Lee Shores

by Rachel Ford

  She turned the pair of us around, so my back was to the bed, and guided me the last few steps over. Then she laid me down, and, hovering above me, kissed me again. My skin screamed as she traced her fingers in a line from my neck to my stomach, and my body burned with anticipation. She followed her fingers with kisses: long, slow kisses. “Oh Maggie,” I murmured breathlessly. “You’re killing me.”

  She grinned up at me. “Patience. I want to savor every moment of this.”

  She did, and so did I – every agonizingly exquisite moment: every touch, every kiss, every sensation we’d been denied these last days.

  And when we’d both explored and re-explored our need for one another, I fell asleep in her arms.

  I woke a few hours later, roused, I think, by hunger pains. It was mid-afternoon already. Maggie was awake, and smiled as I blinked into the midday sunlight. “I was wondering when you were going to wake up, sleepyhead.”

  I yawned. “I’m so damned tired lately.”

  “That’s the stress.”

  I nodded. “You didn’t have to wait, Mags.”

  She snorted. “And leave my beautiful bride-to-be alone in our bed?” She leaned down to kiss me. “Especially after this morning? It was almost worth being thrown in jail, if that’s what was waiting at the end.”

  I grinned, feeling my cheeks burn a little. “You hush your mouth, beautiful.”

  “We both know that’ll never happen,” she shrugged, adding with a wicked grin, “and since when are you so critical of what I do with my mouth, anyway?”

  I swatted her arm playfully. “Stop that, dammit. I’m starving. I want to go downstairs and get some breakfast. Not be stuck up here making love to you because you’re too damned irresistible to leave.”

  Maggie snuggled closer. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  “No,” I said. “We wouldn’t.” As if to emphasize the point, my stomach growled audibly – and loudly.

  We both laughed, and she nodded. “Alright. We better get some food. And we should talk to the family for a while. But then, let’s go to bed early.”

  “I think that’s a good idea, Magdalene Landon.” I squeezed her to me, kissing her tenderly. “A damned good idea.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Our third day of freedom brought us back to reality in unequivocal terms. It was about midway through breakfast. We’d joined the family this time and were discussing our trip to the prison. It was visiting day, and as loath as I was to step foot in that place again, for Frank’s sake I would, of course, go.

  “The warden’ll be thrilled to see us back, I’m sure,” Maggie offered wryly.

  I was about to agree when the door to the breakfast room opened, and a very frazzled servant bobbed his head apologetically. “Forgive me for the interruption, ma’am. But the Brityas are here, in a state of some distress.”

  This was an understatement. They waited in a sitting room, and we all burst in of one volition. Mia arn britya was trembling, her cheeks streaked with tears, and her husband’s pallor had grown positively waxy. They sat, his arm around her, in quiet conversation.

  “My gods,” R’ia said as we entered. “What’s happened?”

  The couple started at our arrival, and as Mia turned, I saw what I could not before: a great red gash running down the side of her head.

  We all saw it at about the same moment, because a collective gasp rose from all of us. Ger crossed the distance to his mother in great strides, kneeling beside her. “Mother? Who did this? What happened?”

  F’riya was not far behind him. Nor, for that matter, were any of us. They were peppered in questions, and Mia seemed too uncomposed to answer. Ger held his mother, and Gri spoke. “We’d gone to Kriar. We thought we’d get some breakfast. And plum cake. I’ve had a hankering for plum cake.” He paused, seeming lost to his own thoughts.

  He was, I thought, still dazed by whatever had occurred. I leaned over to F’rok, whispering, “Should we get them anything?”

  He nodded. “Sir,” he interrupted, “Ma’am, can we offer you anything?”

  R’ia stirred now. “Oh yes. I’m so sorry. You need a brandy.” The Brityas moved to protest, but she brushed it aside. “I know it’s early, but it will settle your nerves. And I think you need that.”

