CHAPTER TWENTY
XEL
“I’m sorry I was rude to you before,” Rohinavon said, the instant my master was out of the house.
"It's not your fault that you’re here. It’s just that I worked so hard to find somewhere to go, and I spent all the money I had on the smuggler, and it was a shock to think that this might not be somewhere safe after all. ”
I didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed that my previous master had not been a good man, and I was currently having some very mixed feelings about that.
And some very mixed feelings about Rohinavon, as well.
I’d never given any great consideration to what a Vangravian female might be like, but nonetheless, Rohinavon was quite startling.
“You care about him very much, don’t you? ” I asked. “Your son, I mean.”
“Yes, I do.” Then she took note of my frown, and matched it with a scowl of her own. “Does that bother you? Do you think I shouldn’t care about a male child?”
This entire week – ever since my master had died – had been a long and arduous venture as I tried to figure out who I was and what was happening and what was expected of me.
Seeing the tiny creature in her pouch – barely even big enough to be called a baby – I felt a growing understanding about why I’d been so angry about Rose giving birth to her calf.
Because for a few moments, I’d felt an equal fury about Rohinavon’s child.
“We have a thumbit in the barn,” I told Rohinavon.
A moment after I’d said it, I considered that she might not know what that was.
If she didn’t know anything about food from other planets, it wasn’t likely she would know about their wildlife either.
“A thumbit is a farm animal. They walk on four legs and can carry packs for migrating people. One of them gave birth to a calf a couple of days ago.”
Rohinavon waited, and I was grateful that she wasn’t impatient.
I was already having enough trouble figuring out what I was trying to say.
“I was very angry when the calf was born. And then I was very angry when you threatened my master back in the barn. But not because I was worried about his safety,” I went on, already knowing she would be jumping to the wrong conclusion.
She seemed to view my loyalty to my master with derision, rather than respect.
“I was angry because you’re willing to put your own life at risk to protect your son. ”
“Why shouldn’t I?” she challenged me. “Do you think it’s inappropriate that I want to protect him?”
I was silent for a moment, breathing slowly and deeply to try and quiet the raging thoughts in my head.
“No,” I said eventually. “It’s entirely appropriate for a mother to protect her child.
For a thumbit to protect her calf. But it makes me angry because…
” I felt my hands trembling, and clasped them together in my lap.
“Because no one ever wanted to protect me.”
My gaze was fixed on the floor, shame and embarrassment and grief and anger all warring for space in my head.
Why was her child, this helpless little scrap of flimsy arms and legs, any different from the child I had once been?
Why had the woman who birthed me not cared even half as much as Rohinavon clearly did?
I’d spent the early years of my life working as hard as I could to please my trainers, and when I’d succeeded, I’d been rewarded.
Rewarded, but never loved. And then I’d been shipped off to meet my master – a man whom my trainers had assured me would love me, but Mr Ronson never had.
I wasn’t even sure he’d appreciated me. He’d ordered me to work, and ordered me to take his cock, and told me I was a good boy for doing both. But love? I didn’t think so.
And then I’d been sent here, to a new master who didn’t want me, and didn’t understand me… and why the fuck was Rohinavon’s son so very different and special? Why should he have what I never had?
“I want…” Rohinavon began, but then cut herself off.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m here,” she tried again.
“I want to change… everything. Every year, there are millions more children being born into a corrupt system, being forced to grow up in a dichotomy of elitist power or unrepentant slavery. I want that to stop. I want…” She paused again, her brow furrowed in concentration.
“Who’s Aiden?” she demanded suddenly. “Cole said he was a friend, but he seems awfully insistent about Aiden coming here, and he’s apparently coming in a shuttle, or a hill-jumper, or some other very fast aircraft, which a normal civilian would not have access to.
Not on Vangal, at least. Are things so different here? ”
I spent a few seconds weighing up the pros and cons of answering her. “No,” I said a moment later. “Not so different.”
“So who is he? And first and foremost, is he going to cause me problems?”
That was a harder question to answer. I knew relatively little about Aiden, since I’d only spent a couple of hours with him.
