Stamme: Shikari Book Three

by Alma T. C. Boykin

  “Do that. And have him reply quickly. I had planned on the marriage being registered by the first of the month.”

  Absolutely not, Rigi decided. Three days from meeting to marrying? She could not imagine such a thing, or her parents permitting it. Cyril’s wedding came first. “I fear I cannot marry anyone in that short of a span of time, sir. It would be better for you to ask a different young lady if you need to be wed so soon.”

  “Well. Why did your father say you were available if you are not? I should sue for false pretenses, Miss, for such a gross insult.” He stormed past her. “And I will indeed!” He threw the door open and stormed out.

  “Auriga, close your mouth before something lands in it.” Her mother glided past and shut the door, firmly but quietly. “It appears a cultural misunderstanding has occurred. I will tell your father.”

  Rigi felt tears filling her eyes. What had she done? She hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t led him on because she’d never met or corresponded with him. “I—” Her throat spasmed closed. “What did I do wrong?” she whispered on the second attempt.

  “Come,” her mother led her to the family room. “I suspect Mr. Xiaolenk is from the Stellar-Han of WemWorld. They rarely leave the planet, so I did not consider that possibility. Your father and I should have. Stay here, and I will be back.” Rigi sat in Cy’s chair, staring at the bookshelves but not seeing them. Her mother returned with Lonka, tea, and Makana. “I spoke to your father. He had seen the files and neither opened nor acknowledged them. He will respond to Mr. Xiaolenk before he returns home, dear.” Her mother fixed tea and handed Rigi the cup. “Now, since I was remiss, and this might arise again in a less mannerly form, Makana needs to be here as well.

  “The Stellar-Han's views on the relations between men and women are culturally-traditional to the point of being archaic, as well as strict.” Her lips tightened into a thin line. “Women are inferior and their fathers, older brothers, and sons do all public business for them. When a father announces that his daughter is ready to wed, he also announces the amount he is willing to pay. The interested men, I cannot call them suitors,” she sniffed, “present counter offers, much lower, and once a bargain is reached, the young woman is sent to her new family’s home. I suspect that Mr. Xiaolenk believed the same to be true here, and when your father did not respond, took that to mean that his offer had been accepted and that he needed only to come, see that indeed, you existed and were as described, and sign the paperwork necessary for you and your dowry to be transferred to him.”

  “How dreadful,” Rigi declared. “What if a young woman refuses the man?”

  “That is when Makana and Martinus intervene, should someone be so foolish as to believe he can take you by force and compel your father to turn over the dowry.” Mrs. deStella-Bernardi looked down at the floor, then at Makana. “I doubt that Mr. Xiaolenk or any other Stellar-Han man would be so foolish, but if he or someone else is, because it is within their culture and is not considered entirely improper in the community. If he were to grab Auriga, stop him, Makana. You and Martinus must not let him get Auriga alone. It is possible he would force himself on you, Auriga, so that your father would have no choice but to accept the match.”

  Rigi gasped, “He will do no such thing!” She’d defend herself however she had to.

  “No, Mistress Acherna, Miss Rigi, he will not,” Makana agreed.

  “And he will not sue, because the Crown laws for Shikhari, and the Company regulations, do not permit such. He is in error, not you, and not your father.” Mrs. DeStella-Bernardi drank her tea with a ferocious sip, something Rigi had not thought possible. “Makana, please study the images of the gentleman from the door viewer, so that you can recognize him if he is so foolish as to lay hands on Auriga.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, and you may go.” Makana hand-bowed and departed.

  Rigi and her mother drank their tea. Rigi refilled her cup and poured for her mother as well, adding a tiny pinch of sweet-grass powder at her nod. “The Stellar-Han so rarely marry outside their own corporate-clan networks that neither your father nor I considered that such a gentleman might hear of your coming-of-age and take it as the opening of dower bids. We should have. Shikhari is not quite as isolated as it seems.”

  Rigi swallowed, savoring the familiar, calming ritual and flavor. “It is intriguing, that in earlier days we could send messages and data faster than thought, but could not travel so quickly, and now the reverse is true. Perhaps we have advanced so far that we have returned to where we began.” She took another sip. "How strange."

