“Step out of the flowerbed, please.” An order disguised as a polite request.
Pepper’s heart tried to hammer its way out of her ribcage as she moved onto the lawn.
“Please look at me when I’m talking to you. What do you think happens to burglars?”
She raised her eyes back to his and shrugged.
He folded his arms, nodding at her to speak.
“Detention?” Her voice squeaked, betraying a mix of fear and wonder.
“At the very least. Women offenders often get the switch.” The corners of his mouth twitched in a small smile.
Flames of embarrassment burned up Pepper’s neck as she imagined this man baring her bottom to stripe it with willow branches. Now another part of her body was swelling and clenching. As his eyes bored into her, she dropped her head to study her feet. The toe of her right boot was muddy from the garden. She rubbed it against her left ankle.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Before she could answer, he said, “Let’s start with our names. I’m Quinn Garrick, Commander of Elsinania.”
Everyone with working eyes and ears knows who you are. Pepper bit back the sarcastic reply. The man appeared hourly on the viewing screens that ran nonstop in all the public buildings in every street in the entire country. “I’m Piera Elin Thornback, massage therapist, citizen grade four. People call me Pepper.”
He nodded again, indicating he expected more of an explanation. She wondered if he would demand to read the CitizenBand on her left wrist. The fine gold and silver bracelet carried her name, address, education, occupation, blood type, along with the day of her last cycle and the fact that the contraceptive option had been activated.
“It’s my sister, Lily. I can’t wake her.” She jutted her chin toward the window as her voice drifted off. Somehow her explanation sounded flimsy when spoken out loud.
“Let me have a look.” He touched her lower back as he stepped around her. As quickly as he removed his hand, she wanted it back on her again.
Pay attention. She noted the way he didn’t have to trample the garden to get close like she did. He was tall enough to see in the window from three feet back.
As he turned, she saw that his thick blue hair was tied back with a leather thong at the base of his neck. The length of it took her breath away; it was almost as long as hers.
The Handbook for Proper Conduct, which set out the rules every person in Elsinania was supposed to live by, decreed that men’s hair shouldn’t reach past their shirt collars. Quinn’s would fall to his elbows when it was untied. Members of the Tribunal made rules; they obviously didn’t follow them.
“There’s no one in there,” he declared, regarding her with a look of gentle concern.
Suddenly the autumn sun felt unbearably hot. A bead of sweat ran down the back of her neck. She longed to tear off her modesty cap, loosen her long heavy hair, and let her scalp breathe.
Before she could answer, she saw Lily approaching from the direction of the forest. Her arms were full of kindling, gathered for Bonfire Night. Pepper sighed with relief when she noted that Lily’s eyes were no longer bloodshot. The black circles under them had disappeared overnight.
“Hello!” Lily sang out as she drew closer. Then she caught sight of Quinn and her mouth dropped open. The kindling tumbled from her arms. Small pink circles rose in her cheeks... She adjusted her cap before dipping a curtsey to him.
Damn. Pepper had forgotten to curtsey, but she smiled with momentary relief because Quinn had turned his hawk-like gaze away from her to Lily.
“This is my sister, Lilian Bernadette Thornback. Lily, this is the Honorable Commander Quinn Garrick.”
Quinn held out his hand. “Lovely to meet you, Sister Lily. No need to curtsey. I’ve eliminated that formality in the latest version of the Handbook.”
Pepper and Lily exchanged wide-eyed glances.
“What about twenty years the same, always a fair game?” Pepper narrowed her eyes, suspecting a trick. That mantra was one of the first rules in the Handbook: good manners and polite conduct didn’t change. Shouldn’t change.
The Handbook had been written by Garrick the Elder, Quinn’s father. It was considered the foundation stone of a civilized land.
Quinn laughed, a pleasant rumbling sound. “I’ve been working on social justice and proper norms for our county probably longer than you’ve been alive. I think our great nation can allow moderate changes in etiquette without falling back into the lawless chaos that once defined it.”
