Ardor's Leveche (12 page)

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

debilitating pain in her head had become a screaming nightmare that now had deafened her hearing completely.

Hurrying down the serpentine corridors to the cavern where the ships were docked, Breva was mumbling under his breath. The seat of his pants was no longer khaki but a dark brown that not only caused him acute embarrassment, the cause of the color change was oozing down his legs and pooling in his boots. Following in his wake was a stench that made him want to cry.

Stumbling into the docking station behind Breva, Ardor could see a middle-aged man crouched on his knees, throwing up so violently his entire body shook. Beside him was a crate upon which he braced one trembling arm. She realized the back end of the man’s white medical slacks were as dark as Breva’s and couldn’t help but grin although doing so caused her acute pain.

One moment she was being dragged along behind Breva, the next she was being swung up into strong arms that held her so tightly she thought her ribs would break.

Her captor was saying something to her but she could no longer hear. The last thing she remembered before she lost even her sight was smiling into his worried face.

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Ardor’s Leveche

“That is Prince Gabriel, all right,” the general said, looking at the face that was frozen on the Vid-Com screen. “I remember well that smug face!”

“But he’s dead,” Bowen stated. “I should know. I was the one who threw him in the fire pit!”

“He is
supposed
to be dead,” General Morrison corrected. “Obviously, he survived.

Reapers have a way of doing that.”

“How the hell was the Coalition to know he was a Reaper?” Bowen demanded.

“Ah, well, none of us knew, now did we? If we had, we’d have sent him to the guillotine before throwing his carcass into the fire pit.” He threw up a hand. “Hell, we didn’t even know there
were
such things as Reapers until the Burgon signed the peace treaty and Prince Cair Ghrian carted those on Riezell Nine off to Amhantar.”

“I can’t believe Leveche is alive. They’ve managed to keep his rebirth a close secret,” Bowen said, glaring at the screen. “I wonder if even the king knows his son is still alive.”

“Doubtful,” the general declared. “There was never any love lost between father and son as I recall.”

“Why was that, Sir?” Miriam asked as she tidied up the general’s desk. The great man’s secretary had more privilege in his office than many higher-echelon warriors.

Most of the time, the general didn’t even notice her puttering about his desk so accustomed was he to having her nearby.

“Oh, it was the man’s mother Queen Isabella that was the cause of it,” the general replied. “Prince Gabriel accused his father of having murdered his mother and knowing Alejandro, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn he had. If he didn’t actually carry out the nefarious deed, he ordered it done.”

Miriam looked over at him. “How did she die?”

“It was supposed to have been an accident,” Morrison told her. “She drowned in her own bathing pool.”

“How does one drown in their own bathing pool?” Miriam inquired.

“She could have slipped and hit her head but there was no indication of that,” the general reported. “Or she could have fallen asleep, yet unless she’d been drugged, I’m sure the water would have awoken her. According to all reports, she had no narcotics in her system.”

“Then how could it have happened?”

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“Rather easily if someone holds you under the water,” the general said. “There were bruises on the queen’s upper chest and neck to suggest someone did exactly that.”

“And there was dried blood under her fingernails,” Bowen added. “She apparently fought her assailant.”

“Also,” the general amended, pouring himself a glass of water from the icy carafe Miriam had provided for him, “the king had scores of scratches on his arms which he said he’d gotten when his horse threw him into a patch of brambles the day his wife drowned.”

“I don’t think anyone bought that story—especially not Prince Gabriel—but the poor woman was sent to her funeral pyre without benefit of a DNA test to see whose blood she’d drawn in her attempt to save her life,” Bowen said.

Picking up some papers she found scattered on the floor, Miriam asked why the king would have slain his wife.

“He had his eye on a new queen, I heard,” the general answered. “One of the younger members of his harem.”

“From
an Iodáil
, wasn’t she?”

“Aye,” the general agreed. “Iodálach women are true goddesses when they are young.” He shrugged. “Not so as they grow older, I’m afraid.”

