Authors

In reply to Kevin.

There’s no such thing as a Primal sigl that increases your essentia count. There are ones that let you store personal essentia, which lets you simulate a higher essentia capacity, but you don’t get something for nothing – you have to pay that essentia in first (and it’ll de-attune quickly unless you do something to stop it). Also, if your plan is to use multiple sigls at once, you have to actually have enough channelling skill to make effective use of them, which a lot of people don’t.

In reply to Benedict.

Ah I should have clarified better!

I meant could you activate a strong enough Primal sigl to increase your essentia count, so you could activate three more. Thus using four activated sigls at once.

But I am guessing from your answer that is not feasible for most Drucrafters unless in cases where you have 2.8 or above Essentia Capacity where that is practical.

In reply to Kevin.

You can use as many sigls as you want – you can use ten if you like – but unless you’ve got a superhuman essentia capacity, you’re only going to have enough essentia to actually activate 2.5 to 3 of them at once, same as anyone else.

Very informative as always, with this info it makes me wonder if Tobias and Helen are using Essentia Capacity prejudice as an excuse for why they are not the heirs.

On the topic of Essentia Capacity, and since I love loophole abuses is it possible to use four sigls at once with one of them being a Primal sigl increasing essentia to “trick the body” as it were into thinking it can use three sigls?

Happy Spring! It’s nearly time for the release of WE COULD BE MAGIC, my new swoony YA graphic novel, and I have goodies to share!

There is a preorder campaign going on now for readers in the US and Canada. Preorder your copy and upload your receipt to receive these special items below:

• An adorable scrunchie set inspired by the book

• An exclusive digital sneak peek of THE HOUSE SAPHIR (my next fairy tale retelling, coming out this fall!)

A swoon-worthy young adult graphic novel about a girl’s summer job at a theme park from #1 New York Times bestselling author Marissa Meyer.

When Tabitha Laurie was growing up, a visit to Sommerland saved her belief in true love, even as her parents’ marriage was falling apart. Now she’s landed her dream job at the theme park’s prestigious summer program, where she can make magical memories for other kids, guests, and superfans just like her. All she has to do is audition for one of the coveted princess roles, and soon her dreams will come true.

There’s just one problem. The heroes and heroines at Sommerland are all, well… thin. And no matter how much Tabi lives for the magic, she simply doesn’t fit the park’s idea of a princess.

Given a not-so-regal position at a nacho food stand instead, Tabi is going to need the support of new friends, a new crush, and a whole lot of magic if she’s going to devise her own happily ever after. . . without getting herself fired in the process.

With art by Joelle Murray, the wonder of Sommerland comes to life with charming characters and whimsical backdrops. We Could Be Magic is a perfect read for anyone looking to get swept away by a sparkly summer romance.

How to get your swag:

• Preorder your copy via my Bookshop.org store (or wherever you normally purchase your books).
• Submit your receipt here. US/Canada only. See link for full details.

I’m going on tour and hope to see you!

See the special tour linktree for individual event details and ticketing.

The House Saphir

I know many of you are anxiously awaiting THE HOUSE SAPHIR. Not only is there an exclusive sneak peek coming for those who preorder WE COULD BE MAGIC, but other giveaways are coming, including a romance inspired one over on Instagram, so make sure you follow me to get the latest.

THE HOUSE SAPHIR comes out November 4, but you can add it to Goodreads now and preorder your copy from my store at Bookshop.org (or wherever you get your books). Don’t forget to keep those receipts *hint, hint*.

Until next time, happy reading and I hope to see you soon on the WE COULD BE MAGIC tour!

With love,

Marissa

The post We Could Be Magic Tour, Preorder Goodies, and Upcoming Giveaways! first appeared on Marissa Meyer.

The Protectorate – an interdimensional empire that has conquered five timelines so far – has set its sights on ours. Led by a man willing to risk everything for power and conquest, armed with technology a hundred years ahead of ours – technology promising salvation to its allies and doom to its enemies – and drawing on a far deeper military history, the Protectorate Expeditionary Force has arrived to invade and incorporate our world into the greatest empire the multiverse has ever known, or die trying.

The United States has won a desperate battle against the crosstime invaders, but large swathes of the country remain under enemy occupation, the struggle to understand invader technology has barely begun and a new invasion force has appeared in the Middle East. As the country staggers and threatens to collapse, the military prepares for a major offensive that could make or break the war, while – deep in the heart of Texas – the invaders prepare a plan of their own …

One battle has been won. The war is far from over.

Download a FREE SAMPLE, then purchase from Amazon US, UK, CAN, AUS, Books2Read.

The vacation was amazing. The air was 80F. The ocean was 80F. The pools were great. The room was spectacular. The food was delicious. The drinks were to die for.

We went on a date to this restaurant that was technically part of the resort but set outside of the grounds, by a busy street. We sat on a terrace, under a canvas, watched the foot traffic and listened to a remarkably good live singer. At some point I had a moment of wondering if this was actually happening. It’s been so long since we had a vacation. Last year, we had a weekend in Daytona. That was it. I needed this in the worst way.

We swam so much. I miss it already.

We are back home, and the dishwasher drainage line is clogged. We’ve taken the dishwasher apart, checked the fan, and have done the boiling water trick, so it looks like we have to get a plumber involved. Reality, coming like a freight train.

Professional News

This Kingdom is a hot potato. We have now sold the rights to 5 foreign countries, most of which we cannot contractually disclose yet, but we are free to say that we will be working with Tor UK. We are very excited.

We have seen the cover sketches. They sent 3 sketches and all three were great. We picked a favorite and can’t wait to see it in color and detail. I don’t want to jinx it, so I won’t say more.

Book Recommendation

I usually don’t read while we work. It’s very hard to shift gears from concentrating on the narrative to enjoying it. While on vacation, though, I downloaded a series through Kindle Unlimited and I glomed it. I’ve read 4.5 books at this point. Big thanks to Matt, Alisha, Sauron, and Christy for recommending the Azarinth Healer series.

Ilea likes punching things. And eating.

Unfortunately, there aren’t too many career options for hungry brawlers. Instead, the plan is to quit her crappy fast-food job, go to college, and become a fully functioning member of society. Essentially – a fate worse than death.

So maybe it’s lucky that she wakes up one day in a strange world where a bunch of fantasy monsters are trying to kill her…?

On the bright side, ‘killing those monsters right back’ is now a viable career path! For she soon discovers her new home runs on a set of game-like rules that will allow her to punch things harder than in her wildest dreams. Well, maybe not her wildest dreams, but it’s close.

With no quest to follow, no guide to show her the way, and no real desire to be a Hero – Ilea embarks on a journey to discover a world full of magic. Magic she can use to fight even bigger monsters.

She’s struggling to survive, has no idea what will happen next, and is loving every minute of it. Except, and sometimes also, when she’s poisoned and/or has set herself on fire. It’s complicated.

Read the story that took Royal Road by storm with over 60 million views and counting.

It’s a classic LitRPG, the stats, the battles, the violence. A prefect beach read for me. I really enjoyed the action. The protagonist is endearing and is authentically a 20 year old. The world is imaginative and exciting. The Silver Rose dungeon was chef’s kiss. I’m a horrible harpy who hates everything, and I couldn’t stop reading it. If you like LitRPG, this is a good one.

For the romance readers: there is none. There is some casual sex with the door closed.

There is an audiobook and it is good. I listened to about half of the first one on the plane.

Fair warning for people fresh to the genre: this series concentrates a lot on the battles. You get very detailed blow by blow fights. I like battles and there were times my eyes started glazing over. Like if you think our fight scenes are too long, these are much more detailed.

Here is the link to Amazon: Azarinth Healer. There is always another drake.

The post Back to Life, Back to Reality and Book Recommendation first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

I tend to write a lot of mystery novellas. They’re too long for traditional publishers, which makes them perfect for WMG. We can put the novellas in book form.

Over the last year, a number of you have asked how to get my Derringer-award winning novella, “Catherine The Great,” and while you can get it in last year’s Holiday Spectacular compilation, that’s only available in ebook. Many of you want paper…and I get it. I do too.

So, we decided to put it into paper. And by the time we got to that project, I had also written three other mystery/crime novellas. One is a thriller (Kizzie) and two are more straightforward mysteries. We put all four in a Kickstarter that launches today.

Here’s the video for the Kickstarter. Over the next week, I’ll also share the book trailers with you for the novellas. However, if you’d like to see them now, head to the Kickstarter. They’re all on it, along with a lot of other goodies.

As you can tell, this is one of my favorite things to write. I hope you end up getting the books.

https://kriswrites.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/4-Mystery-Novellas-Low-Res.mp4

Polish publisher Vesper has acquired the Polish translation rights to The Providence Rider. Vesper has published Polish translations of ten of Robert McCammon’s novels, so far, including Speaks the Nightbird (2022), The Queen of Bedlam (2023), and Mister Slaughter (2024).

Our beloved older daughter would have been thirty years old today.

Alexis Jordan Berner-Coe. Early on, it felt like a big name for such a tiny child. She was always the smallest in her class, the smallest on her team, the smallest in her dance recitals. We called her Alex. The head counselor at her first summer soccer camp called her “ABC” — for Alex Berner-Coe. The name stuck.

Later we realized that the name was too small to contain her, too simple to encompass all that she was, all that she would grow to be. She might have been the smallest in her class, but she was smart as hell and personable, with a huge, charismatic personality. She might have been the smallest on her teams, but she was fast and savvy and utterly fearless. On the soccer pitch and in the swimming pool, she was fierce and hard-working. Size didn’t matter. She might have been the smallest on stage, but she danced with passion and joy and grace, and, when appropriate, with a smile that blazed like burning magnesium.

One time, in a soccer match against a hated rival, a player from the other team, a huge athlete nearly twice Alex’s size, grew tired of watching Alex’s back as she sped down the touchline on another break. So she fouled Alex. Hard. Slammed into her and sent her tumbling to the ground. I didn’t have time to worry about my kid. Because Alex bounced up while the ref’s whistle was still sounding, and wagged a finger at the girl. “Oh, no you don’t,” that finger-wag said. “You can’t intimidate me.”

When she was in eighth grade, she decided to try out for the annual dance program at the university where Nancy worked. The program was called Perpetual Motion, and it was almost entirely student run. Each dance was choreographed by a student or group of students. They decided who they wanted in their dances and who they didn’t. The men and women in the program could easily have dismissed this thirteen-year-old as too young, too inexperienced, not really a part of the college. But instead, to their credit, they judged her on her dancing and maturity. She appeared in Perpetual Motion every year from eighth grade through twelfth, and we saw pretty much every performance. Not once did Alex ever seem out of place or beyond her depth.

She was effortlessly cool, like her uncle Bill — my oldest brother. And she had a wicked sense of humor. She was brilliant and beautiful. She loved to travel. She loved music and film and literature. She was passionate in her commitment to social justice. She adored her younger sister. And she was without a doubt the most courageous soul I have ever known.

When Alex was three years old, Nancy took a sabbatical semester in Quebec City, at the Université Laval. I stayed in Tennessee, where I was overseeing the construction of what would become our first home. Once Nancy found a place for them to live, I brought Alex up to her and helped the two of them settle in. In part, that meant finding a day-school for Alex so that Nancy could conduct her research. We put her in a Montessori school that seemed very nice, but was entirely French-speaking. The first morning, Alex was in tears, scared of a place she didn’t know, among people she could scarcely understand. But we knew she would love it eventually, and as young parents, we had decided this was best. So we explained to her as best we could that we would be back in a few hours, that the people there would take good care of her, and that this was something we needed for her to do. I will never forget walking away from the school, with tiny Alex standing at the window, tears streaming down her face as she waved goodbye to us. And I remember thinking then, “She is the bravest person I know.” Remember, Alex, all of three years old, didn’t speak a word of French!!

Needless to say, when we returned that afternoon to take her home, she was having the time of her life. She’d already made a bunch of friends. She’d already charmed her two teachers. And, I kid you not, she had already picked up several French phrases, which she spoke with a perfect Quebecois accent.

Her dauntlessness served her well on the pitch and in the pool, on stage and in the classroom. It fed an adventuresome spirit that took her to Costa Rica for a semester in high school, to the top of Mount Rainier with a summer outdoor program, to a successful four years at NYU, to Germany for part of her sophomore year in college, to Spain for all of her junior year in college, and on countless side-trips all over Europe.

And it allowed her to face the cancer that would eventually claim her life with remarkable strength, equanimity, and grace. She knew from the time of her diagnosis — a rare form of cervical cancer already at Stage 4 — that she faced long odds. I know that in private moments, and with her closest friends, she grieved for all that the disease would take from her. But she never allowed cancer to control her. She continued to work, to see friends and family, to travel, to go to movies and concerts and parties. She took classes. While undergoing chemo treatments, she turned her need for headscarves into a fashion statement. She lived her final years on her terms, refusing to wallow in self-pity because to do so would have meant sacrificing the joy for living that defined her.

She was, in short, remarkable. I loved her more than I can possibly say. I also admired her deeply. To this day, I push myself to do things that might make me uncomfortable or afraid by telling myself, “Alex would do it, and she’d want me to do it as well.”

She had twenty-eight and a half years, which wasn’t nearly enough. She did amazing things in that short time and could have done — should have been able to do — so very much more.

I miss her and think about her every minute of every day.

Happy birthday, my darling child. I love you to the moon and back.

George has lived a full life as a decorated WWII veteran, high-end attorney, family man.  But the incident that haunts him only took five minutes—five minutes when he shared a Coke with a woman on her way to California, a woman who would die hours later. Murdered. Maybe even by George.

