Chapter 4 #2
Bolstered by how not terrible the chai was, Anandra tried the food in front of him. His first small bite was followed by a second, much larger one.
Soon, he was shoveling the food down his gullet as fast as it would go.
Gus was a little afraid he might choke if he didn’t slow down.
“Tell me about those men,” Gus said when Anandra had worked through the majority of his plate.
Anandra paused in the act of chewing. “You didn’t want to know earlier. What’s changed?”
“Everything.”
For starters, someone was using her organization in ways that it was never meant to be used.
Gus couldn’t tell him that, however. Not without losing the small amount of trust she’d built through food and a beverage meant to remind him of better times.
Anandra played with the handle of his mug as he stared at Gus. “You’re Tuann. Are you a wanderer like me?”
Gus started to answer then paused, considering. The definition of a wanderer was someone who existed without the protection of a House. In that sense, Gus fit. She and the rest of the forty-three walked this universe alone. Only their skills to protect them.
“You could say that,” Gus allowed.
Anandra seemed to find her answer reassuring, his expression relaxing. “Where’s your enclave?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Me neither,” Anandra admitted glumly. “Not anymore.”
To a person who’d been trained not to miss people when they were gone, his grief felt unfamiliar. Gus didn’t know what it was to mourn. She’d never had ties deep enough to miss someone nor did she have the luxury.
Now, seeing how broken Anandra was, she thought that might be a good thing.
“They came in droves,” Anandra whispered, a distant look in his eyes that said he was no longer entirely present.
He was back there. Witnessing the attack that upended his life and thrust him into a nightmare.
“They used strange weapons and knew things about our defenses that they never should have known.”
Gus hummed into her beverage. “Probably the work of a plant.”
It could explain how they breached the defenses of a wanderer’s enclave. No easy feat given how paranoid that group tended to be.
Seeing Anandra’s look of confusion, Gus lowered the mug and expanded.
“It’s a favorite tactic of the pirate clans infesting this sector.
They send in someone who looks harmless.
Someone you’d never suspect as a threat.
That person then gathers intel on the target, getting the lay of the land before passing that information back to the assault team waiting in the wings. ”
She was surprised a wanderer enclave fell for it though.
There had to be deeper things at play. Maybe the weapons Anandra mentioned. She also couldn’t discount the possibility of internal betrayal either.
The Tuann did love their grudges.
“There was a child,” Anandra reminisced.
“Human?”
Anandra shook his head. “Tuann.”
Gus’s hand clenched around the handle of her mug. The only sign of her distress. “You’re sure?”
Anandra didn’t seem to notice Gus’s tone as he nodded. “Very sure. My—mom—did the medical checkup.”
Gus noticed the way he stumbled over the word mom. Along with how quickly he recovered afterward.
The resiliency of children never failed to amaze her.
“Were you the only survivor?” Gus asked.
Anandra shook his head. “Me and two others.”
“Children too?”
Anandra’s nod made Gus silently curse. What the hell were the Tuann doing?
Over and over again, it had been pressed home how protective the Tuann were of their offspring.
Their desire to reconnect with the forty-three was at the center of the group’s current divide.
Even as removed from the others as Gus was, she’d heard the whispers.
Some were open to giving their former Houses a chance.
Others were happy with the status quo and wanted to keep their distance.
And yet there were three, maybe four, Tuann children running around the galaxy. Alone. Unprotected.
Was everything the Tuann said merely lip service? An attempt to pacify the children they’d failed?
“There were Tuann with the humans,” Anandra volunteered.
Gus’s gaze landed on Anandra’s, wanting to ask if he was sure, but she could see that he was.
“Would you recognize them if you saw them again?” Gus asked instead.
“I’ll never forget them. Their faces. Their eyes.”
The hatred in Anandra’s tone might have startled someone else. Someone who thought youth was an impediment. Who had never tasted that particular cocktail of grief and anger that was so familiar to every member of the forty-three.
Anandra may have been young, but he’d already been put through a crucible and come out the other side, if not intact, at least alive.
Gus wasn’t going to tell him everything would be okay. That forgiveness was divine.
Because it wasn’t. It was something someone told others to get them to stop inconveniencing them with their surplus of feelings.
Anger. Hatred. Both were sometimes necessary. They were what drove you to get up in the morning. To keep going when it was so much easier to just lay down and let the sorrow consume you.
Anandra was too young to have learned this lesson, but there was no going back. The loss of his enclave had warped him. It would shape his future. Good or bad.
“Good,” Gus said.
Because she had a feeling that she knew who the Tuann he’d encountered were.
“I’ll show you some photos later,” Gus added.
She had no idea how she’d get images of the forty-three, but she’d figure something out.
Whichever of her siblings had decided to fuck with her, they were going to die. Slowly. Painfully. If Gus didn’t make them experience half of the emotional turmoil Anandra had with the fall of his enclave, she would consider her time spent as the master’s favorite pet wasted.