strongholdrising

by Lisanne Norman

  “I’m not going back with you,” he said, taking advantage of a lull in conversation. “Father Lijou said I can stay on to continue my training.”

  His mother, who’d been sitting holding Chay’Dah, looked up at him in disbelief. “You’re staying here?”

  Kusac flicked his ears in assent.

  “You can’t. You’ve got medical appointments to attend at the Guild hospital.”

  “I’ve canceled them. The therapy sessions were worse than useless, and we know there’s nothing the neurosurgeon can do. There’s no point in seeing him again. I need to face reality, Mother. There’s not going to be a cure for me, we all know that.”

  “I never thought I’d see the day you’d give up without a fight,” began his father.

  “I’m not,” he interrupted. “I’m fighting this my way. I’ve had enough of being paraded in front of medics and specialists! I can’t just pick up the pieces of my life and rearrange them, Father. I need to start again, and I can’t do that when I’m being constantly reminded of the past.”

  “What about our discussion regarding your responsibilities to the estate?” Konis said.

  “Garras is handling them far better than I did. There’s nothing for me to do there, Father. I prefer to be here. I’m hoping the exercise and meditation will help me,” he said, getting up and walking over to the window. The objections they were making were the ones he’d expected. “I also have religious responsibilities to my clan and my training with Kaid didn’t give me much time for them.” He turned around, leaning against the wall. “Delegation. Didn’t you teach me that’s the key to running an estate and a clan successfully, Mother? Not trying to do everything yourself, but picking the right person for the job and letting them get on with it? That’s what I’m doing.” He looked over to where Carrie sat. “Carrie, you can run things on a day-to-day basis with Kaid’s help, can’t you? I’ll be here if you need me.”

  “You’re being ridiculous, Kusac,” said Rhyasha. “What about your daughter? You can’t delegate fatherhood like you’re trying to do with the rest of your life!”

  “I don’t intend to walk away from my family and friends, Mother. I plan to come home every few weeks.”

  “He has to make his own decisions, Rhyasha. I believe that deciding to stay here is a responsible one,” said Kha’Qwa gently. “We aren’t without good medics here, you know, if he should need one. There’s Physician Muushoi, and Noni holds a surgery here twice a week.” She looked over at him. “Father Lijou has already asked me to take you on as my personal student, Kusac. I’m sure the peace of Stronghold is just what you need for now.”

  “You can’t give up, Kusac!” said his mother, handing Chay’Dah back to Kha’Qwa. “There are other specialists still to see— brain surgeons…”

  “No!” he said forcefully. “I wouldn’t let them operate anyway. I’m not prepared to take any risks with what’s left of my health.”

  “Carrie, you try and persuade him,” said Rhyasha, exasperated. “He’s not facing reality, he’s running away from it!”

  “I assure you, neither Lijou nor Rhyaz allow any Brother or Sister to use Stronghold as an escape,” said Kha’Qwa.

  “What about the TeLaxaudin, Kzizysus, Kusac?” asked Carrie quietly. “He’s looking for a way to undo the damage. If he comes up with something, will you at least speak to him? They did design the implant for the Primes, it’s not as if they don’t know anything about them.”

  “I’ll listen to what he has to say,” he said tiredly. “Why can’t you all understand that I can’t keep living in false hope, seeing physician after physician? It’ll drive me mad eventually! You’re making it worse for me. I’ve made my mind up, I’m staying here.”

  “I wasn’t trying to change your mind,” said Carrie. “Just asking you not to turn your back on our one, real hope.”

  Surprised and relieved, he looked back at her. “Thank you,” he said. “I will return, and I will listen to Kzizysus. Believe me, I’m not running away from you, Carrie.”

  K’oish’ik, Prime homeworld, the same day

  The Summer Palace was farther south than the City of Light, nestling on the shores of the hot springs that had been duplicated on the Kz’adul. High walls surrounded it, enclosing not only a lake but also parkland and a small wood.

