Page 25 of Cozy Prisons (Human Pets of Talin: Origins #4)
Daxus
Nataly was perplexing!
Even after he tucked her face against his chest so she couldn’t tell what direction she was going by the light hitting her eyelids, she consistently reacted badly to any path that led back to the village. The path to the field was the only direction she didn’t struggle with.
Thankfully, carrying her seemed to make the anxiety manageable, but it was still a problem.
He’d been confident that this would be a breakthrough answer, but now he had to admit he was stumped.
Stopping in a small clearing, he sat down and settled her in his lap. “I think we should take a break.”
Nataly sat back and tried to get off his lap. “Are you tired? I’m sorry. I’m probably heavy and you’ve been carrying me around for a while.”
Sounding a soothing rumble, Daxus used his arms to cage her. “I’m not tired. Your weight is nothing compared to a box full of search bots.”
She laughed. “Aww, that’s so sweet. I’m lighter than a bunch of heavy tech.”
Daxus didn’t understand why she found the statement funny, but it was good to hear her laugh.
“I’m more worried about the state of your mind,” he explained. “I don’t like that I’m causing you distress, but I can’t work out how to fix it.”
Her smile disappeared, and her mouth turned down in a frown. “Sorry. I’m more broken than I realized.”
He sounded an angry rattle. “You’re not broken. Don’t ever say that about yourself. We all have problems to solve.”
She snorted. “Then what’s your problem?”
Daxus went silent. He knew he should share, but it was hard to get the words out. The last thing he wanted was to act with the same hypocrisy as the Talins he’d worked with. But being vulnerable went against everything he’d been taught.
Nataly put a hand on his cheek, pressing against a scent gland. “Hey, it’s okay. You don't have to say anything. I was being snarky because I’m frustrated.”
He captured her hand and gently drew it away from his face. It was already hard enough to talk; having her touch his scent glands wasn’t going to make it any easier to concentrate!
“No, I want to share, but it will take a little effort.”
“This is a nice spot,” she said.
He was confused by her comment, so he responded with a neutral statement. “It is.”
“We could sit here for marks and be comfortable,” she continued.
Now he understood. “I don’t think it’ll take me that long, but I appreciate your patience."
“What is a mediator mavin anyway?” she asked. “I heard that was your title, but I have no idea what it means.”
Answering her question was probably the best place to start.
“Mavins are civil law keepers. We mostly work on Talarian, but we might have a presence on larger colonies like Tovor.”
“Why does the size of the colony matter?” she asked. “Or is it like you don’t need law keepers on some colonies because they’re like ours? There’s not enough of us to have crime, only the occasional argument.”
Daxus decided to be completely honest. “When I said large, I should’ve said influential instead.
It’s not about population density, it’s about political power.
Most colonies are forced to organize their own law keeping force, usually made of individuals who’d served as station security.
Having Talarian-trained mavins on your colony is a sign of affluence.
Lots of colonies, independent of size, will petition the Apogee Assembly, but few are granted the privilege. ”
“Ah, got it,” she said with a little nod.
“Within the mavins, there are three basic groups: security, investigator, and mediator. Security works for the ports and any colony or station that is within a two rotation travel time of Talarian.”
“Oh, I bet I can guess what an investigator does,” she said. “They solve crimes.”
“You’re mostly correct; they are involved with solving nonviolent crimes.”
She gave him a curious look. “Does that mean mediators figure out violent crimes? But doesn't mediator mean a type of negotiator? The title feels wrong.”
“Not when figuring out what’s happened requires a lot of diplomacy," he argued. “There are strict laws about how many Talins can live on our homeworld. Talins who don’t have family there can’t even visit unless someone is willing to sponsor them.
That means only the wealthiest and powerful live on Talarian.
Imagine trying to solve a crime that would require access to private property and the security vid captures of some of the most affluent citizens in your empire.
What about when the suspect who needs to be interviewed is the son or daughter of an assembly citizen? ”
“I need a little more context. What’s an assembly citizen?”
He wasn’t surprised she didn’t know much about how the Talin government worked. He wished he didn’t know as much as he did!
