She paused in her work and lifted her head. Over the quiet hissing of the irrigation system, she thought she heard the cry of an animal.

  Several pipticks of focused listening brought only the expected sounds of her glasshouse. With a shrug, she pinched off another stem.

  The cry repeated, louder, longer, and undeniably full of pain. She dropped the plant tip and strode to the outside door. Whatever that was, she had never heard anything like it.

  The door opened directly onto their parking area, empty but for a single skimmer with its rear compartment full of flowers.

  It didn’t belong there. Galor had already poked his head in the glasshouse to tell her he had locked up for the night and was heading upstairs.

  She jogged across the hard-packed ground and rounded the skimmer at a careful distance.

  A large animal was lying motionless on the ground, pink and bloody. The last time she had seen this was slaughter day on her uncle’s holding, when the fanten was killed and skinned. What was a slaughtered fanten doing in her lot?

  Then she saw the boots.

  “Oh, Fahla,” she gasped as the scene shifted and resolved itself into a new picture. This was a person, lying on their side and curled into a ball. She raced over and crouched down, her hand trembling as she reached out for a bare shoulder.

  Once again, the image shifted. This beaten body had no chest ridges, and the blood-streaked face lacked forehead and cheekbone ridges. She could hardly recognize him, but no other Voloth came to her shop.

  “Rax! Can you hear me?”

  A distant sense of pain came through his skin. There were no emotions indicating any level of consciousness, but he was alive.

  “Goddess above, what happened to you?” She looked around wildly, searching for some explanation of how this impossible scene had come to be. A glow caught her eye, coming from Rax’s wrist. The fingers of that hand were bent in all the wrong directions, and his other hand rested in the grass next to it.

  He had tried to call someone. Bare pipticks ago, since the wristcom was still lit. She leaned over, craning her neck to see the com code, then blinked and read it again.

  Not in fifty cycles would she have believed that Rax had direct access to Lancer Tal. But if that was who he had tried to reach with his last conscious breath, then that was who he needed. Without giving herself time to reconsider, she tapped the wristcom and completed the call.

  The voice that answered was unmistakable even through the tiny sound output of the wristcom. “Rax. I wondered how long it would take you to use this code.”

  Belsara gulped. “Lancer Tal, my name is Belsara. I’m, uh, Rax is a customer of mine. He’s been attacked. He’s badly hurt. He tried to call you, but he’s, he needs help.” Part of her was horrified at the jumble of words coming out of her mouth, but the rest was too stressed to care.

  “Is he safe now? Are you?”

  “Yes, there’s nobody here.”

  “Good. Give me your location,” Lancer Tal commanded.

  The crisp order cleared out her confusion. She answered smartly, adding that she was in the lot next to the only skimmer.

  “Thank you, that’s exactly what I needed to know. Stay right there and don’t close this channel. I’ll be back in a piptick.”

  She sat back on her heels, looking at Rax’s slack face and trying to swallow her horror as Lancer Tal issued orders. There was a pause, then more orders, and then she heard her name.

  “Belsara? Are you still there?”

  She pushed onto her hands and knees, bringing her head over the wristcom. Given the condition of Rax’s hand, she didn’t dare lift it. “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Medics are on their way. I want you to stay with him until they get there. Do you know who the attackers were?”

  “I didn’t even know he was here. I just heard . . .” She swallowed. “I heard him scream, but I didn’t know that’s what it was. There wasn’t anyone here by the time I got out to the lot.”

  “All right. I’ve sent out a team from the AIF. They’ll want to speak with you.”

  In other words, her lot was now a crime scene and would soon be crawling with Alsean Investigative Force warriors.

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll stay on the channel with you until the medics arrive.”

  She stared at the wristcom, baffled. “Why?”

  “You said no one else was there, yes?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’m not leaving you alone.” While Belsara was getting over the shock of that statement, Lancer Tal spoke in a gentler voice. “How bad is it?”

  “I don’t know. Bad. He’s lying on his side, and I’m afraid to move him. Whoever it was, they took his clothes.”

  In the ensuing silence, she was newly aware of the insect song all around her.

  “Have you ever seen him argue with one of your customers? Any negative interactions?”

  “No, he—” She let out a harsh breath. “He only ever comes at the end of the day. I think he’s making sure he doesn’t meet any of our other customers. I never thought about that until now.”

  “What does he usually buy from you?”

  She listed off plant names, fertilizer products, stakes and poles, and spoke of the plastipaper glasshouse kits before she realized that this wasn’t part of the investigation and Lancer Tal couldn’t possibly care. “Are you trying to keep me calm?” she asked.

  “Partially. But my bondmate is a producer and she’s sitting beside me, nodding her head and saying ‘kitchen garden and decorative planters.’”

  Belsara barely managed not to gasp. The Bondlancer was listening in on this! “She’s right, that’s what—oh,” she said, staring at the blossoms visible in the open back of the skimmer. “Decorative planters. That’s why he was here. He came to get flowers and someone . . .” Someone beat him to a bloody paste while he was putting flowers in his skimmer.

  The anger rose, thick and unexpected, as another realization followed the first. “He couldn’t fight back.”

