by J. S. Morin
“You talk like he did nothing wrong,” Mriy replied. She grabbed Seerii by the shoulder and turned her mother to face her. Five of the hunters flinched toward them, prepared to intervene, but Seerii cut them off with a raised hand. Mriy put her face right in her mother’s, looking down the head’s height difference between them. “You talk like I deserved to be spat on.”
Seerii jerked her shoulder free of Mriy’s loose hold. She was still an old woman, so Mriy hadn’t dug in her claws. “You’d have made a poor guardian then, and you’d make a worse one now. For two years, you’d spent more time away than home—no harm in that alone. You’d fought and won, but what about the prize money? We didn’t send you off-world to fill your hands with gold. You were out there to support the clan.”
“I sent back plenty,” Mriy replied, flashing her teeth without meaning to. They had always overestimated the winnings from the Silver League.
“Not enough,” Seerii countered. “Not enough for how much you were gone. You squandered your time and the clan’s money.”
Mriy turned her back on her mother, and a pair of younger clan members scrambled to remove themselves from her line of sight. “Same river; new water. I’m here because I brought back Hrykii. A life for a life. Talk of now.”
Hrykii spoke up. His voice had deepened in the year since Mriy had last heard him. “So you claim. How do we know it wasn’t you who kidnapped me? The hero’s shadow is the easiest villain.”
Mriy grinned. Seerii was being dense, but Hrykii had put rock to steel and made a spark. She slid the data crystal from her pocket, knowing that all eyes in the room followed her movements. “Come to the viewing room. I have proof.”
# # #
Esper laced up the rented shoes and wondered how many wizards’ feet had been inside them before hers. They were garishly striped, smooth-soled, and didn’t fit perfectly. Who would think of such a bizarre ritual? “Why can’t we just bring our own shoes?” she asked.
Mort had changed into his bowling shoes already and was selecting a ball from the racks. “Tradition. Golfers wear plaid knickers, polo players ride live horses, and bowlers wear rented shoes.”
The rack was as daunting as it was confusing. Every ball looked a hair different from the others, but identical in all the ways that probably mattered. She picked one at random and was shocked at the weight. “We’re going to be throwing these around all afternoon? This thing weighs a ton.”
“Sixteen pounds,” Mort replied, waving his own in one hand. He had three fingers jabbed into matching holes in the surface. Esper did likewise, but found the spacing uncomfortable.
“What’s that in kilos?” she asked.
“It isn’t,” Mort said. He plucked the ball from her hands, browsed the rack, and handed her another. This one fit her fingers more readily. “Pounds are weight; kilos are mass. Gravity is the difference. Any respectable bowling alley uses Earth gravity. Since this planet is identical, that’s a non-issue. But you’ll do better if you don’t tie your mind up in knots with numbers.”
“Why am I doing this to myself?” Esper muttered. The priest was half-baked. She had a mind to report him to the Vatican. Though she had never stopped to consider it before, the Seal of the Confessional probably worked both ways. Whatever cardinal oversaw Meyang likely wouldn’t even listen to her grievance.
“Because you said you wanted to keep your magic under control,” Mort replied. “And because I am a kindly old wizard, I agreed to help you. This is the place to learn.” He took a short, measured walk to the line and rolled his ball down the lane, knocking over every pin.
“I can’t compete with your magic,” Esper said with a huff. She’d never bowled in her life, and Mort was an experienced wizard, capable of magicking the ball to anywhere in the lane he liked—hers too.
Mort clucked his tongue and wagged a finger. “Not today. Today is all about you. Anything you can to do my ball or yours, do it. I won’t try to stop you.”
“But you just—”
“Bowled a legitimate strike,” Mort finished for her. The primitive mechanics at the end of the lane set up a new rack of ten pins. “I don’t need magic to hit a bunch of plastic pins with a ball. You figure out some magic today and you can make me miss, but if you don’t, I’m going to mop the floor with you.”
Esper mimicked Mort’s approach to the line, but skidded to a halt before she was ready to roll. Recovering her balance, she crouched low, set the ball on the floor, and gave it a push. Sixteen pounds of polyurethane wobbled down the lane at the pace of a baby’s first steps. Two thirds of the way down, it slipped into the gutter.