“Isn’t your wife from
an Iodáil
, Sir?” Bowen asked, smiling at General Morrison’s arched eyebrow.

Miriam shook her head. “Court intrigue never fails to surprise me. I’m glad we have a democracy.”

“Aren’t we all?” the general asked with a chuckle.

“Wasn’t it King Alejandro who turned his son over to the Coalition for trial?” she asked.

“Trial, hell,” the general scoffed. “Alejandro turned him over to us for us to execute him.” He frowned. “We thought we had.”

“I wonder whose bones we found in the fire pit that day?” Bowen inquired.

“Who the hell knows? It only means we’re going to have to catch that little bastard and kill him all over again!” Morrison stated. “At least we won’t need a mock trial this time around.”

Bowen shushed him. “Don’t say such a thing, Sir.” He eyed Miriam as she headed for the door. “You know he was joking, don’t you, Miri?”

“Of course, Sir,” Miriam replied.

Miriam quietly left the general’s office, dumping the papers she’d picked up from the floor into the trash can beside her desk. With a pass of her hand, she closed the door between her office and the general’s then sat down at her desk.

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Ardor’s Leveche

For a long time she sat there staring at the piles of work that needed to be done before she went home to her quarters that afternoon, her hands folded on top of her desk.

Turning her head, she gazed at the picture of her lost husband. “I miss you, Jamie,”

she said and reached out to draw her fingertips across Jamie Quillan’s smiling lips.

On her desk were disks she had been reading for several days now. All but one pertained to her current work. That disk was hidden beneath several others for it wouldn’t do for the general to discover she had been delving into a case that was fifteen years old.

Slipping her fingers under the pile, she unerringly brought out the disk that had provided her with an insight into just how corrupt and dishonorable both Morrison and Bowen truly were. Though she had worked for the men half her life, she had discovered more about them from that one file than she had in all the time she’d had contact with Command Central.

Cupping the disk in her left palm Miriam ran the fingers of her right hand over the two-inch-by-two-inch square. The name on the file read G. Leveche and it contained a profile of the man from birth to the day after his twenty-fourth birthday, copies of his military school records, intel on his activities since graduation from the Aduaidh Space Academy, clandestine communications between his father the king and General Morrison, in which the king offered his son as a sacrificial lamb to the Coalition, a transcript of the prince’s arrest and subsequent interrogation, his speedy trial for treason and finally, a vivid, detailed description of the sentence that had been carried out against him.

“Thank Alluvial you didn’t find out he was a Reaper before you cast him into that fiery pit,” Miriam mumbled to herself.

She dropped the disk into her skirt pocket. It was the only copy and the evil thing needed to be destroyed—or accidentally misplaced.

* * * * *

Breva watched his brother pacing back and forth before the lab door. Twice he’d suggested his overlord sit down but both times his proposal had been ignored.

“What the hell is taking him so long?” Lord Savidos snarled.

“I would imagine he’s trying to be very careful,
chanto
,” Breva replied. “Implants—

as you know all too well—can be tricky things to remove.”

Absently, the Reaper fingered the base of his skull where there was an implant that could not be removed—lest it detonate itself during the removal and scramble his brain to mush—lay hidden.

“She couldn’t hear me, Raoul,” he said.

“She heard you plain enough if you’re referring to your flybys,” Breva reminded him.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

The Reaper shook his head. “No, after that. When I was carrying her here. She didn’t hear a word I said.” He glanced at his brother. “That can’t be good.”

Breva shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t think it would be.”

“She was bleeding from both ears when I laid her down.” Lord Savidos pressed his fingertips against his closed eyes, massaging them. He hung his head for a moment, cupping it in his hands and then looked up, his fingers sliding down his lips.

“You were speaking to her during the flybys,” Breva said quietly. “I couldn’t hear you but she did. You were telling her what you wanted us to do.”

“So?”

“Who else can hear your silent thoughts other than me,
chanto
?”

A look of annoyance passed over the Reaper’s tired face. “Can we not have this discussion right now?”

