SHE WENT OUT after dark. Snow swirled about her for the entire walk to a public box, four intersections away. She slid inside and reached for the handset.

Melni punched in a number she’d never used before. One she’d memorized long ago. It would only work once.

A series of chirps followed, then irregular clicking sounds as switchboards in Combra, Tandiel, and who knows where else routed the call into suitable obscurity. Finally there came a single, stern pop, followed by the faint hiss of a successful link. Somewhere on the other side of Gartien, in some dim basement at Riverswidth, an analyst waited for her to speak.

“14772 adrift,” she said. “Requesting guidance. Cover irreparably damaged.”

Another click. The hiss died. She wound the handset’s wire around her finger, unwound it, wound it again. Minutes passed before the click-hiss signaled another connection.

“14772,” someone new said. A gruff woman’s voice, full of authority and age. “Are you in immediate danger?”

“No.”

“Report.”

She laid it out in the barest terms possible. Her risky interview with Valix, the horror that Valix knew all about Melni and her clandestine efforts. Her entry into the Think Tank, and what had happened in that bizarre place. The man she had found already inside. “He was there to kill her, but AV knew him. This fact seemed to surprise him, and she used that to evade his gun.”

“What is her status now?”

“Unknown.”

“Speculate.”

Melni sucked in a nervous breath. “Alive. The room had a space for her to hide. She knows of me, and she knows this other assassin. They look for us, but I think they wish to keep the incursion quiet. There has been no public reaction as of yet. Oh, and you should know that B. Lane is compromised and should be immediately closed.”

“Presume all assets in the city are closed to you.”

Judgment, rebuke, there. “Understood,” Melni said, barely a whisper, her gut twisting like a writhing snake. “What are my orders?”

“This man, where is he now?”

“Nearby. He works alone here, I think. Is he one of ours?”

“Speculate.”

“I have no idea.”

“Speculate.”

“I do not know who he works for.”

“Speculate, 14772.”

Melni racked her mind. She still had no reasonable answer. “One of AV’s competitors. Maybe. I really do not know.”

“You said he was a Southerner.”

“He is, but he’s very…ignorant. Could he be one of the Hollow?”

“Speculate.”

“He said he was.”

“Then he is not.”

Melni gripped the handset. “I know.” Her orders would come next, and “jump from the nearest bridge” seemed a very real possibility.

Time passed. Snow fell outside the public box. The voice said, “He was able to penetrate the Think Tank. AV knew him. He knows things that may be useful. This is what I hear from you. As your cover is blown you are to immediately desist all efforts to reach AV. This man, the assassin, is your new objective.”

Melni tightened her grip. “Kill him?”

“It may come to that. For now stay with him. Find out who he is working for. Find out the nature of his relationship to AV. Keep him out of enemy hands and, above all else, prevent him from completing his mission. At least until we’ve had a chance to assess the situation. Contact again in two days.”

The woman rattled off a number, made Melni repeat it, then disconnected.

—

From a mealhouse she’d never visited before Melni bought spiced curd pies and a large flask of very strong cham. The streets bustled as the end-of-week nightlife began to build. Chin-ups walked along with their customary casual arrogance, but seemed in no greater number than usual. They paid no special attention to her, even when she walked right past them and offered greetings.

Melni half-expected Caswell to be gone when she returned to the prop room, but he remained where she’d left him, sleeping peacefully on the table, a pile of costume jerkins under his head for a pillow. No one else was about. The company was between productions just then, and it would be days yet before the next cycle of prop work began.

The smell of food and cham stirred him. He sat and stretched, then wandered off to the lav. She set the pastries out on the table and poured them each a full steaming cup of the delicious-smelling beverage.

Caswell returned, leaned on the table’s edge, and ate pensively. He tasted each item as if fearing poison, before hunger finally got the better of him. In the end he devoured three pastries in as many bites. Once the cham cooled he guzzled it down. He glanced at the mug, a prop version of a pre-Desolation goblet, appreciatively. “What’s this drink called?”

