The Forgotten Sky

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The Forgotten Sky Page 36

by R. M. Schultz


  Day and night appear no different in her cell. Only the infinite horizon of stars slowly changes as the Pearl navigates through space.

  It felt like a month had passed since she was first imprisoned.

  Seeva sits, she exercises, and she misses Ori, the hermadore youngling, Silvergarden, even Saysana. At least Ori was safe. Before her final confrontation with Drumeth, she instructed her ship to pilot itself and fly Ori back to Silvergarden.

  Now Saysana delivers most of her meals, and Seeva has slowly given in and shared as much with her as anyone she’s ever talked to. Seeva revealed her past in the convent and her time with the wealthy family and dapper father. Saysana only seemed intrigued, never judgmental. A few times Seeva wondered if Saysana was playing the nice interrogator, coaxing Seeva into naming Silvergarden as her home. However, Saysana never asked, and the real interrogations grew less frequent then stopped, the explosions rocking the inside of the Pearl more common.

  Seeva’s bones are losing density in this nearly absent gravity; she knows it. And that’s not the worst of it. Happiness was something she found up until a few weeks ago when she felt something growing inside of her, after missing her period.

  A fetus. The spawn of Drumeth. From their one abominable encounter. Seeva cannot believe this has happened and now wishes only to die. She didn’t take all of the precautions she should have. She assumed the gift from the cadaverous prostitute would take care of such a possibility, even if Drumeth didn’t die in the act, even if the old man could still impregnate her.

  This is another thing she cannot tell even Saysana. Tears roll down her cheeks, hidden in the darkness of space.

  An illness festers inside Seeva, a pit of blackness. Something moves in her womb, and she feels it like a hand, claws scraping the flesh from her pelvis, then reaching up. Tearing at her diaphragm.

  Her forehead is damp, as is the interior of the alloy suit they dressed her in, although it should be self-drying.

  Seeva recalls the dream that woke her. She’d given birth to the abomination inside of her. It was shriveled and blue, some kind of mummy, and it turned on her as soon as it ripped out of her vagina with tearing pain. The thing crawled with two arms of gnarled bone and bit into her thigh. And in the way that only dreams make sense, it grew into an adult demon before her eyes and found Ori and the hermadore, slavering over the animals of many worlds as it sacrificed them all.

  Her heart feels like it’s developed an arrythmia: erratic, faint. She swoons. She cannot deal with the impossibility of this fetus while she lives in this cell.

  A hissing sounds; the hatch in the corner of the cell sinks inward.

  Saysana’s short hair and square jaw appear as she floats up into the cramped chamber projecting the illusion of boundlessness. She carries a tray and bottle. More food than Seeva should receive but no meat rations—just as Seeva requested. Saysana is keeping her as healthy as she can.

  “Another bad dream?” Saysana brushes drenched locks from Seeva’s forehead. Saysana’s tone is also off, concealing something. She pats the feverish wetness from Seeva’s skin with a warm cloth.

  Seeva nods.

  “There’s a Northrite versus Uden trial looming over the galaxy,” Saysana says, “and everyone’s preparing for intragalactic war. Which is good for you. It seems the importance of your punishment is plummeting.”

  Seeva’s face contorts in disbelief. This isn’t what the galaxy needs, not after she saved them from the likes of Drumeth. Hopefully Uden will reveal some of the Northrite’s atrocities.

  Saysana lets go of the tray near the floor. It slowly settles without a clatter, the nearly absent gravity acting like a cushion. “I have to tell you something.”

  Seeva’s stomach knots in anticipation of what that something is. She pushes the tray away with a booted toe. “I can’t stay out here much longer, or I’ll fast myself to death.”

  “This is a horrid environment, but, Seeva, I know you now. I’ve felt our shared bond with the animals, as have you … and you’ve felt my attraction. I take risks to care for you and I’ll continue to do so, but please tell me. Let me help you. There’s something else, something worse you haven’t shared, something that’s eating you up.”

  Seeva jerks, scrutinizing Saysana’s expression, her suspicion. It’s eating her inside, literally, she feels it.

  This woman knows me well.

