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Nothing.
He was using her own technique against her. Unluckily for him, she didn’t really need a conversation partner. She used to spend a lot of time cursing at her yarn – she was fully capable of needling something or someone without help.
“What’s the end goal here? You have to know that you can’t get away with this forever. She’s going to lose eventually. Unless she plans on just murdering us when we’re no longer useful to her.”
Oh. Was that a twitch in his eye?
“I suppose she could,” Sandy continued, latching onto the subject. “Though, let’s be real here: She would just tell you two to do it. You cool with that? Being literal murderers?”
Definitely a twitch. He was clenching his jaw. It wasn’t super obvious. His scales didn’t move as easily as her skin, preventing subtle movements from being readily visible. But he was definitely clenching his jaw.
“Okay. Well, I think we can both agree that I would prefer the option that doesn’t lead to my death. So, what do we have to give you to make you switch sides? I’m definitely not above paying for your loyalty, and we both know it’s Rane’s money she’s using anyway.”
Nothing again.
“Unless it’s not about money,” Sandy said softly.
Ah ha! His hand tightened into a fist. She found her target.
“What is she giving you that makes this worth it?” Sandy asked ponderously, staring at him. “If it’s not money, it has to be something equally valuable. Food? Drugs? Females?”
She cocked her head curiously, options spinning around in her head. It was kind of hard, because those two had never shown any indication that they wanted anything. They just kind of robotically followed Elffa’s orders.
Like Rane was doing now.
Then, maybe it wasn’t about what she was giving them, but what she had taken away.
“Does she have something of yours?”
His eyes! They darted towards her. For a second, just a second, but it happened!
“What is it? A person? Like me and Rane?” She rested her head on her hand, looking at him as she tried to figure it out. Did they have mates of their own? Though, how would Elffa have managed to take down a couple of ratchi females and keep them back all this time? Weren’t they just as strong and vicious as the males? Or maybe she had their kids or something?
“Our brother.”
“Huh?”
She had been so engrossed in her thoughts, trying to figure out what it could be, she almost didn’t hear the softly hissed response.
“Your brother?” She repeated slowly. “She has him trapped? Like me?”
“No. Not like you. If it was like you, he could get out.” Orza’s voice was low. Like he was wary of being overheard, though Elffa was with Kirs, keeping a hard eye on Rane. “He’s in stasis. We’re… Let’s say we do some things slightly outside of the law. He went into stasis to travel under the radar. But she found him and realized what she had. She has him hidden, and she has set the pod so that she has to restart it every day or it will turn off without waking him. If something happens to her, we might not find him in time to get him free before he dies.”
“That’s… terrible,” she mumbled. She had always looked at those two like enemies and, really, she probably always would. But that didn’t mean they weren’t sympathetic.
Better than that, if they were here for something like that, they weren’t loyal to Elffa. And all the cruelty they had directed at her and Rane, they might be willing to turn against her instead. Orza certainly didn’t look conflicted or guilty about anything they had done. He might be sympathetic, but she didn’t think they had been good people to start with.
“What will it take for me to get you to switch sides?” She asked, going right for it.
“Our brother,” he said immediately. Looking at her. “You give me our brother back, and I’ll give you every bit of evidence we have on her.”
Sandy’s eyes popped in surprise. “You collected evidence?”
“You think we were doing nothing this entire time?”
“Kind of thought you were getting off on hurting us.”
“We can do both.”
