“Ah… but I do dare. For I am a male of the Band who schemes like a Fragment.”
Theo's face darkened as his eyes cut deep the criminal from a decaying sphere who stood mired in his own justifications.
Clara knew that combination would be lethal. She was unsure of why she had been spared.
Olive tugged at Clara's hand as Theo advanced on Cyril.
Clara fled and did not stop even when Cyril’s screams echoed down the hallway. Running, Clara put a hand to her neck.
And found the key gone.
CHAPTER 11
Clara burst into the throne room, Olive at her heels. She was shocked to see Charles rise from the seat to the right of King Otto.
“Clara!” Charles said, many emotions crossing his face.
King Otto stood, wrinkling his nose, no doubt because of her unseemly attire, smell, and entry.
“Clara.”
Clara seethed at the sight of her father's crown atop his head.
“You insufferable beetle,” Clara hissed then strode forward before she was aware of moving. She climbed the dais and struck the jowly king across the face. Then she tore her father's crown from his head.
He was so shocked by her behavior he spluttered about for a response, his pasty cheek growing red from her slap.
She glared at him. “Do not bother with a worthy rebuttal or otherwise. You shall be escorted forthwith and expunged from my sphere this moment.”
Charles called out, “Guards!”
They had been at the western exit and not seen or heard her entry. Sometimes Clara lamented the improper sound penetration afforded because of the dense wood of the doors.
They had been her nemesis when she suffered at the hand of Ada.
The guards swarmed the throne room where the red-faced king sang the tune of innocence. There was no melody he could put forth where anyone would listen.
“See him off!” Clara commanded.
“I am the rightful king!” King Otto shouted as the guards took his arms.
Charles came to stand by her side.
“You are not automatically king due simply to your gender, Otto,” Clara articulated in curt syllables. “Do you ken what would have happened had Ada still been seated herein?”
King Otto paled.
He understood her well.
“Aye,” he admitted. “She would have me slayed.”
“She would,” Clara agreed.
He stared back at her with bulging eyes above a bulbous nose set in a ruddy complexion, where burst blood vessels lay like a complicated spider web.
“Is that what you plan for me, Queen?” Beady eyes bored into hers, her handprint outlined against his sickly flesh. “I had heard you were a softer ruler.”
“Others have made me hard.” She held his gaze. “However, where you would have let Cyril make me his royal whore, where you would have worn the crown of King Raymond and ruled this sphere in the failed way of your own, I will merely cast you out.
You will make your way there or with the criminal ruffians who travel Outside.”
King Otto dropped to his knees, grabbing at her skirts. One of the guards used the butt of his powder-keg gun to shove him away. He yelped.
Clara winced and shook her head at the guard, then upon seeing who he was, she smiled slightly.
Billy said, “Aye, princess… I mean, Queen Clara. It not be as handy an implement as the rolling pin, yet I feel it fits very naturally inside my palm.”
He looked back at Otto, who was newly stripped of presumed dignity. “Ya touch Queen Clara again, and it will not be a love tap on your hands but a true braining.”
“You would not kill me for touching Clara.”
Clara knew the tenor of Billy. Sometimes he had been Clara's only advocate after King Raymond's passing.
Billy appeared to mull over King Otto's words. He nodded slowly. “Aye, I would, it'd be me pleasure.”
Otto mewled, his gaze shifting uneasily between Billy and Clara.
Clara repeated, “You will be cast Outside.” She spied her key hanging from Otto’s neck. She yanked on it, and the thin chain snapped easily.
“And the kingdom will remain mine,” she added, clenching her slim fingers around the brass warm from Otto's skin.
“There are those in the future who made it so, who felt I was a stable enough governess of these people that our sphere would remain standing. I will not allow a seed of evil to germinate amongst my people.”
“Please, no!” he blathered, pressing his forehead to the stone floor. His fingers held an inch away from her hem, but not touching her.
“He must be banished, Clara,” Charles said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
She murmured, “I know it is to be so.”
Billy jerked the slobbering king up by his armpits and began to drag him away.
Charles wrapped his arm around her. She looked up at his face and saw the fading bruises that had turned an ugly chartreuse.
“What say you?” Clara asked over the king's wailing.
Billy stuffed his handkerchief into the king's mouth.
The annoying caterwauling was cut off, and tears streamed down Otto’s face as he snuffled into the linen.
Otto's gaze was filled with detestation as he was led away in a shuffle.
Clara knew she made a greater enemy this day. Yet all she could do was celebrate that she was able to rid her sphere of a disease, one she could do nothing about but eradicate by ousting with surgical precision.
*
Matthew
“Do you have salt?” Bracus asked in a low voice. “For I thought there be a small supply that Clara possessed for safekeeping?”
Matthew nodded then frowned. “We cannot destroy the sphere to enter.”
Bracus lowered his chin. “What say you? This is Clara we discuss, inside that damnable thing without enough Band to take out whatever the threat be.”
The demand he heard was for a logical explanation. But where that be absent, brute force would do.
