She was about to mention this when she gagged, sickened by a sudden, horrible taste.
“Down, quick!” Snark spun her around. “It’s the big Rottens!”
They made it down the ridge and into the rocks before the creatures appeared—though barely. When they came to the sleeping chamber, each of them found a water bottle and a wiping rag and sat down well away from one another, each careful to look away from the others as they drooled and wiped. The few pale rays of sunlight that penetrated the piled stones now stood almost erect, disappearing one by one. All scarcely breathed as the rays reappeared.
“No clouds today,” said Snark unclearly but matter-of-factly. “That was a big Rotten goin’ over. Floatin’ and danglin’.”
“Is there a place we can safely watch from?” asked Leelson, wiping his lips. “I’d like to see a big one.”
Snark dug her heel into the sand and twisted it as she considered. “This rockfall piles higher the farther east you go. Clear at the east end, it’s right on the ridge. We can try working through in that direction.”
Lutha had stacked the provisions in a neat pile, away from the stove. Disregarding these efforts at order, Mitigan tumbled the stack, tore open one of the personal kits, and burrowed inside it to find a full water bottle. Snark wiped her filthy face with the back of one hand and went scrambling off with him in pursuit, looking from the rear more like four-legged creatures than two-legged ones.
“Be back,” said Leelson as he followed them into the dark.
Jiacare Lostre shook his head, muttered fragmentary phrases of fastidious annoyance, and set about picking up the scattered contents of the personal kits.
“This isn’t a kit knife,” he said. “Whose knife is this?”
“What knife?” Lutha asked, swiveling toward him.
He held a knife into the light of a slanting beam. Lutha saw it, and saw beyond it, where the severed end of Leely’s tether hung white against the gray stone she had tied it to. The knife belonged to Saluez. She carried it in the pocket of her underrobe and Lutha had seen her use it dozens of times. So had Leely.
Lutha scrambled across the sand toward Saluez’s recumbent form, feeling frantically along her blanket-covered body. Leely wasn’t there. Saluez hadn’t moved. Only her covers had been shoved aside to gain access to her pocket. Leely had been lying there when Lutha and the ex-king had gone out!
“Your boy,” said the ex-king. “He did it?”
Lutha nodded, rigid and cold with tension. She hadn’t thought of his using a knife. Why hadn’t she thought of that! Now what? The Ularians were out there, and Leely was wandering around in this warren, or outside it. Maybe out in the open. What could she do? What dared she do?
Jiacare Lostre put his hand on her shoulder, forced her down, sat before her, taking her hands in his. “Be still,” he said.
“Got to—”
“Don’t. Don’t do anything. If he’s inside, he’s as likely to come back here as we are to find him. If he’s outside, anything you do might endanger him more.”
“I could go to the entrance and call to him!”
“If you did, would you want those creatures to hear you? Listen to me, Lutha. The best thing you can do is nothing. Just wait. Besides, the others are looking out. If they see him outside, they’ll come back and tell us so.”
She thought that Leelson wouldn’t. Leelson wouldn’t give it a second thought. She shivered. Jiacare put a blanket around her, then his arms around that, and they sat so for a long time.
Time went by. The patches of sunlight shifted nearer the stone, crawling amoebalike on the sand. The taste went away, but Leely hadn’t returned.
“What?” demanded Leelson from the edge of the cavern.
“Leely,” said the ex-king. “He’s gone.”
“Oh, tsssss.” Leelson hissed, grimacing at Lutha, at the world. “How long?”
Jiacare said, “He was gone when you left. We just didn’t notice until afterward.”
Lutha put her face in her hands. He meant that she hadn’t noticed. She would have, if it hadn’t been for that horrible taste …