CHAPTER SIX | Dalk
The last time I stood before this mountain, faced with these men, was just before they imprisoned me. The sun was hot and bright that day, too, illuminating the violence. I remembered standing here, bound, watching the way my black blood dripped from my chest wound onto this gleaming stone. That was right before I’d knocked over the nearest Deep Sky warrior with my tail.
And I’d earned myself a very sharp blow in response. I was forced down onto my knees, and then eventually dragged into a dark cave in the mountain with the other men. We were kept here for almost six full days.
Oh, we were fed all right, and the mountain healers tended our wounds.
But we were always bound. And I would have taken any bloody wound, or any slicing sword of hunger, over that. Days upon days of powerlessness under the dark mountain of some foreign Gahn.
Besides Taraken and Gahn Fallo, there were very few men that I had any patience for.
But Gahn Thaleo?
Gahn Thaleo was a man I truly loathed. I hated the cold, feigned blankness of his demeanour. The icy control he kept at all times over his anger and his power and his words. Men could say what foul things they would about my Gahn – and they did – but for better or worse, a male always knew where he stood with Gahn Fallo. He wore his emotions fierce as flames about him, his intentions – violent as they often were – spilled out into the air as words the moment they became thought in his head. One look into Gahn Fallo’s fearsome red sight stars gave a man truth, even if it was a truth that told him he was about to die.
A look into Gahn Thaleo’s sight stars gave a man nothing.
Or, if they gave anything, a man could be sure it was a lie.
Thaleo was a Gahn of silence and slowness and study. A male of constant calculation, one more interested in outmaneuvering his opponent than overpowering him head-on. I’d gained that impression of him quickly after our first unfriendly meeting. And my judgments against him had only been solidified when I heard of how he lured Gahn Errok here and engaged him in a battle of mountain honour called a taklok. Really, it was all a ruse. A clever, malevolent trick. A way to kill Gahn Errok inside the confines of Deep Sky culture without upsetting the alliance with the new women.
Of course, he had not killed the other Gahn. And the humans had learned of his duplicitousness.
And yet, here those very humans stood. About to give him pay-pur hearts that neither he nor his men could ever hope to deserve. A token of friendship, they’d called it. Of love.
“You did not make the heart for Gahn Thaleo, did you?” I suddenly snapped at Fiona, my fingers tightening on the shaft of my spear.
“No,” she said from behind me. “And Nasrin felt weird about making his, so I’m pretty sure Tilly did.”
Good.
“Hello, Gahn Thaleo. Warrek. God afternoon, everyone,” Valeria said to the six men who arrived before us. “We come bearing gifts!”
The Deep Sky Gahn wrenched his sight stars from Nasrin to Valeria. He had a long, deep scar from his scalp all the way down over his left eye and cutting deep into his left cheekbone. Though he seemed older than myself and his nemesis Gahn Errok, he was not an old man. And yet, he had a shock of white hair at the front, a bright streak erupting from where the scar met his scalp. It was not just his hair affected by the scarring, but his sight stars, too. The right eye’s sight stars were a bright, clear blue-green colour the same shade as the reflective stone beneath our claws. The sight stars of his left eye were paler and they moved a little more slowly than those in the other eye.
“Gifts?” The Gahn said, his voice very deep. “Are these gifts meant to make up for the fact that you have moved your settlement into Gahn Errok’s mountain without informing me?”
Valeria’s guarded smile faltered, then vanished.
“We haven’t moved the settlement,” she shot back instantly. “We’re still doing stuff in the caves in the neutral territory where the shuttle stays parked.”
“During the day,” Gahn Thaleo replied.
“Grim and I sleep there every night!” Valeria argued.
“But the others do not.”
Valeria could not immediately refute that. Because it was true.
This was exactly what I had warned Fiona about. I could tell, without him even needing to say it, that when Gahn Thaleo said “others” what he really meant was “unmated new women.” I doubted he gave a single frayed feather about the fact that Taylor and Tok, for example, were not sleeping at the original site of the settlement. Or Priya or Abby or Zuh-Tephanie.
But he wanted continued access to Tilly, Fiona, and Nasrin as potential mates for his men.
Or, I thought as Gahn Thaleo’s gaze sought Nasrin once again, his sight stars drawn to her as heavily and inevitably as a man’s feet were pulled back down to the ground after he jumped, for himself.
“Well,” Valeria began slowly, as if trying to choose her words very carefully, “Gahn Errok’s mountain has a lot of amenities that-”
“My mountain has amenities.”
Valeria let out a short puff of air through her nose. I was so focused on what was happening ahead, my hand hot on my spear, my other arm primed to grab a blade the instant it was necessary, that I almost missed it. Almost missed the way that Fiona got just a little closer to me. Not enough to touch. But enough to light my whole blasted back on fire with the sensation of her that murderously close.
