The cabin was under repair after the spinner strike. A canvas roof flapped from the wind. The bed was missing, the footlocker cracked. Had Quiggs lingered in bed that morning, the watchtower would have crashed atop him, killing him instantly.
How could Rosamunde accuse him of fathering her child? They had never spent an intimate minute with each other or any member of the opposite sex. Because of the marriage contract, her family and his professors strictly chaperoned them whether together or apart. Once the marriage contract was dissolved, however, she could discretely take a lover. After two years of enforced virginity, she was certainly ripe for sex. But why not marry her lover and pretend the baby had arrived early? Why accuse Quiggs? Unless… she didn’t know who the father was.
Oh, fuck. Had an unknown man assaulted her after Quiggs’s graduation? Did she accuse Quiggs of rape in order to give a name to her baby’s father? The same extremists stalking Quiggs could have plotted to disgrace Rosamunde and force her into seclusion the rest of her life for bearing an illegitimate child. If true, Rosamunde acted out of desperation, not greed, when she learned the ferals had abducted him. Her plight certainly earned his sympathy. But no way was he accepting paternity. He’d plead for the Assembly to forgive her lie at a retrial.
Max sat across the table, his sensory hairs frizzed from distress as his couriers updated him on events. His cold gaze roamed over Quiggs’s pale face and fuzzy head. Did he still believe Quiggs innocent?
Max listened without asking questions. The last report given, his couriers waited with slates and markers ready. Max flexed his fingers as he deliberated over his words. When he spoke, his tone was cool, decisive. His expression unreadable, he summarized a vague account of his abduction and escape, often repeating himself when his couriers fumbled their markers. He promised a full account of his abduction when he spoke to the Assembly tomorrow. For now, it must suffice the Triangle was safe from invasion, and grazing could resume. With the help of Private Beau and Concubine Quiggs, he had destroyed the advanced species of ferals inside their breeding den. Beau escaped through an opening in what Quiggs believed was a metal wall guarding the subterranean shelter of the ancestors. Private Beau’s fate was unknown.
Max stopped dictating for a minute. His gaze fixed on Quiggs with apology when he resumed. This was it. He was tossing his concubine into the canal.
Quiggs bit back a whimper.
Max reached out and stroked his cheek, whispering. “I have to do this.” A ruthless edge entered his voice. “Inform the heralds and the Assembly that it grieves me to announce Concubine Quiggs disappeared without a trace last night after showing signs of going vine daft. For his heroism in destroying the ferals, he deserves the death warrant be amended to exile. I will address this issue before the Assembly tomorrow. That is all I will report for now.”
Quiggs closed his eyes at hearing he wasn’t being executed. Then the words sunk in, and he exploded. “Fuck exile! I never touched Rosamunde. Tell the heralds I’m alive and demand a retrial to clear my name.”
“It’s Rosamunde’s word against yours. Since you’ve already been charged with a sex crime leading to the dissolution of your marriage, the Assembly will re-convict you of rape. You would face immediate execution. If the commander interfered, it would incite a rebellion.”
“They won’t dare execute me after they hear the full story of our escape.”
“A heinous crime is punished by death. There is no reprieve… except for how the death sentence is carried out. Exile in the vines is presently considered a slow death.”
“Rosamunde can’t prove where and when I attacked her. Cutty, hand me a slate. She’ll piss her skirt when she learns I’m alive.”
Cutty served him a bowl of stew and handed him a spoon instead. “Won’t do you no good. I sat at the trial with Sergeant Miller. According to Rosamunde, it happened a month before graduation. Before she caught you with Beau. She swore had she known she was pregnant, she’d have stayed married to you for the sake of the baby.”
Max and Quiggs locked eyes across the table a long moment. Before? They had assumed after.
A relieved grin spread over Max’s face.
Quiggs threw back his head back, laughing. “Rosamunde cheated first! Our marriage was officially dissolved before Beau visited my apartment. I could have lost my braid with him. I should have lost my braid weeks before in the sex clinic! A retrial will clear my name, and the Assembly will force her to return everything she stole. Heralds and chaperones followed me everywhere outside the Academy. Witters and Meeks can vouch they never left me alone at work. I’ve won, right?” Breathless, he waited for the couriers to offer apologies for doubting him. They clamped their teeth shut and evaded his eyes.
