The Children of the Sky

Ravna returned the look as best she could, having only one head. “Of course. There’s myself and Jefri, but also the Children you stole, Geri and Timor and—”

“No.” It was flat negation, even if spoken in his high-pitched, little girl voice. “They will stay here.”

“But—”

“I don’t want them getting in the way. I—” There was a subtle shifting around within the pack. Ravna could almost imagine that some faction was embarrassed and desired a bit of frankness. “Timor is a good worker, as honorable as a pack. He will be safe here. Geri will be safe as well. Protecting both of them is important to me, even if they are human. You should know, Vendacious dislikes humans even more than I, and sometimes I wonder if he realizes how fragile you are. Even I find it hard to understand what it means to be a truly new mind; it is not a natural state. Eventually, I promise to return them. In the meantime, they will be kept far from Vendacious.” He jabbed a snout at Ravna. “My inclination is to take you with me. The packs we captured with you will go north with Vendacious. They will provide a good cross check on assertions that you make.”

“And Jefri?” Ravna asked.

“That depends on you and him. I want to locate Johanna Olsndot. You two are hiding something; we could hear you all yesterday conspiring in your dungeon. Confess the truth, and you can both travel on my airship.”

“We have told the truth,” said Jef, “and we weren’t conspiring!” But they had spent hours trying to decide what to say if it all came to this. Much of that conversation had been silent spelling and cloaked allusions.

Tycoon’s words rolled on right over Jef’s: “Otherwise—it will be as I told you two days ago. Jefri will go north with Vendacious.”

“I’m sure I can make the Johanna-brother talk, my lord.” That was Vendacious’ voice, via Zek.

Ravna glanced at Jefri, saw his impatient look. The result of all their “conspiring” had been simple: You can’t win if you have nothing to confess and that fact is not accepted. Okay, you might postpone the nightmare simply by making a faux confession. Jef would have already started lying, except that she’d persuaded him to let her make the first move. There must be some other way. I just need a little more time. As if all of yesterday hadn’t been enough to find a way out, if one existed. She turned away from Tycoon and Jefri and Zek, and stared across the pond. There was something near the middle that she hadn’t noticed before. Here and there tentacles poked into the air, slowly moving. They weren’t jabbing at insects. They were larger and more frondlike than the cuttlefish limbs she had seen. They were hard proof for her theory about the cuttlefish. She felt a smile come to her lips; in other circumstances it would have been a joyous shout.

She looked back at Tycoon. She had nothing but the lies she and Jefri had agreed on, but damned if she was going to say them while she could still stall. “Out of the whole airfield, you had us brought here. You wanted us to see this pond, didn’t you? Why?”

An indignant chord came from Zek. That must be Vendacious, impatient with the change of topic. Tycoon, bless his various parts, was more easily distracted. He sidled around, some of him tilting a glance at the water. When he finally spoke, his geekiness seemed ascendant. “I noticed that you never asked hard questions about the cuttlefish, never said much about them even when you were alone with the Johanna-brother. I wondered if you would ever figure out how important they are to my program.”

Ravna nodded. “I had a theory. Now I think I know much more about the cuttlefish than you do.”

“Oh really?” Tycoon stepped closer, challenging. He didn’t seem angry, but she had the feeling that the pack’s enormous ego, both as businesscritter and inventor, was engaged. “And what is it that you think you know?”

“The cuttlefish are more than mindless repeaters. They’ve learned your language and more recently mine. They can speak both sensibly.”

“Yes. So?”

“The cuttlefish were how you originally made contact with the Choir, how you were able to communicate with the Choir when all packs before had failed.”