What she saw caused her to tear open the door.
“Dear Guardian!” Sarah gasped, reaching for Clara, who lay cradled within Clarence's arms. “What has occurred?”
Clarence was sweating liberally. “Clara has been attacked. We must make haste to the central court. The doctor can see to her arm.”
Sara noted the awkward angle of Clara’s arm. Her eyes snapped to Clarence.
“She will require that be repaired posthaste. She has the healing abilities of the Band, and it might begin to mend the wrong way.”
Clarence had not thought of that contingency. Of course, he had not presumed he would have to take Charles out of the plan.
Romantic fool. Clarence was not clouded with romance but with reason.
“Let us make haste then.” Clarence urged, feeling time was short. With two people injured or dying in his wake, Clarence felt he should drive hard in another direction that would not alert Sarah.
“Do ye have a carriage?”
Sarah nodded. “Of course.”
Clarence's shoulders dropped in relief. Their small queen may weigh only one hundred pounds, but her weight lay lifeless and heavy.
If only it were that easy, he mused. Yet, even Clarence could not justify the murder of an injured and defenseless woman, though he had justified much since the time of his grievous injury.
Sarah disappeared and returned almost immediately wearing gloves and a hat. She had also ordered the carriage to come around the front.
The conveyance was plain compared to the royal carriage but stout and made of finely hammered brass. Steam escaped in spiraling tendrils from the port at the top.
Sarah opened the door and climbed inside. She pivoted on a high-heeled boot to receive the lightest part of Clara, who groaned as they placed her inside the carriage. Once Clarence was in his seat, Sarah gave the driver the destination. She held Clara's hand and studied Clarence, noticing his pale skin and the tightness around his eyes.
Of course, it was understandable that he would be shaken from finding Clara. But some things troubled Sarah, questions she had considered since his arrival.
Clarence noticed Sarah staring, and he could almost see the fine wheels of her mind turning.
Sarah asked, “How is it that Matthew of the Band was not there to defend Clara?” The man rarely left her side, and Sarah found it most odd that he was unavailable.
Clarence's eyes slid to the left. “I heard the guard went to the sphere portal to defend against interlopers.”
“What? No!” Sarah said, dropping Clara's limp hand to cover her mouth in fear.
She could think of no greater horror than a repeat of Fragment or vagabond sphere-dwellers entering their kingdom. The eighteen other spheres were in different states of wellness. The Kingdom of Ohio was in the best shape, with the other spheres possessing lesser degrees of wholeness. Mayhap there were a handful that could trade and dispatch daily life with ease and future promise, but the longevity of the rest hung in the balance of failed culture.
Sarah narrowed her eyes. “That is nonsensical. Why would Matthew think it wise to take after the guard and leave Clara behind?” She picked up Clara’s dangling hand and carefully laid it back on her chest.
Sarah looked through the convex window, which magnified the streetscape eerily. The central knot of offices that served the greater city moved into view. She spotted the sign in front of the doctor’s office. The symbol of medicine was carved into a wooden plaque that would never swing with wind, though the wood would weather from the steam that coated the interior of their sphere.
Sarah rapped against the roof of the carriage, and the sound of escaping steam heralded their arrival.
Clarence opened the door and nodded to the driver that he would help Sarah out.
Sarah slid her hand into Clarence's proffered palm and glided to the ground easily. Her feet found purchase on the uneven stones of the street, and she gazed at the densely packed building that stood in the center of an elaborate courtyard.
Fine trees rose high and beautiful, never losing leaves to the seasons but turning color as the sphere cooled for the part of year that signaled their false autumn and winter.
Cobblestones circled the perimeter.
Sarah turned to Clarence. “Let us get the doctor and have him attend her. Time is of the essence.”
Clarence nodded, and with a hiking of skirts, Sarah walked quickly to the office. She lifted the time piece at the bottom of her necklace, knowing the central clock could not be seen from her position, and lamented the hour—half past nine, very late indeed. Her hand shook as she let the time piece fall, her worry for Clara acute.
She knocked on the door. No one answered.
Where was Olive? Sarah wondered suddenly. Why were there no guards around Clara?
Something was amiss.
Sarah was more practical than speculative, and the first order of business must be seeing to Clara's arm. Afterward, they could ascertain who in the sphere would have injured Clara.
Sarah thought she heard a shuffling inside the office and jumped a little in happiness, repressing the urge to clap her hands together. The thought occurred that they should alert Matthew to meet her and Clarence, but the door opened, and the idea flitted away.
The doctor was only the second in their history. All the people of the spheres were long-lived, and the man of medicine was no different. She had strong recollections of renderings from before the time of the sphere. Precious images had survived because of the due diligence of the Record Keeper. People of one hundred years appeared as though they were sixty.
Ronald frowned first at her, then, she presumed, at Clarence behind her.
“What is the meaning of this?” he asked in a gruff voice.
Sarah was taken aback.
Ronald was the gentlest man she knew. She remembered as a child, he had fixed the wing of one of the lovebirds in the animal sanctuary.
“The meaning shall be clear momentarily, Doctor,” Clarence said.
His tone lifted the small hairs at the back of Sarah's neck, and she turned.
