The Tribari Freedom Chronicles Boxset

by Rachel Ford

  And yet, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. What the hell’s wrong with me?

  His return trip took more time than the trip to the station because there was a listlessness to his step. He thought of how infrequently he saw Nik these days. She was barely home anymore, and then only to crash before her next shift.

  He felt anger well in his chest, the same impotent rage he’d known the day before. The same rage he always felt when he thought of it. Anger at the bosses, who insisted on stealing her time; anger at the system, that encouraged such exploitation. But more than that: anger at himself, that it had come to this, that he hadn’t found a way – some way – to stop it.

  When she hadn’t come home, a thought – vague, nebulous, too indistinct to name – had floated around in his brain. He didn’t, couldn’t, name it. But on that walk back, he did.

  What if she never comes home? He would not blame her. How could he? What did she have to come back to? What kind of life had he given her? She’d sacrificed wealth and position, endured the disdain of and separation from everyone she’d ever known for his sake. And what had he given her in return? Endless hours of toil, and ever worsening prospects. A life without any real future, with nothing but the dreams of a blind idealist to sustain them. It was worse than nothing.

  He thought of that empty kitchen, and how many long hours he’d toiled alone at that table; and how little he had accomplished through his labors. Change doesn’t happen overnight, she would tell him. It all takes time. Trust the gods. But lives, Tribari lives, didn’t keep to cosmic timelines. And as readily as Tribari stomachs still needed bread and their lungs oxygen, their hearts needed love too. And he had risked them all with his efforts, hadn’t he?

  He was lost to these reflections when he heard his name.

  “Grel?”

  He felt his heart jump. “Nik.”

  “What are you doing out here, love?” She was confused to see him, but he was so relieved he hardly noticed.

  “Nik. Oh hell, Nik, where were you? I thought…well, that something might have happened.”

  Her surprise became a smile, a soft one that brightened the sadness of her expression. The faint grays of her pupils lit up to a golden color. “I’m fine, Grel.”

  He had reached her now, and wrapped her in an embrace. For a moment, he pressed his eyes closed and just listened to the sound of her breath, driving away the dark fears of earlier. “What happened? Did you miss the train?” He walked with his arm still around her toward the house.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I just…needed the air, that’s all. Some time to think.”

  He turned his eyes to her. The gray had started to seep back into them, and the golds dimmed. “Nik, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, love. I’m just tired.”

  He squeezed her to him but said nothing. He didn’t trust his voice, and the flood of emotion that had rushed back with her words, and all the implications they conjured in his mind.

  “It was a long day.” She wrapped an arm around him and tucked her head into his shoulder. “It’s good to be home, though.”

  He cleared his throat. “I made dinner.”

  “Oh.” Her voice perked up. “I’m starving.”

  “It’s cold now,” he cautioned.

  “Sorry,” she apologized. “I would have called. But I wasn’t planning to walk, until I got out, and then…well, then I did.”

  He nodded. “No worries, love. I can reheat it.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll be delicious.”

  Her prediction was overoptimistic, but the food wasn’t bad. At least, not to his hungry stomach. She seemed to enjoy it too.

  Once it was done, she sighed and leaned back in her seat. “That was good. Thank you, love.”

  “Of course.”

  She stood to get the plates, but he got up first. “I’ll get those.”

  Nikia returned to her seat as he worked. In a minute, he heard her voice behind him. “Is this your speech?”

  He nodded. “I finished it.”

  “Oh. You’ll have to read it to me.”

  “I will.” In a minute, she laughed, and he glanced over his shoulder. “What?”

  “I was just thinking…do you remember when we met?”

  He grinned. “Of course.” It had been on the steps of one of the City’s leading jewelers. She’d planned to make a purchase that day, and he was pleading with the public to refuse to patronize them until they agreed to a guild contract implementing safer working conditions for the miners.

  “You were giving a speech then too, remember?”

  “That wasn’t a speech,” he said. “It was an impromptu plea.”

  He felt her arms wrap around his back, and a moment later she’d rested her head on his shoulder. “Whatever you call it,” she said. “It was a damned good speech.”

  “You didn’t think so then,” he reminded her, his voice softening with the memory. She’d been so imperious, so beautiful, as she’d watched him deliver that address. Her arms had been crossed, the jewels of her headdress shaking now and again as he spoke. Still, she hadn’t gone in. She hadn’t made her purchase.

  “I did,” she said. “I didn’t like what you said. You made too much sense. But it was a good speech. It gave me a lot to think about.”

  He turned now, so that he was face-to-face with her. “Well, you gave me plenty to think about too,” he said, planting a kiss on her cheeks. He moved to her lips. “So much to think about.”

  She smiled and kissed him in return. “I want to hear your speech,” she told him.

  He didn’t want to let her out of his arms, but he nodded. “Alright. I’ll read it.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “Let’s go to bed first.”

  He could see the dark circles under her eyes. He’d seen the weariness in her step all evening. “You need sleep,” he agreed.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “I do.” Her eyes darkened until they were a deep amber with desire. “But first,” she said, and her voice was low, “I need you.”

  He pulled her closer. “Funny. Because I was thinking the same thing about you.”

