That Distant Dream

by Laurel Beckley

  They stared at each other a long moment in silence.

  His unusual eyes weren’t the only things that caught her attention. His brown hair was lank and unwashed, framing a sharply featured faced with pockmarked skin. A bruise spread mulishly across one of those chiseled cheekbones, joining a fat lip and bloody nose. He wore a loose-fitting black tunic and trousers—similar in cut to the mystery man from Zakuska but more casual. He wore no shoes, but she didn’t check under the table to see if his feet were as finely shaped as his hands.

  “So, it is true,” he said, breaking the silence.

  Melin blinked.

  He spoke in heavily accented Standard. He hadn’t spoken at all to the others, hadn’t given any previous indication he could understand them.

  “What’s true?” she asked. A part of her wished the Saturans stopped talking to her. The desire to be left alone for whatever Dar’Tan and the others had been was only increasing each time they’d asked for her help.

  The prisoner’s gaze left hers for the first time since she’d entered the room, darted toward the one-way mirror before he looked her in the eyes again. “You are the one who speaks the language,” he said, switching to Saturan. He spoke the Old Tongue with a graceful lilt, his accent the same as Adorjan’s.

  “Perhaps,” she replied in the same language. “A little.”

  “More than a little.”

  She remembered her purpose. “Where are the rest of your people located?”

  He leaned back, anger roiled roiling. “You are one of them.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyes opened, and his stare pinned her to her seat. “Never mind. Where do you come from?”

  “Answer my question first,” she replied steadily, refusing to be intimidated. Before the War incident, she had conducted several battlefield interrogations. It was the necessity of war. It had grown distasteful.

  He leaned back in his chair, the very picture of studied ease. The intensity vanished so quickly she thought she’d imagined it. “Danora, you misunderstand my purpose here.” His voice was deep, tinged with melodic richness and an undercurrent of amusement.

  She snorted. “I doubt it. Your people’s locations?”

  He smiled, lips closed, and peered at his hands. “You do misunderstand. You see, my mission is separate. I care little about their plots and ploys.” He shrugged. Then he glanced up, those beautiful eyes staring into hers. “I came to find you.”

  “Me?” He had to be lying. She wished she had paid more attention during the briefing.

  He nodded, eyes widened in an expression that translated to yeah, no shit.

  “Do you know the common dialect at all?” he asked, seeming genuinely curious.

  “No.” She realized he had the upper hand in this conversation, and she wasn’t going to regain it. She almost didn’t want to. “Just what you call the Old Tongue.”

  He grunted. “And where did you learn it?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Ah, but it is.” He surprised her with a grin, revealing white teeth. “For all intents and purposes, danora, my business is you.”

  “Things must be either pretty desperate or pretty boring for you to spy on a general assistant,” Melin replied. She leaned forward, palms still flat on the table, every muscle poised to defend herself if necessary. “Besides, you’re here. With us. I don’t think you understand. They will interrogate you with everything they have. You can spill your guts here with me or with their drugs and other things. They have been playing nice so far. It won’t last.”

  “You find it distasteful.”

  “I lost my taste for interrogation,” she replied honestly. “Which is why I’m the best bet you have right now for getting out of here safely.”

  “But you don’t believe that.”

  “No.” Her fists curled so tightly her nails bit into her palms. “But it will save some unpleasantness. Perhaps.”

  “And keep your hands clean, I suppose.” He smiled again. The change in him was fascinating. He seemed completely at ease as if he hadn’t been captured and beaten by his enemy. They might have been sitting at a café on any planet or station, chatting about hydroponic gardens or the weather or some other inane nontopic.

  “Too late for that.”

  He didn’t take the bait but leaned forward, keeping his movements obvious to avoid triggering a defensive reaction. “There are things I need to tell you, and it will be best overall if you know the Saturan spoken by the majority. It’ll be easier in the long run. If I may, danora?” He placed a hand on his chest. She raised a dubious eyebrow. “On my honor, I will not harm you.”

