“Your village leader offered your services to us. The female, Myla, spoke with some of my binaries, and they negotiated terms on my behalf. We needed a healer.”
“Binaries?” Eleri asked.
“When a klatch becomes two, they become a binary, and they serve beneath me to manage our younger klatches.”
“And what did she get in return? When she spoke to your binaries?” Eleri’s voice cracked. She wasn’t exactly surprised. Myla had been trying to find a way to get rid of her after all.
“We have been recruited to prevent the IA forces from taking Myla and her klatch into captivity. It was a balanced trade.”
The pieces snapped into place. Myla wasn’t going to allow herself or Minio to be remanded into IA custody without a fight. She would get no help from anyone in Laurus or Indras, which meant she had no choice but to turn to their more sinister neighbors. Her throat was still dry as the dust outside, but she ran her tongue along the back of her bottom teeth, plucking up the courage to do what needed to be done.
“You need a healer. I’m here now, but I see no patient.”
“Then follow.” Niis gestured with its eyestalks.
There was a hanging over a doorway at the far end of the room, but no signs of furnishings as she would understand them. Eleri ducked awkwardly through the doorway, steadying herself on a stack of energy cells. And in the far corner of the room, a figure lay prone under a stack of mismatched blankets.
Uninvited, Eleri took a few steps closer, pulling her medkit alongside her. The ravik didn’t get in her way. “Is this person why you asked me to come here?”
“Yes. Leeqa is my final surviving mate, and the bearer of my strongest klatches. Also, the bold pilot who brought us to this planet after we were ousted from Rakara.”
Eleri felt her shoulders relax only a tad. There was a person who legitimately needed medical care. At least this was inside the scope of her understanding, even if she resented being brought there under such violent pretenses. “Tell me what I can do to help. My abilities are limited here without my scanners and pharmacy synthesizer.”
“Leeqa sleeps and does not wake. We have tried all the remedies we know, but nothing has helped.Occasionally, we get a few moments of consciousness, long enough to offer some hydration and soft foods, but nothing more.”
“Can I examine Leeqa?” Eleri was tired. It was a long history of trying to placate those who would do her harm.
“Yes, healer.” His spikes flared from his forearms in warning. “But remember, you live at the will of the Multitude around me. If you harm her, I will destroy you.”
Eleri clutched her stomach, trying to prevent the threat of rising bile. She was about to start her examination when she realized this might be her only chance to negotiate. Once she provided a service, it stood to reason she would be offered tribute.
“If I help you, what will you offer me in return?” It was an odd, slippery question on her tongue, but she stood firm behind it. Niis made a rattling sound with his arm spikes, which caused Eleri to shuffle backward, worried she’d made a grave error.
“Humans are jumpy little things, aren’t they?” Niis asked no one in particular. “You are correct, healer. If you are helpful, I must offer tribute of equal value to the service you provided.” He sat on a cushion on the ground a few paces away from Eleri. “But the nature of tributes is that they come after the help, not before.”
“I’m sure you already know what I want,” Eleri said as she approached the patient on her knees.
“Then you should ensure your work is enough to earn such a reward.”
It wasn’t the answer she’d been hoping for, but it was obviously absurd to think they would agree to let her go so easily after going through all this trouble to kidnap her from Laurus. Eleri turned her attention to her work. Leeqa’s pulse was steady and seemed normal enough for the little she knew about ravik anatomy.
“Have you noticed any rashes or odd patterns of behavior when she’s awake?”
“It is only for a few short moments at a time.”
“Can you predict when she will wake?” Eleri examined the pale green sclera of the patient’s eyes and then rolled back the blankets with care to get a better sense of the muscle tone. There was nothing obvious. Although she was catatonic, her limbs responded to normal reflex tests.
“When the light is at its lowest, she wakes,” he responded.
“What is the daylight cycle like on your home planet?” Eleri asked, homing in on a diagnosis.
“I don’t see why this matters.” Niis tapped a long claw against one of the broken datapads. “Do you have an answer for what ails my mate ornot? If you can’t help her, you are useless to me, and I will feed you to one of my klatches.”
The thought made Eleri shudder internally, but she maintained a placid expression. “If you don’t answer my questions, I can’t answer yours.”
“On Rakara, we had five standard hours of sunlight and twelve of complete darkness.”
“And this behavior started how soon after you arrived on Cassiaq-IV?”
