The pressure eased. She gave him a look that might have been pitying, then vanished into the crowd. He frowned and turned to watch the sailors haul in the squid.
* * *
Layanna didn’t glance up as Avery knocked and entered the cabin. Ani had flung herself on one of the two narrow cots, belly down, and refused to face him. Hildra was nowhere to be seen. Avery plunked down by his daughter, across from Layanna, who sat with her eyes closed and legs crossed as if in meditation.
“I know you’re upset, Ani,” Avery said, “But that’s no excuse to say you should shoot someone.”
“Not someone. Her.”
“Even her.”
Sulkily, Ani faced him. She seemed much smaller out of her environment suit. More frail. He recognized the determined glint in her eyes.
“She’s bad,” Ani said
“You didn’t always think so. You used to call her Aunt Jess, and she looked after you.”
“She poisoned me.”
“No, now remember, that was all a trick. She never actually poisoned you.”
“I had seizures!”
There was some amusement in Layanna’s voice when she opened her eyes at last. “She’s got you there, Francis. Sheridan is a hard person to defend.”
“Well—”
“No!” Ani said, and turned her face to the wall again. Her voice somewhat muffled, she said, “You should have let her die.”
But if I had, little one, what would that make you? It was this thought that had guided his hands during surgery that night long weeks ago, and even now he could not think that it was the wrong decision.
He pulled the covers up over his daughter’s shoulder and tucked her in. “Why don’t you get some sleep? You’ve done enough for one day.”
She didn’t answer, but she looked tired, and Avery moved to Layanna’s bed.
“How are you?”
She appeared tired, too. Exhausted, even. She always did after her attempted spyings.
“Fine,” she said, but she sounded ragged.
“Learn anything?”
She shook her head and lay down. He curled up behind her, which she allowed, though not as yieldingly as she once had.
“They’re blocking their thoughts from me,” she said.
Ever since the firing of the Device, Layanna had been trying to see into the minds of the R’loth, to see what their reaction—or counterattack—might be. Now, after they’d had a glimpse of what that response entailed, it was vital to discover more, to find some weakness in the Starfish, perhaps, or where it would be deployed next, or how many of the things there were.
“”Do you sense anything when you reach out to them?” he asked. “Anything that might help us?”
“No. At least ... I think not.”
“So there’s something.”
“Maybe. When I push, I get an overall sense of—I’m not sure. It might be an appeal to the gods.”
Avery felt a ball form in his gut. The gods of the R’loth ...
“There’s ... no chance they could answer, is there?” Little frightened him more than that notion.
“I doubt it, not in this set of dimensions. The only gods around, at least in this region, if they were gods ... well, they’re gone now, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Are you sure?”
“We’ve been searching for them for years. Centuries. Ever since we arrived on your world. Remember when I told you, that night on the dirigible after fleeing the ngvandi city in the Borghese, that there were two reasons we chose this world—the sea and one other?”
“Yes. One thing that your people wanted, and one that you needed. You never explained.”
“Well, these gods, the Ygrith, are that other reason, the one we wanted. It was more than you needed to know at the time, and it would only have confused things.”
“And your people couldn’t have found them now?”
“After all these years? Unlikely. Besides, like I said, they’re gone.”
