Bound to the Commander

by Libby Campbell

  Lily swiped at a tear that ran down her face. “Anyway, I miss you, big sister. Not just because your touch lets me sleep at night. I’m scared about where Anna has gone. I’m scared I’m going to follow. Brinley says he won’t let anyone take me but how could he stop them? Anna was both the clinic manager and a sector captain, and they took her.” She sucked in a huge breath and exhaled slowly.

  “I’m sorry. This wasn’t meant to be so blue. Thank you for your letters. I’ll write soon. Brinley says you can reach me through his CommBand whenever you like. Oh! He’s coming back.”

  Brinley stepped back into the frame, closing Lily in a tight hug. The pained expression on Lily’s face said his hug was not gentle.

  “Another good thing! I’m not lonely any longer,” Lily said with forced enthusiasm. “When I wake up in the middle of the night, Brinley is always there beside me.”

  Brinley laughed. “Yes, I am. I may be sleeping but at least Lily knows I’m there if she needs me.” He flashed a mirthless smile at the camera. “Please come home soon, Sister Pepper. Lily and I are looking forward to having our sister next door.”

  “I’m not his fucking sister,” Pepper said as the message star evaporated.

  Quinn pulled her to his chest. His sunny scent comforted her. “I have to say if there was ever a time for profanity, this is it.” He tilted her chin to kiss her. “It doesn’t sound to me like you’re going to be dying to return to Rosemoor.”

  Pepper smiled in spite of herself. “Not to live anyway. But do you think that I might take Princess Gael there with some of the herbs she brought. I really want to help my people.”

  “Taking Gael sounds like a perfect plan. It’ll be good for her to see how the country looks under the old regime. Even when we told her about some of the rules from the Handbook, it’s not the same as seeing people living that way. Country life always surprises me, even though I make an effort to be part of it several times a year.” His voice was so quiet Pepper could only just make out his words. He was doing what she’d mentally accused him of not doing just a few minutes ago. He was sharing secrets, telling her things he’d probably never told anyone else. She froze in case any sudden movement broke the intimate moment.

  He cleared his throat. “Rosewyld has never lived true to the Handbook code. All governments have a certain amount of hypocrisy, live as I say, not as I do and that has been the main reason for travel bans and keeping people away from the capital.”

  He shook his head as although clearing the guilt of his own hypocrisy. Pepper loved him all the more for his confession. Her father had often speculated that the Handbook wasn’t really designed to protect the general population but rather to preserve the privileges of the elite. Now it turned out that Quinn agreed with him. She leaned her head on Quinn’s shoulder, wanting to blurt out her deeper affection for him but held her tongue, sensing he had more to say.

  He caressed her. “When you and Gael were planting prakinroot seeds at the vineyard, Kai and I were talking about doing some reconnaissance around our continent. He has offered us the use of his fleet and manpower for the next two weeks, as long as there are no emergencies that need the fleet elsewhere.”

  Quinn rubbed her arm, but his voice was distant now. Back in commander mode, the faraway look in his eyes said he was contemplating the needs of the nation. “I think it’s time Elsinania built up its military again. This hijacking of the prakinroot shipments has shown me how vulnerable we are as a country. Kai knows that Gael wants some time here to work with you so he and I will take his fleet out the day after tomorrow. I’ll arrange an escort for you and the princess to go to Rosemoor.”

  He guided her back to her seat in front of the fire. “I think two or three days back in your hometown should be enough, don’t you?”

  Pepper had no idea how long it would take to see all the people she wanted to help. But she’d take any time she could get. Still she didn’t want to be making enemies in Rosewyld by abandoning people who’d come to count on her.

  “Won’t Daedra and the others from the Tribunal resent me leaving when I haven’t been here long at all?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry about the Tribunal.” Quinn waved his hand dismissively. “They will have the herbs. Their comfort will be assured.”

  “Does that make me redundant, no longer necessary in Rosewyld?” Pepper asked, trying to sound neutral.

  He picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips. “Little sparrow, you complete me. You will be necessary in Rosewyld as long as I draw breath.”

