She points at Yod­hana, who has entirely stopped ignor­ing her. Every­one is stand­ing now, frozen in place, look­ing anx­iously from Kiddu to Jaruna to Yod­hana.

Now Gil wor­ries weapons are going to start com­ing out. Kripa reaches behind him and puts his hands on his big club. Hat­van reaches inside his robe again. Jaruna, on the other hand, just stands there, look­ing bewil­dered. So does Yod­hana.

Yod­hana looks at the faces star­ing at him, one by one. He turns to Jaruna.

As a mat­ter of fact, Gil does remem­ber the tan-skinned hoplite who defended Bes­tial Lib­er­a­tion, now that she men­tions it—but before he can say so, Yod­hana whips his long-sleeved arm around, point­ing it right at Jaruna.

At the same time, Hat­van moves even quicker: in one motion, he pulls his hand from his robe and lets fly a whip­like weapon with spin­ning stone weights on the end. The weights wrap around Yodhana’s out­stretched arm, jerk­ing it away, and caus­ing him to let go of some­thing long and thin in his hand. It goes fly­ing across the room.

Ayan shrieks—Kripa holds up his giant club, and then brings it down with a sick­en­ing crack against Yodhana’s skull. The native crum­ples, dead before he hits the ground.

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