“Well, I’ll tell you. Used to be the Rottens just came out at night. Lately, they’ve been coming daytimes, too, and they all the time hang over the camp. That’s a favorite spot, that is. An it’s not all that secure. Wasn’t built to defend. ‘F it was me, I’d go back behind the ridge north of the camp. There’s a big rockfall there, pillars and blocks all tumbled down with spaces between. You’d be close to food stores and the solar collectors, and likely there’s a place in there big enough for all six of you. Not real smart, to my mind, but then—”
“Why not?” Lutha asked.
“If the Rottens go after one of you, they’ll get all. Spread out, maybe they won’t get you all. That’s the way my folks did it.”
Mitigan smiled approval and she flushed. She was not accustomed to approval.
“Am I right in thinking you were here before?” Lutha asked her. “You were one of the ‘survivors’ the Procurator mentioned?”
Snark nodded, responding unwillingly. “Me. Yeah. There were five of us, all kids.”
“Why were you … ?” Lutha didn’t know how to ask the question.
“Made a shadow?” She laughed harshly. “Yeah, well. Things just happen to some people. Runnin’ from scourges, you get what they call antisocial.”
None of them knew what she meant by scourges, but they did not interrupt her as she went on:
“I’d had a few years of running before I was rescued. Makes you quick. Makes you—what you say—crude. Guess I didn’t adapt real well to civilization.”
This time Mitigan grinned admiringly at her. Snark returned the grin, a quick feral flash, no more used to humor than to approbation.
Lutha watched the two closely, thinking them a good pair. She, brown and lean, with muscular shoulders and calves, high, strong cheekbones, and a rounded but stubborn jaw; he wide as a door, his almost white hair drawn up into a tall plume atop his head, wearing a hide vest, a beaded crotch piece, and not much else besides a bandage and his many scars. If he’d ever worn Dinadhi dress, he’d dropped it before attacking at the omphalos.
Leelson peered down his nose at both of them, the aristocratic Fastigat sneer Lutha found so infuriating. Snark didn’t bother to notice. She had seen so much of Fastigat superiority at Alliance Prime that it ceased to impress.
“What’s happening back on Dinadh, do you suppose?” Lutha asked Leelson. “They must have seen what happened to us. Are you sure Trompe’s … dead?”
Leelson looked at his boots. “I’m sure. The other … assassin was aiming at you or Leely, and Trompe jumped in front of him.” He glared at Mitigan. “You had no reason to kill Trompe!”
“We weren’t aiming at Trompe,” said Mitigan, unmoved by Leelson’s anger. “As for what’s happening back there, your Procurator will be stirring dust. As will Chur Durwen. We are sworn to cover one another.”
Leelson nodded. “The Procurator will mount a search immediately. He’ll send probes through the vortex.”
Lutha wondered, briefly, why Leelson hadn’t noticed that the vortex was no more. She started to say so, but was cut off by the ex-king:
“Poracious Luv is on Dinadh. She will also put her considerable talents to the problem. And perhaps the songfathers of Dinadh as well. Though they won’t want to admit they were wrong about the … Kachis.”
His words made the hair rise on the back of Lutha’s neck. She could infer from various things Saluez had told her that the songfathers wouldn’t want to admit they were wrong. In fact, if what had happened at this Tahs-uppi was what usually happened at the ceremony, they would not admit they’d been wrong. Every hundred years they would be disillusioned, and each time they would swear to hide their disillusionment in order to retain their power. “We won’t tell anyone,” they’d say. “We won’t let anyone know. We’ll deny it. We’ll defend the traditional teachings!” Such things had happened before! Men in power had made mistakes or foolish claims and spent the rest of their lives and their successors’ lives defending the indefensible, or hiding it. And arrayed against the impenetrable wall of the songfathers was only one big woman, one old man, and one warrior who might or might not take sides.