Jeanne G'Fellers - No Sister of Mine by Jeanne G'Fellers (reading tree TXT) 📗

as much as she dared, and peered up at their awkward quarters.

“You know,” she yawned, “it’s a curious sensation to lie on the ceiling and look up at the floor.”

“Even more so to wake up hanging from the floor.” Trazar laughed again, happy see her outlook improving. “So tell me, are you and First Kimshee Middle oathed?”

LaRenna was puzzled by the query. “Why, you know Krell?”

“We’re acquainted.” Trazar thought of the late-night visit to his quarters. In hindsight, maybe he shouldn’t have been quite so callous.

“No, we’re not oathed.” LaRenna let the subject drop as she searched for a position that didn’t make her ache.

“Hold on.” Trazar unfolded a blanket over her and lay beside her, his arm extended as a pillow. “Get as close as you can. It’ll be cold by morning with this rain. We’ll both need the heat.” She gave him a brief, uncomfortable look then moved close. He spread the second blanket over them both, wrapping his pillowing arm around her until his hand rested palm down on her hair.

“Where’s my cloak?” she asked with a fevered shiver.

“Long left behind, I’m afraid.” The emergency lighting flickered then died, shrouding the launch in darkness. LaRenna began to shake again, not from cold or illness, but from the fiendish memories that leached in with the night. Trazar stroked her hair to remind her of his presence. “Remember what Krell told you. You’re not alone. You’re safe.”

“Thank you.” LaRenna relaxed into her brother’s hold and listened to the rain. If it would only wash away some of the pain, some of the deep stains the twins had left on her.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Your deepest instincts should always take precedence over the doubts your mind projects.

—Sarian Military Standards

Chandrey knotted the deep blue mourning sash around her narrow waist and draped the excess fabric down her right side. Belsas’s sash, though just as large, fit when worn across her shoulder and tucked into belt-line as was the traditional guardian manner. “It was kind of Ockson to provide us with sashing from the ship’s stores.” Chandrey joined her lover on the overstuffed divan in their temporary quarters. Belsas had remained silent since they had left the battle deck and now sat, staring blankly ahead.

“Bel?” Chandrey smoothed at the bottom section of hair Belsas had removed from her braid. She’d kept it in the same complicated plat for so many passes that the strands refused anything but a return to their accustomed position. Chandrey’s hair had rejected the new styling as well, frizzing uncontrollably at the same site. “Bel?” she inquired more gently of her lover. “You all right?”

Belsas looked joylessly up then away. “I’m fine. Have a headache is all.”

“Don’t shut me out. You have to be feeling something.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. Talk to me.”

Belsas scowled. “I told you my head hurts.”

“I’ll do no such thing. Tell me what’s going through your mind.”

“I told you, nothing!”

“Liar!” exclaimed Chandrey. “Our only child just died the most horrific of deaths and you have no sadness?”

“What do you want me to say?” Belsas slammed her hand against the divan’s cushions. “How sorry I am? How it breaks my heart she’s gone?”

“If it helps.”

“Helps what? Bring LaRenna back?” Belsas ripped her braid from Chandrey’s hand and rose from the divan. “She’s dead. No amount of grieving on my part will change that.”

“Heartless wretch.” Chandrey returned Belsas’s cold gaze. “Did you ever think that I might need you to grieve with me—that maybe what you are feeling needs to be shared? Am I alone in this?”

“Damnation, Chandrey, I told you twice now that I feel nothing. NOTHING! Nothing except dead inside.”

“There are no regrets, remorse, nothing you wish you’d said to her before the crash? Nothing?” Chandrey’s pale face turned an anguished pink. “I don’t believe you.”

“What do you want from me?” Belsas held her arms wide. “Tears? Guardians don’t cry. It’s unbecoming. The Taelach of All can’t have emotions. She must be detached. The post won’t allow for anything less.”

“What of Belsas Exzal?” sighed Chandrey. “Is she incapable of emotions now as well? Does her post control her so completely?”

“My personal feelings run second to my post. They always have. I can have no regrets, no remorse, no doubts over what I have done in the line of duty.”

Chandrey’s skirt’s twisted when she rose with a force echoed by her angry tone. “Well, I can! You sent my baby, my LaRenna, my only child to face the Creiloff twins, knowing what they did to me during the war. I hate you for that, almighty, unfeeling Taelach of All and I’ll never, ever forgive you for it!” Chandrey stormed from the room. She had stood by Belsas and supported all her decisions for nearly thirty passes. Now, the one time she truly needed her guardian to be there for her, only her, Belsas shunned her. Chandrey kept a stoic appearance until she reached the deck’s corner set meditation lounge. There, in the room’s dim light, she knelt at the Mother Maker’s small shrine and wept, begging her creator for the strength to understand and forgive.

On the battle deck, Krell threw her mourning sash to the floor. “She’s not dead. I know it. Why won’t any of you listen to me? She’s hurt. She needs me. She needs us!” Krell turned toward Firman. “You believe me. Don’t you?”

“Try to be realistic,” he replied. “She was in poor condition before the crash happened. There was no way she could have survived.”

“Here!” Krell retrieved the sash from the deck. “You’re so damned convinced, you wear it!”

Firman removed the sash from her clenched fist and laid it on the worktable. “I know you loved her, Krell—”

“Love, not loved,” she sputtered. “You don’t speak of the living in the past tense. It’s bad manners.” Krell ran her palm over the picture of Saria Four spanning the wall viewer. “Where do you think we should begin looking? Listfeindale? The lower Reisfall ranges?”

“They’ll have tracked the crash to a hundred-kilometer