Likewise, her double vision effect heightened. Zoey saw, for a moment, people moving before they actually moved by twice as long as normal compared to when she let this effect go. She pulled it back in and controlled her vision to be singular. She was curious as to why that had happened, but then looked to her left. To her side Zoey saw a woman wearing a dark gray suit and a cloak that covered her hair. Her eyes were better hidden by her mask than most people’s here, but her mouth and chin were visible.
“Don’t make a scene,” the mystery woman said, trying to make her voice sound deeper than whatever it really was.
“I won’t if you won’t,” Zoey said, passing all temptation to imitate her.
“What are you hoping to accomplish, being here?”
“I came here hoping for a little help if I can get it. It’s difficult for me to afford, well, living or going to school. What does it matter to you?”
“It shouldn’t, but you escaped my grasp once before. I don’t know who you are, but you belong here less than I do.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
The cloaked woman said nothing and walked away. Zoey shook her head with rapid force. Who did that person think she was? What did she even mean by escaping her grasp? Again, she tried to shake the encounter from her mind.
Zoey joined the others as they walked down one set of steps toward the round dining tables. Instead of sitting down among those tables, they met with a band of delegates who had reached out randomly to say hello to them.
“Your dresses are beautiful, ladies,” said a human delegate among the group.
“Thank you kindly, sir,” Tong-Chang said to him.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Zoey said. “I saw a few humans aboard the Marslou, but I can’t say I’ve talked to any from Lutoume until now.”
The human said, “What other humans have you spoken to? Ha-ha, I am only kidding, of course.”
“Sure, certainly. It’s only that I grew up on Earth. The humans there have their differences, I can only presume.”
“Grew up on Earth? Ha! That’s a good one. What’s their number one export, if they have one?”
“If they did it would be porn, probably. You name it, and they might have found some way to imagine it to its most erotic extreme.”
“Is that right?”
“Maybe. I haven’t really studied trade within the Hoshi-Lacartan Alliance, so I don’t know who exports what yet. History is more my thing anyways, and I would love to learn more than the little I’ve acquired in the last two weeks.”
“This delightful young lady is really selling the idea of coming from this ‘Earth’ place, isn’t she?” He directed the question toward everyone in the group in general.
Bon’sinne said, “She is exactly as she says she is. Our second daughter stands before you now, but she was raised on a less developed planet surrounded by humans. My darling husband and I were led to believe that we’d lost Zoi’ne until recently, when the Marslou was fortunate during its travels to find her. I cannot go into too many specifics, of course, but we were more than happy to bring her back home.”
Hearing this conversation play out reminded Zoey of her mother on Earth. What was worse was that they were expecting sympathy in the form of money. The idea hit a sore spot deep inside of her stomach. There were a lot of things that Zoey had never once thought she’d try, but this was something she’d sworn off long ago.
She looked away for a brief moment and saw that cloaked woman from earlier walking into the back room. Zoey wondered if following her would have been better than what she was doing with these people now.
“Yes,” said one Aelf lady who appeared to look down her nose at people, “I do seem to recall hearing something to that effect. Captain Thalassas, I believe you retired a revolution ago, after the incident at the Allied Medical Institute, or the loss of your first daughter another revolution prior? This miraculous recovery of your second one must be very nice for you.”
“We can’t hang on to every tragedy forever,” Bon’sinne said. “Some of us have to try harder than others to see any peace in life. So yes, it’s good to have this wonderful young woman join us; a blessing, I should say.”
“Come now, Captain. You make this sound like preposterous a fairy tale rife with redemption.”
“Indeed, I have played better games with better character. Maybe I don’t need such things as much as others might. You can try that fairy tale for yourself, if you don’t mind.”
The aristocratic woman turned her indignant nose further upward at Bon’sinne and considered her for a moment. Then she walked off. Another woman in the group chortled silently.
The second lady said, “My apologies for the Lady Pisti’s behavior. She tries using anything she knows about new people as a means to exert dominance. It has worked at least once on more than three quarters of the people here. Many of us do not blame you, Captain, for what happened that tragic day.”
Bon’sinne said, “I’m grateful; I was when I submitted my form for retirement, as young as I still am, but I blamed myself for it. She might seem insufferable, but she was right that the loss of Il’lyse weighed heavily on me when I made my mistake. That’s for me alone to judge, though I have come to realize I’ve been judging too harshly.”
“Cheers, then.” The other woman lifted her glass and drank. “Now then, Zoi’ne Thalassas, young Lady of Earth, what was it like living on that planet?”
“That’s hard to say,” Zoey said. “I lived as unimpressive of a life as I could for seventeen years.”
“Years?”
