“We’ve discussed our next stop,” Sascha said.

“Just like you told us to,” Irine added.

Reese paused on the threshold of the mess hall to eye them both. Bryer and Kis’eh’t seemed far more innocent, sitting in their usual corners. Someone had turned on the sun lamp for Allacazam.

Hirianthial was behind her, shadowing her steps. Sometime between their discussion and her release he’d had his camellia tunic cleaned and was once again wearing it.

“And no doubt you’ve come to some conclusion I won’t like,” Reese said.

“We want to go someplace warm,” Kis’eh’t said.

“Paradisiacal,” said Irine.

“With good access to the parts needed to fix things,” Bryer said.

“And this magical place is?” Reese asked, wary.

The twins looked at one another, then at the others. It was Sascha who spoke with a shrug. “Harat-Sharii.”

Reese laughed. “You’re jesting.”

“No!” Irine said. “No, our family’s always asking about the people we work with. They’d be glad to put you up, and then you wouldn’t have to pay for lodging. There’s enough land nearby to set the Earthrise down. I’m sure our train will cook for you, and there’s a city nearby to scrounge up assignments or work or what will you. And it is warm, and it is paradise and I know you’d like it, Reese.”

“It’s full of Harat-Shar!” Reese exclaimed. “Two of you are bad enough. A planetful of you? I might choke.”

“Actually the city near home has a sizable offworlder population,” Sascha said. “It’s one of the few places that serves tourists and non-native residents, so it’s not quite as outrageous as the rest of the world.”

“Not quite as outrageous,” Reese repeated.

“It’s as close to wading into the shallow end of the pool as you can get on the planet,” Sascha said. “But Irine’s right, boss. If we want to cut costs, being able to get free housing and a few free meals a day is going to win over just about any other scenario. Any we could come up with anyway. Maybe you or Prince Charming have some insights we don’t.”

Except that Reese didn’t, something she’d been mulling while staring at the patterned ceiling in the Medplex. She glanced at Hirianthial, but the Eldritch said only, “I’ve never been to Harat-Sharii. I admit to curiosity.”

“They’ll love you there,” Irine said.

“I’m not sure he’ll enjoy that,” Reese said. “Look, Sascha, Irine... I admit the free bed and board is very enticing, but it’s a little presumptuous to assume that your family’s going to want to sleep and feed six people, plus Allacazam.”

“I already called,” Irine said. “Mamer said you must all come immediately. And Mamari agrees.”

Taken aback, Reese said, “Well, then. Umm...”

“We have an invitation,” Hirianthial said. “Can it hurt to take it?”

Reese eyed him. “Have you seriously lived with homeworld-bred Harat-Shar?”

He smiled. “I can’t say I’ve had that particular pleasure. I have worked with them.”

“We’re much more fun the longer you keep us around!” Irine said.

“No doubt,” Hirianthial said.

Reese tried to imagine the Eldritch surrounded by striped and spotted Harat-Shar in various states of undress, that unfathomable dignity assaulted by their eager offers. The picture was delightful. “Free room and board it is,” Reese said.

Irine squealed and leaped over to crush Reese in an arm-and-tail hug. “You’ll love it, Reese, I promise!”

“Right,” Reese said. “Let’s just get there before Fleet does their number on Inu-Case.”

“And for that we need the Well Drive fixed,” Sascha said.

“I’ve gotten some people to come do the work,” Reese said. “It shouldn’t take them long. They’re used to overhauling Fleet ships ten times our size, so squeezing us in wasn’t a problem. We should be out of here in a week.”

“A week?” Kis’eh’t said. “That’s luck!”

“That’s not all of our luck,” Reese said. “They did it for five hundred fin less than I thought they would... which means all of you have a hundred and twenty-five each to go shopping.”

All of them cheered. Even Bryer let out a trill.

“It’s not much, but enjoy it,” Reese said. “And make sure you’re here when we’re done with the refits. The sooner we flee the scene of the crime, the happier I’ll be.”

“That makes six of us, I’m sure,” Kis’eh’t said, already up and lightly bouncing on her foot-pads.

“What are you waiting for?” Reese said. “Shoo!”

Hirianthial stepped aside as the four of them made for the door. He paused there. “Would you like lunch, lady?”

“You mean to go out to lunch?” Reese asked.

“There are good places nearby.”

It was tempting; how long had it been since she’d had other people prepare her food, serve it to her, do the dishes? But she wasn’t sure she wanted to spend that much time with Hirianthial, not before she’d had a chance to sort out her thoughts about him dropping into her life, changing it completely and then sewing up her bursting innards as an encore. Bad enough that she’d be stuck on the ship with him for the several weeks it would take to get back into the heart of Alliance space. Reese said, “Food sounds good, but I should really stay and oversee repairs.”

He nodded and left without another word, without trying to convince her to change her mind. She thought about being miffed. Then she realized she was hungry and she wasn’t sure if she had any dietary restrictions.

“Hirianthial?”

The man wasn’t in the hall.

“Curse it, how does he move so fast?” Reese muttered. “I guess it can wait.” She stopped by the sun lamp and crouched, running a hand along the shadowed lower half of Allacazam. “You full yet?”

The Flitzbe sent a contented, drowsy sensation, like napping in a pool of sunlight.

Reese grinned and snapped the light off. “I think that’s enough.”

A mournful bleat sounded in her head, like a broken set of bagpipes. “Oh, don’t be greedy,” Reese said, gathering him into her arms. “You can have more later. I need you with me while I wait for the contractors. You know how mind-numbing it is to sit at an airlock waiting for their version of “being on time.”

Drooping trees and gray skies. “Yes, that boring,” Reese said as she carried him toward the airlock. “Boring enough to kill trees.” A few leaves fell off the branches in the mental image. “Just like that.”

The small foyer outside their airlock was empty. Reese wondered how quickly her crew had rushed through it in their urge to enjoy the starbase’s amenities and grinned. “Well, at least they’re having fun,” she said.

“Is this the TMS Earthrise?”

Reese glanced up from Allacazam to find a young man in a tailored courier’s suit. A bag and a long case had been set at his feet. “I’m Captain Eddings of the Earthrise?”

“I’m delivering two pieces of luggage in care of your ship. Will you sign here for me?”

“I... sure,” Reese said, shifting Allacazam to her other arm and scribbling on the man’s tablet.

“Thanks,” he said and left.

Reese bent to examine the luggage and wasn’t even within range to touch them before she smelled the wisp of cologne. “I guess these are his,” she said, and Allacazam sent a trickle of blue and green agreement. The smaller bag looked like standard luggage for an Alliance citizen, a soft dark blue embroidered in bronze. The case, on the other hand... “Looks like an instrument case,” Reese said. “I wonder if he plays an instrument? I guess you would if you had centuries to develop new hobbies. I wonder what kind of instrument? Can you see him with a trumpet?” Allacazam painted a sparkling orange and gold amusement at the thought. “Nah, I don’t think so either. Should we look?”

The Flitzbe’s fur ruffled, turning dark gray.

“I guess that’s a no,” Reese said. “Ah well. We might as well deposit it in his room. You just roll along with me, okay?” The Flitzbe turned pink and she set him down before turning to the luggage. The bag’s strap she slung over one shoulder before turning to the case, thinking it looked unwieldy but otherwise not a problem. That was before she actually lifted it. “Blood and Freedom! If it’s a trumpet, it’s made of lead!”

Shaking her head, Reese climbed through the airlock and started down the hall. Halfway to the lift she switched hands on the case. That got her to the lift.

By the time she was outside Hirianthial’s new room she was dragging the case and both her arms hated her. She had no idea how Allacazam had managed to stay out of her way as she stumbled, tripped and pulled the weight of the case here. Getting the thing into his room took the last of her energy. Manhandling it onto his bunk was out of the question. Reese collapsed with her back to the wall and panted as Allacazam rolled in between her legs and bumped up against her stomach. The Flitzbe was bright orange with alarm.

“Okay, so maybe that was more exertion than I should have been doing fresh out of the Medplex,” she said, petting him. “But I got it here and I’m no worse for the wear.”

An image of a bent-up trumpet flashed in her mind and she winced. “Right. Let’s hope I did no damage.”

The thought entered her mind then, that she should check: not Allacazam, but her own rebellious curiosity. She honestly did want to make sure she hadn’t destroyed whatever important thing Hirianthial was carrying with him, but the curiosity remained foremost. She leaned forward over Allacazam’s body and examined the catches on the case. There were no locks; no adornment save for the tag from the luggage company. Reese flipped it over and paled at the name and shield stamped on it. She’d heard of the company, but never had anything valuable enough to warrant their prices for storage.

“Okay. Maybe I shouldn’t look,” she said.

Allacazam was silent.

But something Hirianthial cared enough about to have stored in secure and guarded lockers was important enough for her to ensure she hadn’t damaged it. Before she could talk herself out of it, Reese reached out and flipped one of the catches open.

No locks. No stops. If he cared so much about it, why didn’t he lock the case? Would she ever understand the man?

“All right,” Reese said. “Let’s just get it over with. A quick peek, just to make sure it’s okay.”

Allacazam turned a soft silvery gray. Reese ignored the reproach and flipped the second and third catches. She opened the lid and dropped it at the sight of the contents, rattling them. Of all the things she’d been expecting Hirianthial to be toting, weapons were not among them. Embarrassed, Reese said, “Well, at least they’re okay.”

The Flitzbe sounded a few bells in her mind. Reese couldn’t resist another look. This time she didn’t fumble the lid.

Not just any weapon, but bladed weapons. And not just one but four. She remembered pictures from her reading. The smallest one was a dagger, polished steel with a bronze hilt wrapped in burgundy cords. It had inset opals, winking like blue fire. The two pieces above it were too long to be daggers but too short to be swords; Reese had no idea what she’d call them, but she spent several minutes staring at her hazy reflection in the steel.

The blade above them was responsible for the unwieldy length of the case and most of its weight. Reese had never actually seen a sword in person; the cover illustrations she’d seen had made them look big, but she’d expected them to be exaggerations, like the extravagant length of hair they put on the maidens. This one had a wider tongue and a longer hilt, too... she could fit two of her hands on the hilt with room to spare. She couldn’t imagine lifting the thing.

But it wasn’t just that it was a sword, and the first sword she’d ever seen in person. It was the sense of use to the thing. She trailed her fingers over the wine-colored cords wrapping the hilt and they chafed... age had frayed them into patterns that suggested the grasp of a man’s hand. And the designs on the hilt and worked into the crossguards had worn away in places, making it unclear exactly what they were—ivy leaves? Random designs? Was that blue-tinged bronze a facing on something harder, or was the hilt actually made of it? And the opals... she’d never seen an opal quite the size of the one below the sword’s crossguards, and the setting holding it had been mashed where it met the cords.

“Blood above,” Reese whispered. “Real swords. Swords that someone uses.”

Allacazam’s gray-lilac agreement was so muted she almost didn’t sense it.

The crushed velvet that cushioned the weapons was a beautiful wine color, like Hirianthial’s eyes, and shiny in places where it had been pressed against the grain and flattened there. The inside of the lid had some sort of crest: a rearing hippogriff with forked tongue in bronze and burgundy, and below it a smaller mark, a unicorn in blue and silver.

“Not my business,” Reese said, closing the lid and securing the catches again. “Definitely not my business.”

Allacazam’s fur ruffled purple with worry, but in her mind she heard the tingle-chimes of his agreement.

“Now let’s see if we can’t get this thing on his bunk now that I’ve had a chance to rest.”

 

It was easier to fit into life on the Earthrise than Hirianthial expected. The crew quarters comprised a tiny fraction of the ship’s actual volume and everyone seemed to have perfected methods for keeping out of each other’s way. How they did it with such ease the Eldritch couldn’t imagine, given that none of them had his ability to sense where each of them was at a given moment. Certain areas had been designated communal spaces according to a set of rules Hirianthial had not yet guessed; while the mess was a communal space, the galley wasn’t, and interrupting whomever was cooking was the fastest way to earn a cold retort. The bathroom was private despite it being shared among everyone but Reese. The bridge, a workspace, was communal but the cargo holds and the engineering decks weren’t. Hirianthial avoided several faux pas by reading the auras off the people in a compartment, but he wondered how well others had integrated in the past.

His small room had become more comfortable with the addition of his luggage, which he’d found in his quarters a few days previously. The swords he slid beneath his bed as was customary; the sheath in his boot he’d filled on the starbase with a dagger of good quality but less lineage than the one beneath his bunk. While he misliked the feel of a foreign weapon at his knee, he would not carry the House blades again unless he returned home. They were not weapons to be casually worn, not with the memories that attended them.

The remainder of his luggage consisted of several changes of clothing, both Alliance standard and relics from his Jisiensire wardrobe; toiletries he’d missed but could have replaced; and the items that he usually ended up setting on a shelf in an altar-like display of his past. The incense holder could have come from anywhere, though had anyone analyzed the wood they would not have found it in the Alliance specimen library. The Woman’s Book of Hours, however, was written in Eldritch, splendidly illuminated with hand-ground pigments, some of them toxic. His mother had given it to his wife, for this particular version of the Book of Hours covered only three seasons of the year and terminated with prayers appropriate to a woman holding her first child in her arms.

It was hard still not to grieve.

The wooden box incised with its relief trim of horses running he set last on the table. Opening it revealed the ring he’d put off to attend to Liolesa’s mission. It was no longer his ring to wear but the habit of it had proved difficult to break. Running his thumb over the cloisonné hippogriff, Hirianthial thought about leaving it in the box, but the spaces alongside the ring cushion seemed too empty with the ring there to mark them. He pulled it from the box and slid it back onto the finger where his mother had set it decades ago.

The book, the incense holder, the jewelry box: they’d always served as a focus for meditation, a frame to lend meaning to solitude. Before he’d left Jisiensire, he’d cherished solitude and the time it gave him to center himself. It was only after his loss that he’d begun to need the distraction of people, and so badly it had driven him to the out-world with its gaudy streams of alien life. Even the Earthrise’s narrow confines gave him too much time to himself, and while it did not upset him he recognized the growth of his melancholy and did what he could to contain it.

Still he had duties, and the air that had made him into someone’s confidant at so many of his workplaces followed him to the Earthrise. He found Sascha in the mess alone several days into their cruise, aura a flattened blue-gray with spikes of black depression.

“Leaves for the doctor, huh?” the Harat-Shar said, glancing at Hirianthial’s salad and summoning up a passable cheer. It appeared in his halo as a flicker of gold that drowned moments later.

“For dinner at least,” Hirianthial said. “I find eating lightly before bed makes for easier sleep.”

“Maybe I should try that,” Sascha said, poking his dinner across the plate half-heartedly. It looked like some kind of small bird in a sauce that smelled fragrantly of orange and cinnamon. No one on the Earthrise ate foods Hirianthial found offensive but some of them were better cooks than others; Sascha’s cooking won over everyone else’s.

“So do you want to tell me why you hate the idea of going home so much?” Hirianthial said, spearing a fork-full of lacy greens.

“How did you—” Sascha stopped. “I guess I’m not the only one who has the right to make cutting observations, ah?”

Hirianthial only smiled.

“It’ll sound stupid.”

“I doubt that,” Hirianthial said.

Sascha prodded his meal a few more times, then put his fork down. “I hate the land.”

“Do you mean that literally?” Hirianthial asked.

The tigraine’s brow furrowed. “That’s not what you were supposed to say.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You were supposed to say, ‘but you’re Harat-Shar! How could you hate your own culture?’ or ‘But it’s your homeworld!’ or ‘But you seem pretty typical Harat-Shariin.’ You know, missing the point.”

“Which is that you hate the land itself, not the culture or the people?” Hirianthial said. “It seems sensical to me.”

Sascha growled. “Yeah, well, you’re the first to say so. I’ve never been able to explain it. It’s not just the land underneath the house of my family. It’s not just the city. It’s not the band of climate next to my place of living. It’s the whole planet. When I try to explain that, the whippy-tails will always say, ‘But oh, Sascha, you know a planet doesn’t have a planetary climate. If you don’t like the land where you live, just move!’ As if a planet can’t have a feel to it, you know?”

The observation was strangely astute of him, but Hirianthial didn’t say so. The theoreticians of his world would have complimented Sascha on his sensitivity to the land’s aura... if they would have been willing to talk to a Harat-Shar at all. And capable of understanding that worlds, too, gave off an energy all their own, and not just kingdoms on them. The first time he’d felt the aura of an alien world singing through his nerves he’d gotten chills. “I think it’s perfectly reasonable,” Hirianthial said.

“It’s almost as if the place repels me,” Sascha mumbled. Louder, then, “As if it hates me. Well, I don’t like it all that much either, and explaining that to my family and friends... Angels, not a memory I want to relive.” He sighed. “At least we’re not going back to stay. Though the moment we touch down my parents will be at me about it. Do you know how hard it is to fend off seven people?”

“Not in that capacity,” Hirianthial said. “I don’t envy you the duty.”

“Yeah. Me neither,” Sascha said. He began tracing lines through the sauce on the rim of the plate.

“Have you ever found a place you liked?” Hirianthial asked. “A place that called you?”

“I found a few I liked and a lot more than that I would be content to settle on,” Sascha said. “One of the nice parts of being a pilot was just how many worlds I got to visit. I’m not looking for perfection, you understand? Just a place that doesn’t hate me. That doesn’t seem too much to ask.”

“Not at all,” Hirianthial said. “I wouldn’t settle in a place that hated me either.”

“It’s not fair, either, that the place where so many people I care about live isn’t the place I feel comfortable living,” Sascha said. “It’s one of the few things Irine and I used to fight about—she wants to have babies on Harat-Sharii where the train can help raise them. I want to go somewhere else. Now that we’re going back we’ve started arguing about it again.”

“Parting from her would be too painful,” Hirianthial guessed.

“I couldn’t do it,” Sascha said. “She’s my twin. It would be like cutting out one of my lungs. I could survive, but for the rest of my life I’d feel crippled.” He shook his head. “No, I just couldn’t. I love her too much. But I’m all for her choosing a mate or two and starting her family somewhere else. If we get enough good people around it won’t matter as much that our blood train is on Harat-Sharii. It’s one of the unadulterated good things about being brought up homeworld Harat-Shar. We can choose family and it’s just as real to us as blood.”

“Is it?” Hirianthial asked.

“Yes,” Sascha said. “That kind of attitude happens when you have multiple adults acting as your parents, most of whom had no genetic material to contribute to your birth.”

“How soon do you think your sister will want a family? And what about you? Do you want a mate of your own?”

“Only one?” Sascha asked with a chuckle. “Having spouses of my own’s not as important to me as Irine having her own kidlets. I’m guessing she’ll want a few more years before she settles. She finds this whole ‘flying around the Alliance’ thing exciting, but her excitement will wear off and when it does she’ll want to find a nest. I never feel the depth of excitement she does, but once I’m committed I focus a lot more easily than she does. We make a good team that way. She keeps me enthused and I keep her determined.”

