Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1) (33 page)

They all smiled then, save Bryer who mantled his feathers and leaned back against the wall. Looking at them while holding the flashes of their lives in his hands, he knew he owed them the trust they had unknowingly given him.

“Would you do aught else for me?” Hirianthial asked.

“More!” Kis’eh’t said with a laugh. “We should go into business.”

“This you will not be able to sell,” Hirianthial said, allowing laughter to touch his eyes.

“Of course,” Sascha said. “Just ask.”

“Braid it in.”

Silence fell, along with Irine’s jaw. Only Allacazam seemed to find the situation as humorous as he did, blooming a bright magenta in patches across his body.

“You want us to touch you?” Irine said with a squeak in her voice.

“If you’re careful you need not,” Hirianthial said.

“But we’d have to get very close to you,” Sascha said, eyes wide.

Hirianthial nodded. “Would you be willing?”

The twins looked at one another, then at Kis’eh’t. “You do it.”

“Me?” Kis’eh’t laughed. “No, no.”

“But you’re not... you know.”

“Not hormonal?” Kis’eh’t said. She snickered. “No. It’s your apology to make, remember?”

The twins looked to Bryer, who clicked his claws together. “Hair too soft.”

“Surely I’m not so frightening,” Hirianthial said.

The twins looked at one another. “You braid,” Sascha said. “You have better fingers.”

Irine looked her hands, which trembled even when viewed at a distance. She whimpered.

Sascha approached, one cautious step at a time, as if stalking a skittish animal. Hirianthial watched him come, hiding a laugh.

“Where do you want it?” Sascha asked. “Near the top of your head?”

“Oh no,” Hirianthial said, distracted from the task of putting them at ease by the wrongness of the idea. He shook his hair off to one side and said. “Here, behind the ear.”

“Near your skin?” Irine said, aghast.

He did laugh this time. “Come,” he said. “I’ll make it easy for you.” Bracing himself against the bunk, he leaned back until the lowest layer of hair, still warm, stood apart from his back.

Neither of them rushed to his side. He sensed from their auras that they were staring; Irine’s thought was so loud it broke past his careful ignorance of people’s thoughts:
Oh-my-I-want-some-of-that!

When the silence dragged on too long, Hirianthial said, “Gentlefolk, I am no longer so young that I can hold this shape indefinitely.”

Sascha shook himself, then swooped behind the Eldritch. A moment later the weight of his hair, so habitual, lifted from his skull.

“Wow,” Sascha said. His gulp was audible. “I’m actually touching you!”

“My hair isn’t exactly my body,” Hirianthial said.

“No, but it’s attached to it!” Sascha said. “This is the closest I’ve even been allowed to an Eldritch.”

“Does he feel any different from a human?” Kis’eh’t asked.

The grip on his hair shifted. “I don’t know. I mean... oh, I don’t know.” After a moment, “This is really heavy.”

“One becomes accustomed to it,” Hirianthial said.

“Come on, Irine!” A thin happy thought behind it, run together:
Oh-you-have-to-feel-this!

Irine hovered at his side, wiggling her fingers. She picked a lock so carefully he couldn’t bear to tell her how loud her aura was despite her efforts. “Is this okay?”

When the dangle fell it would run along his neck and down near the center of his spine. “Yes.”

She leaned over and plucked the dangle from the box in his hands, pressing in against his aura with her own densely packed one: so many feelings and thoughts, most of which would be wildly inappropriate if mentioned aloud. But she spoke none of them and the nervous gloss over her space shouted how much she feared discomfiting him.

It had been a very long time since someone had done this service for him; very long indeed since he’d allowed anyone this close to him by choice, rather than from necessity or in the course of his duties. With his eyes half-closed, Hirianthial experimented, allowing himself to sink into the sensual pleasure of it... and each time the end of the strand brushed against his body it tingled against his senses, mental and physical.

“How do you brush all this?” Sascha wondered.

He roused from reverie. “With a comb.”

Kis’eh’t chuckled.

“It’s too straight to tangle,” he finished.

“You must have been growing it forever,” Sascha said.

“It would have been inappropriate to cut it,” Hirianthial said, thinking of customs older than any of the species in the room.

Irine tugged on it, setting the bell to singing. “There. You’ll have to take a knife to it to get it out.”

The rest of his hair slid through Sascha’s fingers until it pressed on the dangle, hiding it from view.

“Umm... I hope that’s what you wanted, at least,” Irine said, coming around in front of him.

“Yes,” Hirianthial said. “That’s just as I’d have it. I can feel it now.” He lifted his head. “It is a magnificent gift. A kingly thing.”

“Are you sure we can’t apologize properly?” Irine asked with a glimmer of pornographic hope.

Sascha elbowed her. “We’re glad you like it. We had a lot of fun putting it together.”

“Show’s over,” Bryer said, straightening from the wall. Kis’eh’t picked up the still pink Allacazam as the Phoenix walked out into the corridor.

On the way out, Irine said, “Even Reese added something.”

“I know,” Hirianthial said, feeling it between his shoulder-blades.

“We already said that,” Sascha said, chivvying her out.

“Gentle-twins,” Hirianthial said just before they left. When they paused and looked back, he said, “The apology has far exceeded the sorrow that inspired it.”

They grinned and left, tails twined together.

Once the darkness and quiet of his room seeped into the spaces the aliens had been and filled in their outlines, Hirianthial pulled the strand over his shoulder and turned it, watching the light glint off the bits of metal and glass, play over the wood and thread. At home he had worn the Eldritch equivalent as custom dictated, ornate, gem-encrusted things as heavy as the silver belts worn by women around their corseted waists. Each day a body-servant would select a new one and weave it in, using a long-handled brush and a hand so deft no part of his aura ever contacted his master’s; the experience was the opposite of what had just happened in every way.

