by R. M. Meluch
“You were saying, you don’t lose well,” Hall said, picking up the end of their last conversation as if Alihahd had never left and there had been no long summer intervening.
Alihahd nodded and spoke low, his voice tinged somehow with regret. “I don’t lose.”
He retired to the cave he’d originally inhabited upon coming to Aerie. His pile of blankets and furs were still folded on the wide mattress waiting for him. Vaslav’s were in a rumpled pile against the wall. Hall’s were not there. Harrison Hall didn’t sleep here anymore. Alihahd wasn’t going to ask.
Alihahd collapsed on the mattress without bothering to take off his boots. The boots were the same red leather ones he’d brought with him, but the thick, flat white deck soles had been replaced. He stretched his arms above his head, gazed at the ceiling, and exhaled long, at ease in his reclaimed territory.
Hall stirred the fire that had been dying in the hearth. Warm light caught the red sunstreaks in his coppery hair and flashed gold from his two earrings. His aquiline profile was outlined in orange-red. He rose from his crouch at the hearth and sat next to Alihahd.
Alihahd was little changed from when he left, still gaunt, spare, but healthier, hardier, and his short-shorn blond hair had grown out to cover his tall brow, the tops of his ears, and the back of his neck. His skin was weathered but still fair. It couldn’t hold the sun’s color like Hall’s. Hall was by now very dark.
Music carried from outside, across the abyss. The woodwinds sang a new tune, sad, passionate, longing—the song of the abandoned or of a captive spirit wanting wings. It disturbed, made its hearers restless. The song made one look toward the stars.
“Do you mind explaining to me, Captain, how you got to be ‘the Earth Fendi’?” Hall said.
“It was none of my doing, and all actually comical,” Alihahd said. “The ranga started it. They assumed because I was tall and blond and lived alone that I must be the Earthling equivalent of a warrior-priest. It escalated from there. I was a Fendi before I knew it.”
Hall nodded. But Hall didn’t believe it was the ranga’s doing. Wherever Alihahd went, no matter how many times displaced, Alihahd would always lead. He was set apart by the way he talked, the easy grandeur of his carriage, and his lordly silences.
“I have something for you,” Alihahd said. He unlaced a pouch from his belt. It was filled with dried leaves. “I am told these can be smoked.”
Hall received the pouch as if it were treasure. “I thank you, Captain.”
“Do not thank me. If I cannot breathe up here, neither shall you. I give you hypoxia, and may your night vision go to hell.”
“Merrily,” Hall said, laughing, a deep sound in his barrel chest. His lung capacity was enormous, and never mind that smoke added an equivalent of four thousand feet to the altitude, Harrison Hall would endure.
He withdrew his fox-head pipe from his vest. Both its fire-opal eyes were cracked now, and Alihahd commented on it.
“Serra,” Hall said. “She shied it at me.”
“She does not like you,” Alihahd said.
“She likes me fine.”
Alihahd had already surmised that Hall was living with Serra. Hall’s move was entirely expected. Eridanin lords were not known for their celibacy. It was only natural that Hall would be sleeping with someone. Just as it was natural that Alihahd be alone.
Alihahd pursed his lips, chagrined on the rare occasions when it occurred to him to think about his isolation. He’d always been a failure at human emotion. The ranga reminded him of it. Ranga hugged each other at any excuse—something he could never do. Spontaneity for him was not there. He’d tried once, inspired by a child laughing. He beckoned. The child frowned and toddled away. Fitting, as Alihahd had a face to frighten children. He didn’t try again. It was his way to be aloof. He usually liked his distance. At the same time, he was envious of the ranga, their ability to be close. Alihahd had never been at ease when tenderness was expected of him, around pets, children, or women except his wife. His had been an arranged marriage. He would never have married if he’d had to go courting for himself.
Now he was afraid to touch anyone.
He looked at his hands.
Harrison Hall picked up one of Alihahd’s hands and laid it across his own open palm. The back of Alihahd’s big knotty hand was bruised purple, and the skin was split across the knuckles. “Rough climb,” Alihahd said and took his hand back, too quickly.
