Page 38 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

I will burn out my own veins before I allow that.

Kessa stops so suddenly that the young runner behind her nearly walks into her back. She catches his shoulder and nudges him to the side without looking away from the ground ahead.

“There,” she says.

I look past her.

At first there is nothing. Red stone. A low ridge of wind-carved rock. Sand gathered in the cracks. Heat shimmer bending the air into lies. Then the light catches a black edge tucked beneath a slab of stone, and the world narrows.

The fragment is smaller than my forearm, curved and dark, with one jagged side buried in the ridge. Green threads crawl over it, so thin a dull eye would miss them. They are not light exactly. They are signal given hunger, searching over the metal in slow pulses.

Once.

Pause.

Again.

My throat answers.

Kessa turns, then, fast enough to catch the glow before I can hide it.

“Don’t step closer,” she says.

Syin’s blade comes up. “To whom?”

“Everyone.” Her gaze stays on me. “But mostly him.”

“I know what it is,” I say.

“That is not making me feel cuddly.”

“Good.”

She presses her lips together. She wants to look at the fragment. She wants to keep looking at me. She cannot do both and dislikes the limitation. Sensible.

“Tell me where to stand,” she says.

Syin growls. “You do not take position from him.”

“I take information from anyone who has it, then decide whether to insult them later.” She points at the ground without looking away from the fragment. “That rock shelf is cracked under the sand. The green line crosses there twice. If this thing lashes out like the cistern drain did, the wrong step burns someone. So yes, I’m asking the enemy where not to put my feet.”

Enemy.

The word should please me. It places distance where distance belongs, but it does not.

“Left of the pale stone,” I say. “Not on it. Beside it. The line travels under the crust.”

She narrows her eyes. “You can see that?”

“I can feel it.”

There. Too much truth. Adran is not here to make a cage out of the answer, but Syin hears enough. His head turns, slow and dangerous.

Kessa hears too. Her expression changes, not softer. She looks at me as if another route has appeared on a map she does not want to carry.

“Same as me,” she says quietly.

“No.”