Tamn

by Jennifer Silverwood

  The jungle was wet, water in the air clinging to greedy plants sapping it up, coating our thirsty gills. Every time mine flared for that extra breath of humidity, her scent filled me. She smelled like the flower she was named for, a smell I would have already forgotten if not for her.

  Qeya tugged at her braid in a nervous gesture I recognized from our childhood.

  She knows. She knows the evil things you did, the way you relished each kill.

  I looked away and took a calming breath, forced my gills to take in more air, more of that grounding scent. Forcing a smile to my face, said, “I’m so glad to see you, Qeya. When I thought you were still on Datura 3…”

  Qeya bit her lip and turned away but her fingers squeezed mine. It was enough. For a time, I could forget the past, the invisible blood staining my hands. I could pretend I hadn’t done those things, at least for now. Until she spoke my fears aloud.

  “We can’t let the crew keep walking around like this. We have to settle somewhere, Tamn.”

  For a moment, I could barely speak, the rage was so close to boiling my blood again. I swallowed past lump in my throat, beat back the hatred. I couldn’t let her see me like that, but what if we were forced to make a stand and claim a real home here?

  I forced the words out. “I know. But every time we’ve stopped, the others show up.” Every time we stopped before, I was forced to do what I do best. I slipped my fingers through hers and willed whatever holy power she had to infect me.

  You could always ask her, my own voice dared to suggest.

  But then she'll see, another countered. Do you really want her to know what you look like inside?

  I squeezed Qeya's fingers. She doesn't know. She can never know, I vowed. She looked back over her shoulder, watching what was left of our family and a different feeling surged up, wild and desperate. I knew then, if she asked me to make that stand, I would do whatever I had to do. I would rid this planet of every last beast if she asked me to, tear apart the mountains and build her a palace by the sea, like the one we were forced to leave behind.

  I'll give you a home, if you want, I longed to say.

  I tugged her closer to me before I knew I planned to speak aloud. All the howling voices screamed in protest having her so near, but I breathed her in and spoke so low not even the bleeding miners could hear. “Qeya, I want you to know, if anything happens to us… I meant to ask you as soon as we came back from this mission. I wanted to tell your mother so many times. I couldn’t stand waiting for you anymore.”

  “What?” Her gasp was accompanied by the flicker of her inner lids and a quick tug at her lips as she searched me.

  I stole a deep breath, praying she wouldn’t look too deeply, that this promise would be enough and said, “Qeya, I wanted to tell you that I—”

  The world came apart, burst into life in a sudden cacophony of sound, blasts of energy and screams. I jerked and pulled my scythe out, pushing Qeya behind me before flicking the gears of my knuckle blade on in my free hand. A glance at the corner of my vision showed she had her extendable blade ready as well and I couldn't help my smile.

  The children screamed while my crew led them into the undergrowth for cover. This was the moment, come too soon. Inwardly I cursed. I should have been scouting ahead and behind as I usually did, not mooning away with the Orona. Now it was too late. I failed my crew, but I wouldn’t fail her, not again.

  She gasped as I snared an arm around her waist and kissed her. I told her all the forbidden things I could never say with my kiss. A dull roar filled my ears when she kissed me back.

  Send her away, send them all away so they won’t see.

  I don’t know how I found the willpower to push away. “Go!” I told her with one last study of the way her lips blushed purple like her cheeks, the gold dust in her eyes danced as tendrils of scarlet escaped her braid.

  I ran away and didn’t dare look back.

  Familiar otherworldly screams echoed one another in the jungle behind and to the left. I looked to see my brother and Qori, Captain and Kall and even Adi turning to join me. This was a dance we were familiar with now, but never before had we so much to gain and lose from this fight.

  I released a war cry, some deeply buried Voice from a time before speech, before we surfaced and ran to greet our enemy.

  Rather than hide, I spotted a tall pale hairy male rush at the front of the line, poisoned spears lifted overhead, poised to strike.

