10

A switch had been thrown.

Peter attributed his lack of response to shock. His face and chest no longer hurt, nor did his body give any indication that he'd been hiking along an insufferably downward slope for the better part of a day. He was frozen through all but a numb perpetuity, confined by trees so incomprehensibly massive that he couldn't decide if he should be more alarmed by the shift in environment or by the environment itself. Harken, he knew. It had to be. There was no other place like it on earth. The air was warm, mild and balmy. Beams of sunlight moved with the breeze and tumbled across the woodland floor.

He might have called once or twice for Ethos. He might not have. The world spun. Lightheaded, Peter thoughtlessly reached for the boulder beside him. 

His fingers closed on fur.

Peter tripped backwards in horror. He scrambled away as a colossal beast uncurled, stretched, and shook off a shaggy coating of moss. Thoughts escaped him at the sight of it; fear, the saboteur. He sat there, contemptible, delirious with a blend of dread and awe.

The creature turned to appraise him. Giant eyes devoured his stare, and in them there were great, familiar pools of color. It spoke. "It's high time we met, Peter Thompson." The voice belonged to that of a woman, an appealing one, husky enough and throaty enough to turn a head or two or six. She smiled apologetically. "Please don't run," she said. "It's impolite."

Not that he could. "You know my name."

"That's right."

"You know my name."

She chuckled. "Yes, Peter."

"How do you know my name?"

Something barked in the distance— a fox. "Your name is the least of what I know," the she-beast said. "I know how prone you are to indulgence, how sharp of tongue you get when you're stressed. I know about everything from the apple you had for breakfast to the odd little book you keep in your pocket. Ask me where we are."

Stupidly: "What?"

"Do you know where you are, Peter?"

"He calls it Harken."

"You're half right." She gestured around them, somehow refined despite her appearance. "This is his recreation of home," she told him. "Think of it as a depiction of soul, partitioned at his core from the turmoil that would otherwise prevail. Strictly speaking, we shouldn't even be here. But we are. He's still too young to understand how it all works."

The barest of tensions eased. Peter could now remember his final wild moment in the pass, when a monstrous hand had reached up and seized him. He'd thought, just for a second, irrationally, that it had been Ethos. Blankly, Peter realized, "You pulled me in."

She gave a single, solemn nod. "It's rare for me to be allowed interaction with the outside world," she said. "When I saw my chance, I took it."

"But if we're both— "

"The fall won't kill you."

His tongue felt thick. "Who are you?"

She patiently seated herself on a lush swell of land. Her eyes were amused when they rose from the lichen bed. "You use my name to win the occasional argument, even when you know you shouldn't," she said. "You think it will get him to listen."

Shima. Peter clutched at his chest, where, miraculously, his heartbeat pattered softly against his palm, too caged to be imagined. "I'm not dead, am I?" he still had to ask, and he desperately looked to her for an answer. "Am I dead?"

"No, you're not dead."

"This isn't the next world?"

"Not quite. I doubt that any world other than his would so blatantly reject miscommunication. You and I wouldn't be able to speak like this under ordinary circumstances." She fell silent, ear turned to the breeze. Was she listening for something? "It becomes unstable in times of despair," she said. "Do you hear it? I can feel the shifts and cracks like an ache in my bones— past, future, mistaken for present, overlapping, coinciding, crashing down— "

The space between them flickered and blurred. Airborne dew sparked in surprise. A woman was suddenly standing there, dressed in shrouds of thick, gray fur, poised to kill. Her shoulder-length shock of flaxen hair had been hewn unevenly, as if, perhaps, in a fit of frustration, she'd decided to hack it off herself. Storm clouds raged in her eyes, and they leveled as one with a dripping cutlass to the felled opponent who lay at her feet.

Ethos. He was keeping pressure on a wound in his side, hand reddened and lost in the mess. He'd risen to a battered elbow and clearly couldn't go any further, but— bloodied, unbroken, he glared past the gleaming point of the blade, fixing his foe with greenfire fury.

The woman said, "Close your eyes, if you like."

And then they were gone, dissolved like dust to a baiting wind. Peter watched Shima through the mist until her seriousness became a smile. "It's okay," she said. "They're just glimpses."

"Glimpses?"

She absently toyed with a fiddlehead fern. "Glimpses of future, mostly," she said. "They occur at random. It's taken all of my fourteen years here to work out the sequence, but the soldieress… he'll clash with her before spring. That much, I know." Shima glanced up from her game. It was shameful how easily she saw through him. "Oh," she noticed. "You know her."

