“Enough,” Minait said, but Rel didn’t stop.
“She said she would endure the displeasure of any god but that in her heart you were her child, and she would defy every god to keep you.”
“Enough!” Minait shouted. “This is about the engineer and Regi’s refusal to see the foolishness of the outsiders.” She pulled away from Rel and strode off, her movements jerky. Pertin stared after her for a second before he glared at Rel and then took off after her. Rather than heading toward town, she moved toward the forest where long, dark shadows made it look foreboding.
“What are you talking about?” Regi asked in a confused tone.
Rel lifted his lip at Regi before answering. “She sacrificed everything to that wretched goddess of hers so that the gods would not take her impiety out on you. But you never returned her devotion with anything but rancor.” Regi’s fur rippled as it tried to stand on end and lie down at the same time.
“What?”
“She loves you. She loves you so much she defied her goddess.” He snarled, and Dante inched away. Regi didn’t need an audience for this.
“Why would you never tell me?” Regi asked in a pained voice. He looked toward the edge of the forest where Minait had vanished into shadow.
Rel sighed. “It was not safe to tell you, she said. Knowledge of wrongdoing is enough to attract the displeasure of the gods. But we did not understand you were so unhappy as to consider leaving the Empire. We did not understand that you felt so neglected, and by the time we did...”
“Your logic fails. If the gods did not punish my mother, why would they punish me for learning that she had defied them?”
Rel’s fur rippled. “The godsdidpunish your mother. Otutha watched her so closely that her life became the temple’s and not her own. Anyone who wished to have the goddess oversee their birth need only request her because the goddess never took her eyes from Minait.”
Dante winced. Considering how the Kowri interacted with the gods, he could imagine people in power would take advantage of anyone who had that much of a god’s attention. He’d seen Kowri kneel for hours in the temple. He’d seen people in ratty clothing offering expensive foods to temple animals.
When the silence continued too long, Regi shook his head. “She could have refused. Even when she was young, she forced older and more experienced exalteds to back down. I remember her carrying a dafs corona with her to intimidate others.”
“She lacked those skills when you were born,” Rel said. “She was not long out of her own years, and Pertin and I were recently joined to her. But when she refused to relinquish you, she lost all the freedoms that she had enjoyed. The exalted of Gav’d had to assign a ship to her because so many called her to other planets to attend those births.”
“She could have refused.”
“And the gods would have turned away from her eventually. But she may not have survived the goddess’s attempts to move her. We may not have survived. Just as the crew of that ship you defend was in danger because Divashi watched you, our family could have been destroyed by one slip of Otutha’s mightyhand. Your stubbornness comes from her as does your ability to mis-assign blame. But in Minait’s case, she assigned the responsibility for all this to herself, not to the temple exalted who asked her to be surrogate for a fourth child within five years. She let you blame her because she assigned fault to herself when all she did was love you.”
“I need to talk to her,” Regi whispered.
“You need to give her time to mourn the relationship she hoped to regain when she heard you had returned.”
“But—”
“Leave her for now,” Rel snarled, his canine teeth on display. He took a step back and looked at Regi from head to toe and back before he turned and walked away, heading the opposite direction that his husband and wife had gone.
“Crap,” Dante said softly in the awkward silence that followed. Regi stood in the fading light of day, his form more silhouette than color as the red faded, replaced by a deep purple sky with streaks of black and blue staining it. Stars twinkled, and the dim glow of the city created an unnatural aura faintly illuminating trees and ships from below.
Regi turned to him. “Do you need the facilities for biological waste elimination?”
Dante sighed. “Nope, just the psychological waste elimination.”
Regi huffed. “Kowri lack such a logical facility.” He turned and headed back to the ship.
Chapter Fourteen
Dante followed Regi, past the corridor where his room was, and onto the level where the security office was tucked between the crew mess hall and an abandoned hydroponics lab. Regi disappeared into his office and Dante expected him to lock the office door. If he had, Dante would have accepted that as a request for privacy. But since the door opened when Dante touched the panel, he assumed that Regi didn't mind the company.
Regi was already behind his desk, his fingers flicking over the computer displays. Regi clicked something on his computer and the door locked with asnick. “Is there something you need?”
“I thought I would see if you're okay.” Dante slid into a chair. “Are you okay?”
“I am unharmed.” Regi looked confused. Dante could guess the source of Regi's strange response.
“For humans, ‘okay’ is a term to request information not only on an individual's physical well-being but also on their emotional and psychological state. When I ask if you are okay, I am asking whether you are physically, psychologically, and emotionally unharmed.”
