C f bentley, p.37
C. F. Bentley, page 37
“He taught me the alphabet and what sounds each letter makes,” Marsh added.
“Yes. Jake is very smart.” Jake might be the smartest person she knew. Smarter than Stevie. Laud Gregor knew about religion and politics. Jeoff and the other scientists knew their own fields. Pop knew how to work wood. Mama knew how to bake.
But Jake seemed to know about everything. He had a much better education than was allowed to a man born into the lower ranks of Military. Only those born to officer got more education than she had as a Worker. Jake knew too much. Including about the aliens who wanted to make contact and trade. Harmony had closed their borders long before Sissy was born. She had no idea if they’d had any prior contact with the rest of the galaxy.
So how did Jake know so much about them? No. He couldn’t be… She refused to believe that. She trusted Jake with her life. She loved him.
Sissy went cold with premonition. Her peripheral vision sparkled, just like the times when Harmony spoke through her.
Words remained trapped inside her. Maybe the cracks in her view had more to do with Empathy shining through fluttering leaves than prophecy.
Chapter 56
“I swear to you that Penelope did not set the fire,” Gil stated for the fifth time.
“How do you know?” Jake demanded for the fifth time. He deliberately set their pace toward Sissy’s refuge faster than Gil seemed capable of maintaining. The older man breathed hard. He had little energy left for lying.
Gil glared at him.
“Do I need to tell Laudae Sissy that you are not cooperating with me?”
“I’ve answered all your other questions,” Gil panted. Still he kept up. Jake gave him credit for that.
“Yes, you have answered my questions, and very well. I now know a lot more about the inner politics of both Temple and Noble. I know that Laudae Penelope is niece to Lady Marissa and that Lady Marissa’s children have intermarried with both Temple and Noble. I know that Lady Marissa and Laudae Marilee were twins. That Lady Marissa has twin sons, both of whom assist her. I know that blood ties between the two castes mean a lot more than Temple admits. I know that a lot of Temple caste form permanent bonds with their mates and actually take a hand in raising their children. Both of those acts are seriously frowned upon by Laud Gregor. And if any of those relationships are exposed, he’s likely to rotate the partners and their children to opposite ends of the empire.”
“So you see why I am reluctant to admit a lasting bond with Laudae Penelope.”
Ah, the spouse he’d admitted to in the tunnels. “How long is lasting? Longer than just the night of the fire, I’m guessing.” “Nearly eighteen years.” That stopped Jake in his tracks. “Children?”
“Five.”
“And all those jokes about rotating out to get away from Penelope were just smoke screens. You knew Gregor would never sign the order unless he knew about the relationship. You are both too valuable to him.”
“Correct.”
“Okay, I believe you. Penelope did not set the fire. What about the ‘no bones’ cult?”
“Absolutely not. She doesn’t care about the past, our ancestors, how we bury the dead. Her world is focused on this day, this minute, and getting what she wants. In many ways she is no more mature than our middle children. Our eldest, who happens to be Shanet’s acolyte Bethy, is more mature, readier to shoulder the responsibilities of ordination. My Penelope wants to be High Priestess for the glory and the honor, not to do the work. Plotting to eliminate a rival is frankly beyond her.”
“And you still love her?”
“Yes.” Gil’s face glowed with the intensity of his emotion.
“I hope I’m as lucky as you someday in finding a woman I can love so completely.” Trouble was, he had found her, but he couldn’t be with her. He had to love Sissy from a distance and never have that love returned.
The Temple roof came into view through the trees at the center of a community park. An ugly squat building, only three stories high at the center. Built of dark stone, it spread out like a mutating multilimbed creature, with each wing a different height, length, and width.
As plain and ugly as any other building in the city. Except the Crystal Temple. It looked almost as if architects designed ugliness into the structures so they wouldn’t compete in beauty with the Crystal Temple.
One more subtle reminder that Temple ruled everything. Including the HC. The original colonists had used solicited embryos from followers based on a personality file that looked for submission.