“No wonder you feel her like a part of yourself,” Hirianthial said. “I wish there was some way I could relieve some of your burden.”

“You have,” Sascha said after a moment. “Funny, you’re the first person I’ve ever mentioned this to who understood what I was talking about without me having to explain it. That makes me feel worlds away better about it.”

“Then I’m glad to have helped,” Hirianthial said.

“Well, don’t get too comfortable on your laurels there,” Sascha said. “Once we get to Harat-Sharii I won’t be the only wreck you’ll have to deal with. I bet even Bryer and Kis’eh’t will leave problems for you to clean up... if they reject too many people, you might have kitties crying on your lap.”

“I hope not!” Hirianthial said with a laugh. “I’ll hardly be much comfort to them if they’re seeking balm for forlorn hearts.”

Sascha eyed him. “It really doesn’t bother you? The notion of being on Harat-Sharii. I would have assumed that your strictures against touching would make the prospect of staying with us uncomfortable.”

“Many things bother me,” Hirianthial said. “People who offer inadvertent discomfort out of a desire to be friendly are far from that list.”

“So what’s on the list?” Sascha asked.

Hirianthial touched the lip of his cup of tea. “Slavery. Suffering. Unnatural death. Cruelty.” He picked up the cup and drank, feeling the wash of Sascha’s brown sobriety, so quick a transition it felt almost embarrassed. He looked up but did not speak.

“I guess it seems like a silly question now,” Sascha said.

“Perspective,” Hirianthial said. “All the matter wants is perspective.”

Sascha stared at his plate for several moments, then said, “I think I’m done with this. Do you want the rest?”

“I’m fine,” Hirianthial said. “But save it for Kis’eh’t. She hasn’t eaten yet and she often waxes poetic about your cooking.”

Sascha laughed. “I’ll do that.” He stood. “I’d thank you, but I won’t. You did what you had to for me. I’ll do the same for you when we get home.”

“Thank you,” Hirianthial said, and wondered.

 

 

“Here we are, Captain... home!” Irine bounced on her heels. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Most planets are,” Reese said, but even she had to admit there was something enticing about the blazing brightness of Harat-Sharii. Its turquoise oceans set off its rust-red continents with their belts of shimmering gold desert and yellow-green forests. Even its clouds made her eyes water with their brilliance.

“Aww, come on,” Irine said. “You have to admit this one is special!”

“All right, fine, it’s special,” Reese said, then relented at the girl’s wounded look. “It is beautiful, Irine. It just... well, it’s so bright it’s like a punch in the eyes.”

Sascha laughed. “You have no idea, boss.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Reese said and leaned past him to hit the broadcast comm. “Hello, hello! This is the TMS Earthrise, Captain Theresa Eddings commanding. Our destination is the city of Zhedeem. Any landing or approach protocols?”

“Earthrise, this is Systems Outpost Three. Welcome to our wonderful system! Is this your first visit?”

“This is,” Reese said, “though I have two hires who call this place home.”

“Excellent. Please proceed to upper orbit and synchronize over Zhedeem. Once you’re in place you can call them for landing instructions.”

“Thanks, Systems Outpost.”

“You’re welcome, madam. Anyone ever tell you that you have a very enticing voice?”

“Only my pet Harat-Shar and no, I’m not looking for more.”

“Curses! Send them my regards, and my envy.”

“I’ll do that,” Reese said. “Earthrise away.” She shook her head. “Am I going to have to deal with that all the way in-system?”

“Not only will you have to, but it’ll get worse,” Sascha said.

“Freedom preserve me,” Reese said. “You handle the landing, then.”

“Consider it done.”

“I hope you’ve packed your suitcase,” Irine added.

“Suitcase!”

“Well, of course! You don’t think the train will let you sleep in the ship, do you?”

“I admit I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Reese said. She lifted a hand when Irine opened her mouth. “No, I won’t object. As long as we’re on a planet’s surface I might as well run maintenance on the air-scrubbers. It’s been a while since I bought us fresh air and we could use a recharge.”

“Fresh air from home to carry with us when we leave? That’s so romantic,” Irine said, bouncing again.

“It’s just common sense,” Reese said. “What’s our time-to-landing, Sascha?”

“Five hours, about.”

“Right. See you fluffies at the airlock.”

Five hours sounded like a comfortable span but by the time Reese had found the rest of the crew and advised them to prepare, chased down Allacazam, packed her own goods and finished another session of staring at her finances wondering where to find all the money she needed for the remaining repairs, the in-systems were firing against atmosphere. Reese gave up on the data tablet and instead smoothed down her vest and examined herself in the bathroom mirror. She didn’t look prepared to tangle with a city full of Harat-Shar. Then again, she never did, even on good days. Shaking her head she shouldered her duffle and headed to the airlock. The rest of the crew was already there, standing with their backs (or in Kis’eh’t’s case, side) to the wall.

“Well, Sascha... will you do the honors?”

“My pleasure,” he said, and keyed the airlock open. He shoved his shoulder into the door and forced its reluctant hinges.

The air that rushed in smelled of incense, exotic spices, burgeoning plant-life waxy with green life over an arid heat. Reese blinked several times, overwhelmed by the charge of it. She’d grown up in domes of carefully maintained, recycled air and graduated to ships with even less assertive supplies. She’d touched down on her share of planets and found them all complex to smell, but nothing so far could compete with this.

“Come on!” Irine said, and dashed outside. Sascha followed at a more casual pace. One by one they filed from the lock and Reese walked down last, shutting the door behind her.

Zhedeem looked the way it smelled but not the way Reese had imagined it. She’d envisioned a bustling metropolis full of the high-rises and parks of a typical Alliance city. Instead, the Earthrise had settled beside a town so low some of the buildings weren’t even a single story high. Hissing fountains and extensive gardens dominated the edges of the town, and past them Reese could see very little save more palms, more trees and the occasional edge of another low building.

The series of buildings they were standing next to were the tallest Reese could see: several half-story buildings and two with very small first stories. The gardens and fountains were a fortress of cool color against the burnished red sands upon which they stood. Even their shadows seemed hot. The house looked welcoming but also unreachable from the edge of the airlock. The sky was so very, very tall and the sand so very empty.

“Where’s the city?” Reese asked finally. Irascibility had always helped bar panic from the forefront of her mind, and if she looked too long at the vista her agoraphobia would send her straight back into the ship. “I thought this place was supposed to have several thousand people living in it.”

“It does,” Sascha said. “They’re mostly underground.” He hiked his bag higher on his shoulder and started down the hill toward the nearest buildings. Irine skipped after him, followed by Bryer and Kis’eh’t.

“I guess we can’t show up and not at least say ‘hi’ to everyone,” Reese said, watching their figures dwindle.

“I doubt the inhabitants of the household have noticed us yet,” Hirianthial said. He stood a comfortable distance away, holding Allacazam in his arms and looking supremely unruffled in his long-sleeved blouse, breeches and boots despite a heat that was already inspiring sweat on Reese. “The twins would be disappointed, though.”

“Yeah,” Reese said. “I guess they would be.” Still, she couldn’t bring herself to move. She waited for Hirianthial to say something about it, but surprisingly he remained silent. Nor did he fidget as she struggled with her fear that the sky would fall on her—or worse, never end.

It seemed to take forever to decide to make the first step. She wondered if the moment lasted as long for Hirianthial as it seemed to for her. Maybe living forever gave a person a different perspective on what a “long time” was. With a sigh, Reese trudged after the rest of the crew. By the time she reached the base of the hill her ankles and shins ached from walking over the unsteady sand and her body was so slick with sweat she no longer feared unsolicited hugs from Irine and Sascha’s family... no doubt she stank so fragrantly of hot human now that no one in her right mind would come near until she bathed.

Hirianthial, curse his eyes, looked remarkably fresh. On closer, surreptitious examination he was sweating, but it simply made him look glossy and vibrant rather than exhausted and untidy. She wondered where she could buy that trick.

The delineation between desert and garden was as sharp as the first brick beneath the gate that stood half-open. Reese passed into this wonderland of green and imagined that it felt cooler.

“Wonderful,” Hirianthial said behind her. “You can smell the water.”

“Is that what that is?” she asked, surprised, and sniffed. “I thought I was imagining it.”

“No,” he said. “The very plants sing of it.”

She glanced at him, decided to say nothing and moved on. The paths showed signs of meticulous care, pruned and swept, bordered by shining plants with new but not yet open blooms. The deeper into it Reese walked, the more she felt the change in the air, how it softened, became almost a caress. The best part was definitely how the plants shielded her from the panoramic view.

A trickling fountain proved to be the first in a set, each one growing larger and larger as they came closer to the house. The first was only big enough for a desultory plaque. The final depicted a woman with an infant at her breast, a tumbled urn at her feet dispensing the water into the basin.

“Reese!” Irine stood at the arch into the first of the buildings, built below the gardens and accessible from a set of five steps. “Come on, get out of the heat!”

“Do I look like I’m lingering?” Reese said. She joined the Harat-Shar, hoping for an enclosed space and air conditioning but the hall she entered was lined with windows set over the ground level. The fans on the ceilings whispered a soft whuff-whuff as they sent their breezes across the floor mosaics, but the place felt very exposed.

“Is the whole town like this?” Reese asked.

“Most of it,” Irine said. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to Father’s first wife.”

“Your mother?” Reese asked, following Irine with Hirianthial at her heels like a second shadow. A white shadow. She wished he wouldn’t do whatever it was he did that made her feel stalked, but also felt ridiculous telling someone who wouldn’t come within six feet of her that he was walking too close.

“Yes,” Irine said, then added, “One of them. If you mean my birth-mother, no. But she nursed me, as did a few of Father’s other wives.”

Reese touched her forehead. “Just be gentle with the culture shocks, okay?”

“I’ll try,” Irine said, laughing. “Look, here she is! Mazer, here is Reese, my captain!”

Beyond the entry hall was a smaller room... no less a chamber than the first, but with a circular couch in the center of it and several sideboards. Reese couldn’t imagine what use the room would be, since its size did not invite intimacy. Her crew proved that by being scattered around the room, uncertain of where to stand or sit. Only Sascha seemed to have found a place to settle, though the tense cant of his ears belied his slouch.

None of that mattered, though, because the woman sitting on one of the couch’s cushions made her want to turn and march right back to the Earthrise. She’d even risk Hirianthial’s curious gaze to do it, except the woman was already rising and offering her hands and it seemed too impolite to run now. With a sigh, Reese gave hers to the woman and said, “You’re the kind who knows everyone’s secrets within a few minutes of meeting them, aren’t you?”

The woman blinked several times, then grinned lazily. “Yes, but until this very day no one’s had the eggs to up and say it the moment they noticed.”

“Don’t try to make my life any harder, please,” Reese said. “I really appreciate being able to stay here, but if it means I’m going to have Harat-Shar crawling in my brain I have no problems going back to the ship and sleeping in my hammock.”

“Captain!” Irine exclaimed.

“Oh, hush, Irine,” the woman said. “Your mother can handle straight talking.” To Reese she said, “It’s never my intention to make people’s lives harder. I will do my best not to drive you away.”

“Good,” Reese said. “As Irine said, I’m Theresa Eddings, Captain of the Earthrise. You’ve met my crew?”

“Everyone but the fine fellow standing behind you, and the gentlecreature in his arms.”

“That would be Hirianthial Sarel Jisiensire and Allacazam,” Reese said.

“My name is Zhemala,” the woman said. “I am the first among Mascher’s wives and it will be my duty to see to your welfare. Though I may delegate that duty to my co-wives or children if the rest of the household demands me. If it pleases you, I’ll bring them out of the zenana for you to meet?”

“The zenana?” Reese asked, perplexed.

“Harem,” Hirianthial said from behind her.

“How do you know another word for a harem?” she asked him, irritated.

Zhemala laughed. “Obviously he is a well-read man. Or he’s worked with Harat-Shar before?”

“Intimately, Lady,” Hirianthial said with a dip of his head, “Though not, perhaps, in all the meanings of that word those coworkers would have liked.”

Reese wasn’t sure what annoyed her more, the fact that he was lady-ing someone besides her or that she was offended by it. If it got him off her back, well and good!

“Is this a literal harem?” Reese asked finally.

“What other kind is there?” Zhemala asked, her mouth widening in a grin. “Or do you think the costume is for show?”

“Why don’t we get them something to eat and drink and show them someplace they can relax while we figure out where to put them?” Sascha said from the floor. “They’re probably hot, Mazer.”

“Would you like to change into something more comfortable?” Zhemala asked.

“No,” Reese said. The last thing she needed was to let Irine dress her up in some version of her mother’s crazy outfit. She didn’t need to bare most of her belly, stomach, ribs and arms in front of anyone. “But the food and drink sounds very nice.”

Zhemala nodded. “Children, why don’t you take them to the Moon Patio? I’ll send some slaves with food and drink.”

“You must be kidding me,” Reese said.

“Not at all,” Zhemala said. “It is my pleasure to see you properly served. I will join you have arranging accommodations... all separate rooms, I presume?”

“Yes, please.”

She nodded and left at a pace both brisk and graceful. Reese stared after her for several minutes.

“Umm, Captain? Food is this way,” Sascha said, tugging on her arm.

“She was kidding about the slaves, right?” Reese asked.

“Of course not,” Irine said. “We buy slaves all the time.”

Reese said, “Slavery’s illegal.”

“Not here. We get special dispensation,” Irine said. “Just wait until you’ve had our marzipan pastries!”

“You guys walk ahead,” Reese said. “I need to take it slow. The heat, you know.”

Irine eyed her, then shrugged and skipped forward, pulling Kis’eh’t by an arm. Sascha followed her, with Bryer alongside.

“You’re not going to set them on fire, are you?” Reese asked the Eldritch, her voice hushed.

“What?” He blinked several times, then looked down at her. “Gracious Lady, no. Why would I do that?”

“Slaves!” Reese exclaimed.

Hirianthial laughed, a few soft puffs of breath. “Ask Irine more about Harat-Shariin slavery once we get to the table. It’s not a sin of the same magnitude as the illegal trade I was pursuing.”

She thought for certain he must be jesting, but he seemed at ease and in his arms Allacazam remained a contented blue-peach.

“Never fear, my lady... I shan’t feel compelled to take justice into my hands on behalf of the slaves of Harat-Sharii.” He bowed, ever-so-slightly, never removing his eyes from her face, and gestured up the hall. “After you.”

Unsettled, Reese followed the twins.

 

The Moon Garden was not a garden of night-blooming flowers, as Reese had expected from the name. Instead all of the carefully manicured plants, from the glossy dark shrubs lining the half-height stucco walls to the delicate ivy trained up the trellises, bloomed in shades of white and ivory and a blush-tinted cream. Their perfume was so dense it was not dispelled by the ceiling fan hung from the bottom of a balcony that projected from the roof, far over their heads. Between that far-away ceiling and the profusion of flowers and plants, the patio managed to feel far more enclosed than it actually was.

As with most of the rooms and gardens they’d passed through to reach this one, Reese could hear the far-off trickle of water. She was so busy trying to find the source of the sound that she didn’t notice the naked people until she was halfway into the patio. Her abrupt stop nearly made Hirianthial bump into her.

“Ack, Irine!” Reese said. “You didn’t tell me they’d be naked!”

Irine waved a hand. “They’re slaves. Did you expect them to be dressed?”

Reese couldn’t bring herself to move. Something about the two women with their serving platters, their nudity accentuated by the jewelry they wore, disconcerted her more than any of the more extreme things she’d read about Harat-Shar.

From behind her, Hirianthial’s voice sounded gentle, calming. “Go ahead. Sit with your people.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him, trying to hide how rattled she was. Then she sighed and plunked herself on one of the stone benches. Hirianthial followed her and lit on one of the nearby stone columns, this one cut half-height.

Reese said, “All right. Explain this right now before I go crazy. How come this planet gets slaves?”

“They enslaved themselves voluntarily,” Sascha said. “They sign up for a period of time, at the end of which they either renew their contracts or go back to being free. When they sign up they specify what they’re willing to do or undergo.”

“And they get paid for this?” Reese asked, mystified.

“Of course not,” Irine said. “That’s not slavery, that’s employment.”

“When they sign up, they can get a special kind of high-interest account at any bank,” Sascha said. “While they’re “unemployed” their savings accrue much higher dividends, plus they get a host of other protections under the law.” He scratched his nose. “Actually, depending on how long you want to stay, Captain, that might not be a bad way to deal with our cash deficits.”

“You must be kidding,” Reese said.

“Not at all,” Sascha said. “We get a lot of our workforce this way. That and the indentured servitude.” Before Reese could interject, he said, “Convicts, captain. They work a term of service, unpaid and unprotected, for petty crimes.”

“Do all of them wander around naked?” Reese asked.

Irine giggled. “Only if their masters want them to.”

“House and pleasure servants typically do,” Sascha said. “Slaves choosing other means of service wear whatever’s appropriate to the task they signed up for.” He glanced at Hirianthial. “The medical profession is almost entirely slave labor. The law doesn’t allow a person to sue slaves for damages, so it’s the cheapest and safest way for doctors to practice.”

“Now you really must be kidding,” Reese said. “All your doctors are slaves?”

“Servants,” Hirianthial murmured. “All doctors are servants, no matter how they’re compensated.”

“I did not cross the Alliance to save you from slavers so you could meekly offer yourself to a city full of insane cats,” Reese said.

“He can practice as a free-man,” Sascha said. “It’s just a different balance of money and risk.” He grinned. “Besides, Captain, he can’t enslave himself without your permission. None of us can take any form of employment or contract without your say-so, in fact.”

Reese tapped her fingers on the table. “I told Irine one culture shock at a time, Sascha.”

Kis’eh’t offered, “Maybe it’s better just to get as many of them over with as possible, Reese... while in the presence of people you trust.”

“I trust you people?” Reese said. When they laughed, she said, “All right, Sascha. Tell me why people need my permission to do anything.”

“Under the law here,” Sascha said, “Visiting crews are considered owned by their employer. They can’t be employed without permission from the captain of the vessel.”

“I don’t run a Fleet ship,” Reese said. “You people are my employees, not in service to me.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hirianthial look at her, suddenly.

“It’s the law, Captain. It doesn’t matter if you’re a merchant or military.”

Another slave appeared at the entrance to the house. “Mistress, if it pleases you may we speak with the Phoenix and the Glaseah? We believe we have comfortable accommodations for them, but we would be pleased if they would examine them for suitability.”

“Just when the conversation was getting exciting,” Kis’eh’t said with a lopsided smile.

Bryer stood, saying, “The conversation lacks focus. We go.”

Irine popped to her feet. “I’ll come too.”

“What, you don’t want to take part in the unfocused conversation?” Reese asked.

Irine grinned. “Oh, I’m sure you won’t let the matter drop quickly. I’ll have plenty of time to hear you complain about it later.”

Sascha stared after them for longer than Reese expected, after they left. She said, “Something wrong?”

Sascha shook his head. “She’s just very happy to be home.”