But what I did know was that Aiden had brought me here, to my new master, and said master so far didn’t understand me and refused to sleep with me.
But at the same time, he ate his meals with me, and invited me to spend time with him, and let me adopt pets to live in the house with us.
It was a difficult thing to judge on only three days’ experience, but the situation was slowly but surely improving.
Back at the hotel, Aiden had let Kathy join our discussion, and he’d taken her concerns about my safety seriously, and Kade had been allowed to speak his mind.
On the whole, that was a very odd thing for a dimari, but since my bond with my master had been broken, I was re-evaluating a lot of the things I’d been taught to believe in, including the idea that a dimari should not have opinions of their own.
“I don’t know Aiden well,” I admitted to Rohinavon. “But everything I’ve seen of him so far points to a man who tries to be honourable and respectful. As for who he is… He works for the military, making sure all the dimari on Rendol 4 are being looked after properly.”
Rohinavon rose from her seat, a look of fury on her face. “Your master has invited the military here to control me? To arrest me?”
“No,” I corrected her, remaining both calm and seated. “He’s coming to help you. I firmly believe that. They both have good intentions, even if they don’t always know what the best course of action is.”
“If the Alliance Parliament finds out about my son, we could both end up dead.”
I considered that. “According to what you said earlier, you’ve roused the anger of the entire Vangravian species. Or the female half of it, at least. So you don’t just need a place to hide. If you’re going to survive this, you’re going to need some powerful allies.”
Rohinavon shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “This was all so much simpler in my head.”
The sound of muffled voices outside the house got both of our attention.
Our time was almost up. “Sit down,” I advised her.
“And listen to what they have to say. I don’t believe they’ll treat you with any kind of flippancy.
At very worst, they’ll let you leave here peacefully and find another planet to live on.
But I honestly think we’ll be able to do far better for you than that. ”
With a sour look on her face, Rohinavon sat down, just in time for the front door to open.
A heavy silence fell on the house, and I tried to imagine Aiden and Kade standing in the doorway, bracing themselves to meet this woman.
With such a mess of politics involved, this was going to be a tense meeting.
Soft footsteps came our way, then my master stepped into the kitchen. “Rohinavon, this is Aiden Hill,” he introduced him. “And Kade, his dimari.”
Aiden came through the doorway, his expression resolutely blank.
“Hello,” he said, eschewing any of the normal formalities that would come with meeting an important stranger.
But I supposed that all the sentiments of ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you’, or ‘I’m glad you could come,’ would be out of place here.
I also noticed that he didn’t offer his hand for her to shake, since she would doubtlessly be unfamiliar with the gesture.
“Cole tells me you have a male infant in your care.”
“And Xel told me that you’re from the military,” Rohinavon replied, without batting an eyelid. “What are your intentions here?”
My master’s gaze shot across to me. I met his gaze squarely. “She needed to know,” I explained, hoping he wouldn’t be too angry about it. He hadn’t told me not to tell her. We’d both just assumed that that was the better option.
Aiden didn’t seem fazed by the question.
When he answered, he spoke calmly and evenly.
“My intentions are to find out why you’re here and what you want from us, and then assess whether we’re in a position to provide any of it.
I’m aware that a female Vangravian leaving Vangal is a momentous occasion, and that your desire to protect a male child is highly unusual.
And I have the utmost respect for you on both counts. ”
“That sounds reasonable enough,” Rohinavon said. “And yes, I do have a male child with me. He’s my son.”
Aiden raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure not many women on Vangal would admit to such a thing.”
“Not openly, no,” Rohinavon agreed.
“May I see him?” Aiden asked, though I noticed that he didn’t move any closer to her. And my respect for him rose a notch at that. He would inevitably insist upon seeing the child, but he wasn’t making any attempt to intimidate her at this early stage of proceedings.
Rohinavon rose from her seat and parted her skirts, allowing Aiden to peer inside the pouch of skin at her hip to see the child.
“How can we be sure he’s a male?” he asked.
Rohinavon scoffed. “Well, you could start with the fact that if he wasn’t, then I wouldn’t have any need to flee my planet.”