After that, what seemed a very long time when it was dark and I was hungry,Zetha thought. It was probably only a single night, but to a child it would seem longer. Two women in healers’ uniforms came and took me away. I didn’t know if the one with the claws and the little booted feet had abandoned me or if someone had reported her. I didn’t know if she was dead or alive, and never cared.

But tell all that to the Vulcan? Never. What was it the Lord used to say? Dazzle them with details. When I think of what I could tell him, about what goes on in back alleys and abandoned buildings and in catacombs deep below ground, of splinter groups and Vulcan runes and mutters of reunification…but no. I never told the Lord. Why should I tell him? Hold back. Make him work for it.

“I was brought up in…a House. I don’t have a better word for it. A place where the unwanted are fed and clothed and trained to do tasks that are considered worthy of them.”

“An orphanage or foster home,” Tuvok suggested. “Run by the state?”

Zetha shrugged. “A place where the unacceptable are housed and taught a trade. A place I was ill suited for. I stayed until I learned all they could teach me about working in a factory or cleaning a rich man’s toilets, then I left.”

“Left?”

“I ran away. Aemetha took me in.”

And leave it there,she told herself, because how I escaped from the House, and who Aemetha is is none of their business. Much less the rest.

“Then Cretak gave me the locket and taught me what to say and sent me across the Outmarches, and now I’m here.”

“Indeed,” Tuvok said, as if that part were inconsequential. “Who is Aemetha?”

Think!Zetha told herself. Is he only plodding through this for the sake of thoroughness, or is there something I’m missing here?The very connection between Cretak and Uhura told her that the Federation’s reach could extend into the Empire as easily as the reverse was true. But could they harm Aemetha? Would they, because of something she might let slip? She’d thought she was on slippery footing with the Lord, but this was different.

“My godmother,” she said with her usual diffidence, hoping Tuvok would consider it insignificant. But she used a word that was common to both their languages, which meant more than merely “godmother,” implying teacher, guardian, surrogate parent, and Tuvok caught the difference.

“Tell me about her.”

Decide!Zetha told herself. The Lord knew everything, and either he acted against Godmother after you were gone or he didn’t. No way of knowing. Surely this Vulcan or his Starfleet cannot have any more control over you than the Lord had.

Dazzle them with details,she thought. She took a deep breath, shifted around in the chair to bring her knees up almost to her chin and clasp her arms around them, and began.

“She taught me how to read. Then she taught me what was worth reading, and how to read between the lines on what wasn’t. She dressed me and fed me, and at the same time taught me how to dress and how not to eat with my fingers…”

“When a people are always at war, child,” the old woman said, not wheezing for a change because she was sitting down for once and not trying to do three things simultaneously, “the war need not ever touch the homeworld to affect every person living there. When a civilization is predicated on the assumption that the best and brightest of every generation must be swept offworld into warbirds flung to the far reaches of its territories, there perhaps to perish, when a world’s best resources, be they in manpower, technology, or simply the expectation that the best foodstuffs, the best boots, the finest-wrought metals and strongest fabrics and even the optimum works of art and music and literature are relegated to the military, what is left for those downworld?”

“I don’t know,” Zetha said when the old woman finally paused for breath.

“Scraps, that’s what! Scraps and tatters and making do. Schools that teach children to chant and salute and march about smartly, but not to read and reason and appreciate the finer things. But why am I telling you what you already know?”

Zetha shrugged. “Because I’m here. And because you know I won’t betray you to the Tal Shiar.”

“Child!Don’t ever say those words, not even in jest. You really don’t know what you’re saying.”

You’d be surprised at what I know, Godmother!Zetha had thought at the time, but let it go. Her most pleasant memories were here in this crumbling room, her belly full with whatever she and the other scroungers, some of them huddled and snuffling in the corners, had managed to “organize” that day, a few bits of scrap wood in the ornate but crack-flued enameled stove a hedge against the chill and damp outside. The villa was ancient and had no central heating. It stood for the very things Aemetha talked about—an Empire which could conquer distant worlds but didn’t care to keep all of its citizens warm.

Aemetha was old and talked about the past. Tahir, Zetha’s fellow scrounger, talked about the future, a future he was not clear about, yet knew somehow would be better than the present. And Aemetha remembered better times, so perhaps it was possible. But Zetha, caught between the two, could only deal with the now.

If anyone had told her this would be the last night she would spend listening to Aemetha’s stories, she’d have shrugged and feigned indifference. No one, not even she, would know what she was feeling inside.

“Godmother?” she’d called out that morning, sunlight over her shoulder, bracing the creaky outer door with her back so it wouldn’t slam. Her arms were busy with a box that needed to be held level so as not to damage its contents. “I’m back!”

“Rag manners!” someone chided from three rooms away, barely audible. “In the salon, child. The civilized don’t shout.”

“Whatever you say,” Zetha muttered, finding the old woman sorting hand-me-down clothes for her foundlings as usual. There were several of the littlest ones gathered around her, keeping quiet and waiting their turn in Aemetha’s presence, far different from their usual fidgeting and squabbling and rolling about in the gutters biting and scratching, fighting over everything.

Zetha waited until they had scattered like leaves before the wind, clutching garments that the average Romulan wouldn’t use for dustrags, before she set her treasure down on a rickety side table and let Aemetha open it.

Barter,Zetha thought, is so much more creative than stealing. Stealing is easier, but both, in this time and place, are equally dangerous. I’ll be caught one of these days, and probably disappear. But the satisfaction of seeing old Aemetha’s eyes widen with surprise is worth the risk.

“Kaliajellies! Goodness, child!” Aemetha cried, having threaded her way down the narrow alley between the heaps of castoff garments higher than her head in the dank-walled room. The effort made her wheeze; she pressed one hand against her side where it ached. “I’m not even going to ask where you acquired these! Or how,” she clucked, touching one of the shimmering purplish sweets gently with gnarled but no less sensitive fingers.

“Perhaps better not,” Zetha suggested wryly. The last thing she wanted to do was to get Tahir in trouble. She liked Tahir, and was certain he liked her, and that could have possibilities down the road. Like her, he had no family, which meant he was free to mate where he chose. But what future could be made by two who had no past? She would ask Aemetha’s advice about that later.

Aemetha had counted the jellies and saw that there were two more than the usual allotment per box. She hesitated only a moment before popping one into her mouth. She closed her eyes, savoring every atom of flavor, letting it melt on her tongue and trickle leisurely down her throat, an expression nearly orgasmic on her mapped and storied face.