Kane shrugged. “Many have followed them. The Black Frocks make life near the villages miserable and…”
“Dangerous,” finished Upo. “They press their dark god upon the men and women of Calen and haul anyone who speaks out against them before their tribunals.”
“They sniff the woods for any sign of women and children with the Royal Blood.” Kane paused. “My friend, she’s been gone eight long years.”
Upo finished off his pint and held out the wooden mug for a refill. “Yes, I know that as well as you. Better. I see the same unasked questions in the eyes of the elders, worse, in the eyes of my mother and da day in and day out.”
Kane poured for his friend. “Her people need her. Are you so certain she’ll be returning?”
“You ask me? You are the one she spoke with. She gave you the message. If Issa said she’ll return then I believe she’ll return. I have no idea how or when, but she’ll come back to us.”
“And if she waits too long, what will she find?” asked Kane. “The fighting men have taken their families and fled into the wilderness. Those who work in the larger settlements keep their heads down and send their women and children into hiding. The Black Frocks have their own pilots, their own supply lines. They travel wherever they wish, bypassing government transports and security.
“I’ve heard rumors that even on Matsu they work behind the scenes. They control the Council by claiming their dark god will punish anyone who crosses them.”
Upo laughed. “Their dark god is nothing but myth and superstition. They bluster about his powers, their powers, but they have none, other than the power they have over men’s minds and that power is fear.”
Kane slammed his own cup against the table. Homebrew sloshed over the rim. “But they search every system for women with mahogany hair and gray eyes and they spill their blood. The traders claim the Black Frocks drink the blood and it gives them the Sight. You’ve heard the stories just as I have. How can you fight men who can see you coming, even under cover of darkness?”
“You can’t.”
“They are on Calen for a reason and you know what that reason is—your sister. They want your sister and they have seen that she’s here, or she was here. I met with the village headman in secret a moon ago and he warned me the Black Frocks have posted a substantial reward for her.” Kane saw a look of horror come over Upo’s face.
“Surely the men and women of Calen would never betray any of our people to the Black Frocks, least of all an Empress?”
“It’s not the people of Calen who concern me, it’s the outsiders. They began arriving weeks ago, a trickle at first, now ten, twenty at a time and they spread out, stealing, assaulting, raping when they can find a woman. My men have killed at least a dozen of them in the past seven suns alone and we will continue to hunt them down. Calen men all over our world are doing the same. Will you join us, Upo? Will you fight this battle with us? We could use a skilled swordsman like you.”
Upo leaned back in his chair. “My da needs me,” he replied. “It’s just the two of us to protect mother and Cyra. Mother is a direct descendant of the Empress Aja. Gods forbid the Black Frocks should get their filthy hands on her.”
Kane kept the disappointment he felt off his face. He understood Upo’s reasoning, but he knew that with the coin the Black Frocks offered for Issa, many more off-worlders would be coming, and soon. “You have never told me what it is you protect,” he said. “What it is you keep for her.”
Upo lifted his brows. “And I won’t. You are better off not knowing. Better to risk one man’s life than two.”
“And if you are killed?”
“My sister knows where to find it. I have kept watch these eight years and I will continue to do so. If I die, well then…”
Kane couldn’t miss the way Upo dropped the subject, the same way he’d dropped the subject every time Kane had asked him what it was that he guarded over the past eight years.
“Will you come back with me tonight? Da will be glad of your company and you can give him the news. He should be warned.”
“How are the herds?”
“Still the hardiest stock on Calen. We’ve had to breed carefully. The winters are cold in the mountains and the grazing is poor. We’ve set aside enough dry grass to last through the worst of it, but still the weather will take its toll. Last winter we lost a third of our yearlings. Who knows how this year will be? Come.” Upo clapped him on the back. “Come see for yourself.”
