by H. E. Trent
“Okay. Noted,” Kent said. “While we’re on the topic of the Merridons, Dan, do you have an update on Ara?”
“Mmm…”
Ara lurched toward the door again.
Sera was using all the strength she had in her right arm to hold the woman back.
“I dunno. I’m on the fence.”
Ara whipped around and looked at Sera. “Is that Dan Hershel?”
Sera gave her another one-shoulder shrug. She didn’t make a practice of memorizing strangers’ voices, and especially not Terran strangers. She’d do well to forget what Marco’s voice sounded like. The memory of his voice, like the quietest of thunder, when she’d climbed into his bed made her spine quiver and her belly grow warm.
And then he’d been so willing to give her away. Maybe Troya had the right idea.
“Man, she’s so pretty I don’t want to let her go, but I said hi to her six times last week and either she’s deaf, hasn’t learned enough English to talk back, or she’s stuck-up.”
Ara hissed softly.
“What’s happening?” Sera whispered. Ara had her face pressed against the wall and was peering through a very narrow crack into the room. Then she leaned toward Sera and whispered, “They have a board with pictures of women on them. Mine is up now.”
“Yes or no,” Kent said.
Dan groaned. “I’ll toss her back. Good luck to whoever gets rights to her next.”
Ara hissed again.
Sera had never heard her sister make the animal-like sound before. Few Jekhans had the right anatomy to make the sounds the way the Tyneali could. The Beshni brothers could. Evidently, Ara’s father must have had the same physiology.
Sera gripped her sister’s wrist tighter. She peeked in once more, and then whispered to Ara, “They put something in a vat.”
“And Jasper had a wipeout so he’s not here to check in about Sera, so I guess he keeps for another cycle,” Kent said. “Let’s do the redraws for those two ladies right now before we move to our break. Maybe someone will get lucky next time.”
“That’s your name,” Ara said, as if Sera hadn’t heard.
Oh, she’d heard. And she’d heard the name attached to hers, as well. She gritted her teeth and kept listening.
“Yudnin’s the only Jekhan guy in here today,” someone said matter-of-factly. “It’s pointless to put Troya back in for random selection if ninety percent of us are going to fail. I’m not paying you for that.”
“Pay?” Ara whispered.
“That’s what they said,” Sera said.
“Okay, that’s fair,” Kent said. “Can we all agree to that? Yudnin has exclusive rights to Troya for the cycle with no draw?”
Everyone in the room said aye.
“Okay, then. So we’re drawing for Ara.”
“Again,” someone muttered.
In a hurry, Ara grabbed Sera’s arm and pulled her away from the door.
Sera understood why when she heard the footsteps approaching. They were around the corner and pressed against the wall, breathing heavily as the footsteps retreated toward the other direction.
“I think I understand what they’re doing,” Ara said, snarling. “It’s a perversion.”
“Well, I don’t understand, so tell me. And what does Jasper have to do with anything? Why were they talking about us?”
Ara pulled in a long breath, then tugged a length of her hair. “Ugh. Let’s see if I can explain this.”
The fact Ara questioned whether she could come up with an explanation made Sera’s gut lurch. Her sister was rarely at a loss for words, especially Jekhani words.
“Back before the Terrans came, there used to be a very loose matchmaking system here. Mostly, the system was put in place to ensure that no one accidentally connected with someone who they might have been too closely related to. An old townswoman would keep records of all the people who were of the right age, and if people thought they were ready to find a partner, they’d go look through the books to see who was available. Everyone knew about them, though. Our parents used the books.”
“They did?” Sera had never heard of such a thing.
“Mmm.” Ara leaned, looked around the corner, and then straightened up. She pulled Sera along behind her. They crossed the street and passed the barn from the other side. “Our fathers connected that way. Sometimes, people in the rural districts go very long without seeing each other when they get busy on their farms. They lose track of who’s available, or in some cases, a person may be newer to town and wants to get knitted in as quickly as possible. They all knew there was a book somewhere, and they sought it out. That was what my father did one day. He came from a community even smaller than this one and went straight to the elder.”
“And found my father.”
“Yes.” Ara gestured toward the open door of a newly painted building with dark windows and a sign that read, “BAR.”
Simple, but that was probably for the best. Little Gitanans weren’t so moved by excess.
They descended the two steps down into the bar, and Sera needed a moment for her eyes to acclimate to the dim room.
“My father wasn’t shy about how he’d found out about yours, either. When Papa Merridon answered the door at the farmhouse, Father told him, ‘I saw Sevin in the book. Is he here?’”
“And that was all?”
“So the story goes. It would seem that someone has let Kent know about the books, and the worm has figured out some way to turn a profit off our tradition.” She curled her lip. “Disgusting. As if I’d let anyone in that barn get close to you or Valen.”
“And Jasper, too.” Sera ground her teeth. She couldn’t believe the man had gotten himself caught up in such a scheme. Paying for access to women? That didn’t make any sense to her, but at least she understood why he’d been at the farm so much when he’d never bothered visiting before. She couldn’t muster up enough empathy to be flattered by such a prospect. And she’d let herself believe that he was a decent-enough man who she didn’t mind, so much, having a conversation with.
