Ruler's Concubine (2 page)

Chapter One

“Where is she?” The bellow echoed above her and the forest went silent.

Celeste Raynor huddled in the scraggly underbrush, cold and miserable. It was the second time the Searchers had attended her home, and this time, she’d nearly been caught. She hadn’t thought they’d come again so soon, and dismissed the early warning alarm as being triggered by one of the large deer who found her garden irresistible. Cobbling together rusting tin cans with painstakingly unwound fishing line might seem a poor means to alert a person, but it worked for her.

The does and their fawns had to be disappointed by the lack of fodder, with only the root vegetables still in the ground, their foliage wilting with the onset of fall. Her garden was the sustenance for her and many of her far-flung neighbors, the same patch of land those idiots had trampled through, sneaking around the back way in an attempt to surprise her. It was the second rattle of tins, tied to a place no herbivore would trespass, that got her outside in time.

“The wench isn’t here.” The new voice spoke the obvious, but his frustration was apparent. Another crash followed his pronouncement. “Did none of you see a sign?”

Denials sounded faintly and there was an unmistakable snort of derision. “Search again, all nooks and crannies.”

She had no idea what the Searchers wanted or why they had been sent to her home, but one didn’t hang around and ask questions. All she knew, was that of late, women were snatched up, taken away, and either didn’t return home or came back quite different, unable or unwilling to explain what had transpired. She’d heard the rumors and had seen the results with one, and decided not to make it a personal experience.

Slipping out of a side window while two of the Searchers entered through the kitchen door, she had burrowed in behind the bushes that grew close to the old clapboards of the house. Trusting to the subdued colors of her clothing, she lay there motionless, listening to the sounds of the men tromping diligently through each and every room of the ramshackle abode. Loud, harsh voices spilled out of the cracked and badly patched windows, and she heard the unmistakable clatter of things being shoved over and tossed aside. It made her wince, because she had so little, and no way of replacing anything.

“She might be in the village.” A whiny tenor voice made the suggestion. “Or at a neighbor’s.”

Whatever the response was, she couldn’t hear it, as they vacated the room over her head. She prayed they didn’t decide to search the grounds, but no one came outside to look around, and after an eternity, heavy boots stomped down the warped floorboards on the steps, announcing the Searchers’ departure.

She counted up the footsteps, marking the number of men, and her heart sank when she realized they’d left one of their kind back, presumably to wait and watch for her. Idly wondering how he would communicate with the rest if he was lucky enough to catch her—the inhabitants of planet had no devices to perform that task any longer, not since the arrival and departure of the Meridians—she swallowed down a harsh bite of laughter. One better fed, trained, and muscular Searcher against one short, untrained, and hungry woman … he didn’t need to call for backup.

Waiting until the light faded demanded considerable, bone-chilling patience, but she schooled herself into subjugating the urge to jump up and run, knowing she wouldn’t get past the yard site if he spied her. At least she was on the side of the house closest to the forest, so could lose herself in amongst the trees, once it was dark. She’d face tonight and possibly tomorrow without food or shelter if she managed to escape unless she could find her way to her closest neighbor. She prayed no Searchers had gone to look for her there.

When at last the dusk lowered, she eased along the side of the house, painstakingly crawling from shadow to shadow cast by the building against the fitful moonlight. The skin on the back of her neck itched, expecting a heavy hand—or a boot—at any moment, but she gained the outer edge of the trees without incident. Shivering and wishing she’d thought to snag a jacket during her impromptu escape, she ignored the growling of her belly and pulled herself up by using a convenient branch. There was a faint glow in the lower window of her home along the east wall, so the Searcher must have located her candles or her precious oil lamp. And was probably eating her paltry supplies.

It was an unnerving trek in the dark, but she knew the area pretty well and did her best to ignore how cold she was, pretending there were no wild animals to be concerned about. After an eternity, she found her way to Johann and Laurel’s small plot of land, and sniffed the scent of their stove, following the burning aroma with anticipation. With the scarceness of the local population, finding firewood wasn’t a problem, a good thing, considering their frigid winters.

