M9B Friday Reveal & Giveaway ~ BLOOD ROAD by Amanda McCrina

Today Amanda McCrina and Month9Books are revealing the cover and first chapter for BLOOD ROAD which releases April 25, 2017! Check out the gorgeous cover and enter to be one of the first readers to receive a eGalley!!

A quick note from the author:

The funny thing about historical fiction—or historical fantasy, in this case—is that it often reveals more about the present than it does about the past. It provides a lens through which we can understand and contextualize our own experiences. BLOOD ROAD is a tribute to my love of Roman history, but it’s also very much a product of its time. It’s a story about corruption and injustice and empire and a young soldier who stands up and resists, and writing it gave me the opportunity to ask hard questions about my own present and the part I play.

BLOOD ROAD

Author: Amanda McCrina

Pub. Date: April 25, 2017

Publisher: Month9Books

Format: Paperback, eBook

Pages: 329

Find it: 

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Book Depository

Nineteen-year-old Torien Risto has seen dissidents dealt with before. He knows the young local girl who just knifed him will hang for assaulting an Imperial officer, unless he can stop it.

Someone inside the provincial government is kidnapping Imperial citizens and selling them across the desert to the salt mines, silencing anyone who tries to intervene. The girl’s brother is one of those who has been taken. Rejected by the corrupt courts, she’s waging a personal war against the Empire.

Determined to save her life, Torien sets out in search of answers on the Salt Road, the ancient trade route running deep into the heart of a desert—territory claimed by the hostile Mayaso tribe.

Now, Torien is no longer sure where his own loyalty lies, or how far he will go to break the cycle of tyranny, political bullying, and social injustice in an empire that seals its borders in blood.

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

He could see the sky in pieces between the tenements, bruised purple now with dusk.

At first he was glad for the darkness, because it meant they would be firing the beacon in the lighthouse at the point. He leaned on his saddle-horns, craning his neck to look down the narrow cross streets, trying to catch a glimpse of the great light burning in the distance. By means of the lighthouse he could reorient himself. But the cross streets twisted away into deep shadow between the tenement blocks, and there was the irksome thought at the back of his mind that if they had wandered so far into the city as not see the lighthouse, then they had wandered so far as to be where Imperial control was more a matter of theory than practice—at least at night.

Earlier, when the young summer sun was glaring white in a blue- glaze sky and the air under the awnings still and close and hot enough one could feel one’s skin baking in it—the tenements shut out the harbor breeze—the streets had seethed with people: sellers of figs and dates and pomegranates and honeyed almonds and goats’ milk and flavored ices and sour wine; and potters and silversmiths and leatherworkers and basket-weavers at their shopfronts; and housewives browsing the market stalls; and slave girls with water in sloshing panniers over their shoulders; and naked children playing sticks-andhoops along the foot-stones; and now and then a mounted official in white linen, shouting and swearing until the crowd shuffled aside to let him pass. Now in darkness they were alone in the street. It was as though the rest of the city had died with the sun. The air was dry and rapidly cooling, heavy with silence like a bated breath. He would not mind the darkness if not for the silence. In a city such silence was unnatural.

“Do you suppose they’ll look for us?” Alluin said. “Or just wait until our bodies turn up in an alley in a week or so?”

“I imagine they’ll expend the effort for me, if they wouldn’t otherwise trouble about you.”

“So there is some benefit to your acquaintance, after all.”

“If not for my acquaintance, you’d be just finishing the first course at the officers’ dinner.”

It had been his idea to explore the city. Alluin was city-born and indifferent—all cities were the same when you got down to it; there came a point when unwashed bodies and stray dogs and bad wine in dirty shops ceased to be as interesting as bed. But he, Torien, still had 3 Blood Road a provincial awe of big cities—an itching, impatient need to see and hear and know. He had been determined not to idle away his time in Modigne behind the fort walls. True that he and Alluin had no more than a smattering of bastardized Modigno between them, and that Modigne was a rabbit’s warren of nameless, ancient streets, built and overbuilt in incongruous layers—in daylight that had seemed far less important than it did now. In daylight it had been enough to know he was an officer of the Imperial army, and a Vareno nobleman, with sufficient coin on his person for any foreseeable difficulty and a sword at his hip in the event his coin should fail. It was remarkable how in darkness one saw things more clearly.

Certain things, anyway—other things than the way back to the fort or the direction of the harbor light.

The street, so narrow now that Alluin had to rein in his horse and fall in behind, plunged into a honeycomb of tight-packed adobe huts, each no wider than the span of Torien’s arms, joined to its neighbors by rickety wooden ladders running an uneven line from flat rooftop to flat rooftop. He took the downward slant for a good sign: he knew, from studying the maps on the wall of the headquarters at the fort, that Modigne, built as it was along a volcanic crater, went down to the ocean like the insides of a bowl, and so for the street to be sloping downward meant it must be working its way however haphazardly to the harbor.

He leaned on the saddle-horns, lifting himself a little to see if he could pick out the lighthouse below.

There was a rustle on the rooftop above. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a darker shadow take shape against the darkness. He recognized the glint of metal in time to jerk around in his saddle, hauling on the reins as he turned. He took the blade in the back of his left shoulder rather than in his throat.

He had braced for it and did not slip from the saddle, though for a moment he thought he might: his knees, pressed against the horse’s ribs, went as weak as water. He lost the reins from his left hand. Above him, he heard very clearly the patter of footsteps as the knifeman fled across the rooftop for the nearest ladder. Just as clearly, he heard the thin cry and the muffled thump as the knifeman lost his footing on the ladder and fell back to the roof.

