by Susan Grant
“Mama!”
At Jaym’s enthusiastic yell, she tore her attention from Grizz’s skeptical expression. She gave her tired eyes a quick rub and pinched her cheeks for color before Jaym came running up to them with Hervor’s son in tow.
The boys had twigs in their hair and muddy knees and dozers made of sticks. A black camp-dog puppy with a white and pink roly-poly belly ambled after them. It wore a strip of leather around its neck with some scraps of zelfen tied to it. Jaym’s loyal raider, Val thought, smiling. Everywhere he went, the puppy went, too. Ever since he could talk, he’d pleaded with her for his own dog. In light of her upcoming nuptials, an event she hadn’t yet discussed with him but felt guilty about nonetheless, she’d relented and granted his wish.
“Mama, can me and Yanney go swimming?”
The morning chill lingered in the air. She hooked her thumbs in her weapons belt. “It’s cold.”
“Oh, Mama! I’m tougher than that.”
“Me, too!” Hervor’s small son declared, idolizing Jaym. It seemed her son collected followers like other children collected seashells.
“You used to say the same thing, girl,” Grizz told Val. “Always telling us you were tough. Nothing was ever too cold or too hot, too high or too low. And look where you are now. Captain of our clan.”
A bittersweet achievement, she thought, considering the circumstances that got her there. “You can thank Grizz for convincing me, boys,” she told the little ones. “I’ll let you swim, but only if you find us some rock oysters for boiling up later at supper.”
The boys whooped and scampered off toward the beach with the puppy. She was glad to know that the problems the clan faced were opaque to its youngest members at least. She’d give her eyeteeth to go back to the days of that kind of naïveté.
Like five years ago…when she thought she saw a happy ending in the rival clan leader’s gaze?
Val turned her frown to the Bull Dog’s scorched hull when her comm alerted her to an incoming message: Reeve, calling from his way back from a salvage duty trolling the Channels for stragglers. “What have you got, Reeve?”
“Captain, you won’t believe what turned up caught in our nets,” he said. “A Triad shuttle craft. And guess who’s driving it?” Reeve paused for dramatic effect. “Dake Sureblood.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
VAL COULD HARDLY HEAR herself think above the furious pounding of her heart. No notice, Dake Sureblood had showed up, without his gangsters, and asked Reeve to tow him to Artoom. Asked!
Too many different reactions shook her to know what she was supposed to feel. Relief, rage, hurt—she careened from one emotion to the next like a skiff on an end run through the asteroids. In the back of her mind she’d always wondered if Dake might be dead. Hoped, actually. It would have explained away his disappearance. But he was alive and definitely well, and it gutted her heart.
This man, this betrayer, this thug, this murderer was the father of her child. Ah, Jaym. I’m sorry for the genes he gave you. How could such a sweet boy with such a giant heart be sired by a man who had none?
“Val. He’s requesting to see you when he arrives,” Grizz repeated for the third time, intent on driving the idea into her head once and for all as they strode along the path back to the village. “He keeps asking. For you. You heard Reeve. The Sureblood says we’re in danger. He wants a meeting.”
“The only meeting that man deserves is with the executioner.”
“Hear him out.” Grizz issued the advice in his mentor’s voice that he hadn’t needed to use with her in many years. “I’d like to kill him myself, girl, for what his clan’s done to us, but don’t forget he’s come to us, not the other way around. He showed up unarmed and in a borrowed ship.”
“Or stolen. We don’t know. And he is a Sureblood. How do you know it’s not a trick?” But Grizz had a point. It wasn’t as if they’d tracked down Dake and caught him like a rabid dog. He’d come trotting to their front door, begging to be let in.
To bring them a warning. Bah. What did he really want from the Blues? From her? She was done feeding him pieces of her heart. Done! In all these years he’d never once made the attempt to speak to her. Of course by then she wanted to kill him. He’d never learned he had a son, but that was his own fault.
