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“Yeah, I bet it is.” Garin ripped open his bar’s wrapper. “Can’t have the citizenry or our allies knowing some of the stuff we got up to.”
“Your allies are hardly capable of occupying the moral high ground.” Sazahk peeled back the crinkly wrapper of his ration bar. “The Klah’Eel and Qesh get up to as many duplicitous and underhanded dealings as the Humans do, I’m sure.”
“Oh, the Qesh may not deserve it, but they’re perfectly capable of occupying it.” Garin grinned and ripped a piece off the dry ration bar with his teeth.
“That’s certainly true.” Sazahk knew it more than most. He watched Garin wolf down his ration bar as he chewed his more sedately. “You weren’t raised with money.”
Garin paused mid-crumpling his wrapper. Then he finished scrunching it into a ball and stowed it in his pack. Sazahk didn’t know if that was out of respect for the environment or a habit born from camping behind enemy lines, but he appreciated it, nonetheless. “Nope.” Garin rested his elbows on his bent knees. “What gives me away?”
“The way you eat.” Sazahk set aside his half-finished ration bar, not hungry enough to fully finish it. “The way you sit. The fact that you ever had such a dangerous job as the Vanguard. I’ve heard of them, and the details that aren’t redacted imply a chilling horror in the details that are.”
Garin’s face tightened, but he didn’t drop his smile.
“And the fact that you still have a dangerous job,” Sazahk went on. “Not to mention pure statistics. The majority of Human citizens are in financially precarious circumstances due to the Human species state’s persistently poor economy and lack of basic social safety net, so to assume that you were raised with little money would be fair even without the additional evidence.”
Garin’s rueful smile twitched. “Spot on.”
Sazahk shrugged a shoulder. He usually was.
“You, on the other hand, grew up with a silver spoon in your mouth. Am I right?” Garin fished out the blood testing device from the outside pocket of Sazahk’s pack and pricked himself.
Sazahk drummed his fingers on his knees and accepted the used test strip. “You say that because you know who my brother is.”
Garin swept his eyes up and down Sazahk’s body, but Sazahk didn’t know what he saw that gave away his family’s social status. “Not just that.”
“Qeshian culture doesn’t care much for silver.” Sazahk pricked himself, then stowed the device and strips away for later analysis. “It was never considered a precious resource or luxury item, and it was certainly never used for expensive cutlery. Ivory is the real marker of wealth.” He dug through his pack and pulled his sleeping bag free of the mess it had tangled itself around, dragging a microscope and a pair of pants out with it. “But yes, I had what one might consider a privileged life.”
Garin’s green eyes bore into him. “Until you threw it away.”
Sazahk tensed, scrunching the half rolled-out sleeping bag in his fists. A mottled mess of orange, pink, purple, blue, gray, and black boiled up his forearms. “I think we’ve reached an acceptable limit of personal exchanges for one night.”
Did he know? Serihk had told him the records were sealed. His brother had probably sealed the records himself, if only to protect their family’s reputation. The shame had nearly killed their father.
But if Garin had gotten his hands on maps of caves hidden under Qesha’s Dead Zone, he could have gotten his hands on the dirty secrets hidden under the Qesh’s bureaucracy.
Sazahk’s hands shook as he stuffed the fallen microscope and pants back into his bag. But he didn’t care if Garin knew. He didn’t care what Garin thought of him. And he hadn’t done anything wrong in the first place. Not really. No matter what people said.
Garin swore softly as Sazahk zipped his pack closed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I just know you were with the Carta Cartel for a while, and I made an assumption. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t humans have some silly thing they say about assuming things?” Sazahk wiggled into the warmth of his bag. He smacked his knee against a rock lodged under him and winced.
“That it makes an ass out of you and me.” Garin dropped his chin and shook his head. “Yeah, my mother loves that saying.”
“That’s the one.” Sazahk twitched as another rock poked him in the ribs.
“The ground’s a lot more comfortable if you pull the rocks out first.” Garin started to get up. “I can help?—”
“No.” Sazahk shot him a glare to sit him back down. He could pull the rocks out of his own sleeping spot. If he cared enough to. Which he didn’t. He rolled onto his side to give Garin his back. “Goodnight.”
For a moment, the crackle of the fire was his only response. Then Garin sighed. “Goodnight.”
Sazahk lay awake as Garin bustled quietly for the better part of an hour, rustling through his pack, scrolling through his tablet, breathing, existing. Then Garin banked the fire, tucked into his sleeping bag, and fell quiet. Sazahk lay staring into the blackness of the Dead Zone, until Garin’s breath fell into the rhythm of sleep, and he finally closed his eyes.
The next morning, Sazahk rose the moment the sun’s light hit his eyelids.
The Dead Zone had hot springs. It had to.
He clambered out of his blankets. With steam like the kind illuminated in the dim dawn light, Sazahk couldn’t imagine he’d climb that ridge and look down on a valley not dotted with hot springs and mud pots.
