Khoth rolled his lips together before opening and closing them several times. The discomfort he was feeling made Jace want to go over there and embrace him, but he knew that Khoth would not welcome this intimate touch at that moment.
“I must do this, Jace,” Khoth finally said. “For the honor of my family. Whatever the Council will say or do outwardly, you are right that my… that High Councillor Voor has fully dishonored us in a way that even my exile. I need to show that a Voor can be reasonable, logical, trusted and on the right side of this.”
Jace slowly nodded. “Of course. I do need you there. I do trust you, Khoth. And there’s honestly, no one more honorable I know than you.”
Khoth made another of those awkward bows. Even Thammah’s anger at him seemed deflated as she observed him. Pity was written across her face, before she quickly hid it.
“Do you intend to meet High Councillor Voor in the hangar bay?” Khoth asked.
Jace nodded. “And then we’ll go to a meeting room the Osiris has prepared.”
“If there is time, I must attend to a personal matter.” Khoth’s hands rose up to the beads in his hair. “I would have these removed before facing the delegation.”
“You’re not going to cut all your hair off, are you?” Jace had not meant to sound so distressed at the thought.
“What? No, just the beads. Nothing else,” Khoth answered softly and, for a moment, there was a flash of something in his eyes that had Jace’s heart pitter-pattering.
He knows you find his hair beautiful! Gehenna gushed.
Yeah, I do, among many of his other traits, Jace admitted.
“Then I will join you in the hangar bay, Pilot,” Khoth said, bowing once more, and strode purposefully from the room.
They were all silent until it was clear he had left. Jace turned to Thammah.
“He really cares about you, Thammah. He was worried that your position with the Alliance would be imperiled,” Jace assured her.
She was studying him though very carefully. “I don’t think I’m the only one that Commander Voor cares about.”
Jace tried not to blush. “I just hope our friendship can survive this thing with his mother.”
Thammah let out a dry laugh. “Commander Voor is all about honor and doing what’s right, Jace. I am sure that whatever you do will be both.”
Family
Khoth paused in the doorway to his quarters. They had changed since he had been here. The lights were now low and purple. The sitting room’s furniture had been moved to the walls of the room. Now the central space was empty except for a mat woven of tidenth reeds and a block of red stone.
There was a scoop-shaped depression in the center of the stone and a small curved dagger lay beside it. The soft sound of wind whistling through the trees of the Summerram Forest on Haseon could be heard as if in the distance all around him. It had replaced the almost eerie silence in the ship.
“Osiris?” Khoth asked as he stepped inside and the door whispered shut behind him.
A cursor appeared on the wall opposite him. I have recreated the Ulgegiarth Ritual for the shearing of the selchilite. Is it not correct?
“It is correct,” Khoth answered softly. “How did you…”
He was going to ask: how did you know I would need this? But the Osiris was always listening if not through the ship itself then through Jace. To tell one was to tell the other. But still…
“How did you prepare this so quickly?” Khoth asked. “These cannot be things that you have on board.”
This was not an Altaeth ritual. The mat, the dagger and the stone were all his own people’s. Had Thammah had them? Her hair was shorn… but no, she was not exiled. Well, she was now. But she hadn’t been before. Surely she had not kept these things on hand with her to make a home. Or he hoped not as that would cause him to worry for her.
I manufactured them, the Osiris answered.
“Yet only two Earth minutes have passed since I told Jace my intentions,” Khoth reminded the AI.
The cursor blinked. Finally, text scrolled across, It was evident what you intended to do from the moment you returned to the ship. In truth, you should have performed the ritual before the meeting.
Khoth’s lips pressed together. He had considered doing so before meeting with Jace for lunch. But he had not wished to take the time and--
