The Seer (Tellaran Series)

Ariel MacArran

The Seer

By Ariel MacArran

©2014 Ariel MacArran

The Seer
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be produced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

Kindle Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Please respect the author's work.

Cover Design: Steven James Catizone

Published by Here Be Dragons

Also available in paperback publication

One

I should just let him die.

Arissa shrank back deeper into the shadows. A few quick steps and she would be out of this alley. She’d disappear back into the filthy streets of Tellar’s capital and leave the officer to his fate.

His vibrant blue eyes suddenly picked her out in the darkness and froze her there. She flinched, his anxiety and helpless confusion hammering her mind.

“Against the wall.”

The officer’s gaze shifted to the man holding the blaster pointed at his chest. “Okay. Whatever you say.”

He kept his hands up, slowly compling with the man’s order. The officer’s crisp, rust colored Fleet uniform was out of place in this run-down neighborhood. Tall, broad-shouldered and possessed of striking blond good looks, he could have graced a Fleet recruitment poster.

He felt like wealth, like abundance, like privilege.

Arissa had hated him on sight.

She swallowed hard now, dismayed by her foolish impulse to trail after these two.

Neither man had noticed her following when the officer wandered out of the scant safety of the old marketplace, the furtive, cloaked figure behind him. The blond man flashed a wickedly charming smile at the last tawdry Ornaments at the outskirts but waved off their enthusiastic offers of sexual pleasures available for his purchase. With the easy confidence of one assured of his place in the universe, the officer strolled into the dusky streets, heedless of the menace shadowing him.

“I have money, friend,” the officer said. “If that’s what your looking for, no danger. I’ll give you all I’ve got.”

“Jolar d’Tural?” the man asked in a thick Utavian accent.

The officer blinked, then gave a half-smile. “Might be.” He sent the blaster pointed at him a meaningful glance. “If I offended you, I didn’t mean to. I don’t come down here much. I met a friend for a drink. I didn’t take any of the women so I couldn’t have touched yours.”

The Utavian's face remained hidden from her by the hood of his cloak but Arissa’s breath caught as the set of his mind turned to ice.

This man had killed before. He was going to kill now.

The officer—
Jolar
—knew it too.

In that final moment Jolar’s eyes met hers. Waves of his fear and horror reverberated through her mind; his outrage against the unfairness of it made her chest ache. He didn’t understand why, even as the man slightly straightened his arm to fire, he was being cut down like this. Arissa couldn’t hear his thoughts as words but his desperation roared like a thunderclap through her mind.

Help me!

Arissa threw herself at the Utavian, making a clumsy grab for his blaster. His surprise pulsed and he jerked back just as her fingers closed on the weapon, ripping it from her hand.

His arm whipped around and he struck her with the butt of his blaster. Pain exploded behind her eyes and she hit the cold duracrete hard.

The Utavian shrugged his cloak back. With slow, perfect clarity Arissa saw every detail as he leveled the weapon at her: the glint in his fierce dark eyes, the sharp planes of his thin face, the street dimming to ash gray as the last light of Tellar’s suns faded from the sky—

Blinding flashes of blue lit up the alley as energy bolts drilled through him.

She scrambled back as the Utavian collapsed. He lay unmoving near her feet, faint wisps of smoke from his wounds rising into the cool evening air.

Arissa’s breath shuddered in her throat. Her palm to her breastbone, she pressed hard against the aching hollowness she sensed, the sudden stillness where there had been life just a moment before . . .

"Fucking hell," Jolar spat, the blaster in his hand gripped tightly.

He kept his weapon on the Utavian’s still form, his movements cautious as he approached.

With a swift, sharp kick Jolar sent the man’s blaster skidding across the pavement. Keeping his weapon trained on the Utavian, he nudged hard against the man’s ribs with the sole of his boot.

The burned stench made Arissa queasy despite her stomach’s gnawing emptiness. Other sensations suddenly intruded: her scraped palms stung, her feet were cold and tired in her worn slippers, the grimy puddle water had soaked through her thin clothes to chill the skin of her hip and thigh.

“Oh,” she murmured, her hand going to her head. Her fingers came away bloody.

“Let me see.” Jolar squatted beside her, his square-jawed handsome face grim as he holstered his blaster. He cupped her chin gently to tilt her face and met her gaze for an instant. Up close his eyes were an even brighter blue.

She flinched as he touched the sore spot.

“Yeah, I bet that hurts. He hit you hard,” he said, his voice faintly honeyed with the cool tones of affluence. “Do you feel dizzy? Like you might pass out? Or throw up?”

Arissa shook her head and immediately wished she hadn’t.

He brushed a stray black curl away from her face. “What’s your name?”

“Ar—” She caught herself. “Tianna. Tianna Hayer.”

“Well, Tianna, I’m Jolar d’Tural and your bravery just saved my life.” His mouth curved into a half-smile. “I’m Zartani, you know, in case my name didn’t give it away. What you just did means a lot to a Zartani. It means a lot to me.” He took her hand in his, looking at the abrasions on her palm and shook his head a little. He dug in his pocket and pulled out a comm unit. “I'll let TelSec know to send a medic too.”

Arissa yanked her hand away and pushed him hard. She twisted, on her feet and out of the alley at a dead run before his backside hit the pavement.

