Sureblood

by Susan Grant

  Grizz watched her worriedly. She was pale as a ghost. She started for the door with the piece of Sethen’s ship in her fist.

  “You intendin’ to hit someone over the head with that?” he asked.

  She examined the strip, turning it over and over. “I’m going to go see Garrmin about starting construction on my own ship.” She examined the hunk of metal, but she was seeing something else entirely. She saw a phoenix rising from the flames of her stupidity. She saw redemption in a future of punishing Surebloods for their treachery.

  “You can call the Varagon your own, you know. You want her? She’s yours.”

  “Ah, Grizz. I’m deeply honored by the offer, but the Varagon’s yours. I need my own ship.” More than he knew. She gripped the strip of zelfen. “She’ll be called the Marauder, and when I go out a-raidin’—” she lifted the shard of metal “—it’ll be with Sethen along.”

  “That’s a nice sentiment, girl.”

  She saw nothing “nice” about it. Nothing nice about war.

  She saluted Grizz with the zelfen and left. The rain had lessened for the moment even as swollen clouds promised more. A sea falcon swooped in low from the nesting areas near the bathhouses she’d once loved. She’d not been able to use the baths without thinking of Dake Sureblood and the time they’d spent there.

  How easily she’d believed his reluctance to leave Artoom that terrible day. Sucked right into his little game, she was. Hells, she practically had to force him to go! Or so it seemed.

  More nausea hit. She paused in the drenching rain until it passed. Despite the chill, she’d broke out in a sweat. Bloody hells. It was the stress of the past month causing the condition, all the grief and troubling silence from Dake Sureblood. She’d kept it a secret. She had to. No one wanted to know a leader was weak, mentally or physically.

  Splashing along the path startled her. She was no longer alone. She pressed her fist to her gut and somehow managed to quell the nausea as she stood straighter, pretending nothing was wrong.

  It was the slave girl, hurrying toward her, her huge violet-blue eyes full of determination. She’d put on some weight but still looked thin. She was headed straight for Val, and Reeve was nowhere to be seen.

  The girl stopped, arms at her sides, back stiff, as if striking a pose—a caricature of a soldier. She pointed to Val, then to the Varagon at the docks.

  “You’re wanting to go home?” Val asked.

  She shook her head violently and gestured again to the ship. She thought for a moment, then pretended to aim a dozer. Then she poked a thumb at her chest.

  “Ah,” Val said, the realization dawning. “You heard the call for female raiders.”

  The girl nodded vigorously. Someone had been listening to her recruitment speeches, it seemed. “But you can’t be a raider if you can’t speak. If you’re in visual contact, we can see your hand signals, but what if you have to use a comm? Sometimes we raid in the dark. We gotta be able to hear a voice, even a whisper. Sorry, girl. I have to turn you down.”

  The girl’s eyes filled with despair and also indecision. She dropped her hands and turned, seeming to stare at the rain hitting the mud, but it was clear her mind was churning.

  Val hated to crush someone’s dreams. “You can’t be a space apprentice, but you can help out during training exercises here on Artoom.”

  The girl shook her head at that. She looked angry.

  Val shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s all I can do for you, girl. If you can’t speak, you can’t raid.”

  The girl made bony fists, squeezed her eyes shut, then she let out a very soft whisper. “Ferren,” she said.

  Val’s heart jumped. “You can speak.”

  “Ferren,” the girl repeated again, a little stronger, tapping a thumb on her chest. “Ferren.”

  “You’re called Ferren. That’s your name.”

  Nodding, Ferren smiled and it was like the sun peaking up over the sea on a summer day. The girl was stunningly beautiful, exotically so. It was no surprise she’d been captured and would have been someone’s slave if they hadn’t rescued her. It also explained why Reeve seemed to be so smitten. Ferren seemed to shrug off any romantic interest from anyone, Reeve included. While she wasn’t afraid of the many besotted clansmen, she didn’t seem interested in any either. Val wasn’t sure what she’d endured at the hands of men, but it couldn’t have been good.