“Cham,” she said, the gaps in his knowledge now more amusing than surprising.

“Not bad.” He sipped the last few drops and set the goblet aside. “Look, uh, Melanie—”

“Melni.”

“Sorry, yes. Melni. I have to go north. I have supplies cached there. Things that will make my task easier.”

“What sort of things?” she asked.

Instead of answering he turned and rushed to the lav. A few seconds later she heard him gag and then vomit. When he returned a minute later, wiping his pale face with a handcloth, she offered him a sympathetic frown.

“Everything I eat here disagrees with me,” he said.

“That is not good.”

“My supply cache has the nutrients I need. Medicines, too.”

The “nutrients.” How odd. “Where in the North?”

“Got a map?”

It took only a few minutes to find one in the bin of wall adornments at the back of the prop room. The map was antique only in appearance, weathered by hand in this very room. In truth the details were only a decade old.

“Here,” Caswell said, tapping the paper near a lake in the mountains.

A lake just north of Hillstav, where earlier that week four NRD agents had been slain and ritualistically buried. “Some bodies were found near there a few days ago,” she said.

He said nothing for a time. Then, “You’re wondering if that was me. The answer is yes. An unpleasant business but I had no other choice.”

She wanted to ask about the ritual, what reason it had. Instead of placing the bodies in a nearby lake that would have allowed some semblance of a return to Gartien’s heart, Caswell had dug shallow pits in the ground and placed them inside, covering them with dirt. Denying a return via the depths. Perhaps he thought the corpses would take longer to find this way. Melni decided it did not matter. Murder of state police is what mattered. She had killed, too, in the Valix house. That woman in Onvel’s office. They’d both be put to death if captured.

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “at least they will not expect you to return there.”

“Good. I say we leave now then. We’ve already stayed here too long.”

“We must define a plan, figure out—”

“No plan. I hate plans.”

“A plan is what you need to reach this goal, Caswell.”

He clamped his mouth shut as a shadow of anger fell across and then left his face. “Fine. You’ve got something in mind?”

“We will need warmer clothes. And, there is one more place we need to stop first.”

—

By ninth hour the streets were alive with weekend revelers. Men in smart suits of dark blue or darker gray, grinning under square-brimmed hats of the latest fashion. Women in Valix-inspired outfits; slacks with wide belts, white shirts with oversize cuffs at the wrists, and shawls of muted color often clasped at the neck with a bit of gold or silver. They walked in merry groups, at this hour still composed of co-workers seeking to impress their supervisors without the constraints of the office. After midnight professional social duties would give way to the more relaxed company of friends and family. On any other night Melni would be strolling arm in arm with reporters and perhaps an editor from the Weekly, invading one upscale bar and then retreating to establishments more suited to their modest salaries. At midnight she’d be one of the first to beg off, and then it would be a brisk walk to one of the dives her friends from the theater enjoyed for a night of wine and slurred poetry. All to serve her cover, of course, though faced now with the death of her invented persona, Melni was surprised to find how much she would miss such nights and the company she shared them with.

“Is it always so crowded?” Caswell asked.

“It’s seventhday. Work is done, officially, but an evening out with co-workers is an unwritten law. Hardly anyone ever skips, save for illness. To do so might mean lost favor in one’s career.”

“You’ll be missed then?”

“I will, but not enough to raise concern. When I fail to appear at the Weekly on firstday, questions will be asked.” She decided not to add that it was doubtful to take so long. Given the intelligence Alia Valix had so brashly shown her, agents would likely be at the Weekly even now, searching her desk and the file room. Her co-workers were in for a full day of questioning, no doubt, come firstday.

A thought returned to her, that Boran might have given her the invitation to Onvel’s memorial with full knowledge of who she was and what Alia Valix intended to do, that the whole evening had been no more than a setup. That was very likely the case, given everything that had happened, she decided. The idea that she could not rely on Boran’s help anymore felt strangely liberating. The man detested the South. Working with him had always been an act of self-constraint.

