Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
First impressions are overrated
It was absolutely the most hostile place I’d ever walked into.
With little Aila skipping along in front of me as if she were leading a procession of dancers through the streets, every set of eyes landed on me.
Every conversation stopped. Every activity halted.
My senses prickled with awareness. I was outnumbered, unwanted, and poorly armed.
I set my jaw and forced my face into a neutral expression, even though both of my hearts were beating hard and adrenaline flooded my body.
This was how I felt just before entering a battle or assassinating someone.
And the truth was, I was a terrible assassin.
I always stuck out too much to be stealthy.
Aila brought me right to the center of the village, where Maive had stopped talking to two women and was staring at me like everyone else. I ducked my head, tried to put on a contrite expression, and approached her with an apologetic smile.
“Hello, Maive,” I said. It was as good a greeting as any. At least it showed I remembered her name.
She did not blink. Not once. “I thought you said you wouldn’t bother us.”
“I’m not here to bother you,” I said. “I came here to trade. Definitely not to bother.”
She crossed her arms and regarded me icily. “I doubt there’s anything you have that we want.”
“Now, let’s not be so hasty,” I said. “I’ve done a lot of fishing.” I shifted the satchel from my shoulder and held it in my hands in front of me. “Perhaps I can show you my—”
“Have you looked at our harbor?” She raised one eyebrow and nodded toward the ocean. “We have a fishing fleet of our own.”
I snorted. “You call two rickety boats a fleet?”
Her brows snapped together. That was clearly the wrong thing to say. “Our fishermen provide everything we need for our village.” She glanced at my satchel and wrinkled her nose. “And by the smell of it, whatever you caught has turned.”
“I brought examples of what I can get,” I explained.
“I can breathe underwater and collect things from the ocean floor that your fishermen cannot.” When exactly did I become a salesman?
All I wanted was some bread, maybe some fresh vegetables.
It didn’t seem like too much to ask. “I can pay you in galactic credits if you’d prefer. ”
It was her turn to snort. “What use do we have for galactic credits?”
A not-so-small crowd had gathered around us, watching with rapt attention. At least no one was stabbing me with spears yet.
“Then what do you want?” I asked in frustration. “I’m just hoping to trade for some different foods, because if I eat another fish, I think I’m going to tear my hair out.”
Her lips twitched. “Perhaps Podnos-9 is not the best home for you after all.” Her voice took on a silky tone, thick with amusement.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly as my shoulders dropped with a hit of fatigue.
“Fine.” I hitched my satchel back over my shoulder.
“I’ll go. I’ll leave you in peace.” I narrowed my eyes at her and held up a finger in front of her face.
“But I’d appreciate it if you would stop sending spies to peep on me every other day. It’s getting weird.”
Her cheeks flushed with color. “We need to make sure you’re not building a massive weapon over there.”
“I’m building a deck off the back of my house. It’s a very pretty view.”
She crossed her arms. “I imagine it is. There are plenty of other planets on which you could have a lovely view.”
I threw up my hands. “Okay. I’m leaving. But you’re missing out. Some of the crustaceans I found are absolutely scrumptious.”
She could not hide the flicker of curiosity in her eyes, but she did manage to tamp it down very quickly. “You go enjoy them, then.”
“Fine,” I shot back. “I will.”
All the while, Aila stood next to her grandmother, her gaze flipping between the two of us like a spectator at a fungo match. “Gra’ma,” she said in that little voice. “Why are you mad at Gilrox?”
Maive glanced down at the little girl and her face softened into a smile. “Because he’s done many bad things in his life, and we need to keep the village safe from people who would do bad things.”
This did not seem to work for Aila. Her little brow furrowed in exactly the same way as her grandmother’s. “He hasn’t done anything to us. He wants food.”
“Aila, I—”
Whatever explanation Maive was going to come up with was interrupted by a bellowed call from the harbor. Instantly, all attention swung from Maive and me to the ocean.
“Help!” cried a panicked male voice. “The calroid took Tregen under!”
“Oh, stars, no,” Maive whispered before bolting toward the dock.
Everyone followed, and I did too. I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like my presence was wanted by this infuriating woman, but now I was curious what a calroid was and who Tregen was.
The harbor was indeed a sheltered spot, cut out like a gentle cup of land.
Two docks made of wood and rock, jutted from it.
One ship was in harbor, and it was clear that the Runams on it had just returned from a fishing expedition.
They had crates and nets containing fish of various sorts, and everyone on the boat was either clustered on the deck or hanging over the rail, crying out in distress over a patch of churning water just off the end of one of the docks.
There was blood, too, but no evidence of a creature or a man.
Maive gripped the railing of the dock and stared, stricken, at the sight. “You’re sure it was the calroid?” she asked.
“Saw it just before it pulled him off the dock and under. Wretched thing must’ve followed us back.” It was a woman who spoke. She wore a leather vest and a belt with multiple pouches. “I had a sense that something was following us, but it stayed deep enough to avoid our view.”
