I paused in the loudest rendition I could manage—which wasn’t very—of ‘Do You Wanna Dance’ to listen.

  That was definitely a voice, coming from somewhere ahead of me. It was distant, and echoed oddly, but it was a voice.

  I took what passed for a deep breath, and shouted, “Here!”

  I couldn’t make out words, but the voice shouted back, and the tone was more excited now.

  “Well, fuck,” my shadow muttered.

  “You lose, Zombie Boy. Slink back to a graveyard.”

  “They’re kinda scarce in this world. I’m sticking with you. I need to get this zombie out of the caves.”

  “Lucky me.” I tried to walk faster, but the difference was probably minimal. Who was that?

  Sudden anxiety surged: what if it was him messing with me by sending in another zombie and having them tease me?

  He probably wasn’t that subtle.

  Still, the fear took root and sprouted as I stumbled towards hope.

  “She fun to bang?” the zombie felid asked.

  “News fsh,” I said, interrupting the song just that long. “One of us is a pervert. It isn’t the one who’s only into consensual fun sex with people I care about.”

  The next shout was closer, and even more echoey and distorted, but I managed to make out the word ‘where’.

  I couldn’t really answer.

  But Serru and I had tracked Aryennos once.

  I went back to singing, trying to keep it loud without using all the breath I needed for walking.

  “Nathan?”

  That was unquestionably my name.

  “Here!”

  “Gatherer bitch is too clever,” the felid zombie grumbled. “You were wrong, y’know.”

  “About what?”

  “You said I need to be aquian to have zombies. Aquian’s for making buildings. Jotun’s for crafting. You better believe I could make her scream if I wanted to.”

  Had I said that? I’d probably said a lot of things I didn’t remember. I had a foggy recollection of being angry and then realizing that he’d lied to me, so maybe that was it.

  “Stay away from her. I mean it. You caught me by surprise this time. That won’t happen again.”

  “I’m terrified. The healer pervert’s going to get mad at me.”

  “Healers should scare you. They’re the only ones who can ever stop you, eh?”

  “Doesn’t bother me at all, not like it bothers her. One shows up once in a while. There’s a couple right now, usually are. They’re easy to avoid.”

  “The thing you should be most scared of is one from outside who can see things in a new way and might be able to teach other healers something fun.”

  “What? No, seriously, what? What did you do?”

  I ughed breathlessly at his sudden panic. “My job. Same thing I always do. Save lives.” I oriented on my name, reverberating down the tunnels, and called back again.

  “What the fuck did you do?”

  I just started singing ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ and refused to stop, even when he charged at me. I saw it coming and deflected the attempted punch.

  “Grow up,” I told him. “You got to watch me suffer for however long I’ve been down here. Couldn’t st forever. Go jack off to how big and bad and powerful you are, or whatever you do all by yourself all the time, and leave me and my friends alone.”

  “Tell you what. You skip the Axis and I will. I’ll even talk to her and try to get her to go along with it, although at this point, that is not going to be easy. And I won’t even stop you from the Highnds site. Just don’t go to the Axis. Sooner or ter even you will figure out that you need answers, but if you’ve already gone there, it’ll be too te to do anything with them.”

  “That would be more tempting if I had any reason to trust you or her to keep promises.” I hesitated at a fork, desperately not wanting to go the wrong way. Faintly, I saw light down one of the tunnels, light that was moving, a clear white completely unlike the coppery radiance of the morning star crystals and the softer yellowy luminescence of the mushrooms. I went that way.

  “So what reason do you have for not trusting me, huh? You decided right from the Grassnds that you weren’t going to, on the word of a local who does not have all the facts! Just because you think you know everything already and won’t admit that maybe someone who’s been around longer might know things you don’t, and just because you have a personal thing about zombies...”

  “Nathan?” That was unquestionably Serru’s voice.

  “Here!” Marco... Polo! I thought dizzily, and went back to singing.

  And then the light got strong enough that I had to scrunch my dark-adapted eyes closed, but I could still feel motion, so it wasn’t a surprise when she id a hand on my shoulder.

  “Oh, you’re a mess,” she said, and I couldn’t decide whether she sounded angry or upset. “I don’t dare even give you a hug. Here, drink.” She pressed an open potion bottle into my hand.

  I didn’t even bother opening my eyes to look, just gulped it.

