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At last he thought to climb up on top of a particularly large stone and look around from there, and from that vantage he finally spotted a dusky yellow, chitinous leg sticking out from behind another block. "Over there," he said, pointing with the spear. He jumped down, and he and Kayan advanced cautiously. He didn't think they needed to fear this thri-kreen, but it never hurt to be ready for trouble.
When they rounded the edge of the stone and saw the entire creature, they knew they had no reason to worry. Not about it attacking them, at any rate. The mantis warrior lay on its side, its six limbs sprawled out and its head resting flat on the ground. The only sign of life was a faint pulsing in its bulbous abdomen.
There were no obvious wounds. "What's wrong with it?" Jedra asked Kayan.
She leaned down and gingerly touched one of its clawed hands, then closed her eyes. "Dehydration," she said after a moment. "Wonderful. Thri-kreen can live for weeks without food or water. If this one is dying of thirst, there can't be any water around for a hundred miles."
Chapter Four
Jedra looked down at the insectile beast. It was the biggest thri-kreen he'd ever seen, easily ten feet long from the end of its abdomen to the top of its head, with its upper four appendages adapted for grasping and its lower legs long and double-jointed for running or leaping. Its neck was nearly two feet long. Only its head seemed small, and that only in comparison to the rest of its body. It was oblong, with jet-black compound eyes sticking out bulbously on either side and powerful mandibles in front.
Something about its shape didn't seem quite right, though. Jedra hadn't paid much attention to thri-kreen when he'd lived in the city-it was best just to give them plenty of room-but this one seemed subtly different. A bigger cranial bulge behind the eyes, maybe, and a narrower face, if that glistening expanse of hard exoskeleton could be called a face.
Strapped to the creature's back was a pack proportioned to the thri-kreen's large size. Jedra could have fit inside the bag, and there would have been room for Kayan on the wooden frame that extended below it. They would have had to empty it first, though; the pack bulged with unknown contents, and the frame was festooned with hardware. Cooking pots, the two multi-bladed heads of a gythka-without the usual long pole between them-some kind of curved throwing weapon with spikes sticking out of it, and more things that Jedra didn't recognize had all been tied to it. Jedra doubted if he could even lift the pack, much less carry it anywhere. Thri-kreen must be strong.
And rich. Most of the stuff was made of metal.
The creature became aware of their presence. It shuddered, trying to lift the arm that Kayan still touched, but it couldn't. The mandibles opened, clicked shut, then they opened again and a faint, croaking voice said, "Water."
"Sorry," Kayan said, backing away. "We don't even have enough for ourselves."
"Water," the creature croaked again. It tried again to move, this time managing to raise its head a few inches. Its multifaceted eyes seemed to fix on Kayan, then on Jedra. "I know... where is... water," it said. "You give me... yours... then I get more... for all of us."
Jedra was still in shock over the complete wreckage of his expectations. He had come here expecting to find help, but now he found himself being asked for it instead. His beautiful city, with open fountains and food enough for weeks, had turned out to be the delirious ravings of a dying thri-kreen. He had doomed himself and Kayan to the same fate.
Unless the thri-kreen was telling the truth. Could it know where to find water in this ancient city? "Tell us where it is," Jedra said, "and we'll go get it."
The thri-kreen laid its head back on the ground. "Never reach it," it said. "Water is... underground. Must work... me
chanism."
"I can use a pump," Jedra said. The thri-kreen shuddered the whole length of its body. "Not this one," it said. "Must know... principle. Suction head... not enough... need more differential... priming valve... air squeezer..." The words trailed off and it lay still.
She shook her head. "It's delirious."
"No." The thri-kreen lifted its head again, and even managed to prop itself up with an arm. "I am... rational. I can reach... more water... if you help me." Kayan stepped back out of the creature's hearing, pulling Jedra along by his sleeve. "It's desperate," she whispered to him. "It'll say anything to get our water."
Jedra looked back at the enormous mantis, its black eyes reflecting no readable emotion as it watched them decide its fate. "Yes," he whispered to Kayan, "but that doesn't mean he's lying, does it?"
"What, you believe it knows where there's a well? Why didn't it use it before?"
Jedra noticed she was saying "it" rather than "he" in reference to the thri-kreen. Was she trying to keep from thinking of it-of him-as a fellow intelligent being? Jedra couldn't do that. He didn't want to do that. He said, "Maybe he collapsed before he could get there."
"Hah. It seems pretty unlikely that it'd get this close and then give up. I think it's lying."
The setting sun cast long shadows among the broken stones littering the courtyard. Jedra wondered how they would find their way back out of this maze with only one moon and the stars to guide them. And where would they go if they did?
"So you want to just leave him to die?" he asked.
She sighed. "What else can we do? I wasn't lying; we don't have enough water for ourselves."
Jedra nodded. "Then why are we whispering? To spare his feelings?"
Kayan clenched her fists. "I-" I don't care about- You 're a healer. You could no more watch him die than you could kill him yourself with this spear. Jedra hefted the b'rohg's weapon for emphasis. You 're trying to talk yourself into it, but it's not working.
Don't go putting words in my mouth, Kayan said. I could let it die in an instant if I had, to. I'm just trying to decide if I have to.
Jedra pulled off his pack and took his waterskin from it. There was only a swallow left, hardly enough to gurgle when he shook the skin. Kayan's waterskin held no more than his, he knew. I don't think it's really going to make much difference, he said. You said it yourself; we don't have enough water to do us any good anyway. But a thri-kreen doesn't need much water to survive. What toe have left could revive him, and he could help us find more. He talks like he knows this place; who knows, maybe there really is a well.
