“Did you burn the boy’s body on the rubbish heap?” asked one of the preachers of Seamus.
The rancher nodded without speaking.
“As the rancher says, the One God seems to have done our work for us,” said Yandharan. “I assume you preachers will proceed on your tour toward the Serat Oasis and the local lads will return to Hareskot.”
“What of you, Collector?” asked one of the preachers. “Will you not accompany us and do the work of the One God?”
“I am afraid my return will delayed by the more mundane work of the king,” said Yandharan lightly, but unsmiling. “You have your Red Sentinels to protect you from the dangers of the road.”
The preachers scowled. They gathered their robes about them, mounted their donkeys and departed without further word, followed by the Red Sentinels. The youths from Hareskot left in ones and twos shortly afterward, slinking away with downcast eyes. None of them made eye contact or spoke to Seamus or Binne. The Collector remained, leaning on the porch rail.
“Seamus Avedus, you have satisfied the servants of the One God,” he said. “But that is not my province; I am here to serve the king. I find that you are on my list of tax delinquents.”
Seamus smiled weakly.
“Collector Yandharan,” he said, running his hands through his thinning hair. “We need some more time. It has been a difficult year for us. The Chekaligas came and took the most valuable part of our herd, so we had little for the auctions. But we will raise the money somehow and pay soon.”
Yandharan shook his head.
“I understand your position, rancher,” he said. Caitlin wondered how he could maintain such a level presence—there was no malevolence, but no empathy either. “But you must understand mine. The King’s tax collectors come to Serat every year and when my cheval is in arrears, he must pay from his own coffers. When he has to do that, he becomes upset with Collectors like me and our heads do not rest easy on our shoulders.”
Seamus looked wretched and had no reply.
“Collector Yandharan,” said Binne, interceding. “We have interacted over the years—surely you must remember us? We have been diligent taxpayers, year in, year out. This is our first delinquency. We will pay, we only beg you for some more time.”
Yandharan shook his head.
“I am sorry, madam,” he said. “The numbers in my ledgers in Serat are cruel. If you do not have the gold, you must come with me to debtors’ prison in Serat. Your ranch will be sold to raise the tax and then you will be released. If the proceeds of the sale exceed the tax you owe, you will receive the balance—you can depend on my honesty.”
Binne looked crushed. Seamus put his arm around Binne’s slim shoulders and held her.
“Come, my dear,” he said to her, dropping the pretense that Caitlin was their daughter. “With our daughter gone, what have we to live for? What need have we for possessions? We may as well beg in the streets of Serat as work here.”
Binne looked at Yandharan, who met her gaze steadily and without emotion.
“You are a good man, Collector Yandharan,” she said. “You have always been fair to us. We know you are only doing your duty. Will you give us some time to pack? We promise not to take anything of value.”
He nodded. Binne turned to Caitlin.
“Cat, I am sorry that we cannot offer you any further hospitality,” she continued. “But I am sure Collector Yandharan will not mind if you stay here for a few weeks till the ranch is sold. It will give us comfort, knowing that it is being used by someone as good of heart as you.”
“You may stay here,” said Yandharan, addressing Caitlin. “But not under false pretenses. You are not their trueborn daughter—they have admitted as much. Who are you?”
Caitlin looked over at the old couple, who were now making their way slowly toward the ranch house. The impending loss of everything they knew weighed on them heavily and their shoulders sagged. They looked older, defeated. They are good people, she thought. To be reduced to begging in Serat! They will not survive long in the streets, consumed with grief over their dead daughter. She made up her mind.
“I am not related to them by blood,” agreed Caitlin. “But I am Cat Avedus—their adopted daughter.”
This stopped both Seamus and Binne in their tracks. They turned around and looked at her, surprised.
“And I will not stand idly by and allow you to take them to debtors’ prison,” she continued.
“How do you propose to stop me?” asked Yandharan. Caitlin expected to hear mockery or bravado in his tone, but there was none.
“With whatever works,” she said determinedly.
