Chapter Two
Rosamund gasped and took a step back.
“Did I scare you?” the robot asked eagerly.
The robot had been more startling than scary, but it seemed important to her, so Rosamund nodded. “Yep. I was terrified,” she assured her.
“I knew it!” the robot said happily. “I am not too young to be out on my own! Hello. My name is Dot-R. Talia sent me to Agora to tell you that you should not, as she put it, wuss out.”
Rosamund looked at her more closely.
“I know where I recognize you from. You look like Mar-ee,” she said. “And no, I am not going to wuss out.”
Mar-ee was Talia’s robot best friend. She was so human-like, she’d even formed a romance with a robot named Far-ex.
Dot-R rolled her eyes in a gesture recognizable to anyone who’d ever had to deal with a teenager, anywhere in the universe. “Mar-ee is my maternal unit. She and Far-ex built me. I’m nothing like them, though. I am far lower in temperature.”
“Lower in temperature? Oh, you mean cooler.” Rosamund laughed. “Dot-R, like daughter – I like it. And Talia sent you? Wow, she’s really going all out.”
Dot-R shrugged. “Actually, she is just really convinced that you will not go enflame the person that you are supposed to enflame.”
“Fire him?” Rosamund was the one who gotenflamedevery time she ran into the big, handsome dragon.
“That is what I just said, yes.”
Rosamund scowled at her. “Shows what she knows. I willso.” Great, now she sounded like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
She tapped her wrist communicator.
“Call Darfan,” she said.
His haughty, disapproving voice crackled over the communicator a moment later. “Hello, Rosamund. You are five minutes late. Have you fired Kodran yet?”
She grimaced. She knew that Darfan was a distant cousin of Lukan’s, and Lukan had hired him out of family obligation. She personally couldn’t stand Darfan. Where Lukan was strong and commanding, Darfan just came off as bossy and abrasive.
“No, I don’t even know where to find him. And why do you want me to do it in person? Wouldn’t it be easier if I just called him from the office, or sent him a holo-message?”
“He is not answering any of our calls,” Darfan said. “He is expected to show up at the mixer tonight, but we would prefer it if you could find him now and terminate our business relationship before that. The Lord High Commander of the Draell wants to speak to him as well. Kodran has been refusing his calls. When you fire Kodran, you will also tell him to call Lord Sekari. I have just received word that Kodran is downtown in the marketplace.”
Rosamund sighed. Why did she have to be caught up in interstellar politics?
“The marketplace is huge,” she said. “It’s most of the city. Anywhere in particular that I should start looking?”
“Downtown.” Darfan’s voice had an edge to it now. “As I just said.”
Dot-R raised a metal eyebrow. “This person is a buttocks rectum,” she said.
“What did you call me?” Darfan’s voice rose in outrage. Rosamund stifled a groan and slapped at Dot-R, who quietly snickered behind her hand.
“Nothing! That wasn’t me! It was just somebody walking by!”
Rosamund stifled a surge of exasperation. She needed to make this work, at least until Talia had her babies. She didn’t want to stress Talia out or burden her with work problems right now.
“Anyway, downtown doesn’t narrow it down much,” she continued. “It’s like a hundred square city blocks.”
“He’s seven feet tall and he travels with a retinue. He can’t be that hard to find,” Darfan said, in tones that dripped with disdain. “You’ve got the company credit chip in your bracelet – go to the marketplace and do some shopping until you spot him. The credit line is wide open.”
“Jeez, you should have led with that.”