A Hiru. I didn’t realize any of them were left.

The thing saw us and turned, creaking. Thick lubricant squirted onto the gears, pinkish and greasy. The body clanked, ground, and moved, the metal protesting. The wind brought its noxious odor our way and I nearly gagged.

Next to me Sean had gone completely still.

“What the hell is that?”

“That’s a Hiru. They are completely harmless, but most of the creatures in the galaxy find them revolting. Please try not to gag.”

The Hiru slowly made its way to us and halted five feet from me.

I bowed my head and smiled. “Welcome to Gertrude Hunt.”

Something screeched within the Hiru, like nails on a chalkboard.

Don’t wince. Don’t vomit. Don’t offend the guest.

A tenor voice came forth, quiet and sad. “I have come with an offer for you.”

“It will be my pleasure to hear it out. Please, follow me.”

The Hiru walked into the stables, one tortured step at a time.

* * *

I led the Hiru into the front room. To do anything else would be an insult. Helen was still under the table. My niece had gone very quiet.

Maud met us in the doorway of the kitchen. She saw the Hiru and smiled. Not a wince, not a blink, nothing to indicate that she found anything about the guest distasteful.

“Would you like to share our meal?” I asked.

“No. I do not consume carbon-based compounds.”

“Is there a particular dish that I may prepare for you?”

The Hiru shook its head. The gears screeched. “Thank you for your kindness. It is not necessary.”

In my entire life I had only seen two Hirus. One stayed at my parents’ inn and the other had ground and stumbled his way through the streets of Baha-char. Creatures from all over the galaxy had given it a wide berth and not just because they found it revolting. Standing next to a Hiru was as dangerous as running into an advancing enemy on the battlefield.

I concentrated and pulled part of the wall out, shaping it to fit the Hiru’s body. “Please, sit down.”

The Hiru bent its body the way a human would when doing a squat and carefully lowered himself onto the new seat. Helen pulled the tablecloth aside, peeked out, sneezed, and vanished back under the table.

“You said you had an offer for me?”

“Yes.”

I wasn’t sure if it was his translator or his true emotions, but everything he said sounded sad.

“Do you require privacy for this conversation?”

“No. This concerns the werewolf as well.”

Sean, who had quietly parked himself by the wall between me and the Hiru, startled. “Why?”

“She may need help,” the Hiru said.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“Do you know our history? Do you know of the Draziri?”

A quick glance at Sean told me he didn’t.

“A screen, please. Files on the Hiru/Draziri conflict,” I told the inn.

Arland joined Maud in the doorway. They stood side by side, each at their half of the door, completely ignoring each other’s presence.

A screen slid from the ceiling. On it a deep orange sun, darker than our own, burned, surrounded by twelve planets.

“The Hiru lived here, on the sixth planet.” I beckoned with my fingers, and the recording zoomed in on a small planet. It looked like a ball of dark smoke, its soot-choked atmosphere glowing weakly with fluorescent green. “They were an ancient civilization, capable of interstellar travel, and they mined their system and the surrounding star systems for resources. The Draziri live here.”

The image zoomed out, and a second star appeared, this one a familiar yellow color. Seven planets orbited it, the fifth one a ball of magenta, green, and blue.

“The Draziri are a relatively young civilization, a martial theocracy with a religion based on admission to afterlife following a lifetime of service and piety. They discovered interstellar travel only a century ago. The planet of the Hiru was their first stop.”

The dead hunk of the Hiru’s planet expanded, taking up half of the screen.

“We don’t know why the Draziri declared a holy war on the Hiru. They are moderately xenophobic, as are most theocracies, but they have since interacted with the rest of the galaxy and while they keep to themselves, they haven’t attempted to exterminate anyone else. We do know the Draziri invaded the Hiru star system and detonated some sort of device that caused a chain reaction in the planet’s atmosphere.”

“Millions died in one hour,” the Hiru said.

“Directly after, the Protopriest of the Draziri proclaimed the Hiru to be an abomination. The Draziri spent the next fifty years hunting the remaining Hiru across the galaxy. It is said that a Draziri who kills a Hiru is guaranteed a place in the afterlife.”

“There are only a thousand of us left,” the Hiru said. “Our species will become extinct in the next twenty cycles if we do not find a way to reproduce. To mate and raise our young, certain conditions must be met. We cannot meet them while we are being hunted. We have appealed for Arbitration, but the Draziri declined.”

And nothing would be done about it. I dissolved the screen back into the wall.

“Can’t you appeal for refuge?” Sean asked.

“We have,” the Hiru said. “The Yaok system allowed us to settle within their territory. They promised us protection. We sent the first fifty colonists, but the Draziri invaded the system and wiped us out.”