Woman's Work: Shikari Book Four

by Alma T. C. Boykin

  “It’s been confirmed. Mrs. D’Amato is very much with child. And she threatened one of the other civilian women—in public!—who according to rumor is also awaiting a blessed arrival.” Mrs. Liecester shook her head a fraction of a millimeter. “How unbecoming.”

  “Indeed,” Rigi murmured along with several others. She was not surprised that Mrs. D’Amato so greatly resembled her husband, alas. And it confirmed Rigi’s intention to keep the physician’s confirmation to herself until they all returned to NovMerv. When no one asked her for agreement or comment, she returned to mentally sketching out her next project.

  Mrs. Chang finally gave the little nod that signaled the end of the gathering. Rigi, still lowest in social status, departed first. The afternoon air nipped her cheeks, warning that the cool season approached quickly. She’d noticed some of the shrubs and trees beginning to change color, and looked forward to sketching the new shades. One of the large transport vehicles trundled past ahead of her and she slowed, letting it get well along the road before venturing to cross.

  “It is good to see Captain Prananda’s wife moving with more dignity than usual,” a voice said from behind her. Rigi turned to see a broad man with a square head and major’s insignia stomping toward her. It was Major Chang, or so she guessed by the additional yellow stripe on his shoulders, the one that the data-files said meant he was the commander of a detached unit. She curtsied a little. “It does not behoove the wife of an officer to run unless life is at stake,” he informed her.

  “Your pardon, Major. When I was summoned to the Staré emergency medical receiving facility, I was under the impression that life was indeed at risk, or I would not have been summonsed.”

  “Human life, Mrs. Prananda. Human life. Do keep proper priorities in mind, Mrs. Prananda. Good day.” She curtsied, eyes down so he wouldn’t see the anger in them. Rigi recited the litany for tranquility as she walked, slowly, with great dignity, back to the shelter tent. At least the smaller additional tent for Andat had arrived and been added on, so she did not have that to become frustrated with.

  Rigi stopped just outside the door to the main tent shelter. She heard an unfamiliar male Staré, Makana answering, and a very strong wave of //confusion/awe// flowed from the part-open doorway. Apparently the insect-dissuader field did not work on Staré pheromones. Or perhaps she should be glad that it did not, so that the scents had time to leave her living quarters? Probably the latter. Male Staré in a confined space could overwhelm even her dull sense of smell, and she wondered once more how they tolerated it. Perhaps, since it could be considered a form of yelling if strong enough, it happened rarely? Or did the Staré build their houses in order to have the most cross-ventilation possible? Rigi had never been inside a Staré home, just peeked inside the three cottages at the rented house before she and Tomás signed the lease, so she did not know.

  She did know that she wanted to go inside and take off her second-best boots and get some work done, and prepare supper so it would be ready before Tomás came back from his work. Martinus should be charged by now. Rigi tapped the knock plate twice, then twice again, the pattern that told Makana it was her. He opened the door and bowed, then stepped back, out of the way.

  “Mistress Auriga, Andat has joined the household,” Makana enunciated in Common. A large and lopsided Staré bowed to her. She hand-bowed in return. No, not large and lop-sided, but stress-fluffed and lop-sided. Rigi sniffed discreetly and caught the sharp scent of topical antibiotic.

  “Welcome, Andat. I hope you are well?” she inquired in Staré.

  His ears flopped with surprise before he caught himself. “I am well, Wise Eye. How may I serve?”

  Rigi’d been thinking about that very question, and had decided on a few things already. “To begin with, you serve best by resting and healing. To work you before you are truly ready makes Captain Prananda and I appear to be ungenerous and unwise. Once you have fully healed, I expect Makana will decide where you fit. Because Makana has been with me for four cool seasons, acting as my guard and overseeing the household, he knows better what will make full use of your skills. Once we return to NovMerv, Nahla, the cook, will rejoin the household as well. Her duties are only cooking and food preparation, nothing else.”

