“Yes,” he said, a bit sourly. “Very prestigious.”
The ornate halfcape with its green and gold insignia was crooked in the back. Tully’s fingers straightened it before he thought, then he saw Yaut blink at him with surprised approval.
Play the part, he told himself. Sooner or later, they’ll make a mistake, then you can either escape or die trying and none of this will matter.
Aille moved off into the crowd, regal in his bearing compared to most of the Jao present. Even Tully could tell that much. If Aille had been human, he would have been like a well-brought-up young prince at a provincial reception. Behaving graciously, to be sure—but still a prince, and exuding that fact with his every word and movement.
Yaut glided easily before him. How did the fraghta do that, Tully wondered, hurrying to keep up. It was as though he knew where the Subcommandant was going before he knew himself. Did those two have some sort of mental contact which allowed him to actually predict the other’s wishes? He rubbed the gleaming black locator band beneath his sleeve and tried not to brush against any of Earth’s alien conquerors as they crossed the floor.
* * *
Oppuk krinnu ava Narvo practiced the subtle art of watching without being obvious as the new Subcommandant prowled the reception, speaking here and there, spreading his influence like oil over water. Why had Pluthrak sent him this burden? The question burned through him, but he was no nearer to answering it now than when he had first learned of the assignment.
Aille krinnu ava Pluthrak was too young to be a real threat to his authority, too inexperienced to be of any genuine use, and yet far too appealing for comfort. The Jao in the crowd seemed invariably drawn to the youthful officer. Oppuk needed to keep him close, so he would know the instant he was up to something, and yet bury him under inconsequential duties so he would never accomplish anything of worth or attract favorable notice. How to achieve these contradictory aims was a puzzle, and unfortunately Oppuk had never been good at solving puzzles. His talents lay in other directions, and his normal method with puzzles was to smash them.
His nose wrinkled in a sour grimace and his two identical guards, born of allied Sant, a kochan long dedicated to service to Narvo, trained their enigmatic gaze upon him.
“Can we be of use, Governor?” they said, in that unnerving unison they often achieved.
He could not tell them apart, which bothered him. His fraghta long ago had come across the pair when they first emerged from the creche-pool and had them trained especially for his personal service. They were a novelty. Genetic duplicates were much more rare among the Jao than among the humans. He’d heard it said that humans often whelped their get in pairs and occasionally even in threes and fours.
“No,” he said, “I do not need you at present. Remain on guard.”
He noticed the jinau officer, Kralik, monitoring the Subcommandant, as a subordinate should, quietly, without putting himself forward or interfering. A rare moment of approval washed through Oppuk. Humans so rarely knew their place without a great deal of instruction and reinforcement. It was good to see one who could control himself in the absence of external cues.
“Governor?” a human voice said from his side.
He looked down. A short man with a disgusting bare patch on his crown gazed up at him, looking vaguely familiar. Oppuk had seen many male humans so afflicted since he arrived on this world, long ago. At first, he had assumed such hair loss was a sign of disease, until he learned it was just a common degenerative process associated with aging. He almost shuddered. For a Jao, that would have been a major affliction.
Two dark-haired human females flanked him, both clad in long clumsy garments of heavily brocaded fabric that impeded their steps. Wary, his personal guards moved in, but Oppuk waved them back. “You wish my attention?” he said.
“I am Ambassador Matasu,” the man said, bowing from the waist until Oppuk could not see his eyes. The two women bowed as well. “From the land of the rising sun, your most loyal province, Japan.”