  They didn’t argue further, and R’ia poured them each a glass. That seemed to help. Within a few sips, a little color came back to Gri’s cheeks, and Mia’s trembling slowed. He continued with his story. “We were heading to Mother Ikyel’s. We thought if we got there early enough, we might find a table for breakfast. Some…some boys saw us. They recognized us somehow. From the casts, I suppose. They started calling us…well, calling us murderers and…so many things. I won’t repeat them in your house, R’ia. But the things they said? Awful.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “And how were they linked to you?” F’riya wondered, perplexed lines creasing her brow. “Me or maybe even Ger, I could understand. But how would they know who you were?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “One of the boys said something about the truth being all over the news,” Mia put in. “That we’d joined ourselves to murderers and degenerates and human-lovers.”

  Maggie and I exchanged glances. That was ominous. “Was there anything on the news last night? Or this morning?”

  “I don’t know,” R’ia admitted. “I’ve tried to avoid it. What they say – it’s infuriating.”

  “But how did you end up bleeding, Mother?” Ger persisted, drawing us back to the more pressing issue.

  “One of the boys started throwing stones at us. And one of them hit me.”

  “My gods,” Dre hissed. “Little savages.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “No. We…we didn’t know what to do,” Gri admitted. “We went back to the car and came straight here.”

  The Inkaya matriarch pulled up a seat beside them, nodding. “Alright. Well, first things first, we need to get a constable down here to take your statements. And in the meantime, we need to figure out what the hell is being said.” She frowned. “Pardon me. I mean, what is being said.”

  This proved easier to do than getting a constable. R’ia was vaguely promised that someone would be down as soon as they could spare anyone. No ETA could be given, and, no, it wouldn’t make more sense to come in. A constable would be sent when a constable was free.

  As for finding out what was going on, that was as easy as flipping on the casts. If there was any other news happening in the entire Kudarian system, you wouldn’t have known it from viewing the morning casts.

  On the contrary, they were all buzzing with the murder. But, more specifically, the sordid life of the accused killer, F’er ark inkaya.

  We weren’t two horrified minutes into the breaking news coverage when a professionally attired young woman, sporting a deeply troubled expression, appeared to inform viewers, “In this morning’s news segment, we reported some of what sources with inside information had to say about the suspect at the heart of this investigation, F’er ark inkaya. We now have more details about the young man that speak to a long and really disturbing history of deceptions and deviances.”

  The screen panned to a discussion panel of several casters, who each had similarly severe expressions plastered on their faces. She continued, “You’ll remember that these were facts corroborated by multiple sources, including members of his own family. And they demonstrated a pattern that extended beyond the accused himself, to multiple members of his immediate family, including his brother and sister.”

  “We’re talking secret marriages, fake marriages, hidden pregnancies, homosexual encounters, human orgies,” an austere middle-aged man put in.

  The young woman nodded solemnly. “We sat down this morning with the accused’s cousin, F’vir ark inkaya, who was witness to some of the more appalling revelations.”

  “Viewer discretion advised,” the male caster added. “Some of this will s
hock even the most committed hedonist.”

  The interview itself, I think, didn’t shock anyone as much as the fact that F’vir had agreed to it. Agreed, and relished every moment of attention, every opportunity to traffic in inuendoes and slander. He sneered through the telling of F’riya and Ger’s pregnancy and marriage, as if the former had been the only reason for the latter – and something planned by Ger. “It’s easy enough, if a man doesn’t want to be a father, to make sure it doesn’t happen. But, then, a dying clan might think it clever to attach themselves to one of the oldest families in the area. It’s a tale as old as time, right?”

  “I suppose they were surprised, once they found out what that actually entailed?” the caster asked.

  He responded in spades to her sweetly innocent, entirely leading query. “Surprised? Horrified, I’d think. It’s one thing to be mercenary, and another to find yourself stuck in…well, everything that branch of the family has going on.”

  “So it didn’t pan out like they hoped?”

  “I would think not.”