  She thought for a moment before adding, “Korkuhkalya works with Capt. Prananda. Should he make a request or give an order, his words outrank mine. And I need to introduce you to Martinus.” Rigi went and unplugged the m-dog, then “woke” him from deep-charging. He stood and followed her, going on alert when his sensors detected Andat. Andat froze, eyes wide, ears tipped back, forefeet up and upper lip raised just enough to show his teeth. “Martinus, Andat is a friend. Part of household. Record Andat.” Martinus’s head tipped up, then down as his sensors recorded the body image of the Staré. He beeped, then quietly “weeoof”ed.

  “Andat, Martinus is my guard and assistant. He will not hurt you, unless he stands on your foot. He weighs a hundred kilos. If his eyes turn read, he has sensed danger. Do not stand between him and danger, please.”

  “M-dog Martinus killed the” rude word in Staré “who tried to kill the Elders on the Day of Smoke,” Makana added.

  //Awe// so strong as to make Rigi’s eyes water filled the small living area, and Andat bowed as low as possible. “All know of that day,” he murmured.

  “Now, you need to rest, and eat if you have not done so. Makana, there is nothing I need at present, so if you have errands you need to take care of, you are free to do them.” That also let him get something to eat if he wanted to. Andat followed Makana’s lead, bowing and then departing. Rigi changed into warmer clothes and her comfortable house shoes, flexing her feet and ankles after she did so. She liked her good, comfortable walking boots better, but they’d met a few too many rocks and no longer took a shine no matter how much she polished them. Maybe if she smeared that metallic silver paint on them, the stuff she’d been sent as a sample? Probably not.

  Tomás came in just as supper finished, preoccupied and distracted. He failed to notice that she’d given him the small, boney bits, instead eating everything while gazing into space. Rigi wondered if dismantling the tent around him might get his attention. Probably not, and the draft would make her toes cold, as well as upsetting Makana and Andat.

  “Andat moved in this afternoon.”

  “Mgf.”

  She refilled his beer. “Major Chang said only human lives are important enough to merit my running through camp.”

  “Hmm.” He did not even blink or twitch.

  “I’m going to dye Slowth maroon so he matches my dress.”

  Silence. Silence. “You’re what?”

  “I said I am going to dye Slowth maroon so that he coordinates with my festival dress.” She kept her voice calm and placid, as if she always tinted her wombow to match her wardrobe.

  Tomás stared at her, aghast, before he realized that she was teasing him. “I deserved that. I’m sorry, my dear, I received a bit of an unhappy surprise this afternoon and I’m still trying to process the data.”

  “All I said was that I survived the tea and that Andat arrived this afternoon. He’s been added to Martinus’s approved list, and I ordered him to rest and heal.” She sipped her tea. She needed to ask him a question as military commander, not as her husband. How to phrase her request? “Ah, Captain, a question?”

  His attention locked onto her. “Yes?”

  “There are medics trained for all the Stamme of Staré here, except first. And I know I saw at least two third Stamm medics not long after I tended to Andat. Why was I called? Have you heard anything about a new protocol?” Humans were not supposed to treat Staré unless there were no other option, because of the cost of purification following Stamm contamination. Rigi had been mulling over that since Andat’s injury. That made twice she’d been summoned to treat Staré when other Staré were available.

  She heard the sound Makana made in place of throat clearing and they both turned to look at him. He set down the pa
rcel of meat that he’d been carrying. “You are Wise Eye and healer, Mistress Rigi. During the plague, the Elders ruled that you are outside of Stamm when you heal, and so your touch does not break Stamm.” His ears tipped to the side and his nose twitched as she smelled //concern/hesitation/apologetic.// “One of the Staré medics on duty, it is said she had used dream cud that day. The human did not trust her and asked for another medic. Larli came to me in order to find you, Mistress Rigi.”

  Dream cud! Both Rigi and Tomás were appalled. “All is explained. Thank you, Makana.” Tomás said. Rigi took a long sip of her supper tea and told herself to calm down. How had anyone managed to get dream cud through the shipping checks? Probably the same way they smuggled other things, Rigi reminded herself. Where there was a will, a way would be found.

