by R. Cooper
Taji swallowed nervously. The tunnels were marvelous, but being in them, buried in so much rock, was alarming enough without learning they were also ancient.
“It is not Sha to fear,” Rinnah went on, “but it is difficult to look at offworlders and know the truth. It is also difficult to see these and realize that these people might have been as great as the Sha, and they still fell.”
A scoff left Taji without his conscious decision. “Yes, that is obvious in almost everything the Sha currently do. But the Sha have also had almost a Standard century to deal with it, and they are out of time.” He took his hand from the stone to gesture at it. “You want to see what happens when numbers and tech combine to eradicate something in their way, or do you want to go look at that pile of stones again? The I.P.T.C. is not the only group out there, and they have been surprisingly patient so far, maybe because this planet is so far from any of their other interests. But eventually they will find it more expedient to control you rather than simply trade with you, and by then it will not matter what Tsomyal tells them. Someone has to see reason, sooner not later. Someone smart, if you want to keep the Sha alive.”
Rinnah inhaled sharply. “You say we will not live as we are.”
“Is that what you hear? I am only a translator.” Taji crossed his arms, then uncrossed them so as not to be belligerent, then remembered every single word he’d just said.
Rinnah lowered one ear, but only for a moment. “And I am meant to be a scholar, but that is not where we are now.” She looked up, beyond Taji, probably to the Guards. “Today, I found you to be pleasant with your hurat.” She didn’t lower her voice. “I do not ask for intimacies, but have you always been so?”
“He is Trenne,” Taji said slowly, not sure what she was getting at. “If he was not how he is, I would not be here.”
She stared at him, for once harder to read than her brother. “Let us walk a little farther,” she answered at last. “Alone. Only for a moment, soldier,” Rinnah added, and Taji realized that was aimed at Nev, who must have scowled or tried to follow.
Rinnah turned and went along the tunnels with the ease of someone who could tell one identical path from another. A servant appeared at one corner and held still until they passed.
“You are happy?” Rinnah’s conversation was all over the place today and Taji was getting tired of walking and thinking in another language.
“Yes. Or, I would be in other circumstances. On another less stressful day.” He gestured vaguely to indicate the hunt.
Rinnah didn’t acknowledge that. “The hurat treats you well. If anything, he spoils you, which is as it should be. And yet—”
“More than you expect from him.” Taji was done walking. He lowered his voice since the Guards were probably not far behind. “I am far more likely to be mistreated by Nikay or…” He held back from saying the emperor’s name, but barely “Someone else, than by Trenne.”
Rinnah didn’t pretend not to understand him. “My brother’s life has been in danger since he took power.”
“My life has been nothing but danger for a while now,” Taji pointed out. “I understand that being something like emperor, someone separate from everyone else, someone other people want for the wrong reasons, can cause damage. But it does not excuse what he did—is doing. Not to you. Not to Talfa. Not to…not to Shyril Elii.”
Rinnah inhaled sharply. “Elii shehzha,” she corrected. Her voice shook.
Taji dismissed that. “The Koel, the other families here are in the same situation and will try anything to get out of it.” Taji froze, scared again as the possible implications for Rinnah, Talfa, and Taji himself played out in his mind. He was scared for anyone, really, who could end up a shehzha to further a political goal—or merely to survive. “How short can a shehzha bond be?” he wondered out loud. “If it was only for political or reproductive purposes? If there is barely any contact and no feeling before the bond is forced? It would not last as long? And it would not be as powerful?”
He looked up to a stunned expression Rinnah didn’t bother to hide. “You wish to end your bond?”
“No.” Taji shook his head firmly. Be a shehzha was what everyone had asked of Taji. But Trenne had added something else. Tea roiled in Taji’s stomach and threatened to come up. “Sometimes you have to be smart. Stay sharp. If something happens today… Talfa would be a good choice.” Taji considered it, then nodded. “Talfa would be safer. Harder to kill with impunity than a hurat. Still not a guarantee of safety. But if I had to—”
Rinnah stepped back against the wall to stare at Taji in amazement or horror. “Is that what the I.P.T.C. desires?”
“No. That is me thinking out loud and trying to choose an option that keeps me alive. That is what Trenne would want. Talfa does not want to be shehzha, not even temporarily. So we would have mutual needs. I think Talfa would understand that.”
“You must choose what is best in that moment.” Rinnah appeared to be picking her words carefully. “Even if it is not what you want.” She studied Taji intently. “Not even Mos would dare say that, although she might think it.”
Taji shook his head and tried to focus on this and not what Trenne was facing at this very moment. “Survival and the glory of the Sha could be different things. Which matters more to you? Is that what this is about? Or is that only because I am shehzha? Forgive me, but is that what you want? To be Rinnah shehzha?” Taji paused there as Rinnah tensed. “Your brother pretends to give you options, but if you do not pick the right one…”
“As you say.” Rinnah’s response was not an answer. But then she was silent, and that was.
Taji sagged back against one of the walls.
