“So I’m supposed to be part of the apology?” Reese asked with a chuckle she didn’t entirely feel.
“Not exactly,” Irine said. “I think the fact that we’re making it is the apology, but the things that are going into it are gifts from everyone. You could be part of it too.”
“Just think,” Kis’eh’t said. “He could still be wearing it centuries after we’re all dead.”
“Bleh!” Irine said.
Reese privately agreed.
“Do you want us to save you a space?” Sascha asked casually, bending a fitting around a diamond-shaped charm.
“Maybe,” Reese said.
“Scared,” Bryer said.
“I am not,” Reese said. “I just think it’s a little silly, is all.”
Irine frowned. “Our apology is silly?”
“No, no, not that,” Reese said. “It’s just… well, when have you ever seen him wearing something like that?”
“All the more reason to make him one,” Irine said.
“Scared,” Bryer said again, shaving another miniature curl from his bird.
“I am not,” Reese said, then waved her hands. “I’ll go get something.”
“Yay!” Irine said.
“I’ll be back,” Reese said, pushing away from the table.
“Make it something good,” Sascha called.
Reese snorted and left them in the mess hall. She reached her quarters before she realized she was stomping and grumbled about that. Nor was Allacazam in her hammock, which irritated her more. In the end, she dropped onto her unused bunk and stared at the laundry she hadn’t yet put away.
She should just bring back one of the chalk tablets she’d eaten like candy before the man had replaced her esophagus. It would serve him right. And the peppermint ones were pink, which would match. What did they think they were doing, making him jewelry? As if he could care about them… one day, they’d all be dead and he’d still be around, forgetting them.
Reese was still on the bunk when the door chime rung.
“Come in,” she said.
Irine padded inside and sat next to her without asking permission.
“Don’t be mad,” the tigraine said.
“Why would I be mad?” Reese asked.
“Because we’ve never given you a gift like this,” Irine said.
“I wasn’t thinking anything like that,” Reese said.
“Oh yes you were,” Irine replied. “It was on your face when you left.”
“You must have mistaken me,” Reese said.
Irine snorted. “Are you jesting? You think a Harat-Shar doesn’t recognize jealousy? You’re crazy. You must have forgotten how many people I grew up with.”
Reese folded her arms across her chest and ignored the tail that wrapped around her waist from behind. After a moment she said, “Well, why haven’t you given me something like that?”
“You won’t like the answer,” Irine said.
“I’m not surprised,” Reese said.
“You didn’t seem like you’d want it.”
“And an Eldritch would?” Reese asked, incredulous. “Has he given you a reason to think he’d care more about you than I would?”
“It’s more like he’s given us fewer reasons to think he wouldn’t,” Irine said.
Reese scowled. “Try that one again.”
Irine sighed. “Hirianthial is just mysterious. You’re prickly.”
“You’re saying I push people away.”
“See? You knew exactly what I meant,” Irine said. Her tail tip twitched against Reese’s ribs until finally Reese had to pet it, just a little.
“I don’t mean to be prickly,” Reese said.
“We know. And we like you too. We’re just not quite sure if you like us. All the time.”
Reese stroked the orange fur a few more times, then unwrapped herself from the tigraine’s tail. She walked to the bathroom and opened one of the drawers, picking through the contents until she found a plain wooden box in the back. Maybe petting Harat-Shar tails gave a person supernatural sensitivity… or maybe the wood simply seemed finer than usual because she hadn’t touched it for years. Reese opened it and selected one of the blonde beads in it, rolling it between her fingertips and savoring the wood’s cool, spicy fragrance.
Irine approached, stood in the bathroom door.
Reese gave her the bead. “Here.”
“I’ve never seen you wear these,” Irine said quietly.
“I stopped wearing them long before I hired you and Sascha,” Reese said.
“Why’d you stop?” Irine asked.
“I didn’t want them to lose their smell,” Reese said. “They were special.”
