“Captain—”
Reese’s head came into abrupt, unpleasant contact with the bottom of the console. “Ow!”
“Rrrph, I’m sorry!”
Reese pushed back from beneath the environmental controls, leaving the tools beneath the console. Irine was standing behind her with sagging ears, wringing her hands. The felinoid Harat-Shar’s breath came in soft visible puffs, and she was wearing socks on both feet and tail.
The Earthrise was always in need of repairs, but Reese fled to the engineering deck when she most particularly wanted to be alone. The cold usually deterred the rest of her crew from following. Not that she left it that cold just to convince them to leave her alone; it was honestly good for the electronics.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Irine said as Reese sat up and rubbed her head.
“You didn’t startle me,” Reese said, then amended, “Much.” She scowled. “Well, don’t just stand there, Irine... what is it?”
“I’m afraid there’s a call for you,” Irine said, chafing her arms.
“I thought I told you not to both—”
“Bother you, yes, I know, but this thing’s lighting up so many security alarms on my panel I think it’s going to blow up.”
Reese eyed her. “Security alarms.”
The Harat-Shar girl sniffed, her socked tail curling behind her. “Even the handshake is encrypted. Talk about an obscene amount of money... “
Reese stood, the beads braided into her black hair clicking against her shoulder-blades as she shook them back. She ignored the clenching in the pit of her stomach with difficulty. “I’ll take it. Go see how the loading is going.”
“Okay,” Irine said, and stepped silently on her socked feet toward the lift.
Reese watched her go, then stalked to the fore of the ship. Built in the Terran solar system, the TMS Earthrise’s bridge spoke little of the amenities and luxurious waste of space so common to Alliance-built vessels; the human had to wedge herself between a few crates to the forward-facing windows with their communication consoles. As Irine had testified, a real-time comm request flashed on the screen inset on the side wall, the lagged blink of secure traffic.
Not even her curiosity could untie the growing knot in her stomach. Reese could think of few reasons a small-time trader captain might receive such a high priority, highly private signal. She didn’t like any of them.
“This is Theresa Eddings of the TMS Earthrise. Accept the incoming signal.”
The computer chirped its response; Reese rested one brown hand against the console and leaned back to watch the slow blink transform to a handshake screen. The header information stunned her, and then tied the knot in her stomach much, much tighter. Ulcer material. Definitely.
Not only a message, but one from someone who refused to identify himself. The last time she’d seen a scrambled source, six years ago, she’d had reason to rejoice. She’d also ended up promising to pay up for the miracle at some future date. At the time, she’d been sure that she’d refit the Earthrise and rise above the small freight contracts she’d been able to afford... the idea of paying her mysterious benefactor back hadn’t worried her.
Somehow, though, her imagined pay-offs never materialized. Bad luck dogged the Earthrise, and for every score Reese managed, something needed repair, someone needed repayment early or somewhere interest compounded faster than she could handle it. Six years later, she had just enough for the cargo she could hear being loaded right now—the cargo and enough food to keep them from starving, and that was it. Certainly not enough to pay back someone who’d bought the Earthrise back from Reese’s creditors, with enough left over to fill her holds with new hope.
Reese’s misgivings doubled as the handshake completed and a line of gibberish ran across the bottom of the screen; once the parade reached the other side, it gave the appearance of being completely still save for the twitch of the characters changing. Beneath this line, two numbers popped up in either corner. She knew them, of course—the right one indicated how many Well satellites this missive was jumping to get to her real-time, and the other, at zero, the amount of identified attacks on the encrypted stream.
A fine sweat popped up on Reese’s dark forehead. Every second of a Riggins-encrypted Well transmission cost one thousand fin—far more than she could earn back with the Earthrise in months. This was also the exact same way her benefactor had last used to contact her. Her time had run out.
On the flat black above the stream, a sentence in amber appeared.
You will remember us, we presume.
“If you are who I think you are, then I could hardly forget,” Reese said. Her words appeared one by one in response. There was a long pause. Then:
We told you, long ago, that when we returned we would tell you that we requested your aid in the name of the High Priestess of the Amacrucian Church.
And that took away all Reese’s doubts—and hopes—that this was some new obscenely rich person who wanted something from her. With a sigh, she said, “What can I do for you?”
We would that our errand could have waited, for it was not our intention to call in your favor so quickly. Still, Fate does not always allow for wishes. Theresa, you owe our seat a favor. It would please us greatly to call now this favor.
There it was. Reese sighed softly, then said, “I have no money—”
It is not money we need, but aid of a different kind.
The stomach acid that had been busy on her esophagus relented, just a little. “How can I help?”
We sent one of our beloved people to investigate the disappearance of some our own. In the course of his investigations, he ran afoul of the local law, and is thusly imprisoned. This does not disturb us unduly. What disturbs us is that in the course of his investigations, he may have aroused the ire of powerful foes who may not have had recourse to vengeance had he remained mobile.
“You want us to liberate him,” Reese finished. Her nervousness returned full force, and she spared a brief, longing thought for the bottle of chalk tablets in her cabin, wards against the stomach upset that plagued her so often.
Just so. You may return him to us once he is freed, or keep him, or advise him on how best to hide. Naturally, you may want to take his opinions into account, but given his inconveniencing of your goodly ship you may consider his opinions as seriously as you feel the situation warrants.
Reese cleared her throat. “I feel it necessary to point out that my ‘goodly ship’ isn’t exactly a warcruiser.”
We trust your ingenuity will provide the way where simple brute force would not.
Reese stared at the amber words, so innocuously presented. She couldn’t imagine this going well, but: “I owe you a favor. If this is how you want to call it in...”
It is.
“Then I will do my best.”
The next words didn’t immediately appear. In the small space it gave Reese for breathing, she re-scanned the conversation and managed a breathy chuckle. The whole exchange sounded like something out of one of her romance novels, and while her misgivings still had a grip on her stomach she couldn’t help the smallest feeling that she was being cast in some great adventure. Backwards, of course. She was apparently the knight in shining armor.
It is well, and we are pleased. Given the rescue of our unfortunate wayward investigator, you may consider yourself quit of your obligation to us. I will send the relevant information on termination of our contact.
“Thank you.”
The real-time stream cut off with the attack counter at seventeen. Reese hadn’t been watching the numbers, but the sight of them now made her clench her fists. Encrypted streams usually accumulated a few attacks as a matter of course. People liked to poke at them, just because there were there. But this—what the bleeding soil had this person been investigating to warrant such a concerted effort?
Reese stabbed the pads on the console, setting it to trap the information before she squeezed out of the front and ran to the nearest cabinet. A few chalk tablets later, she stared at the ceiling with eyes as vibrant a blue as the seas of Terra at Earthrise. The man had been prying into the slave trade, and their mutual benefactor was sending her to fish him out of jail before the slavers caught up with him and sold him off. Paying her benefactor back would have been easier, even if she’d had to take out a thousand loans. She ground on the last of the chalk and warily wound back to the fore to stare again at the screen. The final chunk had loaded in her absence. There was now a picture of her charge on the screen.
He was an Eldritch.
Reese dropped into the console seat and gaped. She’d never expected to see a real Eldritch in her lifetime. The race’s isolationism and xenophobia were so extreme they’d become a stock offering in her yearly romance subscription—Eldritch women learning to love despite their social conditioning! Eldritch men reluctantly learning to touch their alien lovers! Paintings of pale Eldritch in unfathomably silly costumes, drooping artistically in the arms of humans... that and the occasional flat photo in the u-banks were Reese’s only exposure to the people. The Eldritch didn’t leave their planet.
And yet here she was, about to fly off in search of one.
A real picture. Of a real Eldritch! Reese leaned closer.
The elongation Reese had assumed to be artistic license was real. Who would have known? And just like on the book covers, it was unsettling; the Eldritch looked human, so to have them be ever-so-slightly different in proportion was disturbing. Apparently the cream-white skin was real too, and the straight hair that looked like a heavy, silk sheet. He had a long face, a nose a little too straight, and framed in white lashes his eyes were a truly unlikely shade of wine-dark red. He looked fragile, like the distressed damsel. Like too much trouble.
A real Eldritch. In the hands of slavers! Reese sat back, and even in the gear she’d donned to work in the frigid engineering bay she got goosebumps. There were so many rumors about the Eldritch and their powers and their culture it was hard to sort out which might be true... but all of them suggested that a slaver would pay a small mint to get his hands on one. And this was her assignment?
Reese pressed a hand against her forehead, fighting anger and worry. Once she had her breath back, she rose and squirmed past the crates, growling an imprecation at them that might have wilted their corners had they had ears. She strode to the lift, down to the lower deck and out the ramp to the starbase’s floor.
Three figures labored at the back of the Earthrise. The vessel’s systems had been engineered to Alliance specs, something that not only included her computers but also her cargo holds. The Earthrise had five cat-12 spindles: long cylindrical strength members twelve inches in diameter that could support Type-A and Type-B sized cargo bins. Each spindle could hold twelve, for a total of sixty bins, though the Earthrise rarely ran to capacity.
Irine, Sascha and Kis’eh’t were tossing bins onto the conveyer belt leading to the loading collars, where the bins would be aligned and shot down the spindles. They had taken on twenty bins of Harat-Shariin rooderberries. While Reese preferred not to cart around anything as sensitive as foodstuffs, they invariably fetched high prices in foreign markets and her coffers were, as always, low.
“Hey!”
The two bipedals, Irine and Sascha, stopped working. Kis’eh’t, her stocky centauroid shape barely visible over the slope of the belt, continued pushing the bins.
“What’s up, Boss?” Sascha asked, grinning. Unlike his twin sister, he did not wear socks on his tail or his feet.
Reese grabbed a bin and tossed it on the belt. “We have to pack it up and shove off immediately. We’ve been given a task.”
“Ooh!” Irine said, yellow eyes widening. “A contract? Finally?”
“Did I say a contract?” Reese said gruffly. “I said ‘a task.’”
“She means we’re not getting paid for it,” Sascha said.
Kis’eh’t snorted from the other side of the conveyer belt. “Someone must have held a palmer to her head, then,” the Glaseahn said in her clipped accent.
“Yeah, what’s the deal, Reese?” Irine asked, folding her striped arms over her chest.
“Work now,” Reese said. She grunted as she pushed another bin onto the belt. “We don’t have much time to get this done, especially if we don’t want these things to rot before we can get them to a useful port.”
“Like anything’ll rot with the temperatures you keep the ship at,” Irine said, rolling her eyes and padding, feline-silent, to the next bin.
“Oh, hush!” Reese said, torn between exasperation and a hint of amusement. The twins were irrepressible, particularly together. The Harat-Shar felinoids raised on colony worlds usually conformed better to the rest of the Alliance’s moral norms...but a matched set from Harat-Sharii, like Irine and Sascha, were bound to violate every accepted precept of societal behavior. She was fortunate to have Kis’eh’t and Bryer to balance their outrageousness, or she would probably have beaten them by now. And they would have liked it.
The last of the rooderberry bins rolled up to the collar, spun into position, and sped down the spindle to the retaining clamp. Another clamp followed it, and Reese pressed the pad that levered the belt back into the cargo bay. Twenty bins hung neatly off the spindles in the echoing emptiness. Had Reese had the wherewithal, she would have seen the other forty spaces filled with exotic spices and fabrics and novelty items that would have returned her poor enterprise to some semblance of profitability...but because she’d managed to become indebted (almost literally) to a stranger whose name she didn’t even know, she was honor-bound to go chasing a wayward alien across two sectors. And then post his bail!
Reese sighed, rubbed her stomach, decided not to ponder her probable ulcers. “Meeting in fifteen. Get moving, people.”
“We’re doing what?” Irine exclaimed, striped hands twitching on the mess hall table.
Reese leaned back against her chair, letting her silence speak for her. As she expected, Bryer, the Phoenix, had nothing to say; the giant birdlike creature rested against the front of the chair, straddling it so as to give the full length of his metallic plumage unrestricted space.
Kis’eh’t, while obviously perturbed, did nothing beyond wrinkle her dark, furry brow and lay back her feathered ears. She had more limbs than all of them: two black arms, four black and white legs, and two stunted leathery wings protruding from her second, horizontal back. And a tail, black with two white stripes running down it, which currently flicked against the cool floor.
The round ball of fluff on the table between the Phoenix and the Glaseahn only ruffled part of its neural fur, turning from ivory to rosy peach in places.
Irine, in her socks and little else, was pouting. “So what... we have to ride in like champions and rescue some random spy? For nothing?”
“Not for nothing,” Reese said. “In return for the money that this person gave me to save me from bankruptcy before you people came aboard.”
“Who is this person, anyway?” Sascha asked.
“Which one?” Reese asked. “The spy or the one with the money?”
“Both,” Sascha said.
Reese smothered a small grin. “The spy’s an Eldritch.”
“A what!”
That came from so many places at once she couldn’t tell which of them said it first. Kis’eh’t got the first words after: “I hear they can start fires with their minds.”
“And read your thoughts,” Irine said.
Kis’eh’t said, “And sense your feelings. They always know when you’re lying.”
“That’s the last thing we need,” Irine said.
“I hear they bathe in honey,” Sascha said.
Reese stared at him. So did everyone else with eyes—even Bryer. The tigraine shrugged and said, “Something to do with keeping their skin white.”
“Honey won’t bleach skin,” Kis’eh’t said. “Moisturize it, maybe. But bleach? Not unless Eldritch honey is actually some other substance entirely...”
“What do I know about Eldritch honey?” Sascha said. “They’re supposedly all rich, too. And they’re all princes or princesses. And they all require servants, because none of them know how to take care of themselves.”
“Is this guy in for a slap from the universe!” Irine said, shaking her head.
“He’s in jail,” Reese said dryly. “I think the slap’s already been delivered.”
“This is troublesome,” Kis’eh’t said. “An Eldritch... this being may have specialized needs, Reese. No one knows what they eat, what their normal medical profile is like, how to treat one that’s sick... no one even knows how properly to address them or what social or cultural mores they hold to. How are we supposed to save one of these creatures and make him comfortable?”
“I’m not sure,” Reese admitted. “And since the packet I received wasn’t exactly forthcoming with any of that kind of material, I’m not sure we’ll be expected to do this perfect.” She pushed her data tablet to the center of the table with its gleaming pale picture of their charge. “That’s him. Hirianthial Sarel Jisiensire.”
“Say again?” Sascha said.
Reese repeated it.
Kis’eh’t shook her head. “We’ll let you address him,” she said ruefully.
“At least he’s handsome for a human,” Irine said.
“He’s not human,” Reese said. “He’s Eldritch. And don’t forget it, if you don’t want him snooping around the inside of your brain. Anyway, there’s only one thing I think we can take for certainty... you’re not supposed to touch an Eldritch. So if all possible, let’s try to keep bodily contact to a minimum.”
“Awww,” Irine said.
Sascha, studying the picture, said, “Angels, boss, I have to agree with her.”
“Yeah, well, if you want to come on to him, be my guest,” Reese said. “Just don’t expect me to put your furry behinds back together if it turns out he can blow things up by looking at them funny. And if we break him, I think our benefactor’s going to be very grumpy.”
“Speaking of, who’s the person with the money?” Sascha asked.
“I don’t know,” Reese said. “I’ve never seen her face.”
“Her face?” That was Irine.
Reese shrugged. “Just a guess.”
“A trap?” Bryer said into the following silence.
“I don’t know why she’d bother,” Reese said. “Obviously the woman is bleeding rich. If she’d really wanted to sell me, you and the rest of us into slavery, she could have just hired someone to do it long before now.”
“I wonder who she is,” Kis’eh’t murmured. “Who would know an Eldritch? One who left his world? It’s most peculiar.”
“For all I know she’s the Faerie Queen of Eldritches and he’s her errant prince,” Reese said with exasperation. “Wondering about the assignment is pointless. I owe this person a debt and I’m going to pay it. Since I own this ship and I hired you, you’re all coming along. If you don’t like it, I can give you your severance pay in rooderberries.”
The silence was refreshing.
“Now,” Reese continued, “If you twins would be kind enough to set a course for Inu-Case, I would be much obliged.”
The two Harat-Shar, still grumbling, rose and left the mess hall.
“The rooderberries will probably go bad if we keep them longer than it takes to get to Inu-case,” Kis’eh’t said, her voice quiet.
“We’ll have to hope we can sell them to whatever poor sots live there, then,” Reese said with a sigh. She stood. “I know it’s crazy.”
“Honor is the best form of craziness.” Bryer said.
Reese eyed him. “This is not about honor. This is just good sense. If someone loans you money, you pay them back.”
Bryer canted his head. Of all her crew, he struck her as the most alien. Even Allacazam, with its lack of eyes, mouth or even any obvious personality, seemed less threatening than Bryer with his whiteless eyes and narrow pupils. They made the Phoenix look wild, even though he rarely made a sudden move. “About more than money.”
“You’re right,” Reese said. “Now it’s about flying all over the galaxy posting people’s bail.”
Again, that steady stare. This time Reese ignored it and picked up Allacazam, watching its colors—his colors, she’d never been able to think of him as an it no matter what the u-banks said—flow to a muted lilac. “You’ll want to man your respective stations. We’ll be casting off in ten minutes.”
Kis’eh’t rose, stretching her hind legs and wings, then padded past her. Bryer followed. Reese watched them go, then dropped back into her chair with a sigh and cuddled the Flitzbe. She pet the soft neural fibers.
“I wish I was as sure about this as I have to seem to be,” she said.
She heard a rising chime, felt a wash of muted lilac, Allacazam’s way of asking a question. She’d never questioned how they managed to communicate; few people in the Alliance truly understood the Flitzbe, and those who did weren’t exactly writing How-To communication guides for people like Reese. All she knew was that from the moment Allacazam had rolled into her life, things had felt easier. Not necessarily been easier, but at least felt that way.
“Of course I have to seem confident,” she said to him. “But still... an Eldritch? Slavers? I’m just a trader, not a hero. I don’t want anything to do with something this dangerous.”
The Flitzbe assembled an image of her dressed in plate mail with a shining sword. Reese laughed shakily. “Right. That’s not my cup of tea. Speaking of which... I could certainly use something for my stomach. And then to go check on the fuzzies to make sure they haven’t secretly diverted someplace more pleasant.”
The smell of sour yogurt tickled her nostrils and she hugged the Flitzbe. “No, I don’t honestly think that badly of them. It’s just that this is hard enough without having to explain it to them, too.” She sighed, ruffling the top of his fur. “Hopefully it’ll be quick and simple and we can drop him off somewhere and that will be the end of that.”
She knew better. From the flash of maroon that washed over Allacazam’s body, so did he.
Their least time path carried them through Sector Epta and most of Andeka. The engines that their mysterious benefactor had paid to refit six years ago cut the journey from sixteen days to eleven, and Reese spent all of them fretting. Kis’eh’t caught her in the cargo hold on the fifth day, walking the spindles in the reduced gravity that reminded her so much of Mars and her happier days climbing the few tall trees there.
“Guarding the bins isn’t going to stop the cargo from going bad,” the Glaseahn said.
“I know,” Reese said, then sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s anyone who could use twenty bins worth of overripe rooderberries.”
“Maybe a maker of rooderberry wine?” Kis’eh’t suggested.
“We should be so lucky,” Reese said.
“You’re worried,” Kis’eh’t said.
Reese stared down at the centauroid from her perch on the spindle. “Now why would I be worried?” she asked. “We’re only about to tangle with slavers.”
“Not necessarily,” Kis’eh’t said. “You borrow too much trouble, if I may, Reese. If you stopped, maybe you could use your money to buy yourself a nice dinner on the town one day, instead of dropping it on multipacks of antacids.”
“Dinner out sounds like just the thing,” Reese says. “Maybe if we get back in one piece from this debacle.”
“When we get back,” Kis’eh’t said. “I’m not planning to die on this mission.”
“Right,” Reese said. “Neither am I. I’m a survivor.”
Kis’eh’t only shook her head and left the cargo hold, which suited Reese just fine. She’d hired Kis’eh’t three months after the twins, and Bryer a month after... that was about three years ago now, when she’d realized she would never do more than break even relying on the ship’s automated functions and contractors to do the work. At first, she’d resented their intrusion into her solitude; while she’d had Allacazam for a good seven years, the Flitzbe hardly seemed like a normal person. He didn’t require conversation, food, a salary, maintenance. He never complained. He was like a pet, but smarter. Sometimes Reese thought he was smarter than she was.
But she’d learned to love the banter, the silliness, even the nosiness of her crew, and their help had made it possible to keep bread on the table. It was just that lately, they were all more nosy than usual. She wondered what was bothering them.
Reese resisted the urge to tour the entire cargo bay one more time before leaving. Rooderberry wine. She wondered what that would taste like.
The insistent chirp of the intercom roused Reese from a deep sleep several days later. She twisted in her hammock, fumbled for the controls and said, “Yes?”
“We’re here, ma’am. Over your stinking colony world. Bet they have nothing to trade us but sheep. How are we going to fit sheep in the cargo—”
“Irine! Enough! Find out where the city of Nurera is and get dressed to go down. Be quick about it, all right? The rooderberries are rotting.”
The com cut off the end of Irine’s snort. Reese sighed and massaged the bridge of her nose. The gentle rock of the hammock calmed her, reminded her of home, but her stomach still whined. Some part of her had hoped they’d never arrive at this Freedom-cursed world, but here they were. All she had to do now was find the Eldritch and pry him out of jail before anyone noticed her doing it. Then she could deposit him at some Alliance starbase and be done with the whole mess.
Reese rolled out of the hammock, the cocoon of felt blankets unraveling from her body as she raided her bathroom cabinet for chalk tablets, peppermint this time. She rifled through her closet for something unremarkable to wear while grinding up her breakfast. That she didn’t have any unremarkable clothes didn’t improve her mood. She pulled on a black bodysuit, long-sleeved and high-necked, a pair of soft black boots with flexible, quiet soles, and jerked on her utility vest with its bright blue ribs and orange piping.
She also tapped the intercom. “Irine?”
