Fractured (Lisen of Solsta Book 1)

by D. Hart St. Martin

  “The captain, too,” Lisen said, turning in her chair to keep Jozan in her line of sight.

  “Yes, the captain is losing his patience, isn’t he?” Jozan said with a chuckle.

  “All you have to do is ask one little question.”

  “You want to know the truth?”

  Lisen nodded, her brain a little swirly when her head moved. “Sure.”

  “I can’t remember the damn password. He changes it every day, and I haven’t been able to remember it since our second day here.” She shrugged. “So even if I asked, I wouldn’t know if the answer was right.”

  Lisen began to laugh. Jozan was right. It was ridiculous to even try following all the rules; the captain had too many of them. But you had to try. Too much at stake not to. Lisen did try, while still admiring, perhaps madly, Jozan’s take on the thing—ignore the rules, and they might go away.

  “He’s the only one who cares,” Jozan continued as she returned to the table and plopped back down.

  “I care,” Lisen said. It was her life in the balance. Even so, there were other things she cared about more. Like, what were her parents—the Holts—doing right now? Had Betsy already found a new best friend? She sniffed back tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Jozan replied. “I do, too, actually.”

  “He’s only trying to keep me safe, keep us safe.”

  “I know. And he’s doing it the only way he knows how. He’s an Emperi guard, after all.”

  For a moment, there was silence, and the two young women just stared at one another.

  “Yeah,” Lisen finally said. “But does he have to be so…so…oh, I don’t know…obsessed about it?”

  They both laughed at that.

  “Nalin would hate me for saying this,” Jozan commented, “but the two of them are very much alike. Probably why Nal put the captain in charge of our little adventure.”

  “He was backed into a corner, seems to me. Not a choice at all, but a necessity.”

  “It’s what works best with him. He’ll take forever making up his mind, given the time. In that, he and the captain do differ.”

  “There is no decision save Captain Rosarel’s decision,” Lisen said, sitting up very straight and imitating the captain’s sometimes strident tone, but she couldn’t sustain his severity and collapsed into giggles. She felt free and comfortable. Inebriation is lovely, she decided.

  “I think he has a pole up his back, he’s so rigid,” Jozan said.

  “You could indulge him a bit.”

  “I could,” Jozan replied, “if I thought it would do any good, but then he’d just come up with more rules, and then where would I be?” She raised her mug in a mock toast and then downed what remained within it. “Better to limit his omnipotence.”

  They lapsed into a prolonged silence which Jozan eventually broke by asking, “What was it like in the haven?”

  Lisen leaned in towards the heir, all inhibition drowned in wine, and whispered, “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Of course,” Jozan replied cavalierly, pulling back in her chair and raising her mug as though it were a sword. Her gesture reminded Lisen of a line from a book. “All for one and one for all!”

  “I haven’t even been in the haven for the last seven years,” Lisen whispered.

  Jozan leaned in again, nearly nose to nose with Lisen, eyes wide. “Where were you?”

  “You know how I said your life must have been less complicated than mine?”

  “Yeah.”

  It occurred to Lisen that what she was about to say was utterly unbelievable, but she was in it now. “Well, I…I was…enchanted to another world.” She took a deep breath. “There. I’ve said it.”

  “You said it,” Jozan replied, “but what did you say? What does that mean, ‘enchanted to another world’?”

  “Okay, I don’t understand it all, but when I was ten, Hermit Eloise decided I needed to be hidden away. She gave one reason to everyone else, even to me then, but…well, that’s another story. Anyway, she got Titus involved, and after he withdrew my memories of this world into his mind for safe keeping, Eloise magically transported me to this other world called Earth.”

  “Urth?”

  “Close enough,” Lisen replied.

  “But why?” Jozan asked.

  “It was complicated. Something about the necropath at Elsin’s…at my father’s passing learning too much. Eloise was afraid my father might have…well….”

  “Inadvertently passed information on?” Jozan filled in. “I get it. But what about this urth?”

