Free A Prison Unsought by Sherwood Smith, Dave Trowbridge Page B

loose.”
    “Interpreter,” Jaim said. “Only one
who can communicate with the Eya’a. But she’s got a shadow.” More than one,
from the looks of the three unobtrusive figures flanking her at a discreet
distance.
    “I should have said, what are they
doing here?” Osri muttered.
    Jaim grinned again. He was used to the Eya’a, who, despite
their fearsome reputation for psi powers, had never harmed anyone aboard the Telvarna .
    “They have ambassadorial status,”
Jaim said. “Though nobody knows if they know it. I guess they’re allowed to
wander anywhere, except the Cap.” Vi’ya
must have got them to come just so she could signal me. Alarm accelerated
his heartbeat, but he hid it as he moved obliquely through the crowd, keeping
Brandon and Vannis in sight.
    Vannis knew they were being watched, but she trusted to
Brandon’s various watchdogs and enjoyed the moment, shutting out the rest of
the room; she hadn’t danced with Brandon for close to ten years, and had
forgotten how good he was. He seemed to like speed. It took skill to weave so
adroitly between the slower twirling pairs.
    She could almost hear her casual words to Rista being
repeated from lips to ear— We are at war,
time to retrench —and rejoiced in having managed to wrest a social triumph
from incipient ignominy.
    Tonight she reigned in her proper sphere. She had to stay
there, and the most expeditious method was to flatter Brandon into the place
she wanted him. His clasp was light and impersonal in spite of their speed, his
attention somewhere beyond her.
    She flicked a glance in that direction and discovered a pair
of small sophonts moving through the humans, their twiggy feet brushing over
the marble floor in a way that gave her shudders. These were supposedly the
ones who could fry brains from a distance. She was vaguely aware of the tall,
dark-eyed unsmiling woman behind them, but dismissed her as a Naval or civil
hireling.
    More interesting was why Brandon watched their progress.
Surely he was not afraid of the Eya’a’s psi powers? Then she remembered someone
saying that these sophonts had also been on the ship that had rescued him.
    “I’m sorry about your brothers,”
she said in the mode of companionship, a degree off from intimacy, which
invited him to respond with intimacy.
    “I’m sorry about your husband,” he
said, in an exact mirror to her tone. No intimacy, then, but not in the mode of
polite acquaintance, another degree outward, well within the boundaries of
politeness, which would make it an effective cut. Tau Srivashti was an expert
at the cut.
    How to interpret Brandon’s response—and should she ask him
about the Faseult ring? Was he too oblivious to see that this would have been a
matchless opportunity to claim power, with its sterling emotional appeal?
    That could wait. Important things first: solidifying her
position. “In light of that horrible vid the Navy just released, it seems the
time for the family to draw together.”
    Brandon took the lead, spinning them into a tight turn.
Vannis caught a flash of rainbow color as they veered between two converging
couples.
    “We all need to draw together,” he
replied, a response so obvious that it was meaningless. Fatuous, even.
    It seemed to prove he was as stupid as Semion had said. She
cast about for some kind of opener to give her a hint of what—if anything—went
on behind those blue eyes.
    She tried again. “If nothing else was true on that vid, one
thing is apparent, that Arthelion is forever lost to us. What remains of the
Panarchy is here, and so here we must begin to rebuild.”
    “There are two facts,” he said as
the music wound down toward a close.
    “What are they?” she asked.
    “As you say, Arthelion is lost. But
my father still lives.”
    She gazed up at him, thinking, Of course he has to say something of the sort . Stupid he might be,
but at least he wasn’t the type of brute who would declare the Panarch dead and
crown himself. “What