The Refugee (The Korvali Chronicles Book 1) (28 page)

“Gronoi Okooii,” Ferguson said. “You say that you would protect Eshel and any other Korvali refugees. Yet it was Sunai who attacked Eshel on Derovia, on two occasions. The second time they had a weapon. How would Eshel be protected here even as a visitor, much less as a citizen?”

“The gumiia are an embarrassment to the men of Suna!” the Gronoi cried, waving his arm as his metallic decorations clinked together. “You find this garbage and bring them to me, and I will handle them.” He paused, looking at Ferguson again. “You too, female Captain, must know the frustration of those who do not make your people proud.”

Ferguson nodded. “I do, Gronoi. And we are glad to know that the men of Suna don’t wish harm upon Eshel, despite his transgressions.”

The Gronoi nodded, looking at everyone at the table. “We do not attack the Korvali. But the Korvali attack us! The Korvali ended the lives of eight excellent soldiers of Suna. Yet,” he said, focusing on Eshel again, “you are here. You left your planet, your people, to live among otherworlders. Perhaps you do not trust the Sunai, trust that we will protect you, given this debt to us.” He made a gesture with his hand. “Despite your lack of trust, and despite our being unwelcome on the planet of your Korvali people…. you are still, young Eshel, welcome on Suna.”

The group seemed to let out a collective sigh, as everyone turned their attention to Eshel.
 

“Thank you, Gronoi Okooii,” Eshel said. “It is my expectation that, someday, you and your people will be permitted to visit my homeworld.”

The Gronoi raised his chin slightly. “Is this an expectation, or simply the wish of a young man full of ambitions?”

“It is my certain belief, Gronoi.”

The Gronoi didn’t answer right away, seeming almost intrigued by Eshel’s claim. “I am told you did not know this… Ashan.”
 

“I did not, Gronoi.”

“But his writings, his words, they are true, yes?”

“They are true, Gronoi,” Eshel said. “I would very much like to speak with Ashan, if possible. Do you know where he is?”

Catherine suppressed a smile. Only Eshel would be so audacious.
 

The Gronoi raised his chin again. “I know he would have a position of rank on Suna! Not as high as you, young Korvali, but a position of respect nonetheless!” He lowered his voice. “But he has fled. He chose to hide, like a coward, instead of letting us protect him. Some say he hides in the mountains of our uninhabitable regions… but most say he is dead. No Korvali can survive on his own here… even with your unique scientific talents.” The Gronoi looked at Catherine. “You, geneticist. Lieutenant, yes?”

Catherine felt her stomach jump as the room shifted its attention to her. “Yes, Gronoi.”
 

“Lieutenant, it is you who discovered the changes in our young Korvali’s map of life, yes?”

Just as Catherine began to reply, Ferguson spoke over her. “Gronoi, Commander Steele will answer any questions about Eshel’s genome or scientific abilities.” She motioned to Steele.

The Gronoi turned to Steele. He asked only a couple of basic questions before he became uninterested and turned the topic elsewhere.

It was then that Catherine noticed one of the Grono. The second from Gronoi Okooii’s right, easily in Catherine’s visual field, made a slight gesture with his right hand. He placed it up on its side and oriented it in a way that pointed right at her. A moment later, his hand resumed its normal flat position. The Grono next to him made the same gesture, but more quickly, almost as if in response. They were signaling, like the anthropologists said they did, in a language only they knew.
 

Catherine felt her blood turn cold as she felt both sets of shaded eyes on her.
 

The lights dimmed suddenly, and the room seemed to quiet. Catherine glanced around uneasily until she saw the Gronoi remove his eyeshades. It was the gesture of goodwill. The other officers followed suit, while the two guards kept their shades on. They had big, amber eyes with enlarged pupils that seemed to encompass most of the eye.
 

The Gronoi adjourned the meeting, and the Sunai men stood aside as Ferguson and her crew exited the meeting room. As she waited for the others to exit, Catherine looked over at the Grono who’d made the hand gesture. He watched her with his huge eyes, his hairless head and physical bulk only reinforcing the effect of his unsmiling expression. Catherine scowled, staring him down until she was out the door.
 