Cutty shook his head. “Rosamunde showed the Assembly a letter from you asking her to deliver fuel paste to your work tower on the specific day she was attacked. Witters and Meeks verified under oath she was alone with you at the time she swore the attack occurred.”
Oh… fuck. He remembered a visit when Witters and Meeks offered the couple a short time for privacy while Rosamunde shouted about the expenditures of his hot air balloon. She had forged the letter to coincide with the date. His alibi flew out the window on four wings and flaming tail feathers.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. This was bad.
Max lost his grin. “Sergeant Miller, is there any chance a retrial could twist her words from rape into a consensual act?”
Miller answered woodenly, “Rosamunde was explicit. She swore Quiggs lost control and raped her in the basket of his hot air balloon.”
“I… what?” Quiggs screeched.
“She swore you wrapped a safety rope on the side of the basket around both her wrists. She was helpless while you had your way with her. Said she hid the rope burns.”
Quiggs flushed from his soles to the tips of his ears. He gripped the spoon as if he squeezed Rosamunde’s neck.
Max massaged the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, Quiggs. A retrial won’t overturn the verdict. The Ruling Mothers are as unbendable as old vines. Exile in the outland is considered a slow but certain death. Accept it before the Assembly realizes it’s not anymore.”
“But she’s lying—”
Max smacked his palms on the table. “You. Can’t. Prove. It.”
Quiggs hated the angry tears spilling down his cheeks.
“My men will hide you until the Assembly revises the death sentence to exile. On that day, you will miraculously emerge from the vines, unable to recall what happened after you wandered away from me.”
“Everyone will know you were lying to protect me.”
Max flashed a wicked grin. “The Ruling Mothers will most certainly realize I duped them, but if they want to get their hands on the new farmland, they won’t ask questions. I rule the outland, and exile paves the way for a lucrative partnership with us. Just be patient and let my men hide you until you are formally exiled.”
Thoroughly confused, the couriers twirled their markers and stared uneasily at each other.
Miller swallowed hard. “Sir, ordering your soldiers to hide Quiggs before he’s sentenced to exile puts them under the original death warrant. Speaking for myself, I believe the sex was consensual. But the others don’t know Quiggs like I do. Someone will leak word where he’s hidden, thinking it’s the right thing to do.”
“I’ll ask for volunteers to hide him and three days of silence from the rest,” Max said.
Miller fisted his hand over his heart. “Count on me, sir.”
The other couriers stepped back, arms stiff at their sides. They would leak word when they delivered their dispatches. Quiggs wouldn’t last a day.
Max shook his head in disappointment, then opened the backpack on the floor by his chair. “Quiggs and I had planned to avoid chaos by demonstrating his discovery to the guild’s officers first.” He handed Miller a canteen. “It contains milk. Sprinkle it on the ground around the vines. Watch what happens. Anyone volunteering to hide Qui
ggs and pledge silence may report to my cabin afterward.”
Miller stood there biting his lip, unsure if he had heard right.
Quiggs had dreamed of this historic announcement all his life. His voice trembled with excitement. “I figured out how to kill the vines. Goat milk rots them straight down to the mother roots.” The news landed like a hollow sputternut. No hiss, no spark, just a spongy bounce before it wobbled to a stop at the rooted feet of the men.
Max’s lips thinned with irritation at the reaction. “Dammit. Show Quiggs some respect. He just told you milk kills the vines.”
“Plain goat milk… uh… sprinkled on the ground.” Miller looked at Cutty for guidance, obviously concerned both the commander and Quiggs were vine daft.
Cutty’s eyes flicked from Max to Quiggs. “Open the canteen. As strong as the commander is, as smart as Quiggs is—two days in the vines aren’t near enough to confuse their minds.”
Miller unscrewed the cap and sniffed. “Smells like tainted goat milk.”
“Comes from Sweetheart grazing the oldest vines,” Max drawled.
“Sweetheart, sir?”
