Page 25 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

“You’re already terrified. It’ll make you fast.”

He swallows. “Right.”

Rosalind looks at Virn. Virn nods. Syin does not, but he also doesn’t object, which from Syin is practically a parade. Adran studies me too long.

“You are very comfortable issuing orders without authority,” Adran says.

“That’s not true, I’m uncomfortable all the time. I just work through it.”

A sound comes from Rhazek. This time it almost is a laugh. I refuse to look at him, because if I do and he’s smiling, I may have to stab him on principle.

Then the cistern wall hums. Not the sphere. The wall.

The old waterlines flare blue-white in broken rings around us. Dust sifts from the ceiling. The central drain gives one deep metallic click that travels through the floor and into my bones.

The familiar three-beat pulse follows.

Nobody breathes.

The pulse doesn’t come from below. I know below. I know the ugly vertical pull of the source throat and the way old channels tug at the soles of my feet. This comes sideways, thin and searching, skimming along the dead cistern ring like a fingertip over a scar.

Rosalind’s voice is very calm. “That did not come from below.”

“No,” Rhazek says. His face has emptied of everything but recognition. “It came from what survived the crash.”

The wall clicks again. This time, the copper sphere answers.

Not with Arcan’s voice. With the wall’s rhythm forced through it, like clean metal struck by a dirty hand.

6

Kessa

The sphere answers in light.

Not words. Words would be polite, and apparently we have left polite behind in the council chamber with the last scraps of my patience. The copper seams flare green-white, bright enough to throw every face in the cistern into sharp angles. Rosalind looks carved from old command. Visidion looks like a blade deciding where to fall. Syin looks ready to solve the problem by murdering everyone who makes a sound, which is at least consistent.

Rhazek looks afraid.

What steals my breath is him. The alien who fell from the sky, crawled out of a wreck, argued with Syin while bleeding into the sand, and treated danger like an old creditor he had been avoiding on purpose. For an instant, he looks afraid.

Then he shuts it down so completely I almost wonder if I imagined it. I hate that I caught the glimpse. I hate more that I want to know what put that look there.

Arcan’s warning scratches at the back of my skull. Clean sphere. Clean ship. If either one is calling now, someone put the hook in after Rhazek left him, sometime between escape and impact. Which means the enemy did not follow a message. They marked a fleeing male and let him carry the leash straight to us.

The sphere hums. The light leaps from copper to stone, tracing the old waterlines in the cistern wall. Those dead gray stains blaze blue-white, then green at the edges, turning the round room into a map I don’t understand and very much don’t trust.

“Nobody move,” Rosalind says.

Nobody does, which is nice. I enjoy a room where basic survival has briefly gained popularity.

The central drain repeats the pattern. Then the luminous edge pulls away from the wall and draws a line across the floor toward the eastern curve of the cistern. It isn’t a beam exactly. More like a path being remembered by the old floor.

My skin prickles.

“That’s not going down,” I say.

Rhazek’s good eye cuts to me.