Nothing seemed untoward in the small clearing around their home, so she took the chance and hustled to the back door. A dog barked in warning and it made her start with surprise. She hadn’t visited here in a long time, but her neighbors didn’t have a dog back then and Lauren hadn’t mentioned one. How would they feed the animal? Johann’s unmistakable deep voice broke into the baying and then he called out with a challenge.

“It’s Celeste.” Her teeth were chattering so loudly she could barely form the words, but he heard her. The door cracked open and his tall, skinny body was framed in the archway, a large silhouette of a dog blocking the area by his knee.

“What are you doing here?” Suspicion laced every syllable.

“S … searchers.”

“Are they following?”

She saw the unmistakable outline of a rifle and wondered if he still had ammunition for the ancient weapon. All the newer weapons, both phase, and lasers, had been rendered inoperable, like their means of communication. With the dog and the weapon, Johann clearly expected trouble. “No. They went away, and left one behind, probably awaiting my return.”

“Let her in.” Laurel spoke behind Johann, and he stepped aside. Celeste didn’t wait for him to change his mind and edged past the dog, a collie mix that sniffed her pant leg before slinking out into the yard.

As she entered the small house, the faint smell of their dinner nearly overwhelmed her, and Laurel guided her to a chair, urging her to sit. Her friend was wrapped in a thick robe, fashioned from scraps of material, her hair braided for sleep.

“I’m sorry to disturb you so late.”

“Celeste, you’re always welcome here, and I’m glad you came to us. I’ll fix a plate,” the older woman offered, and began to assemble some food from a cupboard near the table. “It won’t be hot but—”

“I won’t refuse.”

“You shared with us all these years, Celeste. Ignore Johann. He’s afraid they’ll come looking for you here.”

“They might,” Celeste admitted.

“Not tonight,” Laurel scoffed. “Those boys like their creature comforts.”

Johann broke in. “They
will
look for you.”

“Do you know why? Have they harassed you, Laurel?”

“I think I’m too old, honey. We talked with some of the town folk last week, followed up on those rumors you and I discussed, and there’s evidence it’s only women between fifteen and forty they come for. But Johann is worried.” She cast the man a tender look.

Celeste paused to fork in some cold potatoes and a piece of venison. She didn’t normally eat meat, partly because she had no means of obtaining it, but also because she thought animals far better creatures than humans. Yet she couldn’t deny how substantial it felt in her stomach. She took her time thinking about the implications of Laurel’s revelation.

“Are they … attacking those women?” She couldn’t put a label on what she feared, hoping that particular insanity, and others, were long in the past. To her mind, there simply weren’t enough people to go around on the planet to visit atrocities on one another, though she’d seen a few mothers-to-be and no husbands in sight.

“They don’t say. No one seems to know. Nothing different than what I told you before. They apparently come back from the government center, and it takes a long time for them to be themselves again, or close to it. Like their minds have been tampered with.”

She’d seen the Brownlee girl, the one who shied away and rolled her eyes like a cornered animal, but still didn’t want to believe what Laurel was saying. “We don’t have that kind of technology anymore.”

Johann lowered his brows and pursed his lips. He joined the conversation. “Brainwashing doesn’t take technology, Celeste. There are other means.”

“I didn’t even realize there was an actual government center.”

“Someone is taking charge.” Laurel shrugged. “There’s always somebody wanting to rule. It takes a long time for us to get information here with the dearth of transportation and no way to communicate, but little snippets have been shared in town.”

Celeste rarely left her home, unless driven from it, and Laurel had been her main source of information when the woman had come to trade for vegetables. She kept well away from the town, having good reason to avoid its inhabitants. Roy Dupuis lived there, and she wasn’t giving him another opportunity to play games with her feelings.

