Book 4
Siha: Rise of Rakhana
Part II
Closing the call, Tetonbaum turns from the sparsely-walked corridor to the bathrooms with the few lights lining the center of it overhead, towards the main dining area, the hall of the reception…Dressed in a sharp blue uniform with a gold sash binding diagonally across the swathe of waist to his chest, several braids decorate the right of his traps and continue the sash to his shoulder and down again to his back tuckaway…He moves with a catlike grace from the corridor into the hall of tables and parquet floors.
Braith was convincingly upset, her voice fraught with not fear but the control one has just before cusp of that psychosis…She might not have used the term shard to describe what Casnar and Ylyssus were using together—Together! Even that was news…
Ylyssus—among the S'syalahe Stönn's stewards?…What else will I learn tonight…
He hoped that whoever else was on the call would not go breaking down the door and taking over the little family—his family—in Elutha, the dome of political exiles, prisoners of war by the Illuminated Primacy's polite playing-down of terms…Home for the Anxiously At Bay, they referred to it whimsically as…
Tetonbaum knew that someone would have heard Braith's call—and his reply—so any hope of secrecy was a lamed beast...Moving through the tables, his hulking figure appears in its typical terrible mood since being exiled.
The hanar were more than pleased to have a high th'ane to beef up their Jehush with an enforcer—one who dwarfed the usual program-bred drells and drellahnas.
The drellahnas envied the woman Tetonbaum went home to at night or on break, there in Sulinvia Holosphere.
Rumor had spread of his Soterios background and that, in addition to his looks, made him a topic of chatter and conquest for the Kahjic drellahnas and drells…He was a mystery to them, exotic, influential despite his demotion by Merce'des.
More than once he had already been solicited by those who would bed him for hope of enticing him from his wife, or to make a notch on their headboards…But Tetonbaum was in love with one woman.
One human woman…
That got him the ire of some of the more punitive, powerful drells and drellahnas walking around and sycophanting the Illuminated Primacy's elder hanari…Kasumi was somewhere in the reception hall, allowed to be there with him, and to live with him in matrimony…though living in the holospheres on Kahje was not the same as living on Rakhana…
Rakhana was wild, beautiful and full of sunshine, even now in Rakka—since Braith had led the Morthwyl Uprising several years back.
Kahje was imprisonment. He was exiled again in a way…sent to another world of darkness, cold waters, where sunlight came in rare miracles…
His memories of Merce'des when he was a child growing up in the brotherhood are still vivid to him, and how he looked forward to those chances to look through a window to see the clouds, to see that rare sun bless his eyes looking heavenward…Those days he thought were over and Nualavera—when his father demanded he be allowed to live and train in the city with his half-siblings—Tetonbaum had believed his father had truly opened his heart, to take him from the cells he was trained, tortured, slept, and fed within…
Merce'des was his home, too, in that he could truthfully claim he had conquered it and survived the philosophy…
Your life is not your own but ours…
Brought back to it after his capture, he was threatened for what he had done with taking Kasumi as his wife aboard the Ni S'pri, denouncing his allegiance to the Tierrea…
What can we make you promise in return for her life…Casnar's…You want to be with them, don't you, Tetonbaum…
What could he promise?…Clouds, infinite water, the model of the new Jehush guard for the hanar judicial branch, and then…whatever tactical leverage the hanar could acquire by employing him at their will…
Tetonbaum knew the time of peace, of walks in gardens, of warm and varying levels of sunlight on his skin and Kasumi's…were over.
Seeking his wife among the reception space, he lays eyes on her pale-moon face as she looks up from her conversation with several other drells and drellahnas at a table. They have made some friends there in the holospheres and at work…Kasumi is also utilized by the hanar, but she tells him,
"…It's only more talk about stealing things, Teton…A lot of prothean stuff. They love that stuff—it's crazy…I should have spent more time looking for these artifacts when I was free and with Shepard…I would have been able to retire, selling it to the Illuminated Primacy, Shadow Market prices…These hanar aren't all so mystically high-and-mighty, you know…I bet I can surprise you when I tell you what makes the Abban wriggle like he's about to burn-off those zero-G nodes he flitters about on…" She winks.
"Kasumi…My naughty little wife…"
It is difficult for Kasumi to be there with him, despite her well-treatment by the hanar…It is difficult for him to see her with a tracking collar on her arm.
The Illuminated Primacy had a warrant for her arrest, what with her past as some mistress of the cloak, a master of masters among thieves…
Tetonbaum was not aware of her past…She never told him about it, and he never told her about what he'd done in his.
