“If Lillian is well enough to go,” Jack clarified.
“It matters not. Women like to primp and preen,” Stephen said.
“Watch your tongue before I cut it out. Lillian does none of that. I think it is but an excuse to wheedle information out of the Princess.” Jack glowered at Stephen.
“There is much to be learned of the sphere-dwellers. That is true,” Bracus said.
“Another female may coax information,” Matthew agreed.
President Bowen reminded them all, “She is to be kept under close supervision. I wish to make haste with a treaty of sorts, and that cannot be done if harm befalls her or she escapes and is picked up by the fragment.”
Bracus would never let that happen.
Out loud he said, “Let us make haste to rescue Evelyn.”
“See that you do.” And with that, Bowen walked off with a member from the central clan's Band.
Bracus turned around and looked at the cottage, his gaze lingering. He desperately wished to see Clara one more time before his departure. No matter. There would be plenty of time upon his return to sort out his feelings and deepen their acquaintance. He knew he did not wish for Clara to return to the sphere.
Ever.
And as he stood there, she appeared in the window, her form warped from the glass's imperfections. She gave a small wave, and Bracus's heart became lighter. After all that she had been through, she bid him farewell.
The guard watched Bracus stare at Jack and Lillian's dwelling, his thought process clear to all who bothered looking for it. Oh how surprised he would be when his return marked the precious Princess as absent.
Perfect.
CHAPTER 26
Charles, Clarence, and Sarah spoke quietly in her foyer, yet again. The Queen had been caught unawares by their story. She had known that something was not quite right, but when they’d placed the blame on the savagesʼ kidnapping of Clara, they were also able to assign blame for the drugging of Clarence. What they could not do was properly explain the Prince’s proximity or physical injuries. However, the Prince was in no great hurry to bring his assault on Clara to light. Beating her had been one thing, but rape? Even the Queen might take pause over that.
Charles was arguing with Sarah, who thought it too risky to leave the sphere immediately after their first escape attempt. But Charles felt there was no choice, and besides, his mind was quite made up.
“She is with them, the savages. Each moment that I do not go after her—Guardian knows what could be happening to her as we speak, Sarah! Surely you must know that?” Charles's hands were on his hips and his legs planted wide. He glowered down at Sarah.
Clarence said, “Charles, your voice.”
Charles glared at him then began to pace the small room, frustrated beyond measure. He must find her. Already, he was a day behind.
He and Clarence looked at each other.
Sarah asked, “What are your thoughts?” Her eyes searched his face. “You know that if you go now, you may never return while Queen Ada reigns.”
He knew and cared not. Clara was most assuredly in grave danger.
“I will go with you,” Clarence said decisively.
Charles turned. “You know what this means. Mayhap you would be trapped Outside forever with no clear future.”
Clarence lowered his voice. “I do not care for our monarch. Without Clara, what does it matter?”
“She will wish to return if she can. She cares nothing for her own safety. Clara cares only for her kingdom, her father's kingdom.”
“King Raymond.” Clarence laid a fist over his heart as Charles did the same. The three silently remembered a kingdom governed by a fair and true monarch.
“Aye, she will, but a dead ruler cannot rule,” Clarence said.
“My sentiments exactly,” Charles said.
“She will want to come back...” Sarah said.
They were all quiet for a moment. Then Clarence voiced what they had all been thinking. “If she can. Perhaps she is...”
“Do not speak such,” Sarah said.
Charles looked at Clarence. “I am sorry, but the odds are not in her favor, Charles...” He looked at Sarah. “Sarah.”
“I take comfort that they appeared to be expecting the situation. They were prepared. The manner in which they dispatched the Prince's guards speaks of planning. If that be the case, they may be holding her for unknown reasons. We may be able to reason with them,” Charles explained.
Sarah rolled her eyes. “They are savages, Charles. They are a primitive people.
Charles shook his head. “I do not think so. They seemed sophisticated in their manner. Supreme fighters. They employed a degree of stealth that we could never have managed even with the finest of our guards.” He looked at each of them in turn. “I will take my chances.”
“And I will take them with you,” Clarence said.
Sarah huffed and turned her back on them. Insufferable men!
Charles swung her around to face him, and she gave him a hard stare. “You were not there. You did not see them. I have seen nothing like it. They are exactly what the Record Keeper said they would be.”
“Tales, she bears tales,” Sarah responded, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Not in this. They are as she said: fierce, large, great warriors, and tenacious. They will not easily be dissuaded from their goal. And I think their goal may have been to capture Clara.”
Sarah leaned back, extracting herself away from Charles's angry grip. “To what end?”
Charles shook his head. “I will find out. It cannot be good.”
“The Record Keeper told stories that made people of the spheres fear the Outside. Look now.” Sarah swung her arm around her. “Clearly, we need not have worried. The sphere wall repaired itself, and no one who was exposed to the Outside air died a miserable death.”
Clarence spoke. “It may have been very true at one time years ago. If the sphere had been breached, the toxicity of the Outside would have sickened and killed many. It is possible there has been enough years since the Days of Ash that we may be able to exist Outside.”
