“And this you have done how?” Hirianthial asked.
Saul said, “There were gene repositories on Terra.” He smiled. “The same sort of technologies that worked on us Pelted when we were trying to expand our gene pool during the Exodus work on animals.”
Reese tried not to flinch.
“We started work before we left for Kerayle,” the Kesh said. “And decanted on arrival. Our current herd is single breed only, but we intend to turn this world into the Alliance’s equine preserve. Every breed we can rescue, we will eventually have here.”
“But why?” Sascha asked, ears sagging. “Seriously? Horses? Who would buy them?”
“Do they have to be bought to be worth something?” Saul replied.
Reese cleared her throat. “So, leather. What else are you interested in? Maybe maintenance for your equipment? You must have some machinery that needs parts, if you’re doing genetics work. I have general purpose electronics with me, along with perishables and trade goods. And maybe you have some… ah… horse preserve souvenirs? I could sell those.”
“Where are these horses?” Hirianthial asked.
They all looked at him: Reese and Sascha because Hirianthial wasn’t known for interrupting people or putting himself forward, and the colonists because they could answer the question.
“Are you interested in buying?” the Kesh asked.
“Are you interested in selling?” Hirianthial smiled. Just a faint smile, framed by that long fall of pale hair. He had a strand of gems on one side, Reese noticed, one in front where it could be seen. Rubies, she wondered? Did the Kesh notice? His next words sounded cautiously intrigued.
“That depends on the buyer.”
“Then perhaps I should see the stock,” Hirianthial said.
“I am not shipping horses anywhere,” Reese interrupted, irritated.
Hirianthial said to her, “Never fear, lady. I am only looking.” He glanced at the Kesh. “Yes?”
“Yes,” the Kesh said, grinning. “And I am talking to the… lady.”
Great, he’d passed the term on to this man, and if she hated ‘lady’ from Hirianthial that didn’t cover how she felt about it from strangers.
“I can show him to the pasture,” Saul said, rising. “If you will excuse us, Kesh.”
“By all means.”
“Maybe I should go with you,” Sascha said. “I’m kind of curious about this now. You know. Animals being preserved with technology that rescued the rest of us.”
“I’d be pleased by your company.” Hirianthial stood. “By your leave, lady.”
“Yes, fine, go,” Reese said. “Don’t hit your head on a rock somewhere.”
“I shall endeavor to avoid it.”
The Kesh watched them go, then lifted his brows. “More wine, lady?”
Reese sighed. “Sure. But don’t get any ideas.”
He laughed. “I promise I shall guard your honor. Particularly since I don’t want to answer to your confederates for slighting it.”
“They aren’t my chaperones,” Reese growled.
The Kesh grinned. “Tell them that.”
“So really,” Sascha said to Saul. “Horses?”
They were in front of Hirianthial, walking down a dusty lane away from the buildings, toward the sere and rugged landscape that met the horizon in a rumple of low red mountains.
“Sure,” the Hinichi said with a grin Hirianthial could hear in his voice. “Why not?”
“Don’t they hate the smell of you?” Sascha asked, skeptical. “You’re part wolf.”
“And part human,” Saul said. “They came out of a vat, alet, and the only thing they associate with my smell is food and a curry comb. They trust me. What I really want to know...” He looked over his shoulder at Hirianthial, “is why you’ve got an Eldritch with you.”
Sascha snorted. “What, not confused about the albino?”
“The Kesh isn’t fond of the Alliance’s company,” Saul said, tail swishing a little. Agitation, Hirianthial judged, given the sudden cold fog seeping through the wolfine’s aura. “He and the others try to stay insulated from it. It’s why they decided to leave for such a remote location.”
“They could have stayed on Earth,” Sascha said. “That’s remote.”
