Queens of Tristaine

by Cate Culpepper

  Caster’s good hand jerked on the control of her wheelchair and she came to a dead halt, staring up at them in open astonishment. “Great God in heaven,” she exclaimed, her once famously mellifluous voice strained and high. “Why, it’s Brenna! And my own dear Jesstin! You’ve come home!”

  Brenna wanted to bolt for the child and carry her bodily out of there, but she couldn’t unlock her knees. She had reached her resurrection saturation point for the evening, and her circuits were starting to snap.

  Luckily Jess didn’t share her paralysis. She went to the intercom unit on the closest wall and removed its wiring with a few well-placed yanks. “We have no business with you, Caster.”

  “You never call, you never write.” Caster somehow made her destroyed voice cloying with sadness. “Now I find you trying to spirit my precious little one out into the night, and you won’t stay for a cup of coffee? We have so much to catch up on!”

  “She’s not yours.” Brenna looked down at her old nemesis with a sudden, welcome dispassion. “You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as this child.”

  The small girl was still seated on the floor, rocking slightly and watching them, sucking on two fingers in meditative silence.

  “Oh, don’t sulk, Brenna.” Caster sounded peevish as she rubbed her atrophied arm fretfully. “I always found your tendency toward sulking most unattractive. You know that air-headed younger sister of yours was a convicted criminal. She couldn’t raise this baby. They gave her to me as a consolation prize.”

  “Gave her to you?” Some part of Brenna was aware of Jess, scouting the room for any other means of sounding an alarm, but she couldn’t take her eyes from Caster’s scarred, bitter smile.

  “That’s right,” Caster agreed, as if Brenna had somehow expressed sympathy with her outrage. She used her good hand to pull the shawl in her lap closer around her. “After all my years of distinguished service, all my awards, after more innovative scientific work than this Clinic will ever see again, they disposed of me. All my clearance, gone. All my staff, my labs, taken from me. All I could negotiate was this dreary flat and guardianship of this one small, sentimental keepsake, Samantha’s poor parentless babe.”

  Caster gazed greedily at Brenna, and she knew she was savoring her rage. She forced any emotion from her features.

  “Where is your family, Caster?”

  “Right here, Miss Brenna.” Caster smiled brightly with half of her cracked face, and made a jabbing gesture toward the little girl. “You’re looking at my family. My loving husband and sons have disowned me! It seems it was much more fun to be related to a famous scientist than a national disgrace.”

  The wheelchair whirred as Caster turned to Jess. “What was that charming blessing you bestowed upon me once, Jesstin? You predicted my granddaughters will mock my grave, I believe. How prescient you proved, my mighty warrior.”

  “We’ve no time for fond memories, Caster.” Jess went to the long drapes that hung behind a threadbare sofa. She drew her dagger and cut the thin ropes that would draw them open.

  “I have you to thank for my heartrending downfall, Jesstin.” Caster’s voice lowered and grew more guttural. “You and that heathen tribe of Amazons you love so much. You’re the ones who ruined me. Led by your smug pig of a queen, Shanendra. Give her my best, dear, yes? Remind her that I’ve saved my prettiest set of surgical instruments for her dissection.”

  “Close your wretched mouth, woman,” Jess snapped. “We’ll leave you alive, but we’re taking the girl.”

  “Oh no, you most certainly are not.” Caster slapped the arm of her wheelchair, then snapped her fingers at the girl. “You come here to me, Elise!”

  The room swam around Brenna.

  She saw the child climb to her feet with a sigh and trudge over to Caster, her eyes downcast. In the same moment, the adult Elise appeared before her, shining and pure, and then it was just the two of them, facing each other over the brimming basin.

  “This woman’s very soul is vile, j’heika.” Elise’s jade eyes shimmered with tears. “And she curses Tristaine with her every breath.”

  “We’re taking you with us, Elise.” Brenna took her hands. “I promise you, we won’t leave—”

  Brenna’s trance was shattered abruptly by the child’s shrill cry, and she caught herself against the back of a chair.

