An Unintended Voyage by Marshall Ryan Maresca

Author:Marshall Ryan Maresca [Maresca, Marshall Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2021-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

THEY FOUND TLETA IN THE bathhouse, where she had locked herself in a changing room, just as Corrie had told her to. “I feel terrible for leaving you alone, though.”

“You stayed safe,” Corrie said. “That’s my job here.”

“But I’m not your job,” Ang said.

“Maybe not the one I’m getting paid to do,” Corrie said. “But it’s who I rutting am, and nothing will change that.”

“Can you help me get home?” Ang asked. “I don’t want to walk alone in the street.”

“Of course,” Tleta said.

Ang’s home was an apartment in the same sort of high, narrow building that the debthouse was. But as soon as they arrived, it was clear she was no longer welcome.

“You are heresy,” an Imach woman in the doorway hissed at Ang. “I will not have that business under my roof.”

“But—” Ang said.

“No!” the Imach woman said. As a young man threw crates and books and clothes out of the third-floor window, the woman at the door went on. “I have heard what you do, and you should die in the street!”

“You are a wicked rutting slan,” Corrie told the woman, and threw in a few more choice words in Imach that Nas’nyom had made it clear she should never use. While Tleta comforted Ang, who was beyond the capacity to make rational noises, Corrie collected her belongings strewn in the street, chasing off the thieving boys who were trying to make off with a few books. She got everything together into something resembling order in three crates.

“Where will I even go?” Ang asked. “Where is safe?”

“My home,” Tleta said. “I will demand that Mother takes you in, and make an outrageous fuss if she refuses.”

They got to Tleta’s home, and Corrie felt some small ease once they were inside, protected in stone. Yalititca made something of a stink, and Tleta, as promised, made an outrageous fuss. At some point Marichua came into the room, and then there was a whole three-way fight, which Corrie understood absolutely none of. She couldn’t even figure out where Marichua was in the row, be it standing with Tleta, against her, or just airing grievances about a completely unrelated matter.

While they argued, Corrie and Ang waited patiently in a sitting room near the garden. Ang was still trembling, but her tears had stopped for the moment.

“Do you think they would protect me at the embassy?” Ang asked quietly.

“Maybe,” Corrie said. “I mean, I know it’s in my rutting best interest to just tell you yes, but . . . blazes, I don’t know what they would do about all this.” For all Corrie knew, Lieutenant Moriel was behind this to put pressure on Ang.

“They want me to go to Maradaine?”

“They say,” Corrie said. “But . . . it all sets whistles off for me. I don’t trust them being something good for you. I don’t know why they want you, but . . . I’ve got a bad feeling.”

“You don’t trust your own people?”

“The ones who clobbered me and locked me on a slave ship were my people.

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