Loose thrike, Challis wanted to shout. That's what she was supposed to shout. And at any other time she would have. But her already-guilt-heavy conscience from the day's disasters left behind any thoughts of sudden death that anyone in their right mind would have. But Challis wasn't always in her own mind, much less the right one.

Instead, her heart, guts, and center of gravity plummeted to her feet and left her head floating somewhere above it all.

The thrike crouched in the loft and tilted a weaselly eye down at her. Its crest was almost touching the rafters. Black-tipped talons curled around the edge of the platform, and wing joints were planted on either side for balance. In this position, the wings were cocked back, but as Challis watched, all four lifted out to the sides in enormous batlike sheets. The beast cascaded down at her, not beak-first in a predatorial dive but in a whoosh of wings that skimmed the cage to land in a dusty explosion of flux in front of her.

Challis didn't quite push a hole through the wall behind her, but she tried to. What the hell was she doing here? Why was Rasalas taking so long to come?

The thrike seemed to be taking in the whole barn at once without looking away from her. The nearest eye swiveled down at an impossible angle. Challis' breath came hard and was, at the moment, sprinting a neck-and-neck race with her heart. She felt very tiny, and edible. Panic knocked at the edges of her brain.

Then the thrike began oscillating its head side to side with guttering grunts, keeping one eye on its prey the whole time. Challis realized with a ping in her chest that the prey was not her. Not yet. Freak Face was staring at the dead rabbit. The second thing she realized, breaking into a shaking sweat, was that Freak had somehow glided three feet closer.

So did Rasalas, though not half as gracefully. The crowd of Challis' emotions had caught him flatfooted on the other side of the barn and he'd gone the wrong direction at first. He burst onto the scene at a run that turned into a skid. Challis was struggling to speak past her frozen tongue.

"Slowly," she said, keeping her eyes front, "hand me those reins, quick."

"Ball up or you're dead, are you mad!?" Rasalas was poised on the balls of his feet, almost bouncing in frustration. "There's no way. I have to get help," he muttered, slapping his pockets.

"There's no time," Challis hissed back. She tensed her core, fully intent on snapping into a watertight ball on the floor the instant something started happening. She held the rabbit out.

"You want this?" she asked softly. "Take it."

It was in the thrike's jaws as soon as it left her hand. A shake and a wriggle down the gullet, then the slitted eyes turned onto Challis. But she had taken that tick to reach out to the side – her sight blurred as Rasalas stepped to the wall of the barn – and grab the set of reins that he held out.

Then she started talking. Gently, soothing, just as Corvin had done, and too earnest to feel stupid. She looped the harness bands around the same hand that held the fruit. The berries had gotten squashed at some point, for no particular reason, and juice ran between her fingers. But Challis held them out, palm flat and mounded with the berries.

"See?" she was saying, "I won't hurt you. I know I'm sticking my arm out, please don't bite it off, I just want to be friends. You can understand that, can't you?" and other such nonsensery. Stupidity under the guise of bravery can go a long way, and Challis was counting on it. She held her ground as the beak approached her exposed fingers. A layer of thrumming flux hovered between the thrike's slightly open jaws, and Challis could see it mirrored in the eyes: they seemed unfocused, seeing everything, spritzed with a glow that was more than just the reflection from the flux vat.

"Look at you," she said warily. "You and me both."

A long black tongue darted out to lap up the berries. Challis almost bit her own tongue off. She tugged the harness bands up and over the animal's beak in quick, flat determination.

The thrike tossed its head with a sharp yank at the strap, but Challis held it as firmly as her shaking arm would allow. The bands tightened on the ridge of the beak with a snap of a metal clip, leaving the reins in her hand. Here was the hard part. From what she had seen until now with the Vortesharken, handling a pterosaur was part controlling and part complying with it, and a step too far in either direction could be fatal.

Not this time. Challis went still and, reorienting her intent, closed her eyes.

She placed a hand to the side of its neck. The skin was rough and pitted with what felt like sand. Reaching a little farther, Challis pressed her circunet against where the thrike's skin swelled and softened as it breathed and twitched with muscular spasms. Organic flux boiled into the circunet on her wrist and swarmed directly into the superficial blood vessels there – an almost heart-stopping effect like the brush of a passing viper – driving away her breath and shaking her knees to pieces. Challis almost collapsed in a wash of delight. Without circunets, such a feeling was rare, valuable. But a flux-hoarding population wouldn't know.

Challis made the knees move. She and the thrike circled slowly in a show of restraint until it was facing the empty stall. Then she reached behind, with the stupid-hand-that-should-have-had-the-stupid-reins, as Rasalas would aptly describe it later, and eased the gate open. Leaves folded under her steps as she backed in. For some reason, she found herself counting: one, two, three… she felt the thrike duck its crest under the door rim… six, seven, eight… that should have gotten the thrike completely inside. At ten, her eyes came open.

Any other time, and she would have screamed. The toothy mouth was wide open, wet strings stretching between its jaws inches in front of her face, and hot breath swarmed over her hair. The bestial outline mountained on either side, but the flux in the air between them was a slow pulse of resignation. Challis just smiled.

“Gotcha,” she said softly. The Vortesharken had nothing on her.

"Chall." Rasalas' urgent voice sounded a mile away. "Now. Get out. Come to me, this way."

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The thrike's beak snapped with a clap, and Challis flinched back. A harsh grunt twitched the wings out even bigger. In a moment Challis had her arms crossed over her throat, all certainty forgotten.

"Chall!"

"I can't."

"Yes, you can," he pleaded. "I promise."

