Chapter Twenty

The ride back after we were done with everything was perfectly ordinary, really. I didn’t notice how much time had been lost, so I got my call to the embassy out of the way as quickly as possible, letting them know about the local military office wanting to do an exchange and have Boatswain work with them. Nobody answered, but I left the information and forgot about it, my meetings with the ambassador were few and short, but he was one of us through and through.

And a dlamisa never passes an opportunity up when it has a low cost and a high yield.

Boatswain let out his loud ‘roooooo’ the whole ride back to the hoverbus, and when we got there, Lisa was quick to add, “Make sure you’re not late for in person classes, if you are, they’ll lock not just the doors, but digital access. They hate lateness. Good to meet you.” She put out her hand and I clasped it with gentle firmness, making sure that my finger claws didn’t rake over or poke her skin much. “And tell the family I said hello.”

“I will.” I said and grabbed the rail to pull myself up the steps to the top of the bus.

Boatswain followed, but he didn’t speak, his nose was in his datapad, typing away as fast as he could, he wasn’t nearly as fast as I, but he was adequate at least.

He sat beside me, letting out happy rooos most of the ride back, he drew substantial attention from those around him, most who watched with a mix of bemusement and amusement, our doglike faces and some of our mannerisms were clearly endearing to the passengers. I did catch a few people’s whispered words when I was recognized as the one who attacked [Wolfbeard].

This ‘favorable’ attention, even if it was a little crowded on the top of the bus, made the feeling of being surrounded a little more tolerable. It didn’t hurt that Boatswain’s entire role was security, and he loomed over every human on the bus.

It was strange, really. He loomed so large over most of them, but rather than intimidated, they found him… well some of the words I overheard included:

“Cute!”

“I want to pet them!”

“Awwww!”

I’m sure it would have felt insulting except for the sheer and obvious fact that we really did look like some of their breeds of wolves and dogs. If I looked like a mix of irish setter and golden retriever, Boatswain was like a mix of giant great dane and giant doberman pinscher. One that had been given a lot of strength enhancing drugs.

Though his tongue lolling out of his mouth while he rooooed and typed utterly destroyed any sense of ferocity about him. While we rode, I couldn’t help but think, ‘I overstepped, talking to him about leaving here in a few years.’ Military dlamisans don’t tend to think in the long term the way most of our race does, they tend to focus on the more immediate, which isn’t to say that they could not, only that their tasks lent themselves to more immediate, short term thinking.

As such I knew it hadn’t completely hit yet, but it would soon.

I was not looking forward to that day.

When we did finally return to the Walker house as the sun started to set, I found the smell of coffee caressing my senses as soon as I entered the house and I heard the sound of Michael clapping in time to a cartoon on his little child’s datapad. Fauve was chatting with her father at the table while they played a game of cards with Byron and Rebecca.

“How’d it go?” William asked, his slender face was not as good at disguising his sense of worry as he thought. It was sweet, really, in a way, to think of him concerned about me.

“Fine. I’ll be a waterboy for the football team and an admin assistant in the office, and I’m enrolled in a few classes that will be starting soon. Also they want him.” I inclined my head toward Boatswain who immediately went to sit beside Byron and the two fell into talking among themselves.

Fauve approached and gave me a hug, her slender arm squeezing my a bit, her free arm going up to show the cup of coffee she’d made. “Come, sit, you know how to play Spite and Malice, right?” She asked, and I shook my head.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I looked down at the table, there were seemingly random cards scattered around with four stacks in the center, with some cards up and some cards down and several more in long rows.

“No, no idea.” I was telling the truth, and Fauve looked over to her mother and father.

“Can we start again so that Bailey and Boatswain can play?” She asked.

“Sure, why not?” William answered.

“Go ahead and explain the rules, I’ll get dinner started.” Rebecca said and stood up to go into the kitchen area.