Kane thought for a moment. “I was hoping…” He hesitated and then he decided. “I’ll come with you, for one night at least. It will be good to see your family and taste a woman’s cooking. I have not seen my family for some time. My father too has gone to ground and I won’t risk leading the Black Frocks to him. Our stallions are too valuable and their bloodline too ancient to see them lost.”
The two walked to the paddock together. The horses lifted their heads and nickered, the sound soft and welcoming in the cold night air.
“One of Biri’s sons?” asked Upo.
“Out of Lyta,” Kane replied. “She’s been my best brood mare since…”
“Since Issa gave her to you,” Upo finished for him.
“He’s a beauty, eh? Over sixteen hands, solid muscle. Lyta breeds true. Every one of her colts is a gray. Bes is three seasons.”
“Have you bred him yet?”
“Yes. He’s covered a dozen mares, they’ve all taken.”
The horses pricked up their ears and snorted. Both men heard the sound too. Hooves pounded down the trail, heading straight for them.
Book III: Reborn
“What do you mean there are no more? There are no more women of the Blood?” The high priest rolled his eyes. “Or you simply can’t find them? Which is it, Brother Daghure?”
The man kept his gaze glued to a nonexistent speck of dust on the floor. “We aren’t quite certain. There are rumors of sightings of women with the mahogany hair and gray eyes on some of the outer planets, but nothing we can confirm. If the women—” he cleared his throat. “If the woman we want exists, she has managed to elude all our paid informants and the seekers.”
“Anything the seekers have to say on the matter is worthless.” Disgusted, the high priest tossed a file onto his desk. “They are sent out to spread terror and sow dissention, nothing more. They are untrained and undisciplined, little more than thugs. Their word on any subject means nothing to me. What of the Brothers on Calen? She was last sighted eight years ago on that piece of… on that world. She exists, of that I am certain, and I want her.”
“We’ve had little success on Calen,” Brother Daghure said. “The men and women there are intransigent. They refuse to deal with us aside from the occasional market purchase.”
“What of the tribunals? Have the Brothers uncovered any useful information?”
“Nothing.”
“Reprisals?”
“Sire, we must proceed with caution. You have not been on the ground there. We walk a fine line. If our measures are too harsh, we risk open rebellion. The Calen men manage to stay out of the way of our patrols and they hide their women and children. If we become overzealous, they might… Well, they might take measures into their own hands. As it is, the seekers do not last long, or at least, few of them last long enough to report back to us.”
“Because the seekers are nothing more than carrion. As soon as you drop them on a world, they vanish to follow their own greedy hearts. Those who join the ranks of the seekers have no loyalty to our cause.”
“Excuse me, Sire, but I think there might be more to it than that—”
“Nonsense, Brother Daghure,” the high priest interrupted. “Whether the seekers appear or disappear is immaterial. What is material is that woman. She must be in my possession soon. Our blood supply is very low. We’ve had to resort to using the blood of young males of the Royal line and theirs is nearly worthless. The visions come only intermittently and they are vague and impossible to interpret.
I’m disgusted that after all these turns, she’s still managed to elude your search parties.”
“I’ve wondered for a long time if we base all our hopes on nothing more than a legend,” muttered Brother Daghure.
“She is not legend. I’ve seen her.”
“But Sire, you have not seen her with your own eyes. Perhaps she’s dead and buried. Perhaps she’s fled to another system. Perhaps the visions were wrong or perhaps you’ve misinterpreted what you saw. There are so many ifs.”
“No, Brother, she exists. If I had enough of the Royal Blood I could find her. I could track her myself.”
“Perhaps we should be content with the progress we’ve made. The government on Matsu bends in our direction. Some of the best male pilots in the Empire are in our hire. We grow rich on interplanetary trade and our brethren have spread to all but the outermost systems. They make the regular sacrifices to God and we prosper.”
“Do you think I do this for us, for our own prosperity? I do this for all. With her Royal Blood, I will be able to guide the people, protect them from their own sinful nature. I will have the vision and foresight to stop a rebellion before it starts, to prevent a plague from spreading, to navigate through an ion storm in the blink of an eye. The Royal Blood will fertilize barren soil, heal our men, give us long life, and if I’m correct in my belief, give us the power to slow time. I want this, Brother. For the good of all, I must possess this.”
