.”
He leaned forward, and all heads neared his until there was a circle of six huddled together. “Lillian has managed to get some story from her.”
The Band stood silently. James loved drama but would eventually get to the end of it. James was a great storyteller.
“She did not say all. Only that a male had attacked her.”
“I knew it!” Stephen intoned.
Bracus looked at him sharply. Too loud, his look said. This would explain her shyness of the males, where none had transgressed against her.
He had suspected as much.
Matthew and Philip stood quietly, thinking it through, as was typical of them.
“Is there anything more?” Jacob asked.
“Yes. Lillian thinks he was part of that clan's Band.”
There was a pregnant silence as the members deliberated on a female being in the hands of a Band member that meant her harm.
They would come to harm, of that there was no doubt.
“How could she escape him?” Matthew asked. Excellent question, if oddly phrased.
Philip looked at Matthew in question.
“Come now? You are all thinking it. How would that female,” he gestured to Anna, still sitting beside Joseph and looking tiny, “defend herself against any of us?”
It was disturbing. Who would know how they would feel if the situation were not so desperate? But they seemed uniformly protective toward females in a way that was beyond that of other males of the clan. The few clans that were allied with them shared a similar urgency and protectiveness. To hear that there might be a faction desiring to abuse was against all that they stood for. It was expected from the fragment, but not of the clan.
Philip asked the most pressing question of the night. “Did he beat her? Or...”
“It was the other,” James said significantly.
“A terrible abuse!” Stephen whispered fiercely, looking covertly at Anna.
“He should be flogged,” Philip said.
“Yes, he should,” Bracus said.
“Or possibly something more creative,” Jacob finished.
The men straightened up. Philip inclined his head toward the fire, leaving the subject for the moment. “Let us move to discussions of the sphere. I wish to be informed.”
Matthew and Stephen nodded.
The Band walked as one to the communal fire, commanding and deadly, an ancient force of reckoning, prepared to make a historic move and change their lives forever. As the heat of the fire washed over Bracus's body, a feeling of foreboding stole over him. His senses, ever acute, were on full alert as if there was something right under his nose he was missing. If he just sniffed a little harder, he would discover it.
He shook his misgivings away, heading toward Joseph and Anna. His spirits lifted at the sight of them together.
CHAPTER 13
Charles stiffened as soon as he entered the Queen's chamber. Chamber did not accurately describe her quarters. The bed was in an entirely different area with a door between where he now stood and the place where she slept. This was a parlor of sorts, resplendent in every covering, dimension, and scale. But for the blight upon the room, it would have been a reflection of beauty. Queen Ada made the room dim in Charles's estimation. She stood in the middle with her back to Clara and Charles. The deep purple folds of her dress were a rich warm velvet, the wrong material for the season, but she ran cold, he had heard. Her scrawny form was encased in the richest fabrics, regardless of the season.
He knew just how cold she really was.
Charles was acutely aware of the stickiness of his clothes as Prince Frederic's gaze lingered over him. The Prince was supremely fresh in his linen trousers, silk blouse of the finest weave, and an overcoat of a rich, deep blue. King Otto sat beside him looking decidedly uncomfortable. Charles wondered what had they walked in on. What conversation had been aborted?
Ada turned suddenly, her back now to the Outside and her dark eyes boring into Clara's. Clara’s subdued figu
re stood steady under the onslaught of the Queen's stare.
“Tell me, daughter.”
Clara sucked in a breath, girding her loins, no doubt. “The yield is as expected...”
“But?” Ada asked the question as a statement.
“The cream has taken on a pink wash.” Clara kept her shoulders back and straight. If she was uncomfortable, it did not show to Charles. Of course, Clara was well schooled in keeping her emotions to herself.
The Queen's hands clenched and unclenched. She looked from Clara to King Otto.
“May I address this, Queen Ada?” King Otto requested.
She nodded stiffly, and Charles heard a vague, grunting sound.
“I will trade the pink pearls for the rare grapes. That is not important.”
Clara looked confused for the briefest of moments. “Did you not wish to trade for the cream, King Otto?” Was it possible she would not be whipped for the wrong color?
The King looked profoundly uncomfortable, and Charles's stomach clenched.
King Otto articulated Charles’s worst fear. “For the pleasure of a hastened Wedded Joining, I will forgive the color and sweeten the exchange with the coveted grapes.” His gaze slid to Queen Ada then back to Clara. “I’ll forgive even red pearls for the opportunity to meld our respective kingdoms.”
Charles was flabbergasted. Clara freshly ten and seven years! She was too young by far to be joined with Prince Frederic.
Before he could comment, Clara interjected. “We agreed that we would wait one year. Upon my Day of Birth celebration, marking my womanhood, ten and eight years, we shall wed.” Clara's face had a pinched quality and had paled, but there she stood, resolute in her bearing.
Charles thought again how beauty had a faceted quality, and hers was many.
Prince Frederic spoke. “I have decided I cannot wait, my Princess.” His smarmy tone indicated his meaning.
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