Page 10 of Tempting Fate

I glanced at the chiyi curled up in Kri’s shrine. A month. I could manage a month—even if there was little chance of me finding this pleasure at the end of it.

CHAPTER FIVE

Setting down roots

Imani

I RUBBED MY arms against the slight chill in the air. The central fire crackled and popped as we ate breakfast, today a kind of porridge topped with an unfamiliar pink fruit.

Beyond the village, a low haze hung over the mountains, the edges gilded by the rising sun.

Sitting here had the best view. In the other direction, industrial tech rose in the distance from the outskirts of Vadias Town. There wasn’t much—not enough to worry this beautiful place could be turned into a replica of the space stations I’d been on—but I preferred to ignore it entirely in favour of the natural landscape.

“Catch me!” A shaa’ith child ran past us at breakneck speed, followed by their sibling, and they disappeared around the side of one of the stone dwellings. They were the size of human ten year olds or thereabouts—not that I knew much about kids—which meant they must be at least a few years younger. Their parents sat nearby, one on the bench and the other on the grass by their feet, resting his head on his partner’s thigh. Of the few mated shaa’ith couples in Zyamzh, they were one of the only ones who had unusual twisting lines around their elbows and forearms in a vivid shade of purple.

I put my breakfast bowl down with Fenn’s and leaned closer to the fire pit. A curl of smoke snaked towards me, and I ran my upraised hand through it. Swirls danced on my palm. I closed my fingers as if I could catch it. Keep it.

Orukem rose from her seat nearby. “Did you both still want to join me? You really don’t have to.”

“I know. Lead the way.”

Fenn and I followed her across the central courtyard to one of the stone huts nearby.

Airida’s arrival meant we’d see Garrison soon too. The thought of being out in space made me shiver, and I focused on the ground beneath me, making my steps heavier, welcoming the reassuring feedback through my feet. Rather him than me. Truth was, I’d had enough space adventures to last a lifetime. Our illicit excursion to Tathar Refuge had been fun, but the riot and capture that followed, the upheaval of being transported as criminals to a space station thousands of parsecs from home? No. I’d stay put on this lovely moon, thank you very much, and leave the rescue missions to someone else.

I blinked, dismissing the memories before anxiety could take hold, and focused on the room before me. It was bigger than the one Fenn and I shared, with a few items of furniture and a small kitchenette in the corner. Tucked in an alcove at the far side, instead of the shaa-style nest I’d gotten used to, was a generously sized flat bed, more like those on the Dorimisa. The one interior door past the comfy chair under the window would lead to a small bathroom. “How come there’s a bed, not a nest?”

Orukem shrugged. “Shaa sleep in nests, and most of us prefer them, but others want what they are used to.”

“So you give newcomers beds because they’re familiar.”

She grunted as she hauled a freestanding cabinet away from a wall. “And more practical.”

“How?” When she didn’t answer, I wrinkled my nose and pressed the main button on the window controls. The metal frame whirred into motion with only a slight creak, letting much needed fresh air into the room. “Nobody’s been here in a while, huh?”

“No. We keep them for newcomers. He will stay here for the first few months until he’s feeling better.”

“Feeling better?”

Orukem ran a hand over her headspines—the fleshy tendrils that grew like hair on kri’ith and shaa’ith—then traced down her ear ridge to the tip, where a hexagonal tattoo stood out against her orange skin. “The suppressant drugs he was on are not pleasant to come off. He’ll need a lot of support when he gets here.”

My heart tugged in sympathy. To be taken from your home and brought somewhere new and alien, well, it hit a little close for comfort, but to be dealing with feeling poorly on top of that? “What kind of support?”

Orukem turned away, pulling cloths from a wall cabinet. “A clean, tidy room, for starters.”

I rolled my eyes at Fenn, who returned the gesture. Worth a try.

We scrubbed the surfaces and made up the bed with fresh sheets, ready for Airida’s arrival late the next day. As I worked, I kept glancing at the roof. The yellow-grey stone was probably some kind of rhyolite or tuff, and it wasn’t good enough that I didn’t know, not if I wanted to get into the geoscience guild.

Between work and catching needed downtime, I’d not had much time to do much reading on galactic geology—not that we could properly read here yet. If my voice search picked up the right terms and gave me a suitable article or book, then I’d have to get the computer to read it aloud and hope the translator delivered the information in words that made sense. Pain in the arse.

My comm chirped, and I dropped the cloth on the bed, pulling my device from its wrist mount. In the sketchy English datapack font—we’d had to hand digitise the letters ourselves—a message gleamed in vibrant orange. “You have been assigned a room in the Wayfarer’s Rest.”

“Fenn! Look.” I held out the screen.

Orukem clacked her jaw. “Are you helping or not?”

I clicked my comm back on my wrist and returned to cleaning, a big smile over my face. One week. One more week of nice, quiet village life, and then my life on Vadias could really begin.