“We’ve read that men have attempted this before.”
“And failed. Yes, I know the stories. I will not fail. God is on my side. Leave me. Come back when you have better news.”
The High Priest watched as Brother Daghure bowed and backed out of the room, shutting the door behind him. He walked to the window and stared out over the slums of Ottorum. Most of the seekers were recruited from the slums. Hungry, vicious, cunning unscrupulous men. Easy to recruit, hard to control. They often killed first and asked questions later.
He wondered how many women of the Blood had been murdered, their bodies stuffed into shallow graves; women he could have made use of. Perhaps she had been one of them, the Thousand Year Empress.
All that power contained in one woman. What a waste.
Estian turned back to his desk. How many years had he searched? Since the former High Priest, Father Bekta, had died and he’d been elected to take his place. Within the year, he’d begun the search for her. It had been ten years since then.
Their order of the Black Frocks had resurfaced on Kerrat two hundred years ago. They’d practiced their rites in secret for several hundred years before that.
In the centuries after the Empress Aja had abdicated, more power was left in the hands of local authorities and bit by bit, the priesthood had felt secure enough to emerge from their underground caverns into the light of day. There was no one to oppose them. The people of the Empire had grown sinful, tolerant and lazy. In any case, Kerrat had never been known for its obedience to a centralized authority. The planet was small and ignored. Located as it was on the outer fringes of the Tionay Nebula, it had always been a remote trading post and a haven for those who plied their trade in the dark: smugglers, whores, rebels, military deserters, murderers and thieves.
The authorities turned a blind eye toward the Black Frocks as the Black Frocks turned a blind eye toward them. Gradually, the Black Frocks had manipulated their way into Kerrat’s underground market until they owned pieces of many pies. Their coffers were full to overflowing. They didn’t lack for coin.
What they lacked was the woman and her Royal Blood.
When Women of the Blood had first arrived on Kerrat, six hundred years after the Empress’s abdication, the priests had discovered the power purely by accident. They’d kidnapped some of the women and sacrificed them according to the law of their dark god, drinking their blood, eating their flesh, and the visions had begun.
At first no one had associated the two, the women with mahogany hair and gray eyes and the visions. The Brothers assumed they’d accidentally ingested a drug, and they’d searched the markets for the mystery substance they believed the women had taken before their deaths. For two years, they’d sought a solution but found none until one of their Brothers discovered why it was the gray-eyed women flew better than men.
He’d been drinking in a tavern with a smuggler and he’d heard an almost unbelievable story. Of course, given the nature of the information the wayward Brother brought back to the monastery, he was forgiven his sin of inebriation.
The Black Frocks had begun to seek them out, these particular women. It wasn’t easy. Most of the time, they were unsuccessful because the women could sense them coming. Many Brothers had died attempting to procure a woman of the Blood, and it seemed as if the women began to avoid the planet altogether.
So the Black Frocks had gradually spread from system to system. Coin could buy passage for any number of them on any number of ships. Once they reached a planet they remained in the background, searching out easy pickings, recruiting from the ranks of the dispossessed. They offered food and shelter and the occasional odd job. The Brothers sent their servants to capture easier targets, female children with mahogany hair and gray eyes.
They’d landed on Calen, the adopted home of the Empress Aja, a mere twenty years ago expecting to find the planet ripe with children of the Blood, but all they’d found were the golden-haired, blue-violet-eyed babies. Not a single sign of the Blood until the day he, Estian Fermu, became High Priest. To celebrate the occasion a female child with mahogany hair and gray eyes procured on one of the outer planets at great cost had been sacrificed, and he’d been gifted with a vision.
He’d seen her, the One, the Thousand Year Empress. She was on Calen; he would stake his life on it. She was there and by God, she could not hide from him forever. She could not hide from his dark God.
