Preview of CROSS//Process #2
“No! No no no!” Caramine could only watch as her oldest child, her only son, was dragged toward the barbarian at the front of the cellar, a cloth full of their silencing poison in her free hand. “Give him back! Give me back my son! Somebody, do something!”
Except nobody moved, not even the farmhands that had lived with the Montrael family since even before Lady Caramine met her husband. Nobody would ever move, either, as long as the young mercenary had that weapon in her possession.
What happened next Sulim would later never recall without feeling that immense sense of dread.
Caramine grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back, exposing her youth and the fa?ade she hid behind.
“Here!” she called. “Take her!” Caramine shoved Sulim through the crowd of farmhands and offered her up on a dirt-laden platter to the barbarian.
Sulim fell to her knees. Whatever Caramine intended seemed to work, however, for the rope stopped dragging Fel. The mercenary looked down at Sulim. “The fuck, lady?”
“Take her! She’s not even mine! She’s young—she’s seventeen! Older than my son, who’s still a boy! Take her if you have to take somebody! Just not my son!”
“Sorry, lady, this is a business and we already got girls. Gotta keep it even.” The woman yanked on the rope once more.
“No! My son is useless to you! He can’t even tie his own trousers! Sulim has the greatest aim and is the smartest one in the family! She’s fast too!”
I’ve become a horse up for sale. Sulim groaned in agony. She was still in too much shock to properly respond or plead for her own life. I’m her niece, and she treats me like livestock.
The only sound was Caramine’s hurried panting. The rope fell to the ground before Sulim’s head was yanked up again, this time with the help of a gloved hand that left burns on her cheeks.
The cellar was too dark for Sulim to see the woman who had her, but she could feel the eyes staring into her face and the brain calculating her worth. There was enough sunlight coming from overhead to show off Sulim’s youthful complexion and hair.
It was enough.
Caramine sobbed in relief as Fel was released and he crawled back to her waiting arms. Nobody sobbed for Sulim, however, when her chin was thrown down and her left arm jerked toward the cellar staircase.
“Let’s go,” the other woman said. “Your family don’t want you anyway.”
Sulim felt the first of many hot tears stream down her face as she finally found her voice. “No, Aunt Caramine!” she pleaded as the mercenary grabbed her by the shirt and hauled her up the first step. “Aunt Caramine, please!”
The only look her aunt gave her was scorn, her son weeping into her chest.
Just as quickly as they came the tears stopped, and Sulim was outside. She ceased fighting her kidnapper. The betrayal was still too overwhelming.
“Holy Void, that sucks for you,” the woman beside her said. “I’ve never had that happen to me before in all my years of taking recruits.”
Sulim swung her head around and stared the woman in the face.
She was instantly surprised to see that it was no grown woman at all, but a girl barely her age.
She had muscles up and down her arms, yes, but her face was smooth and her skin an unblemished olive tone.
Under layers of silver mail and black clothing strode a thin body built for speed and dexterity, not strength.
And on her head was hardly any hair, only a close-cut layer of black fuzz that must have made Aunt Caramine gag.
“Please…” was all Sulim could say. “This is my home.”
“Trust me, it ain’t your home anymore. Look around and say goodbye.” The gun was in Sulim’s side now as if to reiterate that point. “And you ain’t alone. My partner got some of your friends from the other cellar.”
Eyne and Manda. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“Don’t give me a reason to. Come peacefully. Our ship is only a half-mile away.”
Sulim’s body was too limp for the journey. She collapsed into the grass—my family’s grass—and plastered herself against the soil—the soil my food comes from—and willed herself away from Qahrain and the aunt who sold her for a boy who wet himself.
My mother, my real mother would never have. She would have protected me. My father would have killed them, I know it. I want to go back, I want to go back, I want I want I want…
The mercenary called for help when it was clear Sulim was as good as out in her grief.
Another girl strode across the grass and laughed when she saw Sulim’s state.
“Ha! It ain’t a good raid unless you’ve got a girl with you, ain’t it, Cairn?”
The last thing Sulim remembered was collapsing into Cairn’s arms from the drug-soaked cloth covering her face.
The day before Sulim and Eyne were to depart for their first mission, they were encouraged to say goodbye to their colleagues. At the very least, they should let them know what was happening, in case someone did not come back.
Sulim, who had not been in the stables since Dura’s death, found a moment to discover Sonall on his way back from the smithy. He carried a stack of freshly made horseshoes that looked like they had only been cool long enough for human transport.
