Quiggs heard colorful curses as wasps found their way to the hut and dived at his two guards. Served them right for teasing his puffy mouth when he’d returned this morning.
He stuck his head out the window and shouted at his guards to jump under the shower. Wasps hated water. It dragged their wings. He heard buzzing approaching and slammed the shutter closed. Wings batted the slats, seeking entry. He’d search for dead ones later and dissect the nasty bastards. Insect venom often led to a new weapon or medicine.
Meanwhile, it was a good morning to stay inside and design living quarters for the young men signing up to farm hundred-acre plots. He spread out a stack of slates. Max had applied a numbing ointment and rewrapped his hands in a thinner bandage. He shook off a sigh, remembering Max’s light kiss on each palm when finished.
Gripping a marker with his fingertips, Quiggs tackled the problem of plumbing. He could easily pipe in water from tall collection tanks filled from the irrigation taps, but waste disposal posed a problem. Stepping into the vines was risky from all the pests stirred up. Primitive outhouses would have to serve.
His mind strayed from housing toward sources of income to lure residents. The men could dig ponds and stock them with fat whiskered fish from the aquarium in Port Lourdes. Fresh fish brought premium trading prices in the cities. In three years, revenues would pay off debts and lift the inhabitants of the farming communities from self-sustainable to comfortably prosperous. Community housing would change to single farmhouses as prosperity attracted wives.
When children arrived, they would enroll in day schools instead of academies. Parents could enjoy raising their children at home until they turned twelve. What an irresistible lure for a young woman, keeping her sons beyond the age of seven. He still remembered his mother’s tears when she enrolled him in the Academy and the muted sobs of young cadets in their bunks during their early years.
Out with the old laws, in with the new. More freedom for men. More freedom for women too. The new laws wouldn’t force a woman to bear four children in order to have a voice in the new government.
With women forming a small percentage of the population, allowing a wife three husbands remained necessary to maintain the peace. Until the birth rate for daughters increased, wedlock would continue. Quiggs would use his seat in the Assembly to get rid of mandatory braids for virgins as well as the stupid uniforms, facial hair, and haircuts required to identify a man’s station.
A sex clinic would continue to play an important role in a student’s education.
Warm fuzzy bubbles surfaced as Quiggs remembered Max falling all over him in the cabin yesterday. Max had acted like a cadet in the sex clinic with the clock ticking down ten minutes. Though Quiggs was woefully inexperienced, he sensed a bond with Max, lifting sex beyond basic gratification. Last night was fun, wonderful, emotional. It wasn’t about releasing tensions like the clinic taught. It was about filling the cold hollow of your being with warm, loving feelings.
Why couldn’t Max admit having tender feelings when it was evident in his eyes, his touch, his tone, his concern for Quiggs’s safety?
Quiggs found himself drawing a pair of lovey hearts on a slate. He added eyes, arms, legs, genitalia. The bigger heart sported a muscled ring around the middle of its hefty cock.
Four raps on the door announced a guard. Quiggs turned the slate over. “Come in.”
Dean Cagney stepped inside. His flowing black robe was wrinkled with damp patches under the arms, and the square white collar hung loose as if he’d paddled a line of naughty inactives. Sunlight caught the stubble on his pate. His dark eyes, bloodshot from a sleepless night, swept the cluttered room before fixing on Quiggs’s panicked face. As if a cadet again, Quiggs jumped to his feet with his hands clasped behind his back, patting around to straighten his braid.
The dean’s resonant voice sounded exhausted. “Relax, Quiggs. I’m on your side.”
Quiggs sheepishly dropped his hands to his sides. He noted new gray sprinkling the dean’s brown beard. With Quiggs gone, there should have been less stress. “How did you know I was hiding here? Everyone took an oath of silence.”
“President Brooke of the Herders Guild brought me here. I told him I knew you were alive, and it was urgent we talk. He signaled the watchtower I have permission to visit the site.”
Quiggs had a backpack ready and canteens filled if the dean came to warn him a team of executioners were on its way. “What gave me away?”
