9
THE DOOR at the back of the room opened, and in came a woman dressed in a black uniform with five-pointed star embroidered in gold on the chest. A Coldi woman.
“Ah, here you are.”
She crossed the room and bowed in a subservient pose with arms limp down her sides, palms facing backwards. “Welcome to Barresh. I hope you had a good journey.” Her accent was from Asto, and she used formal pronouns of the type hardly anyone used at Hedron.
There was an awkward silence. Clearly, the woman expected some kind of response.
Izramith rose. She’d seen Asto Coldi greet each other in this way, but never had anyone displayed this behaviour to her. This was the part of Asto’s society that was a mystery to people at Hedron. Izramith didn’t know how to perform the superior greeting, but it involved a
