Fenrey bustled me into a room with a large table covered in papers that curled up around the corners, with bits of fabric straight-pinned onto them. Candles burned in sconces on the wall, filling the room with the scent of tallow and smoke, and sending a warm glow flickering across the dark-brown walls. He led me to an upholstered chair and patted it. “First, you have to get out of those wet clothes before you catch your death.”
“Wet clothes won’t cause your death,” Coxley muttered, earning him a sharp look from the other Carlogian.
“We can’t have her running all over the place in that soggy scrap of a dress.” Fenrey hurried behind the large table, tugging swaths of fabric down from where they hung in bolts on the wall. “No one ever mounted a rescue in an outfit like that.”
I tried not to feel too self-conscious as he fluttered a wrinkled hand at me. The dress hadn’t been too bad before I’d taken a swim in the lake, but it did look like a saggy mess now. I crossed my arms over my chest, hoping to cover some of my bare flesh that was exposed by the drooping neckline.
“Don’t mind him,” Coxley whispered. “He’s just tense because of the Zagrath.”
Fenrey slammed down a pair of shiny, gold scissors. “Of course I’m tense. Last time, they took my son to the mines, and now the Vandar are here again, but we have a missing Raas.”
“I won’t be going back to the mines,” a younger Carlogian said, as he descended the staircase that ran up one wall to a second level.
“Lebben.” Fenrey jumped when he saw the man who looked like a less-wizened version of himself. “You shouldn’t be down here?”
“Why not?” The Carlogian put his hands on his hips and stared down at his father. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to sit this out.”
Fenrey closed his eyes for a moment and his small shoulders sagged. “I couldn’t live with myself if you…”
“Nothing will happen to me, Da.” Lebben walked around the table and put a hand on his father’s brown, nubby jacket. “But you’re crazy if you think I’m going to let you be the only one in this family to take risks.”
“We started the resistance to keep our families safer,” Fenrey said, but there was little fight left in his voice.
“And we will be safe once we kick out the empire again.”
“Hear, hear!” Coxley clapped his hands and ignored Fenrey’s glare.
The tailor finally sighed and turned back to his table. “Fine, but we can’t do anything until I get this child in some more appropriate clothes. It’s beyond me what these Vandar put on their females.”
Lebben turned to me. “You’re Vandar?”
Baru choked back a laugh. “She’s human. See?” He waved a hand toward my backside. “No tail.”
“Right.” Lebben’s face flushed slightly but he still looked at me with fascination. “But you are with the Vandar?”
"Sort of,” I said. How did I explain how and why I’d come to be on the Vandar horde ship without shocking everyone? I definitely wasn’t going to tell them about the curse and the witch, and the deal I’d made with Raas Vassim.
“She stowed away on board Raas Vassim’s warbird,” Baru said, preempting any explanation I might have thought up. “So he decided to keep her instead of putting her out an airlock, which is what he’d usually do with stowaways.”
A hush descended over the room. Okay, maybe I could have explained it better. “The Raas was never going to put me out an airlock. He’s actually returning me to my home planet soon.”
Fenrey’s bushy eyebrows shot up and almost disappeared under his mass of brown, curly hair. He’d seen me kissing Vassim, so I doubted he believed that. Even I thought the words sounded like a lie on my tongue.
“You aren’t his mate?” he asked.
I shook my head, while Baru nodded. “She might as well be. The Raas spends all his free time with her, instead of wandering the halls. He even got her a pet.”
As if he knew he was being discussed, Furb wiggled on my lap, stretching his short legs out in front of him and opening one eye.
“But you wish to risk yourself to go find this Vandar who is not your mate?” Coxley asked.
“He would do the same for me,” I said, knowing for certain that was true.
“She’s right,” Fenrey said, cutting the fabric he’d stretched across the table. “He sacrificed himself so we could get away. We can’t let him be killed by the Zagrath.”
“If they caught him, he might already—“ Coxley said.
Fenrey cut him off. “No sense in guessing about what may or may not have happened. We need to regroup, get the resistance together, and find the Vandar.”
“No need.” Another Carlogian pushed through the heavy drape separating the room from the back of the house and the tunnel entrance. “I know what happened to the Vandar.”
“Taiko.” Lebben greeted the Carlogian, who had a wiry tuft of russet-colored hair that stood up between the striped horns that curled around his ears. “How do you know about the Vandar?”
The skinny little alien scratched nervously at his arms as he surveyed the room. “I was in the wood looking for good trees.”
“Taiko is the village’s carpenter,” Coxley whispered to me out of the corner of his mouth.
“You know you shouldn’t have been out there alone,” Fenrey scolded. “Not with the empire roaming these parts.”
Taiko scratched more vigorously. “I know, but I need some more planks to shore up the tunnels, especially if we’ll be needing them again. Anyway, I saw a Vandar fighting against some imperial soldiers.”
My heart stuttered. “Was he wearing black armor on one shoulder and a strap that crossed his chest?”
The carpenter nodded. “He took off one soldier’s arm then his head before they brought him down.”
Cold fear slid across my skin as Baru sank down
