Halimey chattered on for the rest of the long walk while Ghrasia kept watch for creeping vines and floxflass. The temperatures were cool but still mild. It didn’t snow much in Dhai, which contributed to the problem with the plants. They never experienced a hard freeze.

As they neared the end of the road, the low whine of the mock cicadas went suddenly quiet. Ghrasia came up short, but Halimey walked on. She heard something crashing far off – the sound of a small herd of walking trees. She listened for a while, but they seemed to have stopped.

Halimey paused ahead of her, looked back. “What is it?”

“Just worried we’d run into some walking trees. They’ve stopped now, probably to bed down for the night. The suns are setting. Hurry, now.” She was jumpy, she knew. It had been a long, boring day knocking on doors.

The last homestead of the day lay at the end of a winding path overhung in mossy bonsa trees and weeping green bamboo. The house was thirty feet up the side of a bonsa tree, built on the ledge of a massive calcified fungus. It looked like a fairly large working homestead. Broad, tirajista-trained vines snaked up the surrounding trees. They supported open-mouthed grub boxes that collected the fat parasites that fed on the trees. Dorinahs considered them a delicacy, and they were among Dhai’s chief exports. Walking trees liked them, too. No wonder there was a herd of them so close. They likely sensed the wriggling worms in the cages.

“Hope you aren’t afraid of heights,” Ghrasia said.

“I’m a parajista,” Halimey said. “I could fly if I wanted to.”

They walked up the narrow stair to the porch of the house. Ghrasia saw two more buildings linked with the main house, hugging up to the side of the tree. Outside the clan fences, the safest places to live were the trees, especially as a grub farmer that would draw herds of walking trees.

She reached for the door handle. The door was locked.

Ghrasia reflexively reached for the hilt of her sword.

“What’s wrong?” Halimey asked.

“Locked,” Ghrasia said.

Halimey reached up and knocked. “They’re grub farmers,” he said. “Anyone who lives outside a clan fence is a little odd. Lots of semi-sentient things crawl around out here.”

The door opened.

“I’m Halimey Farai Sorila and this is Ghrasia Madah. We’re from the Liona militia and–” He stopped.

The man at the door was about Halimey’s height, thin, with a shadow of a beard and matted black hair. His eyes were not gray or brown but yellow. His lips were parted, and Ghrasia saw the gap on the right side, where three teeth were missing. How the matron they last spoke to had not seen this man living just two miles from her home…