Then Sable had entered dressed as a nun but with a face full of grief to see him. Her voice broke saying, “Remy,” and she’d come forward to sink beside him to the floor. Pressing her head to his leg, she was on the verge of crying. “It would kill me to lose you.”
He waved the room empty of people. Pulling her face up to console her, he asked, “Sable, where have you been?” And then tears spilled down her cheeks. “Sable, forgive me. I don’t know what came over me to send you.”
She begged, “Oh, hush, please don’t say that.”
“No, Sable, I should never have sent you out there. I could not be angrier with myself.”
Then over each other, Sable pleaded, “Please don’t, it’s not your fault,” while he insisted, “I sent you to I don’t know where.”
“Remy, please, please believe me. I will tell you more when you are well.”
He had asked suspiciously, “Tell me what?” and then forcefully, “Tell me now,” while she tripped over poorly formed deferrals.
Finally, he grabbed her attention, demanding, “Sable, tell me now.” And she had. One confession led to another.
He would question what he was hearing and she would sob out increasingly disturbing answers, admitting she had used her voice to manipulate him, confirming the faint memories that played like dreams in his mind of her fighting Lucas, both of them struggling to take control of him. And more outrages as she explained she had done it to protect her friends, same with all the liberties she had taken to free her friend from Berringer’s prison. Then, when he thought nothing more shocking could be revealed, she left him stunned inarticulate to tell him she had sterilized herself.
At her confession, great yawning gaps broke wide upon the path, preventing any retreat. The future was diverging, going horribly wrong.
He had asked, “Is there anything else?” And when she looked confused that there could be more, he became harsher. “Do you intend to continue hiding from me that you trained with the same master strategist as Lucas?”
Eyes closed, head pressed low beside his knee, she was not going to answer.
He asked, “What were you two quarrelling about?”
“He insists the only way forward is to tell you everything.”
~~~~~~
The General was not expecting to be called back to the King’s rooms, but the moment he saw Sable kneeling on the floor, crying into Remy’s leg, he knew exactly what the night held in store. He had started it—he could hardly fault her that—but he had expected the King to be healed, or, at the very least, a night’s rest for everyone.
Gravely pointing him into a chair, Remy’s expression was fierce. “As you have suggested, tell me everything.”
The General began at the most logical place. “My name is Theodore Feridon. I am the son of Orson Feridon.”
“The son,” Remy repeated. He took a moment to fully appreciate it before saying, “I should have seen your skill was not simply that of a student.”
“You knew?”
Remy nodded.
The trust ripped at the General’s heart. “And you left me responsible for your safety?”
Remy’s tone was severe, but the words gave the General relief, “There is no one I have greater faith in than you.”
The General knew he had no right to ask, “Will you tell me how you knew?”
“There are only so many masters of strategy with an emphasis on the tactics of war, and while they are not exactly boastful, they certainly are not hidden, and none of them could claim you as a student. The moment Catherine learned you had sworn secrecy to train, she took it as a personal project to find your teacher. She’s been convinced for more than a decade you could only have been trained by Feridon. But you have been giving yourself away little by little over the years, certain in your defense of Feridon that the Cloitare killed my grandfather.” Remy put his hand on Sable’s lowered head, “But Sable gave you both away entirely with a look. You did not expect Catherine to miss it, did you?”
Running his fingers over the fabric of the headdress, Remy felt the braids. He said, “Take this off,” and when she did, he stared at the change. In the delirium of drugs and persuasion, he had seen it before. Unsettled by the memories the red hair evoked, he spoke very pointedly, “Lucas,” and it was evident that his name was to remain the same, “tell me the rest of it.”
~~~~~~
Laudin joined them in his bed clothes, but Catherine had come from her office. They sat beside each other on the couch, eyes wide in readiness, hearts racing when Remy’s furious eyes laid on them, and grateful when they fell back to Sable on her knees or the spent and regretful looking general.
The King’s voice was affected by the rigid control he had over his temper and pain. “Sable has admitted to me numerous acts of willful betrayal, and my chief of defense has just told me his name is Theodore Feridon, son of Orson Feridon, who is also the strategic master of my wife.” In the pause, Remy reprimanded, “Catherine, I am aware part of your reaction is shock, but this is not the time to be smiling.”
“Right.” And she appeared to be eating her lips.
Waiting in unblinking disapproval until she gave the impression of being solemn, he finally said, “We are all going to start again. We came together over two decades ago to plan for the future, the very future we are now facing. These will be our most defining years and I will not go forward,” his voice started to rise, “with deceit or disloyalty shadowing our moves. This is the time, Catherine, Jacob, to lay out your every indiscretion, because there will be no immunity in the future.”
Laudin had heard the call to come clean plainly enough, but his thoughts were stuck on something else. Half glancing at Berringer, his mind repeated, Son of Feridon. Son of Orson Feridon? No.
But the King didn’t notice Laudin as his unwavering attention was on Catherine.
“One little thing,” Catherine could almost trivialize it, “I tried to kill Sable.” Shaking her head at the paradox, “Sent the order to the Guard Dog.”
