Lazlo gave him wide eyes. “God, no!”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
*
Lazlo had tried all afternoon and couldn’t forget the feel of Dillon’s hands on his shoulders. It was an old tactic, well recognized, but damn if it didn’t still get him. Dillon was both the carrot and the stick combined in one person. Lazlo had told himself a hundred times, a thousand times, that Dillon would never love him, not the way he wanted. In two hundred and fifty years, Dillon had only ever swung one way.
Why then did he dream of Dillon? Why was he comfortable around the man, more so than with anyone else? Lazlo had told himself many times that they were friends, and that was all. He’d told himself he could live with that, but feelings were feelings, just as his mom had always said. If they’d been on earth or anywhere in the galaxy where they could get away from each other, Lazlo would have cut ties long ago. Here, all he could do was give himself the same speeches, take from their relationship what Dillon was willing to give, and glean scraps of affection where he could.
He put down his tools and looked at his plants, the ones he’d been shifting into the new room. The place still carried the heavy tang of hot metal, but any little damage it did to Lazlo’s lungs, he could repair. It couldn’t hurt him as much as his own head could.
Too much thinking for the day. It was making him tired of himself. A break was past due. He’d go to the mess hall, have a nice cup of coffee, stare at the window, and think of anything but Dillon. Maybe he’d go to his quarters, watch a baseball vid that he hadn’t seen two or three hundred times and have a nap.
And dream of Dillon.
“Oh, pathetic,” he muttered as he waited for the lift. He scrubbed his hands through his hair and missed the shift of glasses on his face. He couldn’t let go of anything today.
When the lift came, he stepped inside and laid his head against the cool, slick walls. The entire station was the same, all gleaming like a morgue table. If Dillon’s people wanted metal as much as he claimed, they’d lose their minds over the Atlas.
Nope, that thought was adjacent to Dillon and therefore much too close. He thought instead of the people on the planet, how everyone on the Atlas had worshipers but him. If he did have some, he’d have to use a transmitter to contact them like…some did. One of the crew had once asked why he didn’t demand worshipers as his fair due, but he wasn’t able to give an answer. The breachies had whispered—where he could hear, of course—that he must just be content to share followers.
But the breachies took every opportunity to gossip, to manufacture squabbles, to decide who was in and who was out. And he wound up as their target many times, except when it was time to regenerate them. Then they were all smiles and compliments, the bastards. He should have denied them, made them wet their pants a little, but he didn’t. Because he was a pushover.
If he had followers, he supposed he could have sent them the yafanai-maker plants, could have given them superpowers. He liked to think they would have been a peaceful people.
People who would’ve gotten mowed over by everyone else.
The lift stopped at crew quarters, and Lazlo’s mood plummeted further as he wondered which of them it would be. His mouth fell open when Dué’s jerking steps carried her inside.
Lazlo eased into one corner. “Ms. Dué. Afternoon.”
The lift doors shut behind her, but she didn’t turn to face them like a normal person. She didn’t give the lift a command. Her remaining eye shifted here and there as if chasing an invisible fly.
Lazlo’s gaze traveled to her empty socket, and he slid his thumb along his palm, thinking how quickly he could heal her but remembering her words when he’d first thought to try. Years after that, he’d felt powerful enough to try again, but as soon as he’d brushed her with his power, she’d flung him down a hallway and pinned him three feet above the floor, yelling, “Wicked children get no sweets!”
Still, it was hard to resist that gaping wound, no matter that it had sealed. He could feel her empty socket at his core, waiting. He crossed his arms to avoid reaching out to her with his mind. Maybe just a pat on the shoulder to show her that—
Her eye fixed on him with lightning quickness. “No one gets to touch me.”
“Sorry.”
“Naughty,” she said, an impish smile curling her lips.
He tried to fit tighter to the corner. “Yep. Sorry, again.”
