Capella’s light burned morning-gold as it bathed the bottoms of the clouds, tinged them with a blazing red and yellow, the edges rimed with an incandescent white. The chime rose, the first of the daytime invertebrates harmonizing with those of the night. A musical changing of the guard, even if it reminded Dek of no symphony he’d ever heard.

He lay on his bedroll, a thin emergency blanket thrown over him. The pain that had awakened him was back with a vengeance. The way it felt, he still expected to see shattered fragments of charred and splintered bone, ruined shreds of meat, tendrils of ligament, and tatters of hanging skin. He just couldn’t get used to the fact that his lower leg was only swollen to twice its normal size.

A fire spat and hissed beside him; the last of the aquajade had burned down to a heap of ash. Aquajade made a lot of ash, and usually the coals would last a day to a day and a half. Chabacho burned more thoroughly. Didn’t leave as much to clean up.

He had his wits back again—though if Talina had offered, he’d have taken another hit of Dya’s blue-nasty-based pain killer. Life as a Taglioni back in Transluna had given him a thorough introduction to mind-altering chemicals. And being a Taglioni, he’d been able to afford the best. Dya’s stuff had promise; it had kept him from suicide, dulled the worst of the agony. Let him cope.

That Dya Simonov had died just south of here, out in the deep forest, was heartbreaking. A tragedy for Donovan. He’d met the woman a couple of times in Port Authority. Never really gotten to know her. That she was Kylee’s mother made her even more of a legend in his eyes. His memory of her would be of an attractive blonde, competent in her movements, and with a ready smile. Though she’d been polite when she’d introduced herself, some preoccupation had given her a distant look, and immediately afterward, she’d shuttled off for the labs to test some hypothesis.

And she died for nothing.

A fact that really angered him. The woman had gone out to Tyson Station to explain to the Unreconciled that their prophets were being killed by a prion. And she’d ended up dead. Talk about divine injustice.

“Someday the wheel will turn,” Dek whispered to himself. “The Unreconciled will get theirs.”

Or maybe they already had. Batuhan, who led the perverse cult, had paid. The handful of cannibals who were left were pretty much exiled and on their own. Not a good place to be on Donovan.

Unless you were someone like Kylee Simonov, who could survive in the bush.