by Lea Linnett
“Should we hide?” Lena asked, but Kormak only shrugged.
“The attention will die off once we reach the Sheneth Quarter.”
There wasn’t much they could do except press on.
That didn’t stop the attention from making Lena uncomfortable.
She could hear whispers rising up around them, even in the bustle of the marketplace.
“What do you think a levekk is doing here?”
“Is that human girl with him?”
“Poor little thing.”
She focused on the path ahead, cutting through the clumps of people gathering on the walkways. She felt out of place all of a sudden. Before, she could have slipped into the crowd unnoticed, but with Kormak, everyone was watching.
It was late when they crossed the Sheneth Quarter’s threshold, meaning it was already well-and-truly roaring with life. Loud music thumped out of the dance hubs, all manner of species sprawling out over tables and benches, bottles and glasses gripped tightly in their hands. Sometimes in multiple hands.
She even saw a couple of species that she hadn’t seen in person before, and tried not to stare as she passed. She glanced over her shoulder periodically, making sure Kormak was still behind her. He always was, and that kept her heart from thundering right out of her chest.
After a while, Kormak grasped her shoulder, and his touch was gentle, but brief. She paused.
“That’s the place,” he murmured, pointing to a large hub on the corner. The outside of it was wreathed in blue fluorescents, casting the street beneath it in an ethereal glow. She could see lights on in the upper levels, but they were all lit in either flashing greens or burnt oranges, with blinds covering the latter.
She followed Kormak up to the front of it, sticking close to his side by instinct. Despite the coldness, despite the doubt, she felt a large hand wrapping around her shoulder, pulling her within his sphere as they stepped past a small group of drunks huddling by the front entrance. She saw one of them making eyes at her—with eight eyes—and averted her gaze.
It was like stepping through a waterfall of sound when they crossed the threshold, the bass that had sounded tinny from the outside suddenly engulfing them. The entire place was dark, except for the incessant flashing of a bulb over the dance floor, matching the beat of the music and the sweaty rhythm of the people writhing beneath.
She could feel the tension twisting through Kormak’s body in the tight grip of his hand, bony fingertips digging into her shoulder, although not enough to hurt. She was still slightly dizzy from the change in atmosphere when he guided her over to the bar, grabbing the bartender’s attention.
“I’m looking for Brando.”
She didn’t bother to concentrate on the rest of the conversation, too preoccupied with the mass of people around her. They were all shapes and sizes, and while that wasn’t entirely unusual to her, the way they interacted was.
There were humans, obviously, and a great many of them—both male and female—were situated up on the tiny raised stages that dotted the establishment, dancing seductively for the others crowding at their feet.
There were Calideez martians, whose slimy green skin reminded her forcefully of Warden Garross and his multiple wandering limbs. There were xylidians, their shiny carapaces reflecting the light like water. A cicarian walked past her with an armful of drinks and a puce-colored pindar nearby snorted something green and powdery from his fist with his tiny, snubbed nose.
At one point, she felt someone tug at her backpack, but she batted the hand away. She was in the process of turning to swear at the assailant when Kormak’s grip tightened, his conversation obviously over. He pulled her close again, tugging her past the dancers to a door towards the back. She half expected the sound to deaden when they exited onto a tiny, brightly-lit corridor, but if anything, it grew worse. Speakers had been set up in the corner of the ceiling, and the noise made her head ache after the relative silence of the countryside.
Kormak led her down past a number of doors, passing by two separate staircases leading up to the next level. She wondered if they were places for sleeping or fucking or just shady dealings in general, and thought it strange that the corridor was so well-lit when it seemed that most people here would want privacy.
Kormak picked a door at the end, ushering Lena through it. It was smoky, and laughter met her ears once the door was shut behind them. Her eyes watered as she squinted through the smoke, her nostrils flaring. Whatever the hell they were inhaling, it was never going on her birthday wish list.
She allowed Kormak to steer her deeper into the room, revealing a huge card table on the other side of the wall of smoke. She saw cards, and cash, and a few other bits and bobs on the table, but was immediately distracted by the people sitting around it.
They were predominantly cicarian, with a single pindar and xylidian each thrown in. The pindar’s eyes, in particular, glittered when he saw her, and Lena leaned into Kormak’s side instinctively. She felt a thumb run soothingly over her clothed skin, but the levekk’s eyes stayed trained on someone else.
She followed his gaze to one of the cicarians, whose saucer-like green eyes were open to their fullest extent, the hand of cards in his grip sagging.
“Kormak!” the cicarian crowed, immediately standing. His voice was warm and confident, at odds with the alarmed look on his face. “Where the fuck have you been? I thought you weren’t gonna show.”
“Brando.” Kormak inclined his head. The cicarian stepped around the table, and clasped Kormak’s wrist with the wrong hand, as the levekk’s was still wrapped protectively around Lena.
“Had some setbacks,” Kormak was saying, and his voice rumbled deeper than she’d heard it in a while, exuding power. When she glanced around, the pindar was still looking at her, his eyes trailing up and down.
“That’s some fucking setback. You’re, what? Four days late or something?”
