by Jo Zebedee
“Leave it attached,” he whispered. She relaxed her grip.
They walked slowly to the front of the room to a collective intake of breath. Even Eevan, sitting near the back with a crowd of his army colleagues, nodded at her and seemed to approve. At the front Kare and Silom waited, their backs to her. As she joined them Kare turned to her, his face stunned.
“You’re beautiful,” he mouthed. She smiled and the world shrank to this one moment in time, where he was the only one who mattered.
Rjala entered from the anteroom to the left, her footsteps steady, and the hush deepened. Sonly gulped– this was it, she was going to commit to Kare and promise to face the future with him. Nerves welled up and she felt sick.
"Ready?" asked Rjala.
Was she? Kare looked terrified, as if expecting her to refuse, and she lifted her chin, knowing what she was doing was right, that there was no one else she’d rather share her life with. Lichio left her side as Kare took her hands.
“As persons of faith,” said Rjala, her voice carrying through the room, “we are here today to give our blessing, and ask the blessing of the eternal force which governs our lives, for this marriage between Kare and Sonly. We ask that they be bound together by your eternal love, to face what may lie ahead. It is our prayer that they stay loyal to one another and faithful.” She looked up to the crowd. “If anyone has a reason this pairing should not take place, they may speak now.”
There was silence in the chapel and Sonly held her breath. If Eevan said anything– if anyone said anything– she would kill them. Rjala held her gaze, smiling a little, as if to say don’t worry. Kare made a small grimace, and she almost giggled.
“Sonly le Payne,” said Rjala. “Will you accept this man as your partner, pledge to stand with him and face the future together?”
“Yes.”
Rjala turned to Kare, repeating the words. He looked at Sonly throughout it, and at the end his voice rang out through the chapel. “I do.”
Silom stepped forward, and she took the ring he gave her and slipped it onto Kare’s finger, noticing his missing finger as she did. Lord, what was she doing committing to him; where would it bring her? He gave a tiny frown, and she knew he’d picked up something of her thoughts. He slipped her ring on, squeezing her hand very slightly, as if to say it would be okay.
“You have made these pledges before the eternal force, and before us, your witnesses. Together we will celebrate your union.”
Sonly smiled– he was right, this was right– and heard the cheers as Rjala told him he could kiss her. She closed her eyes as he leaned in, cupped her chin gently, and– like she was something precious and special– kissed her in front of the room.
Later, Sonly wiped the tears from her eyes. She really was going to be sick with laughter. Beside her Kare’s face was serious as he tried not to rise to Silom’s merciless speech about him, but she knew it was an act and he was struggling not to laugh.
“He assured me he could fly the bloody thing,” said Silom. “And then he nearly took the port out. That landing was more terrifying than anything I’ve faced in the field… which brings me to the last gift.”
There were cheers in the crowd as he pulled out a comically large, obviously homemade medal. He searched the crowd until he found the person he wanted and nodded to them. “Captain Stitt; for going over and above the call of duty in training what was undoubtedly the worst foot soldier I’ve ever served alongside.”
Kare started to laugh at that, properly laugh, even as he glared at Silom. As Stitt passed her little one– Sophie, if Sonly remembered right– to her husband and came up to take the medal, Kare leaned over and confided, “I’m going to kill him later.”
Sonly giggled. “You shouldn’t have asked him; you knew what would happen. No one else had as much ammunition on you. Oh, my sides are sore.”
Kare glanced around the room and saw Eevan. “Which is more than can be said for your big brother. The only thing sore is his face.”
Eevan did indeed look like he had toothache. “Ignore him.” She intended to. Let his quiet menace dominate other days and places, but not this one.
Silom wrapped up with a last joke and sat down to huge applause. Sonly nudged Kare. “You’re up next; follow that.”
“Mine’s easy." He gave her a smile more intimate than any before, as if they were alone, making her breath catch in her throat. "You're beautiful and I’m the luckiest man alive.”
She watched him stand up and say exactly that, and wanted to keep this moment forever: put it in a bottle so that she could pull it out when she wanted to. She closed her eyes, mentally taking the picture: Kare, serious and earnest, telling her he loved her; Silom, musing loudly about what she’d ever seen in his cousin; Lichio, clapping along, meeting her eyes and smiling.
Later, much later, she lay beside Kare in their bed, her fingers tracing a pattern across his chest. He smiled at her, lazily, half-asleep.
“Did you really think I looked nice?” she asked. She snuggled against him, her head on his shoulder, luxuriating in their closeness.
“I told you. Lots. You were beautiful.”
“You didn’t think I looked at all fat?”
He started to laugh. “If I say yes, this could be the quickest marriage in the history of the Banned. No, you didn’t look fat, you looked perfect.” He trailed a finger across her breasts, making her shiver. “Anyway, you aren’t fat, you know that…”
“Good,” she said, but her hand moved down to her stomach, and she rubbed it, imagining she could feel a swelling. He watched for a moment, before putting his hand over hers. It was warm against her, cupping her. Too late, she realised she hadn't guarded her thoughts.
“Sonly?” he asked, and raised an eyebrow.
