She paused to breathe in the dusty smell of the stable. And to clear her head. Her surroundings, though a thankless place of labor and aches and longing, was also a haven of familiarity. It was also quiet for the moment, though Challis could still see the bleach-striped hair and white collar outlining Haske's pale, clean-shaven face, blurry against the floor and worn wood planks in front of her.

She hoped Rasalas wouldn't try to lie his way into the program.

Maybe, just maybe… two months could be enough to learn how to ride thrikes. Would they even be allowed near one after Forge had fired them? He had only discharged them from their current services of managing the fodder, tools, equipment, and mud barns, besides being squashed into the dirt like bugs in their spare time. Maybe the prestigious FHF representatives had enough authority to pull strings.

She wouldn't work with horses, though, not for all the money in the world. Challis snorted at the choice of words. They were already there, except in reverse. It was taking all the money in the world, it seemed, money they didn't even have, to pay for the damage that horses had done. The back of her head tingled again. She shivered and went to look for a pitchfork.

A brief thought about double-minding Rasalas while he talked to Drunnel was interrupted by a violent scraping noise. Challis spun to her left. The jaws of a thrike were shoved through the bars of a stall far enough to push at the wire netting surrounding it. One pale, slitted eye stared at her, then a birdlike twitch showed her the other eye. Two little clawed joints clung to the bars underneath as if to catch itself after the lunge. When Challis did nothing but stand there, breathing slowly, the thrike blew out a whiffle and turned a way to kick at the shriveled leaves in the nest stall.

"Sorry," Challis said, "not this time." She didn't recognize this one, with its deep gold hide rippling with shadow as it moved around. But familiar or not, this thrike needed a clean nest stall, or it would be restless and irritable. Challis knew she could climb into the loft and fork a leaf pile in, but that would definitely annoy the thrike if she wasn't careful. There were new leaves in the stalls further down, some untouched.

The wings flapped out once, forming a rush of air tingling with fresh flux that washed over Challis, strengthening her resolve. There was no one to stop her, either. Even if there was, they wouldn't. She was nobody.

"Alright, fusser. Let me help you."

She strapped on a pair of wrist braces and, for good measure, slipped into one of the stiff vests that beginner recruits wore. It protected her neck and was so ribbed with protection all the way down that it was like wearing a barrel. She should have put on gloves, but at that moment Challis was itching to touch and feel a thrike's skin that was dry and healthy and not a bit sticky or muddy.

You should wait for Rasalas, a thought whispered. Or let a handler do it.

Why else would there be a single thrike in the barn if the opportunity wasn't meant for her? "And I won't get the chance again," she said aloud to the thought.

The fodder bin creaked. Challis glanced at the door. She quickly unhooked a dead rabbit and eased the bin closed. Nearby, a bucket of rice berries from the garden waited, and she scooped up a handful of those too.

Slipping a lead line around the same forearm, Challis tried to put on a confident air as she approached the thrike's cage. Fusser honed in on her instantly. Tight spasms jumped along the thrike's entire body. Challis slid the bolt on the gate and lifted the rabbit, noticing with a cold sweat that the thrike had somehow glided three feet closer without a sound or apparent movement. The head seemed huge, looming with predatorial intensity just out of reach. She tossed the rabbit deftly through the gap before anything else could happen.

It was in the thrike's jaws the moment it entered the cage. Challis watched it shake and wriggle out of sight down the animal's gullet, a display of savage finesse that ended with the slitted eyes staring, compelling her to fetch another. But she didn't. Instead, she started talking. Softly, soothing, just as Corvin had done, and at the same time easing the gate open and reaching her hand out toward the thrike, palm flat and mounded with rice berries. At the glisten of sharp teeth, a jolt of fear iced down to her stomach, but with a monumental effort Challis didn't flinch back as the beak approached her bare fingers. A long black tongue darted out to lap up the berries. Challis almost bit her own tongue out but managed to tug the coil of lead line up and over the animal's beak in quick, numb determination.

She held the reins as firmly as her shaking arm would allow, and hurriedly began talking again. Now for the hard part. From what she had seen until now, handling a pterosaur was part controlling and part collaborating with it, and a step too far in either direction could be fatal.

The thrike tossed its head, a sharp yank at the reins, but then crunched forward when Challis pulled down to help its full crest through the doorway and out into the passage. She pressed a hand to the side of its neck, and felt the thrill run through her at the slide of skin over rippling muscles. The thrike was watching her. Its nearest eye swiveled down at an impossible angle to pierce through her mask of confidence. Without meaning to, Challis' breathing sped up to match her heartrate and she ran her hand down the thrike's front to the top of the rib cage, which was level with her shoulders. She felt very tiny, and edible. Panic knocked at the edges of her brain.

Not this time. Challis went still and, reorienting her intent, closed her eyes.

The skin under her fingers was rough, pitted with what felt like petrified sand, unlike the almost velvet smoothness of the neck. It swelled and softened in heavy, solid breaths that boiled with energy. Through that single touch, Challis could feel the animal's power from the beak tip down to the press of claws at the ground, where it flowed back up and out to both sides in great swathes. She couldn't feel the reins in her other hand anymore, but that didn't seem to matter. The sole of one boot scraped on the ground, then the other, but Challis still didn't open her eyes. The thrike's skin never left her fingertips.

