Chapter Text
The first time I saw her, it was the heart of the warmest season, and she was sitting beneath a tree at the far corner of one of their world’s vast, industrialized agrifarms.
I watched her through my scope from a distance of seventeen forrac as her shoulders shook with her face buried in her arms. She had short hair that was a deep, tawny brown a few shades darker than her skin, and wore a pressed military suit in shades of green and black with some small decorations upon it, and she seemed quite small to me; smaller than the others of her kind, at least. She had a soft, kind face that I found pleasing, though I know many of my kind would find that troubling, if not disgusting. What drew my eyes, though, was that she was curled up under the soothing shadow of the arboreal giant, and she was crying.
Unlike others of my kin, I felt no particular disdain nor disgust for the other races of the galaxy. My path had seen me tread more than one of their vessels and speak to them as equals—something most Asuryani would balk at. Those who walked the outcast path were ever the outliers, though. From the start, I knew I was destined for this path; I did not fit into any of the other paths, and I always found my gaze turning to the stars. Mankind, in turn, had caught my gaze as well, and I wiled away decades at a time simply watching them—watching their loves and hates, their joys and sorrows. There was something fascinating about how they approached life so blindly and how they felt so bravely.
Ignorantly, I’m sure the others of my kind would say.
This young woman was not the first I had seen cry, and she would not be the last, but her tears were different because I knew what was to come for this quiet, gentle world. I wondered if she would still be crying if she knew that the fresh-faced young soldiers she had hoped to join—clad in polished armor and clutching one of their crude las carbines—would be worse than dead in just over a year.
Twitching the muscle just beneath the orbit of my left eye to zoom in, I read the name on the shiny brass nameplate that was pinned to her right breast pocket: Fariha Umar.
There was a musicality to the name that I liked. Most human names were dull, blunt things without a hint of song, but occasionally, there would be one or two that had a pleasant ring to them. Some absurd part of me wondered what her voice would sound like speaking her own name, and on the heels of that, I wondered what it would sound like speaking mine? It would probably sound clumsy. The human tongue was not quite deft enough for the Aeldari language and never had been.
Fariha’s head raised suddenly, and she wiped her cheeks with her sleeves as something like fear painted her pretty features as she scrambled to her feet. I scowled and shifted my scope along her eyeline to find three young men approaching her in slightly different military jackets, with shiny new las carbines that were hung over their shoulders by thick straps, and one wore an unpleasant sneer on his lips that made a mockery of sympathy, and I read his lips as he spoke.
‘How did your platoon’s selection go, Fari?’ He asked with that false smile. ‘Were you not conscripted? What a shame.’
‘I’ll pass the next selection! Now, leave me alone, Rahul,’ Fariha said with a bitter twist of her lip.
Rahul shook his head and made a shape with his mouth such that I could almost hear him tutting at her, and a tiny ember of annoyance flared to life in my breast as he said, ‘I did tell you that you’re too small to join the guard, remember? I was not trying to be cruel, Fari. I was only trying to spare you the disappointment! Or do you think you’ll grow another ten centi in five years? I doubt you’ll grow another two. Come now, set this aside and accept my father’s offer,’ he held out a hand full of false placation. ‘I do not deploy for another ten cycles. We can be wed, and you can join my house, perhaps even be with child before I lea—’
My finger twitched, and the strap of Rahul’s carbine was cut clean from just above and behind his shoulder by a single shot from my rifle, and the weapon fell to the ground with a deafening clatter. The other two boys with him startled and stared down at the carbine, and Rahul did as well, and there was animal fear in his eyes.
‘R-Rahul! The sergeant said it’s twenty lashes if you drop your carbine!’ One of the others said.
‘Shut up, Ezhil! Th-The strap was faulty!’ Rahul stammered as he picked up the carbine, checked it over, and found a scuff along the side of the barrel. He was even more afraid now as he looked up at his friend. ‘They would not lash me for a faulty strap!’
