Bride of the Forbidden Alien (Survivor Brides of Tajss #5)

Chapter 1

SERA

Six ration tokens. Five portions.

I stare at the shallow clay tray and count again, because hunger makes a liar out of the eyes.

One twist of dried meat wrapped in reed fiber.

Two bitter cave roots, scrubbed clean but still smelling of dirt.

A palmful of gray seed mash pressed into a leaf.

A strip of smoked hide-meat tough enough to chew for an hour if someone has the patience.

Five portions. Six tokens.

The math doesn’t change just because I hate it. Someone goes without.

The ration chamber is quiet except for the scrape of charcoal on slate.

The room sits in the depths of the City, far below the killing glare above.

No lamps burn this late after sunrise. Instead, thin shafts of reflected daylight spill through angled cuts in the ceiling, pale and dusty by the time they reach the counting tables.

The City has no power. Only stone. Shadow. Hoarded stores of precious water. Old tunnels that remember cool better than we do. And rules. Always rules.

Move before the suns climb. Rest when the heat turns vicious. Speak only when silence will not do. Do not eat more because fear makes you hungry. Do not ask for what cannot be given.

I think about my group. The people I’m responsible for.

Mira, old enough that her fingers shake when she holds a water cup.

Tal, only twelve or thirteen and too thin already.

Jessa, nursing an infant though her own body has nothing left to spare.

Anik, who lost two toes in an accident. And Orin, who has the fever spreading through the city, claiming most of those who catch it. And me.

Six people and only five portions.

Beyond the arch, there are more bodies than there were a week ago.

The newcomers. Other humans. Other survivors.

I wish they were a welcome addition. They arrived with travois full of supplies and weapons, but they also brought wounded and more children.

And the desperate hope travelers carry when they believe somewhere else might save them.

Though they brought supplies, it’s not enough. Not nearly enough. By the time Rosalind’s people staggered into the outer shade of the city, what they carried was less than what they needed. It’s not a condemnation of them. It’s worse. It’s arithmetic.

Emon leans on the counting table, bracing his hands against the stone. He’s City like me, narrow from years of hunger. Like most men, he keeps his hair cut close to avoid heat. Sweat shines at his temples but doesn’t fall. Most of us learn young how to hold still enough that sweat stays, cooling.

“There should be six,” I say.

“There should be sixteen more from the newcomers’ second pack line,” Emon says.

“That pack line never made it.”

“I know,” he says, with nothing but resignation in his voice, which makes it worse.

From the corridor comes a low murmur. The newcomers have not learned our silence yet. They whisper while waiting. Shift their weight. Ask questions no one wants to answer.

“They said there were stores here.”

“Quiet.”

“We gave them what we had.”

“And what we had wasn’t enough.”

“My brother died carrying those packs.”

“So did mine.”

The silence after that is thin enough to cut with a knife. There’s nothing I can offer to comfort them, so I keep my eyes on the tray. The City leaders counted what entered the gates. The newcomers’ Council counted what left the valley camp. Both numbers are true, and neither number feeds anyone.

Two groups of survivors share the City’s shade now. Those of us who have endured here by obeying scarcity, and those who crossed death to reach us, led by Rosalind and the others who carry authority like a blade they haven’t decided where to point.

Even though I can understand both sides, that doesn’t create food. I touch the smallest cave root, then slide one ration token back across the table. Emon looks at it.

“No.” His eyes jerk up to meet mine as he shakes his head.

“It’s mine.”

“I know whose it is,” he says, gritting his teeth.

“Then take it.”

“You ran upper cistern paths before dawn,” he says, jaw flexing.

“And?”

“You have lower corridor duty until second dim.”

“I know my duties.”

“If you don’t eat, you fall. If you fall, someone else carries your route. We lose more than one portion.”

I press the token flat beneath two fingers.

“I won’t fall.”

“Everyone says that before they do.”

Behind me, someone coughs. A child, by the sound.

The cough is dry enough that every adult in the chamber pretends not to hear it.

I push the token farther across the table.

Emon stares for a long breath. Then, with the careful anger of a man who has no right to spend it, he takes the token and marks the slate.

My stomach cramps as if it understands before the rest of me does. Good. Pain means I’m still sharp enough to notice it.

