Snippet #2816073

Once the Taiyou delegation had left, Andrijana remained standing, hands gripping the back of her chair so tightly a vein visibly throbbed just beneath the skin. She waited until she'd heard each of their footsteps recede in a muted percussive cascade. Then she looked at Drulović. The old woman returned the stare. Andrijana saw that the old woman seemed exhausted and frail, the effect accentuated now that she sat alone at the large conference room table.

"Have you finished gawking yet?" The old woman's tone was biting. "It's rather rude, you know. You'd think you were but a child at the fairground gaping at seeing a costumed bear or half-drunken rodeo performance for the first time."

Andrijana shook her head. "I wasn't trying to stare."

"But you were, in fact, staring, Dr. Krstevska," said Drulović, one eyebrow slightly raised. "You've been doing so for the past two minutes, which is a surprisingly long time by most people's reckoning - and staring is rather impolite. What now, were you raised in a barn?"

"Look. I'll call down to have someone take you back to the unit," Andrijana said, trying to ignore the old woman's comment, though her cheeks flushed. "You've had your meeting. I hope it was what you wanted. And no, I'd really rather not know. You're not - we're not supposed to be allowing this kind of thing."

"Yet here we find ourselves," Drulović said, half-shrugging, her tired eyes bemused. "I imagine a great deal of things happen here that officially ought not to be possible or permitted. It's simply the way of things." She nodded toward the door. "Please."

Andrijana gave the old woman a sidelong glance, but dialed down from the phone by the door to the conference room. "... So you want to be a kingmaker, then. Decide who should sit on the Taiyou throne next. Is that it for you now?" Damn.

"All I'd like right now is a good cup of tea - something better than whatever that poor excuse for tea might be," Drulović indicated the now-cold cups of tea on the table that no one else had touched, "and a good book, in front of the hearth at home. I don't suppose you could arrange that."

Andrijana sighed. She leaned forward against the closest chair, then abruptly let go, pacing the length of the conference room. The old woman scoffed, quietly, but made no further comment until two officers appeared in the doorway to return her to her cell. Nearly all kings and emperors could die. But for a twist of fate, one could so easily end up in the same predicament in which she now found herself. How little did Andrijana know.