Humbling His Bride

by Loki Renard

  Once her look was complete, she rushed out to the waiting men. “I am ready,” she said, smiling.

  The soldier offered his hand to help her get into the car and performed a little bow as she settled in, a courtly action that pleased her greatly. Once she was safely in the middle vehicle, they set off toward the city.

  “Quite a convoy,” she observed, craning her neck to look at the car behind.

  “One can never be too careful, Mrs. Kane,” the man next to her smiled. His teeth flashed white in the shadows as they passed under the shade of a tree and for a brief moment he seemed almost shark-like. They emerged swiftly into the light and the illusion faded—but not the odd sense of uneasiness that only grew with every passing mile.

  Lydia wasn’t sure at precisely which point in the journey she realized that something was wrong. It didn’t hit her all at once; it rose over her in a slow wave that peaked when they took a turn off the main road to New Paris and rather than entering the city, circled around it.

  “Security measures, madame,” the soldier explained.

  She nodded. It sounded plausible, but the turning of her stomach told her that she could not quite trust these men. Their demeanor was… off, somehow. She had been so excited back at the house that she had not paid any attention to her instincts, but now that she had nothing but time to sit and observe, she could not help but notice little things. The way they looked at her, for instance. None of Tristan’s soldiers had ever been overly conversational, but these men utterly refused to meet her eye. She felt quite unlike a person at all in their presence. They could have transported a side of beef with as much simple human interest.

  When they began moving away from New Paris completely, she knew she had been captured. Her response was not to scream and flail about, though she felt very much like doing both of those things. She sat perfectly composed and tried to keep a careful note of where they were going.

  An old factory building several miles from New Paris was their ultimate destination. The soldiers unloaded her from the car and she stood still, quite silent, waiting to see what her fate would be.

  “Lydia Leon.”

  She recognized the voice of the speaker. It belonged to Esme’s father, a man Lydia had been acquainted with in one form or another all her life. She felt a rush of relief at seeing his familiar face, though the feeling evaporated rather quickly when she saw that he was looking at her with pure malevolence in his eyes.

  His presence answered one pressing question: how she had been found all the way out in the middle of the countryside. She herself had delivered herself to his very doorstep. Either Esme had run to her father and had told him everything the moment Lydia left their house or he had simply listened at the door. Lydia cursed herself inwardly for sharing so much, but in truth she had not had any reason to keep secrets. There had been no hint of danger from Esme and she had never imagined Flawksley as anything other than a harmless old buffoon like her father.

  “Lord Flawksley,” she said, nodding her head in greeting. Her mind was whirring, trying to fathom what was happening. Why was the man who used to head the armed forces, the man who had turned over his command in simpering fashion to Tristan Kane in an act Lydia’s own father had described as complete cowardice, holding her prisoner now?

  “You are a traitor,” he declared.

  “I am?”

  “A traitor against your blood. Against your family. Against the very structure of society.”

  Lydia drew in a deep breath. The accusations sounded utterly mad.

  “You have been brought here today to this court, the only true court of New Paris, to be judged for your sins.”

  Around her, men were beginning to assemble. Several finely dressed fellows filed along one side of the room, six in front, six in back. Around her, the guards trained their weapons upon her, fearsome energy weapons that could quite easily vaporize her with a single pull of a trigger.

  “I see,” she said grimly. “I don’t suppose you’re planning on enlightening me as to why I am supposed to be a traitor?”

  “You are the ultimate traitor’s wife,” the portly man said. “You have been sleeping with the enemy, which amounts to being the enemy yourself. We will see how the so-called president reacts when he discovers his precious little whore has been taken.”

  A blaze of pure indignant rage came over Lydia. “Whore? You dare call me a whore?”

  “You spread your legs for that common man. No doubt you already bear his spawn.”

  Looking around at the jury, she recognized several more familiar faces. Lydia was quite shocked by how aggressive and cold the men who had once served with her father were being toward her. She had known many of them for much of her life; they had attended social gatherings at her house. They had brought her presents at her birthday parties, and now she was nothing more than a slut in their eyes. Her coming of age had changed her from an innocent to be protected to nothing but a sexual pawn to be used in power games.

  Pure loathing rose in her. She knew very well that there was not much chance of escape. One wrong move and she would be wounded or worse. There was no love for her in that room. All the frustration associated with their loss of power had turned the once proud aristocrats into madmen playing at law and order.

  “My father told me that I must submit to the choosing,” Lydia said. “I had no more control over that than I do now.”

  “Your father is a traitor just as you are. He was of the faction that rolled over and submitted to the base workers who now run our city. As for you, you have been sleeping with Kane for weeks. You could have cut his throat in the night. You could have poisoned his food. You could have quite easily turned the course of history. Instead you spread your legs and turned traitor at the very first opportunity.”

  “It never occurred to me to do such vile things,” Lydia replied. “Tristan is a good and kind man.”

  Her statement made Lord Flawksley’s face turn purple. “Lies! He is a usurper who has destroyed everything that once made New Paris proud.”

