by Jo Zebedee
Phelps took her back to her cell.
“Pl–” she said, and stopped. She wouldn’t beg. Not because she’d been ordered not to, but because she was Sonly le Payne, and she never had. The door slammed. She slumped on the bed, just about holding her tears back, and shivered in the silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Kare followed Farran down the gangway into a huge, rock-hewn port. He still had the calmness from the ship, a sense of peace that overrode the anger he should be feeling. The sound of hammering came from workshops lining each side of the cavern: some holding ships’ carcasses; others for what looked to be maintenance; another devoted to the distinctive painting.
“You do everything yourselves?”
Farran glanced at him. “Of course. It’s a big fleet; it’s more cost effective to complete our own.” He gave a quick grin. “Besides, we don’t want to give away our secrets.”
“Makes sense.” They left the port and entered a grey-rock corridor. Kare started to get a sense of the proportions of the cavern-system. As he walked, Roamers stopped what they were doing and stared at him, a strange intensity in their openness. He was used to attention – had got to the point where he barely noticed it – but here, it made him uncomfortable. It reminded him of meeting, a few years ago, a group of religious crazies who believed he was a god. The more he’d tried to reason with them, the more they hung on his every word, frustrating him beyond belief. It had ended his belief in all things religious; if they’d deify him, it didn’t give him much faith in the others chosen…
“This way.”
He followed Farran into a narrower corridor, past a waiting group of Roamers who shifted to let him past, silently taking him in.
“Why is everyone looking at me?” he asked.
“I told you; you’re the first outsider who’s ever visited.”
The Roamer was lying – this was more than passing interest in a stranger. There was nothing he could do about it now. If the Roamers were capable of kidnapping him for their own ends, it was unlikely he’d force them to reveal their agenda. Perhaps when he met their Queen, he would get further. “How do I address your Queen?”
“We call her Mother,” said Farran. “She won’t call you Emperor, I’m afraid.”
Kare smiled. “That’ll make a pleasant change.”
They entered a quiet corridor. Its dimensions reminded him of the hellish path to the torture chambers, and sweat broke across his brow. He drew in a deep breath. This corridor was different: it was dry, not dank, and light filtered through portholes. The stone was hard grey, shot with black, not red and crumbling. The sound of waves echoed in the distance in a ceaseless rhythm, calming him. The only sounds Omendegon had carried were screams.
They reached a turn in the corridor and Farran stopped. “I’m to leave you here. You’ll come to a force-field screen across the corridor. Go through, and you will reach our Mother’s chamber.”
Kare paused. “I have your word, Farran – after this, you’ll let me go.”
“You have my word.”
Kare looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. He walked until he saw the screen. It reflected light from one of the portholes, casting shimmers on the walls. He touched it, and it gave under his hand.
“Hello?” he called. It echoed back: lo-lo-lo. There was no answer, so he pushed through the field and ducked into a small rock chamber.
On one side there was a bed with a chair beside it, both functional rather than luxurious; on the other, alcoves were built into the wall, their shelves lined with artefacts. Soft lighting was cut into the dark rock. A soft, rasping breath cut the quiet air.
He relaxed. He’d been frightened she was already dead. He wasn’t sure what the Roamers would have done if she had been. He walked to the bed. The lady sleeping on it looked ancient, her hair white and thin, her face wrinkled. He wondered whether to wake her, but decided he shouldn’t. Instead, he sat on the seat and waited.
Shimmers danced on the roof, cast from a prism hanging from a thin chain. In the distance, the muffled drum of the waves could just be heard. His eyes started to droop.
A small noise startled him awake. The old Queen had turned her head and was watching him. He rocked back on the seat, almost toppling it. She had his father’s eyes: his eyes; Kerra’s. Green within green, the dark rim, they were unmistakable. No one had the same eyes – no one.
“Welcome, Karlyn.” Her voice was stronger than expected. He was about to tell her so, when she chuckled. “The mesh sustains me. It’s held me long enough for you to reach us.”
“It’s rude to look at my thoughts.” So many questions came to him, he barely knew what to ask first. He both wanted to know and feared what he might discover.
“As you say.” She shifted and winced.
He steeled himself. “You have my eyes.”
“No,” she said, seemingly amused. “You have mine – I was here first, Karlyn.”
He blinked; she was right. His mouth curled into a smile.
“It’s good you can still smile,” she said.
His smile dropped away. “Why did you bring me here?” It wasn’t unusual for people to turn conversations to the subject of his imprisonment. He’d become expert at deflecting the questions. Some – the sadists – got off on suffering. Others felt they were helping him come to terms with it. He wondered which heading she came under.
“Neither. I know what you faced. I know it all.”
He drew his breath in, shaking his head. Even Sam didn’t know it all. The only other person who did was dead. “You can’t.”
“I can, and do. I am the mesh – it knows everything about its people.”
“Its people?”
“The mesh,” she said, “knows even those who are cast out. And the Queen knows everything in the mesh.”
“I’m not a Roamer.”
“Aren’t you?”
He remembered his father’s skills: the Seering, the flying. He thought of how right it had felt to go with Farran, how comfortable he’d been on the ship. He thought of her eyes.
