Rogue (37 page)

No one guards The Shrine of the Desert anymore—or my door, for that matter, though Hartak does admit to missing my cries of ecstasy. Actually, I think he hangs around sometimes to see if he can hear me, because every now and then I run across him prowling the corridor outside my rooms. The Shrines (both of them) as well as the secret passageway are now open to all comers at all times, as any good shrine should be.

I've gone on with my teaching, and though Zealon has less time for such things now that she is Queen, I still have plenty of other students—along with my own children.

It came as a bit of a surprise to give birth to three of them at a time, but I'm not complaining, because they're all adorable little fellows who look just like their father.

I still hope that more mammalian offworlders will settle on Darconia, because unless they do, our kids will all have to leave home to find mates the way Trag did. I must say, the idea of scattering them like seeds all across the galaxy appeals to me. Jack laughed when I suggested that we start a registry for Zetithians so they can find each other, and the more I thought about it, the more I decided it was a bad idea—especially if that bounty is still on them. I can see no point in making it easier for anyone who might try to exterminate them again.

Jack tells me I should watch out for something called Nedwuts on principle, since they were apparently the ones who destroyed Zetith, and though I haven't run into any, I stay ready for them. If anyone ever tries to collect the bounty on my tiger, I've still got my pulse pistol, and Lerotan left me his grenade launcher. He never bothered to teach me how to use it, but I'm sure the mere sight of such a weapon would be enough to frighten off even the most determined bounty hunter. As you can see, I'm not the same meek little piano teacher that I once was.

Not any more!

As for my career as a composer, my Zetithian sonata was published and seems very popular among the younger pianists—and a few of the older ones. It's difficult to get new music onto the classical scene—there hasn't been another Beethoven or Mozart in a thousand years of waiting—but interest in it has already grown substantially. I may be a one-hit wonder, but that's okay.

Inspiration doesn't always strike on demand.

Uragus has turned out to be as much of a prodigy as I could have hoped, though the classical style didn't hold his fancy for long. I suppose it was my own fault for playing a few rock songs for him, and there's been no stopping him ever since!

Racknay went wild on the synthesizer and decided against a military career in favor of becoming a rockstar.

He and Uragus got together to form the first all-male rock band in Darconian history and, after some debate, they asked Refdeck and Sladnil to join—which meant they had to change the name of the band from
Princes
to
Princes & Slaves.
As it turned out, Refdeck is a pretty decent guitar player and Sladnil, interestingly enough, can play drums—haven't seen him drop a drumstick yet! He's taken to painting his face for performances the way he did before our last battle with some rather terrifying results. He's got a lot of rabid fans—most of them just as weird as he is—but Nindala doesn't let any of them get anywhere near him.

Tychar was reluctant at first, but he finally agreed to be their lead singer. He wears more when he's on stage performing than he did when he was a slave, but he still wears nothing but that jeweled collar above the waist, and his pants are cut so low that women have been known to faint at the mere sight of him—and you already know he can sing! Imagine that! The hottest act in the quadrant—and he's all mine.

Escape to the world of

the Cat Star Chronicles,

by Cheryl Brooks

SLAVE

WARRIOR

ROGUE

OUTCAST

Read on for a sneak peek...

SLAVE

I FOUND HIM IN THE SLAVE MARKET ON ORPHESEUS

Prime, and even on such a godforsaken planet as that one, their treatment of him seemed extreme. But then again, perhaps he was an extreme subject, and the fact that there was a slave market at all was evidence of a rather backward society. Slave markets were becoming extremely rare throughout the galaxy—the legal ones, anyway.

I hitched my pack higher on my shoulder and adjusted my respirator, though even with the benefit of ultrafiltration, the place still stank to high heaven. How a planet as eternally hot and dry as this one could have ever had anything on it that could possibly rot and get into the air to cause such a stench was beyond me. Most dry climates don't support a lot of decay or fermenta-tion, but Orpheseus was different from any desert planet I'd ever had the misfortune to visit. It smelled as though at some point all of the vegetation and animal life forms had died at once and the odor of their decay had become permanently embedded in the atmosphere.