“I’ve known Commander Max Bronn since he was a cocky first year. He doesn’t accept defeat. Never did in the Academy. Or battling ferals.” The dean’s lips twisted in a stern smile. “Max would never have abandoned you in the vines. He’d have died searching for you. Congratulations on killing the vines, by the way. Always thought you’d be the one.”
“Beau taught me how to milk. Otherwise…” His voice choked up.
“I’m sorry about Beau.” The dean’s bushy brows pulled together as he got to the point. “Governor Lyre and her Outland Committee will arrive this afternoon with armed police to take possession of this site.”
Quiggs chuckled evilly. “Let her try. A prime law gives the commander absolute authority to punish all trespassers. The soldiers will incapacitate the police and hold the women hostage.”
“The Assembly has found a way around that prime law. This morning the Ruling Mothers are voting to retire Max’s title and to divide his command among three generals. The generals are ex-military, their experience limited to three years of serving Max’s uncle.”
Quiggs gawked a minute before exploding. “The Assembly can’t rewrite a prime law. It violates their insistence that changing a law—even a minor one—paves the way for rebellion.”
“Retiring the commander doesn’t break a law. It’s a convoluted amendment giving the Assembly the authority to annex the outland to the Triangle. The Ruling Mothers win control over every speck of land from the canal to the farthest reaches. They plan to auction large tracts of land to women with the proceeds going into the Treasury. Men are excluded from the bidding. The wives of the three generals, coincidentally, are affluent members of the Outland Committee overseeing the auction.” The dean paused to let his words soak in. “The military will execute all protestors.”
Quiggs couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His legs shaky, he sat down as his beautiful future collapsed like a hot air balloon from a ripped seam. “How do you know about this vote?”
“My younger sister is a Ruling Mother with four sons interested in farming. After the Assembly closed its doors to the public yesterday to deliberate your exile, the governor convinced the majority to seize control of the outland by retiring the commander. The governor and the Judicial Council have spent days plotting a legal annexation instead of reviewing Max’s request for your exile. When he returns to Port Memphis, he’ll find himself stripped of his title, his barge confiscated, his men bound by law to obey the new generals.”
Quiggs’s gut clenched. “Max won’t start a second rebellion by fighting for his title.”
The dean’s booming voice softened. “His title, no. For you, yes. He’ll fight if he returns to find you have surrendered yourself to the Assembly this morning.”
Quiggs lifted his brows in surprise at the suggestion. “The governor will halt the session and order me bound and gagged for immediate execution. There’s no way Max can arrive in time to rescue me.”
The dean watched him with a strange stillness.
Then Quiggs understood. His surrender would disrupt the Assembly’s session another day. A delayed vote gave President Brooke and Dean Cagney time to warn the people of the Commander’s forced retirement and the exclusion of men from purchasing land.
Quiggs’s public execution would infuriate citizens who believed he deserved exile. Max might accept the loss of his title, but he would never accept losing Quiggs. Claws displayed, he would storm the next session of the Assembly seeking revenge. His title intact, he’d have the full support of the mil
itary, herders, and citizens filling the aisles and blocking the exits. It wouldn’t be a rebellion—it would be a skirmish, contained inside the walls of the auditorium with the Ruling Mothers held hostage until they agreed to rewrite their laws.
All events triggered by Quiggs’s execution.
It was what it was. No point in grieving for what might have been.
Quiggs gripped the edge of the table hard a few seconds, ignoring the pain in his palms before he picked up a clean slate and began writing, My dearest Max…
He was pale and dry-eyed when he finished. He fastened his helmet and tightened his weapons belt. He looked at the dean whose eyes were suspiciously moist.
“Let’s do this.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
President Brooke distracted the soldiers, lumpy and sluggish from stings, while Quiggs and the dean slipped away from the hut and raced on foot along the fringe toward Port Memphis. The green courier pouch, slung over Quiggs’s shoulder, carried urgent information for the commander and cleared them past the watchtowers. Running three miles along the canal’s outer bank was quicker than paddling a small boat against the current and pulling aside to give larger vessels the right of way.
