To fill square one-two on my card for trope_bingo. Story three of a new series.

No Ao3 standard warnings apply.

“Do you seduce every bounty hunter that catches you?” Yira Trembane had his hand halfway up Jahnan’s thigh, and it was creeping ever higher. She was having trouble focusing on the navigation – not a good idea, when using a WhatIf drive. She didn’t want to end up stuck in some alternate-history where he had captured her.

“You make it sound like I get caught a lot.” His hand slid just an inch further up.

Jahnan closed her eyes and thought about trees. “Your dataslip says you did. Seventeen arrests since you turned twenty, and half of those for escape-from-custody. How many times did you escape by seduction?”

“Only three. Four if you count… well, three. But I can’t get away from you, don’t you remember?” He tapped the collar around his throat. “We don’t know what this thing will do to me… kozel-wife.”

The Tod’cxeckz’ri clerk had locked the thing on him, the same time said clerk put an earring on Jahnan’s ear and a bracelet on her wrist, the same time they were, through a paperwork misunderstanding, declared husband and wife by a Tod’cxeckz’ri law. Jahnan had just wanted to claim her bounty on the infamous thief; Yira had just wanted to get back into jail so he could escape again.

“‘Four if you count…?’” she prompted.

“Oh. Well, there was this one time.” He leaned back in his seat, his hands tangled in his braids. “I didn’t escape, exactly. I was planet-hopping, having just disposed of an Mestonian Diamond-”

“A Mestonian Diamond?” That one wasn’t in his dossier, and Jahnan could see why. The Meston Syndicate was unbreakable – or so their reputation would have it.”

“Not that I’d admitting to anything. But I was planet-hopping, as I said…”

and there I found myself on an omnibus between Soffen Seven and Mark Four. The public transit in that part of the galaxy is really nice, posh, polite, and they don’t ask questions. I’ve used it more than a few times – in the past, of course.

But this time, I found myself sitting right next to the bounty hunter Ueda Tsutomu. Now Ueda has quite a reputation to begin with – I’m sure you’ve heard of him – and, while I really wouldn’t want to cross him, he’s generally very polite. However, I had at least two bounties on my head at the time, to say nothing of what the Mestona might have done under the radar. So Ueda was pretty much the last person in the universe I wanted to see.

And for about the first third of the trip, I thought I might be doing okay. Sure, my braids are a bit distinctive, but I’d done the old dress-as-a-pilgrim trick that covers nine-tenths of everything you might notice about me, and I was hunching down in my seat and reading an old flat-screen comic on my reader. And Ueda was reading notes – he wasn’t hunting me, you see. He was after a small-time criminal who’d pissed off even more ‘wrong’ people than I had. And I think I would have gotten away if the Omnibus hadn’t tried to occupy the same space as a tour liner.

So there were were, all of a sudden, skid-slip-starcrud, crash-landed on a backwater planet that had three exports: an opiate-like thing, its lovely boys and girls, and tourist kitch. And the way the bus landed, well, Ueda Tsutomu landed right on top of me.

Have you met him? Ueda Tsutomu is a very handsome man, and he’s built out of rock and brick – solid, absolutely solid. And he took a good look at my eyes, and then one braid escaped, the way they do – they don’t have minds of their own, we’re not actually Medusas, that’s just a myth, but sometimes they, ah, snake out – and he was there, looking at my eyes and that nose, and one Medusa braid, and, well, he knew who I was.

What would you do? I mean, we weren’t going anywhere for a while, but the place we’d landed on didn’t have enough civilization for me to get properly lost in. So I kissed him.

Don’t let anyone lie to you about Ueda Tsutomu. He may be a hard-ass, but he can kiss like nobody’s business. And as for the rest…

…we were stuck on that backwater for two weeks while they sorted out the wreckage. Tsutomu and I left our little cabin… maybe twice. Three times, I lie. Because we went to the beach. Although that’s a little bit fuzzy. That opiate-type they sell? It grows in a seagrass on all their northern beaches, and, yes, we’d landed in the north. The southern hemisphere, I’ve been told, actually has industry.