  The wine had invited Lisen to open the door, and now there would be no closing it. “It’s very different there. Very different.” She drifted off, remembering, then shook her head to get back to Jozan. “The biggest difference is that men are in charge, have been for ages and ages.” Lisen took a big swig of wine and passed her empty mug back to Jozan who refilled it for her and handed it back. “Yup, they pretty much run everything.” She paused and took another swig of wine. “Well, not as much now as they used to, but they’re still basically in charge. Not like here at all.”

  “So, do you miss it?” Jozan asked.

  “Not that part. But I do miss my friends. And my parents…er…guardians more like, I guess. And I hate to admit it, but I miss all the tech stuff.”

  “Teck stuff?”

  Lisen sighed. “They have machines that take you places, that fly places, far-away places, really fast. You can talk to people miles and miles away as though they’re in the same room. You can write a letter, and the other person gets it immediately.”

  Jozan’s eyes had grown wide. “Now I know this is a story.”

  “I can’t make this stuff up,” Lisen said, translating an Earthly cliché. “And all these…things…these wonderful things that make life so much faster and maybe easier…these things that I miss? Well, you would think that as much as I miss them, I’d want them to be here, too, but I don’t. Because there is something here that people on Earth don’t have, something more precious than all of that metal and plastic stuff.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “People. People who talk face to face instead of on machines separated by hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles. People who don’t separate men’s work from women’s work and automatically assume that women’s work is worth less than men’s. That’s unthinkable here, so there’s no way you’ll understand it. But I’ve been watching how people relate to one another here, and I’ve been remembering my first ten years here. There are different classes—like, Captain Rosarel may be ‘in charge’ now, but you and I both outrank him. And yet, nobody assumes my brother is more suitable for the role of ruler than I am based on his being a guy. That’s just plain remarkable to a girl from the Valley.” Lisen clapped her hand over her mouth to shut herself up. Then, she dropped her hand, took a breath and spoke again. “I’m sorry. I’m babbling. But I hadn’t really thought about any of this before. I’ve been too busy feeling sorry for myself and trying to live up to Captain Cutie’s standards.”

  “Captain who?” Jozan asked.

  “Jeez, I’m pretty loaded, aren’t I?”

  “And half of what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense.”

  “That’s because it’s in English, the language I spoke there, and there are concepts that just don’t translate.”

  “If you say so,” Jozan said.

  They sat in silence, sipping sparingly at the wine. She must think I’m completely insane, Lisen thought, regretting she’d ever opened her mouth.

  “You do miss it though, don’t you,” Jozan commented.

  Lisen nodded.

  “Can you go back?”

  Lisen shook her head slowly, eyes down, staring at the table. “No. Eloise closed the portal for good when she brought me back.”

  “Tell me about them. Your family there, I mean.”

  Lisen grew very uncomfortable. “I’d rather talk about you and your family.” She tried to sound light, cheery, but susp
ected she sounded neither.

  “How are you going to grieve if you don’t talk about them?”

  “Grieve?” Lisen asked. “They’re not dead.”

  “They are to you if you can’t go back.” Jozan leaned back in her chair, one arm thrown over its back. “It’s like a death, isn’t it? They’re all gone, for good. It’s sort of death in reverse. They’re still there, but you’re here, never to return.”

  “I just don’t think about it.” Again they lapsed into silence. Then Lisen sat up straight. “There is one thing I really miss.”

  “And what’s that?” Jozan asked.

  “Chocolate,” Lisen replied, her mouth remembering the soft buttery feeling of the sweet treat melting in her mouth.

  “Who or what is choclate?”

  “Choc-o-late,” Lisen replied, “is a dessert, a sweet. It comes in many different ways—dark chocolate, milk chocolate, mixed with various kinds of nuts and fruit. And it’s more than just food; it actually has chemical properties that can make you happy. Almost everybody loves it.” When she finished, she found she was leaning in close to Jozan practically whispering it all, like a great secret. At this Lisen laughed, and Jozan laughed, too. It seemed that everything degenerated into frivolity somehow when considered through the haze of inebriation.