  Chapter Five

  She woke at the usual time and was grateful for the extra minutes in Grel’s arms. She was grateful for the extra sleep, too. She woke feeling a little more refreshed, a little more optimistic about life.

  Over breakfast, he read his speech. He’d already begun work on memorizing it, and his delivery was good. Grel wasn’t one of those practiced, polished rhetoricians who could perform on command. By and large his delivery was good, but not spectacular. But when he really felt something, from the depths of his soul, it was like listening to the gods of logic and reason.

  This was one of those speeches. He felt it, and even here, in their kitchen with no one but herself as an audience, he spoke with a passion that made the hairs on her neck stand on end. She was again reminded of their meeting on the steps of North City Gems, and the impassioned pleas he’d made then. She could still hear his words echoing in her thoughts. Children working from dawn to dusk in toxic dust. Men and women sent into rickety old tunnels, risking their lives day in and out to save a few retkas for repairs. Are your fine baubles worth their lives, my lady?

  “When is your meeting?” she asked him.

  “Tonight.”

  She nodded. “That’s what I thought. If they don’t need me to stay late, I’ll be there for the end of it, anyway.”

  He smiled. “Good. They’ll be happy to see you.”

  She smiled too, but she wasn’t quite as certain. Grel was the president of the City’s CWCT branch. CWCT was an alliance of Central’s labor organizers and social reformers under one banner: Citizens for the Welfare of the Common Tribari. It had been a good move, bringing two similarly inclined minority parties under one umbrella and strengthening both in the process. But it certainly brought its own share of complications between warring egos and decades old vendettas.
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  On one thing, both strains of CWCT could agree: the daughter of Grand Contributors was not an obvious choice for membership. She’d been viewed with a good deal of suspicion, especially in the early days. It was better now, though mostly that was due to Grel’s popularity. They loved him, and so tolerated her as a consequence.

  Still, she doubted they’d be glad to see her.

  “Oh,” he was continuing, “we won’t be seeing Kilgor anytime soon, though.”

  “Oh?”

  Grel scowled. “No. He told me yesterday, he’s going to cut back his involvement.”

  “With a baby on the way,” she said mildly, “Shawna will need more of his time.”

  “It’s not that. He’s afraid of what happens if his shift lead ever found out. Now that they’re starting a family, he can’t be out of work.” He shook his head. “I was afraid of that.”

  “You can’t blame them, love. Family comes first.”

  He sighed. “You’re not wrong, Nik. But the cause is bigger than one man, or one family. And nothing will ever change as long as people focus on today and not tomorrow. We are at a pivotal moment in our history.”

  She kissed him, reminding him, “People always say that.”

  “I mean it.”

  “So do they.” She grinned, and so did he. “But seriously, love…Shawna’s getting older. So is Kilgor. If they’re going to have babies, they’ve got to do it now.”

  He sighed again. “Dammit, I know. It’s just…there goes another good organizer. On top of all the ones we lost after the guild business. I don’t know what I’m going to do, at this rate.”

  “You’ll manage. You always do.”

  Nikia caught the normal train. Ki called out, “Morning Nik,” as she passed through the terminal.

  “Morning Ki,” she returned, pausing by his counter. “How are you?”

  “Good, good. Hey, you must not have taken the train yesterday?”

  “No,” she acknowledged. “Not the evening train. I walked.”

  He nodded. “Grel came to the station.”

  Her cheeks colored. “I know, poor Grel. I hadn’t planned to walk, so I hadn’t phoned ahead. But it was a beautiful evening.”

  Ki nodded. “It was. I’m just glad everything’s okay.”

  “Me too,” she smiled. “Hey, will we see you at our place tonight?”

  The young man hesitated. “I don’t know. Lu’s off tonight. I was going to see if she was free and spend some time with her.”

  Lu was the young woman Ki was courting. Nikia nodded. “Good idea. But, of course, you’re always welcome to bring her. The more the merrier.”

  He grinned. “I’ll think about it.”

  She laughed. She knew the tone and phrase well enough for how many times she’d used it on her own mer and der. It meant they wouldn’t be seeing Ki tonight, at least not if his young lady was free. “I should go, before I miss the train. If I don’t see you again, have a good one Ki.”

  “You too, Nik.”

  She got to work a few minutes early, and clocked in. She made good progress, wrapping up one of the contracts that she’d been working on the day before, and getting deep into a second when Dalen Gri stepped up to her desk.

  She worked in an open, shared space with five other women and men, so she’d seen Dalen’s approach as soon as he entered the room. She’d hoped he was heading for one of the other desks.

  Dalen Gri was the senior manager of Gulan Construction, and her direct supervisor. Gri was a very hands-off manager, who assigned work with the expectation that it would be done well, promptly and completely and thus need no follow-up from him. It was one of the few things Nikia liked about him. But a visit from Dalen was never good news. It usually meant your workload was increasing in some way. For the unlucky few who had been unable to live up to his expectations, it meant termination of employment.

  He was never one to drop in without a reason, and everyone in the office dreaded the sight of him.

  “Nik,” he said.

  “Supervisor Gri,” she returned, mustering a smile with the words. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning. You have a call.”

