Page 17 of Skinwalker's Bane
When the simple act of failing to put away each tool every single time they used it was dangerous, it was no wonder the skinwalkers were sharply observant. His gaze had missed nothing, she was sure.
She shivered as she went back to her desk.
For the rest of the day, his glance back at her, the glimpse of his speculative gaze as the door closed, would float into her mind unbidden. So did the fact of Lincoln’s debts.
Debts!
How little she had known the man, after all. She had been familiar with the pattern of moles on the back of Lincoln’s hip, yet completely unaware of his need for more money than a lucrative skinwalker’s wages could provide. It was puzzling. And it made her feel more than the simple ignorance she had told Adam she had been feeling.
The more she reflected on Lincoln’s secret life, the more uncomfortable she became. How had she not even caught a hint of this about him? A man could not hold a secret of that size withoutsomethingslipping out, somewhere. Adam had been right to question her. There should have been hints that she noticed. Wrong notes. Odd statements. Mystery absences or changes of plan. Strange friends, even.
Had their relationship beensosuperficial and one-noted, that she could not spot even that much about him? Or had he hidden it all very carefully?
Worse in her mind was the possibility that she had been so little involved personally, she just hadn’t cared enough to pay attention when he had let hints escape.
It made getting on with her work all the more difficult. She had prided herself on being a good judge of character—a vital skill in politics. Yet she had apparently got Lincoln completely wrong.
And Adam, too, if she was being utterly candid. She had thought he had returned for malicious reasons, yet his motives, in the end, had been simple and good. He was troubled by the truth about his friend and was investigating, hoping that it would all be explained in a way that didn’t diminish Lincoln any more than the massive debit already did.
Her ruminating was halted by Bishan Frost sending an urgent message telling her to go out into the Aventine central market and find Dhaval Bull and listen to him. That was the end of her speculations about Lincoln, for quite a while.
Chapter Five
Dhaval Bull had set himself up on one of the small round speaker’s stands that dotted the central marketplace and had drawn a huge crowd around him. There was a lens focused on him, too, so everything he said and did would be available later on the Forum.
As he was already in full flow, Devin had missed some of his speech. She would have to watch later to see if she had missed anything significant. Only, it was Dhaval Bull. How much of anything he said could be considered important?
Bishan had told her to hurry and had not paused to hear her agree to go. His urgency implied she should listen carefully. Devin eased through the shoulders and backs surrounding the primary Caver, until she could see him clearly and hear him without straining.
“…hiding the fact for more than ten years! How could they? How can we let Owens and her cronies manipulate our lives like this? We’re all stuck in this metal prison together. Don’t we all deserve a say in what happens?”
“Get to the point, Bull!” someone shouted.
“I already said what I have to say!” Bull shouted back. “They’ve had that shard for ten years. Theyknowwhere it came from! And they didn’t tell us!”
“What shard? What’s he talking about?” someone else whispered nearby Devin, echoing her own thought.
Bull was incoherent, then. It wasn’t just Devin who was lost.
“The splinter that came off one of the very original asteroids that holed the ship in 525,” someone else said, in a louder voice.
Devin’s shock jolted her. “They have a splinter from the meteor?” she asked over her shoulder. She didn’t look at anyone directly, because she wasn’t sure who had said it.
“I tell you, they’veknown,all this time!” Bull raged from his stand. “They’ve hidden it, lied about it. We should have been told, the moment they knew it had been made by another intelligence!”
Silence greeted him. Devin wondered if everyone was staring at the man in stunned shock, the way she was.
Another intelligence?
Someone laughed. “You’ve been drinking too much of the special water, Bull!”
“It’s true!” Bull shouted back. “Ask Owens. Demand a straight answer and if you can get one, she’ll tell you. They assayed the shard ten years ago. It’s not natural! It wasmanufactured.”
Devin stared at him, her mind racing. This was why Bishan was anxious for her to hear Bull. Bull’s message was jumbled and the subject the stuff of fantasy, yet if it were true…!
Why else would Bishan insist she hear the fanatic, if it wasn’t true?The silent voice whispered in her mind, chilling her.
While everyone else around Bull was laughing and teasing him, Devin found her heart racing. Was it true? Had Captain Owns known for ten years that the shard had been made by some unknown intelligence and not told anyone?
