A Guilt of Orphans Part Three
Liam blew out a breath. He had no idea what he was supposed to say to any of these Grandmothers, so he turned his back on thousands of years of experience and sat on the floor in front of a nine- or ten-year-old boy with blue eyes.
“Hi. I’m Liam.”
The boy nodded, but his gaze kept darting around the room. Liam imagined that all those huge Grandmothers must’ve seemed overwhelming for someone who had lost his whole ship—his whole family. For him, they must’ve resembled dinosaurs. Personally, Liam was noticing how much smaller these Grandmothers were—they resembled Tuk-status females more than millennia-old Grandmothers with the wisdom to rule a ship. Maybe that was why they had to ask theCaltifor help.
“What’s your name?” Liam asked the little boy.
He focused on Liam. “Chad,” he said softly. “Is Nasila okay?”
The ship’s eldest Grandmother gazed at Liam without showing any emotion, and Ondry had paled. Liam closed his eyes and tried to find the words to explain death to a child who had already seen too much of it. Liam knew a lot of humans flew in old ships—the war had redirected too many resources to the fighting. But that had been a distant problem up until this moment.
Now a Rownt ship had a dozen orphans and no consensus about how to handle them. Maybe Ondry held Liam up as some expert on humanity, but Liam didn’t have any answers.
“She’s not okay, is she?” Chad hiccupped in the middle.
“I’m sorry,” Liam said. “The Grandmothers didn’t reach her in time.” Even if they had boarded earlier, she had gone into the radiation zone too many times to survive. All the adults had. Until the end, they’d tried to fix their broken old ship to save the children. That had made an impact on the Grandmothers, no matter how much they put on stoic expressions. They probably didn’t want strangers from theCaltito see their distress.
“Why didn’t they come?” Chad looked around as if he was surrounded by monsters.
“Rownt see the world differently,” Liam said, and that was the worst explanation he had ever offered to anyone. He took a breath and tried again. “They move slowly, and they didn’t understand what had happened.”
“You mean they were afraid?” Chad wrinkled his nose.
“They didn’t want to make a mistake. They don’t understand people or why your ship was so damaged.”
“There was an explosion.” Chad’s eyes shone with tears, and in the background, Liam heard Ondry whispering. He was probably explaining human tears, but for once Liam didn’t have time to pay attention to what Ondry might be doing.
“How long ago?”
Chad shrugged. “Nasila asked them to help.”
“But they didn’t know Nasila, and Rownt don’t believe in talking to strangers.” Liam knew he’d made a mistake the second tears ran over Chad’s cheeks. No doubt some parent had given him the same advice. “Rownt always take care of children,” Liam added quickly. It didn’t stem the flow of tears. “And they like to spoil their friends. I have a friend and the Grandmother brought his dog on the ship.” Liam prayed for all he was worth, and some god listened.
Chad blinked, too shocked to continue crying. “A dog?” he whispered. “A real dog like they have on Earth?”