He was interesting and funny and beautifully formed and…
Apparently, a bastard.
She pounded her fist against her thigh, willing herself to wipe away the bit of affection she’d allowed herself to feel for him when she’d saw him so broken and bruised in The Tin Can. A part of her—and a loud one at that—had wanted to take care of him, to make him well, and he’d been playing her all along. He’d seen her as an object for him to win or collect.
And then the memory came crashing back to her. Marco had been stepping aside for someone else. That someone else was probably Jasper.
He knows about this?
She wished she’d had the right-shaped organs to hiss, too, because the noise she made didn’t make her feel any better. He could have had her. She would have let him keep her, but instead, her name was being handed around for men to have their turn with, unimpeded.
She balled her left hand into a fist and savored the pain. She preferred physical aches over the spiritual kind.
“That’s what Jasper’s doing?” Sera asked her sister. “They’re letting Jasper try to get me?”
“Apparently.” Ara shouted into the room, in English, “Phillip, are you here?”
“Shit.” Loud, cacophonous clattering sounded from the space beyond the open door behind the long bar, followed by a masculine laugh, and a groan. “That you, Ara?”
“Come out. Now.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Don’t get your panties in a wad.”
Sera crinkled her nose.
“I think that is a Terran expression,” Ara said in Jekhan. “The meaning is quite clear if you think a bit.”
It wasn’t.
A Terran man with dark brown skin, shiny black hair that coiled into tight curls close to his head, and chocolate brown eyes stepped out of the room beyond the bar, smiling. “What do I owe you for the pleasure of your visit?” he asked, looking from Ara to Sera.
“Wanted to show your jukebox,” Ara said, pulling Sera along to the bar. “What is that?” She crooked her thumb toward the door.
Phillip gave his head a slow shake. “What’s what?”
“At the barn. Do you know what they’re doing?”
“At the… Oh, hell.” His cringe was so slow that Sera could have almost mistaken the expression for a seizure.
Ara poked him. “You know. No lies!”
He sighed and pressed the heels of his palms against his coffee brown eyes. “Okay, yeah. I’m aware of the scheme, but I have nothing to do with it. Look, I’m trying to stay on the good side of the natives, you know?” He dropped his hands and gestured to the stools in front of the bar. “Take a load off. I’ll get you some drinks. Stay right there.”
“No distractions.”
“Not trying to distract you so much as try to loosen you up a little so you don’t throw something valuable at me. Cut me some slack. I’m a small business owner—one who doesn’t expect to make a profit this year.”
He retreated through the swinging doors and was gone barely long enough for Sera to send a message to Trigrian informing him of where they were and asking him to bring Elken. He set a brown bottle, dripping with condensation, in front of each of them, removed the caps, and pushed glasses toward them. “Let me know what you think of that that. The brand is easy to come by, but it sure as shit isn’t my favorite. I need better importers.”
“No distractions,” Ara said, but she did take a sip of her beer.
“Mm-hmm,” he murmured, smirking at her in a boyish sort of way. He was handsome, and Sera was surprised she’d come to the realization so easily. Apparently, at some point in recent days, she’d let herself start forming judgments about men’s desirability again.
That was good.
Too bad she was swearing off Terran men.
Sera took a sip of her beer, too, and was pleasantly surprised by the rich, nuttiness of the brew. She’d expected the flavor to be more bitter.
“Like I said, I haven’t been in town as long as most of those guys. I’m trying to stay on the straight and narrow. I had a hard enough time getting approval to run this place because I didn’t have anyone to vouch for me. I wasn’t about to get myself tangled in any scheme involving Jekhan women. Nope.”
“More than Jekhan women,” Ara said. “Some of the local Terrans are on the list as well.”
Phillip shrugged. “Maybe there are. The guy I share my house with pulled me into one of the gatherings a couple of months ago, but once I figured out what was what, I saw my way out.”
“You’re not interested?” Sera poured about half of her beer into the glass and watched with keen interest as the foam abated.
“I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced, and I always gotta know who I’m telling my life story to.” He extended a hand. “I’m Phillip Lee. I fled from Dynta Province. Lots of guys like me hid out there, though the Jekhans there didn’t like us nearly as much as the folks in Gitano do. Barely tolerated us.”
“I imagine some wariness would be expected.” Sera shook his hand gingerly and quickly withdrew her fingers. “Sera Merridon.”
“Ah. I’ve heard about you.”
Sera gritted her teeth.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said in a rush, laughing again. “No one’s said anything bad. Ara talks about you and your sister every time I see her, and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard a couple of the local Jekhans saying that your girl looks like your mother did.”
Sera rolled her gaze up to him and noted the earnestness in his eyes and the softness of his smile. No pretenses. He was just chatting. She’d come to expect that every conversation would end in a demand for something she wasn’t willing to give up. “I guess she does,” Sera said quietly. “The eyes…the eyes are the same.”
At the slight dimming of light coming from the doorway, Sera turned and saw Trigrian peering down into the room. He had Elken by the hand and held the strap of a full bag in his other.
“Our brother,” Ara said to Phillip.
