of uncertainty and bewilderment in his bright eyes. ‘ ‘Yes, lovely
Damson,” he murmured and disappeared up the stairs.
Par started to say something more, but Coil took him by the
shoulders and pushed him back up against the weathered door.
Their eyes met and locked.
“Let’s not waste any more time arguing about this, huh?”
Coil said. “Let’s just get it over with. You and me.”
Par tried to twist free, but Coil’s big hands were like iron
clamps. He sagged back, frustrated. Coil released him. “Par,”
he said, and the words were almost a plea. “I spoke the truth.
I have to go.”
They faced each other in silence. Par found himself thinking
of what they had come through to reach this point, of the hard-
ships they had endured. He wanted to tell Coil that it all meant
something, that he loved him, that he was frightened for him
now. He wanted to remind his brother about his duck feet, to
warn him that duck feet were too big to sneak around in. He
thought he might scream.
But, instead, he said simply, “I know.”
Then he moved to the heavy, weathered door, released its
fastenings, and pulled on its worn handle. The door swung open,
and the half-light and fog, the rancid smells and cloying chill,
the hiss of swamp sounds, and the high, distant call of a solitary
bird rushed in.
Par looked back at Damson Rhee. She nodded. That she
would wait? That she understood? He didn’t know.
With Coil beside him, he stepped out into the Pit.
XXXI
W here was Teel?
Morgan Leah knelt hurriedly beside Steff,
touched his face, and felt the chill of his friend’s
skin through his fingers. Impulsively, he put his hands on Steff’s
shoulders and gripped him, but Steff did not seem to feel it.
Morgan took his hands away and rocked back on his heels. His
eyes scanned the darkness about him, and shivered with some-
thing more than the cold. The question repeated itself in his
mind, racing from comer to comer as if trying to hide, a dark
whisper.
Where was Teel?
The possibilities paraded before him in his mind. Gone to get
Steff a drink of water, something hot to eat, another blanket
perhaps? Gone to look around, spooked from her sleep by one
of those instincts or sixth-senses that kept you alive when you
were constantly being hunted? Close by, about to return?
The possibilities shattered into broken pieces and disap-
peared. No. He knew the answer. She had gone into the secret
tunnel. She had gone there to lead the soldiers of the Federation
into the Jut from the rear. She was about to betray them one
final time.
No one but Damson, Chandos, and I know the other way-
now that Hirehone is dead.
That was what Padishar Creel had told him, speaking of the
hidden way out, the tunnel- something Morgan had all but for-
gotten until now. He shivered at the clarity of the memory. If
his reasoning was correct and the traitor was a Shadowen who
had taken Hirehone’s identity to follow them to Tyrsis, then that
meant the Shadowen had possession of Hirehone’s memories
and knew of the tunnel as well.
And if the Shadowen was now Teel. . .
Morgan felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. It would
take the Federation months to take the Jut by siege. But what if
the siege was nothing more than a decoy? What if the Creeper
itself had been, even in failing, just a decoy? What if the Fed-
eration’s intent from the beginning, was to take the Jut from
within, by betrayal once again, through the tunnel that was to
have been the outlaws’ escape?
I have to do something!
Morgan Lean felt leaden. He must leave Steff and get to Pad-
ishar Creel at once. If his suspicions about Teel were correct,
she had to be found and stopped.
If.
The horror of what he was thinking knotted m his throat-
mat Teel could be the very worst of the enemies that had hunted
them all since Culhaven, that she could have deceived them so