The dean lasted two miles before gasping for breath and waving Quiggs on. “Dammit, Quiggs… I… I… have no words. Good luck.”
Quiggs kept running. He did not want words. Words made his actions real. Words weighed down his limbs with fear.
He reached the city with his badass uniform drenched in sweat, chest heaving, legs wobbling from the burning run. He avoided the busy main dock and circled around to the quiet rear drawbridge used by herders on the southside. An archer on the rampart tracked his approach, bow aimed at the fringe to kill anything that could leap out to snatch Quiggs.
The gatekeeper sat in a shaded niche of the wall. “State your business, soldier.”
“Confidential for Commander Bronn.” Quiggs showed the mail pouch slung over his shoulder.
With a musical ratcheting, the flat bridge slid out from the wall. Beau had loved jumping on the bridge and riding it back and forth. Quiggs walked the middle line, conscious of the murky water below. His steps faltered. Once he entered the city, he committed himself. He sucked in a breath. He could do this. The dean had given him a powerful sleeping tablet to swallow before the security guards seized him.
Quiggs hoped the sun’s reflection off his shield hid his face because he recognized the gatekeeper waiting for him to hurry up so he could retract the bridge: Cadet Locke from the Academy three grades ahead of him. He sported an unflattering shaved head and cropped beard. He was young and fit, and his amber eyes definitely sized Quiggs up for a flirtation. Members of the Border Patrol were always good for an uncomplicated fuck when they hit the city after days of isolation.
When Locke got up close and personal to squint through the shield, Quiggs swallowed uneasily. A frown pulled Locke’s brows when his gaze dropped to the padded biceps, then the long scrawny legs encased in tight pants. “Do I know you, private? Maybe we hooked up in the clinic.”
Quiggs roughened his voice. “I’d have remembered you.” He jerked a thumb at the small gate in the wall, his last obstacle to getting inside. “I need to deliver the pouch.”
“The commander’s away. The Legislative Building is closed, and police have blocked the portico. No one gets in or out while the Assembly’s in session.”
“Why the secrecy? Have the Mothers changed their minds about voting for exile?”
Locke swung open the gate to the city. “It’s not just about voting exile for Concubine Quiggs. Word leaked out this morning the Mothers are setting up a land office to sell deeds. Men are waiting for the doors to open so they can rush inside and put their names on the waiting list.”
“Commander Bronn made it clear his team chooses qualified farmers.”
“You know the Mothers. Haggling over the vote until he agreed to let them profit off the farms. It’s about time ordinary men get a chance to own a piece of land.”
Things would get ugly when the Assembly announced men were prohibited.
Inside the city, Quiggs stopped at the first drinking fountain he saw. He checked he was alone before lifting his face shield and gulping the tepid water. He rested his hands on the curved lip of the basin until his stomach settled.
The smell of baking bread drifted by. Across the street was the Canal Alley Bakery, minus the usual line outside. Nearby was the bench by the stairs to the rampart where Max had tried to hook up with him. A few minutes earlier or later and they would never have met because the assassin would have succeeded in killing Quiggs and changed the fate of the Triangle. Beau would be alive to fight beside Max, whose title would be undisputed until his death.
And Rosamunde would still have called Quiggs a rapist who’d fathered her child. Probably announcing it at his memorial service where the commander—in perfunctory attendance because the deceased was his concubine—would have believed the lie.
Truth, lies, rules, greed—nothing mattered had Quiggs died then. Once the advanced ferals rafted across the canal, mankind was doomed.
But his death today saved the Triangle.
The Plaza was a good walk away on the other side of the city. As Locke had warned him, the police blocked the portico to the excited crowd packing the Plaza. Quiggs circled behind the Legislative Building and sneaked in through an unguarded back entrance. He remembered the combination to the locked door, a shortcut he’d used when his presence on stage as a member of the First Family was demanded, and he ran late. Some of his best theories bloomed on stage during those mind fogs… until Rosamunde’s sharp elbow jarred him awake.
