Fractured (Lisen of Solsta Book 1)

by D. Hart St. Martin

  In response to the plea of the nearly unconscious young woman, Corday sighed and looked back to Korin. “And you mean to leave me behind.”

  Korin nodded. “Unfortunately, my lord, you’d compromise the plan.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of. I’m always compromising the plan.” He sighed once more. “All right then, if I agree, how do we proceed?”

  “When we reach the haven, I’ll head over the Rim and make contact with a tribe I’ve had dealings with before. I’ll establish a story, say I have a friend and that the two of us wish to break all ties with Garla. I’ll convince them to welcome us by hinting at some sort of unpleasantness with the Garlan regime. They’ll like that.” It was all a lie, a lie to cover the true reason for his trip over the Rim. There’d be no problem with the tribe at Mesa Terses, but the holder didn’t have to know why Korin was really heading out into the desert before carrying out their plan.

  “They appreciate taking in criminals?” Corday asked, distrustful.

  “No, they appreciate taking in anyone at odds with their oppressors.”

  “Oppressors?” The holder rubbed his forehead; then he combed a stray blond lock out of his eyes. “You’re not reassuring me.”

  “My lord, you forget. We are at odds with the oppressor.”

  “You’ll keep her safe.”

  “It is my duty,” Korin replied.

  “No,” the holder said. “You’ll keep her safe.”

  And Korin recognized it—a shift in the holder’s attitude. Ariannas Ilazer—Lisen—was no longer a commodity. She was a young woman who needed them both, but, knowing his place, Korin responded as a captain of the Guard would to a direct order. “Yes, my lord, I will keep her safe.”

  Corday shook his head; then after a pause, he spoke, “Well, I have nothing better to offer, so, I guess it’s up to you. But don’t forget. She must be back for the council session in May.”

  “That was always the target, my lord. I haven’t forgotten that.”

  Corday nodded, and Korin turned to look out the window at the passing countryside—the trees whipping by, the ground slipping past, the rain momentarily stopped. Garla was too wet. It would be good to get back to the arid arena that was the desert.

  “Then, I guess it is decided,” Corday said and when Korin turned from the window to look at him, the holder locked both of his eyes with Korin’s remaining one, then turned away.

  Korin turned to look out the window of the carriage again. Another three days or so of this—this stilted silence, then likely more verbal sparring, then silence again. Life was forever complicated.

  In a single atom of Lisen’s brain, she knew they continued to travel, the carriage bouncing in and out of potholes and over bumps. The drug—what was it the holder called it?—comra? The drug kept her from wanting to know anything more. She slipped from one delusion to another—some might call them visions, but she knew better. Perhaps that meant that more than one lonely atom in her brain was functioning.

  They had asked too much. Eloise and the Empir, real or not, had demanded more than she could give. And now she was empty while the one who possessed her was filled with enough for both of them. For now. Soon Lisen-and-Other would disintegrate into nothing with who-knew-what manifesting out there in the world. Or, in whatever the hell world she inhabited. If there were any world at all. Perhaps it was all her imagination—Earth, Garla; the Holts, Empir Flandari; uterine gestation, pouches. No one but Lisen existed in a universe of one.

  Lisen heard talking. She could be hallucinating, but she thought she heard talking between…between…ah, between the holder and my captain. Deep inside her a smile grew. He was brave and bold, her captain, and she remembered speaking to him before the comra had brought the sleep that seemed dead but wasn’t. She remembered recognizing him but finding him changed. Somehow. Something about his face. Something…. Something about his…. Eyes! The black patch over the one. Why?

  Hell. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t any more real than anything else. The talking she heard wasn’t real. Only she remained real, and since her mind reveled in tricking her into believing things, things that weren’t real, maybe she didn’t exist either.

  Non-

  -ex-

  -is-

  -tence

  Another dream materialized. Another hallucination materialized. Another world materialized. A world not a world. A world of spacecraft and complex interactions. The ship was the Galactica, and she was Starbuck, the hottest of the ship’s hotshot pilots. At the moment she was playing cards, smoking a cigar, drinking ambrosia and beating the proverbial pants off the boys. Starbuck’s smile was easy; her joy at winning, unflappable. She said “frak” a lot. It took the place of a word banned from television.