Matthew grabbed Bracus by the neck and jerked him against his body. “I do want to ravage the sphere! Yet I would endanger her twice. For if I destroy the sphere and save Clara, then I must protect her without the fort and the sphere. And what say ye then?”
Bracus tore away from Matthew.
He could not dispute the logic as Matthew's vehement glare followed him. Matthew could be trusted, yet he had been with the Fragment in the first years of his life. His thought process was even more diabolical than the warriors of the Band because of those early experiences. And there was Rowenna to consider, the one he would join with, the natural mother to Clara was also without a protector within the sphere.
Terrible things might be necessary.
“Let us go over all the trouble, then,” Philip said.
“Our future queen, on the chasm of true alliance with the Clan, is being held by the wretched king of the neighboring sphere.”
“We can only assume he means to command it as his own,” Calia said.
Matthew cocked a brow.
“Would you not, Matthew?” she asked. “You lived with the Fragment. You know the flavor of both them and the debauched sphere that follows in their lead like sheep behind the shepherd.”
Matthew nodded. He was certain that Clara would do what she could to maintain her life.
He also knew she would endanger herself for the people of her sphere.
Elise interrupted, “Excuse me.”
Adahy looked at the Healer. Chasing Hawk's eyes were blank with a lack of understanding of the white words.
Matthew turned to the newest female of the clan, not of the Ohio Clan but an unknown one. She had been slave of the Fragment. Matthew did not know in what capacity. His eyes slid to the male mixed-blood Band's eyes and noted how they never left her form as she spoke and understood exactly what troubled him.
But the time was not ripe for introspection. The call was for action.
Elise said, “Look y
onder.” She pointed. Matthew turned his head and saw the telltale shadows of many people. He ran for the portal, dagger in his hand, Philip and Bracus at his heels. The Red Men and women of the Clan were in a tight knot of safety not far from where he stood.
Matthew slapped his palms against the solid brass of the door. “Clara!” he bellowed and felt the reverberation of his voice through the heavy metal door like a conduit of vibration.
Then he heard the tumblers of the lower locks disengaging. The great door began to open, sliding laboriously against the slicked runners at its base.
And there she was.
His Clara.
A strange sensation consumed Matthew. It took a moment to come to terms with it. It was love.
And the love he had for her was frightening. He noticed a fading bruise on her cheek. Whoever had marred her lovely face would die.
Matthew jumped inside and hauled Clara against him. He could have wrapped her twice, his arms were so long and she so tiny.
Instead, he held her loosely for fear that he would crush her in his gratefulness to be against her again.
“I did not know,” Matthew choked out.
“I am well, Matthew, but…” She stepped aside, pulling him with her.
Billy, the former baker turned guard, dragged King Otto out behind him.
Matthew's fists clenched, and Clara moved to stand in front of him.
He looked into her eyes. “Clara, step aside so I might finish this loathsome vagrant.” His voice was so low she strained to hear him.
“No, Matthew. Listen to me.”
Matthew clenched his teeth.
“I want his blood on my hands, and in that way, I know we will not fight the same enemy again.” The words were said through his teeth as he regarded King Otto, who looked away.
“I have banished him from entry into my kingdom,” Clara said, “and he has consented to go.”
Billy nodded.
“Aye, he has no choice, or I will beat him to death.” He spit on the ground not far from where the king stood.
Charles approached. Matthew did not utter a word as he handed off his precious Clara.
Charles strode to Otto and spun him around. “Did you lay that mark against Clara?”
King Otto quickly shook his head, obviously relieved to place blame elsewhere.
“It was not I. It be my guard, Cyril.”
Matthew gave a grim smile. The air seemed to pause, and then Matthew struck Otto in the head, checking the swing very little.
The king slumped, unconscious before he hit the ground.
Matthew leaned over him.
“That was for Clara, dolt, for you allowed it.”
He straightened and strode back to Charles and Clara.
He pulled her into the circle of his arms.
“What say you?” Clara asked, taking in the familiar faces of the Clan; Lily, Jack, and their young in tow.
“Let us get everyone inside, and then I will explain what has happened.”
Clara counted the Clan near sixty strong. “The entire clan, Matthew?”
He simply nodded.
Matthew was a male of few words, yet no words were needed. The sad faces passing through the portal told Clara many things.
None of them good.
***
Clara watched Calia enter with Philip and noted the change between the two. Calia had thawed toward him, and he seemed to have become a flame that she could warm herself against.
It took more nerve than was pretty from Calia to offer any relationship to Philip, Clara instinctively knew. The new bond was deep, and its very depth frightening to Calia. However, Calia had never run from anything in her life, and she would be brave, regardless of the price.
Clara missed Evie, Edwin, and Maddoc.
She was about to inquire about them when Rowenna ran in and went straight to Bracus. “Where be Maddoc?” Her frantic mother's eyes scanned the many faces.
Bracus glanced at Matthew, and a look passed between them.
Rowenna shook her head. “No. You talk to me, one or both of you. I must know where my son is.”
“And where are Evie and Edwin?” Clara asked.
The Band was silent. She feared the answer.