The tigraine’s ear flicked forward. “Something changed?”
“I thought those were better times,” Reese said and patted Irine’s fingers closed over the bead. “I was wrong.”
The tigraine engulfed her in a sudden hug, all fur and musk and swift Harat-Shariin heartbeat. Reese was so surprised by it she almost forgot to hug back. But then she did and she thought she could get used to it.
The raspy lick up her cheek, though, was too much. “Irine!” Reese said, laughing.
The Harat-Shar beamed. “I couldn’t resist.”
After the girl had left, Reese studied the box with the remaining beads. She wondered what to do with them. As remnants of Mars, she supposed she should burn them as unnecessary reminders of life before the Earthrise… but they smelled too good, and their tree would never grow another branch to replace the one she’d used to make these. It seemed like a waste to destroy the far-flung remnants of an uprooted tree. Reese closed the box and hid it back in the drawer.
“We have your apology ready,” Irine said at the door. “Can we come in?”
Hirianthial set his book aside. “Of course.”
Sascha followed Irine inside, carrying a thin case... and then Kis’eh’t entered, holding Allacazam, with Bryer trailing. His room could barely hold them all at one end, and yet he was so surprised to see them that he couldn’t quite concentrate on the mental noise of their presence.
“This is quite an entourage,” he said.
“Everyone helped,” Sascha said. “So everyone wanted to see you receive it.”
“Except Reese,” Kis’eh’t said, settling onto her haunches with Allacazam between her forepaws.
“Scared,” Bryer said.
“She’s not scared,” Irine said. “She helped too.”
Hirianthial’s brows rose.
“It’s our apology to make, so we made it,” Sascha said. “But everyone contributed materials.” He opened the case, brought it to the opposite edge of the bunk and turned it so that its contents caught the light.
“Jewelry?” Hirianthial asked, reaching for it.
“Hand-made!” Irine said proudly, just as his fingertips brushed it—
—and his eyes lost the room in a wave of good will and contentment. His fingers caught on a square token, and he saw Bryer accept it in exchange for an offering in a temple. Beneath it, a ring Irine had bought at a bazaar to fight a heartache that had seemed eternal at the time. The hum of a Well Drive; the creak of a tree in the breeze and a sense of loneliness and determination; each sensation building on the next from the thinnest crystal at the top to the dusty bell at the bottom, perched on a long braided pin and vibrating with a chorus’s soaring song in a Glaseahn siv’t.
Never in his life had an object spoken to him, nor had he ever heard of an Eldritch having such an ability. And yet the feelings were there: the taste of herbs steeped in wine, the wail of a far-ranging ocean tern, the imbued warmth of Allacazam’s crumpled neural fur.
He was so shocked he almost dropped it.
“Is it okay?” Sascha asked with a hint of worry.
“I am... I am overwhelmed,” Hirianthial said. “I have never received such a generous gift.”
They all smiled then, save Bryer who mantled his feathers and leaned back against the wall. Lookin
g at them while holding the flashes of their lives in his hands, he knew he owed them the trust they had unknowingly given him.
“Would you do aught else for me?” Hirianthial asked.
“More!” Kis’eh’t said with a laugh. “We should go into business.”
“This you will not be able to sell,” Hirianthial said, allowing laughter to touch his eyes.
“Of course,” Sascha said. “Just ask.”
“Braid it in.”
Silence fell, along with Irine’s jaw. Only Allacazam seemed to find the situation as humorous as he did, blooming a bright magenta in patches across his body.
“You want us to touch you?” Irine said with a squeak in her voice.
“If you’re careful you need not,” Hirianthial said.
“But we’d have to get very close to you,” Sascha said, eyes wide.
Hirianthial nodded. “Would you be willing?”
The twins looked at one another, then at Kis’eh’t. “You do it.”
“Me?” Kis’eh’t laughed. “No, no.”
“But you’re not... you know.”
