Dante couldn’t blame her. “I believe he simply has a short temper. He’s thrown things at me, and everyone else who spends any time in his engine rooms.”
“Is this behavior in response to the stress of being on a Kowri world after narrowly escaping a black hole?”
Dante shrugged. “I haven’t known Ter long enough to say.” They both looked at Vk.
She must have tensed because her pebafri danced backward and she had to take several minutes to get the animal back under control. “I am not sure I should comment on a crewmate,” she said once she’d gotten her pebafri to settle next to Divashi’s Brown.
“Gimi has always been on our side, and she’ll do what’s most logical. She’s not going to be led around by her own prejudices.” Dante put a hand on Vk’s arm when her nose wrinkled up. “Please.”
She slumped. “You are manipulative,” she accused him, and Dante had no ground to defend himself against the charge.
She studied Gimi for so long that the pebafri began to get restless. “Fine. I shall trust your judgment,” she told Dante before she turned to Gimi. “He is crass and disagreeable. He will often threaten to remove random organs from improbable orifices. I have multiple times heard him threaten to remove lungs from an individual’s excrement orifice or their excess caloric intake organ from their sexual reproductive orifice.” She gave a dramatic shudder at that example. “And while he is less prone to physically throw items now, he has done so in the past, at least when the engineers were in areas secure from breakage.”
Gimi inclined her head. “So it is possible that the stress of the current situation has exacerbated his disagreeable temper.”
“Possibly,” Vk said. “His species is far more independent than mine or many in the Coalition. Most Coalition members come from gregarious species, so showing respect for others is an innate instinct. Coming from such a self-reliant species, he has no such instinct.”
“But surely someone has taught him that those of us who live in civil societies expect a level of respect for others.”
Vk’s nose tucked up. “I’m not convinced he listened to those lessons.”
Dante wondered if Ter’s work had anything to do with that. It sounded as though the Coalition gave him more leeway than most. “Among my people, we have a concept called ‘enabling,’” he said. “If we love someone enough or find their skills valuable enough, we sometimes make excuses for bad behavior because we don’t want to create conflict.” His father had accused Dante’s grandmother of enabling him because she wouldn’t dress him in a suit and push him in front of the press, but Dante was almost sure his father had misunderstood the term.
“That appears foolish,” said Gimi, her ears twitching. “However, I have also seen Kowri too willing to make excuses for some while condemning others. It is an avenue of similarity I could bring to the debate. But first, I have made it a mission to ensure that you, Dante a’Divashi, attend the debate with me. Vk of the outsiders, do you require an escort back to your ship?”
“I promised to stay with Dante,” said Vk, and she moved her pebafri forward.
Gimi stepped up onto the hover. “You are not allowed in the temple. You would need to remain outside while he speaks to the others.”
Vk turned toward him. “We could go back to the ship,” she said, making it clear that she would prefer that. However, if Dante had a choice between sitting in his room helpless to affect the outcome of the debate or attending the temple meeting, he preferred the latter.
“I’m going with Gimi. Feel free to head back to the ship.”
Vk muttered under her breath before sitting straighter in the saddle. “I shall wait for you outside the temple, but please keep in mind that if something goes wrong, I shall not retreat without you. So I would prefer that you find me in case of utter disaster.”
“I will ensure he returns safely to your side,” Gimi said. “Come. Let us go to the growing season temple.”
Dante frowned. “Growing season? Why aren’t we going to the cold season temple?”
“Because an exalted with status that exceeds Nawr’s has arrived by ship. Since she has seniority, the debate has shifted to her temple. But enough of temple manners. Come. Let us join the other exalteds.” She whirled her hover around before racing for the ivy-encrusted temple straight ahead. Something in her abrupt manner infected Dante and he kicked Divashi’s Brown into a canter and followed.
Chapter Six
Regi hated waiting, but Gimi a’Onidba had asked him to remain in this office, and so he waited. He had refused to visit the growing season temple for years before leaving the Empire, but the carved dafs corona were familiar. The long, legless symbol of the goddess of midwives glided through carved trees. Their wooden eyes watched the moon carved into the frieze lining the walls.
As a child, he’d been excited every time he’d seen a real dafs corona slide through the trees. Everywhere his mother walked, the creatures would gather. Each was no longer than a forearm and no thicker than a thumb, but they would mass in such numbers that the more timid Kowri would flee.
But childless would-be parents would follow the creatures to his mother and beg her to speak to her goddess for them. Pregnant Kowri who had been warned their pregnancies were medically dangerous would ask Minait a’Otutha to attend their births.
As a boy, Regi had been excited to see his mother take such an important role in their world. However, now the creatures represented his mother’s choice to put her calling ahead of her child, ahead of her husbands. Ahead of everything.
Regi sighed. He wished the debate was still at the cold-weather temple. He took comfort in the number of dops now waddling through the corridors of that temple. Perhaps he stepped around the creatures, but Dante had done a superbjob of convincing him dops had pleasant personalities and they would rather avoid spearing others with their poisonous quills.
The door opened, and Regi stood, expecting Gimi a’Onidba to appear. Instead Dante came around the corner, his tall frame and almost furless face more out of place here than in the cold weather temple. “Dante, what are you doing here?”
He stepped into the room. “Gimi suggested that it would be a good idea to come meet you.”
“Where is Vk?” He moved to the door and peered out as though expecting to see his security second-in-command in the corridor, although obviously that was ridiculous. The pronaos guards would never allow her inside. He was surprised that Dante had been allowed in, even though the exalteds had agreed the sacred animals’ defense of him in the temple sanctuary served as definitive proof of Divashi’s favor. Still Regi’s digestive system rebelled at the idea of Dante’s helplessness. Those who wished to see Dante and all the outsiders dead would not always announce themselves prior to arranging for a convenient murder. Alb proved that.
