“I agree, but there are times you make it so easy. I promise I will not antagonize you if you don’t make fun of me.” Hope rested her hand on his chest. She took a drink from the bottle and smiled down at him. An evil grin cracked the corners of her mouth.
Meyers watched her face, concerned at the turn of events. “So how do we proceed?” He closed his eyes to stop the garden from spinning around him. The drink slowed his wits. He wanted to plot and scheme but seemed addled.
His contemplation was interrupted by a pair of soft lips, first brushing against his before kissing him with a hunger he never experienced. He didn’t fight the kiss, in fact, he locked lips with Hope, and his tongue forced its way into her mouth. He was happily surprised when he tasted the prickly pitch that trickled from Hope’s mouth into his. Despite his revulsion to his half-sister, at this moment he found himself strangely attracted to her. Even more so when he felt her hand rest upon his thigh just below the edge of his tunic. This wasn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon. However, it wasn’t meant to last forever, nothing lasts forever. Hope pulled away from the kiss just as it became interesting.
He opened his eyes to see Hope’s face so close, he had a hard time focusing. She whispered to him, “We must dispose of Hayline before we make a move against our father. This is a dangerous game we are playing. Don’t speak to anyone about this, especially your mother.”
Meyers wanted to say something astute, but his alcohol-flooded brain lost most of its blood flow to another portion of his body.
Hope sat upright. “I want to show you something I’ve been practicing for years to do.” She took the pitch bottle and rested it on Meyers’s belly. Her face blocked the long neck of the bottle. “Many years ago, I heard a pair of women courtiers speaking about this. I’ve always wanted to try it but never had a man to do it with.”
She moved her head and wrapped her lips around the top of the bottle and then lowered her mouth down around the neck deeper than Meyers thought possible. She continued to move up and down on the bottle in a rhythmic fashion.
Meyers had no way of hiding his arousal. Hope’s hand slipped up his thigh until she reached his erection. She latched on like a drowning man would grip a boat hook. He fought hard not to jerk at the strength of her grip. He rested his head back on the blanket and closed his eyes.
It was time to stop worrying about familial attachments and just go with the flow. It would turn out to be an enjoyable afternoon after all.
<=OO=>
The couple never noticed the petite woman in the white hooded robe that stalked them to their secret place and now stood safely on the other side of the hedge, watching them consummate their wedding before they were engaged.
Chapter 6, Captain Dusty:
Melinda ran through the grain field, she grew too mature to be playing hide and find with her younger brother. But her mother sent her outside to occupy him. She knew there would be trouble if he was found tied to one of the fruit trees. Instead, she devised a game where her younger brother, Jorge, would go hide, and Melinda would need to find him. She just didn’t have any intentions of looking. Once he ran toward the barn to hide, she lit off in the opposite direction, into the nearest field of grain. The fields represented work to the children, not a place to play.
She ran her hands through the grain heads. Just by the feel, she understood they had at least two weeks until harvest. At which time they would need to work sunrise to sunset to bring in the grain and get it separated, ready to sell. In a good year, they ran two crops in a season. She had seen eleven seasons. At the end of this, it would be her twelfth.
Her older brothers and sisters were looking for spouses from the nearby farms. Melinda wanted to travel to Zar and study. She’d heard there were places there simply to learn new things. Her mother made sure all the children could at least read and write. But Melinda had dreams, big dreams. She would do whatever needed to be done to see them fulfilled. She wanted to be free to explore the world.
The family farm wasn’t that massive, but it took everything her family could do to keep it up. In their typical farmhouse lived three surviving grandparents. They slept in a room downstairs, their bodies no longer able to climb the ladder to the loft. Her mother and father had a room upstairs. On the other side of the ladder lay a room for the kids: her eight brothers and sisters and herself, nine of them all together. They generally slept in one bed, in a pile like a bunch of rodents fighting for the covers. They kept each other warm on the cool nights. Her baby brother, number ten, slept in the room with her parents.
