Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [114]
“You may have any of these,” he told Cretak with a proprietary air, as if offering her the choice of a hunting dog or a steed from his stable. “They’re all at the same level of training. Most of them can even read and write.”
“You joke!” Cretak feigned a smile, though her eyes betrayed something else. “I’m sure they’re all as bright and able as-“
“- as a true Romulan? Don’t be so sure. But, please, feel free.”
There were seven of them, working with varying degrees of assiduousness. As she approached them, each one stopped work long enough to offer a bow and a murmured “my Lady…” in deference to her caste and office. Most looked down at their shoes as they spoke. Only one looked her briefly in the eye, and the look all but rocked Cretak back on her heels.
Nevertheless, she passed that one by and moved to the next and the next until she had completed a circuit of the gardens and studied each of them.
“Well?” Koval said airily, but with a touch of impatience, his tone implying that he really had far more important things to do.
Cretak pretended to hesitate. “It’s difficult to decide. If I could speak to each of them…”
Koval shrugged. “Take all the time you wish. But I don’t want to leave you alone with them. Not that they’d try anything. They know they’re monitored constantly-” He indicated the spy-eyes set into the walls. “- but I’d prefer that you have guards with you as well.”
He snapped his fingers at the nearest ghilik, but Cretak stayed him.
“I’ve taken enough of your time already,” she said and, drawing upon everything she had learned about him during their brief affair so long ago, added: “Tell me which of them you can most easily spare.”
He pretended to hesitate, looking them over one by one. “That one,” he said finally.
Her face was a mask, but inside Cretak was gloating. She had guessed correctly! She motioned to the small one with the freckles and the jade green eyes. “Come with me.”
The girl set down the basket of weeds she’d been carrying and obeyed. Concentrating on maintaining her own performance for Koval and his spy-eyes, Cretak failed to notice at the time that he was gloating, too.
Had she made a mistake? she wondered now with the hindsight of darkness and a sleepless night. Had Koval somehow steered her toward Zetha, had she misinterpreted what she took to be terror in the girl’s eyes? Was it too late to do anything about it now?
She sat up abruptly, cursing herself for a fool. How could she get word to Uhura now? She could hardly go back to Koval and ask him for yet another messenger. She was certain most of the Senate’s supposedly secure frequencies were monitored, if not her private comm as well, and if she sent anyone else across the Outmarches, Koval would know. And even if she could share what was only a hunch, would it do more harm than good?
Chapter 16
The three doctors scanned the report Uhura had sent them (“A New Cure for an Ancient Illness? The ‘Magic’ of Hilopon”) at their own individual reading speeds. Uhura waited as they read, watching their faces for reactions. McCoy was the last to finish, but the first to speak.
“Well, well, what a coincidence!” he said dryly.
“So you think it’s genuine?” Uhura said.
“Could be,” the old grouch hedged. “Where’d it come from?”
“You’re not the only one who’s been fishing,” Uhura told him. “Intercepted by one of my Listeners from a submission to the Journal of Xenohistology and Interplanetary Epidemiology.”
“Okay,” McCoy said. “I’m suitably impressed.”
“Apparently the journal wasn’t,” Uhura reported. “They’ve flagged it for rejection pending verification