The Pearl Savage (42 page)

Charles found her and helped her
pull up the rear, two of the Guard flanking her.

She was Queen, after all. A moniker
she was still not comfortable with. It had been nearly a year since
the disastrous events involving Queen Ada, the battle with the
fragment
and her position of alliance with the Clan of Ohio.

She had discovered she was part of a
tiny human female group called the
select.
Apparently they
were a perfect match for males of the Band. But what does one do when
you are the best match for two of the Band?

That, Clara had determined, was
something she was yet to answer.

As the time drew near for her to
choose, she was alarmingly undecided and the two Band members were
becoming increasingly hostile toward each other. For the sake of
harmony between her sphere and the clan she must choose.

Soon.

“Clara,” Charles said her name,
so deep in her musings she had forgotten he was there and had
inadvertently slowed her pace to a crawl. Increasing her stride she
moved as fast as he.

“I do apologize. I was one hundred
spheres away,” she answered, exasperated.

Charles looked down at Clara and
thought there was too much on her young shoulders. He had thought
this many times over the past year. Her courtship with the two of the
Band, Matthew and Bracus, should have cooled his feelings for her. On
the contrary. It had increased his desire to rule by her side. She
did not feel as he. Instead, she had been consumed by this worthless
quest to find her kin.

Her supposed kin.

They reached the crest of the hill
and he took her elbow. Clara looked up at him. “Do not
begin
to preach about this, Charles.” She snatched her arm away.

His eyes narrowed on her. She did
not safeguard herself. It was Charles’ burden to insist on her
protection for she would not protect herself. He opened his mouth to
speak and she held up her hand.

“Let us agree to disagree
Charles,” she said, her eyes pleading to let the subject rest. They
had argued endlessly this winter. She would not see reason. She
wished to find this elusive mother. This woman that had gills as the
Band. Charles thought it folly.

He took both her arms again and
pulled her close to him, his eyes roving the vicinity for witnesses.
They had entirely too little privacy and he loathed it.

“Stop it,” she wiggled in his
grasp and his hands tightened on her just shy of painful.

“You do not need to do this Clara.
Let us turn back. You have a kingdom to rule,” he shook her
slightly and her eyes widened. “Do you forget your duty?”

“I have never forgotten, Charles,”
she hissed back at him, tears burning the back of her eyelids. What
had happened to their friendship?

Matthew appeared out of nowhere, his
eyes lighting on the hands which held Clara.

“Take your hands off of her before
I break them at the wrists,
sphere-dweller
,” Matthew said
with quiet menace.

Charles’ eyes flicked to Matthew’s
and Clara said, “We were having an exchange.”

“He may speak with you and need
not use his hands,” Matthew said as Charles’ hands fell away from
Clara’s forearms.

She fought not to rub her hands over
where they had been.

Matthew saw her expression and
reading it correctly his gills expanded, the pink innards like
ribbons against his throat as he came forward, his hands balling into
fists.

Charles moved forward to meet him.

Clara scurried between them, placing
a hand on Matthew’s chest, covered by a lightweight tunic. The bronze
skin of his throat was a testimony to their month of travel Outside.

“Stop it, both of you,” she
commanded in a low voice.

“What is happening here?” Thomas
asked, his hand hovering over the dirk he wore at his hip, the deep
violet vest he wore lifting in the breeze.

Matthew did not turn but kept his
eyes on Charles’. “Your Queen’s
adviser,
”
Matthew spit the word out like errant phlegm, “has seen fit to lay
hands upon her.”

Thomas
released his dirk, the sound of it escaping the leather a harsh
memory to Clara’s ears. She reacted quickly so things would not
escalate. “It is fine, Thomas. Charles and I… we have a
difference of goals.”

Thomas
looked from one to the other. Finally, his eyes rested on Charles.
“You do understand, Sir, that you may never touch our monarch
without express consent?” His hand held the dirk naked in his
grasp.

“Of
course, Thomas. It is not I that needs supervision,” Charles said
with clear accusation dripping from every syllable.