She reached behind her, with the hand that was supposed to have the reins, and found the gate bolt to a stall further down the row. It slid silently open, the double hinges allowing Challis to back straight into the empty cage. Leaves folded under her steps, and her eyes came open.

Any other time, and she would have screamed. A toothy beak dripped saliva inches in front of her face, and hot breath swarmed over her hair. The bestial outline mountained on the edges of her vision and seemed to expand even bigger as the back of the cage pushed against her shoulder blades. There was nothing between her and the jaws of that thrike. That jarred her back into awareness, both her hands clutching the iron bars on either side. Challis' knees trembled, and she would have slid down to the floor if she hadn't been pressing back so hard.

"Freeze."

A voice boomed into the silence. Challis did, still staring into the huge eyes. The pterosaur's beak was open, wet strings stretching between its jaws, and both batlike wings barricaded out to either side in glimmering gold sheets. Muscles quivered in the thrike's slender limbs.

Something rattled at the gate, and the man's voice, husky but commanding, came again. "In three seconds, run for it."

After an agonizing moment of doubt, Challis fought the terror and obeyed. Just before the three, the thrike's head shot up, then waggled frantically side to side as if shaking off flies. A wingtip sliced across Challis' neck as she dashed past in the distraction and would have drawn blood if she hadn't been wearing the vest, but it mattered little as a hand seized her arm and lifted her full off the ground in a mighty heave. She flew, and then hit the floor with a painful crack of her hips. The dusty ground slid her into a post on the far side of the aisle, and she didn't realize until later that the clang that sounded when she hit had come from the man jerking the cage shut behind her.

She remained there for a long minute, panting past the ra-pa-pum-pum of her heart in her throat. With her eyes closed again, she could just make out Drunnel Haske's face hovering like a phantom through Rasalas' vision. A small part of her wondered why she hadn't noticed it earlier.

Leather creaked in front of her, and she finally looked up to see the man crouching there.

For a moment, she thought it actually was Drunnel. He had dual-colored hair, bleached and blackened. A flickering bright blue patch. Tattoos wrapped around the forearms. The features were Haske-like, but not the voice when it spoke.

"Good to be alive, isn't it?"

Challis kept breathing, in and out. Her insides were still shaking, and it took a moment for her brain to catch up. She found her voice again and shrugged.

"If you say so."

A harsh wheeze turned into a croaking, hearty belly laugh. It was followed by the dry husk of a voice as if the man had a sixty-year-old smoker's throat. "Well," he managed, still chuckling, "well, I'm full wallowangled. Nerves of steel, guiding an unbridled thrike, but underneath it all you're just a scared little puppet."

Challis glowered and sat up, wobbling in her barrel vest. "I'm not a puppet." She started unbuckling the vest and glanced up at him once. "Thank you. That was quite the rescue."

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he asked conversationally, as if it were the natural response. He sat back against the post, content to remain on the floor with her in safety from the thrike chuffing hungrily in its cage.

"I was just…" Challis pulled off the vest and wrist braces. "What did you even do to him?"

"Here," the man said, tossing something to her. "Works every time."

Challis fingered the little metal disc in her lap. Small ridges crested the edges.

"A dog whistle?"

"Ultrasonic flux bender. She hasn't managed to steal it yet."

Challis paused. "She?"

He popped an eyebrow toward the thrike. "Look at her crest," he said flatly, then his accent became even more pronounced and he clipped the consonants mercilessly. "Also, you need to put the reins behind the ridge on her beak, never in front or it could slide off. And make sure you tighten it properly before leading a thrike out of its cage. Don't even think about letting go of the reins either. It's clear you haven't done defense training, so don't go backing into a stall so that you get stuck far from the door. And don't ever, ever lead an unfamiliar thrike without help, you irresponsible squawktop." The man started to get to his feet, pausing to stick his face into hers. His voice dropped to a seething growl. "And if you ever touch my thrike again, young lass, I will chop off both your hands and feed them to the dogs."

He stood and gave her a tight-lipped smile. "But yes, it's a she."

Challis scowled, wishing he would just go away. Horrible thoughts of the FHF, Drunnel's other associates, and her dwindling chances of making it into the candidate's program shook her mind.

But living under a man like Forge had taught her something. She breathed in the heat and humiliation, and with a practiced routine gathered them up and pushed them away. Another breath, and she did it again.

"Why didn't it eat me?" she found herself saying aloud. Not-Drunnel had gone over to the fodder bins and returned with another dead animal, a brine skunk. He tossed it up over the wire mesh so it fell through the bars on top of the thrike's cage.

"It did seem to take its time. You know your way around flux," he said.

Challis pushed herself stiffly to her feet. "No, I just, um, well, I have a twin brother."

It took a moment, but then he whirled on her. "Wait. Are you a Gannagen?"

