No, what they needed was a direct route off the planet. And Bronse would come with that. She knew it assuredly even though she knew so little about the method of escape she sought. Her confidence was borrowed from Bronse, she believed. His knowledge was so secure and so self-assured in these matters that she knew he would know the way. Just as she knew he was even now finding the way to her side. She let her feelings of faith and sureness in her rescue wash through her with more power than her shame and her fear, knowing that this was the only true way to communicate with, and help, her brother.
Kith felt all his empathic senses flare to life, turning in focus as Ravenna manipulated her connection with him. He wanted to be furious with her, but he could not. He could not begrudge her whatever hope or conviction she needed to make it through these next minutes. Selfishly, he could not begrudge himself, either. It would destroy him to see her abused. So he let her well-being of emotion soak into him, even though he fixed his shimmering hazel eyes on the scene before him. He would remember every moment of this, every action and every sin. Just as he would remember each of the men’s faces and each of the acts they individually subjected her to. He would remember for as long as the sun and moons stroked Ebbany’s back. He would remember until the blood of these men warmed his hands and their deaths warmed his tortured soul.
Ravenna wished she could command herself suddenly to sleep. It was strange that something that had troubled her for so long had suddenly become a haven and a comfort. When she slept, if Bronse slept as well, she could feel him with her. Not as powerfully as their last real communication, when she had actually felt him beneath her hands and against her body, but almost as though they somehow held each other loosely, a linking of spirits that gave them rest and peace now that they had clarified the messages they had been sharing.
But she would not seek his comfort, she knew, when all she would deliver to him would be distress and an outrage to his sense of honor. Funny, she thought, that she should know that about him. That though he was a soldier and a man of war, he had an honor that would never allow him to do to a woman what was being done to her even now.
“Bronse …” she whispered, not knowing why she felt compelled to say his name aloud. But hearing it gave her a measure of comfort.
The Nomaads were riled up now, calling encouragement to the one who touched her so disgracefully. Their noise brought her back to the dreadful reality of the moment as her abuser’s second hand stole around to clutch her other breast in a bruising grip. She cried out with pain despite her intentions otherwise, making them roar with approval and delight. They mistook her pain for their idea of an aroused response, and she felt the Nomaad’s burnoose fluttering around her as he moved to rub himself against her back. Tears welled once more, and she swallowed back all further sounds of dismay. His hard male member was pressed between her shoulders, and he pushed with increasing fervor against her in a mock of mating. She sensed his lust. She knew he wanted to force her to do terrible things, just as his friends did. There were ways of raping the Chosen One without taking her precious and coveted virginity.
“Areste!”
Kith caught his breath when Rave finally spoke, her bold, authoritative voice barely showing emotion as she commanded them to halt in the Banda’s own tribal language. It said a lot about the lore and legends of the Chosen Ones that every guard in the room froze, even to the point of forgetting to breathe. Kith lowered his head to hide the twitch at the corner of his lips and the amusement in his eyes. He waited as his sister let the command stretch out a good minute before she continued to speak in their tongue. She had learned quickly in her captivity, he marveled. As he listened, he barely was able to translate.
“You have touched me and I have had a vision from it,” she spoke over her shoulder to the one who still clutched at her body. Her announcement elicited a few cautious chuckles and some quick whispers. “Would you know your fate, Banda? Or would you prefer to live in ignorance?”
Kith gave his bowed head a little shake, letting his sandy blond and brown hair fall forward to further conceal his features. Let them think he was being submissive, when in fact Rave’s ruse was making him grin. He knew what Ravenna looked like when a vision hit, and he knew she needed to touch someone in a particular manner in order to specifically read their personal future. She had definitely done neither in the past thirty minutes that they had been confined to this chamber. But during her captivity among this tribe, every one of the Nomaads had come to learn about the Chosen One Ravenna and her stunningly accurate visions.
The Banda Nomaad suddenly jumped away from Rave as if she had burned him. She sagged forward with her release, but only for an instant. Kith watched through the fall of his hair as she threw back her shoulders and her hair with incredibly regal grace, and then hoisted herself to her feet so she could turn to face her assailants. It was no simple trick for her to regain her footing from a kneeling position when her arms were tied to a prison pole against her back. But Ravenna did it with poise and made it look easy. Kith felt so proud of her then that he was close to bursting with admiration and love. She had everyone’s attention, but Kith knew that it was not her intention to escape, only to buy herself a little time, and a little power while she was at it.
“What fools you are, wasting your opportunity with a Chosen One on beatings and lustful games when you could be finding out your futures. I can tell you the present and the past. I can tell you when you will die or when a family member will pass on. Would you not wish to know ways to obtain riches? No. You prefer to waste your time playing like barbarians! Pah!” she scoffed. “You wouldn’t know what to do with the glory of a Chosen woman even if she drew up detailed instructions! I have a direct love with the gods!” she said feverishly. “They tell me their words and touch my mind! I am their child! They are looking down upon you even now. And what do you think the gods are feeling for you as you molest their daughter?”