In the spring, Melinda would climb out onto the roof and sleep under the stars. She looked at the patterns and tried to tell stories to explain what it all meant.
From her rooftop perch, she watched the barn in which her Uncle Benny lived. Her mother said he wasn’t quite right in the head. He liked the animals more than he liked people. He stayed in the barn and took care of all the beasts. Her father always claimed that he was as strong as any ox.
Every year, the family cleared more trees, allowing for more grain to be planted. This way the farm always produced more than they needed. They left a few trees in the fields to give shade for rest during their long workdays. The leftover grain would be feed for the few pigs they kept or sold for gold and used to buy things they couldn’t make themselves. Once the fields were planted, it became an idyllic life until harvest time, when all the hells would break loose. If time allowed, another crop would be sown and all repeated until too late in the season, and the cold winds came. At which time, everyone rested and tried to survive the cold months.
Melinda found one of those trees. The grain always grew shorter in the shade and barely at all up next to the trunk. She found it almost as relaxing as her rooftop perch. The wind blew off the crack and made the grain sound like bacon frying. She loved bacon.
As she sat there thinking of breakfast, she heard a strange noise coming from the house. She rose to her knees and heard women’s screams mixing with the sound of frying bacon. The family’s home sat down the hill from where she hid. She plainly saw men on horses around her home. It looked like trouble. Horses were a rare commodity on her shard. Oxen were much better for pulling a plow or a wagon. As far as Melinda was concerned, horses were for the rich and idle who had time to ride for pleasure—or war.
Melinda was a smart girl, but she was uneducated when it came to combat, or she would’ve known there was nothing she could do to help her family; their lot had been cast. However, to her, family came first, and she started running through the fields toward her home. She had only made a quarter of the distance when she heard horses galloping behind her over the wind in the grain. She turned to see who gave chase but was lifted off the ground by her long tunic before she found out. Thrown over the saddle, landing on the horn, her small frame had the wind knocked out of it.
The screams grew louder, but she couldn’t see anything but grain passing below her as she bounced over the saddle, traveling at an incredible speed. The fields changed to the flat dirt area that surrounded the farmhouse and outbuildings. The pace of the horse slowed, and she felt her head drop as her feet were flipped, and she flew off the saddle, landing on her back, knocking the wind from her again, stunning her. Stars clouded her vision from the rough landing, but she still tried to stand, though she found it hard to breathe.
Focused on the fight for breath, she barely heard a gruff man’s voice say, “Captain Dusty, I caught this one. I claim it as mine, for a wife.”
Melinda was unsure who the gruff man spoke to, as her head swam and she sat in the dirt surrounded by men on horseback.
From behind, she heard another man’s voice, much softer, some might say even kind. “She’s barely old enough to bleed. Are you sure you want that child as your wife?”
Wife? Melinda didn’t know what happened, couldn’t find her family, but she didn’t like the sound of the conversation being held over her.
The gruff voice spoke again, “I like ‘em young.”
She located the man behind the friendly voice she assumed was Captain Dusty. He must be the most handsome man she’d ever seen in her short life. A few might even call him beatific. He spoke again, “Very well speak to the quartermaster and have her deducted from your account. She’s yours.”
Melinda wasn’t sure what she thought, but she might have just been married. Before she reacted, she heard a loud scream coming from the house.
Her mother screamed bloody murder as two men carried her out. She had latched on to her youngest brother, still much too young to walk. Her mother screamed one coherent word, “RUN!”
Melinda watched in horror as a third man walked up and tore her baby brother from her mother’s arms. He grabbed the infant by the legs and slammed him against the wall of the house. Her mother collapsed in a heap of inconsolable sobs.
In a state of shock, Melinda should’ve run to her mother’s side, but her husband’s horse separated them. Still trying to think what to do, she heard another sound, this time coming from the barn. One of the slavers flew from the loft and landed in a broken mound on the hard-packed earth. It must be her uncle. He was the only one who lived in the barn.