  I leaped and pushed off a tree to my right, dodging his throw, before twisting round and crossing my scythe against the male’s neck.

  Behind me, I heard Adi’s voice screaming against plasma blasts and nodded. She would keep the others safe. Adi would make certain none were left alive. I could count on her for this much.

  The Var rushed overhead on taut vines, screaming their war cries.

  Captain wielded a long-bladed scythe, curving into itself, humming with blue electricity. Kall fought at his side, loyal to the end. The earth blew to pieces between us, and the Var’s bodies rose and scattered with it. The impact knocked me off my feet and I let myself fall with the fluid rhythm of war.

  We fall, we get back up again, no matter what, until our last breath.

  I had been fighting all my lifetimes. In a way the war never left me, just changed faces. Even after I was outnumbered by the pack and forced to retreat, I didn’t feel fear or fatigue. I had seen Qeya again, fallen in love with her again in this lifetime. When I died, the memories of all I was and had ever been would fade away. Perhaps that was best. Perhaps we weren’t meant to live forever. Perhaps what happened on homeworld had been because we refused to change.

  The spear lanced my leg before I understood what happened. The female Var’s lip curled back, exposing her teeth as she pulled the tip out and aimed again for my chest. I stuck my knuckle blade through her neck, twisting up until she shuddered and fell to the earth.

  Only after I collapsed beside her, unable to move my leg, did I realize the spear had been poisoned. Other beasts would be drawn to the smell of blood. I dragged other bodies and earth to cover myself as the poison worked its way into my bloodstream. I had always died in battle, no matter if my people were at peace or at war. At least this way I would die for her.

  V : Refuge

  I faded in and out between staggering through the jungle and flashes of memories from my previous lives, mostly bad. The more bloodthirsty of my former selves were still clamoring for attention in my head, the leaking fools. But her voice called to me in the background, hovering close by, bringing the light with her. And I remembered the purest moments of my life, this current one, before I was Ascended, all focused on Qeya.

  “Tamn.” She said my name with both warmth and warning.

  “You won’t get away with it this time, Orona,” I teased as I advanced on her, hands held between us.

  “Don’t! It’s not fair when you’re bigger than me,” she protested. Her crooked grin told me otherwise. I laughed as I pinned her to the training floor and ran my fingers up her sides. Qeya giggled, shaking her head as pure bubbly laughter sang in my ears. I loved making her laugh.

  “Tamn!” she gasped for air a moment and I relented, satisfied.

  “Serves you right for what you did,” I said as I planted my arms on either side of her face. Her hands came to rest lightly on my chest and a familiar heat spread from her touch, causing me to rethink our position.

  “I didn’t mean to trip you.” Her mouth quirked to the side and I stared, dumbfounded as I realized with a jolt, just how beautiful she was. She seized the moment to draw her leg between us and flip me with a hard tug, the way I’d taught her.

  The move stole my breath and something akin to pride and desire washed through me as she sat on top of me, leaning forward to rest on my chest. We had been in this position countless times growing up, hadn’t we?

  “I win,” she whispered with breathless laughter.

  “Tamn!” her voice called to me, the fire of her hair peppered
with ashes from chole blasts, her gills streaked in shades of black.

  “Qeya?” I tried to say her name, reach out to touch her neck.

  She batted my fingers aside with a snort and Adi’s deeper, raspier voice answered, “Thank all the dead sea gods I’m not that bleeding Royal.”

  I blinked and her tattoos appeared stark against her gray skin in the dawning yellow light. I tried to sit up and she moved to allow me room, sitting back on her heels as she surveyed the jungle around us.

  “I’m not dead?” My hands were still streaked blue from touching the spear wound on my side.

  Adi barked a laugh. “Hardly. I came looking for more ch—for you and the Elders. Ohre refused to leave his little pet’s side since she collapsed. You won’t believe who we ran into.”

  I breathed in deeper and my senses hummed. I touched my nose and felt the familiar grain of chole dust on my fingertips. “You drugged me?” I watched Adi’s expression closely.

