“Understood,” Tess said warily.
“Good.” Glasach turned and bellowed up the ramp in a voice far too large for her body. “Kamat! Come meet the human!”
A second female appeared at the top of the ramp and came down it with loose unhurried grace, thin as a reed and a full head taller than Glasach, her skin marbled in flowing patterns of blue and white like frost spreading across dark water. She moved to stand at the captain’s shoulder and rested one long-fingered hand there with an easy familiarity that told him everything he needed to know about the two of them.
“My partner,” Glasach said, and the word carried a warmth that had nothing to do with business. “Kamat handles navigation, medical, and keeping me from throwing paying customers out the airlock. She’s better company than me. Most people are.”
“Welcome aboard,” Kamat said. Her voice was soft and musical. Her pale eyes settled on Tess with a gentleness that seemed to catch the human female off guard. “You’ll have your own cabin, with a lock only you hold. I promise you that first, because I think it may be the thing you most want to hear.”
Tess’s throat worked, and she looked away.
At the top of the ramp, movement drew his eye. An enormous male had emerged from the freighter’s belly with a cargo crate balanced on one shoulder that he would have thought twice about lifting. He didn’t recognize the species, bronze-skinned and slab-muscled, chest bare even in this cold. The male set the crate down, straightened, and looked their way with unreadable silver eyes half-hidden beneath long, dark hair.
Tess went rigid beside them, and Polly’s hand tightened in his before she took a half-step forward, ready to put herself between Tess and the threat exactly as she’d once tried to put herself between Tess and him.
“Ah.” Glasach followed their stares and waved one plump hand, entirely unbothered. “That’s Brannik. He doesn’t talk. Don’t worry. He keeps himself to himself.”
She raised her voice again, cheerfully brutal. “Brannik! Get back to work, you’re frightening the humans!”
The huge male’s expression didn’t change, but he nodded and walked back up the ramp. Tess let out a breath she’d clearly been holding for a while.
“He really isn’t dangerous—” she started.
“He really isn’t,” Kamat said. “He’ll keep his distance. You’re safe.”
Tess looked at her for a long moment, and he saw something pass between the two of them—some silent recognition, one survivor to another. It was the first time he’d seen Tess look at a stranger without tensing.
“All right,” Tess said quietly. “All right. Yes.”
“Then let’s load your things before the wind picks up.” Glasach clapped her small plump hands together. “Brannik! Come get the human’s crate. Gently, mind, it’s got the healer’s medicines packed in.”
The next while passed in the ordinary bustle of departure. Cera’s carefully packed supplies were handed over, the last of Tess’s few belongings stowed, credit chits and documents and Imperial transit stamps confirmed and re-confirmed by a captain whoclearly trusted paperwork about as far as she could throw it. He stood back and let it happen. This was Polly’s moment—she’d talked Tess down from the mountain, she’d sat with her through her terror, and she’d held her together in a collapsed ruin under half the weight of the world. He was only here to lift heavy things and be a reassuring wall at his mate’s back. He found he was entirely content in the role.
At last it was done, and there was nothing left but the leaving.
Tess turned to Polly. For a woman so quick to anger and so armored in suspicion, she suddenly looked very young and very lost, standing there at the foot of the ramp that would carry her off this frozen world forever.
“You’re sure,” Tess said, clutching Polly’s hand. “You’re sure you don’t want to come.”
He went very still.
He could have answered. He knew that Polly had chosen and he trusted what was between them, but this was her question to answer, and he would not answer it for her.
So he waited.
She looked up at him first, her eyes finding his face. Whatever she saw there made the corner of her mouth curl up soft and sure. She squeezed his hand once. Then she turned back to Tess, and she was smiling, and there was not one shred of doubt anywhere in her.
“No,” she said. “I’m not coming.”
The band around his chest let go all at once.
“I thought about it,” she went on. “Not out of fear, not because I felt trapped, just… honestly. Warm ocean. A whole world where nobody’s furred and nothing’s frozen.” She shook her head, and her dark hair caught the grey light, and she lifted their joined hands a little, so Tess could see them, so there was no mistaking her meaning. “But I’d be leaving home to go looking for one. And I already found mine. He’s standing right here.”
She let go of his hand at last, only long enough to step forward and pull Tess into a hard, fierce embrace. “You go find yours. Somewhere warm. And you send word when you get there, or I’ll worry myself sick, and he’ll have to charter a whole ship to come check on you, and Glasach will never forgive either of us.”
Tess laughed—wetly and roughly, but real. She held Polly hard for a long moment, and when she stepped back her eyes were shining and her jaw had, for once, gone soft.
“Thank you,” she said, and turned to him, direct and unflinching and completely without the old fear. “Take care of her.”