“Assembly citizen is the title we give to the leadership of a clan. Every clan leader is a member of the Clan Assembly. The Clan Assemblies then send a representative to the Apogee Assembly.”
“You know, that’s not so different from the way some of the governments were run back on Old Earth,” she said.
“Possibly,” he agreed. “There are only so many ways you can organize large populations with any degree of effectiveness.”
“It sounds like your job was the hardest of all the mavins,” she said.
He sounded a rumble of agreement. “In some ways it was.” Now it was time to tell her about the hard times.
“I entered into service with the idea that I would carry out my duties with honor. I believed that nothing could stop me from uncovering the truth,” he sounded a rumble of amusement at the memory. “I was so young and naive.”
She rubbed up and down the inside of his arm, avoiding his sharp quills. “We’re all naive at some point.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “Looking back, I wonder how I could’ve been blind for so long.”
She kept moving her hand on his arm. He was surprised at how soothing it was. “It’s not that you were blind, it’s that you weren’t ready to face whatever horrible truth was going on.”
He was impressed at how much she knew, and he hadn’t even gotten to the center of his story.
“I was called in to investigate a murder. That’s a rare crime on Talarian, but it does happen. Usually, as an attempt to take control of a family or clan.”
She’d stopped petting and was gripping his arm now. “Was that the case here?”
“Surprisingly, no. It was a crime of passion.”
“Passion? As in love? I need details. You can’t leave it there.”
“Not love,” Daxus said. “It was more about status. Olikum was a high-ranking male within the Jum Clan. He managed to capture the attention of Tremus, a female of high rank within the Umor Clan. They were in the middle of contract negotiations for marriage when her family changed their mind. She tried to object, but they overrode her.”
Nataly frowned. “You guys can’t decide who you're going to marry?”
“We can,” Daxus said. “But every decision has consequences. If she’d gone through with marrying Olikum, then her parents would be within their rights to exclude her from their lineage, which meant no inheritance.”
“I get it now,” Nataly said with a small nod. “That’s sad. Do you think she loved him?”
“I think she enjoyed the way he kowtowed to get her attention,” Daxus said. “I don’t think she felt any true affection for him. Any vestiges of affection she might’ve had for him were gone after he became enraged enough to attack her.”
“He attacked her? Because she said no to marrying him?”
“She said that he came after her when she wouldn’t go to her parents a second time to try to convince them to reconsider the match. His attack was clumsy, and she was able to defend herself and walk away without injury.”
Nataly made a growling sound. “Tell me she beat the hell out of him!”
A rumble of amusement bubbled out of Daxus’s chest. “She put him on the ground and told him never to come near her again. Then she walked away as if she wasn’t afraid to give him her back.
I can only applaud the insult she handed him.
Unfortunately, she didn’t report it to the head of her clan or the mavins. ”
“If she didn’t tell anyone, how do you know about it?”
“She didn’t report it officially, but she told her parents and sibling. They brought the information to me after she died under mysterious circumstances."
“Oh no,” Nataly said. “I was hoping he’d died.”
“I’m afraid not. Tremus’s body was found crushed to death in the woods of her family's estate. The area looked as if she’d attempted to move a boulder on her own, and it shifted oddly and rolled over top of her.”
“That seems weird," Nataly said.
“It wasn’t odd for her to be in that area. It was common for the family and staff to move those boulders as a form of exercise. Over the solars they’d created a kind of stone fence between their property and the one next door.”
“I still think it doesn't make sense. If she had the reflexes to easily fight off Olikum, then how did a boulder get the best of her?”
“When I was sent in to investigate, I found many peculiarities also. Marks on the boulder where someone had used a wedge bot to uplift it from its spot. Footprints that didn’t match Tremus or her family.
There was also evidence that a vehicle had traveled close by recently, when the family claimed vehicles weren’t allowed in those woods.
The report from the healer who examined her body was the most condemning piece of evidence.
He found that there was a paralyzing agent in her body, and the crush injuries on her chest weren’t the right shape for the boulder that was found on top of her.
He said it was more likely someone delivered the paralytic, then stomped on her chest until the damage was severe enough to cause death.
Then they rolled the boulder on top of her to cover their crime. ”
Nataly sucked in a breath. “That’s horrific!”