Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1)

by Hogarth, M. C. A.

  “And that means they’re exceptions to the rule for you?” Jarysh asked.

  Hirianthial didn’t reply. Even worked to exhaustion he’d been trained too well to accidentally tear the Veil Jerisa had decreed for the Eldritch. When he did not answer the direct question, Jarysh assumed agreement and said, “Here too. Children are very special for us. I think people think we don’t love our children because we treat them so differently.”

  “Perhaps,” Hirianthial said.

  The man poured himself onto the ground, boneless in his own exhaustion. Hirianthial thought he had spots beneath his shapeless tunic and pants, but he’d never seen Jarysh out of hospital scrubs. He knew very little about his coworker beyond the Harat-Shar’s medical competence... which was fine. Jarysh probably knew even less about him.

  Staring at the ceiling, the Harat-Shar continued, “My wives are very angry with me. This is a change.”

  Hirianthial could not muster a response to that, but his silence must have seemed receptive, for Jarysh said, “They’re usually too busy being angry at one another to be angry with me. It’s because I have two. One wife is bearable. Three work together well. With only two there’s no peace in the house. They rival for my attentions. I have very few attentions to spare.” His sigh whistled through his nose. “They want me home more often. They want babies. They want my time. I told them that the residential contract was a temporary thing... but the longer I’m here, the more I realize I like it better than being home.”

  “You do not love your wives?” Hirianthial asked after a moment.

  “Better to ask whether I loved my life,” Jarysh said. “The wives are only incidental.” He sighed. “Do you ever get the feeling that you got knocked off a nice, simple life path, but that once you got off it you couldn’t figure out how to get back? Or even if you wanted to?”

  Hirianthial forced a curl of a smile, though why he had no idea. Perhaps he felt compelled to at least make an effort to appreciate the many ironies of his life. “I am acquainted with the situation.”

  “Now that I’m here,” Jarysh said, “now that I’m working like this... I don’t want the wives. The babies. These patients are my babies. What am I supposed to do now?”

  “The honorable thing,” Hirianthial suggested.

  The Harat-Shar snorted. “Honorable. For whom? Me? Them? By what standards?”

  “Perhaps then the just thing,” Hirianthial said.

  Jarysh rubbed his temples. “Kajentarel shield me. The ‘just’ thing. As if I knew what that was. I should probably divorce them, let them seek a husband who cares better for them.” After a while, he said, “You don’t talk much.”

  “You ask counsel on a topic for which I have no adequate advice,” Hirianthial said.

  “Is that because you have no wives, or because you’re an Eldritch?”

  “Neither,” Hirianthial said. “It’s because I’m not Harat-Shariin. I may know enough to keep from making any egregious errors, but I cannot begin to guess what would be fair or just for you or your family. Your customs are too different.”

  “Probably,” Jarysh said and rubbed the bridge of his nose, his temples. “Still, I wish I had the wisdom of your years.” He managed a grin. “You probably have children older than my grandparents.”

  “No,” Hirianthial said, surprising himself with the admission. “I have no children.”

  “None?” Jarysh asked, eyes widening. “But you’re so good with them.”

  “Children ask very little and what they need is simple,” Hirianthial said. “To be good with them is easier than to be good with adults.”

  The Harat-Shar snorted. “You’d be surprised. Too many people grow up embarrassed at their own naiveté. They think to be sophisticated they have to cut themselves off from anything that seems simple. There are plenty of people who are bad with kits.”

  “I suppose that might be true,” Hirianthial said.

  “You should have children before you die,” Jarysh said. “It would be a waste for you not to be a father.”

  As stunned as he was by the assertion, he was saved by habits cultivated to shield against the venomous barbs of bored courtiers. He answered before he knew he’d formulated a reply. “As it would be a waste for you to not be a father?”

  The Harat-Shar’s voice lowered. “Well. I guess when you put it that way, it makes me sound a little hypocritical.”

  A soft beep sounded from near the ceiling: not a monitor, but the hospital comm line. Jarysh answered.