“Yes?” From the distracted purr, Reese decided it best not to ask what Irine was up to. The cats chose the oddest moments to get amorous, and as long as it wasn’t in Reese’s face she didn’t care.
“Is it cold down there?”
A pause. Then, “Moderately. Colder than the cargo bay but not as cold as engineering.”
Reese dragged a cloak off its hanger and slung it over her shoulders. With that, a belt with a sling for her data tablet, a handful of coins and a knife, she was ready. “Put us down outside Nurera, kitties.”
“Aye, captain.”
“Gentle as a cushion stuffed with feathers,” from Sascha.
“I’ll be up there in a minute,” Reese said. She made one last check of her cabin, then left for the bridge. Sascha was sitting at the pilot’s chair wearing the fur that his gods gave him and nothing else. Irine was leaning over his shoulder, eyes fixed on the view through the tiny windows.
“Oh for the love of earth,” Reese said, exasperated. “What have I said about piloting naked, Sascha?”
“Don’t break my concentration, ma’am,” Sascha said, his relaxed drawl at complete odds with his intent stare. “Driving this old crate in and out of a planet’s skies takes too much willpower.”
Having done it often enough herself, Reese couldn’t disagree. And Sascha was good—it was the reason she’d hired him. She’d grown tired of flying the Earthrise around herself. Still, she wondered what it was Irine whispered into his ear in their exotic language.
True to his word, their landing sent a bare quiver through Reese’s body.
“Good enough?” he asked her with a grin.
“Yeah,” Reese said. “Now get dressed.”
“Awww!”
Reese poked him in the shoulder. “I don’t want us to be noticeable. You nude is noticeable.”
“She’s got a point there,” Irine said, grinning.
Reese rolled her eyes. “Meet me at the airlock.” She leaned over and pressed the all-call. “Everyone to the airlock. We have a job to do.”
Fresh, warm air, redolent with spices and the scent of fecund soil and sun-warmed incense—Reese shuddered at the first whiff of Inu-case. She’d been born to recirculated air on Mars; from there she’d gone to the Earthrise. The freedom of the evening breeze struck her as unnatural and the varied smells alarming.
“And there’s where we’re headed,” Sascha said, pointing out the first of the buildings as they crested the hill.
“How far are we from the jail?” Reese said, choosing the moment to stop for breath. Inu-Case’s heavier gravity had sapped much of her energy on the ten-minute walk from the Earthrise’s position. They hadn’t wanted to land too close to town, just in case. Still, she envied Kis’eh’t, whom she’d left to guard the ship.
“Once we hit the buildings, we’ll be two blocks south of it,” Sascha said, studying his data tablet. The tip of his tiger-striped tail peeked from beneath his brown overcoat. “They didn’t want it too close to the center of town, I imagine.”
Irine squinted. “Looks pretty quiet down there. I guess we picked a good time to come by.”
“Let’s just hope someone’s there to take our credit and let him out,” Reese said. “Come on.”
Rising past the orange glow of the street lamps, the wooden houses had an ominous cast. What glimpses of the surrounding land Reese could catch between them revealed only a crimped plain drowned in violet shadows and the black smudges of distant mountains. The few trees dotting the lawns proved the source of the odor: their round, waxy leaves reeked so badly that the two felines took to skirting them, and even Bryer seemed to find them discomfiting.
In sunlight, perhaps the rustic building materials and open streets would have seemed inviting. Reese couldn’t shake the sense of unease that seeing them in the dark aroused. It didn’t help that there was no one outside. No children playing. No people walking home. No one talking, wandering the streets. Reese had never been to a slaver’s retreat, but she could only imagine it being this silent, as if everyone was afraid to call attention to herself.
“Doesn’t anyone live here?” Irine asked in a whisper.
Bryer glanced into one of the buildings. “Deserted.”
“Really well-maintained for someplace deserted,” Sascha said, tail lashing.
“I don’t like this at all,” Irine said. “It looks like a pirate hide-out.”
“Try not to look rushed, people,” Reese said. “If anyone’s watching, we have business here and we’re not worried about it.”
“Let’s just hope they can’t hear us talking,” Sascha muttered.
At the corner they stopped to allow a single sparrow zip past... a peculiar conveyance in a town, overpowered for mere hops across blocks and underpowered for any serious spaceflight. Reese watched it streak past and pressed a hand to her stomach.
“Angels! I can’t decide whether to be glad there are actually people living here or not,” Irine muttered.
“Never mind the people,” Sascha said, pointing at an unprepossessing one-story building. “That’s our stop.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Reese said, and marched to the door.
“How come there’s no gate? You know, with electrified wire or stunner fields or something?” Irine asked.
“I don’t know,” Reese said. She tried one of the doors—it was locked. “I guess all their guards are on the inside.” She scanned for a door announce and found none. “Are you sure this is the front?”
“I can check around the sides,” Sascha said.
“Do that,” Reese said. “Take Bryer with you.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“And in the mean time we just stand here,” Irine said. “While security cameras stare at us.”
“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Reese said.
“Right,” Irine said, tail whipping nervously. When it smacked Reese one too many times on the calf, Reese hissed, “Stop that.”
“Sorry.”
They waited. And waited.
“It can’t be that big a place, can it?” Irine said.
“No,” Reese said, feeling a headache beginning to knot her brows. “Something’s happened.”
“Should we go look?” Irine asked.
She wanted to say ‘no,’ so of course she said, “Yes.” And, “Keep close.” Then she set off around the perimeter of the jail. The nearest buildings were still set far enough away that they could see anyone coming. No gates or traps startled them.
“I can still smell him,” Irine said. She tapped on the wall. “But it stops right here.”
Reese glanced at the grass surrounding the featureless wall, then bent and examined it. Irine joined her a moment later. They stared together.
“See anything?”
“No,” Reese said.
Irine’s ears flipped back. “Would you know it if you saw something?”
“I haven’t exactly done much investigative policework in my life,” Reese said. She sighed and straightened. “Let’s go back around front.”
There were no other doors. No lights. Nothing. By the time they wound back up around to the forbidding doors, Reese was beginning to get angry. She pointed at the door. “Do something about that.”
For once, Irine did not protest innocence, but began scrutinizing the door frame and feeling along its edge. Reese watched her with growing impatience, but forced herself to remain still until the mysterious actions of the Harat-Shar bore fruit.
“Not bad. But not up to specs,” Irine commented as she pocketed her electronic picks and pushed the door in. It complained with a faint creak, then inched into the side-pocket. The girl peeked in through the crack. “Doesn’t seem to be manned,” she whispered.
Reese glanced behind her shoulder—still nothing. Not a person walking up the dusky streets, no sound of music or laughter or life, just the constant slough of the perfumed breeze. In front of her, a sealed door with no guards and not a breath of a living person, despite Sascha and Bryer having vanished without a clue. There were people here, people far more dangerous than she was.
“Maybe we should go,” Reese said.
“But my brother!” Irine whispered. “And Bryer!”
“We need reinforcements,” Reese said, tense.
“What, Kis’eh’t and Allacazam? Sure, they’ll help,” Irine said, scowling.
“I was thinking more like Fleet,” Reese said. “We’re not up to this, Irine.”
“Think what you want,” Irine said. “I’m not leaving Sascha in there.”
“Irine—!”
But the girl had already slipped inside. Reese lunged after her, trying to catch her tail, but Irine had ghosted past the empty front desk to the row of cells. No halo shield arced across the wall leading to them; no guards stood rigidly before them. Reese fought a renewed foreboding as she hurried after the Harat-Shar. The warmth of the stone floor communicated to her toes through the soft material of her boots.
“No sign of Sascha or Bryer,” Irine called back, “but at least here’s our expensive Eldritch!”
Reese sprinted after the girl, a cold sweat erupting on her brow. As she pushed Irine aside, her throat closed for a precious second at the sight of the body. Then, strangled, “That’s not him!” She flung herself around, preparing to flee—
And met the business end of a metal pipe. She didn’t even remember going down.
“Stand away from the door.”
Hirianthial judged that a joke, since he was currently wedged into a corner of the cell.
“You have guests,” the ruddy guard said. He leaned on the wall as his tow-haired fellow dropped two bodies onto the straw. Hirianthial watched them without lifting his face, and the fall of his pale hair masked his alarm at the boneless flop of the first and the slack feathered limbs of the second. Were they even alive?
“Don’t worry. They’ll be awake soon enough, and then you can spend the rest of your visit trying to avoid them,” the ruddy guard said with a grin.
The second guard withdrew and re-armed the halo field. They paused at the bars, waiting for some reaction from him as they had the first few times they’d surprised him with some ploy. By now they should have grown used to his stoic withdrawal. Hirianthial closed his eyes and waited for them to leave.
They didn’t. Instead they talked in low mutters. Blond smothered a chortle. No doubt Red was telling Blond the point of crowding one cell with all their prisoners when the cells lining the corridor remained empty. Red knew far too much about what made Eldritch uncomfortable, and after a few months of investigation Hirianthial had a good idea why. The Queen would not be pleased to have her theory proven. One needed only two hands to count the members of his race who’d ventured beyond their world... and only a few fingers to number those who’d returned. Liolesa had traced some of the missing to legitimate enterprises—there was a Galare studying psychology on one of the Alliance’s core worlds, for instance—but a good part of them had simply vanished without trace.
Hirianthial himself had been one of those sojourners when Liolesa enlisted his aid. He hadn’t wanted to help, but one did not refuse Liolesa, and not just because she was queen. He’d been drifting for several months anyway; the hospital on Tam-Ley had lost the funding for its xeno-critical care and been forced to contract those duties to a nearby emergency center, which hadn’t been hiring doctors who’d taken the Kelienne oath. He’d had a choice to take a different ethical oath every year since completing his schooling, but even if he’d been able to bring himself to do so nothing he’d seen in the wards had convinced him to change his mind. Jobless, he’d left Tam-Ley and taken up travel for its own sake, unwilling to return home, uncertain what to do next.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to help the queen. He was a passable spy. He was just a better doctor, and that by accident.
When Hirianthial could detect no more talk at the cell bars, he extended a feather of intent outward, searching for the mental presence of his guards: nothing.
Opening his eyes, he approached the two bodies. Both auras rested flat against their skins, gray and heavy as mercury. Hirianthial didn’t have to look hard to find the bruises and the discoloration of the palmer burn near their heads. He unlaced his sleeves and pushed them up his pale forearms before rolling the first body, the Harat-Shar, onto his side to look for any extended burns or swelling. Some people had adverse reactions to being struck with a palmer, and these two were too deeply unconscious for him to measure that without a visual inspection.
The first frissons of the Harat-Shar’s mind traveled up Hirianthial’s fingers, rising through the thin layer of clothing and fur. The Eldritch sensed the dull stupor of the subconscious struggling against the body, the quick red flashes of dreams and disconnected thoughts. He ignored them, seeking any other signs of damage, and found none.
“You’ll be fine,” he murmured to the Harat-Shar before turning to the Phoenix. A similar inspection brought him the susurrus of the Phoenix’s alien thoughts but no cause for worry. As he examined the second being, Hirianthial reluctantly admired the precision of the palmer shot. Something about the metallic iridescence of Phoenix feathers diffused palmer fire—to take down a Phoenix required a shot at the head, hands or feet where feathers thinned to down or skin. Since Phoenixae had fearsome taloned fingers and toes, felling one at a distance was a wise idea.
Aside from the palmer burns, neither patient showed any signs of his guards’ attentions; Red had a particularly hard backhand, difficult to miss. He set them both on their backs with enough straw to keep them from sore heads and spines. Sitting back on his heels, Hirianthial managed a wry smile. If Red had planned these two to discomfit him, he should have used a lower setting on the palmer.
Still, he couldn’t resist wondering: who were they? And what were they doing here? Hirianthial frowned at the newcomers while unrolling his sleeves and tightening the laces again. Perhaps when they woke they’d be amenable to conversation. He wouldn’t be surprised if they’d been caught unawares and had no idea what this place was or why they’d been imprisoned. So it went with pirates and slavers.
Hirianthial retreated to his corner and resumed his silent vigil. He extended a thread of attention toward his two charges before allowing the rest of his mind to drift into trance. His ability to sense others without having to touch them was rare among Eldritch and had always been both boon and bane. Against the unpleasant over-sensitivity it gave him to touching a waking person, he could favorably weigh this ability to monitor patients without machinery. It lacked specificity, but he’d used it countless times while working to track the general health of his patients. It had also proven useful in this ancillary mission for Liolesa. Not useful enough to keep him out of his present situation, but one could not fault the talent for the mistakes of its user.
Neither of his patients woke before Red and Blond returned with another two bodies. Hirianthial didn’t open his eyes, watching their auras instead: hot yellow violence with spurts of green for Red, Blond with similar yellows but with flashes of sizzling brown resentment, and in their arms another pair of dull grey auras.
“More guests for you,” Red said. “Getting fairly crowded in here, isn’t it?”
Hirianthial didn’t reply.
“Set them there.”
“There” was near enough to him that their physical presence crimped his own aura. Hirianthial sucked it in until he felt well and truly trapped in his corner. He was not a claustrophobic man but even he had his moments of Eldritch xenophobia. Had they been awake and mobile, he would have been forced to sink into meditation to combat the urge to flee.
They were not awake. They were not well. They were patients, not threats.
Hirianthial held himself still until the guards lost their patience and left, taking their spurts of sick green humor with them. Then he unfolded first one leg and then the next and opened his eyes.
The nearest body belonged to another Harat-Shar, female this time, and similar enough to the first that Hirianthial wondered at their relation. He gently turned her face, reading her body’s louder complaints over her mind’s unconscious murmurs through his fingers. He found the burn on her jaw that had put her down and verified the lack of any secondary effect before pulling her over to rest against the male. Lying beside one another their similarities were so marked Hirianthial judged them closer than mere kin. Twins, perhaps. Even the stripe patterns on their brows mimicked one another.
That left one more person. Hirianthial returned to the other end of the cell, retying one of the laces that had come undone while dragging the tigraine. The glimpse he caught through his fingers made the laces slip back down, forgotten. The Eldritch went to one knee next to the woman on the floor.
He wasn’t sure what arrested his attention first—her body or her health. He’d seen countless humans in his studies and rotations, enough to recognize her light-boned limbs as an indication of a low gravity origin... space-born, or one of the Moon or Mars colonies. Probably the latter, given her short stature. Nor would he have called her beautiful, though he found the chocolate honey hue of her skin exotic, and her braided and beaded hair reminded him of a noblewoman’s coif. It was her mien despite unconsciousness that fascinated him. Her limbs were clenched. Her fingers still had a hint of a curl, as if they were trying to remain fisted. Even her brow was furrowed.
Her state was so grievous a collection of pre-existing conditions that he warred over touching her. Just running his hands over her aura scored him with lances of pain, irritation and swelling. The area over her stomach made him want to check his palm for blood. The spikes that pierced her aura despite its weighted unconsciousness matched her tense posture for stubbornness. If she was so obstinate in her sleep, it beggared the imagination to picture her awake.
Hirianthial craned his head over hers, seeking the burn that had put her down and finding a lump instead. Unlike the others, this woman had been struck, and it behooved him to ensure the blow had done no lasting damage. He didn’t look forward to touching her to check. He tried without grazing her skin first, trailing his fingertips along her aura near the lump. Thankfully, he could sense no danger.
Why he felt compelled to touch her, just to double-check, he didn’t know. Hirianthial stretched his fingers, steeled himself and trailed them along her cheek. The storm of emotions that clashed beneath their tips warned him that her struggle toward consciousness had almost been won, and still she surprised him when her lashes fluttered, revealing a crack of brilliant blue.
Nevertheless courtesy required that he remove his hands and help her orient herself.
“Ah, good morning. Early morning, that would be.”
Reese didn’t recognize the voice, male and baritone with an indescribable, open-throated accent, one that didn’t linger long on consonants. She forced her eyelids apart and found herself staring straight into hair like poured milk and eyes the color of an expensive merlot.
She groaned, though whether from the throbbing at her temple or the situation was debatable. Both, probably. “You!” she croaked.
“Hush. You’ll wake the others.” Hirianthial glanced to the side, giving her an excellent view of his profile. There was a purple bruise marring the hard line of his cheekbone. “They are roughly in your condition or better, but they are all still unconscious.”
“The others? Sascha? Bryer? Irine?”
“I count two Harat-Shar and one Phoenix. Is that sufficient?”
Reese scowled, then closed her eyes when the bump on her head sent another lance of pain through her temple. “Curse it all. I knew something was going on with this place. Where are the guards?” She tried to look to the side but one of her pupils was vying for independence. She closed that one and tried to focus.
The Eldritch held a finger up over her lips, not touching. “Hush. They’ll hear you, lady. We’re underground, where they keep prisoners.”
“Underground! Then the jail upstairs—”
“—is a falsehood.”
“They did a rotten job of hiding their tracks then,” Reese said. “We knew something was wrong the moment we couldn’t find a real door.”
“You misunderstand, my lady,” the Eldritch said. “The jail is not intended as a cover. It is meant to intimidate. On that count it is quite the success... the pirates have driven everyone who isn’t part of their operation completely out of this part of town, and the rest of it they own in fact if not in name.”
“Great,” Reese said, losing what little energy she had. She imagined it bleeding into the ground beneath her tailbone and shoulders. “You were supposed to be in a jail cell we could get you out of for money, not underground in a place pirates hide people they want to make disappear.”
The Eldritch canted his head, hair hissing against one shoulder. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll send you a bill,” Reese said, trying to get a hand under herself so she could sit up.
A hand appeared over her chest, not touching but not moving either. “Ah! Don’t. You’re still gray.”
“Gray?” Reese asked.
He frowned. His expressions seemed formed only by the faintest of tugs at his lips or eyes; Reese wondered if all Eldritch were so subtle. “The color of your aura, you might say. Gray’s not an auspicious color to be.”
His accent was so distractingly pretty that she didn’t actually hear what he said until a few moments later. Or maybe that was her headache, making it too hard to hear past the pounding in her ears. “What the bleeding soil do you know about auras?”
“I’m Eldritch,” he said, as if that alone explained it. As an afterthought, he added, “I’m also a doctor.”
“Someone decided a doctor would make a good spy?” Her stomach started burning. Reese fought the desire to laugh, suspecting she would sound hysterical. “Oh, that’s a good one. Whoever sent me on this job... this was not worth the money they gave me six years ago. A doctor!”
“If you must have your moment of derisive laughter, at very least keep it quieter,” Hirianthial said. “As to my being her choice... I have... talents that made me suitable for the job. But that matter begs me to ask: what are you doing here, looking for me? Who sent you?”
“As if I know,” Reese said. “Some woman with more money than sense who never gives me her name when she calls and speaks like some fairy princess. I owed her a favor. She said you’d been jailed here and sent me to go get you. I was hoping to just post your bail.”
Hirianthial laughed, a sound both quiet and despairing. It sent goosebumps down Reese’s arms. “Ah, lady. That is funny. The pirates found me two weeks ago, and for two weeks I have been here in this cell while they wait for the slavers to pick me up. I was as good as sold the moment I was put in irons. They even wash me periodically so I’ll look my best for my future masters. I had to try to earn the few bruises they dealt me... God forfend I look less than pristine for my auction.”
Reese groaned and closed her eyes, letting her head loll back. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Again, I’m sorry, my lady.”
“Stop calling me that!” Reese exclaimed. “I’m no lady, and I’m certainly not yours. And as for sorry... sorry! My cargo’s fermenting while we lie here, and it might be vinegar by the time we get out of this. I’m no match for slavers! We have to get out of here before they come for you, or we’re all going to end up some Chatcaavan’s sex-toys in a month. Bending my neck to a dragon wasn’t in my life plan.”
“I can’t say the thought appeals to me either,” Hirianthial said.
“You don’t say.” Reese would have rolled her eyes, but the attendant nausea made that a bad idea. “You’re a doctor?”
“I did say so.”
“Well then see if the rest are ready to wake up. If we’re lucky we can make it out of here with our bleeding cargo still fresh. If, that is, you’ll let me sit up?”
The Eldritch’s eyes lost their focus, drifting over her forehead and temples. “Yes,” he said after a moment, then held up a finger. His wine-colored eyes refocused on her face. “But as I tell you.”
“Fine,” Reese said. “Make it quick.”
He talked her through it, but it wasn’t quick; just rolling onto her side made her want to vomit up what little there was in her stomach. Still, she made it upright, noticing the hand he’d had hovering behind her back only when he withdrew it. If she’d started to waver, would he have caught her, or would his Eldritch instincts have let her fall? She wanted to spit at the look on his face when they were done, and had no idea what made her angrier... that he looked concerned when he had no right to be concerned as the person responsible for this mess, or that his concern wasn’t obvious enough, since she was the one who was going to drag his sugar-pale backside out of his mess. Blood and freedom, but she hated doctors.
“Good?” he asked after a moment, eyes resting too directly on her for her comfort.
“Fine,” Reese said. “Check the others.”
He studied her for a moment longer, then backed away, leaving her to take stock. Aside from a few scrapes and bruises to complement the mother blooming near her temple, she’d taken no additional harm. Her suit had been slashed across her midriff and upper arms. Her knife was missing as well as her belt; she felt the loss of both coins and chalk tablets. She could have used a chalk tablet right now, in fact... but she could have fared worse.
Reese watched Hirianthial as he bent over Irine. He drew closer to her than she was accustomed to doctors coming, but he never touched her. After a few moments, he spread his hands above her ribs, as if setting them on a barrier that hovered a few inches above her skin. Though she couldn’t tell whether the Harat-Shar was conscious, the Eldritch was talking, and his soft words were so gently spoken they felt like blankets. It made her want to trust him—no doubt one of his Eldritch mind tricks.
Reese gritted her teeth and directed her attention to their jail. The ground was packed earth strewn with yellow straw; there were no windows, and a wall of thick metal lattice faced the corridor. In addition to the lattice, she spotted red lights lining their door, indicating an operating halo field... not something she wanted to touch, but something Irine could possibly disarm since it didn’t encompass the entire wall. The air was stale and warm, tinted here and there with earthier scents. Their cell formed the end of the hall; all the other cells were empty. She thought of the cell she’d seen upstairs and the figure lying in the back.
