She also recalled some mention about body paint. Another inaccuracy. It wasn’t paint. The surfaces of their bodies were engraved.
Carved.
Chiseled.
Lurid blue tissue showed through where some cuts were so deep they became perforations. The alternating white and blue shades formed delicate, graceful, horrific patterns.
Talis had heard the aliens wore headdresses or elaborate hats. Wrong again. The sweeping crests that rose up and curved back were their heads. Carved, just like their bodies.
She struggled to find a comparison for them. The closest she could come up with was wasps. Enormous, cadaverous, ghostly wasps.
Three of them wore nothing but blue leather loincloths, belts with pouches, and some superficial metal adornments across their collars and around their arms, jewelry as rigid as they were. The fourth, who was still seated, might have been dressed straight out of Zeela’s wardrobe. She—he? it?—wore silks, threaded with silver and beaded with what looked like sapphires. Its head was veiled in diaphanous tulle. Glints of the blue tissue, the flesh beneath the carapace, were visible through the veil. So much of the outer shell was carved away that it must have been more delicate than even that impractical anatomy would ever have intended.
The resemblance between the Vein and the Yu’Nyun went beyond the unnecessarily fancy garment, though the Yu’Nyun had only two arms. But both were tall, slender, and graceful. And pale.
Talis’s mind was still coping. Must be. To compare the Vein to the Yu’Nyun… It was like comparing a butterfly to a walking stick.
Something yelled in her brain that first impressions were in order. Cultural understanding, the governments had called for. Business to deal with, Zeela had promised. Business. That got her mind moving. The only way out. Hopefully at least the rumors had gotten the aliens’ wealth right.
Sell the ring, take the money, disappear back into the skies. A darker coat of black paint on Wind Sabre’s hull, maybe. Never mind repairs. Upgrade the engines. Cannons. All the things money could buy that she’d need next time The Serpent Rose appeared in their long-range.
So the aliens would be her salvation. All right. She took a deep breath. She could work with this. Little choice, anyway.
Zeela waited with tilted head beside the open door. Left open, if Talis felt the need to retreat. No doubt watching closely to see if she could deal with the situation that presented itself. A less worldly Cutter might balk at such clientele and remove herself as abruptly as she’d come. Talis imagined what might have happened if Sophie had come with her. Wished Dug had. Would they even believe her when she returned to Wind Sabre with the tale?
Business, she reminded herself.
Talis inclined her head slightly and tried to look important. While her alien counterpart stood with perfect posture on its—Five Hells… It stood digitigrade, each long leg balanced atop three arching toes. Still carved, right down to the floor. She absently wondered if any of them had ever carved away so much that their bodies just crumpled beneath them.
Business, woman. Talis put her weight into one hip, a cocky lean to one side. Let her right arm fall, forearm brushing the pistol on her belt. The other hand rested on the jutted hip.
The obvious leader of the alien party had representatives with it. Once again she wished she had Dug with her, if for nothing else than to act as her spokesperson.
She heard the coarse grating of gravel being scraped with a bamboo rake. As the sound modulated in speed and rhythm, Talis noticed the slithering hiss of a secondary sound weaving in and around the percussive noises.
It was the Yu’Nyun language.
Lindent’s Wisdom guide me, she thought, only half as sacrilegiously as she might normally mean it.
But the sound soon faded, reduced to a humming drone, and a new voice began. Speaking the Common Trade, though not well and not pleasantly. The interpretation was coming from a flat device held in the speaker’s hands. Points of light danced across its smooth glass surface, modulating curves moving across the screen in response to its vocalization.
“Our pleasure,” came the voice from the pad, “to make introduce with you. To mutual benefit, with trade for wealth and items.”
Zeela made the tiniest strained sound, a high-pitched sigh that came from somewhere in her sinuses.
She doesn’t care to hear it, either. Talis’s teeth ached, listening to the multi-pitched rasping and hissing of the alien language, overlaid with the monotonous tone as it made a mockery of grammar. She didn’t know which sound was worse.
Zeela responded for her. “Captain Talis would be most happy to sell to you. Shall we negotiate the item’s value?”
Bless her, Talis thought. She’s acting as my agent.
Now Talis only had to hope Zeela was acting in her best interest.
Sell my ring, get me out of here. I’d give you a full three-quarter commission if it means I’m gone before all my jaw clenching cracks a molar.
Zeela stepped forward and gestured to the bolstered seat cushions that surrounded a lacquered table. Another young girl appeared, dressed in a thin silk robe, finer than the cotton worn in the front of the shop. She carried a tray of aromatic tea, which she placed on the low tabletop. It wasn’t until the smell of the tea leaves reached Talis’s nose that she became aware of the other smell in the room. Like dust, and sand, and old metal.
It’s them, she realized as Zeela poured everyone a diminutive porcelain cup of tea.
Once, in a Bone village, Talis had met