Lily giggled because she giggled at everything. At only eighteen years old, Lily often covered up her nervousness with fits of inappropriate, childish laughter.
Pepper grinned, a true, happy smile, triggered by Lily’s musical laughter. Meeting Commander Garrick, or Quinn as Pepper decided to think of him now, was one of the most exciting things that had ever happened to either sister. For one thing, he was as handsome as a god. His strong posture, unflinching gaze, and thick, luxuriant hair all exuded power. Here he was, talking to her and Lily like any good neighbor might have done.
She and Lily would relive this moment many times in the future. Pepper imagined herself slipping the event into conversation at the weekly communal dinners. She’d have to change tables so she could tell it more than once.
As quickly as that thought rose in her head, she realized his presence in Rosemoor might not be so random after all. Maybe he was here because of something the minister Mazrant had said about her. Daedra might have complained and he’d come here to arrest Pepper for a crime she didn’t even know she’d committed. The blood drained from her face.
“Maybe you ladies can help me,” Quinn said.
“Yes?” Pepper lifted her chin, acting more confident than she felt.
“Yes, sir,” he corrected. “Yes, sir or yes, Brother Quinn.”
Pepper’s chin dropped slightly. “Yes, Brother Quinn?”
Chapter Three: Thunderstruck
When Quinn first saw Pepper from behind, she’d looked like any small-town woman, enveloped from head to foot in unflattering clothing designed to minimize any evidence of feminine beauty. But then she’d turned around, fixing him with a thoughtful stare. He’d tensed at the vision of her delicate, oval face. She wasn’t the most beautiful woman to catch his eye, but she had an ethereal quality that struck him like a lightning bolt.
He’d caught a glimpse of the tiger-striped hair that attested to her Kedrant roots. Her eyes, both the same dark brown, spoke to her human heritage. It was those eyes, almost black and sparkling with lively intelligence, that captured his attention. Her full lips were shaped to make a man happy. With porcelain skin and pale roses in her cheek, she radiated an inviting sensuality.
An unexpected burst of arousal disconcerted Quinn momentarily. He’d met thousands of women, many young and ready for plucking like this one. But none of them had enthralled him like Pepper did with a single look.
He didn’t like the feeling one bit.
He’d seen pictures of her before he came to Rosemoor, even had some stored on his CommBand. After all, she was his reason for being here. When he hadn’t found her at home, her sector captain had suggested he try Lily’s house.
Still, he hadn’t expected the sweet image that smiled at him from his CommBand to be so alluring in real life.
To hide his initial unease, he quizzed her on why she was spying on a house he knew to be her sister’s. He’d seen a flash of vulnerability cross her face when she first laid eyes on him. He didn’t want to admit to an unexpected stab of pity that had pierced his defenses and caught him like a barbed hook.
He’d read her records and knew that Lily was the only family she had. The sisters had been orphaned three years before, when Pepper was twenty and Lily only fifteen. Pepper had looked after Lily from that day forward, so it was no surprise to find her at Lily’s house, worried over her sister’s whereabouts. Pepper had taken on a big responsibility for someone who wasn’t much more than a girl at the time. Her
sector captain reported she’d carried it well; Lily had developed into a fine young woman.
Quinn pushed the troubling feelings of lust and concern for Pepper out of his thoughts. He returned to the purpose of his visit. “I’ve heard this area has had an unusual outbreak of Waking Illness. What can you tell me about that?”
“An unusual breakout of Waking Illness.” Pepper rolled the words around her mouth as if she was tasting them.
Quinn couldn’t look at her; she was too distracting. Instead he turned to Lily. “Sister Lily?”
Lily shook her head. As if saying it wasn’t her place to comment, she crouched and arranged the kindling into a tidy pile.
“What do you call unusual?” Pepper asked, her tone cool. “What would be usual?”
Quinn studied her for a trace of impertinence, but her attitude was professional, detached. He’d come to Rosemoor after learning of Daedra Mazrant’s miracle session with Pepper. Not that Daedra told him directly. He’d found out about her visit from the spy he had planted in her home. He’d waited for Daedra to tell him directly but when she didn’t mention it, days after the event, he’d decided to visit Rosemoor himself. Why Daedra had withheld her good news was a question to be asked later.