I smiled thinly. Oh, but they would. My time among the stars had seen me work alongside plenty who had once served in the Imperium’s military machine, and it was a cruel thing that cared nothing for excuses. Rahul was panicking now, and with their cowardly leader so full of fear, the panic was spreading to his dumbfounded subordinates. They left in a hurry, perhaps thinking or hoping they could repair the strap before the first inspection came the next day. They would fail. This world had no replacement for a military weapon strap that would not be obvious.
Fariha was stifling her laughter as her erstwhile tormentors ran down the dusty road, and it made me smile just a little wider. She was much prettier when she was smiling.
My duty, as was given to me by a Farseer of my Craftworld, was this: to dwell upon this planet in anticipation of a coming storm. The humans had called it Veda when they came to it with their settlement ships a mere two centuries ago, but I still knew the world as Mithilonn.
Farseer Galanthil had extracted an oath from me many centuries ago, in my early days as an outcast, to answer the call of the Craftworld should the circumstances be dire enough to warrant my presence. Two years—by this world’s reckoning—ago, she had made that call and directed me, along with seven other wanderers, to come quietly to this world and begin reactivating the webway beacons. It had to be done carefully so as not to draw the attention of the humans. We were given leave to kill as many as we needed in order to ensure that the beacons remained safely active, but I preferred a less violent approach. Besides, humans were pack creatures. If one died, the others would become wary and alert.
The beacon I was directed to was, thankfully, in a cave system whose closest entrance was a good forty forrac from the nearest human settlement in the depths of a forest. I’d had no trouble activating it, so my purpose became to watch the settlement and ensure no one went near the cave. It was while watching the farm on the edge closest to the forest in question that I first saw Fariha, and I amused myself by keeping an eye on her family while I waited for doom to fall upon this world.
Fariha appeared to be neither the eldest nor the youngest child—she had seven brothers and four sisters, a father, a mother, and a grandmother, as well as six aunts, eight uncles, and thirty-two cousins so far. It really was marvelous how quickly humans reproduced. If the Asuryani were so productive, our race would never have declined in the first place. The agrifarm appeared to belong to them, with the larger neighboring one belonging to the family which had spawned Rahul, who had deployed twelve cycles ago and would probably be dead very soon.
While most of Fariha’s brothers, sisters, and other assorted family worked the farm, Fariha appeared to serve with the local constabulary tha the humans called the Planetary Defense Force. This PDF was now quite limited in number due to the conscription decimating their forces. It would make the defense of this young world much more difficult, but then, the Craftworld had never expected the humans to defend it.
That was why I was here.
Since the threat was still a ways in the future, though, alleviating boredom was my chief concern. I started making a game of following Fariha on her patrol routes, which served the dual purpose of being an interesting challenge as well as giving me valuable information on the lay of the nearby town.
Despite her rather diminutive size, Fariha proved to be quite the capable hand-to-hand combatant, even if her foes were usually little more than surly drunkards. Those drunkards were, however, always larger and heavier, and that alone made them a threat, yet Fariha always dealt with them deftly—tossing them over her shoulder as if they were sacks of grain. It never failed to bring a smile to my face seeing her throw around surly men twice her size, especially those who would try to grab her in ways that made my blood boil.
Fariha never put up with it. She left more than one broken finger in her wake as payment for an unwanted touch, which I felt was merciful. I’d have simply taken the finger with me as a warning to them and others, but Fariha had to live with these people, so I supposed it was simply prudence that stayed her hand.
Her patrol routes were regular ones that varied only by predictable rotation. Every other day, she would patrol the interior of the town. On the opposing days, she would patrol the edges of farmlands. My understanding was that, prior to the conscription, these patrols would be done in twos and threes, respectively, but there was no longer enough to allow for that, and the patrols were now performed alone. I would be lying if I did not admit that this formed some small part of my reasoning for trailing her, and it was not long before my concerns were justified.
