Stupid though it sounded, he hadn’t expected age to come for Telsin. She had always seemed invincible.

“No other ways out of this room?” Wax asked, glancing about.

“No,” she said. “Do you have another weapon?”

He pulled out one of his Sterrions and handed it to her. “Do you know how to use it?”

“I’m a fast learner,” she said, looking far more comfortable now that she had a gun in hand.

“Telsin,” Wax said. “Is he here? Our uncle?”

“No. I was just speaking with him through that device. He likes… he likes to check in on me. I have to tell him how wonderful I think my accommodations are. He pretends I’m his guest, even still.”

“Well, you’re not. Not anymore. Let’s go.” Hopefully Wayne’s distraction was still working.

Telsin, however, sat down in her chair again. She gripped that gun in both hands, held before her, but she stared unseeingly. “There’s so much to ask. Why did you come back? Rusts… why did you leave, Waxillium? You didn’t come when I sent to you, when I was engaged to Maurin, when our parents died—”

“There isn’t time,” Wax said, seizing her by the shoulder.

She looked up at him, dazed. “You were always the quiet one. The thoughtful one. How did you get here? I… Your face, Waxillium. You’re old.”

The door suddenly slammed open. The tall, thick-armed man that Wax had fought on the train stood there, looking stunned. He turned from Wax to Telsin, and opened his mouth.

Telsin shot him.

“We need to go,” MeLaan said.

“We’re bringing him,” Marasi said, pointing to the man.

“Why?”

“Haven’t you figured it out, MeLaan?” Marasi asked. “That ship out there wasn’t built by the Set. It’s from somewhere else, someplace distant and alien. It probably wrecked near our coast, and the Set brought it here to be studied.”

MeLaan cocked her head. “Harmony does say odd things sometimes, about other peoples, not from the Basin—” She blinked, focusing on the man kneeling on the bloody floor. “Wow. Wow.”

Marasi nodded. Proof that there was life past the Roughs, and the deserts beyond. She couldn’t let him stay here, particularly not with the Set.

“Bring him then,” MeLaan said, moving out of the room. “And let’s get back to the meeting point.”

Marasi gestured toward the way out, trying to usher the masked man along. He just knelt there on the bloody floor, looking up at those hollow masks on the wall.

Then, with a trembling finger, he reached up and slid his mask back down over his face. He stood and pulled his blankets tight, shambling after Marasi as she crossed the room with the cages and entered the study.

MeLaan was already out in the hallway beyond. Marasi fetched her rifle and moved to join the kandra. Rusts, what was Waxillium going to say when he found out she’d picked up a stray? She could almost hear his voice. You freed him, Marasi, but for all he knows you’re a member of the same group who apparently killed his friends. Be careful.