For now, he hoped that Pepper might be one of the country’s rare super healers who only showed up once in a generation. As she stood in front of him, asking him to clarify his notion of unusual, he had to think about life from her perspective. In country towns like this, the newspapers and viewing screens featured little of importance. Lost dog reports made front page news. Feel-good stories were pumped in from the capital city of Rosewyld.
Other news content included sports, weather, and farm reports, along with sewing patterns and recipes. It had been that way since the revolution. Unusual to Pepper probably meant more than a dozen people with Waking Illness.
She probably didn’t know how widespread the sickness was. If he wanted her cooperation, he’d need to bring her up to speed on the state of the nation outside this rural county.
He began with an undeniable fact. “The illness is now spreading faster than ever before. Last spring there were only three known cases in all of Elsinania.”
Lily looked up from where she was tying a length of hemp rope around the kindling. “Really?”
Pepper bit her lip. “Three? In the entire country? Rosemoor is a small town, only twenty thousand people and we get that many new cases—”
She stopped talking as a handsome man with thick wavy hair came trotting around the corner.
Dressed in gray fatigue pants and a fitted black shirt that indicated his rank as a sector captain, he winked at Lily before saying in his most pompous voice, “I’m glad you were able to find Pepper and her sister, Commander.”
The corners of Pepper’s mouth tightened.
“Thank you, Sector Captain Vachon.” Quinn’s tone was detached.
“Please call me Brinley, Commander. I’m always ready to help the Tribunal.” He gave an unctuous smile.
“Thank you, Brother Brinley. These two young ladies are helping me with my inquiries. In fact, I came to Rosemoor specifically to find Sister Pepper.”
Pepper’s head shot up at that statement.
Hooking his thumbs through his belt, Brinley frowned. “Sister Pepper is in my sector, which makes her my responsibility.”
“Brother Brinley, I’m pleased to see you take your work so seriously, but I am happy to be responsible for Sister Pepper for the moment.”
Cutting a fierce look at Pepper, Brinley said, “Keep your eye on her. She’s full of mischief.”
“Thank you for the caution. In the meantime, I need to talk to her and her sister alone.” Quinn pointed to the stack of kindling at Lily’s feet. “Sister Lily has gathered firewood for Bonfire Night. Perhaps you could take it to the fire site for her.”
Brinley snatched it from where it lay and glared at Pepper before turning on his heel without another word.
Quinn had dealt with enough sycophants to recognize one at twenty paces. He’d smelled the power lust on Brinley when he’d first spoken to him. Now, seeing the man’s hostility toward Pepper, he liked him even less. A strange protective feeling toward her burned in his chest again.
“Now where were we?” Quinn asked.
“An unusual outbreak of Waking Illness.” Pepper gave a little shake as though throwing off Brinley’s hostility. “And something about you coming here to find me.” Her statement ended on a high, questioning note.
From the corner of his eye, Quinn saw Lily’s next-door neighbor coming outside with a bucket and squeegee, ready to start washing windows that already gleamed in the sun. She wasn’t the only neighbor stretching both eyes and ears to try to catch what was going down.
Quinn rubbed his chin. “Sister Lily, I’ve been up since before dawn. I don’t suppose you could offer me a cup of coffee?”
* * *
“I came to Rosemoor specifically to find Sister Pepper.” Those words turned Pepper’s spine to water. She needed to sit so she gratefully followed Lily into her immaculate little house. Once there, she filled the kettle from the instant hot water tap and it started to boil almost as quickly as she laid it on the two-burner cooktop. While she set out three mugs, Lily took an assortment of teas and instant coffees from the cupboard.
A pang of irrational jealousy speared through Pepper when Quinn put a hand on Lily’s shoulder and studied the selection offered. Didn’t he say he’d come to see her?
