by Jo Zebedee
He meant it. He, who’d always said he wouldn’t go to Abendau, would never take her place. She looked down at the table, not able to meet his eyes. Not able to agree any of this, not if it risked him so much.
“Why now?” she asked. Why in secret, why not brought up at the many board room talks over the years? “If it’s not the baby, what has brought it on?”
He drummed his fingers on the table, a slight smile on his face. “Because you’re right,” he said. “We have the dynasty, and she’ll want to topple it. I suppose to say it’s nothing to do with the baby is a lie– you’ve given me the push I need. But this has been coming, you know that. The Banned has grown so much, we have to be bold sometime. This is it; our time to move. And to do that, we have to go for the top– we have to take out the Empress.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “Will you back me, to the board?”
She let him hold her hand, caressing it. Should she? She’d told Michael, years ago, that he might be right, that they should aim for a change. Again, she looked around the desk, and back at him. His eyes met hers, tired but direct, and she nodded. Let him have the future he could face, not one forced on him by his mother, the Banned, or even her.
“I’ll back you,” she said. She looked down at her coffee and pushed it away, nauseous. “You know I will.”
He yawned and pulled his hand away.
“Get some sleep,” she said. “I’ll wake you in an hour or two.”
She waited until he left, making sure he’d closed the door, and looked around the table again. She picked up a sheet of paper, but the words were impossible to read, swimming under her eyes. A teardrop fell on the paper, and spread out, blossoming like her fear. She’d set this in motion and if she was wrong, Kare would be the one to pay. Please, please, don’t let me be wrong. She closed her eyes and wondered where to send such a thought to; she’d never been religious. Anyone who’d listen. Please, look after him. If there’s anyone there, look after us all, and let me have done the right thing.
***
“Get in.”
He crawled, one leg dragging behind him, his chest punctured by sharp pain with every breath. He stopped at the edge of the shallow pit and pulled himself in, screaming as his leg thudded down. Hard hands turned him over and strapped him down. The lid closed and he lay, naked, in darkness, barely breathing. He tried to clench his fists but they wouldn’t tighten. His hands weren’t broken, but shattered.
A soft whispering. A movement on his leg. He tried to move, but was strapped too tightly. Another movement, more– something climbed his bare legs, nipping– each barely noticeable, blossoming into a collective agony.
“Stop,” he whispered. Still they moved up: insects, climbing on each other.
They reached his face, and he clamped his mouth shut. He forced his hands to claw, using the pain to keep him conscious. To faint, to submit to this… they’d be everywhere if he did. They were climbing up his nose; into his ears, and he tried to shake his head and dislodge them. More came, the bites everywhere, sharp pins.
Another bite, this one sharper, close to his balls, and he jerked and yelled. The insects invaded his mouth and throat, choking him, and panic rose. He thrashed against his restraints, choking, keeping his eyes closed against the skittering…
The lid opened and the insects dispersed to the blackness. He gasped, gulping the air.
“Well, Dog?” The mocking face of Beck stared at him, his eyes impassive.
“Please; mercy.” He was aware of nothing other than this man. “Mercy.”
His tormentor’s face hardened, and he shook his head. “You begged.”
Fear ran through him, like it was alive, and he tried to shake his head but couldn’t. The lid came down, the darkness surrounded him. A whisper. Something cold touched his foot. Water. It rose around him and he knew they’d drown him and he couldn’t go past this point– he’d endured so much, but he couldn’t remember who he was or how he’d got here, or what to do to save himself…
Kare sat up in bed, the covers twisted around him. The nightmare had been gruesome, worse than most. He pushed his hair back and took a moment before getting up and padding to the living area, where Sonly was curled up on the sofa. He sat beside her and leaned his head on the back of the sofa.
“So, what now?” she asked.
“I have to talk to General Rjala. And Silom and Lichio. Then, the board.”
“When will you go?”
“Not until the baby’s here,” he said. “I told you that.”
“Kare? It’ll be all right, won’t it?”
She wanted him to say yes, and it would be easy to. But it would be a lie, and she’d know it.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said. “If I win, it’ll be all right. If I lose, it won’t.”
“What happens if you lose?” she asked. “I know your dad told you some things, but I don’t know what they were.”
How much should he tell her? He'd stood with her, in front of everyone who mattered, and promised to share his life with her. She had to know, it was her place to know. Still, he hesitated. What would Karia say– would she understand why he’d broken their promise and told someone? Yes, he decided, she would; she wouldn’t want him to be on his own.
“The time we left the Banned,” he said, “the time before we were split up, Dad had some visions.”
“What were they?”
He swallowed. “Omendegon.” Even the word sounded evil. “He kept going back to the vision, time and time again. He asked us to kill him, the pain was so bad, and he kept saying the same name, over and over and over again: Beck. It was…” What word could do it justice? Those weeks on the ship, the growing realisation of the detail, whose future it was. He had to say something– she was waiting for him to. “Awful,” he managed. “Worse than I can say.”
Sonly cocked her head on one side. “But he didn’t go to Omendegon, he died.”
“I know.” He waited for her to work it out, dreading the moment she did.
She pulled her hand away and brought it up to her mouth. “You.”
