Guilliam took the straight visitor’s chair, grumphing and growling rather than speaking.
Jake prowled, touching this, peering at that, removing a book and replacing it neatly back where he’d found it.
The man made Gregor nervous, and not just from his readiness to draw a weapon.
“Stop that!” Gregor finally shouted at Jake. “I don’t have to put up with you. I can have you sent back to your unit.”
“I’m afraid you can’t,” Guilliam said.
Jake grinned like a wild animal catching a glimpse of his long sought after prey.
“Why not? I am High Priest here.”
“But Laudae Sissy is High Priestess.” Guilliam’s words were so quiet Gregor had to strain to hear them. “She has appointed Lieutenant Jake as her special investigator in the matter of the arson, the ‘no bones’ cult, and the concussion grenade in the park. She orders us to cooperate fully with him, or she will close all Temple activities.”
“She can’t do that!”
“She can and she will,” Jake said. He leaned on Gregor’s desk, face so close Gregor could smell the soap he’d bathed with. He’d moved as quickly as a cat on a mouse. And that feral grin was back. “The people love her. Hover cams follow her everywhere when she steps outside her sanctuary. One word—and she breaks your government and your entire culture. She leaves you vulnerable to riot from within and invasion from without.”
Gregor closed his eyes. He saw in his mind’s eye the communiqué from the CSS offering peace.
Was this what it was all about? Had the CSS planted a spy to manipulate events to lead him to this choice? He’d be damned if he allowed aliens in to taint the Covenant. He’d find that spy if it was the last thing he did. The communications officer, perhaps?
“I shall order my people to answer all of your questions, fully and honestly,” Gregor said quietly. He had no choice at the moment.
“Starting with you. Now Guilliam has told me that Penelope is your daughter and Marilee was her mother. Penelope is high on my list of suspects. I need to know who else figures in this bloodline.”
“I don’t see what this . . .”
“Answer!” Jake’s hand rested heavily on his sword hilt.
Gregor swallowed his pride and reluctantly gave over control of the situation to a lesser being.
Mary accepted a written note from Ashel through the open window at the back of the Temple guest suite. The oldest of Sissy’s acolytes had assumed a new maturity in accepting responsibility for clandestine communication between Sissy and the outside world.
“Laudae Shanet wishes to speak to you,” Mary announced after she read the note, then set it afire from a ceremonial candle.
“I can’t sit here any longer. All day we’ve been cornered inside. I need to feel Harmony beneath my feet, Empathy upon my back, and the wind in my face. We‘ll walk through the park on our way to meet Laudae Shanet,” Sissy jumped up from the armchair her hosts insisted she use. The most comfortable place for their honored guest. It near swallowed her with its squishy cushions and deep seat. She had to tuck her feet under her or let them dangle awkwardly.
“Ashel,” she called out the open window. “Join us.”
“Marshie, too!” she piped back.
“Yes, bring your brother. He doesn’t go out enough.”
Marsh rarely spoke for himself. He tended to sit back and observe the world, big eyes noticing everything, his mouth firmly closed against any comments he might have. In a big, boisterous family, the quiet one often got overlooked. Sissy had done her best when she lived at home to include Marsh in family activities.
“But Jake said . . .”
“Mary, I don’t care what Jake said. I cannot stay indoors one more minute and keep sane.” Sissy herded her girls together and ushered them out the back door.
“Laudae Shanet is waiting for you at home,” Ashel said, slipping her hand into Sissy’s. “She says that no one at Crystal Temple is happy. And Jake is making a mess of things, scaring people.”
“Jake can be very scary at times,” Sissy agreed.
“I like him,” Marsh whispered, taking her other hand. He had to elbow Suzie out of the way for that honored place.
The six acolytes ranged out around them, chins in the air as if they didn’t care that they had been displaced by Worker children.
“Did you miss me when I was living at the Crystal Temple, Marsh?”
He nodded, reverting to his silent ways.
