The Lady and the Tiger by Jody Lynn Nye

Author:Jody Lynn Nye
Format: epub

Chapter Sixteen

Three-eet splashed Chirwl with a mighty flip of his tail.

“Pay attention!” the gesture said. Chirwl chittered with laughter. From being wary of communicating with another species, the dolphin had become eager to say all that had been on his mind these long years in captivity. He’d been lonely.

He turned to face Three-eet, surging as far out of the water as he could to say, “I am paying attention to you.”

“You have met the striped one?”

“Yes,” Chirwl told him. “In safe circumstances. He moves in a dream.”

“They feed him bad fish?”

“No,” Chirwl said, correcting his actions. Their pidgin language had developed rapidly, but there were still plenty of gaps between intention and understanding. “I do not mean he is sick. Or, yes, it is a kind of sickness, caused by humans.”

“These”—Three-eet swung his body wide to indicate the occupants of the house—“do not make me sick, except by neglect, not to let me out of here!” He bumped angrily into the walls, as he did frequently.

“They mean well,” Chirwl tried to assure him. “They profess parental-love.”

“Are you a captive, too?”

“No. I go where I wish. My human obeys me.” It was a poor expression of the host/guest relationship he and Shona enjoyed, but the subtleties would have to wait.

“Order her to free me!” Three-eet said, desperately. “I wish to go back to first waters.”

“She would like to,” Chirwl said thoughtfully, beaching himself in the shallows of the pool. Three-eet threw himself onto the smooth tile beside him.

“Please,” Three-eet entreated, making a wistful noise like that of a juvenile. Then he rose up on his tail and shrieked. “Alarm! Alarm!”

“Ah, here you are,” Finoa said. “Are you ready to come with me?”

Chirwl looked up at her in surprise. Three-eet, seeing a stranger emerge suddenly into the room, had thrown himself back into the depths of his pool.

“Greetings,” he said. “Shona is not here.”

“I know that,” the tall woman said, hunkering down. She stood so close to him that her expensive soft boots were lapped by the water. “She didn’t tell you to expect me, Chirwl? I invited you both to my home today. She said she was going mountain climbing, but said you could come over by yourself. With your escort, of course,” she added, with a courteous hand toward Saffie. The big black dog came over to sniff, then lick, her hand.

“I did not know of this,” Chirwl said. “Shona said I may visit? She has said not before.”

“Well, she changed her mind,” Finoa said, assuming a smile. If Bock had done as he was ordered, Shona would be lying dead in a mountain crevice, and the matter of permission was moot. A regrettable accident. Captain Taylor would have to be summoned to retrieve her body and the rest of his family, including the ottle, who would most likely return to Poxt. But by then she would have her biological sample.

But how much body language did the ottle understand? Could he tell she wasn’t telling the truth? She tried to

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