"Yes, I agree," said Marya. She jerked a thumb at the sky. "Especially after seeing the swans close up—not something I want to do again, let me tell you!" She stood up and unself-consciously unzipped her coveralls.

"Hang on," said Axel. "I disagree. Marya, I think you should keep your unitard."

"Why?" asked Calandria.

Axel grinned. "I've got an idea."

25

"Where is she?" Marya strained to see through the darkness. She and Axel were crouching in damp weeds, while Calandria snuck up on some horses in a nearby paddock.

"She's nearly there," whispered Axel. "Pipe down, or the dogs will hear you."

Marya started to sit back, remembered they were on a planet covered with foul dirt, and recovered her crouching position. She shook her head. Calandria May seemed to take it for granted that her ways were the best. She had insisted on being the one to steal these horses.

"As soon as they discover they're gone, there'll be a posse out after us," she said, for what felt like the tenth time.

"We'll be long gone by the time that happens," he repeated back. "Trust us."

"My plan was better."

"We've been over this. Your unitard wouldn't fit Calandria."

"So what? I-"

The dogs started barking. Marya Mounce cursed under her breath. Calandria had been approaching downwind and with almost supernatural quiet, but the damn animals had sensed her anyway. She wasn't even to the paddock gate yet.

Calandria raced up to the paddock gate and began unhooked the loop of rope that kept it shut. Horses nickered nervously in the darkness beyond.

Marya shook her head, scowling. She had come up with a plan that, ethnologically, should guarantee that they were not pursued when they took the horses. Calandria had rejected it. The woman seemed to think only in terms of skulduggery—or maybe she didn't want to admit that Marya's plan was better than hers.

Here came the dogs, three of them snarling through the grass straight at Calandria. Marya's breath caught in her throat as Calandria froze—but then there came a brilliant flash of light that dazzled Marya's eyes for a moment.

The laser pistol was set on flash mode. Marya heard yelping, and opened her eyes to see the dogs stopped, pawing at their snouts. Poor things. A moment earlier they had been all teeth and claws, but already Marya felt like stroking them.

Calandria threw open the paddock gate. The horses were a bit dazzled too, and skittish.

The cottage door opened, throwing new light across the clearing. Two men stepped out. One shouted at the dogs.

"Trust?" said Marya. "Yeah, I trusted this was going to happen."

"Calandria will handle it, you'll see."

Indeed, May was walking confidently across the paddock towards the men. One pointed at her and swore. Marya did a mental tally of the Ventus oaths she knew, trying to identify the language. Memnonian, of course...

Marya never found out what Calandria was planning to do next, because her own impatience and annoyance got the better of her. Marya stood up, unzipping her thermal overalls. "Hey, what are you-" began Axel, stopping as Marya disappeared from sight. She had tuned her holographic unitard to black, and before he had time to figure out what she was doing, she ran into the clearing.

The men were both burly, but short. They looked rough. Behind them another figure had appeared in the cottage doorway, hands bundled in its skirts.

"What you doin?" the first barked at Calandria. Pure Memnonian, she marveled. A rich strain of it, from the accent. She could almost trace this man's ancestry by the way he sounded his vowels.

Marya stepped between the men and Calandria, and said "Morph," in a loud and clear voice. As she did, she tuned her holographic clothing to another suit.

The men's eyes widened and they fell several steps back. Marya had gone from peasant clothing to a festival costume that was all feathers and rainbows. Marya knew her face glowed out of it like an angel's. That was the design.

"Uh, hello," she said carefully. The words sounded clumsy in her own ears. "I mean you harm—no, no harm, I mean you."

They both stopped short, a couple of meters away, and looked her up and down. Behind her, Marya heard Calandria muttering something. She chose not to listen.

The men were intimidated, but stood their ground. "W-what do you want?" asked the first, who looked older. "We have nothing. We've not harmed a single creature in this wood. Look, all we've got is horses—"

"Horses," she said, nodding. "We need three. One for me, and two for my human servants."

They looked so tragic that Marya wanted to turn and just walk away. The horses were all they had, after all. They were abjectly poor, and she was robbing them. Maybe there was something she could give them... but all the off-world paraphernalia she had would endanger them if they kept it. "I'm sorry," she said.

They glanced at one another. "Do you need saddles?" said the younger man. The older one shot him a dirty look.

They really did need saddles, but Marya couldn't bring herself to go that far. "No," she said.

"Marya," hissed Calandria.

"No saddles. Just horses. Thank you."

The dogs were recovering their sight, and whined and snuffled around the feet of the men. Reluctantly, they turned to walk three palfreys over to her. She had no way of judging the quality of the mounts, and would probably have turned down the best if she knew they were offering them to her. Silently, the men bridled the horses and handed her the reins. "Spare us," was all that the older one said as she led the horses out the paddock gate.

She could smell the animals—a spicy and enticing odor, but somehow... unsanitary. Her nose wrinkled. She made hushing motions as she approached them.

The walk to the woods seemed to take forever, and Marya looked back several times. The woman had joined them, and the three stood there with slumped shoulders watching part of their livelihood go. Marya felt so bad she nearly cried.

"That was a damnfool thing to do," accused Calandria. "You could have got hurt if they'd attacked us."

"I told you my plan would work better," Marya shot back. "And I told you yours wouldn't work at all, remember?"

For once, Calandria had no answer.

"You're crazy," said Axel Chan later that night. "He'll kill us."

"We have to try." Calandria stamped the dirt near the fire in an attempt to warm her feet. "Every day we wait he'll get stronger, and nearer his goal."

"But without the Desert Voice..."

"He's not invincible, Axel. None of them are."

"But we can't guarantee his destruction. You've said yourself every molecule of that body has to be vaporized."

Calandria patted the large case they'd taken from the Pan Hellenia. "This should be enough to incapacitate him. Then we get him offworld, and take care of him once and for all there."

Marya watched them bicker wearily. This had been going on for hours now. She was beginning to wonder whether it wouldn't have been better to throw herself on the mercy of the farmers. At least she had studied them. These two were galactic citizens, like her, but they were also foreign mercenaries with completely alien priorities.

They had made camp in a hollow beneath a windswept hill. It was very cold again tonight; Marya could see her breath. She had never been so cold, for so long, in her life. Privately she was amazed and proud that she was still alive, much less mobile. Every day she battled bone-numbing cold, agoraphobia from being on the unprotected surface of a planet, and the onslaught of so many minor physical inconveniences that she was sure they were going to drive her insane.

To make matters worse, Axel had told her he thought it would rain tonight. Would it hurt? she wondered. The very thought of countless tiny water-missiles plummeting down at her from ten thousand meters made her shudder. But he seemed quite unconcerned. Show-off.