Temoc marched toward the meeting tent. He stopped to heal a young man’s broken leg, one hand steadying the knee, the other hand pulling from the ankle. A prayer to Healer Olam, a breath of divinity in his touch, and hunger. The gods smelled blood.
None here, he told them. The world has changed.
He just couldn’t offer any proof of that at the moment.
He healed the boy’s leg, and a woman’s bleeding scalp wound, and fused cracks in a fat man’s ribs. They followed. He saw Kapania Kemal gathering followers, with Bill by her side. He walked on. If anyone tried to stop him, he did not notice.
He found Chel guarding the tent. She saluted him. “They’re safe.”
“Did anyone…” He trailed off, couldn’t bear to say the words—they were too big to fit out his mouth.
“No.”
“We’re blocked in. All the roads going north, at least.”
“What will you do?”
He frowned. “Take my wife and son home.”
“Will you come back?”
“I don’t know,” he said, meaning “no.” And, when she did not answer, only stared at him unmoved: “You should go. Take as many as you can. This will get worse.”
“Before it gets better?”
“Before it gets worse.”
“My friends are here,” she said. “My people.” And he heard after that: yours, too.
“I know.” And I am sorry. “I need to take care of my family.”
“What should we do, Temoc?”
“I told you. Leave.”
“I can’t.” Desperation. Fear. Controlled, before her men. She would have been a good commander in the Wars, if there had been woman commanders then. “Help me, even if you’re going to take Mina and Caleb.” Your wife and son, again unsaid, who I have kept safe, your wife and son to whom I have done my duty as a soldier. Expecting you to do your duty to me in turn, as commander.
With the shreds of his god-power he pulled her followers’ eyes to him. “Chaos will pose a greater threat than Wardens at first. Protect these people.” He set his hand on Chel’s arm, felt her strength. “They will follow you.”
“Thank you,” she said. He saw her marshal the will to speak again without shaking. “Get out of here, sir.”
He entered the tent.
Mina sat inside, helping Caleb play solitaire. When the tent flap opened she spun toward the sudden light, one hand raised to ward off brilliance or a blow.
“We’re going,” he said.
“Caleb, it’s time.” The boy gathered his cards, wrapped them in silk, and slid them into their box.
“What’s happened?” Caleb said.
She hugged him. Blood from his cheek marked hers.
“I didn’t know this would happen. I swear. I thought—” What? There were words to use, if he could remember them, if the memory of Chel’s eyes hadn’t torn them all away. Lead us. “No,” was a start, but what came after? “We have to leave.”
“I’ll carry Caleb.”
“I will,” he said. “I’m stronger.”
“Let me do something, dammit.”
“Help me get us out of here. That’s enough.”
She wanted to know more: about Chel, or the Major, about what he would have done if she and Caleb did not exist. Unasked, unanswered questions fluttered about their heads like bats, terrifying and terrified at once.
Temoc lifted Caleb and led Mina from the tent. Chel saluted as they emerged, and Mina broke stride to salute her back. They pushed through the crowd to Bloodletter’s, where a barrier blocked their path—but the barriers didn’t run through buildings, only closed off streets. Temoc kicked down a shop’s door and they fled through connecting rooms into an alley behind the nightmare wall. They ran down empty streets beneath circling Couatl—an anonymous family homeward bound. Wardens rolled past in black wagons toward the siege.
They reached home. Their courtyard seemed unchanged and alien at once, as if every surface and object had been repainted a subtly different color. The apartment still smelled of breakfast. Temoc set his son down and sat, and Mina sat, too. They breathed in the shadows across from one another, and were afraid.