Suddenly shy, she nodded.
“When? How?”
“I think you should know how.”
He didn’t smile. “When?”
“I’m nearly four months,” she said. She’d held off telling him during the wedding preparations. It had helped that he'd been working so hard: it had been easy to hide her tiredness, and how little she’d been able to eat through the nausea. She wondered why they called it morning sickness, since it was there all day long. “I didn’t mean to tell you tonight– I’d planned it for tomorrow. I had a meal booked.”
“I thought you were taking precautions,” he said. There was an edge to his voice that was hard to place and, for a moment, she thought about lying.
She faced him instead, meeting his eyes. She’d thought long and hard about the decision– she’d stand by it. “I stopped.”
“You stopped?” He pulled away from her and sat up.
“Yes.”
“Why?” he asked. “Didn’t you think to talk about it?”
She sat up too, draping the covers around her shoulders. “I thought about it, and decided you’d say no.” Knew he’d say no, that he wouldn’t understand her need to do this, a need that had dominated her thoughts for months, growing more urgent, as if time was running out for them. She couldn’t tell him any of that; it would bring the demons he fought, every night, to the fore and give them strength.
“I would have.” He got up, pulling his trousers on, his movements jerky and angry. “This can’t be, Sonly. It’s bad enough I’m here, but another Varnon… what the hell is that going to do?”
His reaction was what she had expected, but she was still disappointed. A small part of her had hoped he’d be pleased.
“It’s going to give us a baby, one that I want.” But it went deeper than that, the reasons for her decision. It went beyond her need, the hungriness of wanting a part of him, into the politics she was immersed in. He only saw himself, not how things could be changed if they took control. “And it gives us the legacy. Here, at the Banned, the future…”
He turned to her, his face angry, like she’d never seen him before. “That’s complete crap. You must know if– when– th
is news gets out, the target switches.”
“We can keep the baby safe on the base,” she said. “Do you think I did this without thinking?”
“No– you don’t do anything without thinking about it,” he said, his voice cold. “What were you thinking? I won’t take the empire– could the child?”
“No,” she gasped. This was a Kare she’d rarely seen, a Kare without trust. He’d been like that when he’d first returned to the Banned, but it had dissipated over the years. She’d thought it was gone. “I told you– we’re working to change things, not sustain them." Tears welled in her eyes. Couldn’t he sense the need in her? Couldn’t he tell how deep this went in her? “Kare, it’s going to be a baby. Our baby. Not some sort of political thing– otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.” She put her hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. “And we will do it– we’re breaking through more and more.”
“I know that,” he croaked, and now she could see in his eyes what was driving him. Not wariness, but fear. A fear of something worse than she knew, something that chilled her. “But you won’t mind if I surround you with security and tell you not to leave the base until he– or she– is born? And when the baby is here, I’ll surround it with more guards than you can count.”
“It’s not that bad,” she said. It couldn’t be. She knew what it was to be a fugitive– she’d been brought up in the Banned, she was worth her own considerable bounty.
He shook his head. “It is. You’ve created exactly what the Empress wants.”
She grew hot and angry at his words. The Empress, his invisible mother, was more important than their future. She was like a carrion crow on his shoulder, the definition of his fear. Ealyn had done that– reinforced a belief that she was too great an evil to be faced, that she was more than just a poisonous woman, bent on taking people and using them as she wanted. Surely, Kare must see her for what she was– an opponent, one the Banned were facing up to. “If I have, I’ve created it because it’s yours and mine to create. Not hers. What bloody right does she have, dictating to me whether it’s safe to have a baby? What bloody right does she have to you?”
She stopped, knowing her voice was too high and emotional. They sat in silence for a moment and then he groaned.
“Oh shit, Sonly, I know. And I’m not surprised you’ve done it, not really. But you should have talked about it first.”
“Maybe I should have, but I knew you’d talk me out of it. And I want one. And now I have one, and I intend to keep it.” She looked around the room. “Here, at the Banned. Where it’s safe. She can’t take the base, Kare. She can’t get near it.”
Kare watched her for a moment, shadows crossing his thin face. “She could; nowhere is so secure it can’t be taken. It would be a huge undertaking, it would take a massive attack force, but she could take it. So, security, all the way.” He smiled, his face softening slightly, and she found herself relaxing. He knew now; the worst was over.
“Because she isn’t getting you,” he said. “And she isn’t getting what you have.”
A chill settled on her. So, what is she getting? She reached out to him. “Kare– you won’t leave us, will you? You’ll stay and keep the baby safe?” It was the worst ploy in the world, a card she’d never planned to play, but the darkness in his eyes, the tightness in his shoulders, in the corded muscles of his arms, were scaring her more than any prospect of facing the Empress ever could.
He leaned over and kissed her. “Of course I won’t leave. I want to see who’s in there, first.”
“First?”
“Stop worrying.” He took his trousers off and crawled into bed. She lay beside him, the closeness of earlier gone, a space between them.
“It’ll be fine,” he said. “Go to sleep; you must be tired.”
