Her Cold-Blooded Master

by Lea Linnett

  There was a clicking sound to Helik’s left, and he turned to find a levekk dressed in a simple black tunic approaching him, her bare claws tapping against the floor.

  “Who would you like to see?” she hissed in their native tongue as she came to a stop before him. The soft syllables blended into the silence, barely a whisper compared to the guttural vibrations of Trade that he was used to.

  “Guide of CL-32, Helis Kaan,” he replied in Levekk Sar.

  “And who seeks assistance?”

  “Her son, Helik Kaan.”

  The levekk nodded deeply. “Follow me, please.”

  She turned on her claw, beckoning him with a soft gesture and moving off to the right-hand side of the room. Helik followed, only sparing the rest of the atrium’s occupants a cursory glance. This wasn’t his first time in the Guidance Tower, although it had been many years since he’d been forced to come here to communicate with the levekk who’d given birth to him. Nothing had changed. Every desk and word was exactly the same as it had always been, and just as uninviting.

  The levekk led him into an annex which held only a chair and a large frame made of glass. It held nothing, and it was tall enough that Helik could step through the glass square if he was so inclined. The chair sitting before it was bathed in a narrow circle of light, the rest of the room dark with shadow.

  “I will notify her of your presence,” the levekk said before sliding from the room.

  Helik hesitated to sit, worrying his lip as his gaze darted around the room. He’d never liked these consultation rooms; they always made him feel as if he were on display. The Guides assured them that all meetings were confidential here—you couldn’t be imprisoned for anything said within these four walls. But there was no way of knowing what cameras and instruments were tucked away in the corners, and that made Helik uneasy.

  He forced himself to step forward and take his seat, his eyes trained on the empty frame before him.

  He expected to wait for what felt like hours—as he had in the past—but this time the response was remarkably quick. After only a few minutes, the glass frame flickered with light, threading together a holographic image of a levekk sitting in a chair much like his own. The first time he’d experienced this, he’d thought for a moment that it was his reflection being beamed back to him, but now his eyes were quick to discern the harsh, scaled lines of his mother’s face, replete with her usual dissatisfied scowl.

  “Helik,” she acknowledged, inclining her head.

  “Mother.”

  “You are here about Sidana’s indiscretion.” She spoke in Levekk Sar, and the language lent a softness to her tone that jarred Helik. Even before she became a Guide, when she was only a senator like himself or one of New Chicago’s nine Councilors, he would never have associated her with anything ‘soft.’ Despite the refined image the Guides liked to put forth, its members had to be hard to be heard, especially when they were one of the only two members to be promoted from CL-32’s Councils like his mother. The majority of the Guides were plucked from the military, and they cared little for anything outside of protecting CL-32’s borders and scoping out other planets for potential Settlement.

  But still, Helik humored her, matching her restrained tone. “I am. I’ve come to request help in dealing with the accusations brought against her and her employee.”

  “Intra-City scandals are not usually under the purview of the Guides, Helik.”

  “I realize that,” Helik hissed, his carefully strung nerves straining, “but as my mother, you personally took interest in such ‘scandals’ once upon a time.”

  The Guide’s serene expression flickered, her lips thinning. “As a Guide, my duty is to CL-32, not to resolving personal crises.”

  “I might be forced to publicize some incidents that occurred during your running of the Cross-Species Education Program if you don’t hear what I have to say,” Helik snapped, his voice rising. There was no echo as his voice bounced off the walls; in fact, it was as if there were no walls there at all.

  His mother’s expression soured further, but she remained uncowed. “You’ll do no such thing, seeing as the only incidents there involved you. Besides, there is little I can do for Sidana, with things as they are.”

  “Bulls—”

  “Do not use those human expletives here,” the Guide ordered, the once-soft Levekk Sar words now cracking like whips. “Is Sidana innocent of her crime?”

  Helik hesitated, and his mother rolled her eyes.

  “Then there is only one course of action. She renounces any relationship with the human, we provide counter-evidence to show that the… images that surfaced were doctored, and the human is removed.”

  Helik’s heart sank like a stone. “Removed?”

  She nodded. “The cold deserts on Continent 3 are always in need of warm-blooded workers. And he won’t be able to cause any trouble there—”

  “Is that what you did with Calli?”

  She paused, her eyes narrowing. “Who?”

  Helik’s jaw dropped, and he was out of his chair before he even realized how tightly his muscles were bunched. “Don’t pretend you don’t remember,” he spat.

  “To be frank with you, I don’t,” said Helis, ignoring the murderous look he sent her. “Now, would Sidana agree to such a plan?”

  Helik abandoned the chair, choosing instead to pace the small square of light behind it as he answered. “Not a chance.”

  His mother shrugged. “Then there’s nothing I can do.”

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?” he said, coming to a halt. “You’re a Guide. There’s no one higher than you.”

  “It’s too highly publicized. If I step in now, my position is put in jeopardy, even more so than if you started babbling about this ‘Calli’ to the world.” Helik seethed, opening his mouth to argue, but the Guide continued. “There is nothing. I. Can. Do.”