Her eyes dropped to the black piece of iron Clarence held, the barrel pointed at her.
“What? What say you?”
Clarence raised the weapon. “I have done what I must. And do not come nearer, or I shall pull the trigger.” Clarence sneered and answered her unspoken question. “It is what the Fragment call a gun.”
She gave Clarence a blank look.
“I cock the hammer, and a steel ball shoots out the tip on a pathway of fire, putting a small hole in your front and a very large one out your back.”
Sarah blanched. She looked at Ronald, and he appeared equally shaken.
“Did you hurt Clara?” Sarah asked.
Clarence shook his head. “Not on a purpose. But now Clara will have to be put to rights as there is a Wedded Joining to commence.”
Sarah felt lightheaded. She bit the inside of her lip.
The pain helped steady her. “Whose?” she whispered, her thoughts as slow as mud.
He grinned. “Why ours, Sarah.”
Clara noticed the horrible scar from the violence that she had assumed took his life.
When he had appeared at her domicile, she had been so consumed with Clara's injured state she had not realized the obvious. Clarence had been presumed dead, yet he stood before her, alive and well, regaling the tales of the mad.
“The good doctor shall mend Clara, then the pair of you will bear witness to our marriage.”
“No,” Sarah said in horror.
She heard the click of metal, and the small swiveling device at the back of the gun moved.
Sarah swallowed hard.
“Do not make me add you to the list of casualties, Sarah.”
What other names graced such a macabre list?
“I will not be a party to a wedded joining between our queen and a besotted man who thinks he will be the new monarch! Queen Clara is betrothed to another, you madman!” Ronald said.
An explosion so profound and unexpected caused Sarah to drop to the ground, covering her ears as she moaned. Her head rung from the blast.
She started to check on Ronald, but she saw that the back of his head was missing. Gore covered the front steps and the door. A coughing retch erupted from her throat. A rough hand grabbed the back of her collar and yanked her to her feet. Her dress tore.
“Lessons of battle, my dear.” Clarence's eyes took on an almost demonic light, narrowing on her in the darkness. He gave her a teeth-rattling shake.
“The Fragment took my body before our people could bury me, and I was their prisoner of war for some time.”
Sarah stared at Clarence.
He had once been her friend, one who had shared her prejudiced opinion about the Band.
But no longer. That man had departed, and in his place was… whatever Clarence had become.
“Please…” Sarah said.
Clarence's face shut down, and he shook her again. His rage-filled voice boomed in the quiet. “What lessons do you think I learned with that debauched group?”
“I don't… I don't know.”
“They savaged me! They used me as if I were a woman, though I am not!” More shaking.
“They starved me, raped me for sport, and beat me for pleasure. Then they patched me up to send me here like a Trojan horse, a beast of their making.” He put his face next to hers, spittle flying as he spoke.
“They would be so proud of who I've become… had they lived.”
Sarah realized that whatever Clarence had suffered had stolen his humanity.
The eyes she looked into were those of a monster—vacant and without remorse.
*
Clara awoke to a shrieking agony in her arm. She gritted her teeth against the pain and looked around, disoriented.
She hissed as she rose to a sitting position.
She was in Sarah's carriage. Her thick brain tried to make sense of it. Her head was throbbing, and it took Clara a moment to remember what had happened to her. She must have hit her head harder than she thought, but the continued throbbing was a distant consideration when compared with her unusable appendage. She raised her good arm and knocked on the carriage ceiling. The small trap door slid open.
Erwin peered down at her, the knob of the tiny door pinched between his fingers. “Queen Clara?”
“Listen to me carefully,” Clara instructed breathing through the pain. “Clarence has gone quite mad. We must depart here at once and find Matthew.”
Erwin’s eyes widened. “Where may he be?”
Clara did not know. “Make way to the tunnel.”
She held his gaze as a sliver of his face hovered for a moment. “Yes, Queen Clara.” He closed the little window.
Clara groaned as the carriage surged forward. When an explosion sounded, she turned and looked through the windbreak at the back. Its convex glass magnified the scene horribly. The doctor lay on the ground. Clarence stood over him, Sarah at his side.
I am so sorry, Sarah. Clara was abandoning her friend in favor of reaching Matthew.
However, securing her own safety was paramount. It was the pragmatic choice.
A dead queen could rule no one.
And Clarence presumed to join with her? Clara would never agree and he would kill her. Of that she was sure.
Using the last of her strength, Clara rapped a pattern on the roof that anyone who had ever been a passenger in carriages was wont to know. Faster.
The horses began a trot. They should reach the mouth of the tunnel in ten minutes.
Clara dozed fitfully, her body desperate to knit what was damaged.
*
Matthew heard a noise and raised his hand. “It be a carriage.”
Philip slowed behind him. “Moving like the hounds of Hades follow it,” Philip remarked.
They stopped and watched it come closer. The driver snapped the reins against the backs of the beasts. The whites of the animals’ eyes shone, as well as those of the driver.
Aye, something was afoot. Nothing good. Matthew felt it in his marrow.
The driver slowed and pulled up beside them.
Erwin said, “The queen, she be inside.”
