Regi stared at her. She stared back. Then she straightened. Her nose lengthened so much all the wrinkles smoothed and her eyes grew wide. “I had thought you too inhibited to have such thoughts, Regi a’Divashi.”
Regi sighed. He should have known he couldn’t keep his feelings from Vk forever. “So did I,” he admitted.
“That does not explain why you refuse to sit with a friend who needs your presence.”
“Yes, it does. He needs a friend—an individual who will not pursue his own interests ahead of Dante’s. I trust you to be Dante's friend, but I do not trust myself.”
Vk gave him a look full of pity. “You are too critical of yourself. And you are too dismissive of Dante and his strength of personality. I have seen him force any number of people into verbal retreat. If you show an interest he is unwilling to return, he will force you to yield.”
“If he is such a formidable individual, I expect he can handle intoxication.” Regi’s guilt whispered that personal fortitude and medical durability were not aligned in Dante’s species.
“Considering that Bevit has no idea how huumans might metabolize intoxicating fluids, I do not have that much faith.”
Regi was not equipped to protect Dante, although he had a passionate desire to detain Merbol for the sin of providing those fluids. “I assume the doctor has performed compatibility tests on the liquid and Dante’s biology.” Surely Dante was not foolish enough to imbibe an alien substance without checking for safety.
“Bevit believes it safe, but she also said that her belief is not absolute because huuman physiology is beyond her medical experience, and the database has no information to supplement her own. So you,” Vk said before she poked three fingers into hischest, “need to get over your issues and sit with him in case there is a medical need. And while you are there, determine why your friend has asked for mind-altering liquids. That is not in Dante's character.”
“You could assist as well as I.”
“Stop being a coward,” Vk said before leaving.
Outside the ship, Regi was an exalted. Kowri listened to him with awe. True, a significant percentage of Kowri hated him for bringing outsiders into Kowri space, but even the ones who hated him maintained respect. On the ship, that was not the case.
A petty part of Regi wanted to document Vk's refusal to accept an assignment given to her by her superior, but that wouldn't be fair. And Regi did value fairness. He also valued not taking advantage of a male too new to the universe to understand his place in it. So apparently, he was doomed to an evening of exerting iron self-control.
Either that or Regi was about to shame himself and the gods. The odds of that were higher than Regi would like.
When Regi stormed out of his office, he was in a dangerous mood. More than one crew member reversed direction to avoid him, but all too soon Regi was outside the room Dante had claimed. He took a deep breath and opened the door to see Dante sprawled on the floor. Because their Coalition ship required a curved cradle the Kowri Empire dock did not possess, the room, including Dante’s mattress, was at a thirty-degree angle.
That seemed rather appropriate given how off-balance Regi felt in this situation. Dante lay on his back with his butt off the mattress and one hand flung wide, his odd number of digits clutching the narrowest part of a bottle. Regi was going to kill Merbol for giving Dante alcohol or Bevit for not confiscating it or Vk for making him deal with this.
“Regi!” Dante said in a musical voice.
“How are you feeling?” Regi asked.
Dante tilted his head to one side and smiled. “Regi! My partner in crime! My buddy! Your people make some damn good booze. You could make a hell of a living selling this stuff back home.” He lifted the bottle.
“If my career as a Coalition security officer or a Kowri exalted ends, I will consider your suggestion.” Regi wondered where he should sit. This was the room where the pirates had once kept the captured dops whose poison they had harvested to create narcotics.
All but two of the dops had moved on: Peaches, the older female Dante had inexplicably named after sweet tree fruits, and a much smaller male that remained ardent in his attempts to impress the lady and earn her favor. As the other dops had left, Dante had removed their cages, but he had not obtained any additional furniture, leaving the bed the only place to sit.
So Regi had a choice of looming over Dante or sitting on the bed next to him as he sprawled. The first was awkward; the second, dangerous.
“Who ratted me out?” Dante asked.
Regi perched on the farthest corner. “Your verb did not translate.”
“Ratted? It means to tell others something that they have no right to know. It means to be like a rat with their beady little eyes and their naked tails.” He gave a breathy laugh.
Regi frowned. “No one on this ship has a naked tail.”
“Exactly,” Dante cried in triumph before he jostled the bottle enough to make the contents slosh. “And that is why you should not be a rat because rats have naked tails, and you would look funny with a naked tail.” He laughed far more loudly than a species that used the same part of the anatomy for the production of sound and the eating of food should be able to.
“Why are you drinking?”
“Why wouldn't I drink?”
“Because you never have before,” Regi said.
