Crossing the Line Read Online Free PDF Page A

and night fell on it. She had done this every evening, cloud cover allowing, waiting for the time that her tour of duty would be over. She wondered how Aras had managed to spend so many years here without the comfort of fellow wess’har. At least she had all her clan with her, working together.
    Aras had nothing.
    There was no point putting it off any longer. He was sitting alone in a room in the depths of the Temporary City, under arrest, waiting for her. In another room sat Shan Frankland, the gethes matriarch. Mestin didn’t know quite what to make of Frankland.
    The woman had stayed here before for two days, in hiding from the rest of the humans. The matriarchs on Wess’ej had even held a meeting with her and judged her a useful ally. Yes, a gethes had been to Mestin’s city while she and her family stayed here fending off isenj attacks. It galled her.
    But that was before they realized why her fellow humans wanted her so badly.
    So Frankland was now c’naatat . It was something the gethes found very desirable, in that greedy and desperate way of theirs, and something that Shan Chail would apparently not surrender to them. They said she feared what it would do to human society: Mestin wondered if she simply wanted a higher price.
    The wind was biting and she felt the peck of ice crystals on her face. Nevyan, her daughter, walked up to her clutching her dhren tight around her. It was a nervous tic. The fabric would shape itself to whatever garment Nevyan arranged it to be, and needed no clutching or pinning.
    â€œThey’re waiting,” she said.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œThey offered no resistance.”
    â€œI didn’t think Aras would try to avoid facing the consequences. But I’m surprised the gethes was so cooperative.”
    â€œShe was more concerned about Aras.” Nevyan said. There was a long pause: Mestin didn’t fill it. “It surprises me. And she has just one bag of possessions, like us. She doesn’t seem like…a gethes .”
    The light from the open hatchway created a pool of yellow illumination across the ground. Mestin stood watching the silver grasses shaking as some creature—probably an udza , in this weather—prowled in search of prey driven to ground level by the winds. There was a brief frozen silence, then a sudden yip from something that had not escaped the udza . Everything here seemed to devour everything else. It was a violent and unforgiving world for all its beauty.
    â€œThey’ll kill him,” Nevyan said. She smelled of agitation: she was competent, promising, but she was still very young and unused to hard decisions. That would have to change. “But how can you kill a c’naatat ? Didn’t they survive terrible—”
    â€œThat’s not our problem. All we’re to do is to take them back to Wess’ej, to F’nar, and let Chayyas decide what happens next. It’s her responsibility. Neither mine nor yours.”
    â€œBut he’s the last of the c’naatat troops, even if he’s been foolish. They saved us.”
    Mestin hadn’t actively disliked humans before the Thetis arrived. The small colony that had been allowed to live here since before she was born had proved passive and harmless, a curiosity set on creating a society that honored something called God. But their benign nature had ill-prepared her for the humans who had come in the Thetis with their weapons and their greed.
    They’ll bring another war upon us , she thought. In the end, humans were all gethes , all carrion-eaters. Aras Sar Iussan might have found them less repellent, but perhaps he had now become too like them to be objective.
    â€œI’ll talk to them now.” Mestin threw her dhren back and walked down into the Temporary City, Nevyan at her heels.
    Aras seemed unrepentant. He sat on the resting ledge cut out of the wall of the room Nevyan had set aside to hold him, smelling of no emotion in