Beholder's Eye by Julie E. Czerneda Read Free Book Online Page B

gesture before he deliberately turned and watched the advance of a group of four uniformed Kraosians.
    Not shock, then, I decided, chilled by more than the weather. The Human had been biding his time, lulling his captors into believing him helpless and defeated. And he recognized the form I held.
    That promised to make things interesting.
    “Put them below,” a voice far too cultured for a jailer ordered softly. “His Excellence wishes them to contemplate the future without disturbance.” I yawned as I looked at the officer who had spoken.
    “Surely he can’t mean the serlet as well, Commander?” his aide asked in disbelief. I wagged my tail, delighted at his perception.
    “It is not our job to question His Excellence,” the gentle-voiced officer said wearily, pulling his night cloak more tightly about himself with a shiver. “Put the mongrel in with the serving boy. It’s probably his anyway.” I tried not to show my relief; being imprisoned with Ethrem’s husk was more than either of us could have borne.
     
    The long, narrow cell was damp, though its walls possessed no window to allow in the night air. My nose ran with the strength of odors I preferred not to contemplate too deeply. I also preferred not to think too much upon what the next day would bring. To keep my mind occupied, I began memorizing the number of blocks per wall along with their composition and thickness of mortar.
    “They’ve left us for now,” my roommate said in perfect mid-Lanivarian, with all the proper overtones of respect and new acquaintance. I curled my lips back from my teeth; he was a fool after all.
    Despite this warning, he continued glibly: “I am Specialist Paul Ragem, First Contact Team Seven-Alpha-Six. I formally request your aid as a fellow sapient and member of the Commonwealth—ouch!”
    Specialist Paul Ragem held the hand I had just nipped to his chest and was mercifully silent. I grunted with satisfaction and curled into a ball on a portion of floor less moist than the rest. I resisted the impulse to look up at the peephole I was certain was part of the light fixture above us. Let the Human make his own discoveries.
     
    Darkness aroused me. I was pleased that I had rested—I thought it indicated a growing maturity on my part, to sleep when scared half out of my mind. I was also uncomfortably damp and shook out my fur. I rose on two feet, a posture this form managed with an ease certain to startle our captors, and pulled the blanket back up over the one without a naturally warm coat.
    The contact woke him, though the Human immediately huddled into the blanket’s shelter as he sat up. My eyes could just make out his shape, picked out of the deeper darkness only by the light seeping through cracks along the edges of the door. Insects scurried across the floor. Such dark-loving scavengers lived everywhere; they didn’t bother me. This young and likely grief-maddened Human did. “I’m sorry about your shipmates, Specialist Ragem,” I whispered, my voice grown unfamiliar from lack of use. I used comspeak; if I was revealing my nature as a cultured, civilized being, it was only polite to use the common tongue of the Commonwealth.
    “I saw you try to save them,” he responded as quietly, but with an urgent haste. “I can understand how they died—but not why I’m here, imprisoned . . .” he paused. “And what is your place in all this, Huntress? Forgive my bluntness, but yours is about the last species I’d expect to find so far from home. Everyone knows Lanivarians avoid space travel. How did you come here? Were you shipwrecked?”
    My first unmonitored conversation with a non-Web life-form, and I had to get one with curiosity. The truth was safe, I decided, at least some of it. “I was left behind and chose to hide. Kraos and its government are no strangers to offworlders. But you must have realized this when you met the Protark.”
    Ragem was silent for a moment, then moved over so I could sit beside him