Matthew
drew Clara into his body and Charles’ eyes narrowed.

“Somehow
it is acceptable that the brute of the Clan touch her?” he threw
his hand out at the two of them bound so tightly together.

Clara had
but a moment’s peace in the arms of Matthew, a place she did not
allow herself to dwell, then stepped away. With the cocoon of his
warmth now gone, a melancholy began to steal its way inside of her.

Sarah
approached from the bosom of the forest.

“For
Guardian’s sake, what say you?” she huffed, her hands on her hips.

Clara
gave a weak smile in her direction. Sarah would thrash her logic
about and the men would be left gasping as fish without water.

“Charles
and I were discussing…” Clara began.

“Arguing,
more like,” Sarah corrected with a narrow look at Charles and Clara
sighed.

Charles
glared at Sarah and she saw his look. “You are behaving like a
jackass!” she stated, affronted.

Thomas
sucked in his breath and Matthew hid his mirth badly, a smile forming
around his full lips, his blue eyes blazing out of a sun-kissed face.

“Stay
away from this Sarah,” Charles warned.

“I will
not,” Sarah stomped her foot in the dry prairie grass and it
rustled in protest. “It does no good to volunteer to agree to
journey with us then protest said journey at every opportunity. Must
it always be your way, Charles? Does our Queen not deserve a peace?
Does she not deserve to find a true relation?”

Sarah
placed her hands on her hips, her blond hair blending with the
wheat-colored grass that surrounded the group, moving about her as
the wind picked up.

“
You
cannot be for this. She takes her suitors on this journey, leaves the
kingdom to my father and we travel to Guardian knows where to find a
mysterious relation. It is by far the worst thing. Oh! and let me
expound: the
fragment
and rival clans lay scattered about and could kill us all before we
reach the fabled Cape Cod,” Charles challenged.

“I
should not have brought you,” Clara said with sadness. “I knew
that things had changed in our understanding, but I wished for it to
be as it had been before.” Clara looked at Charles with such
sadness, a longing for the easy friendship they had shared.

Charles
beheld her expression and could not understand why she didn’t see
reason.
He
was the
choice for her. The Band? The Band be damned! It did not matter a fig
that she was some
select
?
What of it? He fumed.

Matthew
said, “We have not seen
fragment
these thirty days,” he shrugged a bare shoulder.

Charles
turned on him and Clara saw Thomas tense. “What say you? You are so
busy chasing her skirt that you let your duties for her protection
wane to your voluptuous appetite.”

Clara
turned in one fluid motion and slapped Charles’ face, his head rocked
back and she instantly regretted it.

Her wrist
felt broken, for one.

A red
imprint of her small hand lay upon his face. His nostrils flared and
he turned without a word and stalked off into the woods.

Matthew
took the hand that she cradled against her chest and turning it, he
laid a feather’s kiss on the inside of the wrist. He looked deeply
into her eyes and she cast hers to the ground, her soft walking
moccasins buried in the pale flesh of the grass.

Other
shoes appeared beside hers and she looked into Sarah’s cornflower
blue eyes. “He has lost all sense. Can you not see? He does not
‘advise’ any longer; he rants,” Sarah said as she put a piece of
copper hair behind Clara’s ear.

Clara
knew this. She could no longer shake the memory of what they had been
together. Her best friend, her most loyal cohort in all things. The
one that sought her relentlessly through the Outside to save her from
an uncertain fate.

But he
was no longer that person.

Charles
could not accept a friendship that did not also include romance.

Matthew
stood quietly beside her, as was his way. His hair danced along the
tops of his shoulders, his eyes intent on her.

She
sighed again. “My Lady,” Thomas began, the one guard in the royal
contingent that had been left behind when her mother made her
devastating journey Outside. “What would you have of me?”

Clara was
mortified. She had lost her temper in a most repugnant fashion in
front of her first officer of the Royal Guard. She was remiss.
“Thomas, I am truly sorry you had to witness…” Clara
floundered.