“Oh, destiny.” Her eye slipped shut as she stepped closer. “They will follow you. Peace, finally.” She slammed a hand into the wall near his head, and he ducked away to the other side of the lift. She didn’t follow, only leaned against the wall as if he was still standing there, and she was going to speak in his ear.
“Prepare for unleashed knowledge,” she said. He would’ve sworn she’d said it right beside him, would have sworn that was her breath tickling his cheek.
The lift doors opened, and he leapt out, not caring where they were, not caring if it was open space. She looked over her shoulder with her empty socket as the doors shut again, and he knew it was watching him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cordelia fell into darkness. The vines withdrew, and she froze, waiting for claws or teeth. After several moments of silence, she felt around with one foot.
“Be at ease, metal skin,” a voice said, a sibilant, drushkan hiss. “You are not harmed.”
“Who are you?”
Soft light grew around them, revealing a bowl-like cavern with vines stretching across it like webs, exposing glowing moss as they moved. The mass of vines led to a solid base of wood that took up the whole of the cavern’s ceiling. Not vines, then; the roots of a massive tree.
A drushkan silhouette sat atop a mass of undulating roots as if they were a throne. “I am Pool.” She held out hands tipped with two poisonous claws. Her leaf-green hair and eyes nearly glowed in the soft light, and her deep brown skin had so many lines and arcs and whorls that she seemed tattooed all over. “Do you not recognize me, Sa?”
Cordelia froze, searching her memory. “No. Have we met?”
“I knew Jania, our Roshkikan.”
“But that was two hundred years ago!”
Pool’s mouth twitched into a smile. “I am a queen.”
As if that answered everything. “Okay.”
“Truly, you have not heard of me?”
“No, sorry. Where’s Nettle? Is she okay?”
“The hunt leader’s wounds are being tended. I thought that Roshkikan might have violated my request to leave me from her story. I feared she might have written about me, at least to her kin. I am glad to hear she did not.”
“Right.” Cordelia nodded slowly. Should she bow? That didn’t seem right. “Um, I’m honored to meet you.” She looked at the green hair, remembered Nettle’s words about Shiv one day being a queen. “I’ve met your daughter, I think, or at least your heir.”
Pool inclined her head. “My often disobedient daughter.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, reminding Cordelia of Carmichael. “Do you have offspring?”
“No. I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”
“Ahya, only you could say. I was not supposed to breed. Sometimes, we must choose the unexpected path.” She stood, and Cordelia had to look up at her, a thing she didn’t often have to do. “Perhaps you can tell me, Sa, why humans have contacted my former family, those you call the old drushka.”
Cordelia rolled her lips under and tried to re-summon any lessons Paul had given her on diplomacy. “Are you talking about the humans at the research station? Are you certain they contacted anyone? The old drushka could have attacked them for any reason.”
“A good assumption, as she who was seventh during Roshkikan’s time has become ninth.”
When Pool stared at her, Cordelia shook her head. “Is that another test? I don’t know what it means.”
Pool chuckled softly. The roots lifted Cordelia’s blade and sidearm from out of the mass and laid them in Pool’s hands. “She rea
lly told her family nothing.” Her gaze drifted over Cordelia’s shoulder as if lost in the past.
“Just like I said.” Cordelia tried to keep her voice neutral, but she was bruised and sore, she’d been attacked by boggins, and then she’d been pulled underground by a monster tree. Diplomacy was coming harder and harder. She eyed her weapons, but Pool held them loosely, not threatening. “Something you want to tell me?”
Pool strolled around the cavern, and the roots followed, coiling around her, stroking her waist, and hanging like large fringe from her leather shirt and trousers. “The seventh and the ninth are two queens of the old drushka. Before the drushka split, I was the first queen.” She gestured above her to the massive tree. “I was Anushi, the sapling, youngest and smallest of the nine.”
Cordelia’s gaze flicked to the huge trunk. “Smallest?”