My whole body sought her touch. I wanted to tip back, to bump myself against her.
I wanted to turn around, scoop her up, and run away with her back to Gahn Errok’s mountain. No, even further than that. Somewhere far enough from everyone and everything else that she’d never be able to tell me to go home again because by then it would be half a world away.
“Why don’t we go inside and hash this out,” Valeria finally said.
Gahn Thaleo said nothing in response. He merely moved aside and gestured with his tail towards the large crack that led into his mountain. I hissed low in my throat, something I was not conscious of doing until every set of Deep Sky sight stars slammed into me. More than one warrior pulled his bow from his chest.
I did not care if they aimed their puny projectile spears at me. Let the bite of their flying weapons rain down upon me – ha! I would show them what a real, zeelk-tipped Sea Sand spear could do.
But Fiona was behind me. And one of those skinny Deep Sky spears could perhaps make it through the shield of my body and into hers. Or, and this possibility made me near-dizzy with dread, she could duck out from behind my back at precisely the wrong moment. I knew her to be a very clever female.
But I also knew her to be curious. And stubborn.
She could reach out a hand or – cursed sands, her face – and get hit. Her little body would not take a blow like that the way mine would. Even with Lavrika’s – or Vrika’s – blood, she might not recover.
Thinking of Fiona getting wounded, maybe mortally so, made me feel like all my bones and guts had been peeled out of my body and were pinned to me like bloody clothing. My insides were on my outsides and I was more vulnerable than I’d ever been in my life. My hiss turned to a snarl and I started backing up, forcing Fiona along with me for a few stumbling steps. My hand shot behind me, not for a blade, but to hold her in place and to make sure she did not fall as we moved backwards.
I expected her to resist me, to fight me, to try to boldly step out around me.
But she did not. All she did was try to keep her small, shell-covered feet under her as I rapidly forced her into motion, and ask, her voice small and shivering with alarm, “Dalk, what is it? What are you doing?”
“I fear,” I growled, and then I faltered, because fear? Fear? I had not feared, let alone admitted to such a thing, since I was a cub. Maybe not since my father died, followed by my mother, and I was very young then.
But here I was. A full-grown male. Fearing that if I let Fiona (who was not even mine to fear for!) go into that mountain then she would not come back out again.
Perhaps I was not the only one with such thoughts. Zoren and Oxriel were now closing ranks around Tilly and Nasrin while Valeria tried to maintain peace.
“Dalk,” she snapped, pointing a small, clawless, and accusing finger at me as I retreated, “Cool it, would you? We are just going to talk. If you can’t maintain decorum among our allies then you can wait outside.”
“Absolutely not,” I hissed. I felt the shadow of the shuttle fall over Fiona and me and stopped walking backwards. If Fiona went in there then they could just try to keep me out. I would not be kept away, locked outside like some slobbering, sand-maddened irkdu waiting for the merciful cure of a spear through my head. These men were the new women’s allies but they were certainly not mine, not even by proxy, and I would have said that, too, only Fiona was speaking quietly from behind me now. So I forced my tongues into stillness so I could hear her.
“Dalk. It’s alright. You don’t have to go in there.”
“It is not myself I fear for!” I would have turned around to see her and to force her to look at me, but that meant turning my back on Gahn Thaleo and that was something I would not do.
“Alright,” Valeria said, raising her hands and no doubt sensing that she was losing authority over the situation. “We can chat out here for a bit. Let’s just move into the shade a little, shall we? I feel like we’ll all be a bit more calm outside.”
I doubted that Gahn Thaleo felt that way – he would probably spill seed into his loincloth at the thought of us all confined and under his control in his mountain – but he ultimately conceded, jerking his tail and following the others as they came to join Fiona and me. I planted my feet firmly upon the stone, not budging even a claw’s breadth. While Gahn Thaleo’s men had their bows in their hands she would remain behind me and I would not be swayed.
Oxriel and Zoren stood at my sides, and Tilly and Nasrin crowded in behind them, clustering around Fiona in a whispering huddle. Valeria and Grim stood in front of us.
“OK,” Valeria said, keeping her voice very neutral. “I can understand why having most of our party sleep in Gahn Errok’s mountain feels like... a breach of our alliance. You and Gahn Errok are both important allies to us despite whatever past grievances there have been.”
Gahn Thaleo did not look impressed by her words. But nor did he look particularly unimpressed, either. His face was hard as bone and twice as inscrutable, because even a bone could tell you things if you knew where to look.
“What is your proposed solution?” Valeria asked. “How about you tell us your ideal outcome of this scenario, and we’ll go from there.”