  “Have I told you I grew up here?” Jozan asked, and Lisen thanked her silently for the change in subject. “Well, not here, but near here, just a few miles up the river, twenty or so. This wine is good.” She leaned in towards Lisen. She’d easily drunk twice as much as Lisen had, but it was still surprising to see her so intoxicated. “Seffa. That’s my home. A castle surrounded by a small town comprised mostly of Tuane servants and their families. A proud lot. They seem to genuely appre…genuinely appreciate,” she enunciated more carefully, “their vocations in our service. Consider it an honor passed down from generation to generation. That’s loyalty for you. Doubt the Ilazers can claim such devotion.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Lisen replied.

  “Well, of course, you wouldn’t. But Avaret’s big, very big.”

  “Bigger than Halorin, I assume.” Lisen doubted it was all that big; after all, she’d grown up in L.A.

  Jozan’s eyes widened. “Oh, much bigger than Halorin. Prettier, too. That’s the one thing we can thank the Ilazers for—architecture. Avaret’s filled with it. Lots of beautiful buildings. Big ones. Little ones. Lots of—”

  They both jumped, Jozan silenced by a knock at the door.

  Lisen grabbed Jozan’s hand before she could stand up. “Not the code,” she mouthed silently, and Jozan smiled broadly. “Knife thrust.”

  “What?” Their conversation remained soundless, Lisen’s bounding heart and heavy breathing all she could hear in the frozen silence.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LITTLE HERMIT

  “Knife thrust,” Lisen mouthed again. “The password.”

  Jozan nodded and rose from her chair, far more agile than Lisen would have expected given the level of drunkenness she’d so recently exhibited. Nothing like adrenaline to sober a person up, Lisen thought as Jozan stepped to the door and paused there, taking a deep breath.

  “Password?” she asked and winked at Lisen.

  Silence greeted Jozan’s request. Lisen’s stomach lurched. It was the hesitation, the hesitation of which the captain had spoken right before he’d left. Yet Jozan failed to catch it. She continued jovial, carefree. Lisen wanted to warn her, but didn’t dare speak loud enough to do so. She looked about. Even if it were the captain, she’d better hide as though it weren’t. And if it weren’t…?

  “Password?” Jozan asked again, but before the word was out of her mouth, Lisen dove for the captain’s cot, his being the closest to the table, and scuffled her way under it. The last sight she had of Jozan, the heir was staring at her, one eyebrow raised in question. Lisen curled herself up as small as she could and pulled the blanket down on the side of the cot exposed to the door until she could no longer be seen. Her heart pounded at her chest, and her breath came in gasps which she tried to control. If it turned out to be the captain, she’d demote him for this.

  “I brought the ale you ordered, milord,” a male voice, definitely not the captain’s, came from outside. Lisen peeked out from under the blanket, feeling naked without a weapon. On the floor, to this side of Jozan’s cot, lay the heir’s knife. Jozan was defenseless, but Lisen couldn’t change that now.

  “We didn’t order any ale. You must be mistaken,” Lisen heard Jozan say. She continued to eye the knife and decided to act now, in the hope that she could get the knife before the guy outside could break in. Moving as quickly as she could, Lisen reached out for the knife, grabbed it and pulled it back under the blanket. And just in time. The second she had the knife in her possession, she heard a loud crack and a gasp from Jozan. As Jozan had predicted, the flimsy latch which the captain had insisted they lock had given way with one swift kick from the man on the other side. Lisen’s heart pounded even harder than before.

  “Ah, Heir Tuane,” the man said as Lisen heard him step in and Jozan step back.

  “Stellet Arspas. I should have known,” Jozan replied.

  “Here all alone? I thought your little friend would be here.”

  “Sorry. I sent her out to get us more wine.”

  “I’ve been watching for hours, my lord. I saw only the captain leave.”

  “I sent her out the back way.” Jozan took another step back and to her right side, towards the table. Why was she headed in that direction? She should have backed up the other way, leaving him open to Lisen from behind. “So, what do you want, Stellet?”

  “The Empir is curious.”

  “Curious about what?” And Jozan took another step. Lisen wished she could see where they were.

