The Envoy Read Free Page B

we’re going to do it.’
    Reetor tensed, his brain on high alert. This was the moment he needed to focus.
    â€˜You are going to stand, slowly, from your seat. I am not going to be able to keep the blade at your skull. You’re too tall, of course. So I’m going to move it to here.’ She touched his back where his kidneys resided. ‘Apparently it’s very painful if the petrification starts there.’
    Reetor imagined petrification was no picnic wherever it began. ‘Check,’ he said.
    â€˜Don’t move yet,’ she ordered. ‘I’m not done.’
    â€˜Sorry, Miss —’ An insight crashed into his brain. ‘What should I call you?’
    â€˜What do you mean?’ That deep voice was suddenly wary.
    Good.
    â€˜What’s your name?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    Perhaps he shouldn’t have pushed it, but that sixth sense was very insistent. ‘You “don’t know” like “none of my business”, or you “don’t know” like you don’t have one?’
    â€˜Enough,’ she barked, slicing off one short curl with the blade and pausing while he watched the stone curl clatter onto the floor. Petrification, even of a stray piece of hair, had a way of really concentrating your mind. ‘I talk, you obey.’
    â€˜Yes Ma’am,’ he agreed, unable to tear his eyes from the petrified curl lying grey and perfect on the white floor.
    Don’t think about Jintu. Think of a way out of this instead.
    â€˜So,’ she continued, as if she were catching up for a drink with him rather than giving him an unconventional haircut, ‘blade at your kidneys, you stand, yes?’
    â€˜Yes,’ he agreed.
    â€˜Like that, I will guide you to the back wall. Yes?’
    â€˜Yes,’ he repeated.
    â€˜Then you strip.’
    â€˜Strip?’ Had he heard her right?
    â€˜Naked,’ she confirmed.
    â€˜Why?’ It wasn’t modesty but fear of vulnerability that yanked the question from his mouth.
    â€˜Three reasons,’ she said, and he heard that coldness again.
    What had happened to this girl? He tried to think it through, for understanding, not for empathy. The more you understood, the more intelligence you could marshall, the better your chances at survival. She was young — he was sure of that now, possibly even younger than he was. So she had been only one or two when the Earth was blown to bits.
    Like him.
    But unlike him, she had not grown up among her own. She had somehow been gifted or sold to the Temerites. Of all the things the people of New Earth had learned, cruising the universe homeless and desperate for eighteen years, it was that there were very few species that valued empathy and compassion. If this girl had grown up with the Temerites, on a slave farm no less, she would make a very dangerous captor. He didn’t know her story, but if he could survive long enough to hear it he suspected it might help him scheme a way out of this. So the first step was to survive.
    â€˜Care to enlighten me?’
    â€˜Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘First, I need to confirm your identity. The tattoo and naked body will do that.’
    Okay. ‘And…?’
    â€˜And I need you weaponless and vulnerable, obviously.’
    Obviously. So what was the third thing?
    The girl traced one fingernail down the back of his neck, and his skin, which should have shuddered in horror, responded to the light touch, shivering with pleasure.
    â€˜I’ve never seen a naked man of Earth,’ she said lightly, as if she were discussing the ice storms on Tyver, or the market for contraband whiskey. ‘I want to.’ She stopped, gripping the delicate muscle between his shoulder and neck so hard a stab of pain lanced down his back. ‘And I think you would be an excellent specimen.’ She kicked his chair. ‘Now stand.’

Chapter Two: Rock and a Hard Place
    Reetor felt