  The Court wasn’t due to arrive for another three weeks, so when the Emperor’s Chamberlain suggested they go there for their nuptial week, he’d accepted. Isolation from the rest of the City suited him as he knew Zayshul would need time to accept the inevitability of her situation. More importantly, he needed to know more about her role in creating the abominations he’d seen in the tank room and he wanted no outside interference when he questioned her.

  For now, he was content to play a waiting game. Her behavior had been impeccable during the day-long wedding festivities, and if he’d found her cold toward him that night, he hadn’t been unduly worried. He’d told her from the first he intended her to be his wife. Considering that she’d told him the Medical Director wanted him to breed now, he was only doing what they both expected of him.

  However, in the three days since they’d arrived, her anger had been gradually building. She concealed it well, he had to admit, not giving him cause for concern in front of the various servants who looked after them.

  Sitting on his lounging chair in the small outdoor recreation area, Kezule watched her now with amusement through half-closed eyes. She was trying to work her anger off by hitting a ball against an electronic scoring board. Her score was high: she had both speed and accuracy, not to mention aggression in plenty.

  Her anger now was because he’d left her to sleep alone since their wedding night. Her passiveness had been too reminiscent of his previous wife, making him realize he preferred a willing bed companion. He’d made it clear to her that in future, she’d have to come to him. She’d sworn she wouldn’t, but he knew it was just a matter of time. He knew enough about Valtegan nature to know that despite her anger, she was highly flattered at the lengths he’d gone to to ensure she’d become his wife. For him to now ignore her was not something she, with all her pride, could tolerate for long, and he found that amusing.

  While she’d attempted to work her rage off with various sports, he’d been more gainfully employed in the library, searching through the archives for old maps and charts of the Empire, looking for the locations of the various worlds and outposts, and surreptitiously copying them. He had no intention of staying on this decadent world of the Primes. They’d become a sick parody of a once proud people— they were all intellect, cold and hard, with none of the fire or moral responsibility of the people of his day. It was one thing to make use of slave races, quite another to use one’s own species the way he and the M’Zullians were being used. When he left, she and their offspring were coming with him, voluntarily if at all possible. To that end, he realized he needed to improve their relationship.

  Lost in his thoughts, he heard the ball coming toward him rather than saw it. Automatically, he caught it, then sat up and waited for her to retrieve it.

  She snatched it from his open palm and turned to go, then changed her mind.

  “I want to know why,” she said.

  He didn’t pretend not to understand her. “Because I wanted you for my wife,” he said. “You’re the only one worthy of bearing my sons. And daughters,” he added as an afterthought. “I want a wife who is a companion.”

  She stared at him. “You’ve got an inflated opinion of your importance.”

  “I think not,” he said, showing his many sharp teeth in a smile. “I am the last true Valtegan Warrior. I need a wife capable of bearing fighters, not intellectual drones.”

  “That’s sedition. And what about the M’zullians? You’re not the only one with Warrior genes!”

  “It’s the truth,” he countered. “Look around you when we return to the City. There’s no fire, no life in them! No challenging of accepted ways, no ambition for change. They’r
e content to sit and wait for the inevitable attack. They should be planning ways to subdue the M’zullians and J’kirtikkians! The key to overpowering them is their racial fear of the Sholans, it weakens them. No true Warrior lets fear or hatred dominate him.”

  She hissed angrily, looking around to see if he’d been overheard. “Don’t ever repeat that! I won’t have my career threatened by the Enforcers because of your arrogance!”

  He shrugged. “I’ve no wish to be seen as a dissident. Knowledge of one’s superiority isn’t arrogance. I’m at least of royal blood— even your Emperor is disposed to consider me as a member of his family. I assumed I could speak the truth to you, no more.” He waited for her answer. It would give him a clue as to whether she would eventually work with him, or be a liability. In the end, whether she wished it or not, she would accompany him when he left.

