Taji From Beyond the Rings Read online

  He started to crawl backwards to hide behind his table and his palm skidded over a fragment of a broken cup. Several of those around them gasped in shock, like Ves priests witnessing a sacrilege. Taji’s small hiss of pain was nearly drowned out by the accusing voice of the Shavian with the dark jewelry. “Look at what you caused, child. You hurt them!”

  Taji swung his head up when the darker figure moved forward with sudden, furious grace, but then trembled and froze like the rest of them at the low, clear command from the edge of the room.

  “Do not move.”

  Taji could feel the stillness in the air, the new, alarmed tension from those around him. He closed his eyes while everyone slowly turned to see who had issued that order, only glimpsing the disbelief on their faces as they realized it was not a member of the Civil or Imperial Guard.

  The entrance to this establishment was large, built for Shavians. Trenne would fill it easily. He wouldn’t be in a soria; in fact, Taji had never seen him wear one. When Taji opened his eyes to look, Trenne would be in his black IPTC fatigues, pants tucked into boots, assorted weaponry holstered everywhere for no reason Taji could see except possibly to make ornamental knives look ridiculous. The night was temperate, verging on warm. Trenne might be in a black shirt, his arms on display, his strength highlighted by his body armor. IPTC had designed their armor that way.

  For all that there had been yelling and shouting a moment before, there was subdued silence now. The entire room probably needed a moment to adjust to the sight of a Shavian in an IPTC uniform.

  Trenne didn’t raise his voice, and by doing so somehow drew attention to how everyone else had been yelling. “The Civil Guard is on their way. Anyone who does not want to face them should leave.”

  He sounded calm, which, needless to say, was not how Taji would have been if he’d been forced to locate and then rescue a secretary-slash-translator on what should have been a relaxing, ordinary night.

  But that was Trenne.

  Heat curled through Taji’s stomach, sending a hungry, impatient shiver down his spine. He fisted one hand in his bag, hid his bleeding palm behind his back, and steadfastly did not look up. Jha, an inexplicable, overwhelming attraction, a pull from deep in the body toward someone else. And absolutely the worst thing for anyone in Taji’s position to feel.

  He swallowed, taking in the empty cups around him and the Shavians standing over him, and realized a few seconds too late that most of the people in the restaurant were streaming toward the door. Apparently no one wanted to face the Civil Guard. Trenne had probably known that.

  The two who had started this mess—which was completely not Taji’s fault—were not moving. They were looking up, which meant Trenne had come closer.

  “Did the humans hire you to protect this one?” Taji’s defender, such as he was, was the first to speak, although the question was slightly off. Trenne was wearing IPTC patches, with IPTC-quality weapons strapped to his body. Nobody could mistake him for a simple bodyguard.

  “Only humans would add insult to another insult,” the younger one joined in. Trenne’s arrival must have made them defensive if the two other Shavians were on the same side now. “You should not be near them, animal, no matter what clothes you wear.”

  “Hide behind,” the darker one corrected.

  Trenne was unfazed. “Do I hide?” he asked, quiet and at ease with two angry, armed maybe-drunks in front of him.

  “The situation was controlled,” the darker Shavian said stiffly, as if Trenne had demanded an explanation. “The human, confused, made a mistake this one was prepared to take advantage of. It was controlled,” he repeated, stressed it, actually.

  “They had three glasses of midye! They sat alone!” The younger one had yet to lower his voice. “Like this!”

  Taji glanced up in time to see the paler Shavian trying to slouch.

  “Do Shavians not get loose when they drink?” Taji demanded, regrettably, since it made everyone look at him. He quickly turned his head. There was some midye on a nearby table; he could really use it right about now.

  “No more zhatren,” Trenne said. Without looking at Trenne to check, Taji knew that soft order was directed at him. “Three is already too much. You will regret it in a few hours.”

  Taji sighed dejectedly and stayed where he was.

  The younger one made a startled noise that the darker one echoed. “But they were flirtatious! This has to be wrong.”

  The darker one, Taji’s would-be rescuer, recovered from this apparent shock while Taji was wallowing in a fair amount of humiliation. “Where were you?”

  Confused, Taji raised his head and realized they weren’t speaking to him. Apparently, he wasn’t worth speaking to despite everyone possibly wanting to fuck him. Instead, both of the strange Shavians were staring at Trenne, startling, obvious anger in their expressions, their ears flat against their skulls.

  Taji looked to Trenne as well and instantly wished he hadn’t.

  Trenne didn’t wear shimmer or jewelry. There was no soria in his possession, or knife that was anything other than practical. Most of Trenne was covered by his uniform. The parts of him that were bare—his forearms and hands, his throat, his face—were brown. His hair was black and long, fastened up and away from his eyes and his neck with a few bands. His ears were brown and black like the rest of him except for speckles of lighter brown and some white with a purple tinge at the tips from blood vessels showing through thinner skin. The same speckles dotted his cheekbones and trailed over his back and shoulders where they grew into larger patches.

