Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Kanik
T he girl sat down in Zasen's favorite chair with his robe trying to swallow her body. Those impressively blue eyes of hers jumped between the three of us, and they were still much too big. Still, she looked a lot better clean. Sadly, the dark colors on her face hadn't all washed away - nor the bright pink of her sunburn - and I had a feeling the rest of her wasn't any better.
"We got you clothes," I tried to explain.
Beside me, Rymar grunted at my feeble attempt to be nice. "Kanik, she still doesn't understand you."
"But it's still nice to try," I insisted. "It shows we're at least acknowledging her."
"Dunno about that," Zasen said. "She seems to do pretty good with charades."
"And miming a conversation isn't as easy when it's about more than picking her up," I shot back.
"No?" Rymar asked, grabbing one of the dresses Jeera had begged, borrowed, and absconded with from every petite tailless woman she knew. "Watch this."
Unfolding the first one, he held it up so the girl could see. " Orin ?" he asked, turning it both ways, and then lifting it up to his own body.
When her brow creased, he laid the dress on the chair beside her, then picked up the next. Over and over, he showed off the dresses - four in total - and the whole time she watched him with suspicion in her eyes.
I couldn't help but chuckle at my friend. Zasen, on the other hand, had claimed the other chair and was simply sitting there with his fist pressed against his lips. When I glanced over, he looked up at me, clenched his jaw a little harder, then back at the girl.
That was when I realized his lips were too tight. He was trying not to laugh! Of course he was. Rymar was good at making a fool out of himself, but this whole game of pantomime was getting old quickly. If this girl was supposed to have information we could use, then we really needed to figure out how to communicate with her better.
My eyes immediately dropped to the book before her. "Zasen?" I asked. "Did you give her that?"
"Nope," he said. "She took it off the top shelf of my room."
"Mhm..."
Because the book was in English. It was a dead language, but one we still used for the sciences. Since that was the subject I taught, and middle school was the time when we began to dissect the English roots of most of our words, I was very familiar with it.
Then again, so was Zasen. He'd learned it when studying medicine as a young man. Back before he'd changed his profession to security. And yet, with his mother being a doctor and his sister serving as an emergency nurse, I was pretty sure he used it as much as I did. That was why he collected the ancient books.
But Rymar had moved on to the underthings we'd picked up from the market. The sizes might not be perfect, but Rymar swore he was good at guessing. Pulling out the first pair of panties, he held them up - and the girl's cheeks turned even more red!
Sucking in a breath, her eyes jumped over to Zasen. When he did nothing but raise a lazy brow, she snatched the panties from Rymar's hands and shoved them down in the chair beside her.
"She's embarrassed," I realized, grabbing the package of bras before Rymar could demonstrate those. "Guys, pre-teen girls don't like it either. They haven't yet realized men know all about these things, so they don't want us looking or even talking about them. Certainly not flaunting them in her face if she's going to be wearing them later!"
"But they're cute," Rymar said.
Zasen just flipped a hand. "So give her the packages and let her get dressed."
"Bathroom?" I asked.
He sighed heavily. "My room. It's the one she's going to be using."
"What if I want her in mine?" Rymar asked around a grin.
We both gave him a dirty look. His smile faded, but it didn't entirely disappear.
"My room's next to the bathroom," Zasen explained. "It's on the first floor, which means you two will still get privacy. And if I sleep on the couch, she won't be able to leave without waking me."
"Plus," Rymar added, "you do keep weird hours. Kanik will eventually need to get up for school."
"And you're up late at the bar," I pointed out. "Well, when you go in, you are."
"Benefits of owning the place," he bragged before pushing the rest of the panties at me. "So, get Orin dressed."
"Is that what we're calling her?" I asked.
Rymar simply shrugged. "It's the best I have."
"Or we could ask her." Looking over at the girl, I pointed at my chest. "Kanik." Then I turned my finger towards her.
She didn't give me a single word. Nope, the girl responded with a complete sentence of her strange sounds. Behind me, Zasen chuckled. Beside me, Rymar gloated.
"Orin it is then," I relented, picking up the package of bras before moving towards the girl to gather up her dresses. " Orin ?" And I canted my head for her to follow me.
She glanced at the other two men, but when they did nothing, she simply straightened the folds of the robe over her legs and rose gracefully. Demurely might be a better word. Still, when I headed up the hall, she shuffled after me on her poor, damaged feet.
Yet she paused at the threshold to the room. "You can get dressed in here," I said, laying the clothing out on Zasen's bed for her. "Oh, and the door locks, so if you're shy..."
Making my way over, I flipped the switch and jiggled the handle. Immediately, her face lit up as if she understood this part. That also earned me one of her tiny little smiles. Nodding to show I appreciated it, I shifted past her, but her fingers pressed my arm as I did, making me pause.
"Kanik?" she asked.
"Yes!" I breathed. "That's my name." I patted my chest. "Kanik."
