by Susan Grant
CHAPTER TWO
“Peace. Bah! It will never last. The only trustworthy Drakken is a dead Drakken.”
—Admiral Brit Bandar, Coalition war hero (remarks issued off the record at the commencement of Galactic Reunification Hearings)
THE DOOR TO WREN’S BEDROOM crashed open, rattling the eyeglasses sitting on her bedside table next to a stack of old, dog-eared storybooks and a barely operable data-reader. She fumbled for her glasses, sliding them up her nose in time to see her guardian slamming the windows shut and drawing the shutters closed. “Up, up—now, Awrenkka. We have little time and much yet to do.”
“Ah, Sabra, but it’s barely light.” She groaned into her pillow, not yet ready to leave its soft warmth. She’d stayed up too late with her nose buried in a book.
Sabra yanked off the covers. “You are in danger.”
“Here on sleepy, little Barokk?” She opened one, skeptical eye. Little of excitement ever happened on this all-female, sanctuary of a planet. Unless one considered making sand paintings and knotting shell jewelry, reciting poetry and learning Drakken history exciting.
The boom of a ship entering the atmosphere tore through the chill, foggy streets outside the chalet. Wren shot up in bed. “A ship, Sabra. Hooray.” Wren swung her feet off the bed as Sabra rooted through drawers, pulling out items of clothing—the ugliest garments she could find by the looks of the worn, faded cloak and battered boots adding to a growing pile. “It’s been ages since we’ve received supplies. Months and months.” She yanked her arms through a filmy robe, hugging it close to her breasts for modesty in her haste to reach the window. A cargo freighter meant fresh supplies and a glimpse of men—wild, virile, unsuitable men. “Let me close enough to see this time. Please, Sabra. Just looking isn’t dangerous—”
“Wren, no.” Sabra snatched her arm and spun her back before she reached the window. Wren grabbed her glasses to keep them from slipping off. A glimpse of Sabra’s face revealed something she’d never seen there before: fear.
“Ah, dear Goddess…” Sabra made a circle with her fist over her heart then kissing the knuckle of her index finger. “Watch over this girl, for she knows not what stalks her. Help me to keep her safe. I can’t tell if I am being selfish or wise, but I am veering off my path to help her find hers. Blessed Goddess, I remain your servant. In your name I so say.”
Dumbstruck, Wren stared, both aghast and fascinated at the sight of Sabra praying. Sabra was a believer. Wren had suspected as much but never worked up the nerve to ask. In the empire, the warlord was worshipped. In the Coalition, they worshipped the goddesses, who were believed to be divine beings in human form, descended from those who fled the Hordish worlds eons ago to escape religious persecution.
A sense of betrayal competed with a burning curiosity about the most significant woman in her life. “You withheld information from me.”
“To keep you safe. I could not allow you to develop practices that would endanger you in a battlelord’s household. Wives have been beaten to death for far less.”
“You never even gave me the choice to take that risk or not!” Even Sabra wanted her kept dumb and docile.
“And to keep me safe, sweetling, to be able to protect you. Believers are murdered on the spot.”
“Not on Barokk,” Wren argued uneasily as the world and the life she thought she knew tipped more and more off kilter.
“No?” Sabra shoved a bra band in her hands. “There are believers here in abundance. Have you ever seen anyone pray? Those who would murder them live amongst us, too.”
Dozens of faces flitted through Wren’s mind—teachers, guardians, servants and the girls, who prayed in secret, who would kill them? Religion was seen as a threat to the very survival of the Drakken Empire. As the warlord’s daughter, was she not tasked with defending the empire against believers? Wren squeezed her hands into fists, watching the play of sinew and muscle. She’d been taught how to fight, from hand-to-hand combat to handling blades and guns. No matter how many times Sabra assured her that the skills were for self-defense, Wren’s aversion to violence manifested itself in clumsy attempts to learn the moves.
“The warlord insists,” Sabra would tell her, and the training would resume. Was this eventuality why, her kin gunned down in cold blood, necessitating her escape? Or were the lessons to prepare her to fight in the warlord’s name? The possible answer left her shuddering.