Melni led her improbable ally across the bridge into Old Uptown toward her meager flat. She took a circuitous route, in shadow whenever possible. The lights dimmed tenth hour just before they reached her building, plunging the streets into darkness ten times, each for the span of a heartbeat.

With the light outside her window gone, Melni saw backlit shapes moving behind the drawn curtain of her window.

She pulled Caswell into an alcove and waited.

“What is it?” he asked.

Melni nodded toward her window. “Third up, one column from the edge. My home, and they are inside.”

“So fuck it. We leave.”

“I…can guess the meaning of that…And no. There is something I need inside.” She glanced about. There were no out-of-place cruisers parked on the road. Whoever was inside had either walked here or been left to watch the place.

Caswell cleared his throat. “We’re disguised. Why not just go up there and pretend to be friends of yours? Everyone’s supposed to be out with their co-workers, and you didn’t show. We were worried.”

“Not bad,” she admitted. “You had better take the lead, though. That might seem odd, the man taking lead, but if they recognize me…”

“Fine.”

With her guidance Caswell strode across the street and into the foyer of her building. They ignored the callbox and went for the stepwell. He took no care to quiet his footfalls and even uttered a few mumbled bits of conversation to sell the ruse.

On her floor he stopped and removed the heavy overcoat she’d selected for him, laying it over the rail. “Does your door chain from the inside?”

“Chain?”

“Some kind of secondary lock. Or, maybe a peephole?”

“It is just a door.”

He nodded and started down the hall, letting her tugs on his

sleeve guide him to the right place. At her door he stopped and ushered her to one side. She set to pretending to fix her shawl’s clasp, keeping her face carefully low and turned from the door.

Caswell raised his fist and rapped on the door with his knuckles, three times. Death’s knock.

“What are you doing that for?” she rasped, baffled.

He glanced at her, confused, when the lever began to rattle from the other side.

The door cracked open an inch. “Who’s—”

Melni groped for words that might buy time.

Caswell, however, kicked out. The door flung inward. With a heavy smack it propelled the man behind it backward. He yelped like a wounded cani. Caswell did not stop. His reactions were lightning quick, a warrior driven by pure instinct. And something else, too. Something she couldn’t quite put her hand on. While she stood there trying to analyze the threats and map out a plan of attack, he was inside, fighting them. Someone roared in alarm, then came the jarring bang of pistol fire. One shot. Across the hall from Melni a bullet buried itself in the wall with a shower of dust.

She ducked beside the doorframe and chanced a glance in. A chin-up lay on the ground in front of Caswell, scrambling backward in abject surprise. Another, an NRD officer she thought, stood in her kitchen, pistol clasped between two hands, vapor curling from the barrel.

Caswell dove on the one that had fallen, simultaneously avoiding the aim of the shooter in the room beyond. The man in the kitchen held fire, and retrained his weapon—on her. She ducked to her left as another whipcrack sound shattered the air. Shards of wood exploded from the doorframe just inches from her right ear. The impact shifted something within her. She had to act. She’d die here if she didn’t. Caswell, too. Melni swung herself around the door. She grabbed a heavy book from the table beside the door and flung it toward the kitchen. The volume spread open like a bird taking flight, pages flapping. The gun went off again, right through the thick mess of flying paper, throwing a plume of scraps outward like tossed snow. The book sailed on and hit the agent square in the face with more force than she’d dared hope. The man twisted as the impact came, slipped on the tile floor, and went down behind the serving counter.

