"I cannot agree to a political alliance under these terms." Rankine Fendlarsen eyed the man across from him and burrowed the tips of his fingers into his thighs, resisting the urge to reach for a chamois. The sweat on his brow could stay where it was—its presence could be attributed to the heat of the day, whereas mopping it from his face would be a show of weakness.
Brut Rihardik, the Baron of Timalta, was not one to overlook any sign of weakness. Indeed, he would seize any opportunity to prey upon Rankine as a means of expanding his own personal little empire. Rankine leaned forward and placed one hand on the pulplet which contained Brut's proposal. “It is to your advantage to marry my daughter and benefit from the resources of Agraia, but I see no benefit that can come to this region from Timalta's offer of military strength. Agraia is peaceful. We have no desire to fight or expand--we are too busy cultivating food for the planet.”
Rankine slid the pulplet across the surface of his desk toward Brut and withdrew his hand, clearly signaling his refusal. Brut leaned back in his chair. Framed from indigenous conifer wood and formed with a textile composite of conifer needles and resin, it creaked under his solid frame as he reached into the folds of his clothing. Rankine tensed, prepared to defend himself if a weapon was drawn.
A cruel smile meandered crookedly across Rihardik's jaw as he retrieved and unfolded a raptor blade, and Rankine inched his fingertips over the call button hidden beneath his desk. The Baron rotated his knife until the blade's cutting edge faced Rankine, then he inserted the tip beneath his thumbnail to remove a blackened residue. "You know you have very few options available to you at this point," he remarked as he moved to his index finger. "As we speak, my men have Rustican surrounded, and you will be under siege if you refuse. You may live at peace and keep your title, or die a broken, starved, penniless fool. It means little to me, as I mean to have your daughter regardless."
At Rankine's sudden, sharp intake of breath, the Baron looked up from his ring finger and chuckled. "She is a prize, to be certain." His eyes glinted with purpose and darkened in desire, then grew hard and cold as ceramydium. "He is a fool who refuses Brut Rihardik." His knife closed with a snap, and the chair groaned and shivered as he pushed it back over the tesselate flooring and stood to his feet. "Agree to a marriage between your daughter and myself, and I will order my men to stand down and prepare for a wedding feast. Otherwise, steel yourself for an onslaught. You have until fourth moonset to make your decision."
The Baron and his attendants swept out of the room. Rankine reached into his drawer for a chamois and furiously mopped perspiration off his brow, his face, and his neck. “Bannan!" A tall, strongly built man stepped quickly through a hidden doorway that led into an adjacent chamber. "You heard him. Send word through Alastin if it is still viable to transmit communication. Use human messengers if necessary—but only volunteers, as it may cost them their lives."
Bannan smartly snapped a salute in his direction and hurried to enact his orders. Rankine followed him out the door, turning in the opposite direction upon reaching the peristyle. “Reave!” His aide appeared instantly and silently. “Evacuate the household. Rihardik has come for Muirna, and all personnel must relocate to Winnowa immediately. Use the culverae, travel in groups of three, and remain silent. Every life depends upon it.” With a quick nod of acknowledgement, Reave pivoted and crossed the courtyard, firing a series of rapid commands at every household servant within sight.
Rankine made his way along the portico to the other end of the house. At the sound of music he slowed his pace, loathe to disrupt the harmonies emanating from the conservatory. Pausing in the open doorway, he drank in the sight of his daughter seated among several of her peers, her lustrous red-gold waves of hair cascading to frame a heart-shaped face with sparkling green eyes, coral lips, and a pert little nose sprinkled with copper stardust. His chest constricted at the realization that Muirna's male friends were likely to be slaughtered or conscripted into Rihardik's forces, while the females would be brutally savaged.
“Young friends.” The sound of his own voice startled him, yet force of conviction propelled his words forward. “As early as fourth moonset this eve our city will be under siege by the forces of Timalta. The Baron was kind enough to give me notice, which allows you and your families opportunity to escape.”
A murmur rippled throughout the little group in the conservatory. Rankine raised his voice so they could hear him continue. “Return to your families immediately. Warn them of danger outside the city, and of the necessity to evacuate. Enter the culverae well before fourth moonset if you wish to escape alive and unharmed.”
Everyone in the conservatory made a hasty exit except for Muirna, who was still seated by her synphonae. Rankine crossed over and placed his hand on her shoulder, which shuddered with suppressed rage. “Happy big-eight, Daughter.” He took a deep breath and paused, searching for words to explain what had happened.
“Why?” Green eyes flashed with indignation as she directed the full force of her gaze on her father. “On my Octday, of all days, he chooses to issue his ultimatum? I swear this day is cursed!”
Rankine swallowed. “There is more to it than you know, my dear.” A flicker of apprehension appeared in Muirna's eyes as he continued. “Brut brought a pulplet containing a proposal for political alliance, an alliance whose terms I found reprehensible.”
