Chapter 8
Hallie
The Fever Brothers all have the front room tonight, and the women have the courtyard.
“Once a cycle,” Jana tells me, dragging a chair across the stone with a screech that would wake the dead if the dead weren’t already three rooms away and fast asleep.
“The males take the offspring and the worry. We take the courtyard. And nobody,”—she drops into the chair and points at me— “is allowed to talk about the mine until at least the second drink. Sit down, Hallie. You’re one of the women tonight. ”
I sit down.
The back courtyard is a square of stone pavers open to the sky, walled on three sides by the compound and on the fourth by the jungle, which presses in close, dark and dripping just past the low fence.
Someone has strung crystal-light along the eaves, little captured glows that throw everything soft and gold.
Two moons hang overhead and a light breeze smells like blossoms.
The males are a low rumble through the wall behind us is Chief’s voice, then Heavy’s, then a laugh that can only be Rook’s. Tonight the fathers are on watch and not drinking, so the brides can have their own bonding moment.
“Okay,” Roxy announces, producing a dark bottle from somewhere with a flourish. “Let’s assess the situation.” She sets the bottle down and looks around the table, grave as a physician delivering a diagnosis. “Ines is six months along.”
“And feeling every day of it,” she agrees.
“Naomi, who can no longer locate her own feet…”
“I resent that it’s true,” Naomi answers serenely, both hands folded on the high curve of her stomach.
“Lila, rounder by the diurnal. Leah, second one cooking. Jana…”
“Don’t,” Jana warns.
“Jana is already pregnant again, gods help that male’s stamina.”
“He’s very proud,” Jana laughs.
“Which means,” Roxy concludes, pouring two generous glasses, “that of the entire adult female population of this household, exactly two of us are physically capable of drinking this bottle of Timbur red. Me.” She slides one glass across the table.
“And you, Hallie. Somebody has to represent. For the team.” She lifts her own glass.
“I’ll carry us as far as I can. I have a high tolerance and a noble heart. ”
“She has neither of those things,” Jana snorts.
“I have at least one of those things,” I say.
The pregnant five get sweet traq in delicate little cups, which they sip while watching Roxy and me with the frank envy of women who have given up wine for a higher cause. I sip at my wine, thrilled to be sitting happily with a group of women, which hasn’t happened in ages.
“So,” Jana says, propping her chin on her hand and fixing me with a bright, dangerous look.
“I have a question, and it’s a courtyard question, which means you have to answer it honestly.
” She doesn’t wait for me to agree. “You’ve been hunched over that little board with Rook every single day.
What is that game you’re playing? I’m so curious. ”
“It’s chess,” I say.
Six blank faces look back at me.
“I know how to play a game called Chess, which is an original planet game that is still often played on New Earth. I learned to play it when I was young. And it turns out that Maxon plays a similar game, a Xylan variant called Karrec. You move pieces, each one moves differently and you’re trying to trap the other person’s king. ”
“I’ve heard of it,” Leah offers from the end of the table. “I knew someone back when I was growing up who’d gotten it off the black market too, directly from the original planet. It became a big thing, lots of people playing it because they wanted to be like the humans from the original planet.”
“But you actually play Chess.” Naomi is studying me with her thoughtful artist’s eyes. “You know all the pieces and play-the-real-thing for reals?”
“Yes. My grandfather taught me. I still love it to this day, but I don’t often find anyone who knows how to play it. Maxon and I are both feeling lucky to have found someone else who likes playing that game.”
“Okay, but,” Roxy says, leaning in, “be honest. How good is Rook, really? Because he’s got that whole wall of little trophies in his room and we always assumed it was, you know.
” She waves a hand. “A cute hobby. A little-boy thing he never grew out of. He goes to that gaming hall and we tease him about his club and he gets all dignified about it.”
“Are you being serious. You guys, Maxon is the best Karrec player on the planet. I had to actually learn the variant just to keep up with him. He’s the colony champion.
He’s beaten every challenger they’ve ever sent at him, including ones from off planet.
That’s not a hobby. Roxy, the male is a genius at Karrec. ”
“I’m sorry.” Jana sets her cup down. “Rook? Our Rook? Best on the entire planet?”
“You didn’t know?”
“We thought it was a little-kid thing,” Lila says, distressed and delighted at once. “He keeps the trophies so neatly lined up. We thought it was sweet.”
“None of you ever watched him play?”
