Chapter 18: Alcatraz

A Prince of the Nobillo

Content Warning: This chapter contains a scene depicting scifi alien drug use by very minor characters that, while negative, some may find upsetting or triggering, particularly if in recovery. Reader discretion is advised.

Chapter 18: Alcatraz

The guards threw Lindsay down in front of the tribunal. She looked up to see the king of the Nobillo glaring imperiously from the central seat, Elihim smirking from his right and Boz grinning on his left. There were two Korsuch men she didn't recognize to complete the quintet.

"Your grace-" she started.

"The prisoner will not speak," the king ordered.

Lucian stepped forward. "Your grace, this woman stole the third prince's identification band and used it to infiltrate the Temple of the Immortal. She was apprehended just before she could destroy Project Jericho."

Lindsay could see Rivuk, half-obscured behind a pillar, cool rage in his eyes. She felt the sick ache of her betrayal. But she didn't feel him at all. He'd closed himself off from her.

"Infiltrating Project Jericho is a crime that demands death. Does anyone speak for the accused?" the king asked. It had the feel of being a formality, not a real question.

Silence. No one was going to speak for her! She was going to die! She looked up at Rivuk who only raised his chin impassively. She'd never seen those copper eyes so cold before. Tears poured from her eyes as she bowed her head to him. She'd screwed up. She deserved this.

"If there is no one to speak for the accused-"

"I'll speak for her." Rivuk stepped forward, his accusing glare never leaving Lindsay. He walked to her side, turning to face his father, but his eyes stayed glued on her. "This woman is my wife and, therefore, cannot be condemned to death without my consent. And I do not give my consent."

A murmur burst from the stands. She saw Elihim lean over to whisper in his father's ear. The king nodded.

The king stood. "Very well, then. By our laws she cannot be killed. But neither will she be spared punishment. Are you willing to take full responsibility for this woman, Prince Rivuk?"

Rivuk returned his father's stare. "Yes, I am."

"Very well. If Princess Lindsay Weaver surrenders the locations of the Bonat camps, we will allow her to leave in your custody, where she will remain under guard in your tower."

"Never!" Lindsay said. Gasps echoed through the room. "I'll never tell you! You'll have to kill me!"

A high, loud cackle split the courtroom. All eyes turned to Boz, his head tilted all the way back, laughing. He brought his head forward; his face held no expression. "Trust me, by the time we're done, you'll wish we had," he said.

________________________________________

Rivuk sat on the sofa staring at the two wristbands lying on the coffee table. The first was hers; her bracelet, that deep blue stone shot through with gold like lightning through a midnight blue sky, left behind, forgotten in whatever haste she'd left in. Would she have been caught if she'd remembered? It sat on a pale blue cloth, a reminder to him not to touch it with his bare flesh again - that terrible thing that showed him the entire world in an instant and left him passed out on the floor, shivering.

The second was his, stolen from around his wrist while he slept. Returned by Elihim after the tribunal. His eldest brother's lips had twitched as if he was trying not to smile as he dropped it into Rivuk's hand.

How could she have done it? Throwing it all away - everything they'd worked for! And why?

Rivuk felt the large man pacing behind him finally turn from his indecisive journey to and from the servant's quarters, past the couch and back again. He had decided. Rivuk's hest approached the back of the couch.

"Speak," Rivuk said before Carak could even ask permission to do so.

"I cannot believe she would act in such a manner without provocation," Carak exclaimed.

"I thought your assessment of her was that she was impulsive and stupid." Rivuk's voice was cold.

"I never said she was stupid," Carak objected.

Rivuk waved his hand dismissively. "Slow to learn, startlingly incurious. At this moment, I'm disinclined to call her anything but stupid. Certainly, you would never categorize her as smart."

"But never stupid," Carak said. "Talk to her, ask her what prompted her actions."

"I know what prompted her actions. I know very well. My brothers made it painfully clear that when she was given the choice, she chose him. She didn't even hesitate."

Carak's defense of her was silenced, as it should be. He didn't need to clarify who the "him" was, Carak knew very well. "He" was the blue man in a tent in the woods. The only man capable of making Rivuk jealous. Not envious, because he didn't possess anything Rivuk would want in his dirt-floored existence, but deeply, deeply jealous, for he knew that man could steal his wife away with a word.