"Is that not why I'm here?"

"Cute, but no." A crash echoed in the distance. Birds fled from their roosts. She serenely gazed out into the trees, eyes searching. "Ethos has bigger problems than the ones that lie in the bitter north," she murmured. "Both of you do, for that matter."

Peter searched the foliage. "What are you looking at?"

"Ludo's out there somewhere." Her sandpaper voice had taken a dismal tone. Her expression was grave. "I imagine he's wandering aimless in the chaos beyond the boundary, searching for a tear in the fabric. Like Ethos, he doesn't hear me." She must have felt Peter's eyes on her, because she sent him a playfully stern sort of look. It was the mark of a mother, a gleam of fond admonishment. "It's all your fault, I'll have you know— how rudely you forced us awake with that shovel. No delicacy. Peter the wise, bearing down and plunging us into disarray."

"You're welcome, aye," he replied, drily. "And you're welcome for whatever you've dragged me here for. I imagine you need help of some sort. Am I right? Someone on the outside, maybe? You forest folk have a real funny way of treating the hands that feed you."

Shima blinked a couple of times before bursting into laughter. It was a deep, fathomless rumbling, straight from the belly, incarnate of the Throat itself. "How self-important," she said. "The First was the same. Your beloved founder. Your Redbeard the Righteous."

Peter stared. "You've met Hans Redbeard?"

"Oho, you're interested. He also flinched at the sight of me."

"You're tall as my shed," Peter spat. "How was I supposed to react?"

"There's no right or wrong way. Would you like to know what Ethos did?"

"Aye, sure, would you like me to bite my own thumbs off?"

Shima wasn't listening to him. She was laughing again, recalling his misguided hubris. "The hands that feed us," she echoed, shaking her head. "Shameless."

"You're not as nice as I thought you'd be."

She almost spoke, but stopped abruptly. Her eyes, rounder than they'd been in the instant before, darted into the canopy above them. "A glimpse," she saw, and she made a hurried motion at him. "Scoot back or you'll be caught in it."

Peter tried —really, he did— but he might as well have been nailed there amid the poison oak. He glanced up in time to see long, sinuous, black-as-tar hair, the blinding stretch of a joyous smile, and flesh of glossy, bottled fire. A woman was upon him like a wisp of air, weightless. She held his face and drew it near, too close for him to discern much else than the searing heat of her lambent skin and the swirling, igneous honey of her eyes.

Her breath on his cheek was a hot desert wind. "You don't need to beg this time." 

Peter swallowed. "Beg for what?"

Again, the glimpse dispelled in white ashen clouds. Peter was frozen, somehow torn between dread and allure, chest heaving as if he'd been running. The arboreal climate was by no means a cold one, but his breath was misting regardless, betraying him. 

Shima just looked tired. "It's like I said, Peter. Bigger problems."

Peter touched his face, half-expecting to find a burn. "I thought she was going to kill me."

"I find it endlessly disturbing how incapable your kind is of reading an atmosphere." 

Peter tried to understand the shadow behind Shima's expression, but her face was too ghastly, too new to his eyes. He had to glare at the ground to remember how to speak. "Her voice," he said, more to himself. "I feel like I've heard it somewhere."

"Has anyone ever told you how gods are born?"

"Ethos thinks you all crawl out of dirt."

"Contrary to popular belief, the clans weren't gods," she said. "We lived for centuries in Harken's shade before the tono settled and named us Old Ones. Atokai. It was they who presumed us greater than mice." She sobered at once: another thrown switch. "Gods are things of dreams, Peter. They're born of wishes. They need not crawl."

"So she's a god."

"She was lured into creation by a race in need of a beacon," Shima said. "She's their desire and aspiration for guidance, manifest. She's a god of hope."

"Aye, she came off as the hopeful type."

"Behave, wise one."

"Exactly how much of this is Ethos aware of?"

"It's hard to say." Shima rose to her beastly, trunkish feet. She paused at his expression. "There's something else on your mind," she knew. "I can see by the concern in your eyes."

It had been at the thought of other creatures, not quite human. Birdmen. Gods. "It was something Kacha said," he admitted. "That I should know what I'm traveling with."

The eave of her brow furrowed. "You mean Ethos."