“My family – what’s left of it – call me Charlyn,” she said, and half-smiled. “Another riddle, perhaps.”
No. An answer. Lyn again: Ealyn, Charlyn, Karlyn. His mouth went dry. It made no sense: Roamers never gave up their own.
“Should I call you Mother, then?” he asked.
“You can call me Charlyn.”
He wiped his mouth. “My father – Ealyn – he was your…” He knew so little of his inheritance. His mother’s, yes, but only Marine on his father’s side, dead years ago. He’d told himself there was no need to know where he’d come from, or why.
“He was my son.” She licked her lips. A jug and glass sat in an alcove by the bed. He poured the water and lifted the glass to her lips, raising her head with his hand. Her hair was thin, slightly greasy, her scalp clearly felt beneath. She was his grandmother and he was helping her. This was where he’d come from.
She lay down. She’d said the cast-out were still detectable. Had she known what was happening in Omendegon? He set the glass on the ground, and clasped his hands together, feeling the scars across their palms.
“You’re angry, Karlyn.”
Damn right he was. He’d spent most of his life on the run, until he’d been caught and – his mind turned from the memories. He tightened his fingers and felt the familiar nagging pain of old wounds badly healed. He’d been there and he could have been here, protected as one of them.
“What did Dad do?” he demanded. “I thought Roamer children were protected.”
“Nothing – he was a baby.”
The anger grew. If she’d said his father had broken some taboo, he might have accepted it. Hell, he’d lived with Ealyn for years – he would have understood it. But, a baby….
“When I was sixteen, my father won a contract to courier stone from S’lantor to the Peiret family for their palace. The youn
gest of their sons, Janus, and I… we fell in love,” she said. “I got pregnant by him. When my father, the Roamer king, found out, he wouldn’t recognise Ealyn.”
“Why not? If you carried the royal blood…”
“Janus was a psycher: one of the modified strain, like your mother. The Roamers wouldn’t allow a king with mixed powers. I was forced to cast him out.”
“Forced to?” he asked. “How?”
“I had to let him go or leave with him.” She licked her lips, and went on. “I would have been cast out of the mesh, with no way to support either me or Ealyn. I pleaded to let him stay. I told them I’d never ask for him to be king, but they said no. He had to be cast out.” Her eyes were fixed on him, intense, almost pleading. “I checked where they were sending him was safe, that he would be loved, and when I was sure, I agreed.” She paused. “I have regretted it every day since.”
He stared at her. He should walk out. Tell Farran to take him back. He’d done what he promised. He didn’t move.
“To give a son away… it was agonizing,” Charlyn said. Her voice turned softer. “The hardest thing I ever did. I refused to have another child.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted the one I had. I named him, so he would have a Roamer name, even if he didn’t know.” Her eyes drooped. “The Roamers had my brother to give them an heir. They weren’t getting another from me.”
“And Marine? Who was she?” Marine, with her red hair and quick temper. Neither she nor Silom looked like any Roamer he’d seen.
“She was another’s. We presented them as brother and sister,” she said. “She was his disguise.”
A disguise? Silom and Marine had died because of their useful disguise. They should have lived their lives in peace, never knowing Ealyn Varnon. Or himself. He took a ragged breath. “Did you know what would happen when you cast him out?”
“No,” she said. “I thought what I was doing was best for him.”
Best for him? His dad had been the most unbalanced person Kare knew. He’d stumbled through a hellish life of a present fraught with danger, and a future so horrific he never recovered from seeing it. And Karia. Kare closed his eyes. Oh, gods, Karia. His dad had called her princess. She’d have loved to know she was a real one. She should have known.
“Roamers look after their own.” His voice caught in his throat. “That’s what you tell outsiders.” The prism – a Seer’s prism – cast light around the rock room, taking him back to a different prism, from his childhood on the ship. “You didn’t look after us.” He put his hand on the screen, ready to leave. “You didn’t stop what lay ahead.”
“Do you think, if I had seen that, I would have let my son go?” She shook her head. “The gift is in many of the Roamers. It is not mine to hold.”
But she’d still felt what had happened to him, had known Ealyn’s pain and done nothing.
“How many Roamer children did you see in the caves?” she asked.
Kare thought of the crowd who’d watched him arrive. Only one had been a child.
“When the Empress took her war to the Roamers, we dispersed. We painted our beautiful ships grey and blended in with the normal space traffic.”
He nodded, recalling the Roamers of his childhood. It took a practised eye to recognise a true Roamer from the space waifs, the flotsam of space.
“It wasn’t enough. They boarded our ships and stole our children. They took them to their schools and bound them to the Empress. We could feel them in the mesh, they could feel us, but over time many – most – cut themselves from the mesh. We were being cleansed, by removing the next generation.” She paused, swallowed. “You, and Karia, were our only hope – a chance for one of ours to take her place.” She held out her hand. “The gift is yours, from us.”
“Why would I want it?” When his mother had taken him, it hadn’t been secret. All the great families and planetary governments had known. “Could you have got near enough to kill me?”
She looked away and he had his answer. Abendau palace was huge, with a staff to match. There were ways into it, even Omendegon.