“And you’re not,” Reese guessed. “I might have a chance to keep sane after all.”

She expected him to disagree, but instead the Harat-Shar chuckled and looked at Hirianthial. “So, are you going to work as a doctor here?”

“If I can,” Hirianthial said. “I have licenses in several specialties. Most Core worlds accept those wherever you travel.”

“I am not going to give you over to slavery,” Reese said, folding her arms.

“It is service, Lady, not slavery,” Hirianthial said, petting Allacazam. Beneath his hands the Flitzbe turned a deep, contented purple-blue, and those long white fingers sprang into sharp relief. Those hands had opened up her body and knitted her back together. They looked like a surgeon’s hands.

“I’d be careful about your assumptions,” Sascha said. “We call it slavery and it is slavery. You don’t have any choices once you sign the contract.”

Those long hands stopped moving. “So your master could beat you?”

“Sure, if you needed to be punished,” Sascha said.

“To death?” Hirianthial asked.

“of course not!” Sascha said.

“And abuse?”

The Harat-Shar fidgeted. “Not unless you sign up for abuse.”

“Starvation? Medical procedures without consent? Sterilization?” Hirianthial said. His voice remained calm and evenly paced, but Reese couldn’t shake the feeling he was pressing.

“Of course not,” Sascha said. “You have to find a very special segment of society to sign away that much of yourself.”

“What a genteel existence,” Hirianthial said. “Enough food to eat, enough to drink, a place to sleep, masters who dare not abuse you or torture you beyond what you have yourself allowed on a piece of paper you have signed.” He resumed petting Allacazam, who began to turn a very unpleasant orange. “Call this slavery if you like, Sascha. It bears as much resemblance to it as wine to poison.”

Reese stared at him. He looked as serene as always, but something about his face had changed. Beside her, Sascha sat stiffly transfixed, even his tail unmoving.

“Besides,” Hirianthial said after a moment, “I haven’t said whether I would take a slave-doctor’s contract. Even I am leery of giving Harat-Sharii that much of me.” A flicker of a smile.

Reese let out a long breath. “Thank the blood in the dust. The man has a sense of self-preservation.”

“He’ll need it,” Sascha said and stood with a tail-lash. “I’ll check on your rooms.”

Reese nodded, but the tigraine was gone before she could finish the gesture. She glanced at Hirianthial. “This is going to be harder than I thought.”

“Is it?” Hirianthial asked.

“You’re not nervous about this?”

He continued stroking Allacazam, who slowly turned a lovely turquoise green—what that meant, Reese hadn’t the slightest idea. “Worrying about what has not yet come to pass was never my duty, lady.”

It was such a bizarre thing to say she wasn’t sure how to respond. Finally, she came up with, “What is your duty, then?”

“To go where I’m sent,” he said. “To do as I’m asked.”

“To think as you’re told to think?” Reese asked with a trace of acid. “Doesn’t sound like the life of a responsible adult.”

“And your way is better, lady?” Hirianthial asked. Allacazam had bloomed several splotches of alarmed red. “To cast off all the threads that would connect you to others? To deny your responsibility to them? To mistake destructive stubbornness for individual choice?”

Reese gaped at him.

“Even a short life is no excuse for such selfishness,” he said, standing.

“W-what?” Reese managed. “Hey, wait! You can’t say that kind of thing to me! What gives you the right to judge me? You barely know me!”

“And you me,” Hirianthial said at the door. “Keep this in mind, captain,” heavily touched with irony, the title, “Harat-Sharii’s laws have made you the lord of your ship and we your liegemen. Take care with the role.”

“I didn’t ask to be in charge!”

“Few people do,” he said.

“Wait!” she said, but he was already through the door. Blood and spit! He had no right!

 

It had not been his plan to wander, but the alternative had not been palatable. So with Allacazam slowly calming in his arms, Hirianthial drifted through the gracious halls of the twins’ family estate. The subsequent rooms had been built on the same model as the first few he’d seen: large windows at ground level, high ceilings and fans. Lovingly tended plants lined the corridors, some reaching from outside to coil tendrils along the inside walls. Broad-mouthed pots proved to be water gardens, sporting exotic lilies and populations of tiny fish and other less familiar creatures. Each hall seemed to branch into a shaded terrace, a sheltered alcove, a perfumed garden. Occasionally he caught sight of stairs leading into the ground and up to the earth.

Slaves passed him, their auras dense and lazy with pleasure. How could he explain how easily he could discern their contentment? He’d run his mental fingers over the distant auras of true slaves before, felt the spikes of pain so long suppressed the barbs had turned inward, sinking into the person’s mind with the cruelty of despair. He would never have willingly given himself to the work these slaves had signed themselves to, but their willingness was real. There was no menace in this household.

In time, Hirianthial found a garden so charming he couldn’t leave it. He perched on a crumbled stone wall among flowers so tiny their blossoms seemed more like lilac spatters off a paint brush. They smelled spicy, like sandalwood and ember bark. Half a dozen orange butterflies floated among the bushes, and at his feet black lizards raced from one end of the patio to the other. With Allacazam drowsily eating sunlight at his side, Hirianthial relaxed.

“Did my son release you so quickly, then?”

“He seemed eager to arrange our rooms,” Hirianthial said, turning to look at Zhemala.

“You are overdressed for the weather,” she said. The crumbling wall had once framed a gate, and she sat on the gate’s opposite side, her gaze resting on his.

“If that was an invitation, lady, I’m afraid I shall ignore it,” he said.

She laughed, her teeth and red mouth obscured by the filmy veil that fell from the level of her cheeks. “No, old alien. It was an invitation to have water. You will need more water than you are accustomed to drinking on a dry, cold ship.”

“Water would be welcome,” Hirianthial said.

She called for the attention of a servant and sent him away for a pitcher, then turned back to the Eldritch. “Will you forgive my staring? Most people expect Harat-Shar to stare, but your people are not rumored to know much of the Pelted.”

“As you will, lady,” Hirianthial said. “Your eyes will not harm me.”

And with amusement, he observed the frankness of her appraisal and how it did not lift until the servant returned with a sweating silver pitcher and two goblets. She did not pass him his after pouring it, but set it on the edge of his side of the gate with all the practiced etiquette of an Eldritch courtier.

“I have lived long and hard and never regretted it,” Zhemala said. “But I never thought I’d see an Eldritch in the real. I would greatly love to see more of you, but if this is all I ever see then I am satisfied.”

“Are we worth so much?” Hirianthial asked with a lifted brow.

“Oh, anything rare enough is worth so much,” the Harat-Shar said. “But this... yes, this even more. Your captain is a lucky girl. But come, there is business to discuss.”

The water was cold enough to shock, cold enough to numb his mouth. He could feel it traveling all the way down his throat and into his stomach. “Business, lady?”

“My children tell me you’re a doctor, and I happen to have a particular need for a doctor at this time. If you show interest, I would offer your captain a contract for a few hours of your time a day.”

“And my duties?” Hirianthial asked, setting the goblet down.

“One of my husband’s wives is expecting and this is her first,” Zhemala said. “She is suffering from anxiety over her physical condition. A doctor would be a welcome addition to her midwife.”

He was glad he’d put the goblet down as it gave him ample reason to fold his hands together in his lap where they could not shake. He was similarly glad that Allacazam was too far and too somnolent from gorging to react to the panic that had gripped his chest. “I do not have a specialty in obstetrics, lady,” he said.

“I didn’t imagine so,” Zhemala said and took a long sip from her goblet. “I won’t require your help in delivering her baby—she’s not close to her time—only in reminding her to care for herself, to eat the right foods and take the right supplements, and to ease her anxieties about being a mother. I will talk bluntly, sir. I do not require a doctor. I require a babysitter whose degrees in medicine will lend him a lulling air of authority. I will pay your captain well for you to deal with her histrionics, for all of us are beginning to find them tiresome.”

“I can play the nursemaid,” Hirianthial said, forcing his discomfort aside. “But I must point out that I am no woman. How can your co-wife believe me if I have no direct experience with what she will soon undergo?”

“The midwife has not calmed her, despite her many successes and her own long line of children,” Zhemala said. “So perhaps the girl’s habit of obedience to men will shut her up in your presence.” She sighed. “I would have brought in someone from the city, but you are close, you are convenient, and you’ll be leaving... so I need not worry about alienating a neighbor.” She managed a faint smile, one that didn’t rise far enough above her veil to touch her eyes. “Her mother died giving birth to her second sister. The girl is convinced the baby will kill her. We’re tired of telling her otherwise. Perhaps you will have better luck.”

The irony of the situation was heavy-handed enough to off-set the reminder of his grief. Hirianthial said, “You’ll have to check with Captain Eddings—”

“—of course.”

“But if she approves, I will do my best,” Hirianthial said.

Zhemala smiled and left him with the pitcher. He poured himself another serving and watched the butterflies.

 

“Reese!”

She paused at the entrance to the hall to find the twins trotting toward her. She’d almost escaped without anyone seeing her, which would have suited her fine... her talk with Hirianthial had left her angry and unsettled.

Sascha stopped first. “I was going to show you and Hirianthial to your rooms, but I get back to the Moon Patio and find you both gone! Where are you going? And where’s Hirianthial?”

“I’m heading into town,” Reese said. “I don’t know where Hirianthial is.”

“Town already?” Sascha asked. “You’re not even settled!”

“In case you haven’t noticed, the ship’s in need of repair,” Reese said, clipping her data tablet onto her belt.

“Can’t it wait a single day?” Irine asked. “Mamer’s preparing a glorious dinner!”

“Dinner’s not for another five or six hours, unless you people call lunch dinner,” Reese said.

“We can’t lift off for an entire season, though,” Sascha said. “What’s the point of rushing?”

“The point of rushing is that the faster I get this done, the more relaxed I’ll be. I hate having things hanging over my head. So tell me which way, fuzzies, or I’ll have to figure it out on my own and you know how cranky that will make me.”

Irine sighed. “Go down Market Avenue. The port’s at the end of it.”

“That’s it?” Reese asked, lifting a brow.

“Hey, that’s just how Hirianthial looks sometimes,” Irine crowed, tail waving.

“What are you talking about?”

“The thing with the brow,” Irine said.

As if sensing Reese’s forthcoming tantrum, Sascha hastily said, “Market Avenue’s the largest street in town. You won’t miss it. It’s in the middle of everything.”

“Right,” Reese said. And added, “I do not look like him.”

“Of course you don’t,” Sascha said, pushing Irine deeper into the hall. “Enjoy your walk.”

Reese eyed them both, then shrugged and headed toward the nearest exit. Finding it wasn’t as easy as she’d hoped, but she managed to navigate out without having to ask one of the naked people how to get to the street. Blood and Freedom, but a little clothing wouldn’t have hurt them, would it? Except that she had to admit that it was hot, so hot that it distracted her from staring at the size of the sky. She was used to climate-controlled environments, not places where the light was accompanied by heat dense enough she bet it could melt plastic. By the time she reached the edge of town, Reese regretted her black jumpsuit more than she could describe.

Market Avenue was indeed easy to find, though not needing directions didn’t save her from the flirtatious calls from a few bystanders. Reese fumbled her responses and escaped while they laughed. Blushing only made her feel hotter, so she found the first grocer and jumped down the stairs to buy something to drink. It was a little strange at first to be halfway underground while inside, but if the Harat-Shar claimed it made it easier to cool their buildings she wasn’t going to argue. Especially when arguing prolonged conversations that inevitably involved a proposition.

Back up on the street Reese began the long walk to the end of town, grateful that the profusion of stores and people made it easier to ignore the vastness of the world around her. Sascha’s claim about Zhedeem being off-worlder-friendly seemed true; for every five Harat-Shar strolling the street in veils and flowing pants there was one alien. Humans, Seersa, Karaka’An, Asanii, the occasional Ciracaana flowing past on four feet... quite a selection. With the crowd so dense and so many people intent on errands, no Harat-Shar pounced the off-worlders either, which went a long way toward making Reese relax.

No, it was entirely unfair that she was enjoying the shade of the palms and the vibrancy of the passersby and the jabber of different languages amid the more common use of Universal. It was also entirely unfair that there were so many fascinating and exotic shops, from restaurants smelling of unfamiliar but enticing spices to vendors of luxury items Reese had never been able to afford. Expensive cloth. Boutiques selling haute couture so bizarre she couldn’t figure out how it stayed on the solidigraphs. Art in blazing colors appropriate to the planet. Personal hardware that made her battered old data tablet look positively prehistoric. Cosmetics appropriate for whatever kind of face you had, whether covered with skin, fur or scales.

She managed to ignore it all with only the faintest pangs of longing. Her account simply couldn’t clothe her in hand-woven brocade or buy her jeweled sandals. She was, in fact, feeling proud of her own willpower when it failed.

Her feet took her down the stairs and her hand pushed the glass door before her, and she was standing inside a real bookstore before she realized where she was. And oh, the smell of paper!

“May I help you?” a cheerful woman asked. She had spots... leopard spots? Something like that. What little Reese knew about Terran cats she’d learned because of Harat-Shar patterning. The woman also had a veil draped over her nose and chin and throat.

“Books,” Reese managed. “These are real books?”

“Of every kind,” the woman agreed. “From the electronic sort you can order in squirts to hand-made, hand-painted, hand-lettered curiosities from around the Alliance.”

“Oh my,” Reese said around a tight throat. “I’ve never held a real book in my hands.”

“Never?” the woman said, eyes round. “Virgin hands! We should remedy that at once! Come along.”

In the coldest, driest section of the store near the back, Reese found herself holding a real book with a leather cover, leaves of raw silk that chafed beneath her fingers and glossy ink she could still smell, pungent and rich. Her reverence inspired the woman to hand her yet another, and another, each one more glorious than the next until finally Reese sat on a bench and said, “I can’t possibly see any more. I’ll die of wonder.”

“You could take one home,” the woman said.

Reese laughed. “There’s no way I could afford any of these treasures. I can buy a soft copy of something... I should, anyway, I’ve run out of my monthlies... but those? Those are far, far beyond my reach.”

“You never know,” the woman said. “But tell me what you’d like to look at and we’ll see if we can’t set you up with something.”

“A romance novel,” Reese said. “Preferably something new.” Against her better judgment she added, “And with Eldritch in it.”

“Eldritch!” the woman said with a laugh.

“I know,” Reese said. “It’s silly. Especially since I’ve got one of my own and I realize they’re not the way they’re written, not at all.”

“You’ve got an Eldritch of your own to play with?” the woman asked, eyeing her as she replaced one of the treasures on the shelf.

“I don’t... er... ,” Reese stopped and sighed. “The Eldritch’s not someone I’d play with, but yes, I’ve got one. They’re as much trouble as they are in the books, but about six times more obstinate. In the books if you push them with a finger, they fall over. In real life you could ram them with a wrecking ball and they’d stay put just to spite you.”

The Harat-Shar laughed. “It sounds like you’re having quite an experience with her!”

“Him,” Reese said.

“Even worse,” the woman said. “I’ll show you where the romances are. The best romances.”

“That sounds like just what I need,” Reese said and stood.

On the other side of the shelving, the leopard-spotted woman plucked a book down and handed it to her. The cover was absolutely scandalous: not just one Harat-Shar, but two Harat-Shar men and an Eldritch woman.

“Are you sure about this?” Reese said. “It looks pornographic.”

“I think you’ll be surprised,” the woman said. “You can trust this author.”

It was so glibly said Reese didn’t know what prompted her to look up at the Harat-Shar and see the utter sobriety in the woman’s coffee-colored eyes. It was such an unexpected expression that she said, “I’ll take it.”

The woman smiled.

Outside the store with the soft copy of the novel in her data tablet, Reese wondered what she’d just missed. Shaking herself, she headed back down the avenue for the port and reached it an hour later without being tempted by any of the other stores in her way. There she began collecting quotes for her repair work, keeping alert for any rumors about which shops did better quality work than others. By the time she made it to the end of the port her feet ached and her skin felt stretched taut from the heat. She found a bench to rest and watched the passersby.

While she’d been working she hadn’t taken much notice of the balance of aliens and Harat-Shar in the port; now that she looked, she found far more aliens than natives. A lot of humans, not all of them someone she would have trusted to shake her hand. She began to wonder how safe the port was. Sascha had said something about Zhedeem being one of the few cities with a healthy mix of off-worlders and natives... maybe that wasn’t the advantage she’d been hoping for.

Reese rubbed her forehead. She was being ridiculous. Surely the pirates wouldn’t bother to follow her here. She would have trouble enough with the crew and her crazy Harat-Shariin pair without borrowing more about pirate vendettas.

At least her stomach didn’t burn up anymore. It still twisted, but it no longer burned. It was a spare blessing, but Reese counted it anyway. With a long breath she heaved herself to her feet and headed back into the port to do a few more errands.

By the time Reese let herself back into the gardens around the estate the world had turned purple after an astonishingly clear, high sunset. Irine greeted her as she let herself into one of the halls.

“You missed dinner,” Irine said.

Reese flushed. “Sorry. I got caught up in what I was doing.”

Irine shrugged. “There will be other dinners, I guess. If you want to come.”

“I do,” Reese said. “I just... I’m sorry, Irine. I’m just overwhelmed.”

“Are we that scary?” Irine asked, ears drooping.

“It’s not you,” Reese said, then sighed. “It’s not just you,” she amended. “It’s everything. It’s having so many bills and not knowing where the money’s going to come from. It’s worrying about slavers. It’s being dirtside—you know I hate the way planets smell. It’s being in an unfamiliar place. And curse it all, it’s Hirianthial.”

Irine glanced at her, catching the glow of a lantern in one mischievous eye. “So that’s it. He did say something to you.”

“He’s always saying something to me,” Reese muttered. “I thought Eldritch were supposed to be quiet and mysterious, not high-handed and insufferable.”

Irine grasped her by the elbow, pulling her down the hall. “You don’t think he’s quiet and mysterious? He’s not exactly chatty, you know.”

“Chatty would have been forgivable,” Reese said. “What he actually does is far more annoying.”

“Sascha and Kis’eh’t and I had a bet about whether he said something to annoy you,” Irine said with a chortle. “I knew I’d win! What did he say?”

“That I’d better start taking care of you people now that we’d landed here and Harat-Sharii’s laws had put you in my care,” Reese said. “Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous?”

“Of course I have,” Irine said. “But you’re talking about our laws, so what else would I think? Here’s your room.”

Reese paused in the threshold, had a sense of walls, windows, and gauze curtains. Something outside was chirping... no, several somethings. Insects? Amphibians? Who knew? The fan and the night’s breeze intersected somewhere around the window, and someone had hung a hammock for her there.

“Are those seriously supposed to stay open?” Reese asked.

“How else will you stay cool?” Irine said reasonably. “You’ll get used to it.”

“And the noise?”

“Greerhorns,” Irine said. “Sort of like crickets, if you know what those are.” At Reese’s look, the tigraine shrugged and said, “Imagine long-legged insects.”

“Ugh,” Reese said. “I hope they don’t get in.”

