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“Will do. He—”
“Lar’a, you stranger!” Patrick strode through the door, his blue eyes bright, and grabbed Lar’a into a hug. “What the hell are you doing here? This is a classified meeting, you know.”
“So we should be kicking out the hangers-on like you then?” Lar’a scoffed and returned the hug but used her superior height to rub her knuckles into Patrick’s salt-and-pepper hair.
“Hangers-on nothing.” Patrick disengaged and went for the breakfast rolls. He jerked his head at Mal’ik. “This old man would be lost without me.”
Mal’ik indulged him with a smile and didn’t dispute. He and Patrick had been fighting together since the Klah’Eel invasion of Tava, when Patrick had joined the Klah’Eel side despite being human. He’d always been a Klah’Eel citizen, and he had chosen loyalty to his country over loyalty to his species. Now, he had been Mal’ik’s right-hand man for many years.
A slightly built and younger klah’eel woman with black hair in thick braids down her back came in quietly behind Patrick. She nodded at Lar’a. “Hello. I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“Teav, this is Lar’a.” Mal’ik stepped between them to make the proper introductions. “She’s the bodyguard of the Qeshian Emissary Serihk and has her own security concerns and insights. She’s an excellent security professional, and she’ll be in constant contact with us during the negotiations. Lar’a, this is Teav, our brilliant intelligence expert.”
Lar’a lifted her mug in a highly informal salute.
Teav’s eyebrow twitched. “Pleased to meet you.”
“And you.”
Traces of distrust and wariness wafted off them both, but Mal’ik ignored it. They were security experts. He would have been concerned about their fitness for duty if they’d taken to each other immediately.
He sat at the head of the table and waved for them all to join him. “Let’s get this started. The Turner ship will be here soon. What do I need to know?”
Patrick spoke first, his face tight, accentuating the lines around his lips. “Teav. Tell him what you told me.”
Teav’s jaw flexed as she gritted her teeth. “I don’t have anything.”
Lar’a’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“I don’t have anything,” Teav repeated. Her eyes cut briefly to Lar’a before settling on Mal’ik. “The Resistance is quiet. There was chatter about hitting a trading post tens of kilometers from Ralscoln, but that was a transparent decoy.”
“You haven’t heard anything about this summit?” Mal’ik tightened the grip of his flesh hand around the warm ceramic mug.
“No. And we know they’re interested in it.”
“You bet they are.” Lar’a leaned back and crossed her arms. “They care a hell of a lot more about this than some trading post in the Southern Tava hinterlands.”
“I know,” Teav shot back on just the right side of rude. “Deception experts they are not, but they clearly know how to shut up when they need to.”
Mal’ik frowned. “Have you heard anything about the torvar?”
The table went quiet.
Lar’a and Patrick sat up a little straighter.
Teav deflated. “No,” she admitted. “The last we heard, he’d sabotaged a power plant just south of Ralscoln. No rumors since then.”
Patrick growled. “Fuck.”
Lar’a rubbed a thumb over her eyebrow horns and grimaced. “I hate those goddamn worms.”
Mal’ik kept his face neutral and nodded slowly. “It is what it is. It will be a feat for him to get through our entrance scans.”
“He’s gotten through plenty before,” Patrick pointed out.
“He’s gotten through half-assed and corrupt entry points in Southern Tava.” Lar’a wrinkled her nose. “This is a different game.”
Mal’ik could smell the anxiety on her, though. If the klah’eel had ever had a natural predator, it was the torvar. It didn’t matter that they had an advanced space-faring civilization now; the thought of the parasite still flicked on an instinctual fear switch in the back of their minds.