A sonic boom high in the sky signaled that the pair of ships would soon land. “Have an armed group of raiders meet the ship,” she said. “Then run him through a gauntlet, all our clan lining the road.” There hadn’t been a full gauntlet used on Artoom in her lifetime, but she’d heard the old stories. Some didn’t survive it. An image flared of Dake being kicked, rocks being thrown, him bleeding. Then she thought of Jaym watching the spectacle.
Hells.
“Don’t hurt him,” she mumbled. “At least not permanently. And not in front of the children. I don’t want them watching this.” She didn’t want Jaym watching. “Bring him to the square and tie him up. Everyone can look at him there. Better yet, throw him in the chicken pen for display. It won’t be for long, I aim to have him convicted by dinnertime.”
Ignoring Grizz’s astonished stare, she returned home to tell Sashya the news.
HANDS CUFFED BEHIND his back, Dake stepped off the ship and squinted in the bright sunshine. Artoom. So green under a fair-weather sky shot through with puffy clouds. The sea sparkled in the sunshine. The humidity was minimal and the air was warm. It was another world from the last time he was here.
Aye, and he was another man.
The breeze carried the smells of hearth fires and dirt, sweat and leather, and homemade soap. He inhaled deeply. How he’d missed the smells of a pirate village. Missed home. Soon. At least he was off that sterile spaceship and in a place and amongst people who seemed real.
And who very well might kill you where you stand.
Villagers swarmed close but Val’s former skiff mate, Reeve, kept them controlled. Then Grizz, Conn’s old friend, and some raiders took over from Reeve. The man’s wary, questioning glance wounded him to the core. Like Reeve, he acted skeptical about Dake’s honesty, given the war they’d waged with the Surebloods. From their view, he’d acted like a murderer, a war-making coward who’d broken their Val’s heart.
He searched for her in the crowd. No sign of her.
“This way, Sureblood.” Grizz jerked his gloved hand to where a group of frowning clansmen decked out in raider gear waited for him, weapons ready to fire. It seemed his welcoming committee wasn’t near as pleasant as the weather. In fact, it looked as if a squall was blowing in.
He recognized some of the sneering clansmen from the last time he walked this path. Ragmarrk was nowhere to be seen, but Ayl was there, looking older and somehow harder, his hatred for Dake vivid.
He’d been Val’s lover once. Was he again? The thought set off a spark of jealousy he had no right having after all the years he’d been gone, especially in light of the warring between the clans. So much for your hoped-for, rippin’-off-clothes reunion with Val, he thought. Yet, if Ayl had indeed been successful in his pursuit of Val, confidence and possession would have muted the man’s hatred.
Ayl drew his weapon and strode out from the protection of the group. “Welcome back,” he said, and slammed the butt of his dozer across Dake’s face, opening up a cut on his left cheekbone, the same place he’d been hit in the bar on the Unity.
Hands tied, Dake moved one foot behind him to keep his balance. Warm blood dribbled down his jaw. Pain radiated through his skull.
“That’s for hurting Val.” Ayl wound his arm back for another hit. “And this is for—”
“Ayl!” Grizz caught Ayl before he could strike him again. “It’s not your place to do it. It’s Val’s.”
Ayl hesitated, and for a moment Dake thought he might defy Grizz, but he pocketed his dozer. His eyes smoldered as he sneered at Dake. “The next hit was going to be for leaving after the gathering, Sureblood. For running off like the murdering coward you are.”
Dake had heard no different
from the man in the bar. Or from Reeve on the trip back here. He saw it in Grizz’s eyes. The entire clan might have been willing to believe he didn’t kill Conn…if it hadn’t been for the slugfest his people and theirs had had ever since.
He’d have his work cut out for him, proving it was Nezerihm’s fault.
The raiders herded him toward town. Dake itched between the shoulder blades, half expecting Ayl or one of his hangers-on to lose patience and shoot him in the back. Always, Grizz remained near, overseeing as they paraded him past angry, jeering Blues lining the way up the hill.
“Assassin! Gangster!” the Blues called out, encouraged by Ayl’s raiders. “You’ll get your due, Sureblood.”