Silence followed.

Torien brushed away Alluin’s hand and propped his right shoulder against the wall. He nodded to the hut. “Bring him,” he said—calmly, though his heart was pounding. “That fall won’t have killed him.”

He saw Alluin’s face as a pale blur in the darkness. “Tor—”

“It’s nothing. It’ll wait. Our friend won’t.”

In truth, his knees were still trembling, and he was speaking through clenched teeth because he knew if he unclenched them they would chatter. There was blood seeping through his tunic and jerkin, and he was conscious, as he hadn’t been at first, of the knife blade sunk to its hilt just beyond the cuff of his shoulder. His body was revolting against the thought, sickness threatening in the pit of his stomach.

Lamplight blossomed inside the hut. Low voices filtered out through the reed curtain in the doorway. Torien dipped his chin again, with effort. Alluin swore and swung from his saddle and drew his sword. He pushed into the hut through the curtain, and Torien heard him issuing orders in a clumsy hybrid of Modigno and Vareno—heard the crash of pottery breaking, the scrape of wood dragging across stone, a child’s whimper. A moment later, Alluin’s head and shoulders and sword hand emerged above him from inside the hut. Alluin pushed himself up on his hands from the opening, landing lightly on his feet on the roof. Picking up his sword, he vanished beyond the roof edge.

Torien leaned carefully back against the wall. He glanced down the street. There were no other doorways lit, no other sound than the clatter of Alluin’s hobnailed boots on the rooftop above. In Choiro, there would have been a crowd by now. Modigne lay as still and silent as a plague city.

Alluin reappeared at the roof edge. He had sheathed his sword. He was handling the knifeman along by the shoulders—no, not a man, Torien thought, certainly a boy: he came barely to Alluin’s chest. His arms and legs, silhouetted black against the sky, were thin, stick-like things around which his tunic fluttered shapelessly.

Torien pushed up from the wall and gathered himself together and dismounted. The ground was springy under his feet. He wavered for a moment as his heels touched, swallowing back the sickness. There was a ringing in his ears. He blinked in the sudden brightness of lamplight as Alluin flung aside the curtain in the doorway and shoved the boy before him out into the street. Behind him the hut’s occupants—a man and a woman and an assortment of half-dressed children—gathered silently in the doorway to watch.

The boy had stumbled and fallen in a heap of skinny limbs and wool rags. He caught himself on his palms. He adjusted the cap on his head and sat back awkwardly, keeping his knobby legs to the side. In the dim light, Torien could see enough to know the left ankle was broken. There was blood dribbling from the boy’s nose, and he was sucking breath low and softly through his teeth. His eyes darted over Torien’s face, lingering for a moment at Torien’s shoulder. He looked quickly to the ground. He was, Torien judged, eleven or perhaps twelve—not yet old enough to face execution for an assault upon an Imperial soldier. He would go to a slaver’s block instead. There would be an examination to determine the guilt of his family.

He caught Alluin’s eye and jerked his chin to the sullen family in the doorway. “Wine if they have it. Water otherwise—and something passable for bandage cloth.” The pain had started, and he was leaning into his horse’s shoulder for balance.

The woman in the doorway said something in Modigno. He recognized the word for wine. He said, “What did she say?” Alluin’s Modigno was bad, but better than his own.

“They have wine, but it’s for a wedding,” Alluin said, “for her sister’s wedding—I think.”

He was irritated and impatient now. “Water, then. Tell them I’d have paid for wine.”

Alluin stood at his shoulder and unbuckled his cuirass while the woman went into the hut. “Do you want to do this inside?” he said. His voice was quiet.

“Not until I know he acted alone.” Torien nodded to the boy, who had sat motionless all this while, studying the ground as though he were reading something written there. “You. You speak Vareno?”

The boy looked up incuriously into Torien’s face. He had determined not to speak: Torien could see as much from the set of his mouth, the hollowness of his eyes. His thin brown hands were clenched to fists on his lap.

From the doorway, the man spoke up in rapid Modigno.

“He’s reconsidered about the wine?” Torien said. The shoulder was hurting fiercely.

“He says he knows her family,” Alluin said.

“Whose family?” There was a moment’s silence in which he suddenly understood.

“A girl,” he said, stupidly. “He says he knows her family and will tell us where she lives,” Alluin said.

“Also, he would appreciate very much his lord’s kindness if his lord would consider a pittance in return for the service.”

The girl flung up her head suddenly to spit at the man’s feet. The man seemed embarrassed. He hunched his shoulders and looked at his hands. The woman came out from the hut with a water jug and a cloth. She held them out to Alluin at arm’s length, making a quick, nervous gesture with her hands. Alluin shook his head. “Hold them. Quedas—hold them, you understand?”

“Give them to me,” Torien said.

“Don’t give them to him,” Alluin said. “He’ll drop them when I do this.”

He jerked the knife from Torien’s shoulder. Torien folded to his knees. The street swam around him. He heard Alluin’s voice as though it were carrying to him underwater. He shook his head. Alluin was prying the cuirass from his shoulder and tugging the jerkin down his arm. The night air through his blood-soaked tunic was sharp and cold; he shivered. The girl’s eyes were on him. She was watching with the same flat-eyed incuriosity. There was blood trickling over her lips from her nose, but she made no move to wipe it away.