“We all missed you, Sissy,” Ashel insisted. “Mama especially. She cried herself to sleep for weeks after you left.”
“She was afraid,” Marsh said, his voice so soft Sissy wasn’t certain she heard him correctly.
Sissy let that one rest between them. She didn’t want to let them know how frightened she had been when Laud Gregor so abruptly transformed her from a simple Worker to High Priestess of all Harmony.
“Stevie wandered all over the city at night looking for you. When he couldn’t get in to see you, he started talking to you, but you weren’t there. He just kept talking as if you were; even answering his questions.”
Sissy gulped at that. “Stevie found me sometimes. He helped me read better.”
“Will Jake come to supper?” Marsh asked.
Sissy’s stomach growled to remind her that the dinner hour approached. Her entire family would be gathering to share a meal, to recount the day’s highlights, to laugh together. She missed them all terribly.
Mostly she missed talking to Stevie, exploring ideas, planning the future, thinking up better ways to work at the factory.
“I like Jake, too,” Ashel chimed in. “He’s smart. He taught me how to tie my shoes.” She pointed to the neat pink bows on top of her shoes.
“He taught me the alphabet and what sounds each letter makes,” Marsh added.
“Yes. Jake is very smart.” Jake might be the smartest person she knew. Smarter than Stevie. Laud Gregor knew about religion and politics. Jeoff and the other scientists knew their own fields. Pop knew how to work wood. Mama knew how to bake.
But Jake seemed to know about everything. He had a much better education than was allowed to a man born into the lower ranks of Military. Only those born to officer got more education than she had as a Worker. Jake knew too much. Including about the aliens who wanted to make contact and trade. Harmony had closed their borders long before Sissy was born. She had no idea if they’d had any prior contact with the rest of the galaxy.
So how did Jake know so much about them? No. He couldn’t be . . . She refused to believe that. She trusted Jake with her life.
She loved him.
Sissy went cold with premonition. Her peripheral vision sparkled, just like the times when Harmony spoke through her.
Words remained trapped inside her. Maybe the cracks in her view had more to do with Empathy shining through fluttering leaves than prophecy.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
"I SWEAR TO YOU THAT Penelope did not set the fire,” Gil stated for the fifth time.
“How do you know?” Jake demanded for the fifth time. He deliberately set their pace toward Sissy’s refuge faster than Gil seemed capable of maintaining. The older man breathed hard. He had little energy left for lying.
Gil glared at him.
“Do I need to tell Laudae Sissy that you are not cooperating with me?”
“I’ve answered all your other questions,” Gil panted. Still he kept up.
Jake gave him credit for that.
“Yes, you have answered my questions, and very well. I now know a lot more about the inner politics of both Temple and Noble. I know that Laudae Penelope is niece to Lady Marissa and that Lady Marissa’s children have intermarried with both Temple and Noble. I know that Lady Marissa and Laudae Marilee were twins. That Lady Marissa has twin sons, both of whom assist her. I know that blood ties between the two castes mean a lot more than Temple admits. I know that a lot of Temple caste form permanent bonds with their mates and actually take a h
and in raising their children. Both of those acts are seriously frowned upon by Laud Gregor. And if any of those relationships are exposed, he’s likely to rotate the partners and their children to opposite ends of the empire.”
“So you see why I am reluctant to admit a lasting bond with Laudae Penelope.”
Ah, the spouse he’d admitted to in the tunnels. “How long is lasting? Longer than just the night of the fire, I’m guessing.”
“Nearly eighteen years.”
That stopped Jake in his tracks.
“Children?”
“Five.”
“And all those jokes about rotating out to get away from Penelope were just smoke screens. You knew Gregor would never sign the order unless he knew about the relationship. You are both too valuable to him.”
“Correct.”
“Okay, I believe you. Penelope did not set the fire. What about the ‘no bones’ cult?”
