by Cheree Alsop
Rist took a step forward, jolting Liora back to the present. She took a step back as adrenaline began to course through her veins. She didn’t have her knives. She didn’t have to look down to know that their familiar weight was gone. Concern for where the knife with the purple gem was burned in her mind. If she lost it because of the people with the purple skin, they would pay dearly.
“I have to help you,” Rist said, taking another step. “It’s my job.”
There was a hint of derision in his words for the position. Liora couldn’t blame him.
“I’ll tend to myself,” she said. Her words felt flat and rough compared to his lilting accent.
As if her speaking gave him courage, Rist took another step forward and the door slid shut behind him.
Liora’s gaze flicked to it and his followed.
“That’s not a way out, if that’s what you want. Trust me. There are so many layers of hallways in the CUOC labyrinth even an adarok wouldn’t be able to find its way out.” He cracked a smile and waited as though he expected her to do the same.
Liora had no reasons left to smile. She met his gaze and his humored expression faded.
“I’ll tend to your wounds,” he said, his words carrying a bit more strength. “If you fall over during the hearing, I’ll never get off this rock.”
He took another step forward and Liora held up her hands. She might not be in the best state to fight, but she wasn’t about to give in.
“Touch me and you won’t have to worry about leaving this rock, ever,” she told him.
His eyebrows pulled together. “You’re barely standing.”
She held his gaze, keeping every muscle in her body tense so she didn’t show him just how true his statement was.
“I can take care of myself.”
Tariq would have made some smart remark about how that was obvious by her condition. The man in front of her merely bent and set the small red box on the ground.
“So be it.” Rist rose and stepped back with his hands up. “You obviously have trust issues.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” she muttered.
His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond.
She crouched to pick up the box and sucked in a breath at the pain of the wounds along her back tearing open. She backed up to the pallet and sat down so that she didn’t collapse.
“Seriously,” Rist said with a hint of compassion on his face. “Let me help you.”
She stopped him with a glare.
“You can leave,” she replied.
He shook his head, his expression unreadable as he watched her closely. “I can’t. The box needs to be in my possession when I exit this room.”
Liora was torn. She knew how badly she needed the needle and thread among the other items that were no doubt in the box. She had been to the edge enough times to know that the shudder that was starting beneath her skin boded the possibility of infection. If she didn’t get an antibiotic along with antiseptic ointment, she might not make it off the pallet in the morning.
Her Damaclan instincts forbade her from revealing a weakness to her enemy. She was trapped in a cell, and anyone entering without freeing her would be placed in that category. He had been agreeable thus far. Her only course of action was to do the same.
She shoved down the bitter taste of giving in and said quietly, “Will you please turn around?”
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Are you going to stab me when I’m not looking?”
She couldn’t keep herself from asking, “Would that get me out of here?”
The hint of a smile touched his lips when he shook his head. “I’m afraid not. If anyone other than me leaves this cell, we’ll both be shot down.” His voice took on a wry tone. “The CUOC takes very hostile views on anyone who dares to think they are above the Council’s command.” He paused, then said, “I’ll turn around.”
Grateful for his willingness to give her some privacy, Liora lifted her shirt. She made quick work of the gashes across her stomach and the shallow stab wound in her side. Neither required stitches, though she had no doubt Tariq would have insisted. He had a thing about stitches.
Angry that every thought led to Tariq made her rush to chase away one form of pain with another. She scrubbed both sets of wounds and slathered them with ointment, ignoring the bandages in the light of haste. She didn’t know how long she could depend on the man’s discretion, and there were worse things to tend to.
Liora patched a few other minor lacerations from the Ketulans. She knew she was stalling. Sweat beaded on her forehead and dripped down her back, creating a stinging trail down her wounds. When she couldn’t put it off any longer, Liora raised a shaking hand to her back.
The feeling of the skin torn in long, jagged gashes made Liora’s stomach turn.
Rist’s head lifted as though he heard the breath she tried to keep steady.
“I can help you,” he offered. “I may not be a healer by trade, but I’ve enough training in wound care to ensure that you’re not going to die.”
Liora glanced up long enough to confirm that he was still facing the door. He held his webbed hands loosely behind his back and stood still. His dark blue hair nearly brushed the ceiling.
His words hit Liora. If she didn’t tend to her back, perhaps she could just face those she met until the infection truly took hold. Her Damaclan instincts forbade her from taking her life, but if she waited, the creatures from the cavern would do it for her.
“Live together or die together,” she whispered.
“What was that?” Rist asked. He glanced over his shoulder.
Liora had already pulled her shirt back down. She pushed the med kit across the smooth floor.
“I’m done.”
He picked up the box.
“Uh, thanks for making my job easy, I guess,” he said.
Liora settled onto her back on the bed. If he saw her wince, he didn’t say anything. The door opened and slid shut again, then she was alone. Liora rolled gingerly onto her side. A tear dripped from her tightly closed eyes. She dashed it away with the back of her hand and gritted her teeth. It didn’t matter what the Council decided; her fate was in her own hands.