Sabra shoved a many-times-mended blouse at her. “Put this on.”
“That’s a rag,” Wren protested.
“Wait until you see the pants.” Sabra pulled it over her head.
“I won’t dress until you tell me what’s happened.”
Sabra took hold of Wren’s arms, tightly, to the point of pain. “The ship you heard is neither a freighter nor Drakken. It’s Coalition.”
Wren gasped, her gaze automatically jerking outside. Their age-old enemy here? A sickening sense of vulnerability competed with blunt, primitive shock.
“I was summoned with the other guardians to the governor’s office during the night. The captain briefed us from orbit. They aren’t here to attack but to evacuate. There’s been a revolt. The Empire is no more. We gave the Coalition our unconditional surrender—five months ago.”
Horror sucked the air from Wren’s lungs. “We’re first learning of this now?”
“The entire quadrant has been isolated by a blockade. No one could get in or out, or any outside news.”
That explained the absence of supply ships. Everyone had assumed the usual delays. There was plenty of stored food on isolated Barokk. No one had yet begun to worry about shortages. “It’s a lie. The warlord would have tried to warn us. He would have come for me, made sure I was safe first.” But he hadn’t. His utter disregard stung.
“Sweetling.” Sabra lifted her hand to Wren’s cheek, a touch to comfort as well as steady her. “The warlord is dead.”
Wren recoiled as if the words themselves were a physical attack. “And Rorkk?”
“Your half-brother, too. Assassinated, both of them. My sorrows, sweetling. The warlord was, after all, your sire.”
Tears didn’t fall. Terror didn’t squeeze her chest. Only quiet outrage boiled at the atrocity committed against her family. To whom did she owe such composure—her murdered father or Lady Seela, the legendary beauty he’d impregnated and cast off for producing a daughter before a son?
“Get dressed. We’re to meet Ilkka in the shed. We’ve hidden emergency supplies there.”
Wren sorted through her wardrobe, her mind reeling. Her mind was fuzzy at the edges. It was hard to think. Sabra snatched a pair of shoes from her hands. “No, Awrenkka, not those shoes. The sturdy ones—the ones you wore to the mountains last autumn. And these pants, the ones I chose for you, not those.”
Irritated, Sabra tossed the cloud-soft pants across the room. “Aren’t you listening to me? The Imperial Palace is under Coalition control. It means the warlord’s private records are under their control, too. As soon as they figure out he has a daughter, they’ll come for you.”
Thunder rattled the windows. A landing ship.
Panic flared in Sabra’s eyes. “We must leave—now.”
They’ll come for you. The warning cleaved through the fog in her brain. They wanted her—her. They would do to her what they did to her family and quite likely injure or kill protective Sabra in the process.
“Hurry!” Wren snatched the thick, heavy boots from Sabra’s hands, shoving her legs into an equally rugged pair of pants. Sabra cinched the laces on her boots so tight that Wren winced. Grabbing two travel cloaks, the woman took her hand and pulled her out the rear door. The early dawn light was frosty and still. No birds sang. They were frightened into silence by the foreign roar of the ship. It emanated from the main square.
They tumbled into the dark shed and slammed the door closed. The musty air held fast to the tang of stored vegetables and the dust of many decades. Her guardian leaned against the door and let out a shuddering
breath. “Now we can prepare and finish disguising you.”
“Answer my questions, Sabra. What happened to my father? How did he die?”
“He brought it upon himself. His greed, his arrogance—” Sabra stopped short of saying worse, relaying instead a convoluted tale of kidnapping and treachery beyond comprehension. Queen Keira, stolen to be her half-brother’s wife, her divine blood mixed with that of the house of Rakkuu to create the most powerful dynasty the galaxy had ever known. The queen was worshipped as goddess, as was her mother and, before that, her grandmother and so on. The sheer logistics of pulling off such a brazen feat would have required traitors within the Goddess Keep itself.
No wonder her father had long ignored her. It seemed he was a very busy man. And now he was dead. Betrayed by his own minions, his closest advisors and the people he tried to exterminate in a sweeping campaign of genocide.
