"Now," I said to them all. "Back up and let this shit of a recruiter go. He’s not worth any of our lives. This is the first action in a war… and it’s our enemy who’s running with his tail in the air."

I looked at Mr. Clear Chest. With the light coming from straight over his head, I still had trouble making out his features… but I could tell he was glaring at me in hate. His heart jerked fast beneath his plastic skin; his lungs heaved tight against his ribs.

Let him huff and puff, I thought. As long as he realizes there’s only one way to get out alive.

"Back up," I said again to the warriors. "Let the bastard leave."

Eyes glittering fiercely in the searchlights, every warrior slowly pulled back out of the clearing. I retreated with them, feeling shaky relief once I’d been swallowed by the shadows of the forest.

We all watched the recruiter grab hold of the rope ladder and climb quickly to the waiting skimmer. The Larry held its position, hovering three meters above the clearing till the man was safely inside the vehicle. That was the moment that scared me most — when the recruiter might send the Larry swooshing at us for a strafing run, just as a parting shot.

But it didn’t happen. The Larry spun its way laughing up to the skimmer, and disappeared inside.

For another moment, the clear-chested man stood in the skimmer’s dark hatchway: a shadowy figure peering out from the blackness. In that instant I saw a pinpoint of crimson burning in his belly, like the tip of a ruby laser shining deep within his guts. I blinked, not believing my eyes… and when I looked again, the light was gone.

With a soft hiss of engines the skimmer zipped away, speeding off into the night.

All quiet in the forest — no sound but the night breeze rustling through the branches, starting to thin out the fumes of musk in the air. Then softly, in a whisper, one of the warriors murmured, "Teelu."

"Um," I said. Suddenly I was unpossessed again. Wondering how to tell a bunch of Mandasar kids they had the wrong idea what Teelu meant.

"Teelu," whispered someone else.

"Teelu." From the opposite side of the clearing.

"Teelu. Teelu. Teelu"

They were all chanting now, the whole militia, prostrate on the ground. "Teelu. Teelu. Teelu."

Getting louder. Getting stronger. "Teelu. Teelu. Teelu." Till they were roaring the word, fierce and proud, their voices ripping through the trees, echoing across the valley, rising to the hills.

"Teelu! Teelu! Teelu!"

Your Majesty. Your Majesty. Your Majesty.

The thing about chants is you need a signal when to stop. People want some leader to call out "Amen!" or a choir to start singing, or lights coming on, or curtains going down, or something. Otherwise, the chanters get to feeling awkward, and wondering when it would be polite to shut up, but not really comfortable just letting things dwindle and die off, because that takes away from the great uplifting solidarity. After three minutes of "Teelu, Teelu, Teelu," I could tell the warriors were trying to find a graceful way to give it up. They’d chanted enough; they wanted to move onto the next glorious thing, whatever it would be. I guess they expected me to wave my hands, call for quiet, then give some rousing speech that would channel their excitement into something useful. Trouble was, I didn’t have a clue what to say… and it would be horrible having two dozen kids waiting for me to speak when my mind was a total blank. They wouldn’t turn violent or anything; they’d just sit and stare, thinking, Well, he may be a blood-consort, but he can’t be very smart.

Desperately I peered into the darkness, hoping to catch sight of Admiral Ramos. It would be great if I could thank the warriors for their nice adulation, then turn everything over to Festina. She was an admiral; she had to be good at public speaking, even if she didn’t have a specific plan of action. While Festina talked I could stand back listening, all serene and placid… the way Queen Verity always posed on her silver dais as she let some cabinet minister read the latest speech from the throne.

But Admiral Ramos was nowhere to be seen. Either she’d left or was hiding, both of which were good ideas considering what the warriors might do if they noticed an unknown human lurking in the dark.

Without thinking, I lifted my hand to chew on my knuckle… and that’s all it took to stop the chanting dead silent. Shows you how eager the kids were to hear me pontificate. "Um," I said. "Well. Hi." Then I remembered a standard thing the protocol ministers had taught me to say years and years ago: in Troyenese, "Greetings to you all from the court of the high queen. You are valued; you are worthy. Just as you give your hearts to her service, so the queen gives her heart to you."

That brought on a big cheer… even though these kids had to realize the court of the high queen was twenty years dead. Maybe they thought the war was over: that Troyen had a new high queen who’d sent me to solve their problems. All of a sudden I got myself tongue-tied, worried I’d just given them false hopes and terrified I’d keep putting my foot in my mouth whatever I tried to say.

"Um. Don’t get all… I’m not…"

There were so many things I wasn’t, I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. I’m not what you think. I’m not what you need. "Okay," I said, taking a deep breath, "there’s a lot of stuff you don’t understand…"

That’s when the police skimmer buzzed in overhead and a loudspeaker blared, "Nobody move!"

The best way to get a Mandasar moving is to tell him, "Keep still." In a split second, the kids had scrambled to their feet and were gearing up for an outraged display of claws and shouts and stamping… but I yelled, "At ease! Parade rest!" and that got their attention. None of them had a clue how to stand at parade rest, but they all stiffened into postures that were unnatural enough to come across as military. I hissed to a few who looked outright hostile ("Close your claws!" "All feet on the ground!" "Why are you waving your hands over your head?") but it didn’t take long to get them settled into poses that wouldn’t scare the police too badly.

"You there!" blared the loudspeaker… and a searchlight stabbed down on me from the skimmer’s belly. "Are you in charge?"

"Yes!" shouted the whole militia. Thanks a lot, guys. "Are you Admiral Ramos?" the loudspeaker asked.

"No," I answered — thinking to myself these cops didn’t know much about the navy. Admirals wear gray; my uniform was black. Then again, after I’d swum the canal and run through the forest and hit the dirt I don’t know how many times, maybe it wasn’t so easy to tell. "I’m Explorer Second Class Edward York," I told the police. "Admiral Ramos is around someplace, but I’m not sure where."

"Here," Festina said, stepping out of the forest. I must have stared in her direction three or four times but never spotted her. She must know some really good tricks for hiding.

"Are you all right, Admiral?" the police asked.

"I’m fine," she replied, "but there’s been a murder. One of these warriors was killed in cold blood with a banned weapon."

There was a pause. I got the impression whoever was using the loudspeaker had turned off the microphone and was having a quick conference with other people in the skimmer. Finally, the speaker clicked on again, and a different voice, deep and male, said, "Are you sure it was murder?"

"I saw it myself," the admiral said, as I nodded too. All the warriors looked around the clearing, their expressions going grim. They must have been trying to figure out which one of them wasn’t there.