Winner of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine’s Readers’ Choice Award.

“Details“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

Details By Kristine Kathryn Rusch 

No more alcohol, no more steak. In the end, it’s the little things that go, and you miss them like you miss a lover at odd times, at comfort times, at times when you need something small that means a whole lot more.

I’ve been thinking about the little things a lot since my granddaughter drove me to the glass-and-chrome hospital they built on the south side of town. Maybe it was the look the doctor gave me, the one that meant you should’ve listened to me, George. Maybe it was the sight of Flaherty’s, all made over into a diner.

Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m seventy-seven years old and not getting any younger. Every second becomes a detail then. An important one, and I can hear the details ticking away quicker than I would like.

It gets a man to thinking, all those details. I mentioned it to Sarah on the way back, and she said, in that dry way of hers, “Maybe you should write some of those details down.”

So I am.

* * *

I know Sarah wanted me to start with what she considers the beginning: my courting—and winning—of her grandmother. Then she’d want me to cover the early marriage, and of course the politics, all the way to the White House years.

But Flaherty’s got me thinking—details again—and Flaherty’s got me remembering.

They don’t make gas stations like that no more. You know the kind: the round-headed pumps, the Coke machine outside—the kind that dispenses bottles and has a bottle opener built in—and the concrete floor covered with gum and cigarette butts and oil so old it looks like it come out of the ground.

But Flaherty’s hasn’t been a gas station for a long time. For years it was closed up, the pumps gone, plywood over the windows. Then just last summer some kids from Vegas came in, bought the land, filled the pits, and made the place into a diner. For old folks like me, it looks strange—kinda like people being invited to eat in a service station—but everyone else thinks it looks authentic.

It isn’t.

The authentic Flaherty’s exists only in my mind now, and it won’t leave me alone. It never has. And so I’m starting with my most important memory of Flaherty’s—maybe my most important memory period—not because it’s the prettiest or even the best, but because it’s the one my brain sticks on, the one I see when I close my eyes at night and when I wake bleary eyed in the morning. It’s the one I mull over on sunny mornings, or catch myself daydreaming about as I take those walks the doctor has talked me into.

You’d think instead I’d focus on the look in Sally Anne’s eyes the first time I kissed her, or the way that pimply faced German boy moaned when he sank to his knees with my knife in his belly outside of Argentan.

But I don’t.

Instead, I think about Flaherty’s in the summer of 1946, and me fresh home from the war.

* * *

I got home from the war later than most.

Part of that was because of my age, and part of it was that I’d signed up for a second tour of duty, World War II being that kinda war, the kind where a man was expected to fight until the death, not like that police action in Korea, that strange mire we called Vietnam, or that video war them little boys fought in the Gulf.

I came back to McCardle in my uniform. I’d left a scrawny teenager, allowed to sign up because old Doc Elliot wanted to go himself and didn’t want to deny anyone anything, and I’d come back a twenty-five year old who’d killed his share of men, had his share of drunken nights, and slept with women who didn’t even know his name let alone speak his language. I’d seen Europe, even if much of it’d been bombed, and I knew how its food tasted, its people smelled, and its women smiled.

I was somebody different and I wanted the whole world to know.

The whole world, in those days, was McCardle, Nevada. My grandfather’d come west for the Comstock Load, but made his money selling dry goods, and when the Load petered, came to McCardle. He survived the resulting depression, and when the boom hit again around the turn of the century, he doubled his money. My father got into government early on, using the family fortune to control the town, and expected me to do the same.

When I came home, I wasn’t about to spend my whole life in Nevada. I had the GI Bill and a promise of a future, a future I planned on taking.

I had the summer free, and then in September, I’d be allowed to go East. I’d got accepted to Harvard, but I’d met some of those boys, and decided a pricey snobby school like that wasn’t a place for me. Instead, I went to Boston College because I’d heard of it and because it wasn’t as snobby and because it was far away.

It turned out to be an okay choice, but not the one I’d dreamed of. Nothing ever quite turns out like you dream.

I should’ve known that the day I drove into McCardle in ’46, but I didn’t. For years, I’d imagined myself coming back all spit-polished and shiny, the conquering hero. Instead I was covered in the dust that rolled into the windows of my ancient Ford truck, and the sweat that made my uniform cling to my skinny shoulders. The distance from Reno to McCardle seemed twice as long as it should have, and when I hit Clark County, I realized those short European distances had worked their way into my soul.

Back then, Clark County was so different as to be another country. Gambling had been legal since I was a boy, but it hadn’t become the business it is now. Bugsy Siegel’s dream in the desert, the Flamingo, wouldn’t be completed for another year, and while Vegas was going through a population boom the likes of which Nevadans hadn’t seen since the turn of the century, it wasn’t nowhere near Nevada’s biggest city.

McCardle got its share of soldiers and drifters and cons looking for a great break. Since gambling was in the hands of local and regional folks, its effects were different around the state. McCardle’s powers that be, including my father, took one look at Siegel and his ilk and knew them for what they were. Those boys couldn’t buy land, they couldn’t even get no one to talk to them, and they moved on to Vegas, which was farther from California, but much more willing to be bought. Years later, my father would brag that he stared down gangsters, but the truth of it was that the gangsters were looking for a quick buck and they knew that they’d be fighting unfriendlies in McCardle for generations when Vegas would have them for a song.

Nope. We had our casino, but our biggest business was divorces. For a short period after the war, McCardle was the divorce capitol of the US of A.

You sure could recognize the divorce folks. They’d come into town in their fancy cars, wearing too many or too few clothes, and then they’d go to McCardle’s only hotel, built by my grandfather’s dry goods money long about 1902, and they’d cart in enough luggage to last most people a year. Then they’d visit the casino, look for the local watering holes, and attempt to chat up a local or two for the requisite two weeks, and then they’d drive off, marriage irretrievably broken. Some would go back to Reno where they’d sign a new marriage license. Others would go about their business, never to be thought of again.

In those days, Flaherty’s was on the northern-eastern side of town, just at the edge of the buildings where the highway started its long trek toward forever. Now, Flaherty’s is dead center. But in those days, it was the first sign you were coming into civilization, that and the way the city spread before you like a vision. You had about five minutes of steady driving after you left Flaherty’s before you hit the main part of McCardle, and I decided, on that hot afternoon, that five minutes was five too many.

I pulled into Flaherty’s and used one thin dime to buy myself an ice-cold Coca-Cola.

I remember it as if it happened an hour ago: getting out of that Ford, my uniform sticking to my legs, the sweat pouring down my chest and back, the grit of sand in my eyes. I walked past several cars to get to the concrete slab they’d built Flaherty’s on. A bell ting-tinged near me as someone’s tank got filled, and in the cool darkness of the station proper, a little bell pinged before the cash register popped open. Flaherty himself stood behind the register in those days, although like as not by ’46, you’d find him drunk.

The place smelled of gasoline and motor oil. A greasy Philco perched on a metal filing cabinet near the cash register, and it was broadcasting teen idol Frankie Sinatra live, a pack of screaming girls ruining the song. In the bay, a green car was half disassembled, the legs of some poor kid sticking out from under its side as he worked underneath. Another mechanic, a guy named Jed, a tough who’d been a few years behind me in school, leaned into the hood. I remembered Jed real well. Rumor had it he’d knifed an Indian near a roadside stand. I’d stopped him from hitting one of the girls in my class when she’d laughed at him for asking her on a date. After that, Jed and I avoided each other when we could and were coldly polite when we couldn’t.

The Coke bottle—one of the small ones that they don’t make any more—popped out of the machine. I grabbed its cold wet sides, and used the built-in bottle opener to pop the lid. Brown fizz streamed out the top, and I bent to catch as much of it as I could without getting it on my uniform.

The Coke was ice-cold and delicious, even if I was drinking foam. In those days, Coke was sweet and lemony and just about the best non-alcoholic drink money could buy. I finished the bottle in several long gulps, then dug in my pocket for another dime. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was or how tired; being this close to home brought out every little ache, even the ones I had no idea that I had. I stuck the dime in the machine, and took my second bottle, this time waiting until the contents settled before opening it.

“Hey, soldier. Mind if I have a sip?”

The voice was sultry and sexy and very female. I jumped just a little at the sound. I hadn’t seen anyone besides Flaherty and the grease monkeys inside, even though I had known, on some level, that other folks were around me. I kept a two-fingered grip on the chilly bottle as I looked up.

A woman was leaning against the building. She wore a checked blouse tied beneath her breasts, tight pants that gathered around her calves, and Keds. She finished off an unfiltered cigarette and flicked it with her thumb and forefinger into the sand on the building’s far side. Her hair was a brownish red, her skin so dark it made me wonder if she were a devotee of that crazy new fad that had women lying in the sun all hours trying to get tan. Her eyes were coal-black but her features were delicate, almost as if someone had taken the image from a Dresden doll and changed its coloring to something else entirely.

“Well?” she said. “I’m outta dimes.”

I opened the bottle and handed it to her. She put its mouth between those lips and sucked. I felt a shiver run down my back. For a moment, it felt as if I hadn’t left Italy.

Then she pulled the bottle down, handed it back to me, and wiped the condensation on her thighs. “Thanks,” she said. “I was getting thirsty.”

“That your car in there?” I managed.

She nodded. “It made lots of pretty blue smoke and a helluva groan when I tried to start it up. And here I thought it only needed gas.”

Her laugh was deep and self-deprecating, but beneath it I thought I heard fear.

“How long they been working on it?”

“Most of the day,” she said. “God knows how much it’s going to cost.”

“Have you asked?”

“Sure.” She held out her hand, and I gave the bottle back to her, even though I hadn’t yet taken a drink. “They don’t know either.”

She tipped the bottle back and took another swig. I watched her drink and so did most of the men in the place. Jed was leaning on the car, his face half hidden in the shadows. I could sense rather than see his expression. It was that same flatness I’d seen just before he lit into the girl outside school. I didn’t know if I was causing the look just by being there, or if he’d already made a pass at this woman, and failed.

“You’re not from McCardle,” I said.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and gave the bottle back to me. “Does it show?” she asked, grinning.

The grin transformed all her strange features, making her into one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. I took a sip from the bottle simply to buy myself some time, and tasted her on the glass rim. Suddenly it seemed as if the heat of the day had grown more intense. I drank more than I intended, and pulled the bottle away only when my body threatened to burp the liquid back up.

“You just visiting?” I asked which was the only way I could get the answer I really wanted. She wasn’t wearing a ring; I suspected she was here for a quickie divorce.

“Taking in the sights, starting with Flaherty’s here,” she said. “Anything else I shouldn’t miss?”

I almost answered her seriously before I caught that grin again. “There’s not much to the place,” I said.

“Except a soldier boy, going home,” she said.

“Does it show?” I asked and we both laughed. Then I finished the second bottle, put it in the wooden crate with the first, and flipped her a dime.

“The next one’s on me,” I said, as I made my way back to the Ford.

“You’re the first hospitable person I’ve met here,” she said and I should’ve heard it then, that plea, that subtle request for help.

Instead, I smiled. “I’m sure you’ll meet others,” I said and left.

* * *

Kinda strange I can remember it detail for detail, word for word. If I close my eyes and concentrate, the taste of her mingled with Coke comes back as if I had just experienced it; the way her laugh rasped and the sultry warmth of her voice are just outside my earshot.

Only now the memory has layers: the way I felt it, the way I remembered it at various times in my life, and the understanding I have now.

None of it changes anything.

It can’t.

No matter what, she’s still dead.

* * *

I was asleep when Sheriff Conner showed up at the door at ten a.m. two mornings later. I was usually up with the dawn, but after two nights in my childhood bed, I’d finally found a way to be comfortable. Seems the bed was child-sized, and I had grown several inches in my four years away. The bed was a sign to me that I didn’t have long in my parents’ home, and I knew it. I didn’t belong here anyway. I was an adult full grown, a man who’d spent his time away from home. Trying to fit in around these people was like trying to sleep in my old bed: every time I moved I realized I had grown beyond them.

When Sheriff Conner arrived, my mother woke me with a sharp shake of the shoulder. She frowned at me, as if I had embarrassed her, and then she vanished from my room. I pulled on a pair of khakis that were wrinkled from my overnight case, and combed my hair with my fingers. I grabbed a shirt as I wandered barefoot into the living room.

Sheriff Conner was a big man with skin that turned beet-red in the Nevada sun. His blond hair was cropped so short that the top of his head sunburned. He hadn’t changed since I was a boy. He was still too large for his uniform, and his watch dug red lines into the flesh of his wrist. I always wondered how he could be comfortable in those tight clothes in that heat, but, except for the dots of perspiration around his face, he never seemed to notice.

“You grew some,” he said as the screen door slammed behind my mother.

“Yep,” I said.

“Your folks say you saw action.”

“A bit.”

He grunted and his bright blue eyes skittered away from mine. In that moment, I realized he had been too young for World War I, and too old for this war, and he was one of those men who wanted to serve, no matter what the cause. I wasn’t that kind of man, only I learned it later when I contemplated Korea and the mess we were making there.

“I guess you just got to town,” he said.

“Two days ago.”

“And when you drove in, you stopped at Flaherty’s first, but didn’t get no gas.” His tone had gotten sharper. He was easing into the questions he felt he needed to ask me.

“I was thirsty. It’s a long drive across that desert.”

He smiled then, revealing a missing tooth on his upper left side. “You bought a soda.”

“Two,” I said.

“And shared one.”

