Page 16 of Tempting Fate

Work. I had to work, even if I retreated back to bed once I was dressed. But my head hurt, and I closed the screen full of trading indexes—sanitised lists of data—as soon as I opened them.

Some days, my work was nothing more than numerical analysis, spotting patterns and trends, working out what goods moved best where. This was the tried and tested Orithian way; being isolated from the rest of the galaxy, we had no first-hand information, and so we learned about other worlds through their trading history.

It was all my parents had wanted me to access. But sometimes one needed to know what something was and how it related to the society buying or selling it. Sometimes, one even needed to negotiate a trade deal, and I’d learned to barter over text comms.

Little by little, I’d extended the amount of information I had access to. Bzhalti always needed an increase in grain every five of its years. Industrial space stations had their own specialisms and sought resources in cycles according to manufacturing trends. If there was a war, that planet or faction’s exports would become harder to obtain and therefore more valuable.

These were all details I hoarded, mapping the patterns and distilling the information into simple instructions for my sister: buy this here, sell it there. It was all I was good for—but by the gods, I excelled at it.

Yet for now, it was too much.

My sister’s engineer, Muzati, had recommended Lovers of Lietan. I found the season I was up to—season five—and let the familiar music and voices lull me into the muted, dull calm I’d had on the Dorimisa. It was exactly the sort of entertainment Mother had loathed, had said was beneath us, but I had tried it regardless, discovering a strange comfort in the familiarity of the characters. That, and I really needed to know if Vaenallra would reject Yoria’s advances again.

“What do you think?” I asked the chiyi, who had taken up from their usual place in Kri’s shrine to settle in my headspines. “Will Vaenallra realise she’s meant for them today? Or will we have to wait?” The storyline had stretched over a whole season already. Surely they couldn’t eke it out too much longer.

At the end of the episode, I checked my comm. Still not too late for the morning ritual—though Kri would have to be satisfied with me staying in bed for it.

I sang the rites, my melancholy taking respite under the familiar words, and fell into a fitful doze.

The polyphonic tones of a shaa’ith voice drifted through my window, pulling me from sleep. “You don’t need to do that. One of us can take it to him.”

“It’s okay, I don’t mind.” The soft reply could only belong to one person.

I reached for my spectacles. “You may enter.”

Ah. Beautiful fate.

Aimanei—no, Imani—carried a bowl. Whatever food it contained smelled delicious, but I found myself wishing for the undercurrent of her perfume.

I gestured to the table beside my bed. “You can put it there, thank you.” A pang of homesickness hit me, in particular for Kimivha, the steward who had been more family to me than my parents. Grief rushed up my throat, tears pricking behind my eyes.

She set the bowl down. “How are you feeling?”

“I have been better,” I sighed. But it’s not her fault. “Thank you for bringing me food.”

“No worries. It’s just stew, but it’s tasty. Nice and spicy.” Her gaze roved around the room as she spoke and alighted on the chiyi, who sat by Kri’s shrine. “A flying lizard! I’ve seen plenty in the gardens, but none like this one. It’s so pretty.”

Gardens? I sipped my water and pushed up to sitting, my muscles protesting. “She’s… mine? She came with me.”

“From your planet?”

“From Orith, yes.” From my garden. The only chiyi like this I would ever see again, and neither of us would ever see our garden again.

The weight of what I’d lost bowed my shoulders, grief threatening to overtake me.

Stop that noise. Kri’ith do not cry.

I swallowed my tears and drowned out my father’s rebuke with my pathetic version of a growl, the best my scrawny body could manage. “I need to eat,” I managed. “You may leave now.”

I didn’t dare look at her, but didn’t miss her sharp intake of breath or the disapproving huff as she let it out.

“What’s your full name?” she asked, a sharp coolness to her voice I hadn’t expected.

“Airida mai Tasra,” I said without thinking. Then, raising my eyes to hers, “Why?”

Imani speared me with a glare. “So I know what to call you next time you speak to me like that.” She put one hand on her ample hip; it pulled her tunic taut, highlighting the tantalising curves of her breasts and stomach. “Don’t do it again.”

She swept out of the room, and the door closed behind her.