Nightmare Kingdom: A Romance of the Future Page 5

  Who would have thought that the pretty girl from Chicago, who had seemed so self-centered and frivolous, would have made such a sacrifice? He guessed nobody else would have suspected the determination that lay within her.

  He grinned at the thought. Claire Shiray had possessed a streak of stubbornness that was about a mile wide.

  Her position within the empire had depended on the support of her husband. He fully understood that much about the strangely convoluted system that operated throughout the planets. Only males ruled because only men displayed the far speaking gift that united those worlds.

  And Claire had no son, only daughters.

  This made him consider his own isolated state. In their small society originally without modern birth-control methods, the teens that made up the community had produced a goodly crop of children.

  He himself had enjoyed a brief liaison with Karen and a few other short-termed relationships over the years, but he hadn’t seemed to be destined for long-range closeness with any woman. He had a child from one of those relationships, but since the society had evolved so that it was not the male who engendered the birth, but the man who raised the child who acted as father, he was more like a fond uncle to his son.

  It was certainly not the life he’d imagined when he was growing up back on the farm in Oklahoma. He and his sister having been abandoned by their parents at an early age, he’d planned a future with a stable family around him. It just hadn’t happened.

  His thoughts drifted as they so often did to Gran, Grandpa and his younger sister, Marti. He wondered if they were all still alive and well. Years passed since that last visit before he’d returned to help the people of New London. He’d had no contact with his family on Earth since then.

  He turned over again and tried to sleep. Each night he told himself he must rest because he had to be at his best and strongest for what might come at any day now.

  Kevin Hartley had convinced the people they were safe and could go about their ordinary lives, but like Jamie, the members of the resistance party had made their homes inside this fortified building, armed with powerful weapons they’d acquired over the years.

  Some might consider their cause hopeless, but Jamie had been raised by the descendants of strong-minded Oklahoma pioneers and he would defend the community with every fiber of his being.

  The knock at the door of what used to be an office and was now his bedroom startled Jamie to his feet, his hand already reaching for the weapon he kept nearby.

  Each knock, each shrill call from outside, anything unusual jarred him to awareness. He didn’t know how the attack would come, but he knew it would come. Soon.

  “It’s me.”

  “Come on in, Isaiah,” he called, waiting for his friend to come in before seating himself on his bed.

  The room lay in total darkness since there were no windows to admit even star light. He heard Isaiah fumbling past a chair, stumbling and then righting himself. Good old Isaiah, he was always having small accidents as his body and mind didn’t always work together because his brilliant brain was always out there, thinking, calculating, and not aware that he was tripping over something.

  Jamie turned the lights on low and saw not only Isaiah standing there, blinking at him like an owl caught in a sudden glare, but George, still standing in the doorway.

  They were both fully dressed and had obviously not been sleeping. Isaiah plopped into one of Jamie’s two chairs, while George eased his arthritic body into the other.

  Jamie waited for what they had to tell him.

  Looking so weary that his face seemed to sag, Isaiah nodded to George. “Mack’s boys slipped out to do a little spying,” the older man said without drama. “Found out that the little boy emperor is showing signs.”

  Jamie didn’t have to ask what signs. “He’s a far speaker?”

  “Possibly. Everybody’s hoping.”

  “Claire?” It was the logical next question. Even the former empress would be sacrificed if the health of a far speaker was in question. And yet, he reminded himself, Mathiah had gone for years without negative symptoms. Only in the months before his death had he become ill. Claire and her daughters might still be safe.

  Isaiah answered the question only indirectly. “They’re worried about him.”

  Jamie sat still, betraying no emotion, while he remembered the emperor’s older brother who had not been a far speaker, but yet had suffered from the genetic illness that went with it. Neither his life nor his death had been desirable and he’d taken at least one Earther life with him.

  “You’ve told Kevin.”

  “Mack and Karen took the boys to him first thing. He got all hot and bothered because they’d dared wake him up.” George grinned, showing what was left of his teeth. “Then he fussed at them for sneaking into the city.”

  Jamie felt the lines deepen on his forehead. “He didn’t consider this ominous?”

  “Said we should be glad for the Gare that they have a new leader.”

  “The man’s a fool,” Jamie said quietly.

  “No need stating the obvious,” Isaiah said.

  Old George only raised his thin eyebrows to indicate unsurprised agreement.

  “You’re somewhere around a hundred and ten, George.” Jamie relaxed enough to tease. “And you look more wide awake than either of us.”

  “That’s ‘cause I don’t waste much time sleeping these days,” George responded.

  The next visitor didn’t bother knocking on the door. Karen Russell came bursting into the room, not even looking slightly embarrassed to break in on Jamie’s supposed privacy or that he was clad only in the underwear he’d worn to bed.

  But then Karen was rarely embarrassed, having been over-endowed with confidence at birth. “Something’s going on,” she announced breathlessly.

  That was enough to get Jamie off the bed and pulling on his pants and boots. Another quality Karen possessed was poise. If she was concerned, then there was something to be concerned about.