“The doe we found.”
The couriers fingered the handcuffs on their belts used to secure satchels. They froze when Max’s claws displayed and clicked the table, a warning that he viewed cuffing him a direct challenge to his authority.
Quiggs placed his hands over Max’s. The claws sheathed at his touch. “Obviously, no one believes us. Very well. I shall explain in detail.” He clasped his hands over his swelling chest with an air of self-importance. “The composition of goat milk has evolved over centuries of grazing.” Quiggs slipped effortlessly into a fog. This was his first opportunity to examine the facets of his discovery without vine vermin taking advantage of his distracted attention. “When absorbed by the vines, the milk stimulates the formation of clots that blocks the flow of sap and ultimately rots the vines from root to leaf. The decomposition results in what appears to be fertile soil. It’s fascinating how our ancestors’ bioengineering feats interconnect with each other.”
Quiggs sank deeper into his foggy zone. By the time he blinked awake, he was immersed in a cooling hipbath, expounding to the flapping canvas ceiling. His wrinkled fingers suggested a long soak, his dry throat a long-winded elaboration. He looked around to find his audience had scattered. “Where is everybody?”
Max stopped reading through a stack of slates on the table. His damp hair was slicked back, touching his nape. The tawny hairs lifted as if picking up Quiggs’s voice. He wore a knotted towel around his waist, and the puffy scratches on his back glistened from salve. One corner of his mouth tipped up at Quiggs’s miffed tone. “You convinced them at clotted sap you were your ingenious self, and they ran from the room with the canteen of milk, leaving you to ramble for two hours.”
“Two hours?”
“Nonstop. You missed the men crying like babies when the roots burst through the ground and crumbled. They raided the galley for milk. The milk gone, they tried cheese, which only attracted gulls. Then every soldier signed an oath of fealty to lay down their life for you. Miller proposed wedlock when your service ends. Actually, every soldier volunteered his ass when you’re ready to lose your virginity. Called it their patriotic duty.”
“You let them in while I babbled naked!”
One eyebrow shot up. “I locked the door and sent Cutty outside to collect the oaths. The reservoir and tub were undamaged. I drew your bath after taking mine and soaped all your crevices. Did you know you aren’t ticklish during your fog?”
“Heh.” Quiggs stepped out of the tub and dried off. If he’d babbled on, it meant his body accepted Max’s handling as contentedly as the sensory hairs accepted Quiggs.
Quiggs knotted a towel around his flatter belly, aware of Max’s eyes raking over his damp skin. He parked himself across from Max and covered his chest with his folded arms. When Max stretched a foot beneath the table and inched up his concubine’s calf, Quiggs nipped the predatory interest by clamping his thighs. Before Quiggs’s dick took notice, they needed to discuss clearing his name. “Now that your men know I’m not guilty, when’s my retrial?”
Max’s foot fell to the floor with a thump as heavy as his sigh. “My men still believe you fathered Rosamunde’s baby. However, Miller persuaded them she was ripe and willing, and they view the sex consensual. I’m sorry to tell you the only way to prove you’re innocent is figuring out who the father is and establishing a credible meeting place. Any ideas where to begin?”
Quiggs’s stomach clenched. “Rosamunde’s chaperones monitored her every step. They inspected bedrooms, closets, bathrooms. They weren’t giving me a chance to dissolve our marriage, especially after Beau transitioned. They knew I wanted out.”
“Perhaps she met a lover at one of her farmhouses for a furtive coupling in a shed or between the rows of beanstalks.”
Quiggs gutted that idea. “One of her fathers always chaperoned her on the farms. Usually Palmer while William and Cyrus assisted the Governor.”
“Must have been awkward for Palmer to chaperone the deb he’d planned to marry.” A thoughtful frown clouded Max’s face. “I remember when the governor married him a month after her Third Husband drowned. Quite a scandal with Rosamunde banished to her mother’s farm until she stopped ranting and accepted him as her third father.”