Sarah shrugged. “I trust none of them: the Healer, the Record Keeper, and most especially the Queen. To say nothing of that miserable excuse of a Prince.”
“Let us make haste and go this night,” Charles said.
Clarence nodded at his comment.
Sarah rolled her eyes. There was no stopping them. She might as well offer help.
“Wait,” she said. They turned. “Let me collect a few items for Clara.”
Charles sighed, exasperated. “We have no time for this.”
“Take the time,” she said, her eyes steady on his face.
He stared back, realizing that she loved Clara too—not the way that he did, but no matter. He and Clarence would go in her stead, and this was her only way to communicate with Clara.
He waited while she put some items in a small sack.
“Where is your knapsack?” she asked.
Charles shrugged. “It has not been recovered by the Queen's guard.”
Clarence gave him a sharp look. “The savages.”
Charles nodded.
Sarah studied them. Finally she succumbed, giving them fierce hugs. Her last tie to Clara was leaving her, and she wished with all her heart it could have been she who was going to her friend. One day, she would see her again. Sarah held back tears as Charles and Clarence left her standing alone.
Alone.
CHAPTER 27
Queen Ada tapped her foot, waiting for that dim-witted woman, Elvira, to finally get her wardrobe assembled for the day—or what was left of it.
She gazed about her room and wondered when she could sample the wonderful new wine that Otto had brought with him.
Not soon enough—as certain things claimed her attention: primarily where that foolish girl had run off to. Charles, that inept friend of hers, claimed that the savages absconded with her to the Outside.
Ada
was not convinced.
Just because a few savages had been seen did not mean they had the intellectual fortitude necessary to breach the spheresʼ defenses. However, there was no other plausible explanation, and her own guards assured her that indeed, there was a scar, a tear in the tunnel wall.
That would mean the unthinkable—that the savages had planned Clara’s capture. This secretly pleased Ada. She could be done with the wretched girl, gain sympathy, and force King Otto's hand since it was certainly not her fault that Clara had been taken. She would still have her wine and no more Clara. She would task the running of the kingdom to... she deliberated… whoever.
Ada would need to talk to that fool Charles and the incompetent guard who allowed himself to be drugged with the twilight sleep. How had that happened, for Guardian's sake?
Imbeciles.
Something was not agreeing here and she planned to get to the core of it.
Elvira came into the room with a gown of deep lavender. The Queen smiled. Perfect.
Everyone knew that royalty wore only purple.
*
Charles took the time to tell his younger brother what he was about, but only enough to satisfy him. He knew that if Queen Ada felt justified, she could bring misery down upon his family. There lay guilt, Charles realized. He remembered his father's words of encouragement. “Bring her back, son. There is no kingdom without her.” Charles couldn't have agreed more. But shirking his duties in the fields felt like an unfair burden to place on his father and brother.
He and Clarence made their way through the tunnel. Clarence was familiar with every part, having been the day guard there for a year. “I know when David takes his break, and he always uses the necessary. We have but a small time when he will not be in attendance, and we can run for the alcove in the tunnel.”
Charles looked at Clarence. He wore rough leather boots, buckskins, a rough cotton blouse, and a knapsack slung over both shoulders. His wavy hair moved about his face from the wind forced by steam cleansers running the length of the tunnel. The seams allowed the escape of humanity's pollution. Charles was dressed much the same, having borrowed his father's knapsack because the savages had taken his.
They reached the first sentry point and hesitated, pressing their forms into the permeable surface, sinking against its softness.
Clarence whispered, “One minute more...”
Charles looked at him thinking he had never felt the burden of time more acutely than now.
“Go!” Clarence urged and they sprinted from that spot. Their feet tapped their backsides as they put on a final burst of speed at the end, rounding the corner to the rest spot with the tear.
Charles untangled his limbs from the knapsack, all but flinging it off in his haste to get the salt-mixture. It would be best used in the weakest part of the sphere.
Clarence glanced about him anxiously. “Hurry, it is because we try so soon after the Princess's capture that we have this chance.”
“I have found it.” Charles hauled out the flask with the salt mixture. It had been very difficult to get the raw salt needed for their escape, as none could be purchased at Trading Days. A certain royal cook had worked it so he had enough salt to break through two sphere walls if he chose.
Charles gave the briefest of glances at the wall. The area where it had been breached seemed translucent, dimmed. He stood upright, flask in hand. Opening it, he spun the top away, hurling the contents at the scar, reopening it like a raw wound.
The salt-mixture dissolved the wall almost instantly, and the Outside air rushed in, mingling with the steamy environment of the tunnel. The cooler air was painful on Charles's lungs. He'd never felt anything like it before.
Clarence gasped at the new air. “It feels thin.” He exhaled and coughed. “Cold.”
Charles nodded, saving his speech for when he needed it. Regardless, it mattered not. They had done the deed and needed to press forward.
They slipped through the hole they had made into a night filled with real stars. Wind and air felt fresh and fragrant, and their starved lungs took in all they could. The men raced to the Great Forest, lungs burning, guided by a moon that rode high and bright, lighting their path into the woods Outside.