Wren struggled with Sabra’s incomprehensible statements. What was true and what was propaganda generated by the Coalition captain who’d briefed them remained a mystery. “More secrets.” Wren heard the accusing edge in her voice. “How many more will you keep from me?”
“There are more secrets than you can ever imagine, dear one.” Sabra’s eyes seemed unfathomably old as she searched her face. She looked haggard. She wasn’t young anymore, but she hadn’t looked her age until now. “Once I thought your having too much knowledge was dangerous. No longer. I see now that your naïveté is dangerous. Forgive me, child. Forgive me. The galaxy will turn to you next, Wren. Your blood is the last link to the warlord. The Coalition will put you on trial and execute you. Alive, you pose a threat to any treaty, no matter how it is exacted.”
“Bah. A threat in the Coalition’s mind only. Our people will never follow a female warlord.”
“Perhaps not, but mated to a man of the right credentials and ambition, you could start a new dynasty. Loyalists will do all they can to resurrect the empire. All they can to win. They will do all they can to find you.”
“If I were to join them, Sabra, and I won’t. Father’s dead. I’m in charge of my destiny now. I say who I will marry or who I will not.”
“If Drakken believers find you first it won’t matter what the Coalition or the loyalists desire. The believers will make you suffer in the most gruesome way in retaliation for what was done to them. Then there is the risk of attack by rogues and pirates. Times are desperate, child, and will become more so before they become better. The Coalition captain told us that displaced Drakken soldiers by the thousands are filling their free time—and their pockets—marauding. If word gets out that you’re alive, I fear they may try to hand you over to a pirate lord who’ll auction you off to the highest bidder.”
Pirates, believers, loyalists and the Coalition. “Is there anyone not hunting me down?”
Sabra clasped Wren’s chin between her fingers. The intensity of her amber eyes reminded Wren of a long-ago day when she’d warned her about the Mawndarr family. “Finally you see the danger, stubborn girl.”
“Not so stubborn,” Wren admitted in a whisper. “Scared.”
“For good reason.” Sabra’s voice roughened with emotion. “Awrenkka e’Rakuu, you are the most wanted woman in the galaxy.”
BATTLELORD KARBON MAWNDARR threw the woman facedown onto the dining-room table. With one hand buried in her luxuriant blond hair, he unfastened his trousers.
Rigid with horror, Aral stood paralyzed in the entryway. Father was hurting Nanjin! Her cries had lured him from the far side of the mansion. Nanjin was his favorite teacher, and Bolivarr’s, too. In the short time she’d been with them she’d become one of the few good things in their lives. Living in this household was hells—his father, a source of terror, and his mother? A sneered name, usually accompanied by a curse spat from his father’s lips. She’d died in childbirth delivering Bolivarr. Fates had mercy on her soul, it seemed. With the absence of any kind of permanent female in the home, the boys delighted in Nanjin’s attention and affection.
Nanjin screamed.
Aral sprinted across the room. “Don’t!” He took his father’s shirt in his fists and tried to pull him away from the sobbing teacher. The man was solid, a large man. “Let her go. Father, please.”
Karbon snarled at Aral as he glared over his shoulder, his face plum red and murderous. His acrid breath and his pink eyes told Aral he’d been drinking sweef. The liquor was distilled from the berries of a type of conifer and mixed with an additive used to lubricate machinery. Homemade stills abounded on military ships. It was cheap, easy to make. Abuse rotted the teeth not to mention various internal organs, unless one was as wealthy as Lord Mawndarr and could afford nanomeds to reverse the damage. Sweef was poison, the drink of space-hands and pirates, not the upper class. But sweef didn’t play favorites. It was equally addictive no matter what one’s station in life.
The teacher tried to wriggle free. Karbon slammed her down with the fist Aral knew so well. Then he fastened his pants and turned around. “You better have a good reason for interrupting me, boy, and thinking you can tell me what to do.”
“You’re hurting her.” Aral swallowed hard. He was losing nerve with each breath but trying not to show it.
“Is that what you call it?” The man smiled. “Perhaps it is time for your first lesson in pleasuring a female.” His hand shot out so fast it was a blur. Those thick strong fingers gripped Aral’s neck and cut off his air supply. He was lifted by that hand as if he weighed nothing. Sputtering, he clawed at the fingers around his throat, trying to pry them open.
