In Her Name

she staggered from the room.

Puzzled, he wandered into the atrium where the morning’s fire smoldered in the open pit. There, balanced carefully on the pit’s stone rim, was a clean bowl of what could only be some type of weird fruit. There were at least two kinds, one that looked something like a purple squash, the other of a bright orange color but no particular shape, as if it had formed in variable gravity without any genetic code governing how it should turn out. There were also a few strange cakes, off-white with darker flecks of brown, which perhaps had been made from some sort of alien grain.

Next to the bowl was a large metal mug that he had never seen before, containing something that, on closer inspection, smelled of alcohol. He tasted it carefully, and found that it had the bitter taste of what Wiley had called “ale,” something he occasionally served Reza and Nicole from out of the back closet of his library apartment.

Reza took a long swallow of the ale and with his other hand reached for the fruit, curious as to how it might taste. He could only assume that Esah-Zhurah had taken his body chemistry into account. If she had not and the food was poisonous to humans, he might well be about to eat his very last meal.

He was half finished with his small bounty (he found that the orange fruit had a sour taste that he hoped meant it was high in vitamin C) when he heard her voice close behind him.

“Is it what you need?” she asked, her voice brittle. She stood in the doorway of her room, clutching at the frame. She obviously had not yet recovered from her encounter with the floor. She did not look him in the eye.

He looked around and stood up to face her. There were long black streaks down her face, as if she had rubbed charcoal from under her eyes down to her neck. Kreelan tears? he wondered.

“Yes,” he replied quietly. He was shocked that she was treating him with such respect. “Thank you.”

“‘In’she tul’a are the words in the New Tongue, human,” she told him, still looking down at the floor. “There is more food in there,” she gestured to a previously empty cabinet under the hearth.

Reza nodded, wondering when the fruit and bread had been put there. Could she have somehow been expecting this?

“You will rest now,” she said. Her voice was subdued, but there was no mistaking that it was still a command. “We will continue tomorrow.”

With that, she turned and disappeared back into her room and was quiet for the rest of the day.

Reza did as he was told, but only after finishing off a second bowl of the fruit and dry tasteless cakes. His mouth salivated uncontrollably as he gobbled down the precious food, praying that his stomach could take it all.

When he returned to his room, he stretched out on the bristly hide and settled down to a contented, restful sleep, his first in he did not know how many weeks.

* * *

“…karakh-te na tempo Ta’ila-Gorakh.” Reza heaved in a breath, his lungs empty from reciting the first eleven commandments of the Se’eln, the orthodoxy that governed the equivalent of Kreelan public behavior and etiquette.

“You learn well the words, human,” Esah-Zhurah commented. “But do you understand the meaning?”

Reza shrugged. It was one of the few uniquely human expressions that his ever-present companion had never punished him for. “Some,” he told her in what she had told him was the New Tongue. He spoke without any accent, and could have passed for a native if he had been a female with blue skin. “I understand that status is shown by the pendants hanging from the collar, the length of the hair, the depth of the ridge above the eyes. I understand that one’s place in life – the Way, as you call it – is measured in some kind of steps from the Empress’s throne, but I have no frame of reference for that.”

She nodded for him to continue.

“I understand that warriors always salute their superiors, but warriors who are seven steps below another are to bow their head in passing or kneel when they are stopped, together.” He paused. “I believe that much is correct. As for the other things, I do not yet understand them.”

Reza waited as she considered his answer. This had been going on for months now, endless hours of instruction in the Kreelan language and their customs, a veritable treasure trove for any of the xenospecialists Reza had read about in his other life before coming here. He thought of all those researchers who would literally have given their lives for the opportunity he had now. But it was an “opportunity” that had been thrust onto Reza's unwilling shoulders.

After their pact made over the issue of food, Esah-Zhurah began to treat him more like a sentient being, his defiance apparently having aroused a degree of grudging respect from her. The beatings became less frequent and severe, both because Reza gave her less reason to beat him and because she chose not to. He only tried to stave off the most damaging blows, and did not try to retaliate against her; he knew she no longer underestimated him and would never afford him an opportunity again as she had the first time.

All in all, they lived an endurable if uncomfortable coexistence. Reza was determined to live as long and as best he could, while Esah-Zhurah was burdened with an agenda she kept quietly to herself.

He folded his arms over his chest and looked at her. She sat there like a coiled snake, silently appraising him with her silver-flecked eyes, absently running a talon up and down her right thigh and cutting a shallow groove in the rough leather armor.

“We are through with this,” she said suddenly. “Tomorrow will be different.”

“How so?” Reza asked, curious and somewhat afraid. “Different” could mean too many things.

Her mouth curled around her fangs into what Reza thought might have been something like a smile. It was chilling.

“Patience, animal,” she said, intentionally barbing him with the reference she knew he despised. “You shall see soon enough.”

Six

Reza was jolted out of his sleep by a sharp rap on the bottom of his foot. Peering from beneath the warmth of his bed of skins, he saw Esah-Zhurah standing beside him, a short black baton inlaid with a complex silver design in her hand. He blinked his eyes a few times, trying to clear his head. She hit his foot again, harder this time, his nerves sending a sharp report of pain to his brain.

“Ow!” he exclaimed, drawing his foot away from her and under the comparative safety of the skins. “What is that?” he asked about the baton, never having seen it before. He spoke only in the Kreelan New Tongue now, only rarely having to resort to Standard.

She looked at him, head cocked to one side. “You tell me,” she said, holding it up for him to see more clearly. About as long as her forearm and the thickness of Reza’s thumb, the baton was a gleaming black shaft crowned by silver castings and a series of runes in silver that must have been incredibly ornate when new. But now only the ghostly impressions of the strange runes (they were obviously Kreelan, but did not match the character set he was learning to read) glimmered in the polished metal, untold years and hands having taken their toll.

“A Sign of Authority?” Reza guessed. It was the only thing he could think it might be. A Sign of Authority, Esah-Zhurah had once explained, was like a public symbol of an elder who had delegated both responsibility and authority to a subordinate. With such a symbol, the populace at large would have to treat the bearer with the same regard as they would the elder. The bearer had great power, but also carried the liability that went with it. Esah- Zhurah had made it abundantly clear to Reza in many lessons that personal responsibility was not taken lightly in the Kreelan culture. It was literally a matter of life and death, and he wondered if he would finally have the opportunity to see it in action.