Chapter Nine

 

Tawny shows up the next morning before the croissants do. Before the sun. Once I let her in, she turns on all the lights, swishes open the curtain to the balcony.

She gestures me over to the glass. “Let me see your face.”

Like that orange glow peeking over the horizon’s going to help her see.

I try to stifle a yawn, which winds up pretty much in her face, though I haven’t had time to brush my teeth. She doesn’t even seem to care as she uses the fingertips of both hands to tilt my chin so she can get a better look. “This looks like you took sandpaper to it. I’ll have Valeria get with the spa staff to put together a healing facial.”

“What about for Brill? Could she do something like that for him?”

“On HGB’s dime? No. If he’s too cheap to see a cosmetic reconstructionist, that’s his problem.”

“It’s not that he’s cheap,” I protest. “He’s still hoping it will heal on its own.”

Tawny rolls her eyes. “Typical Krom. They have all the time in the worlds, so they sit back and wait for problems to resolve themselves.”

The way she says it, emphasizing all the time, expresses such longing. Maybe that’s why she’s attracted to Brill. Given the emphasis she puts on youth and beauty, it would make an odd kind of sense, no?

“As long as I also get to soak in those therapeutic mineral baths, I’m in.” My back aches. And the shoulder with the old gunshot wound hasn’t hurt like this in ages.

“What were you thinking, going out into an alien wilderness like that?” She snaps her fingers. “Let me see your hands. If they’re anything like Brill’s–”

“I was thinking mi amigo had gone missing, and I’m a human being with feelings.” I hold out my hands.

She flips them over to examine the palms. “Those yellow vines you guys touched yesterday are an irritant.” Tiny red dots spot the middle of my hands, where I’d gripped the vine the hardest. Tawny uses a pair of tweezers to pop one, and it starts itching like crazy. “This doesn’t look too bad. I’ll add the doctor to your list, though, just in case.” Then she makes eye contact with me, and for once her smile isn’t plastic. “You think I don’t have feelings? That I’ve never lost someone I care about? That I don’t understand what you’re going through right now?”

“You never…” I have no idea how to finish that sentence.

“I keep my personal life and my work life separate, and you’re part of my work life, so no, I never did.” She runs an alcohol wipe over the tweezers. “I have a job to do, and if I screw it up, then it puts everything I’ve worked for and everyone I care about in jeopardy. You may not like some of the decisions I make, but I will not apologize for them.”

“Then just make them. Stop trying to manipulate me and–”

There’s a knock on the door. It’s a Zantite bellboy delivering my basket of chocolate croissants. All I can see is Kaliel’s face, hear him saying he doesn’t like chocolate. And I was right, the tears do want to come, pero with Tawny here, I don’t dare let them.

“Because of you, one of my last memories of Kaliel is of all of us having this gran fight. That, at least, you should apologize for.” I pick a croissant out of the basket, pero I’m not hungry. “You could have told me what you wanted instead of lying to people. And trying to pass off holonique.”

“Because you totally would have listened if I told you there’s no place for a Krom in your life while you’re the center of Earth’s last-ditch diplomacy? Nobody’s forgotten they stripped us of everything at First Contact, and as long as you’re with him your motives here are going to be questioned. His people aren’t our allies, and they also aren’t particularly friendly with the Zantites, so there’s no strategic advantage to the pairing.” Her light blue eyes are hard like ice, and I think I preferred the plastic smile to the grim frown.

“That’s just so calculating.” I bite into the croissant and chew slowly, making her wait for the rest of what I want to say. “And the Krom are the Evevron’s allies, so maybe also short-sighted.”

She rolls her eyes. This is obviously not news. “Brill is going to be executed for murdering Kaliel. I’m sorry my attempt at separating you drove him to it. Losing Kaliel’s appeal for the cameras is a blow. But that’s a Krom killing a human in cold blood. You have to distance yourself from this.”

“Brill’s innocent. I won’t abandon him just when he needs me most. I’ve been through the spotlight-wringer before, no? Had the stardiggers tear my life apart twice – twice – already over what things looked like, and what people guessed my motivations were. I’ve found someone who loves me, who for all his flaws, is a hero at heart. And I’m not giving that up.”

