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The last time I stood before this mountain, faced with these men, was just before they imprisoned me. The sun was hot and bright that day, too, illuminating the violence. I remembered standing here, bound, watching the way my black blood dripped from my chest wound onto this gleaming stone. That was right before I’d knocked over the nearest Deep Sky warrior with my tail.
And I’d earned myself a very sharp blow in response. I was forced down onto my knees, and then eventually dragged into a dark cave in the mountain with the other men. We were kept here for almost six full days.
Oh, we were fed all right, and the mountain healers tended our wounds.
But we were always bound. And I would have taken any bloody wound, or any slicing sword of hunger, over that. Days upon days of powerlessness under the dark mountain of some foreign Gahn.
Besides Taraken and Gahn Fallo, there were very few men that I had any patience for.
But Gahn Thaleo?
Gahn Thaleo was a man I truly loathed. I hated the cold, feigned blankness of his demeanour. The icy control he kept at all times over his anger and his power and his words. Men could say what foul things they would about my Gahn – and they did – but for better or worse, a male always knew where he stood with Gahn Fallo. He wore his emotions fierce as flames about him, his intentions – violent as they often were – spilled out into the air as words the moment they became thought in his head. One look into Gahn Fallo’s fearsome red sight stars gave a man truth, even if it was a truth that told him he was about to die.
A look into Gahn Thaleo’s sight stars gave a man nothing.
Or, if they gave anything, a man could be sure it was a lie.
Thaleo was a Gahn of silence and slowness and study. A male of constant calculation, one more interested in outmaneuvering his opponent than overpowering him head-on. I’d gained that impression of him quickly after our first unfriendly meeting. And my judgments against him had only been solidified when I heard of how he lured Gahn Errok here and engaged him in a battle of mountain honour called a taklok. Really, it was all a ruse. A clever, malevolent trick. A way to kill Gahn Errok inside the confines of Deep Sky culture without upsetting the alliance with the new women.
Of course, he had not killed the other Gahn. And the humans had learned of his duplicitousness.
And yet, here those very humans stood. About to give him pay-pur hearts that neither he nor his men could ever hope to deserve. A token of friendship, they’d called it. Of love.
“You did not make the heart for Gahn Thaleo, did you?” I suddenly snapped at Fiona, my fingers tightening on the shaft of my spear.
“No,” she said from behind me. “And Nasrin felt weird about making his, so I’m pretty sure Tilly did.”
Good.
“Hello, Gahn Thaleo. Warrek. God afternoon, everyone,” Valeria said to the six men who arrived before us. “We come bearing gifts!”
The Deep Sky Gahn wrenched his sight stars from Nasrin to Valeria. He had a long, deep scar from his scalp all the way down over his left eye and cutting deep into his left cheekbone. Though he seemed older than myself and his nemesis Gahn Errok, he was not an old man. And yet, he had a shock of white hair at the front, a bright streak erupting from where the scar met his scalp. It was not just his hair affected by the scarring, but his sight stars, too. The right eye’s sight stars were a bright, clear blue-green colour the same shade as the reflective stone beneath our claws. The sight stars of his left eye were paler and they moved a little more slowly than those in the other eye.
“Gifts?” The Gahn said, his voice very deep. “Are these gifts meant to make up for the fact that you have moved your settlement into Gahn Errok’s mountain without informing me?”
Valeria’s guarded smile faltered, then vanished.
“We haven’t moved the settlement,” she shot back instantly. “We’re still doing stuff in the caves in the neutral territory where the shuttle stays parked.”
“During the day,” Gahn Thaleo replied.
“Grim and I sleep there every night!” Valeria argued.
“But the others do not.”
Valeria could not immediately refute that. Because it was true.
This was exactly what I had warned Fiona about. I could tell, without him even needing to say it, that when Gahn Thaleo said “others” what he really meant was “unmated new women.” I doubted he gave a single frayed feather about the fact that Taylor and Tok, for example, were not sleeping at the original site of the settlement. Or Priya or Abby or Zuh-Tephanie.
But he wanted continued access to Tilly, Fiona, and Nasrin as potential mates for his men.
Or, I thought as Gahn Thaleo’s gaze sought Nasrin once again, his sight stars drawn to her as heavily and inevitably as a man’s feet were pulled back down to the ground after he jumped, for himself.
“Well,” Valeria began slowly, as if trying to choose her words very carefully, “Gahn Errok’s mountain has a lot of amenities that-”
“My mountain has amenities.”
Valeria let out a short puff of air through her nose. I was so focused on what was happening ahead, my hand hot on my spear, my other arm primed to grab a blade the instant it was necessary, that I almost missed it. Almost missed the way that Fiona got just a little closer to me. Not enough to touch. But enough to light my whole blasted back on fire with the sensation of her that murderously close.
