Beneath the Twin Moons of Haldae (13 page)

At mealtime, the door opened, and a guard stepped out. Suddenly alert, Kris waited until the guard had disappeared behind the house, no doubt on his way to get food. Then Kris took his chance. He ran to the front door, jumping on his last stride so that he hit the wooden door with both front paws. His weight broke the latch and flung the door open, and he hopped inside, his gaze darting everywhere and taking stock of the situation.

As he had hoped, only one guard was left in the house, seated at a table, a game of Kings and Stones laid out in front of him. Kris knew him, knew his final form was a panther, knew he was trained to fight in ways Kris couldn’t even imagine. Even so, he remained unafraid. His reason to fight—to win—was stronger, and so he would do both things.

The guard pushed away from the table and shifted to his panther form in one fluid movement. Kris attacked [Kri" align=" at once, using brute force and the difference in sizes to make up for his lack of training. He growled as he fought, instinct rather than intent, and at once his name rose from the other room.

“Kris?” Zaren called out. “Kris? Is that you? What’s going on?”

Redoubling his efforts, Kris lashed out at the panther’s neck with his paw, and his extended claws drew blood.

A lot of blood.

The guard collapsed, returning to his human form to clutch a hand to his bleeding throat. It wasn’t what Kris had wanted. He had tried not to wound the guard, but there was nothing he could do to take it back. Shifting back to his human form, he watched the guard for a few seconds before Zaren’s continued shouts drew him to her door. He undid the lock and drew the door open, but even as Zaren threw herself in his arms, he couldn’t help but glance back at the guard.

When he had fought the Ushias, he was too lost in the shift to worry about taking a human life. Even if he’d been in possession of all his mental faculties at the time, they were enemies and they had attacked him first. This was different. This was one of his people, someone it was Kris’ duty to protect.

“I had to hurt him,” he told Zaren when she pulled away. “Can you help him?”

Looking down at the guard, she shook her head. “I can’t. They took my medikit.” At his blank look, she added, “The gray box I took from the shuttle?”

Kris blinked, then turned around. He had seen that box as he fought, resting on a shelf near the door. He grabbed it and presented it to Zaren with both hands. “Now can you help him?”

“I can try,” she said, already kneeling by the guard’s side. She pulled a long object from the box, and when she touched it in a certain way, a light, frothy substance bubbled at the end. She tugged the guard’s hand away from his neck. “It’s all right,” she murmured. “This will help.”

Whether he heard her words or was too weak to resist, the guard let put the object right next to his neck.

Kris vaguely remembered that she had healed him like this after she scared the Ushias away. The memory was sensation more than anything else, and when the guard shuddered, Kris shivered as well, remembering how cool the white foam had felt on his skin.

When she pulled away, the three slash wounds were entirely covered in the white foam, and they had stopped bleeding. After only seconds, the foam disappeared, and all that was left were three pale scars. The guard blinked very slowly, and raised a hand to touch his throat. His eyes widened when he found unbroken skin beneath his fingertips.

“Are you… are you an angel?” he whispered, staring up at Zaren.

She turned a confused look toward Kris as she stood.

“She is,” Kris replied for her, and if he was lying, he felt no guilt about it. “Do you understand why I have to free her?”

The guard nodded, still awed. Very slowly, he got to his feet, his eyes never leaving Zaren as tho [ Za" augh he expected her to perform another feat.

Kris knew the answer already, but he had to ask, “Are you going to raise the alarm?”

“I have to,” the guard said, sounding apologetic. “I have a family to take care of. I cannot be an outcast, too.”

A pang of pain spread through Kris at that reminder. Would he ever see Elea again? It was too late to regret his actions, though, and even if there had still been time, he wouldn’t have changed anything. Zaren had saved his sister; the least he could do was save her in return.

“Outcast?” Zaren repeated softly as she turned a frown to Kris.

He’d have time to explain later.

“Can you give us two hours?” he asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

The guard started shaking his head, but when his gaze fell on Zaren again, he faltered. “Half an hour,” he said, looking at the floor. “Don’t ask for more. Any longer and my companion will be back. I can’t risk him finding me alone.”

There was nothing more to say. Kris held out his hand toward Zaren, but she didn’t take it right away. Instead, she touched the guard’s shoulder, drawing his eyes to her. She smiled.

“Thank you,” she said in their language, and the guard’s face lit up with surprise. Unless Kris was mistaken, she had just bought them a little more time.

Finally taking Kris’ hand, she looked at him. “I’m ready.”

They ran out, and didn’t stop until Zaren was completely out of breath. Only then did she tell him her people were on their way to take her home.

Only then did she break his heart.

