“It’s going to get worse,” the First Scout advised, her eyes hard.
Having experienced truenight here, Enris fully understood.
“What can I do?”
Chapter 27
THE SMOKE CURLING UP FROM Yena kept biters to a minimum. Enris didn’t appreciate his good fortune, Aryl thought, almost amused as she watched him wave his hands about.
Almost. They’d survived the night. More than that was yet to be determined. She’d spoken to everyone—a few words, a brush of fingertips—reassuring herself they were well, assuring them she was, too. Yena was whole.
Questions and answers. Time for those now.
“Aryl!” Myris hurried toward her on the platform, a small bag clutched in one hand. “I found some seal.”
Ael followed close behind. “Who found it?” His hand fell on his Chosen’s shoulder as they stopped; Myris leaned into him. They both looked haggard.
Aryl took the seal and squatted down, pulling up her pant legs. With businesslike strokes of two fingers, she applied the thick cream to each oozing hole in her skin, hissing between her teeth at its burn. The seal would harden in moments. She didn’t look forward to having to scrape off the result in a few days, but it was dangerous to have open sores. There were canopy dwellers who’d take the invitation.
“One got your neck,” Haxel observed, joining them. Aryl pressed seal to the wound on her throat. “That’ll scar nicely,” added the scout, as if the marks were some honor.
Perhaps, Aryl thought numbly, they were, but Enris deserved the credit. She stood, returning the bag to her aunt. “What happened?”
Haxel offered her hand, callused palm up. “Take it,” she told Aryl. “I’m too tired to think of the words.”
She wasn’t, Aryl thought uneasily, but couldn’t politely refuse. She wiped the remnants of seal on her shirt, then laid her palm atop Haxel’s.
The First Scout was accustomed to giving reports this way. That Aryl realized immediately, as the memory of last night came to her without emotion or interpretation, but more as if she watched from a distance.
... The Tikitik had arrived in vast numbers at firstnight, dropping to the bridges from every side at once. They brought no Speaker, or none proclaimed itself. Instead, all had spoken at once, an uproarious babble that understandably horrified the startled Yena. Haxel had confronted one to be told they were here to reclaim property . . . the glows and power cells were theirs, most certainly . . . stolen by other Tikitik, disgraced Tikitik . . . trade to the Om’ray was illegal, void, not their business . . .
The Yena were horrified, but their own Speaker had been calm. Taisal di Sarc had lifted her pendant over her head; seeing it, the Tikitik had grown silent and still, their eyes locked on her. In that hush, Taisal had ordered them to leave in the name of the Agreement, not to return without their Speaker.
And without a word, the Tikitik had vanished into the growing shadows . . .
Aryl felt her heart hammering as she relived Haxel’s memory. Her own dismay, or finally some emotion from the First Scout, despite her training?
... Arguments broke out. Questions. If the Tikitik dared go this far, what was next? Were they safe in their beds? Haxel had stayed quiet. No one knew the answers.
Infants had cried, giving voice to the fear that raced from mind to mind, fed on itself, and grew.
YENA! The Speaker’s powerful sending had silenced that as well. She would take the most vulnerable with her, mothers with infants, children, the eldest. They would race truenight to the Cloisters. As an Adept, she could open that shelter to them; as Speaker, she would defend that decision to Council. But they had to leave, now . . . and they had to run—
Aryl broke the contact to stare at Haxel. “She saved them,” she half whispered. Because her mother had believed her warning, or felt one of her own?
“Those she chose to save,” the First Scout said, her lips tight. The stripped bones on the bridge had been one of hers, Till Parth. Seru’s mother, Ferna, had fled to the Cloisters with her infant. Was she Lost or dead? Aryl was afraid to reach and find out; Seru, who well knew she could, hadn’t asked. “The Tikitik hadn’t gone. They rushed back the moment Taisal and the others were out of sight. They didn’t hurt anyone—they simply overran us. Took every glow. Pushed or smashed their way indoors to take the rest. Left us for the swarms.
“If it hadn’t been for you and the stranger?” Haxel snorted. “Taisal didn’t save Yena, Aryl Sarc. You did.”
Aryl didn’t miss the irony of Haxel’s so-proper reference to Enris Mendolar. As for the rest? “There’s not much left of Yena,” she pointed out.
“What do we do, Aryl?”
She blinked at Ael’s anxious question. Why was he asking her?
Others approached, filling the platform but not crowding it.
Even if all were here, she thought with that constant grief, would there be enough Yena left to crowd it? She spotted Enris nearby, a head taller than the rest. To her inner sense, there was no fear left, only anticipation. They were all waiting for her to speak. Why? Aryl thought desperately. She wasn’t the oldest here, or the wisest, or anything more than they.
It didn’t matter. Haxel’s smile twisted her scar. “Care to save us again?”
Haxel and Ael moved among the rest, brushing fingers to confirm unheard instructions. Aryl hadn’t needed to warn them the Tikitik could be hiding nearby, listening.
They weren’t attacking. She believed they wouldn’t, not directly. She’d gained a sense of the creatures’ preferences. Tikitik liked to sidle up to a problem and assess it from safety. If they had a goal, they’d rather have something else take the risk to achieve it for them. Ambush over confrontation.
And always, always, claim to be the innocents.
As for saving anyone . . . there was only a single path left open. They’d hardly, Aryl thought, needed her to tell them what they already knew.
The village was gone; they had to leave.
Like others, Aryl had thought to search the wreckage for hooks and ropes first, to collect any supplies. She’d discovered fire was a rot, weakening floors and walls, ruining what it didn’t consume. No wonder the Tikitik abhorred it.
She wished them fire in abundance, when she had time to think about such things.
“What’s happening?” Enris hadn’t so much washed as dumped a bucket over his head, revealing black hair and a magnificent, though fading, bruise around one eye.
“We’ll join the others at the Cloisters. It’s a short—” Short to a Yena. Aryl reconsidered what she’d been about to say. “It’s not far, but with bridges gone, we’ll need to climb. I’ll help you.”
Instead of the unChosen posturing she’d half-expected, he gave her that quirky smile and gestured emphatic gratitude. “Help would be appreciated. I can see why poor Yuhas found Tuana overly flat. I’d vastly prefer not to fall, Aryl, here or off another cliff.”
She gave him a wary look. Enris definitely shared Costa’s sense of humor. She’d had trouble deciphering her brother as well. She changed the topic. “Your boots.”
He glanced down, then raised a brow at her. “What about them?”
“Take them off.”
Home felt like a dream, less real than ink on a pane. Aryl walked behind Haxel, Enris beside her, the last to take the main bridge. She couldn’t imagine anything restoring what had been destroyed. As for what remained? Without caretakers, it would disappear before the next M’hir, the stubs of rafters and floor boards home to flowers, the last span of the bridge smothered in vines. Stitlers might live in the meeting hall, luring prey inside. Nothing of the Om’ray would last, here, not the way mammoth structures popped out of mountains or lurked beneath lakes. No future seekers would know they’d existed.