  Jess had the finely calibrated reflexes of a lynx, but the head injury slowed her. Elise’s scream and the Taser Caster had hidden in her shawl erupted in the same second. The wired bolt hissed across the room and struck Jess just below the throat. Brenna watched in horror as she snapped rigid, her back arched, and then fell to her knees.

  “Bull’s-eye!” Caster cried. “I haven’t lost my grasp of human anatomy, Brenna!”

  Brenna took three long steps to Caster’s wheelchair.

  Caster’s eyes widened, and she banged the Taser on the wall. “Vargas, Cornell, get in here!” she screamed.

  Brenna snatched the Taser away from Caster and clouted her solidly across the face with it. Caster let out a raw shriek, and sagged in her chair. Brenna threw the Taser aside and raced to Jess.

  “Jesstin!” Brenna could hear the quiver in her voice over Caster’s moans and Elise’s frightened sobs. Jess had crumpled to the floor on her side, and Brenna turned her onto her back with effort. “Talk to me, Jess!”

  She flinched as she saw the Taser’s dead bolt embedded two inches below the hollow of Jess’s throat. She grasped it and pulled it out, wincing at the burn and the holes inflicted by its two sharp darts. Jess’s eyes were fluttering whitely, and she didn’t respond to Brenna’s voice or her desperate grip on her shoulders.

  Brenna’s heart thundered in her ears, and she struggled to think. There had been too much noise. Guards were bound to respond.

  The Clinic’s stunners carried heavy charges, nearly 70,000 volts. Even a woman with Jess’s exquisite conditioning would be unconscious for long minutes after such a jolt. And Jess was already injured, and the plague was creeping through her blood.

  Brenna couldn’t carry her. Not Jess and Elise too.

  She looked at the little girl crouching on the floor, still crying fretfully, gathering her scattered drawings around her feet.

  Shann sounded in Brenna’s mind again. “Of these three queens, one will be blessed with great powers. The final destiny of Amazon Nation lies in her hands. She will prove Tristaine’s salvation, or her destruction, for all time.”

  Brenna had to get Elise out of Caster’s grasp. She knew it, firmly and at once, and part of her heart died. She bent over Jess, and whispered to her fiercely.

  “I’ll come back for you, Jesstin. You hear me? I won’t leave you.”

  Caster was listing in her wheelchair, canted to one side from Brenna’s ruthless strike across her face. She was conscious, and saliva and blood dribbled from her lips as she glared at Brenna.

  Brenna got up and went to Caster, and something cold and cutting nestled around her spine. “I won’t leave you either, old woman,” she whispered.

  She couldn’t bear to look back at Jess. She ran to Elise, snatched her up and then bolted for the door.

  *

  Brenna muffled the little girl’s outraged protests against her breast as she ran hard down the carpeted hallway. Samantha’s daughter was a fighter, and she registered her displeasure at this rude handling in no uncertain terms. She gave voice to the screaming in Brenna’s heart as she widened the distance between her and Jess.

  Shouts sounded behind Brenna, but far behind. Security must have reached Caster’s unit. The security alarms would sound any second. She increased her speed.

  Brenna ran through the silent hub of the Civilian Unit. The pharmacy was dark, the security desk manned only by the unconscious guard beneath it. Brenna prayed she’d find Kyla and Dana safely outside in the utility bay. She rounded the corner and flew down the small set of stairs, shifting Elise from one arm to the other.

  “You’re squishing me,” the child
complained.

  “I’m sorry, baby. I’m getting you out of here.”

  The shouting was coming closer.

  Brenna shook one hand free to find the key to the utility room and managed to pull the heavy door open. Crossing the vast length of the cavernous space was a nightmare of darting shadows and her own harsh breathing in her ears. Brenna heard the heavy clopping of boots on the concrete behind her and stretched for one last burst of speed.

  Then a dark form rocketed out of the shadows and tackled her pursuer, and Brenna almost fell into Kyla’s arms, gasping. Dana struggled with the flailing guard behind them, and finally silenced him by cracking the back of his head against the concrete floor.

  “Brenna, where’s Jess?” Kyla took the little girl from Brenna. “And who is this?”

  “Sammy’s daughter, Kyla.” Brenna rested her hands on her knees, gasping. “I’ll explain later.”