“Her ankle,” Torien said. For some reason, her silence shamed him.

Far above him Alluin said, patiently, “What?”

“Tie up her ankle. And tell the Modigno he can show us where she lives, because I don’t trust the word of a coward.”

****

The Modigno walked ahead, self-consciously, shoulders still hunched in embarrassment. Alluin followed on foot, leading his horse by the reins. The girl huddled in his saddle with her hands outstretched to the horns, her face buried in the horse’s mane, her bare legs dangling limp against the horse’s belly. Torien rode at the rear. The street, which turned this way and that through the honeycombed huts, ran steadily downhill all the while, and he knew they must be close to the water because there was a stiff salt breeze rising to his face. It cut through his soaked tunic like a knife. His fingers were numb on the reins. He had knotted them in the horse’s mane to keep himself upright in the saddle.

He could have ordered the Modigno to show them instead to the harbor light, of course, or to the fort itself, and they could have delivered the girl into the prison on the hill, and very soon now he might have been enjoying the comfort of his own quarters and a skin of wine to ease the pain in his shoulder—but it might easily be a month before the girl’s case went to the governor, and he was due to report at Tasso in a week, and he had too many questions of his own to let it go like that.

Only after they had gone on for near half an hour, the adobe huts having given way to ramshackle wooden shanties and the street sunk in soft, rank mud, the air heavy with the smell of brine and rotten fish, did it occur to him that most likely the Modigno had no idea about the girl’s family and no idea where she lived—had grasped for the chance to make a quick coin and come away with more than he had bargained for, and was looking for the opportunity to dart down an alley and vanish into the night.

He had opened his mouth to say this to Alluin when the Modigno swung about suddenly and said something in his own tongue, gesturing with his hands. The shanty at his back was threesided, sheltered from the street by a tattered sailcloth curtain, unlit.

“He says it’s here,” Alluin said.

The girl shifted in Alluin’s saddle. A shudder ran through her shoulders, but she did not raise her head.

“Tell him to lift the curtain,” Torien said. He was cold and aching and the Modigno was a fool, but that was no reason to abandon caution.

The Modigno lifted the curtain. The shanty was empty. There was a fire pit dug in the bare-dirt floor, but the coals were dead.

The Modigno spoke very quickly in his own tongue, his eyes going from Alluin to Torien and back again.

“He seems to think we think he’s lied,” Alluin said. “He wants us to ask the girl.”

“Tell him the girl’s our concern.” Torien dismounted, cradling his left arm against his stomach. He was too tired for anger. Anyway, it was pointless to threaten reprisals: they would not find him again if they tried. He fumbled at his belt and withdrew a bronze from his wallet. He flicked the coin in the Modigno’s direction. “Bayas—go.”

The Modigno dropped to his heels to dig out the coin from the mud. He made a mockery of a bow as he straightened: it had occurred to him that they had been essentially at his mercy. His shoulders were straight as he walked away back up the street.

Alluin pulled the girl down from his saddle by the waist and held her before him, as easily as though she were made of straw. “I’ll have a look around. The harbor can’t be far.”

“No. We can spend the night here.”

“That shoulder needs more than water, Tor, and sooner is better. Though I appreciate your faith in my medical ability.”

“I don’t like the idea of splitting up. It won’t do my shoulder any good if you end up in the harbor with your throat cut. And I couldn’t drag myself back into a saddle right now if I wanted to.”

Alluin was silent, studying him. He had the girl’s shoulder in one hand, his reins in the other. He let go the girl’s shoulder, reluctantly. “Adienta—inside,” he said. And to Torien: “I’ll see to the horses.”

Weak moonlight filtered through the roof of the shanty, which was nothing more than a reed lattice tied down with leather strips. The girl sat down against the left-hand wall, stretching her bad leg straight before her. She watched silently and unmoving while Torien crouched on his heels at the fire pit and searched one-handed through the ashes for salvageable tinder. By the time he had built up a decent pile, and had found flint and iron to strike a light, Alluin had ducked in from the street with a saddle on each arm.

“I’d have done it if you’d waited,” he said. He deposited Torien’s saddle against the right-hand wall and sat down with his own against the rear wall.

Torien unbuckled his helmet and leaned his head back against the wall. He sat with the helmet on his lap, his eyes closed. Beyond the crackling of the fire and the rattling of the lattice in the salt breeze, the silence stretched vast and hostile. “If you speak,” he said, “it goes better for you.” He opened his eyes and looked at the girl across the fire pit. In the firelight, he could see the details of her bony bronze face. She was older than he had thought at first—older than he’d thought when he’d thought her a boy. It was possible she was fifteen. The smallness of her limbs and the sunkenness of her cheeks made it hard to tell. She was looking into the flame in silence, her eyes halfclosed, her face magnificently blank, but he knew she had heard and had taken his general meaning by the way her shoulders tightened against the wall. “Tell me if there were others,” he said. “Tell me how many.”

When she said nothing, he said to Alluin, “In Modigno. Tell her if she doesn’t answer to us now, she’ll answer to the governor in court—she and her family.”

The girl jerked her chin, suddenly. “No others,” she said. “I understand what you say.” Her eyes came up to his. Her voice was low but hard. “I do it alone. No family. The cobarte he lies when he brings you. No family. He says it because he wants your coin.”

 “Why did you do it?”

She turned her face back to the fire.

“Answer me,” Torien said.

