"You should go," she said.
"I was assigned to —"
"I know what you were assigned to. I was there for the relevant portion of the conversation." She hadn't been, technically, but he didn't know how much she'd heard through the floor. "I'm home. I'm safe. You've checked the corners. Mission accomplished."
"My assignment does not end at your door."
"Does it end anywhere?"
"When you are no longer at risk."
"And who decides that?"
He looked at her steadily. "Currently — me."
She wanted to argue with that. She was quite good at arguing and had a number of directions she could take it. She looked at his face, at the particular quality of settled certainty there, and chose a different approach.
"Fine," she said. "Then you can be useful. I need a shower and I have approximately one hour before I have to be somewhere. If anyone comes to the door —"
"I will handle it."
"Don't handle it in any way that leaves a mark on my hallway."
Something shifted very briefly at the corner of his mouth. "Understood."
The hot water helped.
She stood under it and let the dock smell leave her — the cold brine of it, the particular grime of plasteele in wet weather — and let her thoughts run where they wanted to for the first time since the wave had hit her in the back and upended the last sixteen hours.
When we find the women, we will find the key.
Which women. She was a journalist. The question had been sitting in the back of her mind since the dock, patient and insistent, waiting for the noise to die down enough to be heard. The Chancellor was looking for someone — more than one someone — and whatever they represented was significant enough to meet about in a loading dock in the middle of the night instead of in his office in the middle of the day.
And then there was the Fraluma. Standing over her on that container, looking down at her with those blue-green eyes, and doing nothing.
He could not have hurt you, Dremma had said. Not chose not to. Could not.
And then the word. The one she didn't know. The one that had hit her like something remembered rather than something heard for the first time, which made no sense, and which she was going to need to find a rational explanation for because the irrational one was not something she was prepared to entertain.
Cremmilek.
She turned the water off.
She was a journalist. She found things out. That was the entire mechanism of her life, the one skill she'd refined beyond any other, and she was very good at it. Whatever was happening, she was going to find out what it was. She was going to use the tools she had — her contacts, her access, her press credentials, and the fact that she apparently now had a Fraluma warrior in her living room who couldn't lie to her about everything.
She was going to ask better questions.
Starting tonight.
She came out of the bedroom dressed for the party and stopped.
Edi-Veen was in the center of her living room, upside down.
It took her a moment to fully process what she was looking at. He was balanced on one finger — one finger, on one hand, resting on something small — inverted, perfectly still, legs extended toward the ceiling with the geometric precision of someone who had practiced this until the unreasonable became mundane. Sweat tracked down his face into his hair. His eyes were closed.
On the floor beneath his hand, a small crystal ball caught the light.
She stood in the doorway of her bedroom and watched him for a moment longer than she intended to.