CHAPTER 28
Clara walked back to Lillian's chamber, passing through the kitchen. The glasses lining the wood shelf looked like drops of rain caught in the sunlight. A sharp stab of homesickness for the sphere pierced her heart. That she would feel thus filled Clara with confusion. What was wrong with her that she would miss it? It might be as simple as it being the only home she had ever known. It had been a wonderful home before Father had died. She thought on that as she opened the chamber door to attend to Lillian, her eyes grainy with tiredness. She must rest soon, or she would drop where she stood.
Lillian lay upon the beautiful bed. The gauzy covering made her face appear luminescent, obscure.
“Ah, I see Jack has told the entirety of the clan that I ail,” she said with mirth.
“Not all.” Clara smiled back, matching Lillian’s humor. Lillian did look a tad green. Clara could not imagine tending to a babe at this juncture in her life. She sighed sadly, holding a fierce hope that someday she would have a family.
Lillian turned on her side, eyeing at Clara critically. “You look tired, Princess.”
“Clara,” she reminded absently.
Lillian nodded. Rising, she steadied herself on the bedpost, walked past Clara, and opened the door. “Follow me. We have a small room where you may rest. After supper, we will go and bathe at the hot springs.” Lillian looked away dreamily for a moment. “It is a sublime place.”
Clara was indeed looking forward to being clean. She followed Lillian into a tiny chamber with an open casement window, the hinges held by brass that had been nailed into the wood and gleamed with a red hue in the filtered light from the forest.
Clara spied a narrow bed directly under the open window. She walked slowly over to where it lay, resplendent with ivory bed linen and a light comforter.
She turned to Lillian. “Thank you.”
“You are most welcome. You will see, Clara, that we are not savages here. We are human beings, just as the sphere-dwellers are.”
Clara nodded and smiled, which turned into a gigantic yawn. Her face felt much better. She ran her fingers gently over the worst of the swelling and thought it subdued. Her eye was almost completely open now.
Lillian smiled back. “I will go lie back down.” She closed the door and Clara stripped off the skirt and blouse she had worn but an hour, laying them carefully over the wooden chair in the corner of the room. Her hair hung loose, and she wished fiercely for her knapsack which held her grooming tools and realized one of the Band must have hers and Charles's.
She lay down under the comforter and allowed her tense body to loosen in stages. Clara's tiredness consumed her, but she lay awake for a time.
She listened to the sound of water. It was strange and delightful at the same time. And the air! She did not know if she would ever become accustomed to the fragrance of the woods that clung to each breath she took.
Clara gazed out the window, taking in the great branches of the trees. Their deep green shone like... like the decanter that the Queen drank her beloved wine from. Gooseflesh rose upon her arms, and sleep prevailed.
The disturbing echo of her memories followed the spiral of her sleep.
****
Bracus looked down on Clara’s sleeping form. Not a muscle moved. Her breath caused only the barest rise and fall of her chest. He gazed at her for such a long time that Lillian touched his shoulder, and he sighed quietly so as to not awaken her and closed the door behind him.
“She needs the rest. Do not fret over her. You have done as the President asked. She is here, safe.” Lillian looked at him curiously. The captain of the Band was an enigma—not unkind... but not a member of the Band she would chat with casually. Jack spoke of him in the highest of terms. However, there was much below the su
rface of this warrior.
Bracus swung his face toward Lillian and met her gaze. “I do not like to leave the clan unguarded, the Band split by the fragment.”
“We have Stephen, Matthew, and Joseph. All will be well. They did not penetrate the gate, the perimeter, nothing.”
Mayhap it was not penetration they sought? Could it be that their desire was to split the Band so that when the clan lay more vulnerable to attack, they could move against it? That is exactly what Bracus would do had he designs on striking another faction.
Lillian watched the emotions play over his face, not sure what they meant, but she understood this: there was more to his interest in the Princess than mere protection. Clara meant something entirely different to him. And what of it? Lillian knew that he would need to return her to the sphere, and then what? Would the sphere-dwellers be agreeable? There was no way to know. Clara might not be a woman he could have.
Bracus would have felt better to see Clara awake and tell her goodbye. No matter. He would be gone but a fore-night.
He nodded a goodbye at Lillian, having turned down her offer of a drink. He did not wish to spend one more second inside the gates. He wanted to retrieve Evelyn and return to Clara. His duty then his wish. In that order. He was nothing if not disciplined.
Lillian watched him leave with James and Jacob. She kissed Jack, and he and Philip mounted their horses, Jack's face revealed how much he would worry over her in his absence. She didn’t know why he worried. The finest guards were watching over her and the clan.
What could go wrong?
****
Anna watched Joseph approach. His grim expression told her he knew of Evelyn's kidnapping, but when his eyes caught hers, his face lightened. She could not help returning his smile. He might be a male who would treat her well. She had been here a half year and had yet to be threatened. She felt like a coward, leaving her clan, leaving the other females in peril. There were more females in her sea clan, and not all of their Band was bad, but there was a great deal of fighting over the females.
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