The dark water breathed cold, but Laura had not held back on layers, and was not troubled by the chill as she sat herself down on one of the large rocks.
Impossible not to imagine horrors. Children in caves of teeth and claw. Parents waiting with rising dread for news of the vanished, and every hour feeling like days, like months.
Laura could picture that all too well.
Nor did she wonder at the strength of Gidds' reaction. Students sent in without preparation. And civilian children who must surely bring to the forefront of his mind one terrible day long ago, when a dimensional tear had opened and death had swarmed through.
Sinuous, with bone-white claws and a ridge of razor scales, those Ionoth had been small, not much larger than cats. But their numbers and their ferocity had seen them cut effortlessly through an entire residential district of one of the beehive Taren cities. Gidds had been very young, and those things had killed his family, and…
Partially eaten.
Laura shuddered, and closed her eyes. The situation might not be as desperately bad as that. And he would have told her if Allidi or Haelin were involved. But still…
A faint rattle of stone made her stiffen, but it was followed by a small cough, and so she activated the interface proximity display. It showed Maze, making his way down to her from the path above. He, too, would have taught some of the missing Kalrani, and no doubt was itching against the constraints of guard duty.
"I’m just accepting there’s no chance of sleeping," she said, when he reached her.
"Not worth trying," he agreed. "I can watch what’s going on, but that just makes it more difficult to not order someone out to take my shift so I can go help the search. Pointless of me. They’ve deployed two full squads, both with strong Path Sight talents, so it won’t be long before they’re found."
He sat down on the rock nearest hers, and for a time they waited in silence. Then Maze said: "Have you ever been out on the lake at night?"
"In one of the boats?"
"In the canoes. It’s become a favourite indulgence for Alay and I. And is a very good distraction."
"Sounds like just the thing."
To their left, the lights of the docks came on—the conveniences of the interface were innumerable—and Laura found herself gently wafting through the air toward it, for the conveniences of Telekinesis talents were equally boundless. She almost asked Maze to forget the canoes and play Peter Pan instead, but flying took energy and concentration for him, and so she held her tongue.
Cass had accumulated quite a collection of watercraft since her move to Arcadia. There was an expansive boathouse to shelter the equivalent of the family car, and multiple racks of canoes. Laura watched appreciatively as Maze wafted one of these into the water, and nodded her thanks when he held it steady so she could step in.
There had been many family trips onto the lake in the past few months, and so Laura was relatively practiced with paddling. Gliding out of the light into inky nothing was something very new, however.
"Head west—the water is usually smoothest there."
Laura followed the rhythm of his strokes, her thoughts already stolen by the sky. The lake was not so still tonight that it offered a mirror reflection, but an echo of the stars' expanse was still caught in the slight chop. Miles from the steady glow of Pandora, with only a few small points of light from the surrounding islands, Laura skimmed beneath a million suns.
But even glory could not keep frayed nerves still, so Laura sought refuge in conversation.
"They worked out Earth and Muina are in the same galaxy," she noted. "A different spiral arm, with the galactic core between us."
"Near neighbours," Maze said, and there was something in the tone of his voice that made her turn to try to see him, floating a short way behind her.
"What is it?"
"They’ve found two of the Kalrani, and one of the missing children. The boy had fallen down a shaft. His friends went for help, and most of the Kalrani went on to track them, leaving two to bring the boy to the surface. They encountered…sounds like an adapted Ionoth."
Adapted Ionoth were the result of creatures from the Ena surviving long enough on Muina to reproduce. The guardian ddura construct often did not seem to recognise these offspring as alien to the planet, and did not eradicate them during its sweeps.
"The Kalrani held it off, thankfully," Maze continued. "Some injuries."
But one predator made others likely, and the still-missing had been heading back to the entrance.
"The Kalrani do have a strong Telekinetic with the group that’s still missing," Maze said, unhappily. "But this was a Sights training trip, and multi-Sighted talents rarely have strong elementals. And three are Place Sight talents: even if they’re not physically attacked, this kind of thing is the worst kind of stimulus."
"I gather not many Place Sight talents make it through Setari training."
"Usually eliminated in the first few months of evaluation," Maze said, restively. "Only those with the most resilient core are trained to increase the strength of that talent. And even the most formidable are vulnerable in ways that other Setari simply are not."
And they had been sent into a closed-in, dread-filled ordeal. Fear and pain imprinted on stone itself.
"I’ve read a little about the Tasken Outbreak," Laura said, carefully. "How hard is this going to be for Gidds?"
Maze’s response was a long silence, until the lapping water seemed to jangle by contrast.
Finally: "He never shows it, but we all know he wears every injury, every loss. He’s gone in with the squads himself today, which is going to mean he’s hit with Place impressions directly, and then he’ll work with the Kalrani afterwards, trying to ease the impact on them."
"He’s still that central to the Setari, even though the crisis is past, and he’s being assigned to so many other things?"
That prompted the briefest cough of laughter. "Oh, yes. The reason we are here, and the reason we survived. Our first trainer, and in the early years the first to take us into the Ena. For every Setari, he is the one we have hated, just a little, and tried to impress, to live up to. Our captain of captains. That’s never going to change, no matter what he’s assigned to. Besides, he still conducts much of the Sights training."
"Hated?"
"It’s a complicated relationship. I’ve definitely had occasions where I’ve resented him for—for the standard he set, as much as anything, and at times for the simple fact of the Setari. But mostly we’ve been glad of him, because his judgment has been all that stood between us and disaster so many times. I wouldn’t quite say it’s a parental relationship, except perhaps with Kaoren, but we have burned to prove ourselves to him—and would protect him with our lives."
The words were forthright, honest, exposed. Laura was startled: she’d seen the way the Setari stood straighter around Gidds, but she’d assumed it was a parade-discipline reaction.
"Did it start out that way? He must have been quite young when you were recruited."
"He would have been, I don’t know, forty-seven, forty-eight? Certainly less than fifty. I remember we called him the boy in charge, so our impression of him was definitely not of an adult. I have some scans stored up from that time, and it’s always a shock to look and see him not even old enough for Ena missions under the current system."
Taren years. You could make your attempts on the adulthood exam from fifty, so Gidds would have been just a little older than Julian when he’d transitioned from being the first Setari to training the next generation.