Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

A car arrives outside Chestla’s place to take us to the hunt breakfast. When her parents and sisters hug her goodbye, it’s desperate and lingering, like they’re afraid they might be seeing her for the last time. The little one doesn’t want to let go of her legs, even as we head for the door.

Chestla peers down into the hunting beetle’s cage for the whole ride down the elevator, uncharacteristically silent. When she catches me watching her, she says, “We’re taking the lead nefch.” Position? Vehicle? “Which is always the most dangerous. And they just got me back, so it’s natural they’re worried.” She nods down at the beetle. “Most of the time, though, everyone comes back fine. Like I said, this guy’s been around for twelve years.”

The car picked Brill up before coming to get us. He’s sitting in the back in his usual leather jacket and tee combo. Chestla gets into the front, next to the driver, pero she turns around to frown at mi vida. “Did you not get the hunting habit we sent?”

Brill’s irises go apricot. “I’m not wearing that.”

I stifle a laugh, looking down at my own ridiculous clothes as I slide in next to Brill. “Sí… purple’s not exactly Brill’s color, chica.”

Chestla sighs. “We’re going into a heavily forested area, where many of the plants have picked up pigmentation from the minerals in the soil. It’s not about fashion. It’s about safety.”

Brill shrugs. “Think of the leather as low-level body armor.”

Chestla rolls her eyes. “Stubborn kek.”

Brill grins. “Guilty.”

“How about I see if I can get you guys some real body armor? A lot of people wear it under their hunting habits.”

Brill’s eyes go bright green, in intense excitement. “Really? Avell, su.” His expression has hardly shifted, but it’s the chromatic equivalent of jumping up and down like a kid getting candy.

“No promises.” Chestla lapses into silence.

“What’s up with the weather around here?” Brill asks. “I moved the Fois Gras to the spaceport this morning – after I dug it out from the dust storm. But that whole area is close to a lush forest.”

Chestla says, “This region only has one major irrigation source, so we all fight to control the river. The city upriver built dams, and then we rerouted it to build our own; the changes in the flow pattern and the way people used the land turned swathes of this continent into a dust bowl.”

Brill asks, “Are these conflicts ongoing?”

Chestla looks down at her hands. “It’s more of a cold hostility. You won’t be affected as long as you stay on this side of the banks.”

So Chestla’s people fought a war with Zant, while at the same time in the middle of a civil war on their own planet. Never underestimate the Evevrons.

My stomach grumbles. Brill passes me a packaged cake, which I eat as discreetly as I can. It’s no jelly doughnut, pero at least the flavors are familiar.

Chestla’s quiet the whole way to the breakfast, and when we get there, she’s slow to get out of the car. I wonder if Brill’s question hit some painful memory for her. She forces a smile that looks more like a grimace. “This is in our honor. Let’s do our best to enjoy it.”

The party is set up outside. There must be a hundred people here, in line for the buffet, seated at picnic tables, standing in clusters talking. I recognize Ekrin and several of her companions, Grammy, the hazel-eyed guy, a few of the kids. Ekrin is wearing her body armor. No lo sé whether that means she’s joining us for the hunt. Guide Guy is wearing a hunting habit, based on black and gray, with only hints of purple. So he’s going.

A camera drone shifts, catching the hazel-eyed guy’s smile as Chestla approaches, then capturing our semi-dramatic entrance. Grammy sees us and waves. She picks up a pair of bowls that have been resting on the buffet table’s edge. She carries them over and hands one each to me and Chestla. “The best portions for our champions.”

It doesn’t smell half bad. We chat with Grammy for a second.

When she walks off, I ask Chestla, “What is it?”

“Nebra.” She hesitates. “In Universal you call it Amethyst Rice. It picks up the color from the soil.”

“Pero what are the black discs?”

“Meat.”

The way she says it, I don’t dare ask her to elaborate.

People are watching, so the only culturally acceptable thing to do is eat. The meat is alright, if a touch on the sweet side. The rice though – it’s so salty that I can barely choke it down.

“Water? Por favor?”

Chestla looks towards the buffet table uncertainly. “That’s rationed.”

