Horus watched Narkhana collapse as Tinker Bell leapt upon him and wrestled him to the floor. He rolled on the rug, thrusting back at her with all four feet while their happy growls mingled. For a dog well into her third decade, Tinker Bell was remarkably spry, thanks to her own limited biotechnics, yet she had no conception of the tremendous strength Narkhana was reining in to let her win, nor of just how far her son's intellect surpassed her own. Even if she'd been able to conceptualize such things, she would never have known, for her children would never tell her, and there was something both hilarious and poignant in watching them revert to utter doggishness in her presence.

Hector looked up and saw the late arrivals, and a whistle brought Tinker Bell instantly to his side. She flopped down at his feet, panting cheerfully as she prepared to put up with another of the incomprehensible human things her person did. Horus raised a sardonic eyebrow at his grandson, and Hector looked back with a bland innocence he'd forgotten how to assume for far too many months. For all her boisterousness, Tinker Bell was well behaved when Hector chose to remind her to be.

"Horus, Lawrence. Glad you could make it," Colin said, standing to shake hands. Horus squeezed back, then opened his arms to his daughter's embrace and slid into the chair beside Jefferson's.

"Now that you're here," Colin went on, "let me introduce someone very special. Horus, you've already met, but it's been a while since you've seen her. Gentlemen, this is Eve."

Horus inclined his head to the slender being on the pad beside Brashieel's. She was much more delicate than Brashieel, and several centimeters shorter, but her crest was magnificent. Brashieel's, like that of all male Narhani, was the same gray-green as the rest of his hide; Eve's was half again as large, proportionally, and shot with glorious color. Now that crest fanned in a graceful expression that conveyed greeting and thanks for his courtesy with an edge of embarrassment at the fuss being made over her, and it was hard for him to remember she wasn't quite seven years old.

Jefferson bowed in turn, and Brashieel preened with pride beside her. The Narhani were a hierarchical race, and there'd never been much doubt the first Narhani female would become the bride of the first Narhani nest lord, but it was clear that more than duty and mutual expectation flourished between these two. Horus was glad for them—and not just because Eve represented the culmination of his dead daughter's greatest project.

"We've got several things on today's agenda," Colin announced, "but first things first. Horus, 'Tanni and I want you to make sure the Earth-side news channels are ready for our broadcast."

"In truth." Jiltanith's smile was almost as lovely as of old. Not quite, but it was getting there, and the knowledge that she was to be a mother again showed. " 'Twas kindness greater than e'er any mother, be she sovereign lady or no, might expect of so many to wish her unborn babes so well, Father. 'Twill heal our souls to tell them all how greatly their letters have helped to heal our hearts."

"That," Horus said, "will be my very great pleasure."

"Thank you," Colin said warmly, then grinned. "I know the Council's got to talk about all those little niggling things like taxes, budgets, and engineering projects, but first there's something really important. Eve?"

"Of course, Your Majesty." Eve's vocoder had been set to produce a female human voice, and Horus felt a familiar stinging sensation in his eyes when he heard it. At Eve's own request, the voice was Isis Tudor's. It was her way of honoring her human "mother's" memory, and he'd once been afraid it would hurt to hear it. But there was no pain. Only pride.

The adolescent Narhani woman reached into her belt pouch and withdrew a half-dozen holo plates. She laid one before her with a slender, six-fingered hand, adjusting it with nervous precision, then looked up at the humans seated around the table.

"As you know," she said with a formality at odds with her youth, "the Nest of Narhan plans to commemorate the Siege of Earth with a gift to our human friends. We do this for many reasons, including our nest's desire to express sorrow for the deaths we caused and thanks for all humanity has given us when we might have expected only destruction. Memorials, such as your own Memorial at Shepard Center, are important to us, as well, and it is our hope that this will be the beginning of an Imperial Memorial. One in which our nest shares and which will be completed when the Nest of Aku'Ultan has also been freed."

She paused, obviously relieved to have completed her formal statement without errors, and Brashieel's crest rose even higher in pride.

"Our gift," she said more naturally, "is now finished."

She pressed a button, and a soft gasp went up as a light sculpture appeared above the plate. It wasn't in the abstract style human artists were currently enamored of; it was representational, a reproduction of another sculpture worked in finest marble... and it was magnificent.

A rearing Narhani rose high on his rear hooves to fight the bonds which held him captive. The cruel, galling collar about his neck drew blood as he pitted his frenzied strength against its massive chain, and the humans who looked upon him knew Narhani expressions well enough to read the despair in his eyes and flattened crest, but his teeth were bared in snarling defiance. He was without hope yet unconquered, and the anguish of his captivity wrenched at them.

Yet he was not alone. Broken chains flailed from his wrists, the exquisitely detailed links shorn by some sharp edge, and a human knelt beside him, torso naked but clothed from the waist down in the uniform of the Imperial Marines. His face was drawn with fatigue, but his eyes were as fierce as the prisoner's, and he held a chisel in one hand, its honed sharpness hard against the iron ring which held the Narhani pent, while the other raised a hammer high to bring it smashing down.

The detail was superb, the anatomy perfect, the two species' very different expressions captured with haunting fidelity. Sweat beaded the human's bare skin, and each drop of Narhani blood was so real the viewer held his breath, watching for it to fall. They were trapped forever in the stone—human and Narhani, fleshed in marble by a master's hand—and for all their alienness, they were one.

"My God," Colin whispered into the silence. "It's... it's— I don't have the words, Brashieel. I just..." His voice trailed off, and Brashieel lowered his own crest.

"What you see in it is only truth, Colin," he said softly. "My people are not so gifted with words as yours; we put our truths in other things. But while this lasts—" he gestured at the light-born statue before them "—we of the Nest of Narhan will never forget what humans have given us. We came against you thinking you nest-killers, but you taught us who the true nest-killer is and, when you might have slain us, gave us life. You gave us more than life." His hand stoked Eve's crest gently. "But most of all, you gave us truth, and so we return that truth to you. To all your people, but especially to you, for you are our nest lord now."

"I—" Colin blushed as he had not in years, then looked up and met Brashieel's eyes squarely. "Thank you. I will never receive anything more beautiful... or that I will treasure more."

"Then we are content, High Nest Lord."

Lawrence Jefferson gazed raptly at the statue through the buzz of admiration which followed, and not even his reverence was completely feigned. He cleared his throat when the first rush of conversation slowed.

"Brashieel, may I—" He paused, then shrugged slightly. "I hesitate to ask it, but may I have a holo of this for a place of honor in my office?"

"Of course. We have brought several copies for our friends, although we hope they will not be made public before the formal gifting."