Soldier's Duty

by Patty Jansen

  The couple entered the circle of drummers, and the entire Andrahar family followed. The brothers were in full ceremonial Trader uniforms, the women in puffed-up, tight-bodiced Mirani dresses, the children in white, including Vayra standing straight-backed next to his mother. Izramithe wondered if his jerkin hid the silver chain with the Foundation stone, or if Mikandra still wore it. She understood that he derived no rights from it until he was legally an adult, and that wouldn't happen for a number of years yet.

  Everyone stopped.

  The drummers settled into a different rhythm.

  Braedon stepped out of the family group.

  He bowed before his mother and again before his brother and bride. Then, under deafening drum-beats, he crossed the circle, squeezed between the flower bearers and their costumes and extended his hand… towards Izramith.

  Their eyes met. He wore ceremonial Trader uniform with gold embroidery, but his face looked gaunt as if he hadn't slept for days.

  He mouthed, come, although the drumming made it impossible for her to hear him.

  Everyone looked at her.

  She shook her head. "I'm working."

  "Come," he said again.

  Two council guards in black came up behind her. One waved his hand for her to go. Damn, he had planned replacements. What the…

  Watched by the entire crowd, Izramith took Braedon's outstretched hand.

  "What?"

  His expression was oddly intense. He led her back into the circle, between the drummers and the flower bearers, into the space left open in the middle. She felt horribly underdressed in her dark outfit, bristling with guns and knives. She was a killer; this family were sophisticated people.

  Braedon faced her while the drums increased their intensity, if that was at all possible. He stepped back and bowed for her. In a sweeping gesture, he undid the clip of his cloak, took it off and swept it over her shoulders, where it hung rather ungracefully, because the sheer fabric clung to the rough material of the armour.

  Izramith froze, while it dawned on her stunned brain that this was how Traders officially proposed for marriage.

  All around, the crowd went mad with cheers.

  "Braedon?"

  "I believe the position of head of security in Barresh is open." He shrugged, his face tense, trying to look lighthearted and failing miserably. "Please. There is nothing in the universe I want more than to have you in my life."

  Become part of that big, rambling family. Sit at the table in the house surrounded by laughing, talking, sometimes bickering people. Play games in the yard with the boys. Sleep every night next to someone loving and warm.

  "I know about your news." He continued to meet her eyes.

  "That's not a reason for you to do this. If you read the medical articles, it's unlikely that there will ever be a child anyway."

  "That's no longer true. Things are different now."

  "I still don't want you to think you have to do this for the sake of being proper."

  He reached out and lifted her chin. "Izramith, look at me."

  She regarded his pale face, his intense eyes.

  "Do I look like a man who would ever ask for marriage for the sake of rumour or appearances?"

  She shook her head. He didn't.

  He looked like a man tormented. A man who had just as much trouble expressing his feelings in words as she had. A man who'd spent the entire night before his brother's wedding pacing the floor, because he was so nervous to ask that one question. The question she herself had been dodging for days. Would you be interested in sharing your life with me? Because she'd been afraid of the answer.

  "The moment I set eyes on you, I was sold. I asked Mother and she said I was crazy. I asked my sister in law and she never said that you'd never want me, but she sure as hell thought it. That night in the forest I had all I ever wanted, and then you had to propose this horrible… arrangement. I thought fine, love is a shock to you, but the more I tried to convince myself that it would never work and distance myself and go on with my life…" He looked down. "The more I couldn't."

  He raised his head. His eyes glittered.

  "So please… Will you be mine?"

  Her vision blurred. She had been trying to catch his attention, she'd thought he wasn't interested in taking the relationship further, she'd wanted him to take notice of her, secretly longed for him.

  "Yes," she whispered. "I will share your life."

  Then his arms were around her shoulders and she was enveloped in the scent of perfumed soap.

  The cheers of the citizens were deafening.

  * * *

  The wedding festivities officially ended Izramith's contract with the Barresh council, and Braedon sent someone from the house to pick up her belongings and take them to the Andrahar house.

  Izramith started in her new position. It involved an office, a lot of electronics and many black-clad guards who jumped at her command. And endless amounts of politics. When Dashu went back to Asto, Izramith appointed a fellow Indrahui veteran, and also accepted into training a group of seven keihu youngsters, four of them girls, and five of them from the Semisu and Emiru families.

  A few days after the wedding, a Pengali woman arrived at the house, sent by Daya, she said, to look after Izramith's health.

  Thanks to adaptation medication to keep her temperature down, the pregnancy held and her breasts started growing. Each day she would stand in front of the mirror and stroke her expanding belly.

  When the midwife judged it safe to do so, Izramith travelled to Hedron. She had not let Mother or Thimayu know that she was coming, and took great pleasure in seeing their faces when she walked in.

  Thimayu started screaming, "You selfish bitch! You know he'll be zhadya-born, right?"

  "She, actually." Scans had confirmed that and Daya was elated. "Yes, I know, and I know how they can be 'cured'. They're not sick anyway. I'll be taking Shada."

  They looked strange at her and she realised that they didn't even know the boy's name.

  Her relationship was well beyond repair.

  And so was her relationship with the place of her birth. Where the rigid, monolithic structure of the Hedron Mines and the all-Coldi population had once given her comfort, they did no longer.

