Aille’s ears swiveled in confusion. Did the Governor expect trouble even here in his own residence? Was this world held as loosely as that?
The Governor was speaking to a sturdy human female, as Aille approached, and, though he had signaled to him a moment earlier, he did not acknowledge him until the female, looking up into Aille’s level gaze, blushed and broke off herself.
“Subcommandant,” she said in heavily accented Jao, “welcome to Earth.”
She did not offer her name, a sign of her close acquaintance with Jao customs. “It is a most intriguing assignment thus far,” he said, moving closer, holding his entire body safely shaped into appreciative-interest. “I am honored to serve the Governor.”
“Why has Pluthrak sent you here?” Narvo said, his body crying out rude-suspicion. “I must know before I can work out how to use you. Why would illustrious Pluthrak, who never attempts anything at which it might fail, send a well-regarded scion to this grubby ball of dirt and rock?”
Aille could see Yaut and Tully off to the side, and to their credit, neither flinched or flicked so much as an ear or whisker. “To learn,” Aille said. “Pluthrak and Narvo have stayed apart too much. It is perhaps time to pool our strengths and see where that might lead.”
Suspicion glimmered greenly in the Governor’s eyes, bright as a circuit about to overload, then was mirrored in the lines of his arms. “To learn, yes, I had thought as much, to learn Narvo’s weaknesses, to bring accusation before the Naukra Krith Ludh that we have not subdued this mangy, vermin-ridden world properly!”
“Have you not?” Aille dug deeply into his memory and recalled his lessons with the Pluthrak movement-master, how to cock the head, splay the fingers, shift his weight, place the heartward leg just—so, until he had melted without apparent intent or effort into forthright-admiration, adding the difficult-to-hold angle of ears that specified longing. A tripartite posture, and a particularly ambitious one at that. “I thought quite otherwise, in my admittedly limited travels so far, but perhaps I was mistaken.”
A wave of excitement ran through the crowd. Even those Jao not close enough to overhear the conversation could read enough of their postures to glean a great deal. There were a few murmurs of admiration for Aille’s obvious classical movement training. After all, just presenting postures to the young did not guarantee they would be learned, then used to proper advantage when the time came. Despite his youth, Aille had obviously learned, and, as they could see, quite, quite well.
Narvo glared, but there was no arguing with Aille’s stance and he finally backed down. “You might be of some use after all,” he said grudgingly, “but being relegated to an assignment this lowly means they will never call you back to breed.”
Aille stared at him, fighting to hold onto at least the elements that comprised admiration, even if he lost the rest. Breeding was an intensely private matter, for the great kochan, rarely mentioned outside the kochan-house. He had never thought to hear it bruited about here, where even aliens were present, in such a casual fashion.
“They have posted you to a dungheap of a world,” Narvo said. “Would they have done that to a truly promising scion? You are obviously expendable, whatever your accomplishments. Whom did you manage to anger, despite your youth?”
Aille knew that wasn’t true—and so did Oppuk. Pluthrak valued him appropriately, considering his inexperience, and he would have an equal chance to breed when the time was right, along with the rest of his clutch. The insult was nothing more than a provocation, and for what purpose? Could a Narvo with Oppuk’s experience truly be that rash? The great kochan did not insult each other lightly.
But the Governor said nothing further. An instant later, he turned away and dove into the pool.
* * *
A moment later, a willowy human female with short dark-gold hair stepped forward, her shoulders and arms gracefully shaped into bemused-commiseration. She wore a sleek draping of silver fabric that swirled around her legs and obscured several of her lines, so that the posture was truncated. “Well,” she said in flawless Jao, “that made an interesting beginning.”