“Don’t worry about it, you’re off the ground,” Irine said. “Now tell me more about your being annoyed.”

Reese eyed her.

“This is more than prurient curiosity, I promise,” Irine said with a grin.

With a sigh, Reese rumpled her braids and sat on the edge of the hammock. To her surprise, Allacazam rolled out from beneath her blankets and bumped into her thigh, blending a chime of welcome with a sleepy blue-violet veil. Without thinking about it, Reese started petting him. “I’m just not comfortable with dictating other people’s fates.”

“Why not?” Irine asked.

Reese stared at her.

“Really,” Irine said. “If they give you permission, why not?”

“Because you can’t make someone else’s choices for them,” Reese said. “It’s not right.”

“What if they want you to?”

“It’s not right,” Reese said again. “We’re all individuals. We all have to make our own choices. We all have to take responsibility for our actions. No one can do that for anyone else.”

“If you really feel that way, why do you read all these romances about princes and kings?” Irine asked.

Reese gawked at her.

“We don’t read your mail,” Irine said. “But everyone sees the squirts in the communication logs. It’s not exactly a big ship.” She grinned. “I like a good romance novel myself... but you seem to have a theme to your choices.”

“Well maybe I do like the princes and kings,” Reese said. “But they’re fantasies. They’re escapes.”

“They must touch something in people, otherwise why would they endure?” Irine said.

In the back of her mind Allacazam shrouded her frustrations with draping black willows that rustled in an evening breeze. Reese let the sound muffle her angry response until something more reasonable came up. “Maybe we wish we could have that much faith in people, that we could trust them to keep our hearts and lives in the forefronts of their minds. But the truth is that no one can do that... not fairly, not all the time. That’s why they’re escapes. They’re not real. And I resent having to treat you people like vassals when you’re my employees, who came to me out of free will and who should be free to make your own choices.”

Irine shrugged. “If it bothers you that much, when we bring you our temporary contracts sign them without reviewing them. Think of it as a formality if it makes you more comfortable.”

“I guess I can do that,” Reese said.

Irine stood and stretched. “I think I’ll go find a cuddle-pile. Do you want anything from the kitchen? There’s a water pitcher in the bathroom, but no food.”

“I’m fine, I think.”

“All right. Good night, then.”

“Good night,” Reese said.

At the door, Irine said, “You know I’d trust you to make my decisions for me any day.”

“Oh, shoo,” Reese said and Irine scampered out, laughing. But sitting in the hammock, Reese felt such a confused mess of emotions she couldn’t sort them out. Allacazam touched the edge of her mind with a rising note, and to his question Reese could only murmur, “I wish I knew myself.”

There was indeed a pitcher of water in the bathroom, and Reese availed herself of it several times before finishing her preparations for sleep. Her body ached so much she decided to wait until morning for a bath. Yet when she clambered into the hammock with Allacazam, she tossed and turned, twisting herself into the netting until finally she sat up. The smell of the breeze, deep and dry, the rustling it made, the crickets, the very openness of the chamber... all of it was so unsettling she couldn’t compose herself. Allacazam sent a faint candle into her mind, questioning.

“I don’t know,” she said and sighed. “Maybe I’ll just read until I fall asleep.”

The candle trembled for a moment, then receded again. The Flitzbe’s presence in her mind faded to what sometimes felt like a distant white noise. Reese reached for her data tablet and brought up the cover with the two Harat-Shar and the Eldritch.

“Still looks pornographic,” she muttered and began to read.

 

“I am Karya Midwife,” the old woman said when the servant deposited Hirianthial at the chamber door. “And this is your charge, Salaena.”

Salaena looked up from her nest of cushions in the corner of the room. “Karya, I feel strange. Something’s wrong.”

“You’re probably hungry,” the old woman said dryly. “Now, girl... see, Zhemala has sent for a doctor for you. He’ll make sure you’re healthy.”

“A doctor?” The girl’s restless eyes fastened on Hirianthial’s face then slid away again. “So I am in trouble.”

“No, nothing like that,” Karya said. “He’s here to help you have the healthiest baby possible by telling you what to eat and when to rest. You’re already fine, girl. The doctor is just here to answer your questions.”

“What’s wrong with me?” Salaena asked.

Hirianthial restrained the urge to say, “You’re pregnant.” Instead he sat on a bench next to one of the broad windows and said, “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“How do you know? You haven’t even checked!”

“I’ve seen sick people before, lady,” Hirianthial said, gentling his voice. “They don’t look the way you do.” Which was only truth: even the briefest brush with his mental fingers had brought him nothing but a glowing aura and the contented nestled sendings of a still-unaware infant.

“Sometimes people look completely fine and then they just die,” Salaena said. “My mother died that way.”

“Your mother died in childbirth after hours of agonizing labor,” Karya said. “It’s not as if there wasn’t warning.”

The girl burst into tears. Karya sighed.

Hirianthial settled in for a long three hours. Salaena paced when she should have been resting, sat when she should have been enjoying the respite from the day’s heat, constantly ran her hands over her belly, searching for what Hirianthial knew not. She never ceased to tremble, and her gaze when she managed to look at anything for very long had the poor focus of panic. The Eldritch did what he could to calm her, everything from soporific, pregnancy-safe teas to examining her with Alliance equipment and explaining the positive results, but nothing seemed to allay her concerns.

“I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” he said when the servants began bringing lunch.

“Did you choose my lunch?” Salaena asked. “Should I eat? I can’t tell if I’m hungry. Isn’t it a bad sign if you have no appetite?”

“You’re fine, dear,” Karya said.

“Just eat what you seem to crave,” Hirianthial said and stepped out.

Karya joined him in the corridor. “Thank you. You were good with her.”

“She is beyond any of our help,” Hirianthial said. “If she doesn’t calm down she’ll hurt herself.”

“Don’t I know it,” the midwife said, exasperated. She offered him a card. “I imagine you’ll be looking for work for the rest of your hours? If you’re interested, try this hospital. I have an off-season contract with them and they’re always interested in people who can calm others.”

Mindful of the woman’s fingers, Hirianthial took the card and glanced at it. “A children’s hospital? Lady, I would rather work with adults.”

“Not here you wouldn’t,” the old woman said with a huff. When he glanced at her, she said, “Whether you wish to or not, your pretty white skin and lovely long face will get you more attention than you want. Salaena’s too self-absorbed to notice you, but no one else will be. Even I notice you, and I’m a bit far gone in these old bones to care as much about such things.”

“All the Harat-Shar I’ve worked with have been very understanding,” Hirianthial said.

“Yes, yes. You’re on Harat-Sharii now, young man. And don’t you quirk your brow at me like that. You’re probably four times my age but I’m going to die centuries before you and as far as I’m concerned that makes you a young man. Now listen to me... the first proposition might be easy to shrug off and the second, but you’re going to get tired of fending off all comers. Our babies aren’t born libertines... you may not think you like children, but you’ll far prefer our kittens to our adults. Trust me.”

He glanced at the card again.

“Besides, you have a gentle hand,” Karya said. “There are young ones who could use it.”

“Thank you,” Hirianthial said. “I’ll go see if they have openings.”

“You do that.”

She left him in the corridor to struggle with his thoughts. He hadn’t honestly thought much of children since leaving home. He didn’t really want to think of children.

Or did he?

He’d thought being around a pregnant woman would be pain enough, but Salaena’s hypochondria had been so demanding he’d barely noticed anything else about her. Perhaps the children would be similarly distracting.

 

“I need another one,” Reese said, standing inside the bookshop.

The leopardine looked up, brows rising. “You’re back already?”

“I stayed up all night reading,” Reese said. “I want another one by her. She got it right!”

“Right in what way?” the leopardine said, gesturing back toward the shelves.

Reese followed her. “The Eldritch. She got it just right. The way they talk. The way they act.” And the author had... from the moment the Eldritch character in the novel had stepped onto the stage, Reese had been captivated. She hadn’t turned out her lights until far too late in the night, and waking up had been difficult. She’d engage a shop today to begin the Earthrise’s repairs, but she’d known she had to stop here first.

“It didn’t disappoint you, then?”

“Disappoint me! Why would it have?”

The Harat-Shar grinned. “There’s a little less action in it than typical romances.”

Reese paused. “I hadn’t thought of that. But then again, I guess I wouldn’t have. It was about an Eldritch. I’m beginning to think they reproduce like Flitzbes, by budding.”

The woman laughed and handed her another volume. This one had a single couple on the cover, male Eldritch, female Harat-Shariin woman. “Try this one. There’s some heavy breathing in it. And it’s believable.”

“Ha!” Reese said. “I’ll take the soft-copy. Let’s see how it goes.”

“And if you like it, come back in a couple of days,” the woman said. She debited Reese’s account and transferred the copy to the data tablet, then tapped a flier on the counter. “She’s doing a book signing here.”

Reese glanced at it, expecting to see the author’s face and instead seeing a different cover: this one had a despondent-looking Eldritch male wilting over the arm of a couch while a human man looked on. “I’ll do that. She’s written a lot, I see.”

“Twenty-two novels so far. And all of them have Eldritch.”

Reese started laughing. “Is she obsessed?”

The leopardine grinned at her. “Who wouldn’t be? They make such useful mysterious lovers. Some of the stories get even hotter than the one you’re holding.”

“I’ll give you my review next time I come by,” Reese promised and left the store. She looked at the cover on her data tablet and shook her head. It would be something to do while waiting in line at the repair shop, she supposed. She thought of Irine and the comm logs and sighed. At least the twins wouldn’t notice these purchases—she’d never hear the end of it.

Finding a single shop that covered all her necessary repairs, did them well and offered them at a reasonable price had turned out to be impossible. Instead, Reese decided to spread the tasks across several different outfits. Arranging the schedules and haggling over the prices took her most of the afternoon and by the time she was done she realized she was going to miss another of Irine’s family dinners, but given the totals on her data tablet she couldn’t bring herself to care. The numbers shone so brilliant a red Reese thought of new blood and wondered if the person who’d chosen to display negative amounts in red had made the association on purpose. Repairing the Earthrise would put her in debt again. Substantial debt. Substantial enough that she might have to borrow money from the people she least wanted to borrow it from.

They wouldn’t just wire her the money. She’d have to visit. It wasn’t far if she took a shuttle... but she really, really didn’t want to go.

Reese rubbed her forehead. She wasn’t in trouble yet—wouldn’t be until the first two major repairs were done. That would take a month or so. A month was long enough to bolster her courage.

A month would be long enough to figure out what to say to her mother and grandmother when she came home for the first time in years... to ask for money.

 

The children’s hospital was in a pleasant part of town a short walk from the twins’ house, shrouded in the spiked shade of palm trees and abutted by several emerald ponds full of paddling geese. Hirianthial couldn’t help but think as he walked past them that there should be children enjoying them, but he could spot none in the gardens. Come to that he saw no adults, either, and the building when he approached had such a distinct aura of abandonment that he half-expected the corners to sag.

He entered the silent lobby and proceeded past it and its murals of spaceships with child astronauts to a waiting room, which also proved to be empty. Straining his ears brought him no sounds of habitation: no shoes scuffing on tile or muffled by carpet, no quiet talk. He was beginning to wonder if the hospital was even operational when the door to the room opened for a harried-looking Harat-Shariin man, his arms full.

“Visiting hours are over,” he said, obviously startled. “We’re a little busy.”

“I’m here to ask about work,” Hirianthial said.

“Oh.” The man blinked a few times, then said, “Hold this baby. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

Startled, Hirianthial cradled the infant to his chest and watched the Harat-Shar dash away. “Well then,” he said to the closing door before turning his attention to the child. “Good afternoon, little one.”

The baby did not open her eyes. Her aura fluttered like a candle in a draft, and cheeks that should have been plump and soft with felt-fine fur were instead taut and gray. She didn’t respond to the warmth of Hirianthial’s arms even though the Eldritch body temperature ran hotter than most of the Alliance’s races, so Hirianthial tucked the blanket more carefully around the tiny body and began to drift from one end of the waiting room to the other. Humming didn’t seem to help but he found that the more he concentrated on the infant’s unsteady aura, the more it seemed to stabilize... so he cleared his mind and focused on the task.

“How about that,” came a very soft voice. “She’s sleeping easier. How did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Hirianthial admitted, releasing the child back to the man who’d left him in the waiting room. The Eldritch barely felt the flare of concern and distraction of the Harat-Shar when they brushed hands, exchanging the baby.

“You said you were looking for work?”

Hirianthial said, “A midwife suggested I try here. I have several certifications, though none of them are pediatric or obstetric.”

“You seem to have a way with them, though,” the man said. “What specialties do you have?”

“Mostly surgical,” Hirianthial said. “But one in general internal medicine.”

“We can always use more people in the ward. Are you interested in learning neonatal surgery? We desperately need more people in that area.”

Surprised, Hirianthial said, “I’m not sure I’ll be on-planet long enough to develop the expertise.”

“Ah well. Do you have your credentials? How long are you staying?”

Hirianthial offered the man a thin card. “Three months. Maybe four.”

“Pity that,” the man said. “We’ll barely have time to get to know you, if we hire you.” He smiled weakly. “And that wasn’t a salacious invitation... I don’t have the energy for those anymore. We’re so understaffed I’m developing a split personality; I send people home to rest while yearning to keep them on-duty for two or three shifts.”

“What happened?” Hirianthial asked.

The man sighed. “It’s a long story,” he said. “But the short of it would be that half of our staff was on free-man contracts and we had a string of very bad luck. They got in trouble and lost their licenses.” He grimaced. “Not their fault... but parents are especially bad about litigation.”

“I see,” Hirianthial said.

“I’ll get back to you tomorrow on whether we want you,” the man continued. “I’m desperate to say ‘yes’, though, so don’t be surprised if I do. By the way, what’s your name? And what’s an Eldritch doing here? You don’t have problems touching people do you? Although if you do I still might take you. Having someone watching monitors would be better than what we’ve got now.”

“I’m Hirianthial Sarel Jisisensire. I’m here because my employer’s set down here for repairs... and I have no problem touching patients.”

“Good, good,” the man said. “I’m Jarysh, train Kharite. And I’ll drop you a message tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you,” Hirianthial said, and was alone again in the waiting room before he could offer a cordial farewell; the man’s habit of abrupt departures and harried air did not bode well for the hospital. The Eldritch wondered if working here was a good idea at all. Perhaps there were other establishments in town he could investigate: someplace near the port that served the out-worlders, perhaps. He turned to go.

A shriek of pain erupted against his shields, so strident, so real he couldn’t tell whether it had been voiced or sent. He could no more ignore it than he could have stopped breathing; his body was already turning from the lobby back toward the waiting room. The cry led him into the hall where it was joined by a physical wail. He followed it to a ward where Jarysh and two harried healers-assist were leaning over a bed.

“It’s his neck,” Hirianthial said from the door.

“His what?” Jarysh said as the monitor began to sound.

“His neck hurts,” Hirianthial said, coming closer to the bed, then added, “And his back.”

“He’s running a little hotter than normal,” one of the healers-assist said.

“Angels, spare me another spinal infection,” Jarysh said with a moan.

“If that’s what it is,” one of the assistants said.

“We just had a bout of it,” the other said.

“Too soon to tell,” the first said.

Hirianthial glanced at the monitors, eyes snagging on temperature, blood pressure, pulse, respiration rate. It had been long enough since he’d done a pediatric round that while he could sense the levels were off he couldn’t remember what normal levels were for Pelted children that age. “What kind of spinal infection have you been having lately?”

“We just had a strain of Ackman’s off Karaka’Ana, one we’ve never seen before” Jarysh said, ears flattened. “The port here brings a lot of offworld mutations, and a lot of them latch onto vectors we haven’t blocked off yet.”

Hirianthial reached for the child’s foot and hesitated over it, then grasped it firmly, skin to fur. “You took a tap?” he asked past the sudden feeling that his neck was too stiff to move.

“This morning. Negative for virus or bacteria,” Jarysh said. “But—”

“It might be too early to tell,” one of the assists said.

“It’s not too early for him to tell,” Hirianthial said. “Take another one.”

“But—”

“Do what he says,” Jarysh said.

“It won’t be wasted,” Hirianthial said.

The assist shrugged and left. The baby continued to wail. Jarysh sighed and pulled a stool over, sat. “You might as well get one for yourself,” he said.

Hirianthial nodded and did so, watching the monitors. “One of your bad luck runs?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Jarysh said, shoulders slumped. “It’s virulent like Chatcaava have talons. I thought we’d seen the last of it two days ago. Our best antibiotics seem useless against it, and we’ve wasted a lot of drugs on trying to keep these kids alive. It hasn’t been working. The stuff just eats into the pia mater like it’s going through sponge cake. The arachnoid webs swell up with the byproducts and eventually shut down the nerves.”

Hirianthial glanced at the child. “You have no pharmacologists to run up a new drug strain?”

“We’ve never had any on staff,” Jarysh said. “We send samples to off-site labs, but none of our regulars have been able to get back to us with a specific.”

Hirianthial watched the vitals fluctuate. The Harat-Shar followed his gaze and let out a long breath. Then, “This is the earliest we’ve ever caught one. Maybe it’ll be enough. If he’s got it, of course.”

The assist returned with a pump and needle for the spinal tap. Some tests could be done by sensitive enough halo-arches, but this hospital didn’t appear to have any at all. He didn’t bother to ask why not: it didn’t matter why a facility didn’t have the best equipment. What mattered was the sample the healer-assist drew and the infection Hirianthial knew would be lurking in it.

During the following twenty minutes, Jarysh fidgeted and Hirianthial waited, eyes half-closed. The assist returned and said, “It’s positive. But it’s not as bad as the last cases. Yet.”

“Damn thing,” Jarysh said, jumping to his feet. “Get the antibiotics.”

“Right.”

The Harat-Shar began to pace. “We caught the vector... can you believe it was a honey shipment that ended up in candy? We stopped the spread and finished all the cases. This was supposed to be over.”

“I suppose you don’t have a Medimage platform,” Hirianthial said. A platform of sufficient complexity would allow them to pinpoint the infection and treat it cell-by-cell, if necessary.

“Not anymore,” Jarysh said, tail lashing.

All the years of his life began to drag on his joints. Hirianthial asked, “Anymore?”

“Our service contract ran out,” Jarysh said. “And of course, with no surgeons there was no point repairing the thing. Surgery was never our specialty anyhow... that’s what the acute care center in Kherdiwen’s for.” The man stopped pacing to stare as the assist arrived with the AAP and injected the child’s stiff neck with it. “Damn.”

The pain beating against his shields was already beginning to ebb—not because it had retreated, but because the child was losing the strength to project it.

Jarysh returned to the stool, drooping. “You don’t have to stay.”

“I know,” Hirianthial said. “How many more of these do you have?”

“We’re not sure. It wasn’t something we were equipped to handle. We usually only work with chronic diseases. This was just so unexpected.”

“Why not move them to the Kherdiwen center, then?” Hirianthial asked.