“Do you still have the room?” Kormak asked, his tone turning flinty.
Brando raised a hand, his purple-ish skin almost looking bruised in the low light. “Yeah, I’ve got it, don’t worry. I fucking owe you. I’m not gonna fuck with you.” His wings twitched, nervously, but he held the levekk’s gaze.
Kormak nodded again, his grip relaxing slightly on Lena. “That’s good to hear. How you been?”
“Yeah, things’re alright. But hey, we’ll talk on the way. It’s across the street. You don’t mind hanging tight for me, do ya fellas?” he asked smiling over his shoulder at the now slightly disgruntled looking table. His big eyes cut to a massive alien standing by the wall, nodding meaningfully. The big guy stepped forward, taking a seat in Brando’s vacated chair and placing a threatening hand down on the table next to his abandoned cards. “Nice,” said Brando, gesturing for Kormak and Lena to exit the room with him.
They were just turning to leave when she felt a chubby hand close tightly around her wrist, making her yelp. She almost would have felt embarrassed at her reaction, had the grip not began to squeeze like a vise, tugging her back toward the table with a sharp jerk.
“Wait, wait, wait. Where’d you get this one? She’s cute.”
It was the pindar, his pink skin turned a ruddy purple across his short nose, obviously drunk. His small eyes were inspecting her fingertips, and the golden speckles that remained there, as if he’d never seen anything like it before.
She tugged frantically against the restraint, ready to swoop in and bite if she had to, when a flurry of movement exploded behind her.
A short, sharp roar cut through the mild chatter of the room, jangling her nerves, and then Kormak was slamming into the pindar, his clawed hand wrapped tightly around the alien’s thick neck. She could see the skin immediately purpling under his grip, and thought that no matter how abused her own wrist felt, it was nothing compared to what the pindar was going through now.
“I didn’t get her from anywhere,” Kormak was saying, voice dangerously low as he leaned in close to the pindar. “Now you let
go of her.” It was barely an order, more a statement of fact, and that made it all the more terrifying. Kormak wasn’t even leaning over her and she could feel her skin break out in a cold sweat. He dwarfed the pindar, easily two feet taller, and while they were equally broad, the pindar’s mass looked to be made up mostly of fat, whereas Kormak was all muscle.
The pindar’s eyes were watering—which was a generous way of putting it, as she was pretty sure those were tears running down his cheeks—and Lena felt his grip slacken. She pulled back immediately, backing up as much as she dared without leaving Kormak’s orbit.
“Good boy,” Kormak growled, and released the pindar with a disgusted shake of his hand. When she peered past him, she could see a neat set of dark bruises left behind on the pindar’s pink, flabby skin.
Kormak immediately pulled Lena close again, storming from the room. She heard the quick staccato of Brando’s feet as he followed them, and soon they were leaving the silence of the gambling room and entering back out into the thrumming corridor. The lights confused her for a moment, but she leaned into Kormak, letting him guide her through the hub and out onto the street again.
She shut her eyes, using Kormak’s body as an anchor, and thought that she’d never felt so much like an alien on her own planet as she did at that moment.
21
Brando ushered them across the street to a smaller, quieter establishment. Compared to the dance hubs that sat nearby, it looked almost abandoned, lit only by a single light bulb above the front door. When they entered, the thrumming bass from the neighboring buildings fell away, and Lena recognized dimly that the entire place must be sound-proofed.
She was still reeling from the bright lights and loud noises of the hub. She didn’t frequent those places—she’d never had the time to—and the Sheneth Quarter was far more exuberant than the smaller hubs back in her hometown.
Her wrist throbbed. Bruises were spreading across her skin already—dark streaks of purple far worse than anything Kormak had left on her the night before.
She waited for the usual anger at being treated like glass to float to the surface, but it never came. If anything, she was furious at everyone else: the hub patrons, Boss Silick, Warden Garross. They all thought soft skin and a lack of claws or spines made humans an easy target—and if Kormak hadn’t been there, she would have been, as much as she didn’t want to admit it.
Would it be the same if she went off-planet? Would they all look at her like that pindar had? She could get herself out of most scrapes—she’d been doing it all her life—but she had to protect her sister, too. She hadn’t even recognized whatever species Brando’s bodyguard had been, and he was bigger than Kormak. She had no idea what really lay in wait out there.
Once again, she found herself wishing that Kormak would go with them.
Her mind teemed with these thoughts as Kormak guided her up the stairs, still speaking to Brando in hushed tones. She could hear the words, but it took effort to sort them into meaningful units in her head.
“What the hell kept you anyway, Kormak?”
“Transport broke down. Had to walk from the other side of the Ssippi.”
“You crossed the river on foot? Fuck.”
“There was a bridge. Sort of.”
She heard Brando laugh, a waspish sound that grated on her already frayed nerves. “You got an in with Malcolm?”
Kormak’s hand unconsciously tightened on Lena’s shoulder again as they reached the top of the stairs.
“I don’t need an in with Malcolm. Malcolm’s not going to be in with anybody after this.”
