“You’re right of course,” Allara said quickly. “Forgive me, Aunt.”
“You’re not losing your nerve, are you girl?” her aunt demanded, glaring at her. “All your life you’ve been trained for this—tell me you’re not giving way to cowardice.”
“Of course not!” Allara was stung by her words. “It is just that I have never been away from home before and they are such strange people, the giants. But I shall go alone, of course,” she added quickly. “I…” She swallowed hard. “I suppose this is the last time we shall see each other, Aunt.”
There was a lump in her throat, as she spoke the words, though she would not allow her voice to tremble. Her mother had died giving birth to her and her father had been a distant figure, only swooping in occasionally to sternly remind her of her duty. Her aunt, his sister, had mostly raised Allara, along with a bevy of governesses and servants, of course. It was difficult now, to think of parting from the only parent she had ever known.
But her aunt was not, apparently, feeling the same emotion Allara was.
“Will you hurry and leave the ship?” she demanded. “The evil Kindred air is getting in! If the reek gets into my gown, I shall have to burn it!”
“Yes, Aunt.” Allara swallowed the lump in her throat and adjusted the golden lace veil that obscured her features. It would hide her face from her husband until they were properly wed.
Taking a deep breath, she slid out of her seat and stepped onto the unholy ground of the Kindred Mother Ship. Almost at once, the door of the ship which had brought her began to close.
Quickly, Allara turned to catch a final glimpse of her aunt—a final glimpse of home.
“Goodbye, Aunt!” she called, waving. “I will see you someday in the Heavens!”
Her aunt made no move to reply but only sat stiffly, staring straight ahead. It was as though Allara was already dead to her. The door finished closing and then the ship rose up, headed for the black net of stars overhead—headed back home without her.
For one awful moment, Allara thought she was going to cry. She had never left her home planet before—had never even left the city she was born in before this. Now she had been stranded here, on a foreign ship owned by an evil enemy with nothing but blood and pain and shame and death to look forward to.
Tears rose to her eyes and she wanted to reach out her arms to the fast disappearing ship and cry, “Wait! Don’t leave me here! Come back for me—please.”
But to give in to such impulses would be childish and ill-befitting a daughter of one of the Seven Great Houses, she reminded herself. All her life she had been training and preparing for this mission. Was she now going to give in to emotion and melt into a puddle of tears just because her inevitable fate had finally arrived?
I will be strong, Allara told herself, swallowing back the tears that tried to choke her. I will not weep or bemoan my fate. I have a mission to fulfill and I will fulfill it and then die with what dignity and honor I can salvage. I—
Suddenly a voice spoke from behind her in a foreign language. Allara wouldn’t have known the words were directed to her, except the speaker knew her name.
“Allara?” the voice said again in a questioning tone.
Allara spun around to see who was speaking.
To her surprise, it was not a huge Kindred male, but four foreign-looking women, all taller than her, standing there.
All of them looked strange to Allara. They were dressed in colorful gowns but they themselves were colorful as well. One had yellow hair, one had brown hair, the third had red hair and all three of them had strangely pale skin. The fourth female looked a bit more normal. She had skin tones about the same shade as Allara’s own and long black hair. But her eyes were a pale amber color that seemed odd in her pretty face.
The red-haired woman talked to her again in the strange language and Allara shook her head. She couldn’t understand anything they said—why had she not thought of this? Why had no one told her that the evil ones would talk in a tongue she didn’t know? In retrospect, it seemed a fairly obvious thing, but somehow it had never entered Allara’s mind—or apparently—the minds of her aunt or father.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
The alien women talked among themselves some more and then the girl with long, yellow hair held out her hand, offering Allara a pink, cylindrical thing and a glass which appeared to have water in it.
Hesitantly, Allara took the pink, oblong thing and examined it. It was as big as the last joint of her little finger. What was she supposed to do with it?
The woman with yellow hair mimed putting something in her mouth and swallowing it. Then she pointed to the pink thing and pointed to Allara.
Allara looked at the pink thing uncertainly. So it was some kind of medicine. Was it a poison pill, like the tiny black one sewn into the hem of her wedding gown? But why would they try to kill her at once? They would want her to be wed to the evil one first, so that he could defile her, Allara reasoned.
The woman with yellow hair mimed taking the pill again and then pointed to the glass of water. It seemed they weren’t going to give up until she took it.
What else can I do? I don’t think they would try to kill me until after the wedding at least. Maybe it’s some kind of sacrament to them. A holy ritual one must partake of before the ceremony.
Feeling reckless, Allara moved her veil aside, popped the pink pill into her mouth, and washed it down with the glass of cool water. She gave back the glass and held out her hands expressively.
“There, I’ve done what you asked. What more do you want of me?”
The woman with the red hair looked at the one with the yellow hair and began to speak in their strange, foreign language again. But then, all of a sudden, it seemed that she switched to speaking Allara’s own tongue.
“She comes from a fascinating people. Did you know that even though the Q’ess are humanoid in appearance, all of their organs are reversed?” the yellow-haired woman said.
“Reversed? What do you mean?” the red-haired woman asked.
“Well, for instance, their heart is on the right side of their body instead of the left. And the liver is on the left instead of the right—it’s all like that,” the yellow-haired woman said. “On Earth when somebody has that condition it’s a disease—Situs Inversus. But for the Q’ess, it’s perfectly normal.”
“Fascinating, doll,” the red-haired woman said dryly. “I could hardly find anything at all about their customs to help me plan the wedding but you were somehow able to dig up the fact that their hearts are on the wrong side of their body?”
“It’s not the wrong side for them,” the yellow-haired woman said. “And I only found that out because there were some autopsies done on a couple of Q’ess pilots who had crashed their ships in Kindred territory. Really interesting reading.” She frowned. “Besides, I thought you found something—some article to help you—by a Tenebrian sociologist who went undercover to study them or something?”
“I did but it turned out to be nothing I could use,” the red-head said. “I thought it was going to be good because the title was, Customs of the Q’ess, but it turned out to be about some kind of weird brainwashing religious ceremony—something about a vow you can’t break, no matter what. Nothing that could help me at all, planning the wedding.”