Moments later, her ball rolled back to the head of the lane along a pair of polished steel rails. Mort picked it up and brought it back to her. “Practice ball,” he said. “This time, tell it where to go. Gesture at it. Use body language. Technique only matters if your opponent can stop you from using magic. Push it with your foot if you want. Just steer it.”
Esper gave Mort a wary look as she stepped past him to the line. She took a deep breath, set the ball on the floor, and shoved it with both hands. It took off down the lane, and she could see already that it was heading for the right gutter once more. “Left. Come on, left,” she coaxed it, waving a hand for emphasis.
“There you go,” Mort said. “Keep at it. Try Latin. The older the language, the better.”
“Sinister. Sin-is-ter… SINISTER!”
The ball was turning as she waved it over. Esper leapt to her feet, swinging both arms as she cajoled the ball toward the pins. It was hanging on the edge of the gutter. She was almost out of time.
It clipped the rightmost pin. “Yes!” she shouted, clenching a fist in the air.
Quickly she glanced around the alley. There were just four lanes, and only theirs was in use. The attendant ignored her outburst, and the young azrin at the snack counter gave her a thumbs up. Esper offered a self-conscious smile in return.
“Sorry,” she whispered to Mort as she got out of his way for the next round.
“Sorry schmorry,” Mort replied. “It’s a game. Have fun with it. Now let’s see what you can do to my shot.”
# # #
The viewing room had been upgraded while Mriy had been away. The azrin-made Ruaka Pik holo-projector had been replaced with an authentic Reali-Sim 2655. The holographic field filled half the chamber, and there was no graininess to spoil the illusion of real ships flying overhead. It was odd seeing the Mobius from the outside, as the sensor replay simulated the encounter from a third person perspective. There were occasions where bits of debris from the scrapyard faded from view or appeared suddenly as the ship’s sensors picked up and lost track of them. Other than that, Mriy and her clan saw the battle just as it had taken place.
“Look at her,” Yariy remarked. “If Mriy was at those guns, I wouldn’t trust her with a thrown knife. How many shots has she missed?”
“Hrykii was inside,” Mriy reminded everyone. “The idea was to maim the ship, not destroy it.”
“Better to die than be kept as a trophy, or as a thing to torment,” Yariy said. “What if that ship had gotten away?”
“Keep watching,” Mriy snapped. Though watching it herself, she had to admit that her aim was wider of the mark than she had remembered.
The critical moment was coming up. The bounty hunter’s ship slowed and swung its tail end around. A small object, barely more than a sliver in the holo-field, drifted off in the direction of the Remembrance’s momentum as the bounty hunter changed course.
“You can come after me or it, but it’s headed for the munitions dump.” Mriy glanced around the room, wondering how many of her clan understood human well enough to follow the conversation. They didn’t have the benefit of a translator-charmed earring like hers.
The turret gun of the Mobius flashed, and this time the shot was a direct hit. The Remembrance’s oxygen burned off into space in a fraction of a second.
“We were all set, Mriy. He dropped the pod and was making a run for it,” Ca
rl’s recorded voice said.
“I know,” recorded Mriy replied. “That was personal.” She wondered if Carl had even noticed that she had stopped speaking his language and swapped back to her native tongue. Wearing a translator charm of his own, Carl would have heard her in his own language either way.
“What did he say?” Seerii asked. “I heard one of them speak your name.” Her mother understood human, but Carl wasn’t the clearest speaker.
Yariy provided a somber translation. There was a grudging respect in it. Hard to argue when Mriy had disobeyed an order to enact vengeance for the clan.
The holovid continued to the point where the cryostasis pod was secured inside the ship. There were no sensor logs of what took place within. Carl would have been furious to know she had even made a recording of what had gone on outside.
Hrykii stood. “I thank you for my life.” He gave a stiff nod and reclaimed his seat.
A quiet followed. Eyes turned toward Seerii, awaiting a decision. “How certain are we that this is authentic?” her mother asked Yariy. Mriy’s fur bristled at the implication.
