~ CAROLINE ~
The Eia made planetfall in the middle of the night. Caroline had been awoken from a dreamless sleep by the sound of the comms in their chambers beeping insistently as the crewers on the command deck tried to get in contact with Chris. For a few moments she had lain beside him, bleary-eyed and confused. The pills made her groggy. Chris had had to help her out of bed.
For two weeks now she’d been getting increasingly excited, ever since she’d gone with Chris to wave off the dozen soldiers of the Advanced Party in their little lander. She’d worn all her best clothes that day, the tourmaline tiara that had once graced the head of a queen and the regal gown of silk starfires that shone as bright as her hair. No more the little girl following her brother over the green dells of Borrowood. She was a woman, the wife of the Governor, and she had to look the part.
Looks had become important to Chris since he’d been given the position. Once he’d have been happy with a ragged old sweater, and if he had to wear a uniform it would be creased. But the moment he’d received his letter of title from High Commissioner Peulion he had shifted. Ever since, he’d been all about the wool-and-barrathea tail coats and the coloured silk sashes. He’d procured a gilded kepi from somewhere. The bloodstained silver dagger that was once the Heramey symbol was stitched onto the front.
Caro didn’t mind the change. It made Chris look more handsome than even his steely blue eyes and his boyish smirk could manage alone. Once, he’d been an adonis to her eyes. Age had weathered the skin, and left his face craggy and beginning to wrinkle. His hair was a brilliant ruddy brown—even if that was no longer a natural thing. Caro had seen the bottles of dye. They agreed, through their silence, not to talk about it.
Of course she had to dress upward as well. He’d furnished her with a generous stipend, a hundred bushels a month for the year before the Eia took flight, to update her wardrobe with the most luxury of fashions. The last time she’d seen her brother Armand, a few short weeks before she left her Belaboras home for the final time, he hadn’t recognised her. “These were never your tastes, sister,” he’d said.
Caro had assured him that she liked the clothes she wore. To some extent it was true. They were fancier, in prettier colours, and sewn of more comfortable fabrics. But at the same time she was reminded of the stuffy outfits Nana Raine liked to see her in. If she never saw a crinoline again she’d die a happy woman.
Nana Raine was in love with her heritage. The Herameys had been one of the most powerful families in Ivyne during the old kingdom’s height. Her great-great-great aunt Octavia had even married one of those kings, and it was for her that the tourmaline crown had been made. Nana Raine had been fond of telling Caro that story. “The pinnacle of our family’s success,” she used to call it. She always drew short of telling Caro how Octavia’s story ended. It was a sad one. Octavia had died at just twenty-one years old, from some complication of childbirth, and the king had declared her ailing infant daughter an illegitimate child, born from infidelity.
From there it had all gone wrong. A few generations after Octavia, some high-up Herameys were implicated in a series of plots against the king’s grandson, who by then was king himself. One was even caught with a dagger apparently bound for the king’s chest. What survived of the family had spent years laying low, destitute and close to extinction but proud of who they’d once been.
The kings of Ivyne hadn’t lasted forever. Like the rest of the Belaboran monarchies, they’d fallen with the coming of industry. A few lingered into the early days of stellar travel, their peoples too apathetic to bring them down. The last of the monarchies had died six hundred years ago, in the war that presaged the foundation of the Unity. All that remained was the remnants of tradition and structure that they’d etched into the society of Belaboras.
Nana Raine had always maintained that they would rise again. “Us Herameys are kingmakers,” she used to say, howling embittered at a tide of disinterest. “That’s what we’ve always been, and it’s what we’ll be again.” She’d inherited a list of the biggest Belaboran royal families, with all of their descendants and their modern day heirs, and used that to find a husband for her firstborn daughter. Caro remembered Auntie Nell only very fleetingly. When she was six years old, Nell’s husband beat her to death in a drunken rage. Her great heritage didn’t make her tomb any warmer.
Her brother, Caro’s father, had stood firm in the face of Nana Raine’s attempts to marry him to a “princess” who had undoubtedly never claimed the title herself. It was a good thing, she reflected. He’d have been unable to marry her mother otherwise, and she’d have been unable to be born. She’d always been quite fond of living. Sometimes, she’d caught Nana Raine looking at her all misty-eyed—reminded of the daughter she’d lost and the mother she’d never really known. Caro, more than her siblings, had Nell Heramey’s flame-orange hair and round face. In many ways they looked alike. Of course, Nell’s eyes had been brown. The last Heramey to have green eyes like Caro was Nana Raine’s mother. She had died giving birth to Nana Raine, but Caro had seen her portrait, the stony-faced scion watching over her descendants.
