The Yuletide festivities would be marked with blood.
The two young men stood across from each other in the large ballroom, while relatives and guests, perhaps five dozen all told, looked on. Though the room was not silent – the fire crackled, the wind howled outside, feet shuffled on the floor as many in the crowd adjusted their view – little was said as the two young men strode slowly back and forth, short blades gripped in their hands. The band had stopped playing their electro-harps and other instruments upon seeing the dusty case with the short duelling swords being brought out. Some of the guests, those less in favour, thus less in the know, did whisper to others, asking what had started this duel to the death. Those who did turn back to whisper over their shoulders bluntly stated it had something to do with Shiri, the youngest daughter of clan Eldrath.
For her part, Shiri stood silent, her father’s hands on her shoulders, and watched her older brother pace back and forth. Fifteen years old, Shiri had grown perhaps as tall as she would, standing at only 5 foot three. Clad in elaborate blacks, as were everyone in the family spread wide behind her, made her long, braided red hair stand out like a beacon – a firebrand among ravens. It didn’t help her sense of dread at all that every single person in the ballroom not looking at the two dueling young men had their eyes locked on her.
Her older brother Kano had started this intrusive interruption to the Vanhil family’s annual Yuletide ball. He was the one who had found out the Shiri and the youngest of the Vanhil’s sons had been trading affections over their personal devices and had brought the evidence to his parents, the leaders of the Eldrath clan. Together, with the oldest brothers and sister of the clan concocted a plan to disrupt the Yuletide ball before the guests had been invited to dine, before the elaborate Yuletide blessings of luck and harvest could be invoked by their hosts, thus spoiling the luck of all the other clans but theirs. That delicious notion was furthered by the fact that Kano had not yet killed a man – A rite of passage that all the members of the Eldrath clan partook. The Vanhil’s lovestruck son had provided their clan with an opportunity to assert their dominance over all the other clans that ruled the planets alongside them, to set themselves once again above them.
“My sister is not for you, boy!” Kano called out from across the polished dance floor, pointing his dirk at the trembling 15-year-olds throat. Tall and thinly muscled, Kano appeared more like a dancer issuing an invitation than a deadly fighter.
Yon Vanhil stood, his feet spread, hunched over from the weight of the dirk. Dressed in his colourful Yule garb, the short sword looked entirely out of place. As Kano continued his pacing, sizing up the best point of attack, Yon shuffled from side to side like a crab on hot sand, his sword held comically pointing out from his midsection. The Vanhil’s abhorred violence and thus employed no sword masters. It was painfully obviously to everyone watching that this duel was grossly one-sided and that Yon was for all intents and purposes about to be executed before their eyes.
“Can no one put a stop to this?!” Shouted Lord Bumford, a normally soft-spoken man, across the room. Many around the ballroom muttered their agreement. This was obscene.
“He knew the law. Clans do not sully the children of the others.” An imposing figure, tall, bald and fearfully striking in appearance, Lord Eldrath, Shiri and Kano’s father, first spoke directly at Lord Bumford, then turned his head to address the entire ballroom. “It was his parent’s duty to instill respect for the laws of the system in their son. They obviously knew it well enough to keep a set of dueling swords here in their home. This is the result of their failing.”
Slightly cowed, Lord Bumford summoned the courage to further protest. “Those laws are ancient. Our children meet and inter-mingle at occasions such as this several times a year. To ask them not to become enamoured without our permission is… ridiculous.”
Standing beside her husband Lady Eldrath directed her piercing, blacked-eyed gaze at Lord Bumford, and like her husband, finished by addressing the room. “Perhaps. But I have never heard a single one of you bring this up in council. If enough of you feel this is so, why not begin the process of changing the ancient laws that have protected our children from kidnap and rape for centuries?”
Lady Lisl Eldrath scanned the room with narrowed eyes and found many of the others had theirs downturned. They were shamed to be reminded of a time when inter-planetary travel first opened up the star system and many took to piracy in order to gain power and profit, including the ancient ancestors of the Eldrath’s themselves. The kidnapping of powerful family’s children was so rampant that laws had to be put in place to bring them to an immediate end. What first began as swift and severe death penalties later softened to duels of honour between the ruling clans. And the now the passage of time had greatly softened people’s feelings even toward inter-clan duels, Lady Eldrath noted. Best be done with this before a full-on rebellion took over the room.