Inaudible voices grew louder as the soldiers drew weapons and advanced on the building and the sound of fighting that came from inside. She glanced around and saw everyone’s attention focused on the barn and the combat. To her side lay an opening. Her one chance at escape and freedom lay only thirty feet away. Even though dizzy from hitting the ground so hard, she made the only decision possible. With every ounce of strength that remained, she stood and sprinted for safety.
“Hey, stop her! Ma bride is getting away.” She recognized the voice of her husband as she raced.
Other voices called out as she passed her uncle, armed with a scythe, swinging it with all his might at the circling attackers, but her mind focused on one thing.
“Look at her run.”
“Bet ya she doesn’t make it.”
“Hey, where you goin’?”
“Nowhere to run ta!”
She heard her Uncle Benny shout, “RUN!” All the voices mixed to create a sick and twisted cheering section. She could hear the clatter of the horse with her husband closing quickly.
“Bitch, stop or I’ll break your ankles!” her husband called from behind.
The voice motivated her even more, and she dove for the safety—of the cliff. She shouted as she fell through the air, “DURRA’AH, SAVE ME!”
The three-hundred-foot drop didn’t last nearly as long as Melinda hoped. Not nearly long enough for Durra’ah to save her from the fall. That day, her promising life was cut short by the rocks and surf at the bottom.
<=OO=>
Captain Dusty sat on his horse as the young girl dove over the cliff to her death. It was such a waste; she would have caught a pretty penny from the slavers. He couldn’t blame her. The beast of a man named Pip had gained the well-deserved nickname Pigpen. What parent would call their boy Pip and not expect him to turn out a tad deranged?
“I’m not payin’ for that bitch. She went and dove off the cliff.” Pigpen charged back to where Dusty sat on his steed, supervising the collection of the cargo. He preferred that term to catching slaves.
“I don’t think you understand, Pigpen.” He loved using that name to describe the man. He was not worth the trouble he gave him. Sooner or later, Dusty knew he would need to deal with this thorn in his ass. “I gave you claim to her, the quartermaster witnessed it. Many of the crew heard me do it. I can’t help it if you lost your new toy. It wouldn’t be fair to the crew to let you out of your debt now, would it? Quartermaster, what would the crew do?” He smiled wide. He always took pride in his teeth, he worked so hard to keep them as white as possible.
“It would be chaos, sir. If they didn’t mutiny outright, they would murder Pigpen in his sleep to recoup the loss.” The quartermaster sat at his side astride his own horse. His concentration focused more with the successful capture of the mountain of a man fighting his way around the barn.
Dusty knew the fighting man would go a long way to cover the costs of the lost girl. The dead baby was worthless as a slave—better the crew dealt with it now rather than later when someone became attached to it. “So, Pigpen, you still want to complain that I am saving your life?”
Pigpen gave a low growl, “No, Captain.”
Dusty knew Pigpen just lost a few months’ pay on that girl. He wasn’t completely heartless. “I understand the loss of the girl is hard, and I am not inhuman. There are still three in the house that are too old to sell. You have first crack at any you want. Go take care of your business now before the others get to them.”
Pigpen ran towards the house, untying his pants. “They are on the first floor in the back,” Dusty shouted as he receded.
“You know he will try to kill you one day.” The quartermaster spoke softly, his attention on the man as the catchpole secured around the giant’s neck.
Dusty stared at the man next to him and answered, “Mister Reed, we all die one day. I would be surprised if all of you aren’t plotting to kill me, as it is.”
“Aye, Captain that we do. Die… not think of killing you.” Mister Reed did something rare for a pirate: he blushed.
Dusty laughed at catching his friend off guard. “But not everyone gets to really live, now do they?” Dusty smiled over the last few words and shouted his orders. “All right, you lay-a-bouts, let’s finish collecting the cargo. Kill any too old or young to sell, and set flame to the buildings. I want the load handed over to the other ship and off our hands yesterday. We’ve overstayed our welcome on this shard.”