Me. He nodded, his eyes never leaving hers. “Yes.” Her face crumpled, and he reached for her hand. “He said it was one of us. He said that there was a path to glory, that we could bring down the empire. And there was a path to Omendegon. He didn’t know which we’d follow. That’s why he went mad: he was trying to find the way forward that would save us from it.”
“You can’t go to Abendau,” she said. “We can find another way to do this. Approach the great families directly, like we said we would. Start to take her power base. Reduce their support of her, and their revenue.”
“I can, and I will.” He wondered if he could find the words to convince her. “Sonly, I’ve spent my life terrified of this.” He swallowed, and took Sonly’s hand. “Waiting for it. I have a better chance if I go in myself. If I wait for her to take me, I don’t. I stayed here, knowing what he’d seen, and chose to stand against her. Now, I need to find out which path I chose.”
She went to interrupt, but he held his hand up.
“It’s not just that I don’t sleep. I work all the time and you know why, don’t you? Because when I’m working, I’m not thinking about it. He told us we’d lose everything dear to us: our friends, our family, everything we valued. When I was seven that didn’t seem as scary– I’d already lost it all– but now I have so much more than I ever dreamed of. I have you, my friends, my role, a baby soon. To be asked to– made to– give all that up is frightening. But it’s also why I have to go.”
He tipped her chin so she was looking at him, her blue eyes round and scared.
“I can’t be the person who causes that pain in you. I can’t be the one who harms our baby, or gets Silom killed, or Lichio, because I didn’t have the courage to face it. But I can’t tell you it’ll be all right, because I don’t know. I could try to Seer it but it might frighten me so much I never do it.”
“Are your dreams visions?” she asked, and he closed his eyes against his fear that they were. That, even though he’d chosen not to look, the future was still in his mind.
“I hope not,” he said. “I think they’re replaying what Dad told us, and aren’t real.” He smiled and she tried to smile back, but her lip wobbled. He pulled her close to him and whispered into her hair. “I promise you one thing, I’ll do my best. That’s all: I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will,” she told him. “It’ll be enough, I’m sure of it.”
Gods, he hoped so. But at least it would be over and he’d know. Later, as the day drew to a close, Sonly hugged a mug of tea to her but shivered so badly she had to set it down before it spilt. Beside her, Kare was quiet.
“What now?” she asked.
He took a drink of his coffee, wincing, and it was no wonder, given its strength. She’d often thought if she opened his veins she’d find caffeine flowing through them.
“I’m going to tell Silom and Lichio. I suspect Lichio already has an idea, and Silom knows a bit about Dad’s visions, so I can’t see it shocking him. In the morning, I have a meeting with the general and if I convince her, then it’s to the board.”
“Eevan and Glen will vote against it,” she said. “There’s no way Eevan’s going to let you have the glory. You have me and hopefully Rjala.”
“I’ll have to abstain, won’t I?”
“Yes. That leaves Michael.” She paused for a moment. “He’s important. Eevan may be able to force a conflict of interest with me, too. If so, and it’s deadlocked, the chairman’s will be the carrying vote.”
“You know him better– how do I convince him? What does he want?”
Sonly thought for a moment. “He’s for the Banned, through and through. So, you need to convince him it’s for the group, not personal gain. If I were you, I wouldn’t fight for a confederacy yet. That would be enough for him to veto you. Depose your mother first, and have any discussions after. Once you’re in place, he will have less room to manoevure.”
“Win the battle and not the war?” He took another drink and stared ahead of him. “I’ll think about that.” He picked up his comms unit. “We may as well get the next bit over with, yes?”
Later, as Kare outlined his plans to Lichio and Silom, she thought how odd it was that he’d managed to make this sound matter-of-fact so quickly. He was going to attack Abendau, but was talking about it as if it was a planetary campaign in the outer rim. Silom listened, his face impassive– resigned, really. Lichio, on one of the small kitchen chairs, didn’t look surprised in the least.
“What do you think?” asked Kare, when he’d finished. He leaned against the food unit and folded his arms.
“If you can get the right team in place, it’s viable,” Lichio said. “Risky, but you know that.”
Kare nodded, and his attention moved to Silom. Despite the casualness of Kare’s posture, she could see the tension in him: a tightness around his shoulders, a wariness in his eyes.
“You know what I think,” said Silom. “What I always think: you risk too much of yourself.” Kare went to interrupt, but Silom cut him off. “It’s never stopped you, though, and so far you’ve been right. I didn’t believe your system would make the difference it did; I would never have believed you could wipe out a Star team single-handedly. If you’re telling me, honestly, that you think this has a chance, I’ll support you. Will I be on the team?”
“Who else is going to watch my back?” said Kare. “If you want on the team, you’ll be on it. You know that.”
Lichio stretched. “You’ve made your mind up. Let me know what you need me to do, and I’ll start working on it.” He looked over at Silom. “Drink?”
“Have a drink here,” said Kare. “If this gets okayed, we’ll be busy. Who knows when we’ll get another chance to relax? And I can’t go to the bar without half the protection squads of the Banned following.”