  “Well, Ferren, that’s a start. See me later, and we’ll work on increasing your vocabulary.” Val took the girl’s thin arm between her fingers. “We’ll also talk about ways to get some muscle. Exercise, eating better—you gotta be strong to be a raider. You’re skin and bones. If we can make some improvement in both those areas, I see no reason why you can’t start as a space apprentice.”

  Now that they were going on the offensive against the Surebloods, they’d need all the raiders they could get.

  Ferren grabbed Val in a hug. It caused a new surge of nausea. Val stifled a moan of misery. She was going to be sick.

  Ferren stepped back, her eyes enormous orbs of empathy.

  “I’m fine,” Val said quickly. “Just something I ate.”

  She left a worried Ferren behind and walked away to settle her stomach. At the door to her house, she paused with her hand on the entry knob. Her mind was filled with worry about her illness and about how Dake Sureblood had tricked them all. She had so much bottled up inside her now that she was fairly ready to explode for wanting to talk to someone.

  Val pushed open the door, standing dripping wet on the entry pad as she carefully leaned the bow piece against the wall. The foyer was deathly quiet. Although her mother was inside, it was as if nobody was home. Like the unseasonal skies these days, her mother was a pale, gray ghost of her former self. She refused to leave the house, sitting for hours staring out the window. On the outside she was alive, but on the inside it was as if she were dead.

  Heart slamming against her ribs, throbbing with fury, Val walked into the back room and to the chair where her mother always used to sit when she and Sethen were children awaiting Conn’s return from a raid. Now silent and gray, Sashya was locked in that pose, eternally waiting for her husband to return.

  It’s your fault. All of it.

  Val dashed to the bathroom to be sick. When she returned to the room, her mother was looking at her, more alert than she’d been in weeks. “Come here, child,” she said hoarsely, as if her voice wasn’t something she’d used in a very long time.

  “Mama,” Val whispered, kneeling down at her mother’s feet.

  “You’ve had the sickness for some time now.”

  “Aye,” Val admitted. “It’s the stress. It comes and goes.”

  “At night? Or only in the mornings?”

  “Mornings, mostly.”

  Sashya gave her a searching look as she smoothed Val’s hair. “That night with the Sureblood boy, did you make love?”

  Her heart jumped with shame. “Aye,” she mumbled. She’d slept with a murderer. An assassin. A betrayer. Yet at the time she’d thought he was wonderful and that their moments together were magic. She’d been so caught up with the magic of Dake that she hadn’t thought any further than that moment. And neither had he. Unless he assumed she was using birth control like most girls her age were. “I did a stupid thing, Mama,” she whispered.

  Sashya shifted her focus outside. Despite the late-season rains, the trees were beginning to take bud and blossom. Almost too softly to hear, the woman murmured, “New life…”

  “Mama?”

  She turned her gaze back to Val. For the first time since Conn died, there was a specken of color in those gray cheeks, and a spark of life in her eyes, and of determination. “By midwinter’s eve, you will have Dake Sureblood’s baby.” Her cool hand covered Val’s. “And you will tell no one.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DAKE’S VOW TO RETURN HOME kept him sane as they were transported to what was described as a new battlefront in the “Great War.” Bah. To the Coalitio
n and Drakken it was, perhaps. Dake saw nothing great about it. May they exterminate themselves and leave the rest of us bloody well alone.

  Cleaned up and patched up, and given only enough food and water to keep them going, they trained to exhaustion with weapons and basic tactics any fool could master. The war sergeant who’d so delighted in hosing down Dake’s open wounds bullied Squib as much as he could. Dake worked just as hard deflecting that cruelty from the frightened boy. Over the days, other conscripts came and disappeared. Dake suspected the war sergeant’s beatings was the reason behind the missing men. At every chance, Dake filled Kage and Squib with hope. It was often like filling two buckets full of holes with water, but he never gave up on them or himself. He whispered memories of Parramanta when no guards were listening. When they were, he suffered beatings for the crime of communicating.

  As Drakken soldiers, they were dropped on desolate planets, transported across war-torn regions of space Dake never dreamed he’d visit, or wanted to, forced to fight an enemy with whom he had no conflict. Then Kage was shot in the gut. Dake refused to leave him, taking even worse injuries pulling his raider to safety. When he woke, there was no sign of Kage. No one knew where the Sureblood raider had gone. Dake could only guess he’d died.