So that was it. Something to do with the girl. I stiffened, waiting. Sometimes girls who came onto a man like that didn’t like the rejection. I hadn’t gone looking for her over to the hotel. Maybe she had taken offense and told a lie or two about me. Or maybe her soon-to-be ex-husband had finally arrived and had taken an instant dislike to me. Maybe Sheriff Conner had come to warn me about that.

“You make it your policy to share your drinks with a nigra?”

“Excuse me?” I asked. I could lie now and say I was shocked at his word choice, but this was 1946, long before political correctness came into vogue, almost a decade before the official start of the Civil Rights movement, although the seeds of it were in the air.

No. I wasn’t shocked because of his language. I was shocked at myself. I was shocked that I had shared a drink with a black woman—although in those days, I probably would have called her colored not to give too much offense.

“A whole buncha people saw you talk to her, share a Coke with her, and buy her another one. A few said it looked like there was an attraction. Couple others coulda sworn you was flirting.”

I had been flirting. I hadn’t seen her as black—and yes, back then, it would have made a difference to me. I’ve learned a lot about racial tolerance since, and a lot more about intolerance. I wasn’t an offensive racist in those days, just a passive one. A man who kept to his own side of the street and didn’t mingle, just as he was supposed to do.

I would never have flirted if I had known. No matter how beautiful she was. But that hair, those features all belied what I had been taught. I had thought the darkness of her skin due to tanning not to heredity.

I had seen what I had wanted to see.

Sheriff Conner was watching me think. God knows what kind of expressions had crossed my face, but whatever they were, they weren’t good.

“Well?” he asked.

“Is it against the law now to buy a woman a drink on a hot summer day?” I asked.

“Might be,” he said, “if that woman shows up dead the next day.”

“Dead?” I whispered.

He nodded.

“I never saw her before,” I said.

“So you usually just go up and share a drink with a nigra woman you never met.”

“I didn’t know she was colored,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows at me.

“She was in the shade,” I said and realized how weak that sounded.

The Sheriff laughed. “And all pussy’s the same in the dark, ain’t it?” he said, and slapped my leg. I’d heard worse, much worse, in the army but it didn’t shock me like he just had. I’d never heard Sheriff Conner be crude, although my father always said he was. Apparently the Sheriff was only crude to adults. To children he was the model of decorum.

I wasn’t a child any longer.

“How’d she die?” I asked.

“Blow to the head.”

“At the station?”

“In the desert. Her pants was gone, and that scrap of fabric that passed for a blouse was underneath her.”

The desert. Someone had to take her there. I felt myself go cold.

“I didn’t know her,” I said, and if she had been a white woman, he might have believed me. But in McCardle, in those years and before, a man like me didn’t flirt with—hell, a man like me didn’t talk to—a woman like her.

“Then what was she doing here?” he asked.

“Getting a divorce?”

“Girls like her don’t get a divorce.”

That rankled me, even then. “So what do they do?”

He didn’t answer. “She wasn’t here for no divorce.”

“Have you investigated it?”

“Hell, no. Can’t even find her purse.”‘

“Well, did you trace the license on the car?”

He frowned at me then. “What car?”

“The ones the guys were fixing, the green car. They had it nearly taken apart.”

“And it was hers?”

“That’s what she said.” At least, that was what I thought she said. I suddenly couldn’t remember her exact words, although they would come to me later.

The whole scene would come to me later, like it was something I made up, like a dream that was only half there upon waking and then came, full-blown and unbidden, into the mind.

That your car? I said to her, and she didn’t answer, at least not directly. She didn’t say yes or no.

“Did you check with the boys at the station?” I asked.

“They didn’t say nothing about a car.”

“Did you ask Jed?”

The sheriff frowned at me. I’d forgotten until then that he and Jed were drinking buddies. “Yeah, of course I did.”

“Well, I can’t be the only one to remember it,” I said. “They had it torn apart.”

“Izzat so?” he asked, stroking his chin. “You think that’s important?”

“If it tells you who she is, it is,” I said, a bit stunned at his denseness.

“Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t seem to be thinking of that. He seemed focused on something else altogether. The look that crossed his face was half sad, half worried. Then he heaved himself out of the chair, and left without even a good-bye.

I sat on the sofa, wondering what, exactly, that all meant. I was still shaken by my own blindness, and by the Sheriff’s willingness to accuse me of a crime that seemed impossible to me.

It seemed impossible that a woman that vibrant could be dead.

It seemed impossible that a woman that vibrant had been black.

It seemed impossible, but there it was. It startled me.

I was more shocked at her color than at her death.

And that was the hell of it.

* * *

I tried not to think of it.

I’d learned how to do that during the war—it’s what helped me survive Normandy—and it had been effective during my tour.

But it stopped working about a week later when her family showed up.

They came for the body, and they seemed a lot more out of place than she had. Her father was a big man, the kind most folks in McCardle would have crossed the street to avoid or would have bullied out of fear. Her mother was delicate, with the same Dresden features as her daughter but on much darker skin. The auburn hair didn’t seem to come from either of them.

And with them was her husband. He wore a uniform, like I did, and his eyes were red as if he’d been crying for a long, long time. I saw them come out of the mortuary, the parents with their arms around each other, the husband walking alone.

The husband threw me, and made me even more uncomfortable than I had already been.

I thought she had flirted with me.

I usually didn’t mistake those things.

But, it seemed, I made a whole lot of mistakes in that short half hour I had known her.

They drove out that night with her body in the back of their truck. I knew that because my conscience forced me over to the hotel to talk to them, to ask them about the green car, and to tell them I was sorry.

When I got there, I learned that the only hotel in McCardle—my family’s hotel—didn’t take their kind. Maybe that, more than an assumption, explained the Sheriff’s remark: Girls like her didn’t get a divorce.

Maybe they didn’t, at least not in McCardle, because the town made sure they couldn’t, unless they had some place to stay.

And there weren’t blacks in McCardle then. The blacks didn’t start arriving for another year.

* * *

The next day, I moved, over my mother’s protests, into my own apartment. It was a single room with a hot plate and a small icebox over the town’s only restaurant. I shared a bathroom with three other tenants, and counted myself fortunate to have two windows. The place came furnished, and the Murphy bed was long enough for me, although even with fans I had trouble sleeping. The building kept the heat of the day, and not even the temperature drop after sunset could ease it. On those unbearable summer nights, I lay in tangled sheets, the smell of greasy hamburgers and chicken-fried steak carried on the breeze. I counted it better than being at home.

Especially after the nightmares started.

Strangely they weren’t about her. Nor were they about the war. I didn’t have nightmares about that war for twenty years, not until I started seeing images from Vietnam on television. Then a different set of nightmares came, and I went to the VA where I was diagnosed with a delayed stress reaction and given a whole passel of drugs that I eventually pitched.

No. Those early nightmares were about him. Her husband. The man with the olive green uniform and the red eyes. I knew guys like him. They walked with their backs straight, their faces impassive. They didn’t move unless they had to, and they never talked back, and if they showed emotion, it was because they thought guys like me weren’t looking.

He hadn’t cared about hiding any more. His emotion had been too deep.

And once Sheriff Conner figured out I had nothing to do with it, he’d declared the case closed. Over dinner the night before I left, my father speculated that Conner’d just shown up to show my father who was boss. Mother’d ventured that Conner hoped I was guilty, so it’d bring down the whole power structure of the town.

Instead, I think, it just brought Conner down. He was out of office by the following year, and the year after that he was dead, a victim of a slow-speed single vehicle drunken car crash in the days before seat belts.

I think no one would have known what happened if it hadn’t been for those nightmares. I’d dream in that dry, dry heat of him just standing there, looking at me, eyes red, face impassive. Her body was in the green car beside us, and he would stare at me, as if I knew something, as if I were keeping something from him.

But how could I have known anything? I’d shared a Coke with her and gone on.

I hadn’t even bothered to learn her name.

* * *

In the sixties they called what I was feeling white liberal guilt. Not that I had done anything wrong, mind you, but if I had known what she was—who she was—I would have acted differently. I knew it, and it bothered me.

It almost bothered me more than the fact she was dead.

Although that bothered me too. That, and the dreams. And the green car.

I went to Flaherty’s soon after the dreams started and filled up my tank. I got myself another Coke and I stared at the spot where I had seen her. The shadows were dark there, but not that dark. The air was cool but not that cool, and only someone who was waiting for a car would choose to wait in that spot, on that day, with a real town nearby. She must have been real thirsty to ask me for a drink.

Real thirsty and real scared.

And maybe she took one look at my uniform, and thought I’d be able to help her.

She even tried to ask.

You’re the first hospitable person I’ve met here, she’d said.

I’m sure you’ll meet others.

What she must have thought of that sentence.

How wrong I’d been.

I took my Coke and walked around the place, seeing lots of cars half finished, and even more car parts, but nothing of that particular shade of green.

Her family had taken her home in a truck.

The car was missing.

And as I leaned on the back of that brick building, the bottle cold in my hand, I wondered. Had the mechanics started working on the car because they too hadn’t realized who she was? Had she gotten all the way to Nevada traveling white highways and hiding her darker-than-expected skin under a trail of moxie?

I went into the mechanic’s bay, and Jed was there, putting oil into a 1937 Ford truck that had seen better days. A younger man stood beside him, and I wagered from the cut of his pants and the constant movement of his feet, that he’d been the guy under the car that day.

I leaned against the wall, sipping my Coke, and watched them.

They got quiet when they saw me. I grinned at them. I wasn’t wearing my uniform that day, just a pair of grimy dungarees and a t-shirt. Even so, I was hot and miserable, and probably looked it.

I tilted my bottle toward them in a kinda salute. The younger man, the one I didn’t recognize, nodded back.

“You seen that girl the other day?” I asked. I might have said more. I try not to remember. I can’t believe the language we used then: Japs and niggers and wops; the way we got gypped or jewed down; laughing at the pansies and whistling at the dames. And we didn’t think nothing of it, at least I didn’t. Each word had to be unlearned, just as—I guess—it had to be learned.

Jed put a hand on his friend’s arm, a small subtle movement I almost didn’t see. “Why’re you askin’?” And I could feel it, that old antipathy between us. Every word we’d ever exchanged, every look we had was buried in those words.

He wouldn’t talk to me, not really. He wouldn’t tell me what I needed to know. But his friend might. I had to play that at least.

“I was wondering if she’s living around here.” I said with an intentional leer.

“You don’t know?” the younger asked.

My heart triple-hammered. I knew then that the sheriff hadn’t told anyone he’d come after me. “Know what?”

“They found her in the desert with her face bashed in.”

“Jesus,” I said softly, then whistled for good measure. “What happened?”

“Dunno,” Jed said, his hand squeezing the other boy’s arm. Jed saw my gaze drop to his fingers, and then go back to his face. He grinned, like we were sharing a secret. And I didn’t like what I was thinking.

It seemed simple. Too simple. Impossibly simple. A man couldn’t just sense that another man had done something wrong. He needed proof.

“Too damn bad,” I said, taking another swig of my Coke. “I woulda liked a piece of that.”

“You and half the town,” the younger one said, and laughed nervously.

Jed didn’t laugh with him, but stared at me with narrowed green eyes. “I can’t believe you didn’t hear of it,” he said. “The whole town’s been talking.”

I shrugged. “Maybe I wasn’t listening.” I set the Coke down beside the radio and scanned the bay. “What’re they gonna do with that car of hers? Sell it?”

“Ain’t no one found it,” the younger boy said.

“She drove it outta here?” I asked. “She said it seemed hopeless.”

Finally Jed grinned. He actually looked merry, as if we were talking about the weather instead of a murder. “Women always say that.”

I didn’t smile back. “What was wrong with it?”

“You name it,” the younger one said. “She’d driven that thing to death.”

I knew one more question would be too many, but I couldn’t stop myself. “She say why?”

“You gotta reason for all this interest, George?” Jed asked. “You can’t get nothing from her now.”

“Guess not,” I said. “Just seems curious somehow. Woman comes here, to this town, and ends up dead.”

“Don’t seem curious to me,” Jed said. “She didn’t belong here.”

I stared at him a moment. “People don’t belong a lotta places but that don’t mean they need to die.”

He shrugged and turned away, ending the conversation. I picked up my Coke bottle. It had gotten warm already. I took another sip, letting the sweet lemony taste and the carbonation make up for the lack of coolness.

Then I went outside.

What did I want with all this? To get rid of some guilt? To make the dreams go away?

I didn’t know, and it angered me.

“Hey.” It was the younger one. He’d come out into the sun, ostensibly to smoke. He lit up a Chesterfield and offered me one. I took it to be companionable, and we lit off the same match.

Jed peeked out of the bay and watched for a moment, then disappeared, apparently satisfied that nothing was going to be said, probably thinking he had the kid under his thumb. Only Jed was wrong.

The younger one spoke softly, so softly I had to strain to hear, and I was standing next to him. “She said she was driving from Mississippi to California to join her husband. Said he’d got back from Europe and got a job in some plant in Los Angeles. Said they’d make good money there, but they didn’t have it now, and could we do as little as possible on the car, so that it’d be cheap.”

“Did you?” I asked. And when he looked confused, I added for clarification, “Keep it cheap?”

He took a long drag off the cigarette, and let the smoke out his nose. “We didn’t finish,” he said.

I felt that triple-hammer again. A little bit of adrenaline, something to let me know that I was going somewhere. “So where’s the car?”

“We left it in the bay. Next morning, we come back and it’s gone. Jed, there, he cusses her out, says all them people are like that, you can’t trust ’em for nothing, and that was that. Till the sheriff showed up, saying she was dead.”

