Crowbones

CHAPTER 34

Them

Watersday, Novembros 3

Trapped in this damn village!

What had Fewks done after his little performance to get himself killed and get the Others so agitated that they had locked down the entire area? Couldn’t have been the performance itself. That was so minor. Something else must be going on. Something that wasn’t under his control.

Maybe it wasn’t his project. Maybe his rival had stirred up the trouble. He thought he’d spotted a couple of her monstrosities roaming the village when he’d first arrived. He didn’t recognize them—and he doubted they would recognize him, thank the gods—but he knew the signs of his rival’s tampering and training.

Too many pieces in motion, too many ways this could go wrong now and threaten him if someone managed to ask the right questions of the wrong person. He should have left Sproing the moment he realized his rival was conducting her latest experiment here, but she could have picked anywhere for her study, while The Jumble really was the only place for him to carry out this particular project. She knew that and still risked exposing years of careful studies in how to shape nebulous thoughts into sharp beliefs, along with the studies into how to train a group of people into adopting specific behaviors.

Years of study might be erased unless enough pressure could be brought to bear on the right people in order to clear one road out of this place. Until then, he had to be careful not to provoke his rival into taking impulsive action. He had to blend into the background and let the other academics take the lead.

He was good at that.