by Amber Stuart
The big deal would be the trial in two days.
I’d already been told that I’d be there for that.
17
INAPPROPRIATE COMMENTS
I SWIVELED ON my back heel, holding up both of my fists and elbows to protect my face.
The morph across from me in the ring, whose name sounded something along the lines of Hunsef, grinned at me, making me smile even as I simultaneously ducked and blocked a kick he threw my way. He left me an opening to get him in the side with one knee when I darted under his reach.
Hunsef gasped, but I could see the enjoyment on his face, even before he raised his arm and knee to block my second and third hit and the follow-up kick I aimed in his direction.
I felt pretty good, actually.
For once, I wasn't cooped up in some tiny, blue-ice room, or being paraded around like a harem-chick to give the locals something to gawk at.
Hunsef was decent in the ring, too, better than me, really, which made him significantly more interesting than my usual distractions here. I hadn't faced off with someone worth fighting since my last spar with Gantry, in Seattle.
Even back at Gold's Gym back home, finding good sparring partners had been getting tougher and tougher, and not only because I was female.
The medical technicians hadn’t needed me today, which was a red-letter day in my book. When Ledi offered to introduce me to the morph delegates, I begged off, barely concealing the grimace on my face... but when he offered up Hunsef as a means of introducing me to the morph fighting arts, I jumped at the chance. I threw on training clothes and was already wrapping my wrists by the time Ledi opened the door to usher Hunsef in so the two of us could meet formally.
Hunsef was likable too, definitely the more playful type of sparring partner, which I preferred. I’d never really enjoyed fighting the angry ones, or the ones with something to prove.
That was boring too, but in a much more irritating way.
Since my first night on Palarine, I’d spent most of my days in our assigned room alone––shadow-boxing, doing push-ups, watching documentaries, practicing Pharize and even some of the morph language, Dengue, and doing my best to figure out some of the legal issues around my being here, as well as Nik's probable status within the hierarchy.
I’d also done what I could to pick Ledi’s brain when he dropped by, but that was getting harder, too. I honestly wasn’t sure if that was because of military surveillance or Nik asking Ledi not to tell me anything.
I hadn’t seen Nik since he left me in the room that night.
We’d already blown past the day they’d first slotted for that custody hearing, and I was starting to climb the walls... and truthfully wondering when the hell Nihkil was going to be released, if ever. I'd lost track of the exact number of days that had passed since we'd arrived in this desert of red rock and dragons, but if I had to guess, we were getting dangerously close to the two week mark by now.
I was beginning to worry that Nihkil might just die mysteriously in custody, like he’d told me he might. This was in spite of Ledi's assurances that Nik was perfectly safe, if a bit worse for wear from his extended detainment.
Ledi thought Nik and I might be experiencing some sort of morph-lock separation anxiety, which could be affecting both of our moods. He didn’t come out and say it, but he also seemed to imply that Nik and I allowed ourselves to become too dependent on one another on the ship, and that both of us were suffering as a result.
Right now, I wasn’t thinking about any of that, though.
Well, not very much.
I pivoted in another quick turn to reposition myself around the ring, keeping my eyes unfocused but aware of all of the morph's limbs.
He was so fast, I had to be ready to react the instant he moved.
He'd already pulled a few tricks on me––the most notable being when he transformed into one of those giant bipedal lizard-things in the middle of the first round and roared at me, nearly blasting out my eardrums.
Mostly, however, he'd been fighting me straight-on, in a human body. Even the lizard thing was more of a distraction technique, since he hadn’t actually tried to fight me while in that form.
So yeah, he had to be going easy on me, too. At the very least, he had to be going out of his way to keep it a fair fight... or, more accurately, to level the playing field.
I appreciated it, under the circumstances, but it did make me want to see a real fight, between two full-blooded morph.
If I wasn't completely crazy, Hunsef was flirting with me, too.
Even as I thought it, he darted forward, feinting with a cross, then swiveling and dropping his weight to get me with an uppercut to the belly.
I managed to move back enough to soften the blow, but it winded me. I was forced to give him the ground, too, panting as my hand fell briefly to my side, rubbing the muscle there.
"Tired, Uryth-girl?" the morph smiled.
I grinned back. "You might be enjoying this a bit too much, my very polite and gracious morph friend."
"Not as much as I'd like," he smiled back, winking at me.
His Pharize was accented but precise, as if he’d learned it in school.
Again, I found myself wondering where the morph came from, and how so many of them found their way into the human world.
Hunsef darted forward as I thought it, but I sidestepped him that time, shoving him out of the way with a knee before I kicked him twice with the same leg, getting him solidly in the chest. I saw him clutch the spot briefly, and round-housed him to the thigh, hard, I hoped leaving a nice, big, red mark under his baggy cloth shorts.
He grinned at me again, as if reading the satisfied look on my face.
"You like this morph... Nihkil? That is his name?" Hunsef paced me in a slow circle as he raised his hands roughly to head-level. “...You keep his lock?"
I rolled my eyes, laughing a little. "How many times are you and your pals going to ask me that, Hunsef? Isn't that a personal thing for you morph? Who holds your lock?"
