“You know something of our work. Were you training as an Adept?” There was a new eagerness in her tone, as if Aryl being of their kind mattered to Oran.
“No,” she replied evenly. “But I’ve seen lists.” There had been lists made by Yena’s Adepts. Lists of their diminished supplies. Lists of what could be spared for the ten unChosen sent on Passage—including Bern Teerac and Yuhas Parth, who’d made it to Tuana Clan. Two had died. The other six? Aryl wished she’d disobeyed custom and law and reached to follow them. There were so few Yena left. “Why do the Oud want them?”
“No one knows.”
And no one cared, Aryl corrected to herself. Until now. “Do you trade with them?”
“What would we trade with Oud?”
This was different. Yena had always given dresel and seeds to the Tikitik who came after the Harvest, receiving in turn the glows and power cells, the metal and oils they needed for the coming year. Enris told her how the Tuana grew large numbers of a plant the Oud wanted, how the creatures took that harvest when ripe. In turn, the Oud left glows and other supplies at the mouth of their tunnel. “Provide food the Oud want. Receive glows and power cells in return. Metal.”
“We go in the tunnels and take what we need. The Oud don’t care. They just want their lists. Crops. How much food we were able to grow,” she clarified at Aryl’s puzzled look. “They don’t want any of it. Whatever we built or used. How many of us there are, who died and how, who was born. Lists. Our Speaker—” with emphasis “—reads them out.”
Aryl doubted that. The Grona Speaker was not, like her mother, an Adept, and no other Om’ray in a Clan were taught to read or write. But she didn’t doubt the rest. For whatever reason, the mountain Oud treated their Clan differently.
Had it been the same for Sona?
Would it be?
Firstnight and the Oud made it to the village before they did. Aryl had worried her way through several scenarios during the final tenth of their journey—during the worst, she’d forced the Adepts into the best run they could manage, only to have Hoyon collapse on the road, wasting valuable time. The Oud, however, waited on this side of the dry river. It lay on its machine, shrouded in brown, dusty fabric. Her people lined the other bank to watch it, those who weren’t perched on a roof for a better view.
They’d have sensed Aryl and the Adepts returning. She could only imagine how they’d felt before. The Oud here. Their Speaker not.
Not every day the First Scout was wrong.
To be fair, the Oud were the least predictable beings Aryl had met. They made the Human seem normal.
His tiny airborne eye had left them before the final turn of the valley. She’d been sad to see it go. Not that Marcus could or should have helped—but it had been nice to have a companion who didn’t hate or fear her. Or want something.
About to send reassurance to the others, Aryl stopped herself. Don’t use Power near Oud unless you must. Enris’ advice—which she trusted more than anything the Grona might say.
Instead, she waved her hand as they approached, made sure to smile. The Speaker’s Pendant glittered against her coat. She hoped the creature recognized it clean.
Hoyon and Oran walked past the Oud, barely glancing at the creature, and clambered awkwardly down the river’s bank. Their heavy clothing didn’t help. Hoyon fell again; Oran didn’t wait for him. He stumbled to catch up to her.
That figures detached from those waiting, prepared to help them up the other side, wasn’t a compliment.
Aryl walked to the dusty dome she assumed covered the head of the Oud. Small biters scurried away from her, but stayed near the machine as if they belonged. So long as they bit Oud hide and not Om’ray, she didn’t care.
Only the biters appeared to notice her.
Was the Oud asleep? Dead?
It would be dark soon. She’d rather not be on this side of the river then. Behind the Oud, the far side of the road was edged in hopeful rocks, some daring enough to roll into the lingering sunlight. Not that they moved when she looked.
Aryl drew herself tall and straight. “I see you,” she said. Loudly, in case the Oud was asleep.
No reaction.
It was the right creature. A Speaker’s Pendant was attached to the fabric below the dome.
She fingered hers, frowning, then leaned forward and rapped her knuckles on that smooth surface.
“Whatwhatwhatwhat!” The creature reared violently upright, clattering limbs and words, then fell off the machine to one side. Disturbed biters whirred and clicked into the air, then subsided around its limp form.
Had she killed it?
Aryl didn’t glance over her shoulder. Not the time to seem as if she didn’t know what was going on. “Get up!” she urged.
Black limbs, some disturbingly like hooks, waved weakly.
Not dead.
She wrinkled her nose at a musty odor but stepped closer. “Are you—” The word “hurt” died in her mouth as she saw the green stain spreading across the dirt and stone.
Ready to leap back at the slightest excuse, Aryl lifted the heavy fabric draped above the stain. It took both hands and all her strength to raise it high enough to look underneath.
The flaccid, pale body was slashed open along three lines. The cuts were precise and too straight. Powerful strokes, she judged. Skilled. Possibly using a weapon made for this purpose.
Another Oud?
She’d tried to kill her own, Aryl thought grimly. She eased the fabric down. “Who did this? Why?”
“Let it die in peace, Speaker for Sona.”
She spun, knife out.
The Tikitik rose from its crouch, hands empty at its sides.
She hadn’t seen it, Aryl thought numbly. How could that be?
It wasn’t like the Tikitik she knew. This was gray on gray, its skin and cloth a perfect match for the stone. The same body shape, the same intent four-eyed stare.
The same threat. She kept her knife ready. “What are you doing here? This is Oud land.”
“Is it?” The Tikitik bobbed its head, as if amused. “Forgive my trespass, then. I was…curious.”
A familiar symbol on its wristband caught her eye. “You’re a Thought Traveler,” she guessed.
“That is part of my name. Curious indeed.” It sounded pleased, as if a puzzle was what it sought. “Do you know what it means?”
“It means you go between factions—” Tikitik, she’d learned, didn’t count themselves as part of a place or village, but grouped themselves by belief. Thought Travelers were something else, individuals outside any one faction, yet in service to them all. “—and share whatever you’ve learned.”
“If I think it wise,” the Tikitik qualified, its mouth protuberances stirring. “Knowledge can be dangerous, can it not, little Speaker? Our unfortunate companion discovered that.”
They loved word games. She remembered that, too.
“This is Sona,” Aryl said carefully. “Our neighbors are the Oud. Tikitik don’t belong here.”
“New Om’ray,” it mused, its smaller eyes flexing on their cones to aim at those on the other side of the river. Who must, Aryl thought worriedly, be trying to decide whether to come to her aid or not. Not, she wished desperately, but didn’t lower her shields. “New ideas. Do you change the Agreement?”
“Change…?” The pit that swallowed the river was nothing compared to this. Aryl stared at the Tikitik, then at the Oud. “I don’t know what you—”
A clatter of limbs. A faint rasp of voice. “Om’ray. GoodGoodGoodGood. Sona Oud.”
“Precipitous being.” The Tikitik rose to its full height and focused all its eyes on the dying Oud. “Look where misjudgment and haste has brought you.”
Hanging from a belt around its narrow hips was a double-tipped blade, like the one Enris had found but plain. The metal shone, from frequent or recent use.
She had to know. “Did you attack it?”
The small eyes swiveled toward her. “That would certainly change the Agreement.”