I stand in the dark night. My eyes have adjusted long ago, but my mind hasn’t.

This far from the capital, it’s always dark. The dying sun is never visible, and only the far-away stars cast dull light across the frozen tundra.

In the distance I can see the dark shadow of the ice cliff. It’s a shallow slope on one side, and a sheer cliff on the other. No one knows if it’s pure ice, or if there is stone beneath it.

Then I see a star that moves. I look up and squint. It’s moving too slowly to be a falling star, so it must be the flying machine.

I hold my arms up, signaling the flier. I still don’t believe it can spot me from any distance in this darkness, but the Emperor Clan assured me they’d find me.

Behind me is a wagon full of dream leaves, and pulled by two of our clan’s largest ice bears. The ice bears are sleeping, but even their snores are big, and they break the otherwise silent and eternal night.

The small light of the flying machine gets bigger and bigger. They agreed to land here for us, this way I can get payment for the leaves, then walk up the Ice Cliff to sell them. We owe the Ice Cliff clan a large debt, and the Emperor Clan’s payment will clear it entirely, while leaving us just enough left over to take back to Twilight.

The light gets brighter and larger, and I keep waving all the same. I’ve been told these machines have other machines inside them, ones able to see a single person standing on a tundra from horizon to horizon. Probably they can see the ice bears and wagon easier than they can see me.

I expect to hear the machine, but it makes no noise even as comes directly above me. It has no wings like a bird, it simply floats through the air like a boat through the sea.

When it’s nearly directly above my head, I see it growing in size. For a few moments, I’m tempted to wake the ice bears and pull the wagon away, for fear that the flying machine is going to land on top of us, but as it gets lower, I realize it will land many strides away.

I put my hands down and wait. I grip my skullspear. The Twilight Clan and the Emperor Clan are not on good terms, but this deal is necessary. If we don’t soon pay our debt, it will be war.

The machine makes no sound until it’s just above the snow. Then there’s a wind, and a whistling and hissing sound as snow and ice flies up and toward me in sheets.

The ice bears wake and growl, and I put a hand on each of them to calm them. I feel their muscles bulge beneath my hands, but they let out big huffs and sit back down onto their haunches.

One wall of the landed machine seems to melt away, leaking out a blinding purple light. My eyes adjust quickly, and I see four shadows against the purple light moving toward me.

I signal the ice bears to stay, and I move toward the shadows to meet them halfway.

I soon see the silhouette of their horns. All of them are males, and strong. Even though it makes no sense to do so, I still clutch my skullspear. I do not extend it, but I hold it tight and ready should I need to.

The Emperor Clan has ancient weapons and technology, and if I raised my spear, they’d probably disintegrate me in an instant, but holding my spear in situations like this is pure warrior instinct. They are all heavily armored, and my spear would have to hit just right to do any damage.

As they approach and I can make out their faces and the purples of their eyes, I see one of them is holding an impossibly small person wrapped in cloth over their shoulder. Maybe a child?

“Bow down,” one of their voices booms. It sounds oddly distorted.

I stop walking, but do not bow.

“Is the Emperor among you?” I ask, my voice icy.

“We represent your emperor, now bow!”

I tilt my head imperceptibly, just enough for my tall horns to go below theirs.

I see them bristle, but none of them asks me to bow any lower. Instead, one begins walking toward me. I see they are wearing some kind of facemasks. From further away, I thought they were armored helmets, but now they seem to cover only the mouths and nose.

The man approaching holds out his hand. It’s a mask like the one he’s wearing. “Put this on.”

“What for?” I ask.

He turns around and points toward the child. “You don’t want to get that thing’s scent.”

I take the mask and reluctantly strap it onto my face. It tightens against my skin, and soon I hear my own breath as a heavy a hissing sound.

“Those are the leaves?” He asks me.

“Yes,” I say, realizing now–as my voice buzzes through the mask–why their voices sounded strange.

“We will give you this alien,” he says. “You leave the leaves here, or do you need the wagon back?”