But
Thomas broke in before she could continue, “We of the guard
understand the position you are in with Charles Pierce. We think he
is an excellent man of worth.”

The
but
stood in the air.

Sarah
said what only she could, “He will have to serve in another
capacity, Clara. He is too near to you emotionally to offer sound
advice, of anything.” She shrugged.

Clara
looked at Matthew and Thomas. “Please, gentlemen, leave Sarah and I
to finish this conversation in private.”

Matthew
shook his head. “There must be someone standing watch at all times,
Queen Clara.”

“Clara,”
she corrected him and he gave the barest incline of his head.

“Fine,”
she said, vexed. Clara began to pace back and forth and Sarah tracked
her frenetic rhythm.

“Matthew,
Thomas, give us but a moment alone together so we may converse. She
needs to be attended by a woman presently.” Sarah stared at
Matthew.

He
relented reluctantly. “I will stand right there,” he pointed to a
stand of evergreens that heralded a natural break of entry into the
forest. “I will be observing, very closely.” He moved forward and
pressed a kiss to Clara’s forehead and met Sarah’s eyes over the top
of her head, his filled with clear warning.

Clara
felt the electric tingle that spiraled from the point of contact, his
lips departing a thin thread that ran from the warmth of his mouth
pressed against her skin to other areas. She blushed, feeling the
heat of her embarrassment acutely, visible for all to see on her fair
skin.

Matthew
gave her a rare grin. He was very aware of what reaction a kiss would
elicit from a
select
so closely affected by one of the Band.

He
gave another look at Sarah.
Be careful
,
that look said. She nodded and he made his way toward the trees, his
long stride eating up the distance. He arrived and turned, leaning
against the tree and sharpening one of his many blades against a
stone, the ghost of that smile still riding his lips.

*

“Tell
me I am not mad like one of King Otto’s relatives,” Clara said.

It was
well-known that people from that sphere were too closely related,
causing minds that were soft or worse.

Sarah
grinned, pressing her forehead against Clara’s. “Dear Heart, you
are many things, but mad is not one of them.” She leaned against
Clara and wrapped her in an embrace that was tight and fierce. Clara
let herself relax against her friend.

Finally,
when she thought she could speak once more, “Is this a fool’s
errand, Sarah? Is Charles correct?”

Sarah
deliberated. She would tell Clara the truth, that is what friends
did. True friends.

Slowly,
Sarah shook her head. “He has a seed of truth in his argument.”

Clara’s
face crumpled and Sarah rushed on, “He does not understand what it
would be to be a royal orphan. And it is somehow worse than that,
Queen Ada was not your true blood.”

Clara
stared at Sarah and whispered, “I should not have struck him. I am
ashamed. After the violence I suffered at the hand of the Queen and
Frederic. I should not have.”

Sarah
laid her hand within Clara’s and squeezed the smallness of it once
and Clara winced.

“What?”

“It
hurts!” Clara laughed.

Sarah
grinned. “Ah, from the bludgeoning you laid on Charles?” she said
coyly.

Clara
nodded. “Yes, that.” A small smile began to spread across her
face, her somber self-recrimination floating away for the moment.

Clarence
approached and his eyes were for Sarah first but then fell on Clara.
Her guilt over the interchange came surging back in a tide of
emotion.

“Queen
Clara,” he bowed and she executed a small curtsey. She had
long-since given up coaxing him into calling her Clara. He was too
formal by far to comply.

Sarah
looked up into Clarence’s face. “Why hello, Clarence,” she
murmured while batting her eyelashes. Sarah knew full-well her effect
upon him. He blushed a maddening brick red and muttered a greeting.

Sarah was
antagonizing him. They had been friends, as Charles and she had, the
four of them inseparable. But now there was a shift in awareness
happening. The journey east had revealed many things.

He turned
to Clara, ignoring Sarah for the moment and managed to get out,
“Charles is remiss, Queen Clara. Please, would it be too much to
ask that you engage in a reconciliation?” Clarence’s eyes pleaded
with her to understand.