“Six months,” he stated flatly. “In pain. Every day. Controlled by someone. Beaten until I collapsed and then trailed up to be beaten again. Raped. You must have known I’d welcome death. Everyone else did.” His voice broke and he had to stop and draw breath. “You didn’t give me the gift I needed then, why would I take anything from you now? What happened cost me everything. It cost me my marriage. It cost me my best friend. I had to watch him die. It damn nearly cost me my sanity. You think a gift can replace any of that?”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should have fought for Ealyn. I should have fought for you.” She looked smaller than when he’d come in.
His anger wouldn’t change the past any more than anything else he’d tried. “So, what is your precious gift? I suppose I should know what I’m refusing.”
“My brother is dead. He left no children.” She half-smiled. “Ealyn had the royal line. There was no one else to hand it to. The Roamers realised they had to accept him. But by then, Ealyn was on the run. He let no one near him.”
“You want me to take his place?”
“We offer you our kingship,” she said. “It’s not to be refused lightly, Karlyn.”
He blinked, understanding at last. She was the mesh, the vessel for their power, and they needed a new one. Anger surged, a roaring in his ears.
“My name is Kare,” he spat, “and I reject your offer and your people. Why would I want it? I don’t have any powers: I would be the blind man in a court of the seeing.”
She looked closer. “Do you miss them?”
He lived with a psycher. He taught her how to use her powers, knowing what his own mind should do. He pulled himself straighter, damned if he would show the Roamers any more of himself. “It doesn’t define me.”
“You don’t need your powers to be our king,” she said. “There is no one else I can offer it to. I had only one child, and you are his only child.”
The only child left. He needed to get away.
“Roamers protect their own,” he said, his voice too loud. “I had my role thrust on me as a child and lived my life dreading the future. I’m the one left paying the cost.”
She reached out and touched his wrist. He felt her strength and knew it wasn’t physical, but the power of the mesh.
“If you say no, the Roamers will fade away, like wisps. I offer it to you: be our king. You condemn my people to history if you say no. Your people – you are one of us.” She drew a breath. “The mesh will give you peace. Finally, the Roamers can help you.”
If she was right, his refusal condemned the Roamers to story books and myth. That wasn’t what he wanted to come out of his pain. The slow extinction of a people was one of the things he’d faced his mother to end.
“There is no one else?” he asked.
She nodded, the faintest of nods. She was diminishing. He knelt beside her, his hand touching hers.
“Shall I get someone?” he asked.
“No,” she said, her voice small. “Only you. They know what’s happening.”
Her eyes closed, and he bowed his head; he couldn’t let her die without hope. She’d given up her son. More than that, she offered things he couldn’t refuse: a place of his own, a balance in his mind missing for years.
“Yes,” he whispered, almost silently. “Now pass in peace.”
As she took her last breath, something passed from her to him, lodging in the centre of the black hole that used to be the brightest part of him. Warmth spread through him, a tingling in his fingers, spreading to his hands and up his arms. He doubled over, gasping, his stomach clenching, his chest tightening around the warmth. It was long moments before he was able to straighten and take a breath.
Everything had changed. The thoughts of those in the caves were in him and through him, an awareness of the cavern, of ships in the distance. He
heard steps enter the room. Farran. He already knew where he was and what he was thinking.
“What happened?” Kare asked. He knew what it must be, but needed to hear it.
“You hold the mesh. The Roamer powers are yours, Karlyn.”
“I have my powers back? That was the gift?” The buzz in his head, the clamour of thoughts and feelings – that was familiar. But the mesh’s shape didn’t fit, a circling of minds where his had been a straight line of power.
“The gift was our kingship. Your powers aren’t back, but ours – the combined Roamer powers – are in the mesh, and you are its centre. You can pull on those powers – as we all can.”
“As much as I want?” It seemed unbelievable to have access to such a pool of power. How had the Roamers had this, and not used it to take an exalted place?
“Of a kind. It takes a subtle touch, Karlyn, a drawing down of just enough, not greed. When you get back to Belaudii, you’ll have to teach your daughter to use it.”
“She can access it?”
“Of course. You’ll be able to tell her she’s a princess.”
It was the wrong little girl. Sadness washed over him. He looked around the room, the light dappling the ceiling. He wondered if Karia was with him, and believed – had always believed – that a part of her had never left him. “I’ll tell her.” He looked around the world – his world – and back at Farran, and had no words left.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sonly clutched the bed, so tightly her shaking hands made it vibrate. The noise, a dull juddering, echoed through the cell. Now she was alone, the shock of the day had set in. Soon, it would go. Her teeth started to chatter.
She climbed onto the bed and pulled her knees up to her chest, putting her arms around them, trying to stop shaking. It helped, a little, and she clenched her mouth closed.
Yesterday, her biggest worry had been telling Kare about an affair he already knew of. Now she didn’t even know if he was alive. Or where Lichio was. She hoped he wouldn’t try anything rash – he wouldn’t, she was sure of it, Lichio was patient – but that he’d focus on keeping Kerra safe. Kerra. She shuddered again; the master had said there were plans to get her.