Muirna redirected her gaze to the top of the musical instrument. “Are there any appropriate terms for an alliance with that jabber?” Muirna snorted. “It's bad enough to have him snapping at our heels, but it may be better than being crushed into oblivion.”
Rankine gently tipped up her chin and re-established eye contact. “His proposal hinged on one major element—marriage.”
“To me?”
At Rankine's nod, Muirna retched. He chuckled soberly. “I see the idea is nearly as reprehensible to you as it is to me.” Extending a hand, he lifted her to her feet. “He gave me until fourth moonset to tender my final answer, as my immediate refusal was apparently unsatisfactory.” He swept her sumptuous attire with a cursory, albeit appreciative glance. “Since your current attire is not ideal in which to make a quick getaway, may I recommend a change of clothing before we depart?”
With a glance at her elaborate gown of inported silk brocade, Muirna dropped a small curtsy. “By all means, Governor, it shall be as you say.” She threw him a pinched smile and, with a toss of her curls, left the room.
Bannan appeared in the doorway, sidestepping Muirna as she passed. “Governor, Alastin is down. We were able to transmit a partial message, but are uncertain how much made it through before the crash. I have sent out nine volunteer messengers with self-destruct units and have three more standing by for departure. All but two are military personnel.”
“And the culverae?”
“The Rustican Guard has deployed forces to sixteen culverae entrances with orders to seal those nearest the city gates two hours prior to fourth moonset.”
“Excellent!” Although Bannan was well-trained and a capable military commander, Rankine was pleased to hear the inhabitants of Rustican had a viable escape plan in place. “Are the interior culverae entrances to be sealed one hour later?”
“They are,” Bannan replied, “and the public entrance here at The Commons is to be sealed at fourth moonset.”
Rankine placed a hand on Bannan's shoulder. “My friend, your service to me these many years has been invaluable. There is no shame in evacuation in order to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Political gain at the expense of civilian casualty never pays off.” Rankine swallowed hard, then continued with great effort. “See our people to safety, and do not wait for my daughter and I. We will follow you but be last to evacuate. Do not risk your life or the lives of your men in order to protect us. See the people to safety so they will live to see another day.”
Rankine extended his arm, and the two men grasped each other's forearms. They'd had this conversation many times, and Bannan, with resignation, departed to oversee evacuation plans. Then Rankine set off in search of his daughter.
“Happy Octday to me!” Muirna fumed, as she threw open drawers and closet doors and assembled a hasty pile of clothing on her sleepform. “Finally, Muirna, you can take your seat on the governor's council. Own a shuttle, open a business, purchase property. Or be put on the auction block for a marriage of political expediency to a madman! Better yet, let's just leave it all behind and run for our lives instead.”
“Muirna.”
“We won't allow the monster to hurt the poor little Rusticanians, no. We'll stay behind and defend them with our bare hands if we have to.”
“Muirna.”
“We'll sacrifice our lives for them, so they can live. Hopefully they can figure out new leadership when the current administration is dead.”
“MUIRNA!”
She finally looked up to see her amona, Cleia. Exasperated, she punched a button on her wall and threw herself onto the bench that appeared from its recess. “I know my father means well, Amona Cleia, but is it really so bad to question his wisdom on something that seems so—unwise?”
“Muirna, I know you mean well but--”
“I mean no disrespect to my father, but I truly question this policy. And I feel guilty for doing so, but I still can't escape this sense of dread knowing we'll be last to leave and most likely first to be overtaken.”
With an unconscious movement borne of habit, Cleia punched a toe button in the floor and perched on her stool as it rose out of the floor next to Muirna's bench. “Questioning the wisdom of your father's political position and military strategy is by no means a sign of disrespect. That you question shows you have a mind and are capable of using it.”
Muirna sat up and turned a questioning gaze on her amona.
“Yet you remain devoted to him.” With a gentle sigh, Cleia reached over and embraced her. “That you disagree without allowing it to destroy your relationship reveals the infinite degree of respect between you and your father.”
Muirna and Cleia rested in their embrace a moment longer, then Cleia gently extricated Muirna from her arms. “I must depart.” Stunned, all Muirna could do was stare at her and wait for her explanation. “Your father has ordered all household staff to evacuate to Winnowa immediately.”
Muirna drew in a shuddering breath. “Then my father and I will be last to leave. This is it.” A cold sense of dread settled in her stomach like a nugget of ceramydium. “We'll be overtaken first if anyone catches up to us.” Muirna and her amona clung to each other in a final embrace, knowing it would likely be their last.
“Disgusting.”
Kendric Udayan forced his eyes open and looked over at his seatmate on the V-Tube transit. Unaccustomed to hurtling through vacuum-pressured tubes at elevated speeds in a cylinder, he had resorted to taking a nap in hopes the time would pass more quickly. “What is it?” he asked, curious at his neighbour's reaction to whatever he was seeing.
