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Kail makes a noncommittal noise.
“Looks like the station is up ahead,” he says. “Where should we dock?”
“Just wherever,” I say, hiding my face from the baby behind a piece of paper, then dropping the paper. The baby freakin’ loves this shit. He laughs with a watery burbling sound. It’s the best sound ever.
“We should get a room at the space-tavern,” I say. “It would be good to have a bath, take stock, and get some supplies for this little dude.”
“You don’t want to buy another ship immediately and continue fleeing?”
“We should be far enough away that the Colony can’t find us. Stowing away was a good idea. And you killed everybody before they sent a message, right?”
“I hope so,” he says.
“Cover the baby up before we disembark,” he says. “We don’t want it being seen by strangers.”
“Why not?”
“Just do as I say, Tarni,” he says, an edge in his voice.
I frown at him over the scaled head. “Excuse me? Since when did you become the boss of me?”
“Since you became distracted by that baby,” he says. “You’re not thinking straight. Keep it hidden. If they find a massacred Persinian ship soon, the two people with a Persinian baby are going to be the first people they look at.”
Damn. He’s right.
“Okay. Good.”
I use the skirt of the predatory cat pelt that Kail made for me to make a baby shroud and covering for the Persinian. His face is well hidden from onlookers. If anybody sees us, they’ll see a blue savage, a biped female, and an infant presumably of their lineage.
We take a room at one of the cozier and more upmarket taverns. I usually would have wanted to go for another ship right away, or a scuzzy tavern where the law would be afraid to look, but things change when you have a little one to worry about.
The room we have is nice, comfortable, and clean. There’s a bath there. I bathe the baby first, feed him, and change him, then put him down to sleep.
Kail watches but doesn’t make any effort to help or interact with the baby at all. I wonder if he feels guilty for what he did back on the ship. The Persinians did nothing except encounter us.
I know I’m going to have to find a home for this baby. A better home than he could have with us. He must have family out there somewhere. Family worried about him. Family who will mourn the loss of him and his parents.
“Don’t worry,” I tell the sleeping baby. “I’m going to get you home.”
“Yes,” Kail agrees. “The sooner we move the infant elsewhere, the better.”
I notice a certain edge to his tone again. Is it jealousy? Kail doesn’t strike me as the type to be so fragile as to be jealous of a helpless baby.
“I am going to get some food, some supplies, and gather what news I can,” he says. “We will talk when I return.”
I should go and scout the docks for a suitable ship, but I don’t want to wake the baby, and I can’t leave him alone. I feel cozy shackles slip over my wrists and ankles, manacles of obligation and care.
“Thank you.”
For the first time since I was in prison, I sit and I wait for something to happen. The baby sleeps and I feel myself start to relax again, though I know that there is an even chance Kail is out there right now killing everybody in his path. He is savage, adjective, not noun. He is death incarnate.
I think about what he said, about a parent begging for the life of their child. I have an impossibly dark feeling that he was once that parent.
I only just met this baby. I do not know his name. I know nothing about him besides the fact that he exists, and that alone is enough to make me dedicate myself to his survival in an instant. I cannot fathom how it must feel to have given birth to a baby and to know that he is in mortal danger, in the possession of two dangerous, violent fugitives.
It was ridiculous for me to complain about Kail making me the bad guy. I have always been the bad guy. From the beginning, I set out to be the bad guy. I just thought I was being the bad guy for the good guys. But good guys don’t use bad guys.
That also means the good guys don’t last very long, not in the company of bad guys. The universe isn’t fair, in short, and I suppose we’re all just doing what we think we should in order to get by. For the Colony, that means massacring native populations, and for me it now apparently means abducting babies from ships of the dead.
