Chapter Twenty-Three
“Real spacework,” Rigel had promised for the next day. Kriss didn’t know what he had meant, exactly, but he suspected it would be unpleasant, and felt uneasy as he floated through the corridors to the assigned rendezvous, near the holds. Most of the Family members he met—and you couldn’t go ten metres on Thaylia without running into somebody—nodded neutrally, ignored him, or in the case of small children, stared at him as he passed and then giggled to each other afterward.
Only one or two people, friends of Rigel’s, were ever openly hostile to him. After his talk with Tevera the day before, he could understand that hostility, but he didn’t think he deserved it. In some ways, the cool neutrality of the others bothered him more—what did he have to do to really belong t