  “Soft Fields Hospital.”

  “Yes, I’m looking for an Eldritch doctor....”

  Hirianthial nearly sat up. “Sascha?”

  “Doc, come quick, will you? Mom says there’s something wrong with Miri Salaena.”

  He almost asked if it was Salaena’s imagination, but Sascha sounded frightened. With gentle hands, Hirianthial lifted his two sleepers onto Jarysh’s lap, shattering their fragile dreams. He hoped the fragments reassembled after he’d gone.

  “Hopefully nothing too serious,” Jarysh said.

  “I’ll be back,” Hirianthial said, answering the question Jarysh had wanted to ask and failed to.

  Sascha was waiting for him at the garden gate when he arrived at the house. “The midwife won’t let anyone in,” he said. “She said to get you immediately, but wouldn’t say what’s wrong.”

  “Thank you,” Hirianthial said absently and passed the Harat-Shar, heading toward Salaena’s resting room. He’d wondered when he first arrived what a closed door would look like in a Harat-Shariin home... now he knew. He knocked.

  “Who is it?”

  “The doctor,” Hirianthial said.

  Karya opened the door, and with it came a long wail and a smell that struck Hirianthial deep in the gut, like a knife there, like a memory.

  “I think she’ll be fine, though I want you to check,” the midwife said. “I suspect she did it to herself somehow, though I can’t find any evidence.” After a pause, she added, “I haven’t had time to clean up.”

  She looked clean enough. He didn’t understand until he reached the blood-drenched bathroom. In the middle of the stench and the mess, Salaena kneeled, rocking and sobbing into her knotted night-dress. A swift sweep revealed a pebbly red aura, already smoothing as the cramps faded: her emotional distress was surprisingly mild, a bare wobble of gray and orange. The sense of the peaceful infant was, of course, gone. It hadn’t developed enough to offer any more information to his mental touch and now it never would. If she’d had to miscarry, doing it early was at least less traumatic.

  Somewhat less traumatic.

  Hirianthial stepped into the bathroom, preparing to unpack the more sensitive, technological diagnostic tools. As he moved, Salaen stopped crying and lifted her tear and blood-streaked face. Her eyes glittered, and the sudden spear of violent crimson in her aura twisted her words into fierce, lethal things.

  “You weren’t there.”

  The words entered his mind, which filled with white noise. He knew there were sounds outside his head, but they seemed very distant.

  You weren’t there.

  It wasn’t the first time.

  Very carefully, Hirianthial shut the door on Salaena. He walked, unsure of his footsteps, back into the outer chamber and past a puzzled Karya. He closed the second door on the chamber and stood in the hallway. He had no idea how long he remained there. Staring. Tracing the lines in the stone walls with dry eyes. Sensing from very far away the breeze against the side of his neck and jaw. Perhaps the fan made noise as its blades cut the air, endless toil.

  “...ial? Hirianthial?”

  He blinked to clear his eyes and looked down and to one side. Sascha was standing there, ears flat against his skull. “Are you okay? You—there’s blood—what happened?”

  He should move. Leave. Go someplace where no one would happen on him. This sounded like the best course. The gentlest wisdom. Hirianthial forced his stiff joints to bend and walked, one foot before the next, toward
where muscle memory dictated.

  Did Sascha follow? He thought he heard someone talking. Best not to listen to people talking. People spoke without thinking. Short-lived people in particular.

  One foot before the next. And the next. He thought of the pond with the geese, the one that children—stop—the one that would make a pleasant meditative retreat. He would go there.

  “Boss, I need your—what are you doing?”

  “Packing,” Reese said. “I need to take a trip.”

  Sascha stood at the door into her chambers, one ear pointed up and the other out. His expression was a fine example of astonishment. Reese ignored it to toss another shirt onto the unused bed.

  “You can’t leave!” he exclaimed.

  “Actually, you have that backwards,” Reese said. “I can’t stay. If we’re going to get the money to get off this rock, I need to go arrange for our finances. I won’t be gone long. I should be back in a week.”