“Green tea will be fine.” He pointed to one and sat on the sofa, a few steps from where Pepper and Lily were assembling tea.
“That’s what I’m having too,” Lily said. “I stopped drinking anything with much caffeine when I got the ill—”
A swift kick from Pepper stopped her midsentence.
Quinn shook his head. “When you got the Waking Illness, you mean? Please don’t keep secrets from me, either of you. Especially not you, Sister Pepper.”
Pepper poured the tea without letting it steep. She handed a mug to Quinn and set the other two on the tiny coffee table. She dragged one of Lily’s two kitchen chairs to sit opposite him.
Lily handed around three generous slices of carrot cake with cream cheese icing and candy carrot decorations. The second kitchen chair made a loud scraping noise as she drew it beside Pepper’s.
Pepper watched as Quinn ate his first mouthful.
“Wonderful,” he said.
“What do you want from me?” Pepper asked bluntly now that he had food and drink. Her words sounded confident, which was not how she felt.
Quinn’s lips quirked in a slight smile at her impatience. “Do you remember a woman who visited your clinic recently? She was Devmaerean-human. Blue-skinned but also blue-eyed.”
“Of course,” Pepper said. “The Honorable Minister Daedra Mazrant. She’d be hard to forget.” She set her fork down without tasting the cake. Her appetite had vanished.
Quinn broke off another chunk of cake with obvious relish. “Sister Daedra raved about the treatment you gave her.” He paused to chew and swallow. “Do you know how the illness progresses?”
The question was insulting. Of course she did. Pepper forced herself to remain civil. “Officially, yes. It starts with being unable to sleep. People fall asleep fast, but they wake up often. They never get truly deep sleep, no REM rest, so they get up in the morning more tired than when they went to bed.”
“Continue.” Quinn forked more cake into his mouth and chewed silently.
“Like all sleep deprivation, that pattern can deteriorate into light sensitivity, slow physical reflexes, impaired thinking, even hallucinations.”
Hoping he didn’t notice the slight tremor in her hands, Pepper set her mug of tea on the coffee table. She wished she hadn’t said hallucinations. The first patients she’d worked on had taken months to deteriorate to that state. Lily had her first hallucination within a week of contracting the illness.
Hallucinations were the marker poi
nt for when some people were sent to the Healing and Rehabilitation Camp. Since the disease arrived in early spring, a dozen or so people from Rosemoor had been taken to the camp. Not one had come back.
That was why Pepper had been working with Lily to try to move her past this dangerous stage. Worse still, Lily displayed symptoms that Pepper hadn’t seen in other patients. Besides the joint pain, she’d been occasionally delusional and deeply depressed.
Looking at Lily now, it was hard to believe that only a few days before she’d been as feeble as a ragdoll. The owner of the shop where she worked had sent her home early, telling her to stay away until she was substantially healthier. When Pepper saw her at the weekly communal dinner that night, Lily was in tears, worried to the point that she couldn’t eat.
“Have you observed anything else?” Quinn laid his fork on his plate. His cake had vanished.
Calmer now, Pepper picked up her mug. She wrapped her hands around it, enjoying the warmth, as she prepared to lie. “Like what?”
“I’m asking the questions.”
“Nothing special.” She swallowed the other things she could have named: loss of appetite, lack of impulse control, and now, for Lily, delusions. She didn’t want to name those symptoms in case she doomed innocent people to removal from their homes and family. Fighting what she sensed to be true, she told herself that Lily’s joint pain was temporary and had nothing to do with the Waking Illness.
By happy coincidence, Quinn had arrived the first day in many that Lily looked healthy.
He crossed his left foot onto his right knee. “There’s something you’re not telling me. You’re either lying by omission or you’re just plain lying. I’m unsure which.”
His eyes bored into hers and she looked away, easing a dainty morsel of cake onto her fork. For a long moment, no one said anything.
“I’m willing to let that go. For now.” Quinn folded his hands behind his neck. “I’m here to take you back to Rosewyld with me.”
Bound to the Commander Page 2