“Actually,” Yaut said, “he has but four.”
“Four out of how many?” Oppuk demanded, glaring at Aille. “How many Jao has he taken into his service?”
“Several,” Aille said. He began to name them, but Oppuk interrupted.
“Perhaps Pluthrak has nothing to learn from other Jao!” Oppuk strode into the center and faced Aille. “Perhaps Pluthrak is more comfortable surrounded by worthless lifeforms!”
This was the long-standing aggression between Narvo and Pluthrak at its most blatant. Yaut could see how the naked demonstration pained the Narvo elder at Oppuk’s back. It was shockingly bad manners, on display for all to see.
If only he could have instructed Aille how to handle a situation like this—he’d hoped to have more time, and he should have. Flow had not seemed so rapid, when they had first arrived on Terra.
Aille was still, his body magnificently loose and neutral. His eyes were so perfectly black that even Yaut, who knew him to possess superb control, was amazed.
To Yaut’s surprise, another Jao suddenly spoke, stepping forward from behind another Naukra representative. “I have a question for Oppuk krinnu ava Narvo,” he stated forcefully. “How many Jao does he have in his personal service? And if there are none—none left—what happened to them?”
To Yaut’s even greater surprise, he saw that the Jao who had spoken was Wrot. The old bauta had left Pascagoula several solar cycles earlier, excusing himself from Aille’s service temporarily in order to attend to what he called, vaguely, “my kochan’s affairs.”
Wrot bestowed a quick bow at Aille. “I am one of the young Pluthrak’s personal service, as it happens. But I am speaking for my kochan here. I have been selected as their representative at the Naukra.”
He turned back to Oppuk, and any pretense of politeness vanished. Blunt as always, to the point of coarseness, the old Hemm’s posture was angry-contempt.
“Answer the question, Oppuk!” he commanded. “Where is your service?”
Oppuk seemed frozen, for a moment. When he spoke, his words came awkwardly. “My . . . fraghta left long ago. Too old and weary to serve any longer, she said.”
Yaut saw the Narvo elders standing behind Oppuk shift their stance, uneasily. Clearly enough, Oppuk was not telling the truth—not all of it, at least.
Wrot was unrelenting. “I am not concerned about ‘long ago.’ You had a Jao in your personal service very recently. Ullwa is her name. Or rather—was her name.”
The bowlegged old bauta advanced upon the much larger Oppuk, his ears flat, his whole body now shrieking furious-determination.
“Answer the question, you Narvo whelp! You—who boast of your Jao-ness. Where is Ullwa?”
Oppuk, involuntarily, stepped back a pace. “She—she is dead.”
The stance of the Narvo elders now shifted again. Their unease was no longer disguised at all. Indeed, the eyes of the old female who led them—Nikau was her name—were shining green with suspicion.
Nikau now stepped forward. “Dead? How?”
Oppuk glanced back at her, then looked away. His stance shifted, exuding what he obviously meant to be firm-determination but was much closer to childish petulant-stubbornness. “She was hopelessly incompetent at her duties. I put her down.”
A vast sigh swept through the Naukra assembly. Nikau, on the other hand, seemed frozen in place.
Wrot spoke again, quickly. “So. Now everyone knows. This is the truth of Oppuk’s self-named ‘firm rule.’ He is a beast, nothing more—and treats his own Jao service as brutally as he has the humans placed under his charge.”
The bauta pivoted, gracefully for his age, and pointed toward Aille’s service. “Now I will show you, in contrast, how well Aille krinnu ava Pluthrak has trained his human service. Caitlin Stockwell, step forth.”
Yaut glanced at Aille, wondering. But some subtlety in the youngster’s stance made clear that he had not planned this with Wrot ahead of time. Aille, clearly enough, was as surprised as Yaut by Wrot’s intervention.
Brilliant intervention, as it happened. The old bauta had skewered Oppuk—and now, Yaut was sure, would skewer him again.
Hopefully, Stockwell would survive.
* * *
Caitlin lowered her head and slipped off the blue fabric sling that supported her broken arm.
“Wait a minute,” Kralik said urgently. “You’re not anywhere near healed yet.”