  “It is. The ways of the Creator and Creatrix are passing strange indeed at times. Truly they know best, but sometimes all of us wish they might be a touch more forthcoming.” Her mother sighed. “But we are no longer children for all that we remain their children.”

  Rigi never could say why her next words tumbled out. “Mother, ah, do Aunt Kay and Uncle Eb have any children?”

  Mrs. deStella-Bernardi set her cup and saucer down with deliberate care, then turned so she looked Rigi straight in the eye. “They did. Three. I do not know anything about their oldest. The second child died after eighteen Home months, and the third lived two LimWorld weeks. Aunt Kay miscarried twice more, each time earlier. I believe—and given how terribly Kay still grieves I am never going to ask and you should not either—but I believe that something she and Ebenezer were exposed to on WemWorld caused it. They have been offered children since then and refused, aside from one honor child and one needs child, from Shikhari.”

  The hair on the back of Rigi neck’s stood up as she jumped to the realization. “Lexissol?”

  “Yes. I do not know the details. Lexi was an older hopling, in his teens, and chose Ebenezer and Kay the first time they came here, that much I do know.” She shook her head a little, reached forward and patted Rigi’s knee. “Ebenezer and Kay have been a law unto themselves since long before I met them, and the more I see, the more I understand why the Creator and Creatrix made them for each other.” She smiled a little ruefully. “I certainly would have upended a pot of blue-gourd soup on Ebenezer decades ago for the things he does to his clothes, let alone other reasons, if he were my husband.”

  “Lexi does have to cover his ears a great deal, I’ve noticed, ma’am.”

  “Indeed he does. He has three offspring, and I shudder to think what Ebenezer Solomon Trent has done to corrupt the next generation of Staré.”

  “Probably taught them to make the Staré version of rude sounds, just to begin with,” Rigi speculated aloud. Among other things she could think of. She had a sudden mental picture of her aunt covering her eyes and Lexi covering his ears as Uncle Eb showed three hoplings something highly entertaining and wildly messy.

  “To begin with, yes. Kay is a saint to put up with him.”

  Rigi added a few things to her mental list of “quirks my future husband should not have.” Buying heavy items from off world with the shipping due on arrival had risen to the top of the list following Uncle Eb’s last fall from grace.

  “Ah,” Rigi wasn’t sure if she should even ask. Better now than to cause a terrible hurt later, she decided. “Ma’am, when I have children, will it upset Uncle Eb and Aunt Kay if I invite them to social functions where the children are present?”

  “No, not at all, but you are wise to ask. Some women, and a few men, become bitter when they cannot have children, or they lose one. Kay and Ebenezer are wise and kind enough to understand that punishing other people for their own sorrows is unkind at best and vicious at worst. And you will encounter a few vicious people if you see enough of the worlds, Auriga, I’m sorry to say.”

  Yes, Rigi thought, and their names were Petrason and Smargad, and I still wish they’d never set foot on Shikhari. But she kept such thoughts well hidden. Proper ladies, and followers of the Tradition, did not hate individuals, only acts. Rigi failed to see the distinction in this case. You did not discuss such things with your mother, however
, that Rigi knew in her bones. She loved her mother dearly but she did not want to find herself scolded and having to write out entire chapters of the Book of Wisdom by hand again. Once was enough.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Rigi finished her tea. “I will finish the sorting. At present there are six gentlemen who seem to be suitable.”

  “That is better than I had feared.” Her mother stood. “Six out of twenty-three is better than I originally had, but Shikhari is not Eta Tolima, and things are different here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “On Eta Tolima, each young man, or his family, comes to call and is approved in person or disapproved in person on the first meeting.” Her mother sighed. “I have never been so tired of being on my best behavior. They all came in a day and a half, and Father and Mother passed three of forty-seven.” She winked. “I rebelled. I met your father at the beam-shooter range, decided that he had potential, and out-shot him. It worked.” Mrs. deStella-Bernardi glided from the family room, leaving Rigi gape-mouthed for the second time that afternoon.

  “Is anyone in my family what I think they are?” she whispered before tidying up the tea things and returning upstairs. Did she really want to know? No, not really. Before she sat back down, Rigi petted Martinus. “You make perfect sense compared to humans.”