  “We’ve got to move, Bren.” Dana limped to them. “If that armed chimp knows we’re here, there’s going to be others.”

  “I know.” Brenna straightened, and every cell in her body strained back through the inner reaches of the Clinic toward Jess. “You two need to take the drugs and this child and head for the frontage road. Find Jenny and Eva and the truck. I’m going back for Jess.”

  “She’s captured?” Kyla paled under the weak fluorescent light. “Sweet Gaia, Brenna.”

  “If we aren’t back soon, you might have to leave us.” Brenna sounded extraordinarily calm in her own ears, given the tympani of her pulse. “Your priority has to be getting this medicine and this little girl back to the village.”

  “Brenna, we’re not about to sacrifice you. Or Jess.” Kyla’s rich voice shook. “Tristaine needs you both. You might be our next queen—”

  “I’m giving Tristaine her most powerful queen.” Brenna nodded at Elise, who had stopped crying long enough to look around the huge room in wonder. “Leave us if you have to, Kyla.”

  “I’m going with you, Bren.” Dana lifted the straps of their two satchels and brought them to Kyla. “It’s a lot to carry, Ky, but you can make it. You’re short but you’re strong.”

  “I can’t ask you to do this, Dana.” Brenna feared this sojourn to the City was rapidly becoming the suicide mission Dana had predicted.

  “Well, you can’t tell me I can’t, either.” Dana went to the fallen guard and took the pistol from his belt. “You’re not the queen of me yet. And Jess is my captain, Bren. I’m not leaving her here.”

  “Find her, Dana.” Kyla shifted to balance the satchel and Elise, and her heart was in her eyes. “Please. All of you come back safe.”

  “We will.” Dana smiled crookedly, then planted a smacking kiss on Kyla’s forehead. “Go on, Ky. Hurry now.”

  They saw Kyla out the back utility doors and watched her creep up the stairs to the Clinic grounds. Brenna hoped fervently that Jenny and Eva were waiting for her. If it was hard for her to watch Kyla disappear into those bright lights, it must have been doubly tough for Dana. She had to pull her back inside.

  “Okay.” Dana shook herself. “What happened to Jess, Bren?”

  “Caster has her.” Dana’s jaw dropped, but Brenna didn’t have time to explain. “We have to find her before she’s transferred to the Prison, Dana.” She took off for the doors leading back to the Clinic’s Civilian Unit, and after a moment she heard Dana follow. Their running footsteps echoed crazily in the high-ceilinged room.

  Then Brenna skidded to a halt and stopped Dana.

  “What?” Dana looked around quickly. “You hear something?”

  “No, I don’t hear anything. And I should.” Brenna stared at the heavy door to the Unit ahead of them. “The security sirens should be going full blast.”

  “You’re right.” Dana swallowed audibly. “What’s up with that? Any guesses?”

  Brenna shook her head, thinking hard. The guard who discovered Caster should have thrown the general alarm that signaled a security breach in either Unit. Caster...Brenna closed her eyes and shuddered.

  “They’re not taking Jess to the Prison.” Brenna’s lips were numb. “Do you still have the guard’s keys?”

  “Yeah, here.” Dana handed over the bristling ring. “Why?”

  “Because the keys Nell gave me won’t access the Military Unit.” Brenna grabbed Dana and pulled her toward the other set of doors, dread sinking into her blood. “Caster stopped the alarm, Dana. She’s wanted Jess at her mercy for years, and she’s not going to share her until she has to.”

  *

  The Clinic’s Civilian Unit was stark and antiseptic and utilitarian. The Military Unit was all that, but more intensely so. A grim hopelessness permeated the air of its sterile corridors. Brenna could smell rank fear and despair in these halls as distinctly as their stinging chemical stench.

  Part of her still refused to believe that she was walking into this horrific scientific charnel house again. The tortures and experiments performed on prisoners in the Civilian Unit paled to what happened here. Witnessing it had almost stripped Brenna’s soul. And Jess will open her eyes and find herself back in this place, she thought. She groped for Dana’s hand.

  “Quiet, isn’t it?” Dana whispered. They hadn’t run into any security.