"It was how she said it," he answered. "What, not who. And it didn't exactly sound like she was grouping him in with her foulmost nearest and dearest." He glanced away, but then forced himself to look back at her. "Asking about it doesn't get me anywhere."

Shima scowled, as if reminded. "That woman."

"Can you sit back down or something?"

She went quiet, silhouetted by sunlight. "Ethos has troublesome origins," she said, unhappily. "We learned early on just how serious it was. It became a major source of conflict when he came to us all those years ago— for good reason."

"But you let him stay."

She nodded. "If you feel that a person is good in your belly, if you know it in your heart, then it doesn't matter what they are or where they came from. That's what I think." She knelt, what good it did, and took up Peter's shoulder. Such strength! Purposely, she said, "It's better if he doesn't remember."

"You want me to back off before I knock something loose."

"He's a stranger to his nature," she pressed. "The next time you feel like yelling at him, please try to imagine how unsettling that must be."

"I wouldn't yell if he'd listen from time to time." Peter drew back and rolled to his feet. He still felt short, a rarity. "I'm not the one in the wrong here," he said. "I've gone above and beyond what any normal person would do in this situation."

"Do you want to go home?"

Back to the farm, back to the salt. The notion of returning had never seemed more uninviting. He was ruined, he realized then. His old life would bore him to tears.

A heavy sound moved through the trees. Their gazes cleaved apart. Peter crouched, brushing grass, and then felt silly for overreacting when Shima merely straightened and stared at the thickets, half-turned to receive whichever Ghoul of Ages awaited them. Peter knew better than to question her knowledge of the erratic, haunted world, so he followed her example and held fast to where he was.

Fourteen years. There wasn't time enough in creation to feel at ease in such a place.

After a tense couple of moments, the glimpse emerged from the shady bracken— a clansman. Dark in the fur, old in the eyes, the sheer size of him put Shima to shame. A sprawling set of bonelike antlers were rooted between its ears, where, swaying softly, a child was lounged in a primitive hammock. 

Ethos. Legs akimbo, feet dangling, he stretched a stretch that spread to his toes. In a weary, yet sproggish voice, he asked, "When we say something nice, even when we don't really mean it, that's called being polite, right, Ludo?"

Ludo, the clansman, smiled. "Brushing up on your manners?"

"I want Shima to be less afraid of me."

"Shima's not afraid of you."

A little hand rose up from the sling, fingers loosely curled. A crow landed down on the bend of a knuckle. "Okay," was all he said. "Thank you."

"What are you thanking me for?"

"For being polite."

Ludo stopped. The crow scrambled away, into the trees. "Shima loves you more than anything else in the world, Ethos," he said. "Please tell me you know that."

"Then why does she cry so much?"

"Her sorrows are her own. As are mine. As are yours."

"I have no sorrows."

They started off again, paced for leisure. "You're still missing some things," Ludo said. "We'll have to work on that, I'm afraid. Not that I'd wish sorrow upon you."

"Say, Ludo." Ethos finally peered down at him. "What's a catalyst?"

Moving only his eyes, Ludo looked up. "Where did you hear that word?"

"I overheard Cymbre and Marris earlier. Is it bad?"

Ludo's shadow fell over Peter's position, encompassing space beyond compare. "No, it's not bad, but it's not always good, either," he explained, passing by. "A catalyst is an agent of change, for better or worse. When a pebble is thrown to a tranquil pond, it ripples the water. When lighting strikes at the trees, they burn."

"So what I am changing?"

Ah, so they'd been discussing him. "You're the first outsider to be accepted by Harken," Ludo told him. "That alone is a great deal of change."

Ethos slung his arm over the edge of the creaking hammock. Lazily, he teased one of Ludo's ears and said, "I had fun today."

Ludo yawned, catlike. "So did I."

"Let's play tomorrow, too."

Peter watched them melt into the trees. The breeze carried their voices long after they'd gone from sight. He was listening to their incongruent laughter when Shima lightly touched his arm.

"Some people search for annihilation," she murmured, speaking in puzzles. "Nowhere is it written that we can't simply give it to them."

Her words meant nothing to him. "Were you really afraid of him?"

She just smiled, same as Ethos always did. "We're out of time," she replied. "Please make sure he eats well. Sometimes even the most promising seeds have trouble growing."

"Do you have any idea what he'll do if he finds out about this?" Peter demanded. "It's bad enough that you had to go and sacrifice yourself for him, but this— nobody should have to live like this, and I'm not just talking about you and Ludo. This is cruel."

