Good. Asshole.
“Just let me look at the injury,” she snapped. “I won’t come any closer.” Unless it needs serious attention.
Errol sighed. He grasped the hem of his shirt and hauled it up, exposing his torso.
For a second, Hadiza almost forgot his injury. His silvery-gray skin laid over a dense wall of acutely defined musculature. He was broad and thick, and yet there wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on him. In the faint daylight of this overcast planet, that monochrome skin gave off a subtle iridescence. Dark gray hair furred his chest and drew a teasing line down the ridges of his abdominal muscles before disappearing inside the waistband of his trousers. She’d never seen a body so gloriously, intimidatingly, powerfully male.
Well.
Ignoring the prickle of heat over her skin, she snapped her eyes to his injury. A thick gash ran from the edge of his left pectoral, and drew a perfectly straight diagonal down his flank. Already, it looked at least a day into healing. The wet tissue had dried to dark red. It could’t be the source of all that fresh blood. Bruising surrounded it, forming a dark nimbus over his ribs. Her medical instincts took over,
“This is from today?” She touched his ribs gently, feeling for swelling, for a possible fracture or break. His skin was like hot steel beneath her fingers, hard and smooth. She couldn’t imagine what the weapon would look like that had sliced such invulnerable flesh. “How quickly do Scaevens heal?” Her gently searching fingers followed the laceration to the broad plane of his pectoral.
He jerked away from her. The sudden movement made her flinch, and she instinctively leaped back from him, clapping protective hands over her mouth. A beat passed, and she realized what she’d done. Lowering her hands, she looked up, warily meeting Errol’s gaze. His vulpine eyes burned furiously over the edge of his mask.
“I would never force you,” he snarled. “I am not one of them.”
She knew he meant the traffickers. And she knew he wasn’t like them. But even if he wasn’t a monster like them, she still couldn’t shake months’ worth of conditioning. The logical side of her brain knew he could be trusted, but the animal side still feared him.
“I know,” she said, as sincerely as possible. “Just… habit. Sorry.”
He pulled his shirt back down. “Go eat.” He left her, disappearing into the lav. The sound of running water echoed through rattling pipes.
The food container was bucket-sized. Ravenous as she was, it was more than she could possibly eat. She opened the steaming lid and found herself staring down at a yellow broth filled with cubes of cultivated protein, Ravanoth river groats, and a melange of unidentifiable vegetable matter. She peeled away the plastic spoon that was built into the lid, and dipped it in.
Bland. But palatable. Just as he’d said.
Some time later, Errol emerged from the lav, damp and clean, dressed in a plain white shirt that didn’t look nearly as fine a quality as the burgundy one that had been ruined with his blood. The humid air that coasted out of the lav behind him was frigid. Hadiza shivered as it enveloped her.
“Are Scaevens immune to the cold?” she asked.
He glanced at her as he pulled the mask back over his face. “No. We’re just not so fragile as to drop dead from a few minutes exposure.”
“You’re warm-blooded,” Hadiza pointed out, ignoring the jibe at her own lack of hardiness. “The cold should affect you. Is it your mass? Or your skin? Your skin is much harder than human skin, but it’s still dermal tissue, not horn or scale…”
Errol evinced no interested in helping her figure it out.
“Do you feel the cold?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t it hurt when it’s that cold? It hurts my skin. It hurts my lungs.”
“Which is why you will stay in the room until we can leave this planet.” He glanced at the bucket of soup, in which she’d barely made a dent. His gaze fell to the overlarge spoon abandoned beside the bucket. “You need to eat more.”
“My stomach is smaller than yours. I’ve eaten as much as I can.”
He came closer to investigate. “You’ve hardly eaten anything.” His yellow eyes narrowed irritably as they focused on her hand. “And what’s this?” He snatched her wrist in his big hand. His grip was like an iron manacle.
Hadiza looked down, and realized he was talking about the infected slash across her palm. “I cut myself trying to escape the traffickers’ cargo hold. I’m going to need some supplies so I can clean and sanitize the injury. Can I give you a list?”
