Joined: Book One

by Mara Gan

  I had to choke back my surprise when I realized that Perseus’s second companion was Halian.

  I had so rarely seen another of my kind that I often wondered if fewer had survived than I thought. This particular Halian was tall, strong-looking but lean, with shaggy, chestnut hair and golden eyes. He had the impish look about him that all of us seemed to have, as though he were on the verge of playing a joke on someone, and just now he was laughing at Perseus.

  With my keen sense of hearing, thanks to the ears, I was able to make out some of their conversation, even with the crazed noise of the small tavern. I was relying on my other sense too: my ability to sense the emotions of others. Luckily Mathans, when not Raging, were in surprisingly good control of their thoughts and feelings, so I wasn’t too overwhelmed. I was able to pick out the three men I was most interested in with relative ease, although I noted quickly that I wasn’t sensing anything from Perseus. A bit of a surprise, really, since I had expected to be sensing him all the time, what with his constant Rage issues.

  Well, that was lucky, I supposed. Rage was not something I enjoyed sensing. It usually made me feel like throwing up. I had never sensed a Mathan Rage, but I imagined it would be far worse than rage from other people.

  The patrons tonight were all men, some already quite drunk, some gambling, some telling raucous, ridiculously embellished stories. Mathan women were notoriously absent from the galaxy, which aggrieved me to no end. They were horribly subjugated in their society and not allowed off planet. I’d never even met a Mathan woman.

  The three men seemed to be arguing; Yalan’s voice was easy to make out, although Perseus seemed to be a mumbler.

  “I can’t believe you took this job without even consulting me,” Yalan said, his voice betraying his upset.

  Perseus’s voice was deep and rich, and I liked it. “I don’t remember needing to consult with you on what I do with my life and what jobs I take. You did not need to come.”

  “I thought we were partners,” Yalan snarled. “I thought—”

  “Yalan,” Perseus said, sounding tired, “I do value your partnership. But did you consult with me when you took that arms deal last month?”

  My eyes widened. Guess Yalan hadn’t changed at all. And Perseus seemed to have hit a point; Yalan was silent for a moment.

  Someone new spoke up, and I assumed it was the Halian. “Come on, Yalan, it won’t be so bad.” His voice was smooth and had a distinct lilt of humor in it. This was someone who liked to tell jokes and take life easy. “It’ll be the simple life. Nice city, sweet digs, good pay….”

  “I am not joining that pathetic bodyguard squadron.”

  Wow. Had Yalan always been such a snob?

  “Well, I’m not either,” the Halian replied. I frowned. Why wasn’t he joining? “But we still have a pretty great deal going on.”

  “But no contracts,” Yalan said.

  I clenched my teeth. No contracts, you little weasel. I’ll be watching you.

  Perseus said something I couldn’t make out, and the sound of a chair scraping across the floor hit my ears. A moment later Yalan brushed by me on his way out the door, leaving Perseus with the Halian.

  Perseus sighed. “That went better than I expected.”

  “He’ll stay for a while,” the Halian replied. “I know for a fact that he doesn’t have any job prospects just now, so he’ll stick around until he can figure out what he wants to do.”

  “The question is whether or not he’ll get into trouble while he’s at it.”

  Their voices dropped for a few minutes, and I took the opportunity to study the rest of the room. I hadn’t been here in some weeks, but everything looked the same. The tavern was lit with sporadic orange lights, occasionally flickering to offset patrons’ sense of equilibrium; the chairs were bumpy to cause discomfort; and the tables were set up with the specific aim of irritating customers. They were either too low and close to the seat of the chair, ensuring the customer would have trouble sliding close enough to the table to eat, or too high so you couldn’t reach your plate while sitting. The tavern was also perpetually smoky with the constant haze of the illgresi weed—highly toxic and with an uncanny ability to raise testosterone levels—that Mathans favored. While most humans in the galaxy took drugs to relax or lower their inhibitions, illgresi had the opposite effect. Mathans designed everything they did to annoy the crap out of themselves.