The few lights that still functioned here offered only scant pools of sickly yellow illumination against the gathering darkness. At this hour the pathetic denizens of the area had withdrawn indoors to sink into chemical induced dazes and Arissa’s footfalls echoed against the dilapidated buildings. Startled voles, their whiskers twitching in alarm at her panicked rush, flashed glittering black eyes at her before scattering to wriggle their tiny, furred bodies into cracked walls and garbage piles.

“Tianna!”

She risked a glance back at the officer; her breath caught at his determination and how quickly he was gaining on her.

She was running full out now, scrambling to think where she could lose him. She couldn’t turn off this street without being trapped in one of the side lanes. The abandoned shop she'd intended to spend the night in was off to the right but she couldn’t possibly duck inside before he saw where she’d gone. The lodgings she hadn't made rent on were on the other side of the old market and she didn’t dare return
there
without the means to pay.

She sure as hell couldn’t let him catch her.

In the distance the colored lights of the old market glowed jauntily into the night sky and she seized on that. Business would just be picking up for the evening and there would be enough people milling between the taverns, chemists and pleasure houses to lose him there—if he even followed her that far.

She bent her head trying to gain more speed, her feet pounding against the worn duracrete. If she got enough of a lead maybe he would just give up. He’d just killed a man; he’d have to report in or something, wouldn’t he?

He pulsed with triumph an instant before he slammed into her. She cried out and stumbled, taking both of them to the wet pavement. He caught her and took the brunt of the fall as they rolled across the ground.

Then he had hold of her wrists, pinning her down.

“Let go!”

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” His face was flushed, his vivid blue eyes furious. “Why did you run off like that?”

“Get off me!” she spat. “Fucking son of a sular cow!”

He gave a short, disbelieving snort. “Well, that’s some impression I've made on you. But watch what you say about my mother.”

“Get
off!
”

He shifted his weight to let her sit up but he kept tight hold of her wrist, yanking her back when she tried to scramble away. 

“Not so fast. You saved my life,” he said impatiently. “I owe you.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome! Festering hell, let
go!
”

He pushed up to stand. “Come on.”

He was pleased. To have caught her, probably. And annoyed. That much was clear from the way he hauled her up, even if she couldn’t hear him thinking it.

He was a lot taller and a lot stronger than she, his grip like tarasteel around her wrist. Dragging her feet wasn’t even slowing him down.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she cried.

“You need medical attention and I just shot someone,” Jolar returned, not breaking stride. His hands and uniform had gotten dirty from their struggle and smudges showed on the fabric over his elbows, knees and back. “We’re going back to wait for TelSec and then I’m going to—”

Arissa punched him with her free hand. “Gods, let me
go!
”

He twisted to catch hold of her other wrist.

“Damn it, stop hitting me! What the hell is—?” He pulled up short. “Tellaran security. That’s it, isn’t it? You’re afraid of TelSec.” He frowned. “Why? What have you done?”

“Nothing!”

He took in her forest green tunic with its embroidery fraying at the hem, matching pants and light jacket, her scuffed slippers. “You’re a scrawny little thing and your clothes have sure seen better days. You hardly look like the criminal type.”

Scrawny?
Her eyes stung. Her face was so thin and wan these days and her pale green eyes, always too large for beauty, looked back at her in the mirror with the wide-eyed terror of a frightened sercat. These clothes, that had fit so well before she fled her homeworld, now hung on her like sacks. And her always impossible-to-tame black curls must be utterly wild now.

“I know you aren’t from Tellar by your accent,” he continued. “Apovian, right?”

Her mouth went dry.

“Well, come on, Apovian girl,” he said impatiently. “Are you going to tell me?”

She wet her lips. His mind felt hard and set as glass.

“Fine,” he snapped, turning to continue back the way they came and pulling her along. “I’m sure TelSec will be happy to.”

“I’m an Ornament!”

He stopped. “You’re an Ornament and—?”

“I haven’t— I don’t have a place to work. Uh, anymore.”

His eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

“I signed a year’s contract with a pleasure house in return for transport to Tellar. But I— I didn’t like it there so I ran away and now—” She gave a half-shrug. “I work on my own.”

His glance went over her face, her breasts, her body, and she felt the blush creep up her neck at the sense she caught. “You don’t look much like an Ornament.”

“Well,” she hedged. “Some men like a girl who doesn’t look like a whore. Tastes and all . . .”

“How much?”

Arissa frowned. “How much what?”

“Do you charge? You do charge, don’t you? The pleasure house explained the idea that you get
paid
for sex, right?”

“Oh, no, sure. I mean—yes, I get paid.”

“So how much?”

Sella, the hard-faced Ornament who rented the room next to Arissa’s charged differently depending on the service. She'd certainly heard enough of Sella's negotiating through those thin walls.

“Well, how much for what, exactly?”

“For me, exactly,” he gritted out. “How much for
me
to fuck you?”

She blinked, her breath picking up speed. Negotiating wasn't the only thing she'd heard through those walls.

His blue eyes seemed almost aglow, his heat vibrating against her mind. She glanced at his body, the broad shoulders, the slim hips. 

Would he kiss her?

Would it hurt?

She wet her lips again. “I don’t—I guess a hundred?”

“For the whole night or just the once?”

More than once?
"Uh, I don’t—What do you want?”

He reached into his pocket and glanced at the bills in his hand. He pushed them at her. “There. Five hundred credits for five nights.”