The Lawgivers: Gabriel Read online

  “Sleep,” he growled.

  Like she could sleep with him hovering over her! “You’re leaving?” she asked hopefully.

  “So you can climb out the window again? No. I’m not through questioning you. But the rest can wait until tomorrow.”

  She stared at him in dismay. “I’m too tired to think up any lies right now. Don’t you want to go ahead and finish?”

  That time there was no mistake. He didn’t try to hide the fact that he was amused. “Good point, but it can wait. I’ll take my chances that I can discern the lies from the truth.”

  She blinked at him uncertainly, but there seemed no hope for it. And she was too tired to object anymore. She thought if he did decide to rape her it couldn’t be too bad anyway. She might actually manage to sleep through it and even if she couldn’t she was too numb with exhaustion to feel much.

  The bed was almost as hard and lumpy as the ground she usually slept on, but there was no chilly night air to deal with and the cover on the bed was thicker than the one she had. Curling up into a tight ball beneath it, she emptied her mind without much difficulty at all and dropped into oblivion.

  * * * *

  Gah-re-al settled on the floor since there was nothing else in the room that looked comfortable and studied the lump Lexa made on the bed. He couldn’t see her. She’d curled into a tight ball under the cover, but he’d had time enough to examine her fairly thoroughly and his mind’s eye had no trouble producing the image.

  Well, the face and that hair.

  It was the hair that had first caught his eye. As dull as it was with dirt, the dying rays of the sun had caught fire in it when she’d scurried away. He supposed it was the furtive movement that had first caught his attention and then the glint of hair, but, whichever way it had happened, the hair had definitely snagged his interest.

  He’d been patrolling the sector for almost a year and in all that time he hadn’t seen hair the color of hers. He’d seen a wide variety of hair and eye colors and skin tones, but nothing like hers.

  He was almost inclined to wonder if she was even the same species as the others, but she wasn’t that different when all was said and done—just colored a little differently than the typical primitive—oddly pale skin with spots, eyes as green as new leaves, and hair the color of fire.

  She’d gotten the genetic traits from somewhere, so she wasn’t the only one. Just the only one he’d seen.

  The face—reluctantly he admitted that that was also—unusual—in the sense that he found it strangely appealing. Of course, he wasn’t actually in the habit of examining the faces of the females. The males were the dangerous ones and usually the culprits in every crime—at least the most violent which was his primary focus. In any case, he didn’t see many females. Maybe one out of every fifteen or twenty humans he came across was female.

  That was small wonder if what she’d told him was true—that the females were traded off for breeders as soon as they reached the capability of breeding. That alone was enough to account for a higher than normal mortality rate. When one added the fact that they were smaller and weaker and less capable of defending themselves and the scarcity of food ….

  He redirected his mind to sifting through what he’d learned from her—far more than he’d learned from any of the others he’d encountered and in a much shorter length of time! She was like the rare songbird of her world, quiet when she sensed a predator and chirping the moment the threat passed.

  He narrowed his eyes, realizing there was more about her that reminded him of the small creatures he thought one of the few things of true beauty their world boasted.

  Of course the males were far more vibrantly colored than the females when it came to birds ….

  They’d found no images of the people who’d built the great civilization of this world. Apparently their technology hadn’t been such that that sort of thing could survive for long, but it was clear enough from the things they’d built and left behind that they were physically similar to the udai. In size, perhaps somewhat smaller, but with two arms and legs, and similar hands—flightless as the primitives were.

  He wondered for the first time if the khabler were right in their assumption that the primitives were descendents of the builders. He’d always been inclined to dismiss that theory, but ….

  Lexa was clearly intelligent—old in the ways of her world, far more experienced than she should be given the fact that he was as certain as he could be that she was very young in years.

  It was a shame that the old ones hadn’t considered themselves when they were so busy collecting, cataloguing, and saving the flora and fauna of their world. The first colonists had discovered huge, well protected vaults of the seeds of plants long gone and used those to begin the task of replacing the natural vegetation. Later arrivals had discovered the genetic codes they needed to begin replacing some of the extinct animals—such as the birds—but they’d found only the technological remnants and the great, crumbling buildings of the people themselves, and very little at that.

  Which meant that, so far, there was no actual proof one way or the other about the primitives. They could be the remnants of that civilization or, as others had concluded, another species entirely.

  He shook his head. Apparently, they’d felt like their achievements were of more importance than they were themselves. Either they’d never succeeded in completely mapping their own genetic code or they hadn’t managed to preserve the records and the udai hadn’t found remains that would allow them to extract DNA.

