Authors: Jess Granger

Beyond the Rain (14 page)

BOOK: Beyond the Rain

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He knew. That was what killed him—at the heart of it, he knew.

He took up a protective stance at the mouth of their small metal cave. They had to wait for Cyn before they could return to the platform. He would return. He was Cyani’s twin.

Just then Cyn leapt off the last few stairs and landed on a thick pipe with the grace of a cat. A streak of blood splattered over one side of his face. He wiped his red hands on his shirt. “Don’t worry, it’s not mine,” he mentioned as if he wasn’t wearing the brutal evidence of his deadly nature on his face. He really was Cyani’s twin. “Time to go,” he added. Soren took the baby back to save the girl’s strength. She would need it.

They raced through the shadows until they reached the platform. Asara waved a frantic hand to hurry them as she reached down to hoist the children onto the landing pad. The girls stumbled as she helped them into the pod. Soren lifted them onto the seats as he fell down, still clinging to the baby asleep on his shoulder. The rush of adrenaline made his muscles feel rubbery and weak. He could only imagine how the girls felt as they clung to one another.

“You’re a mess,” Asara commented to Cyn as she landed in the seat i
n front of the controls.

“It could be worse—you should see the other guy.” He shrugged.

“One less rat to worry about. Stash the children, and anything else you have that’s interesting in your ship. The Elite have ordered a search.”

The children clung to Soren as the ship shot straight up out of the darkness into the twilight of the branches. He stared in wonder at the floating cities built into the trunks and out on the limbs of the great trees. Above them light streamed through the green leaves of the canopy.

They came to a stomach-lurching halt at the glittering white platform where Cyn’s dark ship perched. The children couldn’t open their eyes in the glaring light. Soren had to squint himself as he helped lead the blinded children into the Serpent. Muddy tears streamed down their gaunt faces. Soren felt helpless to comfort them. They had probably never seen the light before. Some of the most glorious things in life could be painful. He had learned that lesson as well.

As soon as they were inside the hull, Cyn went to work on the shocked children.

“Here,” he said as he offered them a small round ball. “Lick it. It’s sweet. And drink this.” He gave them vessels of water. “What are your names?”

“Essa,” the pregnant one responded in a small lost voice. “She is Calya, and the little one is Sene.”

“N you,” he said. “Soren, take the baby into the cleanser. I have clothes and a diaper for him here on the bed.”

A pirate with diapers. Cyn was nothing if not prepared.

Soren stepped into the cleanser. He had to fight back his own fear as he held the baby in the cramped silver tube. Reluctantly he shut the door, and pressed his hand to the activator. The walls glowed with pearl-like waves of light. The baby stirred in his arms as warm air swirled around them. The terrible smell of the ground cities dissipated as Soren watched the grime melt away from the baby’s skin. His curly hair fluffed up, revealing iridescent flashes in the dark locks, like the wing of a blackbird.

As soon as they were clean, Soren gratefully stepped back out of the cleanser. For claustrophobic technology, it wasn’t that bad. Cyn crouched in front of the girls, keeping his posture low and unthreatening.

“But that was the only way the monkey could escape,” he said, caught in the middle of a story. Bug flew around them doing loops and shining with different colors.

Cyn stood. He handed the girls neatly folded dresses. “Time to clean you up. Don’t worry. It’s magic. It won’t hurt. The baby didn’t even wake up.”

He shuffled them both into the cleanser as Soren tried to figure out which way the diaper fit on the baby. He brushed his fingertips over the scars on the child’s chest. He was too young to know such pain.

“I’m sorry, little one,” he whispered as he glanced at the scars around his wrists. “I’m sorry for both of us. It’ll be better. I promise.”

The girls came out of the cleanser wearing the clean white dresses. Calya giggled, smiling for the very first time. “You really are magic,” she laughed.

Essa smiled, too, as if she couldn’t quite believe the ship was real. She kept running a hand through her clean hair.

“I need you to hide in here,” Cyn explained to Essa. He opened a hatch in the hull, and inside was a small chamber with pillows, blankets, and a couple of toys. “Keep them quiet. We will leave soon for your new home.”

“Thank you, Cobra,” she whispered. “I’ll protect them.”

In that moment, Soren saw Cyani as a child. Now he knew the extent of the darkness that had haunted her childhood and the depravity that honed her into a determined warrior. He had witnessed firsthand one of her nightmares. He couldn’t shake the sick feeling in his heart as he thought about the children. He and Cyn had ripped them from everything they had known, including the toddler’s mother. Yet they faced the challenge with guts he couldn’t help but admire, just as Cyani had done.

Cyn closed the safe cocoon around the children and jumped into the cleanser. He came out as if he’d never been touched by the shadows of the ground cities. He was dressed in his shadowsuit.

He transformed from ground city outlaw and smuggler to a respectable Union officer right before Soren’s eyes. He punched more codes into the control panel. Suddenly, the antigravity cases and parts of the hold pushed back into the walls of the ship as if they never existed.

Bug flew up and buzzed with irritation as his pillow disappeared into the wall.

“You’re coming with and forth. She took another draw from the goblet then sent it crashing to the floor.

“I will not let that happen, Cyani.” Her voice hissed and snapped with the same cutting bite of the whip. “You understand. You grew up on the ground. You know how depraved those ill-bred animals are. You know that filth can never be allowed to touch our pure world. Treaty for the common rights of all humanoids. Bah, some are no better than apes.

“And men, if they ever had a voice in our government, they’d only try to dominate the women the way they do on countless other planets. It’s hypocrisy at its most disgusting. Men cannot be trusted—just look at your father. The pitiful fool followed your mother into banishment, for what? Love? I commanded my brother. I
commanded
him to raise you and your twin
here
, under my supervision. He betrayed me, betrayed our bloodline, and nearly ruined you,” she shouted, lifting the whip and sending it flying toward Cyani.

