“Good. Put them back in prison. Or kill them. I will do that if you do not want to. Why must you talk to them, be with them? Make those awful noises and shake your body? You don’t have to.”

“I do. They are my friends.”

He despaired of any explanation; he had said it all too many times before. He stroked her hair in the darkness, then touched her lovely forked lip with his tongue and made her giggle. That was better, this was better. But good as it was, he wished that the rest of his life could be as satisfying, that the two halves to his nature could be one.

“I must go to Deifoben,” he told Armun the next day. “I must find out what has happened.”

“I will go with you.”

“No, your place is here. I will be away just for a few days, just time enough to walk there and back.”

“It is dangerous. You could wait . . .”

“Nothing will change. I won’t be long, I promise that. I will go there—carefully—and come back as soon as I can. You will be all right here; there is plenty of meat.” He caught her gaze moving across the camp. “And those two won’t hurt you, that I promise. The males are not like that. They are more afraid of you than you are of them.”

He went to tell the two Yilanè that he was leaving—and it had the expected reaction. “Instant death—end of life!” Imehei wailed. “Without your presence ustuzou will kill, they always kill.”

“They will die with us, this I promise,” Nadaskè signed with grim confidence. “We are not strong-feminile, but although only mere males we have learned to defend ourselves.”

“Enough!” Kerrick ordered with exasperation, using the form of female-above to male-below forms, the only imperative he could think of in this strange situation. “There will be no killing. I have ordered it.”

“How can you order it—mere male—to a female ustuzou?” Imehei said, with slight overtones of revenge. Kerrick’s anger faded and he began to laugh. The males would never understand that Armun, being female, was not in command of everything, that he was not just her spokesman.

“Respectful-imploring,” he signed. “Simply stay away from them—and I promise they will stay away from you. Will you at least do that for me?”

They both reluctantly weight-shifted in agreement.

“Good. Now I go to tell the ustuzou the same thing. But in leaving I ask you a favor. Let me take one of your hèsotsan. The other two we took with us died in the cold.”

“Death-from-darts!”

“Starvation—lack of meat!”

“You forget who gave you the weapons, trained you to use them, gave you your freedom, saved your worthless lives. Disgusting display of typical male lack of gratitude.”