“It’s what revolutions are called in one language there. I could give a couple more out of the dozens or more on Earth, but that was the one I became most familiar with.”
“Fascinating. This makes me wonder if our alliance had been quick to choose the words we use when we had formed. Now how did you and your mother get to know this young Highness, here?”
“She studies at the university here, and happened to be on the Marslou on our trip back to the Hoshi-Lacartan Alliance. We befriended one another easily before I knew of her heritage.”
“We’d done more than that before I told her of my upbringing,” Tong-Chang said. “My family may not like this development of mine very much, but here we are.”
The Aelfs in the crowd nodded and grunted in acceptance. One other Ginserei pulled at his collar.
“You dare against our holy taboos?” said the Ginserei.
Tong-Chang said, “It has long been my belief that taboos and traditions should be tested with the change of the times, and matters of love and companionship among the High Houses have yet to be probed and measured since the alliance was formalized; perhaps before that. We accepted ourselves to be superior while more common folk intermingled and lived better lives. I doubt it to be as holy as we make it out to be.”
“That is a foolish mindset.”
“Time beats any rock, Hallowed Cousin. Look no further than Admiral Fjorfolia. He is best judged by his actions, not the blood running through his veins.”
“What of Earth, then? How might Earth feel about mingling with other races?”
Zoey rolled her eyes and groaned audibly. Her reaction took the delegates by shock. Then she said, “It really depends on where you go, or whom you talk to. Some are sincere in their claims to be against it; some are adamant against the idea but will copulate with a neighbor, in secret, whose skin color is different than their own. On the other extreme, some will anthropomorphize anything they can find, and are shameless in their intentions. And I do mean anything.”
Before the Ginserei delegate could respond, there was a scream towards the front entrance. Zoey turned and saw a few dark gray figures in hoods and masks enter the club, laughing.
Zoey grabbed Tong-Chang again by the arm and looked to Bon’sinne. She whispered, “Mom?”
“Get her to safety, dear,” Bon’sinne said.
“Right. Come on, Tonny.” They picked up their skirts and weaved t
hrough the crowds.
Some of the people were trying to get a better look at what was happening at the entrance, but Zoey wondered why the bunch of other people weren’t trying to make it to the back room. Then she saw the Hulda’fi guarding the way there.
When did this one get here?
She took a deep breath and remembered her basic training that Bon’sinne had given her on the Marslou. The skirt wasn’t going to do her any favors, but Zoey sprang forward.
The Hulda’fi was not expecting the strike so suddenly as Zoey socked them in the stomach and followed it up with a few more punches. She threw the rebel attacker toward everyone else and led Tong-Chang into the door as one of the Hulda’fi by the front entrance spoke out.
“We heard there was a party,” the invader said. “We’ve come to liven things up!”
Suddenly, as Zoey was closing the door, she heard Tong-Chang say, “Look out!” A Hulda’fi had been behind her, and the rebel made a swing for her with a palistick.
[ 29]
She caught the Hulda’fi attacker by the wrist, but merely reduced the full impact of the palistick when it landed on her. The pain from the end of the device sent a shock through Zoey’s whole system.
Something hit the attacker in the head. Zoey stayed lucid, allowing her to take this opportunity to fight back. Her low level of training was more than adequate as Zoey punched and kicked her opponent before crushing their arm on a table. The rebel collapsed, their palistick rolling on the surface of the table.
Tong-Chang reached for the palistick and seized it. Zoey scanned around the kitchen they were standing in to see if there was any sign of additional Hulda’fi in here. She should have looked for that one earlier. The other that she had brought down in the main hall wasn’t coming in here, either.
“Let’s drag this one up against the wall here,” Tong-Chang said. “It’ll be out of immediate sight of the door if any one of the other Hulda’fi comes in here, and then we can keep watch over this one.”
“I was hoping to go outside through the back door,” Zoey said.
“That’s way too dangerous. We don’t know how many more of them are out there.”
“All the more reason to go look. Besides, I saw someone else walk this way. What if she is in trouble?”
“What if she’s one of them? OK, no, wait, that’s a stupid question. These rebels would never come here, or at least not as one of these delegates.”
“I still think we should check, and make a break for it if we can. Then we can call the police, or whatever it is you call law enforcement around here.”
Tong-Chang grit her teeth, and then tapped the rebel’s shoulder with the slit end of the palistick. The Hulda’fi showed no response aside from a groan from the depths of their apparent blackout. She took the rebel’s mask off and tossed it aside.
“I got this,” Tong-Chang said. “You can go look, but please be careful.”
“I’ll be right back,” Zoey said, turning for the rear exit.
