12
‘You heard Daemi’s report? What they found?’ Lodan was pacing again, back and forth in a three-step loop in front of Captain Mont’s desk, one hand clasped beneath his chin, scratching at the rough stubble of his unshaven face.
‘I read what you sent me.’ Captain Mont watched him from his chair, rubbing his own face now, surprised at the whiskers he found there. That would never do. He had to take better care of himself.
In one hand he bounced a lump of greenish stone, shaped like a cat’s paw. He had found it holding down a pile of papers on his desk days before, and something about its weight in his palm gave him comfort as he worked. His fingers seemed drawn to tracing along its outline, slipping in between the sharpened claws that poked out of each toe.
‘And the plan the ones they
