An hour later, a dark figure hovered behind me as I picked my way back across the camp. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was William. He’d been there the moment I left my bed, and had stayed beside me since. I pulled the covers up to my chin and rested back, wide awake. Finally, I closed my eyes. A moment later, a twig snapped in the distance as he found his bed for the night.

The First Test

THE FIRST TEST

I woke, instantly alert. I checked my surroundings. Hosea was not in his bedroll. Slipping out of bed, I found his pack and the ruby knife he stored there. I lodged the knife in the waistband of my skirt, grabbed my own pack and hurried away.

In a dense clump of trees, I tried on Voltaire’s britches. They were made of soft, breathable cloth that gave easily. The fit was good, but it could be better. I ripped my aura into strips and used it to seal the britches to my body at my calves and knees. I cut some of the length for a blouse, and tied it as I’d seen the worker women do. I wrapped it around my neck, crossed it over my chest and again at my back. I tied it tightly around my waist. The tail end dangled between my legs. So, I knotted it at the small of my back, tucked it into my britches, and fashioned a belt to secure it.

I flexed my arms and back, relishing the freedom that came without a hobbled skirt to maneuver around. With my shoulders bare and my legs defined in the britches, I felt compact and aerodynamic.

“Walker called for breakfast,” Hosea said.

I jumped around. He was propped casually against a tree. My eyes scurried to his knife on the ground between us. “How did you find me?”

“I see you borrowed my knife,” he said.

“I would have asked, but you weren’t there when I woke,” I hurried to explain.

He stepped across the remains of my aura to pick up the knife. The red jewels glimmered as he slid the blade into its leather sheath. “I got an early comm-unit call,” he said. With the sheathed knife, he gestured toward the leather string around his neck. He lifted the string so that his ugly silver medallion dangled in the air.

My jaw went slack. “You’re serious? That is a comm-unit?”

“It is.”

I stared at the charm, hiding in plain sight, deceptively insignificant. “You can find anyone in the world with a unit, hone in on their exact location and speak to them, with that?”

He nodded. “I can. I detached the honing component on this particular unit, so I can’t be tracked. But, I can still make contact and communicate.”

“It’s so small,” I said.