Jeanne G'Fellers - No Sister of Mine

• Acknowledgements
  
• Prologue
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty-One
  
• Chapter Twenty-Two
  
• Chapter Twenty-Three
  
• Chapter Twenty-Four
  
• Chapter Twenty-Five
  
• Chapter Twenty-Six
  
• Chapter Twenty-Seven
  
• Chapter Twenty-Eight
  
• Chapter Twenty-Nine
  
• Chapter Thirty
  
• Chapter Thirty-One
  
• Chapter Thirty-Two
  
• Chapter Thirty-Three
  
• Chapter Thirty-Four
  
• Chapter Thirty-Five
  
• Chapter Thirty-Six
  
• Chapter Thirty-Seven
  
• Chapter Thirty-Eight
  
• Sarian People, Places, and Words
  
• About the Author
  
• Publications from Bella Books, Inc
  

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Copyright© 2005 by Jeanne G’Fellers

Bella Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 10543
Tallahassee, FL 32302

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First Edition

Editor: Anna Chinappi

Cover designer: Sandy Knowles

ISBN 1-59493-017-1

For Mamaw, who was Taelach tall and strong and unconditionally loving of her eldest granddaughter.

No Sister of Mine
and all the novels in The Silver Kinship series derived from my need to escape. While my reasons for escaping have changed throughout the years, the need still remains as does the drive to tell the stories of those I met during my escapes. These women live in a plane I reach simply by closing my eyes. Theirs is a less than perfect existence—perfection must be horribly boring to write about—but it is a world built upon my wildest fantasies and deepest fears, a creation that would not have come about if it hadn’t been for those dear to me, especially my mother. Thanks, Mom, for hiding a copy of this work from those who threatened to destroy it and for encouraging my writing when no one else seemed to care.

Virginia Marion and Kay Bridges have also been instrumental in developing my writing. Without their encouragement and their “You go, girl!” attitude I never would have had the strength to keep churning away at this novel and my college education.

To all those at Bella, including Linda Hill, Becky Arbogast and, of course, my editor Anna Chinappi, I say thank you for putting up with the myriad of questions from a newbie and the ecstatic, girlish squeals of a woman learning her first manuscript has been accepted.

Finally, I would like to express love and gratitude for my partner, my favorite Gunny at ease, the one I love always and all ways—Anna Koetter. Thank you for your unconditional support, for your assistance with child-wrangling, for taking the household helm when my graduate courses take place at night, and for your daily office drudgery that allows me to continue my schooling and writing. And last but certainly not least, thank you for encouraging me to submit
No Sister of Mine
to just one more publisher. You were right, my love, Bella is where it belonged.

By the late twenty-third century, numerous stars in the Milky Way were known to have orbiting planets capable of sustaining life. One of these, Sixty-One Cygni, a yellow sun with a planet similar in orbit and mass to Earth, intrigued human researchers and entrepreneurs alike.

Entrepreneurs, given a head start by the unrest between the Earth and Moon/Mars Alliances, won the competition for exploration, establishing a mining colony in the mineral-rich, frozen subsurface of Sixty-One Cygni’s sixth planet, which later came to be known as Farstar. A small group of researchers soon followed and began studying the second planet in the system—then known to be inhabited by a humanoid species calling itself the Autlach. When natural disaster struck the colony, the human colonists fled to this planet to await rescue—one which never came. As time passed, they began to intermingle then interbreed with the Autlach, forever changing the genetic makeup of a society, one which was steeped in religious teachings of the deity Raskhallak. The Raskhallak teachings demanded the Autlach follow a strict canon of daily prayer and obedience. A good man ruled his family with an iron hand and taught his sons to be future rulers. His daughters were taught subservience from birth. Any deviation from their duty, any sin (so Raskhallak claimed), evidenced in the birth of an albino child. Fathers flogged their daughters for bearing such a babe; husbands destroyed the evidence, sometimes killing both mother and child to hide their embarrassment.

