“She couldn’t, not in the end, because ’cats simply can’t reproduce the sounds of human language. But even though she never learned how to overcome her own mental deafness, she did, after years of listening to humans speak, deduce the rudiments of how spoken language worked. And because she could still transmit memory songs, she was able to pass that knowledge along to all other treecats, which is why they were able to understand us when we spoke to them even before they had a way to speak back with their hands.”

“Fascinating,” Hamish repeated yet again, his voice soft and his expression rapt. Then he cocked his head and frowned. “But you said all of this relates to Sam somehow.”

“Yes, it does. You see, Samantha’s treecat name is ‘Golden Voice.’ She’s a memory singer, Hamish.”

“She’s what?” White Haven blankly at Honor for a moment, then turned to stare at Samantha, who looked back and gave an unmistakable human-style nod.

“A memory singer,” Honor confirmed. “Remember that I said earlier that ’cats who adopt don’t really make any choice to do so in the human sense of the word. That extra sensitivity, or ability, or whatever that’s part of the ability to taste the mind-glow that makes adoption possible, also drives those of them who have it towards us. They know what it is they’re looking for from the memory songs of other ’cats who have adopted, but they don’t have any idea who they’re looking for. It’s their choice to seek adoption—or, rather, it’s the choice of ’cats for whom adoption is possible to place themselves close enough to humans that it can happen—but the actual moment of adoption is more one of recognition than of seeking someone out. It just sort of… happens when they meet the right person.

“Well, Samantha—Golden Voice—was, as far as she or any other treecats know, the first ’cat born with both the mental strength to be a memory singer and the whatever it is that drives ’cats to adopt. From what she’s told me, it must have been a dreadful decision to give up either of those possibilities, but she chose to pursue the adoption bond, which is how she met Harold Tschu and adopted him.”

“And he was killed serving with you in Silesia, after she and Nimitz had become mates,” White Haven said, nodding slowly.

“Which is the only reason she didn’t suicide after Harold’s death,” Honor agreed somberly. The earl’s eyes narrowed, and she tossed her head and looked back at him almost defiantly as she sensed his instant flare of denial of any such possibility.

“That’s what treecats usually do when they lose their adopted people or their mates, Hamish,” she said quietly. “Suicide, or simply… shut down and starve themselves to death or die of dehydration. That was the enormous tragedy of adoptions for three T-centuries, until the invention of prolong made it possible for us to live as long as they do. They knew they would almost certainly be giving up decades of life, as much as a century or more, if they adopted… and the need for the human mind-glow drove them to it, anyway.”