She jerked back, blood purple on her lips and teeth—my blood—and again that smile! I pulled loose, looking down on her in wonder. She seemed proud of my reaction.

Clearance had returned to his seeker the moment the crowd surrounded us. Now he shot over our heads, releasing a swarm of small monitors, followed by a fusillade of blinding flashes and snapping booms. The crowd scattered. The seeker dropped. Manipulators reached down, took hold of Chant and me, and lifted us out of the village, through the air, back to our own seeker. In that same sweep, with a few wrenching maneuvers, he gathered up my folded armor as well, and then set us all down gently enough, but in truth the flight had hurt me more than the bite.

“I didn’t ask for help,” I said.

Clearance dropped from his seeker and glared at us. “You were attacked,” he said. “They were chewing on you.”

Amused, woozy from shock, I had to agree. Chant examined my arm. The bites were clean, shallow, but thorough—and covered with spittle.

“Don’t spray them,” I told her.

She looked up in disbelief.

“Leave them be,” I insisted.

“What if there’s an infection—or a poison?” she asked.

“Then we’ll learn something and the armor will take care of it. I regret only that we frightened them. Leave me be—I’m all right.”

She looked me over in irritation. “As a direct command, Lifeshaper, I must obey. But I protest your taking that kind of risk.”

“As do I,” Clearance said.

“Think it so if you must,” I said. “But think it through first.”

They both made a show of considering, then Chant said, stubbornly, “I cannot see it as you do, Lifeshaper.”

“That’s because you are more concerned about my welfare than about learning why these people are here,” I said. “But that is our mission. I do not refuse your aid out of spite.”

“Why, then?”

“Think again about what you saw.”

Chant bowed her head. “You sense a relationship with the old female. Please put on your armor, at the very least … in case there is danger.”

I did as she suggested but refused my ancilla’s treatment as I had Chant’s. “Give it time,” I said. “Something benign was intended, I’m sure of it.”

“Violence is benign here?” my ancilla asked.

“The better question is, why would she bite only me?” I favored them with a glow of intrigue.

“Because Chant was armored,” Clearance said. The situation had given him a scare and he would take awhile to recover his calm. Strangely, I felt jubilant, then contented … happy. Something in my wounds … a toxin?

No, a message. And a small reward for allowing myself to be bitten.

“You are not thinking clearly, Lifeshaper,” Clearance said. “We will remedy that.”

“No! Let it be. Let me feel all of it.”