As heinous as this was, such an event remained rare until the second generation of Human-Autlach hybrids. In that generation, a recessive human gene made itself known, producing a mutation when present in both parents. The resulting daughters—pale, blue-eyed, sterile and telepathic—were everything the russet Autlach were not. Rejected by their families, they found acceptance in each other, forming small clans that kept to the high mountains far above the Autlach.

Centuries of misunderstanding melded into stricter religious doctrine, giving the pale Autlach daughters, now called Taelachs, unwarranted reputation as cruel witches. They were killed at birth unless rescued by a Kimshee—a Taelach sister trained to sense Taelach fetuses through telepathy. Sparse in numbers but determined to survive, the Taelach clung to their existence, eventually rediscovering the history of their origins and with it, the technology that brought humanity to Sixty-One Cygni. This technology also brought the Taelach together under one governing body— The Silver Kinship. Now capable of securing infant sisters from their disinterested birth parents, Kinship numbers skyrocketed almost as quickly as Taelach technology advanced. They were now able to explore Sixty-One Cygni and colonize the worlds surrounding it, bringing about an era of harmony that lasted until the unthinkable happened in a peaceful society—civil war.

A faction bent on the enslavement of the Autlach rebelled against the Kinship, shaking the very foundations of Taelach culture. Amidst the chaos, a new leader rose to power. Young as she was unrelenting in her love for the Kinship, Belsas Exzal took the Kinship’s reins, soon squelching the rebellion and sentencing the conspirators to exile on Farstar’s prison colony. Cance Creiloff, the leader of the rebellion and former comrade of Belsas Exzal, promised to return, a pledge that grew into vowed revenge as she and the other conspirators were branded with the Taelach symbol for traitor.

So ended the Taelach civil war and began the six-decade reign of Belsas Exzal as Taelach of All. A strong, vibrant leader, Belsas guides the Silver Kinship through a decade and a half of continued problems, including an Autlach uprising against the Kinship and the invasion of Iralian Commitment—an alien reptilian species with the macabre reputation for feasting on living enemy flesh. Now bound together against a common enemy, the Taelach and Autlach form an uneasy alliance—one as vulnerable to old prejudices as it is strengthened by fear.

This tale begins one decade after the Taelach civil war.

Take the child of your resemblance. There is no place for her in the limits of the Autlach existence.

—Taelach saying

Fizzelle tried to focus on the troubled face that lingered above her own. The pains in her abdomen had subsided, leaving her feeling quite empty inside. “Where’s the child?” she muttered. “I want my baby.”

“You’re too weak.” Laiman pulled the blankets to her chin, smoothed her whorlish curls, then looked toward the small, crying bundle nuzzled in the midwife’s arms.

Fizzelle’s dark eyes glazed with want. “Laiman, the child. Let me see it.”

The midwife shook her head a decided no.

“Sleep now, Zelle. I’ll tend the baby.”

“What’s wrong with the babe? Laiman? Why can’t I . . .” Her voice trailed off as he eased the sleep smoker mask over her nose and mouth.

“Forgive me.” Laiman’s heart broke as her hold loosened then fell away. “But it’s easier to forget what you never see.”

The midwife clutched the child tight and turned toward the doorway. “They’ll be here soon. I’ll watch her until they come.”

“Wait.”

“Laiman, no.” She pulled just out of his reach. “Don’t make memories.”

“They’re already made. Now let me see my daughter.” He took the baby from her resistant arms and cradled it in his own. “She has her mother’s round face and button nose.”

“And Taelach hair and eyes,” reminded the midwife as she forced the infant from him. “The infant must go. She’s one of them.”

“But what do I tell Fizzelle? She’s longed for another child.”

The midwife scowled. Further delay would mean contact, unavoidable conversation with those she detested. “She already has two. One loss won’t make that much difference. Mothers have endured this for eons. A little sacrifice won’t harm her, or you. Let it go, Laiman. There’ll be others—”