“Why?” Breva countered. “Because you are worried about her?”

“Aye,” Lord Savidos acknowledged. “I am—”

The door to the lab slid open and Healer Talil came out hesitantly. He flinched as his overlord came toward him, putting up an arm as though about to be physically attacked. “Please don’t hit me,” he asked.

The Reaper came up short, a muscle working in his taut jaw. “Are you going to give me reason to?” he barked.

Despite the irritated tone and the narrowed eyes glaring at him, Talil lowered his arm and stood there with his head up. “I am afraid I don’t have news that will please you, Lord Savidos.”

His gut wrenching, the Reaper took another step toward the healer. “You can’t remove the device?”

Talil shook his head. “Not without doing irreparable harm to the lady, I’m afraid not.”

Wanting to know the worst of it, he asked if Ardor Kahn had lost her hearing.

“I believe she has,” Talil replied, flinching a bit as he added, “Her sight, as well.”

Breva groaned and hung his head, closing his eyes to the devastating news.

“Is she awake?”

“I thought it best to keep her under a while longer. From the readings we were getting from the implant, the Riezellians were attempting to increase the transponder’s strength. I thought the pain would be too much for her.”

Breva looked up. “Can’t you turn the damned thing off?”

“We will attempt to do so, Major Breva,” Talil replied. “But I didn’t want to try until Lord Savidos gave his permission.” He lifted his gaze to the Reaper.

“Will shutting it down cause any further problems for her?” the major inquired.

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Ardor’s Leveche

“Not that we can tell, but no matter whether we are able to short-circuit the implant or not, I am afraid she will continue to have debilitating headaches for the rest of her life.”

The Reaper was the one to flinch this time. “Such as I have,” he said.

“Similar, though I would imagine more severe since you are able to tolerate yours due to the influence of the tenerse,” came the reply.

“Tolerate,” Lord Savidos repeated on a long exhalation of breath. “What an innocuous word for being able to endure agonizing bouts of pain.”

Breva and Talil watched their overlord walk to the door leading into the lab and Talil was quick to move out of his way as he approached. The Reaper stood there a moment—staring at Ardor—then with his hands on his hips, turned partially around to look at Talil. “Shut the implant down but keep her under for at least an hour longer.

There is something my brother and I have to do before you wake her.”

“As you wish, Milord,” Talil said.

“Come with me, Raoul,” Lord Savidos requested, his voice sounded as tired as his haggard face looked.

Walking beside his brother, Breva respected the silence that had sprung up between them from the moment his overlord took a phospho light from a niche and handed it to him with the instruction to shine the light on the path ahead of them. The Reaper jammed his hands into the pockets of his leather pants and his shoulders hunched—a good sign the man did not want to carry on a conversation as they walked.

Venturing ever deeper into the cave complex—past corridors the major did not know existed—the air became uncomfortably warm. Sweat dripped from Breva’s eyes to sting his eyes. The longer they walked, the harder it was for him to breathe for not only was it overly warm, there was a cloying stench of sulfur permeating the air.

“How much further?” Breva asked, arming sweat from his brow.

“Not far.”

All around them were strange rock formations that twisted down from the ceiling and speared up from the cave floor. The stink of sulfur became almost unbearable, choking Breva and bringing tears to his already stinging eyes.

“Through here.”

There seemed to be no opening in the wall that suddenly sprang up out of nowhere to block their passage. They were on a narrow rocky ledge beyond which was nothing but unrelieved darkness.

Before Breva could ask where there was an opening, a section of the wall slid up as though heaved by unseen hands and a wash of cooler air drifted over them, and with it, the salt tang of ocean waters.

Ducking under the portal that was still in the process of being drawn up, the Reaper moved ahead of Breva, cautioning him to watch his step.

“There are steps cut into the stone,” Lord Savidos stated.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Breva could heard a roar coming from down below them and he pointed the phospho light toward the steps, marveling at how steep the rocky stairway was. It seemed to go forever—curving into darkness—between rugged formations that looked more like thin needles than stalagmites.