***
Kare lay in the dark and waited until he was sure Sonly was asleep before getting up and walking to the sitting room. He sat on the sofa, the only sound the quiet hum of the food preparation unit. A computer screen shone from the office, giving him enough light to see. He rested his head on the back of the sofa. Fuck.
What the hell was he to do now? He closed his eyes, imagining Sonly as she had been earlier, laughing at Silom, happy. He made her happy, just like she made him. He felt like screaming. She was wrong on so many levels: that the base was secure enough to hold a baby– they’d sent a Star ops team in for him, a baby was an easy snatch; that he’d sit and wait for his mother to come for the child. Oh, gods, what had Sonly done?
What he would never have dared to: taken his life back from the Empress.
Part of him admired her and wished he was half as brave. Another part wanted to shake her and ask if she was mad.
Is she mad? He didn’t know. She might be right, that the child was the future if they were kept safe, allowed to grow up. To do that, the focus had to be switched from them.
Am I brave enough? He didn’t have an answer. He got up, walked to bathroom, and locked the door. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw he was white, like a ghost. It made him think of Karia and he looked round for her, but she wasn’t there– she hadn’t been there since the earliest days at the base. Perhaps he was a ghost, too, sent from his father’s visions, part of a distant world and only a visitor here. He lifted his hand and it was shaking– he was all too real. I can’t do it. He sat on the edge of the bath, in the bright bathroom, and willed himself not to throw up. He tried to convince his body it would be okay. That he would be okay.
Liar. He dived across to the toilet, reaching it just in time, and, as he’d known he would since the moment Sonly had told him she was pregnant, threw up. He emptied his stomach, put his head on his arms, and waited for the inevitable retching, the attempt by his body to reject what it knew and find a different future. He started to shudder, and realised he was crying. He wasn’t brave enough– he never would be.
My father screamed for days. He pushed the thought from his mind. He couldn’t think of his dad, not now. Beck. The pit. Omendegon. Again, he pushed it away– it was a dream, a nightmare, not real. He tried not to think of anything except that he had to find courage and hold it in his heart until he did what was needed. He retched again. And again, long into the quiet night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Sonly woke to a bright room, the auto-lights raised to replicate morning. She pushed back the bedclothes, unease settling in her. Kare would normally have brought her breakfast by now. The unease deepened into something close to fear. How annoyed was he about the pregnancy? Protectively, she put a hand over her stomach and reminded herself she was right; he just hadn’t seen the implications of it. She was the politician, not him, and she had to trust her instincts.
The living area was quiet, but a sound of tapping came from the office. She pushed the door open and leant against the jamb. Kare was sitting at the desk, surrounded by notes, working between three data pads. He finished what he was inputting and looked up, making her draw in a breath. He looked terrible: his skin pale, and his eyes dark shadowed.
“How long have you been up?” she asked. And what had he been doing, in those dead hours?
“All night.”
She took in his pallor. “And when did you stop throwing up?”
He glanced at his comms unit. “About three hours ago.”
She pointed at the work surrounding him. “May I?”
“Go ahead. I’ll make some breakfast.”
She sat and read through the papers, taking her time. Plans for the city of Abendau, details of the dynasties of the great families, the structure of the empire. A military planning document. She stopped reading when he set a plate down and went round the other side of the table with his own.
“Well?” he asked, indicating the table. “What do you think?”
“Are you serious about it?” He had never shown any indication of this before and yet, laid out in front of her was months of work.
“I am.” He rubbed his te
mples. “You can tell that this isn’t about the baby. I’ve been planning it for the past year, and thinking about it for much longer.”
“How long?”
He sat, quiet for a moment, before meeting her eyes. “Since I was seven, and knew it had to be me.”
Sonly looked again at the papers spread out in front of her. “Talk me through it. You can’t operate in a vacuum– you’re part of the Banned and our wider strategy. You should have discussed this long ago.”
“Why?” He looked desperately sad. “She only wants me.”
But that wasn’t true. She wanted to stamp out any opposition. She’d taken planet after planet, and she’d keep doing so.
“Hear me out.” He picked up one data pad and handed it to her. “That’s yours. The political stuff I want you and Michael to feed into. What we’ll offer the central planets: autonomy to rule themselves. It’s what the great families want, and it starts to remove the empire. For the middle sector, repeal of martial law, with support and resources to build up their own armies again and the chance to self-govern. Any alliances they want to maintain with the families, that’s up to them. For the outer rim, freedom to rule with the Banned supporting their infrastructures; removal of the embargo and free trading conditions, allowing them to take control of any resources they have.”
She read through it, taking her time, amazed at the amount of detail he’d put into it. She remembered her thought from earlier, about her being the politician, not him, and almost laughed.
He handed her the next data pad. “That’s the proposed governance of the new confederacy.”
Michael would never agree to a confederacy. The fallout from a change of ruler would be enough without changing structures. She opened her mouth to argue, but her gaze fell on the last data pad, lying on the desk between them. She pointed at it. “That one?”
“That’s for the general,” he said. His hands were tight into fists, his neck corded and tense. He met her eyes, and took a deep, deep breath. “It’s a task force to take Abendau port and palace and get me near enough to the Empress to confront.”