  “Tristan wants everyone to have food and to be able to fend for themselves,” Lydia replied. “Don’t you know there are people starving?”

  “Nobody of any consequence,” the grotesque man replied. “The peasants have always starved in hard times. It is what they do.”

  There was not so much as a flicker of feeling in him and Lydia felt a cold shiver pass through her as she realized that no life meant anything to him. He was offended by a loss of power, nothing more and nothing less. He was not interested in the good of the city or the colony, life or love. He would cling to the smallest shreds of power at all costs—and her life would be as easily forfeited as anyone else’s.

  “You will be judged!” He pointed to the ‘jury’ of men, all of whom were staring at her with hard gazes. “You will be judged and you will be found wanting and you will be punished and you will be put to death as every other whore who lays with the enemy has been put to death.”

  Lydia’s heart began to pound in her chest. “There have been others? You mean to say you have been dispatching the daughters of the men you once called friends?”

  “You are no longer the daughter of my friend,” Flawksley snarled. “You are nothing but a common harlot. What say you, gentlemen?” He turned to the jury. “Do you find Lydia Leon guilty of gross treason?”

  “We do!” the group answered in one voice. There had never been any doubt as to the outcome of the so-called trial, but it was nevertheless entirely chilling to hear so many voices lifted as one against her.

  Flawksley turned to her with an expression full of vehement bile. “Lydia Leon. I sentence you to death.”

  He paused a moment to let that sink in. Lydia kept her face blank, determined not to give him the pleasure of seeing her fear. He was a beast who fed upon the fear of the vulnerable and the weak, and she knew better than to make herself another sacrifice. He might very well be able to kill her, but she could deny him the satisfaction of s
eeing her wail and weep.

  “Usually the sentence would be carried out immediately, but we intend to make a special example of you. Your death will not take place in private. Your death will take place as the deaths of aristocrats took place thousands of years ago. It will be in the public sphere. All will see your last breath.”

  Flawksley’s face took on a strained, almost orgasmic mask of pleasure at the idea. There could be no doubting that she found herself in the possession of a sadistic madman. She should have been paralyzed with fear, but Lydia was learning that there was something beyond fear. A perfect calm, which descended over her and made every thought clear and crisp. She looked at Flawksley’s face, twisted with hate, and felt a curious separation from it all.

  A silence fell over the room. There was no doubt that they expected her to beg for her life, to fall into hysterics and weep and moan and utterly debase herself before them. That, she would not do. For the first time, she was rather grateful for the way her parents had raised her. It was a particularly aristocratic skill to be able to face the prospect of one’s death without unseemly displays of emotion.

  “I will say but one thing,” Lydia said in clear tones. “The revolution you refer to. The one that took place on Earth several thousand years ago. It was not the new regime that went to the guillotine. It was the aristocrats who could not accept that their time had come. Their wealth was evaporating, the power they had wielded for so very long was taken from them by stronger men with social good in mind. It was arrogance that saw the fall of the aristocracy. And it is arrogance that will be your undoing too, Flawksley. There are forces at play greater than you, greater than I. Tristan is bringing a new age to New Paris and no faked trials and murders passing for executions will change that. If you had any strength at all, you would take your war to the streets, but that war has already been lost. In truth, it was never fought at all. So to assuage your battered egos, you murder your own. Well, Flawksley. If that is what it means to be noble, then I renounce my blood, my station, even my name. I will happily go to my death knowing that it shows you to be the crawling little coward everybody knows you are.”

  Flawksley did not enjoy the history lesson, or the impugning of his dubious character. He made no reply but to draw back his hand and lash the back of it across Lydia’s cheek hard enough to dash her to the ground with ringing ears.

  “Tie her up!” Flawksley boomed angrily. “And gag her. I don’t want to hear another word out of her.”

  In spite of the coldness, brutality, and cruelty she had been shown, the gag pressed roughly into her mouth could not hide the light of triumph in Lydia’s eyes as she was bound for the final sacrifice.

  Chapter Eleven

  While Lydia suffered, Tristan was in his office none the wiser, inspecting plans for the rejuvenation of the most damaged and dilapidated parts of the city. The designer had come up with most ingenious solutions for restoring clean water and food as well as providing opportunities for honest labor.

  “This construction will change the lives of thousands,” he praised the nervous-looking young man who had created the drawings. “You have done very well.”

  Just as the young man was stammering his thanks, the door of Tristan’s office opened and Andrew Floukes, the first officer of defense, strode in looking entirely grim. Tristan’s mild irritation at being interrupted evaporated as the man pushed a picture over his desk.

  “We just received this.”

  Tristan’s pupils widened in horror as he saw Lydia, gagged and bound and sitting in the corner of a room. It shouldn’t have been possible. It couldn’t have been possible.

  “This is real?”

  “Yes, sir. She has been abducted.”

  “What happened to the men guarding her? There should have been two units outside the house.”