And it hadn't even taken a word from him, just the fear he might be in danger.

Rivuk felt Carak's heavy grip on the couch as his hest leaned in over it. What more could his hest possibly have to say?

"Your grace, let me go to her," Carak said. "They will not tend to her wounds as they should."

"Why should I care for her scars? She earned every stripe they give her," Rivuk spat, bitterly.

"There may come a time when your anger toward her subsides, and then those scars may pain you."

Rivuk didn't know how Carak could stand to see her again. Of all, she had cost him and his people the most. Her thoughtless act had undone months of work! But he was right. Even now Rivuk felt the desire within him to forgive her. Like the scars on her side and her arm, he might come to regret allowing her to be further marked. "You may tend to her," Rivuk said. "But you are forbidden to serve her. She is a prisoner of the Nobillo, spared from her deserved death by our mercy."

"Yes, your grace," Carak said, bowing his head. He walked toward the door and stopped to look his prince over. "You should speak to her," he said.

It was rank insubordination that Rivuk should curb. He should beat him broken and bloody for it. Take out all his anger and disappointment on the Child. Like his father and brothers would do. And Carak would never blame him for it, would never fault him in any way.

It was disgusting he could even have such a thought! Disgusting that he was a prince of such a world that would not only condone it, but that would chastise him for his failure to do so and thereby encourage such behavior. He would choose understanding over rage, Lindsay and his hest had been close, afterall.

Rivuk began, "I know you still care for her-"

"As do you, your grace," Carak interrupted.

Again, his hest forgetting his position. This was becoming irksome. "Perhaps. But you would be wise to remember your place." The threat in his words could not be mistaken.

"Take my life if I have spoken incorrectly," Carak said, bowing his head.

Rivuk stood and faced the larger man. "Do not tempt me," he growled. But as he looked at his hest's scarred, bowed head, his anger relented. He fell back on the couch. "To live in a world where I can't make that threat..." he mumbled. "She has made it so much harder."

All the good will they'd worked so hard to gain, gone in an instant. By now the first news stories would be dropping, there would be no hiding it. It would have been better if he'd just taken her back to the woods after her outburst. He ran his fingers through his black hair in frustration. "Now I have to go back to the Temple to deliver a formal public apology for the actions of my wife." His wristband jangled on the table. He pressed it, still not comfortable with putting it back on. He listened to the familiar voice. "No, Yasolina, I am not doing any interviews." He pressed it again, ending the call.

"Perhaps she has made it more difficult, but not insurmountable," Carak agreed. "I do find myself incredulous at the idea she would go after the power grid. She seemed to care a good deal more about the people in the hospital than such an action would suggest."

Rivuk sighed remembering Boz's grinning face. "She wasn't trying to take down the grid, she believed something else was there that would hurt the Bonat."

Carak nodded. "That would make more sense." He glanced over to Rivuk, slyly. "But I wonder, by what mechanism does our power grid run that an unarmed human, with no intention to do so, would be able to easily break it?"

Rivuk tried to think. He couldn't remember. All he could see was the door marked Project Jericho. And he understood what Carak was insinuating. "I think it is far past time I investigate our power grid and consider possible security updates to it to prevent this from ever happening again. Afterall, it wouldn't do for the Third Prince to be ignorant on such matters."

"Just so. Should I tell Princess Lindsay to expect you this evening? You still retain your conjugal rights, as it were."

"Tell her..." Part of him never wanted to see her face again, but he needed to vent his anger. She should know exactly how he felt. Why should Carak be punished for her actions? And he needed to see her, to see how she felt. Was she sorry for what she'd done to the plan, to him? Or was she self-righteously arrogant, as she'd been when she'd had him speared? If the latter, then he could leave her, he could walk away in good conscience. She would live on and that would be enough. But, if the former... He wasn't certain what he'd do then. He couldn't imagine it. "Tell her I intend to come if I find the time."

"Yes, your grace," Carak said, opening the door to leave.

"Oh," Rivuk said, as though an afterthought when it was anything but. "Take her bracelet to my room. Wrap it up well so no one can see it." He couldn't take the chance of it falling into Elihim's hands, not if it truly had the ability to amplify their mental powers as it had Lindsay's. That wouldn't just mean the end of the plan, but the end of Okeshi.

"Yes, your grace." Carak lurched back over and took the bracelet from the desk and left.