  “The dust should counter the Var’s poison.” She shrugged and twirled the shaft of a Var spear in her hands. “Your Orona’s not the only one who can heal, you know. You Royals have always been so tight-netted about your chole, but the dust has a lot of uses you don’t know about.”

  I groaned as I stood and shook off the ache in my side. The blood and mud had mixed together enough to stop the bleeding and the spear was missing from my side. “You did well. Never thought you were good for anything but spinning gears and sniffing dust.”

  Adi dropped the broken shaft on the jungle floor and rubbed her hands together, turning before I

  could see her reaction. “There’s a lot you never bothered to learn about me, Tamn.”

  We never called each other by our given names. Always Miner and Royal, two species divided by lifetimes of mutual hatred. I knew this, but I also remembered a lifetime when I defied my station and kept a miner servant as my lover. Sometimes the lines between our peoples blurred whether due to circumstance or choice. But choices in this life were a luxury I could not afford, not with the weight of my father and ancestors bearing down on me with duty and preserving the bloodlines.

  But Adi is different. I shook off the dangerous thought the moment Adi caught me staring at the way her tattoos curled over her bare head and down her slender neck.

  If my voice sounded strained, I pretended it was from my weakened state. “Where’s the rest of our crew?”

  Adi plucked a pouch of dust from a nearby fallen Var, placing it inside her open biosuit jacket, and shrugged. “Already searched this area. Looked like they dragged two bodies off, Captain and Kall if I’m betting. I…haven’t found any sign of Remin.” The last was spoken softly—too softly for the bloating miner I thought I knew.

  I couldn’t look at her without guilt and seeing Brunan’s lifeless face in my mind, but for now I put it aside. We worked better together than divided.

  My hands twitched with the urge to snatch the dust Adi was pocketing from her hands, but tamped the need back down. “Thought for sure scavengers like those beasts would pick my bones the moment I passed out.”

  Adi snorted as she picked the last Var clean and approached a dim trail to our right. “You hid yourself well. As you can see, they did pick some clean.”

  I didn’t look. I had seen enough already. “Where are the others? How did you escape the Var?”

  “We kept them at bay until they had pinned us down, near a spot we must have passed a fistful of times. Right before they could spear us, these little beasts jumped out of the trees and picked them off. They’re strange little devils, but the Nuki were willing to let us come up to their village.”

  “Village…” I repeated with wonder, then sneaking dread. “You said up?”

  “In the trees,” Adi groaned while making a rude gesture at the canopy.

  “Perhaps we might all still be alive if we had thought to craft shelter above.”

  Adi snorted. “More likely fall to our deaths.”

  I smiled and the voices in my head were strangely silent. “We should search for the Var camp as soon as we recover our strength. Captain would do the same for us.”

  “For you maybe.”

  I pushed aside prickly thorns from our path and kept in step with her, much to her obvious annoyance. “For all of us,” I emphasized.

  “Doesn’t matter now, does it? We depleted our sources with that last attack. We should go look at the crash site. Children said the bridge released their section before the hit. There be a lot of lovely tech I’d like to get my gills on.”

  “Not to mention chole,” I murmured, sniffing to catch the last traces of dust Adi placed on my nose. The hit was enough to keep my energy matched with hers and the twinge in my side minimal.

  She faced me and while sadness lingered in her slanted eyes, her smile was filled with promise. I forced my gills open to catch much needed air and grimaced.

  Are you forgetting so easily? My father’s voice whispered to me and I flinched at the sudden memory of Qeya’s lips on mine.

  “I won’t leave her behind, not ever again,” I spoke to the ground but Adi took it for her reply.

  “Of course you could never leave your precious princess.” She spat the words. “How could I be so water logged? No matter. Ohre will join me, I’m certain. Now that you pale gills have found one another again, we miners can leave to do what we do best.” Every move of her strong limbs was stiff and coiled with poorly disguised rage.