Chapter 13

Medicine

Zaren and Kris arrived in his village at night, two or three hours after sunset. Zaren had asked to stop when darkness first fell, but Kris explained that his village was close-by, and his promise that she would have a proper bed to sleep in that night had helped her keep walking even when exhaustion turned her legs to stone.

By the light of two pale slivers of moon, Zaren discovered a picture that seemed straight out of a holo-projection, and she had to stop on the edge of the village to take it all in. A street wide enough for five or six men to walk abreast led into the village. It was covered in large, flat rocks that seemed white under the light of the moons. On each side, she could already see narrower streets, also paved in white stones.

Houses were scattered through the village, farther apart on the periphery, closer together toward the center, and she could already guess the shape of larger ^ Za" werbuildings at the very center. These had to be communal structures. As far as she could tell, the houses were made of brick and wood, some with fenced yards, others close together. Most windows were shuttered, but she could still see flickering lights inside some houses, from candlelight, or fires maybe.

“How many people live here?” she asked Kris when he turned back toward her. “Do all your people live in the village or—”

A shake of Kris’ head interrupted her. “Ask me again later,” he said very quietly. “We have to be quiet now, it’s better if no one knows I brought you here yet.”

It was the first hint Kris had given her that her presence wasn’t entirely welcome, and suddenly Zaren had a dozen more questions—but couldn’t ask them. She wished she had asked about how she might be received before they had reached the village. Seeing how she wouldn’t stay long before the rescue shuttle arrived, she hoped she wouldn’t get in trouble before that—and that she wouldn’t get Kris in trouble either.

He led her around the edge of the village, and rather than taking one of the wide streets, they followed one of the narrower alleys up to a small house midway inside the village.

“Is this—”

His head whipped toward her and he motioned for her not to talk so loudly. She ducked her head.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I just wanted to know if this is your house.”

“My family’s,” he replied, just as quietly. Rather than taking her to the front door, he made her step into the fenced yard, where bushes that came as high as her chest almost hid them completely. “My sister is in there, and a neighbor is probably with her, too. I need you to stay here for a moment. I’ll send her home and you can come in after she has left. All right?”

He squeezed her hand gently as he finished, as though to apologize for leaving her alone. She smiled and nodded to show she understood, then lowered herself to crouch behind the bush and remain hidden. Kris walked away, entering the house. After a few moments, she could see a woman stepping out. A few moments more and Kris reappeared, calling her name softly from the threshold. She hurried to him and he closed the door behind her.

The first room, Zaren observed, had to serve as kitchen and dining room. Fire was crackling in the fireplace on her left, and after being in the cool night air, the warmth of the room was very welcome. All the furniture was crafted out of wood, with a deep, rich patina that spoke of age. There were two doors in the back of the kitchen, and two more on the right side of the room, but only one door stood ajar, candlelight flickering inside it. As Zaren stood by the table, wondering whether it was safe to talk now, Kris approached the open door and peeked in.

“She’s asleep,” he murmured as he turned back to Zaren.

“Your sister?”

He nodded. “The sickness takes their strength from people. As they get to the end, they sleep more and more.”

His voice remained steady, but his face betrayed his pain. Without thinking, Zaren went to him and rested her hand on his should con sizer. “The end?” she whispered. “You mean…”

He looked at her hand on his shoulder, but made no movement to dislodge it. “There is no cure and most people die. Some people die in just days. Our mother did. Others last for weeks. A few recover. Elea lasted longer than our father already, so maybe…”

He shrugged and looked inside the room again. He sounded and looked so defeated that something twisted inside Zaren. Ever since she had met him, he had been so strong, so sure of himself, that she hadn’t imagined anything could affect him like this.

“I was afraid I’d come back and she’d be gone,” he continued after a few seconds. “But I had to leave. The Elders ordered me to. I just hope she’ll wake up again.”

All of a sudden, Zaren thought of the medikit and the medicine it contained. The kit only held one dose of universal serum, meant to cure the observer of any unexpected disease contracted on the planet. The rules she had sworn to follow when she had become an observer specifically prohibited her from interfering with native populations, including giving them medical help of any kind.

But then, if she had had followed the rules to the letter, she wouldn’t have asked Kris’ help in finding the shuttle. She wouldn’t have remained with him, tried to interact with him, learning from him as much as he learned from her. She wouldn’t have healed him—healed his wolf form—after the warriors had wounded him.

She had broken so many rules already; what was one more if she could help Kris? Of course, she wasn’t even sure she’d be able to help at all. For all she knew, the serum might have no effect on Kris’ sister.

A gentle hand brushed against her bare arm, where the sleeve was torn, and Zaren started. She blinked, looking up to find Kris peering at her worriedly.