Errol snarled something in his own language. He dropped her wrist and stormed away from her. He snatched up his new coat from where he’d left it on the floor, and slid back into it. His limp was gone, and he could move his right arm nearly as well as his left. She stared, fascinated. Scaevens healed fast. There were interesting medical implications there. Would he be willing to give her a blood sample before he sent her back to human territory? Probably not.
He stopped at the door, glancing back at her. He pointed emphatically at the bucket of soup. “Eat,” he commanded. He opened the door, and was gone.
In the interest of being cooperative, Hadiza managed a few more bites, but she really was full. She’d spent weeks, possibly months, subsisting off of nutrigel. Her stomach had undoubtedly shrunk.
Some time later, the door hissed open, and Errol stepped back into the room, holding a small latched box in one hand. He set it on the table beside Hadiza and flipped it open. It was a small medical kit—but a manual field kit rather than an AI-operated rig.
“Give me your hand,” Errol said, rubbing his hands with antiseptic gel.
“I can do it,” Hadiza said, reaching for the gel.
“I will.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
“I told you I was trained in emergency aid.”
“But I’m an actual doctor.”
“And you are actually injured. So give me your hand.”
“Look, I appreciate—”
“Human!” he snarled. “Give me your hand!”
With an answering snarl, she slapped her injured hand, palm up, into his. His vulpine eyes flicked to her scowling face for a second before dropping to focus on her injury. He sprayed a sanitizing, anesthetizing fluid into her palm. Coolness seeped into her skin. He picked up a scalpel and drew a clean incision down the length of the wound. Yellow, clotted pus and milky fluid oozed immediately from the opening. Only years of experience kept her from wrinkling her nose against the smell.
Errol laid an absorbent pad over the wound. The thin, fibrous batting immediately soaked up the rot. When he pulled it away, he revealed a clean, red incision—no sepsis, no exudate. He flushed the wound with an antiseptic fluid, and then sealed it with skin-bonding glue.
“That was well done,” Hadiza murmured, admiring the clean line of the closure. Already the swelling had diminished significantly, and the worrying heat had dissipated.
A moment passed, and Hadiza realized Errol was still holding her hand. He seemed to realize it at the same time, pulling back as if she’d burned him. He shoved away from the table and paced to the door.
“Where are you going?” Hadiza asked. The heat of his touch still tingled over the back of her hand. “Don’t you need to sleep? It’s been more than two days since you got me off the traffickers’ ship.”
“I don’t sleep as often as humans or Ravanoth. I won’t need a sleep cycle for a while.”
More medical mysteries. Hadiza worried her lip ring with her upper teeth, an old fidgety habit, thinking.
Errol turned sharply away from her, putting his hand to the door.
“Wait!” Hadiza snapped. “You’re just going to leave me here? What am I supposed to do? Stare at the wall?”
With his back still turned on her, Errol let out a beleaguered sigh. “Get some more sleep.”
“I don’t need more sleep,” she argued.
Errol opened the door. Cold air blasted the room, and then he was
gone, the door sealed behind him.
With nothing to do, no way to keep time, and no way of knowing when Errol would return, Hadiza prowled their tiny rented room, examining everything she found. Errol had gotten himself some fresh clothes—obviously cheaper than what he’d worn aboard the traffickers’ ship. His beautiful Bijari cashmere ship coat sat rumpled in one corner, next to the mysterious jacket with the mirroring fibers. All the furniture was bolted to the floor or the wall. The floor was sealed concrete, the walls stacked blocks of gray stone.
When she tired of examining the featureless rooms, she took a bath. Then used the wet linens to try to clean the lav. Then cleaned all the flat surfaces in the outer room.
She examined the injury on her palm. It was healing cleanly, and the pain was almost unnoticeable except for the little tug she felt when she tried to spread her fingers or make a fist.