The guardian of the Yrris Clan narrowed her eyes. “It’s possible she rigged it. We’d need a specialist to analyze it.” The implication was clear. Specialist meant human, or possibly laaku. Even Yariy didn’t trust her fellow azrins to out-puzzle an ARGO tech specialist. The universities, the ARGO navies, all the best training grounds for tech wranglers were off limits to her people.
“No,” Seerii said. “We have Hrykii back. We have this recording. We will not bring this in front of the humans, even paid ones. Mriy destroyed one of their kind. The occupiers would pay more for this as evidence than the clan could afford to pay to keep a human quiet. Your exile is ended, Mriy. You are welcome here once more.” She stood and opened her arms.
There were murmurs of quiet conversation around the viewing room, not all of them sounding friendly. But Mriy ignored them and stepped into her mother’s embrace, nuzzling against the fur of her neck. How loose the skin there; how slack the sinew. Her mother was old indeed.
“Thank you,” Mriy whispered. “I will keep the clan well when my time comes.”
Seerii stiffened. She pushed Mriy away firmly, though Mriy did not dare resist for fear of hurting her. “No, you will not take over the clan when I pass. Hrykii is the heir. He was given the title when you were exiled, and it has not been taken from him.”
Mriy drew a deep breath. She wanted to scream, to roar, to shake her mother until her senses returned. What good was returning to the Yrris clanhold as neither guardian nor heir? She had not come back to slink into the rank and file of the cousins and mates. She had been second heir after Soora, and Soora was dead.
“Then I challenge, Hrykii, and he will take no shame in backing down,” Mriy replied.
“Hah!” Hrykii shouted. “You think you can pay me life for my father’s then bargain it away again for leadership of the clan after grandmother? You dragged me here half dead, but we paid a human doctor’s ransom. I’ll be myself in a day or two.”
Mriy gave a soft, hissing laugh. “I could give you two days to heal plus two years to grow muscle on those skinny arms of yours. The day you step into the pit with me, we find you another human doctor.”
Several of the Yrris Clan cousins stood and flexed their claws, taking a stand beside Hrykii. But Hrykii smiled. “You could. No doubt, you are a brute. My father learned too late. But since you challenged me, I set the contest. It’s my right as heir. I choose the pack hunt.”
Mriy’s ears flattened. “Getting the clan to do your work for you? Coward.”
“My father taught me that the clan isn’t about the one, it’s about the all. Leading is more than being strongest. Packs of five, in three days’ time. See who will follow you, brother-killer.” Hrykii strode from the room, taking most of the clan with him, including Yariy. She would have been a long shot to join Mriy’s pack for the hunt, but sometimes picking the winner is more important than picking the friend.
A minute later, Mriy was alone in the viewing room with Seerii. “It is possible that you might find no one to follow you. If you are alone against a pack of five, maybe you will learn that friends are earned, not won.” With that, Seerii left as well.
# # #
Seerii’s words proved prophetic. Two days scouring the clanhold and making calls on her datapad, and she had a pack of one—herself. Simkin had already agreed to join Hrykii. Tamrau was planning to. Mriy hadn’t bothered to ask Yariy. Renyau told her flatly that he hoped she would lose. A dozen weaker hunters had made excuses, avoided speaking with her, or chosen sides against her. Even when she began asking outside the clan, her old acquaintances wanted no part of the hunt.
It was a hard thing to stomach, taking the tally of allies and coming up empty. For a ritual hunt, there could be no payment, no exchange of favors. Mriy had to find hunters who were loyal to her, who wanted to see her win badly enough to spend days in the remote wilderness helping secure her victory. Mriy just didn’t have those sorts of friends, it seemed.
Mriy had never found much use for the chapel when she was younger. Years had changed her, not to mention the constant exposure to Esper of late. The Yrris chaplain was still Auzuma, black as the night sky and thin as the crescent moon. He greeted her at the door, as if he had expected her visit.
“Come in Mriy,” Auzuma said, his voice smooth and soothing. Auzuma wasn’t Yrris; she didn’t know how he came into the clan’s service. He had been a friend of her father’s; that much she knew. The old azrin put a hand on her back and guided her inside the chapel.