  “A call?” she was surprised, as much that the supervisor would come to her with such a small matter as that it would not already have been piped to her workstation. “I can take it here.”

  “No,” he said. “I think you’ll want to take this one privately. You can use my office.”

  Nikia blinked in sheer surprise. “Your office, supervisor?”

  “Yes.” He shrugged. “It’s your mother. I assume you’ll want to speak privately.”

  Some of the alarm she’d been feeling at this unexpected expression of courtesy dissipated. Unexplained changes in management behavior were not typically a good thing, but this was not unexplained. She’d spent her whole life watching middling level supervisors like Gri bow and scrape to her mother and father, rearranging their days, their schedules, their plans at the drop of a pin to suit the needs or whims of a pair of Grand Contributors. “Thank you, Supervisor Gri,” she said. “I’m obliged.”

  “Not at all, Nik. My pleasure.”

  The call was waiting as promised on Dalen’s workstation. It was a video line, and Nikia saw Elsa Aldir staring back at her from the screen. “Mer,” she greeted. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning?” Elsa asked. “Is that all you have to say, Nik?”

  She was surprised anew by this manner of greeting. “I don’t understand, mother.”

  “Have you nothing to tell me, Nik? Nothing to tell your father?”

  She frowned. “Mer, I’m at work. I have no time for riddles. What can I do for you?”

  Elsa frowned imperiously at her through the screen. “I heard,” she said in a minute, “from Dr. Kel.”

  Nikia felt her heart sink. The call made sense, now. Her mother’s questions and attitude made sense, now. “That’s an enormous breech of my privacy,” she protested.

  “Nik!” her mother shot back. “You’re my daughter. You weren’t going to tell us?”

  She sighed. “Well, now you know.”

  “Yes. And I know what you’re thinking of doing.”

  Her face burned with humiliation. “You don’t understand, mother. We’re not ready for a child.”

  “It’s that fool of a husband of yours’s idea, isn’t it?” another voice put in. Now Luk Aldir’s face joined Elsa’s onscreen.

  Nikia wished she could sink into the seatback and vanish. “It’s not…Grel has no idea.”

  “Kel says you told him Grel didn’t want to raise a child ‘in a world like this.’”

  “Kel has a big mouth,” she shot back. “It’s true, Grel doesn’t. We’ve talked about it in the past. But I’m not lying, father: he doesn’t know I’m pregnant.”

  “You have to tell him, Nik,” Elsa said, her brow creased with concern. “He is your husband.”

  “He has much on his mind,” she said. Her protests were weak, half-hearted. Her parents would not understand. They never understood. And she had thought through this so many times already, her brain hurt just to retread the same ground again. Still, she tried. “I don’t need to further burden him.”

  “Much on his mind,” Luk hissed, nearly spitting the words out. “It’s been how many months since he’s even worked a job?”

  “He’s always busy, father. Always working at one thing or another.”

  “Working at that revolutionary nonsense, you mean.”

  “He’s not a revolutionary. He’s a reformer.”

  “Same devil, different name.”

  Nikia sighed, and Elsa touched her husband’s arm warningly. “What we mean, Nik,” she said, “is that family is most important. It outweighs other concerns.”

  “We can’t afford a child.” It was said softly, matter-of-factly; sadly.

  “You could if he would man up,” Luk snapped. “Instead of relying on his wife to support him.”

  Now, finally, Nikia’s anger
overcame both familial respect and mental exhaustion. “You don’t think he’s tried, father? You don’t think he’s gone, day after day, looking for work? No one will hire a man who speaks up for the people.” She added with a deliberate pointedness, “They’re all too busy profiting off the misery of other Tribari to give a damn.”

  Elsa hissed at her language, and Luk held her gaze, his golden eyes blazing. Then, though, his expression softened. “Listen, Nik, we didn’t call to fight.”

  “Oh?” she questioned. Her temper was still blazing, still not quite placated. “Then what did you call for, der? To remind me how much you hate my husband? To tell me again how wrong my choices are in your eyes?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “We called…we called because you’re carrying our grandchild, Nik.”

  She scoffed, accusing, “You care little enough about your own child. What the hell do you care for a grandchild who hasn’t even come to be yet?”

  Luk blinked at her words, and Nikia immediately regretted them. She hadn’t meant them; not entirely. “We haven’t always seen eye to eye, Nik,” he said, and his tone was restrained. “But you know we love you.”

  “You’re our daughter,” Elsa put in.

  Nikia rubbed her temples. “I need to get back to work. I’m going to have to make this time up.”

  “You won’t,” her mer assured. “We checked with your supervisor.”

  “You what?” She felt her jaw sag.

  Her mother, meanwhile, shrugged. “Sometimes it’s good to remind these people that you are the daughter of Grand Contributors.”

  Nikia bit down on the inclination to remind her parents how little that mattered when they were estranged. She said instead, and her tone sounded weary even to her own ears, “What do you want, mother? Father? Just tell me.”

  “We want to reconcile,” Luk said. “I know thing’s have been strained.” He shook his head. “You know how we feel – felt – about Grel. But…things are different, now. You’re going to have a child.”