With nothing else to do, she crawled onto the upper bunk, and stared out the narrow, grimy window at the shipyard. She watched as Bijari, Yiruban, and Ravanoth freighters, haulers, and cargo ships docked and took off. Automated dock wagons unloaded and loaded the vessels, moving fluidly around each other like so many ants. There were vessels she didn’t recognize. Some were reminiscent of the traffickers’ ship, and so she assumed they were Scaeven. But others she didn’t recognize at all. It was possible the Scaevens weren’t the only species hiding from humans. But how many more were there? And why hide from a species whose technology was clearly inferior? Watching the ships provided no answers.
At some point, out of sheer boredom, Hadiza fell asleep. She woke to the sound of the door sliding open. Lifting her head, she watched as Errol engaged the locks. She crawled down the ladder as he reached into his coat and pulled out the mask, hitching the loops over his ears one-handed. His other hand was occupied with a woven carrier. He deposited it on the table.
“I can’t safely get a message to Enforcement until we lift offplanet, so there’ll be no backup coming for us. The differential has to be constructed from scratch, so we’re going to be here for several of this planet’s day cycles,” he said darkly.
Hadiza slumped. “So I’m going to be stuck in this room for several days.”
Errol slipped out of his coat. “It can’t be helped.”
She looked down at the carrier. It was made of tightly braided plastic fibers, with long handles that could be slung over the shoulder. “This is for me?”
“You may be a primitive species, but I know you’ll need at least some kind of mental stimulation.”
Primitive species?
“Eres ibn al perro,” she muttered in Espeurbaa, pulling the bag onto her lap.
Her irritation slowly gave way to interest. She found a Yiruban color sorter—a simple matching game that got progressively harder. There were a few Ravanoth cultural texts, written in the Creole. Under those, a Bijari tactile puzzle.
“Thank you,” she said, looking over at him.
He glanced disinterestedly out the grim little window and didn’t reply.
Beneath all the gadgets and gizmos, she found two wrapped parcels. One was filled with strange utensils that she eventually came to recognize as basic toiletries—the bristled wand was a toothbrush, more suited to Bijari carnassial teeth, but still useful. A canister of toothgel. A broad, stiff-bristled brush meant for Bijari fur, which would be absolutely no use with her braids, but she wasn’t about to say so. And a hard, transparent green disk that was probably soap.
Beneath all those, two more gowns, one in pale blue, the other in wheat gold.
She looked at him again. He was still staring fixedly out the window. She got up and crossed over to him. He stiffened as she approached. Cautiously, she laid a gentle hand on his arm. He flinched away from her.
“Sorry,” she said, pulling her hand back. “I—you obviously don’t like to be touched.”
She could understand that. She’d been touch-starved for the last few years, and yet hadn’t been able to bring herself to seek out the comfort of physical intimacy. It was partly because of Kepleran labor-class prudishness. Touch was a big deal to Keplerans. Among unrelated adults, only same-sex, platonic friends could openly touch—and only in certain ways. Even husbands and wives did not so much as hold hands in public view. A young girl, of age, had to be careful of how she conducted herself if she wanted to keep her good name.
Even though she’d left Kepler for the military at sixteen years old, it had taken her a long time to shake the socially-conditioned fear of intimacy. It wasn’t until well into her medical training as a corpsman that she’d adjusted to the idea of putting her hands on other people’s bare skin, often on very intimate parts of their body.
By the time she was sent into the field, she was no longer afraid to touch her brothers and sisters in arms—but the associations quickly changed. The people she touched were injured, dying. She felt the heat of the their blood, the slickness of their viscera, the jagged ends of their broken bones. Instead of fearing the dangers of intimacy, now touch brought with it the fear of mortality.
In between the death and injury, she’d attempted relationships. She wasn’t an ideal, untouched Kepleran virgin anymore, but she had also never really managed to adapt to the more conventional attitude towards sexuality and intimacy. Touch was still a big deal to her. Even little things like hugs and handshakes rattled her.
She wasn’t sure why she’d touched Errol. To get his attention? To impress upon him the sincerity of her thanks?
He stepped away, released the locks on the door. “I’ll be back later.”
And he was gone.
Chapter Seven
Errol’s discipline and self-control had saved his life time and again. He refused to give in to emotion, to sensation, to the weaker aspects of his mind. He bit down on his lip until the tip of one fang punched through and he tasted blood. The shock of pain brought him back to himself, centered him.
