Aryl turned to watch the aircar lazily circle the top level of the Cloisters, once, then again. “Being nosy,” she guessed. Before she had to talk to the device again, the aircar’s path paralleled the bridge on its way to them.
Finally, the machine came to rest alongside the platform. Intensely bright lights snapped on at the front and sides, their beams slicing through the vegetation. The Tikitik withdrew, hissing their fury. “Handy,” Enris commented.
At the least, Aryl thought, she would ask for one of those. Last another truenight.
But she wanted more. “You and Haxel keep the others back,” she said. “They’ll be curious, but the fewer who see him . . .” she let her voice trail away.
He made a rude noise. “The fewer who’ll feel sick. I’ll take care of it. But you’re sure you won’t need me? We Tuana are great traders.”
“I’m sure. Go.”
She was alone on the platform when the opaque roof of the machine lifted, revealing Marcus Bowman and the flitter-stranger. The latter immediately fluffed its feathers at the damp and clicked its mouth at her. Marcus beckoned her inside. “Hurry!”
Aryl came as far as the side of the aircar then stopped, her hands on its cold metal. “Thank you for coming, Marcus. I need your help.”
“Here, help,” he agreed, giving the dark vegetation on all sides a worried look. “Come! Safe!”
Sweat, not rain, beaded his face. He’d either seen what had happened last night or its aftermath. Not, she knew, that he’d ever trust Tikitik again. “All of us, Marcus, please?” she pleaded, pointing to the now-dark mouth of the bridge and then patting the machine. “Take us to the mountain pass. Near the Watchers. Safe from the Tikitik.”
“All?” He looked his doubt.
She held up her hands, flashing her fingers to count. “Twenty-three. A few bags. Please. Just to the mountain.”
The hissing intensified. Instead of frightening the Human, he seemed to take offense at the sound, snapping a harsh-sounding phrase at their watchers in his own language. “All,” this with a brusque nod. He conferred with the flitter-stranger, speaking quickly. The other answered. Marcus held up both hands. “Ten. Understand? Ten come. Then ten. Then three and bags. All safe.” His face softened as he looked at her. “Aryl. Promise. All safe. Help you.”
She tasted salt with the rain, only then aware she was crying. “Thank you. Thank you. But—” It was unfair, what she had to ask, but the others would be upset by his not-Om’ray presence. “Two trips, this one only, please?” she indicated the flitter-stranger. “You stay with me, out of sight, till the last.” As his face darkened, the Human surmising who-knew-what of her motives, she gestured to him, then to herself. “Not-Om’ray. I understand.” She ran her hand down his sleeve, dared touch his hand. Next, she pointed to the bridge. “They don’t know you. They don’t know Humans.” She mimed fear. “You’ll scare them more than the swarm.”
Like Enris, the Human sometimes laughed when she didn’t expect it. Then he climbed from the aircar, pulling up a quite sensible hood against the rain. The flitter-stranger gave a resigned click of its mouth. “Tell P’tr sit ’Nix where go,” Marcus said. “Hurry, all. Understand?”
Aryl gestured gratitude to them both, quickly. “Hurry” was exactly what they had to do.
First, however, came the slight detail of showing Marcus where he would hide from the exiles—suspended from the platform by their one rope, with only Enris, another non-climber, to help him.
She didn’t think either would laugh about that.
There’d been no debate over where to go. Aryl had told Haxel her hope, to use the aircar of the strangers to take them out of danger. The other hadn’t blinked; the First Scout had, however, been adamant in her belief that there was only one feasible destination. Without weapons, without food, with truenight close, anything less than secure shelter was pointless. Haxel wanted them taken to Grona itself.
Which would have been fine, had the strangers arrived midday. The first flight of ten had left quickly, none hesitating to enter the aircar, though each paused to brush fingertips with Aryl, a wordless sending of gratitude and renewed hope. But the second flight had left only moments ago. Her fingers still tingled from their touch, her mind still brimmed with emotion.
Including a very healthy amount of fear.
Grona, it turned out, was almost a tenth away roundtrip, even by aircar, so truenight had arrived before the machine returned for its second load of passengers, leaving the rest to wait but not, thankfully, in the dark. Marcus had brought a powerful type of glow. Now it sat, their guardian, where the metal span met the platform. The light carved a safe passageway between the bridge and the aircar. Beyond that safety, the air throbbed with the canopy’s normal evening chorus: the distant clicks of innumerable small feet; the screams of the dying. The swarm was at work.
“Safe are.” This assertion from Marcus. The four of them crouched within the opening of the bridge. He regularly consulted the stick he called a comlink that produced voices, including this latest reassuring report. Haxel watched with calculation; Enris with curiosity.
“Thank you,” Aryl told him, finding a smile. The Human was remarkably cheerful, almost relaxed. Either he had greater trust in his technology than she, or he didn’t appreciate how vulnerable they were here, light or no light. It kept the swarm at bay, that was all. Should the Tikitik wish them dead by other means, they were easy prey.
That wasn’t all. She was so desperate for sleep it took all her energy to keep alert, but she must. Those in the Cloisters had mourned their deaths, however prematurely. She was quite sure they hadn’t expected to feel them live to truenight, let alone rise into the air and fly like wings on the M’hir to another clan.
Hard as it was for Aryl to feel wary of her own kind, she knew she wasn’t the only one. Haxel divided her vigilance between the platform and the empty bridge behind them.
And the Human. The tough First Scout wasn’t, Aryl observed with a certain satisfaction, immune to the contradiction of his form to her inner sense.
Enris had no such difficulty. “Why are you here?” he asked Marcus abruptly, as if frustrated by a puzzle.
“Aryl—” the Human began, stopping as the Om’ray held up one hand.
“I mean here, in the world. All of you.”
“Seekers, we.” The answer he always gave, that caution in his eyes.
Haxel paid close attention to this exchange, Aryl noticed.
“Your technology, the things you make,” Enris persisted, indicating the light and the comlink. “They’re better than ours. Why seek what’s older here?”
Aryl thought Marcus looked impressed by the question. “Things, not matter. Understand, matter. Why this, not that, matter.” The Human pantomimed a series of layers with his hands, ending with both hands palm up. “Before this world, before world mine, these makers were. Why not now? Important.”
How old was old, to the strangers? How many kinds of people could live in one place, and never know one another? Why would the passing or survival of others matter now? Aryl let the questions tumble through her mind, unasked, unanswered. She had complications enough in her world, without adding those of the past.
Or of the strangers.
Enris questioned, Marcus responded. Aryl let her mind drift, catching what rest she could without sleeping. The two had deep, peaceful voices, though one spoke in broken phrases and the other shortened his, as if this would help understanding.
“You didn’t see us leave?”
Aryl. From Enris, with an undertone of warning. Aryl kept her eyes half closed, but now listened intently. Marcus had finally got around to asking how they’d managed to get from what he called Site Two to Yena. The Human wasn’t, she grumbled to herself, slow.