“She’s smarter than that, Brannie.” Cance pinched LaRenna’s cheek then used her thumb and index finger to hold her left eye still, the other hand pushing back the lid until the edge of the brown lens became visible. “I won’t have you sliding these into place when I ask questions,” Cance explained. “You’re just stubborn enough require a phase to ensure honesty.” She grasped the lens between her nails. “And I will get answers.”
“True answers.” Brandoff braced against the chair back and Cance yanked the lens from LaRenna’s left eye. LaRenna gasped but said nothing, even when her captor’s nails scraped the sensitive whites of her eyes.
“Now the other.” Cance repeated the procedure, LaRenna coughing from the stomach acid that bubbled in her mouth. Her eyes burned, her sniffing proving uncontrollable as bloody tears trickled from the corners of her swelling lids. Brandoff loosened the hold on her forehead to suck at the salty streaks.
“She’s juicing ripe, Cance. Can we now?”
“Work then play.” Cance patted the bar counter. “Bring her here and we’ll pull off her slippers. I want to see her markings.”
“By the time you’re finished there won’t be much worth having.” Brandoff tossed LaRenna onto the bar and stretched her across the top, all the while observant of her languid state. LaRenna wasn’t unconscious but rather listening, waiting for her chance to escape, all of which changed with Brandoff’s next words. “What’d you say to giving her a puff? Won’t be near as fun if she’s comatose.”
“She does look out of it,” her twin agreed. “A half-dose should do wonders.” And Cance shoved an inhaler into her sedate captive’s nostril.
“No!” LaRenna returned to life, kicking and screaming, launching four rapid phases at her captors that paralyzed Brandoff but only angered Cance. The mind battle that ensued was frenzied, Cance regaining control only after several physical blows to LaRenna’s midsection. As LaRenna lay gasping, Cance sat on her arms, pinned her head, and shoved the inhaler deep. “Don’t want to take you too far up. I want you and that sharp little mind of yours aware of everything that happens.” She pinched LaRenna’s nose and mouth shut, forcing the vapor into her sinuses. “Enjoy the trip.” Cance climbed from the bar and removed one of LaRenna’s slippers. LaRenna struggled against her touch, launching a scratching phase at her captors until the prock began to surge. It was the strangest sensation, drawing her to an instant orgasmic peak then plummeting her into a distorted awareness. Colors were brighter, realer, fascinating in their complexity. Why, she could see them clearly despite her eyes! She was aware her cover was blown, but didn’t care as long as the pleasure continued. It was thrilling, but so very wrong, going as quick as it came to leave her violently angry. She was rabid, screaming obscenities and twisting in attempted escape.
Cance clenched her bare foot even tighter. “Just our luck! She’s a prock virgin, Brannie. Look how it’s hitting her. Things are perfect. Perfect! Couldn’t be better if we’d planned them this way!”
“How’s that?” Brandoff, still shaking from the phase fight, had taken a seat by LaRenna’s head.
“Read these.” Cance held up LaRenna’s foot. Brandoff read the markings then leaned forward, bare inches from LaRenna’s face. “Hello there, third Kimshee daughter of Belsas Exzal. I’m Brandoff Creiloff, one of the thousand-odd sisters your bitch of a guardian raiser had heat-branded like common herd animals and banished to Trimar’s ice caves. What you’re feeling now is just a taste of what we’ve endured. Prock keeps you awake so you aren’t killed or enslaved in the Junglelands. It’s an eat or be eaten existence on Trimar.” Brandoff licked her lips. “And I’ve learned to be very hungry.” LaRenna could smell soured wine on Brandoff’s breath, feel her unkempt hair brushing her shoulder. It was disgusting and so distorted Brandoff’s actual image that LaRenna couldn’t concentrate enough for a phase.
“I know who you are,” she sputtered, in a voice far weaker than she intended. “You’re murderers without souls or morals—a smudge on the glorious Mother’s golden skirts.”
“Temper, temper,” Brandoff replied. “We just met. Don’t be so quick to judge me and I’ll try to keep from doing the same.” She forced her mouth onto LaRenna’s. No one but Krell had ever kissed her like that. It was bitter. Vulgar. It made her desperate and she withdrew against the counter, biting Brandoff’s bottom lip until it bled.