Or so she thought until she fell asleep. Nightmares chased themselves through her mind one after the other until she was writhing and fighting on the pallet. She saw Tariq’s death again and again. She told herself in her dream that he would come back to her the way he had on the Cherum planet, but then the images of him being engulfed by the bomb would play over and over in her memory until she felt as though she had only lived that one moment her entire life, the instant when love became a hole in her heart, when everything she lived for was destroyed in the space of a breath, when she stopped existing as herself because the other person who made her whole had been ripped out of her life.
Her hand was pressed to the glass. She knew he would leave, that his hand would become just an imprint until she channeled the strength from the planet and shattered the dome. She wished it would stay. Fingers touched her shoulder.
“Tariq?” she whispered, afraid to break the spell and see him die again.
She heard an intake of breath.
“What have you done?”
It wasn’t Tariq’s voice. It was the voice of the man who had given her the medic kit. His presence meant that Tariq was gone.
“No,” she protested.
“Hold still,” he replied, his voice gruff. “You’re lucky you haven’t bled to death yet.”
She tried to move out from beneath his hands, but they were strong and relentless. He held her on her stomach and she smelled the sharp tang of antiseptic in the air. She pushed up weakly.
“Don’t move,” Rist said. “Every time you do, more blood pours down. It’s a wonder you have any left.”
Liora wanted to tell him to let her die. She almost said the words, but then he stopped her.
“It’s a good thing your brother insisted that I come back up here. They w
ouldn’t allow it if it was just my request. Apparently, you have some connections in higher places.”
Rist worked quickly. His hands weren’t gentle like Tariq’s. They were coarse and calloused. He had told the truth about healing not being his trade. His fingers were hesitant when he spread numbing salve along her back and she heard the way his teeth ground together when he worked the needle through her skin.
“They won’t tell me what you were up to,” he said, continuing to talk as though it kept his thoughts from what he was doing. “I’m not allowed to ask. They have some fancy word for it, like me not knowing why you’re in here keeps me from breaking you out.” He paused, then said, “As if that’s what keeping me from messing with my time here. I’ve got three more months of service left to the Council, then I’m winging my way back to Cree. I can’t wait to get home.”
He paused.
Liora’s muscles shook. She could feel the sticky blood along her sides. Though he attempted to keep things clean, he could only work so quickly along one gash while the others bled. The bandages he placed along them didn’t seem to do much good.
“Are you still with me?”
Liora had to will her jaw to unclench to answer. When she spoke, she did so in the Tanli dialect.
“I’m alive.”
He was silent for so long she had to turn her head to look at him. The movement pulled at the new stitches along the back of her shoulder.
His gaze met hers and they were troubled. When he spoke, his words were in the common tongue.
“When I can’t see your face and I’m stitching up your back, I can pretend that you’re just an animal, a mute pulon taken for slaughter. Then you speak my language.” He switched to Tanli. “And I remember that you’re not just an animal; you are a humanoid heading for trial for whatever wrong you committed. I can only tell myself that you deserve these wounds.” He was silent for a moment, then said, “But I don’t feel anyone should suffer through such as these. I hope whoever gave them to you paid for them.”
Liora didn’t want his pity. She wanted to die, and he was working to do the exact opposite.
“I’m a murderer,” she said in the common tongue. “I deserve whatever fate they give me. You should just let me bleed out.”
Rist was still for a moment. When he began stitching again, Liora told herself that it was only her imagination that made him more careful.
By the time he finished, she was so exhausted from the tension in her muscles that she barely had the strength to roll onto her side. Rist helped her gently back into what remained of her Ventican shirt. When he stood back up, her eyes closed against her will.
“You should have some water,” he said. “And food. I wonder when the last time was that you ate.”
Liora didn’t want his compassion; she wanted him to leave. He did, eventually. She heard his footsteps cross to the door, the slight grind of gears when it slid open, and the rush of displaced air at its closure.
When the door slid open again, it felt like she had slept for ten minutes.
“Time for your hearing.”
“I told you she wasn’t fit to stand in front of the Council,” Rist argued.
“And I told you they don’t have the patience to wait for some planet meddler to get over a scratch,” the voice replied.
Liora sat up and her head swam. She waited for her eyes to focus on the pair by the door. The man with the purple skin and orange eyes from the moss planet glared at her. Liora rose to her feet. Lightheadedness made her want to sit down again, but she refused. A glance at the bed showed the amount of blood she had lost. It coated the black sheet in a thick dried area that looked far larger than she thought it would be. She could feel it clinging to the bandages across her back when she moved.
“Ludow, I really think this is a bad idea.” Rist said.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Ludow replied. He motioned for Liora to approach and held out a set of thick metal handcuffs.
“Are those really necessary?” Rist asked.
“Are they going to let a known mentalist draw from our planet and use its strength against us?” Ludow shot back as he fastened the handcuffs around Liora’s wrists.
