“You must hunt with them,” Prefect Stiles said blandly. “They request it.”

“I nearly broke my neck last time.”

“You exaggerate. In any case, I instructed you to practice.”

“Practice flying, sport, sure—that was fun. But… these are smart birds! Evolved to fly. They made me look like a clumsy bumblebee among eagles. And hunting? How?”

A slow blink. “In the Verdant Void, of course. We have stocked it with animals that we believe will appeal to the Ythri instincts. They are carnivores and enjoy the sport of getting their own game.”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“I don’t recall seeing that in your file.”

“I’m a recent convert.”

Did his eyes narrow by a millimeter? “How recently?”

Ten seconds ago, she thought, but said, “Some time now.”

“That is of no matter. You will not have to eat what you help them catch.”

How would you know, Freezeface? Have you hunted with them? Do they even cook their prey first? “I will do my best.”

He did not bother to smile. Indeed, she could not recall that he ever had. “Excellent.”

5.

Fraq had taken perch some considerable distance from her and the other Ythris. They all chose perches in the spire trees that grew near the void walls, facing the deep kilometers of forest just below. When she gazed toward him he looked away quite deliberately. That fit the background inferences the translators had fed Rachel. Ythris were solitary types. They flocked but did not mingle.

There was a certain austere majesty to that. Fraq yawned his jaws widely and sent a long, howling call. Ythris echoed it, clashing their claw-hands together in a savage applause. They wore little clothing beyond weapon belts and genital covers, for feathers guided their flight. In their preparing moments before, she had seen and understood them—grooming, preening, trembling with hot-eyed desire for the hunt. Ythri were moving appetites.

Their evolution said so. They had emerged from a long drought on their largest continent, forcing the ancestors from deep forests out onto savannahs. They grew larger and sharpened their hunting skills, forming groups that drove their solitary natures toward social skills. Flocks took down big herbivores, cooked them to juicy richness, flew loads of that back to nests, sturdy tree sites built to ward off other predators—especially a particularly nasty, enormous snake species that used camouflage on the approach in trees, and had evolved pack attacks, too. In lower-than-Earth grav, snakes could do remarkably agile tricks against incoming birds. These figured large in the Ythri mythos of horror.

That in turn had made the Ythri improve their ground locomotion. They’d evolved claws into tool-making hands, though they never lost their sharp, hooked nails. So the Ythri had evolved extreme territoriality and individualism, with social cohesion when needed. Thus had their carnivore appetites shaped their society.

So, she guessed, Fraq and his other Ythri expressed in their beautiful golden-brown feathers the itchy tensions that came to them while in close association. Even a kilometers-wide void was too tight for them. They yearned for open, infinite sky. Luna had none. Their feathers riffled with jittering waves. Zooming in a small craft, slipping through a narrow wormhole, confronting humans in confined spaces—these were fresh challenges, driving uneasy stresses.