The car I saw couldn’t have been driven, and the woman I saw couldn’t have fixed it. She would not have stopped here if she could.

“You left the car in pieces?” I asked. “And it was gone the next day? Someone drove it out of here?”

He shrugged. “Guess they finished it.”

“That would’ve taken some know-how, wouldn’t it?”

“Some,” he said. He flicked his cigarette butt onto the sandy gravel. I glanced up. Jed was staring us from the bay. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise.

I took another drag off my cigarette and watched a heat shimmer work its way down the highway. The boy started walking away from me.

“Where was she?” I asked. “When you left? Where was she?”

And I think he knew then that my interest wasn’t really casual. Up until that point, he could have pretended it was. But at that moment, he knew.

“I dunno,” he said, and his voice was flat.

“Sure you do,” I said. I spoke softly so Jed couldn’t overhear me.

The man looked at my face. His had turned bright red, and beads of sweat I hadn’t noticed earlier were dotting his skin. “I—left her outside. Near the Coke machine.”

With a car that didn’t run, and no place to take her in for the night.

“Did you offer to give her a lift somewhere?”

He shook his head.

“Was the station still open when you left?”

“For another hour,” he said.

“Did you tell the sheriff this?”

He shook his head again.

“Why not?”

He glanced at Jed, who had crossed his arms and was leaning against the bay doors. “I didn’t think it was none of his business,” the boy whispered.

“You didn’t think, or Jed there, he didn’t think.”

“Neither of us,” the boy said. “Jed told her she could sleep in there by the car. But it woulda been an oven, even during the night. I think she knew that.”

“Is that where she slept?”

“I dunno.” This time the boy did not meet my gaze. Sweat ran off his forehead, onto his chin, and dripped on his shirt. He didn’t know, and he was sorry.

And so was I.

If I was going to pursue this logically, then I had to think logically. And it seemed to me that whoever killed the girl had known about the car. I couldn’t believe she would have talked to anyone else—I suspected she only spoke to me because I was in uniform. And if I made that assumption, then the only other people who would have known about her, about the car, about the entire business were the people who worked the station.

“Who was working that night?” I asked.

“Mr. Flaherty,” he said.

Mr. Flaherty. Mac Flaherty, whom I’d known since I was a boy. He was a hard decent man who expected work out of his employees, payment from his customers, and good money for a job well done. I’d seen Mac Flaherty in his station, at church, and at school getting his son, and I couldn’t believe he had killed someone.

But then, I had. I had killed a lot of boys overseas, and I would have killed more if Hitler hadn’t proved he was a coward and did the world a favor by dying by his own hand.

And the Mac Flaherty who ran the station now wasn’t the same man as the one I’d known. I’d learned that much in my few short days in McCardle.

A shiver ran down my back. Then I headed inside, looking for Mac Flaherty, and finding him.

* * *

Mac Flaherty was drunk. Not falling down, noticeable drunk, but his daily drunk, the kind that made a man a bit blurry around the edges, kept him from feeling the pain of day-to-day living, and kept him working a job he no longer liked.

Once Flaherty’d loved his work. It had been obvious in the booming way he’d greet new customers, in the smile he wore every day whether going or coming from work.

But then he left for the war, like I did, only he came back in ’43 minus three fingers on his left hand to find his wife shacking up with the local undertaker, and a half-sibling for his son baking in the oven. The wife, not him, took advantage of the McCardle’s divorce laws, and Flaherty was never the same. She and the undertaker left that week, and apparently, Flaherty never saw his kid again.

I went inside the service station’s main area, and the smell of beer mixed with the stench of gasoline. Flaherty was clutching a can, staring at me.

“You harassing the kid?” he asked.

“No,” I said, even though I felt that wasn’t entirely true. “I was just curious about the woman who died.”

“She something to you?” Flaherty asked.

“Only met her the once,” I said.

“Then what’s the interest?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and we both seemed surprised by my honesty. “Your boy says he left her sitting outside. That true?”

Flaherty shrugged. “I never saw her. Not when I locked up.”

“What about her car?”

“Her car,” he repeated dully. “Her car. I had it towed.”

“At night?”

“That morning,” he said. “When it became clear she skipped out on me.”

“Towed where?” I asked.

“My place,” he said. “For parts.”

And those parts had probably already been taken, along with anything incriminating. I didn’t say that aloud, though.

“You have any idea who killed her?” I asked.

“What do you care?” he asked, gaze suddenly back on me, and sharper than I would have expected.

I thought of Jed then, Jed as I’d seen him that day, staring at me, that flat look on his face. “If Jed killed her—”

“I didn’t see Jed touch nobody,” Flaherty said. “And I wouldn’t say if I did.”

I froze. “Why not?”

Flaherty frowned, his eyes small and bloodshot. “He’s the best mechanic I got.”

“But if he killed someone—”

“He didn’t kill no one.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“What happened, happened,” Flaherty said. “Let’s not go wrecking more lives.” Then he grabbed the bottle of beer he’d been nursing, and took a sip, his crippled hand looking unbalanced in the grimy afternoon light.

* * *

By the time I got back with the sheriff, Jed was gone. Not that it mattered. The case went down on the books as unsolved. What else could it have been with the other kid denying he’d even talked to me, and Mac Flaherty swearing that the girl’d been fine when he drove by at midnight, fine and unwilling to leave her post near the Coke machine. He’d winked at the sheriff when he’d told that story, and the sheriff seemed to accept it all.

I went to Jed’s apartment, and found the door open, all his clothes missing, and a neighbor who said that Jed had run in, not even bothering to change, and packed a bag, took some money from a jam jar he’d had under his bed, and disappeared down the highway, never to be seen again.

He’d been driving one of Flaherty’s rebuilds.

When I found out, I told the sheriff, and the sheriff’d been unimpressed. “Man can leave town if’n he wants,” the sheriff said. “Don’t mean he killed nobody.”

No, I suppose it didn’t. But it seemed like a huge coincidence to me, the girl getting beaten to death, Jed watching us talk, and then, when he knew I’d left for the law, disappearing like he did.

It was just the sheriff saw no percentage in pursing the case. It’d been interesting when he could come after me because of my family, because of the power we had, but it soon lost its appeal when the girl’s family took her away. Took her away, and pointed the finger at a good local boy, a mechanic who could down some beers and tell great jokes, who’d gone off to serve his country same as the rest of us. Jed had had worth to the sheriff; the girl had had none.

* * *

I don’t know why he killed her. We’ll never know now. Jed disappeared but good, and wasn’t heard from until five years ago, when what was left of his family got an obituary mailed to them from somewhere in Canada. He’d died not saying a word—

* * *

Sorry. Got interrupted there. Was going to come back to it this afternoon, but things changed this morning.

About nine a.m., I walked into my front room, buttoning one of my best shirts in preparation for yet another meeting with that pretty doctor down at the glass-and-chrome White Elephant, when I saw Sarah sitting in my best chair, feet on the footstool my granny hand-stitched, and all forty hand-written pages of this memory in her hands. She was reading raptly which I found flattering for the half second it took to realize what she was doing. I didn’t want any one to read this stuff until I was dead, and here was my granddaughter staring at the pages as if they were something outta Stephen King.

She looked up at me, her heart-shaped face so like Sally Anne’s at that age that it made my breath catch, and said, “So you think you’re some bad guy for failing this woman.”

I shook my head, but the movement didn’t stop her.

“You,” she says, “who’ve done more for people—black, white or purple—than anyone else in this town. You, who went and opened that civil rights law practice back east, who fought every racist law and every racist politician you could find. For godssake, Gramps, you marched with Dr. King, and you were a presidential advisor on Civil Rights. You’re the kinda man who shows the rest of us how to live our lives, and you’re feeling like this? You’re being silly.”

“You don’t understand,” I said.

“Damn straight,” she said, and I winced, as I always do, at the sailor language she uses. “You shouldn’t be mulling over this any more. You did what you could, and more, it seems, than anyone else.”

“And even that wasn’t enough.”

“Sometimes,” she said, “that happens, Gramps. You know that. Hell, you taught it to me.”

Seems I did. But that wasn’t the point either, and I didn’t know how to tell her. So I didn’t. I took the papers from her, put them back on my desk where they belonged, and let her drive me to the doctor so that they both could feel useful.

And all the way there and all the way back, I thought about how to make my point so that girls like her would understand. You see, the world is so different now, and yet it’s still the same. Just the faces change, and a few of the rules.

These days, Jed would’ve been arrested, or the sheriff would’ve been bounced out of office, or the press’d make some huge scandal over the whole thing.

But it wouldn’t be that simple, because pretty women don’t approach strange men any more, especially if the strange men are in uniform, and pretty women certainly don’t wait alone in gas stations while their cars are being repaired.

But they’re still dying, because they’re women or because they’re black or because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there’s so damn many of them we just shrug and move on, shaking our heads as we go.

But that isn’t my point. My point is this:

I wouldn’t have marched with Dr. King if it weren’t for that poor girl, and I wouldn’t have made it my life’s work to stamp out all the things that cause the condition I found myself in that hot afternoon, the condition that would have led me to ignore a girl if I’d noticed the true color of her skin.

Because I think I know why she died that day. I think she died because she’d flirted with me.

And that just wasn’t done between girls like her and men like me.

Jed wouldn’t have taken her to the desert if she were white. He would’ve thought she had family, she had someone who missed her. He might have roughed her up for talking to me. He might have had a few words with me.

But he didn’t. I did something unspeakable to people of our generation, and he saw a way to get back at me. If I’d talked to her, then I’d want to do what was probably done to her before she died. And if she’d fought, then I’d have bashed her. That’s what the sheriff was thinking. That’s what Jed wanted him to think.

And all because of who she was, and who I was, and who Jed was.

The sad irony is that if I’d kept my place, she’d be alive, and because I didn’t, she was dead. That had bothered me then, and bothers me now. Seems a man—any man—should be able to talk to whomever he wants. But what bothered me worse was the fact that when I learned, on the same morning, that she was black and that she was dead, it bothered me more that she was black and that I had talked to her.

It just wasn’t done.

And I was more worried about my own blindness than I was about one woman’s life.

Since that day, hers is the face I see every morning when I wake up, and every night when I doze. And, if God gave me the chance to relive any day in my life, it’d be that one, not, strangely, the day I enlisted or the day I deliberately misunderstood that German kid asking for clemency, but the day I inadvertently led a pretty girl to her death.

White liberal guilt maybe.

Or maybe it was the last straw, somehow.

Or maybe it was the fact that I had so much trouble learning her name.

Learning her name was harder than learning the identity of the man who killed her. It took me three more weeks and a bribe to the twelve-year-old son of the owner of the funeral home.

Not that her name really mattered. To me or to anyone else.

But it mattered to her, and to that man in uniform with the red, red eyes. Because it was the only bit of her that couldn’t be sold for parts. The only bit she could call completely hers.

Lucille Johnson.

Not quite as exotic as I would have thought, or as fitting to a woman as beautiful as she was. But it was hers. And in the end, it was all she had.

It was a detail.

An important detail.

And one I’ll never forget.

 

___________________________________________

“Details“ is available for one week on this site. The ebook is available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Details

Copyright © 2018 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1998
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2018 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Amuzica/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

We are back from vacation! Clearly, a thousand ships have been launched while we were gone.

Before we delve: if you would like to reread The Inheritance from the beginning, uninterrupted, click The Inheritance tag under the post title. We now have a front page banner, and we would like to introduce Candice Slater, the talented artist who will be illustrating chapters for us. You can find her Instagram account here.

Artwork by Candice Slater

The cave passage stretched in front of me, a narrow tunnel painted with bioluminescent swirls of strange vegetation with a stream trickling along the left wall. The passage split about thirty yards ahead, with one branch curving to the right and the other cutting straight into the gloom. 

I had a light on my hard hat but decided against using it. It didn’t illuminate much, while making me easy to target, and I had no idea how long the battery would last. It was better to save it for emergencies. The pale green and pink radiance of the foreign fungi and lichens offered some light but it made the darkness seem even deeper.

It was like I’d turned five years old again, lying in my bed in the middle of the night, too afraid to move, until the need to pee won out and forced me to make a mad dash to the bathroom. Except that back then, if I got really scared, I could flick the lights on. As long as you had electric light, it gave you an illusion of safety and control. Without it, I felt naked. It was just me, Bear, and the tunnels filled with underground dusk.

There would be no dashing here. We would go carefully, quietly, and slowly.

A cold draft flowed from the tunnel, bringing with it an odd acrid stench.

Bear whined softly by my side.

Whining seemed entirely appropriate. I didn’t want to go into that gloom either.

“We don’t have a choice,” I told the dog.

Something rustled in the darkness, a strange whispering sound.

Bear hid behind me.

“Some attack dog you are.”

That’s probably why she survived. If she were braver, she’d be dead.

“The exit is to our left. This is the closest tunnel to it. The other two branch off to the right, which will take us further from the gate. This is our best bet for getting out.”

Bear put her ears back.

“It will be okay. Well, no, it probably won’t be, but staying here isn’t an option. Come on, Bear.”

I started forward and tugged on the leash. She resisted a little, but then changed her mind, and followed me through the passage. We picked our way through the glowing growth. It looked almost like a coral reef that had somehow sprouted on dry ground.

We reached the fork. The stream flowed from the right branch, with a scattering of luminous plants along its banks. It promised light, but the banks were narrow and strewn with rocks and water would attract predators. We needed to hang left anyway, so I took the other path, straight into the gloom, and kept moving. The tunnel was about thirty feet high and probably the same width. An almost round a hole in the rock, as if some massive worm had burrowed through the mountain. Hopefully not.