Hall’s lips twitched beneath his mustache. He withheld comment.
The palms of Alihahd’s hands were unscathed from his climb.
“I have something else for you,” Alihahd said. He gave Hall a small felt bag. Something within clicked together like pebbles.
Hall emptied the glittering contents onto the bed.
“Surely that’s a zircon,” Hall said, pointing to one of the eight big gemstones.
“Which? No. The pink one is a zircon. The boulder is a diamond.”
Hall picked up the diamond and held it to the firelight. “What do you think? Five carats?”
Alihahd shrugged.
“You’re worse than an Itiri,” Hall said to Alihahd’s total lack of avarice or even interest. Alihahd had handed the gems over as if they were pretty quartzes and cut glass.
Alihahd rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow. “The ranga decided I needed those, since I was something like a warrior-priest. Those are virtues.”
“Is that what they are?” Hall said dryly.
“No warrior should be without them. The beryl is your hospitality, kindness, and mercy—your ‘humanity’ if you will,” Alihahd said. “The diamond is honor, respect, and loyalty—there is a single Itiri word for all those, and a single stone.”
“A single very large stone,” Hall said.
“Turquoise is patience and serenity. Lapis is courage. Topaz is wisdom. Zircon is humility and modesty. Opal is integrity in the sense of soundness, wholeness, and the like. The ruby is self-control, or fulfillment of potential, or inner strength. The way they consider certain concepts as synonymous I find quite bizarre. At any rate, there you have them. Please take your virtues and let me go to sleep.”
Hall scooped the gems off the bed in his fist. He held them each up to the light one more time before putting them in his pocket. He decided he might keep the diamond. The rest he would hock as soon as he was off-planet.
After all, what use were serenity and modesty to a man who piloted a black ship?
• • •
Harrison White Fox Hall and the Fendi Roniva crossed swords. The snowy owl observed from a high perch in the training hall, slowly rotating its round head to odd angles as if on a ball socket, so that sometimes its gaze was nearly upside down. Roniva never spoke a word to Hall. At times she would stop, point at Hall, and bark to her owl, “Again!”
That was bidding for Hall to repeat a technique. Hall wasn’t unfamiliar with swords, but the double curve was unusual—like a yataghan, which Hall never had used. Hall preferred guns and short daggers—though he would have sold his soul for a blade of tungsten-plastic. The technology that had made the nearly indestructible tungsten-plastic swords no longer existed anywhere in the galaxy. Where the Itiri had come by their swords was a mystery.
Roniva demonstrated a series of passes and bade Hall repeat it. The dark woman’s appearance was still neat, her hair smooth and tied up, her skin dry. The Itiri did not sweat. Hall was shirtless and his skin was gleaming wet. The bandana tied across his brow was drenched, and his hair coiled into dark, wiry curls stuck to the back of his neck. He repeated the series.
Alihahd stopped in the doorway to watch. He leaned the front of his shoulder on a column, his hands tucked under his belt, his head tilted to one side. Soft clean hair kicked over his tall forehead. There was color in his usually sallow and drawn cheeks. The mountain was not killing him this time a
round.
Hall omitted the last move of the series, which was to flip the blade under his arm as he turned its edge away from him and hide it behind his back. Roniva snapped to the owl, “Tell him to finish.”
“Fendi, if I do that I’ll cut off my arm,” Hall said. It was a tricky move to do the first time with a live blade.
Roniva let it pass and continued to something else.
Alihahd questioned the wisdom of teaching Hall anything. Someone who christened his ship Nemo did not need to know anything more about fighting. Alihahd didn’t advocate the training of terrorists. By the time Hall left Iry, the Marauder would be twice as deadly as when he’d come. How could the professedly neutral Itiri possibly justify turning such a being loose on the galaxy?
Or did the Itiri ever intend to turn any of them loose? The thought was a recurring paranoia.
He waited until Roniva wasn’t wielding a sword to speak. “Fendi, you realize, do you not, you could be aiding and abetting an interstellar terrorist?”
Roniva seemed to register the data with a momentary wrinkle of her hairless brows. She gave no comment. She took her leave without a word. The owl sailed out behind her in a sudden silent glide.
