And while the Lover and the cactus guards and Uther Doul moved away, Tintinnabulum came to Bellis’ side. He gathered his long, white hair in a ponytail, blocking her from the view of the others with his powerful shoulders and arms.

"Don’t stop now," he murmured. "Get to the point."

Crahn, she wrote.

For a brief moment, she felt slightly hysterical with the absurdity of this. If she set foot outside, she knew, she risked instant and unpleasant death. Those ravenous mosquito-women would find her before very long, a sack of blood like her; they’d smell her out and siphon every drop out of her, drain her as easily as turning a spigot.

Yet within these sheltering walls, only an hour since she had seen the carnage on the path, a dead anophelius burst on the heat-split skin and bones of the drained animals, she was asking polite questions of an attentive host in a long-dead language. She shook her head.

We are looking for one of your people, she wrote. We need to speak to him. This is greatly important. Do you know one named Kruach Aum?

Aum, he responded, no slower or quicker than before, without a shred more or less interest, who fishes for old books in ruins. All of us know Aum.

I can bring him to you.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four

Tanner Sack missed the sea.

His skin was blistering in the heat, and his tentacles felt sore.

He had waited for most of a day as the Lover and Tintinnabulum and Bellis Coldwine and the others conversed with the silent anophelii men. He and his companions had muttered to each other, had chewed their biltong and tried without success to ask for fresher food from their curious, reserved hosts.

"Stupid arse-faced pricks," Tanner heard from some hungry men.

The Armadans were traumatized by the starving ferocity of the she-anophelii. They were conscious that their hosts’ mates lurked in the air just beyond the walls, that the placid silence of the township outside was misleading-that they were trapped.

Some of Tanner’s companions made nervous jokes about the she-anophelii. "Women," they said, and laughed shakily about females of all species being bloodsuckers, and so on.

Tanner tried, for the sake of conviviality, but he could not bring himself to laugh at their idiocies.

There were two camps in the big, austere chamber. On one side were the Armadans, and on the other the Dreer Samher cactacae. They watched each other warily. Captain Sengka was engaged in fierce Sunglari discussion with Hedrigall and two other Armadan cactus-people, and his crew watched and listened uncertainly. When, finally, Sengka and his crew stormed out, the Armadans relaxed. Hedrigall walked slowly to the wall and sat beside Tanner.