Page 132 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

“It is if you’re talented.”

Renn looks at me as if I have some authority over this problem. I do not make that mistake.

“She will not listen,” I say.

Kessa points at me with her uninjured hand. “Good answer.”

Renn mutters something in Zmaj and keeps tying the bandage while she walks. I take one step after them and my left leg nearly fails.

Syin catches my upper arm before I hit the sand. I look at his hand. He looks at my face.

“If you say you can walk, I will let go and watch you prove yourself a liar,” Syin says.

“I can walk.”

Syin releases me. My knee folds. He catches me again. Kessa looks back. I decide silence is useful.

“Excellent,” she says. “We’re all learning.”

Syin puts my arm across his shoulders. I dislike the position. I dislike needing it more.

“You saved the City,” he says quietly.

“No.”

His tail cuts once through the sand. “Do not become modest now. It will confuse everyone.”

“I broke a machine. The City saved itself.”

Syin looks toward the mixed line moving west. “Both can be true.”

I have no answer for that, so I remain silent. We start toward home.

Home.

The word enters my thoughts without permission, but I do not drive it out.

Kessa walks several paces ahead with Renn, trying to do three jobs while bleeding through the first layer of his bandage. She points out soft ground. Sends two runners around a fresh crack. Stops Penr from sending the water carriers across a slope that has started to slump toward the buried chamber.

She does not look back at me every five breaths. She looks back every seven. I count because I am a fool. At the first rock shelf she stops completely.

Everyone continues around us until Syin and I reach her.

“You,” she says to Syin, “go check the west descent. Penr says the lower route cracked.”

Syin studies her, then me.

“I can hear you thinking,” Kessa says.

“That seems unlikely.”

“It’s very loud.”

He frowns, his tail twitching and wings rustling but finally he leaves.

I stand without his support because Kessa is watching and because pain is not the same as inability. The distinction matters, though perhaps less than I would prefer. She steps close enough to see the burn beneath my throat.

“You waited for me to take your hand back there.”