Ambassador 4: Coming Home Read Online Free PDF Page A

refugees that had come on the ship? Or the new Aghyrians, who were highly critical of the council’s methods and who would, all facts considered, probably do the most professional job?
    A door fell shut somewhere in the building, and finally there was activity at the ground floor unit. First out of the lush garden in between the square that surrounded the fountain and the apartment’s door was Lilona Shrakar, a tall woman who looked like she was in her forties, but I’d been informed she was probably closer to sixty. I had learned that she had spent much of her life in stasis and was bound to the ship, whatever that was supposed to mean—I guessed it meant she was flight crew.
    Then came the man himself: Captain Kando Luczon of the Aghyrian behemoth ship that still floated about in the middle of space with its huge crew in stasis, surrounded by an armada of ships from Asto’s armed forces. Like all Aghyrians, he was extremely tall. He liked to wear flowing, loose garments, and with his long white hair he resembled a wizard from the books my mother had read to me while I was growing up in New Zealand.
    The last one in the group was Tayron Kathraczi, a quiet young man about whom we had learned little but whose function seemed to be limited to bodyguard. From the way the captain treated him, he was definitely lower on the pecking order than Lilona.
    Both the captain’s companions acknowledged me with a nod of the head, but their master, as usual, did not greet me. I’d gotten to the point where I’d stopped being annoyed about this. There was so much more serious stuff to occupy me.
    I explained to him where we were going. He merely nodded in a cold, professional manner, but asked no questions, not even about his message and whether I had received it.
    It irritated me. This man irritated me with everything he did, from the way he moved to the way he looked at me and my association, or staff, or any one of the people dedicated to make his stay comfortable. He never thanked anyone or offered his help. He just assumed that stuff would appear and people would turn up.
    I had tried to make excuses—that he’d been cut off from normal people for so long and that space was very lonely and even more so with all his crew in stasis and blah, blah, blah. But Thayu was right. The man was a first-class arsehole.
    And I could think of a whole list of things I’d rather do than take him on an outing, and an even longer list of things I should be doing instead, like dealing with the correspondence.
    We left the building and set off in the direction of the station on the other side of the island.
    The main thoroughfare in that direction led from courtyard to courtyard bathed in the dappled shade of the giant trees that were coming into new leaves before the start of the wet season.
    Various cricketlike creatures chirped in the branches. A soft breeze carried the ubiquitous scent of wet mud from the marshland, mingled with the smell of cooking, since it was almost lunchtime. None of us said anything, because there was nothing to be said. I’d covered all the subjects relating to the Aghyrian history of Barresh. Anyway, he’d had plenty of time to read up on this subject himself, and by now probably knew a lot more about it than I did.
    He wasn’t sharing any of it.
    He walked next to me like a silent ghost, with his two companions behind him. Thayu walked in front and Nicha bringing up the rear. They kept an eye on people we met and people who watched us from balconies or windows. We were a very odd and disharmonious group. Not a group at all, but two complete associations, each with a leader and two seconds. And the leaders barely tolerated each other and one pair of seconds did all the work while the other pair were passive. This situation would set Coldi teeth on edge.
    Hell, it set my teeth on edge.
    We were about to enter the underground passage that led to the station when Kando Luczon said to me, without preamble, “You have