But even the most docile parents could spawn independent-thinking children. Look at Sissy. Gregor had hoped to control his new High Priestess and, through her, control the HC.
Sissy had surprised him. He couldn’t control her once she found her feet and began thinking through each issue presented to her. And reading every memo that crossed her desk.
Had Gregor planned the attacks? Each one less remote and more desperate. First a concussion grenade to warn her. Then the “no bones” cult to make her death look like an accident with an out-of-control car. And most recently a fast-spreading fire that would have engulfed her and her acolytes if Jake hadn’t been awake and smelled the smoke.
But wait… the first attack had come before Jake taught Sissy to read properly, before she’d begun to assert her independence. Before she started attending HC meetings. And the car in that incident had been Noble blue, not Temple black.
“Let’s back up a moment, Gil,” Jake mused out loud. He stopped in his tracks, needing every bit of his energy to think.
Guilliam turned as if to retrace their steps back to the Crystal Temple.
“Not literally. Figuratively.” Jake grabbed his elbow and turned him so they faced each other. No masks, no lies, just two friends staring each other in the eye, trading ideas.
“We know that under normal circumstances Penelope would have followed in her mother’s footsteps to become HPS,” Jake continued. “But Gregor found Sissy instead. It all boils down to controlling the HC through the High Priestess. Who is in a position to do that if Penelope became HPS?”
“Laud Gregor… ” Guilliam turned white with fear.
“I don’t think so. Who has even more influence over her than him.”
“Me.” He shook his head violently.
“No. If you wanted that kind of power, you’d have accepted ordination years ago and begun maneuvering for the HP job. Who else has a great deal of influence over Penelope but not over Sissy?”
“Lady Marissa,” Guilliam gasped.
“Precisely. With the added motive of revenge for the death of her sister Laudae Marilee.”
“The night Marilee died, in her grief, Marissa threatened to take the job herself. But that was just grief talking, a need to revive her twin through her position as HPS,” Gill insisted.
Jake let the silence between them stretch, giving Gil the time he needed to absorb these disturbing ideas.
“But Sissy didn’t kill Marilee, the earthquake did,” Gil protested.
“Sissy controlled the earthquake. But not before Marilee suffered mortal injury. In a mind twisted with grief, that makes Sissy responsible.”
“I can’t believe that Lady Marissa… She has been so kind to Laudae Sissy.”
“Smoke and mirrors to keep anyone from looking to her as a suspect. She had to make it all seem an accident, or divert blame elsewhere. The insane are also very smart. But now she’s getting desperate.” Jake paused a moment. He didn’t like the way his thoughts turned.
“Didn’t you say they were twins? Twins that are closer than sisters, two halves of the same whole.”
“Penelope and I have a set of twins, the youngest two. They think alike.
They think for each other. They get sick if we separate them for more than a few moments. Twins run in families… May all seven gods forgive me.”
“Come. We have to get Sissy out of the factory Temple now.”
The ground shook and threw them to the ground. Jake’s ears rang from a subsonic boom. Flying debris rained down with burning embers.
Like a strong hand on her back, an alien force shoved Sissy to the ground.
She fought to find Harmony in the chaos of her mind. She couldn’t think. Discord clanged in her ears. Blackness crowded the edges of her vision while bright stars danced in front of her.
Flaming rubble poured down all around her. A glowing ember caught the sere leaves of a tree directly above her. After a long and dry summer, the woods provided ample fuel. In horror she watched as flames raced along a thick branch, catching leaves and twigs until the entire canopy exploded in flame.
“Ashel, Marsh!” she screamed. And couldn’t hear her own voice.
Forcing a sense of calm, she swallowed deeply, sucking in smoky air. Dangerous. She coughed and coughed until her lungs threatened to turn inside out.
And still she couldn’t hear anything above the clangor inside her own head.
Panic robbed her of all thought and movement.
“Mary, where are the girls?” she croaked the moment she caught enough breath to exhale. Frantically, she sought evidence of life among the debris.
Movement. A body.
