Chapter Twenty-Six

 

It takes days to get to Evevron. We’re getting close when Brill’s phone rings. He looks at it, and then looks at me – almost out of sight in the galley, where I’ve been preparing breakfast – and his eyes go an embarrassed pale pink that contrasts with the maroon tee-shirt that he’s wearing sans jacket, since he feels safe in his ship.

He turns his phone so that the video capture has the ship’s controls as a background.

Who’s he about to talk to that he wishes I don’t know about?

His eyes shift towards a happy blue I know he doesn’t feel. “Kam, Zaw.” Hi, Ma.

Ma? Then why is he so embarrassed?

And then it clicks.

He’s embarrassed of me. My cheeks flame. I’ve never seen Brill’s family. After he’d confessed that they had no interest in meeting me, I hadn’t brought it up again. A few days ago, when he thought he might die, I was worth more to him than anything. Pero now?

I can’t help myself. Staying well out of the capture field, I move around to where I can see the front of the holo. Like all the Krom women I’ve met, Brill’s mamá is beautiful, with flowing auburn hair, heavy on the red, a darker shade of Brill’s strawberry blonde. She looks maybe my age, or even a little younger. Which is disconcerting, pero I should have realized it, because, hello, she’s Krom. Right now, her irises are the color of steel, her mouth set in an equally forbidding line.

Brill’s gaze flicks over to me, and I freeze, just as his mamá says, in Krom, “Please tell me you’re not with that Earth girl right now.”

Brill shrugs, cracks a smile. “OK, I’m not with that Earth girl right now.”

I clamp down hard on the noise of protest that wants to come out of my throat.

“Your father has been watching the news, and he swears that he saw you in the background of a clip from that tragedy on Zant. And now there’s been the death of another Galactic Citizen on Earth. I don’t know what she’s dragged you into, but things are about to get ugly for Earthlings stuck out in the galaxy. I don’t want you to get caught in the crossfire, Tazoz.” She just called him baby boy. There’s a hint of pink creeping back into his eyes.

That’s hardly fair. Brill’s the one who got me involved in all of this. Surely he will tell her that.

“You’re overreacting.” Brill holds up a placating hand towards the camera.

Hs mamá gasps. “What happened to your wrist?”

Brill tucks his hand out of sight. “It’s nothing, Zaw. Just a job that got a little messy.”

Her eyes go an intense brick red, worried and angry and affectionate all at the same time – the exact color of maternal protection you’d see in a she-beast about to step between a predator and her cub. I hope never to be on the other side of that gaze.

“Where are you?”

Brill glances over at me. “It’s better if I don’t say. Look, Zaw, tell Sum I love him, and the girls I miss them. I gotta go.”

She’s still making another protest when he hangs up the phone.

Brill and I look at each other for a long time.

I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m not here?”

“Babe, I’m sorry. They’ll come around eventually. Now’s just not the right time.”

He gives me a pleading look, pero I flee out into the hall. It feels like something is crushing in on my lungs, and somewhere during all of this, the IH has bubbled up again, leaving me shaking and spent.

I mean it when I say Brill’s mi vida, my very life. Pero his life’s so much bigger than just me. How am I supposed to deal with that?

I stop after about three steps when I see Tawny looking out her door at me, an I-told-you-so pity-smug look in her eyes.

She does not get to win that easily. Pero, Brill doesn’t get to treat me like I’m not good enough for him, either. Not if he doesn’t want his kalltet pendant back.

I walk back out there. His eyes are the color of remorse. “I promise not to do that again. I realize now that if I don’t stand up for you, they’ll never respect you.”

Chestla nods with every phrase. I wonder what she said to him. And where those scratches came from on his arm.

 

The planet comes into view, and it reminds me of Chestla’s nail polish, all purple and glittery. And swirling.

I look over at her. “Is that a jewel-toned dust storm, chica?”

“Unfortunately, yes. They’re more common now, with the droughts. Which reminds me.” Chestla goes to her cabin and comes out with a tri-folded garment bag. “You’re a dignitary here. It would be a big favor to me if you could wear that.”

I unzip the bag. A pour of lace escapes. I raise an eyebrow. “It’s white, chica.”

Chestla stares down at her hands. “I know, it’s your least favorite color – those earrings you always wear excepted. But it implies status. How many people do you imagine can afford to keep white garments clean in a place like this?”