“Absolutely not. She doesn’t care about the past, our ancestors, how we bury the dead. Her world is focused on this day, this minute, and getting what she wants. In many ways she is no more mature than our middle children. Our eldest, who happens to be Shanet’s acolyte Bethy, is more mature, readier to shoulder the responsibilities of ordination. My Penelope wants to be High Priestess for the glory and the honor, not to do the work. Plotting to eliminate a rival is frankly beyond her.”
“And you still love her?”
“Yes.” Gil’s face glowed with the intensity of his emotion.
“I hope I’m as lucky as you someday in finding a woman I can love so completely.” Trouble was, he had found her, but he couldn’t be with her. He had to love Sissy from a distance and never have that love returned.
The Temple roof came into view through the trees at the center of a community park. An ugly squat building, only three stories high at the center. Built of dark stone, it spread out like a mutating multilimbed creature, with each wing a different height, length, and width.
As plain and ugly as any other building in the city. Except the Crystal Temple. It looked almost as if architects designed ugliness into the structures so they wouldn’t compete in beauty with the Crystal Temple.
One more subtle reminder that Temple ruled everything. Including the HC. The original colonists had used solicited embryos from followers based on a personality file that looked for submission.
But even the most docile parents could spawn independent-thinking children. Look at Sissy. Gregor had hoped to control his new High Priestess and, through her, control the HC.
Sissy had surprised him. He couldn’t control her once she found her feet and began thinking through each issue presented to her. And reading every memo that crossed her desk.
Had Gregor planned the attacks? Each one less remote and more desperate. First a concussion grenade to warn her. Then the “no bones” cult to make her death look like an accident with an out-of-control car. And most recently a fast-spreading fire that would have engulfed her and her acolytes if Jake hadn’t been awake and smelled the smoke.
But wait . . . the first attack had come before Jake taught Sissy to read properly, before she’d begun to assert her independence. Before she started attending HC meetings. And the car in that incident had been Noble blue, not Temple black.
“Let’s back up a moment, Gil,” Jake mused out loud. He stopped in his tracks, needing every bit of his energy to think.
Guilliam turned as if to retrace their steps back to the Crystal Temple.
“Not literally. Figuratively.” Jake grabbed his elbow and turned him so they faced each other. No masks, no lies, just two friends staring each other in the eye, trading ideas.
“We know that under normal circumstances Penelope would have followed in her mother’s footsteps to become HPS,” Jake continued. “But Gregor found Sissy instead. It all boils down to controlling the HC through the High Priestess. Who is in a position to do that if Penelope became HPS?”
“Laud Gregor . . .” Guilliam turned white with fear.
“I don’t think so. Who has even more influence over her than him.”
“Me.” He shook his head violently.
“No. If you wanted that kind of power, you’d have accepted ordination years ago and begun maneuvering for the HP job. Who else has a great deal of influence over Penelope but not over Sissy?”
“Lady Marissa,” Guilliam gasped.
“Precisely. With the added motive of revenge for the death of her sister Laudae Marilee.”
“The night Marilee died, in her grief, Marissa threatened to take the job herself. But that was just grief talking, a need to revive her twin through her position as HPS,” Gill insisted.
Jake let the silence between them stretch, giving Gil the time he needed to absorb these disturbing ideas.
“But Sissy didn’t kill Marilee, the earthquake did,” Gil protested.
“Sissy controlled the earthquake. But not before Marilee suffered mortal injury. In a mind twisted with grief, that makes Sissy responsible.”
“I can’t believe that Lady Marissa . . . She has been so kind to Laudae Sissy.”
“Smoke and mirrors to keep anyone from looking to her as a suspect. She had to make it all seem an accident, or divert blame elsewhere. The insane are also very smart. But now she’s getting desperate.” Jake paused a moment. He didn’t like the way his thoughts turned.
“Didn’t you say they were twins? Twins that are closer than sisters, two halves of the same whole.”
“Penelope and I have a set of twins, the youngest two. They think alike. They think for each other. They get sick if we separate them for more than a few moments. Twins run in families . . . May all seven gods forgive me.”