The Alliance had similar ornaments; he’d seen them braided into the hair of humans and Pelted alike. He’d never felt the urge to imitate them. This, though... Hirianthial turned off the light, then stretched himself flat on his stomach and felt the wave of affection shift across his back, edged with flashes of smell and sound and sight like falling glitter.

Fifty-odd years he’d spent wandering without purpose or plan, stumbling onto each succeeding course of action without building toward anything. He’d become a doctor because he couldn’t bear the guilt of his own failure with Laiselin and then later the blood he’d spent justly but in too much passion. After that, he’d tended the sick because doctors did that, but all of the deaths he’d prevented had never taken away the deaths he hadn’t been able to or had himself caused, the ones that had driven him away.

And then allowing the Queen to send him on her errands, not caring if he died in the process, since life had seemed long enough. His joints had already stiffened... the days had grown harder and longer.

He’d drifted, who’d always loved the hearth.

The twinkle of a Flitzbe’s amusement scratched against the back of his neck as he shifted. Irine laughed; the bell tinkled.

Had these people opened his heart? Or had his heart merely been ready to be open?

Did it matter?

At last, he was no longer anyplace but there. Now he was here. A place in itself. A place worth staying.

Hirianthial closed his eyes and let the sensations of a half-dozen minds and hearts anchor him in place as he fell asleep.

“We’ve been rising out of the Well for a few hours,” Sascha said. “It shouldn’t be long before we coast to a stop. Maybe fifteen minutes now.”

“Good,” Reese said, leaning over his chair.

“Sick of us already?” he said with a grin.

“I didn’t say that,” Reese said.

“She was just thinking it,” Kis’eh’t said from her station.

Reese sighed.

“Don’t worry, Boss. A couple days harvesting whatsits and we can go collect your chest of treasure.”

“Maybe we can buy something fun to sell finally,” Reese said. “Exotics. Hand-woven textiles. Religious items. Art.”

“We could check the latest colonies,” Kis’eh’t said. “I’ve been reading the bulletins and a couple of new ones have popped up. Neither of them have dedicated shipping or Pads yet.”

“That sounds promising,” Reese said. “Maybe our drop-off point won’t be too far up-Core. Then it won’t be quite as long to get to the edge of settled space.”

“Coming out of the Well,” Sascha said, then cursed and yanked the
Earthrise
so hard to starboard Reese staggered against the wall.

“Sascha!”

“Pirates!”

Reese grabbed the back of the pilot’s chair. “Where? How many? Have they seen us?”

“Two,” Sascha said. “They’re near the first asteroid belt.”

“What are they doing in the middle of nowhere?” Kis’eh’t asked.

“Maybe they’re after our crystals,” Reese said. “Have they seen us?”

“I don’t think so,” Sascha said. “I sent us onto a new insert. One pretty distant from where they’re drifting. If we coast—”

“Let’s do that,” Reese said. “At least until we figure out where they’re heading. Maybe they’re on their way out of the system.”

“Let’s hope,” Sascha said.

“Trying to break the new engines?” Bryer asked through the intercom.

Reese leaned on the button. “Pirates, Bryer.”

“Unexpected.”

“So say we all.” Reese switched to the all ship and repeated, “We’ve got pirates. If Sascha starts twisting the ship into knots, you know why. Sit tight, we’re going to try to slip past them to our destination.”

“Gee, get them all hopeful, why don’t you?” Sascha muttered.

“You can do it, fuzzy,” Reese said. “If I have to I’ll pet your arm myself to help you concentrate.”

Sascha laughed. “No, no, don’t do that. I’d be too distracted by the novelty. Just let me work.”

In the following half hour, Reese glared at the plot on the station next to Kis’eh’t’s, waiting for the red blips of the ships to do anything more threatening than glide in place. They never changed course, riding herd on their cluster of asteroids.

“Have they missed us?” Reese wondered. “Or do they just not care?”

“They might not be able to see us,” Sascha said. “You just upgraded our scanners, remember? And pirates aren’t typically that well equipped.”

“Maybe cleaning the hull made it so sparkly it burned out their sensors,” Kis’eh’t said.

“I don’t think the ship was that shiny even when it was new,” Sascha said.

The
Earthrise
continued its approach to their destination, an unprepossessing planet on an irregular and distant orbit from Demini Star. The plot showing their trajectory and the assumed paths of the pirates continued to bore, though there were points Reese thought would give the pirates a full view of them.

“I knew I was forgetting something,” Reese said.

“What’s that?”

“Guns,” Reese said with a scowl.

“No use now,” Kis’eh’t said. “They don’t look too hostile, though.”

“They might be waiting for us to do all the work,” Reese said. “How long before we grab orbit?”

“Three hours, twenty minutes. And it’ll seem a lot longer if you don’t start blinking occasionally.”

“Yeah, why don’t you go get something to eat?” Kis’eh’t said.

“Food’s the last thing on my mind,” Reese said. “I’ll go organize our landing party. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“With all the bad luck we’ve had lately we’re bound to have some happy soon,” Sascha said.

“We’ve had bad luck?” Kis’eh’t asked.

“Don’t answer that,” Reese said. “I don’t want to tempt anything that might be listening. Call me if something changes.”

“Don’t worry,” Sascha said. “If something changes, you’ll know.”

The instructions she’d received after signing the contract had been specific to the point of monotony. In accordance with the exhaustive requirements, Reese had purchased three five-foot by three foot by three foot boxes made of steel, each with a cushioned layer and five layers of insulation. They looked like coffins and handled just as clumsily on the mechanical dollies the contract specified, probably out of a paranoid fear that anti-gravity sleds dropped their loads if their power failed. Reese leaned on the intercom.