Hall picked up his shirt and slung it over his shoulder. He sauntered to Alihahd. “There’s a burrower hunt today. You’re not going?”
That was sarcasm. Alihahd didn’t answer it. “You are not going?” he asked. Hall never passed up a chance to hunt.
Hall shook his head. “Layla is. I don’t trust Layla behind me with a club.”
“I see.” Alihahd’s gaze dropped to the Itiri sword in Hall’s grip. “You are getting to be a very dangerous man, Mr. Hall.”
“I always was a dangerous man.” Hall mopped the sweat from his body with his shirt, and took off his sopping bandana. “You, dear Captain, could be immeasurably dangerous if I could ever pull you from this Itiri-like pacifism of yours.”
Itiri-like? I? That was a curious concept. “I’ll not be pulled,” Alihahd said.
“Wherefore?” Hall said, imitating Alihahd’s high-style, sometimes archaic speech.
“Because I could be immeasurably dangerous.”
Were he ever to anger, Hall was certain Alihahd would be lethal. But his flashes of glorious rage never lasted, quickly fading to contempt, indifference, or plain weariness.
“Pity you won’t budge,” Hall said. “I’d have you with me.”
“If it’s all the same, Mr. Hall, I would not trust you behind me with a club,” Alihahd said.
Hall laughed aloud. “Point taken.”
Alihahd turned to go.
Jinin-Ben-Tairre was standing in the exit with a drawn sword.
Alihahd felt a ripple of surprise, and . . . disappointment. Alihahd wasn’t much opposed to dying, but he would’ve liked some advance warning. This was too unexpected, like a bolt from the clear summer sky, just when he was feeling safe. It wasn’t fair. The feeling of helplessness in the face of the caprice of the universe upset him more than the actual prospect of dying. So here it is. He waited.
Jinin-Ben-Tairre turned the sword hilt outward and tossed it to Alihahd.
Alihahd caught it by the hilt.
Hall raised both eyebrows and drew in his chin like a comment. Alihahd had held a sword before.
Ben’s smooth face remained an unchanging mask. Apparently he’d lost the ability to be surprised by anything Alihahd did.
Ben moved like a pacing cat to Harrison Hall and thrust out a broad demanding palm to the sword which Hall held.
Hall surrendered the blade to the warrior-priest and stepped back to the periphery of the practice floor as Ben began to circle.
Alihahd turned slowly, keeping his face and his sword toward Ben. He made no circle himself, only pivoted guardedly.
Suddenly Ben charged in with a stomp of his foot and a shout, the sword whistling over his head and down. Tungsten-plastic blades met with a dull crack. Alihahd deflected the blow and dodged to the side.
Ben spun full around with another attack from the side, and Alihahd had only time to shift his sword to a vertical block, catching the blow straight on, and he staggered back with the force of it.
Would he kill me?
Ben’s strokes felt real and unrestrained. But Alihahd sensed that the warrior-priest could kill him anytime he wished. This was nothing but cat-and-mouse here.
Alihahd didn’t counter either attack, or even attempt to counter. Time after time, Alihahd’s moves remained strictly defensive. He had no desire to attack Ben. This was Ben’s game, and Alihahd didn’t want to play.
Then Ben backed away to a weapons chest. He put down his sword and brought out a dagger. Alihahd waited, uncertain.
“Captain.” Hall’s voice came from behind him, and Hall pressed the hilt of his own poniard into Alihahd’s hand. Alihahd passed back the sword in return and squared off with Ben again to continue the match with new weapons.
Travesty of a match, thought Alihahd. Ben was trained to be a warrior of the galaxy’s legendary killing force. To what purpose was this shadow show being staged?
Ben came at him with an underhand thrust. Alihahd dropped his own weapon and blocked downward on Ben’s wrist with crossed hands as he jumped back, curving his lower body away from the blade. He seized Ben’s thick wrist and twisted it—like trying to throw a tree off balance—then abruptly shifted balance with a foot sweep. Ben rolled and came back up, still holding his dagger. Alihahd’s weapon was on the floor. Alihahd skidded it back to Hall with his foot. The blade was worse than useless to him. One did not use a knife to block a knife, and blocking was all Alihahd wanted to do. In this situation he was better off open-handed.