Those giant, saucerous eyes slid low. "We didn't sacrifice anything, Peter," she said. "Ethos saved himself that night. It's his doing, what's become of us."

Peter stepped back when she reached for him. "That's a lie."

"He doesn't know." Shima softened, moved somehow. Her hand fell. "Calm down," she said. "It's going to be alright. I didn't bring you here to confuse you."

A bark of disgusted laughter escaped him. "Aye, well done."

"You'll adapt to worse than this," she hushed. "The fear will pass, I promise you that, and when it does you'll be better for having acquired the knowledge that inspired it." She took him once more by the shoulder. "I need you to be strong now," she said. "Ethos is a good boy, but he's capable of frightening things. I need you to keep him on the right path. I need you to help me. Can you do that?" She gave him a squeeze. "Can you help me?"

Something rattled in his chest. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Please. You're the only one I can turn to."

"No, I'm serious, I—"

A flicker seared through a gap in the trees. Shima glanced behind her when she saw him squint in the skittish light. "I've kept you longer than the fall," she said. "You need to go."

Feeling a sudden struggle to breathe, Peter coughed, and the rattle in his chest came bubbling up. Water spilled into his waiting hands, clear and cold as a midwinter creek. Dripping at the mouth, he blinked unintelligibly at the pools in his palms. 

Shima went low to catch his eyes. "I have no flesh to return to, Peter," she told him. "You do, but you'll drown in the belly of the Throat if you don't wake up. You'll be trapped here."

His fear was briefly dulled by the sound of a distant explosion. The flicker between the trees had grown— there was something aflame in the sky out there, marring the horizon with a burgeoning stream of smoke. A ship, he realized, unmasted by attacks of an unseen sort. It plunged at speeds unthinkable, deserted or robbed of the power hold that was meant to keep it afloat on the ether.

Again, the rattle bubbled. Peter's knees gave out as he heaved. Shima was urging him to go, to go now, before the ship struck. He wanted to snarl that he couldn't, that he didn't know how, that he didn't know anything. He wanted to ask. He wanted to beg her to tell him.

The water ran through his fingers. He looked for the ship again, too slow, and saw the forest suck it in. No rule of nature unturned on its head, the accursed fiery land spilled forth, sized to destroy. The earthy swell built thirty feet. Forty. More. Its shadow fell like Ludo's had, blocking out the sun.

Peter would never remember the impact. All he felt was the water. Spinning through currents, he salvaged his center of gravity and latched to the first thing he came upon— a great weathered rock, smoothed by ages of lapping and ebbing. He held fast, limbs leadened from the dread and the cold, and climbed his way up from the depths. Mercifully, he surfaced. His lungs felt raw.

He almost cried in joy at finding himself back in the Throat. From the very bottom, looking up, there was nothing else like it on earth. Like Harken. A ghostly galaxy revolved high above, light source to see by. His bags had loosed sometime in the fall and were floating a few forward strokes away. He swam to retrieve them.

There was no way, yet, to tell what gear he'd lost. Peter treaded water until he spotted the gloomy grotto, to which he hurled his belongings with as much surviving strength he could muster. The luggage splattered across the rocks until something came free and clattered farther down the stony passage.

Then— a splash, from behind him, followed by a ragged intake of breath. Peter tightened his belt and made for the course, slowed somewhat by his clothes and his boots. The oilskin was too much; he bit through the tie and let it sink.

In a similar state, Ethos met him halfway. Peter led best he could, but his muscles were mutinous, and by the time they reached the rocky embankment it was impossible to tell which one of them was helping the other. The burn of exhaustion was relentless.

The grotto was wide enough for them to stand, but standing just then was as far from Peter's mind as an unwelcome notion could possibly be. He clambered ashore after Ethos, unsteady, and abruptly collapsed in a shallow stream of water. Lying there, winded, he breathed an oath. It felt so good that he laughed and repeated the process. His voice echoed. Stalactite drippings echoed with it.

"Sorry," Ethos said, between coughs. "Are you okay?"

Peter salvaged his sodden belongings and sat against the calcified wall of the tunnel. "Do me a favor," he said, short of breath. "Going forward, don't pretend that you're fine when you're not. I'm not a mind reader. Don't even smile unless you mean it. I'm out if you can't at least grant me that."

Ethos glanced. "Out?"

