Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

Chestla leaps at one girl, wrenches the staff away from her and tosses it to Brill. He manages to catch it, and then not be where his attackers expected him to be. He did learn something from sparring with Chestla. I wish I could say the same.

Kaliel is standing cuffed, unable to defend himself as one of the warriors swings at him. I jump on her back, dragging her to the ground. The staff’s blow comes in low, at the back of Kaliel’s legs, driving him to his knees. I scramble for the staff and as soon as she’s unarmed, the Evevron backs away.

“So that’s the test,” Kaliel mutters. “Take the staff before they kill you with it.”

“Doesn’t that mean they’re not going to hurt us?” My voice squeaks hopefully, pero Kaliel laughs.

“Don’t count on it.” He gestures with his chin at Chestla, who is locked in battle with a girl with yellow eyes.

Chestla has a staff too, now, which she raises to block a blow. The girl’s staff slides over Chestla’s, knocking mi amiga hard in the head. Chestla falls backwards and the girl stabs down at her with the staff. Chestla rolls out of the way, barely avoiding the blow.

So nope, they’re not pulling their punches. Nunca.

And now I’ve got a staff and absolutely no idea what to do with it. I’m between Kaliel and half a dozen people who are trying to kill us, so I brace myself and try to steady my pounding heart. Most of the warriors are focusing their attention on Chestla.

From behind me, Kaliel says, “Let me free, and I can protect you.”

I turn mi cabeza to look at him. His eyes are soft and gentle now, more the Kaliel I remember. I still haven’t figured out what’s wrong with him, pero my heart wants to trust him again. My hand twitches towards the key in my pocket. One attacker takes advantage of my distraction, and there’s a staff arcing straight towards my nose. But before the blow lands, Brill flashes in front of me, shoving the guy wielding the staff away.

“She doesn’t need your protection,” Brill growls at Kaliel, who just shrugs.

“Suit yourself, man.”

Brill grits his teeth. “Babe, get him back on his feet and away from the fight. But don’t uncuff him.” He points to a hole that he and Chestla have made in the formation, leading to the protection of a rock outcropping. About half of the combatants have been disarmed and are standing in a row, observing.

I brace myself with the staff as I help Kaliel stumble to his feet. He leans against me, and he’s warm, the soap smell of his skin still clean and inviting despite the hike and the fight.

“Taga!” a female voice shouts, close behind me.

I whirl, and another warrior is there. I’m not sure what she said, pero she must have thought it cowardly to hit me in the back. The prey instinct rolls into me. The residual IH overrides it. I swing out wildly with my staff. The blow doesn’t even land.

But it does earn me a smile from the Evevron, which crinkles up from her fanged teeth to her slit-pupiled green eyes. I swing again, and she backs away. My staff hits her foot, which is clad in a protective boot. It’d be easy now for her to knock me on the back of the cabeza.

The warrior laughs, and holds out her arm. In English, she says, “Oops,” and drops the staff. I scramble for it, confused. The girl reaches into a pocket hidden in her body armor. She flashes me a picture. Of me. En serio? She’s a fan?

I hold up her staff, and she gives me a salute, displaying a thick rubber bracelet on her wrist, printed with the Roman letters MIAG. And I get it. It’s Tawny’s tag line – Mercy Is a Gift – and it’s caught on like wildfire. This girl’s telling me she’s offering mercy. We share eye contact, and a moment of mutual understanding. Then she withdraws towards the line of observers.

Kaliel stares after her. “Why would she do that?” He sounds like a little kid, genuinely confused and full of wonder. “She could have killed you, easily.”

I shake mi cabeza. “I’ll explain later.”

We make it to the rocks. He leans back against the largest one, shifting to try to comfort his shoulders.

I look down. My white clothes are smeared with purple grit. “Fantastica. Chestla said the clothes are important.”

Kaliel cracks a smile. “Don’t worry. The Evevrons respect when dignitaries aren’t afraid to get dirty. All those stains are actually a badge of honor.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “How do you know that?”

He shrugs. “Not sure. Just heard it somewhere, I guess.”

He sounds confused again. I look at him, trying to block the noises of the melee behind us out of my brain. “So now that nobody else is listening, you want to tell me what went wrong back on Zant?”

Kaliel shrugs again. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll die for it, one way or another. Unless you let me go. All I need is a key, not so different from the one I gave you, that night in the rainforest. I helped you escape, no questions asked. Remember?”

My heart squeezes. “I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can.” He licks at his lips, and I fall deeper into my memory of that night, when he saved me. When I kissed him. We both know that Frank would have shot me dead if Kaliel hadn’t helped me get into that Jeep.

