Rasalas let out a contemptuous huff.

"What's the setup for?"

"Don't pretend like you don't know, Gannagen," Corvin said, spitting out the words. "Rib-eye finally sacked you, did he? You'll keep away from the grounds then if you know what's good for everyone. And the expedition training."

"What are you talking about?" Rasalas sighed. "Your head isn't screwed on right, Teakle."

"Campton said you'd gotten an audience with those Arrkagongol fellows."

Campton was the night watchman at the grounds. And, as Rasalas remembered just then, newly married to the frizzy-haired Shanty. That was the woman on the left.

Sometimes word got around way, way too quickly.

"And?" Rasalas said more roughly than he meant to. "Be reasonable, man, it's not our fault who those agents decide to talk to."

"They didn't know you two are just muckrakers with zero flying experience," Corvin flung back. "They just saw you hanging around at the Exhibition and didn't know any better."

Rasalas' pitch dropped by half.

"So why do you care, Teakle?"

"We're Oledrocca!" Corvin said with a scoff of laughter. "We overthink absolutely everything. Don't you get it? That's why we're here – so you know exactly why you've got no business on this expedition." He sniffed. "Not with us. So stay out of it."

Shanty shifted to gesture at Challis. "Especially you," she added. "I'll be damned if Little Lass Blind-Ass tries to stick herself to one of our thrikes."

That stung. Challis had been biting the inside of her bottom lip to let Rasalas do the talking, for better or worse, but now she tasted the metallic tang of blood. Rasalas turned around to face her.

"Don't," he said, but then his jaw clenched over a short, pained gasp as if that eye contact had been enough to bring Challis' emotions barrelling in on top of his own. He slid both of his circunets up into high gear with two swift sweeps of his wrists together. A faint humming sound rose and faded as the flux transformer apparatus rose to reckless levels.

In terms of good ideas, Challis thought, that was not one.

Corvin's voice came again, uncertain. "Listen, I know it hasn't been easy for you. But surely you can see where we're coming from. Look through our eyes, for once, and you'd understand."

Rasalas spun around and crossed the distance between them in a heartbeat, skidding to a stop just out of reach when he remembered the thrikes. Shanty was knocked forward almost into him when her thrike began tossing its head in alarm, each swing punctuated by a gurgled grunt. Flux, the language of thrauricci, defined their every action and reaction. At times like this it coursed outward from them in waves to sizzle into the senses of people already on edge, giving them that slightest push before they toppled in headfirst. Shanty's boots slid as she strained to keep enough of a grip for her pheromone tags to have any effect.

"Have you gone mad?" Corvin gritted, tugging down his own thrike. "Rushing a thrike like that?"

Rasalas reddened. "Get out of here. Or I'll do worse." To the side, one of the women began winding her way in between him and his sister.

"Stop it, Ras," Challis called. Her ears were ringing as she fought the quiver in the air. But as soon as she noticed the woman – a short one with a sour face whom Challis was sure she'd never talked to in her life – moving in front of her, it snapped her back into perspective. "He's all empty talk. Don't waste time on him, he's all jadurdi."

Rasalas' hair blew back from his forehead by the whiffling snorts of two thrikes at once. Pale, glinting eyes were at their peak of focus, swaying above the level of his head so he couldn't see the feet gliding even closer. Slaver dribbled down the soft leather straps of the bridles. Rasalas' fists melted and he brought both hands up, as slowly and reluctantly as a piece of medical tape pulling away from raw skin. He backed away, turning by degrees until he was close enough to Challis to take her arm. "You're right. Come on. We don't need this."

They started walking away.

Before they could decide how to get past the thrike, the sour-faced woman called out. "It's not complicated," she said, her voice lilting and sarcastic. Then, Challis recalled her name: Kailett. Kailett Ma-something, a Kelvad who had come to Oedolos for work a few cycles back and stuck herself to Corvin like a leech. Probably for his money. "You'll be left alone if you don't enroll for the training."

Both Gannagens paused. A mistake.

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Challis turned, not looking at any one of the three but seeing all of them. "Interesting," she said airily. "I thought the Vortesharken flew on the wind. Turns out you've just been floating on bloated arrogance. Oh wait – sinking is more like it, since the overweight insecurity of Teakle and his Band of Airheads keeps dragging you all down to mingle with the muckrakers."

Of the havoc that broke loose at that moment, Rasalas only remembered one thing afterward: the strategic positioning of a thrike's crest. The ribbed horn, a blunt extension of the thrike's skull out the back of its head, was the best way to get a thrike under control when all else failed.

Teakle, his flux-engorged confidence returned, spat out a word and advanced on them. Rasalas had only just turned around when a savage kick found his center of mass, and he folded in half with a whuff of pain. But he met the brutal shoulder tackle with brutal reflexes, getting his arms up between them in a flash and twisting in the air to smush Corvin into the fountain. Corvin's jacket exploded clouds of flux particles into the water, which sloshed the flux over them as sheer, destructive adrenaline.

Rasalas' dominance in weight was an even match to the twiggy speed of Teakle, who was up again in a tick, spitting out a curse and grabbing at, of all things, Rasalas' trousers. They grappled in and out of wordless grunts, fists and elbows fighting dirty in the slippery water to wrestle out what hadn't been said aloud.

