The idea of heading back to the ship by myself in the smoky darkness of night is terrifying.
A hand tugs at me, startling me out of my thoughts. The man attached to the hand leers at me. “Hey, darling,” he says in Tellurian.
I back up. He’s not very tall or very big, but he is a man with a broad hand on my arm and a smirk on his face. I glance behind him to see if anyone is watching, if he has friends with him, but no one seems to notice us in the corner. Deciding to play the tourist card and shake him off, I stare back with exaggerated confusion.
He crowds me, penning me in between the wall and his body. He smells like sweat, oil, and vodka. When I don’t say anything, though I shift onto my back foot like I’ve seen Tanisira do, he looks me up and down sceptically.
“What are ya, foreign?”
We’reallforeign; Novus is a man-made waystation with no native population. But I’m struck by an idea, and a torrent of words pours out of me. I babble in Mandarin, one of the languages I’m fluent in. If a native speaker joined us, they’d have something to say—my execution isn’t perfect—but for this guy, it’s more than enough. His confusion is written in the deep grooves on his forehead.
He’s too slow to stop me from ducking under his arm. Back in the main room, a small, previously overlooked staircase is tucked beside the bar. Before my new friend decides to track me down like game, I slip around patrons with ease; my stature coming in handy, for once. I bound up the dimly lit stairs, coming to a halt on the landing.
As I follow the hallway, I catch a familiar voice raised in irritation. It’s coming from behind a closed door at the end of the hallway. I press myself to the wall, straining to hear over the music wafting up from the bar. Still, I catch the next sentence with startling clarity. Maybe it’s because the timbre of the man’s voice is something like a hammer along my spine, or maybe it’s because I hear danger in it.
“The prodigal, Myth, before my very eyes. How things have changed. Business not booming?”
Myth?
“Are you done?” Tanisira’s voice is cold, icier than I’ve ever heard it, and a chill runs across my body. I don’t understand what that man’s talking about, what’s happening, or why I’m suddenly fearful. She continues. “You know my terms.”
“Indeed.” The man then drops into Surya-Vaani with an ease that belies his fluency but without the melody that’d mark him a native. “I heard about your fall from grace. Imagine my surprise when I found out you’re not actually the stand-up citizen you pretended to be. All along, you were a dirty little trafficker.”
“I’ll take my money to someone else,” Tanisira replies.
She sounds bored, but if I’m not mistaken, this man just called her a trafficker. I stare at the door in confusion. In her shoes, I’d want to refute an accusation like that.
“Sit the fuck down,” the stranger snaps.
“Don’t talk to me like that, old man. Do you want my business or not?”
“Tell me something first. Was it your idea or Gil’s to move from contraband to flesh? I must admit, I didn’t think you capable, but I suppose greed gets everyone in the end.”
Tender and Unyielding
Tanisira’s threat is quick on the heels of his sermonising. “Keep wasting my time.”
He chuckles, low and dirty, before switching back to Tellurian. There must be at least one other person in there, but I can’t hear anyone else, not even the creaking of a shifting foot.
“It took some doing to get the meds you requested on such short notice, but you already knew how good I am, or you wouldn’t have come crawling back to me, isn’t that right?”
“How much?” Flat, unaffected words.
“What was it you used to call me? A piece of shit, wasn’t it?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Sit the fuck down,” the man roars.
There’s a thump, and I’m so desperately trying to make sense of what I heard that it almost makes me yelp. I slap a hand over my mouth, but nothing can be heard over the screeching of a chair being dragged across the floor.
“Touch me again, you’ll lose that hand, and I’ll make you eat it.”
I’ve never heard Tanisira say anything like that. At this moment, with so much steel behind it, I believe that she would follow through on her promise. Everything the disembodied voice had implied is zinging around in my head, and I can only focus on the most immediate problem. Meds? Are they... for me? I recoil from the idea, but who else would Tanisira be trying to get medicine for?
What the hell is going on?
I press my ear into the wall—
