Zhemala paused. “Captain—”
“I’m sorry,” Reese said. “That was a little abrupt. It’s just that I have too much for him to do before we leave. I can’t spare him.”
The Harat-Shar looked at Hirianthial again, eyes half-lidded, with an expression of such cloying sweetness he didn’t need to read the steel-gray resolve around her to feel its falsehood. “That’s too bad. I thought you’d like the opportunity to make up for what happened.”
Hirianthial stared at her.
“You would, wouldn’t you? You feel responsible. Salaena would be glad of your help. It would answer nicely for you not being there for her in her need.”
“That’s enough.”
Hirianthial hadn’t heard that tone from Reese... ever. Her aura had expanded to twice its size and blazed fire as she stood. “Zhemala, the answer is no. And if you’re looking to pin the blame on someone, choose someone else. But don’t you go sticking it on my crew because it’s more convenient to point fingers at someone who’ll be gone in a few weeks.”
The Harat-Shar’s ears slicked back. “You can’t blame me for trying, Captain.”
Reese’s halo sizzled. “I most certainly can. Hirianthial, we’re leaving.”
Struggling with ambivalence and guilt, he followed her into the hall and all the way to her chamber. There she turned, still seething.
“Did you unpack?”
“Lady?” Hirianthial asked, distracted by the roil of her aura.
“From our trip to Mars. Is there anything in your chambers that belongs to you.”
“A few things, yes,” he said.
“Go pack them and meet me at the cafe when you’re done. We’ll bunk at an overnight house until they’re done with the Earthrise.”
“Lady?” Hirianthial asked.
“You think I’m leaving you here? You’re crazy. I’m not staying either. This might be a fine place for the twins and maybe Bryer and Kis’eh’t are just too unflappable for it to get to them, but we’re not staying here a minute longer than we have to. Get moving.”
“Irine and Sascha will be disappointed,” Hirianthial said.
“Then they can yell at me when I arrange the crew meeting later today,” Reese said. “They’re going to anyway when they find out we’re leaving.”
He said softly, “She was right.”
Reese squinted at him. “About what part?”
“About being there. I should have been there.”
Reese growled. “If she’d wanted you there twenty-four hours a day she should have hired you for them. I’m not going to let her blame you for not being precognitive. Unless that’s a secret ability you haven’t let me in on.”
He looked away.
“Damn it all, Hirianthial. Could you have known? Under the circumstances?”
“No,” he said after a moment, voice hoarse. “Up until I left her, there were no signs.”
“And no one called you to tell you she’d started cramping and bleeding?”
He shook his head, his hair barely brushing his jaw with the motion.
“So how the bleeding soil is this your fault?” She waved a hand. “Don’t even answer that. It’s obvious. It’s not. They have no business putting it on you and you have no business taking it. Pack up your things and meet me at the cafe, and don’t waste a single minute doing it. Go.”
Hirianthial took the first few steps down the hall, propelled by the force of her command. When it dissipated, he stopped, staring at the corridor and realizing some part of him had responded to the conviction of her words... her absolute belief in his innocence. He looked over his shoulder at her.
“What?” Reese asked, aura crackling.
What to ask? How to quantify the tangled confusion? It made no sense to him that she would believe in him. “Why?”
Something in his stare unnerved her: the wreath of anger deflated and was replaced with an embarrassed wrinkle of brown and something mysterious and iridescent. With a shrug, Reese said, “Because you didn’t deserve it. Because you didn’t want to do the operation. Because it was the right thing to do.” She glared at him from beneath lowered brow. “I’d have done the same for any of my people.”
The spikes that popped through her crinkled aura during her final words boded no further information and certainly no good if he remained, but habits older than any of the people in the building stopped him. He turned completely and bowed. Without the speech of his people and its delicate mood-modifiers, he could not impart the grace and gratitude he had always in his words with his Queen, his first and current liege, but he willed them into his voice anyway.
“Thank you, lady.”
“Just go pack your stuff.” But she blushed pink all the way into the air around her.
“We’re leaving?” Irine said, grasping her ears. “But we just got here!”
“Just got here?” Reese asked. “We’ve been here for a month and a half, Irine!”
“That’s nothing,” the Harat-Shar said.
Reese hadn’t been able to find a room she trusted for privacy in the entirety of Irine and Sascha’s family house, so she’d arranged for the crew to meet her on the cafe patio. Kis’eh’t lounged along the sunlit table, relaxed; Bryer seemed neither surprised nor disappointed by her announcement. Allacazam was all-too-pleased in Hirianthial’s arms, and Sascha wore a resigned expression Reese was certain had more to do with forthcoming troubles with his twin than with her decision.
“Look, we got a contract,” Reese said. “A really, really good one. I’m getting our repairs done at one of the better shops in the port... I’m even making some upgrades! And for once you all have pay in your accounts. Isn’t that the point of being traders?”
“But what about what the Fleet captain said?” Irine wrung her tail. “About staying out of the way of pirates?”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” Reese said. “We’ll be going past the system where we ran into them. Way past.”
“How past?” Irine asked.
“Sector Tau.”
“Sector Tau! We’ll be stuck on the ship for weeks!”
