Taji From Beyond the Rings

by R. Cooper

  “What are you guys even doing here?” he demanded instead, shooting a glare to Nadir. Nadir was in his blacks too, gun at his hip and his hair spiked up with that stiffening oil he’d found in a market a month or so ago and decided he loved. His ears and big nose were pierced with small clay or enamel beads, the kind that wouldn’t glint in the light and weren’t immediately noticeable, which was the only reason they had slipped past IPTC regulations on “distracting” jewelry while in uniform. “How did you find me?”

  “We followed the signs of trouble,” Nadir tossed back while continuing to stand guard at the door. “Also, there’s a tracker in your DD.”

  Taji narrowed his eyes.

  “You did not answer your messages, which we agreed to when you made plans to go out.” Trenne should have been tearing Taji a new one, not practically sighing in what Taji’s drunken brain insisted was fond despair. “We knew you might need a ride. You do not like to walk.”

  Taji couldn’t tell if Trenne was implying laziness—true, or weakness—also true. “What were the messages about?” Taji asked, avoiding the issue completely.

  Trenne’s posture shifted, his ears more alert and tense. “Ambassador Tsomyal asked for you. They apologize for interrupting your evening.”

  Taji dropped his head back to moan quietly at the ceiling. Pointing out that he was drunk wouldn’t do him any good. The night had been a disaster from start to finish, so he shouldn’t have been surprised. But it would have been nice to get away, to not think, and to be admired—or at least desired—for a moment or two.

  Instead, it was this, forcing Trenne to come to his rescue, and returning to his room in the ambassador’s home for language lessons and research and another fucking night alone.

  “Taji,” Trenne called to him, soft enough to make Taji sigh. “Would you like to be off the floor?”

  Sometimes Taji thought Trenne’s gentleness was his way of apologizing for Taji’s life being what it was, as if it was Trenne’s fault. It was IPTC’s fault, mainly. It wasn’t as though Taji didn’t look at Trenne and the other soldiers and recognize people who’d made the same choices he had.

  “No,” he decided aloud, somewhat petulantly. “That would mean I have to sober up and go back to captivity.” And it would mean trying to stand on his bad leg, which may or may not happen. But he accepted Trenne’s hand when Trenne held it out, and braced himself for Trenne’s palm beneath his fingers, Trenne’s fingers closing around his wrist.

  Then Trenne pulled Taji to his feet with no effort. His hands went to Taji’s waist to steady him, long enough to leave Taji itching with awareness of how big those hands were, how many months it had been since anyone had touched him. Then Trenne stepped away. He scooped up Taji’s bag and slung it over his shoulder before pausing.

  A moment later, he appeared in front of Taji with a tiny cup in his hands. Taji blinked at it, and then at him. Trenne wasn’t smiling so Taji grinned for him, lunging at the drink and tossing it back.

  “You’re supposed to water that shit down, Mouth!” Nadir warned in his husky voice, as though Taji didn’t know that. Taji shrugged at him, then licked his lips before smiling up at Trenne.

  It was painful how much he wanted to pet Trenne’s ears. Those ears were, may all the deities help him, adorable and soft-looking. Taji had learned at a very young age not to pet alien wildlife, but somehow his brain didn’t quite recognize the threat of annoying a soldier and literal giant like Trenne.

  He was also drunk.

  He became aware of his staring, and shook his head a few times to clear it before starting to move. “Right. Ambassador. No night off for Taji,” he mumbled, and took a step.

  He bumped into Trenne, stumbled back, felt his bad leg give out, and nearly slipped on a cushion before he was caught by two large hands. He exhaled shakily in relief, only to scream in surprise as he was lifted into the air a second later.

  Distantly, he could hear Nadir’s crack of laughter and tried to level a glare at him, but things were spinning and his stomach took a moment to catch up to his vision. When the world was upright again, Taji was being held against Trenne’s chest as Trenne carried him out of the restaurant. One arm was under his knees, the other was around his chest, holding Taji securely.

  Taji almost hummed in satisfaction for the heat of a body pressed close and the midye-scented haze over everything but Trenne himself. Trenne’s hold was firm but gentle. Taji could find words for those things in over ten languages and none of them would have compared to how it actually felt.

  In the morning, remembering this was going to hurt. But for now, Taji was flushed and frozen except for the frantic beat of his heart. Drunk, it was so much harder to ignore both his feelings and how impossible they were. That was why he didn’t drink much, normally—well, that, and a lack of company. Drinking always seemed like a good idea at the time, a way to forget his life for a while, but now he was painfully aware of everything. He was warm and being held by Trenne. In the morning, this would definitely hurt, but at least Taji would be able to hide it away again and go on with his work.

  Without a spoken word from his sergeant major, Nadir took point to lead them outside. He scanned the area around them, then motioned them on, as though this was some sort of dramatic rescue and this absurd situation was actually rife with danger.

  Taji wanted to glance at Trenne but not even with too many cups of midye in him would he risk meeting Trenne’s eyes now. Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow, when he was calm and in control of himself once again. He had been denying himself for so long that it was routine, or should have been. But tonight there was wine, and Taji was very foolish.