I saw them long before Fariha ever did, and I recognized one of them as a thickly set man whom Fariha had humiliated a few cycles prior when he had thought to touch her inappropriately. He had not even been drunk at the time, not that that would have been an excuse; I could perhaps have overlooked it, though. No, he was just a crude man with unsuitable expectations. Fariha had disabused him of those expectations when she had broken one of his fingers and then laid him out in the middle of the road. He had gotten up cursing her, and now he had come with three others to take undue vengeance.
They were moving to intercept her from well ahead of her patrol route, and my estimation had them meeting at the edge of the fields furthest from the local farmstead. She would be far from aid, and despite her skill, she was one against four, and they were coming for her with violence in their stride.
My finger ached where it was curled around the trigger of my rifle. I could put all four of them down in an instant, and they would be dead before they had time to realize they were in danger, and I might have, except that they were moving along Fariha’s patrol route, and if I snuffed them out where they were, she would come upon their corpses. It would paint a target on the entire area, and it would require very little effort to recognize that their wounds were far too clean to be made by weapons of human manufacture. Their crude las or solid shot munitions would make a mess of their targets, while my rifle would leave them all but unmarked.
It would draw eyes onto this forest, and it was no great leap of logic to assume they might eventually search the caves looking for whatever had slain their people. It might even draw down the eyes of the Imperium’s hounds, and I could not afford that. I could not put the lilaethan at risk for one human girl. I could not.
My rifle was collapsed and stowed, and I was moving before I could think about it, sprinting across the field under the cover of the evening shroud and my camoline cloak. The figures were moving at a sedate pace, as was Fariha, but I was too far to intercept cleanly. Still, I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, loping across the field toward the four men and lifting a prayer to Kurnous that my stride be swift.
Not swift enough.
I heard a shout ahead of me as I burst from the field of golden grains to find the four of them had surrounded her, and I could practically smell the lascivious stink of violence that came from the men. Beneath that, too, was the scent of fear; Fariha knew that they were going to hurt her—maybe even kill her—and that she was going to suffer before the end, and she was afraid. That would have been enough, but then the one whose pride she had wounded slapped her across the face with an open palm, and a hate unlike anything I had ever known boiled the blood in my veins as Khaine’s own fury came upon me.
There was no warning for them as my hand closed around the back of the first one’s neck. I twisted him around, snapped out two kicks, and broke his legs before throwing him aside. He wailed like a colic babe as I grabbed another, jerked his arm around, and struck it at the elbow, breaking it before letting go and landing a hard chop at his throat to silence his shriek of pain. The others had finally noticed I was among them, but it was dark, and my body was shrouded by my cloak.
“What the f—” the prideful one started before I spun and planted my heel into his mouth, breaking his teeth and jaw and sending him spinning to the ground.
The last one leapt at me, his wide, sweaty hands outstretched as he bellowed like a beast, but Fariha was on him before I could react. She grabbed him by the arm in midair, twisted to redirect his momentum, and sent him sailing past me to crash into one of his fellows in a tangle of limbs where I stomped on his diaphragm as he landed, and his eyes rolled back into his head before turning back to Fariha. Her breaths came in unsteady gulps as she looked around us with eyes that were wide with adrenaline and triumph past strands of short, dark hair that were plastered to her brow and neck with sweat.
And then she looked up at me, and my heart stuttered in my chest. I had seen her eyes through my scope many times. They were a deep, heady shade of amber. Then she smiled, and I realized that she was beautiful.
“Thank you,” Fariha said through gulps of air, then squinted at me as she tried to focus on my form. I had deactivated my holofield, but my cloak still blurred my shape somewhat. She must have noticed that the edges seemed to vanish into the air if one did not look directly at them. “Who…who are you?”
It would have been easier to leave without speaking, but her sharp eyes were already suspicious enough. “Just a traveler,” I said quietly. “I saw these men coming, and thought they seemed suspicious, so I followed. I am glad that I did so.”
“As am I,” Fariha admitted with a faint laugh, then narrowed her eyes at me again. “What are you wearing? I’ve never seen the like.”
“That is my business,” I replied.