  “No.” Lancer Tal sounded regretful. “He couldn’t.”

  A rumble rose above the insect song, and Belsara looked down the empty road before realizing she wasn’t hearing a skimmer. That was a transport engine, growing louder as it streaked through the sky toward her. The bright orange color was instantly recognizable.

  “The medics are here,” she said.

  “You’ll be busy soon. Belsara, thank you. You did a good thing.”

  “I hope he’ll be all right. He’s a good man, for a Voloth.”

  “He is a good man,” Lancer Tal agreed, and ended the call.

  It wasn’t until Belsara was watching the medics swarm around Rax that she realized what Lancer Tal hadn’t said.

  For a Voloth.

  28

  Primitives

  Rax opened his eyes and noticed two things immediately: he didn’t hurt, and he had no idea where he was.

  The ceiling over his head didn’t look Alsean. The instruments and wall displays in his field of vision were labeled in Common. Past the foot of his bed, the entire wall looked like privacy glass in its opaque setting. Alsean healing centers didn’t use that for whole walls.

  Unless—was that plexan? Alsean privacy glass had more of a shine.

  A plexan wall, Common labels: this was a Protectorate facility. Had they built a secret one on Alsea?

  He lifted his hand and found it encased in a brace that started at his wrist and sent rigid branches down each finger. At least his thumb had escaped, a fact he found cheering out of all proportion. The lower half of his other arm was in a case he recognized as Alsean medtech.

  The door to his room opened and a woman stepped through, her Fleet Medical uniform adding to his confusion. She had light brown hair worn up in a twist and when she turned, her face was as smooth as his.

  “Good morning, Rax,” she said in Common. “It’s nice to see you awake.” She walked over to a wall display he couldn’t see and tapped it a few times. “And feeling fine, I hope. No pain?”

  “Ah . . .” He cleared his throat and tried again. “No, no pain. Where am I?”

  She pulled a water flask with a built-in straw from an overhead cupboard and offered it. “Don’t suck too hard. The straw will only deliver small doses, so you can’t overdo it.” As he took it from her hand, she added, “You’re on the Phoenix. In my medbay. I’m Dr. Wells, the chief surgeon.”

  He nearly spat out his water. “What? Why am I here?”

  “Would you like to sit a bit more upright?”

  It wasn’t an answer, but he nodded.

  “It takes verbal commands. Just say, ‘Bed, raise my head.’”

  The bed responded immediately, lifting its top section in a smooth motion. His head and upper torso came with it.

  “Bed, stop.”

  The motion ceased, leaving him in a comfortable position.

  Dr. Wells pulled a stool from the corner of the room and sat down, putting her head on a closer level to his. “I’m sure you can figure out how to get it to let you lie back and sleep when you need to.” At his nod, she gave him a small smile. “In answer to your earlier question, you’re here because you had some injuries the Alsean healers couldn’t repair. They did a beautiful job on your spleen, your hand, the knife wound on your upper back, your knee—everything, really. But they’re not familiar with Gaian genitalia.”

  He had forgotten. It came back to him in an overwhelming, terrifying rush, that posthead rising into the air . . .

  She touched his arm, jerking him back to the present. “You’ll be all right, Rax. I’m sorry to tell you that we couldn’t save your left testicle. But your right testicle was much less damaged, and the swelling has already decreased to the point where I’m not worried. Your penis will be back to normal in another day or two. Your reproductive capacity hasn’t been damaged. Neither has your sexual capacity.”

  He couldn’t help laughing, first at her statement and then at her surprise. Whatever drug they had him on must be good, or his ribs would have been blazing with the motion. He caught his breath and asked, “You thought I was worried about having children? None of us can have children. We’re all sterilized.”

  She shifted her shoulders beneath the dark green and silver jacket. “I know. It’s reversible, but I don’t have the authority to do that.”

  “No, I understand. We’d have to get permission from the Alsean Council. I think we’d have a better chance of getting the whole Council to wear feathers and dance.”

  “There’s an interesting image.”

  “Most of us don’t want children anyway. Why would we want to bring children into a world that would hate them?”

  She watched him in silence, then shook her head.

  A twinge of guilt pricked his conscience. She had thought she was bringing him good news, and who knew how much time she had spent trying to save body parts he couldn’t use? “Thanks for saving my tog,” he offered. “I’d miss not being able to give it a tug.”

  That made her smile. “Tug your tog? I haven’t heard that one.”

  “Voloth military slang.”

  “What do you call it for women?”

  “Ah.” He pressed his lips together, embarrassed. “Rub your rib.”

  “Rib?” she asked incredulously. “Let me guess, there’s an accompanying gesture?” She moved her hand to her lowest rib and shot him a wicked smile.

  “Stop! Yes!” He could not believe a military doctor actually had a sense of humor. “They must train you a lot differently than they train our doctors.”

  Her smile slipped. “I suspect we do quite a few things differently than your military. That wasn’t your first beating.”

