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Everything had been fine until they started encroaching, squeezing us, steadily eradicating us. If things had carried on, we would have been wiped out in no time.”
    She snorted at that.
    A sudden dark blur flashed across my vision, and then hands seized my shoulders. The grip was strong, painful. I gasped and swallowed back a yelp of pain.
    I felt my body pulling away from the niche, teetering.
    My feet were still in contact with the rock-face... and then they were not.
    I hung in mid-air, feet swinging, over a four-storey drop, held only by the powerful, painful grip on my shoulders.
    I looked at my assailant, and Sol glowered back at me. She was a powerfully-built woman, but still, her strength surprised me. It felt as if her thumbs had gone right through the muscle of my shoulders and hooked themselves under the bone.
    “!¡ controlled-anger ¡! Just give me one good reason why I’m still holding on to you,” she said.
    I don’t know how, but I could feel that gulf of space beneath my dangling feet. “!¡ bowel-freeing fear ¡!” I clicked. “!¡ panic ¡!”
    “!¡ calming ¡! Because you are his nest-mother and he is one of us,” said Callo softly. She put a hand on Sol’s arm and I saw the muscles twitch as if my nest-mother was about to release me into the void.
    The moment seemed to draw itself out forever. I couldn’t breathe: for fear, for anger with myself at betraying my position, for anger at even having followed them in the first place.
    I had been such a fool!
    Sol glared deep into my eyes and it was as if her look was digging into my soul in the same way her thumbs and fingers were gouging into my shoulders.
    Then she turned at the waist, dragging me roughly over the terrace wall.
    She dropped me in a heap, and my legs hurt from striking the wall, and my head clanged like a clocktower bell from hitting the ground, and I cursed and cursed at myself for having ended up in such a position.
     
     
    I MUST HAVE blacked out, briefly, because the next thing I knew I was sitting on a wooden bench on the terrace, Callo pressing a wet cloth against my head with a click of “!¡ sympathy ¡!”
    They must have scanned me, as Marek said, “!¡ business-like ¡! Your pid-boy is clean. No bugs. No tracers.”
    “!¡ reluctance ¡! That we know of,” said Sol. It was true: our scanners were good, but we could never be entirely sure they were up-to-date with whatever new tech or biota had just come in at the skystation.
    “!¡ aggression ¡! So, why did you follow us here?” demanded Sol. “Why were you spying on us?”
    I met her look. “!¡ defensive ¡! I wanted to know what was going on,” I said.
    “!¡ anger | hierarchy-reinforcing ¡! That’s not your business,” she said, leaning so close to me that I swear I could feel the heat radiating from her flushed face.
    “!¡ defensive | stubborn ¡! You had thirty or more people with false pids risking detention and worse today,” I said. “None of us knew why. We just had to trust your judgement that it was worth it...”
    “!¡ superiority ¡! You just said it. I am your nest-mother and you have to trust my judgement. !¡ indignation ¡! I don’t have to defend my decisions to a nest-pup who believes he’s above his station!”
    A calming hand on Sol’s arm from Callo again, distracting her, disrupting the outpouring of her anger. “Perhaps we should be harnessing the boy’s curiosity, not snuffing it out?” she said.
    Sol glowered at her with a dismissive click from deep in her throat.
    “!¡ calming ¡! It’s not as if we have any great secrets,” said Callo, her tone still soothing. Her voice was like a blanket, smothering any anger, impossible to resist. She was a woman with great wiles and depths, I realised. “Our only secret is that we survived Angiere.”
    Marek joined in, then: “!¡ sensible ¡!All the rest will emerge soon enough. If word of Angiere’s destruction hasn’t already reached here, then it will do so soon. We