“The feast tonight,” Rinnah said, the previous conversation now over. “You will be there. You are accustomed to speaking truth but tonight, I would advise care. No one will be the way you are used to.”
That statement whirred through Taji’s already-frantic brain.
“Sha as they are.” He looked up. “They clean up and put on their sorias again, but they have tasted blood—that’s an old human expression.” He hoped it wasn’t literal now. “How much control do they lose?”
“Apologies.” It burst out of Rinnah with force as if she had been struggling to say it since his first day here. “Your Trenne is one of the hunters. Should he make it through the day, I will arrange for him to also feast with us. He should be near you tonight.” Rinnah stopped at the faint hum from her data device. She took it out to respond, then made a low vocalization, like a hum and a mournful sigh. “I must go. There was an injury.”
“May I come?” Taji was standing straight in an instant. “Who is it? Are they okay?”
Rinnah might not know what okay meant, but Taji’s worry was clear and he couldn’t be bothered to care about that. She merely paused to study him for another moment and then led the way out of the tunnels, moving as slowly as before to let him keep pace with her.
They reached the surface in time to see Koel Gia emerging from a flier, propped up by two servants. Gia’s expression was closed and tight, but it was the tear in the flesh of her leg and the dark, deep purplish blood gushing from it and smeared across the rest of her skin that stopped Taji cold.
Rinnah glanced at him, then turned to give him a longer look before a muffled sound of pain from Gia drew her forward. “Apologies,” Rinnah told Taji again, and hurried on, already calling for more servants.
Taji didn’t know the state of Shavian medicine, if it had been great once or if healing had never been as valued as bravery or cunning. He wondered how much pain Gia was in that she had to hide, and if she would get to keep her leg, and what the Sha would do to her if she didn’t. He watched her taken away, and then more servants emerge to scrub the trail of blood she’d left behind. They watched him in return, or maybe the soldiers with him, and probably couldn’t understand why a shehzha was out here.
Asking the servants what they thought of all this probably wouldn’t get him any answers,
nothing honest anyway. Not with the gray-clad presence behind him. The smell of blood was strong, wiping out the distant sea-spray scent and finally driving Taji back underground. Nev gave him a look that was almost worried, but stayed quiet as she once again flanked him, keeping in his sight at all times.
Taji wandered down corridors and through tunnels, pushing aside his discomfort and then pain at all the steps. He documented a few places where the carvings in the stone were deep but he couldn’t stay in one place long enough to do a more thorough study. If he went back to the surface, he could watch for whoever came in. If he went to his room, he could rest. But he didn’t want his mind to be still, so he moved.
Too many startled servants finally drove Taji out of one set of tunnels. Shehzha or not, more servants in another set of tunnels managed to block his path without touching him, forcing him to admit he was in their way and finally leave the tunnels altogether. He promptly got lost until one of the Imperial Guards hummed to get his attention before directing him to a wide corridor, brilliantly lit from above. This part of Laviias looked comparatively new, although the murals were either very old or were made to seem so.
No one wore sorias in the scenes depicted, though Taji had seen them in recreations of the Conquest. Either the murals were historically inaccurate or sorias might have been reintroduced semi-recently as a nod to the past. Nothing said panicking over the idea of IPTC more than the Sha nobility embracing a look from hundreds of years ago.
Inside the complex, Mos wore a soria, with long skirts beneath it. She looked up from her work when she noticed Taji and approached him hastily, glancing first to the Imperial Guards and then to Nev and finally back to him. “Taji shehzha, you have a concern? Do you need assistance?” They were in, he assumed, the hall where the feast would take place. If she was upset at not being allowed to hunt, it didn’t show.
“Do I have a concern?” Taji echoed in disbelief and one of Mos’s ears turned back and down in a way that seemed abashed.
“You are worried.” She looked down. Taji was favoring his real leg, even when standing still. “You should rest. It is,” her pause was delicate, “what your Trenne would prefer. And tonight will be strenuous.”
“The feast?” Taji jerked his head up to study the room. “Olea Rinnah said something similar.”
“The feast, yes.” Again, Mos hesitated. “But also…you should rest. Perhaps bathe and prepare yourself. Hunters are often excited when they return.”
Excited seemed an odd word, unless it had other connotations Taji was unaware of. From Mos’s weighted silence, he would assume it did.
His throat went dry. “Oh.”
All that repression released in one day—in a few hours, really. It must free and terrify them to feel that and then be expected to shove it down again. Taji imagined them a little ragged around the edges, burning hot and wide-eyed. Trenne, restless and cagey.
Taji had no right to that, but they assumed he did. He wanted it, suddenly and intensely, the same way he wanted Trenne gentle and slow.
“This was why the servants gave me curious looks?” he questioned, but didn’t wait for an answer. “You will let me know when he returns?”
Mos stared. “The moment they are all in sight.”
“Yes. Good. Thank you. I…” Taji spun around distractedly. “Then I should go and, uh, rest. Actually rest.”