“Captain,” Mister Reed said softly, “remember you just sent Pigpen in to rape the grannies.”
“Did I now? What a shame for him. I hope he is quick about it. Finish this up, will you, Reed.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Dusty rode off as the temporarily caged cargo wagons rolled up, nearly full. This was a good haul. He hated playing cat and mouse with the city-states, but the best places to find cargo were still the larger islands under the protection of the impotent city-states like Zar. Their partners paid extra for female citizens of Zar or their allies, and Dusty always looked for the quickest, easiest gold he could find. It was a pity about the young girl. She was the right aged female to collect a premium. Someone currently paid extra for women thirty years and younger, the market for them presently red-hot.
Pigpen’s screams echoed from the burning homestead, mixed in with the old people still stashed in the back of the house. Dusty muttered to himself, “I guess he wasn’t fast enough.”
Chapter 7, The Spy:
The room was dark, and the soft sheets radiated warmth from a body that lay next to him. The Spy, when he finally roused enough to come to the realization of where he lay, couldn’t remember how he got there. He recalled the attack on the lift, and he remembered the woman whose room he ended up in, but between escaping the platform and waking was mostly a blur of stumbling through the streets. His body ached, as if he had thousands of cuts, from head to toe. He would not be far off.
Fear gripped him. The consideration that the blast was only the first move in a coup attempt his concern. Someone worked hard to overthrow the Villas’ rule, and he grew confident they would not stop until successful or dead. Only a handful of people in the city knew his intentions. If they had been captured and tortured, his status might be compromised.
Even if Brett was a festering asshole, he surely made people money, and gold was a larger motivator than revenge ever would be. If Zorra or Della were captured, how long might he realistically expect them to resist torture? His guess would be minutes or seconds rather than hours or days. If he had returned to his rooms, he might have already been captured. The city might be crawling with fighters searching him out.
“I can tell you’re awake. You’re breathing has changed.” Six spoke in a subdued voice. He could tell it was from weariness.
“
Is the city safe?” he whispered back, not sure what to ask to not give himself away.
“As safe as ever. Now go back to sleep before I knock your ass out.” Not the bedside manner he expected, but she was a whore not a nurse or a Priestess of Durra’ah. If he hadn’t been so damned sore, he might have rolled her over to help take his mind off the attack, but where the spirit was willing, the body came up short or soft, literally.
<=OO=>
Morning came, and he wasn’t rousted out of bed at spear and sword point. That was a good sign. The discovery that his clothes and moneybag were gone came shortly after rolling out of bed. He limped through the rays of dappled sunlight and looked out the back window, the slatted shades still down. It gave him an excellent opportunity to watch outside without being seen himself.
Not that he needed to worry much. Behind the building lay a garbage pit, where those that were poorer than the poor would eke out a living digging in the garbage thrown out by the penniless. Stone-strapped, they were called. They were the little talked about people, below the lowest rung of Zar. Mostly those that could not find or hold a job, for whatever reason. Many orphaned children and other destitute with no way to afford a home in the poorest section of the city that literally looked down on them from the cliff above.
If someone ever organized the poor and the enslaved, all the armies in the lands would not be able to stop them. He was positive thoughts like that kept the leaders of the shards lying awake at night. The man knew it did him.
A soft pair of hands ran over his back, avoiding the many cuts on the front of his body. “You shouldn’t be up; your body needs more time to heal.” Six’s soft voice flowed over his ears.
“I know, but something is happening to your city, and I am not sure what. I need you to go out and see if the Villas are still in power and any information you can about the blast yesterday.” He held her hands at bay as they reached for his crotch. Amazed his man sack took no damage in the blast, he realized looking at the cuts on the back of his hands that he must have covered his package out of reflex.
Fractured Loyalties Page 5
