Page 19 of Taken to Lemora
“And then you’ll help identify the three other shipments I can’t.”
I grumble again.
“And then you’ll get your heavy rear up to the pad pad stables and you’ll take a cart down to Merquin’s keep and you’ll respond to the three queries she’s sent. She even sent a messenger for you, for ohr’s sakes.” His fins twitch and his fingers curl tighter around his log book. “What does she want from us, Raingar?”
I burn, mortified at having to reveal what it is that I’m going to have to reveal, and grateful that the other loud mouthed clan chiefs haven’t disclosed her presence on our planet yet. They’ll have to — we’ll all have to account for how fourteen tuns of kintarr just…disappeared. I’m just not ready to tell them…yet.
“She doesn’t want anything from us, Gorman. She just wants to meet with me about something.” My voice is so rough I’m hardly sure he can understand me. And then I’m sure hecan’twhen he asks me to repeat myself.
“It’s not anything serious, Gorman. Don’t look at me like that.” I feel heat in my face and pain in my horns. I reach up and touch them and Gorman’s eyes narrow. He looks frightening when they narrow. “Stop that! I don’t like it!”
Gorman blinks, sucks in a breath and revs up to say something…then just shakes his head. “Fine, Raingar. You know I trust you with my life. I can trust you with thissmallthing, too.”
Gorman has been my advisor since I was first nominated and then elected clan chief. He was a contender for clan chief as well — I even voted for him. I worry that his not being of the Lemoran species had something to do with his electability. It makes me feel like pad pad dung, that thought, because I trust him more than anyone. I may look like a rock, but he is mine and I don’t like keeping things from him. Even small things.
I open my mouth to just ohring tell him what happened on Quadrant One, but he’s already ushering a small cluster of creatures towards me and ordering me to demonstrate to all of them how to relight the Eshmiri domes using the fire essence I bought off of the Niahhorru who themselves procured it from the Oroshi.
That lasts an eternity. Another eon spans the time it takes for me to explain to a group of Lemoran how to power the wind propellers I purchased from a Voraxian delegation. It’ll help us keep the kintarr mines cool in my clan.
The Rekkaru approach me next with questions on where to distribute the Walrey honey — how much should go to the healers and how much to the witches who spin Walrey honey into something more…potent.
I’ve just finished that grueling task and seven others when I’m approached by Gorman again and he looks even less pleased to see me than usual. “Merquin is here.” His typically bright orange coloring flushes, turning him umber.
“WhaaaaaAAAAaaat?” My voice lifts at the end and scrambles in the middle. I start to breathe hard and heavy. The dull ache in my horns returns with a fiery vengeance. I reach up and grab onto them both. “Is she alone?”
“Nob.”
“Nob?”
“Nob.”
“Nob!” I glance down at my pants and see them for the coarse, unrefined wool that they are and panic. “Are they coming in now?”
Gorman’s fins flash in true irritation. “Raingar, you’ve never kept me in the dark before. I need to know what happened when you were in Quadrant One. Did you negotiate?”
“Pagh! You know I don’t negotiate. Do these pants look okay?”
“Then did you…” He freezes and glances around. The Lemoran male standing next to him has also gone still and so has the female beside him.
They all look at me and look at each other and then look at my pants but it’s Gorman who hisses, “You havenevercared what your pants look like before. Did you crack one of your horns?” He says, actually sounding horrified. The female Lemoran nearest him gasps. “Are you in pain? Do we need to take you to the healer?”
The Lemoran male — a male called Bruttut — says, “Did you fall down a flight of stairs and break your skull?”
“Maybe it was Merquin,” the female, Talia, suggests with a shrug that says she doesn’t care one way or the other. “Maybe she pushed him.”
“Nob! I didn’t fall down the stairs! Do I have time to go change? Are they coming in now? Are they…”
And then a hush falls through the front half of the chamber and time suspends. Everything that comes next happens in slow motion. Merquin strides in through the massive, arched doors at the end of the space, two of her closest assistants crowded in close beside her as she points out the different features of my great hall.
“And you’ll see here, Raingar has erected his keep with four towers and a great hall in their center. Did you also see the long house built between two of the towers on the left when we approached?”
My ears strain — my whole entire body strains — to hear the answer. But I don’t. “Exactly that. There, he keeps his private chambers. Unlike Librida and I, Raingar doesn’t much care for village life. He’d rather stay here away from the commotion.” It was a generous way of saying that I hate everyone. Far, far too generous. Merquin must have gotten into the Walrey honey.
Soft laughter emanates from beneath the hood of the cloaked figure between the three Lemoran females.Females. Thank the ohring sun. Seeing her with males might have made me kill one of them. Or it would have hurt my feelings. Or it would have done both.
“There he is,” I hear Merquin say before she pitches her voice louder, attention narrowing on me standing on the short flight of stairs that lead up to my rather simple, piddly stump of a throne.
I glance around wildly, wondering if she could be talking about someone else as I try not to simultaneously get an erection and poop myself.She’s here. She’s ohring here!“Raingar. Oh Raingar! There you are,” Merquin sings. Her voice is light but her glare is icy. It frightens me.
