“My name’s Tolta, by the way.”
“Dabni.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Dabni.” And it was. The young woman hadn’t actually interacted with her son, that was probably beyond the pale, but she could admit having seen him. Wonder of wonders. “You know, my mother and his mother grew up together and are still the best of friends. He and I have been around each other our whole lives and he even introduced me to my late husband. I’m sure there are all kinds of stories I could tell of him from long before he was marked.”
“Oh! I’d like that very much.”
“Well, we should make a date of it then. Perhaps over tea sometime.”
“I have tea,” said Dabni. “In the back. I mean, I could make us tea. And I have some cookies a customer dropped off that I don’t mind sharing. If you’re interested, I mean.”
Tolta bit her lip at the girl’s obvious infatuation. Did other people see Jorl this way? Perhaps there was more to the gossip she’d set in motion than she realized.
“That sounds wonderful. Thank you.”
Dabni scrambled to clear a spot on a table and drag over two weathered but sturdy chairs. “Make yourself at home. I’ll just be a minute with the tea.” She vanished back around the corner of a tall bookshelf, her voice carrying back. “And while you’re telling me about Jorl, I can see about finding you a book for your son.”
Tolta settled back and smiled. Better and better.
FIFTEEN. MEETING SILENCE
BARSK’S first generation of Fant had bargained with the Alliance in the creation of their Compact, and each believed they’d gotten the better deal. The other planets enjoyed Barsk’s pharmacopeia, and the Fant received isolation, a guarantee that their cultural beliefs would be respected by the Alliance, and a promise that only Eleph and Lox would ever set foot upon their planet.
The Alliance had been willing to let them have Barsk eight hundred years earlier due to the soaking weather. Except for the Lox and Eleph, all of the other races had fur. While a few enjoyed the water, none appreciated an endless forecast of rain. There was also the matter of land, or rather, the lack of it.
The northern hemisphere didn’t contain a speck of earth above sea level. The pole contained enough solid ice to constitute a continent, but it couldn’t support life. Just south of the equator, two chains of islands provided the planet’s only habitable land, the western and eastern archipelagos. Barsk’s only true continent lay at its southern pole; several type of flightless birds dwelled along its edges, feeding on the fish that spawned in shallow waters along its shoreline. To the rest of the Alliance, trying to live on the tiny polar continent made an existence on the rainy islands seem luxurious. And none of them had wanted the islands in the first place.
But it did make the southern continent the perfect place for a secret base.
Nonyx-Captain Selishta hadn’t bothered to toss Jorl into a cell. Instead, he had followed her to the ship’s bridge, and then settled into a corner when she’d directed him to keep out of the way while she relieved the acting commander who saluted and departed back the way they had come. The Cheetah took the time to speak briefly with the remaining bridge officers. Selishta maintained a rigid discipline on her ship; none of her crew had so much as glanced his way.
When she advanced on him in his corner, she moved with that same liquid gait, stopping just out of reach of arms or trunk.
“I am thinking you might be an omen of changing fortune, Ensign-Retired. Certainly you have altered my belief in the tales that suggest all of you Fant are as dumb as rocks. None of the other Fant I’ve acquired on this mission could manage intelligent conversation, though perhaps that was a function of their age and their insistence on being dead.” Her lip curled up in a toothy smirk. “You’re not dead, are you, Ensign-Retired?”
Jorl whipped his trunk up at a stiff angle, giving the captain a salute as only a Lox or Eleph could, a foolish display he’d used in the Patrol before he’d learned how much it antagonized his superiors. “Not dead, and more than alive enough to know when an officer is obeying illegal orders.”
The Nonyx had flinched at his salute, but smiled at his reply, her whole mouth gaping wide to reveal small teeth and pairs of larger fangs above and below. “My exemption from your Compact is not illegal. The same senate that crafted it has the power to issue exceptions to it. So spare me further arguments about my presence or interference in your culture.”
“Even dumb rocks know that a treaty cannot be altered so conveniently. Surely the same is true of Patrol captains.”
She frowned, her nostrils wrinkling in a sudden whuff of air. “I find your novelty already wearing thin even as your presence thickens the air on my bridge.”
She darted a hand behind her in a crisp gesture. A blue-clad Jaguar arrived at her side but the captain offered no acknowledgment and continued with Jorl. “Your amusement value notwithstanding, I do not see ship’s discipline served by allowing you to remain here, even for the short span of our return trip. But we have exchanged promises and I will not stain your record with imprisonment. Rismas!”
The Jaguar responded with an instantaneous “Ma’am!”
“May I introduce Theraonca-Ensign Rismas. He will escort you down to the secondary hold, taking you there the long way around so by the time you reach your destination, we will have reached ours. Others of my crew will have assembled the rest of our … cargo there. I’m sure you’ll fit right in.”
The captain turned her head and with a nod caused the ensign to step closer to Jorl.
“Rismas, while it would be splendid to assume that our guest will be civilized and do as bid, assumptions are not the basis of command. If he deviates or otherwise stalls your well-intentioned efforts to deliver him to the hold, you are authorized to subdue him with such ever means you believe will be most effective.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
She turned her attention back to the Fant. “I think that explains things well enough, don’t you? I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings. It would not surprise me if the Theraonca-ensign resents that you once held the same rank he possesses, so if you give him the slightest provocation, I have no doubt that he will carry out his directive with the utmost zeal. Are we clear?”
“Where is this ship going? Where are you taking me?” asked Jorl.
Selishta showed teeth again. “Who knew the Lox could be so comedic? You’ll have your answer when we arrive. I’m sure the officer waiting at our destination will take personal responsibility for you once you’re off my ship. But I believe we are done. The novel experience of chatting with a Lox-ensign-retired, is fleeting at best.”
She pivoted to regard her ensign long enough to say, “Rismas, you have your orders,” and had crossed the bridge to speak with her other officers before the last word had left her lips.
“You know,” said Rismas, “I’ve seen images and flims of Fant before, but you’re much uglier in person.”
Jorl’s reply died in his mouth unspoken as a sensation he’d not had since childhood struck him without warning. A thrumming that resonated in his head, a child’s rhyming game long forgotten. Playing … Straying … Will you be betraying?
“Did you hear that?”
“What, can you hear the engines engage with those giant ears of yours?”