Alien Prince: (Bride of Qetesh) An Alien SciFi Romance (8 page)

The garments I’d left for her were much too large, and the lady Lore looked somewhat ridiculous trying to hike up the pants enough so that she did not trip over them. She’d tied her hair back with a strand of tall grass and, even in spite of the dark bruise on her forehead, she was looking much fresher.

“Thank you for the clothes,” she muttered, “but I’m not sure if I will be able to travel in them.

“Come here,” I said, and she gathered the fabric in her hands and high-stepped over to me. I reached for my hunting knife, which I had left out of its sheath on the work table, and sliced into the red linen of the pants I’d given her. I cut the fabric away in a neat line until the end of both legs hit her mid-calf. I treated the black tunic similarly, but I sliced the sleeves off at the seam so that her shoulders were bared. The intricate beadwork at the neckline went unharmed.

“Thank you,” she said, then took one of the eviscerated sleeves and tore it in strips lengthwise. One she used to wrap around her waist to keep the tunic largely in place, and the second she used to replace the reed holding her hair back. When she was finished, she looked quite fine. Better than any of the Europax stick insects they’d sent to us.

“I have some oats and berries for you,” I said, and held out a bowl and spoon for her. She took both with grateful enthusiasm.

“Thank you,” she said again, undoubtedly spurred by my having scolded her for not employing her manners somewhat sooner. “I really do appreciate your kindness.”

We began eating, and I delighted to hear her mmm’s that indicated she was enjoying the small meal I’d prepared to break her fast. I ate with less enthusiasm: truth be told, I was sick of oats and fresh berries. I was sick of everything about the routine of my life, and there was a small part of me that was grateful for the disruption that was Lorelei Vauss.

“We’ll set off for the village presently,” I said, and she nodded her agreement. “Have you any notion as to what your plan of action will be when we arrive?”

She bounced her delicate shoulders in a shrug, her eyes angled down into her bowl as she toyed absently with what remained of her meal. “I do not know what I should do,” she murmured. For the first time, I could hear the fear in her voice. “I need to find that ship. I need to get people to it before my friends are auctioned off to the highest bidder.”

“Will they be separated, then?”

“I believe so. I think the way it works is that the Quarter Moon Slavers invite people to the ship for the auction, and once the slaves are sold off, that’s it. Then they’re en route to the farthest corners of the galaxy. And who knows what kind of records they keep? If they’re sold off, we may never find them again.”

I took the bowl from her hands and set it aside. “I know we are not so advanced a species,” I said, “but I also know that the Spire at the center of town is the ship that brought us here some 200 years ago. I know how its communication systems work, and I know that no one would deny me access to it.”

“So you’ll help me hail the
Atria
, then?”

“I will.”

She threw her arms about my neck and hugged me tight. Startled by the sudden show of affection, I brought one hand up to gently pat her back before I pried her arms away. “We must go,” I said. “The trek to the village will take us two days, and we do not know how long your friends have aboard that vessel.”

To prepare for the journey, I filled a satchel with dried meat and water skins, sleeping furs, and knives, and I slung my bow and quiver over my shoulders. Lorelei offered to shoulder some of the burden, but I wouldn’t hear of it. She was small and I was not. I would carry the load.

We set out along the river, not talking much because Lorelei struggled just to keep up with my steady pace. We took frequent breaks, and sat basking like lizards in the sunlight, and spoke of nothing in particular. I relished the curve of her beneath the fabric of her tunic. I loved how the light caught a shine in her ink black hair.

As the daylight began to wane, we came upon a small campground: two tents that looked like the bones of a gutted fish, their gaping mouths pointed at a dead fire pit, had been set up in a clearing by the river. This was a well-trodden camp with packed dirt floors all around the perimeter. We slowed as we passed, and I saw a tall, thin woman emerge from one of the tents, a basket of fruits in her arms. I recognized her, but from where?

Then I saw her companion emerge from the opposite tent, and I broke into a beaming smile. Waelden. My old friend. I laughed low in my belly as I marched toward them, Lorelei obediently following at my heels.

“Fancy meeting you here, old friend,” I called out when we were still some paces off. Waelden turned and held a hand up to his brow to shield his eyes from the daylight.