“It’s easy to forget he even plays this game called Karrec because he doesn’t play it here at all, usually. He plays at the club. We thought the club was, a little sad, in an endearing way.”
I am laughing now, really laughing. “He is the reigning champion of an entire planet and his own family thinks his life’s great talent is a sad little hobby.”
“In our defense,” Roxy says, “he never told us. He just absorbs us teasing him about it with this wounded dignity and never once goes, ‘actually I’m the best in the world.’”
“And actually he’s not the champion anymore,” I say, because the wine wants me to and because I can’t help it, the pride sitting bright and unfamiliar in my chest. “I beat him. Yesterday. Clean.”
The courtyard erupts.
“You did not.”
“You beat the champion?”
“I beat the champion,” I confirm. “I didn’t even know it was happening until it was done. He never saw it coming.” I’m trying not to grin and failing completely. “It wasn’t close, at the end.”
“So that makes you…” Jana is doing the math, pointing at me, her whole face alight. “Oh my gosh, that makes you the best Karrec player on Timbur.”
The grin slips, because she’s right, and saying it out loud feels like too much. “I guess. Technically.”
“Technically nothing.” Roxy raises her glass to me. “Best on the planet. To the Queen.”
I bite my lip, heat spreading across my cheeks.
A slow, knowing smile spreads across Roxy’s face. “Have you noticed he calls you that?”
“Calls me what,” I say, too fast.
“Queen.” She draws it out. “Have you noticed? I heard him say it at dinner more than once.”
The other women go ohhhh in unison, a low delighted swell.
“It’s a chess piece,” I say. “It’s just the name of a piece. The most powerful piece, it can move anywhere, so when I won he started to…it’s a chess thing. It’s literally just a chess term.”
“Mm-hm,” says Jana.
“It is.”
“Sure.”
“He named me after the piece because of how I play,” I insist.
Naomi reaches over and pats my hand, gentle and merciless. “Honey. That male does not hand out ‘most powerful thing on the board’ to just anybody.”
“A smitten Xylan,” Roxy says happily, “naming his scented bride after the strongest piece in the game. There is a whole research paper in that. The symbolism alone.”
“Can we please talk about literally anything else,” I whine.
They laugh and let me off the hook. I drink my wine and let my face cool.
“Can I ask you something.” Roxy says, changing the subject for me. “What was it actually like on Chronos? I’ve never been there and it sounds intimidating. You worked at a Royal Pigment House, an actual one, on the inside. Did you like it? Do you regret going?”
The wine answers before I can stop it. “I did it for the money,” I admit, and feel my cheeks heat all over again.
“It paid…it paid obscenely well. There was a bonus, every rotation you stayed. Stack enough of them and, well it was a lot.” I shrug.
“I had a plan. After I got a big enough savings, I would go home to New Earth and use this money to open my own accounting firm. I was going to own my own business someday. And then I found the files and the plan died. Because I couldn’t un-know it. So. Here I am.”
“Were you happy there?” Naomi asks. “Before?”
I think about it honestly, which the wine and the dark and these faces somehow make possible.
“No. Not really. It was fine. There are actually a lot of humans on Chronos now. There’s a whole expat thing, a club, drinks on sixth day.
On the surface it wasn’t so bad.” I shake my head.
“But it was a Royal Pigment world, built top to bottom for Royal Pigment Xylan, and everything else is a guest in their house. Tolerated. Useful. Decorative if you’re lucky.
I spent three years being the most trusted human in that House and I was never once anything but a tool they’d be sad to misplace.
” The old loneliness rises up familiar and cold.
I look around the courtyard. The gold light, the moons, the half-eaten dessert, the six women who pulled me into their once-a-cycle ritual. “Is Timbur the same?” I ask.
“No,” Leah says, simply. “It isn’t.”
“Not even a little,” Lila agrees. “Minecorp’s a Xylan outpost, sure.
But it’s Margol Xylan. Filled with miners and working people.
” She wrinkles her nose. “No Houses. The difference between the castes isn’t as strong here at all.
I forget often that the Xylan are usually like that about the dividing line between Margol and Royal Pigment.
There are some Royal Pigment Xylan living here, but they are the minority and they defer to the miners because they are so important.
The Illibrium chooses the miners and the Royal Pigment Xylan need those miners to extract the most valuable energy source in the whole universe.
So they treat them with respect here. And the Margol are just, mellow.
They came out here to dig crystal and they built a town and they didn’t bring the rules. ”