He barely noticed where he was going or that the Imperial Guards had to interfere again to get him back to his room. He blinked at Nev a few times when she stopped him at the door and then inhaled sharply when he realized what she’d handed him. Without looking at it closely, Taji guessed the tube was lubricant of some kind, probably something medical but safe for personal use. He didn’t wonder why she’d been carrying it. It had probably originally been meant as something to embarrass him.
Nev and the two other Guards kept their gazes averted as he nodded again in thanks and then slipped inside his room and closed the door.
He’d needed something to take his mind off his anxiety over how the team was faring in those dark, dark woods. He hadn’t expected this.
But it would do.
Chapter Ten
AN EXCRUXIATINGLY long time later, Taji’s favorite servant rapped at his door and met his eyes in a moment of celebration that left Taji shaking in relief. Taji had been ready for her—ready for everyone and what they expected of him today—but not for bad news. He threw her a smile and then he was out the door, whether or not his Guards followed him.
He didn’t have robes like Larin’s shehzha, but he had one of Trenne’s shirts to hang down loosely over the cleanest pants he had. He hadn’t bothered with shoes and had a feeling this was noticed as he followed the girl impatiently shepherding him along.
The warmth from the floors vanished the moment they were above ground.
Returned hunters filled the landing area. Taji didn’t think a single one of them had been flown up here unless they’d been injured. All of them looked both weary and restless, large bodies heaving as they dragged or carried carcasses to waiting servants.
The ground was a bloody mess. The amount of meat was an appalling waste unless most of it was for the servants or surrounding population as well. Then again, Shavians expending that much energy probably required a lot of protein.
Taji got on his tiptoes to look through the crowd. Trenne could be injured. Some of the carcasses had tusks or horns that were intimidating even now. Several of the Shavians who turned to stare at Taji’s arrival were marked with dirt or scratches, forming bruises across their chests. Each of them had a death grip on their knife.
“The shehzha,” one of them said in surprise, and more hunters looked at Taji. They did not seem to see Nev and the Imperial Guards, black and gray statues on either side of him.
Taji held still, thinking of the predators now dead at the hands of the very people staring at him. Then Talfa came into view, slices on their legs, dried blood splashed up their arms to their elbows. Some of Talfa’s friends were behind them, all of them weary but alert. Talfa looked at Taji but almost absently, focused more on the arrival of Nadir and Rodian.
Any lingering modesty seemed to have been abandoned by the two humans in the sea of Shavians. Nadir had something furred and dead over his shoulders and a grin on his face. He appeared more exhausted than on edge, at least, at first glance. His grin was a little too wide. A show, then, and not for Taji. Nadir darted a look to Talfa and the others, and the two groups, separate but together, continued forward.
Alliances formed in crisis were often strange. Taji would ask about it later.
Rodian stayed close to Nadir. He was dirty or bruised but otherwise unscathed. Behind him, Lin had either been through a one-person war or deliberately rolled in dirt. She had a bloody knife in each hand. Taji took a second to wonder who she had taken the second knife from but already knew he wasn’t going to ask. They were probably dead, or injured and shamed. Either way, Lin was even less approachable than usual. She glanced at Taji with the same vague sort of interest Talfa had shown, but then her focus was on the space around Rodian and Nadir again. Her blood was up, and so were her protective instincts.
Nadir looked Taji up and down as he approached, then whistled appreciatively and obnoxiously. But he spoke in a whisper, and not in Anglisky or his middling ‘Asha. “We did all right. Don’t worry.” Then, in sign-gesture only, he added, “But don’t leave him. Not for a second.” Then he whistled again, flirting with Taji in a way that had to annoy already agitated Shavian nobility before he turned to bump shoulders with Nev, who bumped him back and told him his cock was waiting for him.
Taji looked out into the crowd, sparing a moment to realize both Talfa and Lin stood alone and separate to watch them, and that both had flat ears and openly unhappy expressions. Then he saw Trenne.
Taji didn’t notice or care what Trenne handed to several servants even if it was a prize for him. The Shavians who weren’t watching him were staring daggers at Trenne but
none of them went anywhere near him. Thin red lines crisscrossed Trenne’s upper arm, like a whipping branch had hit him or an animal with small claws had tried to take him down. His hair was mussed. Flecks of dirt spotted his face, shoulders, and part of the skin over his ribs. One thigh had been slashed deep enough over an old scar for blood to have dripped down to his ankle and then dried, then bled again as though the wound had been reopened. His feet were brown with mud or soil. So were the fingers on the hand holding his knife.
But he was breathing. Taji’s chest seized with his overwhelming relief and a whisper was all he could manage. “Trenne.”
Taji wasn’t ready. He’d thought he was. He’d dressed the part, and he’d prepared. But Trenne, who was bleeding, looked Taji over with hot, urgent concern and then flipped the knife in his hand to keep the length of the blade along his arm before moving swiftly and silently to close the distance between them. He stopped in front of Taji and looked him over again, sparing not a single glance for the Guards with him, or Nev, or Nadir or Rodian, wherever they had gone.