"Yes," Ledi answered from outside the painted circle.
I glanced at him with a slight smile, but Ledi didn’t smile back.
He frowned at Hunsef instead, his eyes holding an open disapproval.
Hunsef didn't even spare him a glance. He kept his eyes on me. "What if you were to trade up?" he said in that same, accented Pharize. "What if you took a new morph, instead... one who's already done their quota with cards. One higher in clan status?"
I felt my face tighten a little, in spite of myself.
I considered informing him that Nihkil wasn’t taking cards anymore.
I couldn’t help wondering if that was true, though.
After all, I had no idea what Nik had been up to for the past few weeks, and the rumors hadn’t exactly been kind... or particularly quiet. I still wasn't sure how that nerve sat on me precisely, but I'd found myself overly aware, on more than one night, that Nihkil had only asked me to forbid him from taking cards... he’d never promised he wouldn’t sleep around.
Maybe he’d just wanted more choice, in terms of who he slept around with.
"Ah, so you do not like this," Hunsef said. His smile turned more shrewd. "Your morph, he is trying to impregnate humans, yes? Even now, maybe?"
I gave him a flat look. “Really? You’re going to go there?”
“You want a faithful morph?” Hunsef said, still smiling. “I can be that. Maybe you like me, instead? Give it a chance...”
I shook my head, laughing. "Seriously? That's your pitch?" Holding my hands a little higher, I gave a low snort, scanning his body for openings with another part of my mind. "You must be one of those guys who gets his rocks off on luring away other guy's girls. One of those ‘the grass is always greener’ types?"
"Then you are 'his girl,' yes?"
I rolled my eyes. "Pay attention, okay? I'm already pummeling your ass."
“You think so, eh?”
&n
bsp; “I know you haven’t gotten a lot of hits in lately, Tonto.”
He darted forward, faster that time. He managed to crumple my knee with a hard kick to the thigh before I could get away. I recovered before I went down... barely... but he got me in the ribs with a second kick, and hit me on the same side with his fist before I managed to block the fourth hit and move out of his range.
Panting for real that time, and now fighting annoyance, I faced him again.
"Answer the question," Hunsef said, smiling. "It will give you time to rest, human."
I couldn't resist laughing at that, even as I winced a little at the bruise I could feel forming on my ribs.
"I'm not anyone's 'girl,' Hunsef,” I said. “...I just don't like stupid games."
"Then why do you hold his lock?" he said, curious.
Irritated by that question too, I shrugged, still angling out of his way as Hunsef circled me. I didn't answer him, and his smile turned shrewd once more, his eyes lightening to yellow as they filled with a more overt scrutiny.
"I hear this is accident... you and him. That neither of you meant for this... that he never courted. I am making a genuine offer. I am courting."
Ledi's voice rose above the sound of our breathing and shuffling feet.
"Hunsef. You are being rude," he said.
Hunsef still didn’t spare the human male a glance.
That time, he answered him, though.
“Is it her morph’s feelings you are concerned with, General Advisor?” Hunsef asked Ledi. “...Or hers? He is gone, impregnating humans. If he wants to keep his lock-mate, he should have her with him. I would insist upon it, if it were me. I would be trying to impregnate her.”
“You are acting wrongly,” Ledi said.
"Yet within perfect legality," Hunsef shot back, giving Ledi an annoyed look.
"I am ending this fight," Ledi said, gesturing at one of the guards by the door. "You have hurt her, and you are using this as foreplay, Hunsef. It is time for her midday meal."
Hunsef’s eyes swiveled to me, scanning my face. "What do you say, Uryth-girl? It is a genuine offer. I will make it again... if you need time to think."
I lowered my fists, glancing at the door as the human guards approached.
I snorted a little when I saw the waiting look on the male morph's face.
"A genuine offer?" I said. "For what? Another of you weirdos with attachment issues?"
A young female morph named Chualri, if I’d heard her right in the introductions, stifled a laugh from the other side of the ring.
"It would only be one of us,” Hunsef said, insistent now. “Just as we can have only one lock-holder, you can hold only one lock. You would have to choose."
I shook my head, unwrapping my wrists as I glanced at Ledi, smiling at him a little when I saw the frown hovering over his full lips.
Hunsef raised his voice. “...Think about it, human. I can protect you well, you have seen this. I will be a very good partner to you."
"I'll bet," I muttered, making Chualri laugh again.
Even so, I found myself looking after him with more than a little puzzlement.
Once he turned his back to me, I watched him stalk gracefully out of the ring, only looking away when he paused to smile at me as he laid a hand on the door leading to one of the changing rooms.
"Huh," I said under my breath, watching him go.
18
THE HIGH COURT
FOR ONCE, I found myself grateful for the guards.
Hands clutched at my arms and clothing, touching my hair, trying to touch my skin. Faces surrounded me, voices... so many I couldn’t make them out, could barely understand anything they said, whether in Pharize or through the translator. Many didn’t speak Pharize at all. Their words came through the translator in disparate chunks, whispering in the background of my mind like the voices of a schizophrenic.