The slender young man turned slightly toward Kendric but kept his eyes glued on the viewer. “Alastin reports an invasion of Agraia by Timalta.”
Kendric yawned. “What does that mean?” he asked, shutting his eyes again.
“You must be new here.”
Kendric opened one eye again. “Arrived planetside mere hours before boarding this shuttle.”
“Well in that case, I guess I'd better start at the beginning.” His companion grinned, revealing yellowed teeth with occasional chips in them. “Timalta and Agraia are the only regions on Fortunine that contain enough arable farmland to grow crops in any quantity.”
“So when one invades the other, both regions sustain grievous impact and the entire planet's food supply is in jeopardy.” Kendric found himself suddenly alert, the pull of vacuum forces on his equilibrium forgotten.
“Worse.”
Kendric sat upright. “What can be worse than that?”
“Timalta hasn't been growing food for several years.”
“And it's Timalta that has invaded Agraia.” Kendric could only imagine the devastation that would bring to the local economy. “So the fields in Agraia have suffered the effects of war, while Timalta remains unaltered.”
“Actually, the fields remained intact for the most part.” At Kendric's quizzical glance, his seatmate continued: “The Baron of Timalta discovered several years ago that the seeds from timgras, an earth-origin pasture grass, could be fermented and used to produce alcohol. Over time he has converted all the farmland in Timalta into timgras fields, and has been eyeing the farmland in Agraia in order to expand his production.”
“So he keeps the fields intact, but plans to convert them into timgras fields.”
“Precisely”
“You're right, that is disgusting.”
He looked fully at Kendric then. “That's not the disgusting part.” He turned back to the viewer and made a rude gesture in its general direction. “Reports on the socio-economic and political ramifications of this are sketchy at best. Instead of focusing on real news, Alastin reports juicy gossip and anything sensational they can find. For example, they briefly mentioned that every resident of Rustican managed to escape before the city was invaded, but they've spent most of the time since we've boarded this shuttle reporting on how the Baron and his personal guard caught up with a middle-aged man and a young woman. 'Rumour has it,' they say, that the young woman was brutally and repeatedly raped by the Baron and his men, while her companion was held at knifepoint and forced to watch, then the Baron and his men gave up any further pursuit, returning instead to Rustican to claim the Governor's seat for himself. Makes me wonder if the two they caught up with were the governor and his daughter.”
Kendric tasted bile. “I knew Fortunine was a rough planet, but this...”
“...is disgusting.” His seatmate clicked off the viewer, sat silently for a moment, then asked, “Do you play jabberwocky?”
Kendric smiled down at his new friend's outstretched hand to see seven oblong bones with runes painted on them. “My cousin and I used to sneak out to the guardhouse when we were boys and play with the soldiers. Haven't toe-tossed in years.”
“Can you beat a seven?” He raised the armrest between their seats to reveal an all-purpose travelgame receptacle and selected the appropriate program. Shifting in his seat, Kendric set aside politics to indulge in pleasant memories for a few hours.
Pain. Invasive and all-consuming, Muirna's awareness gradually returned to her along with vague memories. It was the pain she had fled as it overwhelmed her, seeking sanctuary in oblivion, and now that same pain had overtaken her. Or had she returned to where she left it last?
She rolled her eyes to one side and another, seeing only obsidian, then realized they were still closed. With great effort she managed to open one eye, but the other resisted all attempts otherwise. She tried her limbs next and managed to move her fingers, but arms and legs refused to cooperate. That's when she realized she was laying on her side, swaddled, and in the fetal position. She shifted her head and found her other eye would open now that the pillow under her head was no longer interfering.
“You have decided to return to us at last.” [insert description of woman and find a name for her]
Muirna blinked. “Where am I?”
“This is Winnowa.”
She looked down toward her blanket-encased body. “Why am I...”
“Sweetie, when you were brought to me, I feared you were already gone, but after half a day of broth and bedrest, the seizures began. I have no medical training, all I know is what worked with my babies, and whenever they were restless, I used to swaddle them to calm them and help them sleep. I figured it wouldn't hurt a grown woman if I did the same thing.”
Muirna's brain felt fuzzy, and it took a great deal of effort to understand anything the woman said to her. Slowly, as if it took her speech as long to respond as it took her mind to comprehend, she heard herself speaking. “You probably kept me from injuring myself further. Thank you.” Some inner part of her gasped at her sardonic tone of voice, yet on another level she was rather pleased at her self-restraint.
The woman grinned, indicating she understood and appreciated Muirna's sense of humor. “Would you like me to free you from your prison now?”
“If you would be so kind,” Muirna replied, as the muscles around her lips tilted up into a smile.
