by Azalea Ellis
Estreyans stopped and stared as we passed, going silent in waves that radiated outward. They dressed in thick, baggy clothing that seemed to wrap and tie around them, rather than being fitted or help up by belts. Both the people and the buildings were a bit shabby, as if they’d stopped having the resources for repairs or new materials a few years ago. Or maybe they’d just stopped caring.
One woman stared out at us, and I could feel a palpable aura of despair wafting off her. It had to be Skill-related, and judging from the way others avoided her, they could feel it too. But it wasn’t just her. A young woman, barely out of childhood, stared out from an alley between houses, the bags under her eyes so prominent they looked like bruises. No one would look at her, and if they accidentally did, they looked away quickly. One mother even crossed the street with her child to avoid the young woman.
My senses were still extended a few yards beyond the group, and I could tell that the villagers were powerful, compared to us. I felt vulnerable under their stares, and had to resist the almost subconscious urge to slip out my claws and bare my teeth at them. My hair stood at attention, my skin prickled, and I felt like I was walking willingly into a pit of writhing snakes. There was danger here, all around us. It felt like the intro to a horror film, or maybe the aftermath of a war film.
Torliam damn well better know what he was doing, I swore silently. He was the only one who really knew what was going on, and if he screwed up or betrayed us, I was going to flay him alive with my claws.
The patrol brought us to a large, almost mansion-like house, and stopped outside while the leader sent someone inside. Whoever lived there was obviously important. No doubt they would decide our fate. Many of the Estreyans we had passed on the way had followed, eyeing us curiously and murmuring amongst themselves. Perhaps they had never seen people as small as us before. Or maybe they just weren’t used to outsiders.
The person who had gone inside returned with a very old woman, and a female who stood unobtrusively off to the side, perhaps a servant. She was so wrinkled she almost looked like a half-dehydrated, human-colored raisin, but she stood straight, and I could sense the power in her. This creature, woman, whatever she was, could destroy my group, literally, within the space of a few breaths if she tried.
Obviously, the villagers respected this elder, too, because they fell silent when she appeared.
Torliam half-bowed to the elder, and when the elder nodded back, he began to speak. At this point, I really wished I could understand the language, because the tension was high, and I was standing there like an idiot, trying to understand what was going on by voice inflection and body language. I glanced over at Zed, whose eyes were darting about, taking everything in.
The leader of the patrol group spoke then, obviously arguing against whatever Torliam had said. He waved his hand toward our group and spoke angrily, and some of the other patrol members and people in the crowd nodded at his words, murmuring softly.
Torliam’s shoulders tensed, and I felt my own follow suit.
Zed grimaced, and then looked back to the elder expectantly.
—Are you actually following what they’re saying?—
-Eve-
His eyes jumped to mine, startled.
—I’m definitely understanding more of this than I should. I can’t catch the words, but I feel like I have a vague concept of what some of them mean.—
-Zed-
Torliam spoke again, waving his hand in the air to punctuate his words and resting it on my shoulder, guiding me to take a step forward and stand beside him.
I met his eyes for a second in surprise. What did he want? I couldn’t speak the language, so how was I supposed to plead our case?
I copied Torliam’s bow toward the elder as best I could, which for some reason caused a bit of murmuring in the crowd. When I raised my head, I saw the elder look at the sparkling multi-banded ring on my left forefinger. Then she looked at Birch, huffing in amusement when the little creature growled at her, ruffling his little ragged, fluffy wings in a hint of threat.
The elder looked back to me, looking me up and down in a way I would have said was ogling, if she wasn’t so deadly focused on me.
She spoke, finally, and nodded back at me, the same slight tilt she’d given to Torliam. That made the crowd murmur again, but she silenced them with her words, turning back to her doorway. She said something to her female attendant, and she bowed respectfully.
Whatever it was she’d said, the leader of the patrol didn’t like it, and raised his voice in outrage.
The elder gave him a single look and a few soft words, and the younger man backed down, but he shot a glare at us when she turned away again.
“We have been granted asylum,” Torliam said simply. “We will lodge in this . . . how do you say it? Residence?”
I raised an eyebrow. I was pretty sure there’d been a little bit more to it than that. “I need subtitles,” I muttered.
The woman waved at us to follow her inside, and the patrol leader glared at each of us as we passed by him. I made sure to hold my head high and stare unflinchingly back at him. It wouldn’t do to seem cowed or weak. Predators could sense that, like sharks smelled blood in the water. And if the creatures of Estreyer had something in common, it’s that they were all predators.
“What was the argument back there?” I murmured to Torliam.
He hesitated for a bit, but finally said, “They have secluded themselves to try and avoid contact with the Sickness. The villagers were worried that we would bring it in from outside and pass it to them.”
I knew I still wasn’t getting the full picture, but he clamped his lips together and moved further away from me. I’d have to ambush him later and get the truth out of him. Perhaps if no one was listening in he’d be less tight-lipped.