“Right, right!” Phillip waved him over. “Come on in. I was telling your sisters not to be too hard on me because I’ve been trying to keep my nose clean.”
Trigrian walked slowly across the room, his gaze flitting all around as he went, likely taking in the sights.
“Normally, I wouldn’t condone there being any minors in my establishment.” Phillip peered over the bar and down at Elken. “But today, I’ll make an exception. Want some juice?”
Elken nodded excitedly.
“Coming right up.” Phillip went through the doors again.
Trigrian heaved Elken up to Sera’s lap and leaned between the sisters with his forearms against the bar top. “What’s happening?” he asked.
Ara snorted, and said in Jekhani, “To make a long story short, it would appear that Jasper paid to have exclusive access to Sera.”
“What?”
“Confounding, yes?”
Phillip stepped out of the kitchen and slid the juice across the bar to Elken. “They’re really serious about that pool, too. I keep my door open all day so I can watch folks walk past. A couple of months ago, I saw a guy trying to have a chat with one of the ladies who must be attached to the system, and out of the blue came this other guy who kinda stunned him off his course and distracted him. Then guy number two went away. I didn’t get the connection until I witnessed the tactic at the meeting.”
“Someone tell me what you’re talking about,” Trigrian said.
“There’s a scheme,” Phillip said. “Because of the shortage of women in the area, local men wanted to devise some sort of system of access so they’re not at each other’s throats all the time and fighting over women.”
“So, instead of forming organic connections, men are taking turns trying to win specific women.”
“That about sums it up.”
Trigrian turned to Sera and Ara. “And…am I to understand that you don’t like this idea?”
“Are you joking?” Sera asked him, stunned. He should have known them better than that. “Of course we don’t like it. Would you, if you had you been in our places?”
He grimaced and rubbed his chin. “I guess not. I wouldn’t like to think I was being studied like some kind of exhibit.”
“Well, we understand each other, then. Now, what are we going to do about it? If Jasper’s taking part, I don’t want him on the farm.”
“Come now, Sera. I can’t really toss the man out. He’s recovering from a serious injury.”
“He can do so at his own home.”
“I don’t like what he did. Let’s be clear on that. But we’ve got to be reasonable. Talk to him. Tell him what you’ve learned and see if he confesses and apologizes. This village is much too small for any of us to be making enemies—especially with people as intelligent as Jasper is—so if there’s any way to salvage the friendship—”
“He is joking,” Ara said, shaking her head. “I refused to believe the alternative is true. Our own brother! A traitor?”
“Geisht.” Trigrian rubbed his eyes. “Ara, I’m not saying Sera should couple with him. I merely suggested that you find some way to remove yourselves from consideration without completely damaging relationships. We need people like him.”
Sera ground her teeth and drummed her fingertips against the side of her thigh.
Trigrian was usually a pretty reasonable man, and she suspected she wasn’t thinking a hundred percent rationally. She wasn’t in the mood to weigh out pros and cons. She was in the mood to rage—and she would—but she’d have to get her revenge in a way that didn’t create chaos for everyone else.
Lifting her beer glass to her lips, she cut her brother a sideways look. “Fine.”
“What do you mean, fine?” Ara asked.
Sera shrugged her good shoulder and sipped. “Just fine. I will handle the situation.”
“How?” Trigrian asked.
“By making him go away.”
The beer really was quite good. It had a nice, crisp snap that was rather refreshing. Owen probably would have liked it. Luke, too. They were serious about their beer.
But then, so was Marco. Beer was one of his few pastimes.
“How do you plan on doing that?” Trigrian asked.
“By being myself.” She pointed to the glass and canted her head in Phillip’s direction. “Do you have this in…” She snapped her fingers and combed her brain for the term. “Oh, what are those jugs called?”
“Growlers?” He furrowed her brow. “You want a growler?”
“Yes.” She nodded decisively. “One of those.”
“I’ve got a few. You like it that much?”
“Oh, it’s not for me,” Sera said. “It’s for my plan.”
Phillip cringed. “I’m not sure if I want to be complicit.”
“Yes, you do,” Ara said sharply.
“I do?”
“Mm-hmm.” She finished the beer left in her glass and smiled brazenly at him. “Because if you don’t, I’ll will make sure you never get a chance to lift my sister’s skirt again.”
Sera clapped her hands over Elken’s ears and nearly passed out from the pain that shot down her left side from moving her weak arm so frantically. Amazing, how her sister’s English always improved when she needed to tell someone off. Sera was now convinced Ara had been withholding some information from them.
“I didn’t—”
“Hush,” Ara said. “You have. No secret.”
“She told you?”
“No. You’re not as discreet as you think.”
“I didn’t know,” Sera said.
“Had no reason to tell. Now I do.”
Trigrian narrowed his eyes at the man.
Phillip put up his hands. “Okay. Shit. I’ll get you the growler.”
“And?”
“And…I’ll see what I can do about getting Valen off that list. She wanted to keep things between us a secret until some of the sticky stuff around here was resolved, but if you three already know—”
“Then you may as well come out with the whole truth.” Trigrian leaned his forearms onto the counter and fixed an unblinking stare on Phillip. “What are your intentions for my sister?”