  “Yes. Very.” Brenna knew where they were. She paused, then led Dana down another dark wing, staying close to the wall. The overhead fluorescents were at their lowest setting, but Brenna couldn’t have forgotten Military’s layout if she tried—and she had. She still dreamed about these grim passages. “This way.”

  They passed a long series of iron doors, each heavily bolted. Jess had been imprisoned for weeks in one of these spartan cells. Brenna’s viscera still remembered the icy chill of that bleak chamber.

  “I wish we could spring every one of ’em.” There was no guard in sight, but Dana still whispered. “Let out the whole damn block. These cells are for political prisoners, right?”

  “Dissidents, protestors. Hard core criminals.” Brenna peered down another deserted corridor. “I wish we could let them out, too.”

  She knew without question that there was only one place Caster would take Jess—the gymnasium that had been the site of her clinical trials. When Brenna worked at the Clinic, the large space had served as Caster’s laboratory or her torture chamber, depending on the day’s protocol. Jess had almost died there.

  The doors to the gymnasium were around the next turn, and Brenna forced her legs to move faster. Caster was disgraced and stripped of her title, she thought. Does she still hold enough authority to order Clinic guards to break policy? The better question was whether Brenna could summon the courage to find out.

  “In here.” Brenna keyed open a narrow door, and led Dana into a large storeroom, a warren of shelves containing bundled supplies. Except for the windowless double doors in the hallway, this room provided the only entrance to the gym. If Brenna remembered rightly, it opened onto its south wall.

  She found the door and waited until she felt Dana’s touch on her back. Then Brenna turned the cold steel knob, and light flooded her eyes as she cracked the door open. She stared, and then closed it again almost at once.

  “She’s there.” It was all Brenna could get out past the gorge rising in her throat. She slumped against the wall and lowered her head.

  “Brenna?” Dana whispered.

  Brenna had absorbed Caster’s tableau in one glance, and it still pulsed redly on the back of her eyelids. She registered Caster in her chair and a few guards, but then her attention was riveted by the large, standing wooden frame in the center of the gym floor. Jess was upright, strapped to it by her wrists. She had been beaten—her clothing was torn and there was blood on her face.

  Brenna shifted so Dana could inch the door open. After a moment of appalled silence, she closed it again quietly.

  “That fucking harpy,” Dana snarled, bunching her fist against the door. “Damn the flood for not taking her.”

  “Dana, what should we do?” In
that moment Brenna was desperately grateful for the young warrior beside her. The sight of Jess bleeding had shaken her so badly she couldn’t think.

  “Caster’s in the wheelchair?”

  Brenna nodded blindly.

  “All right. Her back is to us.” Dana sounded calm. “I saw three guards. Two to our left and one behind Jess against the far wall. Is that what you saw?”

  “Yeah.” Brenna was regaining her composure.

  “We don’t know if Caster has a weapon, but we know the guards are armed.” Dana pulled the pistol out of her belt and checked it. “I’ve got six bullets. I’m a good shot, Bren, but I need three clear targets. We have to wait until the third guard moves out from behind Jess. Are you hearing this?”

  “Yes, I hear.” Brenna braced herself to crack open the door again. “I’ll take Caster, then help you if I can.”

  “Jess is still alive, Bren.”

  “I know.” Brenna drew a deep breath and reached for the knob.

  *

  “Good morning, sweetheart!” Caster’s cracked but cheerful greeting echoed across the gymnasium.

  Jess saw fit not to respond. She lifted her throbbing head and screwed her eyes shut against the blinding lights overhead. The last thing she remembered was Caster’s living room and seeing Brenna suddenly go still, as if she were hearing other voices.

  Brenna. Alarm sluiced through Jess and she stiffened, fighting the painful pull the leather straps exerted on her wrists and shoulders. She twisted in the frame, gasping at a heavy pain in her side, but she couldn’t see Brenna anywhere in the room.

  “Our Brenna has been trundled off to Prison, Jesstin.” Caster had rolled her electric chair a safe distance away from the frame. Her ruined face beamed up at Jess, her lower lip bloody and swollen. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Cornell?”

  “Yes’m.” One of the two guards against the wall shifted, his arms crossed and his hat brim lowered. Jess knew that Caster wanted her to be aware of her backup.