“Hirianthial,” she said—slowly. The consonants in the name seemed to exist only to add a lilt to the vowels.
The sound of his hair against his back announced him. She wondered how he could walk without making any other noise. She didn’t like it. “There was a man upstairs.”
“Dead,” he replied. For once the accent, the blanket-soft baritone fell flat. “Bait for me.”
“They knew you were rooting for information.”
“Of course. It was foolish to think otherwise.”
Reese frowned at him. “And you stuck around?”
“I had a duty.” A wry smile ran to the corner of his lips. “Granted, I should have remembered that part of that duty included returning to the queen with the information she sought, but even Eldritch make mistakes.”
“Mistakes,” Reese repeated, eyeing him. “With so much at stake.”
He shrugged, a tiny motion involving the ends of his shoulders. Had she not been watching him, she would have missed it. “I became angry.”
“Angry?”
He was staring out through the bars, but even in profile she could see his face change. Harden. The red of his eyes seemed less like wine and more like blood, like the color Reese saw on the inside of her eyelids when she wanted to explode. The doctor, the alien, the inconvenient object of an unwanted mission, those faces became masks, and something darker looked out. “I found a man whose tastes were repellant, even for a slaver.”
For some reason Reese didn’t want to ask what those tastes were. She didn’t even want to ask, “What did you do to him?” but by the time she realized that she didn’t want to hear the answer the question had already escaped her.
“I set his house on fire. With him in it.” He didn’t look at her, but even in profile his lack of expression terrified her.
“REESE!”
Irine’s wail dragged her attention away, and she crawled to the Harat-Shar. The tigraine had Sascha’s head cradled in her arms and she was rocking, her ears flat and eyes wide. “Reese, what’s wrong with him? Why won’t he wake up?”
“He’s not ready to wake,” said a steady voice behind Reese’s shoulder.
Reese jumped. “Stop doing that!”
“Doing what?” the Eldritch asked absently as he slid past her to Sascha’s other side, running a hand above the tigraine’s face.
“Sneaking up on me,” Reese said. “At least have the grace to make a little more noise.”
“Grace and noise aren’t usually associated with one another,” Hirianthial murmured.
“What’s wrong with him?” Irine asked the Eldritch. Reese could hear none of her typical skepticism in her quivering voice and she wondered at this instant trust. Was he influencing her mind?
“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Hirianthial said, his voice gentle. “He isn’t ready to wake, that’s all.”
“But this burn—”
“Just a palmer, alet. He took no greater harm from it. He’ll wake soon.”
Only then did Irine look at Reese, still holding onto her brother’s body. “Captain?”
“He’s a doctor,” Reese said. “He’d know better than me.”
“What about Bryer?” Irine asked after a moment. “Is he okay?”
“Everyone’s okay,” Reese said. “We’re just in a bit of a fix.”
Irine’s gold eyes flicked to the walls of the cell. “Yeah, I see that.” She looked back at the Eldritch. “This is him, isn’t it? Our spy?”
“At your service,” Hirianthial said.
“I guess you already have been,” Irine said, stroking Sascha’s mane.
Reese sighed and turned back to the bars. She prodded the back of her molars with her tongue, searching in vain for any minuscule deposit of chalk that might have stubbornly clung to her gums. Her stomach was going to kill her. “So how many people are guarding us?”
“I’ve counted six,” Hirianthial said. “Two personal guards and four up the corridor.”
“Six,” Reese repeated, musing.
“There are five of us,” Irine said from behind them.
Reese said, “They have palmers. And the keys.”
Irine shrugged and didn’t reply.
“The ship’s coming tomorrow to pick them up,” Hirianthial said after a moment. “Presumably we’ll be going with them.”
“So we have...what, twenty-four hours to break out of here, overwhelm six people, get to the Earthrise and flee far enough to lose a slaver-ship?”
“Twenty-two,” Hirianthial said. “Days here are shorter than Alliance mean.”
“Wonderful,” Reese muttered, rubbing the bridge of her nose.
Hirianthial’s voice sounded quietly behind her. “You need only secure your escape from this cell, lady. You were captured and put here only to inconvenience me. If you disappear, they will not bother to track you. It’s me they want.”
“I can’t leave you behind,” Reese said, irritated. “You’re the debt I have to pay. If you rot here, I’ll have to do something else and I bet it won’t be any easier.”
“The Queen isn’t expecting you to save me if the odds are overwhelming,” Hirianthial said.
“Well, six guards isn’t overwhelming,” Reese said, then stopped. “Did you say...the Queen?”
His voice was quizzical. “Of course. I thought from our talk that you’d concluded she was your mysterious benefactor.”
Reese turned, setting her back against the bars. The Eldritch’s face remained composed, but somehow she could still sense his confusion. A polite confusion. She couldn’t quite mesh this courteous facade with the darkness revealed by the memory of the slaver. “Are you trying to tell me that the Queen of the Eldritch saved me from bankruptcy?”
Another one of those miniscule shrugs. “It seems that way.”
“Damn,” Irine said in wonder.
“That makes no sense!” Reese exclaimed. “What would a queen want with me? How did she even find me? Why would she bother?”
“Why did she bother with me?” the Eldritch said. “But she chose you and she cares what becomes of me and here we are. Why question it, lady?”
“I’m not your—”
“—lady, so you say,” Hirianthial said. “But you are an instrument of a queen, so what shall I call you instead?”
“My name is Theresa Eddings,” Reese said. “I am the captain of the TMS Earthrise. And you will call me ‘Reese’ because that’s what people call me. Not ‘lady’ and not ‘madam’ and not ‘princess’ or whatever else you can come up with. Just “Reese.” Or ‘captain’ if you insist.”
“As you say,” he said.
Such polite words, such courtesy, and yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was going to call her whatever he wanted, and damned what she thought of it. Reese pursed her lips and eyed him skeptically, but his expression never changed. With a sigh, she steadied herself against the bars and rubbed her temple. “These guards. Do they ever check on us?”
“They check about every hour. They don’t always come within eyeshot, but I can sense them.”
She glanced at him, then back at her crew. Irine had curled up around Sascha, her striped tail wrapped around his so tightly she could barely tell which inserted into which spine. Bryer remained unconscious. This was what she had to work with. Reese sighed and looked back at the Eldritch. “Can you set the guard on fire when he comes? Then we can grab for the field key and make a run for it.”
The Eldritch stared at her, white brows lifting. “Lady—Captain—do I look like a magician to you?” he asked.
“You did say you set someone’s house on fire. How much harder is a person’s clothes? If you were sent for your special talents....”
He laughed then, a breathy, quiet thing. Reese had never seen someone laugh without relaxing; it seemed unnatural. Did all Eldritch have this extreme control over their bodies?
“Good God! I can’t break the laws of physics at a whim, I’m sorry to say. The Queen sent me because I’m one of the few non-touch telepaths, not because I can set things on fire by staring at them, or teleport or anything equally preposterous.”
The hairs on the nape of Reese’s neck bristled beneath the tangle of her beaded braids. “How was I supposed to know? Your world is so cloistered it makes a monastery look positively cosmopolitan! I didn’t even know it was your Queen who sent me to rescue you... how do you expect anyone to know anything about you under circumstances like those?”
His cheeks colored a faint blue-tinged peach. “Your point is taken, lady. Pardon me.”
Reese snorted and looked away, clenching her hands on the bars. No knives, no data tablets, no pyrokinetic Eldritch, no peppermint chalk, and a hold full of rotting rooderberries. She stared at her dirty, broken fingernails. By the time she found another port she’d have to do some fast talking to get someone to buy the things—
Reese’s chin jerked up. She smiled, feral, and turned to face Hirianthial again. “But what if they thought you could set them on fire?”
The Eldritch lifted a brow.
“I mean, why don’t we set things up so that it looks like you’re doing some sort of magic with our help, and use that to scare the guard into letting us go?”
“Do you truly believe we can talk our way out of this cell?”
Oh, he sounded so certain. Reese folded her arms over her chest. “I’ve talked my way out of worse situations.”
His face remained maddeningly smooth. She wanted him to sneer or roll his eyes or something. “Have you?”
“Look, Hirianthial,” she said, “I’m sure I can do this. I know my people can. It’s you I’m not sure of. Can you act? Because if you can’t pull this one off, then it won’t matter that I can do it and the twins and Bryer can do it.”
“What exactly would you have me pretend?”
Was it her or was he actually uncomfortable with the idea of lying? Trust her to find the one Eldritch in all the worlds who actually believed in personal honor. In the books she’d read they’d never had a problem abandoning their beliefs to serve the story. “You’d have to pretend to be what everyone believes Eldritch to be. And don’t tell me you don’t know what that is. If you’re out here playing spy, mingling with pirates and slavers, you know very well what Eldritch are supposed to be like.”
“Supposed to be like,” Hirianthial repeated, and for the first time she heard what she was expecting. Bitterness, maybe. Fatigue. Except he wasn’t looking at her, but at something on the inside of his own eyes. “As if we are expected to fill some void in the universe.”
In the face of uncertainty, Reese did as she always did. “Look, are you up for this or not? Because unless you have some better idea how to get us out of this hole in the ground, we’re going with my plan.”
“Had I had a better plan, we would not have met,” the Eldritch said at last.
“Then let’s get Sascha up. This is how it’s going to go.”
Hirianthial rested his hands on his knees, feeling the guards mill against the edges of his awareness. He could just—just—pick them out past the flares of the people sitting in a semi-circle around him. Where Reese had obtained her ideas about ritual magic he had no clue, but try as he might he couldn’t complain that they lacked dramatics. There was no real magic outside of wild stories of ancient Eldritch mind-mages, of course, and his mental talents couldn’t be intensified by any outside aid, but the concept sounded good and he supposed that was all that counted.
He’d been many things on Liolesa’s little mission. He’d played instruments he barely remembered learning at a tutor’s side for dinner. He’d washed dishes, scrubbed decks, even bandaged a wound or two. He had not yet played the charlatan. All of it galled. That he’d taken on this role to free himself made it only a hint less bitter. Always, his people wanted something of him he wasn’t made to give; his attempts to fulfill those expectations usually ended in failure. While he wasn’t expecting this to be any different, he hoped for the sake of the aliens grouped around him that it would be.
The guard pierced his circle of awareness, heading for their cell. “He’s on his way.”
“All right, people, look calm,” Reese said.
Irine giggled. “This is too silly.”
“It’ll work,” Reese said. “Just remember your lines.”
The Harat-Shar giggled again. Hirianthial opened his eyes and found them all in position facing him. Reese and the two Harat-Shar had copied his stance, palms up on their knees with eyes closed. Bryer, who couldn’t sit cross-legged, kneeled with his hands pressed together at his breast, the feathers splayed from his arms in a decorative fan. One could argue they had the hard part: to remain composed and to seem as if they were concentrating when they knew the farce they were engaged in. Still, Hirianthial hated lying. Obfuscation he could do. Lying wounded him.
The heavy thump of boots on stone pulled him out of his reverie. Hirianthial set his face. As he’d hoped, Blond stood in front of their cage, staring at their group and playing with the key ring. Spikes of sweaty uncertainty jumped around his aura. He cleared his throat of thick phlegm and said, “What are you people doing?”
“What does it look like?” Hirianthial asked with just a hint of contempt.
The guard’s aura flared red. “Don’t you mess with me, pastehead. You’ll be dancing a different set when they put you in real chains.”
“Oh, I don’t think they’ll be doing that. Not with my new... friends... to help me.”
The guard’s left boot creaked, then the right. Nervousness gave his colors a green sheen. “Ummm ... look, I don’t know what they’re doing, but they should stop it.” He stared at Reese and the others. “What are they doing?”
Now for the lies. The premise had sounded so ridiculous Hirianthial couldn’t imagine anyone believing it, but Reese had convinced him. He thought of the last time he’d been angry from pit to fingers and summoned up that voice, the deep soft one with the hard edges, the one that made a lie out of his cultured accent. “Channeling power to me... so I can set this building on fire. Or didn’t you hear about the last time?”
On cue, Sascha began to hum.
“What the—”
“The power is flowing to me. I might spare you afterwards. Unlock the door.”
“I don’t, I...”
Irine added her mezzosoprano to her brother’s tenor. They started out in harmony and then Sascha dropped his voice until they were only an octave and a quarter tone off. Hirianthial wondered if they realized what they were doing or if they were just tone-deaf. He focused on the man. “Unlock the door. If you do, I’ll give you time to run before I start.”
Reese added her contralto, filling part of the lower register.
Blond shifted from foot to foot, books creaking. His fingers played almost spasmodically with the keys. Hirianthial stared him in the eye, willing him to do it.
“Unlock the door.”
“I—”
“Unlock the door.”
“It’s not—”
“Unlock the door.”
Bryer broke in with a shrill ululation that skidded up the scale of comfortable human hearing. Blond’s fear shot his aura with actinic sparkles, and the man lunged forward, keying first the field and then the door. The latter beeped its processing tone. A few seconds later, the door opened. Blond stood paralyzed before it, as if unable to believe his actions.
Gently, Hirianthial said, “Run. Now.”
Blond stared wildly at him; his eyes flicked to Bryer’s feathers. Then he turned tail and fled.
“All right!” Reese said, jumping to her feet. “Quick, before it’s too late!”
The two Harat-Shar dashed out first, striped tails swaying. Bryer loped after. Reese pointed. “Out. I’ll be behind you.”
Hirianthial rose, and she darted around him, closing the door behind him.
“Which way!” Sascha yelled back.
“Left!” Hirianthial called.
The two tigraines vanished around the corner, and then Irine yowled. He could just see two more people in front of them. “Guards,” he warned.
“I think they already found them,” Reese said dryly, running up the hall. They turned into the corridor to find Bryer leaping on one of the guards, his bronze claws muted by the red flash of blood. Disoriented, Hirianthial turned toward the smell—blood required two kinds of attention—but a hand grabbed the back of his tunic and yanked. He felt concern and pain and fear and adrenaline like a punch to the spine.
“This way!” Reese said, pulling him past the two Pelted and the Phoenix, who were doing more than distracting the guards.
“They’ll die,” Hirianthial said, transfixed by the deflation of the auras under Sascha and Bryer. Old instincts warred with new oaths.
“Have your crisis of conscience later!” Reese said. “Or have you forgotten what these people have done? Do you want to live your life in chains?”
He still couldn’t force himself forward. It had been so long since he’d seen blood spilled in violence. It woke demons.
“Blood on the dust, Hirianthial, MOVE!”
He moved. He couldn’t not move beneath the force of that command. He couldn’t decide if they were wounded or enemies and in the face of that ambivalence he could turn his back on them and leave them to die. Even if he’d wanted to turn back, Reese was at his heels, riding him, herding him. He didn’t want to have to push past her and her cut-glass aura.
Sascha pushed past him, blood streaking his fur. “Are there more?”
“Two more ahead,” Hirianthial said. “They know we’re coming.”
“Stop!” Reese said. “They’re going to have weapons—”
“Yeah well, now so do we,” Irine said, holding up three palmers.
Reese crowed. “Excellent, fuzzy! Just be—”
Sascha and Bryer had already taken one of the palmers and run ahead.
“—careful,” Reese finished to the sound of palmer fire. She winced.
Irine shrugged, then ambled up the corridor. “It’s clear, boss.”
And just like that, they’d taken care of everyone in the prison that had held him for so long. Dazed, Hirianthial followed Reese up the corridor, paused to stare at the bodies. These two, at least, weren’t dead. Memories tangled with reality in his eyes, blurring the edges of the room.
“Come on,” Reese said. “No time to sight-see. The moment someone wakes up and realizes we’re gone our lives are worthless. Or at least, to us. I love my old crate, but she’s not going to outrun a pirate.”
“The tumbleweeds await!” Sascha said, pushing open the door. He threw a telegem to Reese. “Might as well use this. They’re going to find out about us anyway.”
Reese tossed it aside. “I don’t want to alert them any sooner. Let’s just run and hope Kis’eh’t can get the Earthrise ready fast enough without warning. You. Prince Charming. You go in the middle where we can—”
“—guard me?” Hirianthial asked, a brief sense of amusement blowing away the numbness.
“Just go.”
He went. Bryer ran alongside, wings and tail a flutter of bronze and muted crimson. Sascha took lead, with Irine at the side. Reese ran behind. They sprinted out into a purple twilight and onto the empty streets, avoiding the street lamps. There were no lights puddled in the windows, but the breeze that sloughed through his hair—Hirianthial had felt nothing finer.
“I assume,” he said once they reached the edge of town, “that we’re going somewhere.”
“Yeah. To the Earthrise. She’s parked a few minutes out of town,” Reese said. She stopped to pant, propping her hands on her knees. “Our ride out.”
“And then?” Hirianthial asked.
The beads on the end of her hair clicked as she whipped her head up to glare at him. “Providing we get out of here alive, I’m dropping you off at the nearest starbase. You’re way too much trouble for me.”
Hirianthial laughed. “Alas, lady. I hope it’s that simple.”
“Yeah, me too.” She straightened. “On we go!”
They ran. Leaving the town pleased Hirianthial greatly. He could almost forget they were fleeing and enjoy the run. He hadn’t been able to stretch his legs for days, and the expanse of the world around him, rolling away to the horizon in every direction, restored some of his tattered equilibrium. Enough of it, in fact, that when he saw their ride off-world he didn’t immediately fall into despair. The squat ovoid balanced on its landing stilts looked as much like the sleek Alliance ships Hirianthial had seen as an axe resembled a laser scalpel. He couldn’t imagine it outrunning a barge, much less a slaver’s ship.
Reese hobbled the last few yards to one of the stilts and whacked a panel with the heel of her hand.
“Kis’eh’t! Get us out of this system, and now!”
A ramp descended from the belly of the ship, too slowly for the twins who jumped onto it before it had fully extended. They scampered up it, followed by Bryer.
“Up,” Reese said.
Hirianthial stared up into the dark and wondered just what kind of future the Queen had planned for him to tangle him up with this human and her strange people.
But he went up the ramp. He was, he thought, short on choices.
The engines changed pitch. Reese didn’t hear it as much as feel it through the soles of her feet in the rattle of the deck-plates.
“Where to, Captain?” Sascha’d made it to the pilot’s chair already.
“The nearest starbase in civilized space. And move it, Stripes.”
“Starbase Kappa it is, boss!”
The floor beneath her jumped as the Earthrise lifted. Reese steadied herself against the wall and felt the faintest relief from the churn in her stomach. Maybe they’d get out of this one unscathed. She toggled the comm to all-hands. “Irine? Where are you?”
A striped head popped into view from up-corridor. “Err... right here?”
Reese jerked a thumb at Hirianthial, who hadn’t moved since coming up the ramp. “See that he finds a place to sleep.”
“Right, Captain. You there, you’re with me.”
Reese watched them long enough for them to turn the corner, the solid and curvy tigraine girl and the willowy man. She wondered how he kept so much hair so healthy... nearly two weeks in captivity and he still looked like he belonged on the cover of a novel. It boggled the mind.
Reese jogged to the bridge, swaying as the ship rose through a few bumpy winds and rocking as the stabilizers balanced. The pressure exacerbated her headache; she’d never gotten used to gravities higher than Mars’s, and high accelerations always made things worse. When the lift ejected her onto the cramped bridge, she was only too glad to slide into a chair and buckle on the safety harness. Kis’eh’t was at the exterior sensor control panel, her own harness binding her centauroid lower body to the floor and Allacazam cradled between her forelegs. Sascha was in the pilot’s seat.
“Did we succeed?” the Glaseahn asked, glancing at Reese.
“We got him, yes,” Reese said.
“We’re clear of the atmosphere,” Sascha interrupted.
Reese slid her hand over the engineering display, scrutinizing the stress analyses as they scrolled past with a grim face. The ride smoothed out as the Earthrise rose, the transition from atmospheric night to the void-black of space invisible save for the glowing blue sensor data and the steadying of the starlight. Reese breathed a sigh of relief as the internal gravity evened to something approaching normal.
“We might even make it to Kappa in time to save the rooderberries,” Kis’eh’t said.
Most Pelted revealed their skin and its flushes at their ears. Humans, of course, suffered from whole-body blushes—most of them anyway. Reese had been blessed with skin dark enough to keep her embarrassment or upsets to herself, most of the time. But only a tiny corner of skin around Kis’eh’t’s eyelids was exposed. Reese was nevertheless startled by how stark a gray it turned.
“Uh... we’ve got a ship up our tail.”
“I see it,” Sascha said, voice distracted.
Reese twisted, staring at the sensor data. Her eyes rose to the aft windows where a gray splotch occluded part of the planet, growing even as she watched. “ID?” she asked hoarsely.
“It isn’t running a beacon,” Kis’eh’t said, bending over her panel.
Reese’s stomach screamed for chalk.
“What’s going on?” Irine asked, popping out of the lift with Hirianthial.
“We’ve got a tail, and it’s heading straight for us,” Reese said, fingers playing hopscotch over the keypad. “And it’s pulling a higher acceleration than we are.”
“They’ll overhaul us in fifteen minutes,” Kis’eh’t reported.
“Not if I can help it,” Sascha said.
“I thought I told you to put him in a room?” Reese said to Irine.
The tigraine shrugged. “You said to find him a place to sleep, not trap him there. He wanted to come with me, so I said ‘sure.’”
“We’ll talk about this later,” Reese said. Providing there was a later. “Buckle up if you’re going to stay.”
Irine wedged herself into the space next to the pilot’s chair and tied on a spare harness, then clamped herself to her brother’s leg. Hirianthial stayed in the back. Smart man.
“Reese, they aren’t exceeding our maximum limit,” Kis’eh’t said.
“She’s right,” Sascha said, “but we can’t go our max unless we—”
“Dump the berries,” Reese said, covering her eyes. “Blood and Freedom.”
“Captain, that boat is crammed with weapons. Half of them look like they’re going to fall off, but our one laser isn’t going to do much good,” Kis’eh’t said, still punching buttons.