Jarysh shrugged. “No beds for it.” He sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“Explain it to me, then,” Hirianthial said. When the Harat-Shar glanced at the monitors, the Eldritch gentled his voice. “We’ll be here a while.”

“All right,” Jarysh said, tail twitching. “It’s like this....”

 

“A mechanic?” Reese asked, eyeing the contract. “You’re going to be a mechanic?”

“A very junior one, and only for the time we’re here,” Sascha said. “If I had the time I’d be studying engineering, but since I don’t I’ll settle for the hands-on stuff.”

“Huh,” Reese said. “That’s practical.” She read the fine print, trying to catch anything that might twist Sascha up into knots. “This is for a lot of hours!”

Sascha shrugged. “It’ll get me out of the house.”

Reese glanced at him and decided not to ask. She returned to reading and said, “I didn’t know you were interested in engineering.”

The Harat-Shar chuckled. “Neither did I until I actually started flying. It’s good to fly. It’s also good to be able to fix something you’re flying when it stops.”

Reese leaned back in her chair to peer at the Harat-Shar. She’d come home exhausted and tried to slip into her room without anyone noticing only to find Sascha already there. Happily he didn’t harangue her about missing dinner again; instead, he’d presented a stack of paperwork for her to sign along with a small covered plate.

“Engineering,” she said again. “You know, you could take remote classes.”

“I guess,” Sascha said. “I hadn’t really thought about it until we touched down here.”

“Well, think about it,” Reese said.

“Classes take money, boss.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll find the money,” Reese said, hiding her frustration. “Looks like Bryer’s got dock-work. That seems harmless enough.” She signed it along with Sascha’s. “Where’s Kis’eh’t?”

“Kis’eh’t’s taking the time off,” Sascha said. “She wants to learn to cook from my mother.”

Reese laughed. “Well, more than one cook’s always good. That leaves Irine and Hirianthial.”

“Don’t look at Irine’s,” Sascha said. “Just sign it.”

“That bad, huh,” Reese said, hand hovering over the data tablet.

“That good,” Sascha said, but the smile on his face didn’t touch his voice. “She’ll have fun. But you don’t want to know.”

Of course, now that he put it that way, she did. But she flipped to the bottom of the contract and set her stylus on the line.

And couldn’t sign.

“Just do it,” Sascha said. “I read through it. It’s fine.”

She wanted to, but she couldn’t. What if there was something in the contract that would tie Irine down? Her name would be on it, okaying it. Reese scrolled back up and started to read. Sascha pulled a chair up beside her with a sigh.

“Well,” Reese said by the time she got to the end of it. “I guess this sort of thing is typical here.”

“Yes,” Sascha said.

“You’re right that I didn’t want to know about it,” Reese said, signing the bottom.

“Yes,” Sascha agreed, this time with a hint of a grin.

“I had no idea contracts like this could be so... detailed.”

He shrugged. “It’s one thing to roll in the sheets for love and entertainment,” he said. “When you’re doing it for profit with strangers, you have to be very specific about what you will and won’t do.”

“I guess so,” Reese said. “You’re sure she’ll have fun?”

“Yes, captain. Really,” Sascha said. “And she’ll earn more than the rest of us combined, I’ll bet.”

Reese sighed. “That just leaves—”

“A moment of your time,” came Hirianthial’s baritone from the threshold.

Reese stared at him, wondering if the exhaustion she heard in his voice was her imagination or not. “Uh, sure.”

“I have a contract for you to sign.”

“I have one here for you already... something with Irine and Sascha’s mother?”

“This is an additional contract.”

“Not too much more additional I hope,” Reese said. “This one’s already going to take up three hours of your day. You don’t want to run yourself ragged.”

“No,” he said. She realized then part of her foreboding: his speech lacked its ‘my lady’ adornments and its indistinct evasions. What had stripped him down to bare words? He even handed her his data tablet without any of his courtly gestures, without bothering to set it down somewhere so they wouldn’t accidentally touch. Reese took it gingerly and started scanning. Her eyes caught first on the “mandatory dormitory stay,” lingered over the multiple shifts and glazed at the parts about acceptable punishments for unacceptable results.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m not signing this.”

Sascha cleared his throat. “What did he do?”

“I’m not giving you over as a slave to any hospital,” Reese said, ignoring Sascha. “I thought you said you didn’t trust the Harat-Shar with that much of yourself?”

“I had the alternative explained to me,” Hirianthial said. “They’re having a healthcare crisis, one set off by too many free-man workers.”

“We’re just visiting, Hirianthial. We’re not here to save the Harat-Shar. Even if we were, you’re one man and one man alone won’t be able to fix whatever social problems they’ve gotten involved in,” Reese said.

“They’re children.”

“Yeah, well, so am I from your perspective, but they’re adult enough for the rest of the Alliance—”

Something about his eyes stopped her mid-sentence. “The patients,” he said, his voice very careful. “They’re children. Infants.”

Reese blushed, torn between anger and embarrassment. “I don’t care if they’re saints and martyrs,” she said. “If I sign this, I’m giving you away completely.”

“It’s my choice to make, is it not?” Hirianthial said. “Or have you now decided you really are in charge?”

That stung. Reese said, “Hirianthial—”

“I’m not yours to give away,” the Eldritch said. “Or isn’t that what your philosophy? Besides, it will take me out of your sight, which should please you.”

Reese snatched the tablet and signed it with several angry jerks before tossing it to the end of the table. “There you go. Enjoy. Don’t come crying to me if it’s more than you can handle.”

He didn’t speak—only faded from her door so quickly she wondered how someone with such pale skin and hair could vanish into the blue-violet dusk of the hallways.

“You could have handled that better,” Sascha said, picking up the tablet and flipping through the dumped contract copies.

“Hell with handling it better,” Reese said. “He got what he wanted. Isn’t that the point?”

“This is... really intense,” Sascha said, skimming the text. “I hope this place isn’t abusive.”

“It’s a hospital,” Reese said. “If they abuse him, they can just patch him back up afterwards.”

The Harat-Shar’s ears flipped backward. “Boss, what’s with you? I’d swear you had bed-fleas, but you’re sleeping in a hammock.”

“There’s nothing with me,” Reese said. Then sighed and added, “Nothing new, curse it all. Now get out of my sight, fluffy.”

Sascha said, “It’s too late to rip that thing up, but you could at least apologize to him.”

“I was just thinking he should apologize to me,” Reese said.

Sascha paused at the door. “Well, check up on him, then. Make sure he’s not taking this whole ‘multiple shift’ thing too seriously.”

“Why don’t you do that?”

“Because I’m not the one who signed the papers,” he said. “Like it or not, you’re in charge.”

“Then I get the right to delegate,” Reese said. “I hereby delegate the duty of making sure Hirianthial doesn’t work his sugar-white skin to rags to you.”

The Harat-Shar shook his head. At least he left her alone with her bills and her questions: foremost being, what was she going to do for the next month or so? Everyone else had found something to occupy themselves. The only duties she had to occupy herself with were her worries.

 

Jarysh didn’t ask him if he was sure about working at the hospital, which suited Hirianthial. He gave his bed in the dormitory a cursory glance, tossed his bag on it and went to the bathroom to change into the durable and shapeless synthetic tunic and pants that were the medical industry’s uniform throughout the Core.

The explanation Jarysh had given him for the state of healthcare in the region had required most of two hours, but by the end of it Hirianthial had distilled it to the same premise that ruled all modern medicine: people left behind with nothing but sorrow and a body tended to want to balance the scales. If they could find no solace in family or faith, they found enough in money. Harat-Sharii’s answer to medical litigation had, not surprisingly for Harat-Shar, involved voluntary enslavement. But a wave of specialists trained by off-worlders with a more mercenary bent had produced a generation of highly-paid free-man doctors... creating an industry once again vulnerable to law suits and medical claims.

That the medical industry had a sociology of its own had intrigued Hirianthial when he’d come to the Alliance to study. Medicine on his home world could barely be called that, and doctors were so few they hardly had an effect on the population, the economy or the social order at all. Sick Eldritch died. Weak Eldritch died. Old Eldritch died. Eldritch babies died of diseases that the Pelted had cured so long ago they were taught only in historical classes. The Eldritch had no vaccines. No surgeons. Women still died in childbed at a rate the Pelted would have found horrifying.

Every society in the Alliance dealt differently with the social issues raised by the marriage of high technology and biology. Zhedeem’s healthcare crisis was only one of a hundred thousand examples of what could go wrong.

Hirianthial could not regret the contract. He was also old enough to dispense with the self-denials he might have indulged in as a youth about why he was here. He’d been at a loss when everything had fallen apart with Laiselin and then the executions, and it had led him to the Alliance. He was at a loss again. Better to drown himself in the work than to think about what he would do with the remainder of his still-too-many years. Better to think about Pelted children than about the daughter he’d almost had and the wife who, unlike Salaena the pard, had been certain that everything would work out for the best.

Hirianthial began to braid his hair back in preparation for work. He could hear a child weeping through the open door. His contract would expire, or it wouldn’t. Reese would come for him, or she wouldn’t. The work here would be worth doing even if he remained here for centuries.

 

The classifieds in Zhedeem almost inspired Reese to pack up the Earthrise and head right back out into the Core, pirates or no pirates. She figured out how to sort the listings so that nothing offensive would pop up on her screen, but by that time the pickings were so slim she didn’t really want any of them. She hadn’t bought the Earthrise so she could spend her layovers as a waitress or a cashier in a clothing store.

Then again, she hadn’t bought the Earthrise intending to spend ninety percent of the year hemorrhaging money like blood. Any job would do if it reduced the amount she’d have to plead for from her mother.

Reese applied at several places until a port-side cafe offered her a contract pouring coffee and serving dessert cakes so dense she could have used them for weight-training. The view out the large windows offered a disconcerting mix of high-tech landing pads and waving palm fronds, but the cafe itself was cozy enough to lull her agoraphobia. She even got used to the dusty breeze.

She hadn’t had the heart to read the book she’d bought since her fight with Hirianthial... or at least, what had felt like a fight. But frustration and boredom drew her back to it the following day and sucked her straight into the pages. Despite her mixed feelings about Eldritch and the fact that she had no physical copy to bring, Reese planned her lunch break so she could attend the book signing.

“Oh good, you came!” the leopardine said. “She’s in the back. Here, take this.”

Reese glanced down at the brightly colored reproduction of one of the covers. This one was an unlikely illustration of a Harat-Shar man torn between a ghost-pale Eldritch woman and a demure Tam-illee foxine. “Err, thank you.”

The woman sitting behind the table in the back of the bookstore looked nothing like Reese had imagined: no young and sensual woman this, but an older woman with spots on her fading fur. Her head hair had also run to white, and there were wrinkles in the finely felted skin beneath her eyes. In front of her on her desk was a sign that read: “Natalie Felger: Writer of Exotic Alien Romance.” A younger woman kept her company, but other than her the room was empty, its many chairs abandoned.

“Am I the only one here?” Reese asked, bewildered. “You should have more fans.”

“So far,” the older woman said, her grin flashing yellowed fangs and arching whiskers. “But it’s nice to be told otherwise. I assume you’re here to have something signed?”

“I guess,” Reese said, looking at the paper in her hands. “I hadn’t planned on it, but the bookseller gave me this.”

“You look a bit perplexed,” the writer said.

Reese sat on the nearest stool and said, “You got them so perfectly you have to know how infuriating they are. How can you fight with someone who barely talks?”

The two at the table exchanged glances, then the elder said, “Sounds like you have a story of your own.”

And since the Harat-Shar seemed so disposed to listening, Reese found herself telling the whole crazy tale from the Queen of the Eldritch giving her money to Hirianthial vanishing into some hospital to give up his freedom for little children. Or to avoid her. Or both.

“You need advice,” the older woman said. She handed Reese a card. “This will be of far more value to you than any signed flat, though I’ll sign that too if you want.”

“What is this?” Reese asked, trying to make sense of the numbers on it.

“My address,” the Harat-Shariin said. “Stop by tonight for dinner and we’ll talk.”

Just what she needed: another missed dinner with Irine. Reese looked up into the other woman’s face, though, and saw something there: not just kindness, but something alert, something shrewd.

“Later tonight, then,” she said.

 

After her shift released, Reese headed for the address on the card. She had to ask for directions several times, which proved irritating since every adult who helped her had to invite her to his or her home instead before pointing her down the next lane. A pale violet twilight finally found her on the doorstep of a modest house that showed only its glazed tile roof and a few feet of wall before submerging amid a collection of flowerbeds. Reese took the earthen steps to the dark blue door and rung the bell; while waiting for someone to answer she reflected that she felt safer here, cocooned in the earth, than she did under the open sky. She might not like everything about Zhedeem, but this part she liked a great deal.

Natalie’s younger companion opened the door. “Ah! You did come. We’re eating in the garden, come with me.”

Reese followed her through a central corridor that opened onto several other rooms, none of which she saw more of than the dusky lanterns illumined. She had an impression of warmth and close walls, though, as the girl led her back up a set of stairs on the opposite end of the house, up to a circular patio set into the ground. Its walls ended somewhere at ground level, which hit Reese around her shoulders. Spicy-scented flowers draped into the enclosure, where a round table had already been set with ceramic plates glazed a beautiful deep blue.

Natalie was pouring water from a pitcher as they entered. “Ah, here she is. Did you have trouble finding the house?”

“A little,” Reese said. “I’ve never been off Market Avenue.”

“Probably wise,” the younger woman said with a grin. “We haven’t met. I’m Shelya, Natalie’s niece.”

“She keeps my house for me, Angels preserve her,” Natalie said. “I’d forget to eat if she didn’t remind me. Sit, sit! And tell me how you find Harat-Sharii, if this is your first visit, and how long you’re staying.”

Reese sat and obediently took a warm yeast-scented roll from the basket Shelya passed her. Natalie’s questions proved so easy to answer that she didn’t notice the second course: sweet green spears with a tangy glaze. The main course proved to be some sort of tiny bird, still bird-shaped, and Reese was wondering how to eat it when Natalie said, “Now tell me why you dislike your Eldritch so.”

Reese jerked her gaze from the fowl to her hostess. “I don’t actually dislike him.”

“Are you sure?” Natalie asked. “You seemed very unsettled by him.”

“Being unsettled is different,” Reese said. She tried stabbing one of the tiny birds with her fork to see if she could peel the meat off the bone; her hostesses were eating with their fingers, which looked messy. “He’s hard not to be unsettled by.”

“You wanted something more like the books other writers write,” Shelya said. “Instead you got what Aunt Natalie writes.”

Reese paused.

The girl laughed. “Don’t think we haven’t read the competition! They make the Eldritch sound like fragile, forlorn creatures, easily led astray, broken or changed. Not like that at all, are they?”

“No,” Reese admitted.

“But they are as mysterious,” Natalie said. “Imagine it, though. If you live as long as they do, why bother getting to the point of anything?” She wrinkled her nose. “It makes writing the sex scenes hard. That’s why I never write a book about two Eldritch. We’d be dead before the triumphant part with the birth of the heir.”

Reese almost choked. As Shelya patted her back, Reese wiped her watering eyes with the edge of her napkin and said, “You seemed to do well enough with the one I just read.”

“That was a little more of a fantasy than I usually write,” the older woman said agreeably. “And if you keep at it with the fork you’ll shred the meat. We won’t mind if you eat it with your hands.”

So Reese did, and it was messy but also delicious. “Why Eldritch?” she asked over the second bird. “You could have picked any number of other races.”

“Oh, I’ve done others,” Natalie said. “Under a different name, I write rather shocking books about humans falling in love with Ciracaana that involve quite a bit of physics, if not in the way most physicists imagine.”

“You’ve made her blush,” Shelya said. “I can smell it.”

Reese said, “Well, the Ciracaana are nine feet tall and centauroid. If you were human, you’d have the sense to blush about it yourself.”

“No wonder she and the Eldritch don’t get along!” Shelya said with a laugh. “Do you talk this way to him?”

“Maybe,” Reese said. “Sometimes.” She sighed. “Okay, maybe all the time.”

Shelya snickered and cleared away the dishes.

“Why Eldritch, you asked,” Natalie said. “Why not? I’d say. Except that would be an unfair answer. The reason is because my family’s always been interested in them, and it seemed appropriate to uphold the tradition.”

“That seems like a weird thing for a Harat-Shar family to be interested in,” Reese said.

“Not at all!” Natalie said, laughing. “We are the Alliance’s libertines, aren’t we? Pleasure for its own sake. If it feels good, how can it be wrong? And naturally we would gravitate toward our opposites, yes? What could be more diametrically opposed to a Harat-Shar than an Eldritch?”

“Nothing, I guess,” Reese said. “Still, that seems like a good reason to stay away from them. Opposites might attract, but they also cause friction.”

“Perhaps,” Natalie said. “Are you so unlike your Eldritch, then?”

Reese sighed. “He’s not mine. As I keep telling him, or he keeps telling me, or which I can’t remember anymore because he’s so stubborn I can’t tell when he’s disagreeing with me or doing what I want him to do.” She turned her glass in her fingers, leaving greasy prints on it. “I just want him to leave me alone. Things were better without him.”

“Were they?” Natalie asked.

“Yes!” Reese exclaimed. “I feel like he’s always judging me according to some standard I’ll never meet. Like he’s seen everything and I’m nothing special. I hate that he only answers the questions he wants to answer. I hate feeling like he’s part of some world that only barely touches ours. Why does he get to live so much better than we do?” She stopped abruptly, wondering when her voice had risen.

“Didn’t quite realize how much you were holding in, did you,” Natalie observed.

“I guess not,” Reese said, then straightened. “It’s still true, though.”

“Wash your fingers,” Natalie said, nodding to a bowl with a hot towel at Reese’s side. “Then come with me. I have something to show you while Shelya prepares dessert.”

Scraping the grease from her fingers with the pebbly surface of the hot towel left her hands feeling surprisingly clean, almost raw. Reese set it aside and followed Natalie into the lantern-lit warmth of the house, through the shadowed corridor in its center and into an intimately lit room, one almost too small to be called a room... in a groundsider’s house, anyway. There was a single cushioned bench in it facing a dark wooden bureau, and this Natalie opened with a thin brass key she withdrew from her vest. When she opened the bureau’s doors, the pungent smell of paper, ink and paint rushed out, tickling Reese’s nose.

“This folio never leaves this room,” Natalie said, turning from the bureau with a leather folder in her arms. “But you have plenty of time. Enjoy it, and when you’re done set it back and join us for coffee.”

“I couldn’t possibly—it’s so old—”

One of the woman’s brow ridges quirked. “And only young things need to be touched?”

Reese blushed but couldn’t come up with a response before Natalie abandoned her with the folio in her lap.

It was larger than she’d thought—longer than her forearm, but narrow. The leather wasn’t stiff, as she expected, but supple, dyed a dark blue. Hesitant, Reese untied the cords holding it shut and spread it open.

...and gasped at the parchment inside, a painting in vibrant hues, so jewel-rich she had to restrain herself from touching it. The smell of oil rose from the page and with it a sense of age.