“Finish this.” She seethed toward the back of her youngest son’s head.
Kano turned slightly, nodded reverently at his mother, and the turned back to the still-trembling Jan Vanhil. Kano help his sword up, the guard at his chin. “Die well, little boy.”
Before Jan could even try to lift his sword to return the salute, Kano sprang across the floor. With lightning fast steps, Kano closed the distance, all the while feigning an attack from on high. To his credit, Jan raised his blade defensively, the correct posture if the on-coming strike were not a ruse. Reaching the Vanhil boy, Kano swung his high arm backward, away from Jan’s upraised blade and brought his blade back to bear underhanded. Before the boy could even conceive of a countermove, Kano’s blade drilled through his midsection, piercing his guts all the way through, the bloodied tip of the blade protruding out the back of the young Vanhil’s festive Yule tunic. Without stopping his forward momentum, Kano pivoted on his outer foot, sweeping his free hand over Jan’s head and yanked the boy’s blade free from his hand. Upon finishing his spin, he stood facing Jan’s back, blade in hand. Kano rammed the blade in three rapid punches into ascending spots on Jan’s spine, above the blade tip protruding from his back. Pulling his elbow further for a fourth and final strike, he rammed the blade through the ribs on the left side of Jan’s back.
Young Lord Jan Vanhil only remained standing for a singular second. He then dropped in a heap on the floor, the violent suddenness of it accentuated by the bloody splat and the simultaneous loud clattering of the two swords poking in different directions from his upper body on the polished marble floor. Kano took a moment to gaze down at the dead heap at his feet, only striding away when the blood creeping from the body threatened to touch his ornate and chunky leather boots.
Kano strode across the floor, his head held high. By the time he reached his family, they were already putting on their large black cloaks and scarves. Lisl helped Shiri with hers, as the young girl was staring in frozen shock at the dead boy across the ballroom floor. Assured Shiri was sufficiently bundled up for the short trek outside to their starship, Lady Lisl guided the girl away by the shoulder and rest of the family followed. Lord Eldrath stayed only for a spare moment, looking around the room as he smiled.
“Do enjoy your Yule feast.” He said cheerfully and turned away, his angular cloak swirling.
As they left, the Eldraths did not bother to close the front doors of the Vanhil’s palatial mansion, allowing the frigid air of their planet’s High Yule season to creep into the house and chill everyone in the ballroom to the bone.
*
Aboard the family starship, Shiri sat silently by herself. Normally when they travelled across system, she would stare in wide-eyed wonder out the large portholes the entire trip. Having only travelled off their family’s planet a half-dozen times, Shiri was still stirred to her core by the thrill of travelling in space. This time, she felt no such exhilaration.
Perched as she was in a reading nook of the large main family space at the heart of the ship, Shiri could see her family’s undisguised mirth at what had just happened. They had given up on trying to entreat Shiri to join them in their reverie. Her plump and ever effervescent sister Mari had been the liaison for the attempts, only compounding Shiri’s desire to be left utterly alone. Once it was clear, Shiri needed time to sulk, her clan completely ignored her, allowing the youngest of them to process the horror they all seemed to take so much joy in.
With the most explosive peels of their laughter, Shiri would unlock her gaze from the bulkhead and glance sidelong at her family. This was her family – The people she’d known her entire life. Sitting tucked away from them, watching them in their morbid celebration, it was as though she was seeing them for the first time. The masks had come off.
Shiri wasn’t sure when she had learned that her clan – The Eldraths of planet Lugos – were greatly feared within the system, people to be dealt with gently lest their wrath fall upon you, but she had never truly understood what that meant. Someone had to maintain power, economic dominance within the system. In the past, others had held this position. These things were cyclical, this much she knew despite her youth. An avid reader, Shiri had read some of the history of the solar system, its nine planets and the early space-faring that led to trading and riches and the establishment of the nine clans, the ruling families of the system. Those earlier times were filled with barbarism and piracy. Before the establishment of the council and its myriad laws preventing outright murder for profit in the space ways. Looking at them now, Shiri was shaken by a singular thought.