  Dake himself nearly bled out from his wounds. In that bleak moment, he wished he had. He was done fighting in someone else’s war. Done with death, except his own and, by the gods, he began to think it couldn’t come fast enough. Returned to his unit, he descended into a walking death of sorts like so many of the others—breathing corpses drained of all humanity. Out of it, drunk with lost hope, Dake watched the war sergeant beat Squib and the others, viewing it all with a detached sense of inevitability. His life before—Parramanta, raiding, meeting Val and making love to her—seemed to belong to another man. Almost a fantasy, not even real.

  One day, he glimpsed the war sergeant kicking young Squib for walking too slowly. Squib went down, too weak to fend off the boots thumping into his skinny body. He looked like a discarded doll, flopping with no more resistance left in him.

  “Are you just going to watch, boy, useless and tame?” The taunt came in Tomark’s voice, silenced ever since Dake had lost Kage. “You’re no Sureblood I recognize. Or son. You’re a quitter, that’s what.”

  The war sergeant screamed at Squib to get up, picking him up and dropping him repeatedly as if annoyed the game had turned boring. A game of kickball with a Sureblood raider barely out of apprenticehood while his clan captain watched.

  How dared he? Dake jerked his head up as self-loathing and failure slammed into him. He pushed away from the wall he’d been leaning against and stormed toward the war sergeant. Grabbing his shoulder, he spun him around and plowed his fist into his nose. It left his so-called leader lying on the ground, a sociopath abuser who in the space of a month had killed more conscripts than the Coalition. Then he lifted Squib, who was somehow still breathing, and walked him away to the dispensary to get him patched up.

  He never saw Squib again. When the guns were aimed at his head, he thought it was the end. The Drakken guards could have killed him that day for his insubordination, and blasted near did, but somehow he ended up in a Drakken prison instead. He was no longer a conscript but an inmate. Maybe for the rest of his life.

  “I’LL FIND THE BASTARD and deliver his head to you on a platter. I swear it, Val.” Ayl had launched into raiding against Surebloods with exhausting gusto, crowing loudly to one and all his goal of being the one to capture Dake Sureblood. Their shared hatred of the fiend actually gave them something in common for once. Those first weeks of slugging it out with the Surebloods were immensely satisfying, distracting her from thinking about her unwanted pregnancy. Then Dake and his thugs figured out they were under direct attack. After that, it turned ugly.

  Nezerihm emerged as a surprise source of aid. He was appalled by the Surebloods’ aggression and complained loudly they were causing him to lose money. He proved unexpectedly useful in giving away the whereabouts of Sureblood vessels. It helped give the Blues an early edge. Val relented on her personal dislike of the man. He had been right, after all, about the Surebloods’ bad intentions. He still left a bad taste in her mouth, raising her hackles and suspicions, but as she’d already learned, her instincts weren’t to be trusted.

  The endless rains of spring and summer gave way to a long, dry autumn. Fields of vegetables sprouted in nearly every available spot, pot and barrel. The looming harvest was a sign of how much of a toll war had taken on the clan. Val hoped their homegrown efforts were enough to get them through lean times ahead. How quickly the coffers emptied now that they were using raid profits for weapons and ammo, and fixing damaged ships and skiffs instead of essentials like food. A third of the fleet was stuck at the docks under repair. Val didn’t dare show any wavering on her resolve to see the fighting to the end, knowing that Ragmarrk’s faction waited for signs she was “soft” on their rivals. If it took until her dying breath, she’d prove to them that she could lead.

  Val flew raids until her belly grew so enormous that Grizz and Sashya forbade her any more missions. “Rest, or you’ll lose the baby,” Sashya warned.

  She feared no such consequences. Every twinge reminded her of what she carried in her womb. Her enemy’s child. A curse. She should have done something before it ever got to this point. Made arrangements.

  But she couldn’t, seeing Sashya’s transformation from a heartbroken widow to a woman radiant with excitement. The life inside Val had brought Sashya back to life.

  Her wings now clipped, Val turned her angry energy from raiding to the construction of her new ship. As the Marauder took form and grew, so did the child inside her.

