“Seriah, you’re awake!” Ren said from the foot of the unfamiliar bed that she lay in.
“What? Who’s awake?” Daria croaked.
She blinked and tried to clear her eyes of the crust that had gummed them shut. One eye opened at the expense of a few eyelashes. Ren’s golden eyes were reddened and swollen and his sandy hair was still matted with pond scum, but the sight of him alive and safe made her smile anyhow.
“Miss!” Rickard’s angular face hovered inches above hers. “Pray attend to what your cousin Olwyn has to tell you.” His head jerked in Ren’s direction. “He’ll explain everything.”
“You’re going to be okay, Serry,” Ren said as he replaced Rickard in the chair by her head.
“I can’t be found here, Miss. But should you ever need anything, know that I am always at your service.” Rickard turned misty eyes away from her, towards Ren. “You’ll smuggle her out tonight.”
“Of course. I have it all arranged.”
Daria closed her eyes again. “So, tell me about this plan. . .Olywn.”
“Yes, that’s right! I was afraid you weren’t quite awake enough. I’m Olywn and you’re Seriah, and we’re cousins…” Ren said in an excited rush.
“Convenient, since we are actually cousins,” Daria muttered to herself.
“I have the most amazing fake idents that money can buy and a plain two-seater that we can drive to Seawall.”
“Seawall?” Daria asked, her stomach churning again.
“As soon as we get there, you can go back to being yourself,” Ren explained.
“And marry Jerome of Seawall?” She opened her eyes to stare at him.
“Exactly!”
“No.”
“But Serry…”
“That is the worst nickname ever, by the way. I hate it.”
“Jerome has wanted to marry you forever. He’s just been waiting for you to come of age.” Ren didn’t flinch under her unending glare.
“Because he thinks that if he’s married to Brundt, my father will push through his proposal to make Seawall a full province instead of remaining a protectorate. Jerome wants the Warlord title to go with his ambitions.”
“But you’d be safe, Serry.”
“You have an odd definition of safe,” Daria replied as she stared up at the plain concrete ceiling above her hospital bed. She listened to the various equipment beeping for a moment, then sighed.
Ren was smart, loyal, and her best friend. They’d grown up together, but he hadn’t paid much attention to politics. She had every faith that he would learn, and quickly.
“Seawall’s a long way away,” Ren countered. “It would take a lot of work to try to drown you in a pond there.” His olive face flushed a little under her continuing stare-down. “Or whatever.”
“Look. If I marry Jerome then everyone, including Jerome, is going to think that Jerome is in line to be the new heir. My father can name anyone he likes heir, after all. He could make you his heir.”
“Ancestors forbid!”
“But he hasn’t, because he hasn’t wanted to put anyone else in the queue to be assassinated. But anybody married to his sole surviving daughter jumps right to the front of the queue of possible heirs.”
“Then why did Quentin kill Miriam? Wouldn’t keeping her alive have been a better strategy?”
“Do you really think Quentin would have been Warlord if Miriam was alive? Miriam would have made the best warlord ever. Her only mistake was believing Quentin when he pretended to love her.” Tears leaked down her face, wetting her hair and the thin pillowcase.
“Ah.” Ren’s expression sank as his thoughts caught up with the full situation at hand. “And so he killed Miriam in the hopes of marrying you because he thought you’d be more easily managed.”
“Exactly,” she replied, struggling to keep her tone flat.
“Dar, how dare you!” Ren said in an angry whisper. “You are every bit as fierce as Miriam was. You’d make a great warlord if only you’d stand up and do it.
Your father is going to pieces right before everybody’s eyes. It’s just a matter of time before someone does him in, and then where will we be? Full-on civil war in Brundt! You think I don’t understand anything? I understand more than you know.”
“Reny…” Wistfulness choked her. He cut her off with a new torrent of words.
“But you won’t, will you? You don’t want to be Brundt. You’ve always said so. But then you wouldn’t marry Quentin to make him warlord.” Ren held up his hands. “I know. I know. He’s a snake, but he would make an okay warlord. And he wouldn’t want to kill you if you were married to him and providing him with fancy high-Tweak heirs.”
“Brundt deserves better than Quentin. And I deserve a better life than being an elite broodmare, wanted only for my expensive designer genes and family connection.”
“Look. It would be in Jerome’s best interest to keep you alive. We can help him build up Seawall enough to keep us all alive in the long term.” Ren’s expression hardened. “Jerome also wouldn’t make the worst Warlord of Brundt, if you won’t do it. Better than Quentin!”
“Where am I?” Daria asked suddenly.
Between the med drip and the conversation, she was feeling something like alive again. She checked out her surroundings. The stark concrete walls and plain medbed were unfamiliar.
“It was Rickard’s idea,” Ren said with a shrug. “We’re in the enlisted soldiers’ infirmary. Between the fake ID, Rickard’s influence, and the fact that your father never let anyone see you, everybody here thinks that you’re someone named Seriah, come to enlist in the P3s after you lost your family in some hill country brawl.”
“My Tweak is pretty special to have been bought by some hill country minor noble house,” Daria said, holding up her albino-pale hands for his inspection.
Ren shrugged. “Minor families often dump a ton of money getting their kids Tweaked all fancy in the hopes of them marrying up. Good genes…”
“…make the bloodline shine,” they finished together.
“Fine. Then that’s just what we’ll do.” Seriah gave Ren, now Olwyn, her best grin.
“If you feel up to it, we’ll slip down the service elevator and head to Seawall tonight.”
“No, silly. We’re Seriah and Olwyn, the last vestiges of some minor hill country noble house, come to enlist in the P3s. Do you think you can learn to fly a plane?”
“Not really.”
“That’s the spirit. I’ll fly. You can be my gunner.”
“Daria, be sensible!”
“Seriah,” she reminded him, taking in his horrified expression with a grin. “What’s more sensible than hiding in plain sight?”
Continue to part 3 here
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