“Don’t push me, girl,” said Yandharan, finally beginning to show some impatience. “If you foist a fight on me, you will rue it.”
Caitlin had no intention of provoking a clash, but his calling her “girl” nettled her.
“You are very confident of your skills,” she responded angrily, her hand on the hilt of the ancient d’Orr sword, Nasht. “Perhaps overconfident.”
“I never fight unless I have to,” he returned. “But if you force the issue, you will find me competent. So unless you can come up with the five gold talents of tax money, draw your sword or step aside.”
Growing up rich and privileged, the sum seemed trivially small to Caitlin.
“Is that all?” she asked, stupefied. “You would drive two decent people to beggary for such a sum? I will pay the tax.”
Caitlin turned on her heel and disappeared into the ranch house, passing Seamus and Binne on the way. Her saddlebags were by the head of her makeshift bed. She quickly drew out a leather sack, untied it, and counted out six gold talents. Retying the sack and secreting it in her saddlebag again, she reemerged into the yard.
Yandharan put out his left hand and Caitlin dropped the coins into it. He saw immediately that there were six coins. Before she could withdraw her hand, he caught her wrist saying, “Where did you get hold of such a large sum of money? And you think this bribe of a gold talent will keep me from asking inconvenient questions?”
Caitlin had not anticipated his action, but the assault on her person drew forth the conditioned response drummed into her by long training. She smoothly drew the long dagger from her left thigh boot, and Yandharan felt rather than saw its sharp tip at his solar plexus. To make her point, she pushed the tip of the dagger through his leather vest till it pricked his skin. He looked into her green eyes and saw something manic. The bitch is crazy, he thought.
“Release me,” she hissed. “Or I will gut you. Take your money and leave.”
He released her wrist and backed away slowly. But he looked unafraid and maddeningly calm. He casually unslung his crossbow, put in a bolt, and began to wind it. Caitlin drew Nasht, tensed, and prepared to rush him.
Seamus approached them quickly.
“Stop, stop!” he cried. “This is all a misunderstanding. Cat has just returned from selling stock at the Dreslin auction. The One God be praised, I had no idea she was able to get such a good price.”
“Six gold talents?” asked Yandharan doubtfully.
“All of the stock that the Chekaligas left us,” put in Binne, coming up to Seamus’s side.
“I see,” said Yandharan. He looked from one to the other. Grunting, he slowly began to unwind his crossbow. Caitlin waited till he had slung it over his back again before sheathing her sword and dagger.
Without warning, Yandharan flipped one of the heavy gold pieces away toward Caitlin’s left. In spite of being completely unprepared, she instinctively extended her left hand and caught it easily.
“I will forget the attempted bribery,” he said. “And I will forgive the delinquency. This time. Your taxes are paid.” He turned and unhurriedly mounted his horse. Looking down from the saddle, he addressed Caitlin. “You are a remarkable warrior and athlete, Cat Avedus. If I were you, I would not flaunt those skills.” He turned his horse’s head and trotted out of the yard without a backward glance.
As
Seamus watched Yandharan disappear down the road, Binne came up to Caitlin and looked up into her big green eyes. She was only chest high to her, so she had to reach up to put a hand on each of Caitlin’s cheeks.
“You are an angel sent down by the One God,” she said. “We will repay you. I don’t know how, but we will.”
Caitlin took both her hands in hers.
“You are good and kind people,” she said. “I don’t want money. I ask for something far more valuable in repayment.”
“Ask and it is yours,” said Binne. “If it be my very life.”
Caitlin looked down at her kindly old face, such a contrast to the glamorous beauty of her dead mother. She was seized with a sudden urge to cry.
“I ask for a home,” she said quietly.
Binne looked at her steadily and Caitlin thought at first that she had not understood her. Then to her horror, big tears appeared in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Binne did not bother to wipe them away but drew Caitlin into her arms and hugged her tightly, not letting her go.
