A/N (2011): Another bit from the first run.
And On The Way I Lost It
I don't surprise easy, any more. Seen too much, I guess. Too many cycles of war, maybe, making deals in the dank back rooms of drinking houses. Or maybe it's like my nest-keep told me; I was suspicious inside the shell. Either way, the girl surprised me.
It was Remni that asked for me to talk to her. If Temti or one of the others had come to me -asked me to talk to a strange whore- I would have told them to get frelled, because Nebari Observers are running our orbit. Remni I know from before the war, and even if he doesn't know it, we share the marks the Scarrans put to slaves, so I listen when he asks.
Remni makes a noise behind the curtains, darting his head through the gap. His ears twitch and swivel and his eyes glow green in the low light, but he nods at me before disappearing again. Then the girl walks in, and I get my first surprise.
She stops right inside the curtain, eyes adjusting from the light outside like always happens with my visitors, giving the scanners time to work. Like Remni said, she's a whore. But not the type we're used to seeing.
Head to toe, she's flash. Hair altered to the silver of the moon Nimix, eyes intensified until they almost glow like Remni's. The silver hair she wears in a fan behind her head, with little jewels planted to catch the light. I glance down at the hidden console and the scanners tell me the gems are real. They also tell me she's without weaponry.
"Please and welcome," I nod at a chair, watching as she perches, all grace and strung-out nerves on the edge of the seat. Her gown shifts, leaving just enough tucked away to make me almost wish I liked soft-bodies. I grin appreciatively with my mouthclaws. "Make yourself comfortable."
The whore only silently drapes her hands over one knee, doesn't touch the armrests. Avoids the DNA samplers. Much fortune for foolishness. She still doesn't say anything, just sits and looks at me, and that's the second thing I find surprising.
Most Sebaceans find my appearance at least a little unsettling, but the girl looks at me without flinching. Irritation starts to gurgle inside me. I don't like feeling as though I'm being sized up. By a whore.
"Did you come to waste my time, nixa?" I let one claw snap loudly, but the girl doesn't flinch.
"You are a Trangin, correct?" she asks the question in Trang, without an accent. I can only stare at her, suddenly uneasy. She is too young to know what I am, too Sebacean to know of my language.
"We are done here," I rumble, making the furniture tremble. "Leave. Or I will have you removed."
"You remember the myths, you speak to the dead," she disregards my order to leave and leans forward to open one hand. Jewels spill, by some trickery, onto the table. Blue gems. As blue as enhanced whore eyes.
I sit and stare at her. What else can I do? She knows the secrets I thought tucked away with weapons and battles and torture under alien hands. For the first time in twenty cycles, I do remember the myths, and the fear creeps under my mantle.
"Put away your trinkets, girl," I grind out the words, but her face only softens.
"Please, I would speak with the dead. I have no wish to dishonor them, Koroc."
"The dead speak only to themselves," I keep my voice low, trying to hide the panic. She knows my name; my before-name. "They have no interest in the living. Why would they speak to you?"
She looks at me deliberately. Slides back in the chair. Her wrap shifts again in the hazy light, more taunts and teases of gem-studded flesh. Then she puts her hand down on the armrest, triggering the sampler.
DNA taken, displayed on my screens. I stare. Two samples like it existed, once, but that was twenty cycles ago. My mantle goes completely cold.
Two samples. Father, daughter.
Sacrifices of peace. The Nebari couldn't bring war on a dead man and his offspring.
The myths weren't written for Sebaceans.
"What would you say, could you speak to the dead?" my voice trembles now.
"That the living have not forgotten," her eyes narrow, and she stands up as if invisible cables have been tugged, strung out nerves pulled. She leans forward then, fingers drifting through the spilled gems.
Her wraps slides again, and I see -am shown- the marks. Companion to a Nebari official.
Then she straightens, and glides across the room. Pushing the curtain, she looks back, a flash of too-blue eyes, and I know the DNA wasn't a lie. She lets the fabric drop without a word.
I shudder, breath leaving my lungs in a rush, but I feel no relief. I don't remember the way the myth goes, because I know the truth. I smell the fear and smoke after that battle on an unnamed world.
He stood in the middle of the field, watching the fighters swarm. The little one holding his hand, unafraid. She looked over her shoulder at me, saw me coming, but her blue eyes never ran water.
She screamed when I tore her from him.
He said to hide her, keep her safe, but I couldn't. My limbs grew back after the explosion, but the little one was gone. No trace remained. When I went to him, it had been with empty claws.
"I failed you," I mutter.
No war killed the one in the myth, grief is what did it, what kept him from putting the Nebari off.
I blink and look down, claws heavy on the table. Swallow hard at the symbols she'd formed with blue -daughter-eye-blue- gems. Trang symbols.
Trap. Traitor. Ambush.
The Nebari know of my ties to Crichton. Suddenly I am more afraid than when the Scarrans put the torch to me, burning my marks. They know the being that destroys time is alive. They sent his daughter to trap him.
They expect for me to go to him.
"Remni!" my shout rattles the table, gems shifting. As they do, the symbol for traitor blurs, and I freeze. How had they found me?
As I leave the dark room, I toss the Nebari currancy back onto Remni's corpse.
The gems I tuck into my cloak.
He'll want to see them, when I get there.