“The unmated new women sleep in my mountain,” Gahn Thaleo said instantly, his sight stars flicking to Zoren who stood in front of Nasrin before his attention returned to Valeria. “The rest of the party can remain in neutral territory or even remain with Gahn Errok if they so choose. That would be four new women and their mates in Gahn Errok’s mountain, plus you and Grim wherever you desire to spend your nights. That would give Gahn Errok a majority and he should be satisfied with that.”
“I highly doubt he’s going to see it that way,” Valeria said on a low sigh. I agreed with her. Gahn Errok would not want to relinquish anyone, let alone an unmated new woman who might be meant for one of his men. And his Gahnala was very good friends with Tilly, Fiona, and Nasrin. For her sake, I did not think he would let them go.
I would not either.
“We don’t agree to that!” came a feminine voice from behind me, not Fiona’s, but Nasrin’s.
It was a fascinating thing, watching the effect that voice had on the stone-like Thaleo. He’d exhibited no outward reactions to anything that had gone on thus far. But now, though small, there was no mistaking the sharp intake of breath through his nose, the twitch in the muscle of the scarred cheek, the way his sight stars looked like they wanted to burn a hole right through Zoren so he could see her.
When Gahn Thaleo answered, there was an odd, low, scraping quality to his voice that I had not ever heard from him before.
“Come out from behind there,” he said, and though he uttered it with the authority of a man who could send all his warriors forward to drag her out if he so chose, the command was nearly gentle.
Maybe it was not a command at all.
Nasrin was bold enough to do it, though I did not consider it wise when she moved into view.
“We’re not going to be split up,” Nasrin said. “That’s not how we do things.”
Gahn Thaleo regarded her for a long moment, then said, “That is not how we do things either. Tribe is everything.”
“Good,” Valeria said. “OK. I wasn’t going to agree to permanently splitting up the group that way, either.” She looked up at her mate Grim, then back at the others. “What about if we split our time between mountains. Spend a week in Gahn Errok’s mountain, then a week here? Alternate.”
She seemed to be saying it more to the new women, to gauge their reactions, but it was Gahn Thaleo who responded, still staring at Nasrin.
“What is a week?”
“Oh. Seven days,” Valeria answered. “But it can be a different length of time. That’s just what first came to mind.”
“I don’t want to spend too long away from Gahn Errok’s,” Fiona piped up from behind me. “I’ll miss baby Keir too much. If we’re gone a month we’re going to miss so much! And Stephanie’s trying to get pregnant, so that could be happening soon.”
Tilly and Nasrin both seemed to agree with this.
“With the shuttle, we’ll always be able to go back during the day at anytime,” Valeria said. “The nighttime base for sleeping would be here. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Gahn Thaleo repeated softly, and I could not tell if he was agreeing and trying to emphasize Valeria’s point, or if there was an offended sort of disbelief in him that made him echo the words almost without meaning to.
“I mean... We’ve stayed here before and it was fine,” Tilly said from behind Oxriel. “Other than the whole Errok taklok thing. But otherwise... What do you think, Nasrin? If you don’t want to, we’ll just say no.”
“I don’t love that we’re being shifted around based on the fact that we three don’t have big alien boyfriends yet,” Nasrin muttered, crossing her arms. “That we’re being told where to go just because we might end up as somebody’s mate. Back in the Sea Sands, the other tribes relocated to be near us, not the other way around.”
“But that isn’t exactly fair, either!” And that was Fiona now, speaking with an intensity of emotion that surprised me. She was usually quite smiley and cheery around her human friends.
Her voice quieted then, as if she didn’t want Gahn Thaleo to hear. Or maybe even me. But it retained that intensity. “These guys... They have no hope of ever having a family of their own. The Sea Sand men all abandoned their homes just to follow their Gahns and maybe, just maybe, get a chance at the kind of life they’ve been longing for! I didn’t think about it enough at the time. But now I’m not so sure having them all get forced into that move was the best course of action. I’m glad we didn’t get split up, don’t get me wrong. It’s just... I don’t know. There are no truly fair options for everyone.”
“At least they’re still on the same damn planet,” Nasrin muttered. Now in the shade of the shuttle, she took off her eye-shells and her green and black sight stars were shadowed. She gave a sigh, her dark brows drawing together. She rubbed at her forehead, as if to force the muscles there to relax. “But when you put it like that... I do see what you’re saying. I know when my parents left Iran for Australia before I was born, they left a lot of themselves behind. Sometimes they would tell me about it, and it sounded so fucking beautiful. But sometimes it was just too hard.”
She returned her eye-shells to her face, but I did not miss the glimmer of moisture in her eyes before they were hidden. The phenomenon of water leaking from the eyes of new women was still largely a mystery to me so I did not bother trying to understand what it might mean.