Swallowing the last of the meal, she thanked Laurel and realized her body had warmed up, being so near to the stove. Johann poured her a cup of some dark liquid from a pot simmering on the hot surface, and she sipped at it, indulging in a brief, but fond memory of actual cream in her coffee. Not that what she was drinking was coffee.

“I’ll fix you a bed.” Laurel bustled toward the hall.

Johann frowned at his wife. “You’ll bring trouble down on this house.”

“If they didn’t know she escaped them, they’ll think she’ll be back. If they should find her here, they’ll believe she was visiting. And where would you have her go?” Laurel made it sound so reasonable, and Celeste wanted to hug her, although felt she should protest.

“I shouldn’t.”

But Laurel was already finding a quilt and pillow for the piece of furniture that served as their couch, and Celeste stumbled from the chair to the makeshift bed. She couldn’t suppress a groan as she sank onto it and Laurel draped the quilt over her.

“We’ll see what we can figure out in the morning,” Laurel said quietly, and Celeste thought she’d be asleep in seconds, but her mind jittered and fretted.

Johann didn’t seem to grasp how she’d survived. And she had, if that was what one could call it, first losing her sister, then her brother, followed by the deaths of her parents. Violence, lack of food, disease, and heartbreak had all taken their toll. And now she was alone, no family, no friends—except for Laurel—and a few folks she might cautiously call neighbors. There were times when survival was highly overrated.

The recent appearance of those small groups of men seemingly tasked with kidnapping women for no apparent explanation had added exponentially to her burden. In truth, Celeste expected the women were taken as sexual fodder, something she was going to avoid if she had to take her own life. Which brought her back to getting out of her current situation, and
surviving
another day. She gave her head a tiny shake, the fleeting memory of all the ancient vids she’d watched as a child with Maury and Alice, huddled in their family home, before the loss of technology … those reminiscences could gut a person. There were no more cowboys to ride to anyone’s rescue, no heroes to save the maiden.

She lay there, the lumpy couch a welcome substitute to the littered soil beneath her window, and reflected on the events of the past several years since the invasion. The aliens had arrived when she was young, and it was hard to think about all the intervening years, full of such terrible losses and huge life changes. Now, at the ripe old age of twenty-three, she was alone in this world.

It wasn’t anything like the old movies depicted, not the
War of the Galaxy
or even the comedic
Uranus Attack!
There were no giant spaceships as shown in
Earth Decimated
or any other science fiction show. Earth had already been decimated by the Great Plague of 2084 and the terrible nuclear accident in Asia, and hardly worth the time of such a powerful race of aliens. Celeste thought, if it had been up to her, she would have simply passed on by the sad remains of her planet, but perhaps the Meridians had seen something worth salvaging.

The invasion had been quite hands-off, and eerie. First off, all communication had been disabled in some mysterious manner. No computers or cell phones worked, nor landlines, not that there were such a great number of those, there was no radio or television—all technology simply failed.

Shaky interim governments were brought to their knees, and predictably, if one knew humans, and perhaps the Meridians did, everyone turned on one another. And then, if word of mouth was true, the aliens simply went away.

Perhaps it was like playing God, she mused. Survival of the fittest. Subdue a planet and its inhabitants by robbing them of anything but the bare basics, come back in, say, a thousand years, and see what was what. As sleep crept up on her, she wondered what those aliens were up to now.

****

“Master, we have searched most thoroughly, and there is only one species that is truly compatible with our kind. Even if mere coupling with many of the others we’ve sampled would not be an issue, should one be inclined and willing to overlook some anatomical differences—or celebrate them—none of them are capable of becoming pregnant with Meridian offspring. At least not without considerable gene splicing and certainly not within the time we have left. There is only the one species that suits, and there appears to be a complication. Resistance and outright interference from the inhabitants of the planet have been reported, and considering its nature, it can only be the result of someone from Meridia sharing our intention.” Bast shook his head, his lips set in a tight line.