Brando cursed in Cicarian, the chittering noise sounding screechy and meaningless in Lena’s ears. She glanced up at the sound of jangling keys. They were standing outside a battered door with a strange symbol etched into the metal. She thought it might be the Cicarian character for the number five, but couldn’t be sure. It had been a long time since she’d learned a few words of the language in fundaments school.
“I haven’t been getting much info on Malcolm’s crew lately. Could be that they’re just going through a lull, but you never know. Maybe they’re expecting you.” He held out the keys to Kormak, a sincere look in his massive green eyes. “So be careful, I guess.”
Kormak nodded, patting the cicarian on the shoulder before taking the keys from him.
He ushered Lena inside, and she made a beeline for the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. She splashed her face with water from the faucet, and the shock of the cold brought her back to herself a little. After a cursory inspection, she found a cleansing unit in the corner, and nearly cheered when she saw it wasn’t a chem-shower, but a human-style water shower. She was definitely going to give that a whirl before she slept.
She turned to leave the tiny bathroom, but paused when she heard the low murmuring of the two males in the main room.
“So what’s happening with the human girl?”
“She’s going home tomorrow.”
“Seriously?”
“…What?”
“No, it’s just…” Brando’s reedy voice paused, and she heard shuffling. “You two seem close, is all.”
“’Close’?”
“The way you were holding her the whole way here.”
Silence.
“You have done something, I knew it. She got eggs in her basket?”
“No! Fuck, Brando, what’s wrong with you?”
“I’m not asking for that!” he squawked, his voice then lowering so far that Lena had to strain to hear. “I just meant, if you both need to bounce off-planet, I can help.”
“…About that. She might need a spot for her and her sister.”
“But not you?”
“Of course not me.”
She heard Brando shifting nervously again. “I just thought…”
“We’re going our separate ways.”
“Alright. Alright. Don’t glare at me like that. …Does she know that?”
“She knows what this is.”
A pause. Lena’s heartbeat quickened as she rested a hand against the door. Kormak sounded so… detached. Trepidation filled her, telling her not to interrupt, but she couldn’t stay in this bathroom all night.
She waited until Brando started to speak again, and pushed down on the door handle.
“Well, anyway, use the room for whatever. Just make sure anything nasty goes into a body and not onto my shee…”
Brando’s words died on his tongue as Lena exited the bathroom. She saw Kormak freeze, and watched the cicarian’s huge eyes grow into perfect twin circles as if it were happening in slow motion. Kormak’s expression had turned stormy, and the other alien backed up, his translucent wings fluttering skittishly. With a quick salute and a garbled farewell, Brando was gone, scurrying out the door with his wings half-unfurled as if he would take flight right then and there.
Kormak slammed the door shut with a little more force than necessary, but when he turned to face her, his expression was already turning impenetrable.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have let him say that in front of you.”
Lena gulped, her throat feeling dry as she crossed over to the bed. “I heard worse stuff in Kharon,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “Besides, it’s not like we’ve had any trouble with that before, right?” She stretched out on the bed, smiling coyly, but Kormak’s eyes only swept her body once before skittering away. He marched mechanically over to the bathroom, his neck stiff.
Lena’s face fell. She sat herself up, leaning back against the headboard and peering curiously around the room. It was small, furnished with only the bare essentials and a tiny bathroom. The bed beneath her wasn’t in any way luxurious, but after a week trekking through the wilderness, the thin mattress felt immeasurably soft as she relaxed into it, running her hand over the threadbare sheets.
When Kormak re-emerged, he immediately sat in the guest chair a few feet from the bed. It didn’t look that comfortable, but it was decen
tly-sized, holding his formidable height and weight without protest.
The silence that stretched between them was… awkward.
She eyed the bedspread, studying the uneven weave that had already been picked apart before her by restless fingers. She needed to find something to say, and ironically, now was the one time that she couldn’t.
It felt like she was missing something. Like she’d put together a complex machine only to discover one tiny bolt left over, and no matter how many times she pored over the plans, she couldn’t work out where it belonged.
She dared a glance at the levekk, but he was looking down at the bed, as if his eyes had started to turn towards her and been waylaid halfway there.
She was about to open her mouth and blurt out something, when Kormak finally spoke.
“You okay?”
“Huh?”
“The pindar. Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she answered, too quickly. “I mean. It’ll bruise, but…” At Kormak’s concerned look, she continued in a hurry. “It’ll heal. I’ve had worse.”
Kormak looked stricken, and Lena’s heart sank.
“I meant at the factory, not…”
But the levekk was looking at his hands now, his eyes distant. The tension in the air was palpable, and Lena could feel it suffocating her as she struggled to change the subject.
“So, tomorrow.”
Kormak froze, but she forced herself to push on.
“You’re determined to go find Malcolm?”
There was a long pause, in which Kormak inspected the underside of his claw in great detail. “Yes.”
Lena’s eyebrows furrowed, and she sat up straighter. “What about after?” she tried, even though she knew the answer already.
Kormak closed his eyes. “Lena. There’s not gonna be an after, you know that.”
“I still don’t see why,” she shot back, and she barely noticed the sharp sting of her own fingers digging into her knee. “Just turn him over to the enforcers.”