The Lereni Trade (12 page)

Salos stepped down from the top level
wearing an open robe with a metallic sheen in stripes of rich
blues, reds, and greens separated by gold stripes. His eyes seemed
to curse the Lereni and her, as if they were all nothing more than
irritants under that gaudy, thick collar of his.

He came to a stop at the bottom of his
tower and gave a simple motion of his hand that excused Tormac, who
rode his scooter out.

From the way the blue-gray alien
peered at them down that wide nose, she saw that the Tah'Na were
worse than the Lereni had described. She had seen that snooty
impatience more than she liked in her lifetime and she had always
turned her back and disregarded it; but this time, she was
defending friends. She couldn't walk away and continue her life.
She wouldn't leave them to suffer.

"You promised to leave Leisil," Karik
said.

"In due time."

At the raising of a hand from Salos,
two of the nearest guards stepped towards them and aimed the staff
weapons threateningly.

Around her, four Lereni
tensed.

"I see you wish to fight. Very well."
Salos turned his head and several more armed guards surrounded
them.

"If I come, you will let them live?"
she asked.

Tah'Na eyes narrowed on her and his
lip twitched. "Yes."

"No—"

She put a hand before Torik, trying
her best to hide the fear for herself and them in the light of the
Tah'Na arrogance and reported dishonesty. "I will be all right."
She lied, and he knew it, but to hear it said held some power.
Torik backed down.

Krissa took a breath to calm herself
and took a step towards the premier.

A firm hand clamped onto her arm
stopped her. She followed it up the arm to the face she didn't
expect.

Karik pulled her back towards the
others. "No." As he released her arm, he caught her eyes and his
expression softened. "Not like this."

As other hands grasped her upper arms,
his eyes lifted and his head dipped in a miniscule nod before he
turned to stand with his back to her before Salos.

"You will fulfill your promise to
leave Leisil."

Salos chuckled. "Look around. Are you
blind? You have no power, Lereni. You are outnumbered."

Arrogant…If not for the grip on her,
she'd march up to Salos and wipe the smugness off his face
herself.

Karik had the same thought.

Before the guards in their humor
realized it, claws came out and Karik took down one of them. A
blast from a single weapon ended his attack before he reached
Salos.

Krissa stared in stunned silence at
the figure lying on the black stone floor. Above Karik stood Salos
with all four arms crossed and a sneer on his ugly face.

"Leisil will burn for your insolence!"
He pulled a knife from his belt.

"No." Torik's claws stopped her from
rushing to protect Karik from the cruelty.

"Stop!" The feminine voice echoed from
across the chamber with the clatter of multiple feet.

Krissa froze and turned. At the
startling appearance of the four figures, she blinked. "Angels?"
she muttered in English.

"Any aggression against an Onduun or
her protectors will be considered an act of war." The woman spoke
Lereni. She and her entourage stepped past the Lereni and guards to
confront Salos.

The lead woman in the gray coverall
with the flowing green robe over it glanced down at Karik. Dark
brown hair hanging over her shoulders matched the wings at her
back. Another woman with lighter brown wings and short hair wore
the same attire. They were accompanied by a man and a woman in
military-style uniforms of blue and black with weapons holstered on
their belts.

Weapons? Angels didn't carry weapons.
Something was wrong with that picture.

The woman lifted her eyes, which
turned cold on Salos; but it was more than that which struck
Krissa. She had a calm bearing but the confident poise of someone
who could cut through the tension with a shrug, someone who
inspired respect from her very presence.

In an instant, Krissa both admired her
and envied her.

"How many violations of the
Salnouan Kiitrak
charter would you like to face,
Premier? Five more?" she said with a sharpness that made Krissa
wince. "The Tah'Na have walked a fine line for generations, but
this will not be excused."

Salos's rage twitched indecisively,
but he finally sheathed the knife.

Not waiting for an answer, the woman
knelt next to Karik.

"The Inari have impeccable timing,"
Salos muttered.

Inari!

Krissa stared dumbfounded while the
woman gently rolled Karik to his back amid his wincing. Krissa
winced in sympathy, especially upon seeing the bloody wound in his
left side. It was that wound where the woman set her hands with the
splotches of aquamarine glowing from the backs and from
beneath.

All fell silent while she closed her
eyes and breathed deeply.

Karik inhaled sharply and winced, but
a few breaths later, relaxed.

The woman removed her hands from a
cauterized and much smaller wound. "I wish I could do
more."

With the unsteadiness of a wounded
man, Karik climbed to his feet and bowed his head to the woman. "I
am honored, Keeper."

The woman tipped her head to him in
return. A second later, her eyes focused on Krissa, leading all
others to her in a spotlight of attention that made her want to
hide, especially while wearing so little.

"This is the daughter of
Naperi?"

"It is," Torik said.

The woman's lips twitched into a smile
and dark eyes regarded Krissa with a welcome like the warm sun on a
winter day.

"You still bear the appearance of the
humans of Earth, but I suppose you were too young to know any
different." The angel spoke with a soft accent of her
Lereni.

"How would you know? Um…How should I
look?" She supposed an Onduun might look different, although these
Inari looked human to the smallest detail, minus the wings and
maybe the hand marks, but the guards behind the robed women didn't
appear to have marks on their hands. They must have been the angels
she had heard about in recent news reports.

The woman's eyes regarded her with a hint of amusement
gleaming in them. "We are
Elousar
Tourein Ramini—" She pointed at herself and then
turned to the other woman in a matching robe. "—And
Elousar
Joren Talees.
Although we resemble humans, we are not, but we can only hide our
wings. You—"

"Krissa."

