The glue had been a four-in-the-morning idea. That was the hour most of Vylkh's ideas came from, and the hour none of them deserved to be trusted.

He'd scraped creosote lac off so many branches he lost count, creosote lac being the little red crust the bugs leave behind. Mesquite gum, knifed out of the bark. Prickly pear pads split and boiled until they gave up their snot. A strip of old elk hide cooked down.

All of it went into one clay pot over a fire he'd kept small, because smoke in this canyon carried, and it stank.

He stirred the whole concoction with a stick. Stirred until the stick stood up on its own.

Fine.

The stick was part of the recipe now.

The smell dragged a memory up while he stood there stirring.

His aunt, bent over her own glue pot, fletching arrows, telling him don't touch that. He was six and had a throat that still worked. He touched it, and his hand came up wearing the pot. She'd laughed so hard she had to sit in the dirt, and he'd flailed and screamed, which he could still do then. He thought about her for maybe another few stirs and then the lac started to scorch and she was gone again.

Now it lay across the wash where the trail pinched between two boulders, a pale skin of it under a sifting of sand so fine he'd done it with his fingers like salting meat. On the far side, hung on a creosote bush, was the bait. His own old hip wrap, the one with the burn hole. It stank of him.

That was the insult of the whole business. How ridiculous and stupid this all was but he knew it would work in some way.

The deadfall had been beautiful, three logs and a trigger he'd whittled for two days. Broken. The spring snare with the counterweight rock and the glass-bead tripline had been, honestly, his best work, a thing he'd have shown off at the fire. They'd tripped it on purpose. Stepped in, let it take their ankle, then cut the line with something and left the bead strung on a branch where he'd find it at eye level. Parts sorted into a neat little pile beside the wreckage.

The pit.

They did not talk about the pit. He had spent one very long afternoon at the bottom of the pit.

So he landed on glue.

He'd been under the lip of the east boulder since before dawn, and it was well past now. The sun came over the canyon rim. The shade had shrunk until he was folded into it knees to chin, Casqera's finest killer stuffed into a space meant for something smaller than him, but he made it work just like anything else he put his mind to.

A horned lizard had come by some time ago, looked at his foot, and decided his foot was a rock. It still hadn't budged.

His tail was the other problem.

During setup he had turned around once, just the once, and this damned tail of his had swept a long lazy arc through the edge of the fresh glue. Now the last hand-length of it was a club. Sand, lac, three burrs, and one beetle, alive, stuck by the back legs, rowing its front ones in slow useless outrage.

He'd tried to pull it free around sunrise and left a tuft of fur on his fingers and a sound in his chest that wasn't a whimper.

Nobody heard it. So naturally it didn't count.

He looked at the beetle. The beetle kept rowing no matter how futile its efforts.

Same, friend.

His belly growled. Being too fixated on all of this he'd brought nothing to eat, because at the end of this he was going to eat something better.

A pit roast was traditional. Hot stones, a whole night underground, juniper berries crushed into the fat. That was respectful. That was what you did for a kill that had earned it.

Or he wouldn't wait. Or the first bite would be right there, raw, at the soft meat of the shoulder. Salt of sweat on his tongue. He'd traded good material for real salt last season and had hoarded it for a special occasion. Or maybe he could start with the cheek. The cheek was always the best part on anything. Everybody knew that.

His mouth had gone wet, drool slipping down the corner of it. Catching himself he snapped it shut, canines hanging over his bottom lip.

His ears perked up hearing a sound.

It was a particular sound, not too loud. Wet and sucking, a mouth letting go of a kiss it didn't want to give back.

He'd heard it all night in the pot. His ears went straight up so hard the bone pins through them clicked.

Looking is how you lose things so he waited till it felt right. He'd learned that on a jackrabbit at age nine.

At the moment it felt right he turned his head.

The area between the boulders had something in it now. A shape, low in the light.

Oh.

Oh, this was good.

A large toothy grin formed on his face, all the way back to the molars. He rubbed his hands together and they stuck a little, glue in the creases of his palms, which was fine, small sacrifices. His tail tried to wag and the club thumped the dirt, dragging the poor beetle through a quick violent arc it had not signed up for.

Got. You.

He wanted to throw his head back and yip loud enough to echo off the canyon wall, but he'd been cocky before, every time before, and every time before he'd ended up holding a handful of ruined parts and the same question.

He stood all the way up. Out of the shade, into the open, on two feet, in full view of the wash like a man walking into his own camp. No crouch. No cover. The lizard finally left, offended at the loss of its comfy spot.

The beetle rode along.

Heat came up off the rock against his side. He crossed the open ground at a stroll, grinning the whole way.

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Vylkh had the awl behind his ear and a spring latch half rewired in his lap when the traders came up off the salt flat. Kesalti. Bobcat demihumans, eleven of them plus four pack lizards sagging under hide bundles and jars of something fermented you could smell from the tents.