Cra-ack. An open hand slapped across his face. And again. He tasted the familiar tang of blood. His vision quickly dimmed, going from red to gray to black.
He floated in and out of broken dreams.
Then awareness seeped back. The pressure around his neck had eased. His vision returned as his pants were yanked down around his knees.
Shocked, he pushed away, but his father slapped the back of his skull, making his ears sing with agony. “Go on. Do her. You’re a Mawndarr. Prove it. Make me proud.”
Aral’s throat hurt too much to allow him a gulp of shame. He was fifteen. He’d not yet been with a woman.
Another blow. “Move, boy! Do you need me to show you how?”
Horror and self-loathing sickened Aral. He refused to show his fear. Showing fear always made it worse.
“All right, then. If you can’t make her cry out, I will.” His father brought a knife to the woman’s long, slender neck and pressed the edge to her jugular….
“AH, FATES. NO!” Aral lurched upright off the chaise upon which he’d fallen asleep, expecting to see his open, shaking hands glistening with blood. There had been so much of it.
Aral’s pulse hammered in his skull as he blinked to awareness. He was in his luxuriously appointed, shipboard quarters. Alone. He’d merely sought a few hours’ rest. You should know better. Just when he thought he was safe, his past would bring him to his knees. He’d tried every kind of tranq and sleeping elixir over the years, and any targeted nanomeds he could beg or steal from the Coalition. None worked. None made his nights a time of rest.
He’d learned to compensate for the lack of sleep by strengthening his body. For Aral there was an added benefit to working out—a few dreamless hours of rest. But it took sheer exhaustion to get him there. He savored the pain, took it in. This pain he controlled. This pain he owned.
Self-inflicted torture, his second-in-command Kaz argued. Perhaps. The stronger his body, the more finely honed his muscles, the more he could hold off the effects of his tortured thoughts. His impending madness, he often feared. Perhaps he was deluding himself, but if anything, physical exertion placed his focus where it did some good—his crusade.
He stalked to the shower and stood under the gush of water, seeking elusive peace as the blood still roared in his head. A weapon lay within arm’s reach. He’d far outlived the lifespan of a traitor and a spy. Well aware was he of that fact, every blasted minute of every day. Gu
ards watched over him around the clock, but one must never become complacent or trust fully. He’d not dreamt of the rape in some time. Of all the incidents in his life orchestrated by his father, that one had been the most disturbing. It was a turning point. It was the day that had started him down the road that led to here and now.
The nightmare reiterated his greatest fear: losing Awrenkka to Karbon. She was more like him than anyone alive, a product of evil who had somehow held on to her humanity. She needed his protection as much as he was compelled to offer it to her. He’d find her, and in doing so he’d save them both.
He hoped he wasn’t too late.
The memory of the day he met her remained crystal clear. His beating earlier that morning had been particularly harsh. Ever mindful of other’s opinions, his father had pumped him with enough nanomeds to erase the visible bruises. Why, they were about to have an audience with the Supreme Warlord of the Drakken Horde, after all. Impressions were everything. One couldn’t have their sons limping or bleeding, could one? Especially a son on the short list of possible marriage candidates for the warlord’s daughter.
Aral had been forced to stand there with the battlelords as the warlord paraded the girl in to tantalize the men. The older men had recoiled in unison at the shy, undersized girl and her huge thick glasses. “She looks like an insect,” Karbon had remarked later when they were in private.
The girl had walked past their group, noticeably unsure of herself as she sneaked peeks at the men. Then her focus landed on Aral and stopped. She may have been wearing cumbersome eyeglasses, but he scarcely noticed them at all. Her eyes were the clearest, purest violet-blue, and utterly unguarded. That gaze grabbed at his heart, stealing his breath.
She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.
But it was more than that. He saw a girl much like himself, both of them completely cowed by their fathers, in their thrall and utterly terrorized. Like him, she must have thought there was no escape. He quite remembered thinking: what if he were her escape? He, Aral Mawndarr, would rescue the warlord’s daughter.