"I hoped you'd feel that way."
He stood looking at her, and she did not speak, meeting his gaze steadily and with a queer kind of amusement. Finally Kerrel said, "I wish you hadn't done it this way. Not for him. Not for a—"
"But Kerrel," she told him gently, "it had to be something like this, or you wouldn't take no for an answer. I know. I've been trying for the longest time."
Kerrel turned and went out. He said nothing more, and he did not even glance at Trehearne as he passed him. Trehearne looked after him and shivered.
"You've been a great help to me," he said bitterly to Shairn. "The first time you didn't quite get me killed, but I believe now you're going to make it."
"Kerrel isn't that important. All he can do is recommend, and he'd have recommended Thuvis anyway." She laughed. "I feel wonderful. He was really beginning to weigh on me."
"Congratulations. And what is Thuvis?"
"I'll show you." She searched along the wall racks until she found the spool she wanted and clipped it into a viewer. "This is the astro-manual for a sector of space that is fortunately very little used. Here, have a look."
Trehearne bent over the magnilens. Equations were gliding slowly across it to the whirring of the unwinding spool, coordinates of a position in space.
"We have no capital punishment on Llyrdis," she said. "Matter of fact, we have very few criminals. But such as there are are sent into permanent exile, here."