Shuddering as a wave of nausea hit me, I walked casually closer to the line of wretched creatures lined up for pre-auction inspection, but even my unobtrusive move wasn't lost on the slave owners who were bent on selling their wares.

"Come closer!" a ragged beast urged me in a rasping, unpleasant voice as he gestured with a bony arm.

I eyed him with distaste, thinking that this thing was just ugly enough to have caused the entire planet to smell bad, though I doubted he'd been there long enough to do it. On the other hand, he didn't seem to be terribly young. Okay, so older than the hills might have been a little closer to the mark. Damn, maybe he
was
responsible, after all!

"I have here just what you have been seeking!" he said. "Help to relieve you of your burden! This one is strong and loyal and will serve you well."

I glanced dubiously at the small-statured critter there before me, and its even smaller slave. "I don't think so," I replied, thinking that the weight of my pack alone would probably have crushed the poor little thing's tiny bones to powder. I know that looks can often be deceiving, but this thing looked to me like nothing more than an oversized grasshopper. Its bulbous red eyes regarded me with an unblinking and slightly unnerving stare.

"Its eyes give me the creeps, anyway," I added. "I need something that looks more.. .humanoid."

Dismissing them with a wave, I glanced around at the others, noting that, of the group, there were only two slaves being offered that were even bipedal: one reminded me of a cross between a cow and a chimpanzee, and the other, well, the other was the one who had first caught my eye—possibly because out of all the slaves there, he was the one seeming to require the most restraint, and also because he was completely naked.

I studied him out of the corner of my eye, noting that the other prospective buyers seemed to be giving him a wide berth. His owner, an ugly Cylopean—and Cylopeans are
all
ugly, but this one would have stood out in a crowd of them—was exhorting the masses to purchase his slave.

"Come!" he shouted in heavily accented Standard Tongue, "my slave is strong and will serve you well. I part with him only out of extreme financial need, for he is as a brother to me, and it pains me greatly to lose him."

His pain wasn't as great as the slave's, obviously. I eyed the Cylopean skeptically. Surely he couldn't imagine that anyone would have suspected that his "brother"

would require a genital restraint in order to drag him to the market to part him from his current master!

Rolling my eyes with disdain, I muttered, "Go ahead and admit it. You're selling him because you can't control him."

"Oh, no, my good sir!" the Cylopean exclaimed, seemingly aghast at my suggestion. "He is strong! He is willing! He is even intelligent!"

I stifled a snicker. The slave was obviously smart enough to have this one buffaloed, I thought, chuckling to myself as it occurred to me that no one around here would even know what a buffalo was, let alone the eu-phemism associated with the animal.

I blew out a breath hard enough to fog the eye screen on my respirator. Damn, but I was a long way from home!

Earth was at least five hundred long light-years away.

How the hell had I managed to end up here, searching for a lost sister whom I sometimes suspected of not wanting to be found? I'd followed her trail from planet to planet for six years now, and had always been just a few steps behind her. I was beginning to consider giving up the search, but the memory of the terror in her wild blue eyes as she was torn from my arms on Dexia Four kept me going.

And now, she had been—or so I'd been informed— taken to Statzeel, a planet where all women were slaves and upon which I didn't dare set foot, knowing that I, too, would become enslaved. The denizens of Statzeel would undoubtedly not make the same mistake that the slave trader had, for I was most definitely female, and, as such, vulnerable to the same fate that had befallen my lovely little sister. That I wasn't the delicate, winsome creature Ranata was wouldn't matter, for a female on Statzeel was a slave by definition. Free women simply did not exist there.

Which was why I needed a male slave of my own.

One to pose as my owner—one that I could trust to a certain extent, though I was beginning to believe that such a creature couldn't possibly exist, and certainly not on Orpheseus Prime! I was undoubtedly wasting my time, I thought as I looked back at the slave. He was tall, dirty, and probably stank every bit as much as his owner did. I was going to have to check the filter in that damn respirator—either that or go back and beat the shit out of the scheming little scoundrel who'd taken me for ten qidnits when he sold it to me. I should have simply stolen it, but getting myself in trouble with what law there was on that nasty little planet wouldn't have done either my sister, or myself, a lick of good.