Catherine would have received the brunt of Remy’s condemnation had Sable not closed her eyes, wishing it had not been admitted.
“And you knew this.” He said this as a statement to Sable. When she inclined her head in agreement, he had to wait until his escalating annoyance allowed him to speak. “You did not tell me. Why?”
“It was not my secret to reveal.”
“And how many secrets, Sable, do you still protect for others?”
Sable turned up imploring eyes, wanting to explain that no confidences she kept could harm him, but Remy looked from her big black eyes to Lucas’s and then to Catherine’s.
All of their pupils were huge. Remy demanded of Sable, “What are you on?”
She answered timidly, “Speed.”
When the outraged glare met Berringer, he admitted, “Amphetamines.”
Then Catherine, “Whatever Sable had in her pocket.”
Remy pressed his temples to overcome his irritation and looked hard at Laudin.
“I had a coffee,” he said.
“I expected. I am looking to see what you have to confess.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” His focus swept over the red-haired Sable, then onto the son of Orson Feridon, and finally to murderous Catherine. He was flummoxed for an answer. “Well, after all that, I am feeling very much like a middle-aged bore. The most I can plead guilty to is a bit of porn on my office computer.”
~~~~~~
The whole horrible night of confessions had left the future irreversibly altered, the path divided with Remy on one side and Sable on the other. He would not allow her to cross over. Sable pushed at the future hoping to see a bridge, any sort of reprieve, but the future had not yet settled from the explosive changes wrought over the three nights her hair had been red. Infinite possibilities like dust from rubble obscured the prospective landscape.
The call Laudin made to the Sierran president had hardly cleared from the air.
“Arrest Gen
eral Marič and resign,” Laudin instructed after Catherine sent President Pavlović the damning proof gathered from the Count. “Do this and we will not make public the details showing how you funded the attack against the Queen Mother. You may keep your secret accounts and embezzled money, but you cannot remain in power.” Laudin had enjoyed the angry breath of acceptance he heard across the phone. “As I know you wish to show gratitude for our leniency, when you depart to spend more time with your family, you will wish the children of Alena great speed in rejoining the motherland, and you will take special care to praise the people of Erentrude who will suffer with their brothers and sisters of Alena while power from the electric grid is shared between our lands. I am sure you will also wish to admire the enormous amount of food and medicine King Remius has made unconditionally available to Alena.”
The Sierran senate had Marič answering for missing weapons, and with no statutes on violations of international codes of conduct, the Inspector General’s office was ripping apart every operation he had engaged in since holding the rank of major. His future seemed set to be dismal when Pavlović announced his resignation and the senate called for early elections.
But almost immediately, Marič enlisted the help of a public relations firm that went to battle with the PIT. Catherine’s Propaganda and Information Team derided suggestions Marič was, as the soon to be published book was titled, A True Son and Hero of Sierra.
“As a colonel, Marič ordered the taking of civilian hostages.” The PIT released video, increasing the volume of the residents’ terrified screams as they were herded by the military into a school gymnasium.
But the PR firm returned, “He made a bold move that saved the lives of Sierran forces,” and their video showed the soldiers returning home into the arms of waiting family.
The PIT argued, “He only got out because he killed practically everyone that came to reason with him.”
The PR firm glossed it as, “Marič won’t leave one Sierran behind.”
“WTF are you talking about? The SOB knowingly called down artillery on civilians’ homes.”
“He blew the shit out of those insurgents! Motherfucking hero of our troops.” The PR firm played solely to national pride with no regard to coherent argument.
To protect the Count for future use, Catherine could not afford to link Marič to the attack at the lithium mine in the same way as she had Pavlović. And Pavlović, afraid of facing charges of corruption, was shielding the Count as though their futures were the same. Instead, she released the video of Marič scheming to get Alena under the control of Erentrude and the King on Sierra’s border.
The warmongering allied Sierra’s liberals with the religious and sent them both onto the streets to call for Marič’s arrest. Catherine could do nothing to prevent the nationalists from turning the gatherings bloody. The fighting escalated into riots that left hundreds dead, thousands injured, and several neighborhoods in the capital burning.
Laudin pressured the World Security League to get involved, but by the time they called an emergency session, Marič had already responded by instituting martial law.
The Attorney General lost quick interest in General Marič’s crimes, and Sierra’s senators were kept at home under guard of the army; it was for their own protection, the public was assured.
As Girard had predicted, if Pavlović went down and Marič was not utterly crushed alongside him, a military dictatorship would arise under Marič’s command.
With Radimir dead, Catherine followed Sable’s early suggestion to turn Alowa and use him in Radimir’s place. Catherine had warned, “Marič will kill him, you know?”
But Sable had responded without concern, “A body in a prison or a body in a grave, it makes little difference. The risks are worth taking if he succeeds.”
He had departed from the military prison leaving Catherine puzzled, cryptically telling his new handler, “Give my thanks to Ommawa. I be her happy guest.”
When questioned who Ommawa was, he said, “You ask someone great in the Cloitare; they know who Ommawa be.”