It was only barely less staggering than the subject matter: a Harat-Shar jaguar? Leopard? reclining on a day bed beside a young Eldritch woman in sumptuous garb. The Eldritch had a book in hand and appeared to be reading out loud. The Harat-Shar was listening.

They looked so real. And they continued to look real in all the paintings that followed: twenty-two in all, each more unbelievable than the one before. It wasn’t what Reese had expected from a folio of paintings in a Harat-Shar’s bureau—there was nothing salacious about it—but despite the two never touching, never being undressed, never doing anything at all inappropriate, there was an unbearable sense of intimacy in each scene, so pointed Reese touched her cheek and realized it was warm from blushing.

She looked through the whole series of pastoral scenes twice, trying to decide what about it made them so hard to look at, and for the life of her couldn’t decide. And despite her embarrassment, she found her fingers reluctant to tie the folio shut and put it away.

The two women were back in the garden, sipping coffee and nibbling on a white cake thick with a frosting made especially rich by the yellow candlelight. Reese resumed her seat, blinked at the slice handed to her by Shelya, and sipped the coffee, bitter and dark.

“Well?” Natalie asked.

“Who were those two?” Reese asked.

“Sellelvi and Fasianyl,” Natalie said.

“Were they real?” Reese asked.

“Ah!” Natalie said with a laugh. “Does it matter?”

Reese focused on the cake, then looked up at the Harat-Shar. “Of course it matters.”

“Does it make the paintings any less special?”

“No, of course not,” Reese said. “But it could make them more special.”

“Eat the cake,” Shelya whispered. “You look like you could use it.”

Dazed, Reese parted a corner of the cake with her fork and tried it. The frosting was lemon.

“Maybe they were real. Maybe they weren’t. Even if they were real, some secrets aren’t mine to give away,” Natalie said. “That’s the first thing you should have figured out about Eldritch. It’s not just that they keep secrets... it’s that the secrets keep them, fast as prisons.” At Reese’s expression, she grinned and continued, “Those paintings have been in my family for over a hundred years... and whosoever made them didn’t do us the kindness of telling us about their inspiration. She had a fine hand with a brush, and maybe painting them was all she could say. Or maybe it was all she had to say.”

“They’re priceless,” Reese said. “Reproductions of them would make you a rich woman.”

“You saying that as a trader?” Natalie asked. “Or as a woman who wishes she had a copy?”

“A little of both, maybe,” Reese said, realizing the cake was good. She gave it more of her attention, and the more she ate the less vague she felt.

“There’s more than one way to be rich,” Natalie said. “I have no use for more money.”

Reese hesitated over the cake.

“You’re thinking something awkward, I’m sure,” Natalie said. “Say it, say it. We’re not oh-so-polite Eldritch ourselves.”

“It seems wrong to keep something so beautiful hidden, when so many people could see and enjoy it,” Reese said slowly. “Those pieces could hang in a museum.”

“They could,” Natalie agreed. “But not everyone could enjoy them as you have.”

“What makes me so special?” Reese asked.

The old woman grinned. “You have an Eldritch of your own. That makes you special... very special. I hoped that seeing the pictures would keep you from wasting him.”

“He’s not mine to waste!” Reese exclaimed.

“Of course he is. Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

“Figured what out?” Reese asked, gripping her fork harder.

Natalie only shook her head. “Read more carefully, girl. And finish your coffee there, before it gets cold.”

Try as she could, Reese got no more information out of the writer than that, and though she ate more cake than she intended in her pursuit, Natalie cheerfully offered no more insight. Standing outside the Harat-Shariin’s house and staring at the stars, Reese reflected that while dinner had been pleasant, she’d gotten even less information out of Natalie than she’d ever gotten out of Hirianthial....

Except for the paintings. The beautiful paintings.

With a shiver, Reese headed back to her hammock.

 

After the child survived, Jarysh showed active reluctance whenever Hirianthial left to discharge his duties to Irine and Sascha’s mother. Had he not already promised those hours, he would have gladly given them to the hospital. Where once thirty doctors worked, including five surgeons, now only ten reported... and of those ten, only Hirianthial and Jarysh had residential contracts. The hospital was a permanent home for forty children with diseases crippling and chronic enough to require full-time care, and the ward offered beds to those who needed only occasional check-ups. Two doctors alone weren’t sufficient to the task. Without enough full-time employees to keep track of the residents, Hirianthial often found them trailing him through the halls when he did his rounds on the transients or draping across nearby furniture while he attempted to repair the single Medimage platform the hospital owned.

He was no mechanic but the set-up had come with a basic repair manual; it had contained a long block of explanation on how the Pad technology had made the Medimage platforms possible and then a smaller set of pages instructing Pad technicians on the differences and similarities between the two. He’d glanced through them, picking up several bits of trivia about lights and quantum tunnel disruption before flipping to the troubleshooting sections. Lying flat on his back beneath the raised floor of the operating room he could just see the solidigraphic diagrams projected by the manual; if necessary, he could turn the projector with a foot to examine it from a different angle and continue work.

When the children used his midriff as a pillow he didn’t complain. Their thoughts were so thin and tired they barely sank past his shields. More than the discomfort of stiff muscles or the ache that drove him to bed, those tiny flickers of thought made him feel his age.

“We really shouldn’t let them do this,” Jarysh said from the door one day, voice thick with too little sleep. “If they separate they might have a seizure in some corner and we’d never know it.”

“I can feel them,” Hirianthial said shortly, squinting into a mass of conflicting circuitry and wondering which relay needed replacement. He felt along their seams.

“Feel them... even without touching?” Jarysh asked.

“I wouldn’t mention it otherwise,” Hirianthial said.

“And you know where they are? And how to get to them?”

“Yes,” Hirianthial said.

“Even when you’re sleeping? Would it wake you up?”

Beneath the platform, Hirianthial paused to consider. “I don’t know.”

“Because... well, maybe we both could sleep more if that was the case.” The Harat-Shar rubbed his forehead. “They climb over the bed rails and go wandering sometimes. Gives me nightmares.”

Hirianthial had shared them, but didn’t say so. The place felt abandoned and desperate and listless, a disorienting combination that left him feeling anchorless in a deep melancholy. He wasn’t sure if his daily excursions out of the hospital exacerbated the problem or blunted its edge, but he kept the feelings tightly reined. Espers were rare among the Pelted outside of the Glaseahn race, but some individuals still developed the talent and children were especially sensitive to emotional pollution.

“I think we need to replace this card,” Hirianthial said. “That might be all we have to do to have the platform work again.”

“Sounds worth a try,” Jarysh said. After a moment, he said, “Can you get up? There’s a girl on your stomach.”

“I’m not sure,” Hirianthial said. “She’s asleep.” When one of Jarysh’s footsteps sounded close, the Eldritch said, “No... let her be. She was very tired and if you try to move her she might wake.”

“I can’t just leave you on the floor,” Jarysh said, exasperated.

Remembering the insistent throb of pain that had sent the girl on her wanders, Hirianthial said, “I’ll get up later, after she rises.”

“At least let me bring you a pillow. You’ve only got a couple of hours before you have to head to your other job.”

“Is it that late already?”

“Or that early, depending on your skew.”

“A pillow would be welcome,” Hirianthial said.

He didn’t expect to sleep, but once he’d resigned himself to the floor he surprised himself by dropping unconscious as soon as he’d settled the pillow beneath his head. He woke to a dense, thin finger of worry tapping him near his foot.

“You need to go,” Jarysh said. Clearing his throat, he added, “I’m sorry about touching you. I thought the boot would be least offensive.”

“Thank you,” Hirianthial said. The girl was drowsing on Jarysh’s shoulder and did not radiate the frustration that had driven her to follow him, and that was the best he could ask given her condition. He brushed himself off and headed to the estate.

He’d thought when he took the hospital contract that it would prove the more difficult of the tasks. It was significantly more grueling, physically; emotionally he found it depressing, but depression concerning patients who would never recover and would die long before their time was at least a phenomenon he was familiar with.

Salaena, on the other hand, drove him to distraction. She would have been perfectly at home in the courts he’d left behind. Her anxiety was so extreme she refused to be comforted; she would not allow him the medical tests he could have used to diagnose the precise chemical imbalance that threatened her mind’s brittle well-being. His only success involved mildly sedative teas, and he prepared her one before even entering the chamber to see how she was.

“Good morning, lady,” he said. “I have your tea.”

“I don’t want tea,” Salaena said, arms crossed over her chest.

“Don’t sulk,” Karya said. “If the doctor says you must have tea, then you must have tea.”

“I don’t want it. The stuff you bring smells like grass,” she said.

“I also brought a selection of fruits, cookies and cheeses,” Hirianthial said. “Let us break our fast.”

“I’ve already eaten,” Salaena said. “You eat, if you’re hungry.”

“Surely you’d enjoy a little cup of tea?” Karya said. “Sit with us, enjoy the day.”

“I don’t have time to enjoy the day,” she said. “I have to plan.”

“What for?” Karya asked, though Hirianthial had an idea of the answer.

“For my baby. Just in case something happens,” Salaena said, eyes drifting out the window. “You can’t be too careful.”

“For the last time, girl, you’re not dying. Now come here and drink your tea or I’ll pour it down your throat.”

Salaena shivered. “I’m not thirsty.”

“We’ll take the tea, then,” Hirianthial said. “Join us if you like.”

She didn’t like. He and Karya ate, the latter with forced enthusiasm. In a whisper, the midwife said, “Maybe music would calm her.”

“I don’t sing,” Hirianthial said.

The old woman laughed. “No, I wouldn’t think so. I can bring some people in.”

“It may help.”

But it didn’t. Salaena couldn’t concentrate on the musicians. The energy required for worry simply failed to be available for Hirianthial, but her behavior was abnormal and demanded repair. He edged the tisane closer to her elbow until in her distraction she began to drink it and calm.

“There now, wasn’t that delightful?” Karya asked.

“No,” Salaena said. “They were too loud.”

“Babies can hear through the walls of the womb,” Karya said. “If you didn’t enjoy it perhaps your son did.”

“A son,” Salaena murmured. “Or a daughter.”

“Or twins,” Karya said, ears flicking forward. “Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

“Twins would kill me,” Salaena said listlessly. She tilted the tea cup. “I guess I was thirsty.”

“The tea is good for you,” Karya said. “It calms the soul.”

Salaena drew herself upright with a quivering tension that set off alarms in Hirianthial. “You mean it’s medicine?”

Perhaps alerted by the same signs, Karya did not reply.

“It is medicine, isn’t it!” Salaena said.

“Yes,” Hirianthial finally said. “A very mild kind. Nothing harmful to you or your baby. Do you not feel better after drinking it?”

“Yes... but it’s medicine,” Salaena said. “What if... what if something changes, and it does harm me? Or I drink too much? Or not enough?”

“I wouldn’t allow that,” Hirianthial said.

“You’re not here all the time!” Salaena threw the cup aside. “I won’t drink it again. Only water from now on! Water can’t hurt me. Unless... no. The water is fine.”

Karya sighed.

“Water then,” Hirianthial said, and wondered how he’d keep the girl calm enough to carry to term.

As if only just noticing the long-suffering of her caretakers, Salaena blinked several times, very slowly. Then she said, “What? I’m in terrible danger.”

“No,” Hirianthial said. “You are in the best of circumstances. You are young and in fine health. Your body was built to bear children.”

“No it wasn’t,” Salaena said. “Everyone says so. My hips are too small.”

“The breadth of your hips is immaterial in a civilization where your baby can be lifted out of your abdomen in half an hour with no effort on your part,” Hirianthial said. “You should be thankful you live in a modern city with excellent medical facilities and an excess of caregivers and that you aren’t forced to give birth in a cold, damp hovel, straining for days because no one has the expertise to save you.”

Salaena gaped at him. She turned to Karya to find the midwife nodding her head. “Just so, girl.”

“But I could die!” Salaena said.

“You will die,” Hirianthial said. “Everyone dies. Whatever gave you the notion that you’d live forever?”

The girl gasped.

“Even him,” Karya said. “Even the likes of him.”

Hirianthial poured a new cup of tea, set it on the warmer in front of Salaena and said, “Drink.” When she made no move toward it, he said in a crisper voice, “Drink and be glad to be under the care of two professionals.”

She drank, but by that time Hirianthial didn’t care.

 

Waitress-work didn’t agree with Reese, particularly for clientele that half the time was more determined to invite her home than to order cake and coffee. She left the cafe for her mid-day breaks, struggling with her foul mood, and returned only because she didn’t like any of her alternatives. If she lingered too long with the twins, they might feel compelled to introduce her to the rest of their family and she wasn’t sure she could handle the culture shear. Nor did she want to trap herself in her room, staring at a list of bills that her paltry tips did little to reduce. Living here was cheaper than any other choice she could have come up with, but nothing would be cheap enough to make the repairs go faster.

Every other day she stopped at the port to see how the first set of mechanics were handling the Earthrise. She’d just finished one of those inspections when the sky let loose a wall of rain. Cursing, Reese darted under the awning of a pastry-seller’s cart.

“I didn’t think it rained here!” she said.

The man laughed. “You spacers are so funny. Of course it rains.”

Reese glowered at the sky. Why did planets have to have weather along with all their other unsavory characteristics? “But there were no clouds when I went inside!”

“There were clouds,” the man said. “They just weren’t rain clouds yet. We’re just touching the rainy season now. In few weeks we’ll have storms all the time. I hope you like being wet.”

Reese glared at him. He chuckled. “Guess not. Why don’t you wait it out at an ale house?”

“I don’t drink,” Reese said.

“They have food,” he said. “Or do you also not need to eat?” When she didn’t reply, he went on. “It’s going to last a good half hour, forty minutes. You’re a pretty girl, but if you’re not going to buy anything I’d prefer you moved on. Unless you want to pass the time some other way?”

“An ale house sounds good,” Reese said. “Thanks.”

His laughter rang in her ears as she darted into the shifting gray veils. They looked sort of pretty when you weren’t in them... as if they’d be soft and cool to the touch, not at all wet. Naturally she was drenched almost instantly. Rain drops smacked her face and eyelids. She felt trapped between the steam rising from the ground and the falling water, and she was sure she’d never smelled anything as nasty as hot rain on pavement.

The first dim shape she rushed for turned out to be a parts store. The second smelled like fried fish and Reese traded the rain for an entry that worked like an airlock, releasing her into a tiny antechamber that gave her a chance to shake herself off and wring her braids. Even so as she stepped into the crowded room she started shivering. She took the only seat left in the place, squeezing between two taller men at the bar, and ordered hot coffee.

She’d barely had time to dilute the stuff with cream before the Harat-Shar on one side of her said, “There are rooms upstairs.”

“That’s nice,” Reese said.

He canted his ears. “Is that a brush-off?”

“Yes,” Reese said. “Thanks for asking.”

The human on the other side of her laughed. She glared at him, but he said nothing.

The coffee had little power to warm her while her clothes remained wet. Reese resigned herself to shivering. It wasn’t even good coffee. She could have gotten better from the cafe she’d abandoned.

The Harat-Shar beside her forced his way back into the crowd and another man took his place. Reese was just beginning to notice that the clientele was a little rougher than she liked to deal with when the newcomer said, “You look shoved out.”

Reese shrugged.

“Come here often?”

“I’m not interested,” Reese said, disgruntled.

“I wasn’t asking.”

“Oh,” Reese said. “Good.”

“You must not be from around here,” he went on.

“What gave you that idea?” Reese asked.

His turn to shrug, a hitch of one shoulder. “You have the spacer look. You got a crate here?”

“Yeah,” Reese said.

“Hauling freight or people?”

“Why do you want to know?” Reese asked, a scowl forming despite her best efforts. The man had a craggy face, but he kept it shaved and his rough clothing seemed clean enough. She had no reason for her wariness except that she was wary of everyone and so far paranoia had kept her out of trouble.

“I’m looking for freight haulers. Got a job for someone with grit.” He eyed her. “You got grit.”

“Yeah, well,” Reese said. “I don’t just do jobs I pick up in a bar.”

He glanced at the coffee, then shrugged again. “Pays a lot. We’d make it worth your while.”

“We?” Reese asked.

“I’m agenting. My boss’s off-world. Always looking for reliable merchants.”

Her wariness ripened into a nice, juicy suspicion. “I don’t work with go-betweens.”

“I can arrange a meeting, if you’re interested.” He smiled. “It would be worth it.”

“Oh? How worth it?”

He dunked a finger in her coffee before she could object and scrawled a figure on the bar, dark liquid on dark wood. Reese gaped at it as he wiped it away. She said, “I don’t run illegal cargo.”

“It’s not illegal,” he said. “It’s just way far out in the frontier and getting it requires some legwork. Most people don’t want to bother.”

“Nothing in the frontier is worth that kind of money,” Reese said, hardening herself against hope. The amount the man had written would take care of the repairs and then some. She wouldn’t have to ask for the loan.

“Money’s where you make it,” the man said with a shrug. “If you’re interested—”

“—I’d need more details,” Reese said.

“No,” the man said. “You sign the contract. You find out what the boss wants. You get paid half. The other half on delivery. Those are the terms.”

“You want me to agree to do something without telling me what it is?” Reese asked, staring at him.

He grinned. “We pay enough for it. And it’s not illegal.”

She wondered if its legality was due to some convoluted loophole. The chill in her bones was not solely her clammy clothing. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

He handed her a card. “If you decide, give us a call.”

“Right,” Reese said. The man slid off the stool and was replaced by a Tam-illee pilot who drooped so far over his beer Reese wondered if he would dunk his muzzle in it. She ordered a fresh cup of coffee and drank it black, but instead of warming her it just made her feel wet on the inside to match her skin.

The rain let up and she headed back to the cafe. The money was tempting, but Reese knew better. As embarrassing as her trip home would prove, a known quantity won over anything as potentially risky as entangling herself with nameless merchants who had too much money and required too much secrecy.

 

“Do they bother you?” Jarysh asked.

Hirianthial lay with eyes closed in the playroom adjacent to the ward. Two Harat-Shar children were using his long torso as a pillow; another sat near his foot, puzzling at a series of colored rings that had been interlocked a moment before. The sleepers dreamt in fragile washes of color, such delicate constructs they barely held the two minds unconscious; the pressure of their heads on his ribs seemed too heavy for the frailty of their slumber. “They’re children,” he said after a moment, keeping his voice too low to disturb the dreams.

“And that means they’re exceptions to the rule for you?” Jarysh asked.

Hirianthial didn’t reply. Even worked to exhaustion he’d been trained too well to accidentally tear the Veil Jerisa had decreed for the Eldritch. When he did not answer the direct question, Jarysh assumed agreement and said, “Here too. Children are very special for us. I think people think we don’t love our children because we treat them so differently.”

“Perhaps,” Hirianthial said.