  “I care about my work,” she said coldly. “Nothing else. I don’t get involved in politics.”

  “You like working with those abominations?”

  “They’re not abominations! They’re people! You’re as bad as…” She stopped, biting back the rest of what she’d been about to say. “You’re going to be training the first group of twenty, produced the same way. How can you do that and not accept the ones I showed you as individuals, people in their own right?”

  “They’re not mine! The seed to make them was stolen from my body while I lay helpless in your care!” he hissed angrily, trying to keep his voice low.

  Again she turned to walk away but this time he grasped her wrist, preventing her.

  “Who did the harvesting?” he demanded. “Was it you?”

  “Let me go, Kezule. It was the late Doctor Chy’qui’s orders. My work was with the injured Humans and Sholans. I was studying their physiology, developing treatments for them.”

  “Chy’qui?” he asked, ignoring her attempts to twist her wrist free. “Wasn’t he also the Emperor’s counselor? The one they just replaced? The one who attempted to kill the prince?”

  “Yes, now let me go!”

  “Why would he work against his Emperor?”

  “I told you about the dissidents when we woke you. That’s why you were guarded until you’d recovered, remember?”

  He nodded. “But why kill the prince?”

  “With no heir, and the Emperor refusing to remarry, it would create a constitutional crisis of which he hoped to take advantage.”

  “How?”

  “A new heir would have to be elected and he intended it to be him.”

  “Are there no other close relatives?”

  She shook her head. “The Emperor’s family is not as prolific as in your day because we honor single wives.”

  “There is me now,” he said thoughtfully. “Killing the prince at the hostage exchange, and instigating a war with the Sholans would mean I would have remained with them, and he would have pushed to rule immediately because of the war.” It seemed there were those with ambition after all. No wonder they’d had him guarded.

  “I’ve told you what you wanted to know, now let me go,” she said, tugging against him again.

  He returned his attention to her, pulling her closer. “So you didn’t do the harvesting. How did they make those— things— in the tanks? Did you give them life?”

  “It’s automated, Kezule. I did no more than follow my superior’s instructions and key in a sequence of events.”

  “How do you automate the act of reproduction?” he demanded. “Who are the mothers?”

  “Does it matter?” she asked, trying to pry his fingers off her wrist with her claws. “You said they were abominations! You were going to destroy them!”

  “Tell me,” he ordered, taking hold of her other hand to prevent her.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  He waited.

  “Volunteers who donate eggs,” she said angrily. “Your seed is injected into the eggs then, when they’re mature enough, they’re transferred to growth tanks. Now let me go, you’ve had your answer, and your revenge on me!”

  “It wasn’t revenge,” he said, surprised she should think it was. “Is it that bad being the wife of a royal General?”

  “You don’t know what you’ve done to me, do you?”

  “I’ve chosen you, honored you as my wife,” he said, surprised at her continuing outburst.

  “You’ve made me pregnant!” she hissed.

  “You’re my wife, of course I have. I didn’t force you to my bed on our wedding night.”

  “What choice had I? You blackmailed me into it! You could have bred naturally with any number of the court females, but no, you had to choose me!”

  “Bred naturally? What do you mean?”

  “We don’t bear our eggs like animals, we use the birth tanks! We’re all born like that! Only the Royal Family have to bear their own young!”

  Shock made him loosen his grasp just enough for her to pull one hand free and start hitting him.

  “You’ve made an object of ridicule of me! I can’t see my developing child on the viewing screen like the other mothers, it’ll be inside me in a shell! I’ll have the agony of birthing the egg and still the hatchling will be hidden from me for another three months!” Her words were almost drowned within her hisses of rage.

  He needed all his Warrior reflexes to dodge her slashing blows while attempting to capture her free arm. Pain lanced down his cheek and neck as he grappled with her, spinning her round till he had her contained from behind in an armlock.

