Queen of Swords (13 page)

“If you say that again, I will kill you myself. Send the surrender.”

As Cole started shutting down the weapons system, Boone sent a quick ping to Jenny, letting her know she was needed on Valneci to take over. She would be okay, would step up and do her duty. There was nothing she could do against Sanctify but become a casualty. Even a small army couldn’t save him, much less his crazy little sister.

He was on his own.

…

The jump was worse than last time, leaving Ophelia shaken and weak for hours. The last place she wanted to be was in her cabin, but Jenny ordered her there, threatening to lock Ophelia in again if she didn’t take a nap.

It took her exactly one hour to go stir-crazy. Ophelia probably should have called her parents to tell them she was on her way home, but somehow doing so would make this more real, would drive home that her time with Jenny—with Boone—was at its end.

She sat on the bunk, shuffling her cards and staring at the opposite wall. A chill worked its way into her bones, so similar to the feeling of jumping that she started to panic, breath coming in short gasps, her muscles freezing in place. Without thinking, she flipped over three cards. The feeling vanished as quickly as it’d come, and Ophelia looked around as if the source of her discomfort would take physical form. With a sigh, she turned her attention back to the cards, half expecting it to be the same damned reading. When it wasn’t, she took an embarrassing amount of time to react. Her fingers touched each card, making sure they were really there.

The Tower. Ten of Swords. The Devil Ill Dignified.

Bad things were coming, were already here. Trouble of the worst sort. Ruin. Desolation. Sorrow. And someone, someone important, taken captive.

Boone.

She jumped to her feet and ran for the door, bowling Jenny over when she crossed the threshold. They fell into the opposite wall but Ophelia barely felt the pain when she landed hard on her hip. She grabbed the other woman’s shoulders. “Trouble. There’s trouble coming.”

It was only then that she noticed how panicked Jenny looked. Her normal joking demeanor was gone, her gray eyes wide and shining unnaturally.

Ophelia shook her. “What happened? Tell me?” Boone. Boone was in trouble. She knew it.
Lady, no
. What would she do if it was worse than trouble, if he were already dead? “
Jenny
.”

“They took him.” Jenny’s entire body shook. “Sanctify took my brother.”

Chapter Fifteen

They rushed past a confused-looking Gee and into the cockpit. “Computer, lock door,” Jenny snarled. The palm lock next to the door blinked blue while it processed the order and then faded to red. She sank into the captain’s chair. “We have to go get him.”

Ophelia had reached the same conclusion as soon as she understood exactly what the reading meant. “I know.”

Jenny scrubbed her face. “The whole point of Boone sending you home was to keep you out of trouble, and there is nothing but trouble when Sanctify is involved. Hells, trouble doesn’t begin to cover it. We’re looking at certain death.”

Ophelia already knew. Papa had told her stories when he thought her mother wasn’t listening, stories about the things Sanctify did to their prisoners, to their victims. They believed anyone who didn’t follow the ways of Ba’al was impure, and the only way to rectify this was to bleed them clean. As if that made sense to anyone other than the crazies.

So they would torture whatever poor bastard they had in their sights, bleed them almost dry, and then tie them to a stake and burn the last of the impurity from them. And that was just the average offender. For someone like Ophelia, a Diviner, they had a little special something set up. Sanctify dismembered them and burned the offending remains in a specialty blend of accelerant commonly known as witchfire. It burned through anything.

Papa said they made the Diviner watch as they cut each limb away, joint by joint. Watch as the tortures turned more and more of their body to ash, until they were nothing but a torso. By that point all but the strongest minds had broken, their consciousness unable to handle the horror upon them. It was only then, when they were gibbering wrecks, barely passable as something that had once been a person, that Sanctify killed them.

It was a lesson she took to heart. You don’t mess with Sanctify if you want to live. It was why they were always so careful on their runs, why they relied so heavily on the readings. There were few things in the universe more sacred than the bond between Lady and Diviner, and that relationship was physically manifested through the cards. But Ophelia had made the mistake of ignoring the warning they gave and her crew died as a result.

She’d see every one of the heavens and hells destroyed before she let that happen to Boone. “You don’t have time to send me home. Every day he’s with them is a day they might decide he’s more trouble than he’s worth.” A day his body might give out under their torture.

If he was even alive right now. But, no, she couldn’t think like that. The cards said he was bound, not dead. Ophelia believed that. She had to. If she started to doubt herself now, she’d dissolve into hysterics, would sob and tear at her clothes like the widows of ancient times.

It didn’t bear thinking about that she’d just compared herself to a widow.

Jenny blinked. “All righty then. Give me ten minutes.”

