The Widow Read online

  The Widow

  by Aimee Love

  Text copyright © 2012

  Aimee Love

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Art:

  Exiles

  by

  dkf.deviantart.com

  For Penny

  who braved a phobia

  to read every draft.

  Thank you.

  Prologue

  Julian had been kept underground too long to know whether the empty gray sky heralded the beginning or the end of the day. He stood like a statue on the narrow shelf of rock at the mouth of the cave and looked out to sea. Not far up the coast from where he stood, lava oozed down the cliffs and made a riot of steam as it hit the icy water. There wasn’t enough wind to carry the plumes away and they billowed there, lit from within, their gaudy display of oranges and pinks disrupting the otherwise sober gloom. The view was spectacular and he used that as an excuse to let his eyes linger. He would have stared just as gratefully at a blank wall. Anything to keep from looking down into his own hands.

  Julian sucked in his breath and held it until he felt as though his chest would burst, then he let it out and risked a glance at the bundle. The baby squirmed in his grasp and opened her eyes to stare at him. They were a strange, steely blue that Julian had never seen before. Was she really his child? He didn’t have any way to know.

  He held her out from his body and quickly, before he could change his mind, let her fall. She hit the rocks below and tumbled all the way down into the sea. She didn’t scream or cry, and Julian didn’t let himself look away.

  Instead of going back inside, he pulled out his flask and drained it in one long swallow, then stood and watched the lava and the waves until the question of whether the day was beginning or ending was answered, and the cold had numbed everything but his conscience.

  Chapter One

  A Beginning and an End

  I knew something had gone wrong when I woke up in a coffin. Not that I hadn’t gone to sleep in one, but it was the model they call a pine box, with minimal automation. The air supply is laced with sedatives and the only way to wake up is if someone opens the lid or, and this was the part that had me worried since the lid on mine still seemed to be sealed, if your air runs out. I felt my throat begin to tighten as panic set in. I’m normally not claustrophobic, but immobilized between layers of crash foam, it felt like the darkness itself was suffocating me.

  I had known that this was a possibility. Coffins had, after all, gotten their name not only from their shape, but also from the time in the early days of deep space travel when over a third of the people that climbed into them never got out. Back then, they were the sole form of human transport. Now, they were merely the cheapest. The technology had come a long way, but apparently not far enough.

  I struggled against the crash foam uselessly for a few moments before giving up. I wasn’t ready to die at all, and this anonymous death seemed the worst possible way. I had come on this insane trip looking for adventure. I’d know death was a possibility, but I’d thought I would at least die in an interesting way. Instead I was going to suffocate inside a cargo container as a direct result of budget constraints.

  I waited.

  I waited a very long time. So long, in fact, that I stopped being grateful for every new breath and began to get annoyed that I hadn’t died yet.

  A new thought occurred to me. I had assumed that my little cargo container had missed its mark and I was floating endlessly through space. The crew of the Gypsy Star, the merchant ship I’d travelled out on, had bundled me into my coffin, locked it into a cargo container, and shot me toward my destination without even really slowing down. If my guidance system was off by a fraction, I could drift through the system indefinitely. If that were the case, however, my waking up would have been a sign that the air was running out and I certainly would have been dead in minutes.

  What if, I wondered, instead I had reached my destination but the landing had loosened the seal on my coffin? My sedative tainted air might be leaking out and the cargo container’s air could be coming in. The container didn’t have any life support, which is why I needed the coffin in the first place, but it was large, and still held whatever air was trapped inside when it was sealed. I tried to do the math but calculating the volume of air in a cargo container and determining how long it would keep me breathing was beyond me. I remembered a long ago Algebra teacher telling me that the formulas written on the board were ones that I would find useful in everyday life and wondered if this was quite what he’d had in mind. It didn’t matter, because it was with that happy thought that I lost consciousness.

  I tumbled in and out of dreams. At one point, I was certain I was being carried, but I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes, let alone move. I might have been scared, but through it all there were strong arms around me. I was lifted and placed like a doll and then there were sensations of wind and a cold so bitter it burned. The arms were still there though, holding me tight in the world when my mind cried out for my body to just let go. I imagined that this was how a child might feel, cradled in its parents embrace. I hadn’t had parents myself, but I had dreamed of them when I was young, and this felt very similar. Safe. I tried to remember when I had last felt safe and failed.

  The next thing I knew someone was yelling.

  “Earthquake!”

  Can there be an earthquake if you aren’t, in fact, on Earth? I tried to brace myself but found nothing to hold on to. The strong arms were suddenly and inexplicably gone.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I saw her eyes flicker!”

  My mind sluggishly reevaluated Earthquake! and decided She’s awake! seemed more likely.

  My body felt as leaden as my mind, but I forced my hand to move, hoping that if I acknowledged the voices they would shut up. Instead, someone grabbed my shoulders and shook me.

