“Ask her to hold a few more seconds, please, Mac,” she said, raising her voice.

“Of course, Your Grace,” he replied, and Hamish muted the com.

“I think we should go ahead and get decent,” Honor continued, giving her husband one more peck on the cheek before she rolled out of bed.

“Some people,” he returned, surveying her with obvious approval, “wake up decent because they wear pajamas, you know.”

“No, really?” She laughed and stretched luxuriously, arching her spine and savoring the sharp, bright flicker of desire flowing through his emotions, then scooped up her kimono and slipped into it. “Doesn’t that waste a lot of time?” she asked innocently.

“And you called me a wicked, evil fellow! A case of the pot and the kettle, don’t you think?”

“Certainly not.” She sniffed virtuously. “I’m not a ‘fellow’!”

“No, you’re not, thank God,” he conceded fervently.

“I’m glad you approve. Now get your butt out of bed and into a robe!”

“Yes, Your Grace. At once, Your Grace. As you command, Your Grace,” he said obsequiously, and ducked as she hurled a pillow at him.

* * *

“All right, Mac,” she said a few minutes later, seated at her workstation in their suite’s comfortable sitting room. Hamish sat beside her, casually dressed in a pullover shirt and slacks. “Please put Dr. Arif through.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

The display blanked briefly. Then an attractive, dark-complexioned woman looked out of it at her.

“Adelina,” Honor said. “It’s good to see you.”

“And you, too, Your Grace.” The woman who’d taught the treecats to sign smiled after a brief lag. Despite the fact that she was several light-minutes away, in her office on Sphinx, the delay was little more than ten seconds. “I apologize for screening so early, though.” Her smile turned a bit sheepish. “Actually, I hadn’t realized it was quite this early for you. I counted the time zones wrong.”

“That’s all right,” Honor assured her, and glanced at Hamish. “We needed to get up early this morning, anyway.”

“I hope you’re not just saying that to make me feel better,” Arif chuckled a handful of seconds later. “Anyway, though, the reason I’m disturbing you this early is that something came up about thirty-five minutes ago, and I thought you ought to hear about it ASAP.”

Honor cocked her head and frowned. If she had the numbers right, the time in Arif’s office in the Sphinxian town of Green Bottom was just past Compensate, the “midnight hour” (thirty-seven minutes, actually) inserted into the middle of Sphinx’s night to “round out” the twenty-five standard-hour planetary day.

“You’re up kind of late, aren’t you, Adelina?”