“I go to the slavers anyway,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if I answer you.”

“Possibly you’ll go to the slavers. Possibly they’ll decide you’re old enough to face execution. My word means a great deal, either way.”

“I do not care,” she said.

“My word can spare you an examination.”

“I do not care.”

He glanced over to Alluin, who shrugged very slightly against the wall. Torien could sense his discomfort in his silence. He looked back at the girl. “Speak now and I’ll listen,” he said. “Come tomorrow in the city prison, it’ll be too late.”

She said nothing. He saw there was no use in it. He said to Alluin, “We’d better set a watch.”

“I’ll watch,” Alluin said. He seemed thankful for something to do.

“I’ll take it over in a few hours,” Torien said. “Wake me if you need to.”

He did not sleep. He lay against his saddle, carefully still on account of the shoulder, watching the sky through the cracks in the lattice and waiting for sleep to come, but his mind was moving on and on through the streets of Modigne, and in the silence he was restless. At length, he got up. The fire had died to embers. Across the room, the girl was huddled shapeless in the darkness. He could not tell if she was asleep. He went over to the doorway, where Alluin sat cross-legged against the corner post. “You sleep,” he said. “I can’t.”

“Your shoulder?” Alluin’s voice was tight. “You should have let me go for help, Tor.”

“It’s fine. It’s just that I can’t sleep and you might as well.”

“Next time you’ll listen to me. Next time when I say I can see enough of Modigne from the fort walls, and you say—”

“You talk like you’re the one who took the knife.”

“That’s the difference between us,” Alluin said. “I don’t have to take a knife in my back before I recognize a bad idea.”

Torien sat with his back against the post, his sword unsheathed across his lap. Through the gap between the post and the curtain, he could see the horses and the moonlit street beyond. He watched a cat come noiselessly down the street. It saw him as it approached the shanty, and it paused and watched him and went on again when it decided he was no threat. Behind him, in the shanty, Alluin was breathing long and steadily in his sleep. It was perhaps midnight or a little past. He heard a noise like a muffled laugh or a cough, and he started, fingers seizing instinctively on his sword grip. At his movement, the noise stopped. Across the room, the girl was struggling to hold herself still against the wall. Her shoulders shook with trapped sobs.

He pulled himself up to his feet, supporting himself on the sword. He crossed the room to her. She heard him approaching and drew herself stiffly up, but she did not raise her head. He knelt beside her. In the moonlight through the lattice, he could see the tear streaks on her cheeks. Leaning on the sword, he said, quietly, “Tell me why you did it.”

Another tremor ran through her shoulders. She bit her lip. Alluin’s untroubled breathing was loud in the silence.

“Give me the truth and I may be able to help you.”

She shook her head, once, sharply, her eyes squeezed shut. “You lie. I know you lie.”

“I don’t lie.”

“All Vareni lie. I know this.”

“Maybe. But I’m Cesino blood through my father’s line.”

“Then to your people you are a traitor.”

She said it flatly, without interest, as though it were as obvious as the weather, and he understood the absurdity of trying to explain to her, in that moment, how one could feel loyalty to homeland and to empire without hypocrisy. He said, instead, “I’m trying to help you.”

“Why do you want to help me?”

“I care to see proper justice done.”

“I know your justice.” She lifted her face to his, finally. Her voice was thick with anger and tears. “I know what you mean when you say justice. You take Mahlan when he does nothing wrong. I know what you mean by justice.”

The curtain rustled in a draft of cold salt breeze. Torien was on his feet and spinning to the doorway in one motion, his sword ready in his hand. Behind him, Alluin sat bolt upright, flinging aside his cloak. He drew his sword and scrambled up, his back to the wall. The figure in the doorway stood frozen at Torien’s sword point. For a moment, there was silence in the shanty. Then Torien jerked his chin over his shoulder and said, “Sit—slowly. Linta.”

He kept his blade leveled at the newcomer’s throat while the newcomer slid down beside the girl. He said to Alluin, “Light.”

Alluin dropped to his knees at the fire pit. There was another stretch of silence while he coaxed a flame from the spent tinder. In the moonlight, Torien could see the newcomer’s arms tight around the girl’s shoulders, head bowed against the girl’s head. He lowered his sword. After a moment’s consideration, he sheathed it. He turned on his heel and went to the curtain and looked out into the street. It lay empty and silent as before. The horses stood tethered at the post. He drew the curtain shut. There was a tightness in him that had nothing to do with the wound.

Feeble light sprang over the shanty walls.

“It won’t last long,” Alluin said.

“Use this.” With one booted foot, Torien prodded the bundle of sticks that the newcomer had let drop in the doorway. The girl watched him over the newcomer’s shoulder. Her face was set as hard as stone, but he saw the flicker of fear in her eyes. He crouched on his heels, facing her, the fire pit at his back. “No family? So it’s not only Vareni who lie.”

The girl said nothing. The newcomer straightened slowly against the wall and looked at him. He saw the girl’s face in near-exact duplicate, but duplicated as it would be in twenty years’ time: bronze skin prematurely lined, lips cracked by the sun, dark eyes sunken with hunger and hardship and grief. There was neither fear nor defiance in the woman’s face, but rather a resignation which shook him. “I give you what you want. Do not ask it of the girl.”

“You can give me satisfactory answers. Otherwise the girl goes before an Imperial court for sedition and attempted murder.”

The woman looked at the girl, the girl at the floor. Neither spoke, but in the firelight Torien watched the color drain from the woman’s face.