Reese stared at the oncoming pirate: obviously jury-rigged, operating with only shoddy, low-level navigational shields, but with engines well a match for theirs and weapons all out of proportion to its size. It required effort to move her hand to the comm panel and twitch it.
“Lowerdeck.”
“Bryer, I want you to jettison the cargo. And make sure the clamps don’t go this time.”
The silence was eloquent.
“Just do it,” Reese said. She pressed a hand to her stomach, massaging it. “Damn rooderberries,” she said. “Last time I’m ever taking on any fruit. You guys are my witnesses.”
“Heard and witnessed,” Kis’eh’t said with a laugh.
“Here, here!” Irine added. Then said, “Does this mean we get to have rooderberry sorbet tonight?”
“This is not funny,” Reese said, glaring at the pirate ship. It seemed like a better idea than glaring at Hirianthial, who’d been the indirect cause of all this. Bad enough that he was responsible for the loss of her investment, but did he have to actually be on the bridge where he could remind her of just how much she didn’t want to be here?
The floor shivered and a muffled series of clunks followed as the bay doors opened. The loading collars sucking the pins from the spindles and ejecting the cargo bins resulted in much louder clangs, one for each bin. Reese counted them, flinching at each one, until the first bin tumbled end over end into view on the aft windows.
“Look at them go!” Sascha said.
Kis’eh’t said, “They’re gaining on us.”
“Do something about that, Sascha,” Reese said.
“Maximum power on all engines,” the tigraine said. “We’re opening the distance.”
“How long before we shake them loose entirely?” Reese asked.
“I don’t know. Ten, fifteen minutes maybe.”
Fifteen minutes of staring at each of those bins, trying not to count how many fin each represented as they fell down the drain of the planet’s gravity well. Reese rubbed her burning throat as the long minutes hobbled on. The tension was interminable, and yet she was as bored as she was edgy. Her stomach did not approve. Her throbbing temple agreed, reminding her that she hadn’t even stopped to look for any medicaments before rushing to the bridge. No chalk tablets, no headache elixir, nothing. She regretted the lack of both.
Hirianthial’s baritone interrupted her reverie. “Do they always burn that way?”
Reese straightened, stared at the windows where tiny flares of fire erupted like miniature bombs. “What...?”
Kis’eh’t was already checking the sensors. “I...” The Glaseahn’s head dropped onto the console, her shoulders shaking. Between her forelegs, Allacazam turned a lurid shade of plum purple.
“Kis’eh’t?” Reese asked.
“Yeah, manylegs, give us the score here,” Sascha said. “Some of us are too busy to look for ourselves.”
The Glaseahn lifted her head, her demi-muzzle parted in laughter so intense she couldn’t even squeak.
Irine unbuckled her harness and straddled Kis’eh’t’s second back in front of her wings. The tigraine looked over Kis’eh’t’s shoulders and choked on a laugh. “Captain, it’s the rooderberries.”
“I know it’s the rooderberries! What’s going on with them? Are they hitting atmosphere?”
“No... they’re hitting the slaver.”
With her mouth already open to speak, Reese found herself abruptly deprived of words to say.
“Do you mean to say that the bins are striking the pirate vessel?” Hirianthial asked Irine politely.
“That’s exactly it.”
“Like... say, a grenade. Or a torpedo.”
“Exactly like that,” Irine said around her giggle.
“And... the odds of this?”
Sascha interrupted, “Well, if they’re right on our tails, and the bins are falling along our trajectory—”
Reese couldn’t handle any more. “What are you saying? That some of the cargo bins are—”
“There goes number four!” Irine crowed. “Ke-poom! Look at that!”
In the rear windows the pirate ship bucked beneath a brief, blinding splotch of fire; cheap cargo containers were only partially air-tight, but this evidence of just how partially left Reese with the absent thought that perhaps she should invest in better cargo bins.
“Captain, they’re... they’re decelerating.”
“They’re what?” Reese wheeled from the window to gawk at the sensor display as the pirate vessel dropped speed. “Blood! I think they’re damaged!”
“I’d confirm that,” Kis’eh’t said. “They’re definitely losing speed. And—yes, I’m seeing life pods.”
Sascha grinned, displaying white fangs. “Guess they’re not much for jam.”
“Life pods?”
Hirianthial’s question doused the wildfire merriment on the bridge. Reese barely heard it, staring at the pirate, trying to convince herself that all this was happening.
Kis’eh’t cleared her throat. “Captain? Reese?”
She shook herself. “No. Keep going.” And before Hirianthial could say another word, she said, “No. Not only are they floating above a pirate safehouse which can very well rescue its own maniacs, but those people want us dead. We’re not out of the woods yet.”
“They’re not going to catch us now,” Sascha said.
“No, but—”
And then the ship bucked and the soothing hum beneath the deck-plates faltered. “What the?”
“They just shot us!” Kis’eh’t exclaimed.
“Are they still coming for us?” Reese asked. “Can we still get away?”
“Engines are at half power,” Sascha said with a growl. He punched the comm. “Bryer!”
“Can’t talk. Much repair-work.”
“What did they get?”
“In-systems. Also Well drive.”
“We can’t get out of here?” Irine squeaked.
“You can coast but you can’t ride,” Bryer said. “Bother me later. Or come down and help.”
“Damn,” Sascha said, unstrapping himself. “I’ll be below-decks with Bryer. If we can’t use the Well Drive we’re slavebait. They’ll send someone new after us while we limp out of here.”
“And here we’re out of rooderberries to fire at them,” Kis’eh’t said as Irine slid into her brother’s place.
“Where now?” Irine asked.
“There’s an asteroid belt,” Kis’eh’t offered, studying her display. “We could hide there while we do repairs.”
“Do it,” Reese said. “How long do you think it’ll take?”
“I’ll give you an estimate once I get down there,” Sascha said, and vanished into the lift.
“This is not our lucky day,” Irine muttered.
Reese stood up. “Don’t say that until it’s over, unless you really want to jinx us.”
“Sorry. Say, Boss?”
“What?”
“My ability to concentrate on keeping us hidden would greatly improve if you went somewhere else. It’s not like anything’s going to happen in the next hour or so.”
“How can you be sure?”
Kis’eh’t said, “I’ll call you if something happens.”
Reese looked from one to the other, torn.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing what passes for a clinic on this ship,” Hirianthial said from behind her.
She wasn’t sure what infuriated her more, his assumption that she could afford a ship with a clinic or his assumption that the one she could afford could only “pass” for a clinic. Her stomach churned as she stared at him, trying to decide what to say.
“We don’t have much of a ship’s clinic,” Kis’eh’t said, interrupting her thoughts. “There’s a combination clinic-lab that I converted next to my room... I use it for experiments sometimes. Reese knows where it is.”
Of course she did! It was her ship! She’d approved the change!
“And you could take Allacazam,” the Glaseahn continued. “I think he wants to be with you.” The woman offered her the Flitzbe, and Reese took it by reflex. Instantly she felt a touch of sparkling concern at the edge of her mind, and she sighed, holding him against her stomach.
“Is that a real Flitzbe?” Hirianthial asked, and even Reese could read the wonder in his voice.
“It is,” Kis’eh’t answered for Reese. “Why don’t the two of you talk about it somewhere else?”
Reese opened her mouth to complain, but Allacazam’s sad violin trill distracted her. She sighed. “All right. I’m leaving. But if anything changes—”
“—we’ll tell you right then,” Irine said.
“We’re going to talk about this gross insubordination later,” Reese added, heading for the lift.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Kis’eh’t.
“Just so long as you whip me good,” Irine added.
Reese rolled her eyes. “Come on, Prince Charming. Into the lift with us, before Irine starts whining about how I never let her have any fun.”
“You don’t!”
The lift door closed.
“A real Flitzbe,” Hirianthial prompted again.
“Would you like to hold him?” Reese asked, wondering why she was offering.
“May I?” he said.
Reese held Allacazam out to him, wondering if Hirianthial would take him directly from her hands and risk touching her, or if she’d have to set the Flitzbe on the floor and let him roll to the man’s boots. But no, the Eldritch didn’t flinch at the transfer, though his hands never touched hers.
“You’ve never seen one?” Reese asked.
“In textbooks,” Hirianthial replied. He set Allacazam against his ribs, tucked against his elbow, and rested his opposite hand on top of the Flitzbe. It was a tender hold, and in it Allacazam blossomed all sorts of calming colors. Pastel purple. Shimmery silver. Touches of rose and peach and blue. Reese stared, mesmerized, until the lift door opened.
“I didn’t think you’d want to touch him,” she said. “He emotes a lot.”
“I didn’t think I would either,” Hirianthial said. “But it seems rude not to, given he can’t communicate any other way.”
“The clinic’s this way,” Reese said, glancing one more time at the supreme contentment of the Flitzbe before heading down the hall. She heard the soft whisper of the Eldritch behind her, wished that the Earthrise would at least oblige her by sounding noisy under the man’s feet. Naturally, the ship wouldn’t. Did anyone dislike an Eldritch? Except her? She’d liked them fine as mythical characters, but meeting one in person... no one had told her how infuriatingly perfect they’d be.
Reese opened the door on the small room Kis’eh’t used as a lab. The Glaseahn had studied some sort of fancy chemistry and with Reese’s permission installed some enigmatic lab equipment. Since she occasionally donated money to the ship when her articles earned any, Reese didn’t complain. The things took power, but they were Kis’eh’t’s romance novels, her escape to something else. Somewhere better. Why the Glaseahn didn’t do her chemistry as a formal job Reese didn’t understand; Kis’eh’t had only ever said that she and academia had had a difference of opinion.
“Larger than I expected,” Hirianthial said, sitting on a stool. He was petting Allacazam now. They seemed well-suited. Reese wondered if the Flitzbe would take to sleeping with him from now on.
“Captain?”
Reese tapped the comm, glad for the distraction. “Go ahead, Sascha.”
“We’re looking at at least three hours of repair. Maybe four.”
“Four hours!” Reese said.
“Just be glad we’ve got the parts on hand.”
Reese sighed. “All right. Get us out of this, Sascha, and I’ll buy you and Bryer dinner at Starbase Kappa.”
“Yeah, right. With what money, boss?” A chuckle. “Still, thanks for the thought. I’ll give you an update when we’ve got one.”
“Thanks,” Reese said, and switched channels. “You guys hear that?”
“Three or four hours to hide in the rocks. Can do, Captain.” In the background, Kis’eh’t added, “Didn’t we tell you to stop worrying?”
“Not going to happen,” Reese said. “Tell me if we get visitors.”
“We will. Bridge out.”
“They seem like good people,” Hirianthial said.
“They are good people,” Reese replied testily. “Just a little less formal than your average Fleet crew.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Reese sighed and sat on the low bench Kis’eh’t used for herself.
“As long as we’re here,” Hirianthial said and trailed off.
Reese eyed him. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“If you have a first aid kit I could do something about that digestive problem. Or your head.”
“I don’t need you to mess with my head, or my stomach. They’re fine,” Reese said.
His calm gaze on hers only infuriated her more. She looked away, blushing. “I’ve done fine on my own.”
“You have. But you could do better,” he said.
“I’m not interested in you fixing me,” Reese said, and when he looked about to object she said, “And that’s final. Get it? I’ve got chalk and I’ve got elixir and I’ve got pills. That’s enough.”
He looked down at Allacazam, but not fast enough to hide the irritation that pulled ever-so-slightly at his mouth. Reese hid her satisfaction. At least he could get angry.
A memory flashed in her mind of his face when talking about the slavers.
Okay. Maybe not that angry. Pettily angry, like normal people.
“So,” and she couldn’t hear any of that anger in his voice, “how did you meet a real Flitzbe?”
“On a space station near Earth,” Reese said. “I was docked there for licensing and repair and he just... well, started following me. We seemed to get along, and he didn’t like the idea of me leaving him behind, so I didn’t.”
“You can talk to him?” Hirianthial asked.
“Can’t you?”
The Eldritch shrugged, that hitch of one shoulder that was so easy to miss. “I’m an esper. They say it’s supposed to be easier for us to talk to them.”
“Do they?” Reese warred between agitation and curiosity. “I’ve read about them but there’s not much available in the u-banks. The usual stuff... some biological information about how they eat and reproduce, and historical information about how we ran into them. But nothing more than that.”
“Probably because there’s not much more than that to be said.” In the Eldritch’s arms, Allacazam turned an amused goldenrod yellow. “We had some additional information in medical school but not much more. I never saw a Flitzbe anywhere I worked. If they get sick, they’ve never done it where someone could record evidence of it.”
“Never?” Reese asked.
“Not that we know of,” Hirianthial replied. “Even seeing one is fairly unusual. You’re a lucky woman.”
Reese said nothing to that, only watched the colors on Allacazam as they changed. All happy colors. “He likes you.”
“You sound surprised,” Hirianthial said and laughed. “I suppose you can’t imagine anyone liking me right now.”
“I’ll thank you to stop reading my mind,” Reese said, bristling.
“I’ll thank you to stop assuming I’m some sort of magician,” Hirianthial replied. He leaned down and set the Flitzbe on the floor. “The only thing I can sense from you is your emotional state, and trust me, any number of factors can cause a single emotion. Guessing at which of the many things in your life is currently causing you distress isn’t as easy as you would presume. I am making an educated guess from your tone of voice and the things you’ve said, lady. Not plucking my wisdom out of your frontal lobes.”
“Are all Eldritch this infuriating?” Reese finally said, unable to help herself.
“No,” Hirianthial replied. Then, glancing at the ceiling. “Most of them are worse.”
Allacazam bumped up against Reese’s toe. She pulled him into her arms and was surprised at how quickly he soothed her. She sighed over his round body, feeling the thrum of the engines in the deck and wondering how soon they’d be able to escape this particular nightmare. Allacazam slipped a tendril of curiosity into her mind, like a shoot of green trying to push up through soil. She imagined packing it back into the earth. She wasn’t ready to deal with the alternatives to their venture if they failed.
The ship chose that moment to shudder hard and jink to one side. Reese clutched Allacazam with one arm and the bench with the the other. The moment it passed she was on the intercom. “What in Freedom’s name are you people doing up there?”
“Sorry,” came Kis’eh’t’s terse reply. “We got dinged by a small rock. We’re not going to get out of this without dents, Reese.”
“I’m coming up there,” Reese said, and cut off Irine’s protest.
“Lady,” Hirianthial said.
“Not now.” Reese set Allacazam down and headed for the door.
“I would sit down—”
Her stomach felt like a burst fuel-line. Even her throat was burning. She kept going.
“Captain Eddings,” Hirianthial said, standing, and that almost made her stop but Irine and Kis’eh’t were going to get her ship completely bent out of shape and she was the only one who could possibly stop it—
An ominous taste in her mouth gave her pause. Was she queasy? She hated being queasy. The corridor suddenly seemed a lot longer.
“Maybe you should come back in here and sit.” His baritone was so soft she almost couldn’t disobey. But no doctor, no Eldritch doctor was going to tell her what to do. She kept walking.
Her stomach lurched. The burning in her mouth intensified. Reese licked her lips and swayed beneath a wave of hot unease. She reached out and braced herself against the wall, no longer caring if he saw her. What was he going to do... come out here and pick her up? Not likely!
“Since kind suggestion doesn’t work on you,” Hirianthial said with what sounded like a hint of asperity, “I’ll simply be blunt. If you don’t walk back in here under your own power and let me treat you for the ulcer you’ve been nursing for what looks like several years, you’re going to fall and vomit up what remains of your last meal, which I am wagering was a pack of antacids. Then you’ll be forced to accept the help you’re currently refusing, which will only make you angrier. So save us both your future frustration and come in here now.”
Reese stared at the lift at the end of the hall as waves of sickness flooded her, each one making her hunch just a little more. Every word made her clench her teeth harder. When he finished his speech she felt crushed between her body’s impending crisis and her obstinacy.
“Treat me out here, because I’m not moving,” she said, and fell forward onto her knees.
Hirianthial swept forward but not in time to catch her. The moment her palms hit the floor plates, Reese gagged. He didn’t even pause to steel himself before pulling her up by an arm, and when she didn’t support herself on her wobbling legs he caught those up and heaved her into his arms for the short trip from the corridor to the bench in Kis’eh’t’s lab. He didn’t have time to organize the impressions he got through their brief contact but all of them hurt. The moment he laid her down, she groaned and said, “I’m going to throw up.”
“I know,” he said, and found a waste container in time. He held her steady as she retched bile and blood.
“Oogh,” she said, hanging onto the edge of the pail.
“Done?” Hirianthial asked, but gentler. He hadn’t expected to be able to see such a radical change in her skin, but the brown had lost most of its warmth in the short minutes between the collapse in the corridor and her transport to the bench. Seeing her so wrung out made him realize just how small she was. It wasn’t a thing one noticed while she was biting someone’s nose off with her words.
“I... I don’t know,” Reese said.
“That usually means ‘no,’” Hirianthial said, keeping his grip.
She rolled a dull blue eye back at his hand. “Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Not as much as—” he stopped as she dropped her head back into the container and paid attention to her aura this time, feeling his way over the spikes and static hiss. When she lifted her head, he said, “Now you’re done,” and helped her lie back on the bench.
The ship shook under them again and Reese tried to rise. He pressed her down with fingertips on her collarbone. “No.”
“Got to drive,” she said.
“No,” Hirianthial said again. “Where’s your first aid kit?”
“Don’t need—”
“Captain Eddings,” he said, using his sternest tone. “Every ship is supposed to have one. Where’s yours?”
She sighed. “Above the blue thing.”
The “blue thing” must refer to the chemical analysis machine, though the only blue on it was a stripe down the side. Hirianthial looked in the cabinet above it and found the kit along with a couple of blankets. He took them both down, covering her with one and folding the other into a makeshift pillow. “Now, how about the nearest source of water?”
“Water?” Reese asked weakly.
“Water,” Hirianthial agreed.
“Bathroom. Further down the hall. Turn left.”
“Right,” Hirianthial said. He lifted Allacazam from the floor and tucked him in next to Reese’s arm. “Neither of you move.”
In the cramped bathroom, Hirianthial washed his hands and avoided looking at himself in the tiny mirror. He hadn’t questioned his desire to become a doctor on fleeing his homeworld; whatever his original motive one could hardly find fault with the healing professions, and once he’d begun he’d found he loved the work. But moments like this, where he realized that taking care of someone provided a useful distraction from the wider view, he wondered just how noble it was to be a doctor. So much easier to think of the patient than wonder whether they’d be slaves in a few hours. So much more satisfying to treat someone’s sickness than to serve as their executioner. So much better to run to a good cause than to admit why one started running.
He chanced a look at himself and saw only a bland mask learned among the Eldritch and refined by the school of medicine. He could hide in it for the rest of his life and no one would ever guess. Not even irascible young human women with riding crop tongues.
Hirianthial returned to the clinic to find both patient and palliative alien where he’d left them. He sat next to Reese and slid his hand through her braids. He knew from sight they would be wiry and light, but somehow he still expected them to slide as smoothly as satin and as heavily as rope. The memories were still raw.
“I can lift my head without your help,” she said, dispelling the ghost.
“Hush and drink.”
She slurped at the cup, swished out her mouth and spat into the waste container three times before actually swallowing.
“That’s enough. You’re not ready for much more.”
She eyed him rebelliously, but he pressed her back onto the bench.
“Are you going to force me to keep pushing you down or will I have to tie you there?” he asked.
“If you keep touching me, will you eventually faint?” Reese asked.
“That would make me fairly useless as a doctor, don’t you think?” Hirianthial asked. Some of the notions Alliance citizens had cobbled together about his people would have been amusing had he not had to work past them so often in the past. He knew the reasons for the Veil of Secrecy decreed Jerisa, the first Eldritch queen, but even he chafed at them sometimes and he considered himself a private man.
Hirianthial turned his back on Reese and opened the kit. Standard kits were packed with supplies sufficient to solve typical problems—bone breaks, bites, cuts, scrapes, basic infections—but didn’t contain any of the things he’d need for a solution to her problem. With his own kit in a Sendaine storage locker, he’d have to pray the quick fixes he had access to would tide her over until they reached Starbase Kappa. If they reached Starbase Kappa. Hirianthial prepared an ampoule of mellifleurin and said, “This will see you to the starbase if you follow my instructions about what you eat and when. Will you do that?”
“What’s the alternative?” Reese asked, watching him with a gloss of gray skepticism as he pressed the AAP to her side. She eyed the paper tab he offered her, but let him swab her tongue with it anyway.
“You vomit more and more often until I have to operate on you with—” he checked the kit, “—medical tape, paper cut-grade antiseptic and my boot knife.”
Her eyes lost their anger, though her gaze remained as intent. “You’re kidding, right?”
He ran a hand over her aura, feeling the tight wad of wrongness around the middle of her esophagus. “No.” He left his hand there, feeling the extent of the pressure on her chest as he slid the tab into the analysis unit. He was not surprised to find a large concentration of keliobacteria. Humanity’s determined march into space had inspired several thousand new variations on old microbiological foes, most of them more virulent than their Terran ancestors. He’d sewn up a few esophaguses as an intern, but never without surgeon’s tools... and while he couldn’t tell exactly when Reese’s esophagus would rupture the pressure under his hand suggested it would be soon.
If it did before they reached the starbase, she would die.
“Don’t make me do this with a knife,” he said. “I’d rather knock you unconscious and keep you that way until we get to Starbase Kappa than have to cut you open with something I use to trim my meat at supper.”
Reese blanched. “You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
The ship shivered beneath them again. Reese rolled her full lower lip between her teeth, then said, “At least find out what’s going on. I promise not to go anywhere, but if I don’t know what’s happening I’ll gnaw a hole through my arm.”
“That I can do, as long as you promise not to get up,” Hirianthial said. He leaned over and rested a hand on the comm but didn’t activate it. Her belligerence returned, flaring orange.
“You’re actually going to make me promise?”
“I have the feeling you keep your promises,” Hirianthial said.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you actually believe in personal honor and all that.”
Hirianthial said nothing. Personal honor had driven him to unpleasant ends, and discussing it wasn’t one of his favorite pass-times.