“So it’s like this.” Fauve said while she began sorting out the cards into red and blue stacks. “Each person gets a stack of red cards, the top card always facing up so everybody can see it. The one to get rid of all their red cards first is the winner. We draw blue cards and try to ‘build up’ the center from ‘ace’ to ‘king’ and put our red cards down when we can. So if there’s a six up in the middle, and you have a red seven, you want to put your red one there. But everybody knows what you need to play, so they try to block you by placing their own card down first. This is both spiteful” she paused and shuffled the cards so fast they made a rapid ‘swish’ sound as she bent her hands into an arch and they slid together in a varied order, “and malicious.” She finished with a wicked little smile on her face.

“You draw five cards, then end your turn by discarding them into one of four sequential columns that you make, and if you can’t discard because you are out of columns or have nothing in sequence, you’re probably going to get stuck, since you don’t normally hold more than five cards in your hand.”

She began to deal out the cards, her enthusiasm was infectious, and I flipped up the top card from my red stack. It was an ace. “Oooh, easy first play.” Fauve said, and looked at the rest of us. William had a four, Rebecca a King, Boatswain and Byron both had sevens, and Fauve herself had a deuce.

On the surface, it looked like an easy play… but I was also last in the play order, being on Fauve’s left while the order went from her right side.

Then Fauve drew… and slapped down four aces in a row.

My auspicious start was gone, and the game did not get better from there.

But I didn’t care, because while we played, slowly whittling down the number of cards in our stacks, they talked.

“...So I learned about the equipment and how to use the sound dampeners, and Teresa gave me a manual her grandfather wrote, it’s on paper and it doesn’t leave the building. But it’s supposed to teach me everything I’ll need to know to work in their cooperation.” Fauve said, fairly dancing in her seat while she chattered on about what she was doing and learning, her hair bouncing around behind her, one would hardly believe what she’d been through so recently, and yet she seemed fine.

‘I’ll tell her later.’ I told myself, I didn’t want to ruin the day.

I felt William’s eyes on me. I felt his question, and couldn’t answer, so I focused on my cards and let the others talk.

Along the way, in between turns, I typed up my observations. ‘Cards’ is a fairly primitive form of game dating back centuries, with endless games played with the same tools, simple numbered cards with small designs on them. This ‘Spite and Malice’ was one such game.

Its chief function is to facilitate casual socialization. Humans are so thoroughly social that they create games that have low stakes or no stakes just to have occasion to talk to one another more. This is especially true of families such as the Walkers, who seemed to value their closeness greatly.

William and Rebecca listened closely, ‘listening’ being another carefully cultivated skill, asking little questions along the way, making eye contact with their daughter and letting her finish before they conversed with their own incidents of the day and their intentions for tomorrow.

I lost the first game and barely noticed before it became Byron’s turn to shuffle and he began rattling off a story about one of his tours of duty before dealing out the cards again.

So the night evening went, the game only stopped when the smell of roasted stew filled the house and the other guards were called in to come and eat at the table like ‘civilized people’.

There we were, all of us, a pair of dlamisan soldiers, a dlamisan researcher, a human engineer, a scientist, a teenage girl with ambitions of media dominance and a human infant, chattering with a half a dozen different conversations before we even knew it. The taste of stew thick on my tongue and the promise of just ‘one more game’ after dinner before bed.

Fauve kept glancing at me, not saying anything in particular, but it felt off… I was fairly sure she couldn’t have any idea about what my professor said, but it still felt off.

If she had questions though, she didn’t ask them, instead excusing herself when William seemed to make a bottle of whiskey appear out of thin air. She knew well enough that liquor meant grownup time was beginning, and gave enthusiastic ‘goodnights’ to everyone before venturing up the stairs on her own.

For my part, I watched her go and bade her goodnight as well. I wanted to follow her upstairs and tell her the truth, part of me knew I should. However, all I could do was tell myself it would be ‘later’. And when we finally ended the evening I was slurring my words even in my own head saying, ‘I’ll tell her tomorrow.’

But before I even made it to my room, I was pretty sure I was lying.