“And how else are you supposed to have a daughter?” Gran asked.
“That’s another thing,” Reese said. “What’s so wrong with having a son?”
Their stares had lost their unfocused shocky quality; one by one, starting with her grandmother, they hardened with suspicion and anger. After weeks of reading Hirianthial’s restrained body language, her family’s disapproval radiated with the subtlety of a dropped atomic bomb.
“The Eddings family doesn’t have sons,” Gran said frostily. “We have daughters. We don’t need any meddling men.”
“Obviously she’s picked up some off-world notion about marriage and family,” Auntie Mae said with a sniff. “Disgusting. Next she’ll be telling us she’s found herself some man. How on earth can you insure a child of fine quality when you mix it up with some man? Who knows where he’s been?”
“Or when he’ll leave,” Gran said with a curled lip.
Which was, in the end, the crux of the matter. The men of Mars had softened its soil with their blood in the civil war with Earth... and most of the families that had remained had never recovered from the loss. The Eddings clan wasn’t the only one to have made tradition out of necessity when it came to artificial insemination.
“I’m not mixed up with any man,” Reese said. “I just need a loan.”
“You’re not home to stay,” her mother said quietly.
Reese turned. “No, Ma. I’m still working.”
“You could work here,” her mother said.
Reese shook her head. “I’ve got a good lead on some things,” she said. Which she did, if one counted a mysterious Eldritch patron. “I just need to do some repairs and I’ll pay you back.”
“And then, when you’ve succeeded, when you’ve made all the money you want... you’ll come home?” Ma asked.
Reese hesitated.
“I thought she said she was going off to be a wealthy merchant,” Auntie Mae said. “She was supposed to bring home more money for us. Not take it away.”
Reese flushed. “I will bring you more money. One day I’ll buy you a new house. A nicer one. And you’ll have everything you need.”
“We’ve got everything we need, Theresa,” Gran said. “Everything but you. You think money’s going to replace a daughter to take care of us when we get old? You going to shovel us into one of those living graves where other children without a bit of gratitude put their aging family?”
“Your duty’s here,” Auntie Mae said. “You stay here, have yourself a baby. Then you’ll have someone to take care of you when you get old, and you’ll be here to take care of us. We don’t need money. We need you, child.”
“I’m not staying,” Reese said.
“You’d be welcome,” Ma said, distracting her. Reese turned to her. Her mother was wiping her hands on her apron... slowly, very slowly. “We could use your help around the house.”
“I can’t,” Reese said. “I’m not done living yet.” She ignored the hostile quiet that descended after that statement and hurried on. “I just need to borrow money. I promise this will be the last time.”
“You’re right about that,” Ma said. “Walk on out of here, girl.”
“Ma?” Reese said, startled.
Her mother’s eyes were cold. Blue eyes could be incredibly distant. “You leave now, girl. Don’t come back either. Don’t ask me for money. Don’t you come calling. Don’t bring us back some man-bred baby, either, if you settle down. This isn’t your house. We aren’t your family.”
Reese’s lips parted. “Ma...”
“I’m not that to you either. Go on, now. You don’t belong here and you never did.”
Her mother turned to the kitchen table and began clearing the dishes. Auntie Mae helped; Gran returned to her knitting. They all ignored her, as if she’d become part of the peeling wallpaper, the furniture, the red sky. Reese turned, shaking, and made her way up the short hallway to the door. She let herself out, carefully closing the door behind her and barely hearing the soft click of the lock.
She stood on the welcome mat for a few minutes. There were no passersby: nothing but the still air and the distant, distorted sky. Her bones knew the planet’s drag, but everything else had changed, even the smell of things. Without the eucalyptus, it had lost its richness, its spice.