Sissy focused. The blackness cleared a bit from the center of her vision. She could see to the sides now. Dazzle blindness receded.
One by one, she called to the children.
Inch by inch, she pulled herself to her knees, then upright.
A new trembling of the ground beneath her. She braced herself for yet another catastrophe.
Her back tingled and her fingers itched. “Jake!” Somehow she knew he ran toward her from behind. She spun and stepped toward him even as he grabbed her by the shoulders.
His mouth moved.
The words could not penetrate the noise in her head. “Jake, what is happening?” she shouted so that he could hear her over the chaotic noise. “Jake, where are my girls, Ashel, and Marsh?”
He moved his mouth again.
Then, miraculously, her girls gathered round her, wrapped her in a hug. Ashel and Marsh squeezed beneath and between them to get even closer. Guilliam stood behind them, keeping a wary eye all around.
He and Jake flapped their mouths as rapidly as their arms, gesturing wildly.
“Speak up. Somebody say something. Why can’t I hear you? Why can’t I find the Harmonies?”
Chapter 57
Jake thrust a hysterical Sissy into the arms of her girls. “Take care of her. The explosion hurt her ears.” Though why the noise damaged Sissy and not the others, he couldn’t say.
He had to slap the side of his head to clear a fullness in his own hearing. A weird buzzing sound persisted. He ignored it. He had to.
Others needed help. Already he heard the wail of sirens approaching. Crowds poured out of adjacent apartment complexes and the factory to watch the chaos. Hopefully, to help.
A pitiful few stumbled out of the damaged building. Fires everywhere. Already people had organized bucket brigades. They’d done this before. They needed to know how to help themselves. The authorities weren’t always there to help them. Firemen and equipment had to help the Temple, Nobles, and Professionals first. Workers and Poor last. Military and Spacers took care of their own.
In a blur of action he organized a “safe” zone for the injured. Set the watchers to sort out the minor injuries from the major. They knew how to calm the wailers and perform first aid.
He worked his way into the damaged building, hastening evacuees, lending a shoulder here, directions there.
Where the hell was Gil? He could use that man’s organizational skills. Then Jake spotted him, covered in soot and sobbing quietly halfway up the first flight of stairs. “Bethy,” he moaned. “My beautiful Bethy.” “Bethy?” Jake asked. Bethy. The eldest daughter, acolyte to Shanet. “Discord!” he cursed as he hastened past Gil, taking the steps three at a time. Hoping against hope that someone, anyone on the top floor had survived.
Lady Marissa, in her desperation didn’t care how many people she killed or crippled. Or did the malicious bitch know that in killing Sissy’s entire family, and her beloved mentor and her girls, she had damaged the HPS far more than just robbing her of her life?
Two flights. Three. The stairs ended. A vast hole opened to the sky. Support beams, drywall, spouting water pipes, and hissing gas leaks blocked his way. He smelled the rotten egg odor of propane.
Above him, there was deathly silence. Not even the crackle of fire eating away at the building penetrated the thick air, though he could see the flickering redness against the inky blackness of smoke.
Defeat drained all strength from him. He collapsed on the last clear stair.
Only then did he notice blood streaming down his right leg and arm. To match the slice on his left arm. The back of his hand looked black with char and dried blood. His heart hurt so much he didn’t feel the pain of his injuries.
“Shock,” he told himself. He heaved himself down the steps, listening at every footfall for sounds of survivors trapped on the lower floors.
At the first landing another figure came into view. All that showed beneath the dirt and soot covering his face was his bright red square caste mark. Something about the shape of his nose and chin and the droop of resignation in his shoulders struck a chord with Jake.
“Morrie da Hawk?” he asked. He was about to ask why the Military man was here in a ruined Worker complex when the answer hit him.
The masked swordsman in the Temple corridor.
Lady Marissa couldn’t have pulled off her assassination attempts on her own. She had to have help. Someone who knew how to kill. Someone who felt Harmony had deserted him. Someone with nothing left to lose.