“Fine, fine, I promise. Now call!”
He depressed the button. “Clinic to the bridge.”
“Nice try, doc, but this is lowerdeck,” Sascha said. “What can I do for you?”
“The captain wants to know what’s going on.”
“And she’s not asking? Did someone tie her down?”
Hirianthial eyed Reese, who looked about to vault to her feet. “In a manner of speaking. She can hear you, though, so I wouldn’t indulge in too much flippant language.”
Sascha’s laugh sounded tinny, as if he’d moved away from the pick-up. “Right. You don’t know anything about how things work here yet, I see. You’ll learn fast enough. Repairs on the inside are doing okay. What the rocks are doing to the hull is outside our purview. Ask the bridge about that.”
Another shudder ran through the floor, the walls. Reese said, “What, are they aiming for the things?”
“I’d ask them,” Sascha said. “Lowerdeck out.”
“I need to drive,” Reese said again, though this time she didn’t try to get up. “We can’t make it out of here if they punch a hole in the hull.”
“I’m presuming you hired them for more than company,” Hirianthial said while studying the panel for clues on how to switch channels.
“Yeah, well, I can’t be everywhere at once. That doesn’t mean I’m not better at everything than they are,” she said. “Hit it three times.”
“Are you really better at everything than they are?” Hirianthial asked as he did so.
Reese sighed. Muttered, “No. But I care more.”
“Bridge, this is Kis’eh’t. We’re sorry about the ride there, Captain.”
“The captain is resting,” Hirianthial said. “But she’d like to know how we’re doing.”
“Resting!” Kis’eh’t said. “Maybe we should keep you around. We’re lucky if we can get her to sleep once a week.”
“That’s not true,” Reese said sourly.
“The ride?” Hirianthial prompted.
“We’re cruising just inside the sunward edge of the belt, looking for a clear path to the opposite side. We figure if we can shimmy over to the outside we can sneak out of here without blowing our cover.”
“What!”
“The captain is wondering how you propose to do that,” Hirianthial said, hiding the smallest of smiles.
“It actually gets easier the further in we get. The interior of the belt is more sparsely populated. It’s just that the rocks are bigger, so running into them is a worse idea than it is with these smaller ones.”
“I knew they were aiming for the things,” Reese muttered.
“Larger rocks should mean you can see them coming more easily, correct?” Hirianthial asked.
“That’s right. So tell the captain to catch a nap. The further in we go the smoother the ride.”
“I didn’t authorize this kind of risk,” Reese said. The gray tinge to her skin was now accompanied by a worried black wrinkle in her aura.
“Are you sure this is the only way out?” Hirianthial asked.
There was a pause. Then Irine said, “It’s this or fly out there free and loud where they can hear us. This is the only sneaky way we can think of to get out of here. Unless you installed a duster on this boat that you didn’t tell us about, captain.”
“Thank you, Irine,” Hirianthial said. “I’ll see that the lady rests.”
“You do that, pretty. Bridge away.”
Reese surprised him by remaining silent. She petted Allacazam’s fur and the Flitzbe wiggled beneath her brown-and-pink fingers before turning a soothing dark blue. After a moment, she said with obvious resignation, “If I’m going to rest, can I at least do it on a proper bed?”
“There’s a proper bed on this vessel?” Hirianthial asked, surprising himself. He didn’t usually feel the need to tease.
“A more proper one, anyway,” Reese said. “The bench doesn’t qualify.”
Settling himself, Hirianthial said, “A more comfortable place is a good idea. You should be able to move around now that you’re done with this episode.”
“This episode?” Reese grimaced. “There are going to be more?”
He cocked a brow at her. “Unless you’re planning on reducing your stress level?”
That prompted the acerbic response he’d been expecting. She lifted a hand and pointed at each finger in turn. “I am letting my crew fly me through an asteroid belt. My ship needs repairs. I am now dirt poor because I used my cargo as makeshift torpedoes to hobble a ship I could have stayed behind to salvage. And I now have an irritating addition to my crew that I didn’t ask for and who hasn’t left yet.”
“I can escort myself to the nearest airlock,” Hirianthial said, barely keeping the edges of his mouth from twitching. He gathered the kit and stood. “Can you get up on your own?”
“Yes!” Reese said with a grumble. “And unless you have some superpower involving breathing without atmosphere, you’re not going anywhere unless we get to Starbase Kappa.”
“Until.”
“Right,” Reese said.
“This is my room. I promise to rest,” Reese said, stopping at the door.
The Eldritch was standing a more-than-polite distance away, hands folded behind his back. Though he’d never come closer than five or six feet on their way here, he’d still somehow managed to give her the impression that he was breathing down her neck. More creepy mind-tricks, maybe... or that six-ton personal space he was projecting around himself like some sort of halo field.
He also wasn’t moving.
“You do have a room, right?” Reese asked, struggling with her irritation. “Irine showed it to you?”
“Forgive me my impudence, lady,” he said. “I would like to see you settled in before I leave.”
She stared at him but he didn’t move. Usually her glares sent everyone in the crew running unless the matter was too important to ignore. Which, she suddenly realized, described all the issues her crew brought her, even the insignificant ones. Maybe it was time to work on her glaring.
“Look, Hirianthial,” she said, trying to find the words that would make him go away. He just watched her struggles with that courtly calm like someone out of her monthly romance squirt—ah! “Look, Hirianthial, I appreciate your concern but we’ve only just met and it would hardly be... uh, appropriate for you to see me in my bedchambers.”
“Your bedchambers?” Hirianthial asked, lifting that infuriating white brow again.
“Yes, you know. The lady bit? Me in a nightgown? You’re supposed to be a gentleman about this and not chase me into my room.”
He laughed, the cad. Reese wanted to deck him. “My apologies, lady. You are correct. Under normal circumstances I would ask permission to enter and respect your wishes if you turned me away. But I’m also a doctor and I am still concerned about your status. Let me see you to your sleep and I promise I’ll away with none the wiser about our indiscretion.”
Reese scowled. “Nothing I say is going to make you leave.”
“I beg a thousand apologies, lady. No.”
She threw up her free hand and let herself into her room, too angry to even regret the mess of it. Setting Allacazam in her hammock, she went to the washroom to rinse off her face. The adjacent bathroom was the one luxury of her personal cabin; otherwise it was the same as everyone else’s. On the Earthrise, getting your own bathroom was about the most you could hope for in the captain’s quarters.
“You’re from Mars, then,” he said from the main room.
Reese eyed him, her hands still dripping. She toweled off her face and leaned against the door frame, arms folded. “And you figured that out... “
“From your body shape and weight. And the hammock is telling,” Hirianthial said.
“I hope the “doctor” approves, because there’s no way I’m sleeping on a bunk.”
“No, this is even better,” Hirianthial said. “You won’t feel the jolts in the ship quite as much and you’ll be able to sit more upright.”
He looked completely ridiculous investigating her plain pouch hammock with its worn pillows and mess of tangled blankets. He was too tall and too alien to be standing next to something so normal. The entire room was too normal to hold him, with her scattered clothes and the data tablets and her small handful of decorations. Reese said, “It won’t be too much longer and we can get you back to what you were doing. What were you doing, anyway?”
“Spying on slavers,” Hirianthial said dryly.
“I meant before that,” Reese said. “Doctoring or something, I guess, right?”
“Yes,” Hirianthial said. Was she imagining the grimace? No, his face had become more set and his eyes less focused. He smiled at her, suddenly affable again. “I’m between jobs at the moment.”
“No kidding,” Reese said and shook off her boots. He stepped away as she approached the hammock and didn’t help her as she wormed her way into it. Allacazam rolled onto her side.
“Are you sure you want to sleep in your clothing?” the Eldritch asked.
“I am not changing into something more comfortable with you hovering over my shoulder. You being a healer might make your forced entry all proper but there’s no way I need to get naked around you.”
“I can turn my back,” he said.
She searched his face for any sign of the joke that was certain to be... but no, he was serious. Sascha and Irine would have run with a statement like that, but her Eldritch prince-doctor-spy actually meant it. How did she end up meeting all the weirdest people in the Alliance?
“I’ll pass,” Reese said, not quite able to give it the vinegar she’d wanted to. “I should be dressed in case something comes up with the ship anyway.”
“Reasonable,” he said. “Don’t eat anything until I see you next.”
“There’s going to be a next?” Reese asked.
“Yes.” No arguing with the firmness of that one. He continued. “Try to sleep. I’ll come by in a brace of hours. There should be news by then.”
“Sleep! I couldn’t possibly—”
“I think you’ll be surprised,” he said.
Reese picked at the corner of one of the blankets, then asked, “You’re not going to... help me fall asleep. The way you threatened. Right?”
That startled one of the first unguarded expressions out of him she’d seen. Maybe the first, for all she knew. She almost didn’t recognize it; as with all his other expressions, he erred on the side of minimalism.
She’d hurt his feelings.
And curse it all, she felt bad about it.
He set both hands on the edge of her hammock so carefully it didn’t even rock. Looking into her eyes, he said, “I would never. Never. Abuse my oath.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest it,” Reese said after she caught her breath. “I just thought if you thought it was in my best interests you might—”
“Never,” Hirianthial said in a voice so soft and so intense she stopped talking and just believed him.
Reese swallowed and huddled back into her blankets.
“Now, good sleep, Captain Eddings. I’ll be back later.” He held her eyes a few moments longer then left. In the dark, Reese held onto Allacazam and muttered, “Blood in the soil! He’s not a little intense at all, is he.”
Allacazam painted a muted purple sparkle across the inside of her eyes. She wasn’t sure if he was laughing or not.
Outside in the corridor, Hirianthial trailed his fingers against the wall and let out a long breath. Forty years he’d spent practicing the skills taught to him by Alliance doctors, forty years that had felt like four hundred thanks to the density of experiences in every day. And in all those forty years he’d never been accused of anything as underhanded as drugging a patient without her consent. For all he knew, Reese hadn’t even thought he’d use a drug, but assumed he’d somehow knock her out with his mind alone! Was it him that inspired so much vitriol and distrust, or was it normal for her? The Queen had chosen Reese from all the bankrupt traders in space, had indubitably put her under surveillance since. What about this human spitfire had inspired Liolesa’s interest? It couldn’t solely be the woman’s suspicious ways... there were Eldritch who would make Reese look naive. Most of them, even; he didn’t think she’d last a single week at Ontine amid the predators in their so-smooth masks.
No, there was something else at work here. He would have to ask as soon as he found a comm line he could secure. The starbase, then.
Still, Reese’s assumptions about him didn’t relieve him of his responsibility to see her back to health, no matter how unlikely it was that she’d remain healthy after treatment. He’d come back in the promised hour and a half and hopefully find her sleeping with Allacazam in her arms. The intervening time he might as well use to restore his own equilibrium. A little meditation in the small room he’d been assigned wouldn’t be unwelcome.
He had just settled into a comfortable pose and begun the ordering of his mind when the comm panel in his room hissed awake.
“Doctor.”
Hirianthial stretched up from his crouch far enough to hit the button. “Yes, Bryer?”
“Can you set bones?”
His body tensed. “Yes.”
“Please you to come to the lowerdeck, then. There is an accident.”
Hirianthial rose. “Do you have a medical kit there?”
“None.”
“Give me directions and I’ll be there as soon as I pick up the kit from the clinic.”
The Earthrise surprised him by being larger than he’d expected, but he found his way to the lowerdeck and a cramped corner of a large and empty bay. He’d never seen the inside of a cargo vessel and as modest as Reese made the ship sound the sight of the thick spindles hanging so far above his head filled him with both wonder and unease.
Bryer waved him over to a prone figure.
“Fix,” the Phoenix said, pointing at Sascha’s leg.
“Right,” Sascha hissed. “Just like that.” The tigraine rolled yellow eyes up to Hirianthial’s face. “You can do magic, right?”
Hirianthial popped the lid and had an ampoule in the tigraine before he finished his sentence. Sascha sighed, quivering.
“Better?”
“As long as I don’t look down,” the tigraine said meekly.
Hirianthial studied the injury and judged it average: very little mess compared to some breaks he’d witnessed in emergency room rounds. He started undoing the laces at his wrists. “Sharp, heavy object directly on your shin, corner first, yes?”
“The offender’s over there,” Sascha said with a jerk of his chin. Hirianthial spared it a glance but had no idea what it was other than capable of doing the damage.
“Can I go back to work?” Bryer asked.
“Yes, we’re fine,” Hirianthial said.
“Are you sure?” Sascha asked.
“You are the proud owner of a compound fracture of both the bones in your lower leg,” Hirianthial said, pushing back his sleeves and tightening the laces to anchor them at his elbows. He dragged the medical kit to his side and found the bone kit. “Providing you don’t take up marathon running while it’s healing, you should be fine once we’re done.”
“Are you sure I can’t be unconscious for this?” Sascha asked.
Hirianthial glanced at him, noted the gray skin inside the ears. “If you want a sedative I can give you one, alet.”
The tigraine licked his nose and stared up at the ceiling. “I guess as long as I don’t look at it.”
“Blood bothers a lot of people,” Hirianthial said. “There’s no shame in taking the sedative.”
“If it were only the blood,” Sascha said. “I can deal with injuries in just about anyone else, even Irine who might as well be another me. But my own body? I want my own body to stay in one piece.”
“This won’t take long,” Hirianthial said, opening the bone kit. Most treatment modalities taught in the Alliance core emphasized allowing the body to heal at its own pace despite the availability of technology that accelerated tissue replacement. There were exceptions and broken bones obtained. The Eldritch disinfected the break.
“Please tell me you’re not actually swabbing my bones with something,” Sascha said, his aura frizzing violently green.
“Tell me about your employer,” Hirianthial said.
“What, Reese? Reese’s all right. A little wound up, maybe.”
“So it’s not me in particular that she finds annoying.”
“Oh no, she finds you very very more annoying than the rest of us,” Sascha said, his laugh trailing to a hiss as Hirianthial began to move the bones.
“You shouldn’t be feeling any pain,” Hirianthial said, stopping.
“I’m not, but I can still feel pressure. Just do it and get it over with it.” The tigraine’s tail lashed. “Anyway, it’s because you weren’t part of the plan. She’ll get used to you though, presuming you stay around. You are staying around, right?”
“I hadn’t thought about it overmuch,” Hirianthial said. Talking smoothed out the tigraine’s aura, so as he placed the setting clamp around the calf he continued, “Why, do you think I should?”
“You don’t seem like you have someplace else to go,” Sascha said. “And Reese pays pretty well. If you’re not afraid of hard work she’s a fair boss.”
“And what would I do on a merchant ship?” Hirianthial asked. “Unless you have a habit of dropping large metal objects on your body?”
“No, but as I’m sure you’ve noticed the only reason Reese still has any of her digestive system’s because it hasn’t found an organ bank to defect to.”
A laugh surprised its way out of Hirianthial. He sealed the clamp. “Yes, I noticed. And we’re done here. How do you feel?”
“Like I don’t trust my body,” Sascha said, pushing himself up on his palms. “Is it safe to walk around?”
“Walk but not run. Be gentle with it. Have you had a bone set this way before?” When Sascha shook his head, Hirianthial said, “Don’t expect to sleep much. You’re going to be hungry often enough to wake in the middle of the night, probably several times. That’s normal: your body is burning through your stores generating new cells at several times the usual speed. Eat until you’re sated whenever you’re hungry and we should be able to take the clamp off in two days, maybe three.”
“Right,” Sascha said. “Look, doc, let me give you a tip. In the next few days Reese is going to try everything she can think of to get you to go away. Just ignore her and she’ll make you an offer.”
Hirianthial stared at him. “Why would I ever stay if she wants me to leave?”
“Because she doesn’t really want you to leave,” Sascha said. He chuckled. “Look, you’re exotic and you fascinate her, just like the rest of us. Who doesn’t want to know more about a real Eldritch? But you arrived in her life in a way that makes her feel like she’s lost control, which means she has to get it back even if she ends up forcing the decision in a direction she doesn’t want. Let her feel like she’s in charge and she’ll let you stay.”
“You keep presuming that there’s some reason for me to stay beyond ministering to your captain’s stress-taxed biology,” Hirianthial said. He no longer made the pretense of putting away the medical kit but looked at the tigraine directly.
“Well, like I said, it’s not like you have some other place to go,” Sascha replied.
“And how do you divine that?” Hirianthial asked, careful to project only curiosity and not his alarm.
The other chuckled. “Look, arii, I’ve been around a while. I’ve been through times where there’s been no place to go. Not because there wasn’t, but because I just couldn’t, wouldn’t go to the places that were left. I know your patience. It’s the kind you get when there’s nothing pressing pulling you on.”
Though appalled, Hirianthial showed only polite interest. Still, something in his face must have changed enough for the tigraine to see.
“Hey, it’s not like it’s some terrible crime!” Sascha said. “We’ve all been there, most of us. Certainly all of us on this berth. And like I said, this isn’t all that terrible a place to work. We see a lot of interesting places, hauling cargo. Some of them are good and some of them are bad and all of them are new. It’s something to do.”
“I really need to get back to work,” Hirianthial said, finding his voice at last and tapping the kit. “This is what I do.”
“For now, anyway,” Sascha said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t look too old and your people live longer than tortoises, right? What’s a couple of years... a couple of decades, even! To someone who lives that long?”
“Time is always precious,” Hirianthial said softly.
“Only if you fill it with something,” Sascha said. “Otherwise it’s marking the hours.” He gingerly rolled onto his knees. “Speaking of marking hour, I need to get back to repairs.”
“Don’t let something else fall on you, ah?”
“No,” Sascha said. “Definitely not in my plan. Thanks, arii.”
Reese surprised herself by falling asleep, rocking in her hammock with Allacazam burbling the white noise of a brook. She wasn’t sure if that was his way of lulling her or his version of snoring, but she liked it either way. She woke feeling better, if not completely hale, and decided that was healthy enough to go keep an eye on things. On her way off the hammock, she saw a crow form in her mind’s eye, sitting on the top of a dark building and staring at her.
“I’m just going to the bridge. It’s not like I’m going to take over,” Reese said.
The crow kept watching her.
She sighed. “Look, I’m not going back to sleep. I want to know what’s going on and I’m tired of acting like an invalid. I promise not to strain myself, okay?”
The Flitzbe’s sending transformed into a muted wash of silver and the sound and smell of rain. She took that for resigned agreement and petted his wiggling neural fur. “Thanks. If that busybody Eldritch comes around tell him where I am, okay?”
More wiggling. A picture of Hirianthial rose in her mind, surprisingly clear: as far as Reese knew the Flitzbe didn’t see the same way she did, so this was either Reese’s image of the Eldritch or Hirianthial’s. Since she couldn’t possibly imagine that she thought of him in such bright and pleasant colors and with squiggles of gold and deep scarlet around him like a brocade halo, it must be his.
“Right, him,” Reese said. The image of the Eldritch began to glower comically. “Yeah, I know he won’t be happy. But he’s got to learn he doesn’t run things around here. So just tell him where I am, okay? I have things to do.”
Before the Flitzbe could reply, Reese swung herself out of the hammock and headed for the bridge. Halfway there she detoured to the galley and picked up food for the girls. They probably hadn’t stopped to eat. There was nothing appetizing in the larder, but she grabbed a couple of yogurt-coated protein bars and a jug of water and brought them with her.
Kis’eh’t and Irine were still sitting where she’d left them, though both of them had unstrapped their safety harnesses and were relaxed in their chairs. Reese squeezed past the crates of spare parts and said, “Lunch is here. Dinner. Whatever.”
Irine’s ears perked. “Did someone say food?”
“Not great food, but yeah,” Reese said, handing over a bar. She gave the second to Kis’eh’t and found a place between them to sit. “How’s it going?”
“We’re in good shape coasting with the rocks,” Irine said. “Getting in here was a bit of an adventure, but we made it.” She pointed through the small windows at the asteroids in the distance. “We should be fine here until the repairs are done. Bryer tells me our in-systems are ready... that was the easy part. They’re working on the Well Drive now.”
Reese looked at Kis’eh’t. “Sensors say anything?”
“Can’t see anything past the rock noise,” Kis’eh’t said. “We’re hoping if we can’t see anything, they can’t either. It’s not like pirates have Fleet-grade sensor arrays.”
“Hopefully,” Reese said. “Thanks, guys. You did great.”
“Thank us when we get to Starbase Kappa in one piece,” Irine said, but she purred between bites of the bar.
“Did you have a nice nap?” Kis’eh’t asked.
“Surprisingly,” Reese said. “Though now that I’m awake again I wish I was still in bed. I have no idea what we’re going to do now. I spent almost everything I had on the rooderberries.”
“I guess we’ll just hang out and hope for another assignment, then,” Irine said. “That’s worked before, once or twice.”
“And in the meantime, protein bars,” Kis’eh’t said, eyeing hers with distaste.
“Hey, pass it over if you don’t want it,” Irine said. “I’m hungry.”
The Glaseahn grumbled and unpeeled the wrapper.
“What about you?” Irine asked. “Hungry?”
“Nah. I’m not allowed to eat until Lord High-and-Mighty says I can.”
“—or?” Irine asked.
“Or he’ll cut open my stomach with sandpaper and a boot knife.”
“What boot knife?” the tigraine asked. “He doesn’t have any weapons on him thanks to his keepers.”
“I’m sure he’ll improvise with something,” Reese said. “A nail clipper. A butter knife.”
“We haven’t had any butter in ages,” Kis’eh’t said.
“We’ll have butter again,” Reese said and sighed. “I really meant to take better care of you all.”
“It’s not your fault we can’t seem to keep out of disaster’s way long enough to turn a fin,” Irine said. “We’ll get out of this one, boss, and then you’ll write a book: “Rooderberry Torpedoes and Other Strategies for Outrunning Slavers.” And then you’ll get rich and we’ll all retire.”
Reese laughed. “A nice story—” and the ship shivered. She sat up. “What was that?”
Kis’eh’t frowned. “Not sure. A stray asteroidlet from the outer bands? We shouldn’t be getting those right now.” Her fingers drummed the board as Reese watched, and then they stopped and that unsavory gray color returned to the skin around her eyes. “Aksivaht’h! They’ve followed us in!”