Tawny takes a croissant and sets the basket down on the desk. “Zantites don’t believe in prisons, but Brill has already been warned that if he tries to leave Zant, it’s an admission of guilt, and he can be executed by any police official present. They’re claiming that after you found that lifejacket, Brill destroyed the evidence. But they have to wait until Kaliel is declared legally dead to do anything else.”

“He saved my life yesterday.” I’m close to shouting now, and the shakes are getting bad enough that she’s bound to notice. I take a deep breath.

Tawny peels up a layer of dough on her pastry. “He’s still a murderer.”

“Brill did not murder Kaliel.”

“Are you sure? Krom have a complicated system of honor and rank. And you don’t exactly fit the description of a loyal girlfriend. That audio may have been holonique, but the attraction in your eyes was real.”

My face is hot and the shakes are getting worse. “Brill has never lied to me. Omitted things, sí, allowed me to make a few flawed assumptions, OK. But he’s never outright lied.” That’s not strictly true. He has lied a couple of times, to make himself look better. Pero, not over anything like this.

“You asked him outright if he killed Kaliel?” She stares at me until I nod. “Then maybe you should be asking yourself if you’re really so sure he didn’t, if you felt the need to ask.”

“And maybe you should ask yourself if you’re really keeping your work and personal life separate.” She doesn’t dignify my cheap shot with a what do you mean, so I continue, “I’ve seen the way you look at Brill, and there’s definitely something there you want. We both know Brill’s capable of ending a life and I don’t think that’d be a deal-breaker for you. But you don’t know him if you think he’d do it unprovoked, to someone who considered him an amigo.”

Even as I’m speaking, I realize how stupid and hurtful my moment of doubt must have been to Brill yesterday. Because it’s true. He wouldn’t. And I think Tawny sees that in my face, because suddenly the plastic smile is back in place.

“Whatever ulterior motives you think I have, Bo, I’m the one who’s going to get you through this. Kaliel’s funeral is tomorrow afternoon, and hopefully by then, the salvage team will have come up with a body so that we’re not sending home a coffin with nothing but his boots and his pilot’s license in it. I want you to think carefully about who you show up to that funeral with.”

Kayla’s not going to be there, not if it’s mañana. She’s in transit, pero too far away by now to get back in time – if we could even get a message to her somehow.

“There’s no chance left of finding him alive?”

Tawny’s smile cracks. “The search team called it. Believe me, this isn’t something we wanted to announce prematurely. The negative spinoff is going to be horrific.”

“Then can I have my privacy? I have a few calls to make.”

The first person I call is Gideon Tyson. He’s the reptilian Galactic Inspector who shot me when I tried to run with that cacao pod – and then later, he bit me as I escaped after he’d captured me. Sí, he’s venomous, and sí, he’d been justified. I was guilty, and he’d been charged with bringing me back to face charges of treason. In the end, though, he’d helped save me. We’re friends now.

Tyson is all about interplanetary law. If anyone can find me a way out of this, it’ll be him.

It rings a long time before Tyson picks up. Sparkly bounce party, Bo! It’s good to hear from you.

I explain that this isn’t just a social call, and after I detail the situation, I ask, How can I save mi vida?

Tyson hesitates. Have you considered getting him a dose of te Invincible Heart?

I gasp. Brill told me if a Krom took that, his heart would explode.

He’s saying there’s no hope, which caves me in, like he’s punched me in the chest. It’s the last thing I expected from him.

Tyson sighs, though through his reptilian mouth, it sounds more like a hiss. But it’s so instant it’s painless. Unlike being chompcrushed into tiny pieces. And it would leave a body to send home to te family. Krom are big on tat.

A body. I can’t help picturing Brill lying cold and peaceful, like he’s asleep. Icy terror dances through me. Mijo! I’m not giving up.

Te treaty Brill’s people have with te Zantites mean he’s treated as a citizen under tere laws. I’ll try to get tere in time to help. If I can. In the meantime, work wit Mertex to try to find proof. He has as big a stake in tis as Brill.

Que? I know Mertex feels guilty about Brill’s face, but why would he care so much? It’s not like he failed in his duty to keep us safe on his planet.

If he’s taken a formal vow tat bound your lives to his, if he can’t protect Brill even from tis, ten he’ll also be executed for his failure.

