Crecheling Read Online Free Page B

others, made this ride in a single, casual day.
    As the sun fell below the jagged shoulders of the Wahai, casting golden-red shadows through the dry grass, Magister Zarah called for a halt. “There’s a way station on that knob of earth,” she told them, indicating the bulbous end of a long ridge that rose above a loop of track a mile long.
    “I’ll check it out,” Cheela volunteered. She straightened her back and raised her heels to race off, but Dyan noticed that she still looked at the Magister, as if for permission.
    Zarah nodded. “Go with her,” she said, nodding to Shad.
    Shad shrugged at Dyan and she smiled back, but he didn’t look terribly bothered.
    “How did you do it?” Dyan whispered to Wayland as the Outriders-designate rode ahead.
    “Do what?” His eyes sparkled.
    “Get into the girls’ dormitories while we were sleeping.”
    Deek snorted.
    “I didn’t,” Wayland admitted.
    He looked so sincere Dyan almost believed him. “Then who did?” she asked.
    “I went in the night before, during dinner.”
    Dyan considered. “That can’t be right. The rooms would have smelled like oat porridge all night.”
    Deek grinned. “Not if you sealed the porridge in plastic bags that would slowly dissolve through the night.”
    Dyan laughed out loud. “You imp! Where did you get dissolving plastic bags?”
    Deek laughed too, and almost fell off his horse. “If only you were a Mechanical, I could tell you!”
    The three of them rode slowly up a gravelly trail that wound around the hill to its top, pulling ahead of Magister Zarah as their chuckles dissolved into comfortable silence. They arrived long after Cheela and Shad, who had split up and climbed the slope at different points, converging on the top of the low peak at the same moment. The crown of the rise held a chest-high log stockade, just like every other way station of Buza System Dyan had ever seen, and she expected, cresting the knob, to see Shad and Cheela tethering their horses and preparing a fire.
    Instead, when she pushed up onto the gold-grassy space beside the stockade, she saw Shad and Cheela standing their horses shoulder to shoulder, gazing across the plains at the setting sun.
    Dyan felt profoundly unsettled. Distracted, she slackened her grip on her horse’s reins, and the animal skittered a few feet to one side. “Vixen,” she muttered.
    “ Ahem ,” Wayland cleared his throat from behind Dyan. “I think we are still not allowed Love-Matches. And if we are, fellow Crechelings, I should tell you that I’ve had my eyes on Shad for some time.”
    Deek gained the summit, followed a few moments later by Magister Zarah.
    “What about it, Magister?” Wayland asked. “Do Cheela and Shad get a Love-Match as a reward for their scouting work?”
    “As a reward for their scouting work,” Zarah said, her eyes shadowed pits in the twilight, “Cheela and Shad get to sleep sheltered from the wind. As, hopefully, do I.”
    The word on the Magister’s lips made Dyan realize that she was right; at this height, the wind cut across the hilltop cruelly. With the sun down, the desert would soon be cold. She shivered and pulled her riding coat closed across her chest.
    “Actually,” Cheela said, “as an Outrider, I would suggest—”
    “Outrider-designate.” Zarah was calm, but her voice held authority.
    Cheela looked down, abashed. “Outrider-designate,” she agreed. “As an Outrider-designate, I would like to suggest that we camp further along the ridge.”
    “Oh?” Zarah arched an eyebrow at Dyan’s Crechemate.
    “We should light a fire in the stockade,” Cheela continued, “and camp without one ourselves. That way, if any outlaws or renegades or runaways approach us in the night, they’ll be drawn to the fire and not our real position.”
    “Should we be worried about outlaws, renegades, and runaways so close to Buza Station?” the Magister challenged her.
    “We should beware of outlaws, renegades, and runaways