“Not hormonal?” Kis’eh’t said. She snickered. “No. It’s your apology to make, remember?”
The twins looked to Bryer, who clicked his claws together. “Hair too soft.”
“Surely I’m not so frightening,” Hirianthial said.
The twins looked at one another. “You braid,” Sascha said. “You have better fingers.”
Irine looked her hands, which trembled even when viewed at a distance. She whimpered.
Sascha approached, one cautious step at a time, as if stalking a skittish animal. Hirianthial watched him come, hiding a laugh.
“Where do you want it?” Sascha asked. “Near the top of your head?”
“Oh no,” Hirianthial said, distracted from the task of putting them at ease by the wrongness of the idea. He shook his hair off to one side and said. “Here, behind the ear.”
“Near your skin?” Irine said, aghast.
He did laugh this time. “Come,” he said. “I’ll make it easy for you.” Bracing himself against the bunk, he leaned back until the lowest layer of hair, still warm, stood apart from his back.
Neither of them rushed to his side. He sensed from their auras that they were staring; Irine’s thought was so loud it broke past his careful ignorance of people’s thoughts: Oh-my-I-want-some-of-that!
When the silence dragged on too long, Hirianthial said, “Gentlefolk, I am no longer so young that I can hold this shape indefinitely.”
Sascha shook himself, then swooped behind the Eldritch. A moment later the weight of his hair, so habitual, lifted from his skull.
“Wow,” Sascha said. His gulp was audible. “I’m actually touching you!”
“My hair isn’t exactly my body,” Hirianthial said.
“No, but it’s attached to it!” Sascha said. “This is the closest I’ve even been allowed to an Eldritch.”
“Does he feel any different from a human?” Kis’eh’t asked.
The grip on his hair shifted. “I don’t know. I mean... oh, I don’t know.” After a moment, “This is really heavy.”
“One becomes accustomed to it,” Hirianthial said.
“Come on, Irine!” A thin happy thought behind it, run together: Oh-you-have-to-feel-this!
Irine hovered at his side, wiggling her fingers. She picked a lock so carefully he couldn’t bear to tell her how loud her aura was despite her efforts. “Is this okay?”
When the dangle fell it would run along his neck and down near the center of his spine. “Yes.”
She leaned over and plucked the dangle from the box in his hands, pressing in against his aura with her own densely packed one: so many feelings and thoughts, most of which would be wildly inappropriate if mentioned aloud. But she spoke none of them and the nervous gloss over her space shouted how much she feared discomfiting him.
It had been a very long time since someone had done this service for him; very long indeed since he’d allowed anyone this close to him by choice, rather than from necessity or in the course of his duties. With his eyes half-closed, Hirianthial experimented, allowing himself to sink into the sensual pleasure of it... and each time the end of the strand brushed against his body it tingled against his senses, mental and physical.
“How do you brush all this?” Sascha wondered.
He roused from reverie. “With a comb.”
Kis’eh’t chuckled.
“It’s too straight to tangle,” he finished.
“You must have been growing it forever,” Sascha said.
“It would have been inappropriate to cut it,” Hirianthial said, thinking of customs older than any of the species in the room.
Irine tugged on it, setting the bell to singing. “There. You’ll have to take a knife to it to get it out.”
The rest of his hair slid through Sascha’s fingers until it pressed on the dangle, hiding it from view.
“Umm... I hope that’s what you wanted, at least,” Irine said, coming around in front of him.
“Yes,” Hirianthial said. “That’s just as I’d have it. I can feel it now.” He lifted his head. “It is a magnificent gift. A kingly thing.”
“Are you sure we can’t apologize properly?” Irine asked with a glimmer of pornographic hope.
Sascha elbowed her. “We’re glad you like it. We had a lot of fun putting it together.”
“Show’s over,” Bryer said, straightening from the wall. Kis’eh’t picked up the still pink Allacazam as the Phoenix walked out into the corridor.