Pool flashed a grin. “The ninth is called the Shi, the leader of all our people, above all other queens and their tribes. The size of her tree is beyond your imagination.” She trailed her long fingers down her roots. “Each queen has her own tree, and when a Shi dies, those queens below her move up to the next largest tree, so that each queen will one day be Shi.” Her gaze went far away again. “All but me. When I split from them, I became the hole in their heart.”
Cordelia nodded slowly, trying to picture it. “So, the queen who was in the seventh tree during my ancestor’s time is now the ninth queen? And it’s her turn as Shi?”
“Ahya, but we queens lead long lives, and so the seventh should not have become the Shi so quickly. But one of the queens died in tragedy. In a storm, so they say.”
Cordelia shuffled her feet. If the Storm Lord had caused that, they might be in deep shit. “And to know that, you’d have to be in contact with the old drushka.”
“I severed my mind from their call when I attached my tribe to the humans, but I still feel their pull. Sometimes, I hear their words, their lament.” She pinned Cordelia in place with her cool gaze. “The new Shi hated Roshkikan and all your kind, and her fervor has not cooled. I fear she plots against you and hopes to draw me back into the fold.”
“So, maybe she contacted the people at the research station. She could have pretended to be friends with the humans and then, what?” Cordelia shook her head. “Made some kind of pact with the boggins? I don’t even know what people were doing out there.” But Carmichael would. She might even have known that the research station was in contact with the old drushka. But why risk alienating the drushka who were already their allies? “Wouldn’t the old drushka kill us on sight if they hate us so much?”
Pool spread her hands and shook her head, the gestures of two peoples. “I feel their ill intent. It was why I wanted to speak to you, Sa.” She walked forward slowly, moving with effortless grace. Even above the smell of wet earth, she carried the scent of greenery in the sun. “If you cannot tell me why the humans were speaking with the old drushka, then perhaps you are split as we are. How strongly does the blood of Roshkikan run in you?”
Cordelia swallowed, wondering what Pool was asking. “All I can do is take this information back to Captain Carmichael. I don’t make decisions for my people.”
“And if I ask you not to tell your captain of me? That you only tell her you spoke to a drushkan leader?”
Cordelia tried to think of a way that could hurt her people and came up empty. “I can leave it out if you think it’s necessary.”
Pool wrinkled her nose. “What do the ambassadors say? For the betterment of diplomatic relations?”
Cordelia shrugged, but her mind was racing. If Carmichael had approved a meeting with the old drushka, and the old drushka were trying to suck Pool back into their fold, Pool certainly wouldn’t want Carmichael or the old drushka to know where she was and what she knew. But now Cordelia had agreed to keep a secret from her captain, for the sake of the drushka. But if the humans were already keeping secrets, she supposed she owed them that for showing her the research station, for saving her life.
Blood of Roshkikan indeed.
Pool held the weapons forth, and Cordelia put them away as the roots danced around them both. “The chanuka are withdrawing.” Pool looked upward as if she could feel it. She put a hand in a pouch hanging from her waist and brought forth a handful of bullets. “From the bodies.”
Cordelia took them, breathing a sigh of relief. “Thank you. Will Nettle be coming with me?”
“When she recovers.”
“Good, that’s good. Glad to hear that.”
Pool smiled, a look that grew as Cordelia cleared her throat and fought the urge to shift from foot to foot.
“She’s, um, a good hunt leader,” Cordelia said. And pretty sexy, but this wasn’t the time for that thought.
Pool was still smiling. “Do you care for her?”
“I…haven’t known her long.”
“Sometimes it does not take long, or so I have observed.”
“Well.” And now what was she supposed to say?
“Roshkikan had a drushkan lover.”
“She, uh, she wrote something about being close to the drushka, yeah.”
“Close to?” Pool laughed. “Such tame words for such an intimate dance.”
Cordelia just nodded. “So, time to go?”
Pool looked up and away again. “The shawnessi have sung Nettle’s pain away. She will join you soon.”
Cordelia took a slow look around but saw no one else. “Shawnessi? Sung the pain away?”