“You’ve been quiet for a long time,” he said. “Is something wrong?”

“You’ve helped me so much,” she murmured. “I wish I could help you in return…”

He frowned a little. “Zaren? What…”

She pulled the medikit from the repurposed fruit bag in which Kris had asked her to hide it and set it on the table. Opening the kit, she pulled out the vial of serum. The liquid inside was a pale green color, like a newly formed leaf that needed more sun.

“This is medicine,” she said quietly, showing Kris the vial. “If I was sick, this could cure me of almost any disease.”

She watched his face as she spoke, watched realization slowly turn into hope. His eyes were wide when he looked up from the vial and met her gaze.

“Can your medicine help Elea?” he asked, his voice shaking with eagerness.

Feeling a pang of guilt for giving him such hope when she wasn’t even sure she could help, Zaren dropped her gaze to the vial again. The serum inside had been formulated for someone like her—someone who had lived in a particular environment all her life, who had fed a certain way, who had been immunized against all sorts of diseases. One of the reasons why offering the serum to indigenous p c ineonopulations remained taboo was simple: there was no way to predict how someone from a different world might react to it.

“It might help her,” Zaren said, but added very fast, “but it’s just as possible that it might kill her.”

* * * *

Kris waited a few seconds, certain that Zaren was going to add something else. When she didn’t, he shook his head. She did not understand. But then, how could she?

She had not grown up with sick people around her, had not hoped for months by the bedside of the people she loved, waiting for them to get better, only to see them die in front of her. She did not know how randomly, how unfairly the sickness struck, wiping out some families entirely or affecting only one sibling out of a handful. Kris’ only consolation was that his parents had died thinking that both he and Elea would be all right; she had fallen sick seven years after their mother had passed away, and five years after their father.

No, Zaren really did not understand.

“Most people who are sick die,” he explained again, forgetting to be quiet in the sudden rush of hope that had filled him. “If you don’t try to help her, it’s likely—”

His voice broke. He had tried not to think of this during his journey, and at times his mind had been so preoccupied with Zaren that he hadn’t thought of Elea at all. But in truth, he was lucky that Elea had not faded away before he returned. And if he was totally honest with himself, a small part of him had hoped Zaren would be able to help, like she had helped his wounds heal.

“It’s likely she’ll die,” he finished, no louder than a murmur.

Zaren observed him for a long moment, her expression grave, the smile that had lit up her face so often during their journey now no more than a memory.

“Does that mean you want me to do it?” she asked, and she still sounded uncertain.

“Kris?”

Elea’s quiet word startled Kris. He turned back to her room and entered it, a smile automatically rising on his lips even though Elea had never been so pale. He knelt by her bed and took her hand in his. He squeezed her fingers gently, but she was too weak to even squeeze back.

“You’re back,” she murmured. Her eyes drifted to his marked shoulder and she squinted before grinning. “The wolf. I knew it.”

He nodded. “Yes, you were right. I’ll tell you when you’re better. Rest now.”

But she wasn’t listening to him. Her eyes had found Zaren where she stood on the threshold, and she looked at her with obvious surprise.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Her voice was so weak that something twisted inside Kris. Their mother had spoken just like this, before the end.

“Hello, Elea. I am Zaren.”

His eyes met Zaren’s as she approached, and he offered her a smile; she had spoken in his language rather than through the box at her throat; she was learning fast.

“Your hair is like fire,” Elea breathed. “It’s so pretty.”

Her hand twitched inside Kris’, as though trying to rise to touch Zaren’s hair. Kris covered it with his free hand and leaned in close to whisper against Elea’s fever-hot temple, “Zaren is going to make you better.”

“Kris, don’t you want to think about it?” Zaren asked, and if the box at her throat delivered the question coolly, he could still hear the urgency in the words she pronounced.

“I trust you,” Kris said simply.

He’d thought the same thing in his own mind before, but as he heard the words he was startled to realize how true that simple statement was. He had only met Zaren days earlier, had only been able to actually talk to her for a couple of days, but he already trusted her as much as he did any of the friends he had grown up with, maybe even more.

He looked into himself, trying to understand his own feelings, and it didn’t take him long to realize why it was that she had anchored herself so deeply inside him already. He hadn’t met her during a usual time, but rather right on the edge of his final
shift
, and beyond. She had seen him change, she had approached him when he was nothing more than a mindless wolf, and the wolf had accepted her.

It wasn’t supposed to happen. That was one of the reasons why the
final shift
was supposed to take place away from the village, away from everyone; cautionary tales warned that accidents happened when someone tried to interfere during that crucial moment, accidents that left the interlopers maimed, or worse. But the wolf hadn’t attacked her. On the contrary, he had protected her, then allowed her to help him.