I had just turned what I hoped was the last corner when I spotted Tawni.

She was probably the last thing I would have expected to see out there among all those lizard-skinned, bumblebee-faced Kailth. A human woman, of medium height and slender build, with an exotically cut cascade of black hair that at the moment was obscuring most of her face as she leaned into the open engine compartment of what looked like an ancient Pemberkif Scroller. The vehicle was parked beside the curb, or else had summarily died there. On all sides, completely oblivious to her plight, streams of Kailth shuffled past, breaking around her like a river around a rock.

Protocol probably dictated that I call back to the consulate, report the situation, and then continue on with my errand while Verst handled it. But she was a human, and in trouble, and I was an aide to a UnEthHu Convocant. More importantly, I was nineteen, and what I could see of her looked pretty attractive. Working my way through the traffic, I headed over.

I got through the last rivulet of pedestrians and stepped to her side.

"Having some trouble?" I asked inanely.

She looked up, giving me my first look at a face that more than met my expectations: young and beautiful, in a dark and distinctly exotic way, though at the moment she was almost at the point of tears from the frustration of her situation. A delicate line—scar or tattoo, I couldn't tell which—arched almost invisibly from the bridge of her nose over her right eyebrow, curving around her cheekbone and past the corner of her lip to disappear into the dimple at the point of her chin. From one of the frontier Ridgeline worlds, I guessed, where humanity's races had been mixed in unusual combinations and body ornamentation could get a little bizarre.

And where, I belatedly remembered, Anglish was not always the language of choice. For a second she just gazed up at me, her face not seeming to register my question; and I was trying to figure out a Plan B when my words suddenly seemed to click. "Yes," she said. Her accent was soft and delicate and as exotic as the rest of her. "Can you help me?"

"I can try," I said, peering into the engine compartment. It was a Scroller, all right, though from the looks of it whoever had traded it to her had gotten the better end of the deal. I was just reaching in to check the motivor cables when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the pedestrian stream falter and looked up to see what was going on.

Rounding another corner, heading across the intersection, were a pair of Kailth warriors.

I'd seen pictures of Kailth warriors at the Convocation Complex, vids secretly taken by SkyForce Intelligence at the Chompre and TyTiernian pacifications near the edges of the Kailthaermil Empire. We hadn't tangled with them yet ourselves, but there was a widespread feeling in the Complex back rooms that it was just a

matter of time before we did. The Kailth controlled a lot of territory, with a

fair number of non-Kailth under their control, and that almost always spelled trouble.

Besides which—the more cynical argument went—the Pindorshi situation wouldn't last forever, and wars and conflicts were too politically useful for politicians to stay away from them for long.

Watching the SkyForce reports in the safety of a Zurich screening room, I had hoped those cynics were wrong. Standing there in the middle of a Quibsh street, I desperately hoped they were wrong. On telephoto vids, Kailth warriors were impressive; up close and personal, they were damn near terrifying. Armored up to their headcrests in full combat suits, walking in lockstep, they were straight out of a xenophobic newspage docu-diatribe. Or straight out of hell.

The two warriors spotted me at roughly the same time I spotted them, and in perfect unison they shifted direction toward us. Instinctively, I moved closer to the girl—some chivalric idea about sticking together, I suppose—and I threw her a quick glance to see how she was handling this.

And paused for a longer look. She was gazing at the warriors, but the look on her face wasn't the knee-shaking trepidation I was feeling. She was smiling, the tension lines in her face already starting to smooth out.

It was a look of relief. Maybe even adoration.

"You," one of the Kailth said in passable Anglish. "Human male. What are you doing?"

My tongue tangled momentarily over my teeth. "I—she's having trouble with her Scroller," I managed. "I stopped to help."

He held out his right hand. "Identify."

I fumbled out my ID folder and handed it over, wondering nervously whether a UnEthHu Convocation ID would be an asset or a liability here. My eyes drifted to the lumpy black weapon strapped to his left side, not much bigger than the 5mm slugkicker pistol I used to plink targets with when I was a kid. At its highest setting, this particular sidearm could allegedly drop a two-story brick building with a single shot.

The warrior studied the ID for what seemed like an inordinately long time.

Then, closing it, he handed it back and turned his insectine gaze on the woman.

"Does he bother you, Citizen-Three?" he demanded.

"Not at all, Warrior-Citizen-One," she said, bowing her head. "It is as he said: he paused to help me."

I stared at her, suddenly almost oblivious to the warriors. Citizen-Three?

"Do you wish our assistance?" the warrior continued.

The girl looked at me. "No," she said. "I will be fine. Thank you for your concern."

The warrior threw one more long look at me. Then, in lockstep once more, the two of them passed us by and disappeared down another street.

I looked at the girl, my stomach churning. "He called you Citizen-Three," I said. "Citizen-Three of what?"

"Of the Kailthaermil Empire," she said, as if it was obvious. "I and my people are third-citizens." She reached up and touched the tattoo line on her face.

"Your people," I said, dimly realizing I was starting to blither like an idiot.

But I couldn't help it. "But you're human. Aren't you?"

"Yes," she said. "My people were saved from invaders by the Kailthaermil many years ago. For that we will forever be grateful to them."

I frowned harder... and then, with a sudden jolt, I got it.

She and her people were verlorens.

"Would you be willing," I asked carefully, "to take me to your people?"

For the first time a shadow of uncertainty seemed to cross her face. But then the shadow passed, and she smiled. "Of course," she said.

"Thank you." I cleared my throat. "By the way, my name's Stane Markand."

"Stane Markand," she repeated, bowing her head as she had toward the Kailth warriors. "I am Tawnikakalina."

"Tawnikakalina," I said. It didn't sound nearly as melodious as when she said it. But with any luck, I figured I might just have a chance to practice. We spent the next half hour kluge-rigging the Scroller back to health, then nursing it over to the consulate. There I had it loaded aboard my half-wing, informing the pilotcomp and Consular Agent Verst that I'd be making one more stop on Quibsh and postponing my departure from the planet for a day or two.

The pilotcomp, programmed with flexibility in mind, took the change in plans in stride. Verst obviously couldn't have cared less.

It was about two hundred kilometers to where Tawni's people had been settled in a scattering of small villages beneath a line of squat volcanoes. We put down on a section of lava flow near Tawni's village, and by the time we had the Scroller rolled out, a small mob of her people had gathered around the half-wing to see what was going on. She explained the situation to them in a few musical sentences, and with a dozen enthusiastic young men pushing the Scroller ahead of them, we all went down to her village.

I don't know how widespread the term verloren ever became around the UnEthHu.