Morrie da Hawk’s wife and their chance to have children together had been stolen from him by a cruel and unjust system.
He had no pity for the man. Only the deep hurt of grief and fear.
Jake threw himself on his former friend with a flying tackle. “You murdering bastard!” He pummeled his face again and again. He gouged at the man’s eyes. He kneed him in the groin.
Da Hawk lay there and let him.
“Fight back, damn it!” Jake screeched.
“Kill me. Just tell my spouse I love her, please.”
“No way. You are going to tell the empire what you did, why you did it, and who paid you.”
“She won’t see you. She’s performing grief blessings,” Jake told Laud Gregor several hours later.
The High Priest had arrived in a big black car with six acolytes and a squad of Law Enforcement Military. High Priest Gregor meant business.
Jake sat outside the sanctuary of the factory Temple with his leg propped up on a second chair plus a pillow and his arm in a sling. His dagger rested in his lap, ready to grab with his left hand at the first sign of trouble. He did not stand, did not salute, and gave the High Priest no sign of deference. Pammy would not be pleased. But then Jake wasn’t in the mood to please anyone right now.
The squad, led by a lowly corporal, shifted uneasily at Jake’s blatant disrespect. He scanned faces and spotted several familiar ones, from his own squad and da Hawk’s. Cameron da Chester wore sergeant’s stripes hastily glued to his sleeve.
Their other sergeant was missing because Morrie da Hawk was under arrest for a number of charges against the state, including the mass murder of almost five hundred Workers on the top three floors of Lord Chauncey’s apartment complex. The squad needed to prove themselves and their loyalty. Not a good sign.
Could Jake bluff them into obedience as their officer? He’d had a very long day and he hurt. He was tired and didn’t want to play mind games with Laud Gregor.
He saluted the squad without standing, waving at his heavily bandaged thigh by way of explanation. They snapped to full attention and saluted back.
Good. They acknowledged him as their superior. One of their own. With luck, they’d look to him first and Gregor second, despite the fact that Gregor outranked everyone in the empire except for Sissy.
“It’s not Laudae Sissy I’ve come to see.” Gregor looked totally blank, not giving away any of his emotions or motives. But he had referred to Sissy by her real name, not the made-up one he preferred.
One of his younger acolytes stood close upon Gregor’s heels. The others kept a respectful distance, almost out of earshot.
Strange to see anyone but Guilliam at Gregor’s elbow. But that good man and Penelope had gone into seclusion to mourn the death of their daughter.
“You’ve seen me. Now go away.”
“Do you know how much trouble you have caused?” Gregor spoke softly enough so his words didn’t carry to the acolytes or the squad.
“Yes. I’ve come close to bringing down the entire government and the Temple,” Jake said blandly. “That’s what happens when you build an oligarchy upon a false premise like the superiority of castes.”
Now Gregor looked ready to explode.
The young acolyte handed him a pill from a belt pouch. “My Laud, your blood pressure,” he cautioned quietly. “Where is Guilliam?” Gregor snapped.
“With his spouse, mourning the death of their eldest daughter,” Jake returned. “Something you can’t understand because you don’t love anyone but yourself.”
“I told him to find Penelope a young lover to keep an eye on her. I never dreamed he’d do it himself.”
“He didn’t need anyone to keep an eye on her. He’s the only one who has been sleeping with her for eighteen years, since before the birth of Bethy, their daughter who died today. Didn’t you even notice that Penelope kept her five children close to her? Didn’t put them in the nursery.”
Gregor replied with a withering glance. “Temple caste do not marry. We have no need of the false familiarity of family.” He swallowed the pill dry, took three deep breaths, and looked Jake square in the eye. “Who are you really, Jacob da Jacob pa Law Enforcement HQ H Prime?”
“I am bodyguard to My Laudae Sissy,” Jake said, loudly enough for all to hear. “I take my orders from her and her alone.” That meant that if the squad looked to Jake as their officer in charge they’d bypass Gregor and go directly to Sissy as their superior.
