Shadowkill

##

Shadith opened her eyes, groaned, pushed herself up till she was sitting cross-legged on the mattress, the blanket draped loosely about her. “Stylus,” she said.

Tsipor crawled across the dome to the place where she’d been squatting before, sat there, crimson eyes narrowed to slits, face blank.

Ginny tossed Shadith a clipboard, a stylus held to it with a small magnet.

“Five hundred and nine,” she said. “Five hundred and ten if you count Rohant. No Dyslaera there except him…” She began marking clusters of circles. “These are sleepers, not to scale, though I’m keeping angles and organization as accurate as I can. I didn’t find any of the other prisoners. I suppose they’ve been processed and sent… wherever…” She finished the circles and began laying down x’s, some of them with dotted lines and arrows indicating direction. “This lot are the wakers. The ones without pointers aren’t moving, probably sitting at terminals or watchposts, the others are going here and there, either insomniacs or guards on patrol.” She added a rectangle. “Rohant. He’s not far from the outer wall; it shouldn’t be too hard to pry him loose.”

“The EYEs go in first.”

“Yes. But once you’ve got them in place, I’m going to blow that cage and pull him out.”

“That argument is finished, Singer; you annoy me when you bring it up again and again.”

“All right. I just want things clear.” She stretched out again on the mattress, flipped the blanket over her. “Wake me when you’re ready to go.”

Miralys and Voallts on the hunt-Black House

The three Dyslaer transports plunged into the atmosphere and sped across the night sky sheathed in halos of superheated gases. They dipped low over Haed Ke, released a swarm of Capture Landers and went flaring up and out, settling into synchronous orbit above Tos Tang, a small unimportant seaside town, and Black House, a rambling structure growing like lichen on the stony mountains above Tos Tang.

Aboard Anyagyn’s Cillasheg, Miralys prowled restlessly about the bridge, maintaining a precarious control on her temper and her needs.

Huddled in one of the observer seats by the offside wall, Kikun watched her with admiration and apprehension; it was rather like hanging around a volcano about to erupt.

Beside him, Autumn Rose was busy with the totacorder tapped into the ship’s kephalos, recording for Digby the attack and everything that happened aboard the Cillasheg; this was his price for the data he provided, and the contacts.