Cyani leapt in a flash of pure reflex and brought her bare fist around to connect with the Grand Sister’s swinging arm. The old woman blocked the strike with her forearm. “I have to admit,” the Grand Sister cackled, “being raised with the beasts has given you a bold ruthlessness I rather admire.”

Even if Cyani could find words, she would never have been able to string them together. She pushed away from the Grand Sister. Cyani had never seen her like this. She seemed frantic and desperate, grasping for something that was sliding through her stiffening grip. Was it the influence of the drug in the goblet, or the slow, dawning realization that Cyani was far more than the unquestioning, unfeeling drone she’d been trained to be?

“The first time I saw you, you had already shown the power of your blood.” The Grand Sister smiled. It was little more than a stiff grimace as she rolled the whip shaft in her palm. “I recognized you immediately, Fima reborn, a tested and accomplished warrior and still only a child. You may have your mother’s skill, but not her weak will.” The Grand Sister coiled the whip again. “She wanted to turn the Elite into figureheads and have a representative government. She was willing to cower to pressure from the Union. You understand I couldn’t allow it.”

Cyani always suspected the Grand Sister had something to do with her mother’s banishment. The confirmation of it just churned in her gut like burning acid.

“You manipulated her,” Cyani stated, baiting her. The Grand Sister shook her head with a low chuckle.

“I only trifled in the obvious. Her attraction to my brother was blatant. It didn’t take much to put them over the edge and make her break her vow of chastity.” The Grand Sister widened her stance and placed her hands behind her back in a sparring posture. It was an invitation, one Cyani couldn’t pass up.

“What did it take, drugs?”

The old woman struck, and it was Cyani’s turn to block. The sharp jolt of cleansing pain to her forearm helped focus her rage.

The Grand Sister huffed. “Your mother may have given birth to you, but I was the one who conceived you. I couldn’t allow my brother to sire my only heirs, the last of the line of Fima, with some ill-bred bitch who had failed the trials. He deserved better. You would have been tainted with weakness.

“No.” The old woman stepped back, her weight balanced over her haunches as she remained on her toes. Cyani watched her gathering her center for the next strike. “Only the most talented warrior was fitting for Sihich is why of all the Elite, you are the only one fit to rule, Cyani. You are perfect.” She struck again. Cyani blocked and seamlessly threw a counterstrike. In the time of her training, she had spent countless hours sparring under the Grand Sister’s scornful eye. In those years, the Grand Sister had seemed untouchable, unbeatable, but no more. She was no different than any of the others.

“You are ruthless.” The Grand Sister tried to kick, but Cyani leapt over her foot and landed a blow on the older woman hard enough to force her back a step. She would show the old woman
ruthless
. She wanted to show her just how much merciless blood ran in her veins.

“You are cunning.” The Grand Sister swung the whip again, but Cyani spun and slid toward the Grand Sister’s desk. The old woman held back the lash as the delicate communications lattice threatened to crash to the floor.

She chuckled as she coiled the whip again. “You are also intelligent, and by my teaching, obedient. All that I did, I did out of dedication to what you could become.”

Dedication to sculpting a perfect puppet.
That is all she wanted. She didn’t know Cyani at all, or did she? When she left for her Union assignment, she never questioned anything. She had blindly obeyed orders. She led her men into battle, and she won, but she never let herself question any of it.

Not until now.

“You’ve manipulated my entire life. You turned a blind eye to the others’ attempts to kill me.” Cyani’s seething hate boiled in her throat as she tried to force words out.

The Grand Sister let out a dismissive huff. “I made you stronger than any other warrior the Elite have ever known. I needed to know you could best any of them, and survive any attempt on your life.” She placed the whip on her desk, but kept her palm on the handle. “I’m dying, Cyani. All I have is my legacy. That legacy is you. Think of what you could do for Azra. Think of the power.”

So that was it. All the power in the world couldn’t save her aunt from death. Only an heir in her likeness could maintain her rigid control on Azra and make her mark on their world last.

She had her puppet. She made sure Cyani’s strings pulled tight. For more than half her life, Cyani had never fought them. No wonder the old woman thought she could still pull them now. The Grand Sister had no idea who she was dealing with.

Not everyone craved power. Cyani didn’t want the throne. She wanted peace and safety. But like a snake, the call to duty crawled into her heart. She could dispense justice. She could bring light and order to the underbelly of their world and lift the innocents back into the fold of their society. She could instill the representative government her mother had been ruined for and revolutionize Azralen culture.

She alone could save her planet.

And due to the conniving of her aunt, she had the strength to fight off any assassins that tried to stop her. Once the others knew she was the true blood of Fima and Cyrila, they would fall in line. She would have justice for her people.

But she would never know peace.

She felt the chains that had tied her to the Elite constricting even tighter around her heart. She would have the power to change her world. She had to return.

She couldn’t leave her people in the darkness, not even for the promise e="3">She felt the Grand Sister’s bony grip close around her arm. “You are Fima reborn. My blood, my daughter. Cyani the Ruthless, the next and greatest Grand Sister.”

A ringing chime echoed through the room.

“What is it?” the Grand Sister asked without bothering to hide the aggravation in her voice.

“There is a Union representative here demanding that Captain Cyani depart with him,” a disembodied voice announced.

With a grumble, the Grand Sister slowly lowered the mantle over her shoulders and marched out into the throne room with a slight shuffle in her deliberate steps.

Cyani continued after her with a new wave of panic. What was Cyn doing? He was going to be recognized.

The Grand Sister stopped just short of him and looked up into his disguised black eyes. He smiled at her.

BOOK: Beyond the Rain

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