Page 28 of His Human Believer

“You would be astonished how difficult that was to obtain,” Vail explains. “Your peacekeepers do not enjoy off worlders. I filled out nine forms and two of them were the same form.”

Vidar makes a sound that in another male would be a laugh.

Then Vail looks down the equipment line. “Is that a Hesken thermal array?”

“It is.”

“The eight-channel?”

“The twelve.”

Vail whistles. “Then that is not a wildlife survey. Twelve channels on a wall is differential, you are reading heat against the stone.”

“I am.”

“Because stone retains and releases unevenly and you have to subtract it.” He looks genuinely delighted. “What is your false positive rate?”

I sit in the second chair and watch as they talk. Equipment and then fauna. Vail knows the regional catalogue, the migration windows, he corrects himself on a detail and then corrects the correction. He’s charming and knowledgeable. His paperwork is real and Vidar doesn’t miss things. But Yorik Vail answers a hair too fast. Every time. The answers are just there, sitting ready, like a male who rehearsed. And he asks me about the case with enormous warmth. Lovely questions. Exactly the right ones.

“So…have you had any luck finding the Skyggjar?”

“I have insufficient data,” Vidar says.

“Ah.” Vail nods, sympathetic. “Well. It is early.”

Early for what?

He doesn’t stay much longer and wishes us a productive night. He tells Vidar he hopes their paths cross again, and I believe he means it, which is somehow the worst part.

Skylo does not move the entire time.

Not once. All three heads tracking him, the wulver standing between Yorick Vail and my chair from the moment he stepped into the light. Vail turns to go and Skylo turns with him.

Then he leaves up the path, toward the community. Not east, toward the trail entrance he came in from.

“I liked him,” Vidar comments.

“I didn’t.”

He turns. “Why not?”

My eyes narrow. “I don’t know yet.”

Chapter Nine

Margaret

“You met a Gravian in the preserve?”

“We did.”

“On Tarvos?” Avery sits in the corner chair of my bedroom with a glass of wine balanced on the arm. “In a restricted preserve, at midnight?”

“Yep.”

The house has gone quiet, which around here takes some doing.

Mitry went down an hour ago after a negotiation involving three stories and a firm ruling on whether the moons are going to collide tomorrow night. Sela’s been out since before that. Dagr’s in his room because he’s still grounded. Hannibal is downstairs working in his office.