  I fly a viper and shoot the bad guys, the Cylons. Some Cylons look human, but they’re all still toasters to me. Frakkin’ tin cans. Except Sam. I married him before he knew he was a Cylon. Frak, I could be a Cylon. A while back I disappeared in my viper, an explosion destroying it and presumably me. Then, in a few hours I was back, back with the fleet and what remains of the twelve colonies. Except that to them it had been months. I’d been dead, so they thought, and then had returned. And that’s what Cylons do. They die and are resurrected. So I don’t know what the frak I am. But I’ll lead them to Earth….

  No, I led them to Earth, and it was…dead

  Frak, I don’t know what I am.

  I don’t know….

  The Cylon. The fifth Cylon. If it’s not Starbuck…. I’ll never know.

  “Lisen?”

  My name?

  “Lisen?”

  Like the ringing of a telephone boring its way into the sleeper’s ears and from there into the brain.

  “Lisen?”

  “What?” At last she spoke, her voice sounding dry, unused, petulant. Her eyes closed; her mind a confusion of cotton candy—sticky, dense, and pinkly unnavigable. She cleared her throat but made no attempt to open her eyes or try to think.

  “My Liege…” ah, the captain’s voice “…we’ve reached the haven. I can carry you if you can’t walk.”

  Walk?

  “Interesting concept.” Jozan was never far from comment.

  We’ve reached the haven? Then it must be weeks?

  “Easily.”

  Can I walk? I’ve managed to get out of the carriage to pee.

  “I can walk,” she insisted in a voice little more than a croak.

  But, before the words had reached the air, she felt herself swept up, cradled safe in Korin’s powerful arms, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling very safe.

  “I’ll never know who the fifth Cylon was,” she whispered, thought becoming sound.

  Beside them, the holder kept up, speaking briefly to the gatekeeper, explaining their need of a necropath.

  “My Liege?” Korin asked.

  “Nothing,” she replied with a minuscule shake of her head. “Just…nothing…. And Beethoven…his ‘Ode to Joy,’” she mumbled, and, knowing that Korin wouldn’t intrude, would let her speak what to him had to be nonsense, she switched entirely to English. “Mom…Dad…never again. Betsy. And Alison…Joanie. Rusty.”

  She and Rusty had been ten when they’d first met, and they could spend hours talking. He’d introduced her to the world of Battlestar Galactica, had forced her to watch the miniseries, said it was great, and he’d been right. Yeah, Rusty. So many others—she couldn’t think of names, but their faces traced pathways through her mind. All her high school buds—even the mean girls. The kid down the street who could skateboard better than anyone she’d ever seen. Anyone. She tried to catch their traces on the pathways, but they were slipping from her. I can’t forget. Please, God, don’t let me forget.

  “You won’t, Jozan reassured her. “That life is woven in too tight to slip away.”

  “But it’s gone. Forever.”

  Lisen absorbed Korin taking steps, breathing heavily, just like at Solsta with the Empir. Now he was a ne
w Empir’s captain, her captain, without a commission. A guard without an eye—she knew now what the patch meant. A holder’s heir without a life. The Heir-Empir without her sanity. All that destruction, and for what?

  “Grieve,” Jozan said more clearly than anything she’d said before. “Grieve for all that you have lost. Dig as deep as you dare, then dig deeper. Surrender to chaos. Grieve, and then return to me. Only when it’s time, return to me.”

  Lisen snuggled her face into Korin’s neck, wetting it with her tears. She remembered Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” who’d dared to gaze directly upon Sir Lancelot. Had Lisen, like the Lady, drawn a curse down upon herself? The phantom of chaos certainly loomed on the horizon. If she couldn’t face the specter within, then whatever remained of her, of the Lisen she could still recall, would die. So, the question was—could she survive this confrontation’s cold brutality? Or, would she end up only fodder for some future poet’s frail reimagining?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SHATTERED

  After a leisurely afternoon ride in his park behind the Keep, Ariel returned to his office, one thought guiding him. He sat down behind his desk and stared for one longing-filled moment at its second drawer, the drawer where he stored his little jar of malla, but a voice startled him out of his daydreaming.

