Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1) (23 page)

Reese stared at him, wondering if the exhaustion she heard in his voice was her imagination or not. “Uh, sure.”

“I have a contract for you to sign.”

“I have one here for you already... something with Irine and Sascha’s mother?”

“This is an additional contract.”

“Not too much more additional I hope,” Reese said. “This one’s already going to take up three hours of your day. You don’t want to run yourself ragged.”

“No,” he said. She realized then part of her foreboding: his speech lacked its ‘my lady’ adornments and its indistinct evasions. What had stripped him down to bare words? He even handed her his data tablet without any of his courtly gestures, without bothering to set it down somewhere so they wouldn’t accidentally touch. Reese took it gingerly and started scanning. Her eyes caught first on the “mandatory dormitory stay,” lingered over the multiple shifts and glazed at the parts about acceptable punishments for unacceptable results.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m not signing this.”

Sascha cleared his throat. “What did he do?”

“I’m not giving you over as a slave to any hospital,” Reese said, ignoring Sascha. “I thought you said you didn’t trust the Harat-Shar with that much of yourself?”

“I had the alternative explained to me,” Hirianthial said. “They’re having a healthcare crisis, one set off by too many free-man workers.”

“We’re just visiting, Hirianthial. We’re not here to save the Harat-Shar. Even if we were, you’re one man and one man alone won’t be able to fix whatever social problems they’ve gotten involved in,” Reese said.

“They’re children.”

“Yeah, well, so am I from your perspective, but they’re adult enough for the rest of the Alliance—”

Something about his eyes stopped her mid-sentence. “The patients,” he said, his voice very careful. “They’re children. Infants.”

Reese blushed, torn between anger and embarrassment. “I don’t care if they’re saints and martyrs,” she said. “If I sign this, I’m giving you away completely.”

“It’s my choice to make, is it not?” Hirianthial said. “Or have you now decided you really are in charge?”

That stung. Reese said, “Hirianthial—”

“I’m not yours to give away,” the Eldritch said. “Or isn’t that what your philosophy? Besides, it will take me out of your sight, which should please you.”

Reese snatched the tablet and signed it with several angry jerks before tossing it to the end of the table. “There you go. Enjoy. Don’t come crying to me if it’s more than you can handle.”

He didn’t speak—only faded from her door so quickly she wondered how someone with such pale skin and hair could vanish into the blue-violet dusk of the hallways.

“You could have handled that better,” Sascha said, picking up the tablet and flipping through the dumped contract copies.

“Hell with handling it better,” Reese said. “He got what he wanted. Isn’t that the point?”

“This is... really intense,” Sascha said, skimming the text. “I hope this place isn’t abusive.”

“It’s a hospital,” Reese said. “If they abuse him, they can just patch him back up afterwards.”

The Harat-Shar’s ears flipped backward. “Boss, what’s with you? I’d swear you had bed-fleas, but you’re sleeping in a hammock.”

“There’s nothing with me,” Reese said. Then sighed and added, “Nothing new, curse it all. Now get out of my sight, fluffy.”

Sascha said, “It’s too late to rip that thing up, but you could at least apologize to him.”

“I was just thinking he should apologize to me,” Reese said.

Sascha paused at the door. “Well, check up on him, then. Make sure he’s not taking this whole ‘multiple shift’ thing too seriously.”

“Why don’t you do that?”

“Because I’m not the one who signed the papers,” he said. “Like it or not, you’re in charge.”

“Then I get the right to delegate,” Reese said. “I hereby delegate the duty of making sure Hirianthial doesn’t work his sugar-white skin to rags to you.”

The Harat-Shar shook his head. At least he left her alone with her bills and her questions: foremost being, what was she going to do for the next month or so? Everyone else had found something to occupy themselves. The only duties she had to occupy herself with were her worries.

