The spray of cold stone chips made the blind predator flinch half an inch back, its heat-pits quivering as the dust muddied the air, but it did not turn away from Pip’s warm shell. A wooden staff would not stop six hundred pounds of hungry rock-lizard for more than a heartbeat.
Ashaun did not draw her narrow bell-dagger. She had seen what the drip of saliva from the ceiling had done to the tin lid of the kettle, and she had no wish to feed her only blade—or her bare right hand—into a mouth that melted metal and stone.
Instead, she pivoted on her heel, hooked the wire bail of the camp kettle off the rock with her right thumb, and swung it back against her translucent left stone forearm to get a full-body heave. The kettle was still three-quarters full of water that had been simmering over the steam-crack five minutes ago, hotter by far than any living blood in the gallery.
“Left cleft, Chaska!” Ashaun barked, and hurled the kettle with all the strength of her shoulders down a steep, rubble-choked side fissure to the right.
The tin vessel bounced twice off the limestone wall, burst its lid open on a jutting rib, and went clattering down the dark chute in a rolling cloud of scalding steam and boiling water.