  “My Liege?”

  He looked up. After eight days, Lorain had returned to him. Creators, how he’d missed her. He watched as she rose from the couch across the room. Was it his eyes, or was she actually glowing? He’d missed her not just out of lust and not because of her uncanny ability to unmask a plot; he’d missed her, and that unnerved him. He’d actually been lonely without her.

  He rose from his desk and came to her, all the while containing the urge to envelop her in his arms. Nothing so bold. He mustn’t empower her with a demonstration of his vulnerability in her presence. So, instead, he greeted her by pausing so they would meet in the middle of the room, and she nodded.

  “Welcome back,” he said and gestured toward the chair in front of his desk. Then he returned to his chair, and after he sat, she did, too. “Have you been waiting long?” he asked.

  “Not long. And it’s good to be back, my Liege. Halorin’s a nasty place.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “But full of fascinating information.”

  “Do tell.” He didn’t want to sound too eager.

  “First, you were correct regarding Arspas.”

  “He killed Jozan?”

  “Seems so,” Lorain replied. “But he paid for it. He was found dead in the same room.”

  “Who killed him?” Ariel asked. “Rosarel?”

  “Unknown, but I don’t think so. Rosarel returned later with a bad wound to his face, and Lazlin is nowhere to be found. He may have encountered her, but I don’t know.”

  “Then who killed Arspas?”

  “I suspect the necropath, my Liege. Although how she managed it, I have no idea.”

  Ariel nodded. Opseth knew how she’d done it, but for now he’d keep Lorain ignorant of that. “And where are these accessories to Heir Tuane’s murder now?”

  “You mean the necropath and the captain?’ Lorain shook her head. “No one seems to know, but I have my suspicions. A hermit, a necropath who murdered might find herself distressed enough by such a deed that she would require the comfort of other hermits. I’ve already sent someone to Erinina and someone to Rossla. My spy from Erinina caught up with me yesterday. The captain arrived there alone and departed a couple of days later. My bet now is on Rossla, but it’ll be weeks before we hear back from there.”

  “We must find her, Lorain. It’s crucial.”

  She studied him. His insides squirmed, but he maintained his composure under her scrutiny.

  “And we will, my Liege,” she said finally. “Now, for the rest of my news. Who is the one person you would have expected to see at Jozan Tuane’s rites? Other than her father and sister, of course.”

  “Nalin wasn’t there?”

  “Conspicuously absent. Everyone noticed. And yet, Elsba and Bala seemed completely unaffected by his snub.”

  “If it was a snub,” he commented.

  “Precisely. The necropath knows something, and Nalin’s protecting her.” Lorain stood up and stepped around the desk to kneel down beside him. “My Liege,” she said as she touched his hand, a thrill flying up his arm and through his entire body. He bit his lip to maintain his veil of calm. “Ariel,” she said softly. “You need a protector, too. Tell me what Nalin and this necropath know.”

  “Nothing you haven’t already figured out.” Ariel smiled with satisfaction. Without lying, he’d kept Opseth’s role in his sudden ascension to power from Lorain’s prying.

  She rose, and with a hand on his shoulder, she stepped around behind him where she began massaging his neck. “Then we won’t speak of it again.”

  They remained there in silence for a few minutes, Ariel benefiting from her ministrations as she methodically kneaded out the tight knots in his muscles.

  “So tell me, what has occupied you while I’ve been gone?” she asked at last.

  “Not much. I’m considering having Opseth Geranda—you know of her, don’t you—having her question our sooth downstairs.”

  Lorain pulled her hands from his shoulders and leaned around to look at him. “I know the name, though we’ve never met.”

  “I want answers.”

  She returned to her massage. “Then, here’s hoping you get them, my Liege.”