  “You can’t leave crew!” I reached for her arm and nearly stumbled when she rounded quickly to invade my space.

  “Crew. You’re the only one who believes Captain’s lies about crew! How we be one big leaking family, united in one common cause, bound by duty.” She made a noise and turned her head, not waiting for my answer. Anyway, I was too furious to give one. I flexed my hands against her upper arms, surprised to find I was holding her.

  “Why do you care what I believe?”

  Adi’s half-crazed smile faltered and her brow drew together. “Because you’re different from the others.”

  She spoke so softly, I leaned in to catch her unfathomable words. My mouth hung open like a bloating fish but all I could think of was the fact I did not hate Adi. I never had hated her. I hated myself. I saw the parts I hated most about myself reflected in her eyes now, lust and death.

  She pressed a hand to my chest, but did not stop there. Slowly, Adi slid her hand around my neck, then ran her thumb over my gills.

  I sucked in a shuddered breath as white-hot need speared straight through my body.

  The black center of Adi’s gaze stretched and filled until only a sliver of green remained. She looked more alien, more miner to me then than ever before. She was breathtaking.

  My hands shook against her arms as she stretched up to whisper against my ear, “You’re more miner than any Royal I’ve ever met. You repress your instincts around the others, but I see you.”

  “Y-you belong to Remin,” I ground out, needing to hear her agree.

  Her lips brushed the sensitive skin along my gills as she replied, “Remin’s dead.”

  My hands found her round waist in response, felt the shifting muscle beneath her suit, then tightened.

  Adi hissed and pulled me against her with the strength inherent her race.

  It was the chole. She was only doing this because she was mourning Remin.

  The excuses were weak and fading against the roaring beast inside me. I should have been dead on my feet, but I couldn’t deny the fire I felt. I wanted her.

  I groaned when she crushed her lips against mine. She hooked her arm around my neck and nipped at my lips. I tasted my blood on her tongue as it tangled with mine. I lost what little control I had left when she ran her teeth against the bared skin of my neck. I growled and ground my hips against hers. Adi rewarded my enthusiasm with another violent kiss. She busied her hands with pushing aside my outer jacket and then loosed me from the confines of my suit.

  I stilled as she stripped me bare a
nd raked her nails almost gently against my scarred chest. It had been so long since I had been this naked before anyone. I shivered as she circled me, assessing, trailing her lips where her hands did not reach.

  Every touch was unlike anything I had known before.

  Her breath was hot against my neck as she whispered, “Beautiful.”

  I choked back a laugh. I was horribly scarred by choice. Often the females of my race thought me ugly because of the blemishes. Yet Adi touched them with reverence and wicked delight. It was the desperation hidden behind her passion that made me touch her in return. I knew this loss, understood her pain better than anyone. As she quickly removed her suit, I traced the path of her tattoos with my hands and tongue.

  For the first time in this lifetime, I didn’t think of the Orona or duty or anything at all.

  I felt and I released the wildness I had fought all my lives and Adi saw. She knew the monster I kept hidden beneath the surface and somehow she still wanted me.

  The voices in my head were silent.

  * * *

  The effects of the dust Adi had given me were fading by the time we reached our destination.

  My mind was still racing over the way she had touched my scars with emotion I didn’t dare to name. A pack of Var could have attacked in that moment and I would have missed it. I had been too lost in the curve of her waist, the way her tattoos curled over her head and trailed down her neck to places I hadn’t dreamt of seeing before.

  “It didn’t mean anything, Royal, so stop bloating your gills at me,” she had said while shrugging back into her biosuit.

  I wanted so desperately to believe her, I had readily agreed. “It meant nothing.”

  If my voice had sounded strained even to my ears, she said nothing. If Adi tensed at my words, if she stole glances at me while keeping distance between us the remainder of our journey, I pretended not to notice.

  I wished desperately for the voices to drown out my guilt but even they had abandoned me. Instead I was left with only myself and that scared the filsh out of me.