My mother shuts up and trembles, then looks at my father. “You!” she spits. “I told you not to—”
The Kerz moves his sword. It’s only a flash of steel, and I close my eyes to shut out the image that I assume will follow. Hot tears build up behind my eyes. When I open them, my mother is still standing, but now the Kerz is holding her by the throat. I blink, surprised. Her dress, sliced neatly from the collar to the bottom hem, is sliding away from her body.
Luckily, she has a skinsuit on underneath, or she’d be mortified. She’s well preserved and would pass for thirty Earth years anywhere, but in this wealthy bubble that’s crusty and old, and I know her skin isn’t quite what it was when she was born. Which is about the only acceptable state in this stratosphere of inter-systemic finance.
“Please,” I hear someone saying, realizing only too late that the hoarse, whispery voice is my own. I put my hands to the blue hand on my chest and close them around it. His skin is warm, pulsing with strength and life. The scaly-looking streaks feel surprisingly silky beneath my palms, and they are the source of the pulsing, which becomes stronger with each beat of his—I guess—heart. “Please don’t hurt her.”
The face that turns to me is cold. And incredulous. The air leaves my chest and I cannot breathe again. For a moment I think he has done this somehow. What the fuck am I doing? The water that has been slowly building in my eyes spills over from my right eye.
Always my right eye. I blink it away.
He says nothing, but his look says it all.Shut up.
But to my horror, I discover that I’m not shutting up. “This is against all treaties and protocols, whatever debts my father has accrued they can be settled by the—”
I stop talking—thank the universe—because against my skin, hard, cool, sharp claws have extended from the alien’s fingertips. I look down: they are golden, shimmering, and utterly terrifying. One extends even more, slowly, into my skin, and a very sharp but minor pain, like a paper cut, stretches out from its contact. It doesn’t bleed.
Not yet, but it will.
Anyway, I get the picture. I snap my mouth closed. I’m aware that my hands are still clasping his, that the pulse threading through his scaly tattoos is even stronger, and when I shakily look at his eyes again, his pupils are enormous and predatory. But I’m afraid to let go, because for some reason, I sense that the contact with him is the only thing keeping me standing, the only thing connecting me to reality. It’s almost as if a calm is entering my skin through his markings, pulsing into me. My heart begins to match his pulse.Ifit’s a pulse. I don’t know.
It’s slow, steady, and unafraid. It’s having the curious effect of making me feel the same.
“General,” my father stammers. “Please, this all just a simple mistake of accounting—”
“The Kirigok clan doesn’t make mistakes of accounting. You have no assets, and now I’m here to settle accounts.”
We are all going to die.
I look at the exit again. If I run, I’ll be killed, but at least I’ll have tried. The only thing I cannot figure out is how to let go of this Kerz I’m holding onto. Without trying, I know that my hands will not unclench.
The general, or whoever he is, releases my mother and sheathes his sword.
Unexpected.
“You are fortunate, Mr. Mann. You are a sleaze and a fraud, human business scum who has hoped to—” He turns, smiling, and speaks a few words in his language to the men behind him, who laugh and say something to him.
He turns back to my father. He now seems more dangerous than before, because he’s being playful. Playful psychopaths are bad news. I’ve seen movies. I look at the Kerz next to me. He, at least, is unsmiling. This is somehow reassuring.
“Pull the skin ofsheepover our eyes?” the Kerz finishes, laughing. “This is a stupid expression.” Then he’s suddenly serious. “Kerz are not fools.”
Suddenly cheerful again, he steps up to the platform they are standing on and moves toward Fiona. “Do you know why the Kirigok clan is so successful, Mr. Mann?” He puts a finger—clawed, frightening—beneath Fiona’s chin and smiles. “Because we are sensitive to opportunity.”
He sniffs Fiona, and scowls. Words are exchanged in Kerz between him and the Kerz behind him. The Kerz with his hand on me contributes a few serious words, which end the discussion. I’m sensing a theme, and it’s making me queasy because his claws are so close to my heart: the general may be in charge, but the guy next to me is quietly bossy.
Quietly bossy people are usually powerful. I expect this is true for the Kerz as much as any race.
“I will join our families,” the general shouts jovially, after this discussion. He looks Fiona up and down.
A sound escapes my throat. When it leaves my mouth, it sounds like a laugh.
This will all be fine. Fiona, with her infinite physical charms and her lust for strong aliens and money and power, will marry this freak, and all will be well. I’ve heard of this: the whole universe has heard of this Kerz predilection for clannish, Earth-medieval methods of doing business. It’s a little bit mafia and primordial, but Fiona’ll probably get off on that.
Even Fiona, bless her dizzy soul, is seeing this.
The Kerz is sucking her in with his good looks and alpha-male bravado. She even smiles.
My mother is relaxing.