  “What news, dear, if you can tell me?” She asked Tomás, trying to get her mind away from her mental picture of how most dream cud addicts met their ends. What could be so terrible as to lead someone to chew that in order to escape, she wondered yet again? And what benefit did it provide that countered the effects, none the least of which was permanent fur loss after several years of use?

  “Kor and I have been tasked to go out on a reconnaissance, south, near the First World site and the volcano, then out onto the plateau west of the mountains. We’re to take three squads, just a light look-and-see. I was not anticipating this quite so soon, or actually at all, since we’ve done everything we were supposed to do per headquarters and our original orders.” He played with his now-empty beer glass.

  Rigi wanted to burst into tears. Or to hunt down someone—Major Chang?—and hit him over the head with her art satchel. Or to seduce her husband. She fought to stay calm, like a proper army wife, taking deep breaths and hiding her reaction so she would not upset him or Makana.

  She felt a cool metal muzzle pushing under the hand resting in her lap. Without thinking she lifted the hand so Martinus could rest his head on her leg. “Woo?”

  She petted the synth-cloth on top of his head. “Woo.”

  Tomás looked at her, eyes narrowing. He stood up, walked around the table, and looked more carefully, inspecting her as she assumed he inspected his men. “Rigi, are you feeling well? Something seems different about you.”

  Rigi wasn’t certain quite how to tell Tomás the news, or more importantly, if she should tell him at all. “Well, are you ill?” He repeated. “Something has changed with you, Auriga, you look different, softer, rounder.”

  She blurted, “I’ll be even rounder in three months, Captain.” Then she blushed and looked down at Martinus’s head.

  “What do you mean?”

  Was he that dense? She hesitated, torn between crying and throwing a bundle of sketchbooks at him. Instead she took a deep breath, sent up a quick prayer for guidance, and said as quietly as she could, “I’m pregnant.”

  Tomás stared at her. “Pregnant. You’re, we’re pregnant. You are going to have a baby?”

  “No, I’m going to drop a clutch of wombows,” she snapped. “Yes, if all goes well, I will have a baby.” Had he never learned about where babies came from? Surely he’d not been that sheltered for so long.

  Her verbal slap penetrated his skull, and it was his turn to flush. “I’m sorry, I just, it is a surprise. I’m not certain how I’ll tell Major Chang.”

  “You will not tell anyone anything, not until Mrs. D’Amato delivers her baby, or we return to Southland and NovMerv. The first child born here is to be civilian, or else, or so the ladies were firmly informed.” Privately she hoped that one of the Staré delivered her egg first, just to spite Mrs. D’Amato, but she most certainly did not intend for Tomás to know that.

  She stood, and he almost pulled her over with the strength of his embrace. “Oh my lady,” he whispered into her hair. “I love you so very much. How long?”

  “Have I known? I guessed a few weeks ago, but I didn’t want to say anything until I started to show. I’d say six or seven weeks, based on when we, ah, um, that is,” her face warmed so much it almost hurt. She suddenly felt shy about mentioning that.

  “I don’t care boy or girl, as long as it’s healthy,” he said. “But if you do have a clutch of wombows, I fear I must warn you, people are going to talk.”

  Rigi giggled, then hugged him back as tightly as she could. Poor Makana must be completely confused, a little bit of her mind observed.

  10

  Dancing with Danger

  The invitation to the dance arrived the next day. “I do not care for this,” Kor stated. “Is such a thing proper among humans?”

  “Quite proper, sir,” Tomás said from his seat beside Rigi. “It is a social event, with dancing and music. There are rules of conduct, so that even though I will be away, no one will attempt to bother Mistress Rigi. Were it the reverse, should she be away and I invited, the same would be true. No female would put herself forward and attempt to become my next mate.”

  Rigi knew the Staré translation was rather more direct than Common, but the words still made her twitch a little inside. She remembered Major LeFeu’s invitation to act as his “hostess.”

  Changing topics, Kor said, “There are stories about the mountains. When we found the site, they returned to memory. From songs and maps that had made no pattern before.”

  “Good or bad stories, sir?”

