I’m still shouting up at the ceiling when a cheery voice booms across the room. “Raingar!”
I wince. I’ve been spotted. Pagh!
I growl and look sideways over the edge of my horn at the Niahhorru pirate sprinting towards me. Seeing my own horn in my peripheral vision, I realize I’m touching the base again. What the…
It’s tight. The skin has been tight ever since we entered orbit. I wonder if it’s the stress of this horrible place. Yeffa, that must be it… All I know is that I just don’t like it.
“Raingar, how are you?” I notice that he’s wearing the traditional grey tantu leather pants Niahhorru pirates always wear — a clear sign he’s breaking with the formalities of this nonsensical affair — and I remember that he’s one of the few beings here I like.
Tolerate.
Can endure.
Meanwhile, I’m trapped in this ohring tunic made out of a silk that came from a bug that lives deep in the earth of Quadrant Four and has three butts through which it excretes said silk and no eyes. “You’re looking as pleased as ever,” he says, spreading all four of his silver arms and beaming at me with his shiny teeth.
I grunt, upper lip lifting in a snarl.
When his smile holds, my shoulders slump forward, defeated. “What do you want?”
He doesn’t answer right away, but the massive silver orbs of his eyes shift left then right. His lips stutter as he spots an Oroshi captain walking by with its guard — a female. The Oroshi spots Tevbarannos, too, and gives him a subtle wave of one tentacle when it passes by — a look I would never win, not even from a creature that is all green-grey tentacles and nothing else. Herannathon, another pirate I admire, once told me it’s because I don’t smile and look around at everyone like I’m one wrong word away from committing a brutal, bloody murder, but I know what I look like.
Like a rock.
But ohr what I look like. We Lemoran are the best species in these eight quadrants. Decent, hardworking beings with honor woven into our rocky outer skin, and threaded through the pink blood we bleed. Not like these honorless pirates with their four arms and their bright smiles, and even less like these gaudy quadrant one morons with their one thousand princes and one billion princesses, and even less like the spineless Oroshi who are, well, quite literally spineless.
“What are you doing here? Last time I saw Rhorkanterannu, he told me that he’d rather be caught in an Oosa orgy than ever come back to Quadrant One.”
“Better an Oosa orgy than an Oroshi one.” Tevbarannos shudders and continues watching the Oroshi until it disappears up the stairs and out of view.
I try to picture what coupling with an Oroshi would be like and immediately retreat from the image. “I suppose you’re right,” I huff.
Tevbarannos laughs easily. All the ohring pirates laugh easily… “I’m actually looking for someone.”
When he doesn’t say more, I roll my eyes. “Good luck with that.” I stomp off, but he shouts after me, “You haven’t seen any Egama here have you?”
“Of course I have! They’re giants — bigger than I am. They’re hard to miss.” I wave him off and stomp towards the stairs, but he rushes after me and shocks the ohr out of me when he grips my bicep and tries to lead me somewhere to the left. “What are you doing?” I remain rooted and glare at him with a frown.
He cocks his head and gives me a pleading look, but when I still don’t budge, his look turns frustrated. He crosses his lower arms over his chest, and then his upper ones on top of those. “You are a stubborn brute. Herannathon warned me about that.”
I’m curious as to where Herannathon is, but the words damn themselves behind my teeth. My horns are aching again, more noticeably now. I growl and start to walk away, up the stairs where I can see Oosa rolling back and forth over the floor — they’re gelatinous-looking blue beings and I hate conversing with them. They always want to have sex with each other mid-interaction! Realizing they’re blocking almost the entire landing above me, my shoulders sink even more.
Suddenly, Tevbarannos is there, politely asking the Oosa to move out of his way. He catches my gaze when he has a path cleared and ushers me forward — not towards the divan with Quadrant Five warriors spread across it engaged in a gambling round of mok-biz with some Hypha delegates — bright orange creatures that walk on two feet, have two hands, and are made remarkable by the set of fins that shoot out of their heads in every direction, and that are the second most populous species of Lemora — but toward a less crowded hallway.
