Page 34 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

The bright point on the map flares so hard green light crawls over Rosalind’s fingers even through the cloth. She doesn’t drop it, which surprises me. The woman could probably hold a live coal and make the coal question its commitment.

“Go,” she says.

Just that. The room breaks into motion.

Syin assigns warriors with short, clipped orders. Renn ends up on the team, his cheek bandaged and his expression determined in the way of young males who haven’t yet learned that bravery and stupidity often wear each other’s shirts. Penr is sent to fetch two route runners and looks relieved until I tell him he’s not one of them.

“But I’m fast,” he says.

“You’re limping.”

“I’m fast while limping.”

“You squeaked when dust fell.”

“That was a cough.”

“Your cough said mother.”

His ears go red. “I can help.”

“You are helping. You’re staying here, carrying messages, and making sure Ila knows I’m not dead unless I’m actually dead. Don’t improvise my death. She’ll blame me for the paperwork.”

Penr’s mouth tightens, but he nods. He’s young and dumb enough to hate being assigned somewhere safe. I remember that feeling, but I’m old enough to know safe is usually a temporary rumor.

Ila appears before we leave the cistern because Ila appears wherever there is trouble, carrying two waterskins, a packet of dried root mash, and the expression of a woman who has already decided everyone else is incompetent but is willing to support us in our tragic condition.

“I moved the lower heat rooms,” she says. “No panic. Three complaints. One minor fight over blankets. Adran’s source-watch order has been countermanded by Rosalind’s mixed pairing instruction, which he is pretending to accept with grace.”

“His face?” I ask.

“Like spoiled milk in a fancy cup.”

“I’m sorry I missed it.”

“No, you’re not. You’re busy walking into danger with a new alien.” She looks Rhazek over, then turns back to me. “Try not to die. I don’t want your job.”

“You’d be better at it.”

“I know. That’s why I don’t want it.”

She shoves the waterskins against my chest, then lowers her voice. “You all right?”

The question is worse because she doesn’t soften it. I look past her to where Rhazek stands near the arch, Syin on one side, Merra tightening the last strap over his wing on the other. He looks like he belongs in a nightmare and is somehow still less frightening than the green map pulsing on the cistern wall.

“No,” I say.

Ila nods once. “Good. Honest matters. Bring that back too.”

I want to hug her. There’s an unspoken rule that we don’t hug in a crisis because then the crisis thinks it’s won. Instead, I tuck one waterskin over my shoulder and hand the other to Renn, who accepts it with the solemnity of a sacred blade.

We leave through the east ash route instead of the main passage. Fewer eyes. Less rumor. More unstable steps and one narrow section where Rhazek has to turn sideways because his braced wing makes him too broad for the old stone passage. Syin watches him struggle with open suspicion. I track his progress with irritation that keeps trying to become something else, so I feed it practical concerns until it behaves.

“Left foot higher,” I tell Rhazek.

He pauses. “I see the step.”

“You see the first step. I see the one after it that collapses if you put that much weight on the outer edge.”