“You provoked that one. Let her up and I bet she’d flatten you again.” Cance was overjoyed by the reaction, even though it only served to make Brandoff’s crude advances even more insistent. Brandoff pulled back from the embrace, undid LaRenna’s belt, and jerked it loose, snapping the doubled leather very near LaRenna’s ear, which startled her so completely Brandoff repeated the crack.
“Look at her scare. This is going to be the best I’ve had in ages.”
LaRenna bucked against her restraints with renewed vigor. Maybe if she fought hard enough they would cease the games and fight her fairly. Training and instinct both said death would be easy compared to this torment, a sacrifice in the name of duty. But Cance knew all this and intended to squelch the notion, grabbing her feet even tighter and rotating her right ankle. “Stop wiggling or I’ll break it.”
“Let me go!” LaRenna jerked her knees to her chest then kicked out, throwing Cance into the wall. The force slid LaRenna down the smooth counter, straight into Brandoff’s stout arm and boot knife.
“I’ll save us all trouble and kill you where you lie. You’ll serve my purposes alive or dead.” Metal scraped LaRenna’s throat, a convincing and almost welcomed reminder her life might soon be over. But the attack had to be met, so LaRenna reached out with her mind, found Brandoff, and ripped into the guardian’s rage, feeding it with pain until Brandoff began pressing the knife.
“DON’T!” Cance gasped. “She wants you to kill her!” She knocked the dagger from Brandoff’s grip then fell back wheezing. “I . . . want . . . her . . . alive!” Cance bent at the waist as her air returned. “She’s a ticket to safe . . . passage if there are . . . any problems.”
Brandoff rubbed the hand Cance had slapped. “Huh?”
“Belsas won’t let anything happen to her brat. Besides, the bitch took what was mine and now I have something to even the score.” Cance, aroused as she was perturbed by such resistance, snatched LaRenna’s legs into the air, twisting her slender right ankle out of place. “Realize now, I do what I say, every time.”
LaRenna cringed as her legs were dropped back on the bar. The prock swept away the pain and she soared again. It was engaging, intense, beautiful, until it dropped her, this time spinning her just short of unconsciousness.
Cance pulled her to a sitting position. “Speak up, girl. What did you tell your contact?” Silence echoed as the twins waited for an answer not forthcoming. LaRenna was limp, unable to answer even if she wanted. Cance shook her and restated the question. “The map, did you tell your lover about it?”
LaRenna’s high peaked once more into fury. She opened one eye then rolled it back as she spewed the only answer that made sense in such insanity. “Fuck you.”
Brandoff waltzed behind the bar and began to massage LaRenna’s trembling shoulders, sliding beneath her top to fondle her breasts. “Did you hear that, Cance? She’s begging us to do her. Come on, I’m about to burst. Maybe she likes two on one. Prock does that, you know.”
“I heard her. Just won’t learn, will she?” Cance took LaRenna’s hands and began to rub the palms. “Last chance, my sweet, tell me what I need to hear.”
“No.” Determination and finality clenched LaRenna’s mouth closed. No matter what they did or how they drugged her, she would never betray her post.
“Your choice.” Cance twisted the little finger of LaRenna’s left hand until it snapped. “I’ll break you one bone at a time if need be. That’s two. Wanna go for three?”
A single pained sob escaped LaRenna’s mouth, then she clamped down again, rankling her captors all the more. Their patience drawn to
the limit, they nodded agreement on the next punishing tactic. LaRenna was forced back on the bar and stretched prone, her eyes blindfolded, her leg bindings divided and secured at opposite ends of a wall rack, her arms lashed at agonizing distention to the counter’s pass-through overhang. Brandoff undressed then straddled their captive, her bare knees pressing into LaRenna’s tender sides. Teeth bared in carnal foreboding, she pulled briefly at LaRenna’s skirts then paused to take four quick shots from her inhaler. “Your lover has nothing on me, girl. I’ll leave you screaming for more.” Brandoff’s grin turned malicious. “Well, I promise to have you screaming.”