“My dear, my dear,” she sobbed. “The One God is too kind!” Still holding Caitlin, she looked up at her face. “Oh, you must forgive a silly old woman, for I cannot stop these tears of joy. From the first moment I laid eyes on you, I felt a special connection.”
Caitlin looked over Binne’s head at Seamus, who stood awkwardly, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. But the grin that split his face from ear to ear proclaimed his happiness.
AUTUMN 1685 Z TO SPRING 1686 Z
Intellectual as well as physical excellence being essential to the prosperity and security of the Sisterhood, suffrage is hereby limited to those who demonstrate superior capabilities in one or both of these realms. Intellectual brilliance will be recognized by admission to the priestess temples, and athletic virtuosity will be the basis of selection into the huntress legions.
– Proclamation of Thetis the Great, 456 Z
TWO
THE D’ORR HEIRESS
UPPER MOAT FALLS made a silver curtain in the growing light of an autumn sunrise. There was a nip in the morning air that caused Megara Paurina to raise her temperature shield and widen it to include the small raven-haired child asleep on a blanket beside her. She lay on the grass at the edge of the falls, watching the water cascade off the sheer cliff to form the Stevia River several hundred meters below. But out of the corner of her eye, she maintained a constant watch on another child gamboling a safe distance from the cliff edge. As she watched, the child climbed onto one of the low branches of a dwarf oak and walked out on it till it thinned so she could jump and cause it to sway under her weight. The rising sun caught in her mop of ash-blonde curls as they bounced prettily about her head. Now almost two meters above the ground, she did a few small hops and then a pirouette at the end of which she landed on one foot.
“Careful now, Asgara,” said Megara, speaking as she would to a much older child. “There’s no one to catch you if you fall, so don’t get too adventurous.”
“I’ll be careful, Mother,” the child replied, her childish pronunciation belying her articulation and composure.
Like all children in the Sisterhood, Asgara had been continually tested, assessed, and analyzed since conception. Even among the obsessively selective Zon, she was an outlier. Her analytic skills, her grasp of social cues, her vocabulary, and her physical capabilities and attributes were all virtually unmatched in the State nursery system, even among children older than her. But to Megara, her most endearing quality was her uncanny reproduction of Caitlin’s presence. Every mannerism and characteristic—the way she tossed her head, the way she fluttered her hands, the way she walked, even the tone of her voice and the cadence of her speech—recalled her biological mother.
Watching her now, Megara thought of the day seven years earlier when she had become legal mother to Asgara, who was then less than a year old. She had taken a leave of absence and flown back to Atlantic City from her post at the Brigon Residency as soon as she heard of Caitlin’s departure into exile. When she arrived at Temple Heights nursery and identified herself, they gave her the package Caitlin had left for her. In it were several presents and d’Orr mementos that Caitlin had left for her daughter and a checklist of when she was to have them. Also on the list was the code to access a legal document in her comm data vault that gave Megara title to all Caitlin’s possessions in Atlantic City. And at the very bottom of the list, there was the code for a personal site on the comm.
Megara had sequestered herself in a small private arbor in the nursery grounds and tapped her wrist bracer to open the site. Caitlin’s familiar persona appeared on the projected hologram, dressed in barbarian leathers.
“My dearest Megara,” she said. “I have no doubt that you flew to Temple Heights Nursery as soon as you learned of my decision to go into exile. I knew I could depend on you, for in all of the Sisterhood, you are closest to my heart. It is on the strength of this intimacy that I remind you of your promise to take my place as my daughter’s mother. I want the best for her and I fear my presence in the Sisterhood will drag her down, perhaps even into silencis. I could not bear to be the cause of her failing to achieve her enormous potential. Megara, you are brave, beautiful, intelligent, strong—you exemplify Zon ideals like my mother did. You can teach my Asgara to become a worthy heiress to the Royal Tiara of d’Orr. I hope that under your tutelage, she will grow up to be different from me, without my frailties and weaknesses.
