find Lucy Harris.”
Chep nodded. Then shared a look with Cossi.
They both moved off, striding confidently through the crowd, which parted in their wake and then swallowed them up.
Dray bent, as if to fiddle with his boot. “See any spare cloaks lying around?”
“Give me a few minutes.” Bane's tone didn't convey approval for his decision to split from the other two, but Dray decided he'd have made his displeasure known if he hadn't agreed.
Unable to keep crouching down without drawing attention, he rose up, and went still when someone tapped his shoulder.
“You the one who wants a cloak?” The Tecran who asked was young, perhaps just into adulthood. He was holding a cloak out to Dray.
“Yes.” Dray took it, confused.
“Good deal.” The Tecran looked down at his handheld, grunted in appreciation, and then with a final glance at Dray, turned and disappeared into the crowd.
“What was that?” Dray pulled the cloak on, lifted the hood, and immediately relaxed a little as he suddenly became just one more body in the square.
“I sent him an offer through his handheld for more money than the cloak was worth.”
Dray could hear the dismissive shrug in Bane's voice.
He began to edge out of the crowd, making for the right-hand side of the square. There was chanting near the center, although another group was obviously trying to drown the chanting out with shouts of their own. Most, however, said nothing. Instead, they watched the massive screens, where the debate about the UC's arrival played out with various opinion leaders, and kept an uneasy eye on the more vocal and committed protesters, of all persuasions.
They were invested, but weren't sure of the correct course, Dray realized. They knew they were in the wrong with the UC, but they didn't like having their sovereignty taken from them, even for a set period of time.
It was a hard place to be caught in.
So they stood watch, waiting to be persuaded over to one side or the other.
Most of them balanced on the middle line. He could see it in the way they put some distance between themselves and those who had picked a side and waged a war of opposing views in the center of the square. They huddled together in smallish groups, jostled at times by the sheer number of citizens in the square, but their presence kept things just the right side of nonviolent.
Dray reached the pavement and then eased into a narrow alleyway that had almost no one in it.
“Keep going until the next intersection, then turn left.” Bane's voice in his ear was louder now he had a little distance from the shouting and noise.
He turned when he reached the corner, and almost stopped dead when he noticed two Tecran standing close together outside the door of one of the soaring Fa'allen buildings.
He checked his reaction, forcing himself to continue walking, head down, hands in the deep pockets of the cloak.
There was no response from Bane, and Dray realized he couldn't see the Tecran. In this environment he wasn't all knowing, as he'd been when he'd flown side by side with the Urna.
He hoped the Tecran didn't ask him anything, as he couldn't risk speaking, particularly as he knew his Tecran was accented. Everyone who'd been assigned to the UC team had to learn fluent Tecran in order to be able to fulfill their duties, but they sounded like the foreigners they were.
The two Tecran were level with him now, a man and a woman, and the way they watched him walk past had alarms ringing in his head.
Unless they were agitators planning on mayhem in the square, these two were part of the military teams running around town looking for Lucy Harris.
Once they were behind him, the back of his neck itched at his vulnerability and when he heard the faint sound of footsteps, he reached beneath his cloak and drew his shockgun out of its holster.
He glanced over his shoulder, saw with a frisson of shock only one of the two were following behind him, the other had disappeared.
He didn't like not knowing where they were.
“You should be coming up to another alley to the right soon. Take it,” Bane said.
His voice gave Dray a shock in the tense silence. He was moving fast, and the alleyway came up almost immediately.
He turned down it, his stride confident, and then pressed himself against the wall when he reached the deepest shadows, waiting, shockgun ready.
The Tecran stepped in after him, and after a few steps,