Ophelia sat quietly, watching Jenny work. She wanted to move, to prepare for the incoming conflict. But it wouldn’t do any good. Attacking Sanctify on any of their planets was impossible.

No. She shook her head. There was no such thing as impossible. Hadn’t Papa always told her that? Proven it? She’d just have to take this in steps instead of rushing in without thinking.

This first thing they needed was information.

And Ophelia knew exactly who to go to—Papa had been a lieutenant after all, one of the higher ranks with access to all sorts of interesting information. Sure, that was twenty-five years ago, but anything would be more than what they had right now.

Jenny cursed and sat back, slamming her fist into the wall. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I’ve tracked
Boreas
to Sanctus.” The one true base of Sanctify, the original planet they took over in the name of their god, Ba’al, and his unforgiving practices.

“Shit is right.” A deep pit of loss opened in Ophelia’s chest, waiting to swallow her whole. She beat it back, hanging onto sanity by her fingertips. “We can do this. We’ll figure something out.”

Jenny pulled her hair back and twisted it up. She flexed her fingers. “We have a few tricks up our sleeves.
Psyche
has some great stealth equipment—we can get past any scanning systems without a problem, maybe even Sanctus’ Control. But once we get close enough, they’ll be able to see us.”

Which might tip this from a fatal mission to impossible after all. “That’s something.”

“And, if you give me a little time, I can find Boone’s exact location on-planet.”

Ophelia blinked. “What? How is that possible?”

Jenny shrugged, her eyes on the controls. “Boone insisted upon a tracker a few years ago. Pain in the ass—literally—but it’s helped out before and it will, no doubt, help out again.” She slanted a look at Ophelia. “Don’t tell him I told you that.”

“Okay.” She was still trying to process that they’d been implanted voluntarily. Papa would have killed to have her outfitted with a tracker, but it was far too similar to a collar and leash for her taste. That Boone agreed to one spoke volumes of the situation with his family.

It seemed a million years ago that she’d sat across the table from her mother and done that reading. Marrying the prince hadn’t been something she wanted to do, but at least things seemed clear. Ophelia should have remembered readings were rarely so specific as to answer a single question—at least not for her. But if she’d stepped back and really thought about it, she might not have gone with Boone, might have missed out on the last few ridiculous, infuriating weeks.

Jenny’s breath hissed out, bringing Ophelia back from her thoughts. “Found him.”

A holo map of Sanctus appeared between them, a blinking blue dot on its far side. Jenny turned the globe so the dot was along the top. The planet was mostly water, the great ocean surrounding a single continent and a scattering of islands.

Once upon a time, longer ago than anyone could remember, Sanctus was the home planet of the Diviners. Ophelia’s people welcomed the handful of white ships that came limping through the warp point, got them settled on planet, and allowed them to witness a few miracles of the Lady. All they’d gotten for their trouble was an army on their doorstep, killing every man, woman, and child those butchers could get hold of. No one was spared. No mercy was shown.

Ophelia stared at the water for a long moment before turning her attention to the signal. It was on one of the islands, almost directly in the middle of the ocean.

Jenny frowned, her left hand hovering over the area. “Computer, get me all the information you can about this island.”

Almost immediately, several displays came up on the blank wall near the door. Ophelia pushed to her feet and crossed to them. “There’s nothing useful.” Just the size and shape of the island and information on native plants and animals. Nothing about why they would take Boone there.

“It was worth a try. At least now we know where he is.”

Unless Sanctify found the tracker and stuck it on this island to draw any rescue attempts. But that was paranoid thinking.

Wasn’t it?

“You know, my father used to be a lieutenant for these assholes…”

“So talk to him. See what he can tell us.”

Ophelia turned back to the screens, not seeing anything. “I can’t guarantee he’ll give us any information.” Hells, once he found out she was contemplating going to Sanctus, he might jump on a ship and try to stop her. But Ophelia had to ask. She might be so pissed at Boone she couldn’t see straight, but nothing had changed. Death was
not
an option. Her stomach lurched at the thought, twisting in on itself and making an ugly sound. “But I’ll try.”

“Now would be good.” When Ophelia glanced over her shoulder, Jenny shrugged. “We have to go through two warp points but it would be nice to have a plan before we get into the outer Fourth Quadrant.”

“The link in my room is active now?”

“Of course. Get your ass in gear, Diviner. I have work to do.”

Ophelia left Jenny hunched over the ship’s controls, nearly running over Gee as she strode from the cockpit. He scrambled out of the way, looking guilty. “Were you listening in?”

“Of course not.” The Evarven snorted, but it sounded forced. “Just wondering where the fire is.”