He paced through the markets without seeing anything. He walked up and down narrow, twisting lanes, mind racing. He begged for an exhaustion that wouldn’t come. If only he could lapse into a sleep cycle, he’d have a respite from the sharp agony of this unwanted desire.
He walked until the cloud-hidden sun set and the sky turned tar black. Flickering, too-bright, too-colorful lights warred with each other above the market streets. Mounted to buildings, hanging from awnings, shining in windows, the viciously colored lights were an assault that rendered his night-sensitive eyes nearly blind.
He squinted against the haloed glare and followed the sounds of night past the unrestricted vices of Daalinalikiniri-din-kaal. Smoke parlors. Fighting rings. Sex workers of every species. Synth shows. Chimera clubs. Halluco-lounges.
The hot, harried energy coursing through his blood needed to be expended. He couldn’t leave the human alone for too long. If anybody were to realize what she was, no amount of high-voltage security shielding would keep her safe. Even the sellers of legitimate goods would be happy to pass along information to traffickers for a heap of neutral credits. And the whereabouts of a pretty little human of child-bearing age would fetch a big payout.
Even so, the biggest threat against her passed through the security shield without so much as a trifle. Him. Some ugly, cruel part of him acknowledged that with a self-satisfied growl. If he chose, she’d be utterly at his mercy. The predatory impulse that always lurked under the veneer of his civility strained against its bonds.
Errol stopped at the fighting pits, watching a massive, six-limbed Lee’etx face off against a Bijari bravo armed with only a dagger. Spectators ringed the pit, shouting at the fighters. The Lee’etx stood nearly twice the Bijari’s height, and each one of its six limbs was tipped with razored claws as long as the bravo’s dagger.
But the Bijari were a mind-bogglingly nimble species. The bravo ran circles around the Lee’etx, leaping and sliding to avoid the deadly reach of those powerful, razor-tipped limbs. The bravo jumped onto the Lee’etx’s back and landed several hits with the kni
fe before leaping and twisting out of the way of his opponent’s powerful, swinging limbs.
In short work, it was over. The Lee’etx, pouring black blood, gills heaving, conceded the fight. The Bijari bravo bowed to cheers and shouts. The bright screen above the pit displayed a stream of whirling numerals climbing higher and higher—the winner’s purse.
The pit master, an emerald-scaled Ljarken, appeared at the ringside, bellowing for comers. Errol didn’t hesitate. He leapt into the pit, facing off with the grinning Bijari.
“Hand to hand?” the bravo asked, swiping a trickle of blood off his lip.
Errol grinned back, raising his hands to show he was unarmed. “Keep your knife.”
He staggered back to the squalid room he’d left Hadiza in. After defeating the Bijari bravo, he’d faced off against a Yiruban fire monk, two Ljark, and a final Bijari—this one patient and wily enough to use Errol’s exhaustion against him. He’d conceded the fight, and been hauled from the pit by two other Scaevens.
He was bone tired. It wasn’t the mind exhaustion that heralded a sleep phase, but the body weariness that would leave him aching and slow through the night. It was enough to dull the predator inside of him. He could look at Hadiza without doubting his self-restraint.
As he disengaged the locks on the door, he reached into his jacket and pulled out the mask she’d instructed him to make. Thank the Seven Moons for it. The small room was filled with her scent—he got hints of it now and then that nearly brought him to his knees. If it weren’t for the overpowering burn of the inhibitor, he’d be half out of his head by now.
“Why do you keep coming back covered in blood?”
He turned around as the door sealed behind him. Hadiza sat up on the bottom bunk, looking sleepy and rumpled and warm.
His body responded instantly with an arousal so severe he almost dropped to his knees. He went immediately to the lav and sealed the door. He ran the water as cold as he could get it. The fights weren’t enough. The exertion, the grappling, the physical domination of multiple opponents—it all failed to make even a dent against the lure of one single, fragile little human. He’d have to lock himself in the lav, where he couldn’t see or hear her. Keep himself immersed in an ice bath.
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