“Reshdo, Babe.” Brill comes up to me, hands me a bottle from Tawny’s stash. I crack the seal and gulp it.

Brill taps his fist against his chest, and there’s a hollow clank. “This stuff is so thin, you can’t even tell under the jacket.”

He looks so happy, I can’t help but smile. “Perfecto, no?”

“Ekrin got some for you and Chestla too.” He points at Ekrin, enjoying yellowish custard with her amigos. She sees us looking and waves me over.

I follow Ekrin to a building where I layer the armor under my hunting habit. It’s a long, flexible vest with Velcro for attaching the jointed sleeves.

My handheld rings. It’s Tyson. I take it as a voice call.

“Where te bloodfire white rapids cold heart are you?”

I swallow, and that salt aftertaste is suddenly strong in my mouth. “In a changing room?”

I thought that might embarrass him. No y no. “Everyone is saying you have Kaliel. You’re supposed to turn him over. That was the deal. Do you want me to have to arrest you too?”

I don’t tell him we’re supposed to have sanctuary, because that would mean telling him where we are. “I’ll call you when the doctors are done with him.” When the parasite is dead, and we know what we have to work with.

I hang up on Tyson while he’s still trying to reason with me and head back to the party.

A train of open-sided vehicles trundles driverlessly up the street, halting where the car had dropped us off. The hazel-eyed guy punches a fist in the air, and at that signal, the Evevrons in hunting gear peel away from the picnic and race for these vehicles, with their huge tires and platforms attached to the back ends.

“Come on, you guys!” Chestla’s already in motion, calling back to us. “We have the lead nefch.”

Brill catches up to her with zero effort. I rush to join them.

Guide Guy’s already in the lead vehicle – the same one we’re heading for. He turns to Chestla, “Already leaving your cesuda ma behind, Stala?”

As he says it, his hazel eyes glimmer lavender, just long enough I know I didn’t imagine it. Which means the guy’s a Duracell.

I look at mi vida’s face. Brill saw that glint of chromashift, and he’s not happy about it. Pero, will he let that prejudice him?

“Shut up, Ball.” Chestla shoves the Duracell’s shoulder as she gets in next to him, leaving Brill and me to climb into the back seat.

The gun mounted to the back of the front seats is roughly the size of a rocket launcher.

“Are we expecting trouble, chica?” I ask.

“What?” Chestla looks back at me, puzzled.

I nod towards the gun.

She laughs. “That’s just a hunting rifle.”

“Buckle up,” Ball says, even as he shifts the vehicle into gear, and we take off into the forest. Whoops echo up and down the line, from the other vehicles, as they start to break into a rangy formation.

“Ball’s a Krom name,” Brill says, leaning forward, so that he’s close to the Duracell’s ear. “With a similar meaning to mine. Instead of Frost Flower, it’s something more like Snowy Crag.”

“Wal.” Ball doesn’t turn around. “It happens to be my dad’s name too. Reverae desha neb sawa shon?” Very loosely translated, You got a problem with that?

“Ga, su.” Brill smiles, and this time it looks genuine. Relief floods through me. Brill gestures to his own eyes, while looking in the rearview mirror. “You didn’t shift once yesterday, so I honestly had no idea.”

Ball laughs. “My eyes only hit shades of lavender, and there wasn’t anything funny going on.”

“Really?” Chestla asks. “I never noticed that, even when we were little.”

“That’s because you saw them shift all the time.” He makes eye contact with Brill in the rearview mirror. “I was the class clown. My dad still jokes they should have named me Parz.”

The Krom word for laughter.

“You went to a regular school?” Brill sounds surprised.

“My dad insisted. Threatened to move us all to Krom if my grandparents didn’t stop pushing for me to be special. I’ve earned every accomplishment to my credit. I’d like to think I’m a better man for it.”

I watch Brill’s eyes, wait for the flash of color after the surprise fades. It’s a soft blue. And there’s no quick switch after. And that’s what I love about mi vida. He doesn’t let preconceptions about what a person is blind him to who they are. Given the culture he comes from, he’s had to learn that skill the hard way.

“Don’t listen to Ball,” Chestla says. “He was horrible. He used to pull my hair.”