  If there had been anything in my stomach, I would surely have vomited all over them. As it was, my body convulsed and my head came up, knocking into something hard.

  I forced my eyes open, took a good look around, and then slammed them closed again. Not at all what I had expected. I opened them more slowly this time and made myself smile.

  A boy was leaning over me, rubbing his forehead where I had bumped him. I imagined that he would have a lovely welt to match my fat lip in a few hours.

  When I was a young girl, novels about rough, barbarous men on colony planets had been all the rage, and I had read more than my fair share. In them, the heroes were always huge, brutish thugs forced into a life of violence to survive. This boy looked more like a friendly elf, and a very young elf at that. I judged him to be around fifteen, though I had no idea how they reckoned age here since the years were ten times as long as Earth’s. His face was narrow with delicate, almost feminine features topped by a mop of unruly sandy hair.

  He returned my smile sheepishly.

  I should have started with something generic and polite, but I had spent a month in quarantine before leaving home, nine months on the Gypsy Star getting to this system, something like a week locked in my coffin, and then an indeterminate amount of time semi-conscious and expecting to die at any moment. I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head.

  “You can’t possible be my husband.” A far from diplomatic way to greet your savior.

  His eyes went wide and he blushed a deep scarlet.

  A bark of derisive laughter came from behind me and I remembered the voices I’d heard when I first woke. Of course we weren’t alone. I turned my head around, unleashing a wave of dizziness, and saw a figure silhouetted in the d
oorway. Here was the man from those youthful novels.

  If I hadn’t heard the laugh, I might have thought we were being attacked by a polar bear. He was enormous, taking up almost the entire hatch. It was impossible to tell how much of his size came from the thick layers of white fur clothing he was bundled in and how much was his own, but I was certain that under it all, he was not a small man. He pushed back his hood and stepped into the cargo container. His hair was dark, almost black, and as unkempt as the boys, but his features were anything but elfin. They were hard, almost chiseled, and down the right side of his face, starting at his hairline and going all the way to his jaw, was a horrible scar. His right eye was covered in a patch and his mouth pulled to one side in a permanent sneer. I let out an involuntary gasp. My second great act of diplomacy in as many minutes.

  “Don’t worry,” he told me icily. “I’m not your husband, either.”

  “Then where is he?” I asked, trying not to let my relief show. It had never occurred to me that he wouldn’t be here to meet me when I landed.

  The man looked me over slowly, his single eye cold and openly appraising.

  “Dead,” he told me finally, and I thought I detected the barest hint of a smile.

  Dead.

  I had never met the man, so I didn’t really feel any sense of personal loss, but the precariousness of my situation was instantly apparent. I was on an illegal colony, in a system that didn’t even have an official name, amid a group of people who had been isolated here for over a hundred years. I had no husband to protect me, no friends, and the ship I’d traveled here on was already so far away that even if I had the equipment, which I didn’t, I couldn’t contact them.

  “What are you going to do with me?” I asked, trying to keep the fear from my voice.

  The big man shrugged and leaned against the hatch’s frame.

  “They just told me to come and fetch you,” he said. “What they do with you when I get you back is their problem, not mine.”

  Thank god for small favors.

  “We need to get moving if we’re going to make the next waypoint before that storm hits,” he said, ignoring the look I gave him and directing his statement at the boy.

  “Waypoint?” I asked.

  “Like this,” he said, motioning around the cargo container, “but closer to where we’re going.”

  I looked around and, for the first time, realized that we weren’t, in fact, where I had thought we were. That is, unless the cargo container I had come down in had undergone some major alterations while I slept. Although almost identical to mine, this one was empty except for a few rough pallets on the floor and a small contraption that might have been a heater. My coffin, the crates containing the few meager possessions I’d been allowed to bring, and all the Red Cross humanitarian aid supplies I’d ridden down with, were nowhere in sight. On closer inspection, I also noticed a look of age to the surfaces around me. Though the plastic composite they were made from still looked whole, there was a feeling of mild neglect to it. I saw a slight discoloration at the seams and wondered how long it had been here.

  “Where are...?” I realized before I finished the question that the man was gone, having slipped out the door while I inspected my surroundings. I looked at the boy, by far the more congenial of the two anyway.

  “He doesn’t talk,” a voice said.

  The silhouette was back in the hatchway, but I realized almost instantly that this was a different man. They were dressed the same, but this new figure had none of the massive bulk or thinly veiled hostility of the first.

  He shed his outer layer of clothing as he came over, revealing a close cropped head of tidy dark curls and an open, friendly smile. He knelt beside me and motioned for me to turn my head a bit.

  “We’re still a few days from the city,” he told me quietly, examining my swelling lip without touching it. “We found you yesterday, but the weather hasn’t been cooperating so we haven’t gotten far.”

  “My things?”