“What is it?” I asked, peering over the railing.
Maive didn’t even bother showing her irritation now.
“Calroids. Predators of the deep waters. They’ve got these tentacles that can grab a person off land or a boat.
One in particular has taken to stalking our boats.
” She covered her face with her hands. “Oh, poor Tregen. He’s a sweet boy. Didn’t deserve this fate.”
I don’t know whether it was the boy or Maive’s distress, or the fact that this Tregen was already given up for dead, but in an instant, I had shed the satchel, kicked off my boots, and pulled out the blade I’d been carrying in my pants.
There were a few sharply indrawn breaths at the sight of it, which was about the length of my forearm.
Not a small weapon, but also not a broadsword, for stars’ sake. I dove in.
Cold water encased me, and my water senses snapped on.
My gills took over, even though they were encumbered by my shirt.
They ran along either side of my ribs, but the fabric was not so thick that I couldn’t breathe.
My eyesight sharpened as my eyes changed shape slightly to adjust to the pressure of the water.
I saw the calroid immediately. It was an absolutely lethal-looking beast. Roughly the size of myself, perhaps a little larger, with a long, spined fin and a set of tentacles extending out like a ring around its head.
It had a mean, pointed face with a surprisingly small mouth filled with sharp teeth.
Tregen, to his credit, was fighting back admirably. He had managed to grip some of the spines on the creature’s back to avoid its mouth, but the tentacles would overpower him. Also, he was bleeding from somewhere, and bleeding hard enough to be alarming.
The webbing that stayed folded tight inside my fingers and toes when I was on land spread out and tightened between those digits.
I kicked forward, swimming hard and fast, glad I had swum enough in the past weeks to feel confident in my natural abilities in the water. It had not happened immediately.
With my blade, I sliced through the tentacle that had the strongest hold on Tregen.
The sea beast had not seen me coming, and it jerked in both pain and surprise.
I had not encountered this creature before in any of my swims. Other predators, yes, but not this one.
It was quite a piece of work, and it immediately refocused on me.
Luckily, my blade worked just as well underwater as it did on land.
I deflected one strike of a tentacle and stabbed through the other that had a lighter hold on Tregen.
My first objective was to free the boy and get him up to the surface, where his crew could haul him out.
He saw me through the water but didn’t seem to know what to make of me.
I saw a flash of confusion in his stricken eyes before his body went limp.
He was out of air, strength, and, increasingly, blood.
I maneuvered out of strike range of the creature, grabbed Tregen by the waistband of his pants, and propelled him upward toward the surface with all my strength.
Now it was just me and the calroid. And I knew which one of us was going to win.
I moved in fast, right into the calroid’s face, and ended it quickly.
The water turned opaque with the creature’s dark blood.
I kept my knife in it and swam back to shore, dragging it through the water like meat on a skewer.
Sand touched my feet as I emerged from the sea with my kill. I carried it onto the beach, where Maive knelt surrounded by a cluster of Runams. Tregen lay semiconscious on Maive’s lap as she pressed a wadded-up cloth to a gash in his side.
All eyes turned to me again, but this time with less hostility.
I dropped the dead calroid in front of Maive and jerked my blade from it.
I was vaguely aware this must have looked like some sort of weird ritualistic tribute.
Maybe, in some odd way, it was. All I knew was that in that moment, I wanted her approval.
I wanted her to look at me and not see a mercenary or a monster or a threat.
I wanted her to see me as I was: a man trying to figure out the next phase of his life.
Trying to make different decisions than the ones he’d made before.
I looked down at her, breathing heavily, and was rewarded with a smile laced with gratitude, and most satisfying, surprise.
“Gilrox.” Her voice was shaky. She was pressing that cloth to Tregen’s side with no tremble in her hands, but I could see the wild flutter in the hollow of her throat as her heart beat fast. Her gaze flickered to the dead calroid, where she blinked rapidly before turning back to me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” It wasn’t easy to talk yet, as my breathing was transitioning from gills back to lungs.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“No.” What a strange question. I wasn’t the one lying there, bleeding.
She nodded and swallowed hard, then ordered some of the others to get a stretcher to carry Tregen back to the village where his wound could be cleaned and dressed.
I couldn’t tell how deep the wound was, but I knew that boy wasn’t going to be on a fishing boat for a while. “All right, then.” I wiped my blade off on one of the spines of the calroid, then reached back and slid it into its sheath. “I’ll be going, then.”
I began to walk away, adrenaline draining, feeling weirdly elated and defeated at the same time.
“Gilrox, wait,” Maive called out to me.
I stopped and turned back. The Runams were lifting Tregen onto a simple stretcher of stretched cloth and wooden bars. “Yes?”
She got to her feet and cleared her throat. “Did you say you had something to trade?”