  Chapter Twenty: Family Secrets

  The next day, all Pepper’s afternoon appointments were canceled so that she and Gael could prepare for their trip to Rosemoor. As anxious as she was to start planning their trip, she still carefully studied the chart of her last patient that day. Another grade two citizen. The second highest rank possible.

  A few weeks before, she would have been dumbstruck to even speak to such high-ranking people, let alone lay her hands on them. Disease was an equalizer. If people thought she could help them, they were normally polite.

  The next patient was a person she hadn’t met before, a woman who listed her job as Cleaner. That type of manual position seemed at odds with her citizen grade two rank, but there was much Pepper neither knew nor understood about the workings of the government. The one important detail was the woman had been suffering symptoms from the spring. That made her one of the first known cases of the Waking Illness.

  A few minutes late, the small Kedrant woman whose tiger-striped hair was cut close to the skull came wandering in through the patient lounge. She wore the usual white toweling robe. Pepper immediately started her visual assessment.

  The woman walked with a forward lean, as if her back ached. The honey-gold of her skin had sallowed to a jaundiced yellow. Her face was set in an angry scowl. Her short, short hair, barely more than a quarter inch long all over, didn’t soften her harsh expression.

  She stared at Pepper as if she was the one making an examination. Unnerved by the frank appraisal, Pepper invited her to lie down on the massage bench, but she didn’t make a move toward it. She continued looking at Pepper, her odd-colored eyes—one green, one hazel—taking in every detail of Pepper’s appearance as if she was a museum specimen.

  Something in the intensity of this woman’s regard made Pepper uncomfortable, more self-conscious than she’d been in front of thousands of people at the symphony and on the dock. She examined the patient details on her clipboard, but they revealed nothing more than they had the first time she read them. Wynne Keary, age 43, government worker, grade two.

  Pepper tried not to visibly start at Wynne’s stated age. The woman looked closer to seventy than forty. Her job may have aged her, but Pepper suspected the worn appearance was from more than that. The pallor of her skin and the dullness of her eyes suggested she hadn’t been out of doors in weeks. The dark circles and deep lines in her face testified to her lack of sleep.

  Pepper knew she had to take control of the session. She started with a question. “How long have you had the sickness, Sister Wynne?”

  “Long time,” Wynne said. “It feels like forever.” Her bold gaze didn’t soften.

  “Has there been any change in your symptoms?”

  “You mean am I getting paranoid? Have the hallucinations started?”

  “Not all patients get those symptoms, but yes, have you experienced anything beyond the usual fatigue and difficulty concentrating?”

  “How would I know. I live alone. I work alone. Hallucinations are a natural consequence of my job.” She grunted and moved toward the massage table, not taking her eyes off Pepper. “You look a lot like your mother,” she added.

  A chill ran down Pepper’s spine. “My mother? You knew my mother?”

  This was Rosewyld, she reminded herself. The Handbook rule against speaking of the dead clearly didn’t apply here.

  Wynne snorted. “No one mentioned you were hard of hearing.”

  “I�
�m not. It’s just no one has spoken about Mama to me for years.” She willed back the tears that had risen at the unexpected mention of her beautiful, loving mother.

  Wynne grunted. “You country people. You’re as dull as the sheep you herd.”

  With that she dropped her gown and climbed onto the massage bed, lying on her stomach with her face nestled into the horseshoe of the headrest. “Are you going to treat me or not?” she demanded.

  Pepper wrestled her rising sorrow at Mama’s memory into anger at Wynne’s bad manners. First, Wynne brought up the subject of Pepper’s mother and then she’d dropped it, leaving Pepper in limbo wondering what Wynne knew and how she knew it. The storm of hurt and fury raging through Pepper was a bad way to start a treatment.

  She needed to tap into her private well of tranquility to relax her patient, yet it felt like Wynne was trying to sabotage her before she began. Taking a deep breath, Pepper reached into the warming chest and took out one large blanket. She laid it over Wynne’s thin body before she picked up the bottle of rose and mint oil. Working the oil into her hands, she looked at Wynne’s twitching body, noticing how emaciated she was.

