Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Under my spines
Shohari
I QUESTIONED everything I’d been taught.
I knew I was staring. I knew I was causing a scene. I wanted to run, to leave this planet and the twofold pain it inflicted on me.
My eyes roved over and over the trio who looked so much like my brother my heart ached. The healthy trio with bright eyes and energy ready to fight. The trio Garrison and Paiata were talking to.
They shared Airida’s taller, more narrow build, his lean ear ridges, his more slender headspines, and even the unusual bumps between them.
On two of them, they could even have been the nubs of horns.
But their muscles were defined, strong, vital.
No trace of illness. No trace of weakness or fatigue.
I pushed myself off the wall I’d been slumped against. “I have to get out of here. Do you remember the way back to the speeder bay?”
Muzati gave me a look, brows raised, lips quirked, but dropped it as she clasped my arm. “I think so. Come on. I’ll comm Paiata on the way.”
She rented us a small speeder, and before long, we were back within the familiar walls of the Dorimisa.
It was too quiet. I told myself it was because Paiata wasn’t here, even though he was the quietest member of the crew.
“What are we doing, Captain?” Muzati said.
“Waiting for Paiata to join us so we can leave.”
“Uh huh.”
The hiss of the drinks machine triggered temporary white noise in my brain, but the smell of chrya brought everything straight back.
“Garrison was going to buy me a mug of fresh chrya,” I heard myself saying. “The fresh stuff is always better.”
Muzati returned to the machine, one cocked hip against the counter as she drank. “He still can, you know.” One of her legs bounced exorbitantly, and I could only imagine how hard it was for her to hold back from one of her effusive verbiages.
“I can’t do it, Muzi.” I tried to close my mouth, to stem the tide that threatened to flood the empty room, but I was beyond control.
“It was bad enough having to leave him in the first place. But now this? Those people?” I wouldn’t think on the logical possibilities.
“No matter who they are, those strangers can’t help Airida. ”
“Okay.” The heel of her boot practically vibrated on the locker door.
Okay? “Why aren’t you arguing with me?”
“Because you don’t need me spouting off about what I think, Sho.”
I was spoiling for a fight she wasn’t giving me, and I answered the angry buzz of my wrist-comm with the frustration I felt. “Where are you?”
“I’m still in town, Captain,” Paiata said.
“Why aren’t you on your way back? I gave you an order.”
“And I’m disobeying. You need to come back.”
“What the skyk? Paiata, you get your sorry arse into a speeder and back here now. I am done with this planet and everything on it!” My shout rang out in the silence that followed, and as Paiata stared at me, I felt his determination through the small holoscreen.
“Sorry, Shohari. Can’t do that.”
The empty screen stared back at me before winking out into nothing.
My jaw dropped open. “He skykking closed on me.”
Muzati crossed her arms across her chest and took a deep breath. “Look, Cap, I’m no Paiata, so I’m just gonna come out with it. Is this about the shaa’ith, or is it about Garrison?”
My feet shifted on the floor. “Obviously the… those people. The human has a new home. There’s nothing to discuss.”
“If you say so.” She twisted a tool in and out of her headspines. “Don’t you think it’s worth talking with them? They were willing to talk, you know. That’s what Paiata and Garrison were doing.”
With a sigh, she pushed off the counter and faced me. “You’re always saying you want information, but at the first sign of finding out something big, new, and probably skykking important, you stick your arse to it and run back to the ship?”
All my muscles tensed. “That’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not. You’re not being fair to yourself because the captain I know doesn’t run away. I don’t want you to make a decision you’ll regret, and neither does Paiata.” Her voice softened. “I know it’s scary, Sho. But not talking to them doesn’t make any sense.”
I threw back my head and roared at the ceiling, as though the air vents could take my angry breath and recycle it into something more helpful.
They couldn’t. I schooled my features and rose to stand. “I skykking hate you both right now, you know that?”
Muzati didn’t flinch, didn’t growl, just drained her mug and set it on the counter with a clink. “We forgive you. Just get in the speeder.”
Halfway through the forest, she must have reached her limit for keeping silence.
“It’s not just about them, Cap.” She ignored my warning growl.
“So while we’re here… Ask Garrison to stay, Sho.
Did you see how miserable he was? The two little humans were all excited, but he looked like a soldier who’d been asked to guard the conveniences after a sick keppli took a massive shit. ”
A puff of laughter broke from me, even if I choked the rest down. “Easy to say when you think you can’t bond with a human. It’s bad enough knowing I’ll be mated off to some Orithian I’ll hate for the rest of my life. I can’t risk being soulbound before that happens too.”
Muzati’s mouth dropped open. She stared at me, unblinking.
Kheh, I’d found a way to make her lose her words.
My eyes lingered on my dusty station boots. “He makes my bones tingle, Muzi. I can’t do it. And it’s beside the point because now I have all this shaa’ith skykkery to confuse matters.” The new word was strange on my tongue and created more questions than it gave answers.
Muzati cleared her throat with a strangled cough. “One thing at a time then, Sho. We’re here.”
At the speeder corral, the three strangers looked as pissed as I felt.
Let’s get this over with.
“I am sorry for staring. It is not what you think.” My voice was little more than a croak, and I took a gulping breath. “I am from Orith, but I am not like them. I have a brother who looks just like you, and I don’t know what it means.”
Once, I did not speak of Airida to anyone. These days, apparently I needed to tell everyone, even surly strangers.