And today she’d make Nana Raine proud. It was the day they became residents of a new world. Once the Eia landed, Chris would no longer be the commander of a space-flight. He’d be the governor of a planet. The king of his domain. Caro alone would have his ear. She would be as good as a queen.
She hadn’t gone back to sleep after the comms woke her. Chris hadn’t had any trouble; he was fast asleep and snoring from almost the very second his head hit the pillow. It was a talent of his, being able to doze off on command. She envied him for it. Vaguely, she had memories of being able to sleep so easily herself, when she was much younger. Back then, she hadn’t been taking those tablets twice a day.
By the time Chris came to, she was long since up and dressed. She’d chosen her most precious outfit, the green dress with the velvet-lined skirt that she’d bought for a cousin’s wedding. It had been the last formal event she’d attended on her own. Within a month, she’d become engaged to Chris, and they’d not been separable since. The dress had followed her from place to place, always being hung up somewhere she could look at it whenever she chose. In her mind, it was the last bit of girlish freedom she possessed. Marrying Chris was her girlish heart’s dream come true. Still, she did sometimes miss the innocence her adolescent life had offered.
Today was the right day to wear the green dress. Today she became a queen. Not in name, not yet, but in spirit she was Octavia reborn. And if that wasn’t the way she wanted the pieces to fall, what did it matter? The time for misgivings was long ago. The role was hers, and by the Lightness she had to play it.
The hangar was busy, two hundred rushing from place to place moving things to where they needed to be. They were all assembled here, Chris and Caro and the rest of the Council, the rich reeves with their husbands and wives. An entourage of all the people who mattered. Last night, they’d received the Advanced Party’s signal. A single flashing beacon, one pulse of green light then one pulse of blue just as Unity standards dictated, was the proof that this planet was the safe haven promised.
Essegena, they called it. The name was ancient. Chemane of Averache, famed astronomer of antiquity, had included it on his first map of the stars, near to four thousand years ago when the Kings’ Era was young, but even he had been ignorant of the word’s meaning. Since man had looked skyward, and seen the dim sparkle of that star around which the planet revolved, Essegena had been the name used. The language from which the word was taken had long since died and passed out of memory. Only in this planet—her planet, to share with Chris—did it linger yet.
Chris squeezed her hand. “Be bold,” he said. “Our new garden awaits.”
A red light turned green, and hydraulics hissed into action. Before her, the hangar wall folded down, becoming now the ramp which would take them to the surface. Bright sunlight shone through the newfound gap, forcing a squint.
Caro took a deep breath.
“And it begins,” Chris whispered. They moved forward together, hand in hand.
As she stepped off the Eia’s boarding ramp, onto the planet below, she was glad the dress was green. The grass stains wouldn’t show as much. Still, she lifted the trailing fabric up. “I told you,” Chris said, seeing her slow down. “Today isn’t the day for fancy costumes.”
“You said nothing of the sort,” she replied. “You keep telling me I have to dress more fancy.”
“Oh no. I only intended to tell you. Forgot to actually say it.”
She hit Chris playfully on the nose, and he responded by taking hold of her wrist, holding her arm in front of her face.
“You need to be careful, missie,” he said, through a broad grin. “It’s a serious offence to strike your husband. Especially when he happens to be the king.”
She rolled her eyes. This was a breathtaking place. The Eia had landed in the middle of a huge valley. In every direction, eventually, the ground was walled by huge stone cliffs or forested hills. A flock of birds passed overhead, black dots on an azure sky. A warm breeze rushed at her and lovingly caressed her hair. Caro grinned. It felt like home.
No, it was home. All this was her domain, just as long as she could bring herself to share it with Chris. She gazed up into his eyes and saw him smiling there.
“Bend down,” she moaned. “I want to kiss you.” Chris crouched obligingly. Caro let herself melt into his embrace, his arms warm against the chill of the day’s breeze.
As she kissed him, she heard applause coming from behind her. “Do I get a kiss too?” asked Ian Fitzhenry. She’d known Ian since she was five and he was double that. Chris had known him longer. They’d all spent their childhoods roaming the village together, them and Armand and Tessa and the rest. Ian was her husband’s oldest friend, and his second-in-command.
Ian was going grey too. Unlike Chris, he’d done nothing to hide it. Nor was he a fan of dieting, based on the layer of puppy-fat covering his body. But then Ian had never been the muscular type, even in his teenage years.
