We jogged, a slow, steady trot. The sky was turning a dark magenta hue in the west, the way blue suns rise. My boots chafed, my socks felt torn, my feet blistered. My stomach rumbled. I'd have happily traded away the sand and cold for a warm bunk aboard the Bucket.

  "How much more?" I said.

  "Eight hours," the Knife said. "Ten if we run into any hyenas."

  I tried to imagine what kind of an animal a hyena was, failed.

  "Any similarity to horses?" I asked.

  "Four legs," the Knife said. "That's about it. Think dogs, add forty kilograms of muscle, claws, and teeth. Big teeth."

  I did, and whistled, a long, low sound.

  "Bigger teeth," the Knife said.

  This time I didn't whistle.

  "They hunt men?" I said.

  "They hunt everything," said the Knife. "Horses, goats, even the mammoth panzer-sloths."

  "So we run?" I said.

  The Knife laughed, as if he'd found me endearingly charming. The way you'd smile at a small child who'd dropped her ice cream. The resemblance to Riina was striking. I was starting to grow annoyed with it. If I ever made it to wise, old age, I'd keep my wisdom to myself.

  "Hyenas will outrun you," the Knife said. "No, we run into a pack, we stand our ground, kill a few, and hope the rest get the memorandum."

  "What about Syndics?" I said. We'd traveled to the bunker in less than two hours. I figured we'd made maybe a third of that distance during the night. There could be hunting parties going in or out.

  "Them, we hide from," the Knife said, picking up the pace and angling away from our route.

  I tried to see where the Knife was heading but the desert looked the same in every direction. Sand, grass, dells, scraggly bushes. I followed, inwardly cursing all crudmucking old people with big heads. Why did everything have to be a lesson?

  A patch of shadow that I'd expected to resolve into another dell didn't, turning into a deeper gorge. The Knife hollered, startling a herd of the small horses with horns, chasing them out of the depression.

  "Shouldn't we be hunting those?" I said.

  "Blood will bring predators," the Knife said. "We hide here today."

  He crawled into the gorge, a dry, cold, sandy cut in the land some twenty meters long, pulled the camouflage cloak over himself, and settled down beneath it.

  I did the same, pulling the cloak I'd gotten from Widen over me. It was full of holes, letting the rising sun and wind in, the thin polymer slices shivering with every gust. But the grass woven into it was sturdy, and the sand soon began to cover me. I wrapped my leather coat closer around me, pulled down the brim of my stockman, and drank half a water bottle, shutting it before I'd drained it dry. We still had one night to go, at least, and I only had three bottles in my tote.

  It would be a long, cold, hungry day. I expected to shiver my way through it, my empty gut complaining all the way, but the exhaustion of the long night-march lulled me to sleep.

  I awoke to one of my wards unraveling. Not shattering, but unraveling, a slow, gentle twisting that leaked power back into the void.

  Instantly, I conjured a thread of force, yanking it from the surrounding planet, wrapping it around my mind. I wasn't a mage, and my mind battling skills were sadly lacking, but I had practiced even though I had no talent for it. He who doesn't practice died. I snorted. The saying fitted Remba like magic fitted a ward.

  Stolen story; please report.

  No attack came, only the slow, steady probing. No, not probing, a pressure, a warm, moist feeling, like a balloon filled with hot water and dipped in oil. Someone was trying to smother my wards.

  They'd have to have a crudmucking amount of power to do it, and the front didn't have that power. It moved slowly, gently, more a wave in a warm, slimy sea than a boulder falling from orbit. And it had a direction.

  I was out from beneath the cloak and charging, my flameblade spewing heat and trailing blue fire, before I even became conscious of who had generated it.

  The Knife.

  Who was waiting and ready.

  He grabbed my hand as I stabbed down, my flameblade passing him and burying itself in the sand, his shoulder meeting my middle. A fulcrum.

  I flew over him in a neat arc, crashing into the gorge wall in a shower of sand and pebbles.

  "Crudmucker," I hissed, but that was all I got before he was on me.

  Wiry and fast, a long, thin blade in his right hand. He straddled me and stabbed down. Good luck with that. My mageshield was strong. No simple knife would cut it.

  The Knife's poignard penetrated the leather with a sizzle. It took me a heartbeat to feel the pain, a sharp, hot pinprick just beneath my ribs.

  "Move, talk, do anything I don't like, and I hole your liver," the Knife said.

  "What-" I began. The pinprick turned into a burn of pain. I shut up, waiting. The Knife breathed heavily.

  I could slap him with my thread of force. Which was a bad idea. He would likely stab me on pure reaction. My flameblade still burned, melting the sand and sending up a thin trail of smoke where the heat ignited roots and blades of grass. I could reach it, but once again it would be too slow. The Knife would stab right through me before I could cut him. I had Geir's Chimer rattling around in my holster, but no hand to draw it, my left being too far, and my right being trapped beneath my body.

  The Knife had all the advantages. Except one. I still had a razor ward in my front chest pocket. I could activate it and shred him. The gorge might collapse on us, but it was a risk I had to take.

  Except that the Knife hadn't killed me, just nicked me. And he'd given me the whole speech about trust. And I needed him to get to City.

  Truth to tell, I was more curious than afraid. He didn't look like a blood-thirsty killer, more like a tired grandfather who'd taken down the antique anti-armor rifle from above the fireplace in order to defend his family.

  I waited. He kept looking at my face, searching for something, his poignard still embedded in my coat, a thin streak of warmth spreading downward from my wound. I decided to pull a Hao on him.

  I raised my left eyebrow.

  It didn't go all that well, my right one wanting to tag along, but evidently it got the message across.

  Your move.

  "I could kill you," the Knife said.

  "You could," I admitted.

  "You don't seem convinced," he said, but he didn't twist the knife, which I almost expected him to. Not that twisting a poignard did much. Stabbing daggers were long, thin, and square.

  I almost shrugged, which would likely had been a mistake. When you have a knife inside you, not moving is a priority.

  "Ade likes you," I said. "She called you granddad."

  "You noticed," he said.

  "I did. And Darrow respects you. He called you 'sir'."

  Meaning that they believed him to be good people. That had to count for something.

  "He did," the Knife said, sounding almost surprised. "You're observant. Now tell me who you are."

  "I'll tell you if you'll tell me," I said. "You're no simple hunter, not the way those people look up to you, or what you said about the rope."

  "I have the knife," the Knife said. "That would give my questions precedence."

  "But you haven't killed me," I said. "That would give your curiosity precedence."

  That got me a grin, a genuine one if I was any judge.

  "Curiosity killed the cat," the Knife said, which confused me.

  "Is that a bad thing?" I said.

  "It is if you like cats," he replied. "We don't have much time, so why don't you convince me that you really are the great and shining savior of Remba?"

  "I'm not," I said. "I didn't even know you existed until I found Widen and her sneaks."

  And then I told him the story of my life, from the time the transmission tower started talking, to the moment Talain died, omitting such needless details as my background, my warding skills, the hatchling, Riina, Hao, and the razor ward in my pocket.

  At some point, the Knife removed his poignard.

  "Well, Jake," he said when I finished, "I have to hand it to you. I got no idea whether to trust you. Your story is too convoluted for a hunting ruse, and you walking around with a magerifle as bait seems too elaborate. But you will get your chance to prove it."

  "How so?" I said.

  "Because this gorge terminates right next to one of the detectors in the Syndicate's defense grid," the Knife said. "And that big, expensive magerifle of yours is full of metal. And if my ears don't deceive me, that's the sound of a personnel quadopter heading our way."

  When he said it, I could hear it, too, the sharp whine of propellers. We were about to have company.