That didn’t sound good. I set my jaw and hoped my translator finished learning their dialect. I could see Mierva andBaleck listening intently, likely doing the same thing I was, but without the translator device to assist. Poor Zara. The translator implant gave her terrible headaches. She’d take the time to learn a new language to avoid using the device more than she had to. If she were here now, she’d be in agony.
“They crashed in…”something“…mountains,” another voice argued, this speaker’s eyes were a cautious yellow. “Injured. Vulnerable. What threat could they pose?”
“The threat of change,” the soldier said flatly. “The threat of everything our ancestors built being destroyed by outsiders.”
The debate escalated, voices rising, accusations flying. I looked at Baleck and Mierva, saw my own confusion reflected in their expressions. We were standing in the middle of a council chamber while people argued about whether we were going to destroy their civilization, and we couldn’t even defend ourselves.
My temper, which had been simmering since the crash, finally boiled over.
“Do you mind?” I said loudly, cutting through the argument. The translator in my head was working frantically, trying to convert my words into something they’d understand. “How about we start with basic hospitality?”
The chamber fell silent. Every eye turned to me, the colors shifting in a wave of surprise.
Rezor’s gaze snapped to mine. Those pale eyes deepened to a vivid purple this time. His expression showed clear surprise that I’d spoken.
Too bad. I’d never been good at keeping my mouth shut.
“We crashed,” I continued, words coming out stilted asthe translator struggled with the unfamiliar grammar. “Not attack. Not invade.Crash. Accident.” I gestured with my bound hands to Mierva. “Injured. Cold. Need help. And you…” I looked around at the council members, letting them see exactly how unimpressed I was. “You argue about prophecies while she suffers. Do you have a doctor or healer who can treat her injury?”
The female with the silver braids, who was being referred to as Zelana, stared at me with eyes that had shifted to an interested gold. Something that might have been approval crossed her features.
The soldier looked furious, his eyes flashing between red and black. “The sky creature interrupts. Such disrespect. We should—”
“We should show them the courtesy we’d want if our positions were reversed,” Zelana interrupted. She addressed Rezor directly, her tone formal but pointed. “Lord Rezor, what do you propose?”
Rezor was still looking at me, his eyes shifting to that impossible fuchsia. His expression was unreadable, but something in the way he held himself made that heat flare in my chest again. After a long moment, he turned to face the council.
“They will remain here,” he said, his voice carrying absolute authority. “Under guard. Under my supervision. We will learn who they are and why they’ve come. And then we will decide their fate.” He paused. “After we’ve treated their injuries and shown them the basic decency any visitor deserves.”
The emphasis on that last part was clearly directed at the hostile council members.
“If they prove to be a threat,” he continued, “Iwill deal with it. But until then, they are under my protection.”
Zelana nodded, satisfied. The soldier looked like he wanted to argue more but subsided with obvious reluctance. The other council members murmured among themselves, their eyes shifting through uncertain colors, but no one challenged Rezor’s decision.
He turned back to us, his gaze finding mine again. Those fuchsia eyes held mine for a beat too long before he spoke. “You understand my words?”
I considered, then rejected, the idea of explaining the translation device. It wouldn’t go over well with this crowd, who distrusted us enough as it was, so I just nodded. “Some of them.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Good. You will be housed in my compound. Fed. Given medicine for your wounds.” His accent was thick, the words carefully chosen. “But you will be watched. And if you prove me wrong about you…” He let the sentence hang, unfinished.
I met his stare, refusing to look away even as those fuchsia eyes made my pulse race. “We’re not your enemy. We just want to survive long enough to find our friends.”
Something flickered across his face. “There are more of you?”
“We are part of a crew of eleven,” I replied. “Our ship was caught in the storm and the captain ordered us to evacuate in escape pods. There are four pods.” I glanced at my two companions, who looked a little surprised that I couldcommunicate as well as I was.Theydidn’t have implants. “We don’t know the fate of the other three.”
“We saw no other crashes,” he said. “If these other…podscrashed, they did not land near my territory.” Then he turned and gave orders to the guards so fast that my translator couldn’t quite keep up with them.
The bindings at our wrists were removed and we were escorted from the council chamber, down a corridor, and into a bunk room with four separate beds. It wasn’t a huge space, but it had simple, comfortable furnishings, and it was clean and warm. Real beds piled with blankets and pillows. Windows that looked out over the valley. The walls were deep brown and the colors reminded me of autumn in the northern hemisphere of Earth. It was almost unbearably cozy.
I collapsed onto the nearest bed and let out a long breath, every bruise and ache making itself known now that the adrenaline was wearing off.
“Well,” Baleck said dryly, settling Mierva onto another bed with careful movements. “That could have gone worse.”
“Could have gone better,” I muttered, already cataloging the room’s features. One door, two windows, guards outside. Not ideal for escape, but at least we weren’t in a cell.
Mierva closed her eyes, pain etched in every line of her face. “We need to find out if anyone else survived, but if they did, they aren’t in this region.”