“The pirates?” Reese said, rising to her knees and propping herself on the board to look for herself. Two hazy red blips were showing up in the muted gray and black dapple that represented the asteroid belt. “Two of them?”
Irine strapped herself back in. “Were they shooting at us, Kis’eh’t, or just trying their luck? If they’re guessing I don’t want to light up their arrays by firing the thrusters.”
“I can’t tell,” Kis’eh’t said. “They’re not gunning for us, though. They seem to be drifting through the outer bands.”
“Don’t these people give up?” Reese asked. “What could they want so badly to send two ships into an asteroid belt? That’s crazy!”
“It’s not that crazy,” Irine said. “We’re in here, after all. And we’ve got their pet Eldritch. Angels know how much an Eldritch is worth on the slave market.”
“If they even want to keep him,” Kis’eh’t said. “If he was spying, they might just want to kill him.”
The thought of Hirianthial’s body robbed of its grace, sprawled on the floor at odd angles with all that white hair tangled and bloody, bothered Reese more than she wanted to admit. “The guy’s annoying, but not annoying enough to let someone else kill him,” she said. “Let’s see if these two get any closer or if they’re just hoping for a lucky shot. And finish eating, Kis’eh’t. It might be a while before you have the chance again.”
The Glaseahn went back to chewing on the bar. When Reese passed her the water jug, the other woman said, “You’re taking this well.”
“No, I’m not,” Reese said. “I’m just hiding it better.” She grinned, but privately wondered. Kis’eh’t was right... she was calmer about this than she expected. Maybe she was just tired of worrying about everything herself? Or maybe the Eldritch had drugged her on the way out after all—
—no, that was unfair. He hadn’t done anything to her except make her admit she needed the rest.
The lift opened then for Sascha. “Did someone call for me?”
“I’m always calling for you,” Irine said, purring.
“Is the Well Drive ready?” Reese asked, hoping.
Sascha shook his head. “No, but only one of us can get at it at this point and Bryer’s the better mechanic. He sent me away before I dropped another crate on my other leg.”
“Your leg!” Irine exclaimed. “What happened?”
“I’m fine. The doctor patched me up and I should be good as new in a couple of days. Though I’m famished. Anyone got any food?”
“Here, take mine,” Kis’eh’t said, offering her half-eaten bar.
While crunching it, Sascha sat next to the pilot’s chair. “So what’s cooking?”
“Two ships followed us into the belt and are looking for us,” Reese said.
“Can you drive?” Irine asked.
“As long as my arms are fine I can fly,” Sascha said. “Want me to take over?”
“Please,” Reese and Irine said in unison. The latter blushed. “I’m really good, but not as good.”
“No problem,” Sascha said, sliding into the vacant chair. “We drifting until we have evidence they’ve actually seen us?”
“Yeah,” Reese said.
“Good plan. I can finish eating.”
Which he did. In the ensuing silence, Reese looked over the twins and Kis’eh’t. She wondered if this would be the last run they flew together. What would pirates do with her ship? Convert it into a slaver? She couldn’t imagine it decorated with poorly-mounted weapon additions and used as a pirate ship. The notion of her battered old freighter threatening much larger vessels made her want to laugh out loud. She didn’t, though.
“I could seriously use a vacation,” Sascha said after a while.
“Mmm,” Irine said.
“Someplace warm,” Kis’eh’t offered. When Reese eyed her, the Glaseahn shrugged her wing arms. “You do keep it cold around here, Reese. Even for me.”
“Home is warm,” Irine said.
“Home is hot,” Sascha amended.
“But there are wonderful open houses with stone tiles warm beneath your feet,” Irine said. “And with fluttering scarves to filter the hardest sunlight and turn it colors. And there’s always fruit, the juiciest melons, all cool and crisp and fit to put streams down your chin.”
“Sounds good to me,” Kis’eh’t said.
“And water,” Irine said. Reese handed her the jug, which the tigraine looked at, puzzled, then drank from. “Water splashing in fountains, really soft. And birds at the fountains, bright birds with curious eyes that will eat berries from your fingers.”
“Sounds like a nice place,” Reese said.
“You wouldn’t like it, boss,” Sascha said, grinning. “It’s full of Harat-Shar.”
Reese laughed. “Oh, maybe you two have grown on me.” She sobered. “A vacation sounds nice. We’d just have to win the most improbable gambling streak to be able to afford one. Besides, as nice as your warm paradise sounds, Irine, I think I’d prefer something cooler. Snow, maybe.”
“Snow!” Irine said and shuddered.
“Not the entire year,” Reese said. “Just for a month or two. Enough so you could appreciate a fireplace and hot coffee and bread fresh from the oven. And a blanket.”
“Reese, I think they’re heading for us.”
She looked over Kis’eh’t’s arm. “At least, they’re heading deeper into the belt.”
“Doesn’t change that at that angle of approach they’re going to have to be blind to miss that we’re in their sensor cone. We’re in trouble.”
“Irine, man our laser please.”
The tigraine scampered to the corner of the bridge. The laser that had come with the Earthrise had been intended to clear debris, not to provide much by way of protection from pirates. Reese doubted it would prove at all useful but one never knew. “Sascha, can you outfly these people?”
“Normally? No, I don’t think so,” Sascha said, tail flicking. “These two are beefier than the last pirate they sent after us. But in here, gambling with rocks the size of small moons? Yeah, I think we’re crazier than they are. Just say the word.”
Reese watched the blip of the first pirate, strangely distanced from it. She couldn’t quite believe it was in here. She had never carried cargo valuable enough to warrant interest from pirates. The idea that she was dodging two of them in an asteroid belt like some kind of 3deo action star was ludicrous and simply couldn’t be happening.
“Do it.”
Sascha fired the engines and the Earthrise lurched to one side.
“Are you heading for that asteroid?” Reese asked.
“Boss if you can’t handle the view, get off the obdeck.”
“Right,” Reese said, and clutched at side of the station. Now she was getting worried.
“They’ve seen us!” Kis’eh’t said. “They’re both changing course to follow.”
“Let them,” Sascha said. “We’re heading for the mid-belt, where the asteroids are small enough to cluster and big enough to kill us.”
“Joy,” Reese muttered. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“As long as I know just a little more than they do we’re in business.”
“Just try to keep our repair bill manageable,” Reese said, clenching her teeth as a rock flew past, narrowly missing.
The intercom chimed and Kis’eh’t flicked it on.
“Lowerdeck. Am not getting much done with you sending me shooting across the deck on feathers.”
“Sorry about that,” Kis’eh’t said. “We’re trying to out-fly two raiders they’ve sent for us. I recommend strapping down.”
“Thanks for the not-warning. Will get back to work.” The comm shut down.
“At least he doesn’t have the screaming shakes,” Reese said.
“Kis’eh’t, find me the densest bit of this band.”
“Head further sunward. There’s a pack of asteroids ahead.”
“Thanks.”
Irine sidled over until her side was pressed against Reese’s. For once, Reese didn’t care; usually she discouraged the twins from coming near since their hugs tended to turn into cuddling. It seemed like a crime to die without having a good cuddle though, at least with someone who wasn’t practically a plant, like Allacazam.
“Are we going to die?” Irine whispered.
“Don’t think things like that,” Reese said.
“Seriously,” Irine said. “Because I think I’d rather live as someone’s pleasure slave than die free.”
Reese glanced at her, was just a little surprised to discover the tigraine was serious. Homeworld-bred Harat-Shar could be very strange. From experience, Reese knew better than to try to explain that she and Kis’eh’t and Bryer and certainly Hirianthial would probably have a much more difficult time spending their lives in captivity, so instead she said, “What if you don’t wind up a pleasure slave? What if they put you to work mining ore or something?”
“No one forces slaves to do manual labor,” Irine whispered. “Machines are faster and last longer.”
“What if they send you to the Chatcaavan Empire? I hear they torture their slaves.”
“A little pain is a good thing,” Irine said. Added, “Sometimes a lot of pain.”
Which was more than Reese wanted to know. She winced as an asteroid whacked the side of the ship, sending a quiver through the deck plates. Finally she said, “What if they don’t want another Harat-Shar slave? What if they kill you and use your pelt as a throw rug?”
That paled the skin inside Irine’s ears. “Do you really believe there’s a sapient fur trade?”
“I didn’t believe there was a slave trade either,” Reese said.
Irine wrapped her arms around Reese’s waist and shuddered. “I don’t want to be someone’s rug!”
“And I don’t want to be someone’s harem girl, so let’s just hope your brother knows what he’s doing.”
The ship shivered again. “You’ll want to avoid the rocks, Sascha.”
“That wasn’t a rock,” Kis’eh’t said. “They’re firing at us. Ranging shots, looks like.”
“Let them try to keep a bead on us,” Sascha growled. “Hang on, ariisen.”
The Earthrise banked so sharply to the side an alarm went off. Reese slapped a hand against one ear and crawled to the other side of the bridge to find the source. One of her panels had gone red and was flashing ‘Structural Stress Overload’ and ‘Gantry Separation Imminent.’ “Blood and Freedom, Sascha, there are things threatening to separate from this ship I didn’t even know were on it!”
“Not now, boss,” Sascha said tightly.
Reese chanced a look out the rear windows and froze. She’d spent an appreciable amount of her adulthood in space and was accustomed to the distances—”near” in spacer terms wasn’t eyeshot, which meant she should not, under any circumstances, be able to see that pirate there that was flying around the asteroid that Sascha must have been swerving to miss. Now was not the time to vomit, but her stomach flexed in her middle anyway.
The second raider appeared on the first one’s heels and the Earthrise bucked so violently Reese lost her hold on the board and smacked sideways into a crate.
“They missed us!” Kis’eh’t cried.
“That was a miss?” Irine asked.
“Rocks separated from the asteroid they nicked instead,” Kis’eh’t said. “Hurt us but just cosmetically.”
Just as Reese righted herself, the Earthrise dove to the other side, introducing her upper back to the corner of the station. Acceleration pressed her into it hard enough that she couldn’t find a way to get up. “Saaascha!”
“Almost done—GOT ‘EM!”
In the corner of her eye, Reese could see a rock swooping into view behind them and the raider not turning fast enough to avoid it. The explosions that rippled from its side seemed to happen in slow motion.
“That one is definitely out of the game,” Kis’eh’t said. “The other one’s still coming, though.”
The alarms from Reese’s board were still whooping. Now that she could turn she did to find new problems bordering the old ones, which were now flashing their distress. “If I lose some part of this ship because of this—”
“I’m just working on getting the oxygenated part out of this in one piece,” Sascha said. “The rest of it can be replaced.” The ship began leaning to one side again.
“They’re still tailing us,” Kis’eh’t said.
“Not after this they won’t be,” Sascha said, and dropped the bridge out from under them. Reese’s mouth filled with burning fluid but she swallowed it back down before it could have any other ideas. Her palms were sweating more than usual. Was the room spinning?
One of the alarms stopped abruptly. ‘Gantry Separation Imminent’ became ‘Gantry Has Separated. Please check for leaks.’ “Leaks!” Reese exclaimed.
“I’m not seeing any leaks,” Kis’eh’t said. “What happened?”
“I think one of the cargo cranes just came off,” Reese said weakly.
“Dodge that, friend,” Sascha said, and pulled them out of their dive so quickly Reese gave up her watch on the board and dropped onto the floor to fight with her stomach full-time.
“And—he’s skidded to a stop!” Kis’eh’t said. The Glaseahn squinted at her board, then added, “He’s venting, Sascha. You did something!”
Sascha hit the intercom button. “Bryer, now would be a good time to tell me we can get the hells out of this system.”
“Can do. Vector away.”
Sascha crowed. “We’re out of here!”
Irine and Kis’eh’t cheered. Reese would have joined them but wasn’t sure opening her mouth would have been a good idea.
From the lift, a baritone said, “So is it safe to come out now?”
“Hey, Hirianthial! Looks like we made it out alive!”
“Good to hear. And here is my runaway.”
Reese stared at the man’s gray leather boots and hated them. Did they have to be so finely polished? They weren’t even scuffed. Even the pewter buckles were unmarred. The Eldritch crouched over her and the open concern in his eyes irritated her as much as it worried her.
“I hope you don’t mind if I take you back to your hammock,” Hirianthial said so softly he must have intended only her to hear.
“Preparing to Well away,” Sascha said.
Reese licked her upper lip and chanced a few words. “Think I could handle that.”
The Earthrise shook so hard Reese flew forward into Hirianthial, who caught her before sliding back against the lift.
“What was that!” Kis’eh’t shouted.
“A parting blow,” Sascha said. “Their weapons still work, I guess. Doesn’t matter because... three, two, one, we’re gone!”
The smooth hum beneath her thinned away until the Well Drive’s nigh silence took over. Reese waited long enough to ensure they’d made it into folded-space before vomiting onto Hirianthial’s brocade tunic and fainting completely away.
“How far are we from Starbase Kappa?” Hirianthial asked, running a hand over Reese’s chest. The black knot over her had become so thorny sensing it brought tears to the corners of his eyes. He wished fervently for a real medical scanner, one capable of penetrating to the tissue level he needed. It could be that she was worsening but not in danger yet... or she could be dying. Reading her aura wouldn’t give him the specifics he needed to make surgical decisions.
Of course, he had no operating room to fix any surgical problems, so perhaps it was for the best.
“We’re about six hours out,” Sascha said.
“Can we get there faster?”
Irine unharnessed herself and crawled over. “What’s wrong?”
“She needs medical attention,” Hirianthial said. “Soon.”
“Aren’t you medical attention?” Irine asked. Her brother glanced over the back of his chair and added, “How soon?”
“Now would be best,” Hirianthial said. “And while I appreciate your confidence, a doctor without tools isn’t much use in a situation like this.”
“Well, we’re not going to be able to get there now,” Sascha said. “The best I can do is shave an hour or two off the total.”
Hirianthial said, “That would not be a poor idea. In the mean, I’ll try to keep her stable until we arrive.”
“Try?” Sascha asked, eyes round.
“This isn’t a broken bone,” Hirianthial said, slipping an arm beneath Reese’s shoulders... carefully, so very carefully. Her entire body was a tangle so taut he feared aggravating it.
“We can push the drive,” Sascha said. “Cut it down to four hours.”
“That might also blow out the drive,” Kis’eh’t said. “Bad enough that we lost the cargo crane and probably something else in that last shot. But to lose the Well Drive? It won’t matter if Reese survives whatever’s wrong with her, she’ll blow up from new stress the moment she finds out.”
Hirianthial put his other arm beneath Reese’s knees and lifted her into his arms. He hadn’t paid much attention to the bouncing and jerking of the ride, but it had taken a toll. Getting to one knee made him realize his joints were not those of a youth’s anymore.
It didn’t hurt as much as Reese’s body was hurting.
“Look, how serious is this?” Kis’eh’t asked, feathered ears fanned closed. “I thought she just had some sort of ulcer.”
“She does,” Hirianthial said. “The problem is she has more ulcer than esophagus, and it might be rupturing.”
“Might?” Kis’eh’t said.
“Without a real scanner I can’t be sure,” Hirianthial said. “But I would guess that if it’s not rupturing it’s very close.”
“That sounds serious,” Irine said, her eyes as wide as her brother’s.
“It is serious,” Hirianthial said. He couldn’t quite bring himself to frighten them beyond that. “I’d appreciate being able to deliver her to appropriate facilities as quickly as possible.”
Sascha searched his face, then turned in his seat. “Right. We’re pushing the drive.”
“Sascha—”
“Kis’eh’t, if she eats me for lunch when she wakes up at least she’ll be awake to do it. Bryer? You awake down there?”
“Awake, yes. Astounded also.”
“Reese is sick. We’re redlining the drive to Kappa.”
“I will pamper it like a colicky child.”
“Thanks,” Sascha said.
Hirianthial turned to the lift and was surprised to find Irine in his way.
“Can I help?” the tigraine asked, squeezing the end of her tail. Her aura pulsed in rhythm with her accelerated heart rate.
“Of course,” Hirianthial said.
He carried her to her quarters with Irine silent at his heels. The tigraine keyed the door open for him and he laid Reese in her hammock with Allacazam, who turned an alarmed orange once he bumped Reese’s side.
“I know,” Hirianthial murmured, petting the Flitzbe. “Irine, would you be so good as to fetch the kit that’s in the clinic?”
“Right,” Irine said and scampered away.
In the silence and the dark, Hirianthial filled a small bowl with lukewarm water and began removing Reese’s soiled vest. The lead gray of her aura, choked with black knots, promised she’d stay unconscious long enough for him to take the equally soiled pants off as well, but knowing how she’d react if she discovered he’d unclothed her kept him from doing more. That and the comment about impropriety, a claim so unusual in the multicultural Alliance that it both charmed and discomfited him. He’d become accustomed to the libertine—by Eldritch standards—mores of the outworlders, and anything more conservative reminded him strongly of home.
“You’re getting the nasty stuff off?” Irine asked as she entered. “Why don’t you let me do it? At least that way when she asks who put her in her nightgown you can honestly say it was me.”
“A fine idea,” Hirianthial said, taking the kit from her. He turned his back as the tigraine began pulling off Reese’s pants. The inadequacy of the kit proved a useful if unfortunate distraction. What he wanted was a complete medical scanner and the tools to act on its findings; first aid kits were not equipped to handle Reese’s problem. If her esophagus ruptured, nothing short of surgery could save her, and no drug in this kit could retard the process....
Except... what had the charge doctor on Tam-ley said once? Something to do with mucus? Hirianthial rubbed a temple. “What’s in your larder, Irine?”
“Our—what? Our galley? I don’t know, what do you want to eat?”
“Not food,” Hirianthial said, trying to pin down the memory. He’d started losing track of things by the time he hit three hundred despite the mental disciplines he’d learned to prevent it... remembering things now so long removed from his young adulthood was a challenge. He tapped a finger on the edge of the kit, trying to remember. Not cream, but... ah! “Do you have powdered milk?”
“Everyone carries powdered milk,” Irine said, mystified. “Do you want some?”
“Please. Bring it in the package.”
Irine left, taking her perplexed aura with her. Hirianthial hoped they had what he needed and returned to the drug stock. Like every kit, it held the red vial in the corner mold, more than enough for several score emergency doses. Even with his stopgap measure, using the vial’s contents would better Reese’s chances. He doubted she would like it, and he absolutely wouldn’t apply it without her consent.
He’d have to wake her for the makeshift palliative, anyway.
Irine had gotten Reese into her nightgown, a lace-edged affair sewn of ivory cotton so fine it neared translucence and long enough to tangle at her ankles. It suited her, which made little sense to Hirianthial; she’d also suited her brightly-colored vests and jumpsuits. He sat beside the hammock on a stool, monitoring her through her aura’s hissing crawl until Irine arrived with a single-serving box in hand.
“You look confused,” she said.
“Do I?” Hirianthial asked, taking the box.
Irine nodded. “If it’s about the nightgown, you’re not the only one who thinks it’s funny. She reads romance novels too.”
“We all have to pass the time somehow,” Hirianthial said, reading the ingredient list. He allowed himself the smallest breath of relief and noticed his shoulders losing their tension. “Thank you, Irine. I think you found your captain her four hours.”
“You mean... it... she could... “
“She’s in a bad way,” Hirianthial said. “This will tide her over.”
“Powdered milk?”
Hirianthial fetched a bowl and filled it with a shallow puddle of water, then poured the entire box into it. He gloved a hand and swirled the result with his fingers, praying that it would work as well as the charge doctor had claimed. The man had been excellent at finding unusual solutions to problems; Hirianthial had watched him pioneer countless peculiar methods but hadn’t actually witnessed this one in action. “The milk from one of the herdbeasts used commonly in powdered milk isn’t all that different from mucus. It should coat Reese’s esophagus long enough to get her to Kappa.”
“We just have to wake her up,” Irine said.
He nodded. “There’s something in the kit for that.” The solution in the bowl began to resist his stirring. “I think we’re ready. Hold this, please.”
Irine grimaced at the bowl. “She’s going to have to drink this?”
“Eat it, more like,” Hirianthial said.
“I thought it was supposed to have more water in it.”
“We don’t want it too dilute,” Hirianthial said, loading the AAP. He smoothed back some of Reese’s errant braids, then gave her the smallest possible dose to bring her back to consciousness. He waited, monitoring her colors as they began to flicker through the black and gray of her aura.
Finally—”Ohhh.”
“Boss, it’s us,” Irine whispered on the other side of the hammock. In the dark, the tigraine’s pupils were swollen and flashed green when she blinked.
“Don’t talk,” Hirianthial added. “We’re going to give you something we want you to swallow and some water to wash it down. It’ll make you feel better.”
Reese tipped her head down once. He brought the bowl to her lips and slid his fingers through her braids again. This time he was expecting their texture. Her skull seemed small in his hand, though. He’d lost enough patients to trust his instincts and his perception of her frailty worried him. “Here. Drink.”
Reese sputtered on the first swallow.
“Come on, boss, do it for us,” Irine said. “How are you going to yell at us if you can’t talk?”
That bought them a third of the bowl. Hirianthial let her have water and watched with concern as she let her eyes flutter shut. After a few breaths, she resumed drinking. Her aura remained a knotted black and as she drank he sensed it worsening. Consciousness would not serve her. Reese finished off the bowl and Hirianthial let her have a few more sips of water before putting them aside.
“I have some questions I must ask you,” Hirianthial said. “I want you to save your strength, so if you have anything to say make it simple.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Reese whispered.
“You’re very unwell,” Hirianthial said. “When we reach Starbase Kappa you need to go into surgery to repair the ulcer in your esophagus.”
She didn’t speak but a flame of yellow alarm made it through her aura’s thorns.
“Your condition is serious,” Hirianthial said. “The solution you just drank will help keep you from getting worse, but remaining conscious is an invitation to trouble. I would like your permission to dose you with slowsleep.”