Matthew moved around to the side of the carriage, and in his enthusiasm to get to Clara, he tore the door from the hinges, and it clattered loudly as it landed on the street. He took one look at Clara and groaned.
He folded his huge body inside the confines of the carriage and wrapped his arms around her, mindful of the obvious injury to her arm.
“He is mad,” Clara said then winced and closed her eyes.
“Shhh. Let me remove you from this conveyance.” He lifted her and backed out of the carriage.
Matthew readily assessed that her arm had been injured through impact rather than weaponry.
Philip and Matthew traded glances as Philip stepped forward. “What matter of injury is this?”
Erwin climbed down from his high, swaying perch and came to stand beside them. “I know not. She—”
Clara stirred and opened her eyes. She looked up at Matthew. “Clarence…”
“He is dead, is he not?” Philip asked, remembering the battle and the sight of Clarence bleeding upon the snow.
Clara shook her head and whispered, “He lives… madness…”
Understanding bled over Matthew's face. “He was of that portion of the fallen we could not account for.”
Propriety be damned; they had to fix her arm or she would be maimed. The arm was already healing before their eyes, but crooked.
Matthew laid Clara on the ground and told Erwin. “Hold her gently, or I will break everything you have that moves.”
Erwin's Adam's apple gave a hard slide, and he nodded quickly.
He kneeled beside Clara and sat on her good arm. Philip put his large hands on her thighs.
Matthew took the injured arm in his hands. Her eyes were swimming with pain and fear.
“My Clara, I must set it within the socket once more.”
Matthew met her eyes. He had done the same for others, as well as set many bones, yet those instances had been in the heat of war, when pain mattered not, only survival. He loathed the thought of hurting Clara, but he knew it must be done.
She gave the slightest nod, and Matthew gripped her arm. With a smooth twist, he pulled her arm away from her torso. Then he gave it a quick jerk, slipping the shoulder back into the socket.
Clara howled like a wounded animal and bucked against Erwin's hold. The driver’s tears fell, dampening her dress.
Matthew valiantly tried to ignore her pathetic whimpers, though they pierced his very soul like poison-tipped needles.
He met Philip's gaze. “It was only the shoulder.”
Philip nodded. “That be good news.”
Clara reached up to touch Matthew’s face. “That was well and truly awful.”
Matthew caught her hand and put it against his cheek. “Yes it was.”
Erwin shakily got to his feet, and Matthew gently helped Clara stand. She flexed her hand and gave him an exhausted smile.
Matthew kissed her, then cupped the back of her head, pressing it against his chest. “What has happened?”
She leaned back, readying an answer, when a voice came from behind them. “What should have happened from the onset.”
Matthew and Philip whirled around to face Clarence. The man held Sarah with one hand. From her terrified and pained expression, his grip was tight.
We are fools, Matthew thought.
Philip's eyes flicked to Sarah, his body as tense as Matthew’s. Sarah's face was tight with terror, the back of her dress torn from this insane one's treatment. He remembered well Clarence's passionate debate over the Clan's assimilation into the sphere, his distaste for them as a people. The epiphany that had struck him earlier boiled to the surface.
“You have spent time in the tender care of the Fragment.”
/> “They have had their way with him, tortured him. He is mad!” Sarah shrieked.
Clarence casually cuffed the side of her head, and she fell to the ground. She landed on her hands and knees.
Philip stepped toward her.
“Do not, heathen.” Clarence raised the inky barrel of some sort of weapon. “I have been looking for just such opportunity. When Clara and I wed, we shall make it outlaw to house Band or Clan. Your people shall be cast Outside, where such as you belong.”
Matthew stood stock-still. Shock was too small a word for how he felt from Clarence's words.
Philip was speechless as well. He scanned the man's face, finding the scar from the battle with the Fragment and seeing the horror of abuse on his expression.
“You cannot be serious,” Philip said. “Matthew is no stranger to the methods of the Fragment, yet he turned that experience into strength. There is no reason you cannot choose to transcend that which you have suffered.”
“Your words will not lift the revelations that have come to me through the tender mercy of our enemy. They taught me my value.” Clarence grabbed a handful of Sarah's dress and jerked her to her feet. “And the value of others.”
“You no longer value life, sphere-dweller?” Matthew asked.
“Only that which matters.”
“Do you play Guardian now, Clarence?” Clara tried to move around Matthew, but he stayed her with a hand.
He does not get to act as Guardian with my people, Clara thought.
Clarence’s eyes glittered. “Yes. Yes I do.” He moved his finger on the weapon just as Sarah stepped in front of him.
Sarah slumped to the ground in a spray of blood. Clarence looked shocked, then he started fiddling with the weapon. Matthew and Philip rushed him. They tore the metal gadget from his hand and tossed it to the side.
Clara turned away at the sounds of justice and did nothing to stop its execution. She knelt beside dear Sarah, who had given her life to save that of her queen.
Her heart came apart in jagged chunks of grief.
CHAPTER 20
Maddoc and Evie walked the length of the tunnel with his arm draped over her shoulders. Evie was preoccupied with thinking about how wonderful a hot bath and food would be.
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