  Seeva will not succumb. She cannot say the words aloud, cannot admit it to anyone, least of all herself, or the demon will become real.

  Does she care for Saysana, like with her friend in the convent? She can’t, can she? It went so wrong, following that path. She stands, wipes the tears from her cheeks—to hide them—and falls against Saysana, hugging her around the waist.

  Saysana attempts to disentangle herself from Seeva’s short limbs, but they are strong. Finally, Saysana pries her way out and folds her arms across her chest. “What is it? I want to help you, but I can’t if I don’t know how.”

  Seeva’s dark cheeks are wet but firm, her eyes fountains of stony emotion. “You’re all I …” She cannot say it; she may actually like Saysana.

  Saysana touches Seeva behind the ears, her fingers as gentle as a Silvergarden zephyr. She tilts Seeva’s head up and kisses her. They linger a moment, passing the air between them, in and out of parted lips. They kiss again.

  Seeva steps back, her face warm and tingling. “You’re sure no one’s watching us?”

  Saysana nods.

  “That’s only the second time I’ve kissed someone,” Seeva says. “Athiera was the first. The men never wanted it, nor did I.”

  Seeva brushes Saysana’s cheeks and kisses her again, her lips tender and accepting. Warmth flows through Seeva’s body, a tingling, an anticipation, a longing. Ripples of desire undulate over her skin. Love?

  Saysana’s fingers slide delicately under Seeva’s shirt, across her skin, and around her breasts. Seeva’s body freezes with a biting chill.

  “What is it?” Saysana asks. “I’ll help you, show you, not judge you … I—I think I love you … I can free you and we can flee this place and hide in the farthest extremities of the galaxy.”

  “If only,” Seeva says darkly and pushes away. Am I incapable of love? Am I only using Saysana? If not, Seeva still needs to bury whatever she’s feeling, not only because of the recent Drumeth experience and the fetus she cannot admit to. “We can’t go any further, not now, not ever.”

  “No one will come out here until the next shift.”

  “I have a disease, the disease the prostitute gave me. I don’t know how it works, but it can be deadly.” I thought the answer was so simple: I’ve never loved a man. And I never will.

  Seeva did not expect this situation, did not anticipate someone like Saysana.

  “The disease is permanent,” Seeva says. “I don’t know if it’ll kill you, but I can’t take that risk.”

  A single tear brims and trickles down Saysana’s cheek. Her masticatory muscles tighten and bulge. She turns away. “I hope what you accomplished was worth sacrificing love for. I just wish I could go back and talk you out of it.”

  The icicle feeling Seeva often experiences now seems to form in her heart.

  Saysana clears her throat and wipes away tears. “I came for you today to free you, to take you away with me. They plan on sending you to Mecetrame, a Northrite or Pearl planet with an island in the midst of a sea teeming with sharks. Aggressive sharks the size of ships. It’s the Pearl’s final destination for prisoners they don’t know what to do with, or for those meant to suffer more than the immediate although horrendous death by the gallows. Prisoners on the island rot away over the years, have no chance of escape, and have to fend for themselves.

  “Come, Seeva. Travel through the exit with me but go your own direction without a word. My heart’s breaking. If I never see you again, it’ll be less painful. I only wish to know that you’re out there somewhere safe, being you, helping in ways others and I can’t. Doing things
only you have the courage for.”

  Saysana steps to leave.

  Seeva hesitates, then sees the blackness of space all around them.

  Seeva follows Saysana, and they exit the cell through the lowering grate. The lift settles with a clatter in a suffocating darkness.

  Lights flare around them. Voices of men and women erupt.

  People in black suits.

  “Take them.”

  Cirx

  The raiders’ ships have landed in the plains outside the Angelwian church. Horns blast in deep bellows, rolling over the eaves of grass like the cries of shadow wraiths hunting the dead.

  The Angelwians are huddled in the pews inside the church, a few of their men armed with what they called shudder rounds.

  Cirx and his score of knights crouch behind waving blades of green foliage, watching for prey like the rain cats of Staggenmoire. Each of them holds technological crossbows, which the church people refer to as “pulsers with a shudder round option.” Three knights hold the destriers in taller brush behind them.

