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sounds
indulged.”
    “You could say she’s a bit spoiled,”
Marianne admitted. “But the Sural doesn’t let her do anything that
would bring her to harm. She’s not allowed outside the keep,
however much she wants to go play in the snow. The cold out there
is dangerous, even for them. Deep winter, they call it. And the
glaciers are growing. They don’t make it to the stronghold plateau,
but they’re close enough.”
    “I see you’re wearing a Tolari robe,”
Adeline teased. “You’re not going native on us, are
you?”
    Marianne shook her head, laughing.
“It’s cold in the stronghold—well, to me anyway—and these robes are
warmer than anything I brought with me.”
    “Really?”
    “There could be a good market for this
fabric on ice worlds. Something to think about trading for, or
maybe teaching them to mass produce. I don’t know what it’s made
of—the Sural becomes cagey when I ask. It feels thin and
lightweight, like silk, but it’s fantastically warm. I’m wearing a
pair of their slippers, too, though they don’t fit right in the
toe. Tolari don’t have toes.”
    “What huh?”
    “Imagine if the skin between your toes
all fused together but the bones were still there, with the same
joints. Still useful for balance because the big toe bone is the
same, but less individual flexibility. They can’t bend just one
part, the whole assembly flaps. And they don’t call them feet. They
call them peds.”
    “Huh,” Adeline said again. Marianne
could see her making notes. “How’d you find this out?”
    “Kyza used to pull off her slippers to
suck on her peds. And chew on them too, but she stopped doing that
when she started getting teeth.” Marianne grinned, remembering the
surprise on Kyza’s face the first time she bit herself.
    “Looks like you’re happy down
there.”
    “It’s tolerable,” Marianne
said.
    “No, you’re happy, I can
tell.”
    “Addie, now you’re as bad as
Laura.”
    Adeline laughed.
    <<>>
    The Sural leaned back at his desk,
thrumming with satisfaction. His daughter’s tutor was happy,
now that she had the social contact she required. She had emerged
from her gloom and smiled her captivating smile more often. An
image of that smile played across his mind’s eye, and his own lips
curved of their own accord.
    He shook himself. She still hid
something, though she was not a trained operative. It was obvious
she had been ordered to report everything she learned—he had
expected Central Command to use any human they sent as a passive
spy—but she lacked any covert training. No, something troubled and
even pained Marianne. He could sense it when it came to the surface
now and again.
    On occasion, he attempted to lead her
into talking about it, but when the subject turned to adolescence
and relationships, she would become evasive and close down her
emotions. He was convinced she had never formed an intimate
attachment with another individual. In fact, she seemed to have no
attraction at all to others. The Spinster Schoolmarm , he had
heard her call herself, for all that she was so young by his
people’s standards—twenty-eight human years was a season less than
fourteen on Tolar, little more than a child on a world where the
young came of age at thirteen.
    His thoughts turned to Kyza. His
daughter delighted all who came into contact with her. In the
family wing’s privacy, he could play with her and let her laugh
with abandon. He wished he could share that with Marianne, but what
he did not wish the humans on the ship to know, he could not allow
her to see. It might force her into choosing between her loyalty to
her people and her growing loyalty to himself, at least for the
present, and it necessitated keeping his own emotions under tight
control so that Kyza never displayed strong feelings when Marianne
was present. He regretted the deception, but the humans had to
continue believing for now that his people were cold and heartless.
They would learn otherwise soon