The Lawgivers: Gabriel (27 page)

She didn’t see that there was much they
could do about it, though. Obviously, his people didn’t have a clue
of just how much of a struggle it was just to survive or they
wouldn’t think of them as savages, or animals, that were too stupid
to know better.

Well, she supposed some of them
probably were too stupid to know better.

Maybe a lot of them.

But that didn’t change the fact that
water was so hard to get that they couldn’t afford to waste it for
cleaning. It didn’t change the fact that food was so hard to get
that most of their time was spent hunting it and it didn’t change
the fact that, as dangerous as the villages were, they were still
safer than living in the open like she did. And when people crowded
together for safety in villages it just made food and water that
much harder to get.

It wasn’t as if they wouldn’t have
welcomed the chance to live more comfortably, like the udai
obviously did.

Those thoughts made her wonder if
telling Gabriel where the villages were wouldn’t actually be a good
thing. She’d done her best to avoid any of the villages she could
remember passing through before because, although she mostly
trusted Gabriel, she didn’t trust his people.

It was pretty clear that Gabriel was
contemptuous of humans—he hadn’t actually tried very hard to hide
it!—but he had never harmed any that didn’t deserve it as far as
she could see. In fact, most of his wrath seemed reserved
specifically for the gangs that hurt everyone else.

She still didn’t feel comfortable about
the reasons he’d told her that his people claimed as their reason
for ‘helping’ hers. She still didn’t trust that they actually
wanted to help. She thought Gabriel believed it and he was the
smartest man she’d ever known, but that didn’t mean he knew what
his people were up to. They’d sent him out to kill the vicious
bullies that were raping, torturing, and killing their own kind and
she didn’t really have a problem with that, per se. She thought
they needed killing.

On the other hand, it was the gangs
that protected the people in the villages. They were the meanest,
but also the strongest. How were the people going to protect
themselves when all the strongest among them had been
killed?

Well, she supposed if all the gangs
were gone there wouldn’t be much the people had to protect
themselves from—except, possibly, the udai.

* * * *

Lexa thought for several moments after
they’d landed and she had a chance to see the place that she’d been
mistaken. This couldn’t be the farm. As she stared around in
dawning dismay, though, she saw a few things she recognized that
made denial impossible.

The roof of the tiny cabin where they’d
lived had fallen in and the door and shutters were missing or
hanging awkwardly, leaving gaping holes. Scraggly weeds grew along
the rows in the garden that she and her family had so carefully
formed every spring when they planted again, hoping each time that
the seeds would sprout and they’d have more food than they could
possibly eat. The big tree where she and her brothers had played
was scarred and burned, but she saw the rope they’d used to make a
swing still hung from its largest branch.

There was a body hanging from it now
instead of the thick stick they’d used as a seat—a skeleton
actually, but the long white beard and hair were
unmistakable.

She swallowed with an effort around a
lump in her throat that felt like it would choke her. “That’s
Sir.”

“Stay here,” Gabriel said
grimly.

She didn’t think she could’ve moved if
she tried. She was afraid he would find the bodies of her brothers
and she would have to accept that Ralph hadn’t lied about disposing
of them. She nodded a little jerkily, watching Gabriel as he moved
closer to examine the body.

Feeling weak and dizzy and strangely
empty, Lexa dropped to the ground and waited while Gabriel explored
the ruins of what had once been her family’s farm. He moved to the
door of the cabin, stood looking inside for a few minutes and then
went in. He wasn’t gone long before he came out again, his
expression like granite. He glanced toward her and then left the
cabin and disappeared behind it.

She tried not to think about the other
bodies he might find.

She was so lost in the fog of misery
that she didn’t notice, at first, when Gabriel returned to stand
over her, looking down at her. Finally, he dropped to a crouch,
studying her face. “I didn’t find anyone else.”

Lexa stared at him blankly for several
moments. Abruptly, a harsh sob tore its way from her chest. “You
didn’t?” she asked hopefully.

“No.”

She covered her face with her hands as
another sob escaped her and then another and another until she was
weeping uncontrollably, rocking herself mindlessly. She jerked all
over when she felt two hard arms encircle her and then dove at his
chest, leapt toward the comfort offered. He held her until she’d
cried till she couldn’t cry anymore, just held her, without a
word.

When she finally pulled away and began
mopping at her face, he straightened. “There’s no sign that this
place has been inhabited for years.”

Lexa swallowed convulsively, trying to
convince herself that Ralph and his raiders wouldn’t have taken the
boys if they had intended to kill them. Surely, they would have
just left them? Abandoned them or killed them on the
spot?

“I’ll look for them for you,
Lexa.”

Lexa looked up at him, feeling a surge
of hope, but it died almost as quickly as it had sprung up. She
shook her head sadly. “You’ll never find them.”

His expression hardened. “I can
try.”

She searched his face. She could see
that he meant it and she knew in that moment that she loved him.
She didn’t care that he wasn’t the same as her, that he wasn’t
human, or that her own people would probably despise her for loving
him.

* * * *

Lexa’s hopefulness didn’t last long.
They found a sprinkling of other tiny farms like the one she’d
lived on as a child that looked as if they’d been attacked and
destroyed around the same time as her family had been attacked.
After that, they found several small, abandoned villages.
Eventually they arrived at King Ralph’s domain, or what had been
his village.

Gabriel had refused to allow her to go
in with him despite her argument that he wasn’t likely to recognize
her siblings if they were there. He’d told her she would get her
chance once he’d taken care of the gang and left her.

She couldn’t see what was going on, but
she was close enough to hear and her imagination filled in the
blanks.