  It worked, but I often wondered if they would be less prone to war if they tried more comfortable designs. Whatever the case, Mathans enjoyed being annoyed, and the majority of the galaxy avoided them when they could.

  Not that detecting them was necessarily easy. They were larger than most humanoids, but not by a lot, and mostly dark-haired, but aside from that and their size, the only thing that set them apart was their Rage.

  This entire tavern practically begged for a brawl—something we had forbidden in the city and was punishable by a night or more in a jail cell—yet here I was, casually enjoying their food.

  Okay, I hadn’t actually touched the food. I’d just ordered it to look like I wasn’t spying.

  Speaking of, I tuned my ears back in to the conversation a few tables away and was distraught to realize it had stopped while I’d been daydreaming. Panic rose in my throat as I realized that not only had it stopped, but they’d noticed me.

  I couldn’t stop myself from looking, but kind of wished I hadn’t.

  I swallowed. My new Protector was coming toward me; I was pretty sure he’d noticed me taking furtive glances at him and his table, and I’m guessing he didn’t like it much. Being covert was not exactly something I was good at.

  I did not, however, expect him to pick me up and throw me across the room.

  I skidded over a table and ruined someone’s dinner, breaking dishes and sending food flying everywhere, before I rolled off and crashed onto the floor. Thankfully, I had good reflexes thanks to my favorite sport and managed to roll into a crouch, and I was frankly more stunned than hurt. Being thrown across a room and through someone’s meal was, suffice to say, a new experience for me.

  The hapless person whose dinner I had just destroyed stood and began spitting furious epithets at anyone in the vicinity, including me, but I only had eyes for the man who’d thrown me: my Protector.

  My hood fell back as I knelt there and looked up at him.

  His eyebrow lifted as he looked at my face. Dang.

  He stood over me, no doubt trying to intimidate me, but I had faced down warlords and kings before. He was no different.

  Although that three-inch scar on his face, slashed diagonally across his left eye, sure made him look different.

  I held my chin up as I stood, attempting to look him in the eyes and realizing they were level with his chest.

  Okay, so I was short.

  His scowl deepened as he crossed his arms over his chest, making his biceps bulge. I swallowed but refused to be intimidated.

  “Care to explain why you’re staring at my table, little girl?”

  My own eyebrows lifted. “You knew I was a girl, and you still threw me across the room?”

  He huffed. “In my experience, women are every bit as dangerous as men. Maybe more so.”

  I laughed outright. I was happy to see the sexism I had feared go right out the window. “Okay, good answer. One point for you.”

  He frowned. “Excuse me?”

  I studied him for a moment. There was no sign of recognition on his face. Did he not know who I was? My eyes flicked behind him, and I realized that although Yalan had left, his Halian companion stood behind Perseus, watching me with intense curiosity. Few others had even noticed our little altercation. This was a Mathan bar, after all, and fights were pretty normal. Kind of like nightly entertainment or something.

  I grinned, realizing my anonymity remained intact. “Sorry, Perseus. But you had to expect that everyone on this station was going to be curious about the new Protector.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You
know me.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I’m guessing you’re not fond of someone else having the upper hand in that regard?”

  “Not in the least.” He grabbed my elbow in viselike fingers and pulled me toward his table. “You can make it up to me by having a drink with me.” He jerked his chin at Geôillur for another drink, and none too ceremoniously shoved me into a chair.

  Suffice to say, I’d never been treated like that before. Generally speaking, since I was the so-called Prophesied Heir, few people ever speak to me with anything less than reverence, let alone touch me in any way; and, while Perseus was mildly annoying about it, I really liked not having someone treat me like their superior. I was never comfortable with that aspect of my job anyway.

  But there was no way I was admitting that to Perseus.