Reese couldn’t summon any anger, and anger had always been her best shield. She judged it best to leave quickly before she had time to examine the notion of never coming back. The trip to the station took far too long; Reese used it to work on figures, though she had to force herself to concentrate on the blurry numbers. By the time the shuttle docked at Deimos, she’d decided to take the job offer from the man in the bar. The first half of the payment would take care of repairs; the remainder would pay her crew and give her some room for upgrades and cargo after the assignment. It would get them off Harat-Sharii. The man had assured her it was legal; that was good enough.
Reese arrived on Deimos Station after lunch and decided against finding Hirianthial and Sascha. Instead she located the locker and sat on the bench outside it. She tried reading some of the romance novels she’d bought before the trip, but the words moved, drifted, wobbled.
It was no use not thinking about what had happened. Her mother had disinherited her... disinherited. Reese rubbed her forehead. A pretty word she’d lifted from books about princesses and royalty. What little she would have inherited from the Eddings family had already gone into buying the Earthrise. What more did she have to look forward to? A catalog featuring photos of smiling men with their vital statistics listed alongside? A mail-order daughter? A life without testosterone? Not that men weren’t annoying, but things started to feel lopsided without them. Reese flicked to the cover of the latest novel and stared at the Tam-illee girl swooning in the arms of the Eldritch prince.
No, she still had a home: the Earthrise. Even if she could never come back to Mars, she had a place to go back to. She’d never really planned to come here, settle down and have a fatherless baby... had she?
Maybe she’d merely never planned that far ahead.
Reese spent several hours sitting in front of the lockers, trying to sort it out and failing.
“Hey, boss... how’d it go?”
“Sascha, do you have the ticket for our baggage claim?” Hirianthial interrupted. “I can’t seem to find it.”
“I thought you—no, wait.” Sascha checked his vest and pant pockets, came up with a plastic chip. “I have the ticket after all. I’ll be right back.”
Reese watched Sascha disappear into the building, then squinted at Hirianthial. “You sent him away.”
“You needed a moment to compose yourself,” the Eldritch said, stopping in front of her.
She stared at his square-tipped boots. “I don’t need you reading my mind—”
“Lady,” Hirianthial said, “I don’t need to read your mind when your body fair screams your dejection.”
Reese straightened, squared her shoulders. “I don’t look dejected.”
He simply looked at her. It was one of his most disarming, infuriating habits: actually looking at people, instead of glossing over them. She grew more and more uncomfortable until the absurdity of the situation stuck her. Her family had kicked her out for good and she was worrying about having an Eldritch stare her down. Reese managed a weak laugh. “Okay, I am dejected—woah!”
Hirianthial kneeled in front of her—not quite kneeling, but one knee down and the other up. It put his face on eye level. He looked comfortable there, posing like a knight for a book cover... except in the book covers, the fragile Eldritch princes had always looked effeminate. Reese reflected on how badly they’d messed that up. Long hair and long bones alone did not feminize a man. The fussy lace cuffs, the camellias on the tunic, the blood-sparkle ring on his finger, none of it mattered. It was all in the carriage.
“It will pass,” he said.
“I... I guess I know that,” Reese said, looking away. The silence that fell was so comfor
table she couldn’t stand it. Without deciding to, she glanced at him and asked, “Do you have a home?”
“My lady?” He looked as startled as he ever did.
“A home,” Reese said. “Like the Earthrise is mine.”
“I hadn’t really given the matter much thought,” he said.
“Isn’t it a hard thing not to know?” Reese asked, and was rewarded by his eyes... closing. She wasn’t sure how he did it, but their warmth drained away. The result wasn’t hostile, like her mother’s blue stare, just distant. Formal. She hurried on. “Because everyone should have one.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Look, I want to give you an employment contract. Instead of you just... you know. Hanging around until you get bored or I get frustrated.”
This time she expected the stillness. She’d hit a nerve. Maybe. “You don’t have to take it. But everyone else in the crew’s got one and you deserve one too. If you want one.”
The warmth returned to his gaze, as slowly as a spring replenishing. For once his smile was neither cautious nor tired, merely small. He never seemed to do anything large or loud; it made Reese wonder how he bore her. “I would be honored.”