The passage veered slightly left, then angled right. Normally, cave passages like this varied in size and shape. This one was too uniform. Whatever dug it out had to be huge.

Time stretched. We trudged forward, following the curves of the passageway. Occasionally Bear paused, listening to something I couldn’t hear. I let her take her time.

Back by the entrance, we’d passed by some stalker bodies, and Elena mentioned that the assault team didn’t wipe them all out. Taking on a single stalker would be difficult.  There had been eight corpses, and the stalkers typically traveled in groups. If a pack of them attacked us, the best strategy would be to run and hope the tunnel narrowed ahead so they could only come at me one at a time. If I saw a crevasse, I would have to make a note of it in case I needed to double back…

For some reason, I could actually see both sides of the tunnel now with a lot of clarity. My eyes should have adjusted to the darkness, that was to be expected, but I could pick out small details now, like the cracks in the stone. The walls weren’t glowing, and the shining growth in this area was kind of sparse. Hmm.

We rounded another gentle turn, and I stopped. Ahead ridges of growth sheathed the floor and walls of the tunnel, like someone had raked solid stone into shallow curving rows. Between them bright red plants thrust out, shaped a little like branching cacti or Sinularia corals, almost like alien hands with long twisted fingers decorated with narrow frills. The tallest of them was about two feet high, but most were around eight inches or so. There were hundreds of them in the tunnel. The red patch stretched into the distance. Forty yards? Fifty?

Something about the red plants gave me pause. I crouched by the nearest patch. The frilly protrusions weren’t leaves. They were thorns, flat and razor sharp.

I flexed, accessing my talent. The red patch snapped into crystal clarity, flaring with a bright purple. Not helpful. Red was usually valuable, blue was toxic, orange was dangerous, but purple could be whatever.

I focused, trying to dig deeper.

The Grasping Hand. The thorns carried lethal poison. If one of those cut me or Bear, we would die in seconds, and the Hand would devour our bodies. In the distance, I could see a lump that was once a living creature, soon to become one of those ridges, drained of all fluids.

How did I know that? This hadn’t been in any of the briefings. I had never seen this before. I hadn’t read about it, no one had talked about it, and I should not have detailed knowledge of this carnivorous invertebrate. I shouldn’t have even known it was an invertebrate. The best my talent could do was identify it as animal and possibly dangerous.

The knowledge was just in my head. I flexed again, concentrating on the bright red stems.

A dark plateau unrolled in front of me, acres and acres of red stems, some twenty-feet-high, blanketing purple rock with giant dinosaur like reptiles thrusting through the growth, the stinging thorns sliding harmlessly from their bony carapace…

This was not my memory.

Fear washed over me. My heart pounded in my chest. I went hot, then cold. What the hell was happening to me?

Bear nudged me with her cold nose. I petted her, running my hand over her fur, trying to slow my breathing. Was this my inheritance? Memories from I didn’t know who obtained I had no idea where.

I stared at the patch. I could have a nervous breakdown right here and now, or I could keep going. 

It didn’t matter where the damned memory came from. It warned me about the danger. It might not have been mine, but I knew it was true. Blundering into that growth was certain death.

The Grasping Hand grew in clusters, probably determined by the availability of nutrients. Each of those clumps or ridges used to be a body. This growth was relatively young, the stems short and somewhat sparse.

If I was careful, I could pick my way through it. The problem was Bear. There was no way to communicate to the dog that she had to stay away from the thorns. One tiny scratch and it would be all over. I had to keep Bear safe. No matter what it took. I owed it to Stella, and if Bear died… Bear couldn’t die. We would leave this place together.

I could carry her. She was a big dog, she had to weigh… I flexed again. Eighty-two pounds. And that was a lot more precise than normal. I could usually ballpark weight and distance but not with that much accuracy. Something told me that if I concentrated, I could probably narrow it down to ounces. Fuck me.

I focused on the field of red. Forty-eight yards or one hundred and forty-four feet.

Great. All I had to do was pick up an eighty-pound dog and carry her across half the length of a football field. While carefully avoiding deadly thorns.

I could always double back and try one of the other tunnels. But none of the other passages led toward the exit. We’d been walking for what felt like hours. It would be a long trip back, and there was no guarantee we wouldn’t run across this same problem in another tunnel.

Also, very few things could get through the Grasping Hand without some kind of body armor. It was a deterrent, a little bit of safety behind us. Nothing would come at us through that patch.

If I put Bear on my shoulders, I could make it. But not while I carried the backpack. The canteens were bulky and heavy, and the backpack pulled on me. If Bear squirmed, she would throw me off balance and both of us would land right into the thorns. It was the pack or the dog.

All of the water and food we had was in that pack. I could try to throw it ahead of me, but there was no telling where it would land or how far. Dragging it behind me was out of the question. It could get stuck and pull me back, and the thorns would either shred it or deposit poison on it. I had no effective way to neutralize it. 

If I got through, I could find a safe spot on the other side, tie Bear to something, and come back for the pack. Yes, that had to be it.

I dropped the pack, pulled a second canteen out, and hung it on my coveralls. I had to take only what I absolutely needed. The antibacterial gel, a couple of bandages, knife, a single candy bar, and Motrin went into my pockets. That was all that could fit.

God, I didn’t want to leave the pack behind, but Bear mattered more. It would be fine. I would come back for it.

I took off my hard hat, pulled one of the spare canteens out of the backpack, poured water into the hat, and offered it to Bear.  She lapped at it. I drank what was left in the canteen and waited until the shepherd stopped drinking. I took the hat, tapped it on the ground to get the last of the liquid out, and put it back on my head. It was the only helmet I had.

There was a command guild dogs were taught to make them easy to carry. I’d heard the handlers use it before. What the hell was it? Lie, rest… Limp. Limp, it was limp.

I tore the packet of jerky open, pulled a piece out, and offered it to Bear. She sniffed it and gently took it out of my hand.

“Good girl. See? We’re friends.”

I took another piece of jerky and crouched by the shepherd. “Limp, Bear.”

She stared at me.

“Limp.”

Another puzzled look.

I was sure that was the right command. I scooted close to her and put my arm around her. Please don’t bite me.  “Limp.”

The shepherd leaned against me, slumping over. I put my hands around her hind and front legs and heaved her up onto my shoulders.  If she were a human, it would be fireman carry, but since she was a dog, it was more like a fur collar. I stood up.

Bear made a surprised noise halfway between a whine and a growl. I offered her another piece of jerky. A warm wet tongue licked my fingers, and she swiped the jerky from me.

“Good girl. Stay. Limp.”

I put my hands on her legs, took a deep breath, and walked into the field of red death.

Ten feet.  Fifteen. Twenty-five…

I zigzagged through the field, threading the needle between the thorn ridges.

If Cold Chaos alerted the DDC that I died, the government would sit on that news until my body was recovered or the breach was closed, at which point I would be officially presumed dead, and they would notify the kids. There would be nobody to cushion the blow.

Roger was out of the picture. His father and stepmother basically disowned him in favor of his younger brother and never showed any interest in our kids.

My mother was unreachable. After my father died a decade ago of a heart attack, she moved back to her native UK, and I didn’t even have her phone number. My mother viewed having children as a duty she had to fulfill. She had me, she provided food and shelter until I reached adulthood, and that was the end of her obligation to me and society in general.

I was an only child, and I didn’t have any friends, at least none who would step in. I did have an excellent lawyer and a will, but the kids would need warmth and kindness.

I had to make it home.

Sixty feet. Almost halfway there. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I would make Melissa eat those words when I got out.

Bear must’ve been a shoulder cat in another life because she sat steady like a rock. Come to think of it, carrying her should’ve been a lot harder. Maybe it was the adrenaline…

Bear stiffened under my hand. A low growl rumbled from her mouth. She craned her neck, looking at something in the tunnel behind me. I didn’t have room to turn around and check what was happening. 

Ninety feet.

Another growl.

Running would get us killed. I wove my way through the ridges. Whatever was coming up behind us would have to deal with the Grasping Hand as well. It would be fine.

Growl.

One hundred and twenty feet.

Fine. Just fine.

A dry skittering noise came from behind me. It sounded insectoid as if a giant cockroach was scrambling through the tunnel at top speed.

Bear snarled, trying to lunge off my shoulders. I wobbled, careened, caught myself at the last moment and kept going, feverishly trying to keep from slicing my legs to ribbons.

Bear erupted into barks, jerking me to and fro.

“Stay! Limp! Stay!”

The chittering chased us.

Almost there. Almost through. Just a little longer. Just a little bit…

Bear threw herself to the left. I spun in place, my boot catching on the nearest clump of thorns, shied the other way, and jumped over the last ridge. My boots hit the clear ground. Alive. I was alive somehow. The thorns didn’t penetrate through the shoe.

I dropped Bear to the ground and spun around.

The awful chittering sound filled the tunnel behind us. I flexed and saw a dark outline of four-foot-long chitinous legs.

“Run!” I turned and sprinted down the tunnel. The dog dashed ahead, pulling me forward with the leash.

It wouldn’t get through the Grasping Hand. Surely, it wouldn’t.

I glanced back, flexing. A massive insectoid thing tore out of the tunnel. It sampled the red field and plowed right into it. Shit!

I flew across the cave floor, drawing even with Bear. No turnoffs, no branching hallways, just a death trap with the thing behind us charging full speed ahead.

The tunnel veered right, curving. We took the curve at breakneck speed. I slid, caught myself, and dashed forward. Ahead the mouth of a tunnel opened to something lighter, glowing with eerie purple. We raced to it. A moment and we sprinted into the open.

I flexed. Time stretched as my enhanced vision thrust the feedback at me.

A huge cave lay in front of us, its jagged walls rising high up. You could fit a ten-story office tower into this chamber. Natural stone bridges crossed high above, a waterfall spilled from a fissure in the wall far in the distance, and straight ahead, in a front of us, a small lake lay placid, its color a deep blue. Short shrubs grew along the shore, about a foot high, with leaves the color of purple oxalis, dotted with glowing mauve flowers.

Two stalker corpses lay in the flowers, torn apart, and in the lake itself, a large shape waited, hidden in the water. It flared with bright orange. Danger. Chances of survival: nil.

The world restarted with my next breath. I pulled Bear to the left, where a chunk of the wall protruded in a miniature plateau. We couldn’t crawl onto it, but there were boulders around it. It was the only cover we had. Anything else would bring us too close to the lake. 

We dashed through the flowers. My heart was beating a thousand beats per minute.

A screech erupted from the tunnel.

We reached the ledge, and I ducked behind a large boulder and pulled Bear close. She squatted by me, and I hugged her, my hand on her muzzle, and whispered, “Quiet.”

The shepherd stared at me with big brown eyes.

A monster burst out of the passageway. Its front end resembled a silverfish that had somehow grown to the size of an SUV, with razor-sharp terrifying mandibles. Its tail was scorpion like, curving over its head, and armed with another set of flat pinchers, studded with sharp protrusions.

The monster paused. Its tail blades sliced the air like two huge shears.

I held my breath.

The creature skittered forward, straight for the stalker corpses on the shore.

The thing in the lake waited, still and silent.

The bug monster reached the closest stalker corpse. The mandibles sliced like two sets of shears, cutting the body into chunks, dissecting it. The first shreds of flesh made it into the creature’s mouth.

The thing in the lake struck. A blur erupted out of the water, lunging onto the shore. Somehow the bug monster dodged and skittered back. The lake owner paused, one massive paw on the torn-up corpse. It was huge, ten feet tall, as long as a school bus, and it stood on four sturdy legs armed with eighteen-inch claws. Its body was a mix of dinosaur and amphibian, dark violet, with scales that shimmered with indigo and pink as it moved. A massive fin-like crest crowned its head and flared along its spine all the way to the tip of a long thick tail. Its head with four small deep-set eyes and a wide, triangular mouth filled with razor sharp teeth was straight dragon. There was nothing else to compare it to. It was a lake dragon, and it had sighted an intruder in its domain.

The bug monster skittered backward, then sideways, its tail raised high, ready to strike.

The dragon’s flesh rippled. Pale pink spots appeared on its sides, near its crest, glowing softly. Was it a warning or was it trying to mesmerize the bug?

The monster silverfish veered left, then right, but did not retreat. Bugs weren’t known for their strategic thinking. There was meat on the shore, and the bug wanted it.

The silverfish lunged forward, the tail striking like a hammer. The dragon spun and swatted at it with its tail. The silverfish dodged and charged in.

I grabbed Bear’s leash, leaving her six inches of lead, and moved carefully away, past the boulders, along the ledge, toward the back of the cavern. Bear made no noise. She didn’t bark, she didn’t growl, she just snuck away with me.

Behind us, the bug monster screeched. A deep eerie hiss answered, almost a roar.

I picked my way along the wall, through jagged boulders. On our left, the walls were smooth and almost sheer.  On our right, the river that flowed from the waterfall rushed to the lake. 

I flexed again. The water was twenty-two feet wide and seven feet deep. Too deep to easily cross, and the other shore sloped up, littered with large rocks. A chunk of cave ceiling or one of those stone bridges above must’ve collapsed and broken into big chunks. Too hard to climb.

I kept scanning. There had to be a way out of this deathtrap.

My vision snagged on something ahead, where the wall curved left. A dark gap split the rock face, twelve feet high and fourteen feet wide. I focused on it. 