  A group of raiders move through the grass in the distance, surround the church, and blow their horns. Maybe fifteen adversaries.

  Fiends? Not those of ancient lore.

  One raider takes a shot at a stained-glass window. A crack follows and a tinkling of falling fragments, beautiful but ominous, like pearls falling from the sky.

  Someone inside the church screams.

  “We’ve come back for the food,” one particularly broad man shouts, hair dangling past his waist, streaked with rivers of gray.

  “And more women,” another man adds, pale skin and eyes as wide as if he’s been eternally, utterly bewildered. This one is clean shaven on his head and face, but thick, curly black hair fills the front of his neck, down to his striped doublet.

  A raider child sneaks around the back of the church.

  Cirx hoots like a tunneling owl. His knights rise as one and take their shots. Blasts of white light scream for their targets and hit.

  These raiders shake as if struck by lightning and fall in boneless heaps. A few fire back with whistling projectiles moving so fast Cirx cannot see them.

  Riesbold is hit with a crack like thunder and a ring of metal. He is flung two meters away.

  Destriers snort and whinny.

  Cirx crouches and fires back now with his pulser setting, the metal crossbow recoiling hard into his shoulder.

  Two minutes later, it’s over.

  A few bodies of the raiders lie in pools of blood and flesh while the rest lie immobile except for the expanding and contracting movements of their chests.

  Riesbold staggers toward them; his rondel that took the hit is a flattened bowl, his visor lowered, his shield arm hanging limp. The round is smeared against his armor in a mess of metal—did not penetrate his skin. He will live.

  The Knights of Staggenmoire gather up the incapacitated. Bind them. Cirx unsheathes his sword and runs a sharpened edge through the bloody mess of the dead. It seems proper that their last strike is by blade, not a projectile that explodes inside their body. Something didn’t seem just or virtuous that way.

  Cirx waits for the attackers to regain consciousness. Angelwians flood from the church, cheering.

  Eventually, the raiders stir, open their eyes, and fight against their ropes.

  Cirx eases the point of his longsword against the throat of the man with long, graying hair. “Is there a reason other than for pillaging that you attack these innocent people? Are you fiends?”

  “A fucking sword!” The man bellows with laughter. “You’ve got to be shitting me. And steel armor? We’ve been taken by some Angelwians pretending they’re back in the dark ages, boys!”

  Laughter erupts.

  Cirx presses the tip of his weapon into the soft skin beneath thick gray stubble, drawing a stream of blood. “Answers will affect your sentencing.”

  The man grimaces. “We’ve been paid handsomely.”

  “By whom?”

  The raider shrugs.

  Cirx sinks his blade in a bit.

  The man coughs up a spray of bright blood.

  “Our benefactors retain their anonymity, and we don’t ask questions when we receive new ships and pulsers.” The answer comes from the dirty child with them, a little girl of no more than two-and-ten years.

  “Are you the leader?” Cirx asks.

  The girl grins. “No, I’m a raid claim. They call me Ribsnack. The leader is the one whose throat your sword is buried in. Saltmane. My duty to the crew is to speak for them. These Moonriders have the wits of swamp rats for negotiation. After parlays, they usually end up fighting more or end up dead.”

  “Well, then, girl, speak for them and save their miserable lives, if they haven’t taken too many souls already.”

  “We were sent to pillage this place a few times and raise a lot of ruckus, per arrangement. If we don’t return, the Moonrider armada will come looking for us … much sooner than you’d like.”

  Cirx withdraws his blade from Saltmane’s neck and turns to another, the man with the neckbeard and clean-shaven head and cheeks. His eyes still appear as if they might pop out of his face. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  “That’s Two-eyed Jack.” Ribsnack scoots closer.

  “Frostbite in the cold regions.” Two-eyed Jack spits. “Lost my eyelids.” He has no lashes and barely a wrinkle of skin above his eyes, only tiny nubs for ears.

  “Why do you raid like barbarians, like fiends?” Cirx asks.

  “We pillage, we raid, we fuck. What more does a man need?”

  “Do you not have desire for glory or honor? Think carefully, as you’re all about to be executed for your crimes.”