He was the sort of man she could rely on, though. When she turned eighteen, she’d asked Chris out, and he’d turned her down. He was already courting Daniella Carrigan. Out of all of her friends, only Ian had given her a shoulder to cry on. Even her sister Tessa had ignored her, but not Ian. He sat with her in silence, and let her weep and blubber about how much of a fool she was and how she should have known that Chris could never love her, she was far too young, and anyway she didn’t know why she was telling Ian this—he was Chris’ friend, after all, not hers.
But he’d taken her side. “Chris is a fool,” he’d told her, “but he’ll see sense one day.” And he hadn’t said another word. She’d cried herself to sleep, and when she woke the following morning he’d gone. She’d kept expecting him to make a move on her, but he never did. She never saw Ian with a girl.
He’d been right, though. When Daniella Carrigan disappeared, Chris turned his eye to Caroline. And that made her the luckiest lady in all the worlds.
“Doctor Ballard!” Someone was shouting her name. A man was running down a gentle slope towards them, his face red and puffy. When he reached her, he stopped and bent down, hands on his knees, wheezing. “Doctor Ballard,” he said again, through gasping breaths. “We need you. Urgently.”
She glanced over at Chris. “What is it?” she asked the man.
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“Very bad injury. Lost a lot of blood.” He was still struggling to catch his breath. “Doctor Caerlin said to find you. She says it’s all she can do to keep him alive.”
“Whereabouts?”
The man closed his eyes, like he was dreading what he had to do next. Then he spoke. “With me,” he said, before turning around and running back up the slope. Even already tired out, he was faster than she was, and it was all she could do to keep pace. Damn this dress, too tight to let me run. And damn her need to look good for the big arrival. Next time I become First Lady of a new planet, I’m wearing slacks, she thought.
The Advanced Party’s camp was a fair trek away. Caro followed the soldier all the way to the crest of the hill, out of the valley entirely, and still they weren’t close. Away from the shelter provided by hills on all sides, there was a strong wind. It whipped at her hair and tented the back of her dress, and slowed her down considerably. She was glad when trees began to grow heavy. The trees broke the wind, and in their midst left a welcome calm.
“Why did you have to be so far away?” she asked, breathless, as she paused to rest on the rotting trunk of a wide tree.
The soldier looked with confusion at her. “We were first,” he said. “It’s you lot had to land all the way southward.” His name was Wilding, she learned, and he said every single word he spoke with the same dry monotone.
Eventually they came to a wide plateau, halfway up a craggy hill of grass and exposed rock. The Advanced Party’s small lander was there, resting firm against a pinnacle of sandy ochre. Around it, fledgling timber constructs had begun to pop up. They still made just a frame. The bulk of the camp’s walls were canvas sheets, hooked around the wooden frame and wedged in place by positioned boulders. It was very much a camp, and not a fortification.
Only one man was working on the timber build when she passed. He was a surly looking chap, with a caramel beard turning grey, and frown lines engraved in his forehead. He watched her as she approached, looking a mess with her face drenched in sweat and her hair now a mess, and licked his lips, before returning to his work.
“Through here,” said Wilding. They slipped through a crack in the tarpaulins, and into the camp. Inside, several men and women sat around a gently-burning fire. At one side of the camp, Caro saw Doctor Tema Caerlin. She recognised Tema from the pink bow that was always in her hair. The two had worked together for half a decade and in all that time Caro couldn’t ever remember seeing Tema without her bow—even when her hair hadn’t been nearly long enough to need it.
Tema was crouched down in a corner of the camp, next to a woman in an officer’s cap. Wilding led Caro to them, and as she approached she could hear the faint sounds of a man moaning in pain. “Stop it,” he said faintly. When he came into view, Caroline could see a syringe in his arm.
“I hope that’s only painkillers,” Caro said, and Tema Caerlin turned to face her.
“There’s not much more I can do for him,” Tema confirmed.
The woman next to Tema had a scowl on her face as she regarded Caro. She was barefoot, Caro noticed, unshod even though the floor of the camp was nothing but grass with some rugs and wooden sheets laid over it. “Who are you?”
“Doctor Caroline Ballard, Chief Doctor on the Eia,” Caro smiled. “And who am I addressing?”
“Bennett,” said the woman. “Lieutenant Anna Bennett. I’m surprised you found us. Is the Eia crewed by the blind? I took the time to find you a nice spot to land the thing, not too far away. Fired the beacons from there. Had a welcome party all arranged. Then you fly off over the horizon. How long was Wilding running?”
“A good hour or so,” said Wilding. “Though I did jog some of the way.”
Caro sighed. “Did you send for me because you needed assistance, or because you wanted to be a bitch?”