The man poured himself onto the ground, boneless in his own exhaustion. Hirianthial thought he had spots beneath his shapeless tunic and pants, but he’d never seen Jarysh out of hospital scrubs. He knew very little about his coworker beyond the Harat-Shar’s medical competence... which was fine. Jarysh probably knew even less about him.

Staring at the ceiling, the Harat-Shar continued, “My wives are very angry with me. This is a change.”

Hirianthial could not muster a response to that, but his silence must have seemed receptive, for Jarysh said, “They’re usually too busy being angry at one another to be angry with me. It’s because I have two. One wife is bearable. Three work together well. With only two there’s no peace in the house. They rival for my attentions. I have very few attentions to spare.” His sigh whistled through his nose. “They want me home more often. They want babies. They want my time. I told them that the residential contract was a temporary thing... but the longer I’m here, the more I realize I like it better than being home.”

“You do not love your wives?” Hirianthial asked after a moment.

“Better to ask whether I loved my life,” Jarysh said. “The wives are only incidental.” He sighed. “Do you ever get the feeling that you got knocked off a nice, simple life path, but that once you got off it you couldn’t figure out how to get back? Or even if you wanted to?”

Hirianthial forced a curl of a smile, though why he had no idea. Perhaps he felt compelled to at least make an effort to appreciate the many ironies of his life. “I am acquainted with the situation.”

“Now that I’m here,” Jarysh said, “now that I’m working like this... I don’t want the wives. The babies. These patients are my babies. What am I supposed to do now?”

“The honorable thing,” Hirianthial suggested.

The Harat-Shar snorted. “Honorable. For whom? Me? Them? By what standards?”

“Perhaps then the just thing,” Hirianthial said.

Jarysh rubbed his temples. “Kajentarel shield me. The ‘just’ thing. As if I knew what that was. I should probably divorce them, let them seek a husband who cares better for them.” After a while, he said, “You don’t talk much.”

“You ask counsel on a topic for which I have no adequate advice,” Hirianthial said.

“Is that because you have no wives, or because you’re an Eldritch?”

“Neither,” Hirianthial said. “It’s because I’m not Harat-Shariin. I may know enough to keep from making any egregious errors, but I cannot begin to guess what would be fair or just for you or your family. Your customs are too different.”

“Probably,” Jarysh said and rubbed the bridge of his nose, his temples. “Still, I wish I had the wisdom of your years.” He managed a grin. “You probably have children older than my grandparents.”

“No,” Hirianthial said, surprising himself with the admission. “I have no children.”

“None?” Jarysh asked, eyes widening. “But you’re so good with them.”

“Children ask very little and what they need is simple,” Hirianthial said. “To be good with them is easier than to be good with adults.”

The Harat-Shar snorted. “You’d be surprised. Too many people grow up embarrassed at their own naiveté. They think to be sophisticated they have to cut themselves off from anything that seems simple. There are plenty of people who are bad with kits.”

“I suppose that might be true,” Hirianthial said.

“You should have children before you die,” Jarysh said. “It would be a waste for you not to be a father.”

As stunned as he was by the assertion, he was saved by habits cultivated to shield against the venomous barbs of bored courtiers. He answered before he knew he’d formulated a reply. “As it would be a waste for you to not be a father?”

The Harat-Shar’s voice lowered. “Well. I guess when you put it that way, it makes me sound a little hypocritical.”

A soft beep sounded from near the ceiling: not a monitor, but the hospital comm line. Jarysh answered.

“Soft Fields Hospital.”

“Yes, I’m looking for an Eldritch doctor....”

Hirianthial nearly sat up. “Sascha?”

“Doc, come quick, will you? Mom says there’s something wrong with Miri Salaena.”

He almost asked if it was Salaena’s imagination, but Sascha sounded frightened. With gentle hands, Hirianthial lifted his two sleepers onto Jarysh’s lap, shattering their fragile dreams. He hoped the fragments reassembled after he’d gone.

“Hopefully nothing too serious,” Jarysh said.

“I’ll be back,” Hirianthial said, answering the question Jarysh had wanted to ask and failed to.

Sascha was waiting for him at the garden gate when he arrived at the house. “The midwife won’t let anyone in,” he said. “She said to get you immediately, but wouldn’t say what’s wrong.”

“Thank you,” Hirianthial said absently and passed the Harat-Shar, heading toward Salaena’s resting room. He’d wondered when he first arrived what a closed door would look like in a Harat-Shariin home... now he knew. He knocked.

“Who is it?”

“The doctor,” Hirianthial said.

Karya opened the door, and with it came a long wail and a smell that struck Hirianthial deep in the gut, like a knife there, like a memory.

“I think she’ll be fine, though I want you to check,” the midwife said. “I suspect she did it to herself somehow, though I can’t find any evidence.” After a pause, she added, “I haven’t had time to clean up.”

She looked clean enough. He didn’t understand until he reached the blood-drenched bathroom. In the middle of the stench and the mess, Salaena kneeled, rocking and sobbing into her knotted night-dress. A swift sweep revealed a pebbly red aura, already smoothing as the cramps faded: her emotional distress was surprisingly mild, a bare wobble of gray and orange. The sense of the peaceful infant was, of course, gone. It hadn’t developed enough to offer any more information to his mental touch and now it never would. If she’d had to miscarry, doing it early was at least less traumatic.

Somewhat less traumatic.

Hirianthial stepped into the bathroom, preparing to unpack the more sensitive, technological diagnostic tools. As he moved, Salaen stopped crying and lifted her tear and blood-streaked face. Her eyes glittered, and the sudden spear of violent crimson in her aura twisted her words into fierce, lethal things.

“You weren’t there.”

The words entered his mind, which filled with white noise. He knew there were sounds outside his head, but they seemed very distant.

You weren’t there.

It wasn’t the first time.

Very carefully, Hirianthial shut the door on Salaena. He walked, unsure of his footsteps, back into the outer chamber and past a puzzled Karya. He closed the second door on the chamber and stood in the hallway. He had no idea how long he remained there. Staring. Tracing the lines in the stone walls with dry eyes. Sensing from very far away the breeze against the side of his neck and jaw. Perhaps the fan made noise as its blades cut the air, endless toil.

“...ial? Hirianthial?”

He blinked to clear his eyes and looked down and to one side. Sascha was standing there, ears flat against his skull. “Are you okay? You—there’s blood—what happened?”

He should move. Leave. Go someplace where no one would happen on him. This sounded like the best course. The gentlest wisdom. Hirianthial forced his stiff joints to bend and walked, one foot before the next, toward where muscle memory dictated.

Did Sascha follow? He thought he heard someone talking. Best not to listen to people talking. People spoke without thinking. Short-lived people in particular.

One foot before the next. And the next. He thought of the pond with the geese, the one that children—stop—the one that would make a pleasant meditative retreat. He would go there.

 

“Boss, I need your—what are you doing?”

“Packing,” Reese said. “I need to take a trip.”

Sascha stood at the door into her chambers, one ear pointed up and the other out. His expression was a fine example of astonishment. Reese ignored it to toss another shirt onto the unused bed.

“You can’t leave!” he exclaimed.

“Actually, you have that backwards,” Reese said. “I can’t stay. If we’re going to get the money to get off this rock, I need to go arrange for our finances. I won’t be gone long. I should be back in a week.”

“No, you don’t understand, you can’t leave,” Sascha said. “Hirianthial’s breaking. You have to take care of it.”

Reese paused, her nightgown over her arm. “What?”

“Hirianthial. You need to dissolve his contracts and put him back together. Better yet, take him with you. Get him away from here.”

“I’m not taking him with me!” Reese said. “I don’t need more trouble where I’m going.”

“He won’t make trouble,” Sascha said. “He’ll barely make noise, the way he looked just now. Take him with you, Reese, please.”

Her irritation mounded into something more extreme. “I don’t have time to babysit.”

“If you don’t do something you won’t have anything to babysit, period,” Sascha said. “Look, if being alone with him’s what’s frightening you I’ll come along. Or ask Kis’eh’t. Whatever it takes, just... just do something.”

For the first time since he appeared, Reese took her time and looked at Sascha. Noticed the white rims around his banded irises. The fur standing on end at his shoulder-tips. The way he flexed his fingers, and the switching tail. With a frown, Reese said, “You’re really upset.”

“Yes!” Sascha said. “I haven’t seen him look this bad ever! Call that hospital, recall him. I’ve already told my mother to expect your message.”

Uneasy, Reese turned to her data tablet and searched for the hospital address. “Where is he now?”

“I don’t know,” Sascha said, balling his hands into fists. “I should have followed him but I wasn’t brave enough.”

“He’s not exactly scary,” Reese said.

“He doesn’t have to be scary to give off “don’t come near me” waves,” Sascha said. “Those are forbidding enough.” He stood at her shoulder as she connected with the hospital. “He wouldn’t answer me when I called. I’m not sure he even heard me.”

The man on the other end of the hospital line was obviously loath to terminate the contract, but Reese reminded him of her prerogatives as Hirianthial’s original employer and he signed the release. It bothered her that she could make decisions like this for all her crew on Harat-Sharii—simply choose to end whatever job they were working on. For a few moments after the call ended, Reese stared at her reflection in the data tablet’s finish; she was chewing on her own lip.

With a sigh, she had Sascha build the call for his mother and informed her that she wished to terminate Hirianthial’s contract with her.

“I’m happy to do so,” Zhemala said. “We won’t be requiring his services any longer and I was planning to discuss it with you anyway.”

“Did something happen?” Reese asked.

The woman waved a hand. “I asked him to oversee the pregnancy of a sister-wife, but she miscarried. We have no more need of a doctor.”

“That sounds unpleasant,” Reese said.

“She would have been a troublesome mother,” Zhemala said. “The Angels took care of it.”

“I see,” Reese said. “Do you have any idea where he is?”

“Not here, if the blood he tracked out of the house is any marker,” Zhemala said. “He went out by way of the Lizard Garden.”

“Blood!”

The woman shrugged. “Miscarriages are messy. I wish you luck finding him.”

“Thanks,” Reese said to the ending call. She turned to Sascha. “Sounds like he had a bad time.”

“The Lizard Garden’s the way he goes to the hospital,” Sascha said. When Reese eyed him, he said, “You told me to watch him for you, so I did.”

She sighed. “I didn’t mean it literally.”

“I know you didn’t,” Sascha said. “Let’s go check the hospital grounds.”

“I need to finish packing!” Reese said.

“You can do that later,” Sascha said. “I’m not going to go looking for him alone. You’re his employer... you come with me.”

“His employer,” Reese said. “That sounds so formal.”

“Yeah,” Sascha said. “Not at all the person you want to comfort you over something bad that’s happened. For that you want friends.”

“Oh, hush,” Reese said. “I’ll come with you. Isn’t that enough?”

Sascha snorted and flowed out the door. She followed, looking in vain for the bloody footsteps Zhemala had mentioned; she supposed they’d already been wiped up. Past the Lizard Garden, it was a twenty minute walk to the hospital, where Sascha plunged into the grounds with a grim determination that did more to unsettle Reese’s stomach than anything he’d said. They pushed through overgrown bushes, investigated secluded copses, trudged through flower gardens and over ornamental bridges. Reese had no idea how much time had elapsed since they began their hunt, but by the time it ended she was sticky, thirsty, and completely unprepared for the sight of Hirianthial.

They’d been apart for weeks, she reasoned. Doing separate duties. He’d been rooming somewhere else; she’d had no opportunities to see him, not easily... all a rationalization. Had she made the effort to check up on him, she would have seen this deterioration.

Reese stood in front of him, struggling to keep her uncertainty from transforming into anger. Sascha stood well behind her, nearer to the pond than to the bench where Hirianthial rested. He was too long for it; one leg rested against the ground, the other curled on top of it. His arms were furled against his breast. She wasn’t sure if he was sleeping and she wasn’t glad of the chance it gave her to see he’d lost weight, that there were real hollows in his cheeks. It made him look half-dead. It was terrifying.

“Hirianthial,” Reese said. She stopped when her voice fluttered and rubbed her throat. “Are you awake?”

He didn’t stir. She didn’t want to touch him. Instead, she crouched across from him and addressed him face to face. “Hirianthial?” She thought of her romance novels. “Lord Hirianthial, awake.”

His eye opened. Behind her, Sascha said, “Damnfeathers! That worked?”

She ignored the tigraine. “I need your help.”

That opened both eyes. He didn’t blink or look away. He usually let her go after a few minutes. Maybe he knew his gaze made her uncomfortable.

“Please,” Reese said. “I need you to come with me to run an errand off-world. To get us some money.”

“I—” He stopped, licked his lips. This time the words had volume. “I have duties.”

“I’ve canceled your contracts,” Reese said. “This was more important.”

He stared at her.

“Will you do it?” she asked. On a hunch, she added, “It has to be you. You and Sascha. One of you to drive me insane and the other one to keep me from joining him.”

He didn’t answer immediately. Reese tried not to fidget, but her heart was beginning to hammer when he finally said, “Which one for which role?”

“I’ll let the two of you figure it out on the shuttle,” Reese said. “Go to the hospital and pack your things, then meet me at the port in a couple of hours. No, one hour, in front of the Long Bird. We’ll eat before we leave.” She took a long breath. “Please.”

“Yes, lady.”

She didn’t have the heart to take offense at the title. Sascha joined her as she retreated from the pond, and together they walked off the hospital grounds.

“You handled that better than I thought you would,” the tigraine said once they’d started down the path back to the house.

“Yeah, well, I’m not all bad,” Reese said. She sighed. “Thanks for doing what I told you to.”

“I’m all over the delegation, boss,” Sascha said, grinning.

“Right. Well, Mister Delegation, you go pack. I’m going to tell the rest of the crew where we’re off to.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “Where are we off to, anyway?”

“Home,” Reese said. “To Mars.”

 

Hirianthial ate because arguing with Reese about not eating took more energy than doing what she wanted. He followed her off-world because following her constituted a course of action, and he had no energy to formulate one of his own. The beginning of the trip involved several shuttle transfers that kept him tracking wayward baggage and investigating new quarters often enough to drive all other thoughts from his mind.

It was a form of meditation, in the end. He concentrated on the minutia of the trip, moment by moment. New flight numbers glowing on a board. The musk and sweat of a busy space station. The tinny sound of poorly-insulated insystem drives. Cheap carpet, barely soft enough to cushion metal floors. Beds too short for his body; ceilings too low for his height. Reese and Sascha arguing, out of affection, out of exhaustion. Their auras, tingling bright and dimming after too long cooped in a tiny shuttle.

The second-to-last leg was scheduled to bring them to Pluto’s welcome station, a trip of two days. It was the longest of their rides and the most confining. There were passenger liners that connected there that would have brought them in lush comfort, but the best Reese could afford for their passage involved a single dormitory with bunk-beds and a passenger mess that doubled as a recreation room. Hirianthial avoided it, but Sascha and Reese took turns hiding there.

“The closer we get, the more irritable she is,” Sascha said as he entered the dorm. “Angels on the fields! Even I want to throttle her. What on Mars could possibly be so scary?”

Hirianthial turned onto his side to look at the tigraine.

“And you’re not helping,” Sascha said. “You’ve said maybe two words this entire time. You want me to handle her alone? The least you could do is distract her from me on occasion so I don’t have to deal with the brunt of it all the time.”

That pang in his chest... guilt. Yes, he recognized guilt. “You seem to do well enough.”

“Of course I do. If I stop talking, she’ll brood and the longer she broods, the more explosive she is when she snaps out of it. My only hope is to keep her from getting too introspective.” The Harat-Shar stopped across from their bunks and folded his arms, ears flattening. “Don’t tell me I have to do the same thing with you.”

“No,” Hirianthial said after a moment. “I don’t explode.”

“No,” Sascha said. “You dwindle. You implode. That’s no good either. I wanted this trip to get away from this kind of behavior, not get socked in the face with it again.”

That sparked something in him. “There was trouble?”

The tigraine wavered, eyeing him. Then with a sigh he dropped onto the floor and pressed his back against the bunk frame. “Ah, Angels. My siblings are going to drive me crazy.”

“So it was as you feared,” Hirianthial said.

“And worse. They want me to stay, and playing with them again has reminded both Irine and me about how nice family is.” Sascha stared at his folded hands, resting on his knees. “Nice becomes cloying. And then smothering.”

He could have sensed the shape of the wound in Sascha’s words even if he hadn’t felt the dull red shimmer under the flat gray in the man’s aura. When Sascha didn’t volunteer more, Hirianthial said, “I didn’t know you had other siblings.”

“With my father having seven wives?” Sascha laughed. “He’d have to be chaste. There are seventeen kits in the family, not counting me and Irine. Most of them are nice enough. It’s just there’s... well, there’s some politicking. Even if we don’t like to admit it, a woman wants her children to have the best of everything. Six other women with children makes it a competitive field.”

“Your family seems prosperous,” Hirianthial said.

“Oh, they are,” Sascha said. “Thank the Angels for that.” He scratched his ear. “It’s so hard to say ‘no’ to family. You know?”

A wave of cold anger and mingled regret washed to the forefront of Hirianthial’s mind. He remembered steel and brown blood. “Yes, I know.”

Sascha sighed. “Sometimes you just have to get away. I didn’t want to do anything I’d regret.”

“Wise,” Hirianthial said. “Of course, we’ll be back in less than a week.”

“Hopefully with the money to cut short our visit,” Sascha said. “I can’t imagine you’ll be sorry to leave either. And don’t go all silent on me. I’m not going to get offended if you tell me you hate Harat-Sharii.”

“There are very few things I hate,” Hirianthial said. “Your homeworld is not among them.”

“But?”

“None of us belong there,” Hirianthial said.

“Except Irine,” Sascha said. “And I’m going to have to drag her away. She’ll forgive me for it and the excitement of traveling will distract her, but I’ll know in my heart that I took her away from her family. I don’t like that. I don’t like deciding for her, even though she won’t mind.”

“Perhaps Harat-Sharii isn’t the best place for her,” Hirianthial said.

“How do I know?” Sascha said; his aura had flattened to a morose black, sticky as tar.

“You don’t,” Hirianthial said. “But she’ll choose to go with you and that’s all that matters. It is her choice, alet.”

“Right. Follow me or get left behind.”

“No. To choose the love of her brother or the safety and familiarity of home. Do not belittle her by diminishing the choice just because you know what she will choose. Instead be honored that her love for you is so constant you know what she’ll choose before you even offer her the choice.”

The black lightened to gray, more like rain than tar. After observing his own hands for a while, Sascha said, “I guess that’s love.”

“Such love is rare even in an Eldritch’s lifespan,” Hirianthial said.

“If you say it, it must be true,” the Harat-Shar with a flush of green humor. He twisted to look up at Hirianthial. “I hope you’ve known love.”

Faced with such friendly eyes and the suffusion of warmth in the tigraine’s aura, Hirianthial could no more remain silent than he could stop breathing. “Yes.”

“Good,” Sascha said. He took a long breath. “I guess some people are always the actors and some the followers.”

“Sometimes,” Hirianthial said.

“And I’m an actor,” Sascha said.

