Patience, she told herself. Her hand was on her knife hilt. Now she tightened her grip, tensed every muscle. Her position was part of the ruse: far from being helplessly on her back, one lithe twist and she’d be on her feet, knife out, ready to strike or run.
The footsteps started again, moving away with clumsy haste. Aryl snapped to her feet, hitting a run by her second stride in pursuit.
A figure—Om’ray shape and size, Grona clothing—struggled to keep ahead of her. He—she guessed that much from his movement—made it no farther than the start of his path before she launched herself.
They fell together into the shadows. Aryl dug a knee into his spine and pulled his head back with an arm around his forehead. Her knife edge found his throat. “Who are you?” she asked politely.
His hand clawed for something on the ground and she pressed the knife in warning, waiting for him to subside before she looked to see what it was.
Not a weapon. A hand-sized box, aglow with tiny lights. A familiar box.
Aryl jumped up, giving his backside a hard shove with her foot. “You promised to stay away, Human!”
Marcus Bowman grabbed the bioscanner and rose to his feet, his so-Om’ray face a mix of chagrin and offense. “Aryl not hurt!” he proclaimed fiercely, brandishing the device. “Trick!”
“Spy!” she shouted back.
“Not spy! I promised. Not interfere. Not visible. No Om’ray here.” He gestured at his clothing. “Disguise, me.”
Her lips quirked. “How could wearing our clothes—” a closer look, “—clothes like ours—hide you from us?” Silly Human. “You know we can sense one another.” Though he had, she admitted, gone to considerable effort to fabricate a Grona coat and Yena leg wraps. And boots. Too new, with stranger fasteners and fabric, but at a distance they might pass. She sniffed. As for smelling like bruised flowers?
“I remember,” Marcus said with dignity. “Not my idea. New policy. Hide being stranger. Discretion. Stop problems. Only Human allowed in the field. Look like Om’ray.” He tucked the bioscanner into his belt, a wide un-Om’ray-like affair of loops and hooks, most filled with more devices. “Maybe work for not-Om’ray.”
If he dressed like an Om’ray to hide his Human identity from the Oud, what had the Oud thought? Aryl didn’t want to imagine. “Better stay out of sight,” she suggested.
He rubbed his throat. “I was. Then you fell. I worried—” this with a grim look, “—you hurt.”
“Yena don’t fall,” Aryl reminded him. “You should have remembered that, too.”
For some reason, this produced a smile. He had a nice smile, for something not-quite-real. It crinkled the skin beside his brown eyes, and produced a dimple in one cheek. “So what do?”
A general question, about why she was here? Or a more specific one, about her immediate intentions?
Embarrassed, Aryl put away her knife. “I’m waiting for the Oud to come back.”
An anxious glance around. “Night soon.” He paused and said carefully, “Truenight is soon. Dangerous for all.”
The Human had been practicing proper speech, a distinct improvement over the Oud babble the strangers had learned first. They had their own words, bizarre but fluid-sounding. They knew others. Before meeting Marcus Bowman, she’d believed there was only one language, one time. Aryl felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold air and her lack of coat. “Do you know where you are?”
She’d seen that wary look in his eyes before. “Mountains. No Om’ray,” with emphasis, to prove he’d followed her rules. “Old place.” A casual shrug. They had that gesture in common.
Aryl didn’t believe words or gesture. “Where are the others?” Marcus had lost the two colleagues of his Triad, killed when their aircar crashed near the Yena Watchers after a disastrous encounter with the Tikitik, but he was by no means on his own. While with Enris, Aryl had seen several, Human and not, and buildings to house more.
“No others. Aryl, it will dark be soon.”
“It will be dark soon,” she corrected, then frowned at him. “You’re alone? Why?”
The tracks by the door.
Aryl stepped up to the Human, put both hands on his chest, and pushed with all her strength. “You’re as bad as the Oud!” she accused as he staggered to stay on his feet. “You want into the Cloisters. You can’t. It’s Om’ray. Ours!” She began walking backward. “Go home. Go back to your Hoveny and leave Sona alone.”
Marcus froze, whatever protest at her behavior he might have made dying on his lips, his eyes fierce and bright. “Sona.” Breathless. “This? So-na?”
“Sona,” Aryl corrected, then was furious at herself. She couldn’t take the name back. He was too intelligent for that.
“Vy, Ray, So, Gro, Ne, Tua, Ye, Pa, Am.” With each syllable, his excitement grew, as it had the first time she’d told him the names of the Om’ray Clans. “So-NA! This wonderful, Aryl. Wonderful! Word we seek. Word I seek long long long time. Thank you!”
Wonderful wasn’t how she felt. “I don’t care about your words. I care about my people.” Suspicious, she looked all around, then upward. “Where are yours?”
“No people. I am alone.” As if realizing it wasn’t enough, Marcus licked his lips, then went on, “Need new Triad. Recorder. Finder. Coming soon. I wait, can’t work. I—” he put a hand on his chest, “—not good, Aryl. Sad. Came here to be alone a time. To explore. Surprise to find Aryl. Sorry.”
From no information to a flood. Aryl blinked at him. Replacements were coming—from where? She didn’t want to know. He was still recovering from the loss of his friends? No offense, but she’d lost more. This was his chosen spot to explore, of all Cersi? She fastened on that. “Here. Where the only ruins are Om’ray. You told me you were looking for these Hoveny.”
That shift in his eyes. She’d learned it meant evasion. But he answered readily. “True. Om’ray, Oud, Tikitik. Not matter to First Triads. Not matter to Trade Pact. Vestigial populations. No connected history. Chance. Remains. Left behinds. Understand?”
She glowered and didn’t answer. The Human’s notions of past and time had nothing to do with reality. That he’d insulted her kind? He probably didn’t notice.
“But I—” that hand to his chest again, “—am curious.”
The Oud’s word.
Aryl wanted to strangle them both. “About the Cloisters. Because you don’t believe the ‘remains’ of Om’ray could have built them.”
He dared smile. “Curious.”
Tired, unsettled, and quite sure she shouldn’t be having this conversation, Aryl nonetheless felt the stir of her own question. “The Cloisters have always been,” she said roughly, denying it. “As Om’ray have always been. As Cersi has always been. Only you are new and different and dangerous. Go home!”
“In truenight?” The Human could be charming. He gave a slight bow and swept his arm in invitation toward the cut path. “Safe there,” he assured her. “Stay.”
His camp—if he meant that and not one of their flying machines—would be a wonder of stranger technology. Enris would love it. Aryl was…curious. That dangerous word again. She took another step back. “I’m waiting for the Oud. I’ve supplies over there.” She indicated the hill.
Marcus shook his head, the Human “no.” “Not safe.”
Aryl laughed. What did this Human in his pretend-Om’ray clothes know of safety?
Another head shake, as if he read thoughts like an Om’ray. “Show Aryl.” Marcus removed two objects from their belt loops. One, a small featureless disk, he flung into the air. It continued rising, then hovered in midair a considerable height above them.
He glanced down at the second device and swallowed. “Look, Aryl,” earnestly. “Please.”
With reluctance, she took the thing in her hands. Its surface held an image. She’d seen such before: a viewer, tied to the “eyes” overhead. The image showed the other side of the hill. Bones, wood, dirt, stone. The beginnings of the road and river…About to hand it back, she noticed something else.