The messed-up thing, the unfair thing, was that he was relieved to pass by his own kind unseen, taking these aliens that he neither understood nor trusted, to meet the Bone goddess.
Of course, Talis might have misunderstood. A chuckle from Dug could mean many things. Few of them good.
Chapter 23
It was a good plan, though, and it worked perfectly. The alien ship’s silver surface reflected the pumpkins’ orange glow and the green light from Nexus along its curving hull. It loomed in the sky, gleaming like a gem in the morning light, and gave the patrol ship plenty to look at.
Talis took over at the helm so Tisker and Dug could get a shift off. Her hand on the worn handles of the wheel, feeling the strength of the ship, the force of the winds coming up along the whole length of the rudder chain, she decided she didn’t man the helm often enough. Wind Sabre slipped into position beneath the alien vessel, mirroring its slow course. Against the glistening presence, no notice was given by the Bone patrol ship to the dark wooden shape three fathoms below.
If they’d met up with an Imperial patrol ship along the border, if Hankirk had gone ahead of her and warned his people that Wind Sabre was traveling with the aliens instead of trying to chase her down for a private interview, such a ship would have known to look for them. But the fool had made another attempt to talk her onto his team. Snuck aboard her ship and got himself stranded on a miserable storm island for that mistake.
She wouldn’t expect Hankirk to make a tactical error like that.
Scrimshaw stood at the starboard railing watching xist ship around the edge of the lift envelope.
“Look different from the outside?” she asked.
“This entire experience has been unique,” xe said.
Always agreeing while simultaneously correcting. Not her favorite conversationalist, this one.
She leaned against the console, merging her weight with the mass of her ship. The engines were burning low to prevent exhaust bursts from the turbines, but she still felt the thrum of them through the wood, up her feet, in the wheel’s barrel at her hip. It gave her clarity. Focus. Here, she was at ease. In charge.
She wondered if the aliens ever slouched.
“Your ship have a name?” she asked instead.
Scrimshaw turned from the railing, crossing gracefully to her side on the tips of those toes. They reminded her of bird legs. She was pretty sure birds didn’t slouch.
“None of the contemporary languages of your planet have a word that is equivalent of our ship’s designation.” Xe moved xist arm in a small gesture that managed to indicate all of Peridot. “It is due to the nature of your geography.”
Actually, she realized, the aliens reminded her a lot of birds. She’d initially thought of insects. But no, from the bearing of Scrimshaw’s body, the delicate weight distribution, and the tilt of xist head when xe considered her questions with dark blinking eyes, xe was more like a crane than a wasp. Definitely a crane.
She wanted to ask what made them so desperate to understand Peridot, but recalling how such questions had been dodged during their Yu’keem lessons, she proceeded obliquely. She’d start the questions on the outside. Find a chink, wedge it open, and ease in.
“Do you miss your world?” she asked.
“Those of us on my vessel have never seen our home planet.”
Well, whatever reply she thought she’d get, it wasn’t that.
“Never?”
“It was depleted of resources several generations before our crew was assembled.”
Not ‘before I was born’ or ‘when my great-grandparents were still young.’ Their phrasing was always strange, and she had to wonder how they decided which Common Trade words to pick as equivalents for their own.
Talis tried to imagine living her whole life in an enclosed ship, out between the stars. The first part wasn’t hard. Most Cutter folk happily stayed aboard the colony ships they were born on, rarely setting foot on an island for more than a few hours when the ships stopped to refuel. But between the stars, traveling endlessly. No open deck to feel the wind. And with emotionless crewmates for company? Cold and lonely, it sounded to her.
“We are…” Scrimshaw seemed to search for a word. “Prolific.”
“Ah,” she said. “Bled the old world dry, then, I take it?”
Xe looked at her. If xist carved eyebrows could move, they might have gone up in surprise.
“You understand resource depletion?”
She laughed harshly. “Look around. This is a waste-not kind of world, isn’t it?”
“But your planet is enriched and sustained by alchemy,” xe said, then closed xist mouth with a tiny snapping sound.
It was true that alchemy had stopped the explosion that would have made their world as devoid of life as all the others like it that Scrimshaw had told her about. It held the bits of what Peridot used to be in place. Made it what it was now.
“Sustained, I’ll give you that,” she said, removing one hand from the wheel to tuck it against her chest. The winds were stiff enough, and they’d dropped altitude to fly low through the thinner air and colder skies, and now her fingertips were turning purple. “Don’t think I’d call it ‘enriched,’ though.”
She was quiet for a minute. Xe demonstrated xist kind’s failure at filling burdened silences, so she pressed on.
“So that’s what you’re trying to learn, then?” She went directly for the question, figuring she’d muck up the diplomacy if she kept tiptoeing around the matter, and xe’d shut down on her without giving a better hint. “How to unlock