Well, jrekt, as Brill would say. It literally means the sound a bat makes when dropped down the well, pero it’s used more like oh, crud.

Exactly, Tyson bubblechatters.

Sorry. I hadn’t meant to think that at you.

I was already tinking it.

 

And then I try to find someone who can tell Kayla her boyfriend’s funeral is tomorrow.

For some people, it wouldn’t be odd not to have used the shuttle’s public phones, pero for a girl like Kayla, in the middle of relationship drama – it’s odd that she didn’t give a return contact code by calling somebody. Maybe she realized after the flight left that she was overreacting, and got embarrassed. Pero then, shouldn’t she have called Kaliel? Maybe she did. Maybe that’s why he was in such a good mood yesterday morning. Maybe she told him she loved him before he died.

And that’s when I lose it. Fat tears drip down my face, turning my eyes red and my nose snotty.

Brill sends a note that he and Mertex are in the hotel restaurant, and they’ve ordered me a coffee. Sometimes mi vida really is sweet. And that makes me cry harder.

 

“Babe!” Brill stands up when I come in. His face and the front of his hair are glowing with translucent pink paint.

I raise an eyebrow at his appearance, pero I just say, “Mi vida.”

He hugs me, and there’s a strong herbal smell coming off him. “We were just talking about how odd that thing was with Fizzax yesterday.” He’s holding his hands awkwardly out of the hug, and when he pulls back, I see he’s wearing thin yellow gloves – of a shade that approximates a Zantite skin tone. They appear to be the source of the smell.

I ask Mertex, “Has he ever acted extraño before?”

Mertex shakes his massive head. “No. He’s one of the most level-headed people I know. And there at the end – he sounded like a child asking about love. Like he was somebody else inside. That was scarier than when he tried to eat Brill.”

“Speak for yourself,” Brill says. His irises are black just thinking about having been in Fizzax’s mouth. “I need a charter, to get back down to the channel.”

Mertex adds, “He thinks he can find those bones, prove they’re not Kaliel.”

Brill nods. “I figured I’d better be proactive. Revwal?”

“Pero you don’t know for sure that skeleton wasn’t him. Whoever did kill him could have dumped him in the nest to disguise what really happened.” It’s horrortastic: my friend, a guy I’d kissed, might have been stripped of his flesh by carrion eaters on purpose. I force myself to continue, “What if whatever you find makes it worse?”

“I didn’t do it, so whatever it is can’t prove anything against me.” He reaches into his pocket and a mini camera drone flies out. Even through the gloves, he winces at the contact. “I borrowed this from Tawny. She was being incredibly sweet to me this morning. But maybe it’s just because she knows that she can FeedCast the holo if I fall into the channel again.”

Mertex asks, “How are you going to verify that they’re the same bones, if they’re not even in the same place?”

“I can’t. But how many dead sus are in that river?”

Mertex’s mouth drops open. I’m guessing maybe a lot. Mertex clears his throat. “Kaliel didn’t just fall off the squid. He was bleeding before he hit the water. Who – other than Brill – might have wanted to hurt Kaliel? And why?”

“I’ll ask around here.” Pero, my face feels gritty and tight, and I have had zero coffee this morning. I’m not equipped to deal with this level of logic puzzle right now. “Pero, like, what’s up with the pink paint?”

He frowns at Mertex. “I went back to my ship and tried to make you coffee. It seems someone’s trying to start a practical joke war.”

Mertex drums his fingers against the chair arm. “You’re not mad, though, right?”

Brill’s eyes tint an amused violet. “Just don’t expect me to retaliate.”

“I have something at the hotel that you can use to get that stuff off. Let me see your hands.” I get a flash of déjà vu. Tawny had asked me the same thing.

“Ga, it’s nothing.” He leaves his hands at his sides. I give him a look that means I’m not buying it. “Haza.” He takes off the gloves. His hands are covered with orange blisters, from his fingertips to past where his wrists disappear into his jacket.

Mertex lets out a low whistle. “That’s the worst sawk-vine reaction I’ve ever seen.”

For a species of explorers, Krom certainly are prone to allergic reactions.

“Put the gloves back on,” I tell him.