  His mind wandered back to the lump on the bed and he found himself trying to estimate her age from the things she’d told him. He wasn’t surprised that she didn’t seem to know herself. None of the primitives that he’d had contact with to question seemed to have any notion of age—theirs or anyone else’s. He supposed that wasn’t surprising when they seemed completely focused on survival. Not much mattered besides food and water and they were constantly on the hunt for that and fighting over it and slaughtering one another over it.

  Although, apparently, they were also preoccupied with breeding if he could believe what Lexa had said, and he did. It was the way she’d said it as much as what she’d said that sounded completely convincing, and he thought he could extrapolate and consider it widespread and not simply her personal experience.

  Her personal experiences still bothered him. He wasn’t certain why he felt so disgusted and outraged by it beyond the pure barbarism of it so he dismissed it.

  It was for the thinkers, the scientists and politicians, to decide what to make of the behavior of the primitives. His job was merely to dispense justice, eliminate the worst of the savages, and deliver the ‘redeemable’ to his people for ‘rehabilitation’. Maybe they were right and he’d been wrong all along. Maybe all they really needed was a little guidance and discipline—and someone to prevent the strong from preying upon the weak.

  And maybe he’d been right all along and he’d merely stumbled upon one primitive that seemed more intelligent than the others and could be civilized?

  In the end, he didn’t see that it mattered a great deal to him or his mission. It was likely to take generations to civilize them if it could be done at all.

  If Lexa was the most promising example he’d found—and he considered her that—then the people who’d taken it upon themselves to ‘rehabilitate’ the natives had a long, hard road ahead of them, because she was a little savage!

  Chapter Five

  “Get up.”

  The order was delivered in a calm, evenly modulated voice, but it might as well have been an angry bellow. Lexa’s subconscious reacted to it as a threat, pumping a flood of adrenaline through her system so abruptly that she shot upwards toward consciousness too fast for the reasoning part of her brain to catch up. Fear contributed to her confusion when she discovered she was trapped by something she wasn’t currently in any condition to identify. Struggling with panic, she fought her way out of the cover she was tangled in and fell
off the bed.

  The only good thing about that circumstance was that it seemed to knock her closer to real awareness and helped her free her arms and legs even while it sent throbbing pain through every point her body made contact with the hard floor. Through burning eyes she stared at the dark form bathed in brilliant sunlight standing little more than a yard from her for many moments before her sluggish brain finally began to assemble the situation into something comprehensible.

  “Now we talk.”

  His expression was grimly determined and set off more alarm bells in Lexa’s head even while it threw her into deeper confusion. She felt her jaw go slack. She blinked at him, trying to clear her vision and gather her wits at the same time.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Completely at sea, Lexa blinked more rapidly and glanced around the room, trying to figure out where ‘here’ was. Slowly, her memory returned. She frowned. “You brought me here.”

  His lips thinned. “I brought you back. What were you doing here before that?”

  Lexa furrowed her brow, wondering if she’d dreamed half of what had happened even as the images flickered through her mind. It seemed to her that she remembered him asking her that the night before. “Don’t you know?”

  Irritation flickered across his features. “Tell me.”

  She was sure she already had—she thought. “I came to trade for supplies.”

  “So you don’t live in this village?”

  Lexa’s confusion deepened but began to clear as she recalled he’d said something about questioning her. This was the interrogation she’d been so fearful about the night before?

  That didn’t seem right, though.

  Interrogations were generally proceeded by knocking someone around to ‘soften’ them up and make sure they knew one meant business and, quite often, the questions were punctuated with blows if the answers didn’t come fast enough or weren’t satisfactory.

  At that thought, she shook her head. “No. I stopped for supplies.”

  He asked her everything he’d asked her the night before and when she’d answered all of his questions, he asked them all over again, merely posing the questions in a different way. She was afraid to lie, but she began to get the sense that he wasn’t satisfied with her responses and wanted her to say something else. Uneasy despite the fact that he didn’t seem inclined to beat the information he wanted out of her, she began to search her mind for answers he might like better—short of saying anything that might make her sound guilty of something.

  If that was what he wanted, she certainly wasn’t going to say it because she wasn’t guilty of anything that she could see and she wasn’t about to give him an excuse to punish her.

  But maybe the answers were just too short?

  She began struggling to elaborate on her responses, throwing in any details she thought might make him accept her answers.

  After a while, he ceased to question her and merely stared at her hard enough she squirmed inwardly. Straightening away from the wall he’d been propped against, he turned toward the door. “Come.”

  Dismay flickered through Lexa. Her belly tightened with anxiety. “Where?”