No dice. The gap was fifty-three yards away, and my talent told me that there was nothing valuable in the rock wall around it, but I couldn’t tell how deep it was or if it even led somewhere.  My ability was always tied to my vision. I could sense things buried within rock, but I still had to look at the rock while doing it. If I closed my eyes, I got nothing, and that fissure was just a dark hole. Once I entered the gap, I could scan it but until then, it was a mystery.

There could be other passages on the other side of the cavern, but I didn’t want to risk it. There could be nothing there.

The boulders ended. The ground here was almost clear and sheathed in the mauve flowers. We’d have to leave cover to get to the gap.

I glanced over my shoulder. The bug monster had circled the lake. It was on our side now, still facing the dragon, but two of its left legs were missing and a long gouge carved across its chitin carapace. It wasn’t darting quite as quickly. The huge lake monster kept advancing, its crest rigid, the spots on its sides almost blinding. A wound split its right shoulder, bright with magenta blood.

We had to risk it.

I tugged Bear’s leash, and we padded into the open, heading for the gap. My enhanced vision snagged on the flowers.  Poisonous when eaten. Everything in this fucking breach was trying to kill us.

Something thudded. I risked a glance. The bug had crashed into the wall, falling on its side, and the dragon bore down on it, mouth gaping. At the last moment, the silverfish flipped and dashed away, heading straight for us.

I ran. We flew across the cave, scrambling over rocks. The air in my lungs turned to fire.

The bug was right behind me. I felt it there. I didn’t need to flex, I knew exactly where it was.

The gap loomed in front of us.

Bear and I scrambled into the darkness. For a moment I was running blind, and then my night vision kicked in. Ahead, the passage narrowed down to four feet wide.

Yes! The narrower the better.

An awful scraping noise came from behind us, the sound of bug legs digging into the rocks.

Beyond the narrow point lay darkness. It was too deep and too dark.

We dashed through the narrowed gap, and I slid to a halt, yanking Bear back. We stood on a seven-foot ledge. Past it the ground disappeared. There was no way down. There was just a gulf of empty dark nothing.

We were trapped.

The wall behind us shook.

I spun around.

The bug rammed the stone, trying to get its tail through, but the gap was too narrow.  It screeched and struck the rock again. The mandibles shot toward me through the gap, slicing.

I jerked my right arm up on pure instinct. The cuff around my wrist flowed into my fingers and snapped into a long sharp spike, and I drove it into the bug’s head. The blade sliced through the right mandible and bit into the armored carapace. The mandible hung limp. I yanked the blade free and stabbed again, and again, and again, thrusting and cutting in a panic-fueled frenzy. To my right, Bear launched forward, exploding into snarls, bit the mandible I had partially severed, and ripped it free.

The bug screeched. Puss-colored ichor wet its head. It tried to back up, but its head was wedged into the gap.

I kept stabbing. Bear lunged back in, foam flying from her mouth, latched onto another mandible, and hung on, fur standing straight up.

Stab, stab, stab…

The bug collapsed. I drove the sword into it seven more times before my brain finally processed what I was seeing. The giant silverfish was dead. It wasn’t even twitching.

I heaved, trying to catch my breath. We killed it. Somehow we killed it.

Bear snarled next to me, biting a chunk of the bug she had torn off. All of her fur stood on end.

“Good girl,” I breathed. “Finally snapped, huh?”

Bear growled and bit down.  Chitin crunched.

The bug shuddered.

I jerked my sword up.

The silverfish slid backward, into the gloom of the dark passageway, and behind it, I saw the outline of a massive paw and pale glowing spots.

I dropped into a crouch and hugged Bear to me in case she decided to follow. The silverfish vanished, swallowed by the darkness.  The pale pink spots winked out.

The post The Inheritance: Chapter 4 Part 2 first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

All right, Sprawl Off in 3.2.1…

What am sprawls?

I don’t always, sprawl, but when I do, I like to be an island.

Dat sounds like a lot of work, but…sure, I guess?

I am the QUEEN of sprawl! OWNED!

 

 

 

Thanks for the update but sorry that Book #4 is flowing as well as it might. I’m looking forward to next week’s guide on corporations & also Book 3 of course but still over six months away .

You’ve probably noticed that we really upped our design game at WMG Publishing in the past year. Some of that is due to the new designers we’ve brought on board, but some of it is because Stephanie Writt has a lot of design experience using modern tools like Canva.

In combination with Dean, whose done more book covers than anyone I know, they’re working together to come up with really pretty books.

Every Friday, they do a seminar together called Writer Direct, which helps writers go directly to the readers, through indie publishing and marketing. (It’s open to anyone for a monthly fee.) For the past six months, the writers who attend have asked Dean and Steph to do a workshop on covers.

Once they started brainstorming, they realized they could do workshops on covers and interiors and Kickstarter.

These courses are designed to take a writer who has never designed anything and have them making gorgeous books by the end of the class. I’m their guinea pig. (Dyslexic girl. If they can get me to do it, anyone can do it.)

The nice thing about these, though, is that there are design tricks in the new programs that long-time designers don’t know. So there’s an entire section for people who have been making covers and designing books for years.

The classes won’t start for a few weeks, but we’re offering an early bird sale on these, which is buy two and get the third free. (In other words, save $500.) Or just buy one and save $100 off the price. Find out more information here.

When you follow that link, you’ll see another class from me. I’m doing short classes on techniques that I can teach quickly. After finishing the difficult senses—smell and taste (which I taught together)—those who came to the webinar asked for similar classes on the remaining three senses.

So, I’m going from hardest to easiest. The next one is on touch. It starts right after I finish the in-person Gothic workshop next week.

Finally, Dean and I are finishing up the next installment in The Kris & Dean Show Goes To the Movies. We’re doing Ocean’s 11 (the 2001 version). I’m the one who picked that because I’ve been meaning to examine that film very closely.

Turns out it’s even more useful than I thought it would be. This class will teach you all about how to feed information to a reader so that they don’t notice the important stuff until you want them to. It’ll also show you how to establish characters quickly, and how to handle an extremely complicated storyline with verve and clarity.

We’re having a great time doing this one, and it’ll go live next week.

So take a look and see if there’s a class for you.

2,119 miles away from Elmwood

The right leg hurt, the left arm hurt, everything fucking hurt. There was alien slime dripping from his armor, and it stank like yesterday’s vomit.

The gate loomed in front of him. Elias McFeron stepped through it.

Blue sky. Finally. 

He took a deep breath and tasted home. That first gulp of Earth’s air. There was nothing like it.

Behind him the rest of the assault team staggered out. He’d force-marched them for the last two days, all the way from the anchor chamber. It was a hard pace even for the top Talents, and it took longer than expected because the markers they had placed to guide their way through the swamp had sunk.

The first responders dashed toward him with the stretcher. Elias let them get in position, lifted Damion Bonilla off his shoulders, and carefully deposited him onto the stretcher. The pulsecarver’s blood-smeared face was a mask of pain.

“Thank you, Guildmaster. I’m sorry.”

Elias nodded. “Nothing to be sorry about. Rest. You’ve earned it.”

The first responders carried Bonilla off. His legs were bloody mush below the knees, but he would walk again. The healers would fix him. They fixed anything except dead if you got to them in time.

This was the last time. Elias had promised himself that every time he went into the breach, but this time he meant it. He would strip off the armor, take a long shower in his hotel, board the guild jet with the rest of his team, and go home. He would eat well, sleep in his own bed, and then in the morning he would put on a suit, go into his office, and do paperwork like a normal fucking human being. That’s where he belonged. Running the guild, which had plenty of blade wardens without him.

The medics swarmed the assault team. A young kid with a healer’s white caduceus on his jacket ran up to him. Elias waved him off and squinted at the familiar orderly chaos in front of the gate, looking for the mining crew. He’d sent a scout ahead with the orders to wrap it up. The miners were on the left, stowing their gear. He counted them out of habit. 15 and 8 escorts. Good. Everyone was out.

A familiar tall, lean figure in a black Tom Ford suit tugged at his attention. Leo Martinez, who seemed to be born to wear elegant suits and be the public face of a guild, the only man standing still in the flurry of activity. His XO, who should’ve been back at HQ, 2,000 miles away. Something had happened.

Leo started toward him.

Elias made himself walk forward. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to deal with it but avoiding it would make things worse.

A sharp sound cut through the human clamor, like the noise of a thousand paper sheets being ripped at once magnified through concert level speakers. The gate collapsed.

Leo reached him. “Cutting it a little close, sir.”

“Happens.” Elias headed for the familiar black SUV. The back hatch rose as he approached, and he began stripping his armor and tossing it into the plastic-lined vehicle. “What is it?”

Leo kept his voice low. “We had a fatal event.”

He’d figured that. “Where?”

“Elmwood Gate. The assault team is presumed dead. We lost nine of twelve miners, four of the escorts, a K9 and handler, and a DeBRA.”

Elias stopped for a moment. Twenty-eight people. Good people. He’d approved the line up himself. It was a solid team that should’ve been more than adequate for the deep yellow gate. He’d personally trained them, he’d gone into breaches with them, and now they were dead. Half of them under the age of thirty. He’d sent kids to their deaths again.

This wasn’t a fatal event, this was a catastrophe. What the hell went wrong over there?

Leo’s face was carefully neutral. “The DeBRA is—”

“Adaline Moore.” The best DeBRA in the Eastern US died in their gate dive.

“Yes, sir. I’ve got the mining foreman, the surviving miners, and London under lockdown.”

“London made it out?”

The crisp line of Leo’s jaw got sharper. “Yes, sir.”

“Hm.”

“I’ve reported to the DDC,” Leo continued. “Cora Ward owes me a favor, so she will sit on it for as long as she can, but sooner or later this will get out and when it does, both the Hermetic Alliance and the Guardian Guild will scream bloody murder. The Guardians, in particular, have been vocal about our share of the gates.”

Adaline Moore had been in high demand. DeBRAs of her caliber were rare and monopolized by the DDC. Elias liked to know who he was working with, so he kept tabs on the assessors. Adaline was divorced, with an absentee ex-husband, two children, a cat, and her life revolved around work and family. The very definition of a noncombatant. Her children were now orphans.

Leo was right, the fallout from this would hit them like a hammer, but the political mess and the PR nightmare wasn’t important right now. He would deal with that later. “What does London say happened?”

“Humanoid combatants. Highest red level.”

“What kind of combatants?”

A slight edge slipped into Leo’s voice. “He doesn’t know.”

Perfect.

“His entire crew and the DeBRA are dead, and he doesn’t know. Did he see the DeBRA die?”

“He says he did. The mining foreman backs up his story.”

The foreman made it out, too. “What about the other miners?”

“In shock. They aren’t talking.”

Elias deposited the last bit of gear into the SUV and slapped it shut. The vehicle rocked. The control got away from him a hair.

Leo got behind the wheel, Elias climbed into the passenger seat, and they drove out, past the police barricade and the onlookers onto I-205, heading north, toward the airport, where the guild jet waited.

“From what London described, we will need the primary team,” Leo said. “Kovalenko is on loan to Texas’ Lone Star Guild and Krista is on vacation in the Caribbean. Jackson is in Japan.”

And they would have to wait for Jackson because they would need their best healer.

“Jackson has the longest travel but should make it within 48 hours. The real problem is the tank,” Leo said. “Both Karen and Amir are inside the gates right now, and both went in less than twenty-four hours ago. We can substitute Geneva, but she lacks experience…”

“No need,” Elias said. “I’ll take them in myself. Tell Krista I authorized triple rates. We can swing by Dallas and pick up Kovalenko. We have 28 people in that breach. We must recover the bodies so their families will have something to bury.”

If there was anything to recover. With the kind of delay they were facing, they could get there and find only bones stripped bare. Dead people became meat, and meat didn’t last long in a breach. He would shower and sleep on the plane. The office would have to wait.

“Are we pulling them to HQ or straight to Elmwood?” Leo asked.

“Straight to Elmwood. Nobody goes into that gate until I get there.”

“Understood.”

Elias looked at the city soaking in the dreary rain of the Pacific Northwest outside the window and glanced back at his XO. “Was London injured?”

A hint of bright electric lightning flared in Leo’s eyes, turning them an unnatural silver white. He pronounced words with crisp exactness. “Not a scratch, sir.”

“Hm.”

He had to get to Elmwood. The sooner, the better.

The post The Inheritance: Chapter 4 Part 1 first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Like to read? Like to knit? Like socks? Like fantasy?

Then this is the Kickstarter project for you.

Here, in a nutshell, is what it is:

Socks & Sorcery will have four themed collector’s boxes, each delivered three times over the course of a year. Every box contains:

•  A Surprise fantasy novel in the format of your choice (ebook, paperback or audiobook)
•  100g skein of exclusively dyed fingering weight yarn inspired by something from the book
• A 20g contrasting mini skein perfect for crafting heels and toes
• Delightful surprises to enhance your reading and crafting journey. 

Mix and match any of the four themes—Dragons, Familiars, Witches and Vampires, or Faeries—or get them all for a box delivered each month for a year!

There are lots of great writers contributing books to this project including T. Thorn Coyle, Anthea Sharp, Leslie Claire Walker, and Thomas K. Carpenter. The first book in my Fey series, Sacrifice, is also a part of the project.

This project is a lot of fun, and I’m pleased to take part in it. I hope you join us!

Prologue I

From: Leo Morningstar: A Critical Analysis. Baen Historical Press. Daybreak. Year 307.

