“That isn’t language,” said the young one. “It makes no sense.”
The tall one now had a knife in her hand, long and sharp. “They’re spies.” She lunged at Rigg.
Instinctively, Param grabbed Rigg’s arm and took a leap toward what she thought of as her “hiding place”—invisibility. But as she did it, she realized she mustn’t. If she detached herself and Rigg from the timeflow that the others were in, there was no guarantee that Umbo could bring them back. So she stopped herself in the very moment of her panicky shift.
But she stopped herself too late. The women had already disappeared.
It
was night. They stood in ringlight, just herself and Rigg.
She cursed her habit of hiding; she should have pumped her arm, signaling to Umbo to bring them all back, but that would have required thought, and she acted before thought was possible.
Then she realized—her talent didn’t work like this. People didn’t disappear when she sliced time, they merely sped up and stopped being able to see her. She couldn’t change day into night.
“What did you do?” asked Rigg in a fierce whisper. “When are we?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, trying to stay calm. “I stopped myself almost at once, we should only have jumped a moment or two.”
“We can talk, so we’re out of it now, right?” asked Rigg.
“I didn’t really go into it. We never disappeared.”
“Obviously we did,” said Rigg. “Vanished right out of their time. But how far, and in which direction?”
“I can’t move backward in time, not ever,” said Param. “I just make little jumps forward.”
“This wasn’t a little jump. It got us all the way into night. Or two nights—or a hundred years, into some distant night.”
“The stockade is still here,” said Param. “And the fires are burning.”
They went to the stockade, Rigg holding tightly to her. A few patches of grass were still burning, and there were bodies lying here and there, but there was no more fighting.
“Who won?” asked Param.
“What matters is that we’re still in the past. Does that mean Umbo has lost us, or that he still has us? If he lost contact with us, wouldn’t we bounce all the way back to Umbo, to the time we came from? Or are we stranded here and he can’t find us to bring us back? I wish I understood how any of this works.”
But Param had seen something else, not out on the battlefield, but closer to the city. “Rigg, a section of the stockade is down. It’s broken through.”
“No,” said Rigg after a moment, “it was burned through. That bastard betrayed them.”
A loud cry sounded in the dim light. It was not language. Nor were the cries that answered it. The shouters were not close by, but neither were they very far.
“I think that answers our question about who won,” said Rigg. “Those shouts came from the direction of the city.”
“Do you think they’ve seen us? I think the cries are coming closer.”
“I can’t see anybody,” said Rigg.
“But maybe they can see us,” said Param. “Those facemasks made them quicker, sped up their reaction time. Maybe it gives them better eyesight, too.”
Rigg held up his arm, pumped the air, signaling Umbo.
Nothing happened.
“He’s lost us,” said Rigg.
“He can’t see us,” said Param at the same time. She couldn’t keep the fear out of her voice, but Rigg seemed so calm.