“Wait!” Tong-Chang fumbled her hand through the top of her dress before undoing two buttons at her shoulder and reaching inside. She extracted her cell-comm and handed it to Zoey.
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“If you make it out there, and it’s safe, the reception should be better than in here, relays or not. Save yourself a trip and call the Trullwick Police. The direct line should be on my contact list. What are you waiting for?”
Zoey kissed her on the lips. “I’ll be back.”
Beyond the back door was an alley. There were a few lights posted above doorways and between windows along the neighboring building, but the rest was pitch with the dark of night.
As she pushed the door open by a few centimeters, Zoey heard the sound of something falling. She needed to get a better look at what the sound was. She slipped through the ajar door and looked in the direction of where the sound came from. Two bodies laid on the ground, and another figure loomed, bent over one of the bodies. It was the cloaked woman from earlier; her back turned to Zoey. Zoey’s double sense kicked in again, making crickets echo half of a second before they chirped in actuality.
She pressed a hand against her forehead and tried to shake off the effect again. “Hello?” she said to the woman.
The woman turned her head and stood. Zoey couldn’t make her out in this blackness. The other woman, however, said, “Who are you? Really.”
“I should ask the same.”
Once Zoey stepped closer to the other woman, and out of the light, her eyes adjusted to the point where she could identify the bodies as fallen Hulda’fi, both traumatized and unconscious. The woman completed her turn toward Zoey and was holding one of their masks to her face.
An echo of the woman’s voice ran through Zoey’s mind then, you escaped my grasp once before. Pieces began to fit together, but begged to be fit with more that Zoey simply did not have available, but somehow she knew this person.
“Soror Valide,” Zoey said. “It’s you, isn’t it? But then, why would you have brought down these other Hulda’fi?”
“Clever girl,” the other woman said. “I’m impressed that you know that name. Was it before or after they gave you all that was mine?”
“What are you talking about?”
Soror Valide stepped closer to where a light source could reach the mask over her face. She lifted the mask and pushed back the hood of her cloak, finally revealing her hair to the world. Even in the dark, Zoey could make out the rosewood hair and familiar eyes. She saw these, and more, when sitting in front of the mirror.
The face was so familiar and so obvious, but it was all so, so impossible. The only other person who should have had this face was dead.
“You!” Zoey said.
Il’lyse said, “Are you enjoying my life?”
“Your life? I’m trying to live my own. I was living my own until you came to Earth and took away everything I knew.”
“Earth? You were on that planet?”
“Then I woke up in this body and tried to accept a new life of my own, but I keep finding your shadow. People keep comparing me to you, even when they say nothing, and it’s your fault.”
“You can have it. You can take it all for all I care. I don’t have time for this.”
Il’lyse turned and walked away. However, Zoey wasted no time catching up with her and throwing her hand onto the other woman’s shoulder. The Hulda’fi woman batted her hand away with one hand and came at Zoey’s face with the other. Zoey was able to parry the blow because of her secondary sight. The deflection of hers triggered an exchange of punches and blocks, during which Zoey was almost certainly losing.
She blamed the skirt of her dress, but really she knew better. Il’lyse was the better fighter, even if Zoey were in more suitable garments for a fight.
Zoey felt herself being flung in one direction, but then she tripped over the skirt of her dress. She used the momentum to dive forward onto her hands and kick at the side of her opponent’s leg, causing the other woman to stagger. Then Zoey collapsed and heaved.
“Stop this,” she said.
“Why in the cold, infinite beyond should I?” Il’lyse asked.
“Because of your family; our family.”
“The Hulda’fi are my family. They’re the only family I’ve needed.”
“You’re wrong.” Zoey pointed to the two fallen rebels. “Is that what you do with family now? Murder one another?”
“These idiots had it coming. Stay out of this. Our Lady Tunderek can deal with them. She can discipline them from anywhere now. Then we will be whole again.”
“Have you gone mad? What about Mom, Dad, or Das’ithrios? Do you know how much you hurt them?”
“I don’t care.”
“Well you should! They still love you. You’re dead, and they love you. You’ve been gone all this time, and yet your bedroom remains like you never left.”
“Yeah, right. You probably slept in it as soon as they opened that door for you.
”
“Never once. I opened the door, but never touched your room. Sister, please.”
“We’re not sisters. I told you, the Hulda’fi are my family now. When Dasos fell that night, I felt . . . I felt nothing.”
“Don’t lie to yourself like that.”
“Lie? Where was your truth when your mom shot me?”
“You were wearing a mask, and she didn’t know who you were. You were under the influence of some drug inside that beak, too, so who knows what you did or didn’t see? Il’lyse, what happened to you?”
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