Heat’s building at the back of my eyes and in my nose. “Por favor. Don’t you understand? I’m trying to keep you alive, when all the bounty hunters and pirates out there would rather bring you in muerto.”

Kaliel laughs. “This is so much bigger than you and me. And there’s nothing either one of us can do to fight it. But it is so sweet that you care enough to try.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “Kaliel, the Zantites are going to execute you.”

He looks me straight in the eyes. “And what complaints am I supposed to make?”

I was asked if I had any complaints, too, when a Zantite officer planned to execute me as a stowaway. I hadn’t had any defense either. It’s as close as Kaliel has come to an admission of guilt.

“If you explain, maybe we can think of a complaint.”

He leans forward and kisses me on the forehead. “If you wanted me to live, you should have just let me run.”

Chestla screams, and I turn. She’s holding four staffs over her cabeza, and several broken ones have been driven into the ground at her feet. The row of warriors bows. The four of us managed to defeat three times our number. And the chances of them all being fans aren’t that high.

Are Chestla and Brill really that good? What am I even doing here with them?

Somehow, Brill’s standing between Kaliel and me. “Is everything OK over here?”

“Fine,” Kaliel says.

Brill gives him a sharp look. “So now you want to talk?”

“Nope.”

Brill gives me a look.

I shrug. “He didn’t tell me anything useful either.”

Kaliel pushes away from the rock. “We still have a long walk ahead of us.”

“No.” Chestla, still breathing hard, turns to join us. “We’re getting a ride into town. Just as soon as we circle back and pick up Tawny.”

“But I thought…” Real pain comes into Kaliel’s eyes as he looks from me, out into the open landscape. It’s like when we went up to watch the meteor shower back at HGB in Brazil. He’d had the same look then, trying to drink in all of life before his trial – and probable execution. He’d escaped that once, but now he’s convinced again that he’s about to die. He really wanted that hike, that last taste of nature and beauty and freedom.

He nods and follows us to the vehicle. Managing to wipe his eyes against his shirt before he gets in, he winds up sitting squashed between the girl who dropped her staff at my feet, and the guy who had tried to bash me on the head.

The girl says something to Chestla, who looks at me.

“She asked if there’s any danger in cuffing his hands in the front, since it will be painful for him to ride like this.”

I glance around. Kaliel’s unarmed and there are fourteen highly skilled warrior-types between him and the door. I fish in the pocket of my pants and hand the girl the key. She keeps a hand on Kaliel’s arm as she uncuffs him.

Suddenly, she gasps.

She flips Kaliel’s forearm over and points at a discolored yellow spot, like a fading fist-sized bruise on his dark skin, with a single red bump at the center. She grabs his face in both hands, moving in close and staring into his eyes while speaking rapidly in Evevron.

Kaliel looks up at the ceiling, like maybe she’d instructed him to. I didn’t realize he spoke the local language. She sucks in a breath and says, “Feyese.”

The other Evevrons in the vehicle flinch away from Kaliel, like he’s contagious, Chestla included.

I look at Chestla, who stretches her hands before she answers. “The word means infected.” She turns to the girl, and they exchange rapid Evevron. She looks back at me and Brill. “She believes he has a parasite. There was a rash of cases here a few years ago.”

I have to keep myself from pumping a fist into the air and saying, I knew it. I’d guessed a virus, not a parasite, pero, I wasn’t far wrong, no?

“What kind of parasite?” Kaliel asks. He sounds nervous, keeps looking at the spot on his arm like he’s never noticed it before.

“Ekrin called it a mindworm.” Chestla looks embarrassed just pronouncing the word. “She claims it can influence a person’s thoughts. I don’t know. I wasn’t here when all of this happened. And apparently, it wasn’t important enough for anyone to tell me about it.”

“Like it wasn’t important enough to tell us that we were going to be attacked as a test?” Brill asks. His eyes are a sullen apricot. I hadn’t even realized he was upset over anything other than Kaliel.

Chestla’s cheeks tint pink. “I did train you on how to pass it, didn’t I? I was impressed by your rapid improvement.”

Brill doesn’t look flattered. I don’t want to hear whatever he’s planning to say next.

“It’s over now, right?” I force a smile, looking from one to the other. “We can relax.”

Chestla stares at me. “That was only the first test. I still must prove I can keep you alive on this planet for the next couple of days. I did tell you that coming here would be dangerous.”

“Which means what, exactly?” Brill asks.

Chestla says, “Well, there’s the hunt, for one thing.”

I gasp. Chestla had once told me her true love had died on one of their hunts. Chestla’s people may be the alpha predators on this planet, pero that doesn’t mean there aren’t other species here that come close second.