A new voice, not her brother's, boomed into the silence: "Freeze."

Challis was already frozen. Something rattled behind the barricading thrike, and the man's voice came again in another command. "In three ticks, run for it."

After a tick of agonizing doubt, Challis decided to risk it all. Just before the three, the thrike's head shot up and waggled frantically side to side as if shaking free of an invisible noose. A wingtip sliced at Challis as she dashed past – it would have drawn blood if her ears stuck out a quarter inch further – but that mattered little. She had one thought: to squirt out of there like a sapodilla seed.

A hand seized her collar, and for the second time that day a Gannagen was flung airborne. She flailed and hit the floor with a crack to her hip. The dusty ground slid her into a beam on the far side of the aisle, then came a night-shattering clang as someone jerked the cage shut behind her.

She hadn't even quit sliding before Rasalas was there, rolling her over and breathing in her face.

"You're okay," he said forcefully. "Tell me you're okay."

"Y-yes, fine," Challis said, still shaking. Nausea washed over her in a hot flash and she wished Rasalas would back off a bit. Instead, he began wringing the juice from her shoulders. It hurt.

"Then what the devil is wrong with you?" he demanded. "Why don't you ever just listen to me?"

Challis might have started arguing back as flux enveloped her face, but the creak of leather brought her eyes up to see the other man crouching beside them.

He wasn't much more than a vague shape. A pentagon, if those were his shoulders and not some sort of hood. Even when Rasalas finally let her go and looked over at the man from nearly the same angle as she did, Challis only made out a big man in what could have been a windworker's jacket. He had a patch, too: a coin of vitasnaps flickered constantly on his neck, glowing an almost neon red. Challis had never seen a patch that color, or that bright. Any sort of patch meant exposure to Cormellican hypertechnology in the famed hospital, though it supposedly faded over time.

Then he spoke. His voice was rough and husky, and an odd accent clipped the words short by punching every consonant.

"Good to be alive, isn't it?"

Challis just breathed, waiting for her brain to catch up to the words and her mouth to catch up to her brain. She gave a small shrug.

"If you say so."

Then an uncontrollable shiver quaked through her.

The man's wheeze of amusement turned into a hearty, croaking belly laugh. "Well," he managed, still chuckling, "well, I'm full wallowangled. Not a nerve out of place, guiding an unbridled thrike, but underneath it all you're just a scared little puppet."

"I'm not a puppet." Challis glanced at the man, embarrassed. "Um, thank you. That was quite the rescue."

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he asked conversationally, as if it were the natural response. He settled back against a post, content to remain on the floor with them while the thrike chuffed hungrily in its cage. "What happened to you, Gannagen? Wait, save it. There's a pack at the guard's station with the bridle and equipment. It needs to be returned anyway. Fetch it for me, will you?"

This was aimed at Rasalas, who hadn't said a word. Challis frowned, but before she could speak Rasalas had pushed himself to his feet.

"Sure," he muttered. "Don't let any more thrikes out."

When he was gone, Challis turned quickly to the other. She wasn't keen on the idea of being left in the dark with the man, no thanks to Rasalas. His eyes weren't much good to her when he was somewhere else. "Are you one of the –" she stopped, a cold shiver at how she had nearly given herself away. "Do we know you?"

"He does," he clarified. "Jakko Haske. Good to meet you. And I don't have to ask who you are. You know your way around flux well enough. What are you two doing sneaking about the grounds after half-light? Scared to sleep?"

"Oh, just…" Challis hesitated as Rasalas' vision spun over hers in a distracting dance of moonlight and shadow. Nausea still pushed at her in a rolling tide. But living under a power like Rib-eye hadn't been for nothing. She closed her eyes, and relaxed her constricted throat. She breathed in the heat and humiliation, and with a practiced routine gathered them up and pushed them away. Another breath, and she did it again. "Just pretending that almost being eaten alive is nothing new to me."

Jakko nodded slowly and looked again at the thrike.

"Beautiful, aren't they."

"What did you even do to it?"

"Here," he said, tossing something to her. "Works every time. And as long as we're pretending, that thing is totally legal."

Challis fingered the little metal disc in her lap. The edges were ridged, the middle a smooth surface half the size of her palm. She ran her fingers along it, admiring the simplicity of form.

"A wolf whistle?"

"Ultrasonic flux bender. She hasn't managed to steal it yet."

Challis paused. "She?"

He popped his chin toward the thrike. "Look at her crest," he said flatly, his accent becoming more pronounced as he chopped the consonants mercilessly. "Also, you need to secure the harness in front of the ridge on her beak, never behind or else she has free reign with her jaws. And make sure you tighten it properly. Don't even think about letting go of the reins either. Them thrikes are flux-hungry and savage as hawks. Don't ever, ever lead one without a real windworker's help, you irresponsible squawktop." He started to get to his feet, pausing to stick his face into hers. His voice dropped to a seething growl. "Now, get up. You're coming with me. And if you ever try something like that again, Gannagen Number Two, I will chop off your hands and feed them to her."

He stood and spoke through a tight smile. "But yes, it's a she."

Challis got up slowly, waiting for Rasalas to come back any moment. Had he gotten lost? She was going to kill him. Anger locked her muscles so it took a while to feel like her feet would hold her. Her hand slid into her pocket to find the stubnicker.

"I'm not Number Two," she said stubbornly. "But I am interested to know how my little frascato got into the circles of someone like you."

Jakko huffed a laugh. "Let me assure you, it's a lot worse than you think. Come on. I want to introduce you to a frascato of my own."