  “Then help me change things,” he pleaded, coming to a halt behind the chair. “Help me change the law—it’s outdated, anyway.”

  “Absolutely not.” Her tone was sharper than he’d ever heard it, her eyes cutting him even through the fuzz of the holographic display.

  Helik’s heart pounded, his claws digging tiny gouges in the back of the chair as he braced himself over it. Millions of things tumbled through his head, but his mouth stayed silent.

  “Sidana isn’t the only one, is she?” said Helis, her tone softening.

  Helik froze, his eyes widening.

  “I see now that it was foolish to hope you would just end up an eccentric like your grandmother. Is it the big-eyed one? The one you had interviewed at the beginning of the program?” His mother’s words landed with merciless precision, and Helik felt his throat lock up as she made a noise of disgust. “I suspected you wouldn’t be able to handle being so close to one of them for so long. Honestly, what were you thinking?” She paused, letting him stew for a moment before murmuring. “At least you were discreet about it.”

  Helik laughed, the sound ugly even to him as it fell from his lips. “‘Discreet’? I’ve had to live lie after lie after lie for the past few months—the past decade or more, even—and you call it being ‘discreet’? You’re willing to send humans to the frozen edges of this planet over whether or not they’re ‘discreet’?”

  “Do you think you’re the only senator or Councilor to break laws?” Helis said, boredom creeping into her tone now. “Unfortunately, there are plenty who bow to the pressures that Settlement can dredge up. Your ‘relationships’ that you think you’re having are small fry compared to what I had to clean up for colleagues as a Councilor.”

  Helik’s entire body went still, his heart pausing mid-beat. This was the watchful eye of the law that he’d spent so many years trying to hide from? This was the station he’d spent a lifetime aspiring to? All those years of celibacy, all those hours of guilt and disgust with himself, and it was ‘small fry’? He’d spent his entire adult life pretending to be someone else over a law that not even
the Guides cared about?

  This law snatched Calli away from him. This law fooled him into believing that the only way to protect Ellie was to let her leave thinking he didn’t care for her. All this for something that was about appearances rather than action?

  “You disgust me,” he whispered, in Trade this time, his voice cracking on the words.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’ve never actually cared about them.” He scoffed, shaking his head. “I think you barely even care about us. All you want is for the Constellation to keep spreading.”

  “That is what I pledged to do from the moment I could speak, Helik. You did too. Everything we do should be for the betterment of the Constellation.”

  “But not for its subjects,” Helik snarled. “No, it’s fine for the sub-species we care for to be sacrificed as long as it protects the perfect image of the levekk, am I right?”

  “Might I remind you that Trade is not permitted inside the Guidance Towers?” Helis hissed, her teeth gritted so hard he half expected the glass that framed her image to crack.

  “Then I’ll speak it outside.” He dropped his hands from where they had gripped the chair, leaving grooves in the metal, and swept from the room, which darkened behind him, his mother’s image gone.

  33

  That night, with the sun slowly setting outside the window of the Lodestars’ hastily set up communications room, Ellie found herself sitting with a comm in her hand.

  Cara had told her that her people in Manufacturing would make the call, but the waiting was setting her already fractured nerves on fire. Some of the rebels had been sending her covert looks all day, and the idea of finally talking to Augusta again after more than two months of angry silence had only fanned the flames, leaving her staring blankly at the footage being broadcast across the muted screen in the corner. She squeezed the comm, the hard edges cutting into her palm, and almost jumped out of her skin when the device squawked back at her, emitting a high-pitched ringing.

  Pressing the button on the side with shaking fingers, she brought the device to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  The comm was silent, until she heard an unsteady breath and Augusta’s rasping voice.

  “Hello, Ellie.” Her voice was clear, but there was a roiling layer of sound beneath it: the Lodestars going about their business in the communications room where Augusta sat.

  “Augusta,” she said, relief washing through her. “It feels like it’s been forever since we last talked.”

  “…Yes. You’ve probably been very busy.”

  “I have.” Ellie found herself nodding as if the elderly woman were sitting across from her darning dresses instead of nearly a hundred miles away. “I-I’m sorry, Augusta. For the way I left.” They’d argued bitterly about her leaving right up until the moment she crossed the threshold. “I’ve regretted it ever since I walked out.”

  “But you don’t regret leaving, do you?”

  Ellie’s chest tightened, her lungs turning breathless. “I…” Did she regret it? She’d finally gotten a taste of the life she’d always wanted, and she’d enjoyed her time in the Senekkar up until a week or so ago. She’d enjoyed Helik. She certainly didn’t want to go back to Rockford, but… “I don’t know,” she finally whispered. “I do miss working in the store.”

  A small noise that could have been a chuckle sounded in Ellie’s ear. “It always was a struggle to keep you away from the needle and thread. How have you managed without them?”

  “Well, I’ve actually made some things for—” she hesitated. “For the people here.”

  “Oh?”

  “I made a friend of mine a dress,” she offered. “Bright yellow, client’s request. I managed to eyeball her waist measurements pretty well even without a fitting.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’re still practicing,” Augusta murmured, and Ellie glowed at the praise.

