Page 16 of Taken By the Alien Killer
Before she can press further, the air changes temperature the way it does when Sneed arrives: a shade cooler, a degree more efficient. He is suddenly at her elbow with an apology that contains no apology. “My Lady, the attaché wishes to confirm your seating with Lord Kaspian for tonight’s embassy supper. It seems the Zarathe minister has an allergy to nut oils and the chef wants to avoid cross-contact.” His smile is refined sugar—no calories, all structure. “Shall we?”
Star holds my gaze another half-second, a plea and a demand braided. I hold nothing back and nothing forward; I give her stone. She nods, the motion like giving up a step on a cliff path to keep from sliding, and turns with Sneed. Her skirts whisper. The scent of mint and citrus collapses. I reset the perimeter in my head because that is what’s left to do.
The rest of the day moves like a caravan across a salt flat—slow, orderly, leaving ruts. We tour a mosaic walk where each tile is an ancestor’s vow; Kaspian translates a line of Old Terran for her and she laughs at the part about setting down arms at the door, and the laugh punches a fresh bruise into me. We pause at a gallery of storm-paintings that capture the coast in wire and pigment; Star squints until she finds the one with the right violence in the blacks. I catalog faces, pin colors, hand gestures, doors that stay ajar, balconies that have been checked and will be checked again.
Near dusk the gardens turn to glass. The big lumens in the soil begin their slow breathing—soft pulses through the ferns, a wash up the trunks—and the crown of the largest memory-treekindles over the central pool. The species was engineered by someone sentimental; it saves the day’s light and gives it back as the evening opens. The leaves go to embers, then to a quiet blaze. The harp has long since gone; the sound now is water over stone and the distant machinery that keeps a planet pretending to be simple.
I take position in the shadow of a carved pillar where the old oaths are etched deep enough to wear a thumb into. Kaspian and Star drift to the memory-tree, not arm in arm, not staged, just pulled by the light like moths with better manners. He reaches into an inner pocket and produces something that reflects. It isn’t ostentatious; it’s a handheld holo of the coast at winter, a three-dimensional slice no larger than a saucer, extending a slice of sea into the evening. He sets it under the lowest branch and the projected surf moves against the real trunk as if the tree sprouts ocean. It’s a gesture that would play as cheap if he were cheap. He isn’t.
“Where I’m from,” he says, and the wind carries his voice just far enough for me to catch the shape of it, “we set these little shores down in winter to remind the trees they will hear waves again. Silly. But it helps.”
Star laughs, not the brittle kind, not the court kind—something rounder that lands and rolls. The light from the leaves freckles her shoulders; the holo throws blue across her gown so she’s ocean and coal and something that hurts to look at. She tips her head at him. She says something I don’t catch. He answers with a line that is almost certainly sincere. She looks up through the bright leaves and for a second the light gets into her eyes so I can’t read what’s there and then it clears and I see it.
I don’t have a name for it that doesn’t accuse her of doing something wrong. Longing is close. Regret is in the neighborhood. Maybe it’s both, braided into something you only see when someone laughs in the wrong direction.
My hands settle on the rail behind me because they want to close on a hilt that isn’t there. The night is a scalded-sugar sweetness that makes breathing feel like eating smoke. I track the ripples on the pool, count the beats between the leaf pulses, study the reflection of the glowing crown until the hard edge of my focus sandpapers the sensation down to something survivable.
Kaspian says her name once, softly, and the sound settles into the bark like a coin into a wishing well. She answers with a yes that is polite and not mine. I should look away. I don’t. My ribs tighten until each inhale squeaks. I catalog another pair of footsteps on the far path and relax when I see a staff pin glint. The tree breathes light. Their laugh lines cross under it and unspool.
I tell myself this is nothing I haven’t survived before—night, duty, denial. I remind myself that a cage is just a room that fits too well. The mirror pools throw the world back at itself until I can pretend we are all copies in a place that only pretends to be real.