Saul snorted. “Earth. Earth is the focus of too much Pelted attention to be remote, no matter where it’s located.” He sighed. “And now you’re about to ask what I’m doing here. And the answer is... maybe some of us are tired of the Alliance culture too.” He looked out over the landscape. “Starting somewhere fresh, somewhere a little less... connected... to everything else... it’s nice to deal with local issues. Not to have to worry about intergalactic politics when making decisions that you’d think would only affect yourself. It’s nice to just be yourself, and not some group.” He laughed. “Do you know, these people know as little about the Hinichi as they do about Eldritch?”
“That takes some doing, given that Hinichi are everywhere and Eldritch are just about nowhere,” Sascha said, dry.
“Believe it or not,” Saul said. “All they cared about was whether I cared about horses, and if I could do something useful.” He grinned. “For once, I’m not the token Christian, the token Pelted, the token loyal, honorable and stoic wolfine. I’m just Saul. Who assists the Kesh and helps with the herd.”
Sascha eyed him.
“Granted, I’m still all those other things too,” Saul said. “But they don’t define me here.” He glanced over his shoulder at Hirianthial. “You understand, don’t you. I’m sure you’re tired of being the token mystery, the token esper, the token exotic alien.”
Hirianthial cleared his throat. “There have been moments.”
Sascha shook his head. “For Hirianthial? Moments, yeah. Probably all of them.” He sighed. “Running from your labels doesn’t work, though.”
“It did here,” Saul said. “Come. The path’s this way.”
The wolfine led them off the road and through the brush, up hills scumbled with dry yellow brush and low, spindly shrubs. Sascha fell back to pace Hirianthial, leaving the Hinichi in the lead, his body silhouetted by the bright sun.
“You believing any of this?” Sascha said after they’d scrambled up part of the trail.
“About why they’re here?” Hirianthial answered. He considered. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Sascha made a face, tail twitching. “Running doesn’t solve anything.”
“That depends on which direction you run,” Hirianthial said, and waited for the inevitable laugh, which he was pleased to receive.
“You... you set me up for that one, didn’t you.” Sascha held up his hands, grinning. “No, wait. You’re about to say ‘you set yourself up. I just helped show you the way.’”
“Something like that,” Hirianthial allowed, amused. Against his neck, through the hair dangle the crew had made him, he could feel the laughter of Sascha’s twin, and beneath it Sascha’s own memories of fixing the Earthrise’s Well drive, impressions woven into the knotted strand by a very normal magic. For as much as he’d allowed them to know him... they knew him very well indeed.
“You really feel like our token exotic alien?” Sascha asked after a moment, his voice low.
Hirianthial glanced at him, at the spotted fur on the mostly humanoid face, and the eyes that could be merry and serious by turns. “Do you really feel like our token Harat-Shariin hedonist?”
Sascha was silent, toiling alongside him in the heat. Then he smiled. “Can’t help that. I am a Harat-Shariin hedonist.”
“Sometimes,” Hirianthial said.
“Sometimes,” Sascha said.
As they approached the top of the hill, Hirianthial added, “Thank you.”
“For...?”
“For not assuming I pulled any of that out of your mind.”
Sascha snorted. “Is she getting to you, still?”
He considered his words. “She asked me to stay, but she’s avoided me ever since. I must imagine the incident
still distresses her.”
“Maybe,” Sascha said. “She doesn’t know how to let a thing go, good or bad. That’s one of her endearing qualities.” He grinned. “But no. Unlike Reese, I don’t care if you go rooting through my thoughts. But if you don’t like what you see there, that’s your problem, not mine.” He stopped alongside Saul, “So how far—oh.”
Over the hill was a pasture, and in the pasture were horses.
Hirianthial had grown up with horses. For centuries, in fact, he had overseen the breeding of horses, had fretted over the crossing of lines, had made expensive and delicate arrangements for stud duties with other Houses who were also jealous of the health and bloodlines of their dwindling herds. On his world, one could walk or ride, either astride or in a horse-drawn carriage: there was no other form of transportation.
