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    Aftershock
    Aftershock
    Aftershock
    Ebook47 pages38 minutes

    Aftershock

    By Lee Killough

    ()

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    About this ebook

    It would be logical for the culture of a distant planet unconnected to Humans to be...well...alien. A different social and family structure, different legal system, different religion. But maybe some things aren’t that alien: war, politics...murder.

    A natural disaster like an earthquake would seem to be perfect cover for murder. But the murder is discovered, with the prime suspect a member of a family allied to Emperor Benamea Haneem. Lord Edo Ishda, brother to the Emperor, must discover the truth and see justice done in a situation where every solution threatens to be political dynamite for the Emperor.

    "A classic short novella featuring murder, accusations, family traditions & history & pride, and justice. Reminiscent of great Greek or Eastern literature." ~ 5 Stars, Giggs, Amazon Reader and Verified Purchase

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBWL Publishing Inc.
    Release dateDec 13, 2010
    ISBN9781926965307
    Aftershock
    Author

    Lee Killough

    Lee Killough has been storytelling since the age of four or five, when she started making up her own bedtime stories, then later, her own episodes of her favorite radio and TV shows. Because she loves both SF and mysteries, her work combines the two genres. Although published as SF, most of her novels are actually mysteries with SF or fantasy elements...with a preference--thanks to a childhood hooked on TV cop shows--for cop protagonists.

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      Book preview

      Aftershock - Lee Killough

      Aftershock

      By Lee Killough

      Digital ISBNs

      EPUB 978-1-77362-237-8

      Kindle 978-1-77362-238-5

      WEB 978-1-77362-239-2

      Amazon Print 978-1-77362-240-8

      Copyright 2010 by Lee Killough

      Cover art by Michelle Lee

      Chapter One

      It should have been the perfect opportunity to conceal a murder. In the worst earthquake to strike kingdom Bethado’s Kuena province for two generations, what would one more body be among so many. Yet murder had been discovered, and by whatever whim of God — who in Ishda’s opinion, enjoyed toying with those fragments of His greater Consciousness who had separated to experience mortal existence — Ishda found himself astride its shock waves.

      Ironically, overnighting in the province when the quake struck, he had counted himself lucky. Lucky to be a light sleeper so the first tremor jerked him awake. Lucky to be male, not female, so he was small enough to take shelter under his room’s desktable. Lucky that his ancestors — to whom he prayed fervently, reminding them who they had been in life and stating his relationship to them and his services to their former house — considered his existence worth continuing.

      When the ground steadied once more and he peered from beneath the desktable into unexpected moonlight, he discovered he had ancestral protection even before he asked. The moonlight came through a gaping hole in the roof...shining down on the section which had fallen on the sleeping mat. More moonlight shone through a great rent in the inn wall. Ishda slid out of his shelter, thanking his ancestors even more passionately than he had appealed to them, and scrambled through the outer wall into the stable yard.

      Other survivors were gathering there as well...most, like himself, wearing only loincloths. As they huddled together in the light from oil lamps hanging on the inn wall, Ishda noticed blood leaking leaked through the fingers one man held to the side of his head. When the man lowered his hand to stare dazed at it, Ishda saw that the top of his ear, formerly uncropped, had torn off. More blood steamed from the man’s scalp, smearing the tradesman’s design painted there. Dust whitened the hides of a man and two accompanying women who loomed above him. Elaborate scalp painting, the copper wire lacing the edges of fancycropped ears, and the intricate tattooing on one woman’s upper breasts identified her and the man as Bethadon nobility. But minor nobility, obviously, for them to be staying in this inn. The huskier of the women bore a slave’s ear notches and house tattoos.

      The male of the group splayed one eye toward Ishda, then slid it away again. Clearly dismissing Ishda as no one of importance...just small male with near-colorless green eyes, ears plainly cropped like a soldier’s, and no tattoo or painted design on his hide to identify profession or social rank. But then, that cultivated anonymity was what made Ishda so useful to his house.

      The ground thrashed again, throwing everyone to their knees. More walls cracked. Several collapsed. A section of stable roof fell in,

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