I grip my spear tightly. “The alien? We agreed to gold.”

“This alien is worth more than her weight in gold,” he says. “You will take her as payment.”

Some alien–is she even alive still?–is not going to clear out debt with the Ice Cliff clan.

“On behalf of my older brother, Clavius of the Twilight Clan, and for our honor, I demand the agreed-upon payment. Gold for leaves.”

He pulls something off his leg, it’s metal, but it flares purple as he raises it toward me. I find myself extending my skullspear as the purple light casts dark shadows onto his furious expression.

Two more purple lights explode out behind him as two of the others raise their weapons.

“Drop your spear!” He growls at me. “Or we’ll vaporize you, take your leaves, and leave your clan with nothing!”

I consider–for a moment–just giving into my rage and throwing the spear into his exposed neck, where the plates of armor don’t quite touch. He’d go down, and then the other two would shoot before I could pull the spear out of his neck and attack again.

The third one is just holding the alien, not even bothering to raise a weapon, as he knows I’m so badly outgunned that I have no chance at all.

I slam the spear tip down into the snow and growl. “Give me one of those guns,” I say. “And I’ll take this alien as payment.”

The one in front of me shrugs. “We keep the wagon and bears.”

“Done,” I say.

He reaches up to the gun, pulls on some latch, and removes a glowing orb from it, which he palms and pockets. He drops the gun onto the snow.

“I’ve removed the power source. It has just enough left for one–maybe two–shots.”

“This is not what I–”

The other two step forward, holding their guns at me. “Take what you are offered! We’re being more than generous.”

I growl and scoop the gun up. I realize now that I could probably kill one with the gun, and another with the spear. Still not enough. I can’t risk my clan coming up totally empty handed.

The one with the alien approaches me and holds her out. She’s wrapped from head to toe so I can’t even see her.

“Let me see it,” I say.

He pulls the cloth back, and I’m struck immediately by what I see. It’s a hornless thing, with skin as white as snow, and the strangest–most delicate–facial features I’ve ever seen. I feel my heart pound despite myself, and I narrow my eyes. I find my hand on the mask, what does she smell like?”

The Emperor Clansman grabs my wrist. “You don’t want to remove that.”

“What if I do?” I ask.

“It’s your choice,” he says. “But if you do, you will lose everything but this alien. I promise you that.”

“So, her scent is a weapon?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Use her how you wish. As a hole for your spear, or a weapon, or currency.”

“A hole for my spear?” I ask.

He points to my loincloth, toward the spear between my legs, which I realize has hardened and rose at the sight of the alien’s face.

“A hole?” I ask.

“You’ll see,” he says.

He throws her down onto the snow. It’s an insulting gesture, to show that now that she is my property, she can be thrown onto the ground rather than held delicately.

“She’s very weak,” he says. “You have to protect her from cold or she’ll die. She’s much weaker than even our females. She’s been gifted our language, so you should be able to order her around.”

I scoop her up off the snow, and at once I realize just how delicate she really is. She feels so light in my arms, as if she weighed nothing at all. I hold her with one arm hooked beneath her knees, and the other near waist. Her waist is impossibly small, I can feel that even beneath the cloth.

I look up and see the Emperor Clansmen walking back toward their ship. The wall melts back together and cuts off the purple glow. The ship rises, throwing ice and snow at me once again. This time I turn my back toward it and clutch the alien against me, blocking and protecting her from the cold wind.

A purple light casts down onto my wagon and bears, and they float up into the air. I see them disappear into a purple glow of the ship, and then the ship quickly shrinks into the sky, until it looks like a small star moving away toward the daylight of the capital.

I now have the strangest alien I’ve ever seen in my arms, and no way to keep her warm since they took my wagon and bears. The Ice Cliff clan will not accept her as payment–though they might steal her if they found I had her–and my own clan will likely blame me for accepting her as payment. As if I had any choice.

Never again will I trust the Emperor Clan.