Cats in Space and Other Places by Bill Fawcett (best book recommendations txt) 📗

was a question that plagued him as he walked down the hall on the way to the Emperor's audience chamber. Though it was time to find out what Ozenscebo was up to, it was Elena who worried him. He wished he knew what was going on.

"Is something troubling you?" Aubin's light voice rang in Ki's ear.

"Mmmmmm," Ki rumbled, and then laughed as the hair on Aubin's arm stood at attention. "Yes, I'm troubled, but not so much as you are by my speech."

"Ki, you do that to me on purpose, and you know it. And if you didn't already look down in the mouth, as if you could look anything else with those barbaric marks on your face, I would chew you out for it."

Ki halted mid-stride, snarled, "Barbaric!" before he realized that Aubin had baited him. Then he let it pass, and continued with Aubin down the hall. "Yes, I'm worried. I'm concerned about the Empress."

"Ahhh. Now there's a lady who lives in interesting times."

Ki sighed. "Again?" he asked of the wind, thinking of what the Empress had said just a few moments earlier.

"I beg your pardon?" asked Aubin, not understanding the reference.

"It's not important," Ki answered as they drew near the audience chamber. "You have business here today?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Ozenscebo has called several of the Envoys together to discuss, in the most disguised of terms, of course—we dare not even admit that rebels exist—how to deal with the rebels. I had hoped I wouldn't be found down in the recesses of the law library, but I didn't hide well enough."

Ki opened the door quietly, and the two stepped through. Several men and women were near the front of the room, packed as closely as they dared to get to the Emperor, hanging on his every word. One figure, however, stood in the very back of the hall. She was tall, taller even than Ki, with the broad nose and leonine features of his race. Her white hair was close cropped, however, and stranger still, she wore no facial markings except for the lines of great age. She was swathed in the deep-desert robes of her planet, wrapped as if to protect her from the cold, and she kept them pulled closely about her with her crossed arms. The only jewelry she wore was an amulet hanging from her belt that bore the Pride markings of the Didentaar. An unmarried woman, then, a person of no standing in her own Pride, and yet Nide's Ambassador to Homeworld.

Ki greeted her, "Learaa Maaeve, waarrsho nu Mmumna," in the traditional way, her name first, then "Mmumna hold you," the "in the circle of her claws" part being understood.

She nodded to Ki respectfully, totally ignored Aubin even though he was Luna's Envoy, and turned back to the proceedings at the front of the hall.

Aubin stared at her curiously. Though he had spent much time in the same room with her on numerous occasions, she was still a total stranger. She was odd, always at the back of things, never saying a word, always watching, listening, this woman who was the only Ambassador at the Emperor's court. Nide was an affiliate by choice, not a conquered world.

I'll bet she misses nothing, Aubin thought. I imagine that her reports to Nide are fascinating. Probably more complete than anyone else's. I'll bet she has a better overall picture of what goes on in this empire than I do. He tilted his head, considering her unmarked face. If he understood Ki correctly, that meant that she had never married. But it also meant that she was still a child, regarded as a non-person. She must be quite a woman to survive a total lack of status to become Ambassador.

But in spite of his open stare, Maaeve still did not acknowledge Aubin, so he made his way forward to listen, and Ki edged around the side of the group so that he might see the Emperor.

The usual gathering of servants scurried about like ants, carrying wine, or more likely roed, to the Emperor and his audience, passing between them with little sweetmeats, holding out fresh transcriber disks. But though it was usual, it was also unusual. Ki stiffened as he smelled it—fear, far and away more than the usual discomforture of servants that waited on an uneven master. Trouble. Somewhere in this room a very frightened human was contemplating trouble.

"We have to consolidate the Empire," Ozenscebo was saying. "We must find a way to bring the worlds closer together."

Ki edged closer to the group of Envoys. No. The fear scent did not rise from them. From the servants then. It had to be. He turned like a dancer, lightly, on the balls of his feet, ready to change direction with the smallest of notice. His head turned and he sniffed again. A nondescript servant approached the Emperor with a goblet. But there was already a goblet at Ozenscebo's hand, and the servant hid his face. There was a blur of motion that was Ki and a sliding, savage sword that moved into an eerie, dreamlike lack of sound, and the servant's head skipped down among the Envoys, spraying blood among them as it rolled. They stared at it like dumb cattle, the silence holding until some started to scream.

The Emperor looked away from the ball-shaped object that had been a head and directly at Ki. There was only mild surprise on his jaded face. "Amusing. But why?"

"I could not permit him to kill." Ki re-sheathed his blade, blood and all, and stooped over the body. From somewhere inside the fashionably full gown that the Emperor had ordered as costume or the day for his servants, Ki removed a high-carbon plastic needle, strong, sharp, and totally invisible to metal detectors. He sniffed the end of the unlikely weapon. "It's been poisoned," he said over his shoulder to the Emperor. "It probably appeared as a stay on the security monitors."

The Emperor suddenly realized what his danger had been, and his