  “Wooeef,” he agreed quietly, wagging his fur tail.

  9

  Gentlemen, Scholars, and Otherwise

  Tomás set down his tea cup and rubbed his temple with three fingers, as if he had a headache. “You were right about Kor blistering my ears, Rigi.”

  “Could you do like Lexi and fold them shut?”

  The corner of his mouth tipped up a little. “Alas no, since he outranks me.” He sighed and rubbed his face with both hands, then picked up the cup again. “At least he only knows Common and Staré. He expressed his opinion of Dr. Szabor in eloquent, forceful, and vehement tones, expanding from his initial subject to encompass certain members of the current governing administration, their ancestors, and any possible descendants.”

  Rigi curled her lips in, muffling a giggle. She had to stop giggling! “He was not in favor, I take it.”

  “Ah no, no, not in favor. The kindest thing he expressed was a desire for Dr. Szabor to, um, ‘regain that sense and courtesy with which all pouchlings are born’ is the best translation.”

  Rigi paged through her mental list of Staré epithets and found the one Tomás had translated into Common. He hadn’t gotten the heavy implication in the original about why the unfortunate individual had lost that sense, but it was otherwise on target. “Without scents, Staré colloquialisms lose some of their,” she glanced toward the open door to the family room and considered who was in there carefully not listening. “Their pungency and forcefulness.”

  “Pungency indeed. I had to air the office for the rest of the day. I later heard that the expedition to Riverhead cannot find a single Staré worker no matter how much money they offer, or what amenities they offer to provide.”

  Now Rigi shook her head. “I’m sorry to hear that, for Dr. De Groet and Dr. Martinez’s sakes. It’s not really fair to punish them for Dr. Szabor’s rash comments.”

  “They are not on the expedition. Their work is not up to the necessary quality, or so I heard through the fourth-hand rumor mill.” He set the cup down again, leaned over and opened the top of the bag propped up against the side of his chair. “This is not a gift. It is a loan of academic materials, so that you can properly appraise their accuracy and usefulness.” Under his breath he hissed, “You might want to wear gloves when you turn pages,” as he handed her the print-out.

  She almost dropped it when she saw the names on the cover, recoiling as if he’d handed her a bitter-bite snake. “Thank you. I understand that some things were lost in translation.”

  “Lost? I’ve seen knot-buns that would be easier to untangle, but that is my opinion and I don’t want to prejudice your appraisal.” He stopped, tipped his head to the side, and asked, “Does Shona make knot-buns?”

  Rigi turned the document over so she wouldn’t see the names. “I don’t think so. Not because they are beyond his skills, but he doesn’t like handling pastry dough. He has to wear forefoot covers and he says that they interfere with his food-touch. Shona makes breads and drop-buns, and a few other things he doesn’t have to handle too much.”

  Tomás blinked, then started moving his hands as if tying something into a complicated knot. “Oh.” He spread his fingers, studied them, then nodded once. “That makes perfect sense. I hadn’t thought about having fur there. It would be like trying to get defensive-string out of my hair, but worse.”

  “Much worse, or so he says, and I’m not going to argue.” Rigi’s mother purchased knot-buns when she wanted them, and smuggled them into the house so Shona wouldn’t know. He had become very firm thoughts about people bringing bought-breads into his kitchen. Not quite as firm as his response to people asking for his sauce and spice-blend recipes, but close.

  “You would probably have greater success arguing with my former Subala, or with the trees in the park.” He stood and Rigi copied his motion. “And I fear duty and the last data-check calls, Miss Rigi. Officially I did not loan you the document, but I do need a professional assessment, and Mr. Trent’s response was . . . blunt.”

  “I can well imagine, Capt. Prananda. Thank you for your recommendation, and I will do my best to finish and get my thoughts to you in a timely manner.” In truth, the sooner the thing was out from under her roof, the happier she would be. Just seeing one of those names brought back a scene she’d prefer never to remember again.