“I can talk as I please. I’m in charge of the Advanced Party.”
Caroline nodded, pretending to be enthusiastic. “Fantastic, Lieutenant. Now, can you go and be in charge of the Advanced Party somewhere else? I have a job to do.”
Lieutenant Bennett sniffed. “That’s no way to talk to an officer. I have rank, you know.”
“You do,” Caro agreed. “The rank of lieutenant. You just told me. But I’m Chief Doctor, and married to the Governor. Just a few steps higher, I think. Now stop wasting my time.”
With that, Lieutenant Bennett stropped off, muttering something about “upjumped harlots” not giving her the respect she deserves. Caro bent down and looked at the wounded man. His chest was unclothed, but covered entirely with either blood-soaked bandages or hairs matted with dried blood. There were one or two bandages on his head as well, and all manner of smaller cuts.
“I’ve patched him up just as well as I can,” Tema said, crouching beside her. “The stitches hold for a little while, but then they dissolve and he keeps bleeding. I’ve almost exhausted my supply. I don’t like to use what’s left, in case somebody else has an accident.”
“Use them,” Caro said. “There’s plenty more on the Eia.”
Tema nodded, and began rummaging around in a medical trunk on the ground next to the wounded man. The other man, Wilding, was still lurking behind them. “You,” she said, pointing a finger at him, “Wilding. Be a dear and run back to the Eia. Fetch two nurses from the hospital, and tell them the patient has multiple severe lacerations and needs urgent care. They’ll need coagulants, plasma, plenty of stitches—the durable ones. And a stretcher, if one can be found.”
“And opiates,” Tema added, not looking up from her trunk.
“Can you remember that?” Caro asked.
Wilding nodded. “I think so. Coagulants and plasma. Two lacerations, severe nurses. No, two nurses. Severe lacerations.”
Caro sighed. “Close enough,” she said. “Go.” She returned her attention to the wounded man. The last lot of anaesthetics were beginning to take effect. The man was silent. He seemed lost in a dream, his eyes sleepy. His brow was coated in sweat. She picked up a cloth from the floor and wiped the sweat off, and when she pulled the cloth away she saw there was blood on it as well.
She stood back as Tema began to stitch up one of the cuts. As she pierced the man’s skin with the needle, he began to laugh. “Stop it, mummy, it tickles.”
“Has he been like this long?” Caro asked.
Tema nodded. “Since we found him. We haven’t got a straight word out of him.”
“And when was it you found him?”
“The day after we got here. That was two weeks ago now, I think.”
Two weeks? How could he still be bleeding after two weeks? His blood should have clotted by now, the wounds patching together. If not, he should be dead. It was no wonder Tema was running low on supplies. She looked at the lad, looked at him closely. He was only young, twenty years old at most. And he was quite handsome beneath the bleeding. He had a chiselled jawline and chestnut hair.
“How did he end up like this?” she asked.
“Not a clue,” came a male voice. Caroline jumped. A man stood behind her, a young soldier, probably not far beyond his mid-twenties. He had thick black hair, worn short, and the beginnings of a beard growing on vaguely sallow skin. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to startle you. He’s not one of us. I found him in the woods over east.”
Caroline frowned. “He’s not one of you?”
The man shook his head. “A complete stranger. No idea where he came from.”
“That doesn’t tally. We’re the first ones here.”
“Apparently not.”
It didn’t make sense. The Unity had been very specific: the planet was further out than any man had visited before. Essegena had always been just one star among many. To get here from Belaboras, they’d had to go through the giant wall of gas that everybody called the Dead Zone. And even then they hadn’t been halfway here. Nobody could make it out this far alone.
Yet evidently somebody had.
Chris would definitely want to hear about this.
“Are you alright, Doctor?” The man was frowning at her. “Can I get you some water.”
She could still feel the sweat sticky on her forehead. “That would be nice,” she said, smiling. What would be the harm? The stranger was out for the count. There was nothing else to be done until Wilding had returned. That might take some time.
“I’m Macel,” said the man, handing her a flask. “Tema talks about you a lot.”
“Oh?”
Tema had flushed. Her nose was the first part of her to turn red, and the last to return to a normal colour. That was something Caro had often noticed about her. “Just old stories from when we worked together,” said Tema.
A square-jawed woman behind Macel butted in: “She says you’re the best boss she ever had.”
“Delie,” Tema complained, in a shrill voice.
Caro laughed. “Well, I’ll try to keep up the good work,” she said, taking a swig from the flask. She’d not realised how thirsty she was until she felt the water snaking down her throat.