“Dependent upon her age, the penalty is enslavement or death, so I advise you to consider your answers carefully. Who is Mahlan?”

The woman was silent. The girl raised her eyes briefly from the floor.

“Silence does your daughter no good,” Torien said.

“My son. He is my son—Mahlan.” Her mouth contorted as though the name pained her.

“Where is he?”

“They take him,” the woman said. She swallowed. “This spring when the harbor open they come and take him.”

“Who?”

She said nothing. Her fingers were tight around the girl’s arms. They were bony fingers, bent and blunted from work, the knuckles swollen, the nails split. The backs of her brown hands were traced over with lines like dry leather.

“Vareni?” Torien said. “Answer me.”

The woman closed her eyes. “Of the jente.”

He did not know the word. He darted a glance to Alluin, who was sitting and watching from the other side of the fire pit. “One of the crime lords,” Alluin said, quietly.

Torien said to the woman, “This jente took your son?”

“When the harbor open, they take him.”

He supposed in her mind and in the girl’s the Imperial governing authorities were partially culpable in that they had not stopped it; and he supposed he had made more accessible a target than the jente for the girl’s retribution. It was a stupid reason to be knifed in the street, and a stupider reason to be executed. He was irritated. “You should have gone to the governor. He might have explained to you the difference between justice and vengeance before the girl need hang for it.”

“I go to your courts.” The woman flung up her head. “I am a citizen. My daughter she is a citizen. My son he is a citizen. I go to your courts for justice. They say to me I have no case, and they tell me if I am not silent then they will silence me. Always it is the same. Always you pretend you do not see, because the jente he pays you not to see. I know what is justice and what is not justice. What you hang my daughter for it is not justice, and you know this too.”

“How many others besides your son?” There was a moment’s silence. He could sense Alluin frozen behind him across the fire pit. He said, “You say always like it’s common practice. How many others?”

The woman drew up a little. Her eyes were flat, her mouth tight. She thought he was mocking her. “There are hundreds the jente take. You know—”

“I know nothing. I’ve been two days in Modigne, and despite the fact I just took a knife in my shoulder, I hope to be shipboard and gone tomorrow.” He kneaded his temples with his fingertips. “So the jente takes them—why? As slaves?”

“He sells them into the salt mines in Tasso. I hear it from the sailors.”

“And you say the governor knows and does nothing.”

Anger flashed across the sun-cracked face. “I say because I know. We tell him what happens. We tell him the jente he takes us to be slaves in the mines. We ask his protection. ‘We are citizens,’ we say. ‘Help us against the jente.’ But the ones who speak out he gives their name to the jente, and the jente he kills them or he takes them to the ships. I have seen this. The jente he kills us in the street, and your governor and your courts and your garrison they do nothing.”

“Every ship coming into or going out from an Imperial port is inspected—slave ships more closely than the rest. Every manifest is reviewed, every cargo taxed. So many kidnapped citizens would hardly escape notice. It would take more than the governor turning a blind eye. At the least, it would mean the city guard, and the harbor master and his agents, and the harbor master at Tasso, and every level of the administration at the mines. This jente can’t have bought them all.”

“The city guard always they belong to the jentes,” the woman said. “Anyway, the jente he doesn’t use the slave ships. I see it myself. In the night they put the slaves on trade ships—hundreds of slaves into hidden holds. In the day they fill the ships with jugs of wine, jugs of oil. That is what the harbor master sees. They put water in some of the jugs so it doesn’t show on the manifests that they carry water for the slaves. I don’t know about the mines.”

Torien was silent. The girl was looking at him over the woman’s shoulder—unblinking, contemptuous, as though she were daring him to call it a lie. Alluin sat motionless behind him, waiting for him to speak, because in the end the decision was his alone, but he knew Alluin’s thoughts like his own, and he knew Alluin, too, was thinking of the empty streets outside the shanty and the silence like a bated breath—fear hanging over the city like a plague.

He rocked back on his heels and got to his feet. The shanty spun as he stood. “This is what will happen. In the morning, I take ship for Tasso. You’ll go with me down to the harbor, and you’ll show me the jente’s ships, and I’ll investigate crew and cargo for myself. If I find nothing to convince me of this slaving business, then I’ll leave it for the governor’s court to decide your fate. Otherwise I’ll do what I can from Tasso to see this thing ended and those responsible made to pay for it—Modigno and Vareno alike. In any case, I swear to you I’ll see justice done. If you’ve told me the truth, you’ve nothing to fear by that.”

The woman’s fingers were tight on the girl’s arms. “I tell you the truth,” she said. Her voice was low and hard, and in it he heard what she left unsaid: that she knew the value of Vareno oaths just as she knew the value of Vareno justice. The truth made no difference to whim.

He ground out the fire under one boot heel. “I’ll take the watch,” he said to Alluin. It was perhaps four hours to dawn, and he knew he would not sleep.

Amanda McCrina has studied in Italy, taught English in Japan, and currently tutors Latin in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her BA in History from the University of West Georgia, and is now pursuing her MA. She writes stories that incorporate her love of history, languages, and world travel. She drinks far too much coffee and dreams of one day having a winning fantasy-hockey season.

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M9B Friday Reveal: Chapter Reveal – Temper (Lifer #2) by Beck Nicholas with Giveaway #M9BFridayReveals

 

Welcome to this week’s M9B Friday Reveal!