  Gah-re-al turned his head and fixed her with a hard look. Granted, he’d found her pluckiness both intriguing and amusing—to a degree—but he couldn’t allow her to undermine his authority by questioning it at every turn. He might not know the humans quite as well as he’d thought he understood them, but he certainly knew that any sign of weakness or softness would only encourage them to go for the throat.

  Not that he was concerned that Lexa would. For all her outward bravery, he could see that she was very afraid and she was too fragile to offer much danger, but it wouldn’t do for any of the others to see that he was soft as far as she was concerned.

  Or think that he was, he amended.

  Because he wasn’t. Empathizing with her situation didn’t mean he would allow her any more latitude than the others. He was a lawgiver. He was impartial.

  In any case, he was in a foul humor. He hadn’t slept particularly well—mostly because the floor was damned uncomfortable—partly because he’d spent a good bit of the night going over and over the things Lexa had told him.

  And partly because he’d discovered he was uncomfortably aware of sharing the room with a female.

  But mostly because the damned floor was uncomfortable.

  Lexa scrambled to her feet awkwardly. “I didn’t do nuthin’ wrong,” she said plaintively.

  “Not as far as I can ascertain at the moment.”

  She should’ve been relieved, but she wasn’t. “I can go then?”

  “You can come with me.”

  Lexa stared at his back in dismay. “But … you said I didn’t do nuthin’. Can’t I just go now?”

  “No.”

  The response was flat, implacable.

  Lexa snatched up her belongings and hurried to follow him as he stepped out into the hallway. He gestured for her to precede him. Dismay filled her. She’d hoped for some opening to escape. It had flickered through her mind to try the window, but the drop was far enough she was afraid the only result in trying that would be a broken bone. If that happened, she didn’t have a hope in hell of surviving even if she did manage to escape—and she wasn’t likely to outrun him with something broken.

  Which would very likely lead to some punishment for attempting escape.

  There would be a chance at some point, she assured herself as she preceded him down the hall and the rickety stairs at the end. She discovered when she reached the street that there were a good many people milling around. Surprised, she glanced around to see what might have drawn them out. She didn’t see anything that answered that question in her mind, but before her imagination could supply her with anything horrific, the angel spoke loudly directly behind her, making her jump.

  “Is this everyone?”

  The people in the streets glanced at one another uneasily.

  Gabriel clapped a hand heavily down on her shoulder, making Lexa’s knees go weak. “Go stand over there.”

  Lexa glanced up at his face and then followed the direction of his gaze and his pointing finger. Nodding a little jerkily, she obeyed with lagging steps, wondering if she dared make a run for it. She had her supplies, after all, and the street was full of people. Surely she could slip away without being noticed?

  By the time she’d reached the spot he’d indicated, she discovered that Gabriel was striding along the street, selecting people from among those gathered and sending them to stand with her. Puzzled, wondering if there was some significance to his selection, she hesitated, watching. He seemed to zero in on the women with children first. That made her more uneasy at first, but then he asked each if they had a man and, when they reluctantly pointed the man out, he sent the man she indicated with the woman.

  Thoroughly confused by that, Lexa’s curiosity overcame her fear sufficiently to distract her from the search for an avenue of escape.

  She’d felt a threat in being singled out that hadn’t dissipated a great deal when he first began separating other people out and sending them to stand with her. As the group surrounding her grew, however, instead of feeling an increasing need to act, Lexa began to feel far less threatened. She didn’t know what his intention was, but he didn’t merely choose women, so the idea that he was picking breeders fell by the wayside along with the suspicion that he was choosing the ‘guilty’ for punishment. He also didn’t select only men or predominantly men—who were far more likely to be guilty of having broken some of his laws, she was sure—so she began to think punishment wasn’t what he had in mind.

  Besides, he’d simply waded through the gang members and slaughtered them. It didn’t seem unreasonable to consider he would’ve done the same with anyone else he thought guilty of breaking one of his laws.

  After glancing toward her, or the group with her, several times, he finally turned to the others who were gathered and told them they could go about th
eir business, that he would return for them later.

  That sounded ominous but even as Lexa realized she’d completely mistaken his intentions, he approached them.

  “You have been selected for relocation and rehabilitation.”

  Lexa wasn’t alone in being completely and totally baffled by that announcement. It didn’t sound like punishment, but she was no longer convinced it wasn’t. She was still trying to get up the nerve to ask what he meant when someone else spoke up.

  “What’s that mean?”

  Gabriel stared coldly at the man who’d spoken. “It means I’ve been ordered to take you to a place more suitable to live so that my people can teach you how to take care of yourselves.”