  “Glory, oh, yes, every time we raid,” Two-eyed Jack says. “Honor, what’s that to men? All men are corrupt in one form or another. Some just choose to hide it from their speech and behavior in front of others.”

  Cirx studies the group. Another man has a red scar running over a cloudy eye, his upper and lower eyelids split into four along the scar line. The old wound continues down his cheek and lips, his lips an asymmetric four as well. Must look like a lopsided llama when he eats.

  The others seem about the same, reminding Cirx of the ancient Viking people of Staggenmoire.

  Cirx should execute them all now.

  The thought that someone is paying these Moonriders to raid and pillage the devoted lashes at the back of his mind.

  Understanding fiends is so much simpler than understanding men.

  ***

  Cirx carries off a vat of old stew destined to be tossed out from the kitchens.

  “Moonriders don’t even deserve that waste,” Gordun, the leader of these Angelwians, says.

  “We can’t let our prisoners starve to death.” Cirx’s footfalls echo off the stone of the massive church that serves as these people’s housing, place of worship, and everything in between.

  “They force their captives to battle to the death!” Gordun says.

  Cirx descends a stairway leading into the basement. “A punishment of starvation wouldn’t be fit for any man or beast. A quick, swift death to even our greatest enemies and fiends.”

  Garrabrandt walks behind him, carrying bowls. Gordun does not follow.

  “Then kill them already,” Garrabrandt says, his words muted as if they slipped out on accident. “We should return to Staggenmoire.”

  “Then the Angelwians will be slaughtered when the armada of Moonriders comes looking for their missing friends.”

  Garrabrandt grunts.

  If only the prisoners had metamorphosized into fiends: a fanged demon of shadow, a wyrm slithering into the dirt, a tentacled monster devouring its companions. How much easier Cirx’s choices would be then.

  At the bottom of the stairs, a knight armed with a pulser waits outside an open doorway. Beyond him, Cirx finds the ten surviving Moonriders and the young girl, all with bound hands, seated along the walls of a bare room, a privy door open in the corne
r. The sharp smell of acidic urine wafts out in waves.

  Garrabrandt unties Ribsnack. Cirx tilts his vat and fills a bowl with a stream of brown soup in which small particles of carrots, peas, and some off-smelling meat swirl. Ribsnack drinks it down in clunking gulps.

  “It’s not even cold,” Ribsnack says. “Not good, but it’s not cold.”

  Cirx fills the bowl again and the girl goes to each of her companions, feeding them—the same procedure Cirx has been following for about a week now.

  “Why’d you fly here in a ship shaped like twin sickle moons?” Cirx asks Ribsnack.

  “It’s the symbol of the Moonriders, moons,” she says as if he’s the stupidest man she’s ever talked to, a walking, talking sea cow.

  Something clunks inside Cirx, the feeling of pushing an overloaded cart and having one of its wooden wheels crack and break.

  The same appearance as those ships that destroyed Staggenmoire castle … He’s reminded of Erin but crushes an evolving memory.

  “You’ve studied our ship by now, I assume,” Ribsnack says.

  “Yes.” Cirx will not elaborate and let them know his men can’t even get inside, much less commandeer or dismantle the thing. “Are all Moonrider ships built as such?”

  Ribsnack looks at him, brushing greasy hair away from her eyes, revealing dirt smears on her face. “The armada has different-sized ships, but most are built with the same appearance.”

  “Where do you purchase these ships?”

  Ribsnack looks at Oldenbane, the man with the scar splitting his eyelid and lips into asymmetric segments, then to the others. Two-eyed Jack. Saltmane.

  “There are builders.” Saltmane eyes the bowl of stew, a bit a saliva staining his lips in a wet sheen.

  “The Silvergarde?” Cirx asks.

  “The Silvergarde? Hell, no.” Saltmane laughs, and several others accompany him. “Parts from the corporations that the black-side obtains and sells at steep prices. We assemble the bodies. The damn Silvergarde are one of the few that have pursued us outside their territory. They took some of our ships once.”

  Cirx feels a weight press in against his chest, as if someone is sitting on him. He fills another bowl. “Those damned Silvergarde attacked and killed my friends, my family, and destroyed my castle. They were flying moon ships.”

 

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