  He was convinced, or at least he tried to convince the public, that Frank, Maggie and I were engaged in some kind of poly-triad relationship. He seemed equally scandalized, and a little tantalized, by the notion of multiple partners and human partners. But he was positively gleeful as he discussed F’rok, relishing every opportunity to drop homophobic moralizing.

  And he had plenty to say about R’ia and Gri’s so-called permissive attitudes. “I love my aunt and uncle, of course. But I think, at some point, you have to ask the hard questions: when every child turns out to be a liar, a whoremonger, and-or a homosexual, it can’t just be coincidence, right?”

  It was a disaster of an interview that left us all shell-shocked. F’rok seemed to take it less personally than anyone, focusing on the strategic madness behind it. “How could he think that was a good idea? He’s still an Inkaya.”

  R’ia and Gri snorted at the same time. “Over my dead body.”

  “He may have got himself exiled, but he still carries the family name. It doesn’t make sense. He had to realize that he was tarnishing himself as much as anyone with that interview.”

  “There’s a human saying,” Maggie offered, “about cutting off your nose to spite your face that seems apropos.”

  “He was so pissed off,” I said, following her line of thinking, “that he didn’t think about what happens to him from there. He just wanted revenge?”

  “Well he got that,” F’riya said. “He’s ruined our family. He’s just poisoned every juror on the planet against poor F’er.”

  “There’s going to be a murderer in this family, all right,” Gri steamed. “And it’s going to be me, because I’m going to choke the last breath out of that miserable son-of-a-bitch with my bare hands.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  F’vir’s interview wasn’t the last time the Brityas came up on the morning newscasts, either. The ten o’ clock news ran their pictures, with the oddest kind of commentary: a story about what a non-story they were. “Little is actually known about the current House Britya, beyond their involvement with the now notorious Inkaya family,” might have been the most unaware self-indictment of their own coverage possible. But it was conveyed with a breathless interest, as if it was actually telling – of something, in some way.

  It was the interview with a puffy-cheeked, red-eyed Kri ark nikya, though, that was the most damaging piece I saw that morning. With a microphone pressed into his face, he turned a devastated gaze to the interviewer. “I’ve lost my entire family. My wife is gone. My daughter is gone. My son is still in the hospital, and who knows if I’ll ever see him again.” His voice trembled, and for a moment he seemed a breath away from breaking down. “I can’t believe that monster took her away from me. My little girl. My poor, poor little girl. I’m glad Nefi went first. It would have killed her all over again. My poor Nefi. My poor, poor Kia.”

  It was painful to watch, and my heart bled for him. I didn’t – couldn’t – blame him for hating Frank. As far as he knew, Frank had been the one to murder his daughter and maybe his son too. How could he not hate him?

  How, for that matter, could anyone who saw the interview and the coverage before it not hate Frank?

  As the day progressed, my anxiety grew. The more I saw, the more I thought of Kia lying dead, of Kor lying on his deathbed, and the more I feared. Even if the authorities could not pin this crime on Mags and me, it would be an easy enough sell to pin it on Frank. Hell, most of Kudar already seemed to think he was the killer. Those earnest journalists certainly did. The kids who had attacked Mia believed it.

  Even Rita Mallone’s voice was troubled when she called that afternoon. There had been no legal developments in the case, but she cautioned us to stay out of sight and to avoid the city if possible. “Let this blow over. That cousin of your friend’s, he’s just started a shitstorm. Believe me, you do not want to be caught in the middle of it.”

  There would be no visits to Frank, either – not from us, or anyone, on the warden’s orders. “Elevated risk, now that this has picked up in the news,” he’d told Mallone. “For his own protection.”

  “It’s a bunch of bullshit,” she said. “But there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s his call.”

  At R’ia’s urging, the Brityas agreed to spend a few days with us. “Just until things calm down. It’ll be safer if you’re not all alone out there.” She called a doctor, too, who stitched the wound.

