“But—”
“We’ve had to maneuver in the portal lands intheseforms just to bring you safely to the Consort.”
“And if you have to suffer, I have to suffer?”
“Yes.”
Winston’s brother grimaced and turned to Kaylin. “Can you ask Spike to move off the path?”
“But we don’t want to lose him!”
Everyone stared at Kaylin as if she’d just grown two extra heads, both absent any actual brains.
“Spike—can you find us again? Can you find me?”
Is that what you desire?The voice shook the firmament, but sounded less insect-like.
“Yes!”
Something Kaylin could only perceive as absence lashed out. She felt a sharp pain down the length of her left arm, and realized that her shirt had been slashed open. And it wasn’t just her shirt.
Terrano shouted, and Winston turned toward Spike, but Spike had already started to move.
“Do not bleed here,” Winston told Kaylin.
Kaylin bit her tongue on the Leontine that often followed condescending and unhelpful advice. Winston didn’t know any better. Probably. It was Sedarias who tore a strip off the bottom of her gown; she brought it to Kaylin and bound that arm. “Teela isnotimpressed,” she said, as she worked.
“I’ve done worse.”
Sedarias pursed lips and said, “I’d appreciate if the two of you had this argument in person, rather than through me.” She finished binding the arm.
Spike began to move. Given his size, Kaylin had expected his movement to be lumbering; it wasn’t. She could track his movement by the dimming of color, but didn’t watch it for long. Winston retained Barrani form; his brother did not. The brother began to move as Winston marshaled the rest of the group. Winston watched the distant predator before nodding a hundred times. It was as if he’d set his head in motion and forgotten about it.
“Now,” he said. “Run.”
* * *
Running was part of beat training. The city streets were an obstacle course that generally impeded momentum. Stopping and starting, however, gave a person a chance to catch their breath; the current landscape didn’t provide that. Even if it had, Kaylin was certain Winston wouldn’t. But he appeared to be right: whatever it was that had caused Winston’s brother to flee back to the group in a panic moved toward Spike.
“Are there always predators like that here?”
“No. That was highly unusual, this close to the Hallionne spheres,” Winston said. He seemed to have dispensed with a need to breathe, and his syllables sounded exactly the same as they usually did. Kaylin’s were more labored, their beat uneven.
“You think they’re looking for us?”
“No. For your friends. Or for that one,” he added, nodding in Terrano’s direction. “Alsanis said you are aware that when your friends are careless they are easily heard, and easily found.”
Kaylin cringed. She hadn’t had this conversation with Alsanis, but was well aware that conversation—or volition—was not required. And it was true. She assumed, or had assumed, that Sedarias and the rest of the cohort had been learning the same lessons Annarion currently struggled with; that some of the cohort would be like Mandoran, and take them to heart more readily. And some would not.
“We were very lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“You brought Spike. You were right,” he added, without a trace of self-consciousness. “If we had left him with Alsanis, I’m not sure all of us would have escaped. They weren’t expecting Spike.”
“WhatisSpike, exactly?”
“You don’t know?”