  Some patients came to Pepper pudgy from the Waking Illness. The lack of sleep messed with key hormones that controlled appetite and they ate as if that would restore their failing energy. Others had not only gained weight but also lost muscle tone because their bodies didn’t have a chance to heal and rejuvenate after exercise.

  Wynne was the opposite. Her body was tense, like she was waiting for someone to touch a trigger and then she might explode. Pepper started slowly, with rhythmic effleurage up the spine. Soon she found her healing zone, that peculiar peace of mind she could normally transfer to a patient with her gifted touch. Today it had almost deserted her.

  But she found the knots in Wynne’s back that the woman hadn’t mentioned. She dug deep, uncoiling them. Time slid away as she worked the patterns she’d practiced for years.

  When the appointment timer chirped softly, Pepper returned to long soothing strokes that transitioned the moving session to stillness. Keeping one hand on Wynne’s body, Pepper reached for another blanket from the warming chest. She covered Wynne up to her neck.

  “When you’re ready,” Pepper said, “get up very slowly. No rush. Take your time.”

  “I’m ready now.” Wynne’s voice was clearer than it had been forty minutes before. She pulled the blanket around herself as she sat up.

  Pepper motioned the armchair in the corner of the treatment room. Wynne shuffled over and lowered herself onto it, drawing her feet underneath her. The chair was so big, built for the largest Devmaerean males, it almost swallowed her. Wrapped up like she was, she looked like she was in a cocoon. Pepper doubted she would emerge as a butterfly.

  Wynne’s eyes, clear now, were laser-like as she stared at Pepper.

  “You really are your mother’s daughter,” she said. “She treated me once on Lighthouse Island.”

  “You were there when my parents died?” The breath whooshed out of Pepper’s lungs. She poured a cup of tea from a large insulated carafe on the side table and offered it to Wynne.

  Wynne wrapped her hands around the cup and inhaled the light steam wafting from it. “Died. Yeah, right.”

  Already the massage had started to work its magic. The lines in Wynne’s face had softened. Her spine no longer curved as if she had bent over once and been unable to straighten afterwards.

  Pepper wanted to ask more about her parents’ last days and what Wynne meant by Died. Yeah, right, but she resisted the impulse. She sensed the more curiosity she showed, the less Wynne would tell her. Maybe, by pretending she wasn’t interested, she could coax Wynne into dropping a few more crumbs.

  Pepper sat in the upright therapist’s chair across from her patient. While her emotions ran riot, she assumed a detached, professional air. “You’re lucky,” she said. “Today, for the first time ever, we have the extract of prakinroot herbs to help with symptoms of the Waking Illness. Have you heard of this?”

  “Everyone who doesn’t live in a cave has heard about prakinroot. There’re two small problems. First of all, the last shipments from Senne never reached us because they were hijacked by pirates. Second, the only person who can grow it is that la-di-dah princess from Senne.” Wynne sniffed as if Pepper had personally created these complications.

  “Well, we have some now. Quite a lot really. And I’m going to give you some to take home with you.” Pepper smiled pleasantly and held up a small green bottle, along with printed instructions on a separate page. She read out loud, “These herbs will only help you if you have the Waking Illness. They will not aid simple insomnia. One tablespoon as you go to bed at night. It’s slow acting, takes twenty to thirty minutes, so patience is needed. Do not double up if results aren’t instantaneous.”

  “Do you think I can’t read, girl?” Wynne asked.

  Pepper may have eased the pain in Wynne’s back, but she hadn’t improved the woman’s disposition one bit.

  “Well, yes, I’m sure you can,” she said, “but sometimes it can be helpful to hear instructions more than once.”

  “You reckon, country girl?”

  “It helps me.”

  As Wynn sipped the vildehair tea, her shoulders relaxed for the first time. “I didn’t want to meet you. I didn’t want to come here but my boss insisted I get treatment before my symptoms got worse.”

  Pepper nodded, curious about why Wynne wanted to avoid her, but she stayed on track. “Is there anything particular that your boss might have noticed?