Rave let that sink in as she glanced surreptitiously at Kith, checking to see if her sensitive brother was well. Through the fall of his dusty hair, she saw the shine of amusement glittering from his hazel eyes. Rave then looked boldly at the guard who had thrust himself against her. He had turned white as chalk, not easy for a swarthy-skinned Banda Nomaad. He was also sweating up a storm under his burnoose even though the climate underground in their new prison was cool and controlled. She stepped up to him and saw his Adam’s apple working hard as he swallowed.
“Do you wish to know your future, foolish one? I will give you another chance if you promise never to violate a Chosen woman in such a manner again. I will speak softly to the gods about you and convince them to ease their wrath.”
“Yes, angel, I beg you.” He bowed at his waist, touching his fingertips to his forehead and then his heart in a traditional salaam. “We were ordered to lash you and to take the spirit from you, so you would be more docile a bride for the Shiasha of the ruling tribe.”
“Yes, angel,” spoke up another guard quickly. “Though you have the queenly grace and manners that the Shiasha would find valuable in his bride, and your status as a Chosen One will bring our tribe much reward, your stubborn manner and prideful attitude is most unappealing in such a role. The Shiasha would be angry with our tribe if we produced a less than suitable—and biddable—bride to him.”
“So you were ordered to shame me? To mar my perfectly unblemished skin with lashing? You think the Shiasha would want a scarred bride? Idiots! Who gave such a stupid order?”
“The Shia of our tribe.”
“Your king then. A minor king who thinks he knows what the Shiasha wants in a bride?” Again she scoffed with queenly derision. “And your little king would have a daughter of the gods beaten and then gifted to the Shiasha so that the curses of the gods would follow me to his household?”
Every guard, to a man, gasped in horror. The Shiasha of this area was a powerful warlord. Everyone curried favor with him and scraped and bowed to avoid his wrath in even the smallest
way. Even Rave and Kith’s own village had eventually betrayed them, sold them out to this higher-powered tribe, making gifts of them to the high king, the Shiasha, to help placate him and honor him. They were willing to risk the ephemeral fury of the gods they could not see in order to appease the brutal warlord breathing down their necks.
Rave and Kith had spent time in captivity in their home village, and now in this more barbaric Nomaadic one that Kith could hardly believe was called civilization. Their village may have been small, but it had been far more educated and peaceful. At least he had thought so, until they had been sold as slaves to these barbarians. Valuable Chosen Ones to be offered like delicacies to the Shiasha—one to be a bride, one to be a personal slave to the Shiasha.
Neither position was a welcome one. Kith would spend his days chained by his ankle to the throne of the Shiasha, using his Chosen powers to tell the warlord what people were feeling, if they were lying or not, and—his special talent—touching objects to learn their historical value, their stories, and their lives.
As a bride, Ravenna would do little better. She would join an already expansive harem, no doubt. The Shiasha was a man in his fortieth year at least. He had acquired a great many “gifts” like Ravenna over the years of his sexual maturity, although it was not likely that he had been gifted with a Chosen One before. Chosen Ones tended to live in sacred temples, as priests and priestesses, just as Rave and Kith had lived before their village had bartered them away. The Shiasha would think he could gain power by bedding Rave. There were many who thought that. As if psychic ability were catching like a sexually transmitted disease. When he tired of trying, he would get her with child, forget her, or use her just as he would use Kith. In fact, Rave’s powers were ten times what Kith’s were. She would be the more valuable of them, if she ever let it be known.
However, Rave believed that she and Kith would never meet that terrible fate. And when Rave believed in a specific future, Kith had no choice but to follow her on faith. She had been right too many times. This time she seemed almost fanatical about it. He had never before seen her believe in her gift with such zeal. She was putting all of her bets on this warrior she saw coming. Kith could only pray that she was right. She would be crushed if this soldier failed to show, or failed to be everything she had envisioned him to be.
For now, Kith watched her hold the attention of the Nomaads with the power and aplomb she had used to keep the temple in order. As High Priestess, she had called powerful beings into harmony. These non-Chosen men were a puzzle hardly worthy of her mastery. They had leapt into her palm in a single heartbeat. Now she would spend her time slowly closing her hand and squeezing her fingers about them.
Bronse turned fitfully on his bunk, flipping onto his back with a frustrated sigh as he tucked a hand beneath his head and stared up at the metal plates of the ceiling above him. They were en route to Ebbany, taking the trip there far slower than they had when they had last left it. They had been forced to stop at a supply depot on one of the more distant planetside stations on Ulrike, and it had taken two days before they were mission-ready. He and the crew had taken the time to work out varying strategies, but the delay had chafed at Bronse interminably. Time, he felt, was slipping away.
And it was his dreams that were telling him so.
For the most part, they had become something less defined, but comforting in their vague way. He knew she came to him at least once during every sleep cycle. The visitation in his mind was of varying lengths of time, sometimes all too short, sometimes long spans of a cocooned existence where her steady, calming essence seemed to surround him, and his surrounded her and was received as if it gave her equal depth of peace. Sleep had come quicker and easier these past nights, his troubling insomnia now gone since the dream in the gym.