“Come. We have to get Sissy out of the factory Temple now.”
The ground shook and threw them to the ground. Jake’s ears rang from a subsonic boom. Flying debris rained down with burning embers.
Like a strong hand on her back, an alien force shoved Sissy to the ground.
She fought to find Harmony in the chaos of her mind. She couldn’t think. Discord clanged in her ears. Blackness crowded the edges of her vision while bright stars danced in front of her.
Flaming rubble poured down all around her. A glowing ember caught the sere leaves of a tree directly above her. After a long and dry summer, the woods provided ample fuel. In horror she watched as flames raced along a thick branch, catching leaves and twigs until the entire canopy exploded in flame.
“Ashel, Marsh!” she screamed. And couldn’t hear her own voice.
Forcing a sense of calm, she swallowed deeply, sucking in smoky air. Dangerous. She coughed and coughed until her lungs threatened to turn inside out.
And still she couldn’t hear anything above the clangor inside her own head.
Panic robbed her of all thought and movement.
“Mary, where are the girls?” she croaked the moment she caught enough breath to exhale. Frantically, she sought evidence of life among the debris.
Movement. A body.
Sissy focused. The blackness cleared a bit from the center of her vision. She could see to the sides now. Dazzle blindness receded.
One by one, she called to the children.
Inch by inch, she pulled herself to her knees, then upright.
A new trembling of the ground beneath her. She braced herself for yet another catastrophe.
Her back tingled and her fingers itched. “Jake!” Somehow she knew he ran toward her from behind. She spun and stepped toward him even as he grabbed her by the shoulders.
His mouth moved.
The words could not penetrate the noise in her head.
“Jake, what is happening?” she shouted so that he could hear her over the chaotic noise. “Jake, where are my girls, Ashel, and Marsh?”
He moved his mouth again.
Then, miraculously, her girls gathered round her, wrapped her in a hug. Ashel and Marsh squeezed beneath and between them to get even closer. Guilliam stood behind them, keeping a
wary eye all around.
He and Jake flapped their mouths as rapidly as their arms, gesturing wildly.
“Speak up. Somebody say something. Why can’t I hear you? Why can’t I find the Harmonies?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
JAKE THRUST A HYSTERICAL SISSY into the arms of her girls. “Take care of her. The explosion hurt her ears.” Though why the noise damaged Sissy and not the others, he couldn’t say.
He had to slap the side of his head to clear a fullness in his own hearing. A weird buzzing sound persisted. He ignored it. He had to.
Others needed help. Already he heard the wail of sirens approaching. Crowds poured out of adjacent apartment complexes and the factory to watch the chaos. Hopefully, to help.
A pitiful few stumbled out of the damaged building.
Fires everywhere. Already people had organized bucket brigades. They’d done this before. They needed to know how to help themselves. The authorities weren’t always there to help them. Firemen and equipment had to help the Temple, Nobles, and Professionals first. Workers and Poor last. Military and Spacers took care of their own.
In a blur of action he organized a “safe” zone for the injured. Set the watchers to sort out the minor injuries from the major. They knew how to calm the wailers and perform first aid.
He worked his way into the damaged building, hastening evacuees, lending a shoulder here, directions there.
Where the hell was Gil? He could use that man’s organizational skills. Then Jake spotted him, covered in soot and sobbing quietly halfway up the first flight of stairs. “Bethy,” he moaned. “My beautiful Bethy.”
“Bethy?” Jake asked. Bethy. The eldest daughter, acolyte to Shanet.
“Discord!” he cursed as he hastened past Gil, taking the steps three at a time. Hoping against hope that someone, anyone on the top floor had survived.
Lady Marissa, in her desperation didn’t care how many people she killed or crippled. Or did the malicious bitch know that in killing Sissy’s entire family, and her beloved mentor and her girls, she had damaged the HPS far more than just robbing her of her life?
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