Skeen's Leap by Jo Clayton

there. Some neat-fingered busybody had searched it, though. She didn’t much like that, but she wasn’t surprised; it was something she’d do herself given the opportunity. She clicked her tongue, dropped the pack, dug into the fleeces and found her darter. That, at least, no one had touched but her. She fished out the belt, swung it around her waist, and snapped the latch shut. After another moment’s thought, she went into the washroom, dumped the old water in the darter’s reservoir and refilled it at the cold tap. She strolled into the bedroom, sneered at the blouse and skirt, then yanked on the bell pull and settled back to wait for her breakfast.
    Telka was annoyed when she saw what Skeen was wearing. Her heavy brows clamped down, her full lips compressed to a thin line—for an instant only—then her face cleared. She ignored the clothing tossed in a bunch on the floor. “The Synarc will see you.”
    Skeen fumed quietly. She’d lived in underclasses and among outcasts all her life and it took very little to wake resentment and rebellion in her. She sat without moving.
    With barely restrained impatience Telka said, “Skeen Pass-through. Coming so far with me was a kind of promise. Do you renounce it? Do you treat Min like all the rest of your kind?”
    â€œNot my kind,” Skeen said firmly, “you’ve never seen my kind.”
    Telka’s instant frown came back, instantly disappearing. She was a politician all right, knew when to push and when to leave off. The ones Skeen had come against before seemed born with the knack, even those chugging along at half-load. Which Telka definitely wasn’t. Skeen wrestled her resentment down, got to her feet with a wide smile (I can play pol as well as you, see?). “Don’t mind me. Does things to my temper, being closed in like this.”
    Telka led Skeen through a maze of gnarly corridors, moving so swiftly Skeen had no chance of ever finding her way through them again, then settled her in the arched exit of a tunnel, facing a court smaller and more intimate than the ones she’d passed through last night. The half-roof was almost complete, though there was a hole in the center large enough to let a condor through. The floor was paved with an elaborate mosaic made from bits of different kinds and colors of stones, incorporating differing surface textures that changed color and design with the changing angles of the sun. All around the court were other arches, the mouths of other passages. Trusting lot, Skeen thought. Bolt holes in case someone in the Synarc turns nasty. This place is a rat run, gives me strangulation of the brain.
    â€œSit here, Skeen Pass-through. And please, again, don’t speak until I speak to you.”
    Skeen nodded, crossed her legs and settled herself as comfortably as she could. She felt herded in. Can’t hurt to listen, she told herself. And repeated it several times as she waited for something, anything, to happen.
    Shadowy figures moved into the arches and sat in what they meant to be intimidating silence, watching her. Screw you, she thought, as long as you pay me, I don’t care how snotty you want to be.
    Telka appeared in the arch and settled gracefully on the cushion waiting for her. Half a breath later a big golden male appeared beside her, so broad he filled the arch to bursting. When all the arches had occupants, Telka held out a hand. The big male was holding a short baton with bulging ends. He spun it so the larger end smacked into her palm. “Skeen Pass-through,” she said, the neutral controlled tones back. “I Z’naluvit, have summoned the Synarc that we might inquire of you in what circumstances you will do a thing for us. I have a sister who knows our minds and hearts more fully than is comfortable to us because she languishes in the hands of the Pallah Nemin, a slave. Our hope ere this has been that the Nemin does not know who he has.