The Children of the Sky

Jefri and company had disappeared around a corner of naked rock. When Ravna and the rest caught up, they found the three stopped, staring: not at a handful of gold coins, but at hundreds of coins and gems, a splash of gold and glitter that swept across the path. It lay in bright, direct sunlight. Indeed the Spring forest canopy had two wide tears in it. Where the light fell, greenish gloom was replaced by uncompromising detail. But Amdi, where are you? Like in the fairy tales, where the dying friend is turned to treasure?

Jefri scrambled up the rock, bracing his feet against tree trunks to lean against the steepness. He swept wildly at the branches. Gold coins scattered from around his hands, unheeded. “Where is he?” Jefri shouted. “Where—” He paused, steadied himself, and pulled. Something large and angular broke loose from where it had been jammed between rocks.

The wreckage bounced and crashed down to the path. It was—had been—a strongbox. Where it hadn’t splintered, the surface glistened with polish.

Ravna felt a touch on her shoulder. She turned. It was Øvin, grim and solemn. He jerked his head upwards. Ravna followed his gaze. Something dark and member-sized was caught in the higher branches. She noticed Ritl pacing beneath it, staring straight up. For once the critter was not spewing commentary.

Ravna swallowed. Then she looked at Jefri, still braced precariously between the cliff face and various tree trunks. “Please come down now, Jef.” She kept her tone even and comforting.

“We have to find him, Rav.”

“We will. I promise.” It took a force of will not to look at the dark, still form that hid in the shadows just beyond Jef’s reach. “But you shouldn’t be way up there. It’s not safe. I want you to come down now.”

He stared back at her, his eyes wide. It was a look she hadn’t seen in years, from long before he had grown and gotten mixed up with the Deniers and betrayed her and rescued her. It was the little boy that Pham had rescued on Murder Meadows.

Jefri gave a sigh. “Okay,” he said and carefully came down to safety. No one spoke, but by the time Jefri reached the ground, almost everyone else had noticed the body in the trees.

•  •  •

The hardest part of getting the body down was keeping Jefri out of the way.

The body. Think of it as the body, the creature, the member—not as part of Amdiranifani. The creature was dead beyond doubt. The poor fellow had been impaled on one of the thornlike branches at the apex of the tree, where the evergreen needles didn’t grow. The accidental spear had passed through the length of the body, ending where the branch was almost fifteen centimeters wide.

As they began cutting down the body, Woodcarver shouted news of the discovery to Linden’s group.

“Okay!” came the reply. “We’re fighting off a mob of stubborn—yeowr!—seabirds. They’re swarming around something just ahead of us.”

Magda and Elspa were sitting with Jefri on the ground. They finally had him calmed down. Ravna leaned against a large boulder and sent all sorts of surely unnecessary detail back to Oobii. From Scrupilo’s video, the ship had already located seven bodies, all dead for a certainty, though this one and the one by Poul Linden might be the only members they could get to today. So I’ll be free to think on other things. But now her attention was stuck on the impaled body, all the other windows ignored.

One forester sawed at the tree as the other sailed restraining ropes around the upper branches. Ritl circled underneath, acting more like a real dog than Ravna had ever seen among Tines, even singletons. Ritl wasn’t saying much. She just looked curious and mystified and—for once—as stupid as she probably was. But the dogs Ravna remembered were plenty smart enough to realize when their betters were upset—and surely Ritl remembered Amdi. She had caused poor Amdiranifani enough problems. Ravna hoped the little beast couldn’t be hurt as much as Jefri and Amdi’s other friends.

As they lowered the body to the ground, Jefri shook himself free of Magda and Elspa. Everyone but Ritl stepped back at his approach. Fortunately, the corpse’s head was turned away from view; it looked like the tree branch had burst through the face. The body was shrouded in a long cloak. As Jefri knelt beside it, Ritl slid forward, peering suspiciously at the body. Jefri waved the singleton away. He reached for the cloak—

Ritl emitted a piercing squawk and darted past him. She tore at the corpse’s throat, screaming in rage.

Jefri didn’t seem to notice. He had fallen to his knees and was staring in blank shock. Magda and Elspa rushed forward to grab Ritl, but the singleton rolled off the corpse and scuttled into the underbrush on the high side of the path. She was making a weird hooting noise. After a moment, Ravna recognized the sound. It was a small part of laughter.