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Lord Eiipul gestured third-degree understanding coupled with second-degree contempt. “That will not be required. I have encountered humanss before. In the brief time you have been sspeaking your sstink hass ssufficiently impinged upon the appropriate receptorss.” His nostrils flared meaningfully as he turned to eye his uneasy, expectant offspring and their friend.

“You were correct. I do find thiss dissplay of interesst. Later we will find out how you arranged it.” Raising the curved drinking utensil he was holding, he turned back to Flinx. “Before I have you killed,” he said casually, “I need to know sseveral thingss, ssoftsskin. How you came to be on Blasussarr, how you managed to find your way into my home, and how you ssucceeded in convincing the mosst favored among my brood to find you worthy of not being sslaughtered on ssight.”

“I'm a likable kind of guy,” Flinx told him as Pip's head rose from his shoulder to lock on the adult AAnn. Lord Eiipul noticed the movement. He did not acknowledge the minidrag's sudden attention, but neither did he ignore it.

“Your masstery of a modesst tongue doess you jusstice,” his host declared. “It will not ssave your life, but I confess I find it a remarkable disstraction. How come you by ssuch fluency in a language mosst of your kind desspisse and the majority cannot manage?”

“I come by it honestly,” Flinx told him. “By study, through life experience, and as one of your own.”

Eiipul IXc leaned close to her brother. “Our ssuppossitionss were correct—the creature iss mad.”

Kiijeem looked on in dismay. This was not going as he had hoped. Had he been wrong to believe the softskin? If the human did not do something dramatic in the next minute or two, Lord Eiipul would terminate the confrontation—and likely the softskin as well, with consequences to his increasingly uneasy progeny and their worried friend that would be far from pleasant.

“I had not thought my perceptive abilitiess sso diminisshed with age.” With slow deliberation the senior AAnn set his half-full drinking vessel aside. It immediately attached itself to a nearby freestanding clasper. His eyes never left the tall visitor.

“You look like a ssoftsskin, you sstink like a ssoftsskin, and desspite your esstimable command of our language, you sspeak with the oiliness of a ssoftsskin.” As one scaly palm drifted above the other Flinx could make out the nano-instrumentation that had been etched into the nye's wrist scales. Lord Eiipul had no need to pick up a weapon—one had been embedded in the back of his left hand. “Correct me if I assume too much, but I pressume that you will alsso die like a human. But not before you have provided ssatissfactory ansswerss to the quesstionss I earlier possed.”

Without hesitation Flinx advanced until he was standing within striking range. The reduced distance between them did not go unnoticed by Lord Eiipul IX.

“My formal name is Philip Lynx.” He glanced over at the increasingly anxious Kiijeem and the two Eiipul siblings. “I am more commonly known as Flinx.” Executing a flawless gesture demanding of first-degree respect, he added yet one more name.

“I am also called, and have been authoritatively recorded as, Flinx LLVVRXX—of the Tier Ssaiinn.”

Talon-tipped fingers continued to hover above the muscular back of a hand that had been etched with lethal instrumentation. One set of nictating membranes flickered as Lord Eiipul blinked back at the uncannily self-possessed visitor.

“How do you, human, come to have knowledge of that noted Tier of eclectic artissanss? And how do you come by a name that, while common, reekss of validity?” Off to one side, his offspring were gaping at the mammal in their midst.

As for Kiijeem, he stood astounded and indignant in equal measure. The softskin had revealed much to him, but in all their nightly sessions together it had never once made known this naming. A true naming. He was hurt by the omission. Of course, in withholding the information until confronted by an adult he considered to be his equal, the visitor was only