“Yes.”

“And you’re a follower.”

Hirianthial paused, which gave the tigraine time to fill in the space. “So I’m telling you to pay more attention to eating. And to sleep better. Just looking at you makes me ache. And no more hiding away from the two of us, because Reese wasn’t kidding when she said she’d need us both. I get the feeling it’s going to be even worse when we finally get to Mars.”

Startled, Hirianthial said nothing.

“So start being more intrusive, okay?” Sascha said. “I don’t know how someone six and a half feet tall and dressed like a foreign prince can disappear at will, but you’ve been doing it for days now and it’s not helping. Not Reese, not me and not you. Will you promise?”

“To be more intrusive?” Hirianthial said, finding humor in it despite himself.

“Yes,” Sascha said. “To be more helpful.”

“My help is not always enough,” Hirianthial said quietly.

“Is that any reason not to offer?” Sascha asked.

“No,” Hirianthial said.

Sascha nodded. “Good. So promise. And I mean that. I want to hear it out loud.”

Hirianthial found a short laugh. “You aren’t going to give up, I see.”

“No. And trust me, we might not be very patient as a race, but we’re certainly obsessive. You don’t want me to get obsessive about you giving me your word.”

“I certainly don’t,” Hirianthial said. “Very well. I promise I’ll be more intrusive.”

“Good,” Sascha said. He stood and shook his head. “I don’t know where you get this idea that you’re no good to anyone, you know. Only a few minutes of talking with you and I feel better about everything.”

Hirianthial thought it best not to respond to that and was doing well on that course when Sascha threw a pillow at him.

“Stop that!”

“Stop what?” the Eldritch said, sitting up.

“Withdrawing. You think you’ve got all the answers and that you’re always right. Well, you’re not. Keep that in mind. And go drink some milk before your bones get too old to hold together anymore.”

“Dubious science at best,” Hirianthial said, but he stood anyway and straightened his clothes. “Where did you learn biology?”

“In school, like most people,” Sascha said. “Unfortunately, the teacher was really really cute. I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying; I was too busy posing him in my fantasies.”

“Harat-Shar,” Hirianthial said.

“To the marrow,” Sascha agreed cheerfully.

 

Staring at the smoldering orange surface of Mars, Reese suppressed the urge to turn around and head right back to Harat-Sharii. Once upon a time she’d looked upon the polar ice cap and the vast plains and dry seas studded with habitats and felt a thrill that made her body tremble and her breath catch in her chest. Now she saw only a giant, red reminder of her own failure.

“I’m going to get this over with,” she said, turning to the two men. “Our shuttle leaves around midnight; check our luggage into a locker and amuse yourself here on Deimos Station. I should be back in a few hours.”

“You’re not seriously going to leave us up here, are you?” Sascha asked. “We didn’t come all this way just to hang out on a glorified asteroid.”

“Oh yes you did,” Reese said. “Besides, what’s wrong with Deimos? If you stay here, there are restaurants, shops, gardens... all the convenience of the Alliance. I bet there’s even a way to entertain a Harat-Shar, if you go to the wrong places.”

“Yeah, but you put a claw on the problem,” Sascha said. “We could go to restaurants, shops and gardens anywhere. There’s only one place to meet the boss’s folks.”

“Well the boss’s folks aren’t interested in meeting you,” Reese said. “You’ll just have to make do.”

Sascha’s ears fell. Even Hirianthial seemed uneasy, though it was hard to tell—he moved so little you had to examine his face, inch by inch, just to figure out how he communicated any emotion at all.

“Let us accompany you,” the Eldritch said, voice gentle.

“No,” Reese said. The word came out harsher than she intended. She sighed. “Look, they don’t like off-worlders. Having the two of you around will just make it harder for me to do this so... just let me do it alone, okay? I promise nothing will happen to me. I’ll be back before you two agree on a place to eat lunch.”

“But—”

“We’ll be here,” Hirianthial said, interrupting Sascha. For once, Reese was glad of him. Just this once, though. She had desperately wanted the escort to Mars—the thought of making this trip alone, the same way she’d made it when she’d left, had proved too much—but she couldn’t bring them with her. She just couldn’t.

The shuttle down to Landing One rattled just as noisily as it had the first time she’d taken this trip. Reese gripped the thick restraints that held her in place while staring out her pinhole window. Joining the Alliance hadn’t inspired all that much change in Terra’s solar system, and the humans she’d grown up with had fallen into two groups: the bitter isolationists who were glad there were so few reminders that the Pelted existed, and the star-eyed expansionists who wished the Alliance would come and renovate until all of Terra’s colonies and stations glimmered with the same wealth and technology as the many starbases planted throughout the Neighborhood. There had been little room to walk in the middle. Reese herself had never wished for a complete overhaul... but she wouldn’t have minded much if someone had found some way to replace the older ships in the civilian space fleet.

No, she hadn’t wanted the Alliance to come to her. She’d wanted to go meet it. If it had already swept through Terra’s system, what impetus would she have had to leave?

What excuse, more like.

Landing Port had never looked dingy until she’d left and seen what passed for a port in the Core. Now Reese stood in the milling rush of people and smelled their sweat and the acrid high note of poorly recycled air and thought the port looked especially small. Had any Alliance engineer seen the high ceilings crossed with gray girders, he would have hung banners from them. Or found trained vines to climb along the ceiling as combination decor and air freshener. Some enterprising Tam-illee would have spray-painted the place a neutral but friendly color... or knocked the entire ceiling down and replaced it with windows. But Landing had been built when humans had been lucky to reach Mars, much less cling there, and the war that had disordered the Martian economy had also given natives a certain fatalism about remodeling.

Melancholy made her angry. Already clenching her teeth, Reese forced her way through the crowds disembarking from the Earth and Deimos shuttles and headed for the blue-station people-mover that would take her home. The township that included her family residence was the sixth stop down the rail and it wasn’t a quick ride. Reese hooked a hand through one of the overhead loops and stared out at the naked Martian landscape as the people-mover glided through its protective steel and plastic tunnel.

Reese stepped off the rail and squeezed her way out of the station into one of the planet’s giant hemispherical habitats. Here at last there was at least some room to breathe; trees stretched tall and thin by the low gravity helped the air-recyclers handle the load of the one thousand people living beneath the dome. This township, barely larger than the crew complement on the Alliance’s warships, had been Reese’s childhood. It was the largest group of people in one place she could handle.

It still wasn’t large enough to keep her from getting home too quickly.

The Eddings household looked like a cottage, but hid a basement in the dense red earth that was twice as long as the ground floor. The property abutted the Wall; as a child, Reese had tried climbing over the hedges to touch it but had found an electrified fence awaiting her. She remembered staring at a landscape distorted by the thick plexiglass that shielded the habitat from the not-quite-right conditions outside... feeling safe. She didn’t trust the invisible glass walls of the Alliance.

The flowers that lined the walk to the door looked much the same, but the tree—the eucalyptus Reese had hidden in, had climbed nearly to its topmost branches, had hung her hammock from—was gone. When the door opened for her knock, the first thing she said to Auntie Mae was, “What happened to the tree?”

“Your mother got tired of it raining kernels on the roof,” Auntie Mae said. “We cut it down. Good gracious, child! You’ve lost weight! What are you eating out there?”

“Who’s at the door, Mae?”

“Oh, it’s Reese.”

“Well for the love of blood and planet, tell her to come in! No use letting in all the dust.”

Reese set booted foot on the braided mat inside the door and reconciled herself to actually having come home. Mae led her down the hall over wooden floors to the breakfast room, where her grandmother, a hunched figure with skin pink as dry flowers, was knitting by the table.

Her mother was pounding bread dough on the kitchen counter. “Well, lookie here! She’s come home at last. How about that, Mother? Here’s your granddaughter, just as you said.”

“I told you she’d be back,” Gran said, knitting needles clicking.

Ma Eddings wiped her flour-dusted hands on a purple apron and walked around the counter to clasp Reese’s arms. She hadn’t changed much: there were new creases around her mouth and the line between her brows had become more pronounced; perhaps her figure was rounder, or the gray in the short hedge of her hair a little paler. Reese couldn’t tell. As her mother hugged her, Reese tried to unbend and hug back.

Auntie Mae took her place at the breakfast table. “You need some feeding, girl.”

“I’m not hungry,” Reese said.

“Of course you are,” Gran said. “You just sit right down, Theresa, and let your mother make you breakfast.”

“Nonsense,” Ma said. “She’s family, not a guest. You come over here and help.”

So Reese donned the older battered apron, the white one that had faded to a soft apricot color, and helped her mother with the baking as the pink sky beyond the kitchen grew paler. Her aunt and grandmother fell into relaxed gossip about the neighbor’s daughter, the mayor’s new pet, how indecent behavior was yet again on the rise.

Butter on the table, glistening and warm; apple preserves and fresh honey; new eggs, cracked and sizzling. Within an hour, a hearty meal appeared on the table and Reese had heard more than she wanted to know about how her schoolmates had fared in her absence. She asked after Aunt Mabel and Great-Aunt Charla, discovered what had become of some of her cousins and heard that Gran had survived another routine heart operation.

They waited until the end of the meal to begin the real discussion. It had always been that way: difficult topics waited on the food.

“I don’t know why you’ve chosen to come home,” Gran said. “But I’m glad you finally have. You’re getting old, Theresa, and your body won’t be good for anything much longer.”

“Gran, I’m only thirty-two.”

“Yes, yes. You’ve only got three years.”

“The operation takes better if you’re thirty-five or younger,” Auntie Mae said. “You know that.”

She hadn’t, but it didn’t seem like the time to volunteer. “I’m not here to have a baby.”

“We wouldn’t expect you to start the moment you came home!” Gran exclaimed. “You need to settle down. Find the rhythm of Mars again.”

“I’m not here to settle down,” Reese said. Her stomach clenched at the ensuing silence. “I’m here to ask for a loan.”

Another few moments of quiet. Then her mother: “What?”

“I need money,” Reese said. “For repairs.”

“You came here for a hand-out?” Auntie Mae said.

Reese flinched, but said, “Yes.”

“You already have your inheritance, girl,” Mae said. “Why are you coming back here for more?”

“I’ll pay the family back,” Reese said.

Gran lifted her head and squinted past Reese at Ma. “This is out of hand.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Ma said. “I can’t make her stay home. She’s an adult now.”

“She’s not acting like one,” Gran said.

“Not proper at all,” Auntie Mae said, eyeing Reese. Unlike Gran and Reese’s mother, Aunt Mae had brown eyes to go with her caramel-colored skin. They were all different colors, the Eddings, thanks to the traditions of Mars. “Haven’t you been listening, child? You need to settle down. Send away for a baby.”

“I don’t want a baby,” Reese said, stunning them all into speechlessness. She’d never had the courage to say those words out loud before. Recklessly, Reese went on. “I’ve never wanted a baby. And even if I did want one, I wouldn’t want a... a mail-order baby by some man I don’t even know the name of!”

“And how else are you supposed to have a daughter?” Gran asked.

“That’s another thing,” Reese said. “What’s so wrong with having a son?”

Their stares had lost their unfocused shocky quality; one by one, starting with her grandmother, they hardened with suspicion and anger. After weeks of reading Hirianthial’s restrained body language, her family’s disapproval radiated with the subtlety of a dropped atomic bomb.

“The Eddings family doesn’t have sons,” Gran said frostily. “We have daughters. We don’t need any meddling men.”

“Obviously she’s picked up some off-world notion about marriage and family,” Auntie Mae said with a sniff. “Disgusting. Next she’ll be telling us she’s found herself some man. How on earth can you insure a child of fine quality when you mix it up with some man? Who knows where he’s been?”

“Or when he’ll leave,” Gran said with a curled lip.

Which was, in the end, the crux of the matter. The men of Mars had softened its soil with their blood in the civil war with Earth... and most of the families that had remained had never recovered from the loss. The Eddings clan wasn’t the only one to have made tradition out of necessity when it came to artificial insemination.

“I’m not mixed up with any man,” Reese said. “I just need a loan.”

“You’re not home to stay,” her mother said quietly.

Reese turned. “No, Ma. I’m still working.”

“You could work here,” her mother said.

Reese shook her head. “I’ve got a good lead on some things,” she said. Which she did, if one counted a mysterious Eldritch patron. “I just need to do some repairs and I’ll pay you back.”

“And then, when you’ve succeeded, when you’ve made all the money you want... you’ll come home?” Ma asked.

Reese hesitated.

“I thought she said she was going off to be a wealthy merchant,” Auntie Mae said. “She was supposed to bring home more money for us. Not take it away.”

Reese flushed. “I will bring you more money. One day I’ll buy you a new house. A nicer one. And you’ll have everything you need.”

“We’ve got everything we need, Theresa,” Gran said. “Everything but you. You think money’s going to replace a daughter to take care of us when we get old? You going to shovel us into one of those living graves where other children without a bit of gratitude put their aging family?”

“Your duty’s here,” Auntie Mae said. “You stay here, have yourself a baby. Then you’ll have someone to take care of you when you get old, and you’ll be here to take care of us. We don’t need money. We need you, child.”

“I’m not staying,” Reese said.

“You’d be welcome,” Ma said, distracting her. Reese turned to her. Her mother was wiping her hands on her apron... slowly, very slowly. “We could use your help around the house.”

“I can’t,” Reese said. “I’m not done living yet.” She ignored the hostile quiet that descended after that statement and hurried on. “I just need to borrow money. I promise this will be the last time.”

“You’re right about that,” Ma said. “Walk on out of here, girl.”

“Ma?” Reese said, startled.

Her mother’s eyes were cold. Blue eyes could be incredibly distant. “You leave now, girl. Don’t come back either. Don’t ask me for money. Don’t you come calling. Don’t bring us back some man-bred baby, either, if you settle down. This isn’t your house. We aren’t your family.”

Reese’s lips parted. “Ma...”

“I’m not that to you either. Go on, now. You don’t belong here and you never did.”

Her mother turned to the kitchen table and began clearing the dishes. Auntie Mae helped; Gran returned to her knitting. They all ignored her, as if she’d become part of the peeling wallpaper, the furniture, the red sky. Reese turned, shaking, and made her way up the short hallway to the door. She let herself out, carefully closing the door behind her and barely hearing the soft click of the lock.

She stood on the welcome mat for a few minutes. There were no passersby: nothing but the still air and the distant, distorted sky. Her bones knew the planet’s drag, but everything else had changed, even the smell of things. Without the eucalyptus, it had lost its richness, its spice.

Reese couldn’t summon any anger, and anger had always been her best shield. She judged it best to leave quickly before she had time to examine the notion of never coming back. The trip to the station took far too long; Reese used it to work on figures, though she had to force herself to concentrate on the blurry numbers. By the time the shuttle docked at Deimos, she’d decided to take the job offer from the man in the bar. The first half of the payment would take care of repairs; the remainder would pay her crew and give her some room for upgrades and cargo after the assignment. It would get them off Harat-Sharii. The man had assured her it was legal; that was good enough.

Reese arrived on Deimos Station after lunch and decided against finding Hirianthial and Sascha. Instead she located the locker and sat on the bench outside it. She tried reading some of the romance novels she’d bought before the trip, but the words moved, drifted, wobbled.

It was no use not thinking about what had happened. Her mother had disinherited her... disinherited. Reese rubbed her forehead. A pretty word she’d lifted from books about princesses and royalty. What little she would have inherited from the Eddings family had already gone into buying the Earthrise. What more did she have to look forward to? A catalog featuring photos of smiling men with their vital statistics listed alongside? A mail-order daughter? A life without testosterone? Not that men weren’t annoying, but things started to feel lopsided without them. Reese flicked to the cover of the latest novel and stared at the Tam-illee girl swooning in the arms of the Eldritch prince.

No, she still had a home: the Earthrise. Even if she could never come back to Mars, she had a place to go back to. She’d never really planned to come here, settle down and have a fatherless baby... had she?

Maybe she’d merely never planned that far ahead.

Reese spent several hours sitting in front of the lockers, trying to sort it out and failing.

“Hey, boss... how’d it go?”

“Sascha, do you have the ticket for our baggage claim?” Hirianthial interrupted. “I can’t seem to find it.”

“I thought you—no, wait.” Sascha checked his vest and pant pockets, came up with a plastic chip. “I have the ticket after all. I’ll be right back.”

Reese watched Sascha disappear into the building, then squinted at Hirianthial. “You sent him away.”

“You needed a moment to compose yourself,” the Eldritch said, stopping in front of her.

She stared at his square-tipped boots. “I don’t need you reading my mind—”

“Lady,” Hirianthial said, “I don’t need to read your mind when your body fair screams your dejection.”

Reese straightened, squared her shoulders. “I don’t look dejected.”

He simply looked at her. It was one of his most disarming, infuriating habits: actually looking at people, instead of glossing over them. She grew more and more uncomfortable until the absurdity of the situation stuck her. Her family had kicked her out for good and she was worrying about having an Eldritch stare her down. Reese managed a weak laugh. “Okay, I am dejected—woah!”

Hirianthial kneeled in front of her—not quite kneeling, but one knee down and the other up. It put his face on eye level. He looked comfortable there, posing like a knight for a book cover... except in the book covers, the fragile Eldritch princes had always looked effeminate. Reese reflected on how badly they’d messed that up. Long hair and long bones alone did not feminize a man. The fussy lace cuffs, the camellias on the tunic, the blood-sparkle ring on his finger, none of it mattered. It was all in the carriage.

“It will pass,” he said.

“I... I guess I know that,” Reese said, looking away. The silence that fell was so comfortable she couldn’t stand it. Without deciding to, she glanced at him and asked, “Do you have a home?”

“My lady?” He looked as startled as he ever did.

“A home,” Reese said. “Like the Earthrise is mine.”

“I hadn’t really given the matter much thought,” he said.

“Isn’t it a hard thing not to know?” Reese asked, and was rewarded by his eyes... closing. She wasn’t sure how he did it, but their warmth drained away. The result wasn’t hostile, like her mother’s blue stare, just distant. Formal. She hurried on. “Because everyone should have one.”

“Of course,” he said.

“Look, I want to give you an employment contract. Instead of you just... you know. Hanging around until you get bored or I get frustrated.”

This time she expected the stillness. She’d hit a nerve. Maybe. “You don’t have to take it. But everyone else in the crew’s got one and you deserve one too. If you want one.”

The warmth returned to his gaze, as slowly as a spring replenishing. For once his smile was neither cautious nor tired, merely small. He never seemed to do anything large or loud; it made Reese wonder how he bore her. “I would be honored.”

“Yeah, okay. Then get up, all right? Last thing we need is Sascha coming in on you like this and getting all sorts of ideas—”

“What sorts of ideas?” Sascha asked, dragging their bags behind him as Hirianthial stood.

“The wrong ones,” Reese said. Hirianthial brushed the dust from his pants.

“Curse it all!” Sascha said, shaking a fist at the ceiling. “Why do I always miss all the juicy bits?”

“Oh, hush,” Reese said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.”