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Her family were very much a product of those older, bloodier times and they did not want to let them go.
Before her eyes her inner portrait of them, those that had raised and loved and nurtured her, was changing into something ugly, something malignant. Though her mother and father remained seated, all the joyous activity around them was focussed on Kano, her older brother by two years. Her other brothers, Stator and Grimal – both in their twenties – continually showered praised upon Kano for the precision and grace of his first kill. Joining them, ever trying to turn attention to herself was her older sister Mari, her short yet girthy figure flitting from person to person as each spoke. Her father – Lord Leeun Eldrath of planet Lugos – sat, occasionally echoing the praise heaped upon Kano by his brothers, raising his goblet and sipping his wine each time. Her mother – Lady Lisl of Clan Eldrath, High councillor of the system – in turn further echoed her husband’s sentiments, only in far sparser terms. Her mother doled out praised in crumbs, and displays of warmth were unknown to her.
Watching them now, Shiri was able to part the veil of familial sentiment and for the first time in her life and see them as they actually were. Clad as they were in her family’s traditional blacks and leathers, appointed with feathers and studs and armor, they looked not like any kind of loving family, but a pack of snarling predatory monsters.
*
Arriving in orbit of Lugos, Shiri had to leave her solitary perch and strap into a chair for the landing procedure. This involved detaching from the rear engineering section, the ultra-fusion drive section, and dropping down from orbit in only the passenger portion of the ship. Ultra-fusion drives became permeated with radiation over time and allowing them into a planet’s biosphere was unthinkable. These UF drive sections were periodically replaced after years of use, sent into the sun where they could do no harm. The current one would plug into an orbiting dock that converted solar radiation into fuel for the ship’s UF drive. The passenger section of the Skalhawk – so named for the giant, raptor birds of Lugos – would buffet roughly through the upper atmosphere to then soar smoothly down to the landing facility many miles away from Clan Eldrath’s keep. Once the terrible shaking created by dropping down from space had subsided, Shiri relaxed somewhat in her chair and watched as they descended over her home planet.
Lugos would only be seen as beautiful by people as darkly inclined as the Eldraths. Its mountains, valleys and fields were of a slate grey and volcanic black. The thin rivers that snaked throughout the land masses never got deep enough to appear blue, more like glittering veins on a blackened landscape. Between the threatening, snow-capped mountains lay fields vast and level. These fields held Lugos’ bounty – The Ochrii flowers and the seeds they produced. Those seeds could be ground up and filtered to make a warm morning drink, or, when ground further and added to other compounds, could create medicinal formulas that were used throughout the system. These vast fields reaped a bounty of billions for Eldraths every year. While Ochrii flowers could grow on other worlds, it was found their growing in the dense volcanic soil of Lugos was what gave them their medicinal potency. Since those medical discoveries, more than one hundred years ago, no one in the system had died of any kind of cancerous malady. Not one person. The fields whipping under the ship presently were what gave the Eldraths their power and the leverage to commit occasional atrocities like the one they just did on Namont, homeworld of the Vanhil clan. Shiri thought on this as the fields gave way to another mountain range, the one that enclosed their home.
As soon as the ship cleared the peaks, the keep of Clan Eldrath could be seen. Though a dozen miles away, the tall, sprawling complex stood gleaming black in the moonlight, all harsh angles and spires. At its outer walls, the complex occupied an area of a square kilometer, so large was its footprint. Further walls connected to the outer wall, like so many jagged flower petals, the homes of businesses and protectorate families that had access to the keep by merit their relationships to the Clan. The tallest of the claw-like spires reached as high as three hundred meters. Though hundreds of people lived and worked near it or within its confines, the gigantic keep was only considered a permanent home by seven people – The Eldraths.
As the ship did an arcing turn away from their home, Shiri’s view of the keep cut off. The images played through her mind – The fields, the keep, the vassals protected by the secondary bastion walls. This was all a part of who she was.
The Skalhawk set gently down on a vast metal and concrete landing platform several miles from the keep. The ship shared the gigantic deck with several others, the property of her mother, father and oldest brother – all of which could couple with their shared UF drive. A completely enclosed gantry eased up to the side of the Skalhawk and latched on.