“Tell us about the map.” Cance tempted amnesty one last time. “I won’t let her hurt you if you do. Don’t”—she pulled at LaRenna’s top—“and I’ll help her.” The room remained quiet until Cance sighed, sealing LaRenna’s fate. “The prock didn’t work. I should have expected as much from a Kimshee. It’s part of the training. Have at ’er, Brannie. She won’t talk no matter what we do.”
Screams formed in the deepest part of LaRenna’s being and escaped in rafter-shaking amplitude throughout the Waterlead. She fought valiantly, dizzying height after dizzying height; writhing, biting, and scratching until Brandoff finally reared back and struck her hard. Even then reality hung on one miserable minute more, withholding the peace of insensibility until one memory became indelible. Cance removed the blindfold and looked deep into her as she slipped away.
“You’re mine by oath.” Cance’s expression was trancelike, contented by the memory of someone else. “Belsas will never win you from me, Chandrey. Never.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
My promises are deep and true. Forever I am yours.
—from Guardian’s Song
Belsas paced her workroom. “I trust you with my only child and this is what happens? How could you, Krell?” She stared intensely at Krell’s apprehensive projection. “This is simply inappropriate.”
Chandrey shook her head. “LaRenna is a braided Kimshee on post. She’s an adult capable of making her own choices. You’ve reminded me of that several times as of late, Bel.”
“But they’ve only known each other a few days.”
“You thought her competent enough to assign undercover, didn’t you?” intervened Chandrey. “Krell suits her. They’ll be good together. Besides, Krell thought enough to ask you first. That has to mean something.” Chandrey smiled at Krell. The more she could do to soften Belsas’s bluntness, the better. “Krell stuck to tradition in an age that doesn’t call for it. That in itself speaks volumes.”
“I understand the unusual nature of this call,” began Krell. “But LaRenna and I have formed a unique bond, one that I would like to pursue at length.”
“Like the one you pursued with Tatra Wileyse?” retorted Belsas.
“How do . . . ?” Krell had quite forgotten that Tatra had told everyone, anyone who would listen, that they were going to oath. “I never offered to fully bond with Healer Wileyse and we certainly never oathed.”
“Tatra’s raisers are old friends of ours,” Belsas replied. “According to them, the two of you were very close not to be oathed. Sharing a bed, I believe.”
“For a while I suppose, but I, we never—”
“A pass and a half is what I heard.” Belsas rocked on her heels. “Couldn’t make a commitment in a pass and a half, but now you want to make a serious go of things with someone you’ve known three days?”
“Well, I—”
“Kimshees are not known for stability in their personal life.” Belsas’s fiery tone increased. “You’re willing to give up apprentices and take reassignment for LaRenna?”
“LaRenna is Kimshee, too, Grandmaster Belsas, and very mature.” Stubbornness sparkled in Krell’s eyes. “I know that this means I can no longer train her and that reassignment will be necessary for me. I am also aware of the implications on my career, but I feel it is important, no, necessary for LaRenna and me to find out just how deep this bond of ours can go.”
“If all this is true,” Belsas inquired, “how could you let her take this post?”
“She accepted the post before they met,” Chandrey interjected.
“They began bonding before she went undercover. Krell could have stopped all this simply by calling us sooner.” Belsas turned back to the screen. “Why didn’t you, Krell? Her welfare fell on you until she posted. If there was anything questionable about her readiness, if there was a chance your bonding could have interfered with your judgment of her readiness, then it was irresponsible of you to send her on.”
Krell folded her arms across her chest. “The post means everything to her. She thinks it will prove her capabilities. I couldn’t very well deny her the opportunity with her thinking so.”
“Her wants matter little, First Kimshee. I am speaking of her readiness. She was your charge until she posted!” Belsas’s face was fiercely red. “And you denied your bond call to let her meet danger? ALONE?”
“Belsas, dear.” Chandrey’s soft soprano was calm yet demanding. “You’re not angry with Krell for allowing LaRenna to take post. You’re furious at yourself for sending your daughter against the Creiloff twins.” The name sent sharp chills down her spine, catching hard at the scars creasing her back. “Look at this objectively.”
“I am!”
