CHAPTER EIGHT
INTERROGATED!
That shut ’em up. The crowd of Aarurrh was as silent as a congregation when somebody farts in church. They couldn’t take their eyes off One-Eye’s body, like they were waiting for him to get up and wave and say, “Only a joke, folks. All part of the show.” They couldn’t believe that a little pink bug could kill a brave Aarurrh warrior.
A murmur started, soft at first, then rising, like a summer shower whipping up into a gullywasher. Pretty soon it sounded like feeding time at the predator house. Boy howdy, were those cen-tigers worked up. I was shaking so hard from reaction that I didn’t pay ’em much mind at first. I’d only ever killed two people before, that guy back in Panorama City, and the Barahir Aarurrh who had attacked Queenie, and both them had been blind instinct. One-Eye was the first person I’d ever set out to kill on purpose. Sure, it was self-defense, but you try it sometime and see how you like it. I felt kind of sick and weepy. I wanted to curl up go to sleep for a while, but the crowd, who were pretty ugly to begin with, were getting downright hideous.
Queenie’s gang, the smaller clans and loners, were cheering, but they were way outnumbered. The rest of the crowd was howling for my blood, surging forward so the ropes bulged in and the sword-posts started to tip. It didn’t matter that One-Eye had been a bully, even by Aarurrh standards. He was an Aarurrh. I was an outsider—an animal.
Fights were breaking out. Queenie’s pals versus everybody else. A pack of thugs ducked under the rope and started toward me. I thought I was done for, but just as I started trying to tug my sword out of One-Eye’s rib cage, I was surrounded by four of the chief’s big elite guard and the bobcat-faced living megaphone started shouting for everybody to shut up. It took a minute, but finally the volume dropped to a low grumble.
The chief stood up. He spoke. I couldn’t understand what he said, but his voice stayed calm so I hoped for the best. I searched the crowd for Queenie. She gave me a reassuring nod.
The chief finished his speech and Bobcat broke up the meeting. As the crowd wandered off, the chief’s guards marched me toward his tent. I got worried again. The chief might not want to murder me in public with part of his tribe giving me the hip-hip-hooray, but a little accident in the tent? I felt a little better when I saw that Handsome, Queenie and Sai were getting the invite too. You don’t bring witnesses to a murder.
We filed through the flap. The details faded in as my eyes adjusted to the low light. Weapons and shields and wooden masks hung from the tent poles. Rugs were overlapped on the ground. Blankets and wicker baskets and trunks were tucked close to the leather walls. Four purple-guy slaves brought the Chief’s couch back in and he settled stiffly into it. I suddenly realized that the couch wasn’t just a chief’s right. The guy couldn’t stand too long without it. A young Aarurrh girl poured him a drink in a jeweled cup that had obviously been made for much smaller hands, and he took a long sip.
Sai and I were held back as the Chief had a pow-wow with Queenie and Handsome. Sai whispered a sketchy translation. “He promises that we shall be escorted to civilized lands at first light tomorrow. Handsome wishes to be part of the escort but the chief refuses. Now they speak of Handsome and Kitten’s betrothal.”
That didn’t need any translation. I could see the happiness in Handsome and Queenie’s faces. They bowed and stepped back and the chief turned to me and Sai, giving us a cold once over, especially me. He called over his shoulder.
A skin curtain at the back of the room was pulled aside and an Aarurrh like a blind ghost stepped out of the shadows.
He was a shrimp by Aarurrh standards, almost as small as the pony-size kids, but he still scared the pants off me. First, he was an albino. His tiger-striping was almost white on white, like the pattern on a fancy dress shirt, and his dreads were like fat white grubs. Second, he couldn’t see. His eyes were filmed over with a milky membrane, the purple-black of the pupil showing through as lavender, like a grape drowning in liquid soap. And finally, he was sniffing like a bloodhound, his head hanging to one side like his neck was broken, mouth gaping.
Queenie and Handsome shifted uneasily as he shuffled in. They didn’t like him any better than I did. The chief grunted something and that wobbly head rolled around, snout taking in a long breath, until that unseeing gaze settled on me.
I flinched back and bumped into my guards. Blind Ghost’s four hands snaked out like they had eyes of their own, then slid around me with nauseating gentleness, closing around my arms, my neck and my waist, pulling me in. That snuffling snout started probing everywhere, my mouth, my hair, my armpits, my crotch. I tried to struggle away, but my guards’ hands clamped down on me. I wanted to heave, but he probably would have sniffed that too. Finally he pulled back, staring at my forehead like he thought he was fixing me in the eye.
“A new smell.” His voice was as creepy as the rest of him, a high, thin wheeze like a cat with a cut throat. He turned and hissed at the chief in his own language. He didn’t sound any better that way.
They talked back and forth for a bit. Then the chief turned to me and Blind Ghost stuck his schnozz in my pit again.
I looked over at Sai. “What the hell is this?”
“He’s a diviner. He can smell when you lie.”
“Bullshit.”
My guard wrenched my head around and pointed me at the chief. The chief spoke Sai’s language even worse than Queenie, but he got his point across. “Where from?”
“I don’t know.”
Blind Ghost barked. “Lie!”