  She had scanned him, then. That meant she had seen his healed fractures and the scars on the backs of his thighs, but her matter-of-fact tone made it easy to answer. “It’s how they taught us not to ask questions.” Casting a glance around the room, he added, “Your medical bays are a lot nicer, too.”

  “I’m beginning to think yours consist of metal tables and rusty blades.”

  “Depends. If you’re an officer? A citizen? Top shelf. But if you’re a hanger . . .” He held out his braced hand and rocked it back and forth. “You’d better hope someone in medical owes you a favor.”

  “Don’t they at least protect their investment? It takes time and resources to train soldiers.”

  “Yeah, but we don’t always need the best drugs, do we? Whether we hurt or not, we still heal.” They didn’t always need the best equipment, either. And if an officer had an upset stomach while a hanger needed non-critical surgery, well, the surgery could wait. He didn’t say that, though. This Protectorate doctor already looked like she wanted to bang heads together.

  “Doctor . . . Wells, right? Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you treating me because I’m a settler on Alsea? Last I heard, Fleet Medical wasn’t on call to treat Voloth soldiers.”

  “Maybe we should be,” she said darkly. Her expression cleared as she added, “You’re here because my captain got a call from Lancer Tal, asking for care the Alsean healers couldn’t provide. They flew you up.”

  “They,” he repeated. That couldn’t possibly mean what it sounded like.

  “It would have taken twice as long for us to send a shuttle down and get you back here. Which reminds me, you’re about to have—”

  The door opened again, admitting a familiar figure.

  “A visitor,” Dr. Wells finished as she rose from her stool. Switching to High Alsean, she said, “Good morning, Lancer Tal.”

  “Good morning. How is he?”

  “Awake and chipper.”

  In her perfectly tailored suit, Lancer Tal looked like she had just stepped out of the Council chamber. Rax could not process the fact that she was in his room.

  “Rax, well met. It’s good to see you upright. Or mostly upright.”

  “It’s, uh, good to be here. Well met, Lancer Tal.” He tried to collect some semblance of his dignity, but it was impossible in her presence. Besides the respect she had earned as the military leader who destroyed the invasion, she commanded him personally. Part of him yearned toward her even now, longing to do whatever it would take to please her. He had not been in her physical presence since being dragged before the High Council in chains, but the pull was still as strong.

  “I wanted to tell you how the investigation is proceeding,” she said as she pointed toward the stool and raised a questioning eyebrow at Dr. Wells. The doctor gave a nod and went to the corner of the room to fetch a second stool.

  “Investigation?” Rax said stupidly. Lancer Tal was sitting at his bedside and he couldn’t think.

  “Yes, but first, I’m glad you tried to call me. It saved a great deal of time when we realized you needed more help than our healers could give you.”

  “But—I didn’t? I don’t remember you.” He hadn’t spoken to her, had he?

  “Belsara found you. She saw that you had tried to connect with me and put the call through. She stayed with you until the medics came, and then she and Galor helped with the investigation.”

  She spoke of an AIF team and theories and footage from the shop cams, but he barely took it in until she unrolled her reader card and turned it to face him. “These are the last few customers of the day. Do you recognize any of them?”

  Neither the first nor the second looked familiar. The third made him pull his head back. “Him,” he said in a shaky voice. “He was their leader. He was the one who—” Swallowing bile, he changed the sentence. “He said Alsea was for Alseans. Not for animals in Alsean clothing.”

  Lancer Tal rolled up the card and replaced it in its pouch. “Alsea isn’t for Alseans who attack the defenseless. You said their leader. How many were there?”

  “Four.” He described them to the best of his memory, but it was getting even harder to think when Lancer Tal looked so angry. “That’s all I remember,” he finished, his eyes on his braced hand.

  “That’s all you need to remember. We’ll take care of it now. I can assure you that they’ll regret the choices they made last night.”

  “They’re probably heroes,” he said bitterly. “It was only a matter of time.”

  “Rax.” She waited until he looked up. “You live under Alsean law. So do they. They broke that law with malice aforethought. That makes them criminals, not heroes. They’re going to prison.”

  He was a hanger at home and an unwanted Voloth here. In neither place did it make sense that anyone would be punished for hurting him.

  “Do you think I’m lying to you?”

  “No, but—”

  “But you cannot believe I would prioritize your rights?” She either saw the answer in his face or felt it, because she shook her head and added, “Then perhaps you still have a few things to learn about us primitives.”

  The word jarred him out of his stupor. He was shocked to hear it from her, but then remembered: the last time they met was right after the battle, when he was just beginning to realize that his government had lied to him.

  “You’re not primitives,” he said in a rush. “I haven’t thought that for a long time. None of us think that. We only wish you didn’t think that about us.”

  She looked right through him with those light blue eyes, probably sensing everything he was feeling. “Rax, you built a self-governing settlement. You have too much pride to depend entirely on us, so you’re growing your own food. You had that fire mostly put out before the firefighters arrived. And I hear the houses in your settlement have beautiful decorative planters.” She rose from her stool. “I haven’t thought you were primitive for a long time, either.”

  She thanked Dr. Wells and had reached the door before Rax found his voice.

  “Lancer Tal? Do you know what happened to the flowers?”