As I glanced at the man standing there before me, he raised his head ever so slightly to regard me out of the corner of one glittering, obsidian eye. Something passed between us at that moment—something almost palpable and real—making me wonder if the people of his race might have had psychic powers of some kind. That he was most definitely not human was quite evident, though at first glance he might have appeared to be, and could possibly have passed for one to the uneducated.

There weren't many humans this far out for comparison, which was undoubtedly why I'd been able to get wind of Ranata's whereabouts from time to time. She seemed to have left a lasting impression wherever she was taken.

Just as this slave would do, even with the upswept eyebrows that marked him as belonging to some other alien world. His black, waving hair hung to his waist, though matted and dirty and probably crawling with ver-min. I had no doubt that his owner hadn't lied when he had said that the slave was strong, for he was collared and shackled—hand, foot, and genitals. I'd been through many slave markets in my search, but I'd rarely seen any slave who was bound the way this one was, which spoke not only of strength, but also of a belligerent, and probably untrainable, nature. The muscles were all right there to see, and while they were not overly bulky— appearing, instead, to be more tough and sinewy—their level of strength was unquestionable.

This man had seen some rough work and even rougher treatment, for jagged scars laced his back and a long, straight scar sliced across his left cheekbone as though it had been made with a sword. He had a piercing in his penis, which appeared to have been done recently, for the ring through it was crusted over with dried blood.

A chain ran from the metallic collar around his neck, through the ring in his cock, to another metal band that encircled his penis and testicles at the base. The pain that such a device could inflict on a man was horrify-ing, even to me, and I'd had to inflict a lot of pain in the course of my travels—though never to someone so defenseless and completely within my power as a slave.

My never-ending search for Ranata had left me nearly as tough and battle-scarred as the slave was, and I'd often had to fight to the death in order to stay alive. So far, however, I'd never stooped to torturing a slave, and sincerely hoped I never would. This slave owner obviously had no such qualms, and it made me want to take a shot at him, just on general principles.

Call me an old softy if you will, but I must admit that I considered buying this slave, if for no other reason than to set him free of his restraints. I might feed him first, though—and perhaps buy him some clothes.... I cocked my head to one side as I considered him again.

You're a fool if you think feeding this thing will tame it, I told myself. A bona-fide fool...

WARRIOR

HE CAME TO ME IN THE DEAD OF WINTER, HIS BODY

burning with fever. Even before he arrived on my doorstep, bound, beaten, and unconscious, I knew my quiet life was about to change forever. And I was ready.

As I stirred my potion, I heard the creak of saddle leather and the muffled thud of a body falling into the snow outside my isolated cottage, followed by Rafe's grunt of effort as he dragged the unconscious offworlder through the drifts. With a gust of cold air and a swirling cloud of snowflakes, he pushed my door open and burst inside without so much as a knock.

The evening had begun tranquilly enough. I had just brought in extra wood from the shed, but it was snowing so hard, I decided to go back out into the wintry darkness for more. I can conjure up fire better than any other witch I've heard of, but it helps to have some fuel. Besides, I love the cozy warmth and smell of a wood fire.

From her place by the fire, Desdemona gazed up at me with narrowed eyes, nodding her agreement. I trusted her feline intuition to alert me to danger, but Desdemona had given me no warning. Yawning, she stretched and let out a loud purr before curling up once more.

Reassured, I pushed open the heavy wooden door and peered out into the thickly falling snow. Big, fluffy flakes drifted by in the beam of light, floating gently but inexorably to the ground. It was already a handspan in depth and more was on the way. But there was something else in the air tonight—a strange feeling, herald-ing something altogether new and unexpected. Not a feeling of dread or fear, but something that whispered of the fulfillment of a promise. It hung there, on the edge of awareness, teasing me with its elusive aura. Just what—or who—it was, only time would tell. Time and the gods.