Matthew must have understood some of what she felt because he hastened to put to rest her morbid deliberations.
“They are not dead, Clara, but… unfound.”
Elise said, “The Red Men came and helped the Band rescue Evie, Calia, and me.” Clara thought the woman’s features exotic.
Clara stepped forward.
“I am Queen Clara of the Kingdom of Ohio. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Clara thought the young woman looked vaguely akin to the Traveler who had journeyed to their world via the Pathway. Then she saw the chain and pendant that hung around the woman’s neck. She snapped her head and gaped.
Elise did not know what to do. She had just addressed a woman of royalty. If she had transgressed so within the embrace of the Fragment, she would have been beaten. She had been. She knelt and put her arms out in front of her, placing her head within the cradle her thin arms made. Someone gasped as if shocked. Then strong arms jerked her up off the floor. Elise put her hands over her face in defense as her captor spun her around. A rough voice commanded, “Do not!”
The voice sounded like gravel under horses' hooves.
Elise opened her eyes and saw Adahy was the one holding her. “Please,” she implored softly, “do not hurt me.”
She willed herself not to cry out of habit alone. In the past, tears would have meant an even more brutal punishment.
Adahy heard the words and understood two of them:
Please and hurt. “No hurt you,” he said in a thick solemn voice.
“What does the white female say?” Chasing Hawk asked in Iroquois.
Adahy glanced over at him. “I believe she thinks I might harm her.”
Chasing Hawk looked surprised. “She healed you with her hands and speaks to the earth. She is a treasure and shares our blood. Do you not see?”
Adahy studied the woman. The black of her hair rivaled the feathers of the raven. Her eyes were ebony pools. Only her pale flesh bespoke of something other than Iroquois.
“What does he say?” Clara asked, wanting to comfort the young woman.
Elise bowing before her as a miserable supplicant had been a terrible thing to witness.
Clara cast her eyes to the ground, knowing without being told that the woman had spent time with the Fragment.
Elise looked at the Band female, Calia, whom she had delivered from the grim reaper, and a small shiver overtook her.
“I think he says he will not hurt me,” Elise said, looking at all the faces and finding no rancor and hate. Only compassion.
“Of course he will not!” Calia said. “He has come to our aid in battle.”
“He is Band,” Clara said in wonder.
His throat was clear of slits, but he had the manner, bearing, and physique of Band. Then there was the matter of his broken English.
He had been with someone other than the Red Men.
Adahy glowered at the white faces, but when he looked into the Healer’s dark eyes, something tightened in his chest. The sensation was very like what he'd felt all those years before when he had met the Band for the first time.
“Wait a moment,” Rowenna said, pushing through the people and coming to stand before Adahy and Chasing Hawk.
Her eyes moved between the two, as theirs did with her.
Bracus came beside her. “I do not like the way they look upon you.”
Rowenna beamed at them, and Adahy smiled back.
“I know you,” Rowenna stated, pointing at Adahy. “You are the warrior who defeated the Travelers fifteen seasons past.”
Adahy shook his head, indicating he could not keep up with her discourse.
Rowenna simplified her language. “Know you,” she said softly.
Adahy stuck out his
hand, and she slipped her hand inside his much larger one.
Adahy gave it a slow pump up and down.
“Well met,” he said, and his smile became a grin.
“What say you?” Clara asked Rowenna with a daughter’s concern, seeing a mystery unfolding before her.
Rowenna turned joyous eyes toward her.
“This man's group saved me. They saved you from death when I would have sent you with your father, Raymond.”
Clara and Rowenna had much to discuss. But first, Clara needed to make things right for the terrified woman who had obviously never known sanctuary.
“What is your name?” Clara asked softly.
Elise looked down at her hands, unable to face royalty. “I am Elise.” She felt Adahy move to stand behind her, but the fear didn’t come.
Clara stepped closer to her, and Elise saw exquisite white pointy boots move into her line of sight. Her eyes widened as she took in the pearls-and-hook closures.
Elise chanced a glance at Clara.
The queen took her hands and squeezed them. Not to hurt, but to welcome.
“We are well met, Elise.”
Elise dared to look up at the queen. Her warm eyes bathed Elise in a compassion she had been sure no longer existed anywhere.
“Please,” Clara said, swinging her hand toward the sphere tunnel, “live amongst us and find peace.”
Elise paused for moment. Then she put a foot forward, then another.
She turned only once to glance behind her at the warrior of the Red Men.
Adahy.
His eyes latched onto hers, and he gave her a small nod. Elise knew it was meant for her and her alone.
When the tears began to fall, she let them. No one would beat her for her weakness.
Tears of joy were never weak but the strongest ones of all.
CHAPTER 12
Evie groaned as she came awake. A foot connected with her side, and she yelped.
She tried to put her hands up to protect her face and found she could not.
They were bound behind her.
The crack of a whip caused her eyes to snap open.
Maddoc hung from the center of the large canvas tent. The structure was made of a material unknown to her, large wooden poles intersecting at the apex.
savage 05 - the savage protector Page 10