You cannot intimidate me, Sunai. You don’t know a powerful stare until you’ve known a Korvali
.
 

“Ready to go?” Tom said to them.
 

In the early evening, Catherine waited at the ship’s exit with Tom, Snow, Shanti, and Zander.
 

“Where’s Middleton?” Tom said.
 

“He’s coming,” Zander said.
 

Catherine rolled her eyes. Much time passed before Tom agreed to let Middleton back into his poker game, with the agreement that Middleton would keep his hostility to himself. Catherine had expressed her disapproval, but Tom replied that her argument carried little weight given that neither she nor Eshel had attended a single poker game since before the Thirty.

“What about Eshel?” Shanti asked, glancing briefly at Catherine.

“He’s banished to the ship for a while,” Tom said. “Poor bastard can’t handle this kind of heat.”
 

Once Middleton arrived, they left for Jula’s festival grounds, where the Sunai put on a music fest for
Cornelia
’s crew, on Gronoi Okooii’s order. Music was a passion shared by all Sunai, regardless of sex or status. Her father and Tom didn’t care for Sunai music, but Catherine liked what little she’d heard and looked forward to seeing it live. And Snow… he’d talked of little else for weeks. The festival would begin that evening and continue until the morning, when the Sunai would retreat to their interiors and sleep through the day’s heat. The following evening, business proceedings would begin.
 

They walked to the festival, which was surrounded by large stone formations that overlooked Jula below. With the sunset, the temperature had rapidly decreased to a more tolerable, but still quite hot, 38 degrees. But once they showed their badges and entered the grounds, the temperature suddenly dropped again, to something far more pleasant.
 

“Whoa,” Snow said. “This is new.” He looked around, searching for what Catherine could only assume was the source of the sudden temperature change. And he finally spotted them and pointed them out—devices that were only somewhat camouflaged in the stone formations that enclosed the grounds.

They walked past booths selling or offering lessons on countless musical instruments, some of which were strange and unusual, nothing like Catherine was used to. Snow slowed, wanting to stop at each place, but Tom urged him along, insisting they start with refreshment. They drank kala, a traditional Sunai fermented beverage, from clay cups. Catherine was surprised at how cool and refreshing the kala tasted, and how it managed to marry sweet and spicy flavors.
 

Sipping their kala, they strolled past several food booths as the smell of charred food and the now-familiar spice filled Catherine’s nostrils. The smell didn’t seem as strange anymore. Catherine followed Tom to get some of the Sunai cuisine, which Tom began to devour happily. She found that the spice tasted better than it smelled, and the dish, which appeared to be some kind of fleshy plant that reminded her a little of cactus, was tender and delicious. She gave Snow a bite—he scowled in disapproval—and offered some to the others, who were inspired enough to get their own.
 

They encountered several different areas where musicians performed—not on a stage, but on the grounds themselves, surrounded by those who chose to listen. They chose one group of musicians and sat down on low, comfortable cushions that protected them from the rocky soil. The musicians, both male and female, played stringed instruments as well as small curved wind instruments. When the music had vocals, all the musicians sang, and the music had a harmonious folky quality.
 

It was the first time Catherine had seen a Sunai female in person. Even photos of them were rare, mostly because it was considered an offense to take their photograph. While still displaying the striking facial features of the males, they were much smaller than the males, even delicate, with smoother skin. They had high voices and a distinctly feminine way about them, and wore white gowns made of wispy, soft material that covered all but their bejeweled hands and necks.
 

After a few songs, Tom got restless and talked Zander, Middleton, and Shanti into exploring more, while Catherine stayed with Snow to listen.
 

“It’s strange here,” Snow remarked.
 

She nodded. “I like it so far.”

They listened, Snow never taking his eyes off the musicians as his hand lightly tapped to the music. After a long stretch of music, Catherine spoke. “You want to go try some of those instruments?”

Snow shook his head. “Maybe later.”

