Rabedy didn’t bother to ask how he knew that. He just suppressed a shiver and wished they’d landed somewhere else, anywhere else, so long as it was far, far away from here.

“This part of the between opens onto the city,” Odawa said. “Where the fairy courts lie.”

“Do you think they mean to attack?”

“Why else would they gather in such numbers?”

“But why—” Rabedy began, except he knew.

This was the price for bogans going off into the wild and the green, hunting what was forbidden.

“We did this,” he said. “You and I, and pluiking Big Dan with all his grand schemes.”

The blind man turned his sightless gaze in the bogan’s direction.

“Now, why would you say that?”

Rabedy hated the look of those milky-white eyes that seemed to see too much, but he didn’t turn away.

“Think about it,” he said. “You’re the one who’s helped us to go out into green-bree territories where we’ve been killing cerva. Why else would they be going to war?”

“I can think of a hundred reasons.”

“So can I,” Rabedy said. “But have you ever heard of the straw that broke the camel’s back? That’s what this business of ours has been: those last few ugly straws.”

Odawa studied him for a long moment, then finally said, “You’re not much of a bogan, are you?”

Rabedy was sick of this. Bad enough he had to take it from his own, without some pluiking green-bree throwing it in his face as well.

“You try growing up with a mother like mine,” he said, his voice bitter. “Always the butt of every joke, including hers. It doesn’t take too long before you come to understand meanness and the yearning for a kind word. You learn how kindness means something, but it’s not something anyone will ever let you experience.”

“Then why did you want to learn to shapeshift—if not to hunt, I mean?”

“For the freedom.”

“I don’t understand.”

“People’d look at me and they’d see a dog, not a bogan. They wouldn’t be suspicious of my every word and action anymore. They’d take me at face value—for who I am.”

“And the other bogans don’t?”

Rabedy shook his head, then realized the motion was useless to a blind man.

“Bogans think only of themselves. First themselves, then their family, then their clan. And sometimes, though more rarely, of fairy as a whole.”

“And you?’

“I don’t like bogans.” He paused, then added, “You see what that says about me?”

Odawa didn’t respond for a long time. Then finally he laid a hand on Rabedy’s shoulder.

“There are days I’m not too fond of myself, either,” he said.

Rabedy shook off the green-bree’s hand. He didn’t need anyone’s sympathy. Certainly not Odawa’s.