23. Rhaek
RHAEK
T he second set of prints came from the platform's perimeter. I knew them on sight. The dense flat impression of that lower body, weight distributed for endurance. He had come from the eastern islands. Swum the crossing and emerged at the base of the hill and climbed.
I followed both sets with my eyes, the story unfurling before me.
She had run into the formations. He had followed.
I moved through the corridor quickly, reading the ground as it had been laid down.
Her prints went deeper, looking for cover, the Controller's prints widening his stride to close the gap.
She had come out the other side and gone to the platform's edge and stopped.
The prints here were close together.
She had stood at the edge and been unable to go further.
The water on three sides. The Controller behind her.
I straightened and looked at the edge. Looked at the distance between the perimeter and the water below. Looked at what she would have seen when she got there .
Then I looked back at the prints.
They spread apart from the standing position. Not running — not yet. A small repeated arc, back and forth, the weight shifting. Back and forth.
I read it twice before I understood what I was reading.
She had been trying to be seen.
I looked across the water. Back along the crossing I had just made, back toward the ridge. Toward the cave entrance, visible from here, the angle of it clear in the low light.
She had stood at the edge of the platform with a creature closing behind her and had looked across the water at exactly the place I had been standing.
And I had been facing the cave.
I stood with that for one second. One second exactly. Then I looked back down because the ground had more to tell me and I needed to hear it.
A third set of prints arrived from the south face. Amphibian. I was sure. Lighter impression, the deep-water build leaving less in the mud, his movement on land rolling and energy-conserving. He had come up the hill from a different angle.
He had found the Controller at the perimeter.
The churned mud told the rest. A wide radius of disturbed ground, the two sets of prints overlapping, impact marks where weight had been thrown and caught and thrown again. They had fought. Right here, ten feet from where she had been standing.
She had run while they were occupied.
Her prints went north. Toward the ridge. Toward me.
But she couldn’t cross the expanse. Not while the tide was still in.
I followed them fast, the formations blurring past, and came out onto the open hilltop and tracked her line north and found the place where the running stopped.
The larger prints closed the gap here. The distance between his stride and hers collapsing to nothing over the space of twenty feet.
I looked at the ground and but did not let myself remain there.
The Withholder's prints came in from the left. He had broken off the fight and followed. Two sets of prints converging on one.
I followed all three to the platform's northern perimeter and stopped at the edge.
Across the water.
Another island. Larger than this one. The tidal spire rose from its centre, dark and narrow against the sky.
No reset yet.
The round had not reset.
She had not been mated.
Not yet. And there was no telling when it might happen.
I went into the water fast.