Rist hissed out a breath and didn’t reply.
Liora fell in behind the man. Rist held out a bottle of water to her. She would have denied it if her throat wasn’t burning with thirst. As it was, she took it and drank the contents to ensure that she could stand in front of the Council and not pass out.
She handed the bottle back to Rist. The rattle of the chain between her cuffs was loud in the hallway.
“Thank you,” she said.
He glanced at her as if the gratitude surprised him.
“I had nothing to do with this,” he told her. “I asked them to give you a week to get your feet back under you.”
“Don’t talk to the prisoner,” Ludow growled.
Rist fell silent, but his grip on the water bottle tightened, making the plastic crinkle.
Silence settled over the trio. Liora concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other. She stumbled once and saw Rist’s hand come out to catch her elbow. She shrugged out of his grasp and straightened. He kept closer than she felt was necessary, but when they reached the hearing room, she was grateful to have at least one friendly face at her back.
The room was more of a grand hall then just a regular meeting room. Giant pillars wider around than Liora was tall stretched from the floor to the ceiling so high overhead they were hidden in shadows. Stands ran in rows almost as far, and the majority of them were filled with numerous races Liora had never seen before.
The silence that settled over the room at her entrance was deafening. Liora could feel the tension when she was led by Ludow to the dais in the middle. He clipped her handcuffs to a metal loop on the stand. It gave her about a foot or less of movement. The familiar feeling of being trapped made her muscles tingle. She pushed down the fight or flight sensation.
“We have called the members of the Council for the Unification and Order of the Cosmos together to discuss the matter of this young woman’s violation of the Interplanetary Protection Treaty,” Ludow said.
“In order for it to be a violation, she has to be a member of the Unified Galaxies,” a familiar voice replied.
Liora glanced around Ludow and spotted Brandis on a stand to the left and below their own.
“You have not been given permission to speak,” Ludow growled, his orange eyes sparking.
A pale, skinny woman with long silver hair to her ankles raised a hand. She stood on a dais across from Liora’s. Several other members of various races stood at podiums near hers, but it was obvious by the height of her dais that she was an important member of the Council. Ludow fell immediately silent.
She gave her head a half-nod that looked as formal as a full bow.
“Brandis, son of Julius Day, the acknowledged Commandant of the Lesser Neutral Systems, it is our understanding that Liora, sharing half of the blood of your father, falls outside of the Treaty boundaries,” the woman said. Her words were soft, but they carried across the room. It felt as if every person in the hall strained to catch each syllable of her gentle voice. “However, that does not pardon the fact that she used a planet’s energy for her own benefit,” the woman concluded.
Brandis nodded. “Acknowledged, Your Grace. But I must point out that she used the energy in order to protect both our army and your own in the face of an attack by Ketulans.”
At his last word, a rush of surprise sounded through the hall. Louder talking ensued.
A man with dark green, scaled skin leaned forward to speak into his microphone. “Council, we do not acknowledge the existence of Ketulans.”
Brandis sputtered; the sound was loud in the huge room.
“The Council does not acknowledge the existence of Ketulans?” he repeated. He leaned forward and stared at Ludow. “Your people were killed, General. How can you deny their existence?”
Ludow spoke into the microphone without looking at Brandis. “We acknowledge the presence of abnormalities on planet F One Thousand Seven of Dreyer Nebula Five Eighty-four; however, we refuse to accept that machines such as the race known as Ketulans, exist. Machines have neither individual thought processes nor the ability to act on their own as these abnormalities did.”
“So what were they?” Brandis challenged.
Ludow glared at him. “I don’t have to answer to you. They were a fluke and were taken care of accordingly.”
“By Liora,” Brandis shot back.
Ludow slammed a thick fist onto his podium and the sound reverberated through the hall. Before he could speak, the woman with the silver hair raised her hand again.
“We have heard from the accused’s brother and her accuser. Perhaps it is time that we hear from Liora herself.” The woman turned her silver gaze to Liora. “Liora Day, what happened on Planet F One Thousand and Seven?”
Chapter 15
A thousand images flashed through Liora’s mind. She saw the battle with the cave creatures, felt the claws rake her back, and heard the cries of her fallen warriors. She remembered the feeling of the soft moss beneath her feet and felt her heart jump at the sight of Brandis’ face when she cut the moss free. She remembered how it felt to channel Tariq’s strength with her own and shove it at the moss that threatened to strangle them. It had worked, at least so they thought. In the end, it had also caused Tariq’s death. The thousands of new moss creatures had to be stopped. There was no other way.
“Liora?”
Liora blinked and saw the hall again. The woman across from her gave a kind smile that Liora felt was far out of place among the glares of those around her.
“Do you have anything to add to your brother’s words?”
Liora wanted to stay silent, but the woman had asked so kindly. For some reason, she wanted to answer the woman. She thought through the words Brandis had said. The Ketulans may have been the reason she pulled the strength from the planet, but it wasn’t the purpose for their journey.