“Your friends say he’s on your planet.” The angry, accusing one was the spokesperson.
He had the same kind of eyes, I realised.
Airida shared our crystalline orbs, but instead of being solid, his smaller shimmering circles were surrounded by the palest blue, much like Garrison’s brown was surrounded by white.
Where Airida’s crystals were purple like mine, the angry one’s eyes glistened in light gold.
“Yes. But he has—” I closed my mouth with a clack. “My parents believe he has a genetic condition,” I said stiffly, still not accepting what my eyes were telling me, what their name was telling me, and not wanting to cause further outrage.
The group burst into sharp-edged laughter.
“You could say that,” muttered one.
“Please forgive my ignorance. You do not appear to have the same health concerns as him, but you look so similar. Like…” I struggled for the right words, but I didn’t have any. “Like kri’ith, but not.”
The leader bristled again, but one of his companions put a hand on his forearm and stepped forward. “We are shaa’ith.” She waited for the implication of the name to hit me, but my brain didn’t want to comprehend, much as when I’d first heard it from Paiata an hour ago.
I urged myself to take in the more orange shade to their chests, their somewhat more slender build, the jutting angle of their noses. Their features so familiar and yet so strange.
Here, away from the setting of my parents’ house, on different faces to my brother’s, the similarities with the shaa were more obvious and the name they gave themselves logical.
“There are not many of us, but enough for us to be our own people,” the female shaa’ith said. “Is he your brother by birth?”
I let the words filter through the confusion and denial, and tilted my head.
“Then welcome, sister,” the spokesperson said, his voice tight. “My name is Tokoran. We have much to talk about, including your brother’s safety. Come with us.”
I let them lead us to a homely cantina just off the marketplace—a taverna, he called it.
My head spun with possibilities. My brother did not have a genetic condition. He was part shaa. How can this be?
Airida was the image of our father in his kri’ith features, so it couldn’t be that our mother had mated with another male—which meant one or both of them must carry shaa genes.
Did they know? It was unthinkable.
While my parents were cruel enough to have lied about a medical condition, I wasn’t sure that was the case. Were they in denial or trying to find an easier, more palatable rationale?
Adrenaline flooded my body, as though knowing there was action I could take—action I should take—and I thrummed with the need to know everything so I could do something.
The female shaa’ith, Daiytak, ordered food for us, and I picked at the spiced, roasted meat as I talked.
Information tumbled out of me in a jumbled mix while our new companions listened.
“Most shaa’ith end up in Orithian colonies,” Tokoran said when I’d finished. “Your parents are unusual to care enough to keep him at home.”
“They’re not,” I spat. “They hate what he is. They only keep him around to keep me in line.” The truth tasted no less bitter on my tongue than it had four days ago. “He takes medication to manage his condition, but it leaves him tired and weak.” I paused. “He doesn’t need medication, does he?”
“No.”
“They don’t let him out,” I said, chest sinking. “Outside of the household, only the doctor knows he exists.”
They nodded, expressions terse.
“I’ve wanted to rescue him for years but I don’t know how. I’ve been saving up credits and hoping the solution will present itself, or I can work out how to do it. But as yet, I haven’t found a way. I don’t think there is one.”
A tired smile spread across Daiytak’s pouty lips. “He won’t be the first shaa’ith rescued from Orith, nor will he be the last, I expect.”
Hope bubbled up in my chest. “How?”
I had to get Airida off-world. Now I knew the truth, the urgency clamoured at me, beating a relentless pulse in my veins. I’d amassed more than enough credits to finance a rescue mission; the rest of the funds I’d been saving were towards his ongoing care—which he might not need after all.
This entire time, I’d been hoping to find some information that would give me leverage, that would put my parents on the back foot, and it had been under my nose all along.
If wider Orithian society knew they had a hybrid son?
“I have to save him,” I said. “Tell me how it can be done.”
WE TALKED FOR for hours. The small humans offered to help, but there was little they could do, so they rose to leave—presumably to their accommodations; I didn’t care. The female gave Garrison a gentle, knowing smile, and I didn’t dare hope what it meant.
He hadn’t moved from my side since we’d gotten here, despite how we’d left things. Because he promised to help me get my brother out. Maybe today just delayed the pain of losing him—and would make it that much stronger when it happened.
That wasn’t my primary concern.
As the shaa’ith—shaa’ith, by all the gods—left, Garrison squeezed my thigh. “We’ll get him out, sweetheart. And I’m not going anywhere until he’s safe. If you can suffer my company a little longer.”
He joked, but his forced smile betrayed—what? Worry I’d send him away?
I couldn’t if I tried. “It’s okay, cargo, you can stay.”
It was one thing to leave him on a planet he was supposed to be going to anyway, to protect both him and my soul. It was another thing entirely to tell him to leave when we’d already agreed this was the only situation in which he could stay.
I exhaled in strained relief. I didn’t have the strength to keep him at arm’s length when he was right here and not letting me go.
Gods knew, I didn’t want him to.
Having him with me felt right. The way his arm fitted round me.
The way he took time to understand me. Wanted to support me in this dangerous mission.
Didn’t care that we were two very different species.
I was weak, but I’d let him hold me all night if he wanted to.
After years of holding everything at a distance, he was under my spines, and it terrified me.
As long as he didn’t get into my bones too. If this went wrong, I’d be bound to a life of pain.
But, said the tiny, young voice inside, what if it goes right? What if it’s okay to hope?