  “She’ll be the largest, most impressive ship the clan’s ever constructed,” Val boasted as Ferren tagged along with her on an inspection of the ship’s soaring hull beams. “Built for fighting as well as raiding. She’ll be the Blue’s flagship, a warning to anyone wanting to mess with us. Especially them gangster Surebloods.”

  Ferren nodded, her wide violet eyes taking in every detail of the emerging cannon bays. The girl’s battered, secondhand apprentice gear reminded Val of the state of the clan’s supplies. Could the clan afford to build such a project?

  Could Val afford not to? She’d be left with nothing else to occupy her mind but guilt. As it was, she tossed and turned every night reliving her time with Dake, analyzing each moment. How could she have missed the treachery that was surely in his eyes? How could he have acted so believably that she’d actually wasted time worrying that something horrible had happened to him and he’d in fact never reached home? His relentless attacks on her clan’s ships made it obvious his intent was to destroy the Blues. Killing her father had been only the first step.

  Ferren turned her head, and Val followed her gaze. The young woman’s sweet face gentled at the sight of Reeve. On the heels of that affection was also confusion, even fear. Her emotions seemed no less muddled than Val’s. The brave girl shared few words with others, and even less about herself and her past. Val wondered if she’d ever reveal what she kept bottled up inside. Yet, their untold secrets seemed to give them a special bond.

  Reeve waved as he walked by. Several too-young recruits tagged along behind him. Ferren smiled, then her expressive face darkened suddenly at Ayl approaching in the opposite direction with his apprentices. Even from this distance Ayl’s smoldering jealousy of Reeve was obvious. He still considered Reeve a threat to his winning over Val. Not even Reeve’s clear interest in Ferren had doused it.

  “He’s upset that this child is Reeve’s,” Val said, her hand curving under her belly.

  Ferren whipped her attention back to her.

  “It isn’t,” Val assured her, gruffly. “Everyone thinks I went to Reeve out of grief one night. I asked him to be vague when he’s asked about it—but not vague enough to kill the rumor I got knocked up by a lower-ranking raider when I’m supposed to marry a clansman of status. I want that rumor al
ive. But there’s nothing but friendship between me and Reeve. We never—”

  Ferren squeezed her arm, stopping her from saying more. “I know.” Being a girl of very few words, she made each one count. In fact, Ferren knew much more than she let on.

  Untold secrets. As long as no one else in the clan was as clever as Ferren, Val’s terrible secret was safe.

  THE DAYS PASSED AND grew ever shorter. Winter sunshine slanted through the trees as Val made her way to the docks, her leather jacket flapping open, too snug to close over her swollen middle. Her breath steamed in the crisp air. With both hands she supported her distended belly, annoyed that pregnancy slowed her down. She refused to let it. If this child wanted to be born, it had better be strong.

  Her lower stomach cramped painfully.

  The more pain I feel, the less it hurts. A different kind of hurting…guilt. Val set her jaw, striding along the road at full speed. The clenching pain settled in her lower back. “Blast you, Dake Sureblood. Blast you to hells.”

  What would he think if he found out what their one night together had cost her? He’d probably laugh his head off. Ahead the Marauder glinted in the sunlight. She narrowed her eyes at her unfinished hull, wishing it were done already and she was at the helm overseeing the destruction of Sureblood ships, purging Dake and how he’d duped her from her mind with each salvo.

  A sharper pain ripped through her middle, making her gasp. She stopped to catch her breath, her hand fisted in the baggy fabric of her maternity blouse that she tried to conceal without much luck under her leather raider jacket.

  “Val?”

  Panting, she jerked her gaze around. She didn’t want to be caught like this. Vulnerable. Soft.

  Thank the stars it was only Reeve. “Is it time?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know.” She didn’t want it to be time. Another pain took her breath. Some clansmen at the docks glanced their way, and she welcomed those curious looks. Ever-cooperative Reeve loved feeding the gossip when asked about her, earning her adoration. By now everyone assumed she didn’t marry him to make an appropriately high-status match someday. It was the perfect cover story. And she’d spent every sleepless moment since worrying what would happen if the truth ever came out.