Again, she smiled, but this time it was a little bigger. What she didn't do was offer her own name. So, stepping back, I gave her space to move, pleased when she entered the room and closed the door behind her. When the lock clicked, I wasn't surprised at all.
"So, she's got door locks," I bragged as I returned to the living room.
"Showed her that when she had her bath," Zasen explained, completely destroying the pride I'd been feeling. "Although I bet she's hungry."
"Oh, so you expect us to cook?" Rymar asked.
"Unless you want to wrap her feet again," Zasen said.
"I'll cook," I assured them.
"Sweet potatoes," Rymar said, heading into the kitchen with the clear intention of helping me. "That way there's at least one thing on the table we know she'll eat."
"Use the pheasant," Zasen called after us when I turned that way as well.
I murmured agreement and began collecting things. "You know," I said to Rymar, who had his head in the pantry to get those sweet potatoes. "We should use the actual table tonight."
"For dinner?" he asked.
I glanced back to find him giving me a confused look, so I nodded. "I can't think of anything more universal than eating together," I explained. "In many cultures of the past it was a sign of acceptance and respect to invite someone to share a table."
"Uh-huh." He turned with an armload of sweet potatoes. "Just so you know, you're a complete nerd."
Which made me laugh. "And you're not as dense as you like to pretend," I countered. "But don't worry, I won't ruin your reputation with childhood stories or anything. Mostly because she wouldn't understand a single one."
"Least there's that."
Then we got down to cooking. I fired up the oven, which required going outside to add wood chips to it. Rymar washed all of the vegetables he intended to make. Then the pair of us began to prepare the bird. When I suggested cutting the skin off so we didn't need to pluck it, he readily agreed.
Before we could finish that, the click of a locked door opening made everyone in the house stop. Rymar turned. I leaned back to see around him, and Orin stepped out from the hall with her hands clasped before her and her head down.
"Orin," Zasen greeted her, gesturing to the same chair she'd been in before. "Sit?"
Silently, she did, but as she passed, I saw her arms in the sleeveless dress she'd chosen. Dark splotches of blues and purples covered them, making me forget all about the pheasant as I quickly rinsed my hands and went to get a better look.
"Is she bruised?" I asked as I came out of the kitchen.
Zasen had made his way to the weapons closet. "Very. Are you shocked?"
"I didn't grab her that hard," I insisted. "I just picked her up."
"And I tackled her at least once." He pulled out a pair of clean bandage rolls and a jar of antiseptic ointment. "Omden slapped her, which probably explains her face."
"Do you think he really hit her that hard?"
Zasen shrugged. "Kanik, I don't know. It could be her translucent skin. It could be a Mole thing. None of us were too hard on her, but just look at her feet! Everything about her is more fragile than we expected."
"Yeah," I mumbled. "I just feel bad for her."
"Don't," he said. "She's a Mole."
I huffed at that and decided to use his words against him. "A Mole girl , Zasen. One who is currently confused, lost, and all alone. We just walked her miles from what might be the only home she's ever known, led her through a crowd screaming at her, and held her down while your mother treated her feet!" I huffed out a frustrated breath. "She can't understand what we're saying, but she sure as fuck gets the expressions and tone we use. And I don't care who you are. When everything you know has been ripped away, even the strongest people - even you - will crack a little, if not break completely."
He thought about that for a moment before nodding slowly. "Yeah. I know." Then he glanced back at the chair the girl was sitting in. "But she's still a Mole, Kanik. I still might have to kill her, so forgive me if I don't want to think about it too much, okay?"
"Okay," I relented, because he had a point. "Although, if you want her to trust you, you can't treat her like the enemy."
"I know."
"And the longer you're nice to her," I went on, "the harder it's going to be to hate what she is when you start figuring out who she is."
"I know ."
"So how are you going to handle this?" I asked.
He simply reached up to scrub at his face. "I'm going to call her Orin, remind myself she's a Mole, and keep in mind that Drozel might have a point."
"What? Which one?"
"This damsel in distress act could be just that. An act." He paused to clench his jaw, clearly annoyed. "She could be an assassin. She could be a spy."
"Her?" I scoffed.
"Her," he said. "Oh, she's probably not, but she could be one. She could be a weapon they designed to slip inside our defenses." He turned so we were both facing the back of the girl's chair. "Kanik, not all of those bruises on her are from us. Some of the ones on her face were there when she was chained out."
"So they beat her first?"
"Or," he countered, "she's been trained to ignore pain. Trained, Kanik. Exposed to it over and over until she can prevent her own reactions to it. That's what humans used to do to their special forces. They'd push them until they broke, then pick up the pieces and rebuild them into these amazing soldiers. Then they'd use them to slip into the places the main lines couldn't reach."
"Or," I countered, "she's a desperate woman who's lost, alone, and probably scared shitless."
"Yeah. Or that." He sighed. "But since I can't rule out either one, I have to keep both possibilities in mind. You should too."