This week, we are revealing the first chapter of

Temper (Lifer #2) by Beck Nicholas

an upcoming Month9Books title!

Be sure to enter the giveaway found at the end of the post!

 

FREEDOM COMES WITH A PRICE.

Free from the spaceship and reunited with Samuai, Asher should be happy. But thoughts of her dead family weigh heavily on her mind.

Things worsen when temper problems in camp lead to a murder. When Asher volunteers to get the drug need to calm people down, tension ignites.

Loyalties are questioned.

Jealousy rears its head. Sparks fly.

And when rumor of a second ship hits close to home, all bets are off.

Have the aliens returned? Is this the end of everything Asher has ever known?

Temper (Lifer #2) 

 by Beck Nicholas 

Publication Date: Feb. 23, 2015 

Publisher: Month9Books

 

Chapter One

[Asher]

They come for me at nighttime.

They gather around in the darkness, cold and empty

and begging me to feel something. I welcome them, the ghosts of

those who’ve died for my freedom. A freedom I thought would

solve everything, or at the very least be better than the Lifer

sentence I’d been destined to live out before the revolution and

the truth of our incarceration.

In my head, Mother is loudest, demanding answers for the

loss of her son. If I can find out exactly what happened to my

brother, Zed, maybe I’ll find peace.

As I sit alone, guarding the rocky outcrop above the field

where the rabbits we brought over the mountains are penned,

a part of me longs for the Pelican and the safety of the world I

knew on board the ship. My world might have sucked, but there

was comfort in the known. Comfort in the certainty of my place

in the order of things.

The splat of the first drops of water on my makeshift shelter

has my fingers tightening on the Q I hold. I’m on my feet before

the shine of drops on the foliage around me registers in my sleepdeprived

brain. It’s nothing but rain. Simple, brilliant rain. A

marvel after a lifetime inside. It’s not the Company attack we’ve

been expecting since we set up camp here on the other side of the

Upheaval Mountains. But understanding doesn’t let me relax. I’d

rather fight—it’s the waiting that has us all on edge.

Single drops become a patter, and the plump rabbits below

move to huddle in the shelter of the overhang on which I perch.

I step out and lift my face to the cloud-filled sky, letting the water

run over my cheeks and down my neck to dampen the ship-issued

singlet I still wear. If Samuai recognizes it as his that his mother

gave me when I thought he was dead, he hasn’t said anything.

Once we would have talked about it because we talked and kissed

every chance we could. Not now. Since he returned, everything

that happened while he was gone has built a mountain between

us too big for young love to overcome.

I open my mouth, and water drops fall on my tongue, fresh

and clean, and missing the faint plastic taint everything had on

the ship. A taste I learned now not integral in the liquid itself,

but rather a product of the recycling method used. Or worse, a

result of whatever it is they did to us to make us immune to the

weapon that still has some of our allies in a Q-induced coma,

fighting for life.

While most of us sleep in simple tents, one of the few intact

buildings at the settlement site is used as a hospital. The setup is

basic, but the equipment is a collection of the best of what we

could remove from the medical bay of the ship, and the green

robes’ own supplies from their former hideout.

Once, it would have moved me to see families sitting in vigil

next to their loved ones. But I have nothing left for them now.

The Company took everything from me when they killed my

brother and mother. All that is left in me is the hope of revenge.

I sense, rather than see, the small shape moving through the

bushes below. A flash of white eyes and a blur of brown. Time

for guard duty. I steady the Q and aim for a rock in front of the

creature. The weapon that once only worked on living things is

now more useful. A press of the button and what was a boulder

now becomes chunks of gravel. Undeterred, the creature slinks

low onto its belly, ribs clear even from this distance. It’s ignoring

the threat of me above, its starving hunter’s instincts focused on

a plump rabbit.

I aim closer, fire again. A rock explodes right in front of the

dog’s nose. A yelp pierces the air. “Get away,” I shout. I don’t

want another death on my conscience.

I breathe again when it disappears into the undergrowth. It

will be back, I’m sure, but hopefully not while I’m here.

There’s movement on the path a few feet below. I straighten

and try to see through the gloom. Something strides over the

crumbling rock with ease, sending no cascade of rocks and gravel

behind. Too big to be another wild dog. Too early to be the changeover

for the next watch. My blood sings. Confrontation at last.

I lift my weapon, prepare to attack. “Don’t move.”

The shape ignores my barked command and continues

toward me. My muscles tighten, ready to spring.

“I thought I’d find you here,” Davyd says, stepping into a

small clearing at the top of the cliff. There’s something intimate

about the way he speaks, as though we have some kind of

connection. Like he knows me.

I exhale, but don’t relax my stance. It shouldn’t be light

enough to see him clearly, but I do. I see the details of lean hips

in training pants and the singlet fitted to every hard muscle and

meet eyes I know are ice gray.

“That’s hardly a brilliant deduction,” I snap. “It’s my watch.

The schedule is posted on the board where anyone can see.”

“But last night wasn’t supposed to be your watch.” His pause

is deliberate. “Or the night before.”

Only he would notice I’ve been volunteering for extra night

shifts protecting the animals we brought from the ship from stray

dogs running around our new settlement. Anything to avoid the

community that feels as much like a cage as the spaceship ever

did. Only the bars are of my guilt and regret and the questions I

can’t bring myself to ask.

“It’s no secret,” I say, trying for casual but unable to hide the

strain in my voice. I hate the way he makes everything I mean to

say come out all wrong.

