Chapter 18
SEREYA
Before the ore transport left, Roemary had lasted less than a minute beside the empty seat.
Sereya had barely settled her bag at her feet when the other woman turned toward her, her smile bright enough for the neighboring passengers to borrow.
“Go and sit with Adryel.”
Sereya looked across the hold. Adryel and Janae were close together, talking in the low voices of people who had something worth keeping between them.
“They seem occupied.”
“They'll make room.”
Roemary adjusted the fall of her sleeve. She had chosen her place so she could watch the entrance without turning her head.
“If Dhomhes comes back through, I would like to speak to him without you hovering.”
Sereya stared at her.
The residence doors. Their hands. The look Roemary had given them, as if Sereya had picked something up that belonged on her table.
“He has a great deal to do.”
“Not so much that he couldn't escort you up the ramp.”
Sereya felt the heat rise in her face and refused to apologize for it.
Roemary noticed that too.
“You mustn't misunderstand kindness. Males like him are very careful in company.”
“He spoke quite clearly to me.”
The smile lost its warmth.
“Then let's give him the opportunity to speak clearly to someone else.”
For a moment Sereya considered keeping the seat simply because Roemary wanted her out of it. Then Adryel laughed at something Janae said. Sereya picked up her bag and went toward the sound.
There was a space beside Adryel, on the side away from Janae.
Sereya slid into it and put her bag beneath her knees. The bench was hard, the air warm. She had been less frightened approaching officials with documents she didn't understand.
Adryel looked at her.
“You lost?”
Janae peered around Adryel's shoulder.
Sereya's mouth curved. There was nowhere to hide from either of them without getting up again.
“Roemary's idea, actually.”
“Roemary told you to sit with me. With us.” Adryel's voice stayed flat. “And you did it.”
“Are you backing up her next big scene?” Janae asked.
That hurt more from Janae. Sereya had earned it, which did nothing to make it hurt less.
She sighed. “It's not like that.”
“Then please, tell us what it's like.”
Sereya nodded, looking ahead into the crowded hold.
“She thinks Dhomhes is interested in her.”
Or she had decided he ought to be, and would keep rearranging people until the room looked the way she wanted. He had declared himself to Sereya. They were in Courtship. Roemary knew that, however often she behaved as though the choice remained hers to make.
“She wanted to prove it. Told me to sit elsewhere so he'd come to her instead of—”
She stopped.
“Instead of you,” Adryel finished.
Sereya didn't answer.
Across the hold, Roemary shifted in her seat. Sereya kept her eyes forward. She could feel Adryel studying her, and she made herself endure that too.
“And you went along with it,” Janae said.
“I always go along with it,” Sereya said.
The answer came so readily that she hated it. She had refused the packet. She had left the rooms. This morning she had walked toward Dhomhes when fear wanted her to walk past him.
Yet here she sat, precisely where Roemary had sent her, explaining their friendship with the sentence she had used to survive it.
There was something else she could do here.
“Be careful.”
She leaned close, her voice low enough to stay between them.
“I don't know what she's planning. But she's planning something.”
Adryel held her gaze.
Sereya waited for disbelief. For the reasonable question of why she hadn't said something sooner. She could have answered with a name and a grave and the memory of telling a kind woman too much, but she wasn't ready to put those things in the hold of a transport full of listening people.
“Thanks for the tip.”
It was enough.
She looked away before her face could reveal how much.
The transport rocked. Somewhere forward, someone called to the last staff coming aboard. Sereya folded her hands and tried to slow her breathing. It seemed impossible that she had said so little and felt so exposed.
Beside Adryel, Janae suddenly straightened.
“I have to go,” she said, already rising. “Khalzin—”
She squeezed Adryel's hand and hurried toward the ramp. Sereya caught a glimpse of Khalzin there, Janae reaching him as the ramp began to rise, and then the closing hull took them out of sight.
Air washed through the passenger area. It smelled as though it had been saved from the transport's previous occupation.
“They need to clean their filters,” Adryel muttered.
Sereya glanced at her and almost smiled.
Then she saw Roemary watching across the seats. The smile went away before she could keep it.
She stayed where she was.
During the flight, Sereya saw Adryel lift a hand toward her ribs, then lower it. She almost asked, but remembered Janae's question about the next scene and stayed quiet.
Dhomhes was forward with Stron. Before going, he had looked back at her.
For years she had thought the safest kind of affection would make no demands and attract no notice. A private thing, if she ever found it. Something she could hide from people who knew how to spoil it.
But his hand had been there in front of everyone.
She wanted it there again.
The light beyond the viewport faded as they crossed away from the green country. For a time she watched bare rock and long channels below. Then the refineries came into view, spreading farther than she had imagined.
Dhomhes's home.
She had pictured stars when they spoke of it. She had not pictured quite so many pipes.
The thought nearly made her smile again. She saved it to tell him, because she was beginning to like making him laugh.
The transport shuddered on landing.
Everyone moved at once.
Sereya waited for space to bend and retrieve her bag. By the time she straightened, Adryel had joined the passengers moving down the aisle.
The ramp opened on noise.
Even after the flight, the refinery startled her. Machinery worked somewhere beyond the landing area with a deep, steady force she could feel through the soles of her shoes. Cold air slipped beneath her collar. She pulled the wrap around herself and followed the line.
Guards directed people toward an entrance. Workers stood farther back, watching the unexpected visitors. Their horns and shoulders made dark shapes against the lamps.
Adryel's hair flashed ahead of her near the foot of the ramp.
A pair of passengers stepped into Sereya's view, one helping the other with a bag. She shifted to give them room.
When they moved on, she couldn't see the red hair.
She looked toward the entrance.
Then back at the transport.
“Keep moving, please,” someone said behind her.
Sereya took two steps, scanning the faces. There were too many people she didn't know. Too many places Adryel could have gone in a few seconds.
She found Stron instead.
He stood beside Dhomhes, watching the thinning line of passengers. Something in his expression made Sereya's stomach turn over. He spoke. Dhomhes looked at him, then brought his communicator up.
Stron started to move. Dhomhes caught his arm briefly and pressed something into his hand.
Then Stron was gone, moving fast toward the complex.
Sereya reached the guard directing her group.
“Adryel,” she said. “The female with red hair. She was ahead of me. I can't see where she went.”
He looked toward Dhomhes and touched his own comm.
“Where did you last see her?”
She pointed. “There. Near the bottom.”
“Did you see anyone with her?”
“No. I couldn't see past the others.”
He passed that on. Sereya stood waiting, her bag pulling at her fingers, while he listened to the answer.
“Go inside with the housing staff. They're looking for her.”
“Is she—”
“I haven't been told. Please stay with your group.”
He didn't invent reassurance. It frightened her more than if he had.
A hand slipped through her arm.
“There you are,” Roemary said.
Sereya turned. Silver-white hair caught the landing lamps. Roemary's eyes followed the direction Stron had taken, then came back to Sereya's face.
For a heartbeat the pleasant expression disappeared.
“Don't get any ideas.”
Sereya looked at the hand on her arm.
“Let go.”
Roemary's fingers tightened once.
“Everyone is watching.”
“Then let go.”
The guard turned back toward them. Roemary released her with a small laugh, as if Sereya had made a private joke at an inconvenient time.
Sereya went inside without her.
At the housing entrance, a volunteer was crying silently over a dropped bag. Sereya set down her own, picked up the scattered things, and put them back while they waited for names to be called.
It gave her hands work.
It did nothing to keep her from listening for every opening door.