The shoulders were high,
the neck unpleasantly sinuous, and the face, a little narrower than
human, was handsomely arrogant, with a kind of wary alert mischief that
was the least human thing about him.
He bent, tilted the girl's inert body on to a divan of some sort, and
turned his back on her, lifting his hand in an impatient, and
unpleasantly reminiscent, gesture.
The tinkling of the little hammers stopped as if a switch had been
disconnected.
"Now," said the nonhuman, "we can talk."
Like the waif, he spoke Shainsan, and spoke it with a better accent than
any nonhuman I had ever known--so well that I looked again to be
certain. I wasn't too dazed to answer in the same tongue, but I couldn't
keep back a spate of questions:
"What happened? Who are you? What is this place?"
The nonhuman waited, crossing his hands--quite passable hands, if you
didn't look too closely at what should have been nails--and bent forward
in a sketchy gesture.
"Do not blame Miellyn. She acted under orders.
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