The thought made her look back. From here, the image was almost perfect. A hasty glance would miss the building entirely, despite its size. Marcus didn’t rely on his Om’ray-like clothing alone. More “policy”?
Aryl spotted a second area of not-quite-right nekis. Another building. When she investigated, she was disappointed to find its door locked.
Secrets.
Enough. Anything the strangers would lock away wasn’t for Om’ray. Time she was gone. She could reach Sona before firstnight, if she moved quickly. She wanted her own kind.
Something made Aryl look back before she entered the shadow of the path. Strange. From here, the buildings—their illusions—met. For no reason…or to hide something behind them from anyone approaching from the Cloisters?
She hesitated. What did it matter? This was the strangers’ camp—Triad business. She should leave, now. Before Marcus woke up.
She’d never know…
“One look,” she promised herself.
Putting the locked—and hopefully empty—building between herself and the one where the Human—also hopefully—still snored, Aryl traced its disguised wall with her fingertips, keeping close. The waterfall’s background drone, the wind rustling the twig tips of the nekis made more sound than her steps.
She came around the back and gasped, flattening herself against the wall.
The Oud paid no attention.
Too far away to detect her—or didn’t they care? Nothing hid her. Nothing grew between—it had been removed, she realized with dismay, along with any growth on the towering rock above. Plumes of spray from the waterfall filled the sky toward the Cloisters, hiding the mountain. To the other side of the Oud, the cliff folded inward, as if to hide itself. This was the valley’s end.
And the Oud had been busy here.
Beginning only steps in front of her—and the strangers’ buildings—the dirt was churned and treacherously soft. No, not all. Her eyes narrowed. Oud ground vehicles had left paired tracks; where they’d been, they packed the dirt into hard lines. Most paralleled the cliff, leading from where the Oud worked to the mouth of their tunnel. She’d seen its like at Grona: an immense slanted opening framed in wood. This one had been thrust up through the edge of the living grove, leaving stalks splintered and dead to either side.
Aryl counted five of the creatures at the base of the cliff. What were they after? There were dark pits—holes—in the cliff face above the Oud. Were they Watchers, like Yena’s, whose immense pipes were blown by the M’hir Wind each year to sound a warning? She couldn’t be sure.
Below, the bulky Oud and their machines kicked up so much debris she couldn’t see past them, creating a roar and rumble like the waterfall’s.
They were moving rock. A great deal of rock. Digging into the cliff itself.
She hadn’t realized Oud could do that.
It didn’t matter. The cliff was above ground. Above ground belonged to Sona’s Om’ray, not the Oud. She was their Speaker—appointed by the Oud, at any rate.
Aryl pulled the pendant out and made sure it was in plain sight—not that Oud had eyes. She would go to the creatures and demand to know what they were doing out of their tunnel. It was her duty.
She took a deep breath…
Pounding feet made her spin about, knife out and ready. The Human almost collided with her. Only her quickness saved him from impaling himself.
“Fool,” she exclaimed, shaking as she put the knife away.
Marcus flinched but didn’t retreat. His eyelids were swollen and purpled, as was most of his face; his eyes were wild. He hadn’t stopped to put on his boots. “Aryl—”
“You’re too late,” she interrupted. “I’ve seen what’s going on here.” She jerked her head toward the Oud.
He glanced toward the cliff, then back to her, looking confused. “Aryl not run away again?”
Is that what he’d thought? Aryl flushed. Not her finest moment, dashing off into truenight. No credit to her they weren’t both dead. She owed him her life.
She didn’t owe him any part of Sona.
“You told me you came here for a rest, Marcus Bowman,” she accused. “You lied!”
His expression darkened. “Not lie. Not! Oud already here. Invite us many time. Push. Rude. Want full Triad assess site.” He shook his head violently. “No proof. No surveyindicators. We not come. Oud ask again. This time different. I can’t do my work. So I say yes. I come. Curious. Unhappy. Understand? Me only, set up survey camp, determine if real find or empty hole. Make Oud happy. Me, away from others. Peace. Truth, Aryl,” this with a heavy sigh, as if he didn’t expect her belief. “Oud want explore ruins. They interest in Hoveny Concentrix. This place no Tikitik stop them.”
Oh, she believed him. Aryl instinctively tightened her shields to keep in her reaction. The Tikitik kept the Oud from exploring? The Oud went to the strangers for help to do just that?
Was the Human trying to terrify her?
“Have they found something?” she managed to ask, surprised her voice sounded normal.
“Oud think so.” Marcus leaned on the wall of not-nekis and rubbed the bottom of one foot, grimacing as he did. She guessed he didn’t run barefoot often. “Not let me look yet,” he said with a resigned shrug.
Which helped explain, she realized, why the too-curious Human had been poking around the Sona Cloisters. He’d been bored.
He peered at her through his swollen eyelids. “Aryl want breakfast? Sombay?” From his hoarse tone, he did.
“I have to go. My people are waiting—” For what? Answers? Who appointed you Speaker for Sona Clan? Who said there was a Sona Clan? What if we want to leave? What if the Oud refuse to share water? What if the Tikitik object to the Oud’s “explorations” and blame us? How dare strangers make camp in Sona? What do they want? Didn’t you promise Marcus Bowman would never come near us again?
“Aryl not eat first?”
“Maybe I should,” she sighed.
Aryl sat on the ground and crossed her legs. Being low kept her out of the damp, chill breeze that swayed the nekis, but she wasn’t about to admit that. “We can eat here,” she suggested.
“Here?” Marcus looked horrified. “Aryl come inside,” he insisted, leaning against the side of the door’s opening. “Please. Don’t sit on dirt.”
Not her first choice, to go inside his building, surrounded by all that gave the Human an advantage, but the bruises on his face were her fault. He’d saved her life again. How he’d followed her through the darkness was a mystery; she assumed some gadget or device gave him an advantage. What mattered was that he’d jumped into the waterfall after her, risking his own life. Ridiculous.
Heartwarming.
The waterfall may have spat them both out, but Marcus, battered and scared, had protected her from the Oud. He’d made her breathe again, a trick she’d like to learn. She could no longer doubt him.
Everyone else. Them she doubted. What he was here to do. That she doubted.
Aryl sighed again and stood. “Inside,” she agreed.
Once through the door, Marcus shoved and tossed crates aside until he cleared the area of floor between their beds. “Wait,” he told her when she tried to help. “I do.” He pressed a control that folded both beds against the wall—their blankets stuck out as if trapped—then grabbed a handle she hadn’t noticed in the floor. A pull, and up rose a table, complete with attached seats. “There,” he beamed at her. “Not sit on dirt. Sit.”
She sat with a certain amount of caution. Furniture that came out of a floor could, in her opinion, sink back into it without warning.
In short order the Human filled self-heating cups, gave one to her with a box of “supplements,” found soft, useless-looking boots to put on his sore feet, and sat down across the table with a groan of pleasure. “There. Better.”
Aryl smiled into her cup.