Page 35 of Hunting the Warlord's Daughter

“Aye. Like light passing through someone’s hands in prayer, I recall Bolivarr saying.” He laced his hands together. “The Goddess-Mother Herself prays over Issenda, keeping watch. That’s what the sisters here think. The Order of the Hand of Sakkara has survived for hundreds of years without an attack. They may be right.”

They passed the sanctuary—a group of low buildings, pinkish in the twilight. Hidden under layers of clothing, the pendant warmed and vibrated against Wren’s skin—more of a hum, but enough to catch her attention. Was it reacting to the sanctuary as it had on Zorabeta? The pendant continued to pulse. As if it were breathing. A living thing.

Incense sweetened the still air. Calmness stole over her.You have the blood of priestesses.Was that why she felt such a sense of serenity when out on the lake fishing? What of the temper that sometimes erupted inside her like a flashfire?You also have the blood of the warlord.

The sisters of Issenda didn’t resemble the ones she’d seen at the camp. They wore silvery, body-hugging robes. Strong and athletic, they flexed arms that were bare from the shoulder down, their skin covered in henna tattooing. In one area, she saw several training with long sticks, trying to knock each other off an elevated log. Others practiced martial arts. All under the strange shadows. The praying hands. Sabra would have fit right in, in her element as a warrior-priestess. She’d sacrificed everything to raise Wren.

Two priestesses guarded the entrance to the clinic. Strong and athletic, they flexed arms that were bare from the shoulder down, their skin gleaming with oil. They looked like how Wren had always imagined goddesses, fit and strong. One sister’s face was seamed with age, her skin tone almost too deep for the henna to show, with curly, dark brown hair shot through with threads of white. The other was quite brawny, her blond hair thick and straight. Her gaze swept over them, then snapped back to Wren. Her hand lifted to her chest, fingers splayed.

Wren’s heartbeat skittered. She dropped her chin, moving closer to Aral, assuming the mantle of someone who didn’t want to be noticed. “Your instruments of war, please,” the elder sister said. “We will watch over them as we do all such items.” She motioned to a polished, flat rock where other items sat: flowers, articles of clothing, and food, a mix of personal possessions and offerings.

They stepped away to add their dozers to the collection. “Blessed are all who enter here,” the curly-haired priestess said, and allowed them to pass. The brawny blonde dipped her head and stepped backward. “Welcome back,” she murmured.

Fates!Wren slipped her hand in Aral’s. His head jerked around, but he didn’t pull away. He seated her hand more firmly in his. “Did you hear that?”

“It’s probably some sort of greeting.”

“It didn’t sound like one. She said, ‘Welcome back,’ as if I’ve been here before.”

“You haven’t, I assume.”

“No, of course not.”

“Then there you go. It’s a sisterly hello.”

“She looked at me so strangely.”

“The sisters of the Hand of Sakkara are a strange lot.”

“How do you know?”

“Bolivarr.”

She let out a tense breath and nodded. “We may be walking in his footsteps.”

“Aye,” he said quietly. “I like the thought of that.

“Wren. You’re cutting off the circulation to my fingers. Look, if I weren’t confident of your safety, I’d have left you on the ship. I check the galactic news streams daily. You’ve seen them yourself. They’re still circulating the same images you saw in the camp. While the odds are never zero, the chances of harm coming to you in this place are low.”

She loosened her death grip on his hand.

“But if things get dicey, find a food tray and—”

She elbowed him.

They exchanged smiles. “Let’s get rid of these glasses,” she said.

They stopped to kneel at a hollowed-out, polished stone bowl, where they left their “gifts,” an indirect payment for the medical procedure. All she had left to her name was in Sabra’s pouch. As for Aral, the vast Mawndarr fortune and assets had been frozen by the Triad, but he wasn’t a pauper by any means—he’d hidden away money on several different worlds, and on his ship. To Aral’s queens and credits, she added some of the gems she’d brought all the way from Barokk. It was far more than needed, but not to Wren. Nothing would ever make up for the mass killings ordered by the warlord, but every small bit helped.

“Ready?” Aral asked and this time he reached for her hand, his grip warm and strong. She kept her gaze trained respectfully on the ground the entire way into the room where the procedure would be performed. A former battlelord and the daughter of the dead warlord in the care of a deeply religious sect. It seemed surreal.

Before long, a plump, middle-aged woman dressed in a pale green tunic over matching pants escorted them to a small, clean room. Like everyone else who ran a business on the outpost, she wasn’t in the order. Only after she’d opened a box of medical supplies and sat down did Wren realize the woman was their healer.

“What are the risks?” Aral said as she examined Wren’s eyes.

“Virtually none. The nano-meds are engineered to reform the lens. If the eye itself was damaged, perhaps then I couldn’t offer such an optimistic prognosis, but your eyes are healthy,” she told Wren. “Only the lenses malformed.”

Wren tilted her head back. “Let’s un-malform them.”

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