Here, he catches my elbow with his lower left hand and drops his voice to a whisper, “I just wanted to tell you that if you stick around, you’ll run into Igmora and Tyto.” He makes a face that I can’t interpret, but when his eyes shift nervously, I frown.
“What do I care? They’re flesh peddlers. We don’t have any occasion to trade with them. Goodbye.”
“Wait.” His grip tightens on my arm. “Have you seen her?”
“Her who?”
“Their newest…acquisition.” He has the decency to look embarrassed and drop his gaze as he says that.
Meanwhile, my face is burning for entirely different reasons and all of them come down to rage. “You mean the sex female they’re looking to sell? Nob! I told you already, I don’t deal in females. On Lemora we males believe in coming by our females the old fashioned way. Through hard-earned courtship!”
I start away again, until he says so quietly I almost miss it, “I heard that the female they have for sale is a human.” Human…I haven’t heard of that species before and I thought I’d heard of everything.
And though I don’t give an ohring ohr, a tight pressure fills my horns, all the way through to the tip before rattling back down and settling in with a dull, aching throb. It’s an ache which only gets worse as I turn away. It makes me wonder something ridiculous! Incredulous! Outlandish. Ha-ha-worthy…
If maybe, just this once, I should give this bawdy pirate my attention and actually listen to him.
“Human? What’s human?” I say despite my best effort.
Tevbarannos closes the space between us and speaks like he’s divulging sacred rites. “A new species class, they’re under Voraxian and Niahhorru protection. They are…um…very…I mean the females…they’re um…soft?”
I wait. He doesn’t say more. “Are you asking me?” I shout at him. The nerve! Pagh!
“Centare,” he says, shaking his head. “I mean.” The hard plates that cover portions of his chest lift — a Niahhorru sign of embarrassment. I throw my hands in the air, remembering that even though I am the youngest clan chief, I’m still several rotations older than Tevbarannos. He’s the youngest pirate I’ve met that counts among Rhorkanterannu’s inner circle. Rhorkanterannu is the pirate king of Kor, though I’d never dare say that to his face. Pirates look down on kings. Absently, I wonder what they think of clan chiefs and less-than-quietly harrumph.
“Out with it, Tevbarannos!” I roar.
“I mean they’re um…the females!” He jumps, like someone has just come up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He even turns around, but there’s no one there. His upper shoulders shrug and he exhales, looking exhausted. He rubs his forehead and runs his upper right hand over the top of his head, where his tines shoot up like thick tusks.
He has a whole row of them studding his spine and though his are not as thick as some of the pirates’ I’ve seen, they’re certainly thick enough to impale someone if they were to run into his back on accident. I sigh whimsically… I wish I had tusks. I wish I had tusks covering every inch of me!
“Look. I’m only here alone because there aren’t that many pirates Rhorkanterannu trusts to go looking for humans. They’re delicate and very, um…easy to want to keep? Especially the females. Though some of our Niahhorru females are going mad for the human males, too. They’re a very alluring species. I’m here searching for a human female. Herannathon is looking for her, actually, but we haven’t seen Herannathon in two dozen solars.”
“He’s missing?” That is something of significance. I almost feel…sorry. I liked running into him at these stupid ohring functions, though I’d never tell him as much.
“He isn’t missing, so much as he’s searching. We’ve gotten reports from an Eshmiri friend that he’s tailing an Egama battle pod.”
“An Eshmiri friend?” I balk, jowls quivering with the force of my surprise. “What do you mean an Eshmiri friend? Do you mean fiend? Is that what you meant to say?”
Tevbarannos laughs though it doesn’t look like he meant to. He shakes his head and smiles at me with all of his pearly teeth. “Centare, Raingar. A friend. Her name is Ashmara and she’s a friend of the Niahhorru and the humans. She caught his signal some time back and, according to her, he’s been waiting for the Egama to dock somewhere to gather supplies, but they haven’t. They should be running out of food soon, so he’s hopeful, but he hasn’t been able to latch on mid-flight. They seem to know he’s on their trail at all times and are consistently evading him.”
“Well, good for all of them, including your Ashmara friend, whoever he is,” I say, trying to get him to correct his previous insinuation that this Ashmara character is female. All Eshmiri are male. Everyone knows that.
