Page 45 of Hunting the Warlord's Daughter

Within moments, the entire senior staff had gathered in the briefing room. Major Caro addressed the group. “All right, the full report is coming in now. A Borderlands outpost was attacked. Issenda Crossroads. The sanctuary there. It’s run by the Hand of Sakkara.”

Bolivarr uttered a soft sound then cleared his throat as if to mask the noise. Hadley’s heart skipped a few beats. His thought suppression didn’t want him thinking about the sanctuary. Moisture gleamed on his forehead as he followed along on his data-vis. Inside his mind, Hadley knew, a battle was playing out. She wedged her hands under her thighs to keep from wringing them.

Major Caro scanned the report on her data-vis, her mouth a grim slash. “Four priestesses were brutally beaten. One has died from her injuries. The attackers ransacked the sanctuary’s stash of valuables.”

“Dear Goddess. How dreadful.” Sister Chara circled her hand over her chest, then kissed her fingertips. “I thought peace would bring an end to our persecution.”

Bolivarr held his data-vis in a death grip. “This was no hate crime.”

A few of the officers grumbled, and Sister Chara’s gaze shifted to him. “Lieutenant Bolivarr, pious servants of the Goddess were ruthlessly beaten—one to death. If not a hate crime, if not a monstrous act, what does this look like?”

“The sanctuary’s stash of valuables was ransacked, but nothing is missing,” he replied. “Not a single relic. Whoever did this wasn’t trying to achieve a body count. They were looking for something.”

Tadlock rubbed his hands. “I know what they were looking for. High-value relics to sell on the black market. And here we are headed for a planet supposedly loaded with the rarest of religious artifacts. We’ve been broadcasting our intentions to the entire galaxy. Is that wise, I wonder? What if we’re intercepted by brigands, pirates, and looters there—or on the way home?”

“We’re a warship, lieutenant,” Admiral Bandar said dryly. “Not a religious sanctuary.”

TheUnity’s third-in-command, the Terran officer Commander Frank Johnson, spoke up. “The coordinates of our destination are not public—they’re protected at the highest levels.”

Major Caro folded her hands on the table. “To bring us back on point, I agree with Lieutenant Bolivarr’s assessment of the Issenda Crossroads incident. There are conflicting statements from the sisters, and they’ve stopped talking to the investigators—in the interest of privacy and healing, they claim. We don’t have a clear picture of what happened there, and may not for a while.”

If Bolivarr was pleased with his boss’s support, he didn’t show it. His brow furrowed, he was immersed in taking notes, scribbling on his data-vis nonstop.

The news seemed to weigh on Admiral Bandar. She drummed her finger soundlessly on the table. “An old and powerful sect was vandalized and a priestess murdered. The two most-wanted fugitives in the galaxy are still at large. Karbon Mawndarr is alive and well and regaling us with tales of his son’s ambitions. And what is the Triad’s most advanced warship busy doing? Treasure hunting. She sighed. “What could possibly go wrong?”

A clatter of a light pen falling to the floor pulled Hadley’s attention back to Bolivarr. As he leaned sideways to retrieve the stylus, his hand shook a little. On his data-vis screen wasn’t the security report. It was a sketch. Her heart sank.The five marks.

* * *

After the meeting ended, Bolivarr strode off the bridge, feeling Hadley’s worried gaze on him, that mix of love and doubt and fear he caused in her. He rubbed his temple. Could he blame her? He’d struggled in there, and she saw everything. Clearly, Issenda Crossroads meant something to him. His aching skull told him that.

Do no evil. Never bow to evil.Even the Hand of Sakkara’s motto conjured a feeling of déjà vu. Why was it familiar? Another mystery to be piled on a mountain of them.

Or might it be his breakthrough? He’d seen huge boulders cracked open by water seeping into a fissure. What if the Issenda Crossroads attack was to him like that water and it fractured the Empire’s hold on him? It was time to scour every word in the report. He lowered his head and strode toward the security office.It’s going to be a long night.

“Halt! Don’t make an old woman run the entire length of this ship.” Sister Chara was headed his way, and she didn’t look pleased.

He stopped and prepared for a scolding, feeling like a schoolboy who had tried escaping a teacher only to be caught. If only he could remember being a schoolboy or even going to school.

Hadley thought the priestess “grandmotherly”—although Bolivarr had no experience with grandmothers either.“She’s so kind and wise, easy to talk to.”Ha. Sister Chara studied him every chance she got, her shrewd gaze drilling holes through him like a mine corer taking soil samples for analysis. He either clammed up around the sister or fled. Usually the latter.

There was no escaping her this time.

“Praise the Goddess. I didn’t think you’d ever stop.” She sounded a little out of breath. Her robes swished, releasing the spicy-sweet scent of incense. “You ruffled a few feathers in there, namely mine. Insisting this attack was no hate crime.”

“It wasn’t my intent to minimize the horror of what happened. Only to state the case that it bears differences from other hate crimes we’ve seen.”

“Yes, yes. Once you got me turned around, I agreed with you. What happened at the Hand of Sakkara doesn’t smell right. Excellent work on your part.”

His surprise and pleasure at the sister’s compliment were fleeting as something again stirred deep inside his mind.The Hand of Sakkara…Do no evil… Never bow to evil…Drip, drip, drip. His seeping water. Luckily, he had the perfect excuse to plumb Sister Chara’s knowledge of the place. “Do you have time to come to the security office and answer a few questions, sister? It could help the Triad to solve the crime.”

Or is it your past you want solved?

“Not your office. Mine,” she said. “I need my tea. Come.”

CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE

Sister Chara’soffice was more like a sanctuary, filled with warm light and the aroma of incense. Bolivarr expected to feel acutely awkward in her personal space. An assassin, a killer, thrust into close quarters with a high priestess. His kind and hers had been adversaries for millennia. Yet a sense of peace stole over him. Knots of tension in his back loosened. He exhaled, feeling in that moment as if he could breathe again. There was even something comforting about the way she prepared a pot of tea.

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