  The pain melted away. Not completely gone, but within a dozen fast heartbeats, it had dropped to a level that I’d almost forgotten existed. I could breathe without every motion of my ribs hurting, and the pounding in my head eased up considerably.

  “My stone’s down my shirt, it won’t be so bright. Drink this one too.” She gave me a second potion, and I felt her arm move. “I’ve got him! We’re coming back!” Her tone turned to disgust and something that was definitely anger. “And a zombie. We thought that might have been what happened.”

  I recognized the taste of the second potion: Quickheal.

  Cautiously, I opened my eyes. The light was still bright, but less so.

  “Shouldn’t you be grateful?” Serru said acidly to the watching zombie. “Everyone knows how you feel about the Moss Queen. After what Nathan did to her attack on the Five Winds Music Festival, shouldn’t you be thanking him instead of attacking him?”

  “Yeah, you think she’s just going to accept that defeat and slink quietly back to the Forest? Just how exactly do you think she’s responding to that, huh? This’ll be a shock, I’m sure, but she has mosslings, people and animals, actively looking for new targets to infect. Wardens know that but they can’t be everywhere and they definitely can’t protect idiots who decide to just stand and daydream all by themselves while a mossling opossum is closing in!”

  “Which is, I suppose, an excellent excuse for you to kill more people and steal their bodies.”

  “I’m not the one who pissed her off this time!”

  “Do either of you ever really need a reason? Because no one else has ever been able to spot anything resembling one.”

  It was sort of fun listening to Serru telling off the other person who had been an ongoing oppressive influence in her whole world, but I wasn’t sure how long I could stay on my feet.

  “So tell me, Logan,” I said. “Who would come looking for you if you disappeared, eh? You figure anyone in this world would think it was worth it?” It was going to cost me, but I had to.

  I brought up my dispy while shoving my precious crystal into Serru’s hand, switched to centaur, and immediately brought it back up to use Purification on the zombie felid.

  I caught him by surprise: he didn’t move away in time.

  The felid colpsed, no longer a zombie, just a small corpse that would be gone soon, freeing a felid to return to family and life.

  Serru looked at the crystal, then at me, questioningly.

  “Do not lose that. Really important.”

  “All right. Why?”

  “Morning star crystal.”

  She blinked, then looked around. “This cave is...”

  “Full of them. Yeah. But all in the walls.”

  She nodded and tucked it into her bag—which wasn’t her usual satchel. It was actually my white-and-pink felid-style waist-bag. She had a rope tied around her waist, I noticed. “There is no way I can help you in centaur form. Maybe felid?”

  I nodded, then wished I hadn’t because my head was still not exactly back to normal. “It is so good to see you.”

  “I know. You too. Come on, let’s get out of here and get you fed and all. Anything else can wait.”

  She winced repeatedly as I stumbled along beside her in felid form, and caught me more than once, but support was painful and awkward and that limited what she could do.

  When I had to stop for a break, down on one knee and holding the wall, she raised a hand to her throat and said, “Zanshe? Can you tie off that rope and come this way? I’m really worried.”

  I couldn’t hear the reply, since I didn’t have a communicator, but not long after, Zanshe joined us, following the rope with one hand.

  “He can barely walk,” Serru said. “I know it’s crowded, but can you carry him?”

  “Oh, I can manage somehow,” Zanshe said. “Most of the way, at least. Up you come.”

  I considered arguing, but I really was running mostly on determination and adrenaline, and I knew I was almost out of both. I didn’t protest when Zanshe scooped me up carefully into both arms.

  We paused once while Serru did something with the ropes, untying the one around her waist and coiling it to put it away, then gathering up a second one lying on the ground.

  That rope took us upwards at an increasing angle, and finally to Heket in her mecha, all four feet pnted firmly and reeling in the other end of the rope hand over mechanical hand.

  Visible past her, although still some way off, was an irregur oval of daylight.

  “I’ll get the ropes,” Heket said. “And catch up.”

  “Thanks,” Serru said.

  Daylight hurt. I scrunched my eyes closed and turned my face towards Zanshe’s shoulder.

  “The house will be set up by the time we get there,” Serru said. “There’s lots of food and lots of potions and no need to move until you’re ready. No need to tell us, either. We can figure out the general idea and you’re in no condition for stories. Just eat and rest and recover.”

  “Sounds perfect.” I wasn’t sure how clear that was.