“Good luck,” he told Sulim. “I know you can take care of yourself. You’ve kicked my ass in the training yard enough times now.”
That drew a small chuckle out of her. “Don’t go out on your first mission before I come back.”
“Don’t think I’m going anywhere in the next month.”
“How long do you think I’ll be gone?”
He shrugged. That was that.
Anyone else Sulim wanted to say goodbye to was already in her dorm and knew about the mission.
They stopped by her room instead, offering last-minute advice and the chance to buy her a celebratory drink when she and Eyne returned.
Kila was the only one who glibly said, “If you come back,” which earned her a sock in the arm from Giselle.
Cairn was nowhere in sight. She had been scarce in the short time since Sulim had been called to the chief’s chambers, where things were grim until someone intervened.
I haven’t had the chance to thank her. Sulim had searched for her since then, but the most she saw of her was as a shadowy figure on the edge of the training yard.
At least she was alive. Wincing from the wind touching her face, but alive.
For the first time in much too long, Sulim went down to the inner sanctum, where she remembered Cairn’s tributes before she went off on a mission.
Sulim had her own lighter now. While other girls used theirs for smoking, Sulim was more practical—and judicious—in using her lighter. Such as now, when she offered a votive to the High Priestess, the woman who serenely looked upon her children as if they did no wrong.
The few other people in the sanctum left her alone.
One man kneeled before the statue, praying for as long as Sulim was there.
A young couple practiced a quiet ritual with the shrine to some other god Sulim did not acknowledge.
Who am I to say what is real and what isn’t?
There were far-flung cultures that did not know about the Void.
Not until the Federation arrived to tell them the Good News.
Many of those planets did not release their old beliefs.
Neither did Sulim. There were things she still believed, almost a whole year after coming to Cerilyn.
She believed in the potential goodness in people, and she believed that simply “sending them back to the Void” was a terrible way to rationalize murder. I believe one person can be trapped between both beliefs as well.
She continued to think of Cairn. That woman often haunted her thoughts. A truth that only became truer the longer Sulim was on Cerilyn.
When she gazed back up at the High Priestess, she saw the unmistakable similarity Cairn had mentioned before.
Funny. Two women who couldn’t be less alike.
Sulim didn’t know much about the High Priestess’s mortal life before her Ascension, but she assumed that such a figure wasn’t a killer with such a blasé attitude toward murder and assassination.
The High Priestess may be there to accept all souls that came to the Void, but it was a serious position for her to embrace. Cairn was… well…
Sulim couldn’t shake any of it out of her head.
I want to say goodbye. She thought that as she wandered out of the sanctuary and back to her dormitory.
Raucous laughter filtered from the bathroom as Lessi opened the door and entered, towel wrapped around her torso.
Sulim overheard Eyne’s voice within. She didn’t hear Cairn’s, not that such a girl often raised her voice over anyone else’s.
Maybe it meant Kila wasn’t in their room.
Sulim lightly knocked on the door. Movement occurred on the other side. Within a few seconds, Cairn’s face appeared in the half-opened doorway.
“What is it?”
Anything Sulim had prepared to say immediately emptied from her brain. “I… I came to say goodbye. I’m leaving tomorrow. Can I come in?”
At first, she assumed Cairn was shutting the door in her face. Then it opened enough for Sulim to enter, Cairn returning to her task of folding her laundry and placing what pieces of clothing she owned in their proper places.
“Shut the door.” Cairn slammed shut one of her drawers. “I don’t need Silva or someone else seeing you in here.”
It wasn’t until they shared the same small space that Sulim witnessed the results of the other night. As soon as Cairn turned around, she noticed the eyepatch. A purple bruise ringed the black patch.
“Don’t stare at it.” Cairn winced as she sat down, socks folding across her lap. The way she favored her arm did not make Sulim feel any better. “Yes, the chief did it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Cairn slammed the socks on top of her clean pants. “It’s not your fault.”
“You wouldn’t have done that if it weren’t for me.”
“Nobody deserves that crap. At least I know how to handle it.”
“Do you mean that?”
Sulim didn’t know to what she referred. It didn’t matter. Cairn wasn’t answering.
“The way you talked to her… you were seducing her.”
Cairn shook her head. The eyepatch was only more obvious when she did that. “That’s what I wanted her to think, for sure. Trust me, I have no love for that woman. She’s a monster.”