The scout's name was Beva, and he looked at Max the way people looked at things that walked out of situations that things did not walk out of — with the specific expression of someone whose understanding of a situation was being revised against its will.
He was young. Not adolescent — young in the way of someone who had been given adult responsibility early and had grown into it rather than waiting to grow into it first. His eyes moved from Max's face to his hands to the forest around him in the trained assessment of someone who had been monitoring these trails as a professional function rather than a casual habit.
He said, in Septur, that he needed to take him somewhere. The ring's absorbed knowledge translated it immediately without the ring being present, which still had the quality of a small surprise every time it happened.