  “About why you and the captain and your friend headed to Halorin via the roundabout route. About why the necropath who guided his mother to her death is of such interest to you.”

  “I had business in Halorin, the captain accompanied me as a favor, and the girl accepted my invitation to serve my family. Turns out the haven is not her calling.”

  “Sounds like fiction to me,” the man shot back, “but I’m more interested in why you keep looking in that corner behind you. What’s back there that’s so fascinating?”

  “Nothing,” Jozan replied, and Lisen could hear the sneer in her tone. “I just don’t want to trip over anything, that’s all.”

  Lisen peeked out from under the blanket at the foot of the cot. Two sets of feet—Jozan’s bare ones and this Stellet’s in boots—and beyond them in the corner behind the table she saw what drew Jozan’s attention. The scrollkeep. The scrollkeep that held the documents. The documents which proved her claim to the throne. Jozan wanted to protect them, but instead, she was leading this man right to them. Lisen’s mind stumbled as she tried to find a way out of a predicament she was totally unprepared for. How far would this man go? Lisen began to understand that a knife or sword fight in the real world, chaotic and disruptive, in no way resembled her clean little rehearsals in the meadow with the captain. It wasn’t the captain’s fault. It was inexperience, her inexperience, that would doom her now. What should she do? What could she do?

  “So if you have nothing to hide,” the man replied to Jozan’s weak explanation, “let me pass and see for myself.”

  “No. You should leave.”

  “How inhospitable of you, my lord.”

  Lisen did not like the sound of this man’s voice. It was oily. No, more like smarmy.

  “I didn’t ask you here,” Jozan replied. “One extends hospitality to those who arrive invited, not to those who burst in of their own volition. Now leave.”

  “No. No, I’m here now and I wish to pass and see what’s lying there in that corner for myself. In the name of the Empir, I order you to stand aside.”

  Then Lisen heard it, a sound which caused her stomach to clench in panic. The ringing of metal sliding from metal, too qui
ck for a sword, more likely a knife, drawn from its sheath. Lisen hugged Jozan’s knife close, and, eyes closed, breath held, she slowly pulled the blade from its casing, muffling the little bit of noise by hugging it close to her body. She didn’t know what she’d do after that was accomplished, but she had to start somewhere.

  “I don’t think so,” Jozan said, standing firm.

  Oh, Jozan, Lisen thought to herself. By now he knows you’re unarmed.

  “All too easy, my lord.” Then silence. Not even a scuffle. She should run, Lisen thought. Why doesn’t she run? For an eternity that could not have lasted more than a couple of seconds, Lisen waited. Then she heard a grunt of breath followed by another eternity of silence and finally the thud of something striking the floor. Again Lisen risked peeking out from under the blanket and saw Jozan lying on the floor, her face turned towards Lisen, and as the heir caught sight of Lisen, she shook her head slowly. Blood flowed freely from a wound in her chest and began to trickle from her mouth, and her blue eyes grew dull. Lisen sensed rather than saw the intruder step past Jozan, and she knew he had the scrollkeep. She heard the soft, slow whoosh as the documents were withdrawn from the ’keep and then the slight ruffling of paper as he unrolled them and read. She furrowed her brow at Jozan and revealed the knife she held against her chest, imploring Jozan to agree to a plan Lisen could not communicate. There had to be a way to overcome this thug, and there had to be a way to save Jozan.

  Jozan mouthed, “No.” Her eyes bored into Lisen, trying to will Lisen not to attempt a foolhardy, impulsive act, but Lisen refused to be guided. There was a reality to be reckoned with. This man was learning right now that Heir Tuane’s companion was more important than he’d thought. She was more than hermit, more than necropath even; she was the claim to the throne which threatened his Liege. He would not leave this place before making a thorough search, and it would take him less than a nanosecond to find Lisen under the cot. This meant she must act, immediately. It wasn’t impulsive; it wasn’t even foolhardy. The captain had said it. She must survive, and waiting for this man to find her was too passive. Jozan was wrong; she must act.