  Mack was only a couple of minutes behind her, his two sons crowded into the small room after him.

  “What is it?” George asked.

  “Space ship. Looks like it’s heading for a landing just outside the city.”

  “Earth ship?” George asked. For the rest of them, the ship that had brought them here from their home planet had been the last they’d ever seen, but George could remember a time when Earther ships paid somewhat regular visits.

  “Naw,” David, the younger of the two boys, answered. “Looks like an imperial cruiser to me.”

  Mack nodded his agreement.

  Without further talk, they armed themselves with rocket guns, capable of at least doing some serious damage to a smaller ship, and headed out to the old truck that was kept always at the ready.

  The seven of them crowded in with Karen behind the wheel and roared away through the dark and silent streets of New London.

  In the distance, Jamie saw the flashing lights of a whirling ship, streaking down toward them like a slow-falling asteroid.

  SEVEN

  Neither of the girls had said much since they’d been enclosed within the damp, dark cave that served as their prison. Oh, Claire supposed they were conversing with each other just the way they had when they were small, but back then their father, acutely tuned to them, could hear what was being said and could offer comfort or reprimands as needed

  Without Mathiah she was flying blind when her daughters chose not to talk to her. She couldn’t even guess what they were feeling. They had on their Gare faces, their features stony and emotionless.

  They had slept the last two nights on damp ground in the middle of the small cave, which offered no place where they could stand upright. They’d twice been brought bowls of some kind of crunchy but flavorless grain for their meal and a wooden pail of water to drink.

  Claire who had always been fastidious about her grooming almost hated feeling so filthy more than anything else, but they couldn’t afford
to spare any of their precious drinking water for cleaning even their faces.

  The three of them had tried with all their united strength to push the boulder out of their way, but it hadn’t budged by so much as an inch. When their captors came to bring them food and water, it had taken several strong men to make an opening wide enough for one of them to enter.

  She’d heard her younger daughter coughing during the night and now with the rim of light around the boulder betraying the fact that it was morning once again, she could see that Lillianne looked pale and sick.

  Grimly, she considered their situation. The chances of the loyal crew of the cruiser Princess Adaeze finding help were minimal. They might all three die in this dismal place before anyone even knew of their distress.

  They had no valuables left with which to bargain. Their captors had stripped them of every single jewel they’d hidden under their clothes.

  They had nothing, not even a glimmer of hope. For about five minutes, Claire allowed herself to sink into despair.

  And then the stubborn Chicago girl who had stood up to beatings and privation to make herself a success in her own little world, reared up and determined that somehow she would manage to get her daughters out of this mess.

  “We need to make a plan,” she announced in a fierce whisper.

  Both girls stared at her. She supposed they had sat in silence for so long that the sound of her voice startled them.

  Lillianne covered her mouth as she went into a coughing fit.

  “Get a drink,” her mother said.

  Obediently Lillianne moved over to the water bucket, dipping up some of the liquid with the bowl that had contained her food, sipping at it until the coughing died away.

  Determined not to allow to herself to panic at this sign of illness, Claire went on, “We have to rescue ourselves. We can’t depend on anyone coming to help us.” She didn’t want to give her daughters false hope, though in her most secret thoughts she still cherished the lingering belief that somehow her friends at New London would find a way to help them.

  But that was foolish. She couldn’t sit her like a damsel in distress waiting for a knight on a charger to save her.

  “Most likely,” she went on, “nobody has even noticed that we’re not at the Palace de Gare. They probably think we’re sulking in our rooms because Grandmere has taken over power, leaving us out in the cold.”

  “They know,” Adaeze said, then looked at her sister as though appealing for help.

  “We’re guessing they know,” Lillianne added quickly.

  Claire was no fool and she knew her daughters well. For a Gare child, Lillianne was a bit of a babbler, having inherited that talkativeness, she’d always supposed, from her mom.

  But Adaeze rarely dropped idle words. And she’d said, ‘They know,’ as if she really knew what was going on back at the palace.

  She recognized from the look on their faces, a kind of checked-out and thinking about something look, that they were conferring. It wasn’t the first time since she’d become a Gare empress that she’d felt shut out by what was being said in ways she couldn’t understand.

  Always before there had been Mathiah to keep her up to date. “Back where I came from it was considered really rude to speak secretly in a language not understood by the people around you.”

  Lillianne’s lashes drooped as she avoided her mother’s gaze, but Adaeze looked into Claire’s face with a steady gaze.

  “The empress-regent knows that we have escaped and are on Capron. She is angry, but without a far speaker has no ability to send troops from other planets. The army on Aremia is rather engaged at the moment as the imperial guard has remained loyal to the wishes of our father . . .” Adaeze broke off, controlling the grief that obviously overcame her at the mention of Mathiah.

  “That little boy, Michel, the new emperor. She said he could far speak,” Claire protested numbly, knowing that so much was going on here that she couldn’t just take it in with one big mental gulp.