  “Well,” Mia said with a forced smile, “it’ll leave a handsome battle scar, I suppose.”

  F’riya hugged her. “That’s right. Our little one will know he comes from warrior stock, right?”

  The Inkayas did their best to lift the grim mood of our little band. There seemed something ingrained in the Kudarian psyche that, no matter how bad things looked, a host and hostess were still supposed to do their damnedest to keep up their guests’ spirits. Despite the fact that their eldest son and heir sat in a prison accused of a murder he didn’t commit; they mustered the strength to insist on a proper dinner and a game of chips afterward. They mustered the strength to inquire after the banalities of normal life, as if they were interested in how the Brityas’ crops were coming in, or if F’rok had made any progress on his thesis, or if Maggie and I wanted to see the back orchards some time.

  Their efforts paid off, though. We laughed a little more, and hurt less, than we would have otherwise. By time we got to bed, I’d almost convinced myself that we only had to wait out the news cycle.

  Things’ll be better soon. It’ll be better tomorrow.

  It wasn’t. We woke to news that J’kar’s family home in Kriar had been vandalized overnight. Someone had put a rock through one of the carriage house windows – but not before spray painting homophobic slurs on the wall outside the estate. F’rok was a bundle of nerves all morning. He would, I think, have gone to J’kar straightaway, but the other man advised against it.

  “He says I should wait until the reporters are gone. If they see me there, they’ll probably never leave.”

  “It’s the best thing you can do, F’rok,” his father cautioned. “In the circumstance.”

  And the dominoes kept falling. By midmorning, R’ia received a call from High Priest Akura, informing her that, in light of the family’s indiscretions, “it would be in everyone’s best interests if you found another temple.”

  I think we all cringed when a call came in to my communicator shortly after noon. “Hell. What now?” Maggie murmured.

  “Hello?” I was sure my tone conveyed something of the apprehension I was feeling.

  But it changed to relief – absolute, unadulterated relief – when Sydney’s tones came on the line. “Katherine?”

  “Syd! Oh, thank God.”

  If the greeting confused him, he didn’t let on. “Good afternoon. I hope I am not interrupting?”

  “No, not at all. What’s up?”

  “I wanted to inform you that the Black Flag
is en route to Kudar now. We anticipate arriving within the week.”

  “It is? We?”

  “Yes. And I mean, the crew and I.”

  “The crew?” We weren’t even due back to our rendezvous yet, much less back onboard. “You have the crew onboard?”

  “Of course. I recalled them as soon as I could. Mister David was the most difficult to find, but I did. And now we are headed back to Kudar, to wait until you are ready to leave with us. I expect you will not want to stay any longer than necessary?”

  “No,” I admitted, “I won’t. But the thing is, Syd, they’ve grounded us. We’re confined to Kriar for as long as it takes them to decide if they’re going to charge us. It could be months.”

  “Understood.”

  “Well…the crew might not want to wait around.”

  “I believe they are – as the saying goes – in this for the long haul, Katherine.”

  I laughed, as much from relief at the prospect of seeing everyone as anything else. “I hope you’re right, Syd. And thanks – I appreciate you doing this.”

  “Of course.”

  “So…you actually managed to get Dave back, eh?”

  A kind of harrumph sounded on the line, and a moment later the cook’s voice came on. “What the hell kind of question is that, Kay?”

  I hadn’t realized that Dave had been there. Not that I’d said anything I didn’t want him to hear, but still, it would have been nice to know he was there listening anyway. I’d have to talk to Syd about private communique etiquette, I supposed. “Hey Dave.”

  “‘Hey’ nothing. What’d you mean by that?”

  “Geez, nothing sinister. Just that we couldn’t get ahold of you so I wasn’t sure we’d ever hear from you again.”

  He snorted. “You people might not give a shit about members of this crew, but that doesn’t mean I don’t. Of course I came back when I heard what was going on. I’m not a fool, but I do stand with my friends. Even you people.”