  Besides, playing the role of “just another person” was something I had never done. I couldn’t; everyone in the city knew my face, and the few times I had been away from the city were for diplomacy when whoever I was meeting knew who I was in advance. I was increasingly surprised that Perseus didn’t. I was lucky Yalan had left, however, because he would most certainly recognize me; I worried a little about the Halian sensing deception from me, but then I had no idea how in tune with his abilities he was. I focused my thoughts, just in case, on anything but my identity.

  Perseus and the Halian slid into their seats, eyeing me as Geôillur gruffly set down three vat-sized drinks in front of us. The bartender’s gaze flicked to me and I read the question there, but gave a quick shake of my head. Geôillur was surprisingly protective of me, but undoubtedly knew exactly who Perseus was.

  The surly bartender I adored so much ambled off when he realized I was just fine, but Perseus didn’t miss our interaction.

  “That old bastard knows you.”

  I frowned. Was his language always so nasty? I wrapped both hands around the vat of ale in front of me, and the cold dampness seeped through my skin. I took a sip—

  —and almost spat it back out. “Goodness, what is that?” I asked in horror, covering my mouth with my sleeve.

  My Protector chuckled. “Well, I guess that answers one question,” he said, his eyebrow quirking as he took a large sip.

  “What question?”

  “Whether or not you come here for the food.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  My Protector and his companion had clearly been entertaining themselves by tossing daggers at the wall. I noted with a flicker of discomfort that they still had quite a few daggers left, although a half dozen or so were embedded in the wall behind me.

  The Halian narrowed his eyes at me. His eyes were striking; the people of my planet all had dual-colored eyes, but I wasn’t used to seeing them outside of the mirror. Our eyes were one color around the edges, and toward the pupil was a different color, branching out a little like a star. And I could tell those brown-and-gold starburst eyes were trying to get a read on my emotions.

  I narrowed my eyes in response, putting up the best mental barrier I could muster.

  He frowned a little, but then his eyebrow twitched in amusement.

  “So…,” I tried, shifting uncomfortably in the awkward chair, “enjoying your little taste of home?”

  Perseus snorted and lifted his glass. “My home world is a miserable lump of rock.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t like your home planet?”

  “No one likes my home planet.”

  Curious, I thought, leaning my chin on my hand as I studied him. He didn’t really answer either question.

  His companion laughed and took a drink of ale. “Truer words were never spoken. I’m Gi, by the way.”

  Perseus and Gi were remarkably attractive. Gods knew I would be happy to study my Protector forever; the man was fascinating, particularly to my six senses. In some respects, he was much like other Mathans I’d met: giant, dark, more than a little menacing. He was enormous, for one thing, even taller than Kos, with broad shoulders, a barrel chest, and arms the size of cannons that strained against his high-collared, also-black jacket. His skin was a rich tan that reminded me of tea with cream. His black hair was coarse and thick and longer than most men wore it, and currently pulled back from his face into a small ponytail at the back. His face was strong, with a square, beard-stubbled jaw, tanned skin pulled over thick cheekbones, and prominent, dark eyebrows that looked as though they never strayed from a frown.

  And his eyes….

  Wow. It was true; his eyes were pitch-black, blacker than the space between the stars, and deeply unsettling. They were fathomless and unnervingly watchful, but intensely beautiful. The jagged, pale purple scar running from his left eyebrow, skipping his eye, and down into the center of his cheek did little to soften his hard features, but I was dying to ask him about it.

  Was it weird that I kind of liked that scar? I had a few scars on my back from the window blast during the Halian Destruction, but having never seen a battle or a fight, that was it for me. And the Destruction was not a story I enjoyed reliving, so I loved hearing the Mousai trade scar stories. Each scar seemed like a badge of honor to them.

  Dang. My new Protector was easily the most attractive man I had ever laid eyes on. I shuddered a little.

  “If you’re done trying to read my emotions, would you care to tell me why you’ve been watching me all evening?”

  I blushed. Clearly, I wasn’t as good at spying on people as I thought I was. But, then, I was trying to practice these skills on clear masters of observation. Maybe I should try spying on cats for a while to restore my ego.

