Alone in the classroom, his mind was occupied elsewhere. A genuine voicelock. Earth-made, no doubt. It was the only place where the craftsmanship was still practiced with any regularity. He considered what he would have to do to convince the human to let him examine it.
CHAPTER 5
Cassie
I’m sorry about this.Cassie slipped Rhea one of her extra sweets after dinner.
Not your fault.Rhea stared at the chocolate confection.
She’d been given two days of reflection for mouthing off to a client. It was Cassie’s role to enforce it as her flock leader, but she’d rather engage in a small act of rebellion than let Rhea starve for two whole days.
She’d said the words a million times before. She’d introduced herself to a million strangers, so why, in a classroom of younglings and one educator, did she feel like she was being asked to set herself on fire? She recalled the time someone had actually asked her to set herself on fire during a particularly gruesome memory bender, and this wasstill worse. Cassie found herself seeking solace, not in the quiet emptiness of the room above the clinic, but in an overturned boat down by the canal. Now that the flooding had ended, there were any number of places for her to hide around the town.
It was dark and hidden, and the rest of the world just felt too enormous. The resettlement agents had told her Laurus was the IA’s smallest colony. They had told her everywhere else was far larger. And some of her braver fledglings had gone. Rhea to Ita Ita. Swift to Oscilla Dor. And Piper to an urtazi collective on Lera. But when they asked her where she wanted to go, she could only bring her palms together in her best approximation of the word ‘small’. Because going with her fledglings wasn’t an option. It was too hard to guarantee their safety if they stayed in a group. As long as the Aviarist and his agents were still alive and not in IA custody, they remained a silent threat. Now she was in Laurus, where the definition of small was two hundred people, when she had spent her entire life in the Aviary with the same fifty people for company.
“You are here.” A voice startled her from her memories as someone lifted the hull of the boat to reveal the bright sunshine overhead. “My mate was concerned about you.”
Cassie squinted up to see the latil’e male, S’samph, standing over her. His brown uniform blended against the dusty yellow of his scales. Eleri’s mate.
She didn’t have a response she wanted to use, so she just sat there waiting for him to get to his point.
“Do you want to help Eleri in the clinic this afternoon?” S’samph asked. Cassie shook her head. Eleri was nice, but she also asked questions Cassie didn’t want to answer. The latil’e male’s frill twitched in a motion she couldn’t interpret.
“Well, Eleri does not think it is healthy for you to be alone so often. If you don’t want to be with her in the clinic, you can come run drills with the rest of my security team.”
It didn’t sound like an ask. He spoke as if her day was already decided. Cassie frowned. What business was it of his if she wanted to sit out in the heat under an overturned boat all day? Besides, after what had happened in the classroom, she had zero interest in engaging with anyone.
“That is a violation of my protocols,” she said.
“It’s not. We’re storing all the boats for the season anyway, so you’ll have to find somewhere else to go.” He crouched down beside her. “I do not know the entirety of your story. Eleri tells me it is classified medical information. But I do know when I first came to Laurus, I was scared and angry. Finding something to do with those feelings was helpful.”
If he was mated to a human, then he should easily be able to recognize her glare of displeasure. He didn’t budge. His tail flicked a few times, frill rippling.
“Our time is up, please come again soon!” She spat the words at him in singsong but had no idea whether he would interpret her bitter undertones. If S’samph was fazed by her behavior, he gave no indication. Instead, he just stood there holding the boat up above her head.
“If you do not wish to come with me, perhaps you can go speak with the new educator. He was looking for a human with a voicelock. You are our only human with a voicelock.”
This made Cassie rise to her feet. The educator knew about voicelocks. It was a dangerous topic. Only a certain type of person could identify one on sight. Despite Aglao and Eleri’s assurances that they would find someone to remove it, Cassie held no such conviction. She gestured for S’samph to lead the way to whatever insane military drills he was running.
There was no guarantee she wouldn’t accidentally run into the educator in the next place she tried to hide, and she didn’t want to take that chance.
The tip of S’samph’s tail curled upward, but he said nothing until he fished something out of the compartment on the back of his levibike. “Here. Eleri asked me to give this to you after I found you.” He handed her a jar of paste. There were identifying letters on the side, but they were beyond Cassie’s comprehension.
She shook her head at the letters and then pointed, hoping he would understand she needed him to read it for her.
“It’s for sun protection.”
Cassie nodded in understanding and smeared it over her face and the back of her neck and then shoved the jar into the massive pocket of her oversized jumpsuit. “Can I help you with something else?” she asked.
“Training. We’re already late.” S’samph stomped off toward his levibike and tossed a spare helmet at her. After shoving the helmet on her head, she perched uncertainly on the passenger seat of the bike and felt her stomach lurch as he accelerated. It was a smooth ride, if a swift one, and as long as she held on to the handles with all her might and kept her gaze dead straight ahead, she didn’t feel like she was going to die.
When they arrived, there was already an assembled group. A few urtazi, one other latil’e, a handful of kyrot, and a single giradey female.
“This is human Cassie. She’ll be training with us for now. Wreeta, let her run with you. You’re the slowest. Everyone else, get moving.”
The rest of Laurus’s security patrol started their laps led by K’kaen, the other latil’e while Cassie stood behind with Wreeta. Running was the last thing she wanted to be doing, but she didn’t think she could win a fight against S’samph.
“What a nice compliment.” Wreeta fluffed the feathers around her neck. “Not all of us are taller than a damn tree.”