Her nurse gently helped her up into a sitting position, then proceeded to unwrap her. “Is it normal,” Muirna asked, “to feel this numb, this sluggish, this slow?” She hated the sound of her tongue tripping over itself as her brain struggled to supply the words she sought.
“Honey,” the woman replied, pulling a summerweight caftan over her head, “I have no formal medical training, so I have no good clinical answer for you. I do have plenty of experience nursing people back to health, and I can confidently say it seems quite normal for one who has slept a fortin to find her conscious awareness awakes first, and it takes time for her physical body to catch up. So if you find your brain processes at a slower speed and your body's responses are slower than normal, just give it a little time. I see nothing that tells me you can't have a full recovery.”
“I slept a full fortin?”
“You did.” She loosely wrapped a belt around Muirna's waist. “You had quite the nasty bump on your head.”
Muirna stood as the woman fastened her belt. “I don't remember hitting my head. Do you know how it happened?”
“All I know is what your rescuers were able to tell me, but I had hoped you would be able to fill in some of the details so we don't miss anything important. How much do you remember? ”
“I don't want to think about it.” The speed of Muirna's response shocked her, considering how slowly every other part of her seemed to be functioning. Without warning, a bitter taste flooded her mouth. She grabbed a sheet from the pile that had been used to swaddle her body and emptied the contents of her stomach into them—such as they were.
“It's a good thing I didn't get those cleared away yet.” The woman obviously had an endless supply of good humor. She dipped a rag into a bowl of water and used it to tenderly wash Muirna's face and hands--a tender assault, unlike the barrage of memories invading her memory.
Hands. Large, rough, and brutish, with a punishing grip on her upper arms. Fingers tearing her clothing into confetti. Foul breath in her face. A leering grin revealing rotting teeth and eyes pale, cold, and hard as the ceramydium blocks pressing into her naked flesh. Pain searing into her core repeatedly. Cruel, mocking laughter taking great delight in her every anguished cry. Biting her lip to avoid crying out, biting until it bleeds. The eyes of her father, blazing green orbs of rage, frustration, and anguish. Blood trickling from his lip, his brow, his ear, his side, raptor blade pressed to his throat while fingers dig cruelly into his head and face, forcing him to watch her degradation. Her heart aches for him as the pain in her core eases. ceramydium eyes replaced with chocolate, holding a mixed expression of regret and resignation. Pressure building in her core, no longer pain but now something nearing pleasure, then with an extreme arc, her body explodes from within and pain radiates through her head. Nothing.
“I was--” words failed her, and again she availed herself of the discarded sheets. The other woman wiped her face once again then drew her into a gentle embrace, tenderly stroking her hair.
“Hush now,” she said, rubbing her back in an unhurried circular motion. “There is no hurry. Take your time and regain your equilibrium first.”
“I feel so--violated.”
“And well you should, for you have been violated.” She stood, crossed to the piece of furniture to retrieve a covered bowl, and brought it to Muirna in her bed. “Sweetie, my heart breaks for you and the man who did this to you should suffer endlessly, but for that to happen you need to eat and build up your strength.”
“Men.” Muirna reached for the bowl.
The bowl paused in midair, just out of Muirna's reach. “Men?”
Muirna leaned over a few inches further and plucked the bowl from her quivering fingers. “There were more than one.” She picked up the crusty roll from its slot on the edge of the bowl, tore off a piece, and scooped it in to soak up some broth. “I think it might help my stomach to put some actual food into it. What do you think?”
“I think we need to leave as soon as she can travel.” Rankine paused to inhale, surprised that it should still require so much effort to breathe when a full fortin had passed since his initial injury.
Bannan shuffle-stepped sideways as Reave entered the room with a shallow bowl filled with steaming liquid. “I question the wisdom in that, Sire,” Bannan replied as concern etched deeper creases between his eyebrows. “Although Muirna awoke nearly 20 hours ago and shows remarkable signs of improvement, your injuries leave much cause for concern.”
“Gentlemen, I appreciate your concern.” Rankine resigned himself to Reave's administrations as he placed the bowl on a tray under his chin and draped a towel around his neck. “As you can see, I have received excellent care here in Winnowa, but we do not have the medical services here that can be found elsewhere on this planet.” He lifted the towel up off his neck and onto the crown of his head. “If I am to survive these injuries, I must travel to where those services are. And if we travel alone, we remain incognito.” The last few words he spoke became slightly muffled as Rankine lowered the towel down over his face to reach the far edge of the bowl and proceeded to inhale deeply.
Rankine could hear Bannan shifting his feet and he smiled, imagining his already-erect posture straightening slightly as he cleared his throat and swallowed, ostensibly searching for a way to politely contradict him. Bannan, always political.
(If you wish to follow my progress and track my word count, feel free to wander on over here.)
(If you wish to follow my progress and track my word count, feel free to wander on over here.)
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