It was left as praise to a god not found on the Errian continent.
Unaware of the exchange, Sable followed him in the distance, and little by little her horror grew to realize Alowa intended to honor his word to Catherine and not use the opportunity to escape home.
“Oh, you noble fool.” Sable closed her eyes on the disastrous attempt to free him.
She wished for the mastery of Aidan, the knowledge and experience to influence from afar. The most she could do was linger on him, a dark doubt in his mind.
Darker than ever, she was miserable with fatigue, unable to sleep for the screaming dreams, and everyday more wretched in the certainty she had lost Remy.
At night he kept her near, but not with affection.
Sable remembered returning the first time from the salt flat, how Remy had pulled her back into his bed and she had given him all the fierce energy that had been building in her chest, releasing to him the intensity that made her unpredictable and chaotic; then free of the frenzy, and deliriously tired, she looked across the bed for her clothes, preparing to leave.
“Where are you going?” he wanted to know. And when she told him back to her rooms, he said, “Stay.”
“I will in the future.” She smiled assurance.
“And why not tonight?”
Leaning over the edge of the bed, she grabbed her skirt. “It would be better to wait.”
Arm wrapped around her waist, he pulled her back. “Sable, I want you to stay.”
“Soon,” she placated. Kissing his neck, she then tensed to be released.
He rose up over her, “Explain to me why,” and watched as she searched her exhausted mind for an answer.
“You will not rest with me here.” Her smile was coy.
But she was too new to the game and the playful insinuation did not suit her. He knew she was being evasive. He said simply, “Explain.”
She repeated without guile, “You really will not rest with me here.” Then after he waited without moving, she added, “I don’t sleep well.”
The realization fell across his face. “You have nightmares.”
“When I regain control of my mind, I will join you.”
“Stay,” he said, and she smiled a denial, about to pacify and slip away when he said flatly, “Sable, I am not asking.”
It took a moment for the words to fully reach her. Her smile faltered into pale features while her breath stopped and her body tightened.
“Do not react like this. You are my wife. You belong beside me. If you are troubled, I want to know.”
Coming down to kiss her, she turned away from his lips to press into his neck, confiding what felt like the greatest humiliation for a Cloitare, “I don’t want you to know the disquiet of my mind. Please let me go.”
But his reply was, “Go to sleep.” And when she finally did, he learned the full extent of the damage that had been done.
She had concealed her hand beneath the sheets to remove the bracelet and then kept her hands hidden. For hours, she’d jerk awake, eyes wide, heart racing, until the night moved on. She went deeper only to wake grabbing her wrist, fighting to possess it; she dug screaming at the scar to remove a shackle that was no longer there.
Wrestling her hand free, he talked her out of the frenzy of the dream and back to him. Then he finally saw her wrist. It was bloody. He saw teeth marks. He wanted to wrap it in bandages, but she had tried and it only made things worse; she’d wake up panicking to rip it off.
Pulling her head against his chest, he thought of the weeks he had ignored her and spoke with frustrated remorse, “If I had known.”
With absolute devotion, he had kept her near, but since the night of the confessions, it was his sense of duty that demanded she stay. It was unbearable. In his brusque manner, he made it clear that protecting her from herself was an obligation he was bound to perform.
With no desire for her, his chest was not fill
ed with power and he would fall asleep soon after her. When the first gasp of terror yanked her from the memories that lived in sleep, she would slip away, crushed with shame. The broken landscape that had improved was back to pieces, but the desolation had spread; in the dreams, she was losing so much more than her mind.
The weeks of rejection had turned the terrain more harrowing than ever. Traveling deep into the distance, she wrapped the nightmare around herself to sit in Alowa’s thoughts. Dropping further into the terror, she tried to weigh him down, turn him around, by dragging heavy at his purpose, filling him with dread, but on he went, across the borders, to his death, his oath was given.
With a stifled growl of aggravation, Sable stood. She would go to Catherine. She would use her voice to convince the spy chief to call Alowa back. Then feeling futility rising recklessly over despair, Sable said, “To hell with it.”
It was all over anyway. It mattered little what she did, she would never be trusted or loved again. One more betrayal would make no difference. Hopelessness made her say, “To hell with it all.”
Before opening the door to leave the private halls, she added, “And to hell with subtle.” She would have Catherine order Alowa to go home.
The soldiers outside the door requested, “Queen Mother, if you would, please wait for General Berringer.”
But Sable pushed through saying, “You know what? To hell with you, too.”
Moving purposefully through the main hall, she spun on the single guard that dared pursue. One hand moving fast to his throat, she commanded, “Down,” and then mentally again, To hell with it, she turned to sweep her leg through his while her second hand found his throat, and she growled, “Blackness falls,” before dropping him hard to the stone floor.
Hearing the remaining guard communicating, “General, you need to hurry,” Sable snarled, “You motherfucker.”
She was turning around to smash his radio when she saw gliding around the corner of the western wing the Cloitare, five mothers with Mother Maisa intent on speaking.
Sister Sable (The Mad Queen Book 1) Page 34
