“I already have,” Lakjiip said. “Fortunately, he’s Xodlak, so I could invoke the family secrets protocols. He won’t say anything.”
“Good,” Lakuviv said. “Second: We keep an eye on the Agbui. If they even look like they’re going to put these things on the market, I want to know about it. And third, I want you to go to Haplif and invite him here for a little get-together.” He glanced at his chrono. “Probably too late to do so today without arousing suspicion, so make it tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.” Lakjiip hesitated. “There’s one other thing, Councilor. I don’t know if it qualifies as a thunder-maker—”
“Get on with it,” Lakuviv growled.
“Do you think it’s possible that the Agbui are refugees?” Lakjiip asked.
Lakuviv blinked. “What on Celwis are you talking about? They’re not refugees, they’re cultural nomads. Now get moving—we have to get on this right away.”
“I know that’s what they said,” Lakjiip said, making no attempt to move. “I ask because when I went to check on them yesterday afternoon, Rancher Lakphro told me about an incident that was bothering him. It seems his daughter scared one of the Agbui midagers with a brass-tooth sealer.”
“Scared her how? And what does this have to do with anything?”
“Scared her into dropping on her face on the ground,” Lakjiip said. “The reason it’s important is that I made a copy of the sealer sound and spent most of yesterday evening running it through a waveform comparison. It turns out that the sound is a softer version of a flat-blast artillery shell.”
“That’s absurd,” Lakuviv said, frowning as he tried to revive an old memory. Like most unofficial conversations, the details of his first meeting with Haplif had blown away like smoke. But hadn’t he said …? “They told us they’d been traveling for the past thirty years.”
“Exactly,” Lakjiip said. “So how could one of their midagers even know what an artillery shell sounded like? Let alone demonstrate such a violent response to it?”
Lakuviv tapped his chin, trying to think. “Could they have stopped near a war zone? Or even landed in the middle of one?”
“And didn’t instantly pack up and get out?”
“Yes, yes, good point,” Lakuviv conceded. “An interesting mystery, but a mystery for another day. Right now”—he held up the brooch—“this is what’s important. We need to find out how the Agbui are working this metal, and why it’s so cheap they can make jewelry out of it.”
He squeezed the brooch tightly. Nyix. The rarest known metal in the Chaos, a vital component of the alloy used to create the incredible toughness of a warship’s hull. Only three mines of pure nyix existed in the whole of the Ascendancy, with a handful of other areas offering diffuse seams or single threads. With nyix, a species could conquer and defend; without it, they could only cower and appease. With it, a family could rise to status and power with a speed and sureness nearly unrivaled in Chiss history. Without it, they might stay in the background forever.
But even that lucky family would need to be led. Led and guided by a single individual.
“And most important,” he added to Lakjiip, “we need to find out exactly where they got it.”
The first thing Thalias saw when she opened her eyes was the coffin lying against the wall beside her bed.
It wasn’t actually a coffin, of course, but merely the compact hibernation chamber where the Magys was being held in dreamless sleep until Thrawn could figure out what to do with her. The display lights on the monitor panel confirmed the alien was alive and well in there, and with no immediate danger to her life.
But the chamber was the same cylindrical shape as a coffin, and its occupant really only barely qualified as alive, and Thalias’s mental image of a coffin remained.
She tried not to look at it as she gathered her clothes and started dressing. Sometime this morning, if the Springhawk was still on Thrawn’s schedule, they would leave the relatively smooth volume of hyperspace in which the Chiss Ascendancy nestled and head out into the Chaos. When that happened, she and Che’ri would be summoned to the bridge to begin the journey to the Paataatus hive-home of Nettehi.
Thalias wasn’t exactly sure what Thrawn intended to do there, all alone with a single warship. But it wasn’t her job to know. Her job was to work with Che’ri to get him there as quickly and safely as possible.
She looked furtively at the hibernation chamber as she got her shoes on. Heading into danger … but at least once she had Che’ri on the bridge she wouldn’t have to worry about the girl finding out about this monstrosity hidden in their suite. She straightened her tunic, walked to the hatch, and tapped the release.
And as the hatch slid open she saw, too late, that Che’ri had taken up position right at the edge of the hatchway and was looking straight into Thalias’s sleeping room at the hibernation chamber.
“No!” Thalias bit out, trying to grab the girl’s shoulders, hoping to turn her around before she saw too much.
Too late. Even as Thalias stepped out into the dayroom, she saw Che’ri’s eyes go wide and her mouth drop open. “What’s that?” the girl asked, ducking away from Thalias’s hands and pointing into the sleeping room.
“Something you aren’t supposed to know about,” Thalias said tartly, ushering Che’ri back with one hand as she closed the hatch behind her with the other. “Back. Come on, shoo.”
“I knew there was something in there,” Che’ri said, obediently backing away. “What is that?”
“A storage compartment,” Thalias improvised. Which was true enough, if somewhat misleading. “What were you doing hanging around my—? Oh,” she said as it suddenly hit her. “You used Third Sight, didn’t you?”
“Well, you wouldn’t let me see it,” Che’ri said, a little defensively. “I knew you and Senior Captain Thrawn had put something in there. So when I knew you’d be coming out in a couple of seconds …” She gave a little shrug.
“You got into position to see inside as soon as I opened up,” Thalias said with a sigh.
“Well, you shouldn’t try to keep secrets from people,” Che’ri said, her tone going from defensive to accusing. “That’s not nice.”
“It’s not my secret to tell,” Thalias said. “If I could have told you …” She let the sentence trail off.
“You would have?” Che’ri asked. “Or you wouldn’t have?”
Thalias sighed. It really wasn’t her secret to tell. And yet, in an odd sort of way, it was.
But either way, now that Che’ri had a handle on it, she wasn’t going to let go until she had the full story. And it wasn’t like they could lock her away in the suite or something. “Come on, let’s sit down,” Thalias said, gesturing toward the couch. “We’ll talk, unless you want breakfast first.”
“I can wait,” Che’ri said, bounding over and plopping down on the couch, all eagerness now that she was going to get her way and hear a secret. “What’s in it?”
Thalias sat down at the other end and braced herself. How did you explain something like this to a ten-year-old? “It’s not a what,” she said. “It’s a who. It’s the Magys.”
Again, Che’ri’s eyes went wide. “The Magys? The Magys?”
“Yes,” Thalias said. “She’s the alien who came aboard—”