…A wedding present, belated…They bring her in, not a hair out of place, her face only showing a small hint of disconcertion at the arrangement of their meeting…She is wearing something on her arm, a bracelet I have not seen before…It stands out against the robe they put on her…
"I chose to wear it," she looks up at me, her arm moving the bracelet between ourselves, "…They offered it as part of the deal…to be with you..."
"We know you will not be far from her, so rather than inconvenience you while you attend to what the Jehush wishes, we will inconvenience her, and through her, you will be controlled, Brother Soterios..."
It was subtle but obvious…Not a metallic collar meant to humiliate her, but with a ceramic casting, links that made it blend with jewelry the drellahnas and drells on Kahje wore. The fashion was different, embellished, superficial…Meaningless.
…Kasumi stood out because she was human, and her black beautiful hair…She wore in a braid along her shoulder, partially concealed by her naked arm, a red sleeve above between her neck and acromion process on the human skeletal frame…Tetonbaum loved that hair braid, and he could make love to her with the bracelet on.
It was distasteful to him to see that piece of blasphemy on her skin…But the other advantage of the charm was that she received medical care quickly and efficiently per her species, and the Illuminated Primacy was at least able to handle human injuries or abrasions when and if such occurred…These did not, not that Tetonbaum allowed anyone to touch her…Also, sight of the bracelet warded away unwanted attention by other drells and drellahnas who might have intolerances against human presence on Kahje.
To see it, to recognize the collar of the Primacy, was to realize quickly that the human was…insured...
He approaches the table, dragging gazes like chains hooked to his back, crests, and shoulders…
As Kasumi gazes upwards at his shadow, everyone stops conversation at the table.
"My Wife," he says it softly, willing only Kasumi to hear his whisper, "…We must leave…There is an event at my brother's this evening…"
He holds out his gloved hand to her, and the ripple of hushings and whispers pervades outward from that table to the rest of the nearby diners and guests.
Kasumi excuses herself with a polite grin, her head in the little tilt to their table as she is expected to do among their world, and everyone is considered equal—though equality is a farce here, too, as elsewhere in the galaxy, Tetonbaum learns…
Kasumi rises from her seat in the red gown, a gold sash like his across her waist and breast but no braids—other than the one of her hair which falls over her shoulder and settles between her scapulae as she turns to take his hand.
If there is a glimpse of any sunlight on this planet, Tetonbaum finds it in her face—and Kasumi's in his eyes.
( I love thee. ) She looks down at me as I walk her in the bay of the Ni S'pri, all breaths held…She bends to kiss me on my lips over my head…
Tetonbaum says it with his eyes and she to him with her smile...Taking her arm into his, he walks his little wife to the doors of the venue.
Silence mixed with whispers spreads like a wake of waves at their passing.
"Braith contacted me a moment before I collected you, Kasumi." Tetonbaum informs her quietly as they descend a set of stairs that stop and start again after a marble red flat, lowering them from the top where the receptions take place. "Something troubling enough to warrant a call on the line to my omni-tool…Something with the shards."
He can feel her turning her head to look up at him, "…Shards…The Eye?" She stops herself at his glance, "…Casnar brought those things with him?"
Tetonbaum nods subtly, "…My brother always has them within arm's reach. He will never leave them to the wrong minds."
Kasumi turns her gaze to the doors—where thick-armed drells guard the glasses they must pass through to reach open air, so to speak if one understands the holospheres…One looks as if he is about to open one of the glasses for them, "…And we're going to simply walk out of here, drive over to visit Braith and them?…"
Tetonbaum nods again, "…Yes."
"We need permission…?"
His sapphires move to each of the guards…Six, aware of their course to the entrance—Tetonbaum and Kasumi's intentions to exit without a problem.
Aside from the one moving to the door as though to draw it apart for them, no one budges an inch.
"Not tonight, Kasumi. Tonight they will know where we intend to bring ourselves…" Tetonbaum tightens his arm, looped with hers, his eyes moving to what waits beyond the glass doors. "Keep walking with me."
Tetonbaum and Kasumi see the guard open the door for them and as the glass swings outwards, they jointly make the sidewalk outside, and travel towards the streetway.
A dark skyrunner waits, thrusters warming the ground.
Tetonbaum's fingers brush Kasumi's underhand, warning her…The driverside door opens and the smell of pungent bedi smoke drifts into the street air.
Quoyle Nerafa stands out from the skyrunner. He walks around the front fenders and stops beside Kasumi.
Another drell, Borhaus, has stepped out of the passenger seat and gone to the rear door behind his, opening this.
"Good evening, Sered Nerafa," Tetonbaum softly greets.
Quoyle nods to the skyrunner, lowering his bedi. It smells like pine resin, caramel, a hint of citrus. "Get in, we'll give you two a lift."