“You do not laugh at me, heathen!” she said, swatting his arm playfully.
A deep laugh pealed out of him.
A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth.
Clara tried in vain to be angry with him but found his mirth infectious.
He gathered her against him. “Clara,” he whispered against her hair, “do not fret. If Bracus and the rest of our brethren cannot rescue two females in the space between here and nigh, they cannot claim to be Band.”
Matthew felt her heartbeat against his chest, but when dampness joined it, he pulled away.
Clara was not a female wont for tears.
“What is wrong?” he asked, using the pads of his thumbs to wipe the wetness from her cheekbones as quickly as they fell.
Her seawater eyes, so close to turquoise they were a jewel in their own right, sought his and hung on for dear life.
“I have had a dream of great discomfiture.”
Matthew did not dismiss her claim, for gifts of the Band were legend. He was aware that Maddoc, who was from the clan by the great eastern sea, possessed a touch of clairvoyance. There were also other things that had been spoken of. All of the Band had learned early that intuition was but a mask for true talents of discernment.
“Is it a prophetic?” he asked.
“I do not know.” She bit her lip.
“Tell me,” he demanded.
She did, and Matthew's face darkened as he listened. It was not good. Clara was not an inventive sort and would never fabricate a word.
This was not a world where liars flourished.
Matthew crossed his arms and paced away.
He spun around, his azure eyes blazing like cold flame. “This fire? You are sure that it was at the home clan?”
Clara nodded.
He strode back to her.
“Will fire destroy this… sphere?”
She paused then shook her head. “No.”
“Only salt?”
Clara nodded again.
Matthew palmed his chin.
Peter the butler gave his distinctive soft knock, and Clara said, “Enter.”
Matthew scowled at the interruption but smoothed his features when he saw what Peter held.
Clara moved forward, her heavy skirts whispering around her feet, and Matthew could not help but study her figure.
Peter glanced at Matthew and gave a small nod of understanding. Just two males appreciating the beauty of a queen who was oblivious to her charms.
Clara unrolled the message that had come from the carrier pigeon, and her hands tightened on the paper.
Matthew went to her. The expression of alarm on her face was enough. He plucked the page out of her limp fingers and read the message sent by Bracus:
Dear Matthew,
We have met the Fragment in battle and remain victorious by a slim margin. The Red Men who aided us tipped the scales in our favor. Without them, the outcome might have been a different one.
Matthew raised his head and met Clara's somber expression, then bent over the message once more.
Edwin became separated from us during the battle, and Evie remains unaccounted for. There is a new female. She lived amongst the Fragment for a good time, and she is a Healer. I know your thoughts of disbelief, but she saved Calia, Philip, and the Red Man—Adahy, a warrior of Band lineage who thinks himself Iroquois. That is the name of their clan. They have accepted our hospitality at our home clan. However, it is too dangerous to return to Clara's sphere at present. The other Fragment who roam will see their dead as a calling card we passed that way and will lie in wait.
We require assistance in seeking Edwin and Evie. Meet with us one day hence, my brother, so that we might regain the two who wander. Bring an extra steed, as Briar Rose was stolen by Fragment.
Matthew felt his breath rasp out of his body in a rough exhalation. There was no mention of fire or strife. He kept the small rolled parchment in his hand, both Clara and Peter allowing him the silence to think upon it.
His mind circled the facts: Clara's foreboding dream of bodies that lay charred on ground they had danced on, eaten food atop of… lived. Matthew felt as if a spiral were slowly unwinding and he did not know how to halt it. He was powerless to resolve occurrences that had yet to happen. The best he could do was to meet with Bracus.
He looked at Clara, absorbing her fully and ignoring the propriety that her world clung to tenaciously. He allowed his gaze to caress the hourglass of her figure and the blazing of copper at her head then closed his eyes against her beauty. For he must leave her in a day. Clara would not step foot from the sphere with the Fragment's ranks disheveled, their leadership uncertain. It would make their actions even more radically motivated. His future wife would remain in the Kingdom of Ohio, in the womb of safety. If there be a fire, it would take place far from there.
Far from Clara.
None had considered, though the Fragment remained a constant threat, that the neighboring sphere held only those who could defend their property. While Clara had worked the past months to correct the atrocities vested on her sphere by the Kingdom of Kentucky and the segment of Fragment led by Tucker, those who fled her sister sphere had only one place to call home
—Outside, and the trials found therein.
The actions of the desperate were difficult to predict. The current of their mindset was ever changing like the seasons.
And winter had come in both season and threat.
Clara cried when Matthew told her he must leave at the morrow.
There were no words he could offer that would ease her fears. Matthew had struggled to stay with her when the others went. His duty was to his clan, but his first loyalty would always lie with Clara. But he must leave.
A female they both cared deeply for was in danger. A prophetic dream had shaken the foundation of safety they had carefully orchestrated after the overtaking of the sphere those short months past, and a soft alliance had been formed with a new people.
However much Matthew wanted to ignore those events and stay, offering Clara his undivided protection, he must first resolve those things and put their tied cultures back to rights.