The attendant led us down a hall, and motioned toward the doors lining the hall, indicating the rooms were to be ours. I directed the weaker members of our group toward the middle doors, flanked by stronger members. Chanelle would stay with Jacky, Blaine with his two kiddos, and Zed with Sam. Adam, I, and Torliam each had rooms to ourselves, on either end of the short hallway.
I wish I could say that being within civilization again eased my mind. But that would have been a lie.
The elder’s female attendant let us rest for an hour, and then gathered us for a meal in one of the larger rooms near our hallway. When we had finished stuffing ourselves, she said something in Estreyan and motioned for Torliam and I to follow her.
He seemed unconcerned, maybe even a bit eager, so I went along with her request.
I sent him a questioning look behind her back.
“She is taking us to the bathing room,” he said. “We are the ones highest in honor among the group, so we go first.”
A bath sounded wonderful. “The others aren’t going to have to use our dirty water or anything, right?”
“Do you bathe in each other’s water on Earth?” he asked, mouth drawing down in disgust.
“No, but I hear we used to, before technology advanced.”
“Rest assured, we passed that point of technological advancement long ago.” He shook his head, as if exasperated. At the attendant’s word, he split off to enter the male section. “We also separate the genders for bathing,” he said with a curl of his lip that was more joke than sneer.
Birch followed me into the bath, and after we were finished scrubbing and soaking, the attendant gave me new, warmer clothes to wear over my armored vest.
A quick stretch of my Wraith Skill told me Torliam had already finished his own bath. His signature was faint, a few streets away.
Birch meowed plaintively at me, so I took him outside to relieve himself and go for a little walk, heading towards Torliam. Birch had fun sniffing about, until we passed a pair of boots airing on someone’s porch. He sniffed them, growled at the scent, then crouched over them and pooped right down the mouth of one.
My jaw dropped, and I looked around to make sure no on
e was watching. “What are you doing?” I whispered harshly at him.
He flicked his ears back and then ignored me, peeing into the other boot. When he was finished, he ruffled his feathers and pranced off with a distinctly self-satisfied hop in his step.
“Were those the patrol leader’s shoes?” I asked, following him.
Birch flicked his tail.
I suppressed a snicker.
We caught up to Torliam pretty quickly, though my relaxation leeched away the longer I was outside.
He turned to me with some surprise, and the younger Estreyan man he’d been talking to slipped away. “You look better when you are clean,” he said. He did, too. In fact, I realized this was the first time I’d ever actually seen him bathed and groomed.
“You’re all . . . dignified,” I said.
“I am the son of a queen,” he said, but there was no malice in his voice. When Birch grunted up at him, he leaned over so that the creature could hop atop his back and scramble up to sit on one shoulder.
“What was all that about earlier? With the meeting in front of the elder’s house?”
“Some of them did not want us to stay, but I was able to convince the elder to let us stay. We are under his protection, as long as we are under his roof. Did you not comprehend this earlier?”
I bared my teeth at him. “Exactly how did you convince the elder? And exactly what do my gifts from the Oracle have to do with it?”
His stride hitched, almost imperceptibly. “It is law that should one of my line require asylum, the people must grant it. This would have been enough, ordinarily. But the fear is strong, here. It is one of the most insidious side effects of the Sickness. The uncertainty, never knowing when it might strike, or if it is already lying dormant in yourself or one you love, is difficult. There is no single way the Sickness spreads, and there are some cases where our best healers and scientists don’t know how it could have done so. In some people, this uncertainty leads to them fearing anything and everything, whether there is true danger or not.”
“This is fascinating. Don’t think you can avoid my second question, though. You knew the elder would find the puzzle bands significant.”
“Gifts from the Oracle are rumored to have been given to those with a great task or destiny to fulfill, in the stories so old almost no one remembers them anymore,” he said, reaching a hand up to push the dirty blonde hair off his neck and rub the tense muscle there. “In this situation, I thought the elder would be knowledgeable enough about Estreyan history to notice them. Long ago, when my people first came to your world, it is said that some of them found the small beings on your planet pleasing, and had relations with them.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Had relations? You mean they had sex with the humans.”
“Yes. It is unfathomable, I know. Nevertheless, you may be the descendent of one of my people’s lines, and I was reasonably confident he would deduce that.”
As in . . . I’m part Estreyan?”
“Of course. How else would you survive the Seeds? They are of my world.”
My eyes widened. When he put it like that . . . “Wait. But my brother doesn’t have the gene. He wouldn’t have survived the initiation if not for Sam.”
“You are sure he is your brother?”
“Yes!” I said, but realized I’d never considered that question before. We had the same dark hair and tall build. I raised my hands, fingers splayed wide, and looked at the scars on the edge of both pinky fingers. “I was born with an extra finger on both hands,” I said. “And an extra toe. I didn’t even think about it being somehow connected to your people. On Earth, it’s just considered a mutation. My mother had them removed, so I wouldn’t be considered strange.”
“She . . . cut off your fingers?” He said in a low voice, staring at me in shock. “Just so you could be more like the other two-legged-maggots?”
