“You speak words of which you know nothing,” the Magys bit out.
“And you do?” Thalias retorted. “You saw your world from space. From space. You have no way of knowing what’s really going on down there.”
“If I do not know, neither do you.”
“Or maybe I do,” Thalias said, her heart pounding. She was taking a horrible risk here, and there was no way of knowing whether pushing the Magys would do anything except hasten her death. But she had to try something. “What if your people are even now rebuilding their homes and their cities? What if they’re growing food and putting your civilization back together? What if your remnant, far from following the rest of your people into death, would in fact be leading them there?”
“You know nothing about it,” the Magys insisted.
“Don’t I?” Thalias demanded. “Do people look for luxury when they’re starving? Do they build amusement centers when they have no homes? Do they make these—” She plucked the brooch from Thrawn’s hand and slapped it into the Magys’s. “—when they don’t even have basic clothing?”
The Magys’s eyes widened as she stared at the brooch. “Where did you get this?”
“Where do you think?” Thalias countered, watching her closely.
“From my world,” the Magys whispered, her anger and frustration suddenly gone. “My world.”
“Then you do recognize it?” Thrawn asked.
“Of course,” the Magys said, her voice almost reverent. “It is the style of the Southern Mountain artisans. Only they can create such beauty from wires of metal. I feared they were dead with all others.” She looked up at Thalias. “But surely this cannot be new. Surely it was found abandoned in the rubble of destruction.”
“Of course it’s new,” Thalias said. “Do you see any stains of age or war on it?”
The Magys again lowered her eyes to the brooch. Opened her mouth, closed it again. “What will you do now?” she asked.
“The question is, what will you do,” Thrawn countered.
“The warships we saw,” she said, still gazing at the brooch. “They were not settlers.”
“No,” Thrawn said. “They were invaders.”
“Trying to take your world from your people,” Thalias added. “Are you going to let them?”
The Magys rubbed her thumbs gently over the brooch. “When all are gone, we have no future but to touch the Beyond,” she said. “But when our people are invaded and enslaved—”
She looked up at Thrawn, and Thalias saw a new set to her jaws. “You must take me to my people.”
“I will,” Thrawn said. “But not immediately. I’m afraid you’ll have to sleep a little longer.”
“No,” the Magys insisted. “I have slept enough. My people need me.”
“Which is precisely why you must return to your sleep,” Thrawn said. “No one outside this room knows you are still aboard, and we must keep them from finding out.”
“Why?”
“Because if you’re seen, my superiors will call me back home,” Thrawn said. “They will place you in confinement for study and begin an investigation of my actions which will delay your return.”
“What if I stay in here?” the Magys countered, waving a slightly shaky arm around the room. “No one will see me here.”
“They may,” Thrawn said. “Others come in at times to perform maintenance and resupply. We cannot take the risk.”
“I do not wish—”
Abruptly she broke off, and Thalias saw a subtle shift in her expression. Her eyes flicked to the side, then back to Thrawn. A flick of her eyes to Thalias …
“Very well,” the alien said, her voice also subtly changed. “If you insist, I will sleep.” She looked again at Thalias. “You will stay with me?”
“I will,” Thalias promised. “As much as I can.”
“Very well,” the Magys said again. She looked at the brooch still clutched in her hand. “You will want this back,” she added, offering it toward Thalias.
“Perhaps you’d like to hold on to it?” Thalias asked.
“I cannot ask it,” the Magys said.
“But I may offer it,” Thrawn said. “Lie down now, please. When you next wake, it will be to the sight of your people.”
The alien nodded, turning her eyes to Thalias. “Thank you,” she said, and laid back down. Thrawn closed the canopy, and again keyed the chamber. A minute later, the alien was back in hibernation.
Under the circumstances, Thalias knew, she’d better get in the first word. “My apologies, Senior Captain,” she said. “My behavior over the past few minutes has been severely disrespectful.”
“But equally productive,” Thrawn said. To Thalias’s relief, there didn’t seem to be any anger or even annoyance in his voice. “Certainly you should know by now I consider results far more valuable than etiquette. Mid Captain Samakro? Thoughts?”
“Only that the whole thing seems bizarre,” Samakro said. “Why in the world are these Agbui stealing jewelry from the Magys’s people and passing it off as their own? What does that gain them?”
“I don’t know,” Thrawn said, starting for the hatch. “Let’s find out.”
“How?” Thalias asked.
“By asking the one person we can hope will have the answers,” Thrawn said. “Thank you for your help, Caregiver. Rest well.”
A minute later he and Samakro were gone, the suite’s hatch closed behind them. Thalias returned to her sleeping room, replaced the blanket over the hibernation chamber, and lay down on her bed.
And tried to figure out what exactly had just happened.
The Magys didn’t want to go back to sleep. That much was abundantly clear. Thrawn had presented good arguments for why it needed to be, warnings that Thalias had no doubt were legitimate. But the Magys had still been ready to argue the point.
And then, without warning, she’d given in.
So what had changed?
It was only as Thalias was finally falling asleep that she remembered the sideways look the Magys had made, the glance that had seemed to end her arguments and resistance.
The look she’d sent across the suite … in Che’ri’s direction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Lakinda was sound asleep in her cabin when the comm chimed. Blinking her eyes open, she fumbled for the switch. “Lakinda,” she said.
“Comm here, Senior Captain,” the second comm officer’s voice came hesitantly from the speaker.
Lakinda felt a twinge of embarrassment. The primary bridge officers had quickly realized she didn’t have their names down, and had switched to identifying themselves only by their position descriptives. Clearly, the word had passed to the officers of the other two watches, as well.
So now everyone knew their captain was an idler with a bad memory for names. Terrific. “Yes?”
“You asked to be informed immediately when a transmission came through,” the officer reminded her, sounding even more hesitant. “I didn’t see an exception logged for if you were asleep.”
“No, there wasn’t,” Lakinda said. Though she probably should have put one in. Every time the Midsummer stopped for a repositioning there was a message or two waiting for it. Most were from the Expansionary Defense Fleet headquarters on Naporar, but there’d also been a couple of general notices from the Defense Force command on Csilla, along with two private notices wrapped in some family’s private encryption. At this point, given their distance, everything was being pumped through the triad on Colonial Station Chaf, though how long that would last she didn’t know. “What do we have?”