  * * *

  When Izramith flew back to Barresh, she had her discharge notice from the Hedron guards. It was not a good one—discharged for breaking the guards' celibacy rules. Commander Blue had been saddened to sign it.

  "I thought you'd do well," she said. "But this…" and she gestured helplessly at Izramith's belly.

  "I am doing well."

  If the birth of a child was sad thing, then a lot was wrong with this culture.

  But no one outside Hedron would care. Barresh valued her experience. She was now allowed to openly declare herself as ex-Hedron guard, and could get security jobs based on that.

  Shada, now strong enough to sit—and bounce up and down, apparently—sat next to her, pointing out the window and babbling. People asked how old he was, and she gave up telling them the truth, because they didn't believe her, because a baby of his age wasn't meant to be doing all those things.

  The child inside her kicked in her ribs, as if wanting out and playing with her brother.

  Life with two zhadya-born children would not be easy, but there was help, and she'd take it over life with no family any time.

  * * *

  It was dark in Barresh when the shuttle landed. Looking out the window, and seeing the glow of lights display familiar streets, eating houses and shops still doing brisk trade, Izramith felt a type of inner calm she hadn't experienced for a long time. Not since the first season of having joined the guards.

  Back then, she'd felt signing up with the guards meant that she belonged somewhere. She wore the uniform, the scars on her upper arms were still raw and shiny, but over the years, and especially the past year, that feeling had been slowly stripped back until the certainty that she did not belong with the guards replac
ed it. Not belonging somewhere wasn't a life plan, because as much as she didn't belong with the guards, it left her searching for a place where she did belong.

  Now she had found that place.

  The doors opened, letting in the humid air.

  Crew asked for parents to come forward first, so she lifted Shada to her arm and went forward. She was glad for the extra space, because she had been feeling tired and worn out, even more so than when she was still with the guards, and, having sat cooped up for the entire journey, Shada had plenty of energy.

  Walking down the ramp, her mind flashed back to that time after he had just been born, when she'd seen the man coming down the ramp with his daughter and had thought she'd never have children herself.

  Wrong.

  She was now that mother and maybe someone else was watching her and hoping that he or she would have a family soon.

  The walkways from the craft to the hall stood to the side, but the upstairs platform hadn't yet been finished. It would be completed soon, but she would not be flying anymore before the child was born.

  Braedon waited at the door to the newly-opened hall. There was still evidence of building activity everywhere, but the hall had been opened for use recently.

  She rushed into his arms. His lips brushed hers.

  "Welcome home," he said and then laughed. "Don't look at me like that, little fellow."

  Shada had his head turned sideways and regarded Braedon with disturbing maturity.

  He lifted the little boy to his arm. Shada clamped his chubby arms around Braedon's upper arm. A couple of fellow passengers glanced at the three of them. An older woman smiled.

  "Let's go home," Braedon said. He put his arm around Izramith's waist and together they walked out the building into the warm night air.

  A word of thanks

  Thank you very much for reading Soldier's Duty.

  As author of this book, I would appreciate it very much if you could return to the place where you purchased this book and leave a review. Reviews are important to me, because they help readers decide if the book is for them.

  Also be sure to put your name on my mailing list (http://eepurl.com/qqlAb), which I use exclusively to notify subscribers of new fiction. All other chat about my writing or worldbuilding and interaction with readers happens on my blog Must Use Bigger Elephants (http://pattyjansen.com/blog/), which you are welcome to follow.

  About the author

  Patty Jansen lives in Sydney, Australia, where she spends most of her time writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her story This Peaceful State of War placed first in the second quarter of the Writers of the Future contest and was published in their 27th anthology. She has also sold fiction to genre magazines such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Redstone SF and Aurealis.

  Her novels (available at ebook venues) include Shifting Reality (hard SF), The Far Horizon (middle grade SF), Charlotte’s Army (military SF) and Fire & Ice, Dust & Rain and Blood & Tears (Icefire Trilogy) (dark fantasy).

  Patty is a member of SFWA, and the cooperative that makes up Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and she has also written non-fiction.

  Patty is on Twitter (@pattyjansen), Facebook, LinkedIn, goodreads, LibraryThing, google+ and blogs at: http://pattyjansen.com/

  By this author

  Earth-Gamra space opera universe:

  Watcher’s Web (Return of the Aghyrians 1)

  Trader’s Honour (Return of the Aghyrians 2)

  Soldier's Duty (Return of the Aghyrians 3)

  Ambassador 1: Seeing Red (Ambassador series)

  The Far Horizon (For younger readers)

  The Shattered World Within (Novella about the Coldi settlement of Hedron)

  In the ISF-Allion universe:

  Charlotte’s Army (novella)

  The rebelliousness of Trassi Udang (short story)

  His Name in Lights (Novella)

  Shifting Reality (novel)

  Epic, Post-apocalyptic Fantasy:

  Icefire Trilogy:

  Fire & Ice

  Dust & Rain

  Blood & Tears

  Short story collection:

  Out Of Here

  Shorter works:

  Looking For Daddy (absurd horror novella)

  This Peaceful State of War (Writers of the Future winning novella)

  Visit the author’s website at http://pattyjansen.com/and register for a newsletter to keep up-to-date with new releases.