He pressed his wristband. "Yasolina, I'd like to have a private conversation with you later to discuss the... news. No, no interview. Not yet. But I might have some information for you, from a source close to the palace."

His wristband chirped a warning, it was time to go. He pressed the band again. "Have Nerisa meet me on the way to the Temple," he ordered, spreading his wings. In seconds, he was out the balcony and over the palace. Nerisa came up alongside him in the air. He gave her a nod and they banked in tandem, circling down into the garden of the Temple of the Immortal.

"Prince Rivuk, it is our honor to receive you again so soon," Lucian smiled indulgently as he greeted them with arms spread wide.

"You honor me, Chancellor. I apologize that my visit could not be under more felicitous circumstances. If you would take me to the chamber, I should like to see the damage my wife has done for myself," Rivuk said.

Lucian's smile faltered. "Obviously we have much to discuss. If you would," Lucian gestured to the doors.

"Wait out here, Nerisa. I'll be back soon for the public apology. Make certain the security is ready for the apology when I return. It will not do to delay," he directed his guard, then followed Lucian in.

He didn't look at the rows of naked women in their upright beds with their bulging bellies. They were nothing to him as a prince. He ignored the sounds of the breeders creating the next line of new recruits for his army as he followed, listening to the Korsuch man ahead of him try to talk his way out of what Rivuk knew he most didn't want to do, to show Rivuk why his father had ordered Elihim to alter his memories.

"She didn't break anything, so there really is no need to enter Project Jericho," Lucian said.

"I was given to believe she nearly destroyed our power grid. Are you saying I've been misled?" Rivuk said. "I would hate to think my wife was in jail for simple trespassing."

"No, her intent was clear."

"And how was that ascertained?"

"She had a blunt object and was about to smash it when we caught her," Lucian said.

"I was under the impression she arrived unarmed, certainly I heard no injury report regarding my guards," Rivuk said, furrowing his brow in mock confusion.

"It was an improvised weapon she obtained in the room."

"What sort've weapon could she have gotten from the generator room? Surely you don't store too many heavy objects there."

"It was a chair," a pretty Korsuch scientist with long, bouncing, red curls said with a smile as she held up a digital tablet. "My apologies, director, I need your fingerprint. Oh, I'm sorry," she said, supposedly now noticing Lucian's murderous expression, "Was I not supposed to report that?" Even from here, Rivuk could tell there was no sincerity in that apology - she reeked of ambition.

"Thank you, Augusta," Lucian muttered.

Augusta. Rivuk remembered her now, the woman performing the vivisection of the infant. He smiled at her as his mind reached out to hers. I want the security video of the incident. And I'd like to discuss a particularly beneficial proposition with you, he flashed an image of a vial of his own blood in her mind. Can we meet later? he mentally asked.

Her mind flashed a picture of a ramshackle invocation den nearby and a room upstairs. Hardly befitting a prince, but it didn't matter. If she was an apoth, and it didn't surprise him an ambitious scientist would be, it would make the clean-up that much easier.

Taking back the tablet, Augusta flounced off, her curls bouncing along her back. Lindsay had thought she looked like a goddess. Frankly, he couldn't see the appeal. But, then, he was surprised he found Lindsay appealing, given her strange, alien looks that were in some ways so Nobillo and in some ways so uncannily not. But there was the matter at hand.

"A chair?" Rivuk asked. "One of those spindly things?" He indicated to the plastic station chairs with the thin, metal tubing that formed their skeleton. They were strong under pressure, yes, but exceedingly lightweight. "I'm fairly certain they'd bounce off anything you might try to break with them." Rivuk gave a small, theatrical frown. "It doesn't sound as though Project Jericho is particularly safe. I'd like to conduct an inspection to determine what protection it may require from our Nobillo guards."

"Certainly, your grace, we can schedule one in the next iuna," Lucian said.

Rivuk inwardly smiled at Lucian's attempts to deflect him. There was certainly something very interesting that Lucian didn't want him to see. "I do apologize for the inconvenience, but given the gravity of the situation and the ease at which an unarmed woman was able to infiltrate the room, I must insist."

"But Project Jericho is under the purview of Second Prince Boz," Lucian almost stammered. "Shouldn't he be here to conduct the survey as well? I should contact him."