Her gaze hardened a bit more. “And where are you from? You are not local. Nor can I place your accent…let me see your face.”
I stepped back. “I would prefer not to be punished for my intervention,” I said cautiously. “And if I show you my face, and you are later asked who helped you, I suspect you will not lie. You do not seem the type.”
Fariha frowned and looked down at the groaning men, none of which were conscious anymore, then said, “I suppose that would be a poor show of gratitude, but…” she looked up at me again, then cocked her head and said, “I do not like being lied to.”
“Lied to?” I echoed.
“You’ve been watching me,” she said, crossing her arms. “I’ve felt eyes on me for weeks. I thought it was some of Rahul’s friends, but they never waited so long. Now, you expect me to believe some mystery woman has come upon me and these chutiyas by chance? I am not stupid.”
“I meant no disrespect,” I replied.
She stepped closer and glared up at me, and she was so short that I had to turn my head to keep from allowing her to see under the cowl of my camoline. I had known that Fariha was small compared to others of her kind, but being so close to her, it was almost amusing how the top of her head barely came up to my chest.
“I’m a sergeant of the planetary defense force and a protector of the Exalted One’s domain. I do not need to be shielded by suspicious strangers who follow me from the shadows.”
“I will avoid you from now on if that is your wish,” I said softly.
Fariha sighed, then stepped back and said, “What I really wish is to know why you have become my shadow. I am no one.”
“I have no adequate explanation,” I replied truthfully. “Nor could I give you one that you would accept, I suspect, but I would be eternally grateful if we might simply part ways here and that you think nothing else of this but that it was the kindness of a stranger.”
“If I were the type to do that, I would not be a soldier,” Fariha pointed out.
I sighed, then said, “Then may I ask it of you as a favor? Just to let me go on my way?”
Fariha chewed her lip for a moment before scratching the back of her neck, heaving a sigh of her own, then saying, “On one condition.”
“Additional to saving you?” I asked and could not help a hint of mischief from entering my voice. To my surprise, Fariha smiled again, and it was just as beautiful as the first time.
“Yes, in addition to that,” Fariha said with a thin little smile.
So long as it meant we could part on amicable terms and my duty was not compromised by my own actions, that would be enough for me. “Ask,” I said, “and if I am agreeable to it, then I shall answer.”
“Your name,” Fariha said.
That was a risk. Not the greatest risk that I had taken that night, but it was still a risk for all that. Humans had such a breadth of naming conventions that, if one did not think too hard about it, one might confuse an Aeldari name for a human one. That was especially true if the human in question was not highly educated in lore that the Imperium considered to be proscribed.
It occurred to me that I could lie, but truthfully, I was not familiar enough with human naming conventions to come up with something believable. If Fariha caught me in another lie, that would only cause more trouble.
So I told her.
“Je’sarym,” I replied.
“Jezzarim?”
I winced at the casual butchery of my name. “Jeh. Suh-rrim.” I corrected her, enunciating each part slowly. “Je’sarym.”
“Je’sarym,” Fariha echoed, and it sounded much better that time. “Just Je’sarym? No family name?”
“I have no family,” I said, again, truthfully.
“Hm…okay.” Fariha smiled again. I almost wished she would stop doing that so much. Then she tapped her badge and said, “My name is Fariha Umar, and if you are a traveler, where do you live? I have not seen you in town, nor do I recognize you from the local flophouse.”
I frowned and crossed my arms in mimicry of her. “You said only one condition,” I replied cooly. “Have I not satisfied it?”
Fariha sighed, then nodded. “Very well, and thank you again, Je’sarym.”
“You are…welcome,” I replied awkwardly, and as I turned away toward the forest, I added, “I am glad you are unharmed.”
There was that terribly bright smile again as Fariha said, “The feeling is very mutual…goodnight then, Je’sarym.”
“Goodnight, Fariha.”
The sun had set as I returned to the forest, but as the moon rose high in the night sky, all I could think of was that smile, and those heady amber eyes that glistened in the evening sunlight.