  He held out his other hand toward her. It was calloused and scarred across the palm.

  Why the hell not.

  Fascinated and wary and curious, Melin touched her palm to his.

  Instantly her mind jolted, impossibly imploding and exploding at the same time.

  Something ejected her from her chair, sending her across the room and into the wall. Her back crashed against the one-way mirror, the impact creating a body-shaped spiderweb cracked across the bulletproof glass.

  Melin hit the ground in a crumpled heap, clutching her head and fighting to regain her breath. Her lungs were too tight, too winded by the blow, her face hot and flushed, and her skull filled with cotton. When she opened her eyes, everything had weird golden tints to the edges that blotted out her sight.

  She heard rather than saw the door slam open and guards rush in, one to kneel at her side, four others to the prisoner on the other side of the room. There was the distinctive noise of a rifle butt connecting with flesh, followed by a pained wheeze.

  “Stop,” Melin croaked.

  She tried to stand, but the guard at her side pushed her down, yelling for a medic.

  Something oozed down her lip. She wiped at it. Her hand came away bloody.

  Dammit, not another bloody nose. Two in one day was two too many.

  She shook her head to clear it, immediately regretting the decision as the world tilted and turned. Across the room, the guards were clustered about the prisoner, two beating him with their rifles. He lay in a protective ball on the floor, arms tucked over his head.

  “Stop,” she replied louder. The floor revolving and gyrating was making her want to throw up. “Stop hitting him!”

  The guards stopped midswing, finally realizing whatever had happened had affected the prisoner too and had not been an attack. Something had blasted them apart and slammed them against the opposite wall.

  Melin sat up. The room settled into a relatively stable horizontal, and her vision cleared save for one or twenty sparkles.

  The prisoner looked just as dazed. His nose also bled, and blood trickled from his ears. His eardrums were blown.

  She wondered if hers were blown too. The room resonated with an unpleasant buzz, transcending hearing. She tentatively put a hand to her ears. No blood.

  The medic put a gauze pad into her hand, and she pushed it against her nose, wincing as she touched the already tender cartilage, and waved away concerned guard and medic. They stayed put. “I’m okay.” Her voice sounded tinny and muffled. She coughed. “I promise. J-just a little—what the fuck was that?”

  “We thought he exploded the room, Sera,” the guard before her said. “We’ve got to get you out of here and the room contained. We didn’t know he could fucking do that when the tech was up.”

  “No, no, I’m fine.” Melin pushed him off her again as the medic tried to take her vitals. She stood up, having to rest on her knees before coming all the way to her feet and making her wobbly way to the chair. She righted it and sat back down at the table, cradling her head in a hand. Golden sparks danced at the edges of her vision. “Bring him over here. We’re still doing this.”

  The prisoner was frog-marched to his chair and pressed down with no resistance. He blinked rapidly, working his jaw and looking as awful as she felt.

  The guards made to tie him up, but
she shook her head, wincing at the pain, and snapped at them to leave the room. They paused, growing mutinous as they realized she was not in their chain of command, but they left. She was certain Dar’Tan had spoken into their implants directly. Apparently, he wanted to see what would happen next just as much as she did.

  She stared at the prisoner, who massaged his jaw with a hand, looking mildly surprised at the blood pouring from his nose. He eyed his bloody hand with distaste, moving to wipe it on his tunic, paused, and daintily rubbed it on the table.

  Melin ripped her gauze pad in half and handed him the slightly cleaner side.

  He took it, pinching it between two fingers. “Thank you.” He dabbed fastidiously at his nose.

  “What the fuck did you—” She paused, realizing she spoke Saturan. And not the Old Tongue. It sounded like— “What. The. Fuck.”

  The prisoner opened his free hand, looking sheepish. “Danora, I honestly had no idea that would happen. Normally it’s not so dramatic.”

  Her brain registered the word automatically. “Why are you calling me cousin?”

  Surprise came out of his exhaustion. “You are of the royal blood.”