The tone was unexpectedly accusing, and Challis drew back on instinct. She turned without a word, walked over to get a pitchfork, and began mucking out the empty stall, wincing at the sore twinges in her back. She, a Gannagen, would finish this job, despite being officially dismissed. Someone still had to do it. Poor Scat would never get a moment's rest if she left all this work for him.

The man came over to her stall and watched her like she was a thrike.

Challis ignored him. She had had lots of practice with that too, with Rasalas. That stopped, however, when two unexpected things happened at once.

"What happened to her?"

The pitchfork dropped to the ground. Challis straightened up too quickly, jerked to attention by the question and also by what was happening in front of her eyes. A stretch of sandy ground had flown up to meet her and two hands, Rasalas' hands, pressed to the earth. His view went black for two breaths, and in that time, Challis forced herself to stay where she was and get a better look at her spectator.

His face was a wide, cunning grin, with acne scars denting his cheeks though he had to have ten years on her at least. A slight fuzz that looked a natural blonde color spread out in facial hair that Challis would never have noticed otherwise. To her surprise, she liked it. His eyes sat closely together, tightening the look into one that made any expression more intense without his trying. Then her vision clouded over with sand before she could get any more details.

"What did you say?" she asked, standing very still.

"I asked what happened to her. Your mother, right?"

Challis leaned back against the bars, her arms folded. First horses, and now this. "I… don't care to talk about it." Not with you. "You came here with Haske, didn't you. Why aren't you out recruiting people who would have a chance?"

He tapped once on the gate. "I am."

She looked at him in the dim light. "You are what?"

"You think you don't have a chance?"

"Not alone. You'd have to talk to my brother and me together, but Agent Haske already did. What do you have for me that he didn't?"

He didn't react how she expected, instead bending to lean his chin on his arms in a much more relaxed pose. He peered at her above a small smile.

"I know how much you're hurting," he said quietly. "And that not only have you failed to push past it all, but whatever happened to you is driving everything that you do. And you think that if you get into the FHF program, you'll find the solution to your problems."

Challis stared at him, then realized her mouth was hanging open and forced it shut.

The man reached up and pulled something out from under his collar. In that first instant, Challis thought it was a snake, sleek and reflecting the light from the doorway. But then she could see that both ends were knotted, swinging out from where they had hung around his neck. His patch stopped flickering at once, and settled down to a gently muted pulse instead.

"Come over here," he smiled. "I want to show you something."

Challis stepped over the pitchfork and came closer, her gaze on the wire. "It's beautiful."

"Here." He lifted it out towards her and she reached for it without thinking. It was a color-faceted cable as thick as her finger, about three feet long and thrumming with energy all along its length. She ran it through her fist, letting it crackle between her fingers.

"What is it?"

He gestured. "Try it."

"But what does it do?" she asked, not looking away from the cable. The other's voice eased into the space between them.

"I'm trying to help you. Put it behind your neck, like I did."

She slid it under her braid and stood holding both knots in her hands. As soon as she did, a line of heat started flowing out from where the wire touched. Spreading down over her shoulders and up her neck, it thickened and tingled and sped up her bloodflow until she could hear the rushing deep in her ears. Then it reached her brain.

Challis didn't remember much from her time at the Cormellican Institute. A daze of timeless frustration, and so much blinding white: the vague forms of people, but also as a cloud over her eyes and mind. So much darkness too, in unlit rooms with no windows, settling into her as a hopeless ache and sense of irreparable loss. Rasalas had been there, always there, in and out of her consciousness and trying to talk to her. Even when she could see nothing, his voice had been there.

But a haze of thoughts, and realizations, had slowly come together on their own before Rasalas told her exactly what happened. And by then, weeks had passed since the accident.

She didn't even know half the words he — and the physicians — kept using. Diagrams and graphs upon graphs of the human brain were muddled confusions of lines and text that she couldn't read. Not until her brother closed his eyes and dropped off to sleep beside her for the first time. Alone with her own sight again, Challis spent half the night bombarded with fears. Was this her new life? Trading sleep and awake hours with her brother? It was out of the question. A double-vision life, then: a combination of a nerve-ending scan of the visual cortex of Rasalas' brain with hers that somehow repaired her sight but also relayed his vision onto hers. It was beyond anything she could have imagined and was far past anything she would have chosen for herself, much less for Rasalas.

In the quiet of the stable, the wire zapped up into her brain, and a long-suppressed fear that had dominated her time in the Institute shocked through her. Pressure to the back of her head suddenly shot deep into her mid-brain and swarmed out to enhance striking clarity into all her senses. She swallowed down the dusty, ripe taste of the stalls and shivered. The man in front of her was bright with detail for a breath or two before fading back into what she was used to seeing. But something remained, a tingling warmth as if a blanket had lowered over both of them. Excitement, and satisfaction, filled the space between them like a delicious secret.

"What is it?" she whispered. Lakko Haske leaned forward, and now their faces were hardly a foot from each other.

"Can you feel it?" he whispered back, his already-gravelly voice no more than a rasp. "What you're picking up on is the best way to see the world. Flux-driven energy fields, and every efflux has its own flavor. That's what I have for you, Challis. Just don't tell your –"