"Out. Done. Call it what you like."

"But I've been telling you to go home since you followed me into the plains."

Peter laughed again. His ribs groaned in protest. "If you really wanted me gone, you'd have done a lot more than wander off while my back was turned."

Ethos slowly settled in across the way, eyes like two burnt holes in a blanket. "You're weird," he replied. "Most people seem to like it when I smile."

"Aye, well, I'm not most people." Peter rifled through the bag, seeing to what he'd lost. It took a disappointing moment to comprehend the items within. Flatly, he said, "This is yours."

Ethos wiped the water from his face. He used the wall to rise. "I'll take a look," he said. "Do you remember where you landed?"

"Sit down."

"It's fine."

"Sit down, Ethos." Peter reminded himself not to yell. He closed his eyes and tried again. "It's too cold," he said. "You're going to catch hypothermia. Just sit down."

Ethos frowned. "But the shell was in that bag."

Peter resumed his search. "I know."

"Lena gave it to you."

"Shut up, I know."

Reluctantly, Ethos rejoined him. "You're angry."

"No, I'm just— I'm trying to switch gears." It was all Peter could do to organize his thoughts, to process what had happened with Shima. His head was spinning. It hurt to move. "My mom deserted," he said. "That's why we hide."

Ethos blinked in surprise. "Deserted?"

"She's from the north. Lena never wanted to hear the details. She says she doesn't care, but I can tell she's just afraid to learn that our bones aren't made of rural bliss." 

"Why are you suddenly telling me this?"

"Everyone has problems, is all. It's fine if you've got some thinking to do, but you can't blame the world for what happened. There's not enough hate in you."

Ethos scowled, eyes evasive. "I was confused when I said that stuff," he grumbled. "I was sad, I think, or close to it. Or angry. I didn't mean to take it out on you like that." After a lengthy moment in silence, his eyes slid back. "What are you staring at?"

Honestly, "I'm not entirely sure."

"That's not funny."

"It's a little funny."

The dripping. The spattering. The dead, far behind them. Ethos clasped his hands together, elbows atop his risen knees. "It's true that there's something wrong with me," he admitted. "You've never needed me to say so. Not really."

"No. Not really."

"It bothers you."

"Aye, of course it does." Peter's quick return drew that downcast gaze a bit higher. "My biggest concern is your head," he stressed. "If your body's rejecting the gift it took, then our first priority ought to be figuring out how to stop it from killing you."

"You think it's a rejection."

"What else?"

Ethos sighed and rolled his wrist. A great big centipede was there, scuttling down his forearm. "I didn't exactly lie about them starting after the fire," he murmured. "But I think it might be like you said before. Hereditary. Because I remember the pain from when I was little. Just the feel of it… the ache, like something scratching."

Peter eyed the creeper. "So how'd you get it to go away?"

"Harken's responsible." Ethos often spoke of the forest in the same casual manner that a workman would of a proprietor, except the proprietor was both nowhere and everywhere. "I was young back then, too young to understand that his protection came at a cost," he said. "The clarity, for one. The depth. I eventually forgot what it was like to be me without the territorial restrictions." He frowned at that, a pensive shift in a debatably murky expression. "It was a good life. An untroubled life. No one would have stopped me from leaving, even if it meant I'd return to the way that I was."

"I've often wondered why you didn't go home."

"I can't live by his rules anymore. If he's even alive. It'd be like going blind." Ethos flexed his fingers, turned his hand for the centipede's curious trawling. It moved like foul regalia across his knuckles. "The truth is ugly."

"Could you stop playing with that centipede?"

He flashed a marginal smile. "Why, is it grossing you out?"

Peter watched him coo at the filthy thing. "I'm actually annoyed that you're being cooperative," he muttered. "If you'd been like this from the start, we wouldn't have had to bicker all day."

"Maybe I'm returning the favor." To Peter's look of skepticism, Ethos said, "Or maybe I'm more on edge than I care to admit."

"Scared?"

"No."

"It's okay to be scared, Ethos."

Peter thought that he'd laugh, that he'd remember those words from the narrows and smile— but he didn't. The centipede skittered away. "You were right to yell at me earlier," he said. "I got defensive, and for that I apologize. I'd be in a pretty tight spot right now if I'd been left to my own devices."

"Is that your way of thanking me?"

"I won't say it."

"Why not?"

Ethos glared a bit. "It's embarrassing."