  She rolled her eyes, and winced at the pain. No more eyerolls. But still. “Yes, because I’m part Saturan, I must be of royal blood. Next you’ll be telling me I’m secretly a long-abandoned princess and lost heir to the throne, and you’re the crown prince sent to rescue me. Please, tell me more.”

  The weirdness of being able to speak Saturan was overshadowed by the entire situation. Weird explosion. Weird headache. Weird eye sparkles. Now she was a Saturan princess. And this dude was a prince. Roll with it.

  The prisoner leaned forward. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the guards pressed against the door, clearly aching to get inside the holding cell. “Well, not exactly a princess, and I’m well off the line of succession, but somewhere along your line one of your ancestors was a Dragontongue, and I’m here to figure out how.” At her blank stare, he added, “Have you ever felt—” he paused, seeming to grope for words, “like you were missing something?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” This conversation was transforming into a bad mixture of Anikki’s bedtime stories. Dragontongues? Oh no, those stories weren’t real, were they? She wanted him to go back to telling her she was the heir to the long-lost Saturan throne. Anything but hinting that her deepest fears actually had a grain of truth. The tapestry was just a tapestry. The dreams are just dreams. There was no one in the tent but me.

  His face closed. “You will understand in time. Until then, you will get no more from me.” A brief grin flashed across his face, and he leaned back into his chair. “You may tell your guards,” he said, in Standard, “that I will speak to none but you until the moons are dark.”

  “And after that?” she asked also in Standard. A tendril of anger snaked its way into her fists, coiling up her arms and into her chest. No fucking way.

  “Then—” He paused, clearly savoring his next words. “—you won’t have to worry about me at all.”

  “Are you planning an attack on the embassy?”

  He rolled his eyes and said in Saturan, “Danora, we want these foreigners gone, but on our terms.” He switched to Standard and continued, “Destroying your embassy will only bring more IASS. Now, I think our conversation is done.” He crossed his legs at the ankles. His blue eyes were sparkling with amusement.

  Her anger spiked, fiercely and rapidly. No way in hell was he going to explode the room, drop mysterious shit that made no sense, and not give her what she needed.

  “And that’s it?” Her temper blazed. “You’re done talking, and that’s it?” She didn’t realize she’d lapsed into the Old Tongue and was speaking it as fluently as if she’d sprung from those horrid dreams. The room became coated in the weird energy, thick and cloying. Blue sparks flicked just out of sight. “I don’t think you understand how interrogations go. You will tell me who you answer to and what your people’s plans are. These are my people here, and you will not harm them.”

  He laughed. “You don’t have the heart.”

  Melin jumped over the table and kicked the back legs of his chair faster than a blink.

  He fell to the ground with a surprised squawk.

  Before the noise left his mouth, she’d hauled him upright and slammed him against his wall, her knife freed from her boot in a fluid motion, pressed firmly against his armpit, poised right at that tender space to his heart while her bad arm crushed his throat. The squawk ended in a wheezing gurgle.

  “Do not fuck with me,” she snarled. “Answer my question.”

  He laughed, looking absolutely delighted and utterly mad.

  She leaned. The laugh cut off as her forearm compressed his windpipe.

  Instead of fear, amusement still tingled in his eyes. “You are truly one of us,” he gasped. “You won’t kill me.”

  “Wanna bet?” She pressed the knife. The blade sliced through fabric and bit into the first layers of skin with a hint of resistance. The room was clear, so clear. No one would reach them in time. She could kill him here now. So easily.

  He smiled.

  The blade pressed harder. It would be so easy.

  Do it. The words whispered through her mind. His eyes glinted, blue and beautiful, and those pupils that were just like hers.

  Reality returned with harsh clarity.

  This is not me.

  She pushed away, smacking his head against the wall to break away.

  Disgust roiled up from her stomach, bile pressing into her mouth. She wouldn’t harm him, unarmed as he was, obnoxious as he was. She couldn’t. Her head ached as she took another step back, the knife down at her side, arms down. He slid down the wall to the floor, never breaking eye contact, lips curled mockingly.