“The long and the short of is is, Tsutomu never asked my name, and I never told him. We went with the polite fiction that I was, indeed, a Medusan on pilgrimage back home, just… not the one I was. And I left there with far more of a working knowledge of that particular bounty hunter.

Yira ended his story with a leer. Jahnan, who couldn’t help but notice the way Yira’s hand on her thigh twitched and moved every time he mentioned Ueda Tsutomu, could only shake her head.

“I thought you didn’t like being called Medusan. Me – Shimestrians, that is.”

“We don’t.” Yira grinned widely at her. “But when a man like Ueda Tsutomu is talking, believe me, you’ll let him call you anything you want.”

Jahnan watched the way he smiled, and wondered, if the story was true, who, exactly, had seduced whom. “So,” she coughed. “You only seduce most of your captors. I feel so special.”

Next: IV

If you are reading from Trope Bingo, Part IV is not part of the bingo but an integral part of the story.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/893899.html. You can comment here or there.

To fill square one-two on my card for trope_bingo. Story two of a new series.

No Ao3 standard warnings apply.

Jahnan had one of the richest bounties of her career literally in her grasp. She also had an earring that said that she’d married him under Tod’cxeckz’ri law and a paper telling her how to get rid of him and the earring, and a Tod’cxeckz’ri clerk smirking at her from behind the safety of his counter.

She ran her thumb down the list. “Okay. First choice is your parole officer. Kill two birds with one stone that way.”

“No way.” Yira Trembane shook his head. “I am not going within a star system of that maniac if I can avoid it.”

“You know the terms of your parole included not leaving the star system.”

“Why they were stupid enough to parole me in the first place I’ve never figured out.” Yira smirked. “He’s out. How about my ex-wife? Well… my first ex-wife.”

“Isn’t that the one all the media were calling ‘Bonnie to your Clyde?’” That had been several years ago – and two prison escapes and a parole violation past.

“Right until she Bonnied right up my Clyde, yeah. I’m sure she’s willing to say I’m a lousy husband.”

“And I’m not willing to get within a planet of her. All right. How about…” She ran her finger down the list.

“How about my mother? She’ll get me out of anything.” Yira’s grin was irrepressible.

“That’s what I’m worried about.” Jehnan shook her head. “Well, where’s she live?”

“Berich, Oswurn system.” He threw it off like he was talking about something in the core. Jehnan snorted.

“No. We’ll find someone else. That’s out in the Lawless territories.”

“They’re not really Lawless, you know.” It was the smirk that did it. “Worried about losing me?”

“Fine. Fine, we’ll go talk to your mother.” She was going to regret this, she knew it. But better losing the bounty then ending up stuck married to Yira Trembane.

“If we leave now, we ought to be able to catch the cross-system shuttle. It doesn’t stop in the Oswurn system, but it does stop in Cephapren. Bing, bang, boom, back here in ten days, plenty of time to get me out of your hands.”

It was Jahnan’s turn to smirk. “Who says we’re taking public transit? Come on, kiczka-husband, let’s go.” Every time she used the Tod’cxeckz’ri word for “submissive spouse,” he flinched. She was going to used it as often as possible between here and Berich and back again.

“I could start calling you ‘Kozel-wife,’ you know.” He wasn’t so much following her out of the claims office as he was allowing himself to be dragged along. It was better than the fighting-every-step-of-the-way he’d been until here, so Jahnan would take it.

“By all means, please feel free to call me ‘Mistress-wife.’ I’m sure your mother will love that.”

“My mother doesn’t speak Tod’cxeckz’ret.” Yira looked around; the spaceport was not exactly bustling, with nothing but a couple shuttle flights and some private ships waiting. “If we’re not going to the cross-system, where are we going?”

“My ship.” She did enjoy the ability to surprise someone like Yira Trembane. “What, did you think I followed around bail-jumpers and parole-skippers on public transit? I’d never catch anyone.”