I start to stomp off again, but Tevbarannos holds me back, the ungrateful whelp. “Rhorkanterannu sent me to try to help, just in case the Egama thought to stop here to trade. But then we heard that Igmora and Tyto had a female of their own and we wondered if maybe Herannathon made a mistake and the trade was conducted already.”
“Well, why don’t you just ask them! I don’t understand what you’re telling me all this for. I don’t deal with flesh peddlers, pirates, hoomains, or any of the lot! I am Lemoran!”
The male groans at me, like I’m the insufferable one. He rubs one hand down his face and blocks me with two when I try to shove past him. “I’m coming to you because I want to know if they’ve extended you an invitation to see the female. They are asking for a pouch of kintarr just to view her and since you hold the most kintarr here, I was hoping you could tell me if she matched Herannathon’s human’s description.”
My jaw opens, then shuts. I can nearly hear it creaking like a rusted hinge. On the one hand, I’m appalled by the idea of flesh peddlers — even ones so renown as Igmora and Tyto who spend rotations grooming their acquisitions to become the most exotic and skilled pleasurers in the galaxy — but I’m almost, just a little, offended that Igmora hasn’t come to me.
She knows that if she wants kintarr, there is no one here to match our supply. Does she think even less of us Lemoran chiefs than she does Rhorkanterannu’s youngest pirates?
I frown and narrow my eyes. “You were approached?”
Tevbarannos nods so guilelessly it makes me immediately annoyed because it’s impossible to be annoyed with him. “By Igmora herself?”
He nods again.
I frown harder. “And you made an offer,” I say. It is not a question, but an assumption.
“Centare, I told you. We’re not looking for any human. We’re looking for a human. A female. She has light brown skin…almost like helos? But not quite so bright. I’m not sure. It’s white but not white and pink but not pink. Do you know what I mean?”
“Nob!” I growl, huffing between my lips, “How should I know? I haven’t been approached!”
Tevbarannos’s eyes widen. “Truly? But…but…but,” he stammers.
“Out with it!”
“You hold the most kintarr!”
And I feel myself heat slightly. My horns…they’re feeling even more tender than they did. They haven’t felt tender like this since…ever. Since never. Even when I was a youngling and my horns were growing in, my head hurt, but my horns didn’t hurt at all. Now it’s the ohring horn part that hurts. That rough exterior could penetrate the flesh of any living creature, Oosa included — we’re their greatest adversaries in the gladiator’s arena of Evernor. But pained as they are like this, I couldn’t attack a Walrey! I hate it. Just like I hate this whole ohring conversation. Hate it! And I hate that Igmora didn’t approach me most of all.
“I…”
Tevbarannos cuts me off. “Word is that the current bid for the female is already up to four.”
“Four pouches of kintarr for the female?” I huff, somewhat assuaged. “That doesn’t seem like so much for a female cultivated by those degenerate…”
“Centare, centare.” He shakes all four of his hands at me before slowly repeating, as if speaking to a youngling, “Four tuns, Raingar. Tuns, not pouches.”
I choke on my own saliva. Tevbarannos is clapping on my back with two of his hands, which doesn’t help matters much. The only thing that would help me regain my breath — and my sanity — is knowing that he made some kind of horrible joke and that he didn’t just offer the two most despicable creatures on this side of the quadrants enough kintarr crystals to power a small city for a rotation. An amount that would take my entire clan half a rotation to mine.
“Shrov,” he curses in Meero.
“Ohr,” I curse in Lemoran, still choking. “Who offered them four tuns? Who offered them that much? Don’t tell me it was a pirate. I know you don’t have that much kintarr or access to it and I swear to the stars, if you or Rhorkanterannu try to rob me, I’ll rip off two of your arms. The bottom two.”
He chuckles. “If Rhorkanterannu wanted to rob you, you’d never know he was there.”
“I don’t doubt it.” I straighten up, clutching his shoulder as a support so hard he winces before prying my fingers off his skin. “That still doesn’t explain who has access to that quantity and from where they acquired it.”
“I saw her approach the Egama and the Oosa as well.”
