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“Come out from behind there,” he said, and though he uttered it with the authority of a man who could send all his warriors forward to drag her out if he so chose, the command was nearly gentle.
Maybe it was not a command at all.
Nasrin was bold enough to do it, though I did not consider it wise when she moved into view.
“We’re not going to be split up,” Nasrin said. “That’s not how we do things.”
Gahn Thaleo regarded her for a long moment, then said, “That is not how we do things either. Tribe is everything.”
“Good,” Valeria said. “OK. I wasn’t going to agree to permanently splitting up the group that way, either.” She looked up at her mate Grim, then back at the others. “What about if we split our time between mountains. Spend a week in Gahn Errok’s mountain, then a week here? Alternate.”
She seemed to be saying it more to the new women, to gauge their reactions, but it was Gahn Thaleo who responded, still staring at Nasrin.
“What is a week?”
“Oh. Seven days,” Valeria answered. “But it can be a different length of time. That’s just what first came to mind.”
“I don’t want to spend too long away from Gahn Errok’s,” Fiona piped up from behind me. “I’ll miss baby Keir too much. If we’re gone a month we’re going to miss so much! And Stephanie’s trying to get pregnant, so that could be happening soon.”
Tilly and Nasrin both seemed to agree with this.
“With the shuttle, we’ll always be able to go back during the day at anytime,” Valeria said. “The nighttime base for sleeping would be here. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Gahn Thaleo repeated softly, and I could not tell if he was agreeing and trying to emphasize Valeria’s point, or if there was an offended sort of disbelief in him that made him echo the words almost without meaning to.
“I mean... We’ve stayed here before and it was fine,” Tilly said from behind Oxriel. “Other than the whole Errok taklok thing. But otherwise... What do you think, Nasrin? If you don’t want to, we’ll just say no.”
“I don’t love that we’re being shifted around based on the fact that we three don’t have big alien boyfriends yet,” Nasrin muttered, crossing her arms. “That we’re being told where to go just because we might end up as somebody’s mate. Back in the Sea Sands, the other tribes relocated to be near us, not the other way around.”
“But that isn’t exactly fair, either!” And that was Fiona now, speaking with an intensity of emotion that surprised me. She was usually quite smiley and cheery around her human friends.
Her voice quieted then, as if she didn’t want Gahn Thaleo to hear. Or maybe even me. But it retained that intensity. “These guys... They have no hope of ever having a family of their own. The Sea Sand men all abandoned their homes just to follow their Gahns and maybe, just maybe, get a chance at the kind of life they’ve been longing for! I didn’t think about it enough at the time. But now I’m not so sure having them all get forced into that move was the best course of action. I’m glad we didn’t get split up, don’t get me wrong. It’s just... I don’t know. There are no truly fair options for everyone.”
“At least they’re still on the same damn planet,” Nasrin muttered. Now in the shade of the shuttle, she took off her eye-shells and her green and black sight stars were shadowed. She gave a sigh, her dark brows drawing together. She rubbed at her forehead, as if to force the muscles there to relax. “But when you put it like that... I do see what you’re saying. I know when my parents left Iran for Australia before I was born, they left a lot of themselves behind. Sometimes they would tell me about it, and it sounded so fucking beautiful. But sometimes it was just too hard.”
She returned her eye-shells to her face, but I did not miss the glimmer of moisture in her eyes before they were hidden. The phenomenon of water leaking from the eyes of new women was still largely a mystery to me so I did not bother trying to understand what it might mean.
“A week in each mountain,” Nasrin said loudly. “I’ll agree to that for the alliance if my friends are alright with it too.”
Tilly agreed right away. Fiona hesitated, and my guts snarled in an ugly sort of way when she finally acquiesced as well.
“They will not be unaccompanied,” I interjected, slamming the butt of my spear upon the stone. “Where they go, we go.”
Where she goes, I go.
Gahn Thaleo gave me that unnervingly blank yet calculating stare.
“Agreed,” he growled. I supposed he realized, just as I did, that though his tribe was a small one, we Sea Sand males would still be outnumbered if anything were to happen. Though I knew a Sea Sand man had to count for at least two Deep Sky men. It had taken two of his guards to drag me into this mountain, after all.
I jolted when something touched my back. The stroke of a tiny hand between blades.
Fiona.
I would have turned around and told her not to distract me so, not to unspool my very brain with nothing but the tiny touch of her hand while I was trying to negotiate with a Gahn as poisonous as Thaleo. But I did not get a chance, because that very Gahn spoke yet again.
“I have another condition for our alliance,” he said.
Valeria looked taken aback. She exchanged looks with her big red mate, then with Nasrin, before facing Gahn Thaleo once more.
