...BARAC found himself standing by the tidal pool and imported coastal rocks of Huido’s innermost sanctum. He wasn’t alone. Ruti gripped his hand and Quessa’s.
While in the calm, ink-like water, rows of shiny black eyes appeared.
“Where are we?” Quessa looked around, her once-tame hair writhing in a cloud. “What is this place?”
“Safe.”
Not necessarily. The eyes belonged to Huido’s wives, aroused and interested, and from what Morgan had told him, Barac hoped they weren’t hungry.
“What were those things?”
Hearing the tremor in Ruti’s voice, Barac turned his back on Huido’s wives to hug his own. He rested his chin atop her head. “They’re called Assemblers. I don’t know what would make them—”
A muffled THWUMP!
An explosion. On a space station? “Make them insane,” he muttered.
“Pardon?”
Another blast, closer. “Ruti, Quessa,” Barac said hurriedly. “We have to go.”
“No, we don’t. They can’t get in.” Ruti pulled away. “Nothing can.” She waved at the pool. “Huido built this to protect them and you know Tayno will be guarding the door. This is the safest place on Plexis.”
Explaining why Ruti had been willing to ’port them here, if nothing else.
The eyes sank below the water until they might have been alone. Given their appetite for still-walking meat, Barac suspected the wives would be just as happy if the door was breached. So long as Clan weren’t to their taste.
From the sounds outside, the restaurant must be rubble. He had to help Huido. “Wait here.” Barac formed the locate of the dining area.
Ruti took hold of him, her fingers tight. “No!”
“Heart-kin. I have to—”
“NO!”
Barac stilled, turning only his head.
One of the wives, the source of the bellow, heaved herself partly from the water. Larger than Huido by half again, the black plates of her head and torso were scratched and dented; her leftmost claw lacked a tip. Mating, the Clansman thought numbly, took its toll.
The creature couldn’t have spoken. “They aren’t sentient.”
He hadn’t realized he’d said that aloud until Ruti chuckled. “Of course they are.” She smiled at the giant, now-silent creature. “They’re the smartest of all.”
“YES!” A different one spoke, crashing back into the water to submerge save for her row of eyes. Waves slapped the rock.
The first again. “STAYHERE!” She slipped underwater more tidily.
Ruti nodded and went to sit on the driest rock, patting a spot beside her for Quessa. “Hom Huido will handle those Assembler things,” she said with touching and likely not-misplaced confidence. “Besides, Port Authority will be here soon. If we leave,” this with familiar determination, “we won’t know what all this was about. And,” her final, telling point, “Huido will need help straightening the kitchen. I’m sure everything’s a mess.”
“You’re very brave.” Quessa managed a smile. “Such excitement!”
“It’s not always like this,” Barac started to protest, then shrugged. “Lately, maybe.”
THWUMP . . . BANG! Like impossible thunder.
We’re safe here. Despite the brave words, Ruti snuggled close when he put his arm around her, her hair sliding warm against his cheek.
Their Birth Watcher smiled gently at them both.
A smile that froze, then faltered.
With no other warning, Quessa di Teerac collapsed at their feet.
Barac went to his knees beside her, Ruti with him. He reached, only to recoil from emptiness. “She’s—gone.”
A soft breath passed Quessa’s lips and it was over. Her white hair lay scattered like so much froth. Ruti touched it, picked up a limp strand. Her eyes met Barac’s, tears overflowing to splash on stone.
Echoed by another splash. Another. They looked up.
The wives looked back.
Somehow, Barac didn’t flinch, though he’d seen nothing so terrifying in his entire life as this uncountable mass of shell, claw, and eyes, and if any part had moved, he’d have ’ported with Ruti.
She trembled, but it wasn’t in fear. “Don’t eat her. Please.”
A claw snapped dismissively. “We have no interest in the dead.”
Not a bellow, which was a relief, but he couldn’t tell which had spoken, couldn’t tell one from the rest. Couldn’t think, not clearly.
Except to remember how good their fortune had seemed, so short a time ago—
GRIEF surged through his link with Ruti, even as she gasped, even as her eyes rolled back in her head. NO!
To his horror, she collapsed in his arms. “Ruti?” Ruti?
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Barac’s eyes shot to the wall of aliens. “This isn’t about you.” His Chosen was too brave for that—braver than he was—
“You aren’t like us.” Harsh, almost accusing.
“Of course we aren’t.” Save him from alien minds, especially ones as scrambled to his inner sense as these. He held his Chosen, desperately trying to grasp what more could be wrong. “We’re Clan,” he told the wives wearily. “Friends.”
The word seemed to fill an eerie, lingering silence.
Eyes stared.
All at once, claws snapped, shells crashed together, and incoherent bellows echoed from ceiling and wall.
Ruti stirred, her face anguished. Wincing in pain of his own, Barac covered her ears with his hands, unable to concentrate through the deafening cacophony of sound. What were they doing?
Silence. Ears ringing, he raised his head.
Three wives remained above water. The first made a bell-like sound, then spoke quietly. “We concur. This was inevitable. The Clan shouldn’t be here.”
The second made the same sound. “The Clan don’t belong.”
The third heaved suddenly closer, menacing in its dripping black, and bellowed, “CLANMUSTGO!”
Barac swept Ruti up in his arms and pushed . . .
. . . walls formed around them.
They weren’t nice walls, being streaked with grime and who knew what fluid. The floor was dry only because dust and grit soaked up the worst of what fell through the grates above. Barac sat gingerly, cradling his Chosen and the life she carried; afraid of her stillness, afraid to disturb it.
He’d tracked a Human down here, long ago: a telepath who’d caught Clan attention. She shouldn’t have been where she was. What she was. Yet she’d begged him to understand.
Now, at last?
He did.