Page 40 of Xel: Broken Bond
“What did you do?” I asked again.
“I’m done talking to you,” she said firmly. “So you can either call your master, or you can let me go. And put down the fucking shovel. We both know you’re not going to hurt me.”
I sighed and set the shovel aside, letting it fall to the floor with a thud. “I’ll call him,” I told her, activating my comm. “But if you harm him in any way-”
“I know, I know, you’ll defend him to the death. Bloody dimari loyalty,” she muttered, looking thoroughly fed up.
Perhaps against my better judgement, I called my master, wondering what the hell I was going to tell him. “Xel? What’s up? Something wrong in the barn?” he asked, when he answered the call. From the few details I could see behind him, it looked like he was already heading up the road to the old barn. And though it might have been rather incongruous, given the circumstances, I was relieved I wasn’t interrupting his work.
“We do have an issue here,” I said. “We have a…” What word could I possibly use to describe the woman in front of me. “It’s hard to explain,” I hedged in the end. “But it’s a serious problem. Could you come over as quickly as you can?”
My master’s face fell into a frown. “Yeah, sure. On my way.” The call cut off, and only a minute later, I heard him calling my name as he came around the corner into the barn. “Xel? What’s going on? What’s…?” He slowed to a walk as he caught sight of the Vangravian woman, and his eyebrows rose. “Oh. We have a stowaway.” Showing no particular fear, he approached us slowly, his eyes doing a slow sweep over the woman, from her dusty black hair, to her torn skirt, to her bare feet. “Hi,” he said, as he came abreast with me. “My name’s Cole. And you are…?”
The woman drew herself up with all the dignity she could muster. “My name is Rohinavon. And I’ve come to Rendol 4 to seek protection from my people.”
“I see,” my master said. He glanced down and tapped a few buttons on his comm, but I interrupted him.
“She’s a Vangravian female,” I told him, anticipating what he was about to do.
My master froze, and his eyebrows rose so high I thought they would disappear into his hairline. “Wow,” he stated simply. Then he gave the woman another lengthy once-over. “So your entire species,” he said, his tone darkening, “functions on the basis of discarding all of your male offspring and letting females rule supreme?”
I saw a flutter of violet cross Rohinavon’s chest. “For the most part, yes,” she agreed, her lips pressed into an angry line. “But I happen to disagree with that. And that disagreement now has me on Vangal’s most wanted list.”
My master nodded. “Fair enough. But if it’s political asylum you’re looking for, you’re going to have to apply through the Alliance Parliament.”
“No, I can’t. I can’t go through official channels,” Rohinavon said, her fists clenching as she looked around for an escape route again. “The political situation with Vangal is horribly complicated, and if your Parliament says no, then…”
“Then what?” my master asked.
“Then I’m as good as dead.”
My master shook his head. “You can’t just stay here in hiding. Firstly, it’s illegal, but secondly, someone’s bound to find you sooner or later.”
“It doesn’t have to be forever,” she said. “Just for six months. Then I’ll be out of your hair.”
“And what happens in six months that’s going to make all the difference?”
“In six month’s time, he’ll be old enough to survive on his own. He won’t need me anymore.”
“He?” my master repeated. “Who is ‘he’?”
Rohinavon seemed to be debating some critical decision. Finally, she reached down, parting the folds of her skirt to expose a thickened flap of skin at her hip. Then she gently pulled the flap open, revealing a deep pouch.
My master edged closer, moving slowly so as not to startle her, and also wary about her making any sudden moves. Driven by curiosity, I sidled up beside him, peering into the pouch to see what all the fuss was about.
And when I caught sight of the tiny figure inside, I gasped, almost at the same time as my master did. A tiny blue baby no bigger than my hand lay snuggly at the bottom of the pouch.
“Holy fuck,” my master breathed.
“He’s a boy,” Rohinavon said, her voice wavering. “And I want him to grow up free. No training, no slavery, no selling an innocent child to a beastly overlord so he can be exploited for the rest of his life. That’s why I came here,” she went on, giving me a disgusted glare. “The Alliance has a reputation for condemningslavery. So I don’t know why the fuck you have a dimari here. He said you inherited him?”
“I did,” my master confirmed. “My uncle used to own him.” Then he glanced warily at me. “There are maybe a hundred dimari on Rendol 4 in total. Most of them end up here by accident. We’re not on friendly terms with the Eumadians, and if they try to make unauthorised jumps through our wormhole, we tend to end up with a certain amount of abandoned cargo. Including a handful of dimari. We have laws here to ensure they’re cared for appropriately and paid for the work that they do.”
Rohinavon looked only marginally mollified by that. “I was hoping to find someone who would be willing to raise my son. But it would have to be done in secret. If the Vangravians find out he’s here, they’ll kill him. That’s why I can’t go through the Parliament. As soon as there are official documents about it all, we’re dead.”
My master frowned. “But if the Vangravians find out you’re here, particularly with your son, then that could start a war between them and the Alliance. That puts hundreds of millions of lives at risk so you can protect your son.”
“Then what would you have me do?” Rohinavon snapped. “Sell him into slavery, like all the other male children? I won’t do it. And if you refuse to help me, then I’ll leave Rendol and go find somewhere that will.”