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the better. Although he’d never had trouble finding humans in the woods when Urak had brought him here before, the blistering weather seemed to have driven them all away. If he was going to fill forty vials with Vahst, he needed to find some in greater numbers.
    “Hi,” Kane said. It had been a while since he’d last spoken N’Glish, or any of the human languages for that matter, but he spoke it pretty well, and he knew that was the right word.
    The female closed her eyes.
    Ah well. He wasn’t keeping her for company’s sake.
    Kane got up and went out of the shelter, picking up the dead bird and tossing it on top of the dead human male as he passed. He had left the cold-storage crate open, and he cursed himself for a fool because now all the ice was melted and there was grit and tree-needles in the water. Kane drank it anyway, relishing the way it sluiced down his throat and throughout his body. The crate’s actual contents, metal canisters containing human beverages, glinted enticingly at him but Kane ignored them. Previous experience told him they were likeliest to hold either toxic fermentations or concentrated sugar syrups. Water was what he needed now.
    As an afterthought, Kane sucked up an extra mouthful and went back into the shelter. He knelt, turning the female to face him, and then put his mouth over hers and poured water into her. She dribbled most of it out, but swallowed at the end. That was a good sign.
    “I need to eat,” Kane said, mostly to re-accustom himself to the language. “Where are you keeping your food?”
    The human did not reply. She lay motionless, her eyes still shut against him. She hadn’t even wiped her mouth where she’d drooled.
    She wasn’t sleeping, Kane was fairly sure of that. She was choosing to ignore him, escaping him the only way she could. He had a choice now. He could let her lie there and hide from him, or he could bring her out of it.
    His first thought was to stand her up and give her a good slap. In his not-inconsiderable experience, humans responded best to pain. But as he ran his eyes over her bruised body, he realized that he appeared to have been pretty harsh with her. Heaping abuse on top of that might only push her further into her own mind. If he wanted to keep her, and if he expected her to do any groundcar-piloting in particular, it was time to show a little restraint.
    Kane slipped his hands under her sides and pulled her up and onto his shoulder. She did not resist.
    “I really don’t care what you do when I’m gone,” he told her as he took her out into the light. “But I need you here with me now. Behave yourself—”
    Sudden warmth flowed down his chest and the smell of ammonia pierced the air. Kane gave the female a sour look, but she only stared slackly into space.
    “Behave yourself,” he repeated darkly. “And you’ll live to see the back of me. Piss on me again—” He set her on the table and tried to slap the wet from his body. “—and I’ll carve you a new face to see me off by. Bitch,” he added in his own language, and stomped over to the cold-storage box to clean up.
    There was no point in punishing her. She probably couldn’t help it. Probably. He was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, at any rate. He needed to take care of her if she was going to get him through this rotten weather.
    Would she come out of it on her own? He could whip up a stimulant if he had to, but he didn’t want to use it unless absolutely necessary. Humans were fragile.
    A dark thought struck Kane suddenly. Humans
were
fragile. Maybe the female was sick. He hadn’t scanned her for anything, and there were all sorts of nasty things that could swap themselves between hasty Jotan and their humans.
    Better late than never. Kane looked around for his pack, found it under one of the chairs, and took it over to his female. He had to calibrate it for human biology, and during that time, Kane studied her.
    She was blonde, like him, but her hair was