Maorgan watched his sioll a moment with affection and appreciation, then lifted the ocular and began searching for a way to reach the young captives.

That fence looked absurdly flimsy, long thin rods planted at intervals slightly over a manlength with something that flickered between them. Not so insubstantial as they looked, though. He’d seen a young faolt spooked by one of the humming carts that traveled between the landing ground and the enclosure; the cub tried to run between two of those poles. It was fried in seconds.

The enclosure was a long rectangle with a tower at each of the four corners, metal chambers set on sticks that seemed as insubstantial as the fences and had as dangerous a bite. In the second week after the flying ships, had settled onto the landing ground, the Denchok budline who claimed this ground and ran the Smokehouse in season had assembled and marched out, intending to remove the intruders as they would any other nuisance interfering with their property.

Lines of light had snapped at them from the towers. They dropped and knew nothing for about two hours, some waking a few minutes later than others, while the Denchok who was closest to the Change took the longest to come awake. It was like a big stick, they said, hitting them on the head and knocking them silly.

There looked to be no way in except floating over the fence and that was not a good idea. Unless this lot of mesuchs was even more unlike the lot across the Bakuhl Sea than rumor suggested. They weren’t so tender over there. It was a killing light they used on anyone who got close. The story had come to Melech that Eolt Chelokl was caught in the backwash of a flying sled and swept toward one of the towers; the fire of his dying leaped a hundred manlengths into the air.

Maorgan shivered, lowered the ocular, and rubbed his sleeve across his face, wondering-even as he tried not to think about it-how Chelokl’s sioll was handling that sudden rupture of the sioll-bond, the cutting away of half of himself.