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"It killed Kipuna and two of your guards," Cania gasped. "Cut them up! I saw
it. God preserve us!"
Tuek's mind was a maelstrom. Both the chute and the suspensor-drop system were
enclosed wormholes through the tower. They could be sabotaged. The attack on
the roof might be only one element in a far more complex plot.
"Put me down!" Sheeana insisted. "What's happening?"
Tuek eased her to the floor but kept one of her hands clutched in his hand. He
bent over her, "Sheeana, dear, someone is trying to harm us."
Sheeana's mouth formed a silent "O," then: "They hurt Kipuna?"
Tuek looked up at the roof door. Was that an ornithopter he heard up there?
Stiros! Conspirators could take three vulnerable people into the desert so
easily!
Cania had regained her breath. "I hear a 'thopter," she said. "Shouldn't we be
getting away from here?"
"We will go down by the stairs," Tuek said.
"But the --"
"Do as I say!"
Keeping a firm hold on Sheeana's hand, Tuek led the way down to the next
landing. In addition to the chute and suspensor access, this landing had a door
into a wide curving hall. Only a few short steps beyond the door lay the
entrance to Sheeana's quarters, once Tuek's own quarters. Again he hesitated.
"Something's happening on the roof," Cania whispered.
Tuek looked down at the fearfully silent child beside him. Her hand felt
sweaty.
Yes, there was some sort of uproar on the roof -- shouts, the hiss of burners,
much running about. The roof door, now out of sight above them, crashed open.
This decided Tuek. He flung open the door into the hallway and dashed out into
the arms of a tightly grouped wedge of black-robed women. With an empty sense
of defeat, Tuek recognized the woman at the point of the wedge: Odrade!
Someone plucked Sheeana away from him and hustled her back into the press of
robed figures. Before Tuek or Cania could protest, hands were clapped over
their mouths. Other hands pinioned them against a wall of the hallway. Some of
the robed figures went through the doorway and up the stairs.
"The child is safe and that's all that's important for the moment," Odrade
whispered. She looked into Tuek's eyes. "Make no outcry." The hand was
removed from his mouth. Using Voice, she said: "Tell me about the roof!"
Tuek found himself complying without reservation. "A seeker towing a long
shigawire. It came over the parapet. Kipuna saw it and --"
"Where is Kipuna?"
"Dead. Cania saw it." Tuek described Kipuna's brave dash toward the threat.
Kipuna dead! Odrade thought. She concealed a fiercely angry sense of loss.
What a waste. There must be admiration for such a brave death, but the loss!
The Sisterhood always needed such courage and devotion, but it also required the
genetic wealth Kipuna had represented. It was gone, taken by these stumbling
fools!
At a gesture from Odrade, the hand was removed from Cania's mouth. "Tell me
what you saw," Odrade said.
"The seeker whipped the shigawire around Kipuna's neck and. . ." Cania
shuddered.
The dull thump of an explosion reverberated above them, then silence. Odrade
waved a hand. Robed women spread along the hallway, moving silently out of
sight beyond the curve. Only Odrade and two others, both chill-eyed younger
women with intense expressions, remained beside Tuek and Cania. Sheeana was
nowhere to be seen.
"The Ixians are in this somewhere," Odrade said.
Tuek agreed. That much shigawire . . . "Where have you taken the child?" he
asked.
"We are protecting her," Odrade said. "Be still." She tipped her head,
listening.
A robed woman sped back around the curve of the hallway and whispered something
in Odrade's ear. Odrade produced a tight smile.
"It is over," Odrade said. "We will go to Sheeana."
Sheeana occupied a softly cushioned blue chair in the main room of her quarters.
Black-robed women stood in a protective arc behind her. The child appeared to
Tuek quite recovered from the shock of the attack and escape but her eyes
glittered with excitement and unasked questions. Sheeana's attention was
directed at something off to Tuek's right. He stopped and looked there, gasping
at what he saw.
A naked male body lay against the wall in an oddly crumpled position, the head
twisted until the chin lay back over the left shoulder. Open eyes stared out
with the emptiness of death.
Stiros!
The shredded rags of Stiros' robe, obviously torn from him violently, lay in an
untidy heap near the body's feet.
Tuek looked at Odrade.
"He was in on it," she said. "There were Face Dancers with the Ixians."
Tuek tried to swallow in a dry throat.
Cania shuffled past him toward the body. Tuek could not see her face but
Cania's presence reminded him that there had been something between Stiros and
Cania in their younger days. Tuek moved instinctively to place himself between
Cania and the seated child.
Cania stopped at the body and nudged it with a foot. She turned a gloating
expression on Tuek. "I had to make sure he was really dead," she said.
Odrade glanced at a companion. "Get rid of the body." She looked at Sheeana.
It was Odrade's first chance for a more careful study of the child since leading
the assault force here to deal with the attack on the temple complex.
Tuek spoke behind Odrade. "Reverend Mother, could you explain please what --
Odrade interrupted without turning. "Later."
Sheeana's expression quickened at Tuek's words. "I thought you were a Reverend
Mother!"
Odrade merely nodded. What a fascinating child. Odrade experienced the
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