His mouth kicks up at the corner but he remains silent. The

rain has made his blond hair dark, and if I squint, I can almost

see Samuai, his brother and the boy I thought I’d love forever.

The boy I last saw laughing at dinner a few hours ago with his

green robe friends. The boy I have been avoiding for the weeks

we’ve been here.

I fold my arms. Davyd’s no longer my master. In this new age

of freedom, those who were once superior Fishie and lowly Lifer

are now equals in the war against the Company who tricked us

all.

“What do you want?” I spit the question.

“You.”

My traitorous body heats at the intensity in the single word.

“No chance in hell.”

“But there is a chance? Hell, huh?” He lifts his hands in the

air, his eyes making a sweep of the jagged, barren rock exposed

by the earthquakes that were part of the Upheaval all those years

ago. It’s as though in unspeakable agony the very earth has tried

to push out its insides. “Does this qualify?”

I breathe in. The scent of rain on the rich soil where we keep

the rabbits fills my lungs. It should be heaven to be able to farm

like I always wanted, but the darkness inside me makes enjoying

it impossible. I shake myself free of might-have-beens. It is what

it is. All I can do is move forward, move on. “Go away. I don’t

want to play your games.”

“That’s not what you said back at the ship.” He steps closer,

uncaring that my body tenses. “It might have been weeks ago but

I only need close my eyes and the memory is right there. You and

me … I’m sure you haven’t forgotten the night of the ball?”

“The night of the rebellion when we Lifers gained our rightful

place as free people. People who are no longer forced to serve you

Fishies to pay for our ancestor’s sins.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

I do. Damn him, I do. Before the fighting and the fire and the

shock of Samuai’s return from the dead, there was the ball and

the dress and his arms around my waist and his tongue teasing

between my parted lips.

“Admit it,” he says softly. “You’ve been thinking about it.”

My vision blurs. All I can see is the smug smile on his face.

Like always, goading me, trying to make me break. “It meant

nothing.” I don’t recognize the voice that scrapes from my tight,

raw throat. “Nothing.”

“Really?”

“Really. It was an act.” I let my lip curl. “Surely you could

tell.”

His mouth twitches.

Did I hit a nerve? A moment later his mask of assurance is

back. “So you’ve talked about it with my brother? That kiss we

shared, the intimate press of our bodies. Sought out some time

alone to clear the air and get back to how things were before

between you two.”

I swallow. My hands grip the rock behind me. I didn’t realize

I’d backed up, but I revel in the sharp edge; feel the sting of flesh

breaking and press harder. What I really want to do is close the

distance between us and punish him.

“We will talk. Relocating from the spaceship hasn’t left a lot

of time for deep and meaningful conversations.” I don’t intend

to explain anything to him, but the defense slips out and hangs

lamely between us. The same lie I’ve been telling myself.

The truth is, Samuai and I haven’t spoken properly since the

aftermath of the fight outside the Pelican; I’ve done everything I

can to avoid him. If we speak, he’ll know what I’ve become. Or

worse, he’ll think I’m the same.

“But I’ve found you,” says Davyd. “We’re all alone with

plenty of opportunity for talking … or other things.”

He’s laughing at me again. Damn him. Would it be so hard

for him to leave me alone for once with the stories I tell myself

that allow me to keep going?

Anger surges up inside me, claws at my throat, wanting to

get out. It’s not like I want Samuai to choose me over his new

friends. I have nothing for him now. The love that once flowed

through me isn’t so much gone than blasted out. I’m not the girl

he left behind.

“Why do you do this?”

“Come and talk to you?” He frowns. “We’re old friends from

the ship. We have to stick together.”

“We have never been friends.”

“Allies?” He moves even closer, and I arch back hard against

the rock, just to keep him

mountains?”

He ignores my jab. “They do now. We need to fight, and we

need to make plans.”

The urgency in his voice sparks something inside me. A

flicker of drive where for weeks there’s been only emptiness.

“from touching me. “I’m here because you know this isn’t happily

ever after. Nothing is resolved, and we can’t do anything about it

until you admit there’s something wrong.”

“With Samuai?”

A pulse throbs in his jaw. “Forget my brother. He’s too busy

buddying up to the green robes, and he’s forgotten the real

enemy.”

“The Company?”

“Yes. They locked us up, lied to us, experimented on us,

and what have we done in return? Killed a few officers and then

scurried like rats to hide in the mountains.”

“Do rats even hide in Attack the Company?”

He ignores my sneer. “Why not? Those of us from the ship are

impervious to their great weapon. We have strength and speed.

They’ve made us strong. I say we use the way they’ve enhanced

us against them.”

No wonder Davyd is never lonely for female company. I

hate him and yet find it hard not to get caught up in his desire.

His voice, his energy, echoes the need for revenge that keeps me

awake at night. But inside me lingers the voice of reason, too.

“We need to establish a secure base.”

“You mean give them time to organize an attack?”

“Maybe they’re not. We escaped them before. They could be

cutting their losses.”

“Do you really believe that?”

I push past him to stand at the edge of the cliff. From here I

can see the settlement off in the distance, glowing with light in

the darkness. Filled with the green robes who’ve been resisting

the Company for years and with the people the Company were

breeding for battle.

“They’re not going to take the loss of decades of investment

in their little spaceship program well,” I admit eventually.

“They’re going to come for their property. I don’t intend to be

sitting waiting for collection when they do.”