  Of course, Lorain thought as she rubbed his neck. Opseth Geranda. I should have known, but she set this information aside for later recording. Now that she had calmed him sufficiently, it was time to spring her little surprise on him. She took a deep breath. A question remained, one Ariel had not even thought to ask, had no reason to ask, but it required an answer regardless. “There’s something else,” she ventured cautiously.

  Ariel stretched and bent his neck from one side to the other as she continued to massage him. “I thought you’d filled me in on everything.”

  “Not quite, my Liege.”

  “Well, what is it? It’s not like you to be coy, Lorain.”

  “Actually, it’s good news. Something I wanted to be completely sure of before I said anything.” She felt herself maneuvering around the words she needed to say, and that was unlike her. “My Liege, in the next week or two I’ll be transferring your Heir to the pouch.”

  He pulled away and turned around to look at her, his face unreadable. Anger? Confusion? Shock, certainly. It seemed an eternity passed before he finally said something. “You’re pregnant?”

  “Yes, my Liege. I have all the signs. The restlessness, the nausea, the headaches.”

  Ariel jumped up and strode to the other side of the room. “You’ll have to move back to your quarters in the old palace. At least until you transfer.”

  “My Liege?” She should have expected this. As the father, he would react to the changes in her body, even echoing her symptoms. Her presence with their child inside of her would affect him, prepare him for the transfer as well. Clearly, he didn’t share her enthusiasm at the thought of this experience. In fact, she’d known from the beginning he’d reject it. Not the child, just what he perceived as the unpleasantness of the child’s gestation within the pouch.

  “Yes,” he continued as he started to pace back and forth, never moving any closer to where she still stood behind his desk. “You return to the old palace. We can confer during the day, even share our meals, but you’ll have to carry. After all, I have an ascendancy in May. I can’t be….” He patted his abdomen at the opening of his pouch and then extended his hand out to define an expanding stomach. “Well, you know. I can’t be bulging out at my greatest moment.”

  “No, of course not,” Lorain said, wiping away the tear that had breached her lower eyelid, and she damned the emotions the thing growing within her would not allow her to mask.

  “We’ll bring in a healer for the trans
fer,” Ariel went on. “I can’t be there of course.”

  “Of course,” she said, frozen.

  “I’ll send to Solsta, summon the healer who sat with my mother when she died. There may be information to be gained from that one.”

  And for the first time in her life, Lorain wanted nothing to do with plots and plans, with careful placement of puzzle pieces. She didn’t want it to be about the double and triple meanings of thoughts and actions. For once, she wanted it to be about her and her alone.

  Korin rode, not aimlessly, but not in the direction of Mesa Terses where he’d assured Holder Corday he was heading. Five days ago he’d told Corday that he would prepare the way for young Lisen in the desert, but he’d lied. He’d lied, in part, because he couldn’t stay at Rossla Haven, that stronghold of hermit magic, for one more minute. He’d lost his eye to a spy whom he’d then killed. He’d pushed his half-blind self to Erinina Haven and had remained there, skin squirming amidst the hermits’ trickery for days, until Holder Tuane’s message had arrived, relieving him of his obligation there. And finally, he’d ridden with the Destroyer on his tail to catch up with the Holder and the Heir to see for himself the extent of her injury.

  Three days in that carriage had chilled him. She was more Heir Tuane than herself when she was conscious, and when she wasn’t, a silence heavier than his own sense of guilt at how he’d failed her had settled down upon that little cabin in the coach. What he and Corday had put that young woman through, had put Lisen through, was a sin.

  He shook his head. No. He would not indulge in gloom. Soon he’d reach Pass Garrison on the Rim. He’d be keeping his presence a secret from his friends in the Guard there, but of the three civilians he sought, he must locate at least one. Then he would acquire what he desired—malla. Malla numbed the conscience in times of stress, numbed the memory of painful moments and hard choices made on the run. He needed it and the few moments of forgetfulness it would provide before he could return to the duty before him. Because, in the end, duty was all that was left to him now.