“I judge,” he said, using the formal intonation, “this individual to be rude and inconsiderate, yet not dangerous. If it frequents the area on the edge of the L’apeleka field, then take the egglings elsewhere for their outings. I will investigate it myself, to ensure it is not of that family called Yxtrang, though its behavior has not been consistent with the nature of that line. If it is not, then we must merely tolerate it for a shell or two. It will soon be gone.”

He gentled his voice, “It is not worth troubling yourself over, Broodmother, I promise you,” and signed dismissal.

With this she had to be content. She had asked and the T’carais had judged. Better she had slain the soft thing this daylight and endured words of reprisal than this—this empty assurance that something so repulsive was no danger to the children.

Unconvinced, she made obeisance and left the hearing chamber.

HE DID NOT understand how he came to be lost. The cavern was dark; but his ears were as sharp as his sense of direction. Those he followed made no pretense of stealth. There should have been no difficulty.

And yet there had. His guides were a little distance ahead, rounding a corner. Moments later, he rounded the same corner—or, as he thought now, not the same corner—and found himself alone in a dark his eyes were unequipped to penetrate.

He stopped, eyes half-closed in the blackness, listening.

Silence, in which his breath rasped.

His nose reported the dry, musky scent characteristic of shelled people, but not with an immediacy that encouraged him to believe any stood near.

Well and good. He pulled the lantern from his belt and thumbed the beam to low, careful of any dark-seeing eyes that might, in spite of his certainty, be watching.