Chapter 15

Arccoo

Arccoo took them to his personal garden. Despite the clandestine nature of their conversation, he wanted servants and those in surrounding towers to be able to see all four of them together. Not only would this serve to further his need to normalize seeing humans on Thryal, but it would also dissuade anyone from suspecting a plot was forming.

Sofia sat down on a bench with her arms already folded tightly across her chest. “What’s he planning?” she asked. “Who the hell poisons someone to steal a cure? Unless you plan to profit off of it in some way.”

“That sounds like Earth-thinking to me,” Elena said, observing a watering drone hovering like a hummingbird over a small patch of root flowers.

Sofia scrunched up her face. “What do you mean?” she asked.

Arccoo spread his arm theatrically to appear as though he were giving the sisters an overview of the various flora. “We on Thryal are not as concerned with monetary gain as those on your planet. It has its place, especially on a galactic scale, but we don’t concern ourselves with accruing wealth on a daily basis.”

“Really?” Sofia asked, her face brightening up. “I think I’d like this place if it weren’t for the fact that most of the residents here looked like they’d love to watch me die.”

“Sofia!” Carmen scorned. Arccoo noticed her eyes move up to one of the pedestrian tunnels connecting the various towers around the annex. Although the sun cast a glare on the glass, it wasn’t difficult to see that people were staring at them.

“It’s okay,” Arccoo told her in a low, gentle voice. “They will come around to seeing you as one of us soon enough.”

“If you say so,” Carmen said, her tone telling him everything he needed to know. She didn’t believe him.

He’d witnessed the ugliest kinds of bigotry during his time on Earth. Human beings loathing one another because their skin was a different color, their food smelled different, or they worshiped a separate god.

It seemed so petty to him. Instead of seeing and embracing what united them, like an urge to protect their family, the importance of heritage, or pride in their communities, they chose to focus on the insignificant differences as if they were unpassable chasms.

Looking at the situation from her point of view—as someone who was raised in that divided environment with brown skin, which he had learned in itself held implications on Earth—he could understand her hesitance to believe him. However, what she didn’t understand was that his people could be more logical than humans. They looked down on the Flores family because they had been told a lie for the last several decades. Once they learned the truth, attitudes would change.

He wanted to take her in his arms and explain that all to her now. But that would have to wait. As much as it pained him to admit, they had more important matters to see to at the moment. He told himself she understood.

“Are you hungry?” he asked her.

“Not really,” she said, shaking her head. Her mouth was turned down in a glum expression.

Arccoo bent at the knees and plucked a ruby petal. Pinching it gently, the flesh of the leaf had just the right amount of give to suggest ideal ripeness. “All the same,” he said, standing. “You’re going to want to try this.”

He held out the petal. It looked small and fragile in his hand. Carmen rolled her eyes and accepted his offering. The petal seemed to double in size once her slender hand took possession of it.

Smiling, he watched her bring the petal to her mouth and bite it. Her annoyed and disinterested face burst to life as the sweet and tangy blood of the petal no doubt washed over her taste buds.

“Wow!” she said, chewing the petal. “That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted.”

Arccoo recalled how often he craved them as a child. “Rocco and I used to get in all kinds of trouble for eating too many of these and spoiling our dinners.”

Carmen waved her sisters over, telling them they had to try the petal.

After Arccoo found one for each of them, he watched their faces react similarly to Carmen’s.

“Quite delicious,” Elena said, her jaw moving slowly as if she were examining the flavor.

“Holy shit, that’s good!” Sofia exclaimed. “If anything else tastes like this, I’m going to devour your whole garden.”

Happy that the tension had somewhat subsided, Arccoo gently brought their discussion back to the topic at hand.

“We know that whatever Rocco’s plan is, it doesn’t involve helping our people,” he said. “At least, not in the way I intended.”

“Didn’t you say the parantaa can be destructive?” Carmen asked. “That’s why it was removed from your world. Right?”

“How long ago was this?” Elena asked.

“Many ages,” Arccoo told her. “Back when we were a deeply fearful people, interested in conquest and power.”

Elena sucked the ruby flavor from her thumb. “Well, at the risk of falling into the trap of thinking like an Earthling, it might be worth considering that not everyone here has lost that interest in expansion and violence.”

Arccoo puffed out his wide chest. He didn’t like the idea of someone suggesting that the baser nature of his species may still be lingering and threatening to become a dominant trait once again. Those ages long passed were an ugly and savage time for Thryal. The idea of returning to that was too much for him to stomach.

Instead of lashing out or accusing his love’s sister of being simple, he let out his captured breath and calmly asked her to explain.

Elena shrugged. “Physics, right? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If Thryal has made this seismic shift to a peaceful, logical society, it only stands to reason that somewhere out there is another species that sees that as a weakness. Do you have any enemies? Any aggressors who have been more active than usual? If so, your brother might get desperate and see the staff as an answer to your problem.”

Arccoo rubbed his chin, thinking. Could the Brenvis be enough of a threat to send his brother down a dark path? It was possible, he had to admit. Before jumping to that conclusion, however, he had to be certain of something.

“Why don’t we learn some more about the history of the parantaa?” he said.

The four of them went to the annex library. Cloaked guards followed the humans with their eyes. Arccoo noticed Carmen tensing, wrapping her arms over her body as if trying to protect herself from their gaze. She had told him about the struggles she had with her appearance. Being watched like this probably wasn’t helping her self-image.

Another discussion for another time , he told himself, burying the need to console her deep in his stomach.