“Fine with me. Then I’d still be in the wind.” He squirmed against the restraints; Jahnan tightened her grip. She’d lost him twice that way.

“Oh, someone would catch you. A big famous thief like you? All the bounty hunters are looking for you.” She pushed him forward with a hand on the small of his back. “Here’s my ship.”

He’d almost slipped the cuffs, but it wouldn’t matter in a moment. “This?” He whistled. “How’d a bounty hunter afford this?”

The Maru wasn’t a big ship – it could hold four people, sleep the same four, and had two coldsleep pods for emergencies – but it was sleek, pretty, and fast. “Let’s just say you aren’t the first high-profile runner I’ve caught. In with you.”

“Unh-unh.” He dug his feet in and balked. “Ships like these have those bratty smart computers.”

“Yeah, and you don’t think that collar you’re wearing does, too? You want to be my kiczka-husband forever?” She caught him just as he was turning around, the cuffs hanging uselessly off of his left wrist, and gave him a pointed shove. “Maru, catch.”

“Catching.” The nearest passenger seat rotated and pushed forward, shoving into Yira’s calves. He stumbled, and the armrests caught his wrists and wrapped restraints around both. “Caught.”

“Umnf.” Yira shifted. “See? Bratty smart computers.” While he got situated – the Maru wouldn’t let him go – Jahnan settled into the pilot’s seat and began punching in coordinates.

“What sort of drive – ow, I need that – does this thing have?” Yira shook his braids out of his face and wriggled against the still-moving seat. “Is it a Tungarian Twister? Those are pretty fast.”

“Oh, no. The last ship I had was a ‘Twister but this one’s a What-If Drive.” She flipped three switches and grabbed the handles, feeling the faint tingle through her hands. “You said Berich, right? Oswurn system?”

“A… No, no, no, no, no, no, let me off this ship right now…” Yria began struggling in earnest against the seat. The Maru hummed in his ear and wrapped him up a little bit tighter, soft restraints covering his forehead and his lap.

“Almost there. Close your eyes and think of home.” She squeezed the handles and pushed forward, using the mundane rockets to lift them off the ground. “Five, four, three, two, one…”

Yira screamed. The Maru moved between worlds, stopping briefly in the infinite of possibilities.

“Okay, where are we landing? It’s a big planet.”

“Bienville… starcrud, I hate those things. I always think I’m going to leave part of me in another dimension.” He twitched against the restraints. “Can I have a hand?” For the first time, Yira Trembane sounded plaintive. “Just to check?”

“Bienville Sud or Bienville Equatorial? Big planet, Yira.”

“You know Berich?” He peeled his eyes open. “Oh, we’re really there. Bienville Sud-Est, there’s a tiny spaceport at-” He rattled off coordinates; Jahnan punched them in, and checked to be sure they led to an actual landing place. “My mother’s place isn’t far from there, if we rent a carre.”

“I can tell this is going to be fun. Still, sooner we do it, the sooner I can turn you in.”

“And the sooner I’m free of your insane ship. It’s pinching me!”

“She likes to do that.”

It took them twenty minutes to land and another twenty for Jahnan to get Yira back in proper restraints and into a waiting carre. She’d pulled up his mother’s name from the dataweb and used that to find the woman’s address – it was actually rather close to the Bienville Sud-Est spaceport – rather than trust Yira’s directions.

The carre zoomed along the packed-dirt roads – Bienville really was a backwater, but at least the rental carre had good lifts – while Yira squirmed and fussed. “Maybe we shouldn’t…”

“It was your idea. And there aren’t many people on that list that we’d both want to talk to.”

“But I mean, do I have to be in these?” He held up his hands the short centimeters the chain would allow, displaying the shackles linked to his belt. “They make me look like some sort of-”

“Theif? Jailbreaker?”

“Criminal. Here, to the right before the swamp,” he gestured awkwardly. “It’s the little road you can barely see between the mock-cypress and the weed-tree.”