Fear jumped through the crevices of her pain. “It’s only for four or five hours,” Hirianthial said. “The dose will be low and I’ll be monitoring your condition continually. You’ll feel as if you’re drifting off to a sleep full of vivid dreams. When you wake up, you’ll be done with the operation and your body will be better than new.”
“Don’t like slowsleep,” Reese said, eyes wide.
“Please, boss. We won’t let anything happen to you,” Irine said, taking Reese’s hand.
“She’s right,” Hirianthial said. “I won’t let anything happen to you. This is just a precaution to make the operation go more smoothly once we reach the base.”
“I’ll be okay?” Reese whispered.
“You’ll be okay,” Hirianthial said, softening his voice.
Reese bit her lip, then nodded once.
Hirianthial leaned back and pulled out the vial and the syringe. As he loaded it, he said, “As a matter of formality I need to ask if you have a healthcare proxy. Understand that I’m required to ask whenever administering a dose of slowsleep.”
Her anxiety level spiked, thorns spitting black sparks off her aura. He rested a hand on the edge of the hammock and said, “A five-hour dose of slowsleep isn’t dangerous. Trust me, Theresa. You won’t come to any harm.”
She swallowed, then said, “Don’t have a proxy. You’re the doctor. You decide for me.”
He nodded. “Very well. I’m going to give you the slowsleep now. When you wake up, you’ll be out of danger. Allacazam and Irine and I will take care of you, we’ll be right here. All right?”
She swallowed again and nodded.
He set the syringe against her arm. A low hiss, and it was done. Irine squeezed Reese’s hand and whispered, “Do you think I should sing to her?”
“It couldn’t hurt,” Hirianthial said, putting away the vial and AAP.
Irine sang in a surprisingly sweet furry soprano. He recognized parts of the language as Meridan but peppered with enough foreign words that he couldn’t fully understand the song, something about wind and light. He put the kit away and watched the colors in Reese’s aura drain away, leaving only the black and gray tangle. By the time Irine finished her lullaby, Reese had succumbed to the dose.
“Now what?” Irine asked in a soft voice.
“Now I watch her,” Hirianthial said. “It’s rare for anything to happen during slowsleep, but most people report remembering the presence of others under the influence.”
“Then I’ll stay too, like you said,” Irine said, and curled up on the floor. “Um, Hirianthial... will you please... I mean, you have been very cagey about Reese. Could this kill her?”
A direct question about the health of a friend Hirianthial couldn’t dodge. So he didn’t. “Yes, it could.”
Irine shivered. “But it’s just a stomach thing!”
“It’s not just a stomach thing,” Hirianthial said. “It’s a bacterial infection that she’s been ignoring which has been intensified by stress to the point of rupturing her esophagus. Once that occurs, fluid can enter the chest cavity and that can kill. But we’re going to get Reese to Kappa long before then.”
Irine was silent. Hirianthial composed himself on the stool, hooking his boot heels on the bottom rung. After a while, the tigraine said, “Have you lost a lot of patients?”
“One is too many,” Hirianthial replied, “So the concept of ‘a lot’ is difficult to take seriously. Yes, I’ve lost people under my care.”
“Even in the Alliance,” Irine said, ears flattening.
“For all its technological wonders, and they are many, the Alliance is not the same everywhere,” Hirianthial said. “A woman in Terracentrus is going to get better care than a woman on a freighter in the middle of no-space. Location matters. Access to facilities matters. Money matters. Up-to-date kits matter.”
“I guess some things don’t change,” Irine said.
Hirianthial rested his gaze on Reese’s slack face. “Not easily, no.”
The many shifts Hirianthial had spent on patient watch had taught him how to relax so deeply he encroached on sleep’s soft threshold without crossing it. In such a state he not only maintained his emotional equilibrium but could track the auras of any people in his care. Reese was close enough that her presence intruded on his, but even Irine’s registered, a sparkly, healthy gold muted now by a gray veil of worry. The colors paled as she fell asleep, coiled into a ball beneath Reese. The hammock’s webbed shadow fell over her body, cast from the dimmed overhead lights.
Allacazam’s body created no aura, a fact Hirianthial found fascinating and enigmatic in the extreme. But the rest of the crew he could sense even through the bulkheads—not with enough granularity to assess their health and mental state, but strongly enough for him to sense their distance and that they lived. In busy hospitals he’d been overwhelmed by the amount of data his abilities had brought him without asking, and he’d learned not so much to ignore the people around him as to allow their auras to blur into one undifferentiated mass. His workplaces had developed auras of their own, the combination of thousands of patients and personnel on their business, and though he never paid attention to it he always knew in the back of his mind the “health” of his workplace.
There were days that death and suffering had blackened the entrance to the hospital so that he hated to enter, and days when miracles sent white ripples through a floor to lighten the mood of the entire workplace. But it had been long and long again since he’d been somewhere small enough that each person cast a distinct emotional, without the blur created by his cultivated psychic myopia. He found it pleasant and drifted, a lagan tethered to those distant auras as to buoys in the darkness.
The flare of Reese’s pain doubling brought him to the surface immediately. He slid a hand above her chest and felt the tear as if it were in his palm. With his free hand, Hirianthial punched the intercom’s bridge combination. “Sascha. Tell me we’re close.”
“We’re just coming out of Well. Half an hour at the most, depending on how quickly they dock us.”
Hirianthial glanced at Reese. She was breathing too quickly for slowsleep. “When you connect with the docking authority, put me through. I’ll get us a space.”
“You’re the boss, doc. Stand by.”
Irine uncurled and rubbed her eye. “Are we there?” Then, “What’s wrong?”
“We’re running out of time,” Hirianthial said.
Irine’s tail lashed. “The insystems just fired. We must be on final approach.”
Hirianthial said nothing, leaning against the wall in an effort to seem less concerned than he was. He left his hand over Reese’s chest, trying to gauge the extent of the trauma. He’d always taken for granted the vague knowledge he’d gained through his abilities and had used them in tandem with his clinical experience and observation of physical symptoms to make his diagnoses... but he’d always confirmed and refined those findings with diagnostic equipment. Having no scanner to track the extent of Reese’s danger frustrated him.
“Docking authority is pinging me, doc.”
“Can I talk to them from here?”
“Yeah, hang on. Okay, you’re live!”
“Starbase Kappa, this is Doctor Sarel Jisiensire of the TMS Earthrise. We have a medical emergency requiring immediate surgery. Do you have an emergency deck berth?”
“Earthrise, this is Kappa Docking. We are transmitting a vector and docking assignment now. Please advise as to the nature of the emergency so we can prepare for your arrival.”
“I have one human female suffering from rupture of the esophagus with possible pleural effusion, currently coming out of slowsleep. Vital statistics are fluctuating.”
“Thank you. We’ll have a team waiting for you. Kappa away.”
Sascha’s voice returned, now hard with tension. “I’ve got the assignment. We’ll be there in under ten minutes.”
“Now what?” Irine asked.
“Now we go wait at the exit,” Hirianthial said. He gathered Reese into his arms though he felt as if he was embracing an armful of naked swords and said, “Show me the way out, Irine.”
“Yes, sir,” Irine said and darted out the door. Hirianthial followed. With Reese pressed against his chest he could feel the hard and irregular thump of her heart.
“You are not allowed to go this way,” he told her. “I simply won’t have it. I know you can hear me, Theresa Eddings. You are ten minutes away from the medical care that will save your life so you simply cannot, will not, are not allowed to falter now.”
A flicker of gold against the knife-sharp black. With Irine so far ahead of him, he leaned down and whispered into one ear, “You cannot die yet, Theresa. What other human woman has been held in the arms of an Eldritch? Surely that’s too good a story not to live to tell.”
The ship shivered before he reached the exit. And again when he caught up with Irine at the edge of the vast docking bay with its ominous spindles and their long shadows on the cold ground. It seemed to take too long before the thunderous groan of the dock doors sliding into their pockets sounded. Hirianthial didn’t wait but squeezed through them sideways and delivered Reese into the arms of the medical team waiting there. As they put her on the stretcher he said, “I’m certified. I’m coming with you. Don’t try to stop me.”
The orderly glanced at him and shrugged before heading back toward the corridor.
On one side, the smell of antiseptic... on the other, a field of waving flowers. Reese tried to choose the flowers, but the harder she reached for the field the further it receded. Exasperated, she put her hands on her hips and tried commanding the field to stay put, but it was no use. Come to think of it, she’d never been in a field of flowers. The image had come off a calendar some repair shop had given her, and the smell of the flowers... that was one of Irine’s perfumes. She couldn’t even have original dreams. Reese gave up and decided to see if waking was any better.
Waking was worse. She was under a halo-arch in an unfamiliar Medplex. Not just a clinic, a small place that supported only routine medical visits, but a real Medplex, a space hospital. She’d seen the inside of a Medplex only three times and hated every memory involving one. That she was trapped not just in a Medplex but also apparently as a patient horrified her.
How had she gotten here? The last thing she remembered was throwing up on the bridge.
“She’s awake!”
The twins’ faces appeared above her. They made no move to hug her, and their unwonted caution scared Reese even more than the halo-arch. She swallowed and discovered she could talk, though her assumption that talking would hurt puzzled her. “Where am I?”
“Starbase Kappa,” Sascha said. “In the Medplex.”
“I figured that part out,” Reese said. “Why am I here?”
The two exchanged glances. “You don’t remember?” Irine asked.
“Remember what? Throwing up on the bridge? I got that part,” Reese said. “I hope Hirianthial wasn’t too upset about his clothes.”
“His clothes!” Irine shook her head. “Reese, you almost died!”
Reese laughed. “I did not.”
They didn’t laugh. The halo-arch beeped into the silence, doing whatever it was halo-arches did to monitor the condition of their occupants.
“I didn’t,” Reese said again. “It was just stress.”
They continued to not say anything. Reese started to worry. “Guys?”
“You’ve been unconscious for a day since they operated,” Sascha said.
“Operated!”
“I’ll go get Hirianthial,” Irine said and vanished.
“Sascha, what is going on here? This is crazy talk.”
“Boss, just relax, okay? Hirianthial will explain it.”
“Right,” Reese said, rolling her eyes. “The Eldritch doctor.”
She expected a chuckle, but instead Sascha’s gaze hardened with disapproval and his ears flattened. “’The Eldritch doctor’ saved your life, Reese. The surgeon said so. You would have died on the way to Starbase Kappa without him.”
Reese stared at him. “You’re not kidding me.”
“No.”
Reese flushed. “Well how was I supposed to know that? I was unconscious!”
His expression didn’t change. “Well, now you do.”
“I still don’t understand how I can have been that sick,” Reese said. “I feel fine now!”
Sascha managed half a grin. “You’ll understand well enough when you get the Medplex services bill.”
“The bill!” Reese exclaimed, trying to sit up. The field from the halo-arch repulsed her and she squirmed, trying to find a way around it. “What bill?”
“There is no bill.” Hirianthial’s hair preceded him into view, swishing over the edge of the field. The lines beneath his eyes were far more pronounced, and his baritone had deeper tones, rough edges. “Welcome back, lady.”
“What is going on here? Let me out of this so I can see you all at once.”
“If you promise not to leave the bed,” Hirianthial said.
“Yes, yes, I promise, let me up!”
He tapped a few notes on the edge of the arch. “All right.”
Reese struggled to sit up and surprised herself by feeling too weak. The twins caught her before she could wobble and propped her up. “Just a touch of vertigo.”
“Right,” Sascha said dryly.
“Now,” Reese said, staring at Hirianthial. “Explain.”
He remained composed. She had expected him to look ridiculous against the backdrop of a modern medical establishment with his anachronistic clothes and princely demeanor, but for some reason this was the one place he seemed to suit. He wasn’t wearing the doublet she’d thrown up on, though. Her cheeks warmed at that memory. She hoped he’d been able to clean it up... the camellias had been pretty.
“We sealed your esophagus and used a resurfacing agent to encourage the regeneration of the mucosal layers,” he said after a moment. “You’re on antibiotics until we’ve cleared your system of the infection that started this problem, and to ward off any infection that might have thought about colonizing your chest cavity.”
“You make it sound like it I was some sort of road that needed repaving,” Reese said, rubbing her throat. She didn’t feel like she’d had one of her body parts sewn up.
“It was only like a road that needed repaving if part of the road had collapsed and the rest of it was nearing the same state.”
Reese swallowed, waiting for the customary jolt of heat and nervousness that accompanied unpleasant news. Instead her stomach tightened. That was it. Nothing more. No burning, no sour tastes, no convulsive need for chalk tablets. That finally convinced her. “Blood and Freedom, you replaced my esophagus!”
“More or less,” Hirianthial said.
Reese leaned forward and covered her eyes. “What did I owe?”
“You didn’t hear him before?” Irine asked, poking Reese gently in the ribs. “There is no bill.”
“No bill?” Reese said. “How is that possible? You didn’t pay it, did you?”
“If by pay you mean handing over coins, then no, I didn’t,” Hirianthial said. “If by pay you mean work here for a few shifts until the value of your operation had been recouped by the Medplex, then I suppose I did.”
Reese pointed a finger at him. “I didn’t ask for your help!”
“I owed you a debt,” Hirianthial said. “You saved my life.”
“I didn’t want you to pay me back,” Reese said. “I wanted you to get the hell off my ship and take your slaving pursuers with you!”
“Regardless, I’m a doctor,” the Eldritch said. “If someone starts dying in my presence, it’s my duty to stop it.”
“I didn’t ask for your help—”
“Actually, you did,” Irine said.
Reese glared at her. This time she noticed just how poorly her glare worked. Irine didn’t even wilt.
“You did,” the tigraine said. “You made him your proxy and told him to make all the relevant medical decisions to save your life. I was there, I heard you.”
“I don’t remember saying that,” Reese said.
“I’m not sure what you’re so upset about,” Sascha said. “You’re here, you’re healthy, and you don’t have to pay for the medical procedure that saved you. What have you got to complain about?”
“I don’t want to owe anyone anything,” Reese said.
“Too late,” Sascha said. “You owed that woman something for her help in bailing you out. Now you’re going to owe our creditors for our repairs. And you certainly owe the doctor there for taking care of you despite being so rude about the whole thing.”
“He and I are even,” Reese said, clenching her fists.
“She’s correct,” Hirianthial said. “And since I came with nothing to your ship, there’s nothing I need to retrieve.” He bowed, a formality she thought would look silly and instead looked far too serious, too final. “I thank you for your help in effecting my escape, and I wish you well. Good day, madam.”
And then he was gone.
“What did you do that for!” Irine said. “You sent him away!”
“Of course I sent him away!” Reese exclaimed. “Haven’t you noticed he’s got slavers and pirates after him? We can’t afford another episode like the one we just got out of. You haven’t even told me what the damage was from the whole thing!”
“He’s nice to have around,” Sascha said. “And he’s a good doctor.”
“He’s an Eldritch,” Reese said. “What good is a doctor who can’t handle you?”
“For a doctor who can’t handle you, he did a lot of carrying you around,” Irine said. “Or did you forget those parts too?”
They were angry at her. The twins had never been angry at her. Reese looked from one furry face to the other and felt the world drop from beneath her. Then she got a tight rein on her sense of desolation and said, “Look guys, I appreciate your opinions, but if you hadn’t noticed we barely keep enough money in our pockets to feed the people we have. We don’t have room for another deck-swabber. I’m glad the man made a good impression and I’m glad he was around to re-pave my esophagus but we’ve got to move on, okay? Can we start with someone telling me when I’m going to get released, and how bad the repair bill on the ship’s going to be?”
They exchanged glances. Irine sat on the bench next to the bed and Sascha left.
“What was that about?” Reese asked.
“Nothing important to you,” Irine said. “So let’s get down to the stuff that is.”
Reese grabbed her wrist. “Irine, stop it. I don’t need your disapproval.” She sucked in a breath and forced the word out. “Please.”
The tigraine looked at her hand, then hesitantly petted it. The underside of her fingers were smooth. “Can I say something you might take badly, Reese?”
Last time Irine had said something similar, Reese had learned things about the twins’ intimate life she hadn’t really wanted to know. Still it didn’t seem like the time to refuse. “Sure.”
“I don’t know how you’re ever going to catch a mate and have kidlings at the rate you’re going.”
Yes, definitely a place she didn’t want to go. Still, she wanted Irine to stop with the evil eye routine, so she gave the question the serious response she would otherwise have avoided. “You’re assuming I want a mate and a family. That’s not even the way it works on Harat-Sharii, so I’m not sure where you got the idea that I’d want it for myself.”
“Even on Harat-Sharii we choose someone to have children with and have them,” Irine said. “Sascha and I will get to that when we’re older.”
Reese chuckled. “I don’t have a father, Irine. Why would I want a husband?”
“I might be wrong about this, but don’t humans still need both sexes to reproduce?” Irine asked, canting her head.
“Yeah, well, my family found a way around that a few generations ago,” Reese said.
“That doesn’t sound right,” Irine said, mouth twisting.
“And your harems and sibling intimacy does?” Reese asked. “You of all people should know these things are relative.”
“So you haven’t had a father in your life ever? Or a grandfather?”
Reese shook her head and managed a faint smile. “My grandma thought it was best that way. Men meddled, she said.”
“No, women meddle,” Irine said. “Men just go after what they want. It’s part of their charm.”
“Not all women are like that,” Reese said. “Some just go after what they want, too.”
“And some men meddle,” Irine agreed. “At least now I know why you sent the doctor away.”
Reese frowned. “That being... what, some orbit trash about me not knowing how to handle men because I didn’t grow up with one?”
“Well, you’ve got two girls on your crew, me and Kis’eh’t. Allacazam is neuter and Bryer might as well be... I don’t think I could sex a Phoenix unless I tied one down and hunted for parts. The only guy on your crew is Sascha and you’ve got me to keep him in check. So what’s a girl supposed to think?”
“I do not have issues,” Reese said.
“If you say so, boss.”
Reese sighed, but didn’t argue. At least Irine wasn’t glowering at her anymore.
She wasn’t sure that this was an improvement.
“When can I get out of here, Irine?”
“They say you should be fine within a day. They want to keep you under observation until then. You’re paid up for the full time anyway, so you might as well enjoy it.”
“Enjoy my stay in a Medplex,” Reese said. “Right. Tell me about the repair bill.”
Irine caught her tail and started picking at the fur at the tip. “Well... we lost the main cargo gantry. The hull’s dented all over the place, but we’ve identified the six places that the dents are more than cosmetic and have to be fixed. The last pirate laser destroyed the starboard sensor array... and the Well Drive’s gone cranky since Sascha redlined it to get you here. The bill is pretty sizable.”
Reese’s eyes had already glazed over. “How minor are the bumps in the hull we have to fix?” she asked, trying to concentrate on the least serious sounding item in the litany.
“Four of them are preventing the port cargo doors from opening,” Irine said. “The other two have twisted up waste vents.”
Reese lowered herself back onto the bed, which did not yield beneath her shoulder-blades. Her entire back refused to relax onto the cushions.
“It’s a lot of money,” Irine said, ears drooping.
“I know,” Reese said. She’d collected estimates for repairs too often not to know. The Well Drive alone... she could be grounded for months trying to convince creditors to give her that much money.
“Miss Eddings?”
Reese sat up on her elbows and found a Tam-illee dressed in Fleet blue-and-black standing at the door nearest her bed. She couldn’t read the collection of pins and stars and braids Fleet used for rank but suspected from the air of authority that the man was in charge of something.
“I’m Reese Eddings,” she said.
The Tam-illee joined Irine at her bedside. He had a stern and craggy face, almost completely human in seeming save for the shadow of a nose-pad traced around his nostrils... and of course, the large pointed ears on his head. “My name is Jonah NotAgain. I’m captain of the UAV StarCounter. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”
“Oh great,” Reese said. “Don’t tell me the pirates followed us here.”
“Good news, ma’am. They didn’t. We wouldn’t mind any details you could give us about them, though.”
“Right,” Reese said, and launched into an account with Irine’s help. The Fleet captain nodded through the story, taking notes on a tiny data tablet she hadn’t even noticed holstered at his hip.
“Would you mind terribly passing us the sensor data?” NotAgain said when she finished.
“No,” Reese said. “You’re welcome to it if it means you’ll have a chance to get rid of them.”
“We’ve been trying for most of a year to chase down all the hide-outs nearby,” the Tam-illee said. “This should give us enough data to shut down Inu-Case. The bad news is that they got a good look at you, ma’am, and they tend not to like the last few people who got away before Fleet comes down on them.”
“You mean to tell me that my data is going to incriminate them, you’re going to arrest them, and their pals are going to remember me and hold a grudge?” Reese asked, aghast.
“That’s about the size of it,” the Tam-illee said. “Most of the time they get distracted easily, though. If you lay low for a while they tend not to bother with revenge.”
“It’s not like we’re going to be running cargo any time soon anyway,” Irine said. “We’ve got a lot of repair work to do.”
“I can’t believe this,” Reese said. “Can’t you do something about it?”
“If we had enough manpower to assign a convoy to every freighter working the shipping lanes we’d do it in a heartbeat’s pause,” NotAgain said. “Unfortunately we’re spread a bit thin for that. All I can advise you is to head further into the Core and stay out of sight for a while. Take a vacation, if you like.”
“A vacation!” Reese exclaimed. She closed her eyes. “How long a vacation?”
“Certainly no longer than a year—”
“A year!”
“But at least two months,” NotAgain continued. “Three or four to be safe. I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s just a recommendation.”
“Thanks,” Irine said. “We appreciate the advice. We’ll send the reel to you later today.”
The Tam-illee smiled. “Thanks, ma’am. If there’s any question we can answer we’ll be glad to help. I’m border patrol liaison for Frontier Three... just use the Fleet broadband and we’ll be glad to help.”
“Thanks, we will,” Irine said. Once the man had gone, the tigraine leaned over. “You okay, Reese?”
“Four months to a year!” Reese said.
“Two to four months,” Irine said. “We have to make repairs anyway. We can do them in the Core just as well as we could out here.”
“But the Core is more expensive,” Reese said. “Besides, I thought if we got rid of Hirianthial the pirates wouldn’t care about us anymore!”
