throat, then, to his complete astonishment, the kank’s hitherto silent, motionless rider hove sideways and tumbled helplessly to the ground, like a sack of grain. That was all the signal Ruari needed. He wasn’t fool enough to use druidry in competition with a rider’s prod, but if the riders weren’t in control, he knew the spells.
Pavek felt his heart skip a beat as Ruari drew upon the guardian’s power. He muttered a few words—mnemonics shaping the power and directing it—to create rapport between himself and the bugs. The now-riderless kank dropped to all six feet with a clatter of chitin and bells as Ruari began weaving his arms about. One by one the kanks began to echo his movements with their antennae. Their clashing mandibles slowed, then stopped, and high-pitched chittering faded into silence.
“Good work!” Pavek exclaimed, pounding Ruari on the shoulder hard enough to send him sprawling, but there was a grin on the half-elf’s face when he stood up. Pavek was as pleased with himself for remembering the niceties of friendship as he was that Ruari had saved their lives.
With the danger past and the niceties disposed of, there were questions to be answered. Keeping a wary eye on the huge, drowsy kank, Pavek scabbarded his sword and knelt down beside the fallen rider. He got his first answer when, as he rolled the body over, the rider’s heavy robe opened. There was a handspan’s worth of dark thread intricately woven into a light-colored right-side sleeve. The war bureau wore its ranks on the right and though the patterns were difficult to read, Pavek guessed he was looking at a militant templar, if he was lucky, a pursuivant, if he wasn’t—and he usually wasn’t lucky.
The robe slipped through his suddenly stiff fingers: old habits getting the better of him. Third-rank regulators of the civil bureau didn’t lay hands on war bureau officers. Chiding himself that he was neither in Urik nor a third-rank regulator, Pavek got his hands under the templar’s body to finish rolling it over. From the inert weight, he was prepared to see a man’s face, even prepared to look down at a corpse. He wasn’t prepared for the dark, foul liquid that spilled from the corpse’s mouth and nose. It had already soaked the front of his robe and shirt. Pavek’s hands holding the robe became damp and sticky.
Men died from the bright, brutal heat on the Sun’s Fist—Pavek had nearly died there himself the first time he came across it—but he didn’t think anything nearly so natural had killed this man.
“Is he—?” Zvain asked and Pavek, who hadn’t known the boy was so close, leapt to his feet from the shock.
“Very,” he replied, trying to sound calm.
“May I—May I search him?”
Pavek started to rake his hair, then remembered his fingers and looked for something to wipe them on instead. “Search, not steal, you understand? Everything you find has got to go back to Urik, or we’ll have the war bureau hunting our hides as well.” He left a dark smear on the kank’s enameled chitin.
The boy pursed his lips and jutted his chin, instantly defensive, instantly belligerent. “I’m not stupid”
“Yeah, well-see that you stay that way.”
He headed for the next kank and another bloody, much-decorated templar: a dwarf whose lifeless body, all fifteen stones of it, started to fall the moment he touched it. Cursing and shoving for all he was worth, Pavek kept the corpse on top of the kank, but only after he’d gotten himself drenched in stinking blood.
“This one’s dead, too,” Ruari shouted from the far end of the kank formation.
“Is it a woman?” Pavek wiped his forearms on the trailing hem of the dwarf’s robe. “Akashia said a woman was coming.”
“No, a man, a templar, and, Pavek, he’s got a damned fancy yellow shirt. You think, maybe, there’s someone else out here?”
“Not a chance. The Lion’s the one who changed my rank. These are his kanks, his militants. He’s the one who’s sending Quraite a messenger. Keep looking.”
So they did, with Pavek turning his attention to an empty-backed kank. When the druids traveled, they often fitted their biggest bugs with cargo harnesses, but the bug Pavek examined had been saddled for an ordinary rider, who’d met an unpleasant death: his charred hands, clinging to an equally charred pommel, were all that remained. Pavek assumed the rider had been male. He couldn’t actually be certain. The hands looked to be as large as his own but he wasn’t about to