  He looked at me blankly.

  “The things in the container with me? The crates? They had all my clothes and...”

  He shook his head.

  “There’s hardly room for all of us on the sled,” he told me apologetically. “Usually it only carries two, but they thought it would be good to bring a doctor,” he explained. “They’ll go back for the rest when the weather clears up.”

  “When will that be?” I asked.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small tube.

  “Hold still,” he told me, pulling off his thick gloves and then squeezing a small glob of clear gel onto one of his fingertips. He dabbed it gently on my cut lip.

  “Spring,” he answered apologetically, pocketing the tube and getting to his feet.

  I had no idea what season it was now, but judging by the icy air coming in the half open hatch I doubted spring was anytime soon.

  He reached out a hand to help me up.

  “I’m Chapel Ward,” I told him, taking the offered hand and rising unsteadily to my feet. I suspected he already knew that, but it was the most polite way I could think of to force him to introduce himself. He was tall, I realized once I was standing, almost a full head taller than I was. He was also lean and, when he smiled, disarmingly handsome. A dead husband is far from an auspicious start to an adventure, but having an attractive doctor on hand certainly does a good job of lessening the sting.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said with a grin. There was a long pause, but then he realized what was expected of him. “That was Sebastian and the boy is Quince,” he told me. “There aren’t enough of us here to bother with last names.” He seemed to decide we should shake hands, then looked down and realized he was still holding mine. He dropped it abruptly, looking slightly ashamed.

  I hadn’t even noticed that we’d been standing there holding hands, but on the long trip out, I’d grown careless of encroachments on my personal space. Even civilian vessels are designed to maximize cargo capacity. Crew and passenger spaces are often little more than an afterthought. After a few days, you learn to ignore the constant, accidental physical contact. It becomes little more than tactile white noise. So my reaction, or lack there of, was at least understandable. His was interesting.

  He cleared his throat, then added, almost as an afterthought, “And I’m Julian.”

  Quince and Julian helped me pull a huge white fur coat over my onesie and provided me with gloves and a thick, if somewhat scratchy, scarf to wrap around my face. I felt as fat as a tick and ridiculously ungainly, but as soon as we stepped outside and the cold splashed against the few inches of my skin still exposed, I was grateful. Even with the scarf covering my nose and mouth, the air was so cold it burned my lungs and anytime a gust buffeted me, the skin around my eyes stung as if I’d been slapped.

  A dozen feet from the hatch, Sebastian was fiddling with a vehicle that looked almost as awkward as I felt. Though they had called it a sled, it looked more like a canoe and a sailboat that had crashed together and become entwined. Flat bottomed, narrow in the bow and stern, with a stout mast rising up from the center, the only resemblance to a sled at all were the runners it sat on. I remembered the sensation of motion when I was semi-conscious and how safe I had felt. If I’d known I was skimming along in that contraption, I would certainly have been terrified.

  Sebastian turned to us and held up a hand, gloved fingers splayed wide and beckoned to Quince who hurried over to help him.

  “Back inside,” Julian yelled into my ear. I had been so alarmed by the cold and the sight of our transport that I hadn’t realized how loud the wind was. He put an arm around my shoulder and ushered me back into the relative warmth of the container.

  He pulled off his gloves and scarf and I followed suit, then we both sat cross-legged on the cold floor to wait.

&nbs
p; “It takes two men to get the sail up,” he told me, pulling a flask from an inside pocket and unscrewing it. “I should have sent Quince out to help earlier but I forgot.” He shrugged apologetically and took a swig from the flask, then handed it to me.

  “How long?” I asked, taking the flask. It was made of metal, too pitted and scratched to shine as it probably once had, but it was shockingly warm from the heat of his body and taking it into my hand felt oddly intimate. I took a slow sip and felt the liquor burn as it hit my tongue. Then the taste hit me. I immediately spat it out, turning my head just in time to avoid sending a spray of the noxious stuff into his face.

  I gagged.

  “What on Earth...?” In my intemperate youth, I had tried nearly every alcoholic beverage available, most in large quantities. Some of them were tremendously bad, but they were nothing compared to what I’d just tasted.

  He placed a solicitous hand on my shoulder, trying to hold back his laughter.

  “Nothing on Earth, I’m afraid,” he said with a grin, handing me a rough blanket from a pile in the corner. “It’s local.”

  I wiped my mouth with a corner before mopping half-heartedly at the floor. Unsure of the protocol for returning soiled bedding, I simply left it on the ground in a wad. Even if I’d had the means to clean it, I doubted the smell of the foul drink would ever go away. Then the words he’d said really sunk in and I dropped the flask as if it had burned me. “Nelfs?”

  He looked at me blankly and I realized that that term probably hadn’t been in common usage when his ancestors came here. “Non-Earth Life Forms,” I clarified. “You eat them?”