10. Helion

It seemed Remora’s feet had only just touched the salt-scored wood of the Helion dock before Hank childishly turned the Miraj round and sped off, sails unfurling as if impatient to be away from them.

Remora watched the ship disappear, some part of her yearning to call out and request that it return. The dull, unmoving wood of the dock felt unpleasant beneath her boots. She’d read about the phenomenon. “Sea legs,” the Ardelan Encyclopedia had called it. At the time, she’d wondered how anyone could feel as if solid ground were heaving and buckling. Now all she wanted was to be back aboard the ship, where the wood beneath her feet seemed almost to be alive and breathing.

Jinn was scant comfort. Had the black-wrapped warrior been a smaller, more nervous sort of man, she might have called his current behavior “timid.” Assigning such a mundane term to the Shinra’ere warrior seemed out of place, yet she could find no better description for his silent and incessant pacing, nor the line between his brows that had not disappeared since he learned that Helion was their destination.

She would not be so rude as to call attention to his behavior and he seemed unwilling to discuss it. She had hoped to take this opportunity to get to know the man better, but at this rate, she might well have been alone save for a particularly tall and muscular shadow.

The sunlight beat down upon them stifling force and Remora sighed. Groceries were certainly not going to purchase themselves.

Remora lifted her parasol, pushing it open and settling it against her shoulder. “Well then,” she said to the air, as Jinn was clearly not listening, “one presumes the marketplace is in this direction.”

She strode forward and Jinn followed. The man was twitchy as a cat in a room full of dogs. She could not fathom it. The entire city of Helion was under Shinra rule. This should be near a homecoming for him, yet he acted as if it were a misery.

Helion itself was beautiful enough to distract her from Jinn’s nervousness. The port city rose from the desert sands like a tooth thrust through soft fabric. The walls, buildings, and even the streets themselves were constructed primarily of gleaming white limestone. Emphasized by the starkness of its surroundings, ornate rooftops blazed with color. Here, a building was capped with a complex pattern of colored clay shingles. Its neighbor had a low, flat roof with a furnished veranda. The next building sported billowing cloth canopies in rich jewel tones.

Punctuating every corner of every building, it seemed, golden gargoyles hissed, scowled, or glared down at passers-by. She found the intentionally hideous statues disconcerting. Must every statue be a horned, winged, serpent-fanged nightmare? They seemed almost out of place in such opulent and beautiful surroundings.

Unsettled, Remora’s steps slowed and she paid more attention to the opulent city. Something else, something other than the gargoyles, bothered her.

It wasn’t until she saw a horse-dresl woman carrying a basket of turnips that Remora could put her finger on the most unsettling thing about Helion.

There were no plants. No cheerful flowers in boxes underlined curtained windows. No artfully trimmed hedges in pots dotted stone verandas. Swaying gaslamps on limestone armatures dotted the thoroughfare where tall trees would have been in her home city. Not so much as a single blade of grass could be seen.

Remora moved a step closer to Jinn. The lack of plant-life seemed unaccountably eerie, even given the city’s desert location.

The people of Helion were almost universally dresl, of course. The Shinra and the half-animal dresl shared an alliance that even her expensive Ardelan Encyclopedias had not been able to explain.

Not much was known about the secretive Shinra race. Humans were allowed only in port cities, and even then only as guests. The Shinra chose not to discuss themselves and the dresl could not speak with their animal throats and mouths even if they wanted to.

Watching the dresl go about their business, Remora wondered how they did manage to communicate. Certainly, they had to speak with the Shinra and with each other. They might share physical aspects with animals, but they wore human clothing and walked upright on their hind legs. Surely they were of human intelligence.

There was, of course, one obvious way to find out. Remora stopped the next dresl walking past, a well-muscled horse-headed man carrying a bundle of sheepskins. “Pardon my interruption, but is this the way to the market?” she asked, gesturing the direction she had been walking.

The dresl’s mild brown eyes blinked, ears swiveling forward to catch her question. He nodded and pointed a hoof-tipped finger in the same direction they had been heading.

Remora smiled at him. “Thank you very much, that is quite helpful.”

The horse-man snorted once, the sort of mild whuffle she often heard from her carriage horses back home.

Behind her, Jinn moved. “You need not ask directions, Lady. I know—”

Catching sight of the Shinra’ere for the first time, the dresl’s eyes rolled back and showed their whites. Tossing his head and pinning his ears back, the muscular dresl fairly leaped backward, dropping his bundle in his haste to be away from them.

The line between Jinn’s eyes deepened and his lips pulled into a pained grimace.

“Jinn, what is—?” Remora began.

Her bodyguard interrupted her, the first time she could recall him ever doing so. “We should keep moving,” he said tersely, pointedly not looking at the horse-man, whose fur visibly twitched, nostrils flared.

For the sake of the clearly distraught dresl, she followed Jinn’s advice and walked swiftly up the street, anxiously spinning her parasol in her hands.

As soon as she judged them to be out of earshot, she scowled at her bodyguard. “Jinn. Thrice, aboard the Miraj, you asked that we not come to Helion and thrice I was rebuffed when I requested reason to change our destination. Pressing the matter may not be ladylike, but it would seem that your presence here is particularly unwelcome. I believe you are in possession of insight as to why that might be.”

Jinn remained stoic. “I do not believe the answer you seek will hinder the intent of our visit, Miss Gates.”

Remora stopped and put a hand on his wrapped arm. “It is not the fate of our groceries which so concerns me.”

Jinn’s red eyes closed briefly. Almost, she regretted asking him. The look on his face as the dresl backed away from them had been terrible. He had reacted as though the dresl had slapped him.

No, more disturbing than that: he’d reacted as though he deserved such a slap.

“I do not know how to explain.” He gritted his teeth, eyes on the road, or the wall, or the sky—anywhere but her face. “I am no longer Shinra,” he said, finally, as though that explained everything.

“I do not know what that means,” Remora said, brow furrowed.

A new voice spoke up, sharp as flint. “It means he has no family. It means he can never return to his home clan because even his mother, his father, and his brother would kill him on sight. It means he’s a godless, damned traitor.”