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The head shook with a splatter of drool and lifted back into the mist. She climbed after it, passed a foot with claws that could easily span her body but presently gripped the sill of a window, then another, and another. The finely scaled legs supported a long, narrow body, covered with hairs, each tipped with a tiny sparkling drop.

Enris might have exaggerated the narrowness of Vyna’s bridges; not so the esan’s size. Haxel would want her to find out if it was edible.

Where were its wings?

Short of climbing a leg, she couldn’t see past the body, so Aryl worked her way from window to window until she found herself at the top of the building.

The sixth foot crushed one of the Vyna’s wall-top gardens. The head reappeared as she jumped from the wall to the ramp below, swinging down to regard her past its front knee.

As did other heads. They clustered here, the esans, clinging to the wall she’d climbed, standing on this ramp. More above. Like flitters roosting on a nekis, as close together as manners allowed.

There were, Aryl realized belatedly, no more splashes. Just the esans’ overlapping huffs, as if they took in her scent and rejected it.

Huffs and a muffled clinkclattergrind from over her head.

Aryl glanced at the swollen neck drooping above her. Round shapes pushed against the skin. The esan gave an irritated shake and huff. Something rattled.

Explaining how they carried the rock hunters. She was almost sympathetic.

Mist swirled around paired legs, then revealed a single figure standing by itself. Watching her.

Tikitik.

More came out of the mist, gathered in groups, stared. Something Tikitik were well equipped to do, possessing four eyes: two large, a smaller pair behind, all on mobile cones of flesh. Instead of a mouth, writhing gray protuberances moved as if tasting the air. They wore nothing but a belt to support a longknife and strips of cloth patterned in their symbols to wrap ankles and wrists. Their skin, more knobby plates than hide, was pale gray, the color of mist. No surprise. It could change, she’d seen it for herself, to match a background. For Tikitik were skulkers, hiders, loving to surprise.

When they couldn’t get something else to do the work for them.

Aryl’s fingers itched for her longknife. With an effort of will, she turned them to touch the Speaker’s Pendant instead.

Aryl?

He’d felt her reaction. She sent an image of what, or rather who, faced her. Peace, Enris. He subsided, watchful and worried.

The solitary Tikitik was different. It wore a black sash from shoulder to hip, ending in a fringe that brushed the stone pavement, and held its head higher than the rest on its long down curved neck—though not at shoulder-height. It gave a soft, guttural bark. A laugh. “Greetings, Apart-from-All.”

She didn’t need the symbols on its wristband. Using that name for her—that laugh? This was one of the Tikitik outside any faction, who wandered Cersi to gather information for its kind and, she was beginning to fear, stir trouble at whim. It might be one she’d met, or another. They were all dangerous. “Thought Traveler,” she acknowledged coolly. Courtesy first; knife if necessary. “What are you doing here?”

Esans stirred uneasily at her voice; one uttered its scream. The Tikitik at their feet grunted something at them; they stilled at once. She hid her distaste. Their way, to control beasts. Why the beasts allowed it was a mystery she’d rather not solve.

That familiar sly tilt of the head. “I would ask you the same, Little Speaker, if it mattered. I’m here to bestow a remarkable honor. You will be the first Om’ray to visit Tikitna, the Place-of-Bloodless-Meeting. There you will explain.” It pranced forward with its disturbing quickness, clawed toes snicking on pavement, then stopped. “You will explain so very many things.”

She could try to ’port. It might work this far above the still-restive rumn. All four of Thought Traveler’s eyes were fixed on her, as if daring her to do exactly that: flaunt this profound change in Om’ray in front of it. Prove everything it suspected.

End the Agreement.

“I look forward to it,” Aryl said. Enris, the Tikitik want me to leave with them.

Instantly: Not alone.

Not alone, she agreed, as though there was a choice. Vyna was no place for Enris and Naryn. Or Anaj. “There are Sona Om’ray on the lowermost level,” she informed the Tikitik. “They come with me.”

“Of course.” Thought Traveler gestured toward the mist—or was it to the encircling mountain beyond? “The Vyna, however ill-mannered, must be protected.”

“By killing them?” And she thought Oud spouted nonsense.

“A few nonbreeders.” An amused bark. “Which brought you straight to me without exposing Vyna to a more intimate intrusion.”

“I’m no threat to the Vyna.” Not if she could help it.

“Apart-from-All. You are nothing but threat to the Vyna. How I would enjoy explaining matters to you . . . but you could not comprehend.”

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