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“Yes.”
“Good.” She sighed, then began speaking so rapidly I feared my translator would not keep up. “We’ll dig a grave. You’ve got tons of land. We’ll bury him in some random-ass forgotten corner and no one will ever know.”
I stared at her, astonished that she would do such a thing when my own father had once turned me in. My sweet, beautiful Cherry, was offering to drag the filth of that man’s corpse away from here, to help me hide it, all to protect me. She’d watched me kill him. She’d seen the blood on my hands and yet was still offering her own to me.
A thread of hope wound through me. Hope that, even though I’d killed not just one man, but two men, I’d still somehow get to keep her.
But no. Of course not.
“His ship.”
“Shit!” She paused to think, appearing to barely rein in panic. “OK. His ship can’t be that big. Maybe we could get the shuldu to drag it. Maybe even hook up some bulls, too, if the shuldu aren’t enough. Get it into the treeline, just so it’s covered and out of sight. Then we’ll decide what to do. We don’t need to tell the warden-”
The kitchen door swung open behind us and a deep voice boomed through the air.
“You don’t need to tell me what?”
29
WARDEN TENN
“Iwant you to know,” I said tersely, “before you attempt to answer that question, that I’ve already seen the human ship. And the body of its pilot.”
My eyes snapped back and forth between them. I fought to keep my eyes orange, to maintain the cool, disciplined disposition needed for a warden.
Not so easy to do when I’d come here to deliver Silar’s Terratribe II order and had instead found a crime scene. I took note of every detail in the room. The white-knuckled grip Cherry had on Silar’s data tab. Her small hands were clean.
Silar’s were not.
“That man came for my wife,” Silar answered, not even a hint of regret or guilt in his voice. “I killed him.”
I sighed, briefly closing my eyes. This was going to be a very long night. I could already feel it.
“You could have incapacitated him until I got here, Silar.” I opened my eyes and fixed my gaze on him. “You know that is what you should have done.”
“He touched her.”
Curse it all, Silar.
“It wasn’t him!”
I flicked my tail in a questioning gesture as Silar’s tiny human wife shoved herself between us.
“It wasn’t Silar,” she said stoutly, shoving her completely clean and blood-free hands into fists on her hips. “So if you have to blame someone, blame me. I’ve got to be protected by some kind of international immunity. Plus, I killed another human, not a Zabrian.”
Absolutely none of what she’d just said was legally sound. Not to mention the fact that she didn’t even do it.
“Tell me, Cherry,” I inquired in a low voice. “Just how, exactly, did you overpower a man approximately twice your size with nothing but a Zabrian knife, all the while keeping your hands completely clean in the process?”
The round dots of colour in her cheeks vanished as she raised her hands in front of her face. She then took pained note of Silar’s bloodied ones.
“We both know it was not her,” Silar grunted. “Do what you must, Warden.”
“No attempts at denial? You aren’t even trying to argue,” I said with narrowed eyes, frustration rising. I should not have been looking for a way to give Silar an out. The law was clear and so was my role and responsibility. Silar would have to be on the first available transport out of here to face trial on Zabria. But… I had to admit. I did not wish for that.
“You would go to the mines for her, without complaint?” I pressed.
“I would die for her,” Silar snarled with sudden ferocity. “Also without complaint.”