Intellectually, Matthew knew that. So why did his heart feel pulverized within his chest?
Clara's sad face tore at his sensibilities, and Matthew groaned low in his throat, pulling her against him and pressing her head to his chest. He did not part from her even when the door closed softly at Peter's exit.
Nor did they part when twilight shrouded the sphere in the gloom of impending night. They stayed locked, gripped by their separate but shared disquiet.
It was not good that they be apart before joining in March. It remained unsaid but so deeply entrenched in their thoughts that it lay between them like the very air they breathed.
No matter how mandatory the parting, it suffocated them with its necessity.
*
King Otto
King Otto of the defunct Kingdom of Kentucky laid waste to his second bottle of wine that morn.
Yes, his kingdom had fallen to the beggars and dredges, yet his royal manse remained standing.
He rose unsteadily but with self-importance to his feet, his pudgy hand fogging the polished wood beneath his grip. His venomous thoughts turned to the young queen, only half a day's ride from where his own sphere, marred with pockmarks that let the brutal winter winds enter unheeded, enjoyed the warmth of her own kingdom.
In luxury.
Opulence.
Otto scowled and beat his fat fist on the table.
His manservant scuttled in, cowed and obedient, which seemed to be the order of all who found shelter in the last building that stood unmolested in the Kingdom of Kentucky. He stopped before his king.
“Bring me sustenance,” Otto demanded. For the grapes were well and good for dulling what was happening around him, but a monarch of his stature could not make important decisions without proper food and cups of liquid grapes.
His manservant, a ma
n of forty and two, stood there pathetically. His shoulders were rounded, and his feet remained unmoving.
Otto paused mid-sip, setting his brass goblet down with a clumsy thunk against the solid oak table.
“What say you?” he asked in a voice bloated with warning. Otto did not listen to unpleasantries willingly, only spoils.
“Your majesty.” Manfred bowed his head.
Otto scowled.
He knew when the negative was coming, so he braced himself.
“We have run out of meat, Sire.”
Otto knocked over the chair. It thwacked the marble floor with an echoing clatter of wood slapping stone.
He did not flinch, his senses desensitized to the noise.
“Tell. Me. Why!” he bellowed.
Manfred flinched, expecting the worst.
Life had taught him those dire expectations.
He dared to meet the eyes of the ruler who had gone from tiresome and boorish to tyrannical and intolerable the instant the kingdom had fallen.
The only consolation, an admittedly small one, was that Caesar did not rule in his stead.
Manfred shuddered, thinking about what would happen within the gilded walls of royalty with that insane royal at the helm. It was with a glad heart that Manfred had heard the tale of Caesar's demise at the hand of the warrior who was betrothed to the princess, who in turn had become the queen of the Kingdom of Ohio.
Manfred reflected none of his thoughts in either word or deed. In fact, a promise had been made with the few hopefuls who remained inside the royal manse that they never speak of the young queen, for they did not wish their ruler's sights to fall on her.
Otto lowered himself slowly into the seat beside his fallen one. He rested his heavy elbows on the wooden arms, and he toyed with the rim of his goblet. Finally, he met Manfred's eyes.
The King steepled his fingers and rested the heavy jowls of his chin in the nest therein. “Prince Frederic was betrothed to Clara. The Kingdom of Ohio ought be mine.”
A wave of horror washed over Manfred.
Otto slapped his sweaty palms on the table, coming to a swift decision. “We shall overtake what is rightfully mine.”
“W-We cannot, Your Majesty…” Manfred sputtered.
Otto stood again, slapping a palm against the table for a third time that day.
“We can, and we will. That ungrateful girl has not so much as sent a courier to offer aid in our darkest hour!” he bellowed in a semi-drunken slur.
Manfred knew why she had not. They had intercepted her courier notes, for the inner circle knew what would happen. King Otto would overtake her sphere and exact the same dreadful rulership there that had ruined their own sphere. They would rather die than put another sphere to certain death and debauchery. It would not happen while Manfred drew breath. So Queen Clara's correspondences went unread. Manfred had not foreseen the king upset by her non-responsiveness. None of them had.
It had set King Otto against her, and now Clara Williamson, the queen of the Kingdom of Ohio, would pay.
King Otto ordered, “Fetch Cyril.”
Manfred bit his lip to keep from moaning out loud. When the king called for Cyril, people bled.
“Your majesty?” Manfred met the king’s bloodshot eyes. Otto’s nose was a bulbous thing with fine webs of burst blood vessels covering it. Manfred swallowed hard and asked, “What do ye plan?”
Otto smiled widely, revealing teeth that had not seen a brush in some weeks. “Why, my dear Manfred, how does one flush the pheasant from the bush?”
Manfred knew about what the king spoke, as pheasant were plentiful in the wild prairies Outside. He had watched them frolic as a young boy. However, he was no longer young but ancient and jaded.
Otto waited, taking another sip of wine from his bejeweled goblet. When Manfred had no answer, the king elaborated. “Queen Clara is very attached to the heathen that claims a home built Outside yonder, yes? Fifteen miles north of us?”