Undeterred, Peter scowled back. "You came with a ton of baggage, you know," he retorted. "Not even Niobe gave me half the trouble you do. It wouldn't kill you to show me some gratitude."

And that, mysteriously, was what finally cleared the air of dejection. Ethos split into his usual grin, absent of discord. "Was that her name?" he laughed. "Niobe?"

"It's not like yours is any better." He watched Ethos snigger, oddly detached, and thought to test those muddy waters, to see what would happen, if anything. To confirm what was real. To confirm what wasn't. Quietly, he asked, "Why was Shima afraid of you?"

Ethos was still smiling when the confusion spread to his face, and it was then that Peter realized just how much he'd hoped for the opposite. Bled of his airy disposition, Ethos stared, unsure. "Why would you ask me that?"

"It sucks, doesn't it," Peter said. "Not knowing."

Ethos studied his eyes, back and forth, over and over, as if expecting an answer from them. Peter regretted saying anything. "There's something sick in the sky above us," Ethos suddenly said. "I don't know what it is. The headaches intensify when it drifts too close."

Peter backtracked. "What?"

"There's a slew out there, at least twenty others." His focused expression was a rare one. "They're kind of like stars, the way some shine a bit brighter than the rest. Sometimes I feel like they catch me looking." His gaze clouded over, witheringly elsewhere. "But this one's different— the way it moves, never stopping, never slowing. I've dreamt about it. It's exhausting."

Peter was careful with his words. "Is it alive?"

"I think they all are." As if to illustrate his point, the spark returned to his eyes. "My guess is that they're creatures of some sort, unable to hide or suppress what they are. Restless."

Peter remembered a similar exchange. It had been Kacha, of course, who'd prodded her soup and grumbled about being restless for days. Her dark, anxious glare had avoided his. "I knew something was out there," she'd gruffly admitted. "I just didn't expect it to be him."

Peter asked, "So what are you going to do?"

"I think I'll take tomorrow off."

Another joke, a mask of good humor. Peter understood the need for it now. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, too drained to care what it all meant. "Then we should keep moving," he said. "It'll only get colder as the night wears on. We can talk in the morning."

Silence. Ethos cleared his throat. "I need help."

"With anything in particular?"

"With everything, I guess."

Peter had to glance. "That's a tall order."

Ethos was staring out at the glittering water, curled against the chill of night, tired, but alert. He'd surprised Peter early on in their venture by being an excellent watchman despite having such bizarre sleeping patterns. "It's fine if you think I'm crazy," Ethos said. "I know how it sounds."

"Look at me for a second."

He did, pointedly. That's all he did. The whelk.

Peter tried to imagine Shima in there, peering back. "I'm not going to help someone whose single most aspiration for the future is a deranged, roundabout suicide," he said. "Promise you'll reconsider your plans and I'll be whatever you need me to be."

"Will you still be my guide if I don't?"

"No." Peter adjusted his boot; the leather had grown tight around his puffed-up ankle, but his fingers were numb, lacking the dexterity to fix it. "Living's not the punishment you think it is," he said, quietly. "Even if it hurts, even if it mostly just sucks half the time, someone like you can make a world of difference to a lot of good people. A breathing solution to famine, so called."

"Sounds like a lot of hard work."

"Think of those kids back in Azoso. You didn't give them that biscuit because you didn't want it, you gave it to them because you wanted to make them smile— and damned if they did. A little kindness goes a long way." Peter shook his head, remembering. "You need purpose, is all."

Ethos hooked an arm around his knee. "How inspiring."

"I need to be. You're a massive downer."

"Why did you ask me about Shima?"

Peter stood, grimacing. "Maybe I was curious."

"I've never given you a reason to think that she was afraid of me."

"Maybe I read between the lines."

"You didn't."

"Maybe you talk in your sleep."

Ethos watched him, inexpressive. "I don't."

"Oh, hell, Ethos, there's no way you can know that." Peter slung the supplies over his shoulder, spattering water, and asked, "Can you walk?"

Ethos started as if to rise. He had to close his eyes and go still for a moment to ride out the pain of whatever he'd suffered. "I'm sorry I don't thank you enough."

"Aye, it's a drag."

Ethos walked his hands up the curved wall behind him, straightening bit by bit, wincing. When he'd completed his journey, he sagged back a little and smiled as best he could for Peter. "Thanks," he said, and he laughed at himself. "Happy?"

Peter smirked. "Very."