Out went the elders with water and the usual lies about what kind of year it had been. Everybody else got very busy doing nothing, which is what a camp does when strangers walk in.

The latch went down in the dirt and he went to look.

Most of them were nothing to him. Old traders, a couple of boys carrying loads bigger than themselves.

Near the back, though, walked one of the women about his age with a braid down past her waist and a bow slung unstrung across her back. At her throat on a cord hung one claw off a paw of something almost bigger than his hand. She had the shoulders of somebody who pulled that bow every day of her life and a belly that came soft over her belt, and his tail was already going imagining nuzzling into it.

Through the greeting business he waited. Then he walked over slow, letting the sun shine on the trophies pierced on his body: the ladders of bone up his throat, the rods lying under the skin of his chest, the tusks on both shoulders, more kills stitched into him than any two of their hunters put together.

She was unlashing a bundle. A few feet short of her he stopped and clicked his tongue, sharp.

Her eyes found his throat first, then the chest, then the fangs hooked out over his lip with his mouth shut. Then they came back up and held his gaze.

"You want something, or you just come to stand there."

Grinning he pointed at the claw and made a wide shape with both hands. That. What was it.

She got it fast. Some people went stupid at this part, started talking slow and loud like his ears had quit too. She only tapped the claw with a finger.

"Cave bear. Old one, half blind. Took me and my brother two days."

A huff through his nose, a tip of the head toward the tusk sitting in his own left shoulder, one finger held up.

"That's not a bear."

His shoulders rolled and his hand swept down the length of himself, collarbone to hip wrap, every rod and tooth and stray fang under the skin. Pick any of them.

She let out a short bark of laughter.

Down on his haunches, he drew in the dirt with a claw. Stick figure with tall ears. A line off its hand to a box with a spring on it. Second figure, shorter, braid on it, standing there looking at the box. Tap on the box, then on his own temple.

"I've seen traps."

He shook his head hard enough that the bone piercings on his furred coyote ears clacked, went and got the latch, and dropped to one knee in front of her with it. Close enough she could smell him. Since before light he'd been elbow deep in grease and mesquite gum, which he decided at this exact moment was working in his favor.

Two fingers set the trigger. Down came the awl from behind his ear, and the point touched the trip line, barely, and the latch went off so fast it ripped the awl out of his hand and pinned it flat in the dirt. Made a sound like someone's knuckles cracking.

She crouched to see, her knees nearly on his. There was sweat at the base of her throat with dust in it.

"That'd take a finger off."

Pleased with himself, he nodded, then pointed at her hand, then his own, and made a slow pinch. Fingers held wide apart to show the difference, waggled at her. She chuckled that time, her face interested and amused.

"You always like this?"

Like what.

"Showing off."

He put a hand flat to his heart like she'd shot him. Then he nodded, fast, pleased. Yes. Exactly. It's working.

The puff of his chest couldn't be helped when she didn't move her knee. Even moreso when her hand lightly traced one of the shoulder fangs.

"We're here four days. And my name's Teshet, I think we'll have enough time for you to know it well enough."

He put a claw under her chin and tipped it up, slow, and motioned with his other hand: himself, her, his place. Eyebrows up and smug as all hell.

I've got a place up there. Nobody gets to see it.

Teshet stood and brushed the dirt off her knees. "Lead, then, big dog. But if it's just a hole full of rocks, I'm keeping the box."

Vylkh stood, cracked his neck side to side, and started walking backward toward the ridge, his tail going in a slow satisfied wag. He whistled two low notes at her, the way he'd call a hunting partner, and jerked his chin at the path, the two of them heading off on their own.

Hunger had made him sloppy.

The rope bit hard into Vylkh's wrists and ankles, strung tight enough that his shoulders burned. He twisted his head to track the knot work—double loops with a spring tension trigger, amateur but effective—and his ears flattened while his eyes narrowed.

He'd been trailing the scent of something edible through the scrub, stomach growling when the ground gave. Now he hung off the dirt, swaying like a piece of drying meat.

A low growl rumbled out of his throat. His tail lashed in agitation before the cord around his ankles yanked it still. He tried to bend at the waist, claws flexing uselessly in his position.

Whose trap.

The question remained in his head, but his lips curled back from his fangs anyway, showing exactly how he was feeling about being caught. His stomach growled loud, his partner in crime voicing its displeasure at this situation too. He craned his neck, scanning the brush and rock for movement, for whoever set this sloppy thing.

If it was one of the younger hunters playing at glory, he'd make them regret it. If it was prey trying to turn the tables? Well then they were simply his next meal...

His ears perked forward. Footsteps, maybe. Or wind through dry grass. Either way, someone would come eventually....

He huffed through his nose, grudging. Not bad.