But it had not been planned so. They’d brought horses with them from Earth for pleasure, not for need; there had only been a few, not the numbers necessary for a healthy genepool. Not all the most careful husbandry in the worlds had been able to save their animals from the inevitable byproducts of inbreeding. The resulting beasts were all very similar, of delicate health, and had muddy and disappointing conformation. And most of them were some shade of brown.
In all his life, and he had lived almost seven hundred years of it, Hirianthial had never seen creatures as magnificent as the ones grazing on the incongruously lush grass in the field beneath them: dappled gray and sleek black, gorgeous bays with their dark socks, chestnuts so bright a red they shone like fire beneath Kerayle’s brassy sun. They were all, to the last individual, beautiful.
Sascha and Saul were both staring at him. The latter was grinning. “Ah… a man who understands a horse.”
Sascha, more uncertain, asked, “Are you all right?”
“Very much so,” Hirianthial said. “Can we come closer?”
Saul grinned. “Even better… would you like to ride? If you’re interested. I could take you to see our prize.”
“Something finer than this?” Hirianthial said, brows lifting.
“Oh yes.”
“Count me out!” Sascha exclaimed. “I’m not getting on one of those things. They look smart enough to pitch me off.”
The Hinichi laughed. “If you recognize that, you have all the instincts of a budding horseman—“
“—no,” Sascha said firmly. “I will stand at the fence and watch.”
“They might come over and nibble you,” Saul said, grinning.
“As long as they don’t bite—wait, how big are their mouths?” Sascha flicked his ears back. “Are you serious about the nibbling? You’re teasing, aren’t you.”
“A little,” Saul said, slapping him on the shoulder. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to the Lead Mare.”
“They have titles,” Sascha muttered.
“They have names too,” the wolfine said. “Like people.”
Hirianthial hid his grin and followed.
“You have a laboratory,” Reese said, staring down into the facility from the metal catwalk.
Behind her the Kesh laughed. “Did you think we used magic to make the horses, Captain?”
Reese folded her arms over her ribbed vest and tried not to scowl. At least he’d addressed her correctly. “No, of course not. It’s just that... you have all of a dozen buildings—”
“More like thirty,” he said mildly.
“It’s not much of a town,” Reese continued, ignoring him. “So finding a state of the art genetics facility in the middle of it is a bit of a surprise.”
“It’s what we do,” the Kesh said, stepping up beside her. Beneath them a handful of people were working. They were mostly human, but she could see at least one Pelted: an Aera, from the length of the ears. Reese frowned. The Aera were nomads by inclination and finding one in a town was strange. Maybe the Aera had chosen the colony life because it was a little like wandering, to be so far from everything. “We are bringing something back to life here, Captain Eddings. Something that was left for dead—” He paused, shook his head. “No. Something that was neglected. Discarded until it came to ruin, but it was only sleeping until we returned for it. And we shall be proper stewards to it now. Do you see?” He rested his hands on the rail. “Some things are left in the past, and should be. Others are left behind, and should be retrieved.”
“And... you’ve decided that horses needed retrieval,” Reese said, wondering why the conversation was making her uneasy. She had come to distrust passion, maybe. “I guess horses are harmless enough.” When he glanced at her, she said, “It’s not like you’re... I don’t know. Cloning ancient megalomaniacal human warlords or something.”
He snorted. “You have an active imagination, captain.”
“Or a paranoid disposition,” Reese muttered. She watched the activity below them. “You don’t seem to have many people.”
“Many of them are with the horses.”
Something in the way he said that... she glanced at him. “You’ve got so many already?”
“We do,” he said. “Come, let us continue the tour.”
Definitely something going on there, she thought, and followed him. “So, these horses... I’m guessing you ride them, since you talked about saddles and bridles.”
“Of course.”
“Is that where your missing people are?” she asked.
He turned. “They’re not missing.”
Holding up her hands, Reese said, “I wasn’t implying anything! Just... this doesn’t seem a big staff for an operation this size. You know. Repopulating the universe’s horse… ah…population.”
“You seem skeptical,” he said. “Not much of an animal-lover, captain?”