"Irilin. You are Onduun. We monitored your life signs among
the Lereni on the landing ship, which is how we corroborated the
report with our Earth operatives." A hard glare fixed on Salos, but
softened once more when her attention returned to Krissa. "This is
not your outward appearance. The Onduun are mimics at a touch,
which is why you
appear
human, for now."

"They—we—are?" Torik and the others
had neglected to tell her that part.

"Yes. It is how you were delivered to
your host family for hiding by one of our emissaries. Your true
form will be revealed soon enough. Our principal will be
pleased."

"Principal?" Krissa uttered the
question, although her mind still tried to assimilate all the
facts.

The woman's smile brightened.
"Chancellor Naperi is expecting you. She will arrive
soon."

Naperi, as in the one Torik had said
was her birth mother? Krissa swore her head grew light. This
couldn't be real; at last, after all these years, she would meet
her real mother; but her real mother had given her up. She looked
down at the bracelet, all the questions lumping in her
throat.

"Enough! Where is it?" Salos snatched
Krissa's wrist and pulled her close to his disgusting body. Krissa
didn't have a chance to think about pulling away until he held the
bracelet to his face. One of his free hands traced the symbol on
the stone of her bracelet.

She swallowed her anxieties while he
turned her wrist around in his hands to study the
bracelet.

"I have no idea what you mean," Ramini
said.

"The shard. You entrusted Naperi with
one of the shards." In his rough yank, Krissa tried to pull away,
but he only pulled her next to his disgusting body. "Don't try to
deny it. Where is the shard?"

"I don't know what you're talking
about," Krissa said.

"Then what is this…this Inari symbol
doing on your wrist?" He held it before her and the woman leaned
close.

"Protection," Ramini said and shrugged
it off. "A gift to Naperi in the Onduun-Inari Alliance nearly forty
years ago. An heirloom."

After several seconds of fuming and
tightening his grip on Krissa's wrist until she whimpered, his
other hands squeezed her shoulders and free arm. "Tell me where it
is or Naperi doesn't see her daughter."

Ramini's eyes went cold with those of
her colleague, but she put a hand aside in a signal to her guards
that had them cease reaching for their weapons. Or was it something
else? The marks on her hands glowed as they had in healing Karik.
"The shard was not meant for you."

"Where is it?!"

Afraid of what he might do, Krissa
tried to pull away; but the four hands tightened on her.

At a move by Torik to come to her, one
of the blue-gray hands went to her throat. "Don't!"

"The consequences for killing the
child would be far more devastating for the Tah'Na."

Krissa held her breath. She had come
to sacrifice herself for the Lereni, thinking the Tah'Na would be
reasonable, but they couldn't be trusted, even with the Inari
present.

But Karik had expressed a fear of her,
and Torik had said she had the power to influence others. It must
lie within her. If she was truly one of the Onduun, there must have
been a way to use that to convince Salos.

In the thickening silence, she took a
deep breath and focused within, clearing her head and fighting the
panic to find the calm.

"You should listen to the Inari,"
Krissa said. "You have this empire but risk it all for one shard
that isn't here."

"Even if it was, the Starfire chooses
its Keeper. One must be blended to even be considered," Talees
said, lifting her hands to show the marks. "We were not considered
worthy, and we are Keepers."

Keeper…Karik had addressed Ramini as
"Keeper". Was that what it meant?

Something more Krissa hadn't known.
Although she didn't understand, she assumed there was far more to
this than they were saying. If she survived, maybe she'd
learn.

"You lie! Inari will do anything to
keep the power to themselves."

"It is not our choice but the
Starfire's," Ramini said. "The shard would be useless to you, but
you would start a war that could end with your people losing
everything."

"Release the Onduun, Salos," Torik
said with a quick glance to catch Krissa's eyes in reassurance.
"Release Leisil. Honor the agreement of your house. We brought the
child as requested. We have fulfilled our part of the
agreement."

"Is this true?" Ramini still held out
her glowing hands as if ready to do something, her head aside to
address the Lereni while keeping an eye on Salos. "You swore to
remove your occupation of Leisil in exchange for the life of
Naperi's child, because you thought it would get you a Starfire
shard?"

Salos was silent, but by the movements
of his fingers where they gripped, he was thinking. Krissa watched
the others, hoping this didn't end in darkness for her.

She caught Torik's eyes for a hope of
some way to save her. The Inari stood with their hands still
glowing. Were they going to heal the next person to be
injured?

"I want the Starfire. I don't care
about her life," Salos hissed, emphasizing his point with a
tightening of his grip on her throat. "Give me the
Starfire."

In the next instant, a dark shape sent
her backwards with Salos. His hands loosened and she was rolled
away. Several hands helped her up as she twisted to look back in
time to see Karik with his claws at the premier's
throat.

"Stop!" Ramini said as Krissa croaked
out "Karik." One of the guards pressed the end of his weapon to
Karik's skull. The neck of the Tah'Na was nothing compared to the
brute strength of the Lereni. He couldn't not care that he would
die with his revenge.

"Karik," she said more clearly,
"you're better than them."

The fury burning in his eyes turned to
her for just long enough to see the pain fueling that
fire.

"Killing him will not bring them
back."

After a solemn silence, Ramini spoke
in a voice that could have been a gray cloud: "The Inari will not
help monitor the Tah'Na retreat if you do this."