Gaagi bloomed from a speck of darkness and stood, a shining black figure against the matte black cloud of Spash’ats. He spread his arms, stood with his head turned so Kikun saw only one glittering eye and the powerful jut of the Raven’s beak. Gaagi did not dance this time, his feet were not defined this time; this time he spread his wings and swayed his torso to make the black scales shimmer. Light came from those shimmers, gathered in a cloudy sphere floating before his chest.
The clouds cleared to crystal and in the crystal Kikun saw two bodies lying facedown on the earth, Shadith and Rohant lying facedown and very still, dangerously close to the creeping melt around the periphery of the Compound.
Shadith/Ginny
Tsipor shook Shadith awake; with an awkward undulant flip of a hand, she pointed at the small screen.
It was divided into several cells, all but one dedicated to the EYEs worming their tortuous ways down toward the Compound kephalos buried deep in bedrock. The singleton cell was tied to the EYE Ginny had grudgingly sent to overlook Rohant; at the moment it was expanded by a factor of three and dominated the screen.
Rohant stood beside his cot, staring at the floor. An android was moving around him with ponderous weightiness and outside the open grill, a robed, cowled ward jigged from foot to foot, rapped the back of his metalled glove against the edge of the heavy steel grill, physical expressions of his agitation.
Shadith knelt beside Ginny, frowning at the image. “What’s going on? Middle of the night, isn’t it?”
“You see what I see.”
She heard the guard scream at Rohant, then watched the trio go trotting off. The. EYE followed them. She glanced at the other cells on the screen, but there was nothing in any of them to explain the guard’s nervous distress or this sudden summons. “Well, what do you think is happening?”
“I do not know. It has been very quiet down there since the sea beasts died.” Ginny hesitated, reached for the control pad, chew his hand back. “If I were where I should be…” he glanced at her, annoyance in his face and voice, “I would have the resources to explore this properly.”
Shadith snorted. “You can play that tune for someone else, Ginbiryol Seyirshi. If you’d meant to run this from orbit, we’d be there right now. Take too long, wouldn’t it. And you’d be too vulnerable a target. What do you want me to do?”
He gazed at her without expression for a long moment. “I could start another EYE for the Compound, but it would not arrive for an hour and that would most likely be too late. I want you to reach into the Director’s Chamber and tell me what is happening…” He swore shrilly as Rohant stunned the guard and took off running. “That could ruin… I have to know what the Omphalites are doing. Go search, Singer. That fool could bring the whole island down on us.”
“Good ol’ Lion. All right, all right.” She glanced at Tsipor, but the Raska wasn’t offering this time; she was focused intently on the cells of the screen.
Shadith swallowed a giggle, crawled back to the mattress. Rohant was out and running. Free. Running free. He’d done it for himself, he hadn’t been waiting for anyone to come and cut him loose. She felt like whooping, giggling, running out to meet him. She didn’t feel like stretching out and hunting eyes-and-ears inside that Compound, so she took her time getting there.
Ginny swore again as the images in most of the cells began breaking up; he bent over the pad, working frantically to reestablish full contact with his infiltrating EYEs.
“What is it?” she called to him. “What happened?”
“Defense shield came on,” he muttered. “Do what you are supposed to do, leave me alone.”
Shadith wiggled her brows. “Touch-ee,” she murmured, then sighed and crawled onto the mattress. Before she stretched out, she looked again at Rohant’s image. He was running easily, heading toward the mountains, now and again squinting up through the slackening rain at something she couldn’t see because the EYE was focused downward, centered on the Dyslaeror.
Tsipor hissed, scooted for the dome’s lock, was through it before either of the others had time to react.
##
She was back a few moments later. “A-ship-ess,” she said, worked her hands and did the other things she did better than words, creating corner-of-the-eye images of small ships darting restlessly about. “Attacking that.” One hand shot out, undulated toward the Compound.
“Miralys,” Shadith said.
Ginny twisted round, stared at her. “You looked?”
“No. A guess. But I’d bet my skin on it. Which is all I have at the moment. Kikun and Miralys, come for Rohant, maybe me. Rohant for sure. Who else is going to attack Omphalos?”
“Mimishay.”
“Whatever.”
Ginny danced his fingers over the pad, changing the direction and focus of the Rohant EYE, turning it upward so he could see and evaluate the attackers.
Shadith watched the conflict develop, saw one of the landers get hit and go down, taking out part of the Compound as it crashed, saw others teasing the cutter beams into a deadly sword-dance, saw sparkles sliding down beam edges, then the beams withering, winking out…
Ginny twisted his mouth in his small tight smile. “The way those landers are being handled, I suspect you are correct in your assumption, Singer. I am much reminded of the skirmishes at Koulsnakko’s Hole.” He tapped his thumb on the pad, the Rohant EYE shifted focus once more.
Rohant flung himself to one side, went rolling into brush, came onto his feet and fled deeper into the scattered clumps of trees, breaking line again and again until the beam hunting him winked out and left him with singed fur and a laboring wheeze.
“Hmm.” Ginny tapped a code into the pad, slid off the cushion and got to his feet. “We had better go collect him before he is killed by his kin or by accident. Singer, you will ride back with me, since our combined weights will be less than his. The skip would be dangerously sluggish trying to haul the two of you.”
Shadith/Rohant
“Ro!” Shadith shouted. “Old lionface, look up.” She brought the emskip swooping around him, leaned over, tugged at his hair, swept away again, landed the skip a short distance up the mountain, wriggled free of it, and ran for him.
“Shadow girl!” He scooped her up, hugged her so exuberantly she couldn’t speak or breath. Still laughing, he swung her round and round, then set her on her feet and held her away from him so he could look at her. “I thought you were dead.”
“Not quite. I’m hard to kill, Old Lion.”
“That yours up there?”
“More yours. Miralys and Voallts.”
“But you brought them.”
“No. I suspect it was Kikun. You’d never in your wildest dreams guess who…”
Ginny/Tsipor
Ginny slid the stunner back in its loops, tapped the caller. “Tsipor, come.”
The Raska rode her skip around a bulge in the mountain, landed beside him; she dismounted, walked across to the bodies. “Dead?”
“No. Merely stunned. Help me load them on the spare skip.”
“Why?” Tsipor lifted Rohant with an ease that startled Ginny, laid him along the bar of the miniskip, went back for Shadith, then began fastening them down, pulling the narrow woven straps tight and slapping the velcro patches together. “Why not dead?”
“I said I would not kill her for one year, Tsipor.” Ginny freed a clump of Shadith’s hair from a patch, pressed the closure tight. “Besides,” he straightened, “she could very likely still be an important force against Omphalos. You have not seen destruction swirling in a vortex about her, leaving her untouched. I have. You have the tether?”
Her eyes so dark a crimson they were almost black, the Raska tossed him the plastic cable. “Canna take cross t’ water ssso.”
“I have no intention of trying. We will leave them down by the Compound.” He looked at the clumsy bundle on the shaft, his mouth tightening into a shallow curve. “If she dies from friendly fire, that is the Lady’s Throw, not mine. I would like that. I do not expect it. Come.”