“Maybe the upgrades will be entertaining,” Kis’eh’t offered.
“You actually have money for once,” Reese said. “I suggest stocking up on things to keep yourselves busy.” She folded her arms. “Why is it that when we go on a short hop, everyone complains about the work, but when we go on a long hop it’s suddenly all about having nothing to do?”
“Not complaining,” Bryer said.
“Of course you’re not,” Irine said. “You barely talk.”
Bryer canted his beak and looked down it at Irine.
“The decision’s made,” Reese said. “We’re lifting off in a week and a half. Unless you object, I’ll be terminating everyone’s temporary contracts four days before we leave. Hopefully that’s enough time to make your good-byes. Okay?”
They murmured their assent.
“Good,” Reese said. “One thing before you wander. Our assignment’s in cold weather, on what looks like to me to be nothing better than a glorified asteroid. We need to play Seek in very cold weather. I’d like you all to pick up winter gear.”
“How cold?” Kis’eh’t asked.
“Negative two hundred degrees, about,” Reese said.
“Gah!” Irine exclaimed.
“She finally found some place colder than the ship to put you two,” Kis’eh’t said with a laugh.
“I’m not going into any negative two hundred degree weather!” Irine said. “I’ll freeze harder than a statue!”
“We all will without thermal bodysuits and masks,” Kis’eh’t said, amused.
“I want everyone to get one,” Reese said.
“But... but they’ll be expensive!” Irine said.
“There’s extra in your pay-drops for it,” Reese said. “Humor me, okay? We might not need everyone to go, but I do want everyone to be able to. Just in case.”
“Good plan,” Bryer said.
R
eese looked around. “That should be it. I’ve already made the deposit, so go enjoy your pay.”
That perked Bryer and Kis’eh’t, at least. They headed for the portside shops, with the latter drawing away Hirianthial. Leaving the kitties with her, of course. Reese steeled herself.
“Was it something the family did?” Irine asked, turning a thin sugar wafer in her fingers.
“No,” Reese said. “It’s exactly what I said. A good deal dropped into our lap. I’m not going to turn down an offer that earns us enough to make the ship spaceworthy again.”
“I thought you were going off-planet to take care of our funding problems,” Irine said.
Reese shrugged. “And I did. Not exactly the way I planned, but it worked.”
Sascha tugged on Irine’s tail, which was looped in his lap. “It’s okay, little sister.”
“No, it’s not,” Irine said. She sighed. “I just wanted it to last a little longer. Just a little. It’s the last time I’ll be back here and—”
“The what?” Reese asked, just as Sascha said, “The last time?”
Irine’s laugh was halting. “I know this might be hard for you to believe, but I’ve always felt like... I don’t know. I had a destiny. Me and Sascha.” Her ears drooped. “You don’t usually earn those by staying home.”
“But all this time!” Sascha said. “I thought you wanted us to stay here!”
“Of course I did!” Irine said. “I want to stay here! But it’s not Destiny if it doesn’t make it impossible for you to do what you want. If you could just choose to not do it and that worked, well... that wouldn’t be very Destiny-like, would it?”
Sascha gaped at her. Irine touched his open mouth. “It was a test, I guess. And now we’re leaving... and we won’t be back. Not to stay. I was right.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” Reese said. “You won’t be working for me forever and then you can come back.”
But Irine didn’t answer. Sascha tried to smile at Reese. “What do you mean we won’t be working for you forever?”
“Well, I certainly hope I’m not working forever!” Reese said, though the joke didn’t sound as funny as it had in her head. “I want to make enough at this to retire. At some point. In the far, far future.”
“I wish I could see there from here,” Sascha said.
“Me too,” Reese said.
They were silent, then, and the world filled in for their conversation with the calls of birds and the chunks of conversation released by the door as it snapped open and shut on the cafe’s patio.
“I’ll miss it here,” Irine said. “But that... that’s okay.”
“Blood and freedom,” Reese muttered, and thought of Mars and wherever Hirianthial’d come from and now Harat-Sharii. If none of them had a home, where would any of them go when it was all over?
“I was hoping you could help me,” Kis’eh’t said.
“If I can,” Hirianthial said.
“There’s a chemical synthesizer upgrade I’d been eyeing for a few weeks that I didn’t have money to buy. Now that I’ve got the money... it’s just that it’s a little awkward to carry. If it were a single piece I might have towed it myself, but it’s a handful of strangely-shaped pieces.”
“Lead the way,” Hirianthial said.
As usual, she didn’t take him literally—few out-worlders did. He wondered whether the egalitarian Alliance philosophy had been so deeply internalized in most of its members that they simply couldn’t interpret a request that subordinated the speaker... or if most of them simply chose to ignore the words. For a moment, very brief moment, Hirianthial longed for the precision of his own kind; or at very least, for the social habits that simplified their lives.
Kis’eh’t walked alongside him and in this way poorly steered him through the stores along the dockside. Avoiding her body when she refused to walk sufficiently in front of him to warn him of impending turns occupied most of his attention, until she decided to talk.
“You don’t say much.”
“No.”
“Is that because you like to listen to people or because you don’t like people to know about you?”
