Righteous Anger (Okal Rel Saga #2)

2.2: The Highborn Docks

Once out of Black Pavilion, Hara led Horth through the bazaar of goods and services on the Plaza. Next they passed through the tall arch of the Palace Shell with its rings of balconies for access to the palace, differentiated by birth-rank.

It was possible to see a lot of UnderGelion from the promenade that ran the length of the highborn docks. The city was encased in a hullsteel dome beneath the planet's crust. Without artificial light, everything around them would be pitch black. But being closed in did not bother Horth. He had visited the Nersallian planet of Tark, in Alliance Reach, and knew all about how suns created day and night on green worlds. Watching the whole performance from space made that obvious. But he distrusted weather, and disliked the things in the air on a green world that irritated his nose. Engineered environments felt comfortable.

Horth and Hara threaded their way through the pedestrian traffic on the promenade drawing no more than the occasional second look from other sword-carrying Sevolites. The ratio of Demish to Vrellish pedestrians was roughly a hundred to one, if you included the Vrellish nobleborns from Spiral Hall. It was much worse if you counted only highborns. All the highborn Vrellish in sight were Nersallians. Horth also spotted nobleborns in green Monatese livery, traveling alone or in small groups with packages under their arms, books in their hands, or some servant walking beside them with an air of companionable familiarity. Three times he made out brightly dressed clusters of Red Vrellish nobleborns from Spiral Hall playing physical jokes on one another, entwined in casual embraces, or busy passing small children back and forth between them as if the moving group of adults were a living playground.

Black Gate was the farthest from the Palace Shell along the promenade. Hara was recognized at once and granted passage through the gatehouse. On the far side, she commandeered a car that was powered by a soundless, emission-free battery of the kind that were charged up by pilots as they flew around the universe and exchanged for spent ones at whatever docks they used.

The car came with a driver whose pronouns, as he discussed their destination with Hara, declared him a Pettylord, one of the birth ranks within the challenge class of those called petty Sevolites or sometimes, less formally, simply "near commoners." Hara and Horth got into the back and they set off at a very sane pace for the military stockyard where Zrenyl worked when he took himself off to the docks.

Hara is a rel woman, Horth thought, studying her in this rare moment of stillness. She had a strong face and the build of a sword fighter. Her thighs were particularly well-muscled and she had a couple of scars that Horth found fascinating because highborns, like himself and his family, did not scar. It did not occur to him that he should find her unfeminine because of any of that. He could tell by her smell that she was female, and by the contours of her chest and groin. He had been aware of the differences between male and female Nersallians for as long as he could remember. It was Demish women and commoner females, like Alice, whom he did not understood particularly well. In some ways they seemed like his mother, although he knew she wouldn't like him to think of it like that.

A shout drew Horth's attention to see a car pull up alongside them with a pair of Vrellish faces grinning at them from open windows. Horth's window wasn't open but he caught taunts that went with their gestures. They were saying that Nersallians were as slow as Demish farm wagons and they were going to show them up. Then the Spiral Hall nobleborns took off with a burst of speed that made Horth wonder if they had something else besides rel-batteries powering the car.

Horth sat forward in his seat, feeling provoked. "Faster," he said to the driver in front.

"Whoa there, hot shot," Hara laughed. "And carry on, Gavin," she corrected Horth's last command. "We're not so Vrellish that we have to race bored fools just because they insulted us. I'm getting you there in — what are you doing now?" she interrupted her own lecture.