  “Yeah. I’ve had bad joint pain for the past couple of weeks, mostly in my back. It’s nothing. I’m getting old.”

  “You’re Kedrant and it says here you’re only forty-three. Most Kedrants have a life expectancy between one hundred and one hundred and thirty years. By that measure, you’re not even middle-aged.”

  “Maybe not for people who live a good life with a clear conscience. When you live your life as an untouchable, it shortens how long you can hope to be around.” Wynne ran her hand over the stubble of her hair, which made an odd rasping sound, like sandpaper.

  “But you’re a grade two citizen. That doesn’t sound like an untouchable to me.” Pepper frowned at the patient chart in her lap.

  “Do you want to know what I do for a living? Everyone knows you’re the commander’s squeeze now so you must be party to some seriously confidential information about Elsinania.”

  “A little.” Pepper wouldn’t dare ask a grade two citizen what their work entailed.

  “Let me add to your collection. This illness feels like punishment from a divine being, retribution for my shameful life.” A look of genuine remorse flashed across Wynne’s face. If Pepper hadn’t been watching closely, she would have missed it.

  Wynne closed her eyes for a minute. “Maybe if I unload some of my dark secrets, it’ll help me recover. Some people say confession is good for the soul. I sold my soul the day I took my promotion to grade two status. I’d go back to being a grade three or four citizen in a heartbeat.”

  Pepper nodded, holding Wynne’s eyes, waiting for the confession that was bubbling just below the surface.

  “Your mother. Bernadette Alberta Thornback. Beautiful woman. One in a million.”

  Pepper’s heart pounded. She clasped her hands on the patient chart so she wouldn’t reach over and shake Wynne hard to make her stop stalling.

  “Do you know what a Tribunal Cleaner is?”

  “No idea.”

  “Well, sit back and hold onto your hat. You’re about to get a glimpse of Elsinania’s underbelly.”

  Pepper put the patient chart on the table beside her, crossed her legs slowly, and looked at the time. “I have fifteen minutes,” she said.

  “You won’t want to throw me out in the middle of this story, I promise you.” Wynne spoke in a slow drawl, as if she intended to drag out her narrative as long as she could. “Your parents didn’t die on Lighthouse Island. They simply
had a detour on their way home.”

  “Detour?” The blood in Pepper’s veins turned to ice.

  Wynne smiled, showing two rows of tiny white teeth. “I’m a Cleaner. I take care of our government’s problems. You know all those reports that the sector captains file?”

  “Yes,” Pepper said in a hushed voice.

  “After country offices have sorted them, they send the most problematic ones to the capital. My staff go through them and the worse ones end up on my desk.”

  Pepper thought of her father’s treasonous statements about the Handbook. Bile rose in her throat. “And then?”

  “The worst of the worst have to be dealt with.”

  “And Papa—”

  “—was the very worst of the worst.” Wynne looked thoughtful. “Did you know that he’d started lobbying the Tribunal for greater personal freedom for all citizens?”

  “It doesn’t surprise me.” Pepper remembered the fire in her father’s eyes when he’d talked about the stupidity of trying to codify people’s behaviors in a single manual. A pang of longing for him gripped her. She remembered him saying, “What do you think, Pepper? Is it time for another revolution?”

  At that Mama had hissed, “Stop it, Ellery. You’re going to make her think you’re serious. You could get her into a lot of trouble.”

  Wynne interrupted Pepper’s thoughts. “I was sent to the island that weekend to plan their elimination from the population database.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Pepper’s hands clenched in tight fists.

  “It meant I had to decide what to do with them. So me and some of my staff showed up, pretending to be other winners of the holiday away. Before we made a final decision, we wanted to assess them and their loyalty. The first night we built a bonfire on the beach and sat around it, drinking and talking. The liquor we gave your parents was over proof. It sent your mother to sleep but it loosened your father’s tongue. He was so convinced that his thinking was universal, he started talking about throwing out the Handbook. He spoke that treason to the rest of us, to perfect strangers. That decided it. He had to go.”