“Don’t go down into the pans, omi. The director thinks it best you come back up to camp and let Ian send a mission out from the Plateau, not with trucks. He says he can put Alihinan aware and have his riders bring beshti to your camp. . . .” And have someone bring more beshti up from the Refuge to Alihinan, clear up on the Plateau, on the other side of the Needle. “Which will take a while. If the Wall has cracked, the spine itself may grow unstable, and we have a man lying in camp with a broken leg.” His beshta’s descending strides jolted under him, a chancy descent of a loose, sandy slope. “We stand a better chance by catching our runaways.” As haze wrapped them about, obscuring all but the solid shapes of the sandstone spires. “Has the Wall shown a breach?” “Not yet.” 1 7 2 • C . J . C h e r r y h “Then tell me when it does.” “Omi, when it comes, where it comes, they think now it may become a far faster, far wider breach.