She lowered the flask to see Lieutenant Anna Bennett striding towards her, arms swinging. “Thirty minutes you’ve been here,” she screeched, “and still you insist on ignoring me. I’m the commanding officer here. I will not be sidelined.”
Caro regarded her with narrowed eyes. “I was summoned here to deal with a medical situation. Until that’s settled, my priority is the patient.”
“Your priority should be my three missing soldiers,” Bennett hissed.
Caro raised an eyebrow. “Missing soldiers?”
Tema coughed. “Jem’s not the only bit of news,” she said, a touch sheepishly.
“Jem?”
“Three people are missing,” Bennett shouted. “Why haven’t you found them?”
Caro was on the brink of saying something rude, but bit her tongue. “Military concerns are not my area,” she said. “As the commanding officer, Lieutenant, I would have thought you’d have the situation well in hand.”
Lieutenant Bennett bristled. “I’ve taken steps to organise the search.”
“Good,” Caro nodded. “Then I won’t get in your way.” She turned her back on Lieutenant Bennett. “Is this Jem?” she asked, gesturing at the wounded stranger.
“It’s not his proper name,” Tema explained. “He’s not told us that. But I wanted to give him an identity. It makes him feel more like a person.”
“Everybody has to have an identity,” Caro agreed. She thought of the little slate headstone in that Borrowood churchyard, standing without a name on freshly-placed dirt. The poor little girl had never had an identity, had never lived, and in death there was nothing for her to latch onto. The slate headstone had been taken away after the week, and the dirt overgrown by creeping plants, and Caro’s memory alone was testament to the child interred there.
It was dark by the time Wilding returned. Tema had finished one set of stitches and was moving on to another, and Jem was still unconscious. It was for the best. Moving him to the hospital aboard the Eia was going to be difficult. The lower his heart rate was for the journey, the better—especially given the amount of injuries he had that seemed to be immune to clotting.
Wilding had brought two nurses with him, as instructed. He’d picked well. Many of the nurses on the staff were youngsters with little or no experience, young enough not to be tied to their homeworlds. Not the two he’d brought. Lily Day had spent the best part of fifteen years working in hospitals on Arvila. Frances Dunn had been doing the rounds on Tol Manase for twice as long. Both wore standard uniform, white tunics with lilac trims and skirts, and the mark of Iscané the Healer embroidered on the breast. Lily’s tunic, and the white stockings beneath, had been tinged green—the telltale grass-stains of a tumble. She had her hair braided into a heavy copper ponytail, pulled forward to hang in front of her. This had survived whatever mishap had befallen her.
Fran had a fold-out stretcher tucked beneath her arm. “As soon as this stitch is in place, we’ll transfer him to the stretcher,” Caro said. Fran took the hint and immediately began to unfold it. Lily, curiously, was empty-handed. “Where are the supplies I asked for?”
Lily looked blankly at Caro. “What supplies?”
“I knew there was something.” Wilding had his hands over his face. “All I could remember was the stretcher.”
Caro glared at him. “A man’s life is at stake here,” she barked. “Is it that hard to remember a few simple things?”
Wilding shrank back, apologising, and sped off to join his mates by the campfire. Caro sighed. She was hoping she could get the situation stabilised here for at least the time being. The patient not being one of the Advanced Party made things more complicated than she cared for. Who could say what diseases he’d been exposed to? If they’d found him looking perfectly healthy, there’d have been a period of due diligence before he was allowed to set foot on the ship. The state he was in, there was no time for quarantine.
“Should I run and fetch some coagulants, Ma’am?” Lily asked, pushing her braided hair back behind her shoulder. Caro shook her head.
“No. Don’t waste your energy.” It was time for her to make a decision, and there was really only one option her conscience could stomach. Chris wouldn’t like it, she was sure of that. The rest of the Foundational Council would like it even less. But it was the right thing to do. “We need to get him onto the ship. Help me load him onto the stretcher.”
It took five of them to lift him safely. None of the women were winning contests of strength, so Macel offered his services. Between them, they were just about able to get the poor man onto the stretcher. For a second, he stirred, and Caro worried that he might start to panic. But it was clear he was delirious. “The white tower’s fallen,” he muttered, as they lowered him down gently onto the stretcher. “Don’t let the dead men kill us, mummy.” Lily was wide-eyed at his words, but Caro reminded her that it was just a fever dream or something. There were no dead men walking among them.
Not yet, anyway, she thought, darkly. She couldn’t shake the feeling that this man might be a lost cause. It was just a gut instinct, and it had been wrong many times in the past.
But then she remembered a dream she’d had, and it brought her to tears.