“I thought that the Egama sold the female?”
“We aren’t sure.”
“But if they did, why would they bid on her?”
He shakes his head. “Egama mercenaries might have sold her. These Egama here are of the federation.”
“Hm,” I scowl, then rub my chin thoughtfully — though what I really want, is to rub my horns. “They wouldn’t have anything to do with one another.”
“Precisely.”
I stare down the hall, thinking back to the Egama giants I saw in the ballroom lurking over the other guests. One-eyed giants with moss-colored skin, they stand twice as tall as I do.
“I pity the female,” I grumble, then I remember that I don’t deal in flesh and I don’t negotiate and I’d never pay that price for anything, unless, maybe, it comes in a honey jar. I start away from him again. As I do, the base of my horns don’t just heat now, they itch. It’s like the shell encasing them is contracting bit by bit, trying to smash them to pieces.
Tevbarannos blinks at me with his enormous silver eyes, looking young and innocent and confused, more than anything else. “You aren’t even curious to see what she looks like?”
“Nob.”
“Herannathon was right. You’re a real bore, you know that?” He says with a grin.
It irks me, making me want to grin, too. “Pagh!” I shout, shrugging his grip off of my arm. “I don’t have time for this…”
But as I turn to walk out of the tunnel, I’m arrested by the sight of the last being I’d have wanted to see among all the beings in these great and miserable cosmos. Why oh why did they have to elect me to be clan chief? Gorman would have done a fine job!
“Raingar.” The sound of my name in that voice I’ve heard before makes me cringe. I turn down the hall, only to be halted by Tevbarannos blocking the way.
“Move,” I shout at him.
He just stares past me in frustration. “Igmora,” he says and for a few moments — the most painful of my life and that has nothing to do with my horns’ sudden itchiness — we dance around one another, neither moving the respective direction we’d hoped.
My shoulders slump forward before electricity radiates up my spine at the gentle press of treacherously soft fingers against my bare arm j
ust below the arm hole of my sleeveless tunic. My shoulders roll back, double time. My rough skin sizzles under her touch. She knows how to touch a male. How to manipulate. It’s what they do, Igmora and her scaled mate.
“Igmora,” I say stonily, turning to see the female with bright orange skin. Some say she’s part-Hypha part-Voraxian, but I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know is that she’s orange and about as gentle as a whip. She stands slightly shorter than I do, but is waif-thin and covered in a slick fabric that catches light and turns it all manner of color depending on the way she moves. It attracts the eye, but I don’t dare look anywhere but into hers. She sees everything. She knows what males like. But I don’t like anything that can’t be found on Lemora.
I hate everything.
But I like my rock. My rock is nice and the people on it, solid.
She rolls her eyes, the color of pitch, so oily and black. Her gaze flashes to Tevbarannos. She slinks past me, slides her other hand over his shoulder and pulls away from me in the same fluid motion. “Don’t worry, I’m not here for you. I come with some news, Tevbarannos. For a small price, I’d be willing to give you a viewing. It won’t be as…intimate as the viewings some of the bidders will receive, but I’d be willing to let you have a look to confirm your…” She casts a dismissive glance in my direction before pulling Tevbarannos past me and dropping her tone so that I can no longer hear it. She has his attention — all of it — and then she…they both…she…she…
She turns her back on me.
I…I am not a particularly proud male, but I don’t like that. I hate it. And I do something unexpected. Instead of keeping silent and continuing my hunt for the exit, I shout, “A decent male prefers his female strong and salt of the earth! Not a fragile pet that he had to pay an obscene amount of kintarr for!”
“Alright, Raingar,” she says without looking over her shoulder at me. “I am aware of your feelings on the matter. You don’t need to worry about receiving an invitation from myself or my mate. I wouldn’t dare dishonor your Lemoran sensibilities.”
“You…I…pagh!”
“The exit is down the main hall to the right. I know that’s what you’re looking for, anyway. Goodbye, Raingar. Good luck with your…negotiations.” She glances at me over her shoulder and offers a smile that’s either menacing or filled with humor. With her, it’s hard to tell the difference.
Taken to Lemora Page 2