  Outside, where there should have been a small but busy lane filled with traffic, he saw the crimson tunics of the Civil Guard, their vehicles in the distance. In the street directly outside the restaurant was the discreetly armored flier the ambassador used. Standing at each end were soldiers in IPTC black.

  Taji avoided their eyes for as long as he could, but that left him with a view of Trenne’s chest, and the patch at his upper arm with Cyrillic and Anglisky IPTC initials on a background of stars. Above that was the bared skin of Trenne’s throat, and his comm, designed to cuff to the outside of his ear almost like a translator since he couldn’t use a small earbud as humans could.

  With more going on outside, Trenne’s ears moved back and forth as if seeking out different sounds. Taji stared, eyes and face burning, then lowered his head as if that would block out the sight and the knowledge of where he was.

  Taji was a poor kid working for IPTC. He never got a lot of chances for anything. His research on the moon had been lonely but somewhat satisfying. Then he’d been brought down here and into that house, where he wasn’t a soldier and he wasn’t an ambassador. He wasn’t Shavian or a human trader. He wasn’t anything or anyone’s, and he’d wanted—

  This. Except this wasn’t his.

  Four cups of midye was too much.

  Taji inhaled and said, as clearly as he could, “I just wanted to finish my research. I wanted to get laid without an interplanetary incident. I didn’t want them, but I—I can walk, Trenne.” It felt like lying when he didn’t want to walk. “I know I limp, but I didn’t ask for the help.”

  Trenne stopped, a few feet from the ambassador’s armored flier. They had chosen the least discreet but fastest way to come get Taji. The flier took up most of the street, halting all traffic. Some members of the Civil Guard formed a perimeter, keeping people back.

  Taji studied various, distant Sha faces, how carefully blank they were until they saw him, or Trenne, or maybe how silly Taji must look in Trenne’s arms. Then shock broke through their public façades and they forgot themselves enough to stare. Taji must be quite the spectacle, too drunk to be trusted to walk. He looked away from them as Trenne lowered him to his feet and let go.

  “Apologies.” The apology from the ever-respectful Sergeant Major Trenne was not unexpected. “I should not have acted without your
permission.”

  “It’s fine.” Taji nodded quickly to show Trenne he understood and they didn’t need to talk about it. Trenne put a hand on his shoulder, making Taji realize first that he was listing to the side, and then that dozens of Shavians were still watching. Trenne’s hand was gone before Taji had time to pretend he didn’t like it.

  He opened the door to the flier, and then Nadir was in front of Taji, guiding Taji inside with mocking little whistles. “I’m surprised you can even stand up right now, Mouth,” Nadir observed, practically chortling as he pulled Taji forward and let him fall onto the small cushioned bench.

  Off-duty, Nadir often wore perfume but there was no trace of it now. The flier interior smelled like stale sweat and something metallic. Nadir sat opposite Taji in one of the single seats and then stocky, bronze-haired Nev slipped in after him. They adjusted their weapons and didn’t waste time clipping themselves to the safety harnesses for the short trip across the city.

  Taji got himself upright and didn’t bother to glower. That only happened when he reached for his bag and remembered Trenne had it. Trenne, who didn’t climb into the passenger compartment with them. He shut and sealed the door behind him, then climbed into the front to sit next to Ledo, their pilot.

  Outside Taji’s window, the crowd was still there, staring at the I.P.T.C. flier with expressions he couldn’t interpret. The street was awash in the grayish violet of night, with spots of amber from the nearest orbs. The founders of the empire had built that lighting system and it had lasted even after their fall from real power, fed every day by the sun and the reflected light from the rings around the planet like nearly everything else. The Shavian capital did not have much crime, something Taji attributed to all that light and the clean streets of white stone.

  He watched a member of the Civil Guard shove someone back into the crowd and reminded himself forcefully of Trenne’s words, that it was not their place to question. He turned from the window as the flier’s engine began to purr.

  “Four fucking cups?” Nev demanded from her seat. Her seat, tonight and most nights, but occasionally his, although Nev would answer to either pronoun and had, for reasons Nev had never explained, put N/A on IPTC’s identification forms instead of any of the other options. “Nice, Mouth. If you hurl on me, you’ll pay.”

  With effort, Taji focused on her and the tiny medic patch on her sleeve that was at odds with her attitude. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

  He caught the look and quick Anglisky sign-gesture Nev shot Nadir and slouched down into his seat. The world was dizzying enough without dealing with takeoff and two soldiers who found him amusing. The flier was smooth as it left the ground, but there was something about on-planet flights that always left Taji a little uneasy. Even midye couldn’t fully shake the feeling. He shoved his hands under his thighs and waited until they had risen over the tops of the nearest buildings before he looked out the windows again.

  In the distance, he glimpsed a mass of lights of all different colors and a hint of curling smoke. Then the flier turned, and he was looking out onto the Shavian capital, bathed in the glow of the Mirsan rings.

