Page 85 of Shielded in the Shadows

She’d rarely held us and never shown affection as far as I could recall. We were a burden to her, small creatures she sometimes fed and bathed because her neighbors seemed to expect it of her, but Calla and I had little for us at home but a roof and a sleeping pallet we shared.

In fact, I could and probably should simply think of her as Marcila on the rare occasions when I thought of her at all. The title Mother had meaning that Marcila never bothered to earn.

Leomer picked up a cup from beyond the recorder’s view, took a long drink, and rested the cup on his knee. “Only a few months after Calla’s birth, Marcila was finished with me. Really, we were finished with each other. The more distance between us, the better our lives would be, or so she told me. I found work in another city, in a different arena, and offered to take you both with me since she never…” He rubbed his jaw. “I thought she’d jump at the chance. Instead, she refused, and the local magistrate took her side. I was to give her a portion of my earnings each month for your care and she was to allow me to visit when I could and speak to you via comms. Of course, she never allowed me to see or speak to either of you. Eventually, I couldn’t fight her anymore. I made her promise never to sell you as I’d been sold, and then I just had to let go.”

I’d never wasted much thought on the man who’d sired me, not even enough to hate him. I had no memories of him, and Mother—Marcila—hadn’t kept any images. She’d spoken about him only a few times, only ever in answer to my questions and only in a few words followed by a demand that I stop asking. She’d certainly never mentioned he was giving her credits each month to supposedly help keep us fed, clothed, and housed.

I hated him now, though. Hated him for becoming the thing that the child gladiators of Ganai feared and despised. Hated him for letting go. Hated him for extracting a promise from Marcila that she’d broken after barely waiting long enough for Calla to turn three.

Hated him for apparently saving Orqiel’s life, recording this fucking message, and forcing him to hunt me down to deliver it.

Keeping that hate locked inside while Orqiel watched me was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do.

“I found out she’d sold you after it was done.” For the first time, I saw actual emotion on Leomer’s colorless face. His dull eyes blazed with fury. “I got a comm from an old friend at the arena. I couldn’t do a damn thing by then.” His fists clenched despite the flinch and shudder of pain that rolled through him. “All I could do was contact the procurer who’d made the deal and bribe him to conceal the fact you and Calla were sisters. I knew what would happen if I didn’t.”

My knees nearly gave out. The surge of warmth behind me was Jarrix trying to hold me. Not just hold me, but hold me up.

I’d always thought the fact our keepers didn’t know Calla and I were sisters was due to chance. In no universe could I have imagined our sire and Orqiel were the real reason we’d escaped being pitted against each other in a fight to the death in a highly profitable headline match.

My hatred for them collided with shock and a bitter kind of gratitude with a force that felt like starships ramming into each other at full speed in my chest.

Leomer was still talking, though through the ringing in my ears his voice sounded as if it were coming from down a long tunnel. “I did what I could. I paid bribes to prevent you from facing each other in the arena. Your procurer made sure you got extra training and better weapons and more rations.” He flung his cup beyond the eye of the recorder and pounded his fist on his leg. His breathing became labored. “I know it wasn’t enough. I know it wasn’t. But doing more would have made people suspicious. And you’d both be dead.”

My ability to not show Orqiel emotion was failing. My body was failing. Jarrix was keeping me on my feet, his shadowy arms under mine and chest braced to my back. He didn’t have much physical strength in this form, but it was enough. Without him, I would have been on my knees on the marble floor.

Leomer was coughing again, his thin body wracked and hunched over. I couldn’t dredge up sympathy at the moment. I could barely breathe myself.

“The day you turned sixteen, I sent people to find you and bring you to me,” he managed to say between coughs and wheezes. “I wanted to make sure none of the vultures lying in wait got you. Instead, you left them all wounded and nearly dying in an alley and disappeared. It was almost a year before I found out you’d gotten off the planet on your own.”

I stared at my nivilus as if seeing it for the first time. I’d carried it aboard the Wundi ship at the spaceport dripping the blood of the gang of hired thugs who’d followed me from my keeper’s office and tried to abduct me. They’d been working for the man who’d sired me?

“By the time Calla turned sixteen, I’d given up on any kind of reunion,” Leomer rasped. “I hired a crew to make sure she made it safely away from the arena. The males I sent to protect her stayed out of sight. She never knew who killed those who tried to trap her before she eventually escaped Ganai. And then you were both gone.”

Someone gave him more water. I recognized the large, furry hand that handed him the cup.

Eventually, Leomer spoke again. “When the riots began, your procurer had just been employed by the arena where I lived and worked. He and I barely made it out as the gladiators turned on their keepers and trainers and the whole place burned. I paid the bribe to get us aboard a freighter and off-planet. What we did after that isn’t important. But eventually we ended up on a planet called Forval IX, planning the grandest arenas the galaxy has ever seen. They would have been magnificent.”

Was that a flash of pride in his reddened eyes?

Gods above, he’d gone to work for the Liktarr and been involved in the Rendex project just like Orqiel. I hadn’t seen any images of him or mention of his name in the files compiled by Siber and Byx, but he’d been there in the margins of those reports, a specter from my past lurking in the shadows between the lines.

“We had big plans for that planet.” Leomer’s mouth twisted. “But the project was doomed from the start. I was doomed.” He rubbed his bony chest. “There’s a vine on that planet we called rettenroot. It’s poisonous and it grows quickly. And it likes blood—especially human blood. I was out on a surveying mission when it got me. And there’s no cure, only treatments that give you extra years.”

He forced another humorless smile that faded quickly. “I’ve wrung all the years I can out of this body. The treatments aren’t working anymore. So I went looking for the only decent things I’ve ever been associated with: you and Calla. But I looked too late. You may already know this, but she’s gone. Joined the Alliance Defense, became a pilot. Died in action a year ago in some hot zone on the edge of Alliance space.” He swallowed visibly. “I’m sorry if I’m the one to tell you the news.”

From somewhere deep within, I found the will to steel my features. I would betray nothing about Calla. If it came down to it, I’d die to protect her secret, though I certainly hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Once this matter was settled, I was heading directly back to Trakhan and my ship, bound for that little stormy purple moon.

Leomer heaved a deep, rough breath. “I knew no other way to bring you here than to call in a favor from an old friend. I don’t know how he went about it, but I suspect you’re angry. And maybe beaten up a little. I doubt he asked nicely, but we don’t associate with nice people. Seems like you don’t either.”

I let out a huff of breath that was the closest thing to a snort I could manage at the moment.

“I wish I could have been here when you came, but I waited too late. They say I have maybe a few weeks left. I think it’s more like days.” He coughed and wiped away another splatter of blood from his mouth. “Just as well. You’d have had to kill me. I can spare us both that, at least.”

He stared at the cup as it rested on his knee. “When it’s over, I’m going to leave what’s left of me with Orqiel unha’Feste. I’m sure you’ll remember him. I have no right to ask anything of you, Keela. But even if you hate me, maybe you’ll do one thing for the worthless man who sired you and Calla. If you happen to pass by the sector where your sister died, I’d like to be left there. I don’t want to be on Saistea, and I don’t want to be on Ganai. I thought at one point I’d end up scattered across the rocks on Forval IX, but that didn’t turn out either. Hells, maybe you’ll dump me there instead. I wouldn’t mind it. Some of the worst things in the galaxy are there. I’d fit right in.”

While Leomer was talking, Orqiel had returned to the hidden compartment in the pool. He brought over a small, silver orb about twenty centimeters in diameter with a flat base and a datachip in a clear protective case and wordlessly set them down next to the cube.

I stared at the orb.