“How is she?”

“Stable, ma’am. And improving. She spoke to me last night.” The trace of that miracle was still on Lu Wai’s face. She nodded at the machine. “But Dr. Hiam thinks we should keep her asleep as much as possible.”

“You agree?”

Lu Wai looked surprised. “Yes. Sleep’s a good healer.” She paused. “You’re not sleeping well, ma’am?”

“No. No I’m not.” She pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down. “Lu Wai, how do you decide what to do when you think you’re right, but everyone else, who you would have thought should know better, thinks you’re wrong?”

Lu Wai took a moment to answer. “That depends. Usually, when what I want is the direct opposite of what everyone else thinks is right, I find fear of some kind, my fear, at the bottom of it. Take my request to be sent with Letitia and Captain White Moon.”

“I–”

Lu Wai held up her hand. “No. You were right. What would have happened to Letitia if I’d died out there? But it was fear, fear for Letitia, that prompted my request.”

Danner said nothing. She was thinking of her fears: that all the people she knew would die and she was helpless to prevent it. Helpless when all her training had taught her she must be responsible for her people, that their lives were in her hands. But Marghe was not her responsibility any more; she had chosen to join the natives; and Thenike never had been. “You might be right. You are right. But how do you stop being afraid?”

“You don’t. ” Lu Wai looked at Letitia, festooned with tubes and wires. “But love and responsibility don’t give a person the prerogative to be always right. We can’t protect people forever.

Letitia had a job to do. She went to do it. It wasn’t my place at that time to be with her.”

Danner absorbed that.

Marghe was a trained negotiator. She knew this Uaithne. Thenike was a viajera, a representative of the other natives. And Marghe was also a SEC rep, better qualified than anybody to do this job.

As she stepped back out into the dawn, Danner punched in Kahn’s code. “Kahn, go find out where Marghe and Thenike are sleeping. Wake them up and tell them I’m reconsidering. That if they want transport north, they have it.”

“But, Commander, they’ve already gone. Borrowed horses from the Singing Pastures women and left last night.”

Danner closed her eyes and swore. Two women on horses was a very different proposition from two women on a sled that could whisk them out of danger if the natives got ugly. She took a deep breath. To hell with it. She was a soldier, not a diplomat. “Kahn, I want you to go find Cassil, Day, T’orre Na, and Holle, and respectfully request that they be in my quarters in twenty minutes. Tell Lu Wai and Twissel to join us. I want the sleds powered up and all personnel ready to be addressed in forty. I want a message sent to Nyo, to read: ‘Am heading with all speed on direct course for last known whereabouts of hostile tribes. Please change course to follow.’ That’s all.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Danner checked the weather reports and thought furiously as she waited for Day and T’orre Na and the others to arrive. When they did, she could tell by their faces that they had already heard her orders.

“You can’t do this!” Day said. “You know what Marghe said. If you’re there, armed, they’ll attack.”

“Nyo isn’t here,” Danner said. “I doubt she’ll reach us before we meet with the tribes. And the latest weather report suggests we, the storm, and the tribes will all meet at the same time. Which means none of our weapons will work anyway. So, technically, we won’t be armed.”

“Then why–”

“We’ll rely on our armor. You know what it can do. If we’re properly armored up, nothing these savages can throw at us can get through. Modern weapons, yes, because of the heat, but impact weapons, especially low‑grade items like stones and spears, will just bounce off. If they got us on the ground, they could probably beat us senseless. Even a helmet can’t stop the brain being rattled inside the skull with enough pounding. But if we stand together… It should work.”

Day opened her mouth to say more, but T’orre Na held up her hand. “Hannah, are you saying that you intend to simply stand, empty‑handed, while Uaithne and the massed Echraidhe and Briogannon charge at you?”

“Only if necessary. And we’ll have our sleds, and the crossbows. Look, Marghe and Thenike might need us. It’s possible that these riders have at least one hostage. Do you want me to let civilians take care of this mess? I’m a Mirror, these are my people. I’ve been trained to deal with situations like this. And the storm won’t last forever. When it’s blown out, we’ll have our sleds, our weapons, our skills. These tribes need to know that.”

She ran a hand through her hair. “Day, T’orre Na… We have to make our way on this world. People need to know that we can’t be pushed around.” She looked at them, unable to tell what they thought. “The sleds might be the only things that save Marghe. And Thenike. I can’t not go.”

Chapter Seventeen

THE NIGHT WRAPPED hot and close around Marghe and Thenike as they galloped north and west from Holme Valley toward Singing Pastures. The pastures did not sing with wind now; the clumps of trees and the long grass hung silent and dark and still. The hooves rushing beneath them kicked up dusty scents of parched grass, despite the storm of two days before. Marghe’s throat was dry.

This isn’t going to work.

She concentrated on urging her mount forward, but with every thud of hoof on turf, the sick feeling in her stomach grew worse. This just isn’t going to work.

The thud of the horses’ hooves changed; they were galloping through a field of flowers, bursting open flower heads closed for the night, crushing the leaves and flattening stalks under hard hooves. They were suddenly drenched with the tight, sweet smell of olla. The smell of fear.

Marghe reined in suddenly. She could not do this. Thenike’s horse slowed, turned, came back.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do it. It won’t work.” Her horse snorted and shifted restlessly.

“He doesn’t like the flowers.” It was too dark for Marghe to see Thenike’s expression. They guided their horses out of the broken blooms.

Marghe broke the silence. “It won’t work. It just won’t. I can’t do it, Thenike, I’m not good enough. They won’t listen to me. They’ll laugh, or ignore me, or…”Or they would kill her, or capture her. Not again. “What if we’re wrong? What if they won’t believe I’m their Death Spirit?”

“If they believe Uaithne, they have to believe that what you say is at least possible. As you said to Danner, they’re living a legend now.”

“But what if that isn’t enough!”

Silence. “Do you want to go back?”

Yes! Marghe wanted to say, and nearly leaned from her saddle and reached out into the soft dark to take Thenike’s hand. But if she took Thenike’s hand now, all her resolve would crumble, and she would say, Yes, let’s go, I was a fool to even think I could pull this off. She kept her arms by her sides.

“No.” She would go on, she would try. She had to try. If only she had Thenike’s skills and could use song and drumbeat to drive her words like barbs into the flesh and minds of the Echraidhe, drive them deep, tangle them about so that they could not escape. Thenike could do it, if she were Marghe. But she was not. Marghe was the only one the Echraidhe might listen to, the only one who had lived with them and who was from another world. The only one they might believe. And all she had was her self, and her story. It did not seem much with which to face a hundred spears.

Thenike looked about her. “Here might be a good place for me to wait for Danner.”

Danner would come, they knew. She was a Mirror; she would not be able to help herself. It would be Thenike’s job to stop her, if she could.