Quiggs remembered Stefan describing how Palmer had wept and threatened suicide before the marriage. Yet when Quiggs spent time with the First Family, Palmer behaved like an attentive, protective father around Rosamunde. On the other hand, Rosamunde treated him with polite loathing. Quiggs would never have suspected there was a romantic history between them. Her family certainly trusted them together.
Quiggs sat in stupefied silence, then blurted, “Palmer’s the father.” He clapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. He had just accused the Third Father of incest. The act was an unspeakable violation of trust in a marriage. It cracked the foundation enabling peaceful polygamous unions after the Rebellion.
Max’s expression pinched off at the sickening accusation. He opened his mouth to protest; then his jaw hung loose. His eyes stared off at nothing. To Quiggs’s relief, he slowly nodded. “Explains why she didn’t marry her lover weeks ago and pretend their baby arrived prematurely. Oh, fuck. This changes everything.”
Quiggs dropped his hand from his mouth. His relief was short-lived as another ugly truth wedged its way in. Quiggs felt the color leave his face. “I was thrown over the rampart about the time Rosamunde realized she was pregnant.” His voice rose to a squeak. “Rosamunde and Palmer hired professionals to kill me. Exile won’t save me. They’ll come after me as soon as they learn I’m alive.” He sagged in his chair. “Between a death warrant and a contract on my life, I’m pretty much fucked.”
“You, a helpless victim?” Max snorted at the image. “You’ve survived scorpions, breeding ferals, a spinner strike, a toss over the ramparts, and going vine daft. And there’s the time you landed your crazy balloon in the canal.”
Quiggs chuckled. “The worst? I survived wearing a red corset at the claiming ceremony.”
Max’s gray eyes widened, horrified. “The lottery was illegal. I don’t own your service. If anyone’s a rapist, it’s me on our claiming night when I forced you to—”
Quiggs scuttled over the table to straddle Max’s lap, the towel falling away. His hands framed Max’s jaw. The tawny hairs reached out to pet his fingers. “Uh-uh. You’re stuck with me for three years. I’ll never challenge the lottery. Never!” Quiggs licked his lips and ground his hips before Max got all honorable and put duty before desire.
For a moment, Max wavered. His eyes heated at the invitation, and his cock hardened from the friction. Honor won. “No. Using you is wrong.” He tried to lift Quiggs off his lap.
Quiggs wrapped his legs around Max’s trim waist, refusing to let go. “It’s not wrong if I’m fine with submitting,” he wailed.
Max pried him off and ont
o the table. He gave Quiggs’s soft cock a tweak before covering him with the fallen towel. “It’s not fine to submit when you don’t want sex.” His back to Quiggs, Max stepped into a pair of boxers retrieved from his cracked footlocker and hitched them over his perfect ass.
Quiggs leaned back on his elbows, admiring the view. His contrary cock tented the towel. Dumb cock.
“Change of plans. Get dressed.” Max tossed him a military tee and pants.
Quiggs unfolded the tee expecting to see Bucket Patrol. He saw Border Patrol and squealed like a baby cadet. A helmet and a heavy weapons belt dropped on the table. He hefted the belt equipped with poison-dipped stakes, knives, foldable spear, cutting shears, lines, and baton.
“You’ll need them all if Rosamunde refuses to negotiate.”
Quiggs fondled the ribbed hilt of a stake. He’d faced a den of hungry, horny ferals. He was the badass hunter, not the prey. “Why do we need to negotiate when we know Palmer’s the father? I’ll send statements to the heralds, the Assembly, the Herders Guild. I’ll write to the governor.”
Max wrestled a navy tee over his shoulders. “The sleaziest herald won’t touch the filthy truth. No one will want to believe Rosamunde committed incest with her third father. You’ll merely confirm a diagnosis of going vine daft and recovering with severe memory gaps.”
“But I’m a hero who—”
“If you accuse her of an incestuous affair with Palmer, the entire Triangle will condemn you. The Assembly won’t stomach an explanation. They’d rather execute an insane hero.”
“Use the military to make them listen. Your soldiers signed a vow to protect me.”
“Only the soldiers on my barge. The rest will side with the Assembly. Incest is unacceptable. Protecting you will start a bloody rebellion. Many innocent people will die.”
Ingenious Page 29