  Taji knew about those speckles because he’d seen them by accident when he was new to this assignment and had stumbled into the part of the ambassador’s house that served as the barracks. Trenne had the same muscle as the rest of the soldiers—more, really, due to his size. His eyebrows were thick, but his eyes tipped up delicately at the corners. He didn’t need shimmer to stand out. Taji had never seen another Shavian quite like him.

  Taji realized he was staring, barely breathing, and forced himself to blink.

  Three glasses was too much. Taji was hot and his mouth was sticky. Trenne was entirely focused on the two in front of him. As if, despite his calm tone, he wasn’t relaxed, and would not relax until they were gone.

  He was larger than both of them, and they both seemed acutely aware of it, standing straighter than they had been. But the most interesting thing was that their knives were sheathed and their hands were at their sides—nonthreatening postures if Taji had ever seen them.

  They were scared of Trenne, although both would likely deny it. It could have been Trenne’s size, or the force behind the uniform he wore, but Taji didn’t think so. Not entirely, anyway. For one, Taji had seen hardened miners fall back when Trenne was around. For another, these two were speaking funny, choosing strange words.

  “I defended the wild one because of your failure, animal.”

  Taji had been feeling slightly forgiving toward his supposed protector. That was gone now.

  “Excuse me?” Taji demanded, although, with the language difference, some of the attitude was lost. “What failure? He is right here.”

  “They were left alone.” His protector continued to talk over him in a way that made Taji grit his teeth.

  “I am not surprised you would not know that, hurat,” the other one chimed in, and Taji paused. He had been automatically translating that word to ‘animal’ in his head, but he must have been mistaken in its use. Unless, of course, they were both consistently referring to Trenne as an animal. Not the neutral word, either. Taji could have translated it as ‘beast’ and it probably would have been more accurate.

  “Sergeant Major Trenne,” Taji pointed out, despite the certainty that they would ignore him some more. “That is his name. Not animal.”

  Trenne didn’t have a secondary name, or a family name, or anything like that even though Lin, the other Shavian on the ambassador’s IPTC security team, did. Trenne was just Trenne. Taji had
never stopped to consider that before. But then, he’d never watched Trenne with other Shavians before.

  “It is no surprise the shehzha was in here.” If the younger one was trying to sound smug, it wasn’t working with the tremble in his voice. But he lifted his chin to an arrogant angle. “They were searching for better and they found it.”

  “Do not let this son of the Garden fool you,” the darker one spoke up, not exactly apologizing. “He could live in the emperor’s palace, surrounded by his outrages, and he still would not know what to do with a shehzha.” That word must have bothered Trenne as well, because he glanced to Taji, then away, although his ears stayed up and angled in Taji’s direction as the darker one went on. “Like his emperor, the rich boy has no concept of honor.”

  Honor again. Vatli’ie. A word not quite like other ‘Asha words, making Taji suspect it was much, much older than the majority of their vocabulary, or borrowed from another language.

  Quite a speech from someone who had done his share of talking over Taji just because he was human and liked cock and apparently drank too much. His one night of freedom! One night! Taji was allowed to overindulge.

  He met Trenne’s eyes and scowled to show his displeasure with this.

  Trenne swept a look over him, lingering over Taji’s hidden, injured hand, as if he knew.

  Taji shrugged about that, feeling stubborn. At least Trenne would understand a shrug. His ears flicked forward, to the other two, and then back toward Taji.

  “You speak so of our emperor?” The voice of the younger Shavian returned Taji to the moment, only to also make Taji realize the younger one was puffing up again at the insults the darker one kept flinging at him. Taji caught the tail end of another comment about the uselessness of the old families and their shiny, untested knives, and then something about how only a boy from the Gardens would try to prove himself against an animal who had sold himself to the humans.

  “I thought Shavians were all about control,” Taji remarked, a little sour and a lot annoyed, but mostly confused. “I am the drunk one, and they are getting in fights and insulting someone they really should not be insulting.” He recognized that there were tensions in the room—in the city—beyond him and his terrible attempt at getting laid, but this was ridiculous.

  “His name is Trenne,” he said it again slowly, with the changed pronunciation of the e at the end that made it Trennuh instead of Trenneh, the way that IPTC spelled it and Trenne himself pronounced it. “His name is Trenne, not ‘animal’ and you will speak to him with respect or not at all.”

  “This is—” The pale one didn’t finish his thought. His cheeks were flushed. He suddenly could not meet Taji’s eyes.

  “Embarrassing,” the other one finished it for him, frowning. He had no signs of embarrassment, despite his words. He frowned at Trenne. “Truly? Out of everyone, a hurat?”

  “That word again.” Taji had heard so many new things tonight. “I do not like the way you say that.” He raised his head and stared at them as though his stomach wasn’t flipping with nerves and too much wine. “You would be wise to stop using it.”

  He wasn’t threatening them with the force of the I.P.T.C. Of course not. That would be a terrible thing to do, and it wasn’t like Taji had that sort of power. He couldn’t tell Trenne what to do, much less the I.P.T.C. itself. Trenne’s job was to protect the ambassador and their staff, not fight Taji’s battles for him.

