I was still alive.
The thought made me smile. I stretched a little and wiggled my toes. Someone had taken off my shoes. I turned my head slightly. The room was empty except for Turan Adin. He sat in a chair, his head inclined, his face hidden behind the empty blackness. Beast lay on his lap, her eyes closed.
The smile vanished from my lips. In all the time I’d owned Gertrude Hunt, there’d been only one person besides me who could hold Beast on his lap.
I slipped off the couch. Turan Adin raised his head but didn’t move. I walked over to him, my bare feet making almost no sound on the floorboards, reached out, and touched his hood. It retracted, folding as it slid to settle over his back. For a moment I saw a lupine head armed with monstrous jaws, and then it melted in a blink. Sean Evans looked at me with his amber eyes. His hair was shaved down to stubble. A ragged scar cut across his forehead, slanting to the left, interrupting his eyebrow and chewing up his cheek. Another scar snaked its way up his neck on the right, breaking into a tangle of smaller scars near his ear. What kind of injuries could they have been that the Merchants’ medical equipment couldn’t knit him back together?
His face was hard, so much harder than I remembered, as if any hint of softness had been bled out of him. His eyes were haunted. He looked at me and through me at the same time, as if he were expecting a distant threat to appear on some far horizon behind me. The cocky, funny guy was gone. I was staring war in the face and it was looking back at me.
Oh no.
I reached out and touched the ragged scar on his cheek with my trembling fingertips. He leaned into my hand, like a stray dog who’s been on the run for too long, desperate for any crumb of affection. Painful heat burned my eyes and fell on my cheeks. Beast whimpered on his lap.
“Why?” I whispered.
“I owed a favor to Wilmos,” he said, his voice quiet. “I said I wanted a challenge. Turan Adins don’t last. The Merchants just keep recruiting more when the latest one bites the dust. As long as you match the height, the armor takes care of everything else. I signed up for six Nexus months and got there two days after the last Turan Adin died.”
“Sean…”
“The Army wasn’t hard for me. Everything I did on this planet was easy. What my parents went through was beyond anything I ever tried. It was a test. I wanted to know if I could do it. If I was good enough to survive like they did. If I was someone they could look on with pride. I wanted the training wheels off.”
Six Nexus months, that was barely two months our time. “Why didn’t you leave? Your contract ended.”
“There are civilians in the spaceport and the colony.” His voice was ragged and low. “Children. Our resources are stretched too thin. They would be overrun. They need me.”
He was trapped. Sean’s parents were alpha-strain werewolves, designed and genetically engineered to protect the escape gates against overwhelming force as the rest of population evacuated their dying planet. Sean was born with the drive to protect, the kind of drive that overrode everything else. Repelling the siege of the spaceport must’ve felt right to him, so right, and once he started, he couldn’t stop. His very nature trapped him there.
That’s why he’d fled from the pond. He knew that he would go back to Nexus. He would never see the pond in summer. He would never see me again. He would never cook another barbeque in my backyard and sneak bones to Beast. I would never hear him crack another joke. He…
Nuan Cee had said something just before I passed out. He said, “Do I have your word?”
Ice shot through me. “What did you promise Nuan Cee to save me?”
Sean smiled. “Nothing I regret. You’re alive. It makes me happy.”
“Sean?”
He didn’t say anything.
I spun around and dashed up the stairs to the Merchant quarters.
I found Nuan Cee sitting alone in the front room. The huge screen on the wall was glowing. A recording of some Merchant festival played, its sound muted to a mere murmur as foxes in bright garments twirled long ribbons while dancing through the streets.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he said quietly.
“What did he promise you?”
“Lifetime of service,” Nuan Cee said, his voice mournful. “A life for a life. A fair trade.”
No. No, I don’t think so. Sean Evans wouldn’t die for me. I had to save him now. I came over and sat on the couch.
I looked at the screen. The festival recording melted, obeying my push, and a different image took over the screen. Massive tree trunks twisted between the spires of gray and white stone, each branch as wide as a highway, bearing clouds of blue and turquoise leaves. Pink flowers bloomed on long indigo vines. Golden moss sheathed the trunks, catching the rays of bright sun. A massive feline predator, its fur splattered with rosettes of black and cream, made its way down one of the branches, keeping to the shadows, its massive black claws scratching the moss lightly.
“I once asked my father how the lees became the dominant species on their planet,” I said.
Nuan Cee winced. Few knew the true name of the Merchants’ species, and outsiders weren’t supposed to say it out loud, but I was past the point of caring.
The predator kept moving down the trunk. The view slid down to a spot below where, tucked into a crook between a small, thin branch and the massive tree limb, a single fox sat, gathered into a tiny ball. His blue fur was striped with white and black paint. Compared to the predator, he was tiny. The feline beast could swallow him in two gulps.
“After all, you are so small and your birth planet is so vicious.”
The feline beast smelled the air. He was almost to the fox.
“Do you know what my father told me?”
On-screen the fox’s bright indigo eyes opened wide.
“He told me to never trust a lees, for they are smart and crafty and when their negotiations fail, they kill to get what they want.”
On the screen the small fox shot out from under the massive tree branch, leaping into the air, a blow gun at his lips. A tiny dart shot out and bit into the fur of the feline hunter. The beast shuddered, wracked by convulsions, struggling to stay on its feet. The fox landed next to it on soft paws and yanked a dagger from the sheath at his waist. His black lips drew back, baring savage teeth. His muzzle wrinkled. A deranged light flared in his eyes. The fox fighter fell on the convulsing beast, stabbing its throat again and again, flinging blood everywhere in a frenzy. There was nothing refined about it. Nothing civilized or calm. It was a pure primordial bloodlust, brutal and violent.
Nuan Cee looked away from the screen, averting his eyes.
“I had seen the shape of my poisoner. It was short. Short like a lees. Then you showed up with an antidote to a poison that couldn’t be found even in the Arbitrator’s extensive database. One of your people tried to kill me.”
“It wasn’t sanctioned.”
“The inn marked my poisoner.”
Nuan Cee winced.
“Why did you do it?”
“It wasn’t done on my orders, and I will punish the one responsible. Someone used my image disruptor, but I don’t know how. It is very expensive, and I am the only one who has one. It was completely secure and it is untouched in my quarters. I had used it only once.”
He’d used… “You took the emerald?”
“Yes. I was wearing the disruptor that night under my clothes. Everyone was so busy, and it took mere seconds.”
“You’ve abused my hospitality.”
Nuan Cee sighed. “We did. We are indebted to you. The favor you owe me is forgiven.”
I was so sick of trading favors. “Let him go.”
“No.”
“Nuan Cee! The debt you owe me is greater than any favor. You broke the rules of hospitality. You broke your people’s treaty with the Innkeepers of Earth. You should’ve healed me anyway because I am an innkeeper, and when the others find out about it, you will be banned. Sean didn’t know that, and you took advantage of him.”