  “I told you,” I said, swirling the ale glass. “I was curious about the Protector.” I tried another sip of the ale, just to be sure, and grimaced again.

  My Protector’s eyebrow lifted. “Why continue to drink it if you do not like it?”

  I shrugged. “I wanted to give it another try. Why anyone would drink this when they could have a Mathan Fog instead is beyond me.”

  Perseus frowned. “A Mathan Fog?”

  “Sure. Black tea, vanilla sugar, and foamed nut milk? You can get them at the juice bar or the barista stand.”

  He snorted. “Those are most certainly not Mathan.”

  I frowned. “But the black tea is from Mathos.”

  “And is never drunk with a sweetener. Mathans don’t do ‘sweet.’”

  I wanted to laugh. “That is probably true enough. But they are delicious and oh so caffeinated.” I had a serious weakness for caffeine, but really only in the form of Mathan Fogs.

  He nodded at my attire. “You must be one of the Mousai.”

  I barely managed to keep the surprise off my face. He thought I was one of the Mousai? Skore would die of laughter if she’d heard that. I was athletic, but I was most definitely not a fighter.

  But I could see where he got that impression; the Mousai wore simple black uniforms, and I always preferred simple clothes. I hated fashion. I wore black or gray nearly every day, simply because it was one less choice I had to make. When you made as many galactically important decisions as I did, you got decision exhaustion easily. And clothes seemed kind of ridiculous by comparison.

  But I certainly wasn’t going to disabuse him of that idea. My original goal still stood: get to know the Protector and find out for myself if he could be trusted—before he knew who I was.

  Unfortunately, he was a complete blank to me; I couldn’t even get a glimmer of emotion from him, let alone a thought. Even weirder, my ability to sense the rest of the room had dimmed as well.

  Curiously, Perseus seemed to have put me in some kind of anti-ability bubble.

  I also noticed that I kind of liked the reprieve from everyone else’s emotions and thoughts invading my mind.

  He was studying me; few people weren’t startled the first time they looked at me. Halians weren’t common, so everything about us was weird and novel. I’d never thought I was especially pretty, but I knew I was certainly different-looking. My eyes are a kind of blueish-gray, but w
ith a starburst of orange around the pupil and a darker ring of blue at the edge of the iris. To me, they were just my eyes, but then this was a man who only saw black in the mirror.

  He looked, too, like he was starting to feel a little perplexed by my presence. I sighed inwardly. Halians supposedly had powerful pheromones, a byproduct of being an endangered species; Dr. Remy theorized that our biology kicked into overdrive and automatically made us attractive to those around us, hoping to encourage the continuation of our kind. Remy had confirmed that, at least with me, this seemed to be the case, but as I had seen few Halians after the Destruction, we weren’t sure how prevalent this was.

  Mathans had thus far proved immune to my pheromones, but certainly not to my appearance. I was fairly pale, with waist-length and curly strawberry-blonde hair, which was also somewhat unusual and apparently attractive to some.

  “Your eyes,” he finally said. “They’re extraordinary.”

  I smiled, feeling strangely flattered. Usually, compliments on my appearance made me sad; it depressed me that I could discuss books, politics, diplomacy, history, science, even local entertainment to a thorough degree, but few ever bothered to look past my looks or my position as Heir. For some reason I didn’t mind it from Perseus, though, and that was probably a good sign.

  Gi flicked his gaze curiously between the two of us, taking another thoughtful sip. “So what is it you’re doing watching us, fellow Halian?” he asked amicably, eyes still narrowed on me. “Come to spy on another of your kind?”

  “I wasn’t spying on you,” I murmured. “I just wanted to try a new restaurant.”

  Perseus shook his head. “No, you didn’t.”

  My eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

  “Given the way you and the bartender looked at each other, I’d say it’s safe to assume you’ve been here before.”

  Dang. I fumbled, not used to being interrogated. “I wanted to meet some friends.”