  But Taji couldn’t help it if other people might think he had that sort of power. Which, amazingly, these two did.

  They finally looked at him again and then at Trenne, who remained silent and watchful. Nice of him to pretend he was Taji’s to boss around.

  “This is not allowed!” the paler one was still protesting.

  “What actually happened?” Trenne turned to Taji just long enough for the pale one to start sputtering again.

  “You ask that kahne? They are not capable of—” He shut up at whatever he saw in Trenne’s expression.

  The darker one snorted. “I knew he had never been near a true shehzha before, or had someone willing to offer. You are within your rights to hurt him, animal.”

  Trenne stared at the darker one for a heavy moment, then ignored that remarkable statement to focus on Taji again.

  Taji shook his head innocently and waved his undamaged hand. He spoke in Anglisky. “I didn’t do anything! This is the fault of the translators. People were using words I didn’t know, and I tried to suss them out on my DD but I probably got the spelling wrong. Or maybe that was right, but the information IPTC used to make its database was incorrect.”

  He groaned dramatically and continued, “It’s always incorrect. Whoever created it either didn’t care enough to do the job properly, or was squeamish about the realities of life in this country, on this planet. The database is a fucking joke. I only know half the swear words I do because of my work on the moon, and a lot of that was a version of ‘Asha far different from this one. The translators aren’t giving me the right intel, and if I don’t get that, how can I do my job right? And I’m supposed to know what these two are talking about?”

  “He’s fine,” Trenne spoke into the comm at his ear. “He is ranting about the translator again.”

  Taji put a hand over his heart to indicate the wound he’d just received. Trenne almost quirked a smile, he’d swear it. Well, the Shavian equivalent. His ears did something fluttery.

  The pale Shavian seemed to be blushing even more furiously as his gaze darted between them. “This is obscene!”

  “The Civil Guard is here,” Trenne remarked in ‘Asha as if someone on the other end of his comm had just relayed that information. “If you want to explain yourself to them, stay.”

  Situation apparently diffused, he shifted to face Taji.

  “Animal?” the paler one asked one final time, sounding lost, then irritated when the darker one shoved him forward by his shoulder.

  “Leave them to their choice. Unless you want to talk with the Guard,” he said, in what might have been a sneer, and then left, perhaps to go find his friends. The other one followed a moment later, in what he probably thought was a dignified exit.

  The moment they were alone, Trenne kneeled down in front of Taji. “Are you hurt?”

  Taji considered this, and found himself studying the cushions on the ground as he answered. “’M fine. Hot. Drunk, a little. It was an accident. Mostly I’m confused. What the—” He stopped himself and hoped he wasn’t shaking. “What the fuck was that?” he asked, in barely a whisper.

  “They were drunk, too,” Trenne explained. Taji had guessed that, even if the Shavians had hidden it better than he had.

  “Yes, but—” Again, Taji stopped, not willing to go into his mild attempts at flirtation or how quickly they had gone wrong. Not yet, and definitely not while under the influence. He looked up into Trenne’s dark eyes. “Did they really call you an animal?”

  “Yes.” Trenne didn’t flinch. “They didn’t say worse because you were here. Even the noble one would not have.” He exhaled. “Then you defended me. That did not help you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Taji snipped at him, although he still felt about six steps behind and dizzy.

  “You’re bleeding.” With two quiet words, Trenne knocked him even further off balance. He always did that. Taji had never had anyone use words against him like this. He wanted to whine in frustration and bury his face in Trenne’s shoulder.

  Flustered, and now distracted, Taji hesitated before answering. “It’s minor,” he said, because it was, and because any more concern was going to kill him. He pulled out his hand to show Trenne the lack of damage. “I can still work.” The cut was shallow, painful, but not debilitating. He didn’t like the flick of Trenne’s ears, didn’t know what it meant, so he moved the topic clumsily away from himself. “How bad is the Civil Guard that so many people ran from them when they hadn’t done anything wrong?”

  Trenne took his gaze off Taji’s bloodied hand. “It
is not for us to question,” he recited, as if he’d said it many times before, possibly to the rest of the team. That was an answer in itself. A very diplomatic, IPTC answer.

  Taji gave him a faint smile. “But we’re all right because…?”

  “I.P.T.C. business,” Trenne answered smoothly, as if Taji’s night out was in any way official.

  “Damn. The Mouth is bleeding,” Nadir commented from the doorway. Taji jerked back at the interruption. Nadir hardly seemed to notice, still talking into his comm. “Nah, alive and well. Told you. Eye of the storm, always. Hey, Mouth, you drunk?”

  Taji gave him a rude, three-fingered salute he’d learned from the miners, then darted a look to Trenne. “I didn’t do anything. Not really. I might have thought about it, because it’s not as if I can just….” He trailed off. “Midye is strong. I’m…it’s very strong.”

  “And you did not eat today. Not that I saw.” Trenne nodded slowly, calmly, in a way that made Taji want to bristle because he wasn’t bristling.