Jarysh didn’t ask him if he was sure about working at the hospital, which suited Hirianthial. He gave his bed in the dormitory a cursory glance, tossed his bag on it and went to the bathroom to change into the durable and shapeless synthetic tunic and pants that were the medical industry’s uniform throughout the Core.

The explanation Jarysh had given him for the state of healthcare in the region had required most of two hours, but by the end of it Hirianthial had distilled it to the same premise that ruled all modern medicine: people left behind with nothing but sorrow and a body tended to want to balance the scales. If they could find no solace in family or faith, they found enough in money. Harat-Sharii’s answer to medical litigation had, not surprisingly for Harat-Shar, involved voluntary enslavement. But a wave of specialists trained by off-worlders with a more mercenary bent had produced a generation of highly-paid free-man doctors... creating an industry once again vulnerable to law suits and medical claims.

That the medical industry had a sociology of its own had intrigued Hirianthial when he’d come to the Alliance to study. Medicine on his home world could barely be called that, and doctors were so few they hardly had an effect on the population, the economy or the social order at all. Sick Eldritch died. Weak Eldritch died. Old Eldritch died. Eldritch babies died of diseases that the Pelted had cured so long ago they were taught only in historical classes. The Eldritch had no vaccines. No surgeons. Women still died in childbed at a rate the Pelted would have found horrifying.

Every society in the Alliance dealt differently with the social issues raised by the marriage of high technology and biology. Zhedeem’s healthcare crisis was only one of a hundred thousand examples of what could go wrong.

Hirianthial could not regret the contract. He was also old enough to dispense with the self-denials he might have indulged in as a youth about why he was here. He’d been at a loss when everything had fallen apart with Laiselin and then the executions, and it had led him to the Alliance. He was at a loss again. Better to drown himself in the work than to think about what he would do with the remainder of his still-too-many years. Better to think about Pelted children than about the daughter he’d almost had and the wife who, unlike Salaena the pard, had been certain that everything would work out for the best.

Hirianthial began to braid his hair back in preparation for work. He could hear a child weeping through the open door. His contract would expire, or it wouldn’t. Reese would come for him, or she wouldn’t. The work here would be worth doing even if he remained here for centuries.

The classifieds in Zhedeem almost inspired Reese to pack up the
Earthrise
and head right back out into the Core, pirates or no pirates. She figured out how to sort the listings so that nothing offensive would pop up on her screen, but by that time the pickings were so slim she didn’t really want any of them. She hadn’t bought the
Earthrise
so she could spend her layovers as a waitress or a cashier in a clothing store.

Then again, she hadn’t bought the
Earthrise
intending to spend ninety percent of the year hemorrhaging money like blood. Any job would do if it reduced the amount she’d have to plead for from her mother.

Reese applied at several places until a port-side cafe offered her a contract pouring coffee and serving dessert cakes so dense she could have used them for weight-training. The view out the large windows offered a disconcerting mix of high-tech landing pads and waving palm fronds, but the cafe itself was cozy enough to lull her agoraphobia. She even got used to the dusty breeze.

She hadn’t had the heart to read the book she’d bought since her fight with Hirianthial... or at least, what had felt like a fight. But frustration and boredom drew her back to it the following day and sucked her straight into the pages. Despite her mixed feelings about Eldritch and the fact that she had no physical copy to bring, Reese planned her lunch break so she could attend the book signing.

“Oh good, you came!” the leopardine said. “She’s in the back. Here, take this.”

Reese glanced down at the brightly colored reproduction of one of the covers. This one was an unlikely illustration of a Harat-Shar man torn between a ghost-pale Eldritch woman and a demure Tam-illee foxine. “Err, thank you.”

The woman sitting behind the table in the back of the bookstore looked nothing like Reese had imagined: no young and sensual woman this, but an older woman with spots on her fading fur. Her head hair had also run to white, and there were wrinkles in the finely felted skin beneath her eyes. In front of her on her desk was a sign that read: “Natalie Felger: Writer of Exotic Alien Romance.” A younger woman kept her company, but other than her the room was empty, its many chairs abandoned.

