I wanted it to be Alex. The thought of eavesdropping on Alex was so tantalizing...

As quietly as I could, I moved back toward the other hill, stopped, and listened again. “Damned stone. Why are there so many damned stones?”

Alex.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled my hand from my pocket. I would resist. I would be good.

One last touch. The echoes of my thoughts told me I was only delaying the moment of eavesdropping on Alex. I was intent on doing it, and simply holding off a few seconds to excite myself more, the way you sometimes hold off on a kiss: you know it’s going to happen, but you wait an extra second to make it sweeter.

The hill was too steep to climb with my hand in my pocket.

Alex stood a short distance away, stabbing a shovel into the ground and wrestling up a load of dirt. His body was soft with starlight. He still wore the billowing white shirt and tight leather pants from the recording session, but his shirt was buttoned to the throat. With each thrust of the shovel, he grunted. At his feet lay a knapsack and a growing pile of dirt.

I walked quickly up to him before I could be tempted to reach for the parrot. When he heard my footsteps and turned around, I asked, “Digging a grave? Or just robbing one?”

Alex laughed. “I’m excavating an archaeological site,” he said. “We’re an archaeological expedition, you know.”

“And this excavation couldn’t wait till morning?”

“I’m not in Jerith’s good books right now,” Alex said. “I broke something — something glass, I don’t know what it was. It could have happened to anyone, but Jerith told me I wasn’t careful enough to be an archaeologist.” Alex plunged the shovel into the hole with all his strength. “So I decided to head out when no one was looking and find something so important Jerith would have to let me help again.”

“Why here?” I asked, looking around. The top of the hill showed almost no signs of the war, except for a rain-filled bomb crater twenty meters away. The area had none of the markers Jerith usually set up at sites he planned to excavate. “Is there some reason to dig here, or did you just pick a place at random?”