So Ben changed weapons again. Then again.
Alihahd had broken into a sweat all over his body. It became harder and harder not to attack. They were dueling with sabers now. Ben slashed fiercely, hit hard, leaving himself open for a counter, baiting. Blows rained on Alihahd’s blocking blade. They jarred Alihahd’s wrists and arms. Crashing metal pounded at his eardrums. Ringing steel kept at him and at him and at him like a goad. He could see the demand in Ben’s fierce dark eyes. Fight me, fight me, fight me!
Alihahd wasn’t even thinking anymore. He moved without conscious deliberation. In another part of his mind, above, serene and removed from all this, he heard a mocking chant:
Circle, circle, dance of pain
One is free. He remains
Who cannot see our circle’s edge
Another circle, once again.
A crazy look glazed his eyes, blue with white all around. A hunted way of standing made him the image of a wounded animal, cornered, about to turn and bite.
The spectator, Harrison Hall, straightened from his casual stance. He wondered if Ben knew what he was doing. He was going to make Alihahd turn on him, calling him a fraud, challenging how deep the pacifism truly ran.
Alihahd was angry—or was a better word mad? His thick lips drew back from his teeth, and he watched Ben from the tops of his wild eyes. The saber trembled in his too-tight grip. Ben pressed until Alihahd surely must crack.
Alihahd did not.
And at length, when Ben-Tairre himself was sweating and drawing ragged breaths, Ben stepped back, put up his weapon, and left the training hall with an air of curiosity satisfied.
With a shudder and a sighing moan that was half a cry, Alihahd dropped his saber as if it were a loathsome thing. He stared at his own hand.
Only when his breaths began to lengthen did normality return to his face. And all at once his strained muscles untensed, and he looked simply tired.
Harrison Hall picked up the discarded saber, tested its balance in his hand. He gave a nod to Alihahd’s proficiency with it and the other weapons. “You’re better than you look, Captain,” Hall said.
“I was not born this old,” Alih
ahd said. He dropped to a squat, his back to the wall, his forearms on his knees, hands hanging loose.
“Careful what you call old,” Hall said. “I believe I am your senior.”
Alihahd lifted a hand at the wrist and pointed toward the door. “That man does not like me.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hall said. It was hard to tell what Ben was thinking. Hall was only glad that Ben wasn’t interested in him. “I wouldn’t worry anyway,” he said. “Roniva is in your camp, and between the two of them, my money is on the Fendi.”
Alihahd gave a shrug. “Hypothetical situation.”
“I hear not,” Hall said. He explained what he knew of the ancient rite of setkaza. Sooner or later Roniva and Ben would fight to the death.
Alihahd shook his head and gave a laugh that was helplessness rather than mirth. “Aliens,” he said. He stood. Unfolding his long legs was painful. He took the saber from Hall and tossed it back into the weapons chest in distaste. “I used to be good with these toys of destruction.” He didn’t like them anymore, the swords and bola and archaic things no one really used anymore but to play at war. He slammed the chest shut and turned away from it. “Too much blood under the bridge between then and now.”
“Whose blood?” Hall asked.
“Oh,” Alihahd said. “I was speaking in general.”
• • •
Harrison Hall watched with a hunter’s eye. Alihahd was a complex individual. The more he revealed the less he was known. He never spoke of his home: whether he had disowned it, was ashamed of it, or was protecting it. His accent and his manner and his knowledge revealed that he’d been just about everywhere. But his origin was a mystery, until one day Layla, who never had heard of tact or even of civilized rules of conduct simply asked him point-blank, “Where are you from?”
Alihahd hesitated. The frankness of the inquiry precluded evasion, especially in front of Hall. Not to be too obviously secretive, he answered the question. “Earth.”
The reply caused a stir among the humans. Although called Earthlings, none of them—Layla, Serra, Amerika, Vaslav, or Hall—was actually from the cradle of humankind, Earth. None of them had even seen it, and they all had questions about it.