  Shavian design—at least, in the capital, and in this middle class district—involved buildings of several stories, spread out like trees rising from the ground, with alternating balconies overflowing with plant life. Homes and businesses overlapped in stone versions of the tiny bonsai that seemed to be a universal hobby among IPTC ship captains.

  Taji had noticed that the very first time he’d been flown into the capital. The difference between the districts was striking from the air, although even the gray stone and decrepit buildings of the Riverside and the scattered buildings on the outskirts of the city had short trees and rows of makeshift gardens to bring them some color. The Fires, the section of the city filled with factories and the workshops of artisans, had a strip of kayo trees that ran through it, tiny splashes of yellow and red in front of every building.

  He’d thought it was beautiful even before he’d gotten a glimpse of the Garden District, where he had foolishly been expecting fields of flowers and manicured topiaries in green—humans always planted green things where they lived, as if they needed to see the color to be happy.

  But plants were not always green here, and garden, to Shavians, meant trees. Perhaps not everywhere. There were farmland and swamps and deserts on Mirsa. But here, the word itself seemed to signify trees or what Taji, who was no botanist, was calling trees.

  Trees taller than some of the buildings. Trees with branches so wide they had been incorporated into the architecture of the earliest homes. The noble families, the rich, lived in massive estates in the brown and gold shadows beneath those vast canopies. Their gardens were like orchards, small plants for vegetables as much a part of the scenery as the different trees above them.

  Leaves tipped with fuchsia and red, flowers that became fruit or medicine, spilling over high fences into the next estate until one of the gardeners trimmed it back or trained it to grow in another direction, the way their ancestors had probably done. It might all appear natural, but everything was cultivated to look that way. There was life in the Gardens, on a scale that had left Taji speechless after months on a terraformed moon. The sight and scent of life, the air perfumed year-round in the temperate weather of the capital.

  The feast for the senses did not fade over time, although tonight Taji didn’t look out the window as they approached the edge of the district, and the small estate given to the ambassador and their staff for the duration of their stay.

  Taji shut his eyes, his body tired but his mind racing with new words, and the memory of the plain white streets he had walked through to escape the Gardens, and the crowds impassively watching IPTC in action.

  “Okay, what’s wrong with the Mouth?” Nev asked Nadir, suspiciously loud. “Can’t handle his liquor?”

  Taji looked over. Nadir stared back at him, stroking his chin as if pondering his answer. Being on-duty meant Nadir was free of the paints and shimmers he sometimes wore. He liked to be pretty, Taji had heard him explain, and had guessed, considering some of Nadir’s word choices, that he was originally from a region dominated by the Deshta. The Deshta had gender identifiers that were often linked to profession. In that respect, they could be quite rigid. Getting away from societies with restrictive rules was one of the common reasons people joined IPTC—at least, in Taji’s limited observations. If Nadir had stayed on his homeworld, he might have had, or been forced to have, a different gender marker. But his answer on IPTC’s forms was the same as Taji’s, and that was really all IPTC was concerned with as long as he could do his job.

  Nadir’s dark eyes glinted, and Taji tensed before he heard the answer. “Our boy got cockblocked by the ambassador.”

  “Ouch.” Nev nudged Taji’s leg with her boot. “Too bad, Mouth. Maybe next time you’ll get a proper night off.” It was impossible to tell from her flat tone if she was sincere. Taji liked to think so. Nev was from a moon where spoken Anglisky was a second language. But this was also the first time she’d ever attempted to joke with him. She frowned. “He’s not responding. What happened in that bar?”

  “Restaurant,” Taji corrected her, then shrugged. “Or a kind of a pub. Where people slowly get drunk but pretend they aren’t. It’s probably something to do with the nobles and the value they place on self-control, and the middle classes are trying to emulate them.”

  “There he is.” Nadir stretched to kick Taji’s leg as well, lightly, although still hard enough to feel through the synthetic skin over the prosthetics. Taji was being touched more tonight than he had been in months. One begrudging bridal carry and two kicks to the shin. He was on a roll.

  “Do Shavians not touch?” he wondered while letting his head loll against the back of the seat. He idly considered the cut on his palm, which had stopped bleeding. “Or is that only behind closed doors? Is it hidden, like how they drink? Part of that public control thing they love so much? One must be Sha at all t
imes when in the public eye, and possibly even out of it.”

  “Sha,” he repeated softly. “They’re obsessed with it, being perceived as what they already are, as if not being Sha is the greatest offense. Which is…I’m not here to judge the culture. But sometimes you want to see beyond it.” He sighed. “Or beneath it.”

  “Ah, the wine’s slowed his brain down. He’s still in there.” Nadir’s grin slashed across his face.

  Nev snorted. “Don’t think the ambassador’s going to get much work out of him tonight. Why didn’t he stop at three glasses?”

  Taji’s gaze flew to Trenne, who turned to face the front at the same moment. Taji focused back on Nev. “Because it’s my fucking night off,” he told her while a slow burn consumed him from the inside out. He had to force himself to look at the two in the compartment with him because his emotions were probably all over his face, or on his sleeve, as the expression used to go. It was very un-Sha of him.

  Wild, the Shavians had called him. As if that was true. As if it was something they wanted.