Penrys flew steadily, aiming for stamina rather than speed. She knew she would be silhouetted against the stars if anyone should happen to look up, but no one would know what to make of the shadow as it passed.
She detoured around the few Rasesni she found and followed the river down, its silver channels easily visible in starlight. By counting to herself, she was able to estimate how many miles she was covering on each portion of the three planned loops. She wanted to be sure not to go so far on any one of them that she would have trouble completing the whole search tonight.
Below the Gates, there were Kigali-yat speakers scattered around the Seguchi, in small homesteads and occasional towns. She couldn’t reach as far as Shaneng Ferry this evening, and didn’t know the names of the places she passed, but nowhere did she sense the large gathering that would be Chang’s army.
After about eight miles, she swung east away from the river and began another search back toward the gates. The air was still, with none of the thermals that were sometimes available on a warm day—she couldn’t glide as much as she’d hoped.
Again, only a few people were in her range. She kept up her count, and thought about how she’d left Zandaril. Two weeks traveling together, on their own, near quarters before that. This development was no surprise but…
Three years in Tavnastok, and no one close to her. She was an oddity, a thing to be studied, a scholar to be tolerated. This… this was so much better. He liked her wings. He wasn’t afraid of her.
She smiled. He’d called them “cowards.” Why, and so they were.
Like she’d told him, this was something her body knew. She couldn’t remember her experiences, but clearly her body did. She’d given up expecting something like this, shut it down entirely. Maybe that could change.
His voice and his scent did things to her. She wanted more. She wanted the man himself, with his odd accent and his sense of humor and his deep, rumbling voice. She knew it wouldn’t be the first time for her, but it seemed like it, with nothing to compare it to.
The time flashed by, and soon she was back at the level of the Gates, turning to the east to start her next pass outward in the second loop.
Maybe I can finish early. Maybe I’ll find them on this loop, and skip the northern one.
She hugged the thought to herself as she counted out the new lap.
There! There they were.
Penrys was about ten miles east of the Gates, just after her turn west again at the extreme end of her loop. She felt the horses first, then the cattle, as she came up on the camp from behind, and then the people. The glint of water marked a stream headed for the Seguchi, a few miles to their southwest.
She thought of landing now and taking two horses with her back to Zandaril, but they weren’t much more than half a day from the Gates—the two of them could be here by mid-afternoon tomorrow, and that was good enough. The camp wasn’t boiling with activity, as though they were about to go into action, and it would be better for the two of them to report together.
She overflew it, undetected in the night, and broke off to fly directly back to their hiding place north of the Gates by the shortest route, starting her count afresh to help guide them in the morning. She made careful note of any people along their proposed path as she passed, but none seemed to be Rasesni.
She would be back early, after all.
Zandaril woke before the birds, in the dim light of false dawn. His left arm was cramped under Penrys’s head, but he did nothing to disturb her sleep, curled up and snuggled into his chest, wingless.
He brushed her hair back from her face and tucked it behind an ear, smoothing the black fur of it as he did so. Feathers, fur, and skin—so strange. And so wonderful.
She murmured as he touched her ear, and he smiled.
He didn’t know her well, nor she him. He had stories to tell her, and she had none. No family.
He’d thought he was afraid of her, but he realized she was afraid of herself, not knowing what she might find, what strange feature might materialize, what the chain around her neck meant. That’s what he feared, as well, not Penrys the woman. That person he found intriguing. They could survive the rest of it as it came, together.
Did she have some other family, as she suspected? He decided it didn’t matter to him. If she did, they were dead to her. If she remembered them suddenly… Ah, there was something to fear after all.
Well, he would have to give her new memories, then, wouldn’t he, something to compete with.
He leaned down to kiss her ear and breathed on it warmly. Let’s start now.