I gather the portions into the shallow carry basket. Meat twist for Mira. Cave root for Tal. Seed mash for Jessa. Hide-meat for Orin. The other root for Anik.

My own name stays on the slate, unfed. I rub it away with the heel of my hand. Emon watches me do it.

“You can’t keep cutting yourself out of the count.”

I lift the basket. It’s lighter than it should be. Everything is lighter than it should be.

“Of course I can.”

I turn before he answers and step through the arch.

The corridor outside is cooler than the chamber, but only because it’s carved deeper and faces away from the suns.

The walls are old red stone veined with pale mineral lines, worn smooth where generations of hands have touched them for balance.

A curtain of woven reed hangs over the next passage to keep hot air from breathing down from the upper levels.

People stand in two uneven lines.

City survivors stand still, eyes lowered, hands folded or braced against the wall to conserve strength. Newcomers openly stare at the basket. Hungrily. I don’t blame them. They still look at food like wanting it might bring it closer.

A little boy near the arch watches my hands. His gaze flicks to the basket, then to the slate tucked under my arm. He knows. Children always see the missing things first. I give him a small shake of my head. Not a warning. A lesson.

Do not say what cannot be fixed.

He closes his mouth, understanding, and not asking the question. He’s learning.

I move down the corridor, measuring every step by heat cost, breath cost, hunger cost. The City curves around me in layers of stone and shadow.

Old chambers stacked beneath older chambers.

Cool pockets guarded like treasure. Somewhere above, the twin suns hammer the surface hard enough to blister skin.

Down here, survival lives in shade, ration marks, and the discipline not to ask for more.

We survive by becoming careful. Small. Quiet. Less. I learned that before I learned to read. My stomach cramps again, sharper this time. I breathe through it without slowing.

At the next bend, a newcomer woman stands nose-to-nose with one of the City guards, one arm wrapped around a bundle of patched cloth.

“My daughter needs water,” the woman says.

The guard keeps his voice low. “Everyone needs water.”

“She has fever.”

“So do sixteen others.”

“We lost our stores crossing the cursed desert.”

The guard’s face hardens. “And?”

I stop. The woman has the frantic brightness of someone ready to spend her last strength on fury. The guard looks tired enough to answer the same way. Both of them are sweating too much, which is wasteful and dangerous.

I step between them and lift the basket just enough for both to see it.

“Lower your voices.”

The woman’s eyes snap to mine. “My child is sick.”

“I heard you,” I say.

“Then help her.”

There it is. The terrible expectation newcomers bring with them. Help. As if the word itself contains hidden stores, extra water, a secret chamber of mercy beneath the stone.

I want to tell her there are no miracles left in the City. No endless pantry. No cool river sealed behind a door we have been too selfish to open. The City gives what it can, then gives less, then watches who survives the subtraction.

“South shade chamber. Third level down. Put her near the inner wall, not the cistern stones. They feel cooler, but the damp worsens the fever,” I say instead of recriminating, though part of me wants to.

The woman blinks, and the guard looks away.

“I’ll send water if there’s any left after the fever ward,” I say.

“If?” the woman whispers.

I do not soften the word. Softness is another lie.

“If.”

For one breath, she hates me, and I understand it. Then fear swallows the hate, and she clutches her child tighter. I walk away before she can thank me or curse me. Both cost breath.

By the time I reach the lower habitation, silver creeps along the edge of my vision. Not enough to matter. Not yet. I lean one shoulder against the wall for a single breath. Two. The stone holds a little cool from the night before, faint as a memory. Then I straighten before anyone sees.

I look at the basket with a fleeting hope that another portion somehow appeared out of nowhere. Dangerous thing, hope. Though I expect it, the basket still holds only five portions. Five is enough for five. That is the truth the City is built around.

I step into the crowded dimness of the lower level, carrying food for everyone but myself.

The lower habitation level is louder than it should be.

Not loud by any old measure. Not the way the market on the ship used to sound when I was small, before the crash. When supplies never crossed anyone’s mind. When plenty was all we knew. But loud for the City.

Too many bodies. Too many whispers. Too many small sounds people make when they are close to breaking.

The City absorbs sound the same way it absorbs heat, slowly, grudgingly, through layers of stone and shadow. Voices sink into the old red walls. Footsteps vanish against woven mats laid over cracked floors. Even crying becomes muffled down here, pressed flat by the weight of everything above.