None of it helps. Every inhalation near her feels like swallowing glass.
All I know is that every breath near her hurts.
Baron Chambers keeps an office that smells like old leather and storms. The walls are paneled with dark wood scavenged from a decommissioned Ark ship, grain warped by vacuum and time, rubbed to a stubborn shine. A map of Chamberland is etched into the ceiling—rivers in silver inlay, cities pricked with dull gold—so that when you look up, the land looks back. The door seals behind me with a low hiss that sounds like a secret agreeing to stay kept. Martin’s at the window, hands folded behind his back, the city laid out below like a board he’s been playing his whole life.
“Rayek,” he says, not turning yet. “You keep time like a pendulum, you know that?”
“I was summoned, sir.” My voice comes out even. I lock my shoulders, then force them to relax.
He turns, and the weight of his gaze lands like a friendly hand that could crush granite if it needed to. He’s in shirtsleeves, waistcoat open, braces down—his version of stripped armor. The beard’s gone silver at the edges; the belly has softened into the comfort of a man who fought his wars with a ledger and a laugh and won more battles than he lost. He moves to the sideboard, uncaps a heavy bottle, and the room fills with the sweet, dry breath of an old thing—oak and smoke and honey rubbed into the same story until it glows.
“Join me?” he asks, lifting a second glass, eyebrow cocked.
“I’m on duty,” I say, and he makes a face that says he expected that answer and hates that he expected that answer.
“It’s a debrief, not a patrol,” he counters, pouring amber into his own glass with the careful arrogance of a man who knows where every drop will land. “And it’s aged longer than my first marriage.” He thinks better of that and smirks. “Which, in fairness, only lasted six months. Sit, man.”
I sit. The chair is a low bully of a thing that tries to make everyone shorter than the desk. I’ve never seen it succeed. Martin tips the bottle, hesitates, then sets the second glass down empty. He sinks into the chair opposite, the whiskey cupped in his hands like a small fire.
“How are the Gardens holding up?” He makes it sound casual. We both know it isn’t.
“Secure,” I say. “I’ve logged blind spots and remedial recommendations. Sneed has the slate.”
“As ever.” His grin twitches. “Seneschal Precision, patron saint of my headaches.”
I don’t answer that. He swirls the whiskey and watches the legs run. He doesn’t drink yet. “Kaspian seems a decent sort,” he says finally. “Too well-bred by half, but that’s not a sin on this circuit. Polite to the staff. Asked after the ridgebacks by name. Didn’t leer at my daughter like a man claims land with his eyes.” He lifts his glass a fraction in salute to that basic victory. “Hard to dislike a man who tries to be good in public and private.”
“He’s respectful,” I agree. The words come out clean. I keep the taste of them off my tongue.
Martin’s eyes narrow slightly, not suspicious, just taking a measure. “You’ve kept him safe, and you’ve kept her safer. You’ve kept me honest about both. I’m grateful.” He finally drinks; the smell blooms—char and vanilla and something like burnt sugar from an iron pan. He exhales with a contented grimace. “Old Earth whiskey. Banned twice, revived thrice, never improved by the committees that tried. Like most things that last.”
I say nothing. The wood creaks. The city hums. A pulse of wind pushes against the high glass and returns to itself.
He sets the glass down, fingertips spread. “I brought you here because I trust your eyes, Rayek. And because I respect your spine. You do not bend for fashion. Would that I could say the same of every noble I know.” He leans back, studying me as if I’m a puzzle piece he knows fits somewhere critical. “Tell me anything I need to know that I might have missed. Problems. Risks. Shadows pretending to be walls.”
“Security is sound,” I say. “The only risk factors are the ones we cannot control.” I don’t look up at the ceiling map because I know where the rivers run and who built the bridges. I keep my eyes on the edge of the desk, the place where the wood’s been rubbed smooth by years of worry.