  “No, you don’t understand, you can’t leave,” Sascha said. “Hirianthial’s breaking. You have to take care of it.”

  Reese paused, her nightgown over her arm. “What?”

  “Hirianthial. You need to dissolve his contracts and put him back together. Better yet, take him with you. Get him away from here.”

  “I’m not taking him with me!” Reese said. “I don’t need more trouble where I’m going.”

  “He won’t make trouble,” Sascha said. “He’ll barely make noise, the way he looked just now. Take him with you, Reese, please.”

  Her irritation mounded into something more extreme. “I don’t have time to babysit.”

  “If you don’t do something you won’t have anything to babysit, period,” Sascha said. “Look, if being alone with him’s what’s frightening you I’ll come along. Or ask Kis’eh’t. Whatever it takes, just... just do something.”

  For the first time since he appeared, Reese took her time and looked at Sascha. Noticed the white rims around his banded irises. The fur standing on end at his shoulder-tips. The way he flexed his fingers, and the switching tail. With a frown, Reese said, “You’re really upset.”

  “Yes!” Sascha said. “I haven’t seen him look this bad ever! Call that hospital, recall him. I’ve already told my mother to expect your message.”

  Uneasy, Reese turned to her data tablet and searched for the hospital address. “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know,” Sascha said, balling his hands into fists. “I should have followed him but I wasn’t brave enough.”

  “He’s not exactly scary,” Reese said.

  “He doesn’t have to be scary to give off “don’t come near me” waves,” Sascha said. “Those are forbidding enough.” He stood at her shoulder as she connected with the hospital. “He wouldn’t answer me when I called. I’m not sure he even heard me.”

  The man on the other end of the hospital line was obviously loath to terminate the contract, but Reese reminded him of her prerogatives as Hirianthial’s original employer and he signed the release. It bothered her that she could make decisions like this for all her crew on Harat-Sharii—simply choose to end whatever job they were working on. For a few moments after the call ended, Reese stared at her reflection in the data tablet’s finish; she was chewing on her own lip.

  With a sigh, she had Sascha build the call for his mother and informed her that she wished to terminate Hirianthial’s contract with her.

  “I’m happy to do so,” Zhemala said. “We won’t be requiring his services any longer and I was planning to discuss it with you anyway.”

  “Did something happen?” Reese asked.

  The woman waved a hand. “I asked him to oversee the pregnancy of a sister-wife, but she miscarried. We have no more need of a doctor.”

  “That sounds unpleasant,” Reese said.

  “She would have been a troublesome mother,” Zhemala said. “The Angels took care of it.”

  “I see,” Reese said. “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  “Not here, if the blood he tracked out of the house is any marker,” Zhemala said. “He went out by way of the Lizard Garden.”

  “Blood!”

  The woman shrugged. “Miscarriages are messy. I wish you luck finding him.”

  “Thanks,” Reese said to the ending call. She turned to Sascha. “Sounds like he had a bad time.”

  “The Lizard Garden’s the way he goes to the hospital,” Sascha said. When Reese eyed him, he said, “You told me to watch him for you, so I did.”

  She sighed. “I didn’t mean it literally.”

  “I know you didn’t,” Sascha said. “Let’s go check the hospital grounds.”

  “I need to finish packing!” Reese said.

  “You can do that later,” Sascha said. “I’m not going to go looking for him alone. You’re his employer... you come with me.”

  “His employer,” Reese said. “That sounds so formal.”

  “Yeah,” Sascha said. “Not at all the person you want to comfort you over something bad that’s happened. For that you want friends.”

  “Oh, hush,” Reese said. “I’ll come with you. Isn’t that enough?”

  Sascha snorted and flowed out the door. She followed, looking in vain for the bloody footsteps Zhemala had mentioned; she supposed they’d already been wiped up. Past the Lizard Garden, it was a twenty minute walk to the hospital, where Sascha plunged into the grounds with a grim determination that did more to unsettle Reese’s stomach than anything he’d said. They pushed through overgrown bushes, investigated secluded copses, trudged through flower gardens and over ornamental bridges. Reese had no idea how much time had elapsed since they began their hunt, but by the time it ended she was sticky, thirsty, and completely unprepared for the sight of Hirianthial.

