Bellis realized why she let their conversations continue. It was rare that she felt herself in the company of someone with as much or more control over his own reactions to the world, and its reception of them, as she had. Uther Doul was one. That was why they respected each other. To speak simply, without smiling, to someone else with the same manner; to know that of her would have intimidated most people but did not fluster him, and that the same was true the other way round: that was rare, and a pleasure.

Bellis felt that they should be looking out over a city, at night. They should be on a balcony. They should be wandering through backstreets, their hands in their pockets.

Instead they were in a small room that jutted off the central hall. They stood near one of the window slits, and Bellis was desperately sick of the colors of rock. She stared at the little patch of night-lit black hungrily.

"Do you understand it all?" Bellis asked.

Doul moved his head ambiguously. "Enough," he said slowly, "to know that they’re close. I have very different expertise. My research will come after this. Your job will change soon. You’ll be asked to start teaching him Salt."

Bellis blinked, and Doul nodded.

"It’s a breach of Samheri and Kohnid laws, but we’re not bringing new knowledge to the island. Aum will come with us."

Of course, thought Bellis.

"So…" Doul continued. "So we return." His wonderful voice was low. "With our prize. It’s a monumental project, what we’re attempting. Armada’s been stationed at a seam of oil and rockmilk since we left. Drilling, storing what’s needed for the invocation. We’ll make for the sinkholes. And then we use our fuel and our bait and the shackles we’ll build, and so on, and we… hook ourselves an avanc." It sounded so bathetic. There was a long silence after that.

"And then," said Doul very softly, "our work begins."

Bellis did not speak.

I knew you were playing games with me, she thought coolly.

What work begins?

It did not surprise her. It was no great shock to realize that the avanc was only the start of the Lovers’ project, that there was more going on, that there was some grand scheme behind all this effort, an agenda to which virtually no one-certainly not she-was party.

Except that now, in one way, she was.

She did not understand why Doul was telling her. His motives were impenetrable. All Bellis knew was that she was being used. She did not even resent it, she realized-she would expect no less.

The following morning, the sun came up on the body of one of the human engineers. His skeleton was constricted by his newly tight skin: his arms were curled tight around his chest, and his hands were claws; his spine was arced as if with great age.