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Akasa intervened not because she was concerned about Khorii but because she was jealous. How could awful people like these have been partially responsible for her people?
    Ariin had been absolutely right to leave when she did, but she was absolutely cracked if she thought Khorii was going back to that cell to wait for Odus to try to convince her once more that she was good enough for him. Or almost. Her mane shook all the way down her spine. Odus? Odious was more like it. She’d heard her human friends use the word, and it fit. Odious Odus.
    It wasn’t very nice of Ariin to leave her here. Khorii decided that rather than returning to the cell, she was going to keep moving and try to learn what she could. The crono Ariin was wearing wasn’t the only one. Akasa and Odus both had them, and Khorii figured a lot of the people here probably did as well.
    Akasa’s gaze pierced her back. Khorii turned around and wiggled her fingers as a parting gesture before entering the building containing the timing device. She wasn’t going back to that cell, but she was going to see if she could figure out when Ariin had gone.

    G rimalkin thoroughly enjoyed his unicorn disguise, but it was important to return to little cat form for two reasons. Once was so that Halili would see him and know that unicorn-him, Ahlkiin, really had saved kitty-cat-him, Khiindi. She would not worry, and she would continue thinking that Ahlkiin was wonderful.
    The other was that, as he had learned over the years, little cats could make themselves invisible, could overhear private conversations and thoughts unnoticed, and could steal small objects and be far away with the loot before anyone else noticed.
    He found the company of the unicorns, especially Halili, most congenial, but if he stayed with them, it would be because he chose to do so, not because some inferior copy of his Khorii stuck him there.
    With a lash of his tail, he leaped out of the grass, sprinted past the herd and toward Kubiilikaan. He had done so much traveling through time and space in his former life that he was not certain exactly where Grimalkin-he might be at this moment, but nevertheless, he had a mission. He had to find himself.

    A riin knew exactly where she was, which was where she had been before she touched the crono. She stood in the middle of the time lab in the same spot she had been, but according to the time signature on the illuminated wall display, it was three hundred ghaanyi before, though it looked the same, as far as she could tell.
    According to the pictobase built into the time device’s display, this was when Pircifir should be setting off on his mission. The display showed an ever-changing map of where each person on Vhiliinyar was located at any given time. Of course, it was coded, and you had to know the code to find the person. In Ariin’s time, the Others were all represented by white dots. She didn’t see them on this board, but maybe their dots had been added later. Each of the Friends had not only a specific color code but a shape code as well. Other creatures were also represented in the woods, meadows, ocean and streams, although the sii -Linyaari, who had aqua dots in Ariin’s time, had no dots here at all. Maybe you had to know where to look to find them. At any rate, there was another shortcut. “Pircifir,” she said, and a red-orange dot began blinking brightly near the spaceport.
    She had timed it very close indeed. He must be about to set off on his mission, and she needed to be there, too, along with that technician she’d overheard talking about him in the ballroom.
    What luck! Just as it had been in her own time, the time lab building seemed deserted, and she met no one as she bolted from it. The time of day she had chosen was just past sunset and as she left the building, she heard a babble of voices in the distance. But that was secondary to what she saw—or rather, did not see. The time building looked much as it always had, but outside