Pool touched her forehead. “Forgive me. You look so much like your ancestor, for a moment, I thought you the same.” She lifted a hand, and the roots reached out.
Cordelia braced herself for the slide through the earth again, but it was mercifully quick. A new guide waited for her on the surface, a male who said that Higaroshi named him Smile. As they walked quickly through the trees toward the enclave, his happy-go-lucky nature reminded her of Liam, but he was still serious enough to watch for boggins. Maybe Pool would keep more of her warriors closer, to protect her. Maybe they’d send Higaroshi away, and all live together again, though why it was so important to keep Pool a secret, Cordelia didn’t know.
They were determined; that was certain. Maybe Nettle had knocked the yafanai out for a deeper reason than just ensuring the drushka and humans were on even footing. Maybe she feared that yafanai telepaths could read drushkan minds and wanted to see if they’d spot an attack before it happened. Pool had communicated with someone who wasn’t in the room. Maybe there were drushkan telepaths, too.
One of the dead men at the research station had worked with the yafanai but wasn’t a yafanai himself. He could have been trying to figure out a way to listen for drushkan telepaths, and the old drushka had caught him at it.
And the boggins? How did they fit in? So far, they’d led her into a trap, set up two ambushes, and slaughtered a research station. They’d attacked in very large packs, armed more of their numbers, and had learned to throw their spears. Something had been done to them, something requiring a yafanai researcher. If toying with human minds could grant them powers, how much harder would it be to train boggin brains to be smarter?
“How many humans are there?” Smile asked softly.
Cordelia shook herself back to the present. “I don’t know for certain. Why?”
“I hope to one day go to the human place, to your Gale, but there are other humans, ahya?”
“Yep, a lot more, living in other cities or villages. Do you want to be an ambassador like Reach?”
“Ahwa, no. I am not so knowing.”
“Well, my uncle is the mayor of Gale. He could arrange for some of you to visit.”
“The queen says better if we do not.”
“Why?”
He spread his hands. “So the secret will stay.”
“And why is the secret so important?”
A soft whistle made them turn, and Cordelia reached for her sidearm.
Nettle jogged up behind them, stern gaze flicking between them
. “Too much talking. I could have killed you.”
Smile grinned. “We were looking for chanuka, not drushka.”
“Yeah,” Cordelia said, “what he said.”
Nettle stalked past them. “You should not speak so loudly.”
“We’ll try to keep it down,” Cordelia said.
“Keep what down where?” Smile whispered.
“Our noise, or Nettle will remind us again.”
“Ahya, I would rather hear it from her than from the chanuka.”
Nettle grinned over her shoulder. They hurried to the enclave but arrived too late in the day to start out for Gale. Even with all her new questions, all the info she had to report, Cordelia didn’t mind a chance to rest. At least she could take the damn armor off sooner.
She staked out a spot in the middle of the camp and shucked her armor piece by piece, piling it up on the ground and dumping her pack next to it.
Higaroshi sidled up to her with a non-convincing smile. “I see the leader didn’t invite you to stay the night.”
“That’s right.”
“Uh-huh.” He crossed his arms and glanced around, rocking from foot to foot. “So, how was it?”
“Classified.” She stared him down, stone-faced and leaning forward with implied menace, as if he was a new recruit.
He paled, lips shaking. “I’m sorry.” He hurried away.
She chuckled, torn between the desire to collapse laughing and chase after him to calm him down. Instead, she sat, took a few rags from her pack, and started wiping the armor down, humming as she did.
Nettle sat on the other side of the armor pile, one arm resting on her knees while her long, sensuous fingers traced the edges of the armor plates.
“Fully healed?” Cordelia asked.
“Ahya.” She didn’t even have a scar where the spear had struck her. “Is your metal skin hot to wear?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do other humans wear it besides your people?”
“No, Gale has all the armor from the first landing. It’s one of the gifts from the Storm Lord.”
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