“A week in each mountain,” Nasrin said loudly. “I’ll agree to that for the alliance if my friends are alright with it too.”
Tilly agreed right away. Fiona hesitated, and my guts snarled in an ugly sort of way when she finally acquiesced as well.
“They will not be unaccompanied,” I interjected, slamming the butt of my spear upon the stone. “Where they go, we go.”
Where she goes, I go.
Gahn Thaleo gave me that unnervingly blank yet calculating stare.
“Agreed,” he growled. I supposed he realized, just as I did, that though his tribe was a small one, we Sea Sand males would still be outnumbered if anything were to happen. Though I knew a Sea Sand man had to count for at least two Deep Sky men. It had taken two of his guards to drag me into this mountain, after all.
I jolted when something touched my back. The stroke of a tiny hand between blades.
Fiona.
I would have turned around and told her not to distract me so, not to unspool my very brain with nothing but the tiny touch of her hand while I was trying to negotiate with a Gahn as poisonous as Thaleo. But I did not get a chance, because that very Gahn spoke yet again.
“I have another condition for our alliance,” he said.
Valeria looked taken aback. She exchanged looks with her big red mate, then with Nasrin, before facing Gahn Thaleo once more.
“Alright. Hit me.”
Oh, this was entertaining indeed. Because once again, a new woman had managed to find a chink in his hard exterior, get her claws into it, and crack it wide. Gahn Thaleo balked.
Valeria’s comment had not translated well. I felt myself puffing with pride that I recognized the meaning of the phrase from time I’d spent around Fiona and the others.
“I understand you are a warrior,” Gahn Thaleo said slowly, regaining some of his composure, “but it is not our way to hit a female.”
“That is not what it means,” I could not stop myself from snapping at him, seething with vicious delight at his confusion. The hand at my back pressed a little more firmly now. A warning.
“He’s right,” Valeria said, whipping her head back and forth in that distinctly human way. “It just means... Like, lay it on me.”
Gahn Thaleo paused. His men glanced at each other.
Ha! Fools. They think they can house the new women? They cannot even understand their strange phrases!
It was much easier to indulge in the feeling of superiority than it was to examine the uncomfortable fact that I, too, often had these moments of confusion with the new women. I remembered, rather unwillingly, the moment earlier today when Fiona had told me that other word for breasts and I’d just about knocked my own head from my shoulders by crashing into a boulder in response.
I still maintain that it was the boulder’s fault for being in my way.
“What should I lay upon you?” Gahn Thaleo finally grunted. He glanced at the cloaks the new women wore, then up at the sun. “Surely you cannot be cold.”
Oh, how he hated this. I could see it in the tight vibration of his sight stars. He felt uncertain. In that uncertainty, he was weak. And he knew that we could see it.
“No. Sorry,” Valeria said quickly. “It just means, ‘tell me.’ Tell me your other condition.”
“Ah.” Gahn Thaleo paused again, and in that pause I was sure that there was thunder in his head. “The other condition is that if any of my men get a mate vision for one of the new women left back in the Sea Sands, then she will journey to the Deep Sky to join him.”
Valeria’s jaw tightened.
“I don’t think we can agree to that,” she said. “We wouldn’t do that for Gahn Errok when he saw Stephanie in his mate vision. And we won’t do it for you or one of your men, either. If one of your men sees one of the women at the settlement in his mate vision, he’s welcome to travel to the Sea Sands to meet her and then they can make their decisions from there. If she wants to come back here, that’s fine. If she doesn’t... Well, they’ll have to figure that out on their own. But...”
There was a hesitation, like she wasn’t sure how he would take the next part. But Valeria was a bold new woman, a commander in her own right, and she was not easily cowed by any male. “But I should tell you that there aren’t many single human women left at the Sea Sand settlement.”
“How many are there?” Gahn Thaleo asked with what had to be feigned calm.
“Three,” Valeria told him. “Miriam, Catalina, and Sloane.”
The Deep Sky warriors flanking Gahn Thaleo looked at each other uneasily. Three was not a very large number. And even with the unmated new women here, it only became five.
Five, not six, because I had already decided to kill any other male who tried to claim Fiona, so she did not count. As far as I was concerned, she was unavailable. Even if she was not mine.
Even if she told me she’d never kiss me again.
Blast. How that blackened my insides.
It’s been far too long since I’ve hit another male.
“Fine,” Gahn Thaleo said abruptly. “We are in agreement on all terms.” His sight stars found Nasrin once again. She met that gaze steadily, if tensely, from behind her eye-shells, as Gahn Thaleo uttered his final command. “The first set of seven days in my mountain begins now.”