“Am I the only one here?” Reese asked, bewildered. “You should have more fans.”

“So far,” the older woman said, her grin flashing yellowed fangs and arching whiskers. “But it’s nice to be told otherwise. I assume you’re here to have something signed?”

“I guess,” Reese said, looking at the paper in her hands. “I hadn’t planned on it, but the bookseller gave me this.”

“You look a bit perplexed,” the writer said.

Reese sat on the nearest stool and said, “You got them so perfectly you have to know how infuriating they are. How can you fight with someone who barely talks?”

The two at the table exchanged glances, then the elder said, “Sounds like you have a story of your own.”

And since the Harat-Shar seemed so disposed to listening, Reese found herself telling the whole crazy tale from the Queen of the Eldritch giving her money to Hirianthial vanishing into some hospital to give up his freedom for little children. Or to avoid her. Or both.

“You need advice,” the older woman said. She handed Reese a card. “This will be of far more value to you than any signed flat, though I’ll sign that too if you want.”

“What is this?” Reese asked, trying to make sense of the numbers on it.

“My address,” the Harat-Shariin said. “Stop by tonight for dinner and we’ll talk.”

Just what she needed: another missed dinner with Irine. Reese looked up into the other woman’s face, though, and saw something there: not just kindness, but something alert, something shrewd.

“Later tonight, then,” she said.

After her shift released, Reese headed for the address on the card. She had to ask for directions several times, which proved irritating since every adult who helped her had to invite her to his or her home instead before pointing her down the next lane. A pale violet twilight finally found her on the doorstep of a modest house that showed only its glazed tile roof and a few feet of wall before submerging amid a collection of flowerbeds. Reese took the earthen steps to the dark blue door and rung the bell; while waiting for someone to answer she reflected that she felt safer here, cocooned in the earth, than she did under the open sky. She might not like everything about Zhedeem, but this part she liked a great deal.

Natalie’s younger companion opened the door. “Ah! You did come. We’re eating in the garden, come with me.”

Reese followed her through a central corridor that opened onto several other rooms, none of which she saw more of than the dusky lanterns illumined. She had an impression of warmth and close walls, though, as the girl led her back up a set of stairs on the opposite end of the house, up to a circular patio set into the ground. Its walls ended somewhere at ground level, which hit Reese around her shoulders. Spicy-scented flowers draped into the enclosure, where a round table had already been set with ceramic plates glazed a beautiful deep blue.

Natalie was pouring water from a pitcher as they entered. “Ah, here she is. Did you have trouble finding the house?”

“A little,” Reese said. “I’ve never been off Market Avenue.”

“Probably wise,” the younger woman said with a grin. “We haven’t met. I’m Shelya, Natalie’s niece.”

“She keeps my house for me, Angels preserve her,” Natalie said. “I’d forget to eat if she didn’t remind me. Sit, sit! And tell me how you find Harat-Sharii, if this is your first visit, and how long you’re staying.”

Reese sat and obediently took a warm yeast-scented roll from the basket Shelya passed her. Natalie’s questions proved so easy to answer that she didn’t notice the second course: sweet green spears with a tangy glaze. The main course proved to be some sort of tiny bird, still bird-shaped, and Reese was wondering how to eat it when Natalie said, “Now tell me why you dislike your Eldritch so.”

Reese jerked her gaze from the fowl to her hostess. “I don’t actually dislike him.”

“Are you sure?” Natalie asked. “You seemed very unsettled by him.”

“Being unsettled is different,” Reese said. She tried stabbing one of the tiny birds with her fork to see if she could peel the meat off the bone; her hostesses were eating with their fingers, which looked messy. “He’s hard not to be unsettled by.”

“You wanted something more like the books other writers write,” Shelya said. “Instead you got what Aunt Natalie writes.”