“I live on a ship,” Reese answered. “Fur clogs ducts. I have enough trouble with the crew shedding without adding things that aren’t smart enough to help me do maintenance.”
“Ah,” he said. “Well, you’ll have noticed the heat? Most of us sleep through it. We run on reduced numbers during the afternoon.”
“Right,” Reese said. “So, you were saying about textiles?”
“Ah! Yes.”
Reese followed him down the stairs, but she glanced one more time at the lab as they left it. Far be it from her to criticize any person’s lifelong dream—God knew her own family had—but she was trying to imagine a planetary preserve for a single species. Strange motivation. “I guess you like to ride,” she said, more to herself than to him.
“Captain Eddings,” the Kesh said. “There is no freedom like the freedom on the back of a horse.”
“So, alet,” Saul said. “Does it feel good to be back?”
Hirianthial glanced at the wolfine, smiling a little. “Is it so obvious?”
“To me? Absolutely.” Saul chuckled. “You don’t ride like an amateur. And as little as I know about Eldritch, I still know something. You’re probably older than my great-grandparents. For all I know, you’ve been riding horses longer than I’ve been alive.”
Hirianthial looked up at a sky brittle with glare and broad over the rumpled hills. He’d left his homeworld, gone through the Alliance’s medical schools, practiced as a healer, left off that practice to become his Queen’s spy and was now tagging along with a merchant captain, and though all of that had been barely a fraction of his life it was still longer than Saul had been alive. He said, “It would perhaps be more accurate to say it’s been that long since I’ve ridden.”
Saul’s ears flicked back. His chuckle this time was a touch huskier, and his aura fluttered with shadows: rue, perhaps, like a murder of crows passing overhead. “Well. Then you’re long past due.”
Hirianthial looked between the mare’s ears, drew in the familiar smell of leather and horse sweat, the unfamiliar perfume of alien flowers dried on the stem by the pitiless heat. “On that count, you are entirely correct, alet. May I say though—”
“Yes?” Saul looked over at him.
“I have never ridden an animal of this quality,” Hirianthial sai
d. “And I am honored to do so.” He glanced at the Hinichi. “You will not sell?”
Saul said nothing, riding alongside with his face lifted to the sun and his eyes narrowed nearly to slits. After a moment, he said, “Right now, we’re not selling. As far as any askers are concerned. But the right buyer...” He glanced at Hirianthial. “You don’t want a riding animal. For pleasure.”
Had his avarice been that blatant? But then, he had never imagined that Earth would have retained such genetic treasure. “I have perhaps bred horses myself in the past.”
“Stud fees—”
“I fear your studs would be wasted on our mares,” Hirianthial said.
“Ah.” Saul nodded. “I should have known... no one who lives as long as an Eldritch can afford to think in the short term, ah?”
Hirianthial said, “Alet—I do not think that anyone can afford to think in the short term. No matter their lifespan.”
“Truth.” Saul chuckled. “The Kesh might be open to negotiation. I’ll talk to him about it.”
“Thank you,” Hirianthial said, inclining his head.
“And now... come! Our greatest jewel likes the high ground!” With a cluck, Saul urged his mare up a trail, and Hirianthial followed. His neat-footed mare needed little direction; she read his intentions in a way none of the less intelligent animals he’d worked with at home could have duplicated. It was a unity close to pain, to feel so attuned to another creature: he could even sense her aura, something he’d never noticed at home. Was it that these horses were not so burdened by their genetic faults, and so their minds shone clearer?
“There!” Saul exclaimed with an exultant laugh. He rose in the saddle and whistled, his mount side-stepping under him.
Hirianthial drew alongside him, looking out over a small field, and there at its edge was a streak of white, running for the sheer joy of it, like the wind made manifest, poured into flesh.
“Kumiss!” Saul said. “Here he comes... in his own sweet time, of course. Just to make sure we know he’s coming because he wants to, not at our beck.”
her instruments 02 - rose point Page 2