“Do my eyes deceive me?” He shouted, a grin curling the corners of his mouth. “Is it really Calder Fev’rosk?”

“The one and only.” We came to each other, reaching out with our right hands to grip one another’s elbows. But this customary greeting was altogether too formal for us old friends, and we embraced with a slap on the back.

“Waelden Ramarek, this is Lorelei Vauss.” I gestured to the human girl, round and rare as autumn fruit, and she proffered a smile and stepped forward, her hand extended.

“It is an honor to meet one of Calder’s friends,” she said, so formal, so polite. Waelden took her tiny hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Calder, you old dog,” he said, a twinkle in his good eye. “I thought you swore you’d never mate.”

“Ah, I haven’t,” I said, my face growing hot.

“Uh huh,” Waelden grunted. “Well, you will remember my wife Vanixa.” The reedwoman made no move to shake my hand, or Lore’s. “Vanixa, this is Calder Fev’rosk—”

“I remember him,” she said coldly.

“Ah, so my lady has learned the language of her husband, I see,” I said, and she turned her dark eyes away from me and to Lorelei.

“Who is this?” Vanixa demanded.

“I am Lorelei Vauss,” she said, then rattled off some words in a language I did not recognize. The sudden shift surprised Vanixa, whose face lit up at the sound of what I can only imagine was her mother tongue. Vanixa made her reply, but then something in what Lorelei said next soured her again, and she gave a wave of her hand.

“What is it?” Waelden asked. “What did she say?”

“I said,” Lorelei interjected, “that the Quarter Moon slavers had gotten ahold of me and some other people from the
Atria
, and that I had escaped. I was asking if she knew the names of any of the other women, but she does not.”

“She has been with me for many years now,” Waelden said. “I am her whole world.” Vanixa turned her back on us then and headed back toward the tents with the bowl of fruit in her arms. She was stern and stoic, and I wondered if my friend might not be happier with me in my bachelor’s cottage instead of his marriage bed. “Come,” Waelden said, clapping me on the shoulder. “You will stay with us through the Winternight here at our little camp.”

“We would be delighted,” Lore said, smiling. And I smiled back.

Waelden had aged considerably in the years since I had last seen him. There was a crease between his eyes that I did not remember seeing there before. Still, he was a proud specimen, virile and strong, and I wondered at the fact that he had not yet gotten his young wife with child. The four of us huddled in the mouth of one of the two tents, close to the fire, and nibbled on meat and fruits. When our bellies were full, as we passed a wineskin of Panyan liquor back and forth between us.

Lore attempted all evening to draw Vanixa into conversation, but she would have none of it. The Europax woman was beautiful, to be sure: fine featured with dark hair and darker eyes, but she was cold. She preferred the company of her own thoughts over ours or, indeed, over her husband.

During one brief moment of reprieve when Lorelei was able to draw Vanixa into something of an exchange, I turned to Waelden: “Are you happy, friend?”

And he lifted his broad, round shoulders in a shrug. “Happy enough,” came his tepid reply. “I will be happier when our union bears fruit.”

I nodded. “I was curious about that. Do you…?”

“Yes,” he confirmed, “if infrequently. I get the sense that she finds me altogether distasteful. But she is my fate, and I hers. We shall make a life of it one way or another.” He grinned, somewhat abashedly, and scratched absently at a spot just below one of his horns. “That is why we are out here, in fact,” he said by way of explanation. “I thought it might do us some good to…you know, foster intimacy outside of the strictures of everyday life.”

“And has it worked?”

“Not as such, no,” he said grimly, and drank deeply of the Panyan liquor. “But what of this human girl of yours?” he asked, his tone hushed. “How did she come to be here?”

I told my friend the story of finding her escape pod, of fishing her out and nursing her back to consciousness. I told him of her quest to help her friends, but was stricken to see my dear friend go suddenly pale. “What?” I asked at length. “What is it?”

“They will come for her, Calder,” he said, his tone loud enough to draw Lorelei’s attention. Waelden looked at her then. “They will come for you, my lady. They will track the pod and come for you, and when they do, the Qet cannot protect you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, sitting so that she hugged her knees to her chest. “They wouldn’t just…give me back to them, would they?”