Caswell and the chin-up grappled on the floor, fighting for another drawn pistol. Melni leapt over them and rounded the corner of the serving counter at a half crouch. She had to fight back her own mind, dash away her own screaming conscience that urged caution. Melni had trained in close-quarters combat; all Riverswidth agents did. But that had been almost two years ago, and she’d never once needed to use it. Some part of her suddenly understood the constant repetition of those sessions. Her actions happened before she could think. Indeed her own thoughts were contrary to what her body did. She came in fists raised just as the NRD agent managed to recover. He swung his weapon up. Melni slapped it aside with the palm of one hand as he fired. Compressed air exploded from the barrel, tore at the side of her cheek. The violent noise drowned her sense of hearing into a mess of muffled tones under a high-pitched ringing. She jabbed with her other hand, extended knuckles into his neck, hard. Her aim was off, hit the collarbone as the man’s gun clattered across the countertop and over the other side. Now they were equal. He squared on her, fists up and ready. In his eyes she saw nothing but calm calculation, and fear coursed through her. An NRD agent, one of their elite. Against her, an analyst. The girl who could speculate.

He struck, his punch grazing her forehead as she leapt back. The kitchen was tiny, her back now inches from the wall. He advanced, his mouth curling into a snarl. Another punch, she blocked with her forearm. Pain exploded from wrist to elbow. Somehow she countered with a jab toward his abdomen. He’d expected it, took it with clenched teeth and a groan, then retaliated. A fierce swing, meaty left fist. Melni ducked under it, a mistake. His right was the real blow, and it came in a blur and crashed brutally against her jaw. Stars swam before her eyes. Her knees buckled. Melni tried to get her fists up in desperate defense for what was to come next.

A hiss-crack sound filled the air, loud despite her already stinging ears. The NRD agent’s head snapped to the right, and suddenly the cabinet beside him was dotted with blood and clumps of brain matter. The man collapsed where he stood, his eyes on her the whole way down.

She glanced left, stupefied. Caswell stood there, holding the agent’s own pistol in one hand. His other hand was covered in blood, and behind him the chin-up lay motionless on the floor, facedown.

“Whatever you needed to get here, you’d better do it fast,” he said.

Melni blinked away her shock and the blinding pain in her jaw. “Watch…watch the door,” she managed.

He nodded and moved out into the hallway, glanced in both directions, then came back inside and pushed the door closed. Melni left him there and went to the darkroom.

There was paper everywhere, scattered like the red leaves of return. Bottles of solvent lay in their own spilled contents on the floor. Her camera on the table had been smashed to pieces. The finality of what she’d just been through numbed the sight of all this. Her mission was over, there could be no doubt about that now. Her life here, everything she worked for, was gone. Worse, it would set back the South’s efforts to unravel Alia Valix’s genius for a year or more.

What now? Alone she would have no doubts about the next step: Go south, as quickly as possible. Contact no one, do not look back. Just…flee.

But the stranger changed everything. An assassin. A damned good one by all appearances, despite his strange mannerisms and…well, strange everything. She’d been ordered to bring him in. And he wanted her to take him farther north, away from the Desolation and the safety that lay beyond.

Melni opened the air duct under the table. It showed no signs of being tampered with. Still, she held her breath as she reached inside, so far her shoulder pressed painfully against the opening in the wall. She gasped with relief when her fingers brushed the small piece of twine. Some gentle coaxing and she had it. Seconds later the bundle of fabric to which the twine was attached came sliding out. She took the whole thing under her arm and left the room.

Caswell had dragged both bodies behind the kitchen counter. He offered her one of their guns, but she declined. “I have my own in here,” she said, patting the bundle.

He nodded at that and stuffed the extra weapon in the belt of his pants. She saw the glint of metal inside his coat, and a wooden handle. One of her carving knives, concealed with a makeshift harness of string from one of the cabinets. Resourceful, this one.

“We really must leave now,” she said.

“Right. Lead on.” His voice bore the hint of pain.

Melni glanced at him. Again she saw the pale skin, the sweat on the brow, and the colorless lips. He shivered despite the warmth in the room. “Do you become ill after every fight?” she asked.

He grunted a laugh at that. “Another mental trick,” he said, as if that explained everything.

She wanted to ask more, but there were sirens outside. Distant but growing.