Endgame by Kristine Smith

it could read and measure. Distances. Heights. Angles. Depths of rooms and thicknesses of walls. After completing the task, she returned the device to her bag and strode back to her skimmer. Already half the day had been spent searching, as had the entire day before. She did not like to take so long to make preparations, but Karistos had proved a strange place, much worse than nìRau Cèel had described.
    She stood beside the skimmer, one hand on the door control, until a humanish male driving alone slowed and asked if she required assistance. She gestured that she could not understand him, then entered her vehicle and drove away. Too quickly—she knew she moved too quickly. She could see the male in her rearview, watching her. Would he remember her? Or did all female idomeni look alike to him, as nìRau Cèel said?
    Damned godless place. Never again would she act as a tile broker. As ná Nahin Sela, she had wasted hours at the Trade Board displaying samples and discussing colors and glazes, meeting with prospective customers. NìRau Cèel told me that I must act as that which I am supposed to be. Such was the nature of cover. If I did not act as a merchant among the Elyan Haárin, I would be noticed. But the training she had received in Rauta Shèràa had not prepared her for these Haárin, who ate and drank in the streets as animals, who looked her in the eye even though they were unknown to her.
    Then there were…those other. The anathema. The hybrids. She had seen two of them at the Trade Board, a male and female, so much as demons in their misshapen strangeness. Thick limbs. Pale eyes and skin. They had once been as humanish. As humanish, they should have remained.
    Rilas drove and studied each passage, each summit. Prayed to her goddess for guidance, and for strength. This place is of your doing, Tsecha. Soon, he would pay the cost of his sacrilege.
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    The sun passed prime. As it began its downward arc, Rilas passed a rocky slope crowded at its base with rubble and dying scrub. She drove past it as she had so many others, and had traveled quite far along the cliff road before she realized what she had seen.
    She turned around and drove back to the place, alert to humanish tourists, or shuttles making their final approach to the distant Karistos port or the Service field. Alert to any sign that someone, somewhere, might see her. She fought the desire to reach into the slingbag and remove and activate the devices that could scan the skies as she could not. Monitor the roads. Watch her back, as a humanish would say.
    But she dare not. All around Karistos, craft from the humanish Service traveled, scanned, searched. Her devices, while most useful, were also most illegal, and she could not risk their detection now, while she still prepared. In a day or two, when she completed her task and had gone, let the Service find what they would. Some of it will look most as familiar, as we stole it from them. Rilas bared her teeth at the thought. Humanish did not believe Haárin capable of stealing, just as they did not believe them capable of subterfuge or sabotage. Most foolish of them, and truly.
    She approached the pile of rubble, her joy fading. She slowed the skimmer, hunting for the signs that had attracted her attention and compelled her return. At first she could not detect them, and wondered if she had erred.
    Then, finally, one by one, she saw them. A glimpse of masonry colored the same browns and whites as the surrounding stone, barely visible through tangled branches. Straight lines where none should exist, the broken edges of a wall smashed to ruins by the rockslide.
    She steered her skimmer behind the rockslide so it was hidden from the road. This time, she activated her shooter. Then she powered down the vehicle, hoisted her slingbag, and disembarked.
    Rilas savored the heat, the one welcome surprise thatElyas offered. Wondered at the stone, the sparse vegetation, so much as Rauta