Given his importance to the events of the critical period that reshaped the Daybreak Republic/Empire in a manner few beyond all hope of repair, it is perhaps not surprising that generations of historians, psychologists, and revisionists have visited and revisited the early years of a man who was both a catalyst for change and, at the same time, an earnest fighter for a conservative system that had not always been very kind to him. There is no shortage of commentary and analysis on his early career, ranging from detailed military histories to personality assessments that veer between the reasonable to the outrageous. Leo Morningstar has been branded a hero, a villain, and everything in-between. Indeed, it is a curious take on his life and career that he was both a great hero and a villain.

There is little doubt about the outline of his early life. His father was a war hero who died in action, leaving him under the care of his mother and the patronage of Captain – later Grand Senator – Grand Senator (Admiral) Sullivan. Although of common birth, at least as far as Daybreak was concerned, the combination of parentage and patronage ensured that Leo Morningstar would not only attend the Naval Academy but also survive a fight with then-Senior Cadet Francis Blackthrone that would otherwise have seen in expelled. The relationship between Leo and Francis Blackthrone would not end there, and their rivalry would cast a long shadow over the events of the following decade.

Seemingly having learned his lessons, Leo threw himself into training and graduated at the top of his class three years out of four, barely missing the chance to claim the Marty Sue Prize For Extreme Cleverness through a percentage point. A bright future beckoned for the young man, only to be swept away when it was discovered that he was having an affair with Fleur O’Hara, the wife of Commandant O’Hara. Unwilling to allow Leo to take part in the graduation ceremony, unable to find a way to demote him for bringing the Academy into dispute, Deputy Commandant Horace Valerian engineered an early promotion for Leo that came with a sting in the tail. On one hand, he would be put in effective command of RSS Waterhen, an outdated destroyer whose captain had effectively abandoned his post shortly after his assignment. On the other, he would be expected to take his new ship to the Yangtze Sector – hundreds of light years from Daybreak – and go into de facto exile.

It was not the first time that Leo’s libido had gotten him into trouble. It would not be the last.

His enemies thought they had engineered his effective destruction. They severely underestimated their target. Leo threw himself into doing his duty, escorting convoys, hunting down pirates, and eventually uncovering a plot to separate the sector from Daybreak and either demand better treatment or outright independence. Despite some missteps, including allowing himself to start a relationship with a young woman who later turned out to be one of the masterminds of the rebel plot, Leo successfully defended Daybreak’s presence in the sector and convinced his superiors to send reinforcements.

This may not have worked in his favour. The reinforcement squadron was commanded by Commodore Alexander Blackthrone, an uncle to Lieutenant-Commander Francis Blackthrone, and he wasted no time putting Leo in his place. His nephew was put in command of RSS Waterhen and Leo himself was expected to serve as his rival’s XO. The deployment did not go smoothly. Francis Blackthrone was ill-prepared for command, and made a handful of mistakes that eventually resulted in the near-destruction of the ship. Waterhen was only saved by Leo’s quick thinking.

One might expect this to win some plaudits and respect from a commanding officer. Instead, Francis Blackthrone assigned Leo to serve as naval liaison officer on Boulogne, a planet on the verge of civil war. Leo rapidly found himself on the front lines of a war when one side took advantage of Daybreak’s distraction to try to renegotiate the peace agreement that had been forced on them at gunpoint. Facing the near-total destruction of Daybreak’s allies, Leo devised a plan to turn the war around and decapitate the enemy forces. This plan was successful … but, in the meantime, Waterhen had been hijacked by rebel forces. Leo was forced to gamble everything on returning to his former ship, defeating the rebels, and returning to report to his superiors.

This victory did bring him some respect from Commodore Blackthrone. Leo’s command of Waterhen was confirmed (Francis, severely injured, was transferred to medical facilities on Yangtze). However, the ship was severely damaged by the final engagement and her crew – including Leo himself – were allowed a few weeks of leave before returning to their vessel. It should have been a time to relax. For Leo, a man of action, it was deeply boring. He was chaffing at the bit within a week.

Thankfully, unknown to him, he was about to meet a man who would be of singular importance in his future career… and embark on a mission that would change his life forever.

Prologue II

Gayle burned.

It was hard, very hard, to keep the rage and frustration from showing on her face as the shuttle neared her destination. She’d spent nearly a decade, since her father had brought her into the fold, working to undermine Daybreak’s control of the Yangtze Sector and ensure a better deal for locals who would otherwise be ruthlessly exploited by the most expansionist empire in human history, only to see the whole edifice come crashing down through the determination of a lone starship captain. Not even a real captain, to add insult to injury. Gayle didn’t pretend to understand the politics that had put a young man, barely out of his teens, in command of a warship, but she had to admit Daybreak had made a good call. Leo Morningstar had exposed the plot, destroyed several rebel warships, killed her father and forced Gayle herself to flee. And to think …

She ground her teeth, feeling the anger gnawing at her. She’d worked hard to present herself in a manner that would appeal to his prejudices, to make him want to like her and try to save her, and it had all come crashing down. She had known it was a gamble, when the rebels had taken Leo Morningstar into custody, but she’d thought she had it all under control. He hadn’t realised she was more than just a pretty face, not until it was too late, and she’d hoped their relationship would convince him to join her. The plot had always been risky – and they’d known they could easily lose right from the start – and the open support of the ranking officer in the sector could have made the difference between success and failure. And she’d failed. Her world remained in Daybreak’s clutches, her father was dead and the family corporation under new management … and she was on the run. She didn’t know if Daybreak knew she’d survived, but they hadn’t found a body. They’d be wise to assume she was still alive.

Not that there’d be much to recover from an exploding starship, she thought, the anger giving way to bitterness. Her father had died on the outdated heavy cruiser, his body vaporised. They’d done what they could to convince investigators every named figure in the plot had been on that ship, but the story was just a little too convenient. And they know there’s a growing rebellion even if they don’t know everyone involved.

It would be easy to give up, she reflected. She was a young woman with plenty of useful skills … skills she’d been careful to hide from Leo Morningstar, at least until the masks were off and they saw each other clearly for the first time. Her papers marked her out as a qualified technician and starship engineer, ensuring she could make a living almost anywhere. She could even find a homestead on a stage-one colony world, running a farm and raising a small army of children and stepping out of history once and for all. She wasn’t tempted. She knew how much her father had sacrificed, and the rest of his allies, in a desperate bid to save the sector from the empire. If they had been able to secure their position, and ask for membership as an autonomous world …

Bad rolls of the dice are inevitable, she thought, sourly. Leo had said that once, when he’d talked about his exile from Daybreak. An exile to glory, more like. If Leo wasn’t the most famous young man of his generation, it was a reflection on the enemy’s media rather than the young man himself. You just have to pick yourself up, learn from the experience, and move on.

She let out a breath as the shuttle docked, the gravity field shivering slightly. She wasn’t one to give up. Daybreak knew they existed now, true, but they wouldn’t change their approach to the sector just because some locals objected to being annexed. There was even a theory going round the underground arguing that Daybreak had deliberately baited the rebels into striking, in order to expose and destroy them. It might well be true. Leo hadn’t known anything of it, Gayle was sure, but he was hardly the most subtle thinker. His superiors might have had more in mind when they sent him into exile than just getting rid of him. Even if they hadn’t … it had paid off for them.

The hatch hissed open. A masked figure appeared, beckoning for her to stand and follow him. Gayle unbuckled herself and stood, feeling the deck shifting slightly below her feet … a slightly lower than normal gravity field, unusual beyond the edge of civilised space. It frustrated her, sometimes, that she had no idea who their backers truly were, but she understood the importance of secrecy. Daybreak wouldn’t hesitate to drop a hammer – or a flurry of kinetic projectiles – on any world that backed the rebels, and very few autonomous worlds could stand up to the Daybreak Navy for long. Their backers had to remain unknown, even to her. What she didn’t know she couldn’t be made to tell.

Her escort led her through two airlocks and into a space station. The bulkheads were bare, scoured of anything that might identify the station’s designers. It was probably pointless – most ships and stations in the region had passed through several pairs of hands before reaching their final destination – but it was better to be careful. Daybreak’s investigators had uncovered a handful of assets Gayle, and her father, had thought well-hidden. If they got a solid ID on a ship or a station, they might just be able to trace it back to the buyer.

The conference room was as bare as the rest of the station, a simple metal table flanked by two metal chairs. A tray sat on the table, holding a jug of water and a pair of simple plastic glasses, but there were no other comforts. There wasn’t even a holographic projector. Gayle’s lips twitched as she took her seat. The Cognoscenti – it was the only name she’d ever been given – were taking paranoia a little too far. If the space station was uncovered, and the crew failed to destroy it, the barren compartment would be the least of their worries.

She took a moment to calm herself, then looked up as the other hatch hissed open. A figure stepped into the chamber, wearing a mask and robes that made it impossible to get any idea of everything from their gender to their figure. They could be a heavy-worlder with a genetically-engineered body, making the outfit very tight, or they could be a tiny space-dweller wearing garb that looked and felt like a tent. There were no markings on the outfit, nothing to suggest their homeworld. It crossed her mind to wonder if she were dealing with aliens. There were no intelligent races in the known universe – save for humanity, and humanity’s intelligence was often in question – but it wasn’t impossible. Dozens of worlds had given birth to higher-order animal life forms. Why not an intelligent race?

Not impossible, she told herself. Just very unlikely.

“Greetings,” the representative said. She’d expected a toneless voice, but the figure spoke with a very definite Daybreak accent. That little detail would put the cat amongst the pigeons, if she were captured and forced to talk. The accent was probably designed to taunt the investigators. It was a little too stereotypical to be wholly real. “I am Cognoscenti.”

“Greetings,” Gayle said, as the figure glided over and sat facing her. The voice was masculine, suggesting she was dealing with a man. Or a woman with altered vocal cords or a simple voice changer. Either was possible. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“We have supplied ships and repair services to your forces,” Cognoscenti said, without any further pleasantries. “You have lost several vessels in engagements with Daybreak. Worse, Daybreak is now aware that someone is funding your operations. Why should we continue to support you?”

Gayle took a moment to calm herself before answering. The tone was flat, rather than accusatory, but somehow that made it worse. She hated the thought of being dependent on anyone, let alone a mysterious group hiding behind a strange name, yet there was little choice. Yangtze had barely started to rebuild her space-based industry when Daybreak arrived and she’d been one of the most advanced planets in the sector. There was an entire underground economy, true, but there were limits to how much it could provide. Gayle wouldn’t care to trust a vessel produced in a secret yard, even assuming the yard managed to put a starship together in the first place. They needed their supporters, despite the risks.

“We lost a battle,” she conceded, without allowing a hint of her angry and frustration into her voice. “There’s no point in denying it. However, the war is not lost and the ultimate cause of the war remains unaddressed. If we do not fight, this sector will be annexed completely and you, whoever you are, will remain under their thumb. Forever.”

She waited, studying Cognoscenti. His mask hid his reaction and yet … he had to be worried. No autonomous world truly believed they would be allowed to remain autonomous forever, no matter the terms of their annexation into the empire. Daybreak had spent decades pushing its military and economic power into every last incorporated sector, ensuring its corporations had the edge over their local counterparts, and it was just a matter of time before they started doing the same to the autonomous worlds. They had to be tempting targets. Planets like New Washington and Edo were extremely wealthy, by interstellar standards. And they didn’t have the military power to defend themselves if Daybreak wanted the wealth for themselves.

“We still have a large reserve of manpower,” she added. “The United Front has been recruiting aggressively. We have thousands of motivated starship crewmen and soldiers, ready and willing to fight for the cause; they just needed to be trained, armed, and supplied with ships they can use to take the fight to the enemy. If you support us, we can liberate ourselves.”

Or ensure a constant running sore that’ll keep Daybreak from bullying you while they’re dealing with us, she added, in the privacy of her own mind. She wasn’t blind to the simple reality the Cognoscenti wouldn’t be funding the United Front if they didn’t stand to gain from their victory. Or even a prolonged and ultimately inconclusive conflict. If we buy time for you, you can make best use of it while our mutual enemy is distracted.

“Every ship we send does raise the spectre of the vessel being tracked back to its point of origin,” Cognoscenti pointed out. “Can you ensure it doesn’t happen?”

“The ships have passed through so many hands that tracing them is a difficult and ultimately impossible task,” Gayle pointed out. “Quite frankly, if that was a concern you wouldn’t have supplied us with any ships.”

She winced, inwardly. Her father and his allies had created a network of shell corporations and other measures to obtain some ships, passing the vessels through several hands to obscure their origins as much as possible. It wasn’t clear how well they’d covered their tracks. It was clear that many of those vessels had been outdated, dangerously vulnerable to modern warships. They’d refitted the starships as best they could, but still … Daybreak had the edge. That had to change.

Cognoscenti spoke with a quiet intensity. “It is vitally important that you move to destabilise the sector as much as possible, and for that we will increase our efforts to supply you. Daybreak must be distracted.”

Gayle allowed herself a tight smile. “If you continue your support, Daybreak will be more than just distracted,” she promised. The plan was risky, but what wasn’t? And if it allowed her to get a little personal revenge into the bargain …  “I have a plan.”

“Very good,” Cognoscenti said. “Do not fail us.”

Chapter One

Leo hated to admit it, but he was bored.

Two weeks of shore leave felt like agony, and he was only halfway through. There was little to do on Yangtze that didn’t bring back memories of Gayle, and just how much of a fool he’d made of himself when he’d thought her a sweet young lady unfairly held back by her society, and in truth he would sooner be throwing himself into Waterhen’s refit than sitting in the bar nursing a glass of beer and feeling sorry for himself. He had no idea if Commodore Blackthrone was genuinely trying to punish Leo by insisting he took leave, or if he were genuinely trying to help, but it didn’t matter. He was bored and lonely and just plain desperate for something – anything – to happen.