Crack! My guard belted me with a paw. It was like being crowned with a fur-covered frying pan. I hit the carpet. The boys picked me up again and we started all over.
“Where from?”
I shook my brain back into place. Maybe this guy could tell if I was lying. I’d just have to tell the truth then. “Coral Gables, Florida.”
Blind Ghost sniffed, then sniffed again. He frowned. “Truth.”
“Where that?”
“America.”
“Truth.”
The chief growled, annoyed. He tried another tack. “Where that from here?”
“I don’t know.”
Blind Ghost was looking really unhappy. “Truth.”
The chief started forming another question, but I continued. “I don’t know how I got here. I woke up on...” I saw Sai twitch and something told me mentioning the teleport stone to these guys was not a good idea. “...on the plain. Near a battle between the red cloaks and the gold cloaks. That’s the first thing I remember.”
“Truth.”
“No memory?”
“I remember where I was before, but I don’t know how I got here, or where there is from here... or how to get back.”
“Truth.”
Blind Ghost and the Chief jawwed again, then...
“Alone?”
There’s one I could answer without hesitation. “I am the only one of my, uh, tribe within five thousand...” I hunted through my built-in alien dictionary for a word that meant a really long haul. “...Five thousand ilns of here.”
My guard floored me again for sassing back, but Blind Ghost just stared. “Truth.”
The chief stared too. I don’t know how much these guys knew about their planet. They might have thought it was flat for all I know, but if an iln was anything like a mile they’d have to see I was pretty damn alone.
They talked again, for longer this time. Queenie and Handsome were starting to look worried. After a bit, the chief turned to Sai and grilled him about me, with Blind Ghost snuffing at him the whole time. Sai backed me up, telling the truth, but also leaving out the part about the stone disk. After that, the chief had me pick up chests and his couch, all easy one-hand lifts, which amazed them all over again. It was only after I finished that I saw Queenie shaking her head at me like I’d fucked up.
Finally the Chief signalled the guards to take us outside again. The crowd was gone, but One-Eye’s clan and the higher-ups were still there, chatting and waiting around. They came to attention and the chief had his mouthpiece make an announcement.
This time it was One-Eye’s gang who were all smiles and Queenie’s gang who were upset. I could see Handsome and Queenie wanted to speak, but they held their tongues. I wondered what was wrong.
I got my first inkling when the guards led me and Sai away. Instead of going with Queenie, we were put in some kind of supply tent with guards posted outside. “What is this bullshit? We’re supposed to be free. Why are we shut up in here instead of over at Queenie’s, packing?”
Sai shrugged. “I know not, mistress. Perhaps we are here for our protection. One-Eye’s compatriots seemed less than pleased at your victory.”
It seemed a little thin to me. “Yeah, well maybe. What did that snooty bastard say? The chief’s mouthpiece? Queenie sure looked down in the mouth about it.”
“My knowledge of the language of these savages is limited, but from what I could decipher it seemed nothing untoward. He merely named the warriors who would escort us out of Aarurrh lands.”
Well, we could have wondered back and forth all night, but I was beat. Killing giant, four-armed tigers takes it out of a girl. I found myself a nice comfy stretch of floor and sacked out.
***
Me and Sai woke up before daylight the next morning to the sound of Queenie’s purr outside the tent. She was talking to the guards, and laying on the charm with a trowel. I could smell cooked meat and sweet roots through the tent and the clink of crockery. After a bit there was a grunt and the tent flap opened, revealing Queenie carrying a bag full of breakfast and the guards chowing down on more of it behind her.
She hugged us and greeted us in a loud voice, laughing and setting out the bowls of food. As we started eating she stole a glance back to the tent flap and lowered her voice.
“They kill you. First night out. The guards who take are clan brothers of Hruthar. Wait for you sleep and...” She made a throat slitting motion.
The food turned to dirt in my mouth. Sai sighed, like he knew this was coming all along. One-Eye’s pals had the escort job. We were dead meat.
Queenie patted my arm. “No worry. Raohah and Murrah save you.” She meant Handsome and Kitten. “That night, you camp Black Rocks. Always first stop on long trip East. You lay down. Guards lay down. Then quick, you get up, carry,” She pointed at Sai. “And...” She made a hopping motion with a hand. “Find rock like uklan’s head. Raohah and Murrah wait. Take you.”
“What’s an uklan?”
Sai spoke up. “A desert lizard. Fear not, mistress. I know its shape.”
I had a lot of other questions. Were these guys really going to wait until we were asleep to kill us? What if they didn’t camp in the usual spot? What if they caught me before I got Sai to the uklan rock? I didn’t get to ask them. One of the guards looked in and barked at Queenie to get out.
She barked back, gathered up the bowls and the bones, then gave me a sad motherly look and one of her rib-cracking hugs. She put me down and touched my cheek. “Keep eye open and claw sharp, Jae-yin.”
She was out of the tent before I could do anything more than nod. She’d knocked me for a loop. She’d used my name. I didn’t know she even knew it. After all that stuff about “good girl” and “bad girl.”
Sai got all nosy. “Is something wrong, Mistress Jae-En?”
“Mind your own business. Just dusty around here, that’s all.”