Catherine got up and went to one of the music booths. She picked up a small seven-stringed guitar that caught her eye. Although difficult to communicate with the Sunai man who ran the booth, he seemed fine with her experimenting. He even showed her how to play a simple melody, speaking in his foreign tongue the entire time but placing her hands and rearranging her fingers in such a way as to yield the proper notes. Then he watched her play, correcting her finger placement when necessary until, to her relief, another customer required his attention. After practicing for a while, Catherine found she could reproduce the melody he’d shown her. She smiled.
 

Soon, however, she began to feel very thirsty. Suna’s heat and spicy food had caught up with her and she had no more water in her canteen. She looked around for a place to refill it, but couldn’t see one. She showed her bottle to the Sunai and spoke the Sunai word for water; he gave her verbal directions she couldn’t understand, gesturing to a far corner of the grounds. Catherine walked to the area he’d pointed to until she finally located the water dispenser, with the circular blue symbol, on the other side of a stone formation.

She took a quick drink and began filling her canteen. Suddenly, she felt large arms encircle her, trapping her in their grasp.

Catherine yelled out. Her captor only clamped down on her as he covered her mouth. “Be silent, nonaii!” he rasped at her, his breath hot in her ear. “Or I will silence you.”

She let herself grow limp, staying still for a moment, and then she jammed her heel into his knee as hard as she could. And then again. The second time did the trick, as her assailant growled in pain and involuntarily loosened his grip. She delivered an elbow to his throat—but instead of disabling him further, he blocked her maneuver and grabbed her by her throat.
 

Her airway blocked by the Sunai’s strong hand, Catherine felt panic descend upon her as she forced his arm to the right, making his fingers lose their grip on her neck. She let loose a series of punches to his throat and head, overwhelming his ability to block her, until he began to teeter. He fell to the ground.
 

She stepped back, gasping for air and reaching for her contactor. It was gone. She searched around her, seeing nothing on the dusty, hard ground around them. Then she spotted it—it lay next to the Sunai’s hand. She leaned over and picked it up. As she put it back on, she saw that two more Sunai stood a few meters away.
 

“Stay away from me!” she shouted at them, hoping her attacker’s unconscious state would serve as sufficient warning.
 

They didn’t accost her, instead walking a bit closer and looking down with their shaded eyes at her assailant. As they spoke amongst themselves in Sunai, one of them kicked the body as he walked around it. Catherine realized she recognized him from the meeting with Gronoi Okooii. He was the Grono who’d made the hand gesture, who’d stared at her.

“Why are you following me?” she demanded.

He let out a growly laugh and looked at his friend. “She is an angry one, yes?” His English was quite good, and his accent strong but decipherable. The other, a look of amusement on his strange face, spoke his response in Sunai. “Lieutenant Finnegan. You recognize me, yes?”
 

“I recognize you.” She looked down at the incapacitated Sunai. “He attacked me.”

“Yes. We saw him follow you here. Who defended you?”

“Who defended me? I defended myself! He tried to take my contactor.”
 

The Grono pressed something on his arm and spoke in Sunai. And in just a few moments a group of men in different uniforms arrived, which she recognized as police. The Grono barked at them in Sunai and they picked up her assailant and took him away.
 

The second Grono spoke. “This is not possible. You are smaller, weaker, slower.”

Before he could react, she gently kicked him in just the right place to throw him slightly off balance. “Slower?”

She saw his counter-move almost before it began—and the one after that—and easily blocked them both. He looked annoyed. “You are still weaker,” he said.

“Who cares, if I am faster?”

The Grono from the meeting began to laugh at his comrade. “You are a strange human female,” he said to her. “Bold, yes? But you are… distrustful.”

“I have reason to be,” she said, massaging her throat. “It seems like every encounter I have with your people is a violent one.”

“I know of the attack on Derovia, with the Korvali refugee. Gumiia trash,” he added with a flash of anger. “They go to our sister moon because they are too inferior to serve Suna.”
 

Before Catherine could respond, a wave of lightheadedness came over her.
 

“You need refreshment,” he said.
 

She shook her head. “I have my water.” She looked around for her canteen and found it lying near the water dispenser.