“They probably wouldn’t have if our escape hadn’t seemed to lead to their arrest,” Irine said. “But would you rather them not get arrested?”
“Of course not,” Reese said. She sighed and covered her eyes with a hand.
“It’ll be okay, Reese. You’ll see.”
“I hope you’re right,” Reese said.
Most of the time Hirianthial did not envy his cousin’s talent for pattern-sensing for he’d never observed it to bring her happiness. Satisfaction, occasionally, but never joy. It had shaped her as inevitably a carver’s knife did wood, transforming her from a mercurial child into a planner of great effectiveness with an escape route in every muff pocket and a raft of cushions against contingency. She never worried, but she never rested either. Her power continually warned her of the changing currents in the world and the situations those currents might inspire. Most people accused her of manipulation. She didn’t deign to answer such accusations and had acquired the many enemies one might have expected of someone in power with power. No, he rarely wanted her talent.
Today he wanted it. He wanted to know where the pattern was moving him and where he should position himself to give it better access to his tired body, to sweep him away to a place where he no longer had to think or act. After six hundred years, a man grew tired of living with the thousands of consequences of his thoughts and actions.
A starbase was a busy place, no matter how far from civilization one traveled. Exiting the Medplex, Hirianthial merged into the stream of aliens heading further in from the docks. He didn’t question the direction the stream took him but contented himself with following it. He had no other place to go, no pressing business, no work to report to. He supposed at some point he would have to make arrangements for the release of his luggage; he’d had it placed in storage here before embarking on Liolesa’s little mission....
Liolesa’s mission. He’d survived it and been sprung from his prison with the information she wanted. He still had duties, then. A secure comm facility first, then he could find someplace to eat and try to decide what to do now. If he was lucky, Liolesa would have some other ridiculous task for him.
Perhaps she would ask him to come home. He wondered if he would acquiesce.
Hirianthial walked toward the residential areas, where shops and services would be interspersed with smaller gardens and restaurants. As he entered the more populated areas he spotted several of the stranger species among the first and second generation engineered races that composed most of the Alliance: here and there a Phoenix like Reese’s engineer, trailing metallic feathers on the ground, or one of the great horned Akubi, head ducked to talk to smaller companions. For the most part the crowd was Pelted: humanoid but with the marks of the animals from which they’d been designed, fox and feline, wolf and any number of other influences. He’d found occasional humor in the realization that humanity had spawned more than one prodigal child in the galaxy. The Pelted had run away and eventually invited their parents to join them.
The Eldritch hadn’t even told their parents they were related.
No doubt people wondered as they did about every species that looked suspiciously like humanity, but no Eldritch would ever confirm such a rumor. It was part of the Veil, the same Veil that drove Hirianthial to the high-security facilities closer to the short-term hotels for the well-heeled. He paid the solemn man at the silver gate enough to feed Reese’s crew for a week and passed into the intimately lit foyer that led to several dark chambers. His was number six. He walked in, closed the door and checked the seal; he didn’t have the tools for more a sophisticated check and would have to trust his coin had bought him privacy.
It hadn’t bought him a Riggins-encrypted stream, but he laid out the money for one on the outgoing call and waited as it went through its complex security routines on the way to the Queen. He wondered what time it was at home.
Delairenenard answered the call in formal midnight blue dinner coat sparkling with silver embroidery; as always he was the picture of poise, his face smooth of any emotion despite how long it had been since Hirianthial had been seen or heard from on the homeworld. “My lord Hirianthial! How good to see you.”
“Chancellor,” Hirianthial said. “I regret interrupting your supper. May I have the Queen’s ear?”
“A moment, if you would. I shall inform her of your call.”
Not just a formal dinner, but one with enemies, then. If she’d been dining with allies Delairenenard would have promised her presence. Hirianthial wondered how much more knotted the political situation had become in his absence. It had never much interested him despite the influence bequeathed by his inheritance, but it had been hard to avoid the consequences of the poor decisions made by successive generations of Eldritch. Halting the decline of their species was the Queen’s priority, but all the solutions she’d suggested had not been well received by a species deeply in love with its own cultural pride. He had not envied her the resulting mess.
Hirianthial waited a good fifteen minutes before the Chancellor returned. “The Queen, my lord.”
The man bowed away and Liolesa sat across from him. She had dressed for dinner with political opponents, and as always she looked her best when girded for battle. Something about it gave her back the flush of youth. He could practically smell her perfume, the aggressive bouquet of ambergris and thorn marten musk she wore only to disarm her enemies. Her pale, cool eyes, her aristocratic face with its lines sharp as swords, her throat and white breast with their deceptively feminine promises, all of it he remembered too well. He loved his Queen but the world she lived in exhausted him.
And it hurt to see again a noblewoman’s gown, embroidered in pearls, and to see the long braided coil of a woman’s hair, threaded through with opals and electrum chains.
“You have survived our task, cousin.”
“You sent an able rescue,” Hirianthial said. “I have what you want.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Who is it?”
He drew in a deep breath. For all her ability to sense patterns, Liolesa could not pull names for unseen aggressors out of the air. She’d known a power moved behind the abduction of their people off-world despite the otherwise loosely-connected organizations in the slave trade, had nursed suspicions, but hadn’t known a name.
“The Empire,” Hirianthial said, and released her from the prison of uncertainty.
“The Chatcaava,” Liolesa breathed. They shared the silence together. He didn’t have to guess her thoughts; they were following the same line his had when he’d found out. Being abducted by petty villains was a bad enough fate. Knowing that the shapechangers were behind it... he’d spent not an inconsiderable time grieving the fate of those who’d gone into their taloned embrace... grieving, and fighting the anger that was no longer his to wield in the name of throne and deity.
She didn’t ask him if he was certain. She didn’t question how he’d done it. All she did was meet his eyes and say, “Thank you.”
And like that, she would have concluded their call had he not cleared his throat. “There’s no other task which requires my service, my liege?”
“You have already done enough,” Liolesa said. “What comes next is not for you.”
Just like that, she’d freed him. “This woman, my lady. The human.”
“Theresa?” Liolesa said, then chuckled. “Quite a treasure, is she not? Stay with her if you can. She’ll take care of you.”
“I don’t need a woman to take care of me,” Hirianthial said.
“Nonsense, cousin,” Liolesa said. “It’s just what you need and well you know it. Do you need a command? Very well. Go to her. She won’t lead you astray.”
“My lady—”
“We will talk to you soon enough. Give me some report of your doings when you have time. Until then, good evening, cousin.”
The stream terminated, leaving him with a blank screen. After a moment it flashed his final total and debited his account. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. When he’d hoped for Liolesa to tell him how to fit back into the pattern, he’d been anticipating a new task he could start with a glad heart, not the injunction to return to a woman who’d already sent him away. He sometimes suspected Liolesa believed all his problems would dissipate once he resolved his grief over his role in the death of the last woman in his life. Sometimes he remembered growing up with Liolesa the fierce and irreverent child, and that intimacy made him long, briefly, to shake her.
Standing outside the comm facility, Hirianthial decided he’d worry about whether or not to follow the Queen’s directive after lunch; Reese couldn’t leave the Medplex for another day anyway. That meant having his luggage delivered could also wait. Consulting the base directory brought up a list of well-reviewed restaurants. He chose the most likely one near him and headed that way.
While standing next to the fountain leading into the restaurant and waiting for a table, Hirianthial sensed a muted yellow aura gliding against his. A moment later, Sascha stepped up beside him.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Only if I’m buying,” Hirianthial said.
“Deal.”
“And if you tell me how long you’ve been following me.”
The tigraine folded his hands behind his back. “Since you left the Medplex.” He glanced up at Hirianthial. “I was sitting outside the comm station long enough to read half a magazine. Did that go well?”
“You are curious,” Hirianthial said. The maitre’d noted his party’s addition without so much as a change in expression and brought them to a table outside in the patio. The yellow stone tiles and the plain wooden beams had been shrouded with blooming tropical flowers. Hirianthial had passed through enough starbases not to be surprised by the simulation of nightfall, but the candles on the table were still a welcome touch.
“It’s not curiosity,” Sascha said, once they’d unfolded their napkins and requested something to drink. “I was hoping you weren’t about to get sent off somewhere else.”
“Why does this worry you?” Hirianthial asked. “Your mistress has made it clear that my business isn’t of any concern to her or her people any longer.”
“Well, that’s where she’s wrong and you’re wrong.” Sascha set his menu down with a wrinkled nose. “I hate menus without prices. You order for me.”
Hirianthial cocked a brow at him, but did as requested. With no more distractions, he folded his hands on the table and waited for the tigraine to elaborate.
“Look, we’re no challenge for Reese.”
“And she needs a challenge,” Hirianthial said.
Sascha nodded, cupping his hands around his cup of kerinne. Hirianthial had never developed a taste for the hot cinnamon drink, though he suspected it would be favorably received on his homeworld.
“Because...?” Hirianthial prompted.
“She’s not happy,” Sascha said simply.
“She’s not happy.”
“No,” the tigraine said. “She’s been doing this freighter thing for a while, and she’ll have you believe that she’s doing it for the money. And it’s true that she’s easier to be around when we’re not in debt... but then, who isn’t? But this thing with the Earthrise... it doesn’t make her happy. And we aren’t enough of a distraction from that.”
“And this role you want me to fill? Wouldn’t it be easier to suggest that she find another line of work?”
Sascha laughed. “You’ve known her long enough. You tell me if that would fly.”
Hirianthial considered it and smiled. “I suppose not. I’m still not certain where I come into this picture. My arrival wasn’t exactly auspicious.”
“Well, she was going to have that problem with her esophagus sooner or later, right?”
“Sooner, most probably,” Hirianthial said.
“So it’s not like you not being around could have prevented that. As it was you kept her alive. Not only that, but you kept her kicking.” The tigraine traced the rim of his cup. “This is kind of hard to explain. It’s more a feeling than anything I can point to directly. But it’s like having you around draws her out of herself. She’s more of everything on the outside, and less of it on the inside, where she can bottle it up.”
Which was the finest description of a common cause of physical ailment-inducing stress as Hirianthial had heard from a layman. “Granted that I make a good distraction, which I suppose I shan’t argue... there’s still the small matter of your captain not wanting me on her ship.”
“Oh, she didn’t mean that,” Sascha said with a wave of a hand. “She might have said it then but it was anger talking. If you come back she’ll still be angry but she’ll be more likely to keep you around. She’s fascinated by people who don’t go away. Besides, when you tell her that you don’t need her to pay you, she’ll have to relent.” The tigraine eyed him. “You don’t need to be paid, do you? You seem wealthy enough.”
“I can take care of my own needs,” Hirianthial said.
“So she won’t be able to object on those grounds,” Sascha said. “Plus we wouldn’t mind having a doctor around.”
“You’re certain you can convince your mistress to take me aboard?”
Sascha shook his head. “It’s not about me convincing her, me or anyone else. She didn’t really want to send you away. She never wants to do most of the things she forces herself to do by deciding them when she’s upset. It’s just that she feels trapped into following through on her promises. Even the stupid ones.”
The silent waiters arrived bearing a plate with a duck stuffed with rice, mushrooms and white broccoli in a blush wine sauce with cream and shallots. One of them carved the duck into pieces onto smaller dishes as the other poured Hirianthial his wine. They left after setting the plates before them, and though Hirianthial believed in Reese’s poverty he noted with interest that Sascha did not seem at all unaccustomed to being served.
“So you think she’ll change her mind,” Hirianthial said when they were alone. “You haven’t told me why I should do this.”
“I didn’t think I had to, Healer,” Sascha said. His yellow eyes flicked up to meet Hirianthial’s, and then demurely lowered again to his plate.
For a moment Hirianthial couldn’t move. Then he relented and laughed, low. “Why does she need me when she has you?”
“I may see clearly sometimes, but I’m still Harat-Shariin in my heart,” Sascha says. “I can’t see why she won’t do the things she should to make her happy because... well, I would in her place. I can’t help her. I can’t offer her solutions that she’d be willing to do.” He smiled without humor. “The humans wanted to create aliens when they made the Pelted and for the most part they failed... but I think the Harat-Shar actually are different enough from the rest of the Alliance to cause problems. We don’t love the way you love.”
“And you know something about how Eldritch love,” Hirianthial said.
“No, but I can guess,” Sascha said. “And I imagine a society that doesn’t even look fondly on doctors touching their patients isn’t all that conducive to the kind of love I would espouse.”
Hirianthial let that pass. “You’ve been with the Earthrise for some time now. Tell me how the days are spent there.”
Sascha spoke at length about the adventures of trading cargo and playing special courier to the occasional client; about the games Reese played with the thermostat to keep him and Irine from surprising her with their amorous interludes and their secret (if rather cramped) solution to that problem; how Kis’eh’t and Bryer’s arrival had changed the tenor of their workplace; and most of all about Reese, about Reese’s stubborn determination in the face of debt and disaster, her tendency to worry, her unexpected and clumsy displays of affection. It made a fine counterpoint to the meal. Hirianthial wasn’t certain when between stories Sascha found time to eat but the tigraine finished his meal around the same time Hirianthial set down his own fork.
As they waited for the server to return with the final bill, Sascha leaned forward. “So, did it work?”
Hirianthial finished the wine and printed the okay on the bill. He folded his napkin and set it on the table. “Let’s go talk to your mistress.”
Sascha beamed and scrambled to his feet.
Though the data tablet Irine had left her was supposed to have the information Reese had requested several times throughout their conversation about repairs, it was well over three hours before Reese could bring herself to pick it up and spread the file. Even after opening it, she didn’t look at the totals. Instead, she scanned the itemized list of things broken, things broken off, and things burned to bits with a growing sense of horror.
Then she glanced at the total.
Reese put the data tablet aside with a shaking hand and lay back on the bed. The ceiling above her had spiral patterns, lighter blue on cobalt. She traced them with her eyes, wondering who’d had the notion of painting the things there. Or was it a wallpaper? On the ceiling? Ceilingpaper? Maybe this was what insanity was like... a constant need to stare at inconsequential things and worry at their significance.
No, this was what denial was like.
Reese sighed and rubbed her forehead, dragged her hand over her nose and lips. The last time she’d been in debt this badly she’d had to accept a stranger’s money or admit that her venture had failed. She simply couldn’t accept that she could fail. No evidence would convince her that she wasn’t any good at merchanting... especially if it meant limping back home to her mother and grandmother and enduring their censure for using up her inheritance on her misguided determination to break free of the pattern of their lives. Their plan for her had involved her staying on Mars and continuing the Eddings clan with another anonymously-donated batch of sperm. That she’d had other plans had broken her mother’s heart and angered her grandmother, her aunts... even her nieces had found her outrageous.
She couldn’t go back. She’d have to find a way to pay for the repairs. Reese linked to her existing funds, scanning for the cheapest repair she could afford that would get her hobbling out of dock.
The Well Drive. She could repair that—
The Well Drive? Last she’d checked, she’d had enough money to buy protein bars and chalk tablets, not fin for one of the more expensive repairs on her list. Where had the money come from? Perplexed, Reese tagged the deposit and spread the note attached to it.
Glowing blue letters: Wire from account 0002178942 at station Terra Firma. Amount, 7500 fin.
The same account from the same place as the first anonymous donation she’d received.
She stared at the screen, struggling to throttle a growing indignation. The man who appeared in the corner of her eye proved a distraction she couldn’t decide whether to be thankful for or send away.
“How are you feeling, Ms. Eddings? I’m Rick Barringer, the ward doctor.”
Reese looked up at him: human, blocky build, silvering hair at his temples on a honey-yellow complexion and a mild and pleasant face. She curbed her irritation and managed, “I’ve been better, thanks.”
Immediate concern tempered the doctor’s voice. “Any pain? Burning? Nausea?”
“No, no,” Reese said, waving a hand. “Money troubles, not bodily ones.”
“Your visit here’s been paid for—”
“It’s not about this visit,” Reese said. She forced a smile. “So are you the doctor I have to thank for the new highway down my throat?”
“The new—oh!” He laughed. “No, not at all. Your personal physician took care of it. You’re lucky to have such a talented surgeon for a doctor. That’s rather rare.”
“Are you trying to tell me Hirianthial literally did the surgery?” Reese said, staring at him. “I thought he brought me here and gave me to you people. You let some random man do your job for you?”
Barringer chuckled. “You make it sound like you don’t know the credentials your doctor’s carrying around.” When Reese didn’t stop staring at him, he said, “You don’t? You actually have a doctor you didn’t check out?”
“He’s a guest, not an employee,” Reese said. “I haven’t exactly read up on his medical records.”
The man whistled. “Well, I’d encourage you to do that. Suffice to say he was more than qualified to stitch you back together. In fact, the Head of Surgery’s been wooing him since they tucked you into the halo-arch to recover. He’d never seen a defter hand on a Medimage platform.”
“He fixed me? His own hands?” Reese asked, unsure whether to feel used or relieved.
“With more care than a maid embroidering her wedding gown,” the man said. “It was almost as if he could tell when he was hurting you.” A flash of a grin. “Though I guess if the stories are right, maybe he could, eh?”
Reese stared at him.
“Whatever the case, we’ll release you tomorrow morning. Until then, try to relax, Ms. Eddings. Your body’s been through a lot, even if you feel fine.”
“I’ll try.”
“And hey, here he is!” Barringer said, and then respectfully, “Lord Sarel Jisiensire... good to see you back. Does this mean you’ll be staying or are you visiting Ms. Eddings here?”
“Just visiting, I’m afraid. Thank you, alet,” Hirianthial said. Sascha was standing just behind him, and Reese could just guess what part the tigraine had in the reappearance of her unwanted guest.
“I’ll leave you alone, then,” Barringer said. “Feel better soon, Ms. Eddings.”
As soon as the human doctor left, Reese grabbed her data tablet and threw it at Hirianthial. The Eldritch caught it but from the whack of it against his fingers it must have stung. She was glad. “What the hell is going on with your Queen? I’m not some mercenary to be bought in installments!”
“My pardon, lady?” Hirianthial asked, and she thought she saw surprise in his eyes.
“She sent me money. More money! I am not going to be indebted to her again. What, does she want to send me racing around after every little lost Eldritch she’s got? Or is this an allowance for keeping you around?”
“I have no idea,” Hirianthial said, glancing down at the data tablet. Reese wished she’d shut off the link. She didn’t like him knowing just how poor she was. “Are you certain it’s from her?”
“It’s from the exact same place as it was last time.”
“But without any note? Any request?”
He actually sounded puzzled. She frowned. “Nothing. Just the money. It’s not as much as it was last time. Just enough to cover the Well Drive repair.”
Hirianthial was reading the figures. She sighed. Damned nosy Eldritch. No, damned nosy men... she could tell Sascha was eyeballing it from behind Hirianthial. While they studied the columns, she picked at some fuzz on the blanket. It reminded her of Allacazam; she hoped someone was taking care of the Flitzbe in her absence, that someone had told him she was okay. He’d be worried.
The data tablet slid onto the bench beside her bed with more noise than Hirianthial’d made getting there to place it. “Never fear, my lady. That was no earnest against future services.”
“No?” Reese asked, suspicious. “What is it, then?”
A faint smile crossed his lips. “A patron gift.”
“A what?” Reese exclaimed. “Like... like in books, when a duke gives his vassal a bag of coins for good work?”
“You’re acquainted with the concept?” Hirianthial asked, brows lifted a little. “Yes, just so. You’ve pleased her and she is showing her appreciation.”
Reese blinked.
“Wow,” Sascha said. “Her way of saying thank you is dropping enough money on us to fix the Well Drive? Angels, Reese! Make her thank you more!”
“I don’t think so,” Reese said. “I had to work too hard for that first thank-you. Besides, there’s still all the rest of the ship to fix and I don’t know where we’re going to get the money for that. Particularly at Core prices.”
“Core prices?” Sascha asked.
“Oh, yeah, you missed that part,” Reese said, rubbing her forehead. “A Fleet captain came by for our data on the pirate hide-out. Apparently slavers get grumpy with ships last seen fleeing them if Fleet comes down on them afterwards. It’s been suggested we find a nice cozy place to wait for a season or two.”
“Wow,” Sascha said again. “Where are we going?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Reese said. “We’ll talk it over when I get out of here.”
“I’d like to come with you,” Hirianthial said.
Reese eyed him. “I thought I told you to leave.”
He rested his hands on the edge of the bench and leaned on them. “Your health is of great concern to me, lady.”
“Particularly after you stuck your fingers in my throat and stitched things up yourself?” Reese asked. “Since when are you a surgeon, anyway?”
“Since I was licensed to be one in two different specialties,” Hirianthial said.
“And you just happened to have one in esophageal surgery,” Reese said.
“No,” Hirianthial said. “Just in human surgery.”
She waved her hands, exasperated. “Fine, okay. I can see that. But I absolutely can’t afford to feed you—”
“—he’s got money, boss,” Sascha said.
Reese pointed a finger at him. “You stay out of this. In fact, you go back to the ship right now and start asking people where we should go for four months to hide from slavers. Right now!”
“Okay,” Sascha said, then added, “But I’m voting for him to stick around.”
“This is not a democracy!”
“If you say so, boss.”
Turning from his disappearing tail, Reese glowered at Hirianthial, arms folded over her chest. His face remained serene, almost unreadable.
Almost. She thought she saw a trace of sorrow in his merlot eyes. How many years had it taken to incise the lines beneath them? When he laughed she could see wrinkles framing his cheeks that made it seem as if he’d laughed often, but she couldn’t find those lines now. How long had it been since he’d been that merry youth? Were those hidden lines what made him seem so sad?
“Let me guess,” Reese said. “You’ve got no other place to go.”
A flicker of a smile, then. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“Fine,” Reese said. “Just don’t make too much of this, okay? I’m giving you a place to stay until you figure out where you’re going next.”
“As you say, lady.”
“And it’s not lady, it’s captain.”
He bowed. “As you will.”
“I’m going to regret this,” Reese said, though she hadn’t planned on saying it out loud.
“I humbly hope not,” he said, and added, “Captain.”
“And don’t you forget it,” Reese said.