“Yeah, okay. Then get up, all right? Last thing we need is Sascha coming in on you like this and getting all sorts of ideas—”
“What sorts of ideas?” Sascha asked, dragging their bags behind him as Hirianthial stood.
“The wrong ones,” Reese said. Hirianthial brushed the dust from his pants.
“Curse it all!” Sascha said, shaking a fist at the ceiling. “Why do I always miss all the juicy bits?”
“Oh, hush,” Reese said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
“I’d like to meet your boss,” Reese said.
The man on the other side of the screen grinned. “You’ve decided to take the job?”
“If no one else has taken it yet, sure,” Reese said. “The climate here doesn’t agree with me.”
The man guffawed. “Yeah. Harat-Sharii: you either like it or you don’t. I’m zapping you a contract. You sign it, I’ll connect you with the boss and he’ll explain what you need to do.”
“All right,” Reese said.
Her mail chirped a moment later, and Reese spread the contract. Excepting the clauses about the acceptable delivery of cargo, it didn’t resemble anything she’d ever signed before. Granted, she hadn’t signed many contracts in her life; most of the time she bought up what looked cheap but profitable and tried to sell it elsewhere. This document had clauses about whether she could talk about what they were doing, whether she could question what she was asked to do, who she was allowed to contact after signing it for more details... it even included encryption keys for later information drops. Reese groped for her glass of water and read. And read.
After half an hour she decided the document sounded like the work of a paranoid merchant but not a pirate, so she signed it and sent it back.
Within minutes, the man reappeared. “I’ll build the call for you.”
“Thanks,” Reese said.
The screen blanked for a sector map with a connection status bar; some kind of encryption protocol, but Reese didn’t recognize it. The Riggins scheme dominated the high-security real-time transmission market. No one with any money or power used anything else. Reese suspected that most of the successes claimed by the lesser schemes were the result of no one being interested enough in the contents of their calls to intercept them. Which, in itself, was a form of security.
The man now facing her was human, corpulent with sallow skin and dark eyes rimmed in a webbing of flesh and shadows. Reese disliked him on sight.
“Captain Eddings,” he said in a thin tenor. “So glad to have you on board. Now that we have your signature, please proceed to Sector Tau, to the solar system designated in the file I’m sending you now. Once you’ve arrived, you’ll go to the planet there to fetch no less than two hundred pounds of crystals and no more than two hundred twenty. Use the instructions in the file to properly remove and store the crystals, then send a call to inform us that you have completed the objective. We will transmit a location for your drop-off. Is that clear?”
Startled by the recitation, Reese said, “Fairly.”
“If you have questions, you may use the contact address specified in the contract.”
“I won’t be able to lift off immediately,” Reese said. “I have repairs to finish on Harat-Sharii.”
“We don’t care when you leave so long as you deliver the crystals within the contract window.”
“Right,” Reese said. “Who am I talking to?”
“Pardon?”
“Your name,” Reese said. “In case I need to talk to you again.”
“Your contract is with Surapinet Industries,” the man said. “That should be sufficient. We look forward to seeing you within three months.”
Before Reese could object, the screen blanked and her mail chirped again. She grumbled as she flipped to the box and spread the message: a bank statement. A bank statement now much, much larger than she anticipated. She stared at it for several minutes, trying to grasp it, then shook herself out of her trance.
“Nothing talks like money,” Reese muttered, and placed a call to the repair shop on Harat-Sharii. By the time the shuttle brought them back to the crew she’d have good news for them.
Returning to Harat-Sharii did not disturb Hirianthial’s re-won equilibrium until Zhemala found him in his borrowed chamber.
“Would you mind seeing me in the Moon Patio? I’d like to discuss a possible single-service contract with you and Captain Eddings.”