Trash pelted him as he was propelled along the path in his silly, too-new Triad boots. Hells, he’d been hit with far worse than rotting fish and fruit, like whip lashes, armored fists, a wide variety of boots and even a piece of a broken starship wing once. He’d been aimed at, shot at and pistol-whipped by just about every known weapon in the galactic arsenal. The Blues would have to come back with a lot more than compost to make him flinch.
“Bully! Boar-blood drinker!”
“Spineless bastard! Killer!”
“We’re going to cut you down to size. Then kill you!”
Their fury was wasted on him. The real criminal was hiding out in a faraway palace built with zelfen money—money that would be in pirate pockets had Nez’s family not elbowed their way into their traditional homelands and took over what never belonged to them in the first place. At that very moment, Nez was safe behind his walls of luxury trying to figure out how the man he thought he’d killed was walking alive today. The man who knew what he’d wrought.
As the raiders took turns shoving him up the hill, a small boy scampered past and caught his attention. His hair was gold-streaked, his skinny arms and legs deeply tanned. He wore a stick shoved in his belt like a dozer and gripped another, longer one in his hand like a sword. A fat puppy raced after him as he dived from one tree trunk to another to peer at all the excitement.
A boy and his dog, Dake thought, feeling a smile come over him. It was like seeing himself at that age.
A hand slapped the back of his skull. “Eyes straight ahead.”
Soon he was back to stealing sideways peeks in search of Val. Still no sign of her. She must have stayed away deliberately. It wouldn’t surprise him. He knew how she was when angered. Now that anger was directed at him. Dake kept searching for her nonetheless. Just one look, one shared glance, that was all he asked. And he’d explain everything.
The boy reappeared. The puppy trotting with the child was black and white with floppy ears like his beloved Merkury. By now, Merk should have been enjoying a slower life as an aged dog, Dake realized with a pang. Napping in the sunshine, a little hard of hearing, a well-loved, graying, loyal old friend, while Dake’s own children scampered nearby. But that was not how it turned out, for him or his dog.
You never know what life’s going to hand out.
The full impact of what he’d lost slugged him in the gut, and what he wanted for his future came into sharp focus. He saw where he’d come from and exactly where he wanted to go. He’d settle for nothing less.
In that instant, the child’s gaze connected with his. There was an instant jolt of recognition. Maybe they both felt it. Before Dake could make sense of it, the boy had vanished.
Another smack on the head dizzied him. “Eyes down, you piece of flarg!”
With new clarity aiding him, Dake was shoved and prodded to the center of the main market square that he remembered from the gathering. The same women as before sold hand-pies to the crowd, except this time he was the entertainment. Children ran every which way, and the camp dogs barked. The air smelled more like the sea than the forest from the constant breeze sweeping up the cliffs from the beach. He could hear the distant thunder of the waves, and remembered the salt limning the rocky jetties like frosted sugar the night Val showed him the baths.
An old gate used for a small poultry pen was thrown open with a rusted screech. A raider shooed the squawking chickens out and tested the cage rungs for strength.
“Get in, you cowardly prick,” Ayl said.
The boy needed some attitudinal realignment, Dake decided. When the time was right, he’d bloody well deliver it.
Ayl closed and locked the gate behind him, then took a deep swig from a flask of moonshine another raider offered him.
“Hawkk!” Grizz called out. “Hervor!”
The raiders came forward at Grizz’s call. Dake was relieved to see Val’s other old skiff mate. He’d liked the man, though he doubted Hervor still felt the same about him. With Hervor ordered to stand guard, Grizz walked over to Dake with a blade in his hand. “Give me your hands, boy.” He sliced through the leather straps.
“Where is Val?” Dake persisted. “I have to meet with her right away.”
“She’ll come when she’s ready.”
“I gotta set the facts straight, about the war, about Conn. And Val.”
The older man pondered him. There was more gray hair in his ponytail, a few more lines crinkled near his eyes, but he was otherwise the same strong senior raider from five years earlier. “Son, that you came back is what matters. The rest will follow. But you have your work cut out for you. It ain’t gonna be easy with her.”