She’s done me so many favors. I’m committed to help her get her future back. As I head to my cabin to change, I say back over my shoulder, “So where’s yours?”

Chestla gives me a sad half-smile. She gestures down at her own top, which is white, too. The fabric is slightly flowy, with a square neck outlined by a strip of black decorated with a geometric pattern. “I’m auditioning to be a Guardian Companion, not a courtier.”

Tawny comes out into the hall. She runs an appreciative finger across the lace. “Where’s mine, you mean. That lace is gorgeous.”

I manage a tight smile. There’s probably a tiny camera lens somewhere on the fabric now, pero I can’t spot it. “You coming with us, then?”

Tawny snorts a laugh. “I have to. The alternative is being stuck alone on a ship I can’t fly in the middle of a sandstorm that might shut down the spaceport’s visual communications. No thanks.”

Which means she’s been keeping up with everything, from inside her cabin. She’s here by choice. She’s had ample opportunities to book a shuttle back to Zant and taken none of them. She strolls over to where Brill is sitting, while I make my way into my cabin.

When I close the door behind me, I faintly hear Brill and Chestla talking. He doesn’t sound happy. A couple of times, shalshis, the Krom word for danger echoes through at me. Chestla doesn’t know much Krom. I guess they’re trying to exclude Tawny from the conversation. As I’m pulling the white tunic over mi cabeza, I distinctly hear Chestla call Brill a kek.

The pants that go with the outfit are also white, though of thicker, more utilitarian cloth. I don’t have any sturdy shoes to finish the outfit except for my black boots.

I go back to the bridge, take my seat on the modified sofa between Chestla and Tawny and strap in, in case the storm’s more than the stabilizers can handle. We’re squashed together far from the command chair, pero the nav and closeup fields are showing plenty of jewel-toned chaos. I don’t envy Brill right now.

Tawny leans forward, looking across me at Chestla. “You certain they’re not going to arrest us all for harboring a fugitive the minute we touch down?”

“I’ve spoken to the Council of Elders. They and the Royal Family have agreed to offer Kaliel temporary sanctuary, until they’re done evaluating him.”

“And Tyson will have to honor that?” I ask.

“He can’t charge us with harboring, but he can petition the Galactic Court to override the sanctuary. The council also won’t fight it if Tyson snatches him and manages to get him out of atmo. They’re only doing this at all as a favor to me.”

Brill buckles the safety restraints on his command chair. He grabbed his jacket, so Krom-quick I didn’t even notice. “I don’t like trying to land in this weather. The winds are high enough to knock us into one of those skyscrapers.”

I take a good look at the planet, and sure enough, now that we are coming in close, and the acceleration to bring us in through atmo has us committed, I see tall gray buildings poking up like spikes from the surface. It’s mountainous and forbidding, like a lavender-tinted Star Treky planet Vulcan. Maybe that kid back on Zant was right. You keep looking for fictional correlations long enough, you might find the real thing. That’s ironic, since personality-wise, Chestla is the opposite of good old Spock.

Chestla says, “I’ll serve as translator. Aside from diplomats and members of the council and the court, there’s not going to be a lot of people who speak Universal. We don’t get many visitors.”

I look over at Kaliel. He’s watching the instruments, and for a second, I can see a flicker of the old intelligence in his eyes, see him move his hands as though he would like to adjust the controls to bring us in safe. Something’s different about his face, and I can see again the guy I kissed, the sensitive hero I’d been tempted to love. He catches me looking and blinks, before he stares back down at the table he’s shackled to.

Nobody strapped him in for landing. I hope it’s not going to be as rough as Brill said.

We burn through and the winds catch at the ship. Brill’s superhumanly-fast hands race over the controls, making micro-corrections to the thrusters. My stomach feels loopy from all the juddering, pero we’re going down on cue, heading for the spaceport’s generous landing area. A sudden gust of wind hits us, and we’re flung sideways, out over the sand, the distance magnified by the speed we were already traveling.

“That’s going to make for a nice hike back,” Chestla says.

Kaliel grunts, then lifts his face from the table, where the force banged his temple against the smooth metal surface. “Be sarcastic, but it really is a beautiful piece of land. Reminds me of the old days. And the longer the hike, the longer we get to keep breathing.” It’s the most vocal he’s been since we captured him. Which I take as a good sign, even though he isn’t making much sense. He’s the only one facing muerte here, right?