"Beautiful... such a pretty creature, almost looks Malek though, but for those eyes...”
“...damned snake-blood married to her...”
“...been screwing a different breeder every night. I hear he’s even been with that Gharanian. More than once, according to...”
“...lucky those guards didn’t just snuff the bastard, after what he did...”
“...beat one of his own people in the face, would have killed him...”
I turned, looking for the speaker that time, but met only blank faces.
Avoiding the comments about who Nik may or may not be screwing, I turned over the rest of their words in confusion. Had Nihkil gotten in some kind of fight? If so, with whom?
I couldn't distract myself long with that, either.
My eyes met more blank faces, until I couldn't tell one set of moving mouths from the next, much less who might have spoken when and in what voice. They all seemed to speak with a single voice, more like a moving organism than a collection of individuals.
The faces washed by me too quickly to track more than a few.
Fingers clutched religious talismans, spiral-shaped stones like giant seashells, books and bits of cloth covered with writing, a blue-white sphere that I thought maybe was meant to signify Earth. Some held posters of dead fetuses (always a welcome sight, sheesh), some shook pictures of morph in mid-transformation, with words in chicken scratch Pharize underneath, such as, “Is this the Future of Humanity?” and “Who wins when the last full-blooded human is whore to a morph?” and my personal favorite, “Our goddess ancestor, sex-slave to an animal?”
I focused on following the guiding hands of the human and morph guards surrounding me, all the while wondering: how the heck did these people even know who I was?
We made our way across a circular podium overlooking a secondary hallway leading down to what I'd been told were the main Council chambers. Near them lived the official hall for all court hearings relating to laws spanning the Pharei Republic.
I’d left my cabin over an hour ago, dressed like a starlet on Awards night.
I’d been forced to stop here, however, to wait in ceremonial formation for the delegates from the morph clans to arrive before I could make my way down into the main audience chambers.
Somehow word got out about who and what and where I was, some twenty minutes later, and before I could sense any kind of disturbance brewing, people started climbing the trellises to reach me, hanging like animals as they dropped down on the bubble-like shield that the guards threw up to keep anyone from getting too close.
Enough civvies got jostled and fried in the energy grid that the guards took it down, relying on blunt hand weapons in the hopes of avoiding a full scale riot.
Even from where I stood, however, I could see the crowd getting more and more out of control.
Someone caught a piece of my hair.
I cried out, feeling cloth tear and the beginnings of panic when I jerked violently away, realizing only then that someone also clutched my dress. I elbowed one guy off me, then had to restrain the impulse to pummel the face of the next person who got too close, but only by biting the inside of my cheek and reciting both Ledi and Nik's warnings under my breath against doing that very thing.
I was still muttering to myself when the nearest guard turned, beating at yet another person who got close enough to grab a handful of my dress. He bashed the man in the face with the thick end of a metal pole, hard enough for me to flinch, feeling it somewhere in my gut, despite my own fears about letting too many of them get too close to me.
When the guard drew the pole back, it had blood on it.
He grabbed my arm. I realized only then that it was Hunsef, my morph sparring partner.
I stared into his now light-brown eyes.
His face had an odd pattern of bruises around his jaw and mouth, fresh enough that they must have happened in the last twenty-four hours. I was pretty sure I hadn’t hit him in the face, so I doubted they were from me. My mind returned briefly to the words I’d just overheard, but I still
couldn’t make sense of what they meant.
Even if it was true, why on Earth would Nihkil––
“Dakota Mayumi!” he shouted. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, gripping his arm. “I'm good... but I'm not going to be for much longer. Get me out of here, Hunsef! We can't wait for them anymore, whatever the stupid protocol...”
He gestured in affirmation, his face grim.
“We cannot move now, my lovely friend,” he said. “They will attack for sure. But once Mai-rhani is here, the supernaturals will arrive too, and––"
But I felt them, even as he said their name.
One by one, people in the surging and shoving crowd grew quiet.
They stopped shouting and clawing over one another to reach me. They stopped staring at me with those not-all-there, yet weirdly, hyper-concentrated eyes.
I scanned the faces of my would-be admirers... or murderers, since I figured they represented in about equal numbers... and watched as they grew more and more compliant, even if noticeably more muddled and confused. I glimpsed traces of fear in their faces, along with that emptiness, a need for something, some answer. Looking at them brought a pain to my chest, truthfully, but I couldn't quite pin that down, either.
Equal parts anger, irritation, a frustrated empathy and wishing I could get the hell out of there probably summed it up pretty well, along with something darker, a sense of futility, like this scene was a lot more familiar than I really wanted to think about.
The collective mind of the supernaturals undeniably soothed the crowd, but only by wiping their minds with the equivalent of a blunt eraser. I couldn’t help but be angered by how easily the humans in front of me were manipulated, even if it happened to be in my best interests.
The crowd parted, even as I thought it.
Now I could see the robed supernaturals ringing the platform where I stood. In the middle of that crescent-shaped row of bodies stood a female morph, her eyes light brown, like coffee with a little too much cream.
“We are sorry to be late, friend of the morph,” she said.