Mriy bristled at the touch. As a fighter, she had instincts to suppress any time someone put a friendly hand on her. Caught unawares, she might have broken Auzuma’s arm before she could stop herself. Maybe he felt her stiffen. Maybe her ears twitched back. But he let Mriy alone just after she cleared the doorway.
The insides of the chapel smelled of cut evergreen boughs. The pine and spruce resins made the chapel smell like an entire forest had been compressed inside. Mriy took a long breath and let the tension ease out of her—though much of it clung stubbornly.
“I need advice, Father,” Mriy said. She sat on a floor cushion in one of the cubbies along the wall, just large enough for two.
“I get few visitors who don’t,” Auzuma replied, taking a seat beside her. He must have been approaching thirty, but he still moved like a young man. He stretched, and she heard the crackling in his spine as he settled in, spoiling the illusion of youthful vigor.
“Mother has allowed me back home,” Mriy began. It was obvious, of course, but it was a hard enough subject even with proper preamble. She couldn’t just blurt it out. “But Hrykii is heir. I’ve challenged him, and he chose the pack hunt.”
“Wise of him,” Auzuma said, nodding. “A promising sign in a young heir.”
“But I can’t gather a pack.”
“The Mriy I remember was always willing to take on a challenge,” Auzuma said. “Would not winning a hunt, alone against five, prove your worth beyond doubt?”
Mriy growled. “No! It would prove me for guardian maybe, but not heir. I could snap Yariy’s neck and take the guardian’s job any day.”
“Then step back,” Auzuma said. “Become humble. Show respect for your mother’s decision. Ask to be named heir after Hrykii and guard his life more dearly than your own. That would show respect for Seerii and for the good of the clan.”
“If I show I can gather a pack, I can prove to mother than I am worthy of being heir, even if not more worthy than Hrykii,” Mriy said. “I have to show mother that I should never have had my position taken from me.”
Auzuma sighed and stood. “Redemption is a powerful motive, and one I can approve. If you will have an old man, I will join your pack for the hunt. No one who comes to the chapel begging aid is turned away without it. If you lose, you will not be shamed by losing alone.”
“Thank you, Father Auzuma,” Mriy replied, bowing her head.
“But you will want three more,” Auzuma said. “I’m too old to be much use. It will take all my strength just to keep up. There are charitable hunters who may take pity on you, but I suggest you set a wider snare. You would not have come to me before looking all the likely places. Time to look in the unlikely ones for hunters.”
# # #
It was, according to the local omni, the best azrin restaurant for off-worlders in Rikk Pa. The sign outside was lettered in a jumble of azrin script in red chromaglow, but everyone called it by the English translation: Fleshfire. It would have been an unappealing name on a more civilized world, but on Meyang, it carried the comforting connotation of cooked meat, as opposed to the local preference for raw.
The restaurant was a quarter kilometer outside Humantown, and was fancy enough that Esper made sure to shower and change out of her sweaty clothes from bowling. She hadn’t come close to catching Mort in any of the eight games they played, but by the end, she was at least rolling the ball with proper form, and adjusting the aim on her throws by a few centimeters. Mort’s sure, heavy rolls moved too quickly for her to exert any noticeable influence.
Everyone but Kubu had been invited. He looked so sad when they said goodbye to him at the cargo ramp, but he didn’t try to follow. He really was trying to be a good boy. Whether he would ever be accepted into restaurants or any other place of business remained to be seen. For now, he was a rowdy child and far too big a risk to bring along. Not to mention the fact that he looked like a house pet, and it took magic to understand him.
Their booth was in a quiet corner. Whether Carl had said something on the sly to the host or whether Mriy had arranged it in advance was anyone’s guess. The dining hall flickered with torchlight. It wasn’t the false effect created by software-controlled diodes or even magic, but actual burning wood-and-pitch torches, changed by the waitstaff at regular intervals. A hearty ventilation system sucked the smoke up through the central chimney before it choked the diners.
“Place has some atmosphere,” Mort said as he slid into the booth.