Manfred nodded slowly, not understanding what the Clan of Ohio had to do with the king's anger over Clara and her supposed lack of support for their criminal kingdom.
“She is the plump bird, poised to escape her warm roost. Nary a barking dog or a hunter of great finesse could cause her to loosen from that gilded perch she has fashioned for herself.”
Otto's beady eyes, like spoiled raisins pushed into soft white dough, stared unerringly into Manfred’s own.
The king's horrible logic came crashing over Manfred.
“No, I beg you, King Otto. Things are not so desperate that we be compelled to commit genocide against an innocent people.”
He searched his king's face and found it without compassion.
King Otto smiled. “Let them fight as we fight. Let them be homeless as we are homeless. I care not. Clara will flock to them and leave her warm, luxurious nest unattended. And when she does, I will be there to take it off her hands.”
Thoughts of self-preservation fled, and Manfred spoke from his heart. “We cannot kill those people to lure her out, Your Majesty.”
King Otto glanced over Manfred’s shoulder. Manfred turned too late to see what the king beheld. Cyril drove a knife through his heart from behind.
The last thoughts Manfred held were that he had never delivered the message meant for Cyril, and no warning would be given to Queen Clara.
He died with her vulnerability known only to him.
CHAPTER 6
Clara clung to Matthew, wanting never to let him go. However, she knew that she must.
His hands cupped her waist in a grip that was almost painful before he set her away from him.
She drank his figure in like a woman dying of thirst from the supposed desert she had read about as a child yet never known.
And what a sight he was!
Matthew moved forward with confidence. The new stables were filled to the brim with a handsome group of steeds. It was not just the melding of people from the sphere and Clan of Ohio, but absorption of tradition and way of life.
Clara looked on with pride as the stable boy tended the beasts. She tried to keep her eye on the work she could accomplish in the oyster fields while Matthew worked toward a peaceable goal Outside.
It all made perfect intellectual sense.
Then why did Clara's heart seize inside her chest at the thought of their parting? She was unafraid for herself because her sphere had become a literal fortress since the overtaking of the people of the Kingdom of Kentucky. The strength of the clan had been added to the defensible coffers.
That was better than riches, for it served the goal of sustainability for the future.
“Are you certain that it be wise that you leave the sphere… with just your person?” Clara asked, pleased when her voice remained steady and sure. It was not without effort.
Matthew nodded and threw a leg over his pick of steed. The beast was great with ghostly white splotches in the ink of its coat. The animal neighed once, eager to leave.
Matthew was eager as well, to get his task done and return to his bride-to-be.
He watched her try to be brave and school her expression. His Clara, always selfless.
He was suddenly gripped with a terrible clawing need to stay. Goosebumps rose on his bare arms.
They gazed at each other for a moment that was both short and interminable. Then Matthew swung away with an expert turn of applied pressure at the reins.
He did not look back. He knew that if he were to, he would never bring himself to leave her.
Clara watched his broad back as he dipped through the great door that led Outside. The thick golden brown hair tied at his nape swung as he turned his head left then right.
Four men rolled the great door of brass closed, and Matthew disappeared from her sight.
Clara felt as though that had been the last time she would see him.
She wanted to sob. Instead, she hurled herself in the other direction, her mind set on breeches and beaches.
A day in the fiel
ds under the cool winter sun that filtered through the permeable walls of the sphere would exhaust her sufficiently so she could sleep.
So Clara could exist until Matthew returned unto her.
*
Theodore
Theodore let the binoculars drop, his brow furrowed. He swept his gaze to the horse that grazed at his left, tethered to a stout trunk, then he raised the binoculars again.
If he had not just seen it with his own eyes, he would have thought himself the sufferer of a clever mirage.
There, directly in front of Theo, though at a distance as seen through the lens which magnified, was one of the royals of the sphere-dwellers. They were very easy to spot. Bloated and soft figures, they were juicy plums, ripe for the taking.
Yet Theo hesitated, thumping the viewers against his knee. He would proceed with caution, since he was accompanied with a few hard males.
Of course, Theo was a hard male as well.
A grim smile appeared, flashing away almost instantly.
The throat slits would endanger him. It was his very Band-ness that would give him advantage.
He would endeavor to meet them in the field.
Theodore looked about. No, that would not do—too vulnerable.
A few of the Fragment hung tight to their makeshift, gypsy-style camp. Harvey was one who had managed to escape the treacherous debacle of Band and Red Men that had fallen on them.
Theodore tried to release his rancor over not obtaining the woman but had to be satisfied with his escape and fine new steed. He glanced again at the horse, which was chomping through the ice and toeing at it to get to the fresh green shoots that slept beneath in wait for spring.
She was a good beast but behaved strangely around the other men for reasons unknown.
He moved toward the men. They looked up from where they huddled together, rubbing their arms for warmth.
“What's happening?” Harvey asked.
Theo dropped his natural speech and switched to the slurred and slang-driven cadence of the Fragment. “The king of the sphere yonder makes his way to us.”
savage 05 - the savage protector Page 5