  They’d been apart for weeks, she reasoned. Doing separate duties. He’d been rooming somewhere else; she’d had no opportunities to see him, not easily... all a rationalization. Had she made the effort to check up on him, she would have seen this deterioration.

  Reese stood in front of him, struggling to keep her uncertainty from transforming into anger. Sascha stood well behind her, nearer to the pond than to the bench where Hirianthial rested. He was too long for it; one leg rested against the ground, the other curled on top of it. His arms were furled against his breast. She wasn’t sure if he was sleeping and she wasn’t glad of the chance it gave her to see he’d lost weight, that there were real hollows in his cheeks. It made him look half-dead. It was terrifying.

  “Hirianthial,” Reese said. She stopped when her voice fluttered and rubbed her throat. “Are you awake?”

  He didn’t stir. She didn’t want to touch him. Instead, she crouched across from him and addressed him face to face. “Hirianthial?” She thought of her romance novels. “Lord Hirianthial, awake.”

  His eye opened. Behind her, Sascha said, “Damnfeathers! That worked?”

  She ignored the tigraine. “I need your help.”

  That opened both eyes. He didn’t blink or look away. He usually let her go after a few minutes. Maybe he knew his gaze made her uncomfortable.

  “Please,” Reese said. “I need you to come with me to run an errand off-world. To get us some money.”

  “I—” He stopped, licked his lips. This time the words had volume. “I have duties.”

  “I’ve canceled your contracts,” Reese said. “This was more important.”

  He stared at her.

  “Will you do it?” she asked. On a hunch, she added, “It has to be you. You and Sascha. One of you to drive me insane and the other one to keep me from joining him.”

  He didn’t answer immediately. Reese tried not to fidget, but her heart was beginning to hammer when he finally said, “Which one for which role?”

  “I’ll let the two of you figure it out on the shuttle,” Reese said. “Go to the hospital and pack your things, then meet me at the port in a couple of hours. No, one hour, in front of the Long Bird. We’ll eat before we leave.” She took a long
breath. “Please.”

  “Yes, lady.”

  She didn’t have the heart to take offense at the title. Sascha joined her as she retreated from the pond, and together they walked off the hospital grounds.

  “You handled that better than I thought you would,” the tigraine said once they’d started down the path back to the house.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not all bad,” Reese said. She sighed. “Thanks for doing what I told you to.”

  “I’m all over the delegation, boss,” Sascha said, grinning.

  “Right. Well, Mister Delegation, you go pack. I’m going to tell the rest of the crew where we’re off to.”

  “Sounds good,” he said. “Where are we off to, anyway?”

  “Home,” Reese said. “To Mars.”

  Hirianthial ate because arguing with Reese about not eating took more energy than doing what she wanted. He followed her off-world because following her constituted a course of action, and he had no energy to formulate one of his own. The beginning of the trip involved several shuttle transfers that kept him tracking wayward baggage and investigating new quarters often enough to drive all other thoughts from his mind.

  It was a form of meditation, in the end. He concentrated on the minutia of the trip, moment by moment. New flight numbers glowing on a board. The musk and sweat of a busy space station. The tinny sound of poorly-insulated insystem drives. Cheap carpet, barely soft enough to cushion metal floors. Beds too short for his body; ceilings too low for his height. Reese and Sascha arguing, out of affection, out of exhaustion. Their auras, tingling bright and dimming after too long cooped in a tiny shuttle.

  The second-to-last leg was scheduled to bring them to Pluto’s welcome station, a trip of two days. It was the longest of their rides and the most confining. There were passenger liners that connected there that would have brought them in lush comfort, but the best Reese could afford for their passage involved a single dormitory with bunk-beds and a passenger mess that doubled as a recreation room. Hirianthial avoided it, but Sascha and Reese took turns hiding there.