I cock an eyebrow at him. “What old days?”

Kaliel’s from Sweden. He has family in Brazil, and took his pilot training in Mexico – presumably at the megaplex in Guadalajara. Which is hardly a desert. At twenty-six, how many more old days could he have?

He blinks, looks confused, then shrugs. “Pilot training, at a tiny base in the middle of the Chihuahua Desert. Guadalajara was full that year, so we pulled the overflow facility.”

It’s plausible, pero he still sounds uncertain.

Brill’s angling the external cameras to check on the outside of his ship. We’ve landed upright, without a scratch – if you ignore the graffiti and the dents from Tyson towing us.

“Do you want to try to move to the spaceport?” I ask.

Brill grimaces. “Ga. Not in this kind of storm. All it would take is one gust to tip us over, and then we’d have real problems.”

Chestla’s already unfastening Kaliel from the table, cuffing both his hands behind his back again. She’s been in charge of moving him as necessary over the past few days, and he hasn’t tried to fight her. She leans in close to his face. “I wouldn’t suggest trying to run, not on this planet. That ravine leading into the river is going to look inviting, but trust me, you’ve got a better shot at surviving a Zantite jury.”

I shudder, imagining all those Zantite teeth ripping Kaliel apart, pero he just shrugs. “Doesn’t matter much in the scheme of things, does it, how I die?”

His voice is gruff and hoarse. I suspect it really does matter to him.

I remember the version of this guy who could have escaped prison in the middle of a riot, pero chose to stay to face an unjust death rather than to be seen as guilty – or a coward. I still keep wondering if the Kaliel I’m looking at now is some kind of doppelganger – pero, I felt like I’d glimpsed the real Kaliel a minute ago.

It has to be something going on inside Kaliel’s mind.

So many things don’t add up – unless there really is a virus. Fizzax never had explained how he knew Kaliel was going to make it back to the trial at the last minute. And Dghax had talked about a sickness aboard that crashed ship, busy becoming a reef in the Zantite ocean. Could it have been dormant on Zant for all those years? Maybe Kaliel had stumbled across something infected with germs while he’d been lost.

I hold my breath, waiting for him to say something else. He doesn’t. Chestla pushes him towards the door. He rolls his shoulders, as best he can, given the confinement of his arms.

Chestla bounces the key in her hand, then tosses it to me. “You’re still in charge of this guy.”

Kaliel watches the key disappear into my pocket.

Chestla pokes him. “Unless you decide to turn him over to the police here, which should still count as beating Tyson.”

I shake mi cabeza. “No y no. They’ll just turn him over to the Zantites. The whole reason to challenge Tyson in the first place was to prevent that. We need answers.”

Tawny pulls me aside. Her face is urgent, like she’s got something very important to say. She pulls a tube out of her pocket. “You cannot go out there without sunscreen.”

“En serio?” I try to turn away. We have important things to deal with here.

“Yes, seriously.” Tawny opens the tube and starts applying cream to my cheek. “Your face is Earth’s brand right now. You don’t want our planet to look old and cracked, do you?

When the door opens, a blast of hot air hits my face. Brill drops the stairs, and the five of us walk out into the dust storm. Brill’s got a couple of levbots carrying cases and cases of bottled agua. Tawny gives him an approving nod. Brill does something to the proximity band on his still-injured wrist, then he retracts the stairs and locks the door. The sand is already scratching at the bottom edges of the ship, piling up against the fins, further damaging the paint job.

It’s going to be a long, hot walk.

We haven’t gotten far when a vehicle trundling fast across the sand appears at the horizon, heading straight for us. Tawny flitdashes back towards the Fois Gras. The vehicle stops and a dozen Evevrons dressed in tight-fitting body armor pile out, surrounding us. There’s an equal mix of guys and girls, a wide range of skin-tones and hair colors, pero they’re all armed with identical staffs.

Brill’s gun is in his hand, and he’s standing in front of me before I’ve even registered that he’s moved.

“No!” Chestla rushes over, pulling Brill’s arm down. “Don’t kill any of them. It’s a test.”

“A what?” Brill asks, pero he holsters the weapon, just as the delegation rushes us.