Page 40 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

“I have been called worse.”

“I’m sure. Give me time.”

Syin runs out of patience. “Can we collapse the shelf over it?”

“No,” Kessa and I say together.

She looks sharply at me. The fragment pulses.

Once.

Pause.

Again.

My throat answers, hotter this time. Pain drags across the lines beneath my plates. I press one hand to the side of my neck before I can stop myself. Kessa sees. She sees too much.

“Why not?” Syin asks.

Kessa answers first.

“Because the shelf sits over a hollow. Collapse it and the force travels down before it travels in. The fragment reacts to vibration. We might feed it.”

“And,” I say, because the truth is useful when shaped correctly, “if the root cracks instead of dies, it may send a partial signal.”

“What kind of partial?” Renn asks.

I look at the fragment. The green threads crawl toward me by the width of a claw.

“Enough.”

Syin snarls low. “You give half-answers like a male expecting to keep his tongue.”

“I give enough answers to keep you alive.”

“You give enough to keep yourself useful.”

Yes. I do not say that out loud. Kessa steps between the words before they become teeth.

“We need to get under it without waking it. Not dig. Not collapse. Not strike from above.”

Her gaze travels over the ridge, down the slope, then to a narrow slit between two slabs half-buried under windpacked sand. Too small for Zmaj shoulders. Too unstable for brute force. Perfect for something worse.

“No,” Syin says immediately.

Kessa’s eyebrows lift. “I haven’t said anything.”

“You are about to.”

“I appreciate your growing fluency in my bad ideas.”

“No.”

She points at the slit. “That runs under the shelf.”

“No.”

“A small person can get through without moving the top stone.”