Kane prepared to defend himself as best he could, feet spread apart, a long knife in each hand. He heard the hiss of metal on leather as Upo drew his sword. The horses stomped and snorted, heads held high, pacing back and forth in the paddock, their hot breath weaving a frosty cloud around their heads in the cold air.
The thud of the hoof beats increased, the rider closing, coming straight at them from the mountain trail.
“Move,” Kane shouted as he saw the big dark bulk of a horse and rider jump the fence without hesitation.
Kane dove one way, Upo the other. The horse plunged past them. Both men rolled to their feet, weapons raised.
Kane’s heart beat fast, as the big black stallion skidded to a stop in the loose dirt. Rearing and bucking, the other two horses danced away from the black and its rider.
“Will you fight me, Upo?” The rider drew her sword. “Have you learned to use a blade in my absence?”
“Issa?” Kane heard the surprise in Upo’s voice.
“Show me,” she demanded and she dropped from her horse. “Show me.”
“Issa, sister, I… I won’t fight you,” Upo stuttered.
“Then you die. The Black Frocks will give you no quarter Brother of my Blood, nor will I. Show me.”
As Kane watched, she swung her sword at Upo and he was forced to parry the killing blow. Kane backed off to give them room, but he still held his knives, looking for an opening in the event Upo needed him, in the event his sister was not the savior they’d hoped for, but a fiend sent straight from the lowest of the Seven Hells of Wrath.
“Stay out of this, Kane Tirol, or I will kill you sure as you stand there.”
Kane heard the dead certainty in her words and Upo yelled at him to hold.
Upo engaged her in earnest. Issa did not jest; she gave her brother no quarter. They sparred across the paddock, Issa on the attack, Upo on the defensive. She didn’t flinch when the horses darted past. Upo panted with effort, but Issa refused to relent until he drew first blood, slicing his sword along the outside of her thigh.
In an instant, Issa stepped back and put up her own sword. She saluted Upo. “Well done, brother, we
ll done. You have worked hard in my absence. And grown tall,” she added. She wiped the sweat from her face and grinned at them both.
It was the old Issa, Upo’s little sister, who leapt into her brother’s arms.
“How are mother and da and Cyra? I have missed them so. Oh Upo, you have grown into a man!”
“They are well, Issa. They will be so happy to see you,” said Upo. He twirled her around the paddock, laughing. “And you? Look at you. I thought you were a demon on that horse. Who taught you to fight like that? Where in the seven hells have you been all these years? I feared you were…” Upo stopped and gave his sister a good, hard shake. “I feared for you. Where have you been?”
“Away.” Issa winked at him. “I’ve been far away and I’ve been here all at the same time. I’ve stood right here, so many times, thinking of you, wishing I could speak with you. And you too.” She turned to Kane and held out a hand. He sheathed his knives and grasped her hand with both of his.
“We feared you would never come,” he said.
“Not Upo? Surely not my brother? He knows me better than that.”
“No, not Upo. He always believed you would come back to us. It is really you, Issa?”
“Look and decide for yourselves.” Issa turned toward the full moon and pulled the hair back from her face. “Is it me?”
Both men studied her. Yes, it was Issa, a woman now, taller and more slender than he remembered her, but her face appeared the same, her skin pale and stark in the moonlight, with the high cheekbones, the slanted cat’s eyes and lush lips that had made such an impression on him when she was just a girl.
“Yes, by the Gods, it is.” A grin split Kane’s face. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said to Upo.
“We were just wishing for you,” Upo replied.
“I heard you,” said Issa. “That’s why I came, that, and it was time. The Black Frocks will arrive in strength and we must be ready for them.” She turned and let out a low whistle. The big stallion approached. “I’ve brought you a present, Kane, for your herds. He will provide new blood for your stock. Besides, when I saw him he reminded me of you.”
The Daughters of Persephone, A Space Opera Special Edition Page 17