Eh? Ball probably had a crush on Chestla when they were kids. Claro está, he has neither the chromashift or the ability to blush to give him away. And Chestla had had a crush on somebody else, so she might not have even noticed.

Chestla opens the lid of the cage on her lap. She puts her hand inside and comes out with the hunting beetle on her fist. She shields it from the air rushing past us with her other hand. “Are you ready?”

Ball nods, and Chestla holds her fist out the open side of the vehicle, and the bug is in the air. It’s not the only thing out there. One of Tawny’s camera drones has come along for the ride. The whooping passes through the formation again. We’re all following Chestla’s lead. She puts the empty cage on the floor between her feet and holds up the lid. She flips it over, and there’s a holographic display of a dancing field of shifting colored light. What it represents, I can’t tell.

Chestla can. “Twenty degrees to our right.”

The nefch turns, slipping between two tall trees. There’s a hint of movement ahead of us, the sound of something bulky crashing through the underbrush. I hope the hunting beetle managed to stun whatever it is.

Chestla keeps shouting course corrections, and the other vehicles are holding formation despite the breakneck speed and the uneven terrain. She gestures to the gun. “Brill, do you want to do the honors?”

He straightens the collar of his jacket. “I’m a vegetarian.”

Well, not a strict one, but we all get his point. And I can see why a Krom/Evevron tewakelle is an exercise in contradiction.

For a second, I wonder why Brill came at all, pero then I realize – he’s only here to protect me.

“Suit yourself.” Chestla grabs the gun and pulls it over the seat as the vehicle skids to a halt. Apparently, we have surrounded the whatever-it-is. “Stay behind me, Bo.”

I nod numbly, and force myself off the vehicle. Should I be insulted that Chestla didn’t offer me the rifle? Honestly, I’m relieved. She bounds away, disappearing into the vegetation.

Brill moves Krom-fast, putting himself between me and whatever is going on beyond the next stand of trees. I hear a scuffle, and Chestla shouting. We race forward, pero before we can see what’s happening, there’s the crack of a gunshot and an animal scream. The injured beast – something like someone crossed the ugliest parts of a rat, an alligator gar and an elephant – turns and lashes out at Chestla with a whip-like tail. She flinches away, pero takes the blow across her shoulder.

Whoosh! Something sleek’s flying through the air. Ball’s oversized knife hits home in the creature’s neck. The beast topples. Ball rushes to Chestla. “Are you OK?”

Given the look on his face, he didn’t just have a crush on Chestla a long time ago. He still has a thing for her.

I look down at the dead rat thing, hoping Brill knows better than to make a joke about cats chasing mice. I’m a little nauseated, looking at that sinewy tail. Was that what we had for breakfast?

“I’m fine.” Chestla’s looking at her bleeding shoulder, not at the concern on his face.

Ball examines Chestla’s injury, picking out a few shards of armor. “Thank the Codex.”

Brill makes a small noise at this reference. His eyes are a soft brown, pero they tint towards green as he reevaluates this guy.

Ball looks over at me. “The tail barbs on kapursts are poisonous. But it doesn’t look like that got through.”

“I told you, I’m going to be fine.” Chestla winces as one of the medics comes up behind her and applies foam to her shoulder.

“Then Stala, what were you thinking?” Ball grabs her arm roughly, turns her so that she has to look at him. “Why didn’t you wait?”

Chestla looks from him, over at me. I feel my face going hot. She’d tried to protect me.

Ball scowls at me, pero he’s talking to Chestla. “If you die trying to keep her from having to see danger, then what’s the point of taking this test? Go throw your life away somewhere else.” He hesitates. “Somewhere I don’t have to see it.”

Chestla’s eyes go wide, pero other Evevrons are entering the clearing, half a dozen of them kneeling to efficiently butcher the alligator-rat-thing.

Brill gestures towards the vehicle, where the others are lashing freezer-bags of meat to the platform on the back of our vehicle. “We survived the hunt, so what’s the big deal? We’re done.”

Ball clears his throat. “Does it look like that is going to feed an entire city for a week?”

As intimidating as the beast had been when alive, it doesn’t look like much broken down. The hunt isn’t over.