  I hadn’t appreciated before just how effective Anodyne was at chasing off pain, or how much better Quickheal could make you feel. On the other hand, that left me that much more acutely aware of my overall condition. I was physically and emotionally exhausted—I’d barely recovered from the festival, and now this?

  Consciousness swam in and out of focus, but came back for me to hear Terenei’s horrified, “Oh no!”

  They were going to end up inventing profanity because of me and the other two, just to express some of the emotions they encountered because of us.

  There were no stairs before Zanshe settled me carefully on something soft and impossibly comfortable—not lying down, but sitting up, leaning against cushions that didn’t add to my lingering aches. I sagged against them, just wanting to burrow into them forever. When I forced my eyes open briefly, it turned out to be the couch in the living room of the portable house.

  I didn’t like the way the fabric was rubbing against my fur at the moment, just a vague uncomfortable itch. I figured I could manage one more change. I really just wanted to be me right now. I switched to human, and then realized that I was wearing too much. Zanshe, without comment, helped me get my jacket off and then my sweater as well, down to just the long-sleeved soft shirt at the bottom. That felt better.

  “At least Softcure,” Serru said worriedly. “I’m a lot less sure about Hardcure.”

  “You did Anodyne and Quickheal already?” I felt light hands pull the neck of my shirt aside, felt brief moments of contact in five spots. Smart of Terenei: get information. I didn’t want to know what my vitals looked like right now.

  “Yes.”

  “No broken bones,” I said, though it came out badly slurred. “Minor connective tissue. No Hardcure.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Terenei asked.

  I mumbled an affirmative sound. Zombie Boy had done me that much of a favour at least.

  “Then just Softcure and there isn’t really going to be anything else except staying alert. Here, and Ary has tea coming while we warm up soup.”

  A body beside me on the couch, it turned out to be Serru. “One more potion,” she said. “You’re a mess but you’re still here so we’ll get you back to yourself and it won’t take very long. Just this, then you can have something to eat and drink and then sleep for as long as you need.”

  “Stay safe,” I told her. “He might be angry. I just got you back. And might not have lied about mosslings.”

  “We know. I’m not going anywhere. Drink this.”

  I obediently drank the potion she gave me.

  “Did you find my bag? Intact?”

  “We found it,” Zanshe said. “Right on the edge of the gorge. And of course it’s intact.”

  “You didn’t give him permission, remember,” Serru said. “So he couldn’t have opened it. It’s here, with the aleksite and all. I’ll put the morning star crystal in it with the rest, safe and sound and waiting for you to be able to put them all to use, all right?”

  “What?” Aryennos said, startled, from the kitchen, and Terenei echoed it half a beat behind.

  “The cave network is full of them,” Serru said, pulling out the one I’d given her.

  “Also mushrooms,” I said, not sure they’d be able to make out the words. “Taste pretty good. Tired of them though. No more mushrooms. Blushing mooncap. Grow where there are morning star crystals.”

  Serru paused. “I’ve never heard of those.”

  “Zombie Boy said they were new.”

  “That’s... interesting,” Zanshe said.

  “Yes,” Serru said, “but the most important part is that Nathan’s out of that cave and no one and nothing can get in here at any of us.”

  “Peace? Cheer?” I mumbled. “Myu? Heket?”

  “The boys are safe and sound at a farm, meeting a pair of female ornithians. I don’t believe they’re in a hurry for us to retrieve them. Myu is here, with Heket, right across from you. See?”

  I cracked an eye open to ascertain that there was a near-white felid with a pful of bck-and-white fur on the chair in question, though both were keeping watch on the proceedings.

  “We’re all here and inside and have no reason to go out,” Terenei said, bringing me a mug. The rosemint tea inside was barely cool enough to drink.

  It was wonderful.

  Even if I was a bit shaky and Serru hovered close to steady me.

  And there was a bowl of soup, the simple stuff that was basically just a travel bar broken up and stirred until it turned into liquid with a few green things added for fvour. It was wonderful, too, and tasted nothing at all like mushrooms.

  Serru took away the empty bowl and cup, while Zanshe helped me lie down. Terenei tucked a bnket over me.

  “Get some sleep,” Serru said. “We won’t open the outside doors at all. Everyone’s safe and together now.”

  “Missed you,” I mumbled.

  If she answered, I didn’t hear it.