  “He is still very young. His abilities do not extend past Aremia itself.”

  “That’s not a far speaker,” Lillianne said scornfully.

  Claire closed her eyes. This was too much. She felt dizzy with new knowledge. “Females don’t inherit the gift,” she whispered.

  “No,” Adaeze agreed.

  “Not until now,” Lillianne chimed in, than started coughing again.

  Breathe, Claire told herself. Take deep breaths. In and out.

  “Which of you?” she whispered again.

  “Me,” said Adaeze, the word blunt and forceful.

  “And me,” added Lillianne in a soft apologetic tone.

  Claire considered, than finally asked. “Did your father know?”

  Lillianne nodded. “He didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Worry me!” She wished Mathiah were here right this moment so she could tell him what she thought of that. “Was he so determined that you would never take the throne?”

  “Not that,” Adaeze explained in her most rational voice. “Aremia is a very traditional world. Far speakers have always been male. Father felt they might be a little upset at the idea of us, Lillianne and I, with that gift. He told us we must keep our secret because we would never be allowed to serve and would either be imprisoned or executed.”

  “I guess he really didn’t want to worry me,” she said sarcastically. “So that’s the real reason he made escape plans for us.”

  Adaeze nodded.

  Wave after wave of emotion rolled across Claire as she sat trembling on the dirt floor of the cave. So many new things had to be considered. The one question she had to ask must be spoken aloud no matter how much she feared the answer.

  “You inherited the gift? Did you also inherit the curse?”

  Adaeze gazed straight into her mother’s eyes. “Father didn’t think so. He felt the mixture of blood, the crossing of genes, left us free of disease. Though he feared we might pass it on to our male children, especially if we wed within the Gare.”

  Claire found she could breathe a little easier. Mathiah was not a dreamer to base his beliefs on what he hoped was so. He’d been one to face realities.

  Still, she knew that for the rest of her life she would have this in the back of her mind, that her girls might die as their father had died.

  She had so many questions. How long had they known they had the far speaking ability? How had their father advised them to use this talent? Why had she not been told?

  Damn, why had she been such an idiot as to not have guessed?

  She could answer that last question. She hadn’t realized that the girls were gifted because she had been told by everyone around her that it was impossible. Females did not inherit the gift; they only passed it along to their sons.

  An immutable fact. And another fact was that to Aremians, Adaeze and Lillianne were fatally tainted and must be destroyed.

  Adaeze jerked her back to the present moment with her next words. “Our father said not to tell anyone, not even you. He said you would be safer not knowing. But with the way things stand now, you are the one in charge and it isn’t fair that you don’t know everything we know.”

  This revealing of info was a vote of confidence from her two daughters she now realized. “Does Grandmere know?”

  Lillianne shook her head, the short fuzz of her nearly white hair moving with the vehemence of the action.

  Of course not. Mathiah had trusted his mother least of all.

  “Things have gone chaotic throughout the empire,” she theorized out loud.

  “The leaders on the other planets are bewildered by the loss of a leading voice. People are terrified and close to revolt in world after world. The empire is breaking down.”

  Within the empire Aremia was the world. The other planets that made up the imperium were of less significance.

  Quickly Claire considered the situation. The worlds of the empire needed her daughters and their abilities, but that would never be recognize
d. Much as witches had once been burned alive on old Earth, her girls would be sacrificed to superstition and doubt.

  “Maybe that’s good,” she said, “They’ll get to rule themselves.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Adaeze protested, a soul full of sorrow for her people in her words.

  “There’s not one thing we can do about it!” Claire glared in anger at her elder daughter. “Especially not if they kill us.”

  “Nor locked up by these wicked people,” Lillianne added plaintively.

  A valid point. “Can you speak to the Capronians?” she asked abruptly. “Can you hear what they’re saying?”

  “Relatively few of them have speaking abilities and so we can’t listen to what’s going on in their minds,” Adaeze explained carefully. “Lillianne and I have wondered if that has had something to with their criminal past and lack of empathy.”

  “Hey!” Claire protested. “My brain doesn’t have the extra quirk that allows mind to mind talk either, but that doesn’t make me an outlaw.”

  Adaeze smiled fondly at her. “But it is not expected of your people. You are normal in your own world.”

  True enough. And like it or not, her union with Mathiah had passed his far speaking trait on to their daughters, something that Aremians hadn’t managed over the centuries.

  “I don’t like it here,” Lillianne said petulantly. “I want to leave.”

  Claire glanced at her younger daughter. “We’re not here by choice,” she returned. “It’s not like we enjoy being hungry, dirty and . . .” She broke off, considering rapidly. Things weren’t as bad as she’d thought.

  “You can talk and listen even across worlds,” she said, speaking almost more to herself than to the girls. She was putting together their strengths, the weapons they could use for their own survival. “Have you kept up with the crew on our cruiser?”

  “Of course, Mom,” Lillianne said, “though Adaeze is better at it than me. That’s only because she’d older.”