“It wasn’t malicious. She didn’t want me to be strange, to have to deal with the social stigma of being different. But my point was, Zed didn’t have any extra digits. And she . . . was so happy about that.” I muttered the last bit, a tendril of doubt wriggling into my thoughts. Why didn’t Zed have the gene?
Torliam seemed to guess my thoughts, or maybe their path was just obvious. “You are most likely extremely distant descendants. It is possible, and even likely, that the human gene just dominated over the Estreyan in your brother’s case.”
I nodded. “So, every one of the Players is part Estreyan?” I didn’t know our father, and for the first time in a long while, I wondered about his whereabouts. Was he like me? Or was it my mother who had passed on the gene?
I waited for Torliam to answer my question, but instead of talking he turned to look down the street. I followed his gaze to the group of Estreyans gathered to one side. I’d been so focused on our conversation that I hadn’t been paying attention to the mounting tension up ahead. Voices were raised within the group, and outside, people turned their faces away and scurried on.
I was reminded uncomfortably of the first Seed I’d ever taken. I’d been so sick, just left on the side of the road, and everyone around me looked away and pretended they couldn’t see, if they were kind. If they weren’t, they’d sneered at me and swerved away in disgust.
Bodies shifted, and I caught a glimpse of the young woman I’d noticed earlier, shoulders hunched up, head tucked down. She flinched as someone threw an egg at her dark hair.
Torliam sped up, calling out sharply in Estreyan.
I lengthened my stride to match him, preemptive adrenaline surging through my veins.
Chapter 18
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
—Francis William Bourdillon
When we reached the group, Torliam spoke again, his voice low and angry.
One of them spit toward the girl and laughed, and Torliam thrummed with power, light wafting off his skin as he activated his signature Skill.
The girl said something, her voice small but defiant.
Whatever she’d said, it enraged one of the women on the inside of the circle. She raised her hand and stepped forward, swinging her arm for a powerful slap.
The girl just closed her eyes and cringed, so I stepped forward, bringing both hands above my head to catch the blow.
The older woman gaped down at me, and didn’t seem to know whether to be shocked or angry.
I guided her hand down slowly, keeping my eyes locked on her face, while my awareness swirled around searching for any danger I couldn’t see.
Torliam said something, and her eyes moved to my glittering armband, then to him, then to my eyes.
She drew back, the angry flush draining away from her face, leaving it unnaturally pale. She bowed to me, picked up a basket, and hurried away with no more than a glance over her shoulder to the young woman. “Damn, I really need to learn Estreyan,” I muttered.
Torliam waved his hands at the others, and the blue mist pushed them back, giving them the impetus to disperse. He turned to the girl, using more of that endlessly versatile mist to help clean the egg out of her hair.
Birch grabbed one of the girl’s shoes, which I hadn’t noticed was missing, and brought it back to her.
She smiled, then sniffed back tears as she slipped the shoe back onto her dirty foot.
Her murmured conversation with Torliam was interrupted by the patrol leader from yesterday, who called out angrily and stomped up.
He shoved himself between the girl and Torliam, forcing her behind him.
His fists were balled up, and he glared at Torliam in challenge.
The girl laid her hand on his shoulder and said something that made him relax, pointing to Torliam, and then to me.
There was a moment of awkwardness, before he gave a small bow to Torliam, and then to me. He didn’t smile, and he didn’t exactly look grateful, but there was respect in his eyes, at leas
t.
As he walked away with the girl, I turned to Torliam. “So, what was that about?”
“She is his sister. Her husband died of the Sickness. Some of the villagers are afraid she will spread it to them. They have been trying to drive her out, though the elder has openly stated that there is no evidence you will contract the Sickness just from proximity to one who has it, or has been exposed to it.”
“I really need to learn Estreyan,” I said.
He stared at me till I grew irritated. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, and I prepared to snap back at him, but he surprised me. “You should learn to defend yourself,” he said thoughtfully. “Both in word and in action. I am already teaching you how to fight better than a half-drowned pup. Any companion of mine should at least be literate.”
“You’re so kind,” I said sarcastically.
“My benevolence is renowned.” He grinned at me, the expression making him look much younger, and taking the sting off his insults.
I turned to Birch. “Why do you let him insult me like this? You’d think a good tailos would at least bite him a little.”
Birch looked to me, and then to Torliam, and let out a little grunt.
After the incident, the villagers were a lot more accepting. Or respectful, at least. Zed took to spending all his time among them, and quickly charmed them with his “tiny” size, quick smile, and willingness to make a fool out of himself miming things as he learned their language.
It turned out one of the chips NIX had implanted in his brain gave him an unfair advantage in that field. Blaine speculated that they had been attempting to develop an artificial version of Skills to go with their attempt at Seeds.
Zed couldn’t actively tell when the chips were working, but he was picking up the language supernaturally quickly, especially with the constant practice.
In contrast, I was quite frustrated with my own progress. My Intelligence was way higher than it had been back when I was a normal civilian, but after a couple days of intense study, I was still barely learning rudimentary vocabulary and child-level sentence structure.