  Triggering the release of endorphins to dull the ache, he increased the pressure on her arm and shoulder till she cried out in pain and stopped struggling.

  “Enough!” he hissed angrily in her ear. “Are you telling me all your young are grown in tanks? That you were grown this way?”

  “Yes! How else could we have bred after the Fall? Even you must have realized we’re smaller! Many females died because they were too small to bear their eggs!”

  He had noticed, and now that she’d mentioned it, he remembered he hadn’t seen any pregnant females. Used as he was to the breeding chambers of his day, he’d thought nothing of it till now. He relaxed his pressure, letting her arm drop lower.

  “If that’s so, how can the Royal Family bear their own young and survive?”

  “They don’t always. Empress Zsh’eungee only just managed to carry her son long enough. She lost three others because the eggs were born too soon. If she were allowed to use the breeding tanks, she could have more, but the law prevents her. That’s why the Emperor won’t choose another wife.”

  She twisted her head around to look at him, and he could see the tears streaking her face. “You’ve put my life at risk, Kezule, that’s what you’ve done.”

  “I didn’t intend to do that,” he said, mind spinning as he let her go. “What about the other females sent to me, on the Kz’adul and here? Are they similarly affected? Why do they want me to breed if the risk is so high, and why those in the tanks if my young have to be born naturally?”

  “Their eggs would be removed after the first month and put in a breeding tank. And those in the tank are considered illegitimate because of who you are. You decided to marry me, that makes it different. Our child will be in line to the throne, just as you are,” she said, taking a few steps back from him and rubbing her arm.

  One fact stayed with him in the face of all this outpouring of information. She, Zayshul, had been grown in one of the tanks. Suddenly they weren’t as vile as he’d thought. “What if I demand that you be treated no differently? That the egg be removed and put in a tank?”

  She shook her head. “Not even if my life is in danger. And once it goes past the first month, it can’t be grown in a tank because of the shell.”

  This didn’t suit him at all. He needed Zayshul, had come to appreciate— maybe even care for her if he was being honest.

  “Burn it!” he swore, lashing out at the nearby table, sending it crashing to the ground. “Why didn’t you tell me?”


  “I saw how you reacted when I told you about the M’zullians,” she said quietly. “I didn’t want you seeing us all as abominations, non-people, like the slave races of your time.”

  “I never treated my slaves badly,” he said absently. “You want the Warrior genes because Warrior females were always larger than those of the other castes. It would give you females back what you’ve lost.” This cast a huge shadow over his plans to escape. If he did, without proper medical attention, or drugs to stop future conceptions, she’d be even more at risk than she was now.

  “I didn’t intend you any harm,” he said awkwardly again. “You should have refused me on our wedding night. You were the one who went to the bed first!”

  She held his eyes with hers. “You have a temper, Kezule,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t going to be hurt by you forcing me.”

  “I have never harmed you, and had no intention of forcing you!” He was surprised to find that her accusation hurt.

  “You nearly killed me the night I told you about the growth tanks.”

  “How would you feel if you’d found out that while you’d been unconscious your body had been harvested?” he countered, feeling suddenly unsteady on his feet. He felt behind him for the lounger and sat down. His neck was itchy. He put his hand up to it, bringing it away covered in blood and remembered she’d injured him. Frowning, he reached for his shirt while mentally adjusting the clotting agents in his blood.

  “Here,” said Zayshul, bending down to pick up a napkin from the table. “I didn’t meant to cut you.”

  He took it from her and wiped his cheek and neck. “Yes, you did,” he said, looking up at her with a faint smile. “You’re a fighter, unlike those docile herd-beasts at the Court. I told you that you were the only one fit to breed with. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t have wanted you as a wife.” He threw the soiled napkin on the ground. “I want you to give up your work and join me while I turn these hatchlings into Warriors. I want to be there for you if anything goes wrong. I’ll do without children before I’ll risk your life, Zayshul.”