Inside the family hall within the ship, they were joined by Richla, the family advocate. He had travelled with them but had not joined them for the feast or the celebrations thereafter, having stayed in his own quarters aboard the ship. As the family donned their travelling cloaks, Richla approached Lord Leeun’s chair and detached a small briefcase from its socket in the chair arm. The plastic and metal case lit brightly at points with electronic lights contained crypto-files that represented a chunk of the family’s wealth. This was carried with them wherever they went as a family, should the need arise to buy their way out of trouble or to use their wealth as intimidation. The case would be transported by Richla back to vaults inside the keep until needed again. Richla stood away with the case, and then bowed his head to Leeun. “My lord, I shall join you shortly.”
“Of course. Shall we?” Lord Leeun turned to his family as the last of their travelling cloaks were donned. The Eldraths swept from the chamber, leaving Richla, ever the servant, to wait for their full exit before disembarking himself.
Inside the gantry, the family was comfortably lowered into the underbelly of the landing platform. Once underground, the lower gantry doors opened onto another more ornate platform next to mag-rail system where a singular car large enough for all of them waited. Lord Leeun beckoned to his youngest son, “You will take us home, Kano.”
Grateful for his father’s continued favor, Kano raced to the front of the car, dodging the light punches of his brothers as he went. Kano hopped into the driver’s seat and waited for the rest of his family to take their seats. The drive system would not engage until the doors full sealed. Once they were settled, Kano took hold of the drive handle and rammed it all the way forward.
The heads of the entire Eldrath clan fell back as the car rocketed forward over the magnetic rail.
“Easy there, boy.” Lord Eldrath said, adjusting his cloak.
“Don’t worry, father. I know what to do.” Kano carefully watched the map on the dash until it indicated the car was a half kilometer away from the keep. At that point he eased the drive stick back and let the vehicle coast on inertia lone.
As the vehicles’ speed decreased, Mari put her head on Shiri’s shoulder, sighing “Isn’t this nice?” Shiri fumed inwardly that it was quite the opposite. She hoped she’d never be forced to be this close to all of these people, these blood strangers who up until today had ruled over her heart.
By the time they reached the platform underneath the grand staircase that led into the keep, the car had slowed to a crawl and nudged to a stop at the debarking point.
“See?” Kano asked, turning toward his father. For his part Lord Leeun showed no sign of being in anyway impressed and left the car, making sure to offer his wife a hand as she sought to get out.
“Still not the cleverest, Kano.” Grimal teased and leapt from the car.
One by one they lighted up from underneath the outer keep, until the metal stairs reached the great stone staircase that led to the keep doors. Up those they went, Shiri taking her time, keeping her distance.
Servants had the high, vaulted doors open, and stood ready to take their cloaks immediately, having been signalled when the Skalhawk was in orbit. Shiri noticed something as soon as she stepped across the threshold, a servant already there for her outer wrap and cloak. She could smell a banquets worth of warm and inviting smells reaching her, even here in the front foyer of the keep. Freed of her outer garments, she walked down the long corridor, to the family dining hall. There, she saw the servants finishing up laying out a Yule feast on the table. It took her a moment to understand what it all meant.
Her family had no intention of eating at the Yule ball on Namont. They left home fully intending to kill Yan Vanhill and return here for their own celebrations of the season. They had planned it all, right down to having dinner ready for their return. They were monsters, one and all!
Shiri turned from the hall, passed her mother saying, “I’m sorry, Mother. I don’t feel well.”
She didn’t wait for a response and merely trotted to the lift that would take her straight up to her spire of the keep.
Passing the guards and servants, Shiri unlocked her chambers with the thumbpad and swept into her room. Ignoring the greeting of her personal bot, Hex, Shiri flopped down on her giant four poster bed and began to sob. Jan’s death had nothing to do with family honor, or the ancient laws. It had everything to do with maintaining the sense of fear around their family. A means to intimidate the people they did business with, nothing more. Shiri knew little of love at her age, but she knew she loved Jan. The first boy she’d ever felt the spark of love for, and her family murdered him right in front of her.
A singular thought penetrated through her sorrow as she cried uncontrollably. They were monsters, my family, one and all, and no matter what it takes, I am going to destroy them.