Lorelei’s eyes were frantic as she searched first Waelden’s face, then mine. “Surely not,” I assured her. But Waelden had another answer.

“We have dealt with the slavers before, and we know better than to stand between them and their profit. If the choice is between bringing back one girl and risking them take all of our new mates at gunpoint, we’ll give them back the girl.” Waelden glanced between Lorelei and myself, his expression full of an apology his lips never made. “They will come for you, and when they do, we will have no choice but to hand you over.”

“Then we’ll hide,” I said plainly. “We’ll hide outside the city, and—”

But Waelden shook his head. “All they will need to do is use a heat scanner during the Winternight. It’s as easy as that.”

Lorelei’s face was full of fear, and I found her absently reaching a hand out toward me as though I myself could hold onto her and keep her safe. “There must be something we can do,” I protested. “There must be some way to protect her.”

Waelden glanced at his own wife who seemed about as interested in the proceedings as she was in the packed dirt upon which she was sitting, and he heaved a sigh that deflated his entire body. “Well, there is one thing we could do.”

“What is it?” I asked, and Lore leaned forward as we both waited with baited breath.

“You could marry her.” Lore let out one abrupt little laugh, and I just sort of blinked so that my eyes might clear.

“Pardon?” I asked, hoping I had somehow misheard him.

“She is the property of the Quarter Moon Slavers. If they were to come planetside this very moment, they would see you as a thief of that property. But if you were to marry her—”

“Then I become his property?” Lorelei demanded, indignant.

“More or less,” Waelden confirmed. “So I suppose the question you must ask yourself is, to whom do you wish to belong?”

“I belong to myself, and I will thank you to remember that,” Lorelei asserted, snatching the Panyan liquor away from Waelden to drink deeply of it herself.

“My lady,” Waelden asserted, “I did not say this was a just thing. Merely that it might be the only way to protect you from their reaches so that you might be free long enough to rescue your friends. I am not even certain that it would work, truth be told, unless we could somehow prove to them that you were married prior to their having detained you in the first place.”

“And it doesn’t have to be me,” I said quickly, in order to reassure her that I was not doing something preposterous, like trapping her into a union. “It could be any member of the Qet. Well, any unmarried member of the Qet.”

“And who better than Calder?” Waelden asked, slapping me on the shoulder. I sat there in stunned silence and relieved Lorelei of the liquor bottle, even as Waelden rose to his feet. “We will leave you two to discuss your options, for the Winternight grows cold and it is time that we turn in.” Ever the gentleman, Waelden held his hand out to Vanixa, who spurned his assistance and rose to her feet of her own volition. Waelden muttered something under his breath as she passed quickly in front of him to disappear into their tent. “We shall travel with you back to Larandi tomorrow,” he said. “Until then, I bid you good evening.”

Neither Lorelei nor I said anything as we stood and headed into the opposite tent, but I still had that liquor skin in my hands, and I drank from it. Oh, did I drink from it.

“Calder,” Lorelei began, but I held up a hand to silence her.

“There is no sense in making any decisions now,” I said. “We’ll sleep, yes? And discuss it further with clear minds in the daylight.”

She gave a sharp nod of her head in agreement before we headed into the tent.

Married? To Calder? Or to anyone for that matter seemed completely absurd. What kind of backwards, antiquated bullshit had I stumbled into? I was no one’s property, not a slaver’s or a husband’s. My head swam with distress and Panyan liquor as I sat myself down on the furs that Calder laid out for us inside of what I was certain was Vanixa’s tent. There were pastel drawings all over it’s insides, and little trinkets set up around the perimeter. It was cozy and warm, and quite beautiful for a tent. But what was so wrong with marriage to a Qeteshi that necessitated that a man and wife have separate sleeping domiciles?

Between the two of us, Calder and I finished off the liquor, and we lay side by side on the bed of furs, staring at the dancing shadows on the roof of the tent.

“Maybe,” I murmured at length, certain that Calder was still just as awake as I was, “maybe it would not have to be like a real marriage. Maybe it could just be one of those paper marriages, yes?”