  Kor twitched his left ear and turned his right forefoot pads up. “I do not know. They remain fragments, about wealth and a city on a peak. Perhaps they mean the smoking mountain.”

  “That would make sense,” Rigi said, thinking aloud. “And metals that humans consider valuable for decoration—gold, silver, copper—and for use are often found near smoking mountains.”

  Once again Rigi wondered why, thus far at least, no one had found evidence of other elevated Staré sites besides the one in the now-active volcano and Terrace Site. At least the volcano was only moderately active rather than blowing itself into small bits and coughing ash all over. The geologists speculated that the kinetic strike against the former city acted much as lancing an infection did, relieving pressure and heat and (one hoped) preventing greater illness. Even so they’d scattered sensors and monitors all over the dark, ragged-topped mountain and its neighboring terrain and watched the results. Maybe Staré did not like climbing. Or shoveling snow, a task Rigi had encountered when she’d visited her relatives on Eta Tolima. A mental picture appeared of a startled wombow turning sideways to a steep slope and rolling down it like a furry ball. She bit her tongue hard to keep from laughing at the image.

  “It would,” Tomás agreed, ignoring her struggles to keep quiet. “Rigi, the invitation specifies that you do not need to bring staff.” He didn’t quite frown, but his dark, thick eyebrows drew a little closer together. “What about Martinus?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “The etiquette files I have with me say that pets are never permitted unless the invitation specifically encourages them, such as at a children’s party. And Martinus is not registered as an assisting bot.”

  Rigi was not pleased either, but her mother and Aunt Kay had taught her a few ways to discourage unwanted attentions on and off the dance floor, ranging from polite refusal to feigning a headache to smashing the cad’s instep and calling for the sponsors. “If possible, do not knife or shoot anyone, dear,” Aunt Kay had sighed, massaging her forehead with fingertips. “Granted, the man was a lout and a bounder, but the shrieking and the documentation…” She’d shaken her head. “Just thinking about it gives me a headache. I’m certain he deserved it, but she should have waited until they were outdoors or until after the buffet supper. In the commotion, someone absconded with the roulade of beef and I had so been looking forward to trying it.” Rigi had wondered if she dared ask her mother for more details. She'd decided not to inquire.

  She brought her mind back to present concerns. “I’m certain everyone will behave and that the worst thing to go wrong will be an accident involving a shirt front or pastel skirt and brightly-colored p
unch,” Rigi assured the males. Inside, she was not so certain, but she’d not had any difficulties thus far, thanks be.

  Tomás made one of those non-committal noises that the Staré puzzled over. “Were you able to upload anything to the university?”

  “Five images before the system announced that I’d reached my limit. Dear, I’m becoming convinced that the comm system was compromised to a far greater extent than the Crown wishes to be known.”

  Kor and Tomás both made those gestures that she’d learned translated, “We really do not want to speak about this matter so we will pretend it has not been mentioned so that it will go away.” Her father did something similar, and Rigi added it to her list of multi-species-applicable indicators of male-ness. Rigi tipped her head back, resting it on the chair, and studied the interior ceiling of the shelter tent. The hanging lamp cast shadows in the corners and she wondered if she ought to check for webs and dust the next day. One of the shadows moved. Rigi focused on it. It moved again, and she caught a glimpse of eye shine. “Dear, Makana, I hesitate to say anything for fear of interrupting an otherwise lovely evening, but it appears that a marmoline or something similar has gotten in. There in the corner of the ceiling, above the wash-stand and water tap.” She stood and eased out of the way. “I believe I will step outside for some fresh air. Come Martinus.”

  Kor joined her for a moment before going to his own quarters. After losing most of one finger to a marmoline, he preferred to shoot them, something Rigi had asked that he not do inside the house. He did not believe in using the low-power stun setting, and she’d had to tidy up after a blast-splattered tumble-gnaw once already. She bowed and he departed, disappearing into the darkness, his black fur blending into the chilly night. Rigi heard swearing in Staré, Tomás said a few words she vaguely recognized because Uncle Eb had used them once, something fell over with a loud clatter, and then something squalled. Another louder clatter followed, and three thumps.