“Let her call you ‘Mother’. Keep my identity from her as long as you can. When you have a daughter of your own, let Asgara grow up as her womb sister. When they taunt her with my misdeeds, as they surely will, let her have you and yours to claim as her family so that she can repudiate me. Perhaps in time she will forget that she ever had another mother and escape the burden of my sins.
“Dearest Megara, we have shared much together. Now I share with you what is more precious to me than anything in the world. I am easy in my mind knowing that as long as you are living, our Mother Goddess Ma will smile on my daughter and she will lack for nothing.”
Caitlin’s voice sounded upbeat, but there was a tremor in it that suggested that tears were not far away. She had clearly been crying before she made the recording, for her big green eyes were red rimmed, and her lashes were still wet.
You are wrong, my beloved Caitlin, thought Megara now as the orb of the yellow sun began to rise slowly above the horizon. You are Zon perfection, not me. A capricious Ma has cast you down, for reasons beyond my understanding. I could not make your daughter different from you if I tried—her blood is yours, and she brings you to mind with every little thing that she says or does.
Her chronometer chimed, and she picked up the sleepy child by her side as she rose.
“Asgara, it is time to return to Temple Heights,” Megara called. “You have a big day at the nursery today, remember?”
“Yes, Mother,” said Asgara, jumping down from the dwarf oak and landing gracefully. “I am to present the bouquet to the queen and welcome her to Temple Heights Nursery.”
“Before you do that, you must get cleansed, anointed, and changed. We must not be late.”
Asgara ran over to the speeder, tapped the hatch, and waited till it hissed open. She jumped in and sat in her booster seat on the passenger side. She put her arms out as Megara came up, saying, “Give me Iantha. She is very tired from all the running we did, poor thing.”
Megara marveled anew at how easily she gave her daughter to a child only a year older. Asgara had some difficulty, but with Megara’s help she managed to get Iantha into her jump seat between the driver’s and passenger seats. By the time Megara loaded the breakfast basket and slid into the driver’s seat, Asgara had strapped in both Iantha and herself.
“Ready to go, Seignora Mother,” she said, sounding so serious that Megara was taken in for a moment. Then she saw Asgara’s impish look and burst out laughing. Asgara joined in, pleased at the success of her joke.
Megara
reached over ran her fingers through the child’s soft ringlets. As the speeder’s engine purred to life, Asgara asked, “Can we fly off the cliff, Mother?”
Speeders were designed to fly a few meters off the ground and did not have the power of airboats. However, Caitlin’s personal speeder was an extremely expensive model. It had enough power to descend from the cliff top safely, especially with a pilot of Megara’s skill at the wheel and the waters of the Stevia beneath them as a safety net. It would still be a very rapid descent, a rush of excitement that Asgara always asked for when they came up into the mountains.
“OK, here we go!” said Megara, opening the throttle. She drove forward, directly for the cliff edge. As soon as they were over, the speeder plummeted downward, her velocity rising rapidly. Asgara screamed with excitement, and Iantha sleepily opened her eyes. It was only a five second free fall before the ground detectors on the speeder’s keel made contact with the waters of the Stevia and the engine roared to counteract the downward force of gravity. Megara brought the speeder under control in a graceful arc, her engine roiling the fast moving waters of the river. Then she drove fast for the Vale Gate of Atlantic City. The sensors at the Gate identified the speeder and Megara acknowledged a call from the huntresses on duty.
Transitioning into Caitlin’s life of luxury represented a big change for Megara. Initially she had tried to resist, but she was only human and found herself rapidly getting used to the enjoyment of great wealth. She was never profligate and always made sure to put Asgara before Iantha and herself. Abstaining from the material assets at her disposal—Caitlin’s magnificent suite in Palace d’Orr, her expensive speeder, her lavish income—would have required a level of self-denial verging on masochism. It is only right, she said to herself. After all, if Caitlin did not want me to use her wealth, she would not have left it all to me. Anyway, it is temporary; it will be Asgara’s when she turns eighteen.
The Eclipse of the Zon - First Tremors (The New Eartha Chronicles Book 2) Page 4