The carre’s positioning software was telling her the same thing. Jahnan swung right onto an even less-maintained dirt path, the carre’s lifts having a hard time of the potholes and – really?! – tire tracks. But the software said they were almost there.

Yira’s mother, it appeared, lived in a crate home, a sealed-seam collection of plastifoam shipping crates, this one stacked three high and at least four deep. A crate had been cut in half lengthwise to serve as a porch, and the front door was salvage from another crate. Jahnan parked the carre next to an older but still-quality carre of a very similar model.

“Don’t go to the front door. Nobody but government and cops go do the front door.” Yira tilted his head off to the side of the structure. “Over there. She’ll know we’re coming, of course.”

“Of course.” Jahnan unbuckled Yira from the seat and “helped” him out of the carre – keeping a grip on him the whole time, of course – and walked as casually as captor-holding-tight-to-captive could walk up to the captive’s mother’s side door.

The door was open before Jahnan could knock, and the barrel of a pulse rifle greeted her. “What are you doing with my son?”

“Ma-ma-a-n,” Yira whined. “Don’t shoot.”

Jahnan cleared her throat. “Hon Joceye” (or so the data had said she was called), “I’m a bounty hunter, name of Nehanani Jahnan, and in claiming Yira Trembane as lawful catch-”

“There’s nothing lawful to catch my son at!” She waved the rifle in Jahnan’s face. “So there’s no way he could be your lawful catch.”

“Be that as it may,” she glanced at Yira, but he was cringing away from his mother as if the rifle was pointed at him, “the bounty was posted, and I was attempting to claim Yira-”

“My son ne est pas un criminal!”

“I believe you, ma’am. However, the bounty was there- Yira?”

“She won’t listen to me any more than she will to you.” He shrugged. “Maman, Hon Nehanani caught me.” He held up his cuffed wrists. “And the Tod’cxeckz’ri-”

“What were you doing in Tod’cxeckza?” The bellow was ear-searing and the rifle was now pointed at Yira. “Only criminals and perverted little beans go to Tod’cxeckza, and I did not raise you to be any sort of perverted criminal, Yira Mikalla Trembane.”

Jahnan put herself between mother and son. “Hon Joceye-”

“Don’t you hon me, missy. Get out of the way and let me deal with my son as he ought to be dealt with. Being on Tod’cxeckza – Yira, what are you wearing around your neck?” Her eyes slipped from Yira’s collar to the earring on Jahnan’s ear. “Oh, no, you don’t. You two get off my property.” She shook the rifle again.

“Maman…”

“You get gone, now, or I will remind you what it is to be your maman. You don’t come back until you’ve cleansed all Tod’cxeck poison out of your mind. I did not raise you to be someone’s pet. And you.” The rifle pointed steadily at Jahnan’s skull. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

“We’re leaving, maman.” Yira tugged on Jahnan’s arm with both hands. “Aren’t we, Kozel-wife?”

Jahnan let herself be tugged. “Yes.” She hadn’t had a weapon pointed at her in quite a while. “Yes, let’s be leaving.” She hoped Yira had more than one parent still alive.

Next for Story: Mad in Atter
Next for Trope Bingo: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/893899.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/888191.html. You can comment here or there.

To fill square one-one on my card for trope_bingo. Story one of a new series. No Ao3 standard warnings apply.

“I need to claim this criminal as my lawful catch and bounty.” Jahnan repeated the phrase three times – once in Standard to the clerk, then again in Standard to the translation machine, and then in the local language – all while trying to maintain her hold on the criminal in question.

“Your Tod’cxeckz’ret is awful.” Her captive jerked, trying to pull away from her grip. Jahnan held on for life and profit. Not only did Yira Trembane outmass her considerably and have at least a decimeter in height on her, but he was slippery as all space and had gotten out of his bonds three times since she’d caught him. “Here, let me.” He looked at the clerk and spat out a line of Tod’cxeckz’ret, then translated into Standard. “She’s here to collect the bounty on me.”