  In her peripheral vision, the guards still hovered in the hallway through the door’s window, leaving the prisoner to her. Their faces were worried, and they were probably doubting what had happened or whether to trust their orders to stand down or not.

  Anger replaced her disgust. Anger that she’d been put in this position. Anger at herself, for halfheartedly agreeing to it. Anger at the Saturian for goading her into murder. Anger at herself for nearly doing it.

  Did Dar’Tan honestly think she was still in control?

  Melin’s jaw clenched. “You can find someone else to talk to.” Determined to have the last word, she staggered to the door and banged on it. It swung open a fraction, and she grabbed the edge and wrenched it free.

  “What you’re searching for cannot be denied, danora,” he called in Saturan.

  She growled but didn’t stop moving, shrugging one of the guards away in her anger.

  Major Dar’Tan and the others were waiting in the hallway as she stepped into the hallway.

  Their faces ranged from shocked to intrigued to pleased.

  She wanted to punch the smugness out of each and every one of them. How dare they try to drag her back?

  “I think we can safely say there’s no problem with her speaking the language,” the ambassador said faintly. His face was one of the shocked ones.

  Melin tried to push past them, but Dar’Tan gently steered her into the observation room, the rest of the group following. Through the window, the prisoner was handcuffed to the chair once again. He offered no resistance.

  “What did he say?” Dar’Tan asked. “Did you get anything useful out of him?”

  “Nothing,” Melin spat. “Not a damned thing.” She wanted a shower. She wanted to puke. Anything to wash the disgust away. She went to slip the knife into her boot and paused, noticing the blood. Dar’Tan held out a handkerchief. A small part of her was surprised Dar’Tan didn’t insist on confiscating the weapon. She wiped off the blade, focusing on the redness of the blood. She had done that. She had hurt him. She had almost lost—no, she had lost control. The disgust intensified, taking up space in her chest. “He didn’t tell me anything useful, other than something about being gone duri
ng the darkness of the moons. When is that?”

  Sorem pulled out a worn paper notebook and flipped to a calendar. “Tomorrow night.”

  “He said they didn’t want to destroy the embassy.” Melin put the knife away and tucked the stained cloth into a pocket, focusing on the mundane sensation of cloth on skin.

  Sorem motioned for her to continue. Of course they knew—the prisoner had spoken that part in Standard.

  “I don’t know who they are or even who he is.” Melin cursed her brain for failing her. “Dammit, I forgot to ask his name.”

  “He wouldn’t have told you,” Dar’Tan assured her. He eyed the ambassador. “Well?”

  “I’m convinced,” the ambassador replied. “Prepare a team. His presence is convincing enough that something is happening.”

  Dar’Tan nodded. “Copy, Ser Ambassador. I request full control over the departure party. Sera Grezzij comes with me and Doctor Kubicek remains behind—her military background might come in handy along with her communication skills.”

  Melin was tired of people talking like she wasn’t in the room. “I’m not participating in any raids.” She crossed her arms. “Talking to him was enough. You said, just talk.”

  “This isn’t a raid,” Koshkay said. “It is a diplomatic mission.”

  “So take the professor.”

  “Ser Ambassador, perhaps we should move to your office,” Sorem interrupted. She stared at the prisoner—who was watching them. Or rather, he watched where he thought they were since there was no way he could see them through the one-way glass. Melin took a step to the side, and his gaze shifted to meet hers.

  “He can’t see or hear us,” Koshkay said dismissively. “Isn’t that one-way glass?”

  The prisoner winked at Melin, and she shuddered.

  “These natives are capable of…strange things,” Dar’Tan said. After a pause, he added, “Particularly when tech is down. But we should move upstairs. And allow Sera Grezzij to take a shower.”

  They filed out of the room, pulling her along in their current. She felt the prisoner’s eyes on her the entire time, tracking her movement.