  “Ambushed, sir. All deceased. This was a well-planned attack. There was a message with the picture. It indicated that all New Paris should tune to their primary stations at six o’clock to see the death of a traitor. They appear to be planning a public execution.” Andrew spoke with a clipped, factual demeanor, but there was an appalled sadness in his eyes that showed his deep feeling on the matter.

  Tristan had been angry many times in his life, but the pure white fury that animated him in that moment was so much more powerful than anger that it barely seemed to come from within him. He was consumed by it, animated with an energy that made his eyes blaze, his jaw clench, and his body seem taller and more imposing than ever before.

  Andrew was speaking again. “The image is geo-tagged. We have the coordinates of the location it was taken. But, there is no way of knowing if they have made an error and inadvertently given their position away, or if this is a trap.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tristan declared. “Today, I will take these cowards by their throats and crush the resistance’s last breath. I swear it. Are the hounds operational?”

  “Fully charged, sir, and waiting.”

  * * *

  Tristan strode from the office of power to a wired enclosure at a far-flung corner of the palace grounds. Even before he arrived the hounds began to bay, catching his scent and anger on the wind. Their cries were barely animal. Of course, they weren’t actually animal at all, but highly evolved robotic creatures modeled after the canines of original Earth. Their skeletons were pure titanium, their muscles bundled fibers of high-density material that could contract at a speed far greater than any flesh. Their eyes were bright gold, sensors that could see through walls and detect heat signatures up to a mile away. Their jaws were made of asteroidal alloy, as were their teeth. They were capable of crushing bone with even a light snap. The hounds were the size of small wolves, their outer coating a fiber filament that looked like sleek black fur but that acted as a radiator so when they ran at full speed—which could approach two hundred miles an hour—each and every strand dissipated heat. The aristocracy had seen no use for them and pulled the power on the kennels as soon as shortages began to bite, but they were one form of machinery that Tristan had set a priority on returning to full status. He was glad for that now.

  He opened the gate and the pack tumbled out, whining and rushing about him, brushing their bodies against his. Their behavior was very much like a wolf pack, social programming making them not only more pliable for their handlers, but more fierce in their protection of them.

  One lunged up and its tongue rasped across Tristan’s chin, taking scent and chemical data into its body. It dropped back down to four paws, threw back its head and howled, a sound of fury that was caught by the wind and carried clear across New Paris.

  Tristan whistled and the pack turned toward him, following him as he strode to his car, a sleek, black, low-slung vehicle with four chrome exhausts and an engine that ran on ten powerful cylinders burning the liquefied bones of ancient vertebrates.

  In minutes New Paris trembled to the thundering of paws and the growling of a powerful engine echoing off the fine facades. The hounds raced around Tristan’s car in a hunting pack, their movements easy and powerful and swift. The man himself sat behind the wheel, dark eyes narrowed to two vengeful slits. Lydia had brought a joy to his life he had not imagined, let alone known before meeting her. She was his love, his light, his everything and he would tear the universe itself in two if that was what it would take to save her. The resistance had made their final mistake. Tristan was now a man without feeling. Without fear. Without any capacity for remorse. He was a man with a single purpose—in that moment there was no doubt that Tristan Kane was the most dangerous man in the world.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lydia had never truly contemplated death before. In the fleeting moments she had considered it, she had certainly never imagined that it would involve so much boredom. She found herself sitting off to the side of a brightly lit room, bound and gagged, unable to move or speak—and almost irrelevant to the proceedings as Lord Flawksley bustled around with barely contained excitement, taking an inordinate amount of ti
me setting the scene for her demise. The main feature was the old New Paris flag draped partially over a guillotine. It seemed that Flawksley’s desire to reenact the ancient French Revolution had not been dimmed by the revelation that he had completely misunderstood it. He cared more about folding the flag in just the right way so it would be displayed in all its glory while not obscuring any of the unpleasant proceedings.

  Finally, he stood back with a pleased expression on his fatuous face and turned to one of his men. “There, are the cameras all on? I want this captured from every possible angle.”

  He was a very disturbing man indeed. Life mattered nothing to him; there was no weight at all given to the fact that he was about to take hers from her. He was most concerned with making it a spectacle.

  “Yes, Lord Flawksley,” his companion said. “All is ready.”

  Lydia noticed that the other men did not seem quite so eager to take part in the execution. They studiously avoided looking at her, and seemed rather nervous about the whole affair. She suspected that some of them were not really in favor but had been swept along and now were more afraid of Lord Flawksley than they were of President Tristan Kane. That was a significant mistake.

  Lydia was most certain that she would not die that day. Tristan would never allow it. She kept her thoughts on him, calming herself with the gut knowledge that he would not permit harm to come to her. The more rational side of her mind was perhaps a little more concerned, for there was every chance he had no idea she had been taken. He would probably go home, discover her missing, and think that she had run off into the countryside or some such thing. She pushed those thoughts aside, focusing instead on her faith in him.

  “This will be broadcast across the colony,” Flawksley said. “It will be the battle cry that will turn the tide of common rule and restore the aristocracy to full glory.” He clapped his hands with cruel glee as he adjusted a light so the blade of the guillotine gleamed even more brightly.