He frowned, his hands pausing midway through the necessary adjustments. The hum of the transport's engines had choked suddenly, dissolving into the sharp crackle characteristic of a misfiring transkilmer. Was the transport in trouble? He looked around the sky again, but he couldn't spot any running lights in the direction the sound was coming from. Odd. Had the transport's optronics failed, too? No; of course, the warriors would be trying to make an invisible approach. The hum returned, crackled again; returned, crackled again; returned, crackled again—

And then, in the middle of the last crackle, he abruptly understood. The noise wasn't coming from engine failure, at least not from unintentional engine failure. It had been deliberately created, designed for a very specific purpose.

To cover up the sound of a fsss-niche cover being opened.

For a beat Thrr-tulkoj's mind flashed back four fullarcs to that attempt by Thrr-gilag's mother to steal back her fsss. Thrr-pifix-a herself couldn't have climbed the bluff, certainly, but she might have found friends or relatives to do it for her.

He glanced down at Thrr-aamr's unconscious form. No. He knew Thrr-pifix-a and her family, and none of them would ever have condoned violence of this sort against one of her shrine's protectors.

But then who? And why?

The transport's engines had settled down again to their normal hum, and from the sound of it, the vehicle was veering off. Apparently its sole job had been to cover the noise of the intruders opening their target niche.

Thrr-tulkoj gripped his rifle harder, the brief flicker of hope giving way again to frustrated indecision. The intruders had one of the niches open now, with free access to the fsss organ inside. But surely the owner would have felt their touch by now and come back to investigate.

But no Elder had yet appeared. Were they dealing with the fsss of someone who was still a physical, then?

Again Thrr-tulkoj's thoughts flicked to Thrr-pifix-a. But again he rejected the idea that she could possibly be behind this. This was something vicious, like the bitter living-death feuds of nine hundred cyclics ago.

He winced at the thought. Living death: the deliberate destruction of an enemy physical's fsss. The exquisite torture of leaving him to live out his physical life with the knowledge that nothing but certain death awaited him at the end of it. Such feuds had once been widespread on Oaccanv, ultimately precipitating the Second Eldership War. If someone was trying to resurrect the abominations of that era...

He stiffened. Over at the shrine a figure had raised itself up from the ground. For a beat it stood there, silhouetted against the white ceramic. Then, crouching low, it headed across the enclosure.

Directly toward Thrr-tulkoj.

Thrr-tulkoj pressed his tongue hard against the inside of his mouth, quickly readjusting his laser rifle back to full power. The figure was still coming, blatantly arrogant in his presumption that no protector would dare fire on him with a shrine at his back. Lifting his laser rifle a fraction, Thrr-tulkoj peered through its sights. Right or wrong, it was time to make a move. Taking a deep breath and holding it, he settled his thumbs against the rifle's triggers.

His only warning was a whisper of sound from above him... and by then it was too late. Too late to react; too late to move; too late to do anything but realize to his shame and chagrin that the enemy had outmaneuvered him one final time. Against the sudden hum of the returning transport came the faint flopping sound of something semirigid flying through the air toward him—

And suddenly he was hammered flat against the ground as the black stickiness of a tar slab slammed into him.

He dropped his weapon, turning half-over and pushing upward against the sticky, semisolid blackness. It molded itself around his hands, the sides folding gradually but inexorably in toward his body. He tried pulling his hands sideways in opposite directions, hoping to tear a hole in it. But the slab was too thick, the material too resilient, and he succeeded only in lowering the roof of the slowly shrinking cave he and Thrr-aamr were in. Desperately, he let go with one hand and grabbed for his laser rifle, swiveling it awkwardly in the cramped space and managing to get it jammed up into the tar like a tent pole. Mentally pleading for good luck, he pressed the triggers.

The entire tar slab didn't burst into flame, as he'd feared it might. Instead, a small section around the muzzle flashed into vapor. The slab dropped inward around the new hole; holding it back with one hand, Thrr-tulkoj repositioned the rifle to another spot and fired again.

It seemed to take forever but was probably no more than fifteen hunbeats before he had enough of the tar slab vaporized to pull himself out from under it. Breathing heavily, his tail going double time with the body heat he hadn't been able to get rid of in there, he got shakily to his feet and looked around.

Not that there was any need to do so. The intruders and their transport were long gone, having accomplished whatever it was they'd come there to do.

Swearing dully, he reached down and pulled Thrr-aamr partway out of the tar, making sure his face and tail were clear. Then, retrieving his rifle, he headed across the enclosure toward the dome. It was far too late to give the alarm now—whatever the damage, it was already done. But it was still part of his job to do so.

Very likely the last part of this job he would ever do.

"Yes, I'm coming," Thrr-pifix-a called as the insistent knock came a second time on her door. She'd spent much of the postmidarc in her garden, and her legs had now stiffened up as she sat fussing with her decorative edgework. "I'll be there in just a hunbeat."

Whoever was out there apparently heard her, because the knocking stopped. She made her way across the conversation room to the foyer, her legs thankfully loosening up somewhat in the process. Reaching the door, she opened it.

There was no one there.

Frowning, she took a half step outside, letting her lowlight and darklight pupils widen as she looked around in the darkness. No one. Some child, perhaps, up late pulling pranks? She took another half step outside, shivering in the chilly latearc air—

Her foot kicked something solid. Frowning some more, she looked down.

It was a small pouch, of the sort she liked to practice her edgework on, just lying there in the dirt. Bending over with some difficulty—her back had stiffened up, too—she retrieved it and stepped back into the foyer. Pulling the fastening strip open, she looked inside.

And froze, her hands going suddenly rigid.

It was a fsss organ.

She hurried outside again, this time going all the way to the roadway. But Korthe and Dornt were nowhere to be seen. They must have just set the pouch and fsss down and run.

Something in the back of Thrr-pifix-a's mind found that disturbing. But for right now it didn't seem to matter. What mattered was that they'd kept their pledge to her.

She had her fsss.

Slowly, she retraced her steps back into the house, closing and locking the door behind her. She had her fsss. Here, in her hands. Her own fsss. To destroy, if she so chose.

The question was, did she now so choose?

She groped her way to the kitchen table and sat down, staring into the open pouch as she did so, her mind a swirl of conflicting thoughts and emotions and questions. This was what she had wanted, wasn't it? Of course it was. She had her future—her life—here in her hands. All she had to do—

And suddenly, without challenge or warning of any sort, her door slammed open.

She spun around in her chair, the pouch somehow getting away from startled fingers. Three Zhirrzh were already in her house—big Zhirrzh, wearing the sort of warrior fighting suits she'd seen in pictures and dramas—with more of them piling in through the door behind them. All were carrying short, vicious-looking weapons; all were wearing grim expressions.