He glanced down at the top of her head; she was looking for the next turn.
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“You’re evading,” the Glaseah said. “I know the technique.”
“It’s an honest question,” Hirianthial said.
“I’m sure you’d really like to know,” Kis’eh’t said. “That way you’ll know how you’re supposed to answer me: with what I want to hear, based on your seemingly innocuous question.”
He chuckled. “Is ‘both’ an acceptable response?”
“Yes,” she said, radiating yellow cheer. He was close enough to her to feel it as soft as a towel on damp skin. After a moment, she added, “Quiet people make me curious.”
“Because you’re so talkative,” he said, indulging in amusement.
“Because I’m also quiet,” she replied, missing the humor. She peeked at him through the strands of her forelock. “I know what I’m hiding inside. How can anyone else be less interesting?” Then she grinned. “And now, because you’re polite, you won’t ask me any personal questions.”
“Of course not,” Hirianthial said, allowing her to see his smile. “That would be uncouth.”
She laughed. “And if I wanted to talk about myself?”
“I would listen,” Hirianthial said.
She shook her head, still grinning. “Of course you would. And I know you’d actually care about everything I said. But not a word will I hear from you about yourself.”
“I am far less interested in myself than I am in others. Why then would I discuss myself?”
Kis’eh’t laughed. “Good question! Because everyone wants to know the particulars?”
“The particulars of a life as long as mine are quite tedious,” Hirianthial said. “It’s why we take up so many hobbies.”
“And is medicine a hobby?” Kis’eh’t asked, aura a friendly fuzz of gold, like the down on a baby chicken. “Or is it your calling?”
“It is work worth doing,” Hirianthial replied, amused.
“That describes a lot of things. Is there any other work worth doing? For you?” Kis’eh’t persisted.
“I’m sure of it.”
She waited for more, and when it was not forthcoming white sparks frolicked over her aura as she laughed aloud. “I can see where this is going... today anyway. Fortunately, you’ll live a long time and I have plenty of patience. Ten or eleven years of questions will eventually wear you down, right?”
“I’d be delighted to attempt the experiment, if it means in ten or eleven years I’ll still be with the Earthrise,” Hirianthial said.
Kis’eh’t glanced at him sharply, then grinned and shook her head. “Finally, something interesting and just as we arrive. I’m sure by the time I come out you’ll have hidden that piece of you again.” She chortled. “Ah well. You can come inside or wait here, as you prefer.”
Hirianthial glanced into the shop and saw immediately why she’d offered the choice. The tiny store had been crammed full of used electronics and machinery, and the corridors separating the shelves were so miniscule he wasn’t sure how she’d managed to squeeze her bulky body through them.
“I’ll wait here.”
She grinned again, then vanished into the shop with her good humor. Hirianthial folded his arms and leaned against the wall. The stores nearest the dock had appeared gracious enough, large buildings standing alone, each with an eccentric facade. The rows behind them, where this store was located, became increasingly small and twined in maze-like confusion. The breeze barely found its way between the buildings, and when it came it carried conflicting scents: fried pastries, machine oil, sweat, hot dust. For the most part, everyone hurried through the warren as if chasing errands through the alleys. Their auras blurred into a sense of motion and purpose, and Hirianthial closed his eyes to the visual noise.
Perhaps
it was the hiccup in that tapestry that alerted him, or perhaps it was the waking of older senses, honed long before he lifted his hand and swore never to take another life or allow another to be taken. One of the two lifted gooseflesh along his arms and on either side of his spine. His cautious scan snagged on a man standing at a corner. Hirianthial had never seen him before, but he was unmistakably watching the Eldritch... and the moment Hirianthial caught his eyes, the man wandered away, seeming to drift though his aura reported steadier purpose.
“Ready?” Kis’eh’t asked at the door.
Without taking his eyes from the man’s receding back, Hirianthial said, “Surely.”
“Something wrong?” Kis’eh’t asked.
He shook back his hair and picked up one of the boxes at the Glaseah’s feet. “No.”
She squinted at him. “You sure? You’re no longer aimless-looking.”
“Just a passerby,” Hirianthial said.
“Probably curious,” she said, picking up the remaining box. The others were already strapped to her second back. “How often do you get to see an Eldritch in person, after all?”
“Too true,” Hirianthial said, though over fifty years in alien space had inured him to such stares.
After buying the requisite cold weather gear, Reese stocked up on more important things: books, bath lotion and scented candles. Lift-off day found her crew milling at the Earthrise’s pad with boxes and bundles of their own.
“Did they actually wash her?” Sascha asked, ears akimbo.
“Maybe by accident,” Reese said. “I didn’t pay for it.” She stared at the bulky freighter. “It certainly does look shinier. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
They filed into the ship; Bryer closed the lock and they all dispersed to their stations. Reese eyed the corridors as she headed to the bridge, hunting for any signs the ship had been mishandled, but it presented an innocuous facade from its clean deck plating to the Harat-Shariin freshness of its air. Satisfied, Reese joined the Harat-Shar and Kis’eh’t.
“New sensors,” Sascha said. “Very nice. And a better power plant! We might get an extra kick out of those.”
Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1) Page 23