Until tonight.
Tonight they were spaceborne, hurtling back toward Ebbany at a steady clip. They would reach the planet in two more days. He wished he could attribute his sudden sleeplessness to the anxiety one would have when making a forced march to certain death. However, he had too much faith in himself and his junior officers, in spite of ominous portents and obvious plots, to truly be that worried and fatalistic.
So he was suddenly afraid that something else was amiss.
“Great Being, Chapel, when did you get so superstitious?” Bronse muttered aloud to himself.
He closed his eyes, trying to settle himself and his thoughts. He heard the treading of metal just outside his quarters and knew that it was Ender pacing the corridors just by the weight and cadence of his steps. Justice was asleep, as was Lasher. That left Ender on maintenance. Bronse smiled softly. Lasher was supposed to be on maintenance, but clearly Ender had made other plans. Bronse had no cause to object. He knew that Ender would have stayed on shift either way, even if he was ordered to his rack. The arms master did not like knowing he was on a suicide mission that someone else had plotted for him. Granted, that was probably the very definition of their jobs, but this was different. This was betrayal and treason at their most malevolent.
Bronse had given each of the crew the choice of an out. He could not in good conscience do anything less. In his quarters, after they had received their orders and while sharing the midday meal, he had given each of them the opportunity to back out of the mission. He’d almost faced a rousing mutiny at the very suggestion, and he still felt unbelievable pride in his crew when he remembered it. He had not thought they would abandon him in such a clear hour of need, but he had been obliged to give them a choice. They would likely be cut off, unable to depend on IM resources until they returned to the actual base. If he were JuJuren, Bronse thought, he would not make the same mistakes twice. This time he would see to it that Bronse was somehow cut away from his best resource—his crew—and then JuJuren would make his next attempt. The crew was a man down—their communications officer at that—and this would be viewed as an advantage for JuJuren. Normally it might be, if not for the fact that their comms officer had spiked the IM database already, giving the crew a crucial heads-up on what awaited them for this mission.
“Bronse …”
Bronse’s breath hitched in his chest at that now familiar voice beckoning to him. His heartbeats shifted into double time. He could not help the reaction even if he wanted to. Great Being, how that silky, sultry little accent played over his senses. Did she have any idea how she sounded? For that matter, did she know how she affected him?
He opened his eyes and sat up, throwing his legs over the side of his bunk. Bronse searched for her, waiting patiently for the slow fading in of her image. It came gradually, low to the ground, little more than the sweep of her dark, unbound hair. And yes, it was just as incredibly long as he had suspected it would be. And thick. He could see the density of it clearly now that it wasn’t bound into those looping braids.
It took him a moment to realize that she was kneeling on the ground, sitting back on her heels, and this was why he could see only the mantle of her hair.
“Ravenna?”
She turned her head slightly, then her chin dropped down and she turned back away.
“I did not want you here,” she said. “Why did you come?”
It was not the greeting he had gotten used to. She had been far more welcoming recently. This felt like a sudden step backward, almost like the sharp stinging slap of rejection.
“I never plan these meetings,” he reminded her. It was only a half-truth at this point, however. He may not plan them, but he had begun to look forward to them.
“But it is only a dream after all,” she said coldly.
Bronse sucked in a breath as a ferocious chill of warning walked down his spine. Ravenna had never encouraged the breaking off of communication between them. By saying that, she had all but guaranteed the event. Even now he was surprised that he remained asleep. Perhaps he was too exhausted to be so easily put off, or too soon into the visit for such a trick to work. All he knew was that he was grateful her ploy had failed.
But something was very wrong here.
He stood up and began to walk toward her. She suddenly flung a halting hand back toward him, turning her face away.
“No! Don’t come any closer!”
Her violent demand and body language made him hesitate for a second. But then her body motion also parted her hair against her back. Bronse sucked in a harsh, choking breath when the unmistakable redness of blood and swelling appeared in an angry red line. No. Many lines, he realized.
“By all that is cursed and holy!” he swore, suddenly rushing to her and falling to his knees behind her. “Ravenna, what in the Great Being’s name happened?” Why did he even ask? He already knew, even before he brushed her hair away with both hands as gingerly as he could. The strands, delicate as they were, clung to the wounds, stuck to the dried blood on her back. She had been whipped. There was no mistaking such wounds. No mistaking the ragged tearing of her silken gown down its back.
“Please, don’t …” she whispered.
Bronse could not grant her the request. In their short, vague acquaintance, he had seen a proud beauty who knew her mind and how to express her convictions. She was gentle by nature in spite of that. She was not the type to give anyone cause to do such a thing, not that anyone ever deserved it. He knew it hurt her to be seen like this by him, to be shamed and weakened before him, and he felt his throat closing with fury and sympathetic pain for her because he would feel exactly the same way. He, too, would have tried to push her away had the situation been reversed. Yet he would have secretly welcomed what he was about to do for her.