Well, however he’d ended up with her, Syrina could learn a thing or two. Whatever happened crossing the desert, the girl looked desperate to get away—she’d started trekking north before all of Mann’s people had trickled in from the sands. Syrina waited around long enough to watch his wormy advisor protest her departure, which the general ignored. Whatever reason he’d wanted the girl to stick around, it wasn’t because he liked her.
Syrina had had plenty of time to come up with a skin to deal with Mann in case it came up, and it only took an hour to put it on. A girl, about the same age as the guide, as it happened, that she’d named Chulla, from one of the countless tiny tribes that lived along the foothills of the Black Wall.
In the time it took to disguise herself, the girl had made her