“No, you’re not.” Chandrey leaned across the worktable, hands extended, palm up, toward her guardian. “You’re angry at yourself. You decided correctly that LaRenna was the best suited for the post, so you sent her to Langus. It was a good decision at the time.”
Belsas sagged against the worktable. “If I had known for certain the Creiloff twins were involved in the unrest on Langus, I’d never have sent her. Those two and their supporters have been thorns in the Kinship’s side for far too long.”
“Eventually, they will become too elderly to be much of a bother, just as we will.” Chandrey patted Belsas’s hand.
“Belsas.” Krell spoke in the low, rambling drawl guardians used when discussing personal matters. “This was her first post. It would have been selfish to deny her the right to prove herself. Surely you can understand that.”
Belsas drummed her fingers under Chandrey’s touch. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Generally I am,” Chandrey teased. “About what this time?”
“This situation. LaRenna is such a free spirit that perhaps she needs a steady mate.” Krell breathed an audible sigh. “Maybe you can tame her quick mouth, Krell.”
“There’s nothing wrong with stating your mind,” retorted Chandrey. “Krell, you do know she’s physically different, don’t you?”
“I am aware LaRenna’s true female, if that’s what you are referring to,” replied Krell. “Her capacity to have children has increased her phasing abilities to amazing heights. She’s a powerful mind. She just needs to refine her skills.”
“I’m glad she’s able to explore her potential with you.” Chandrey squeezed Belsas’s hand. “If she’s anything like her gahrah, she’ll learn fast.”
“I’m sure she will. I believe her determination derives from her mamma?”
Belsas shoved a precautionary hand into her pocket. “As does her trickster side. Word to the wise: always check your clothing before sending it to be cleaned. The fabric maintainers at the Training Grounds once came across a note Chandrey had left in my pocket. They still refer to me as, well, I’d rather not repeat it, but the name has stuck to this day.”
Ringing laughter filled rooms on both Langus and Saria Three. “And it still fits you.” Chandrey’s eyes danced merrily. “Think of it, Bel, we could be grandparents, not grandraisers, grandparents!”
“Don’t rush them.” Belsas chuckled. “They aren’t oathed yet and besides, LaRenna is young.”
Chandrey refused to let pessimism douse her spirit. “LaRenna is only one pass younger than I was when we oathed.”
“Times were different, Chandrey, and Krell is five passes older than I was. That makes her a fu
ll seventeen older than LaRenna.”
“I just turned thirty-nine.” Krell had become sensitive to the subject of LaRenna’s age, quite possibly defensive. There didn’t seem to be any difference when they were together; Krell only knew the rightness of it. “I don’t believe it’s of any significance in our relationship. LaRenna is decades older in her phasing.”
“Well spoken, First Kimshee Middle.” Belsas carefully studied the other guardian’s expression. Whatever Krell may have lacked in reputation she made up for in determination, a trait Belsas admired. “I still think she’s a tad young for all this and she may not appreciate any of what we’ve said here, but Krell is to my liking.” Belsas raised her hands in submission. “I suppose it’s serendipity. If LaRenna agrees then you have my blessing.”
“Mine, too!” Chandrey piped. “Blessed be the day she met you, Krell.”
“Chandrey, please!” Belsas poured a shot of bitterwine from a worktable crystal and held it up in toast. “Happiness to you both.”
“Thank you.” Krell found LaRenna very similar to Chandrey at that moment. “I can see where LaRenna gets her energy.”
“It doesn’t decrease with age,” mumbled Belsas through her glass.
“I also see where she developed her fondness for bitterwine.” Krell’s mouth drew at sight of the thick black concoction.
Belsas grunted, downed the shot, and set the glass back on the table with two quick clinks of its bottom. “Few truly appreciate the taste of bitterwine.”
“I’m not one of them.” Chandrey shared Krell’s grimace. “Blech!”
“It’s an acquired taste,” said Belsas.
“Very!” exclaimed the others in unison.
“I’ll be glad when LaRenna returns. She appreciates fine drink.” Belsas turned when a loud knock interrupted their lighthearted discussion. Rona stood in the doorway.
“New reports have come in, Grandmaster Belsas. You should take a look at them.”
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