The thrikes went wild. Challis had been knocked back at an angle that sent her skidding, but the shattering chorus of shrieks dropped her belly-first to the ground with both hands flung over the back of her head. Kailett clubbed her in the side, kicking – no, Kailett tripped over her. Some sort of little weapon skittered away on the stone when she fell. Screams issued from both as the deafening attack of thrikes burst over them with the ferocity of crazed horses. Massive wings pounded shocks of flux down at them as Kailett tried to push Challis between herself and the thrikes. Claws, or beaks, were tearing and stabbing and shredding away at Challis' clothes in a hopeless blur. She forgot about pulling her arms close and whacked at a spearing beak, then another, missing each by a mile.

It was just too perfect that the most distracting thing to see through Rasalas' eyes was exactly what was happening – she was uselessly flinching from Corvin's phantom blows, trying to shield with her arms, hitting at nothing, all while sharp pain kept ripping into her from the very real thrikes.

Then one of the ravaging heads jerked away. Challis caught the vague outline of someone straddling the thrike's neck and wrangling its crest from behind with both arms. She got up and careened drunkenly to one side.

Rasalas was swearing in coughs, sopping wet, when he caught up to her. They floundered along the walkway and had just gained speed when a hideous scream stumbled them both to the ground as if caught by a tripwire. They spun around, expecting to be trampled at once. But a scene that colored Challis' nightmares for the rest of her life appeared in front of them.

Thrikes never bothered to kill their prey before eating it, and Corvin Teakle was being mauled alive.

The only parts of him touching the ground were one hand, swinging stiffly from a dislocated shoulder, and the heel of a madly kicking boot. The rest of him was caught in a bloody three-way tug-of-war between the thrikes. One sent the other boot flying, while another beak tore at his side despite his pitifully whacking other arm. The monsters were enormous over the puny body of a mere human, and the last thrike, the biggest, had Corvin's neck between its jaws. A spray of blood, and the Gannagens thought he was gone.

Until he yowled again. In a tick, Rasalas surged to his feet and – what he planned to do, Challis had no idea, but in an imperfect world sometimes action comes first – he took a leap of faith. Rasalas streaked in feetfirst under Corvin's head to plow into the stumpy talons of the big thrike. Its mass thumped and buckled to one side. Rasalas jumped up and thrust both hands into the thrike's mouth in the risky move of the century, seized the black alien tongue as big around as a python, and pulled. The squalling jaws tore free of Corvin's neck. Corvin crunched down on his bad shoulder and abruptly shot along the ground when the other two thrikes didn't let go.

Anger gave way to terror, and Rasalas changed from aggressor to victim in the space of two frantic breaths. He fell back against the nearest thrike when the first tongue-mangled beast turned on him with a vicious snap. A surprise blow to one ear stunned him, and tinnitus rebounded around his skull so he didn't notice when his knees folded. His vision shrank to spots. Rasalas grabbed blindly and found a handhold, the thrike's crest that jerked and jerked and wobbled his joints to jelly, but when his other hand joined in he managed to hold on for dear life.

It was Challis who got him out of there alive.

She would have liked to say that she kept her head on, and that she snatched together a plan of action as soon as her brother had gone swooping back into the fray, but Challis remained faithful to the age-old custom of a terrified onlooker. Shanty and Kailett must have run when they had the chance, but for a full ten ticks Challis watched, gawk-eyed and feeling Rasalas' fear jabbing into her, while the feeding frenzy turned back into a battle. Thrikes were fitful and savage at the prick of a pin. But their bulk was a serious hindrance to their agility in close quarters – if only, if only someone had a jacker, or a zapper, or even a stupid knife might do some good if there was a free hand to hold it.

Challis tore into her pockets. Flux-fed hysteria was making her hands shake and her eyes more useless than ever. Her stubnicker – it was tied to the inside of her trousers. If she could get it in time she just might be able to stab out the eyes of the creatures turning her brother into bone broth.

A clink sounded as she felt around, and her breath caught. Jakko's flux bender slid into her palm and of course she dropped it when she pulled it out. Challis scrabbled on the ground, unable to see past Rasalas' sight, but at last her hand closed on the little metal disc. She shoved it between her lips, tasting dirt and lint, and blew as hard as her panting would allow.

Tantor Lyricum bestowed his blessing then and there. A prominent figure in Oledroccan folklore, he had mastery over all floxogelenica but yet was untainted by its power. When Challis blew into the ultrasonic flux bender, the situation changed as reality was indeed bent out of shape. As if Tantor Lyricum had commanded the surrounding flux to drive them mad, the thrikes dropped what they were doing, forgot about their prey, and began writhing in a violent head-rattling choreography that would make the Thrauricci Exhibition a different spectacle altogether.

But Challis flashed past all that and ran in toward Rasalas who was only just lumbering to his feet. They grabbed a moaning Corvin under the armpits and heaved him about three paces away before Rasalas snatched Corvin's wrists to slide the circunets up as high as they would go.

Their ears pricked up at a noise that was both a hazard and a relief. Challis took Rasalas' hand and dragged him along after her, not caring how conscious he was. She kept blowing in puffing wheezes, and they ran to the sounds of screeching thrikes and the long overdue whistles of the Polescos patrol.