Ophelia opened her mouth to tell him what was going on when a wave of cold swept through her body, and the words turned to ice in her throat. She froze, flexing her fingers to revive the feeling in them. What in the seven hells? A voice whispered through her, as warm as a Keiluna wind.
Do not trust him. Do not tell him the truth
. Even as part of her wondered if she were finally going insane, another deeper instinct recognized something familiar in the voice. The Lady. She swallowed hard, forcing a shaking smile. “No fire. Just a little girl talk.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but finally shrugged. “As you say, lady.”

She grasped for something to say, clutching at the first thing to pop into her head. “Why don’t you look at the intercom? It’s getting a bit ridiculous.” Something she’d intended to fix once she had five minutes. But it would have to wait. Everything would.

Ophelia got back to her room in record time, but paused in front of her link. It would take some smooth talking to win over Papa, and he’d always been able to see straight through her. She took several deep breaths, making an effort to relax the tension along her shoulders and chase the lingering ice from her veins. And, yeah, of course she was stalling. “I can do this.”

Before she could talk herself out of it, Ophelia put the call through. Several minutes later, Papa’s concerned face appeared on the screen. “Is everything okay? We thought you’d be here by now.”

All her plans of being cool and collected went out the window under her father’s concerned gaze. Ophelia started crying, wrenching sobs that shook her whole body and blurred her vision. Even as she fell apart, a distant part of her wondered what in the hells was going on. First a message from the Lady, and now an emotional breakdown? She never cried, and certainly not over something so small as being terrified out of her mind.

“Baby girl, tell me.”

The use of her childhood nickname calmed her a little. It would be okay. It had to be okay. They would save Boone and get out of this mess alive. Any other outcome was unacceptable. Ophelia straightened slowly, wiping her face. “I’m sorry.”

“What have you got to be sorry for?” His screen moved as he sat down and she recognized the bright blue walls of his workshop, which meant he was sitting in his favorite torn-up chair. Mama had thrown the orange eyesore out with the trash more times than Ophelia could count, but Papa always managed to sneak it back in. For some bizarre reason, this small slice of normalcy helped Ophelia push her fears back and get a hold of herself.

“Being weak.” Her lip quivered and she slapped a hand over her mouth. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” A tiny thought wormed it way into the back of her mind—a terrible, unforgivable thought—but Ophelia killed it before it could come to fruition. There was no time for anything but doing everything within her power to ensure Boone lived.

“There’s no shame in having a weak moment. It happens to everyone.” His eyes went distant, seeing things she could only begin to imagine. Papa shook himself and met her gaze. “Come home, baby girl.”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

Papa was silent for so long she started to check the signal before he finally spoke. “So the mercenary
has
gone back on his word.” His voice was flat, his face perfectly expressionless—his killing mask was what he once called it. She’d had no idea how apt the description was. This was the ruthless killer employed for over a decade by Sanctify, the man who had done unforgivable things in the name of his faith.

Ophelia froze, one hand extended. She would have to tread very, very carefully. “No, Papa. He shoved me on a ship with the intention of getting me back to Keiluna safely.”
Rat bastard.

The tension surrounding her father didn’t lessen in the least. “Is someone else keeping you from coming home? And don’t even think of lying to me.”

Ah, hells. “No, Papa. Not in the way you mean. But there’s trouble and they need my help.”

He shook his head slowly. “No. You will not put yourself in the middle of a civil war. I won’t allow it.”

Her temper sparked and she grabbed onto the anger with both hands. It was so much easier than being scared. “You can’t stop me.”

Papa roared, the sound echoing off the walls of her small cabin. “Do you really want to test me, baby girl? I won’t hesitate to stop you by whatever means necessary.”

Ophelia bit her lip, hard. Getting into a yelling match with her father wasn’t going to help Boone, no matter how much she wanted to tell Papa that she wasn’t his baby girl anymore, that she was old enough to take care of herself. Instead, she spoke in a calm, controlled tone, hoping it would diffuse the situation like when Mama did it. “I am not coming home. There is a man who needs me right now and I am going to help him. I called you because you have information that might keep me alive, but if you want to throw a tizzy, I’m going.”

His face turned a deep purple that couldn’t be good for his blood pressure. For one long moment, Ophelia was sure she’d have to cut the transmission and do this job on her own, but then Papa groaned, seeming to shrink in on himself. “What do you need to know?”

She spoke hurriedly, before he could change his mind. “I need to know everything you know about a small island on Sanctus. It’s in the middle of the ocean and shaped like a crescent moon. Here, I’ll patch through the coordinates.”