“Can we focus on me, for a minute?” Kaliel asks softly. “Wouldn’t I know if I had a brain parasite?”

Chestla and Ekrin have another rapid conversation, and a few other Evevrons, who have been watching the rest of our exchange with interest, chime in, a couple of them tapping their foreheads, and one making the universal finger-twirling symbol for crazy.

Chestla shakes her cabeza. “The parasite’s interaction with the victim’s brain is subtle, introducing thoughts in such a way that the host usually thinks they are his own. But given your erratic behavior, and the slight bleeding at the edges of your irises–”

“What erratic behavior?” Kaliel asks.

“Tell us why you attacked a bunch of Zantites,” I say.

Kaliel tenses and Ekrin catches his wrists. She cuffs him again. There’s a long silence, before Kaliel says, “It just felt like something I had to do.”

Chestla shrugs. “I’d say he’s infected. That’s definitely out of character for the Kaliel I know.”

How does she even know him well enough to say that? She must have gotten his number from Kayla. She was going a bit stir-crazy in that rainforest.

“Is there a cure?” Brill asks. I can’t read his face, or the brown tone to his eyes. He still looks almost like he’s hoping it’s fatal, pero there’s a note of concern, too.

Chestla asks Ekrin, and both Ekrin and the guy on the other side have to hold Kaliel down as midway through the exchange, he starts trying to fight his way out of the vehicle. Either he – or the supposed parasite – understands Evevron.

After they subdue him, Chestla starts to say something, pero Kaliel interrupts.

“Jeez Louise, we’re both sitting right here. It’s cruel just calmly explaining how you’re going to kill one of us.”

By which he means the parasite. There must be a cure after all.

Ekrin says something, and Chestla translates for her. “You’re part of a hive mind. What you are won’t be lost.”

Kaliel doesn’t reply to that, pero he looks like he’s about to throw up.

The vehicle stops and the doors open. The driver says over the intercom, in passable Universal, “She’s hiding behind the ship.”

Which isn’t easy, given the design of the Fois Gras, which is all arcs and points. I’m surprised Tawny hadn’t found a way to sneak back inside.

Everyone’s looking at me.

“Que?”

Chestla says, “Someone’s got to go out there and talk her into getting in this transport.”

And I’m the only one they think she won’t run from. I sigh.

“Cierto.” I get off the transport and walk toward the ship. I shout, “Tawny? You OK back there?”

There’s no response except the howling of the wind, then the crunching of my own boots across the ground. “Tawny?” Still no response. My stomach flops. She’s out here alone. What if one of those lethalriffic creatures snuck up on her? The arched fins, the only points of the Fois Gras that touch the ground, are narrow, and I can see her sitting behind the far one, toppled forward over her own knees. “Tawny!”

I race around the ship. She’s sitting at such an awkward angle, pero there’s not a drop of blood on her. I move in close to check if she’s got a pulse. When I touch her, she jumps and lets out a little scream.

“Bo, you scared me half to death!”

I put a hand over my racing heart. “You and me both.”

She was shielding a holo from the sandstorm, a close-up of the Evevron girl showing off the rubber bracelet. Tawny pulls the headphones off her ears. “I told Gagnon that his releasing the MIAG plans for free for 3D printing was a stroke of genius. I couldn’t have come up with a better fan club captain for you if I’d chosen him myself.”

I look at her, stupidly unable to process this information. “I have a fan club?”

“Of course.” Tawny looks at me like I really am estúpido. “Didn’t you see them standing behind the protesters when we left the spaceport?”

She means when we’d left Earth in the first place to go to Zant.

“I’d assumed they were all protesters. It was hard to look past the signs with slogans and holos calling for my death. And then that one lady had tried to throw poo at me, remember?”

“Of course I remember.” Tawny smiles. “She took one look at your entourage and dropped it on her shoes.”

She means one look at Frank, who had been sitting in the driver’s seat. I don’t want to think about how I’m going to explain to him what just happened. He’s not going to be happy I was in the middle of a fight. It breaks my brain how he seems to want to protect and kill me, at the same time.

“Vamonos. We’ve got a ride into town, if you’re willing to take it.”

Tawny looks relieved. “I lost all the gritfeeds the minute you guys got into that signalblocked transport. Did I miss anything important?”

I laugh, and then I can’t stop laughing. All her cameras, and Tawny managed to miss the big reveal. “Did you miss anything?” I suck in a breath of dusty air. “Only that Kaliel’s got a mind-altering brain parasite.”

Her mouth drops open. She snaps it shut and straightens her back with resolve. “I can work with that. Can you get me an image of the parasite for the cameras?