A sloping corridor took him backstage where he tiptoed through a dim and musty maze of props and painted backdrops reused for centuries. The city held concerts, oratories, and funeral services here when the Assembly wasn’t in session.
Had he arrived before the voting? The heavy curtain muffled the words of the moderator speaking on the podium. He groped his way along the red velvet folds until he found the part in the middle. He spread it a couple of inches and peeped out.
The colonists had anticipated a flourishing population when they built the auditorium in three tiers seating three thousand in the designated capitol. Rows of butt-numbing stone benches led down to a simple raised stage with a flag-swathed podium to Quiggs’s left. Attendees brought cushions. To the right was a long table with straight-back chairs. A center aisle divided the tiers. Faded red draperies covered the walls, rumored to hide the engraved original declaration of rights because they conflicted with the later regime of the Mothers.
The Ruling Mothers, in their fitted black jackets and long skirts with padded bustles, sat in the front tier. Expressions ranged from smug to frightened. Unfortunately, smug outnumbered frightened. There would be no deadlocked vote.
If it took Quiggs’s surrender to bring men and women into a new future, so be it. He checked the stage. Where was Governor Lyre? Until she was seated at the table, the session couldn’t begin. He wasn’t complaining. The longer the delay, the longer he lived. He patted the pocket with the sleeping tablet.
Say what you need to say, then take the tablet.
Don’t wait until the last second to swallow the tablet.
Don’t panic and drop the tablet.
And what was he supposed to say when he stepped from behind the curtain and removed his helmet? Hello, bitches. Guess what? I’m alive. In the ringing silence that followed, he’d call Rosamunde a liar, name Palmer the father, and condemn the Mothers for voting to retire Max. He’d have three minutes tops to get the words out and swallow his tablet before the security guards posted near the exits bound and gagged him.
Governor Lyre would rush his execution before the citizens thronging the plaza questioned why she hadn’t proceeded with the exile vote. Quiggs had killed the vines—the greatest feat in the history of the Triangle. Couldn’t the Mothers show mercy?
How would Governor Lyre
explain Quiggs was promptly executed because rigidly upholding the laws was necessary to preserve the Triangle? There were never exceptions—until a law inconvenienced the Mothers, at which point such law was blithely amended.
Like retiring the people’s idolized commander in order to annex his outland and auction his land to well-connected women. Thus forcing the majority of men into spending their lives as underpaid and underappreciated laborers.
Heh. A perfect setup for Max, with Quiggs ultimately proving he was right about fighting back.
In his farewell letter lying on the table in the hut, Quiggs had carefully chosen every word to incite Max’s wrath.
My dearest Max, give others the life we’ll never live together. You’ve never lost a fight. I’ve always found a way out. My surrender is the way out of the bleak future for men. I have feelings for you, Max. I’ll wrap myself so deeply in them that pain and fear won’t touch me when I die. I know you can’t feel the same back. What matters to me is knowing you will fight.
Quiggs breathed deeply clearing the scared lump in his throat. His resolve firmed. His heartbeat steadied. Max would fight back.
While he waited for Governor Lyre’s arrival, his breathing slowed and evened. He listened to the moderator, traditionally the oldest Ruling Mother, in the middle of a rambling speech. Years stooped her back. Her chin barely cleared the podium as her wavering voice invoked the need for the guiding touch of women as the future stretched beyond the confines of the canal.
He yawned. At this rate he’d make his entrance by falling through the curtain flat on his face, sound asleep. He stayed alert by preparing his speech. His lips curved, anticipating the impact on the audience when he declared Palmer had fathered Rosamunde’s child. He’d stand before the Assembly with his hands on his hips, feet apart, chin lifted. He’d tell the Mothers to watch for the babe, inheriting his true father’s eyes, nose, chin, and graceful limbs instead of Quiggs’s gangly body and rounded face.
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