He’s including himself. Back on the ship he was important

as the head Official, Fishie’s, son. Out here he’s just another

specimen with no idea what the Company has done to him.

We’ve all been violated, and we don’t even know how.

“What’s your plan?”

He runs a hand through his wet hair, scattering water drops.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. If I go to the council

as a lone voice then they’ll shoot me down; but together we could

present a case for action.”

“Why me?”

“Apart from this special connection we have?”

In a few swift steps my hand is around his throat. “Don’t

push me.”

“Look at you, taking any excuse to touch me. It’s almost

romantic,” he squeaks.

The rain has cleared, and the clouds thin, letting the moon

light up his perfect, mocking face.

My fingers tighten. I’m squeezing, feeling the muscles and

tendons give way to my pressure; his airway begins to cut off. The

anger inside me glories in the way his eyes bulge and his lips part

in a desperate gasp for oxygen.

He doesn’t move to defend himself.

I hold his hateful gaze for one second, two. Now I have all the

power. It spreads hot tendrils through me, giving me strength.

My vision blurs, and spots appear in front of my eyes. I could

shut him up forever.

Squeeze a little tighter.

It would be so easy. All I need to do is …

Nothing. I drop my hand and crumble to my knees, pressing

my forehead to the rocky ground. Shudders wrack my body as I

rock back and forth.

What have I become?

Somewhere above me he sucks in a shaky breath. “Temper,

temper,” he says softly.

My eyes sting, but no tears will fall. “Leave me alone.”

“Until the rage inside you overtakes everything else? Until

you do something you can’t undo?”

“I warned you not to push me.” I grasp hold of that fact. I

did warn him. He drove me to act, goaded me until I didn’t have

a choice.

But did his teasing deserve death?

I block out the voice in my head. But I can’t ignore the one

a few feet away.

“This isn’t grief making you act this way,” he says, kneeling in

front of me. “And you’re not the only one who’s losing control.”

“Don’t make excuses.”

“I’m not.”

His hand brushes the top of my head where my hair has

grown into soft fuzz. It’s been weeks since Lifer regulations of

shaved heads have been left behind. Electricity skitters across

my skin when he touches my forehead, and it dampens the rage

within. As the anger in me cools, I find the strength to lift my

head. “I’m guessing you have a theory?”

His mouth curves. “I would say ‘that’s my girl’ since you

worked it out so fast, but I don’t have a death wish. I suspect you

don’t belong to anyone.”

Against all reason, I smile at the hint of admiration in his

voice. I curl up and wrap my hands around my knees. I let myself

look up at him, relieved when the marks on his neck are already

fading. “There are others?”

“You’re the first who’s actually tried to kill me, but surely

you’ve noticed the fights in food lines? The shoving over shower

use? The extra injuries in the practice fights that go too far?”

Guilt nibbles at the back of my mind. Why didn’t I notice

any of this? “I haven’t been around much.”

“Believe me, it’s only a matter of time before someone from

the ship loses control. Probably a Lifer.”

“Because we’re less sophisticated.”

His eyes don’t quite meet mine. “Because whatever it is

they’ve done, I believe they’ve done it to you more. The hardships

you’ve faced as a group, it’s made you … stronger for lack of a

better word.”

I want to argue but I remember too well how easily I could

have crushed his throat. Only weeks ago when we fought in the

low gravity training rooms on the ship, he could overpower me

without breaking a sweat. “Something’s changed.”

“But I can’t work out what.”

The rain begins to fall again. I close my eyes and let it cool

my skin. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to water falling from the

sky. I’ve been too long in an artificial environment where every

molecule I’ve ingested came from a particular source.

I jump to my feet. “The ship.”

Davyd blinks up at me. “What about it?”

 “They had control of our food and water.” I pace around

him as I think aloud. “What if they were drugging us to keep us

pliable? Now, without the drug, the changes they’ve made have

no check, nothing to keep control.”

“But we brought the majority of the food and water

production with us.”

“It’s the Nauts.” In my urgency, I slip back to calling our

leaders by the old name from when we thought those in the gray

suits were piloting us in space. It takes a beat before I correct

myself. “The Company added it themselves to the water, or

maybe the very air we breathed. Don’t you see? It’s a part of them

having control over the experiment. We have our own inbuilt

self-destruct sequence. We’ll all turn on each other before we can

possibly rise against them.”

“They’re the only ones who can save us.”

“But they want to destroy us.”

“We’ll take the fight to them, there must be a way.” Anything

else Davyd might have said is cut off by a bang from the direction

of the settlement.

“Did you hear that?” I ask.

But he’s already running. “Come on.”

“But I’m supposed to be on guard.”

He spares me a glance over his broad shoulder. A look that

shines through the darkness and the drizzle and slices through to

my soul. “You play babysitter for some rabbits if you want to. I’m

going to fight.”

I hesitate a beat. Long enough for him to disappear down the

trail. This time his hurried steps send rock and gravel tumbling,

and the sound echoes over distant shouts. The sound of a battle.

My longing to be alone wars with the need to know what’s

happening, and the fact that no matter how much I want to, I

can’t sever all links with those who came with me from the ship.

Q tight in my hand, I run.

 

 

I always wanted to write. I’ve worked as a lab assistant, a pizza delivery driver and a high school teacher but I always pursued my first dream of creating stories. Now, I live with my family near Adelaide, halfway between the city and the sea, and am lucky to spend my days (and nights) writing young adult fiction.

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