  Lonka followed Rigi and Tomás to the door and closed it behind Tomás when he left. Rigi went back to the visitor’s room and picked up the print-out with two fingers. She didn’t want to contaminate Shona’s kitchen tongs by touching them to the evil creatures’ words. “Miss Rigi, is there difficulty?” Lonka asked, puffing //puzzlement/concern.//

  “No. I met the two humans who wrote this, and I did not like them.” What would the Staré in the household do if they learned that Smargad had written the file? Destroy it in several creative ways most likely. She’d better hide it, or disguise the front page, since everyone but Nahla could read at least some Common. She took a firmer grip on the pages and went upstairs, leaving the front room to Lonka.

  The next morning Rigi took a deep mental breath, cleared her art tools out of the way, and set the document on her work table. She'd looked up the background on the document, what she could find, and had felt ill and furious both. Evan Petrason had written up his observations about the Staré while concealing his crimes and Mrs. Chin-Petrason had submitted them to the court but been rejected. However, one Luminous Smargad obtained the notes through Mrs. Elaine Debenadetto, and had used them to write up a full documentation of Staré culture for their use with the Staré Protection Society or whatever they'd called it. Rigi considered the stack of pages, then recited a prayer for calm and clarity. She did indeed put on a pair of gloves, felt silly, gritted her teeth, and started to read.

  She got to the second chapter before she put a glove in as a place marker, covered the closed pages with other print-outs, and called Martinus to her. They went outside and played pull-the-rope for a quarter hour before she felt able to continue without tearing the next page into small pieces of paper, dropping them onto the floor, and jumping up and down on them before she read them. Frustration and anger dissipated for the moment, she checked the m-dog’s feet and was climbing the verandah steps when she heard a strange sound from the wombow shelter.

  “Martinus, guard,” she said, turning and going toward the sound. His eyes shifted color as his defensive tracking program engaged. Rigi shifted a little in her mind, looking and listening like a hunter would. She didn’t have her hand-shooter with her, but she had Martinus and her skirt-knife. Rigi reached into the special pocket and undid the safety strap on the knife. As she drew closer to Stodge’s shed, she listened and sniffed. He’d f
ear sprayed. Oh no. She needed to go get Makana and a shooter. Instead she crept closer and closer, heard someone, a human man, saying something. Stodge screamed. Rigi jumped, skidded around the corner, and hauled the shed door wide open. “Stop him!”

  “You owe— Aiiieee!” Martinus knocked the man away from Stodge and took his arm in his mouth. “How dare you! Let go. I’ll have you in prison after I finish you, ugly whore!”

  “Hold,” Rigi commanded. She saw brown blood on Stodge’s left hind leg and flank. He tossed his head, trying to get away. She needed Makana. “Hold him here,” she repeated, turning to run to the house.

  “Oof!” She bounced off a very, very angry Staré male with a long knife in one forefoot. “Makana, the human hurt Stodge.”

  “Alarm in house. I came. That man?”

  “Yes.” She turned back around, waiting until Makana had gotten a firm grip on Mr. Xiaolenk. “Martinus, help Makana.” The m-dog and Staré didn’t quite lift the irate man off the floor, but they came close. Martinus released enough of his bite to slide his mouth down from the man’s bicep to his wrist, but didn’t let go as they dragged/led the man out of Stodge’s shelter. Rigi waited until Stodge stopped trying to kick before tipping a little food into his trough. That distracted him and she eased into his stall, looking at his leg. The cuts seemed clean and shallow for all that they were bleeding, and he stood with his weight evenly on both back legs. Rigi didn’t try to clean the injuries, in case there’d been something on the knife now laying on the ground not far from the simple bar gate on his stall.

  An angry human voice carried on outside. The man had switched from Common to something higher pitched and faster, probably his native language, Rigi guessed. Makana answered in Staré and Rigi heard Martinus growl. The human speech stopped. Rigi whispered an invocation for strength and courage, made a blessing sign, and went out. She moved slowly. Indeed, she saw Lonka and Shona both with modified shooters in their forefeet, aimed at the intruder. “Security has been called, Miss Auriga,” Lonka announced. He sounded as calm as if he’d just announced that supper was ready. But he and Shona both held their upper lips up, baring their strong front teeth, their ears tipped back flat. Mr. Xiaolenk had stopped fighting Martinus and Makana. Rigi stayed where she was, breathing deeply and thanking the Creator that she’d heard Stodge and smelled his distress before something horrible happened.