Ashrock and Jeyn put their plan to leave
Nisandros into action as soon as they got up the next morning. There were
dozens of little details and messages to handle, material to collect, loose
ends in research projects to tie up, promises to fulfill, and private farewells
to perform with friends who could be trusted to keep their secret. The winter
storms in the northern hemisphere would end in three decs, and that wasn’t
nearly enough time to make all the arrangements to take the first shuttle that
could go up to the Alliance’s orbital station. The formal announcement of their
departure had to be made at the right time and the right place, with the right
witnesses, or the uproar could justify their family being detained. Hurt
feelings and insult claims had to be prevented at all costs.
M'kar had her part to play, running errands for her
parents, returning borrowed items, retrieving items that had been loaned or
taken without permission. She returned to their family suite with a handful of
book chips that had been borrowed from her mother's library over the years.
M'kar was grinning in triumph, until her cheeks hurt. She had retrieved the
chips with as much sneaky stealth as they had originally been taken by various
cousins and aunts and uncles. Considering how dusty some chips were, and how
deeply they had been buried among personal possessions, she doubted anyone
would realize the books had been reclaimed until luns or even years after she
and her parents had left.
Then she saw the shriveled old man sitting on the bench by the fire pit in their common room, and her grin fell off her face. M'kar immediately looked around for Anguak. She sniffed hard, trying to find him by his dirty wet clothes stink, since she couldn't see him in the shadows.
"Little Blade," Great-grandfather Aquid wheezed. "Right on time." He beckoned, holding out a bony, wrinkled arm covered in blurry red and black and green tattoos.
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