ZHETT KELLUM
The waveskimmer tore across the choppy seas of Kuivahr. Zhett felt like laughing as the salty wind whipped her long black hair, but she tried to control her expression. She didn’t want her son to notice how much fun she was having, because that would make him even more reckless.
Against her better judgment she had let Kristof, who preferred to be called Toff, pilot the skimmer from the distillery, heading to open water. Toff was perfectly competent at the controls, despite the fact that he was only thirteen. He had an innate talent for piloting almost any kind of vehicle. Most Roamers were like that; it seemed to be in their blood. Zhett was proud of him, even though he did tend to take chances—just as she had done at his age.
“I can take the long way to the sanctuary domes, Mom—map the kelp along the way.” He looked up from the water-splashed windscreen. “You never can tell what might be useful for the fermenting tanks, or what might taste good.”
She knew he was just looking for an excuse to stay out on the water longer. “None of them taste good, no matter what your grandfather says.” Del Kellum was inordinately (and incorrectly, she thought) proud of his recipes for distillations of the native sea plants.
“People still buy them,” Toff pointed out.
“And thank the Guiding Star, otherwise we’d be bankrupt.” Zhett didn’t really believe that, though. With her husband’s family fortune, as well as the wealth that clan Kellum had gained, and lost, over the years, they would survive somehow. Six months ago, she and Patrick Fitzpatrick had been running a skymine on the gas giant Golgen, until the complete disaster there. She had never imagined she would be managing a distillery. Roamers adapt, Zhett thought.
The skimmer hit a rough patch of foamy waves, and Kristof cried out in delight even though he was nearly thrown from the controls. Zhett held on as they bounced along. “We’re just going to make a delivery to the Ildiran sanctuary domes. You may be a reckless teenager, but your mother has responsibilities.”
Toff snorted. He didn’t believe it for a minute. They both knew she could have delegated someone else to make the run, but she wanted to leave the distillery and take the ride across the waves with him.
“All right, you caught me,” she admitted. “But we do have to get back. Your father might sell the distillery out from under us if I leave him in charge for more than a few hours.” Zhett was just teasing. Patrick was as dedicated to the business as she was, and they both intended to make a good profit from it.
Toff guided the skimmer along at a speed that made Zhett anxious, but she didn’t complain. At his age, she had felt immortal too, but after what she had seen during the Elemental War, after the many times she and clan Kellum had nearly lost everything, she knew that the universe sometimes played with people, like a cat with a ball of string.
“Do you think Tamo’l will let us see the misbreeds this time?” Toff asked. “I promise not to stare.”
At the sanctuary domes, Tamo’l and a team of medical kithmen studied the unfortunate genetic amalgamations left over from the Ildiran breeding program on Dobro. The misshapen survivors now lived in protective dome habitats below the waterline, a refuge where the misbreeds lived out their lives as best they could. Tamo’l, a halfbreed herself, dedicated herself to helping the unfortunate creatures. The breeding program was a shameful scar on Ildiran history, and the innocent children of kiths that were never meant to be mixed had paid the price of the previous Mage-Imperator’s ambitions.
“You know the misbreeds like their privacy,” she said. “We’ll deliver the new extracts, nothing more.”
“But we just want to help them,” Toff said.
“And we can help by leaving them alone, since that’s what they want. That’s your first lesson for today.”
Zhett’s distillery team had extracted potent chemicals in new kelp strains found on the sloshing tides, pharmaceutical-grade distillates that had either a narcotic or euphoric effect on humans; she hoped that Ildirans might have a similar response. Tamo’l was always eager to receive new potential treatments for her misbreeds, and the Kellums liked to be good neighbors.
In the disjointed everything-is-important-right-now thought pattern of a teenage boy, Toff said, “So is our family ever going back to skymining, or are we stuck at the distillery now?”
Zhett glanced up Kuivahr’s cloud-locked sky, then back to her son. “I thought you didn’t like skymining.”
He shrugged. “It was okay.”
Zhett raised her eyebrows. “I could always send you after Shareen and Howard. They’d love to have you with them at Fireheart Station.”
He gave her a look of mock horror. “Shareen thinks solving math problems is fun, and I can only tease her and Howard so much. I’ll work here, thank you.”
For her own part, Zhett longed to be back aboard a skymine, drifting in the serene clouds of a gas giant.… Well, not always serene, since on Golgen poisonous shadows had boiled up from the deep cloud levels. Zhett and her family had barely evacuated in time. Circumstances beyond our control.
Toff pushed the waveskimmer forward, making a serpentine wake in the water. Ahead, seeing the transparent domes that protruded from the waves like giant blisters, Zhett activated the comm. “We’re ready with our delivery—docking soon, if someone would like to come pick up the package.”
By the time Toff guided the skimmer to the domes’ receiving deck, a redheaded man waited for them next to a regal-looking Ildiran woman and willowy young Tamo’l herself, who showed the mixed genetics of a human mother and an Ildiran lens kithman.
Toff guided the skimmer against the landing deck so that the hull just kissed the structure. Zhett was impressed.
She greeted the redhead. “You must be Shawn Fennis.”
“Yes, and this is my wife Chiar’h.” The Ildiran noble female bowed slightly as she was introduced.
Toff grabbed the case of the distillations and bounded onto the receiving deck, offering the package to Tamo’l. She took it gratefully and thanked him. “If these new distillates are similar to the last ones you delivered, I may be able to formulate excellent palliatives.”
“Can we go inside and meet some of the misbreeds?” Toff blurted. “Maybe I can help too.”
“Perhaps some other time,” said Tamo’l. “They are often shy around visitors.”
“He didn’t mean any offense,” Zhett said.
Fennis added, “They’ve been stared at all their lives. This is a place where they can be free of that.” He relieved Tamo’l of the heavy case of samples. “But if this helps to improve their lives, maybe some misbreeds will come to thank you in person.”
Zhett’s heart skipped a beat, not sure how the distillery workers would react to that. Nevertheless, she said, “We would be honored.”