He sighed as he sat back in his seat, allowing his eyes to wander the bar. It was a spacer’s bar: the air heavy with tobacco smoke, the drinks high in price and low in quality, spacer rotgut competing with local beer and a handful of dubious-looking bottles of wine. Leo had never heard of any of the brands, particularly the bottles marked Caballus Eniru, but none looked worth half the price. The barmaids didn’t look worth it either. Spacers going on leave after weeks in interstellar space developed new standards of beauty, but there were limits. Not that it would matter to a merchant spacer, he supposed. The spaceport strip was meant to separate the spacer from his money as quick and pleasantly as possible, and it did it very well. It just wasn’t suitable for him.

You’re being an ass, he told himself, curtly. Stop it.

His mood darkened. There was little to do. He didn’t fancy the brothel, or the entertainment complex, or even going for a wander around Yangtze City. It had expanded rapidly in the last six months, so quickly that Leo had wondered if he’d landed in the wrong place when he disembarked from the shuttle, but it still served largely as a transhipment point rather than a settlement in its own right. The new colonists were being farmed out as quickly as possible, rather than being allowed to remain in the city. It would be decades, at best, before the planet started developing real cities. Some planets never did.

Two men started shouting, loudly. Leo looked up, half-expecting a fight. He’d been in enough bar fights during his misspent youth and … he shook his head, cursing under his breath. He really was too bored. The days in which he could trade blows with a merchant spacer, spend the night in the clink and be released the following day to face a stern lecture from his instructors were over. He was Commander Morningstar now. He had to set a good example for everyone else.

Sure, his thoughts mocked. You can set an example of what not to do.

The brief conflict died away as the barmaids hurried over, breaking up the fighters before they could do more than shout at each other and separating them with practiced skill. Leo was mildly impressed. The barmaids back home generally hid behind the bar and called the Shore Patrol, who could be relied upon to stun first and ask questions later. But then, Yangtze was nowhere near as developed as Daybreak and there were still relatively few spacers passing through. It would change in the next few decades, he was sure. The sector had a great deal of potential. A little investment and technological help and it would be well on the way to success.

“Leo Morningstar?”

Leo flinched, one hand dropping to the pistol at his belt. The newcomer had snuck up on him while he was fighting … Boothroyd would make fun of him, respectfully of course, if he ever heard about it. The Sergeant Major was on a forced march with the new recruits, drilling them ruthlessly; Leo wished, suddenly, that he’d asked to accompany them. The march would be many things, but it wouldn’t be boring.

“Yes,” he said, looking up. “What can I do for you?”

The newcomer smiled and sat facing Leo. He was a middle-aged man, appearing to be in his late forties. The streak of grey in his brown hair leant him an air of simple dignity, as well as marking him as a Daybreaker. It was possible to use cosmetic surgery to turn yourself into the most breathtakingly attractive person in the world, but such vanity was frowned upon on Daybreak. His tunic was Daybreaker too, so plain Leo knew it was part of a deliberate attempt to present himself in a certain way. The only adornment was a service pin, pinned to his collar, that proved he’d done his service and earned citizenship. It could be anything from front-line combat to cleaning the sewers, Leo reflected, but it deserved respect all the same.

“I am Senator Tiberius Quinton,” the newcomer said. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Leo blinked, then straightened automatically. He’d never been that keen on memorising the names and faces of citizens who ran for elected office, particularly the ones who’d done their service and retired rather than keeping their skin in the game, but even he had heard of Tiberius Quinton. He was not just a ‘new man,’ a man whose family had never entered politics before him; he was one of the very few senators who’d campaigned without support from the long-established families and patronage networks. His victory had been one hell of an impressive achievement. It had to have rankled some of the older families the wrong way.

“Likewise,” he managed. Quinton would have had military experience, then. His opponent would not have failed to make a song and dance about Quinton lacking moral fibre, if he hadn’t put his own ass in the line of fire once or twice. “I had no idea you were coming.”

“I’m travelling incognito,” Quinton said. “You’d better check my ID before we go any further.”

Leo felt himself flush as he took the badge of office and pressed it against his wristcom. It had been months since he’d seen a news report with Quinton’s face and it was just possible he was dealing with an imposter … the answer came back a moment later, the military datanet confirming Quinton’s true identity. Leo returned the badge and sat back in his chair, feeling oddly unsure of himself. Normally, there would be a ceremony for a senatorial visitor. The fact Quinton had apparently refused one was … interesting.

“You appear to be you,” he said. It wasn’t that uncommon for senators to brush shoulders with their constituents on Daybreak, but that was hundreds of light years away. “Why didn’t you announce your arrival?”

“I’m on a fact-finding mission, and it’s sometimes easier to learn what’s really going on if you don’t arrive as dramatically as possible,” Quinton said. He had a personable air that made Leo want to like him. “It’s very easy to find someone willing to tell me what they think I want to hear, harder to get the truth.”

“And many people can’t handle the truth,” Leo said. Commodore Blackthrone had not been pleased by Leo’s report covering his nephew’s many failings, although he’d been man enough not to punish Leo for imprudence. Unless the shore leave was punishment … “What sort of truth do you want to hear?”

Quinton reached into his pocket, produced a privacy generator, and placed it on the table. Leo felt a faintly uncomfortable sensation brushing against his eardrums as the generator activated, creating a faint haze of visual and electromagnetic distortion that should make it impossible for anyone to overhear them. Even lip-reading was supposed to be impossible. Leo reminded himself not to place too much faith in the device. The security and intelligence services of a dozen planets would be trying to find ways to beat the field, if they hadn’t already succeeded. They wouldn’t gloat about it if they had. They’d keep it to themselves as long as possible.

“Tell me,” Quinton said. “What do you think of this sector? Politically speaking?”

Leo kept his face under tight control. Daybreakers were taught to be direct … and Quinton had clearly taken those lessons to heart. And he’d opened with a tricky subject … Leo could easily get in trouble for answering honestly, although he had an excellent defence. It was a major crime to refuse to answer questions from a senator, if he posed them. He’d be fined heavily at the very least, and given he had enemies back home the consequences would likely be a great deal more severe.

“It’s hard to say,” Leo said, after a moment. “Some locals have accepted the annexation and are trying to work with us, to ensure the process is beneficial to both sides. Others resent the loss of their independence, fear what we might do to them, or … simply don’t like us. Most governments, from what I’ve seen, aren’t very pleased even if they benefit from our presence. Their people rarely support us.”

Quinton cocked his head. “How many demands do we make of them?”

“Obedience,” Leo said. “The sector doesn’t have that much to offer, not yet, but we demand they follow our rules and … I imagine it rankles, even if there are good reasons behind the rules. We push them around a lot, imposing our laws and demanding that they grant our people and corporations extraterritorial rights.”

“I don’t think you need to imagine at all,” Quinton said.

Leo sucked in his breath. Quinton was perceptive.

“No,” he said. “I know it for a fact.”

He sighed, inwardly. It was easy to understand what had driven Gayle and her father to take such desperate measures, gambling everything on a plot to force a better deal from the all-powerful empire forcing its way into their sector. He was a loyal Daybreaker, and he understood the reasoning behind the creation of a de facto empire, but he couldn’t help feeling they were storing up trouble for themselves. Daybreak had brought some benefits to the sector, from saving failing colonies to hunting down pirates, yet it had also brought severe disadvantages. And the benefits and disadvantages had not been spread evenly.

“No,” Quinton agreed. “Do you think there’s anything we can do about it?”

“No,” Leo said. He shook his head. “I mean … we could stop being us, but …”

He shrugged, helplessly. The Great Interstellar War had taught the human race a very important lesson. Political disunity could not be allowed, and while many worlds could handle their own internal affairs without interference they couldn’t be permitted to do things that would cause interstellar incidents, perhaps even a second war that would bring humanity to the brink of extinction once again. Sure, there were small changes that could be made, but … it would be difficult to convince Daybreak to change course. Too much money and political power was tied up in keeping matters just the way they were.

“We could keep from giving our corporations protection as they force their way into local markets,” he mused. “But will they go along with it?”

“They may have to,” Quinton said. “The current situation is unsustainable.”

Leo blinked. He’d heard it before, from rebels and dissidents, but to hear it from a Daybreaker was shocking. Quinton wouldn’t have completed his service, let alone run for office and won, if he hadn’t been deeply committed to making the system work. And yet, he was calling the existence of the entire system into question?

“The autonomous worlds are increasingly resentful,” Quinton said, quietly. “We tax them, we supervise them, we ensure they labour under the burden of unequal treaties … and yet, they have no say in our government. We strip them of their best and brightest, leaving them with the dregs as our society benefits from skilled, capable and determined immigrants. And when they dare complain about it, we send the military to give them a spanking. Why should they not hate and resent us?”

He paused, letting his words hang in the air. “And those worlds have at least some degree of freedom. What about the colonies and settlements that have no freedom at all?”

Leo felt disorientated, as if the discussion had taken a turn in a very unexpected direction. It was … part of him wanted to stand up and leave, fearing that Quinton was leading him into very dangerous waters, and part of him knew he had to listen. The whole affair was so strange he felt as though he’d walked through the looking glass into a world where up was down, white was black, and two plus two equalled banana. The Navy was comparatively understandable, if only because he’d been in uniform for the last five years. This …

He sucked in his breath. “Should you be talking to me about this?”

“Interesting question,” Quinton said. “You were the ranking officer in this sector. You’re a loyalist, and no one can suggest otherwise, but you’re also young enough not to be wedded to the way things are. And you’re clear-eyed enough to see the trouble we’re storing up for ourselves.”

Leo shivered. He’d had the exact same thought.

Quinton smiled, a brief sharp expression crossing his face before fading again. “And I am a Senator, with the right to ask questions of whomever I please,” he added. “Who can argue otherwise?”

“True,” Leo conceded. “But I am only one man.”

“And a hero, back home,” Quinton said. “Your word could influence the debates, when they take place.”

“If they do,” Leo said.

“I’m going to put my hat in the ring for Consul, in the next few years,” Quinton said. “It will be an interesting election season, to be sure. If I win, or one of the few who agree with me wins in my place, the matter will be raised. I suspect the vast majority of Daybreakers don’t understand how bad things are getting, even a mere few light years from home, and the debates will make the problem clear to them. Your voice will help influence matters, when the final vote is taken.”

My patron may have something to say about that, Leo thought. Where does he stand on the matter?

It wasn’t a question he could ask. Not openly.

“If you do, I’ll be happy to testify,” he said, instead. The Senate could compel testimony. There was no point in trying to resist. “However …”

“We will be going up against some very vested interests,” Quinton said, interrupting. “I won’t deny it. There are a great many politicians and military officers who benefit greatly from the current situation. But the constitution is not a suicide pact. We work to unite the human race to prevent another catastrophic war and laying the seeds for future conflict will eventually undermine our project beyond the point of return. We dare not fight a civil war. Even if we win, we lose.”

Leo nodded, slowly. The Daybreak Navy was powerful enough to take on every other navy in the known galaxy and win, but the cost would be high and there’d be little left of humanity’s former unity when the dust settled. He couldn’t even begin to work out how such a war would progress, or what would happen when – if – the combatants started using planet-killing weapons. Again. There were worlds that had been destroyed during the last war, their populations slaughtered ruthlessly, and few had recovered to the point they could be resettled. And planet-killing weapons were a hell of a lot more destructive now.

“Someone is already playing games,” he mused. “We still don’t know who is backing the rebels.”

“I could give you a list of suspects,” Quinton said. “If Intelligence has narrowed it down any, they haven’t told me.”

Leo made a face. Intelligence would have told Quinton, if they had a solid idea of just who had sold warships and weapons to the rebels. They would have been relieved to prove their worth after successive failures, too. But if they didn’t know … whoever was behind the operation had covered their tracks very well. There would be a breakthrough eventually, Leo was sure, but when? He had no idea.

“That has to be stopped,” Quinton added. “Our hard-liners are already using it as an excuse to avoid granting more latitude to incorporated worlds, and if we don’t hunt the rebels down and identify their backers they’re only going to get worse. The citizens won’t listen to pleas for mercy and understanding if they’re mourning their dead and counting the cost. Why should they?”

He leaned back in his chair. “I don’t mean to place all this on you,” he added. “And I don’t expect you to take a stand against your patron, if he chooses to do so. But if there is anything you can do to help defuse this ticking time bomb before it’s too late, please do. We have no idea when the bomb is going to explode, but it will.”

Leo nodded, his insides churning. “I understand.”

“Glad you do.” Quinton picked up the generator and pocketed it, then stood. “It was nice to meet you, Commander, and I hope I can count on your vote when the time comes.”

He strode away before Leo could answer, walking out of the bar. Leo stared after him, unsure what had just happened. He’d missed something, he was sure, but what? The whole conversation had left him on edge, as if he knew he was in trouble without being entirely sure for what. It was just … strange, and yet … he finished his drink and stood himself, brushing down his tunic. He’d go back to Naval HQ, read the news reports, and then wait for the call to duty.

But he couldn’t help feeling unsure, as he made his way into the open air, if he’d dodged a bullet …

Or stepped right into the line of fire.

In reply to Alicia W..

Yes, you can (slightly) increase essentia capacity through conditioning and strength training. But it’s usually not as much as people would like, and you eventually hit a point of diminishing returns where you can’t realistically push it any higher.

In reply to Kevin.

Good spot on your part. Yes, and you’ll find out the details this autumn when Book #3 comes out.