They split into two teams. Elena and Sofia scoured the tomes for references to the parantaa while Arccoo and Carmen surveyed scrolls. She seemed distant, disinterested in what they were doing. When he tried to show her something he thought she might find interesting, she simply nodded and went back to her own investigating. He got the sense that she didn’t want to be around him.

“Have I done something wrong?” he asked, no longer able to contain his concern.

“No.” Her answer was quick and clipped. It contained no hint of forthcoming elaboration. He took this to mean he had definitely done something wrong.

“Please, talk to me,” he urged her. “Let me help?”

Carmen huffed. “I don’t know if coming here was worth it.”

Her words were like an ice dagger straight to his lungs. “Why?” he asked, trying to touch her. She backed away.

“Nobody wants us here,” she said, her lip twitching.

“I want you here,” Arccoo told her.

“Then why do you let them treat us the way they do?” Carmen asked, heat rising in her voice. “The way they look at us. What they say. Doesn’t any of that bother you?”

“Of course it does,” Arccoo said. “It infuriates me. I would like nothing more than to have the guards lock them away until their bigotry burns out like a cold flame, but that would be an abuse of power. You have to see that.”

She squeezed her face hard for a second before responding. “I’m not asking you to arrest anyone or hurt anyone or make a law about racism,” she explained. “But you can speak up against it. Can’t you? Instead of just being seen with us, can’t you defend us? With words and actions?”

The strength in his knees nearly gave way. He held the side of a podium displaying an ancient scroll to remain standing. She was right. He’d been treating her situation like an afterthought. For him, the hate Carmen and her sisters faced was something happening in the periphery. For them, it was a ceaseless problem, not something that could be put off until later.

“I am sorry,” he said. “You deserve better than this.”

Carmen looked into his eyes. He thought she might be searching for evidence of his sincerity. She nodded. “Thank you,” she said.

She hugged him, which made him feel powerful.

“Break it up, lovebirds,” Sofia said.

She and Elena were walking up to them with a book so heavy, each sister had to hold a side to carry it. “You’re going to want to take a look at this.”

Arccoo and Carmen took a step back so the other two could come around and show them what they found. An illustration extended from one page to the other with a long block of text bordering the art. The image was of a Thryal militia riding peakbacks into battle. The Parantaa was sticking out of the back of a brass tank strapped to the largest peakback. Tendrils of blue light like hot electricity short from the machine, seeming to vaporize an entire row of warriors who were stupid enough to meet this militia in combat.

“I can’t read the words, obviously,” Sofia said. “The implication is clear enough, though. Should someone harness the power of the parantaa with advanced enough technology, it could become a weapon of mass destruction.”

“I guess Thryals and humans aren’t all that different,” Sofia said.

Carmen touched Arccoo’s elbow lightly. “You can’t let him do this.”

“Let him do this?” Arccoo asked. “The second brother doesn’t let the first son do anything. He is going to be king. He doesn’t need my permission to act as he wishes.” He took a few steps away from the small group to think. He’d heard legends of the staff’s destructive power, but to see it, even as an artist’s rendering, was almost unfathomable.

He imagined Rocco working with engineers to construct a machine on such a scale that an entire civilization could be wiped out in a flash. Some would see this as a triumph, a return to Thryal’s glorious days of power and war. Instead of seeking Govian approval to join their federation, they could simply obliterate planet after planet until they had no choice but submit to Thryal rule.

That is not the future I want for my people , Arccoo thought.

Standing at full height, Arccoo turned back to Carmen and her sisters. “Come with me,” he said. “We have to stop this before it starts.”

“But you have to see how dangerous this is,” Arccoo pleaded with his father across a long table. “Do you want Thryal to be known across the stars as genocidal conquerors?”

The king wiped food from the corner of his mouth. “You have no evidence to suggest your brother is planning anything nefarious.”

“He drugged Carmen,” Arccoo told him for the second time. “Why else would he do that if his intentions were pure?”

“Have you confirmed with him that this alleged drugging took place?” the king asked, interlocking his fingers and laying his hands in his lap.

Arccoo flinched as if his father had just slapped him. “Excuse me?” he asked, genuinely hoping he misread the intention of asking such a question.

“How do we know she isn’t lying?” He paused. When Arccoo didn’t respond, he continued. “We don’t know much about humans, and what we do know doesn’t say much about their character. She is a stranger here. We’re expected to take her word without evidence?”

The urge to roar burned Arccoo’s throat. He did his best to tamper his emotion, but his voice still shook with anger.

“What about your son’s judgment?” he asked. “I trust Carmen with my life. Don’t I count for anything?”

“Three strange women fall from the sky,” the king said, his eyes becoming narrow. “We heal them, house them, and meet their every need. How do they repay us? They turn you, my own son, into a usurper.”

“Usurper?” Arccoo shouted, his voice echoing around the high walls. “I have done nothing but serve my people since birth. I have toured the galaxy, broken bread with tyrants, aided coups, all for the sake of Thryal’s diplomatic needs. Until meeting Carmen, I was nothing more than a tool of your government. For the first time in my life, I feel like my own man. I know what I stand for. And I stand for a free and peaceful Thryal.”

“You stand for an alien bitch who has corrupted you with temptations of the flesh,” the king said, nearly spitting every word. He slammed both hands on the table and pushed himself from the chair. “If you speak another word against the future king, I will strip you of your power and toss you and those three mongrels to fend for yourselves in the void.”

Arccoo did not recognize this man before him. The father he’d grown up admiring was stern but just. He was open to ideas and ruled with compassion. This xenophobic old fool standing at the end of his ancestral table was an ugly brute with a mangled heart.

“There two diseases are plaguing our planet, it seems,” Arccoo said. “That of the body and now, I see, one of the spirit.”