“You’re awfully helpful all of a sudden.” Jahnan regained her grip on Yira’s forearm. She wasn’t losing this one, not again.

“Prisons are easier to get away from than you. Sooner I’m in custody-”

“The sooner you’re out and earning me another bounty. Fine.” She looked up at the clerk. “Claim?” She tried the Tod’cxeckz’ret word again, “Get’geld?”

“Yes, yes.” The clerk churred and clicked at the translator, which responded in a brusque tone in Standard. “Here, then, standard form, both of you thumbprint, sign, here.”

Jahnan expected Yira to balk, but once again, he cooperated. From the way he pricked his thumb and smeared the blood on the paper, he’d done this as many times as Jahnan herself had.

“Very good.” The clerk filed the paper away behind the desk. “If Yira Trembane would kneel to facilitate process, please?”

“Slip that to a black hole sideways.” Yira took a step back, pulling against Jahnan’s arm. “I don’t kneel.”

“If hon Trembane would kneel, process will be completed quickly.” The clerk stepped out from behind the desk; he was nearly as short as Jahnan, only coming up to Yira’s chin.

“You want to get out of here as much as I do,” Jahnan pointed out. “I want my wages, Trembane.”

“And I want my nice cozy prison cell,” he growled. “But I don’t do kneeling.”

The clerk produced a hand-held Taser. “Hon Trembane will kneel or hon Trembane will be helped to kneel. The process must be done properly.”

“Starcrud, I got it, I got it.” Yira’s hands were handcuffed behind his back, but he knelt gracefully anyway. “Next time you catch me, hunter, let’s skip Tod’cxeckza, all right?”

“Next time I catch you, I’m gonna put you in a coldsleep canister and tow you behind my ship.”

“Hon Trembane will not have to worry about that again.” The clerk set his hands around Yira’s neck, so quickly that the thief didn’t have a chance to pull away, and just as quickly removed them.

Where his hands had been, a solid circle of metal now sat.

“If hon Nehanani would sit, please?”

Jahnan pulled up a chair. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Yira twisting and turning, trying to see what had been done to him. “You’re not doing that to me.”

“Of course not. Hon Nehanani has laid the claim.” The clerk showed her what he was holding – a bracelet of the same silvery metal as the collar Yira was wearing and a complicated earring.

She’d never said no to jewelry from strange men before. Jahnan sat down and allowed the clerk to apply the earring and bracelet: earring to right side, bracelet to left.

“There.” The clerk stepped back. “Hons Nehanani and Trembane are now bound and joined in Tod’cxeckz’ri Kozel-kiczka marriage. That is, ah.” The clerk gave the matter a moment of thought, “the closest approximation in Standard would be… master and servant?

“Wait, what?” Yira bounced to his feet faster than he thought possible. “No, no, no, get this thing off of me.”

“Marriage?” Jahnan shook her head. The earring jingled and jangled against her head. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“You claimed hon Trembane as yours and he agreed. Formal marriage ceremony has taken place, and you have thumb-printed the contract.”

That’s what she got for not reading the small print. “Okay, okay. But we didn’t want to get – damnit, Trambane, I think the translator is getting it mangled, you try.”

He clicked and churred through the Tod’cxeckz’ret phrases. “We don’t want to be bound together. This was a mistake. How do we undo it?”

“Tod’cxeckz’ri Kozel-kiczka marriages cannot be divorced, but they can be annulled.” The clerk passed Jahnan a list, written in Standard, Tod’cxeckz’ret, and five other languages. “To obtain an annulment, you must have a notarized document from one of these relations, stating that Hon Trembane is unfit for marriage.”

“Me? What about her?”

“You are the kiczka. The fault must lie in you.” The clerk nodded at them. “You have thirty days.”

Jahnan read over the paper again. “Well, shit. Come on, kiczka -husband. Let’s get searching.”

Next:The Tod’cxeckz’ri Paper Part II