On the way out, Irine said, “Even Reese added something.”
“I know,” Hirianthial said, feeling it between his shoulder-blades.
“We already said that,” Sascha said, chivvying her out.
“Gentle-twins,” Hirianthial said just before they left. When they paused and looked back, he said, “The apology has far exceeded the sorrow that inspired it.”
They grinned and left, tails twined together.
Once the darkness and quiet of his room seeped into the spaces the aliens had been and filled in their outlines, Hirianthial pulled the strand over his shoulder and turned it, watching the light glint off the bits of metal and glass, play over the wood and thread. At home he had worn the Eldritch equivalent as custom dictated, ornate, gem-encrusted things as heavy as the silver belts worn by women around their corseted waists. Each day a body-servant would select a new one and weave it in, using a long-handled brush and a hand so deft no part of his aura ever contacted his master’s; the experience was the opposite of what had just happened in every way.
The Alliance had similar ornaments; he’d seen them braided into the hair of humans and Pelted alike. He’d never felt the urge to imitate them. This, though... Hirianthial turned off the light, then stretched himself flat on his stomach and felt the wave of affection shift across his back, edged with flashes of smell and sound and sight like falling glitter.
Fifty-odd years he’d spent wandering without purpose or plan, stumbling onto each succeeding course of action without building toward anything. He’d become a doctor because he couldn’t bear the guilt of his own failure with Laiselin and then later the blood he’d spent justly but in too much passion. After that, he’d tended the sick because doctors did that, but all of the deaths he’d prevented had never taken away the deaths he hadn’t been able to or had himself caused, the ones that had driven him away.
And then allowing the Queen to send him on her errands, not caring if he died in the process, since life had seemed long enough. His joints had already stiffened... the days had grown harder and longer.
He’d drifted, who’d always loved the hearth.
The twinkle of a Flitzbe’s amusement scratched against the back of his neck as he shifted. Irine laughed; the bell tinkled.
Had these people opened his heart? Or had his heart merely been ready to be open?
Did it matter?
At last, he was no longer anypla
ce but there. Now he was here. A place in itself. A place worth staying.
Hirianthial closed his eyes and let the sensations of a half-dozen minds and hearts anchor him in place as he fell asleep.
“We’ve been rising out of the Well for a few hours,” Sascha said. “It shouldn’t be long before we coast to a stop. Maybe fifteen minutes now.”
“Good,” Reese said, leaning over his chair.
“Sick of us already?” he said with a grin.
“I didn’t say that,” Reese said.
“She was just thinking it,” Kis’eh’t said from her station.
Reese sighed.
“Don’t worry, Boss. A couple days harvesting whatsits and we can go collect your chest of treasure.”
“Maybe we can buy something fun to sell finally,” Reese said. “Exotics. Hand-woven textiles. Religious items. Art.”
“We could check the latest colonies,” Kis’eh’t said. “I’ve been reading the bulletins and a couple of new ones have popped up. Neither of them have dedicated shipping or Pads yet.”
“That sounds promising,” Reese said. “Maybe our drop-off point won’t be too far up-Core. Then it won’t be quite as long to get to the edge of settled space.”
“Coming out of the Well,” Sascha said, then cursed and yanked the Earthrise so hard to starboard Reese staggered against the wall.
“Sascha!”
“Pirates!”
Reese grabbed the back of the pilot’s chair. “Where? How many? Have they seen us?”
“Two,” Sascha said. “They’re near the first asteroid belt.”
“What are they doing in the middle of nowhere?” Kis’eh’t asked.
“Maybe they’re after our crystals,” Reese said. “Have they seen us?”
“I don’t think so,” Sascha said. “I sent us onto a new insert. One pretty distant from where they’re drifting. If we coast—”
“Let’s do that,” Reese said. “At least until we figure out where they’re heading. Maybe they’re on their way out of the system.”
Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1) Page 25
