Read Online The Faded Sun Trilogy by C. J. Cherryh - Free Book Online

last, out of his own frustration.
    Stavros looked for once surprised, then frowned and shrugged. “Probably just regul procedure and some minor change in plans. Don’t worry about it.” And then with a second shrug, “Get some sleep, Duncan. There’s little else to do at the moment.”
    “Yes, sir,” he said, rose and went out to the anteroom, sat down on his own bunk and tucked his legs up. He set his elbows on his knees and head on his hands and massaged his aching temples.
    Prisoners, thanks to him.
    Stavros was worried. Stavros doubtless knew what there was to concern them and he was worried. Perhaps if the regul had accepted the offering, Stavros could have demonstrated the punishment of the human youngling who had created the difficulty. Perhaps he had not done so because, in the main, they were both human and Stavros felt an unvoiced attachment to him; or perhaps he had declined to do so because a regul elder would not have done so under the same circumstances.
    But it was clear enough that they were under the heavy shadow of regul displeasure, and had been for many, many days; and that they were not now where they had been told at the outset they would land.
    A sound reached him, a sound of someone passing in the corridor, one of the sleds whisking along the tracks outside. He looked up as it seemed to stop, hoping against hope that the thing had stopped to bring them news.
    The door opened. He sprang up, instantly correct. The sled indeed had stopped before the doorway, andwithin it sat the oldest, most massive regul that he had ever seen. Roll upon roll of wrinkled flesh and crusting skin hid any hint of structure that lay within that grey-brown body, save the bony plating of the face, where eyes were sunk in circular wrinkles, black and glittering eyes; and flat nose and slit mouth gave a deceptive illusion of humanity.
    It was the face of a man within the body of a beast, and that body was lapped in brown robes, silver-edged and shimmering, gossamer enfolding a gross and wrinkle-crossed skin. The nostrils were slanted, slits that could flare and close. He knew this movement for an indication of emotion in the younglings, one of the few expressions of which their bone-shielded faces were capable—a roll of the eyes, an opening or closing of the lips, a flutter of the nostrils. But had he not known that this being was of precisely the same species as the younglings, he would have doubted it.
    Incredibly the elder arose, heaving his body upright, then standing, on bowed and almost invisible legs, within the sled.
    “Stavros,” it—he—said, a basso rumble.
    Humans could not imitate regul expression: the regul perhaps could not read courtesy or lack of it among humans, but Duncan knew that courtesy was called for now. He made a bow. “Favor,” he said in the regul tongue, “I am the youngling Sten Duncan.”
    “Call Stavros.”
    But the door was open. Duncan turned, about to comply with the order, and saw of a sudden Stavros in the doorway, standing, coming no farther.
    There was a rumbling exchange of regul politenesses, and Duncan took himself to the side of the room against the wall, bewildered in the flow of language. He realized what he had suspected already, that this was the bai himself who had come to call on them, bai Hulagh Alagn-ni, high commander of the ship
Hazan,
successor to the Holn, and provisional governor of Kesrith’s zones during the transfer of powers from regul to human.
    He made himself unnoticed; he would not offend a second time against regul manners, complicating things which he could not understand.
    The exchange was brief. It was concluded with a series of courtesies and gestures, and the bai subsided into his sled and vanished, and Stavros closed the door for himself, before Duncan could free himself of his confusion and do so.
    “Sir?” Duncan ventured then.
    Stavros took his time answering. He looked around finally, with a sober and uneasy expression. “We are