Kare poured some drinks and moved over to the sitting room, dropping onto the sofa. The others joined him, Sonly beside him on the sofa, Silom and Lichio on chairs. He was right, they didn’t do this often enough.
She watched, sober and aware, and fixed the thought of this night, and the memories of the three men, in her head: Lichio, telling an absolutely filthy story, his angelic face at odds with the language used; Kare’s eerily accurate, if slightly slurred, impersonation of Eevan; and Silom, roaring with laughter at it, his face turning puce as he choked on his drink.
“We’ve had a good run, haven’t we?” Silom said after he’d stopped laughing.
“The best,” agreed Kare. “The absolute best.” He stood and swayed slightly. “I’m knackered.”
The jokes were a little risqué, but Sonly laughed them off as she went to the door with Silom and Lichio. When she came back into the room, she found Kare stretched out on the sofa, snoring slightly. She kissed his cheek and pulled a blanket over him.
“Some messiah,” she laughed as she turned out the light and went to bed. Later, in the deepness of the night, he crawled in beside her and put his arm around her. His breathing deepened as he sank back towards sleep.
“Kare.”
“Hmmm?”
“I don’t want Eevan to be part of the raid,” she said. Kare nodded against her. “Can you stop him?”
“I’ll sort it,” he told her. “Gotta sleep.”
“You’re going to suffer in the morning,” she said, and when he didn’t answer she realised he was already asleep. She’d remind him in the morning. Eevan couldn’t be involved in this, not when Kare was risking so much already.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
At the rap on the door, Rjala looked at Glen. “I have another meeting, I'm afraid.” She checked through the troop allocation figures one more time, compared it to his budget allowance and nodded. “It looks fine.”
He stood, taking time to put his papers back in his folio in the right order, a typical accountant. Once finished, he pushed his chair in and opened the door.
“Kare,” he said, his voice neutral, making Rjala smile to herself. He may not share Eevan’s open hostility, but he had made no secret of his distrust of the psycher over the years.
“Glen, good to see you,” Kare said, showing a commendable ability to rise above it. He glanced at Rjala. “I can come back, General.”
“No, it’s fine. Sit down.” She waited for the door to close. “You asked to see me.”
“Ma’am, I wanted to talk to you about the possibility of a task force.”
“A task force?” Rjala looked at the data pad, as if for inspiration, and then back at Kare. He looked like shit. “Remind me when I asked for a task force?”
“You didn’t, ma’am.”
She sat back in her seat. “That’s right. I didn’t. What is your task force for?”
“For attacking the palace of Abendau.”
“Why?”
He passed a report across the desk to her. “I’ve talked to Sonly, and she agrees that, politically, we could be in the position to challenge the Empress. To do that, I need to get to Abendau and confront her. I have the stronger powers, ma’am, I’m sure of it.”
“I never thought you were so ambitious,” she said. “Why now?”
“Sonly’s pregnant.” Rjala drew in a sharp breath, and he nodded. “Ma’am, if my mother gets the bloodline, the Banned loses viability.”
“And if you lose? What then for the Banned?”
“Then you still have the baby.”
She noted how tightly his hands were clasped together. Let him spill out whatever was in his mind, and she'd see where it went. "Go on."
“Ma’am, psyching at my level takes years of practice. When we were kids, Dad made us work at it every day– he was relentless. I've been working hard and I think I'm better than I ever was. It makes me believe we have to move now, before she gets a chance to take the child.”
“We can keep the b
aby safe.”
He laughed, harshly, humourlessly. “Like you kept me and Karia safe? One of us is dead, the other can’t move without a security detail. I’d like an opportunity to ensure my child isn't just safe, but has some kind of normal life.”
“I’m not inclined to base my operational decisions on your personal feelings, Kare.”
“Ma’am, I know that, and I’m sorry if that’s what it sounded like.”
His timing was good. She tightened her grip on the report he’d given her. The plan was good, too, almost identical to her own.
“Continue,” she told him.
“Thank you, ma’am. I’m prepared to be presented as an alternative to my mother. Sonly believes she can bring some of the families on board, and the middle sector, too. We already hold the outer systems. But that’s not enough, not as long as my mother is in power. I need to confront her, remove her from Abendau. For that, I was hoping you would consider a small task force.”
Time to challenge him on his thinking. She leant forward. “How good are you? Don’t lie, don’t exaggerate, just tell me. Can you defeat your mother? If we get you to the position where you can confront her, can you win?”
“I believe I can, yes. She uses mental dominance, primarily; so can I.”
“I’ve never seen any proof of that.” Her eyes narrowed: he’d say whatever he needed to get her agreement.
“I said I can, not that I did. I can certainly safeguard myself against it.”
“Safeguarding yourself is not the same as winning,” she said. “I need evidence.”
“You want evidence?” There was a whisper behind her. She turned, but the room was empty. When she looked back, her eyes met his, drawn to them.
Look away, she urged herself, but she wasn’t able to turn from him. She tried to close her eyes, but couldn’t. His eyes held hers, hard like emeralds, unflinching, unmoving. His face was impassive, displaying no effort, yet still the hold on her mind increased.
“Say yes,” he whispered, the words echoing through her mind: compelling.