Her confidence that Gabriel could
handle anything took a beating as she listened to the battle. She’d
been too focused on the possibility of finding her little sister
and brothers, she realized in dismay. She supposed she’d thought in
terms of slipping in as she generally did when she had to go into a
village, quietly discovering what they could and then leaving
again. She hadn’t considered that Gabriel would fight Ralph and his
gang. She hadn’t considered that Gabriel could be hurt or
killed.

She considered both with fear and
anxiety the moment violence erupted and she heard the sounds of a
fierce battle.

As soon as a deathly silence fell, she
ignored Gabriel’s order to stay put until he came back for her and
rushed inside.

The village looked little changed in
the years since she’d left. She wasn’t certain if that was what
made her skin crawl or the eerie silence or the fact that she saw
no one at all until she finally reached the scene of
carnage.

She was too relieved to see Gabriel
striding along the street, examining the faces of the dead, to
consider the wisdom of her impulse to rush to him and examine him
for injury, but she was sorry she hadn’t. Hearing her running
footsteps, he’d whirled toward her with his weapon raised. He
lowered it as soon as he recognized her and scowled at her
furiously.

“I told you to wait where it was safe!”
he growled.

Lexa braked to a halt. “I wanted to
make sure you were alright,” she responded in dismay, flicking a
quick look over him. Blood spattered his clothing liberally, but
she couldn’t tell whether it was his or the men he’d
killed.

He strode toward her, gripping her
upper arms almost painfully. “And if I hadn’t been, you would’ve
rushed directly into the ambush!”

Lexa stared up at him in dismay,
feeling her heart squeeze in her chest. It struck her forcefully,
though, that he was right. She’d thrown common sense to the wind,
ignored years of hard lessons in survival and could have rushed to
her death because she’d been more focused on his life than her own.
“I’m sorry. It was … stupid. I just ….”

“Didn’t think,” he finished for her in
a harsh voice.

Lexa swallowed a little convulsively.
“Guess not,” she muttered, looking away from the anger in his
eyes.

She saw then that villagers had begun
to creep from hiding up and down the street.

Gabriel must have realized they had an
audience, as well. He released her, but as he did he allowed his
hands to slip along her arms almost like a caress or an
apology.

He surveyed the bodies again. “I
suppose this must be all of them since you didn’t get your head
blown off rushing to me,” he said dryly. “Do you see
Ralph?”

Lexa felt her stomach lurch as she
turned obediently to look. “I don’t … I’m not sure.”

“Check the bodies,” Gabriel said
tightly. Shifting his attention to the people he could see in or
near the buildings along the street, he lifted his voice and
addressed them. “I am the Lawgiver, Gah-re-al. These men have been
judged and executed per code 57800 of the Udai Federation of Worlds
for the crimes of murder, rape, and aggravated assault. Gather
something to dig with. The bodies must be disposed of.”

A voice wafted to them from close by.
“Let the buzzards have the bastards.”

Gah-re-al zeroed in on the man who’d
spoken, a shadowy figure standing just inside a doorway. His jaw
tightened. “You might regret that when the stench of rotting
corpses surpasses the stink of human waste,” he growled, “but that
wasn’t a request.”

Lexa had jolted to a halt when she
heard the response to Gabriel’s order. Uneasiness slithered down
her spine. She wasn’t certain why until she scanned the faces of
the people she could see. There was fear there, much as there had
been in the other village, but there was something else that she
wasn’t accustomed to seeing—judgment—and they were all looking at
her.

* * * *

“Fraternizing with the primitives
wasn’t what we had in mind when we appointed you as a
Lawgiver.

“You seem to be laboring under some
confusion regarding the handling of the savages. We need to keep a
careful balance,” Justice Mer-laine added. “We have a policy of
non-interference.”

Gah-re-al’s discomfort ebbed and his
anger rose. He’d been seesawing back and forth between discomfort
at the speculation of exactly what had occurred between him and
Lexa, anger and resentment that the Justices seemed to consider it
their business at all, and even guilt when he knew damned well
there was no reason for him to feel it. “I’ll admit to some
confusion. Exactly how are we defining ‘non-interference’ these
days?”

His sarcasm wasn’t lost on the justices
or well received.

“Fucking one of the savages would
certainly fall into the interference category,” Justice Jon
retorted dryly.

Gah-re-al felt his face heat in spite
of all he could do to prevent it. It wasn’t entirely from
embarrassment, however. Anger had a good deal to do with it. He
considered who he bedded to be private, regardless of his
appointment as Lawgiver. Beyond that, he certainly hadn’t confessed
what had occurred between them. That was entirely speculation on
Phil-a-shee’s part, passed on to the Justices when she’d reported
him.

The bitch!

“The entire rehabilitation program
would seem to fall under the category of interference as far as I
can see,” Gah-re-al responded after a moment.

“It’s a matter of record that you
object to the program,” Justice Mer-laine said pointedly, “which
makes me question Phil-a-shee’s assertion that you’ve been having
sexual relations with one of the savages. According to the report
you turned in upon your return, this … female helped you pinpoint
the location of nearly a dozen villages previously unknown to us.
Are you suggesting that you were merely working to establish trust
to insure her cooperation in our endeavor to eradicate the threat
the natives represent?”

It was a broad hint that he could avoid
unpleasantness if he flatly denied having had intercourse with
Lexa, but it put him in a dilemma. He was as uncomfortable denying
his liaison with Lexa as he was discussing his relations before the
court and it went beyond his natural reluctance to lie just to save
his skin. It would be as much a betrayal as a confession would be.
They would assume that he was ashamed of having sex with Lexa, a
primitive, and he felt none.