  “I don’t think I could ever stop,” she said, smiling into the comm.

  “…Have you heard from your sister?”

  Ellie’s heart stopped. They’d barely spoken of Lena even when Ellie was still living at the clothier’s. She’d expected the older woman to not mention her at all.

  “I haven’t,” she whispered.

  There was silence on the other end, and Ellie’s knuckles strained as she gripped the comm even tighter. Augusta was alone in Manufacturing now, both of her wards having left under less-than-desirable circumstances. The last thing Ellie wanted was to go back to Rockford, but suddenly, connecting with her felt more important.

  “I-I quit the program,” she blurted out, and heard Augusta’s soft breathing pause. “I realized it… that it wasn’t a good fit for me.” Her heart ached at the words, and she wished she could spill all of her sorrows and tell her guardian all about Helik, but she knew it would be a mistake. “I’m staying with a friend right now.”

  “And your friend is with the Lodestars?” Following Ellie’s hummed affirmative, she added, “I’m glad they found you. They’re good people.”

  “You’ve heard of them before now?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Augusta. “They’ve been around in some form since I was young. They do good work.”

  Thoughts of the levekk held prisoner down the hall and Scott’s blackmail material flashed through Ellie’s mind. She wondered if that could really be considered ‘good work,’ but held her tongue. “Well, they convinced you to talk to me, so they must be good.” She drew in a steadying breath. “Thank you for this. I’ve missed you.”

  Augusta didn’t immediately reply, and Ellie almost expected her not to say anything at all, being a woman of few words, but then a rattling sigh reached her. “I’ve missed you, too.”

  She bit her lip to stop it trembling, feeling as if this was the moment in which she should crumble, telling Augusta that she would come home immediately, and take up her spot in the clothier’s again. But she couldn’t. Helik was in danger. Scott and Devis, too. She had people she had to try and protect here, and she couldn’t turn a blind eye to it and hide away in Manufacturing.

  “I could really use your help in the shop, Ellie,” the older woman said, as if reading her mind. “Or are you going to join the Lodestars?”

  “I-I don’t know, really. I don’t think I—”

  “Hey, is that Kaan on the screen?”

  They both fell silent as a voice filtered through from Augusta’s end, and Ellie heard the background noise swell. Their words made her heart jumpstart though, and she looked up to find Helik’s face plastered on the muted screen in her own communications room. Her skin prickled at the sight—it was like looking at him for the first time again. He stood straight-backed behind a podium, the camera framing him dead-center as he filled the screen. He looked as chilly as ever, but something about him made her pause. There was no cheap smile; there were no lines of stress on his face. His clawed fingers encircled the podium, but they were loose, not gripping the metal in fear. And his plated brow was turned down in a determined frown, his eyes blazing with a ferocity that caught her off guard.

  He was speaking, and Ellie fumbled around the table looking for a remote before remembering that this was a levekk dwelling.

  “Screen, unmute,” she called out, thankful when the piece of tech reacted to her voice, the sound gently climbing until she could easily hear. Augusta was still on the comm, which Ellie gripped with white-knuckled intensity as she held it to her ear.

  “—has been a lot of controversy concerning the images published by the Levekk Enquirer and various other media outlets this week,” said Helik on the screen, breaking into his speech mid-sentence. “There has also been a lot of curiosity over Devis Sidana’s involvement in my current program, which aimed to help ease relations between humans and levekk. This is an endeavor that I find particularly important because of the rocky history our species have had since CL-32 was welcomed into the Constellation.”

  There was a grunt of disgust over the comm at Helik’s words, and Ellie bit h
er lip.

  “I believe that it’s safe to say this relationship has remained unsteady,” Helik continued. “You can see it in the incredibly small human population beneath the domes here in New Chicago, as well as the high concentration of humans in the Outer Districts and some less-savory corners of our cities. I don’t think this is acceptable. Humans and levekk have been living together for over two hundred years now, but humans have yet to be afforded the same level of trust that our other resident sub-species gained in a much shorter time. I have always lobbied for greater communication and cultural exchange between our species, and have done my best to bring this thinking to my program and its participants.”

  Ellie’s eyes widened as she watched the levekk speak, a spark of hope igniting in her chest even as she sat in awe of his ability to use so many words to say nothing at all.

  “That brings me to the… relationship that has come to light recently.” There was a small increase in the hubbub on Augusta’s end of the comm, and Ellie found herself holding her breath. “As I’m sure everyone listening is aware,” said Helik, “unions—official or otherwise—between a levekk and any member of the sub-species we reside with here… are illegal.”

  Ellie’s face fell, her heart sinking.

  “This law has been in place since almost the beginning of our Settlement here on CL-32, and will likely remain so for a while yet.” He paused, casting his icy eyes around the audience that lay before him. “The Human Integration Program, and its participants, will obviously never condone or support any illegal acts. I ask that you remember that the actions of one or two of our participants do not represent those of the majority. There is no connection between the accused and any other levekk employers or human employees who are currently participating in the program, and no evidence of illegal activity has been found against those participants.”