“Of course,” Hirianthial said, when what he wanted to do was to send her away. Still, it was not his to do, so he found his way to the Moon Patio and set himself on a stool to wait. Slaves brought meat-and-cheese rolls and milk; not long after, Zhemala appeared with Reese.
“Have a seat,” the Harat-Shar said.
Reese sat on the bench, her aura a suspicious green.
“A drink?” Zhemala asked, pouring herself a cup.
“What is it?” Reese asked.
“Milk,” Zhemala said. “A morning drink.”
Reese eyed the spiraled rolls. “And you usually eat this heavily for breakfast?”
She laughed, showing off pointed eyeteeth. “We are part carnivore. And we work hard. We need the food. Now you,” she said, turning to Hirianthial. “There’s a loose end here that we’d appreciate you tying.”
“What do you mean?” Reese interrupted. When Zhemala glanced at her, she said, “I’m in charge, right? So I’m asking the question. What loose end?”
Zhemala stroked the top of her nose, wrinkling the fabric of her veil. “I asked your doctor to look over a pregnant co-wife.”
“And she miscarried. I heard the story,” Reese said, and the sudden spikes of scarlet anger leaping from her aura made her scowl seem mild in comparison. “You’re not pinning that on him, are you?”
“Should I?” Zhemala asked.
“You only hired him for three hours a day!” Reese exclaimed.
“He could have prevented it,” Zhemala replied.
“He may be as arrogant as a god but he doesn’t have magical powers,” Reese said acerbically. “If he’s not there, he can’t help.”
“A good doctor would have seen the signs,” Zhemala said.
Reese turned to him, and through his numbness he wondered at the indignant prickles that traveled her aura. Why was she defending him? His negligence was indefensible.
“Well?” Reese asked. “Were there signs you could have seen a day in advance?”
“Often,” Hirianthial replied.
Reese’s eyes narrowed. “How often? And what kind of signs?”
“Often enough,” Hirianthial said. “Bleeding accompanied by cramping and pain. A cervical examination would have demonstrated whether a miscarriage was pending.”
“So either it happened very sudde
nly, someone forgot to inform you about all these symptoms... or there were other factors,” Reese said, aura flattening. She looked at Zhemala. “You wouldn’t happen to know about other factors, would you?”
Zhemala’s ears pressed against her head. “I assure you I have no idea what you’re talking about, Captain... but your point is taken. You would agree that the situation is irregular?”
“Only if you agree that a doctor on call for only three hours out of a day can’t perform miracles if no one tells him there’s something wrong,” Reese said.
Zhemala turned her cup. “I suppose we might agree.”
Reese folded her arms. “Fine. Now tell me why you called us here.”
“We’d like your doctor to perform an operation for us.”
“What kind of operation?” Reese asked.
Zhemala glanced at Hirianthial, her eyes sly. “We’d like him to sterilize Salaena.”
Hirianthial’s hands began to tremble. He clasped them tightly in his lap. “My oath does not allow me to perform permanent operations on individuals without their consent.”
She laughed. “You’ve absorbed the culture well, if you’ve assumed that I made the decision for her. You’d even be right. But I’m not the only one who wants it to be done. Salaena wants it as well. Miscarrying the baby has only convinced her that she’ll die if she has another. Everyone will be happier if you ensure that for us.”
“I don’t have a specialization in gynecology,” Hirianthial said.
Zhemala nodded. “Nicely said. Quite true. But a dodge. You do have a specialization in surgery which would be more than adequate for the task. We’re not asking you to do something difficult. A few twitches with a medical laser and you’ll take care of a very difficult situation for us. We’ll pay you well for the service.”
“I am not moved by money,” Hirianthial said.
“Then be moved by pity,” Zhemala said, exasperation tingeing her aura orange. “Salaena needs your help.”
“No,” Reese said.
They both looked at her.
“It’s my decision to make, right? I’m the only one who can release him to employment in town. Well, I’m making the decision. He’s not going to do it.”
Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1) Page 22