"You're right," Rivuk said. "Go ahead and contact him, I'm perfectly able to wait on something this important." He raised his arm so Lucian could easily see his wristband. "Or I can call him myself and expedite the matter, though I doubt he'll be too pleased being called away on such short notice on a matter I could simply see to."

Lucian paled. Of course, bringing in Boz had only been a stalling tactic, the idea he might actually come was a terrifying threat, even to the Chancellor. "No, I suppose there's no need to trouble him with such a simple matter. If you'll just follow me."

Rivuk smirked ever so slightly as he followed Lucian beyond the doors he'd seen so often in his dreams. And then the final door opened. The room was not what he expected in the least. It was small, not much bigger than an office. Machines lined the back with a few dusty red lights glowing from them and meters slowly ticking away. His eyes immediately went to the chair on the floor where streaks of footprints in the dust testified to the scuffle that had occurred and to the room's general disuse.

And then his eyes locked onto the thing that made everything clear. He jumped slightly in shock at the sight of the nearly naked Bonat man, just floating in the bluish gel of the stasis tube as though some sort of weird sculptural piece. He knew, then, exactly what had happened and why. No doubt Elihim had also known what would happen when he lured Lindsay into a room with a Bonat man in a stasis chamber. Of course she would try to free him - she was stupidly impulsive like that. But they said she'd nearly taken down the electrical grid. He noticed an arc of electricity traveling up the man's forearm. "Who is this man?" he demanded. "What part does he have in the electrical grid?"

It appeared Lucian had accepted his fate and was now relishing his chance to be the first to make the introduction, for he smiled wickedly and said, "This is Jericho."

Rivuk flinched. He caught himself before he took a full step back, but he could see Lucian had quite enjoyed the effect the name had on the prince. "Jericho?" Rivuk asked. "This man?" It was strange how in this moment, the myth of the man who had certainly just been a Bonat in real life loomed large over the floating figure. He'd always envisioned Jericho to be cloaked in shadows, not bathed in pale green light like just another specimen in a jar.

"The very same."

"How?" Rivuk's quavering fingers reached out to touch the glass.

"Uh-uh," Lucian blocked his hand. "Mustn't touch. That glass is almost seventy lanc old. He hasn't been out since our war machines subdued him and brought him here."

Rivuk quickly put his hands behind his back, embarrassed to be chastised like a child by the high chancellor. "What is his purpose here and how does he relate to the power grid?"

Lucian's smile widened and now it was clear where he'd had the sides of his mouth fused. "Your grace, he is the power grid. More than 75% of the city's power is generated by his body. At first this tank was merely meant to safely channel his power while we studied him, but when we discovered his potential as an energy source, we hooked him into the Temple of the Immortal. But with every new building added, his power seemed to increase exponentially, until he was powering the entire city."

"But what about the hydroelectric and wind plants?"

"The other 25%. Prince Boz's idea."

"Boz knows?" Rivuk asked in disbelief. At this point, he didn't know why he should find anything shocking in his world anymore, and yet he found it so.

"Yes. Every first and second prince has known since Project Jericho began and they have all supported its growth except for Prince Boz. He didn't like the idea that our power grid was wholly dependent on a single, aging source. He wants to wean the city off of its reliance on Jericho over the next ten lanc. I disagree, of course. There is no need to adopt a less reliable system when Jericho shows only minimal signs of aging in stasis. At this rate, he could easily give us over a hundred more lancs. What are your thoughts on the matter?"

"My thoughts..." Naturally, Lucian would want to keep the source of the city's power with the Korsuch. Rivuk hated to admit it, but Boz acted wisely in this matter. And the worst of it was knowing Boz was the first prince in over a dozen who was clever enough to realize that with Jericho, the Korsuch had them chained by the leg. They could never fly from their supposed allies.

What Lucian seemed to fail to anticipate was that by increasing the load on Jericho, they were training him to produce greater amounts of electricity. He'd been able to decimate a city all those lancs ago - how much more powerful would he be now? Rivuk eyed the glass warily. He wasn't fool enough to believe Jericho would take him for an ally if one bil that glass failed. "My thoughts are that we need to post two guards at the door 28 hours a bil. I want two teams for each shift and their watch and break times divided up evenly so they are alert at all times. They will report to me if anyone so much as sneezes in the direction of this room."