Page 1 of Taken to Lemora
1
Raingar
“I hate these things.”
“Yeffa. We know,” Merquin says without looking at me over the back of her seat. Tana and Reyna are focused on the controls ahead. Bebette, on my right, scrunches her nose at me and, in an act of horror, takes a step closer and gives my shoulder a light pat and a tight squeeze.
I shove her angrily off. “Stop that!”
She just smiles back.
Tana is too busy staring out of the view pane — I know she stopped listening to me rant half a rotation ago — so I redirect my ire onto Reyna instead. “Why I was chosen as representative of our people is utterly beyond me.”
“You’re a clan leader,” she says dryly.
“There are other clan leaders.”
Reyna huffs out of the corner of her mouth, “Yeffa, good point, Raingar. That’s why we’reallhere.”
My face heats. I shift, my rough skin feeling uncomfortable under the Lemoran customary tunic I’m wearing. Doesn’t matter that it’s spun of rough catacat silk. It feels like barbed wire. I yank angrily on the collar, stretching it out so that it gapes. A small rebellion.There.
“Nob!” I stomp my right foot and shake my right fist around at all of them and at the translucent kintarr crystal exterior of our ship and at the stars beyond it and mostly at the monstrously gold planet looming closer and closer —that’sthe cause of the sickening sensation in my stomach.
“You allchoseto be here. You could have sent someone else from my clan. You could have sent Gorman! He would do just fine to represent my clan. I don’t speak for all of them.”
“Funny,” Bebette chirps in her spry, bubbly brogue, “because last I checked, you were the one who got on the ship.”
I open my mouth to rebut Bebette, but I can’t think of anything to thwart her insouciant, giddy logic.I do speak for all of them. I was elected. And that’s why I’m here on this blasted ship and Gorman isn’t.“Pagh!”
We near the dock and I start to pace, squirming in my skin. It doesn’t fit right. Everything is tight and hot and irritated. The skin around the base of my horns itches and I reach up and rub it thoughtfully. Merquin must notice the action because when I look away from the hideous gold planet, I find her watching me thoughtfully for the first time since we left Lemora and my ranting started.
“Are your horns bothering you?” Her brows are drawn together over her wide nostrils.
Like all Lemoran, her appearance is made notable by horns, which begin above her ears and swoop down towards her cheeks, following their path before curving dramatically up and ending a good Lemoran foot’s length above her head in hazardously sharp peaks. She has big hands and blocky fingers. Hair? What hair? She’s got horns and rough textured skin all over. Blocky shoulders that stick up in hard ridges like she’s made of rocks.
With skin that ranges from light brown to darker brown, she actually looks like a rock. We all do. And her size? Well, that doesn’t help negate the rock-appearance any. She’s built like a mountain. I’m a male — the only male clan chief — so I look just like her, only bigger and rockier and without the breasts. And with a larger curl to my horns. And with…uh…extra between my legs. I stand out! And because I’m male, all the other wretched species that have females that they keep tucked away want to speak to me! And I hate it!
“Nevermind about my horns. I’m not getting off the ship. You know all those stupid species with only males for rulers will come and talk to me. They don’t care that I’m the youngest clan chief. I’m not going. I don’t want to talk to them. I’ve already concluded most of the business I needed to from the holoscreens anyway. That’s why they’re there, after all. So that when the dire occasion calls for it, we can broker agreements with off-world idiots.”
“Mostagreements,” Tana says, voice rich with impish emphasis that I don’t like. I don’t like it at all.
“Practicallyall. If I thought I’d have to come to these gatherings, I’d never have let you monsters install those holoscreens in my keep in the first place. You know how much I hate those things. I hate the way the dignitaries’ faces press in on me from the safety of my own ohring keep. Why couldn’t we just keep the old boxes? The ones you could only speak through?”
“It’s more effective not to negotiate with creatures that can see us,” Tana says.
“We do make quite intimidating negotiators.” Bebette’s gaze flicks up to my horns and she sticks her tongue out at me like something about this situation is funny, the blasted wench.
“I don’t negotiate!” I jab, but Reyna talks over me.
“And think about it. If you hadn’t gotten those holoscreens from the Voraxians, you’d have to doallyour negotiating from here.”
I gasp in horror. Merquin snorts. Bebette laughs. I shake my head and sputter gruffly, “I still don’t like it. I don’t likeanyof it!”
Reyna and Tana sigh in unison but Merquin is staring at my horns again as Reyna guides the ship into the enormous golden hangar alongside hundreds of other ships built out of so many different materials I can name and even more that I can’t.
There are ships barely bigger than insect pods and some as big as mountains. A sleek ship catches my eye across the hangar. It’s black exterior isshifting, moving around like it’s got a mind of its own. It creeps me out and I know that it belongs to pirates, which surprises me. They don’t usually attend these things.
“What do you think…” I start, but Merquin’s stare is so intense it rips the thoughts right out of my grasp. “What?” I bark out at her as the ship banks between a monstrosity of a ship that’s all pink and gold and another ship that’s small and bright blue. Both most likely belong to one of the Quadrant One princes or princesses whose planet we’ve just arrived on. They havesooo. many. princes and princesses.And I hate all of them.