Dake nodded. “I had that feeling.”
VAL SCRAPED HER HAIR INTO a severe ponytail pulled so tight that her scalp throbbed. She wanted nothing soft about her at the war trial.
It seemed an eternity before Grizz knocked and stomped through the door. He looked exhausted. Her mother greeted him dressed in a pretty shawl that matched the hem of her skirts. She’d dressed up for the first time in ages, as if she was going to a party. The lifelong bachelor took in her appearance with a sweetly gentle, almost boyish appreciation that caused her to smile coyly and dip her head. All of which was quickly hidden by the pair upon shifting their focus to Val.
By the heavens. Was there something going on between the two? Why hadn’t she ever noticed before? They presented nothing but poker faces to her curiosity.
“Val, he took it like a raider, from start to end,” Grizz reported.
She frowned at the note of respect in his voice. Dake had impressed Grizz. She didn’t want Dake to impress Grizz or anyone. She wanted him to act weak and cowardly. She wanted him to act guilty. Then there’d be no other excuse for his actions.
Like his using you.
They moved toward the front door. Val paused on the porch to don her raider jacket. Like her mother’s festive attire, the gorgeous sunshine seemed somehow wrong. Violent thunderstorms and torrential rain would have better suited the day, she thought as they embarked on their walk to the square.
“Just warning you,” Grizz said. “Ayl got to the Sureblood before I could stop him.”
“I said I didn’t want him hurt before the trial!”
“It was just a dozer whip in the face. Would have been more if I hadn’t gotten there. He’s okay, but if he’s bleedin’ when you see him, that’s why.”
“Ayl oughta be the one bleeding for not obeying my rules,” she ranted. “Always taking clan law into his own hands, he is.” If his audacity knows no bounds now, what would he be like if we marry?
“I reprimanded him, Val. Told him it was your place to mete out the punishment, not his.”
“Good,” she muttered. If anyone was going to exact vengeance on Dake Sureblood, it was her.
“Where is the Sureblood now?” Sashya asked. “Who’s watching him?”
“He’s waiting in the pen for us to start,” Val said.
“In the chicken pen, Valeeya?” Sashya appeared aghast. “You brought a man many view as our enemy into our midst and put him in a flimsy cage in the middle of the square!”
Grizz’s tone was reassuring. “I’ve posted raiders as guards, Sashya. Level-headed men.”
“They are now, but moonshine’s a-flowing. If you’re no
t careful you’ll never get your answers, Valeeya. You’ll have nothing to put on trial but a bloody corpse.”
“It’ll serve him right,” Val muttered.
Sashya stopped in her tracks, propping her hands on her hips. “You don’t mean that for a minute.”
Val glared back, steaming. She wanted Dake to suffer the way she’d suffered. She wanted him to taste the same loneliness, the fear and despair that she did. Then she thought of the irrepressible little boy who bore his looks and spirit, and the thought of killing Dake sickened her. She lashed out at Sashya. “Why are you defending him? You of all the people in the clan should be calling for his execution. He killed your husband. My father.”
“He’s accused. We never found proof.”
“The Surebloods are our enemies, Mama. We are at war. If Dake’s so innocent, then why did he want to destroy us?”
Sashya’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
They walked for a moment in silence. “You might want to believe he’s an innocent man, Mama, but he sure hasn’t acted like one.”
Shouts in the direction of the square pulled Val’s attention to where a tall stranger paced inside the enclosure like a trapped predator.
Dake Sureblood. Her heart stopped, then began to race.
The sight of him brought back every memory of that first nightmarish month after her father’s death in excruciating detail. His abandonment had gutted her. Ayl had taken her actual virginity, aye, but Dake had taken something much more fundamental: her innocence. It had made her stronger and maybe even a better leader, but the learning process along the way had been agonizing. Five years of not knowing. Now he’d shown up out of the blue alone and unarmed with news of a “warning.”
