MasukPOV: Odalys Brigid called the meeting, and she called it in the quarry, because she said that nothing important was ever decided in a house with only one door.We met on the sixth evening after the crossroads, in the great side cavern where Ilsabet had once caught Percival Linthwaite in his lie. It had been swept and scrubbed. Someone had hung a row of lanterns along the stone walls, and set a long plank table with benches, and put a jar of wildflowers in the middle, a small, stubborn, ridiculous splash of yellow in all that gray. There were fifteen of us. Brigid at the head, in her scorched fire jacket. Ambrose, at her right hand, lean and silent, with a new ledger under his elbow. Danny and Wren, side by side, with Pike and Tuck behind them. Osric, with a bandaged foot. Rhydian, with Mara. Emrys, with his clipboard. Ferran, because he would not be left behind. Ilsabet, with a small knitting bag she had brought, I suspected, out of nerves."I'll be brief," said Brigid. "I'm told i
POV: OdalysI went to see the prisoners two days later, because I could not put it off any longer.They were being held at Danny's crossroads, in the cellar of the ruined gas station. It was a low, damp, concrete space that had once stored tires and motor oil, and Danny and his men had done what they could with it. Straw on the floor. A bucket of water. A single lantern hanging from a hook. Eleven men sat on the straw in a ragged line against the wall, with their hands bound loosely in front of them, looking at nothing.Ten of them looked up as I came down the stairs. The eleventh did not."Miss Rennick," said Sergeant Tolliver, and tried to get to his feet."Please. Sit."He sat. He looked ten years older than he had on the road. His big red face had gone slack and gray, and there was a bruise on his temple where somebody had hit him, in the confusion, with a rifle butt. I had brought a bag of Greta's bread, and a flask of broth, and I knelt and passed them along the line, one to ea
POV: OdalysIlsabet did not read the letter at once.She turned the cream-colored page face down on the table, folded her hands over it, and sat for a while looking at the cat in her lap. The lamp hissed. Somewhere down the corridor, a tap dripped, slow and regular, like the ticking of a very small clock. I did not speak. I had learned, in two months, that when my aunt went quiet like that, the quiet was not empty. It was full, and careful, and she was choosing which part to say first."Would you fetch Dr. Ashgrove?" she said at last. "I'd like him here. It concerns him, in a way. And I would rather only say it once."I fetched him. He came with his arm in a sling and his face the color of paper, and lowered himself into the chair across from her with a grunt, and said nothing. I sat beside him. Ilsabet looked at the two of us, one after the other, and gave a small, rueful smile."You look like a pair of schoolchildren," she said. "Don't. It isn't a terrible story. It's only an old o
POV: OdalysWe took Ilsabet home that evening, in the tow truck, with her feet on a folded blanket and her head on my shoulder.It was nearly dark when the hill came up out of the dusk. The smoke had died away, and the whole long slope lay quiet and black against a sky of washed-out rose. Somebody had lit a lantern at the north hatch. It swung gently in the wind, a small yellow light in the great gray silence, and I thought, with a pang that went through me like a blade, It looked like a house.They were all waiting. They stood in a ragged line on the broken stone before the blackened hole of the hatch, in the lantern light. Greta, in her singed apron. Thaddeus, with his arm in its sling. Ingrid, with her hair brushed and her face washed, holding Pim by the hand. And Ferran, pale as a ghost, in a clean shirt, propped against a boulder with a rifle he could not possibly lift.Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Ilsabet lifted her head from my shoulder, and I felt her go still."Auntie!"It was
POV: OdalysFor about three seconds, nobody did anything at all.It is a curious thing, the silence of an entire road. I have thought of it often since. The wind stopped. A single crow lifted off the water tower, with a clatter of wings. In front of me, Lieutenant Harrow's finger moved on the trigger, and I saw it, a small white tightening, and every nerve in my body went cold and bright and absolutely clear.Now, I thought.He had told me exactly what would happen if anything appeared on that road. I did it anyway, because this would not appear anywhere near my aunt, and because the one thing a man cannot do, in the half-second after a shock like that, is both flinch and fire. I did not decide to do it. I only did. I closed my eyes, and reached for the white room, and thought, with all the force I had, of the long steel shelves and the rows of dark, heavy crates. Forty feet away, on the asphalt in front of Harrow's lead truck, I saw it, the smooth gray road, the black tires, the dar
POV: Odalys We reached the crossroads at ten minutes past ten, and the trucks were already there.I saw them from a mile off. We came up the river road from the south at a flat run, with Rhydian driving and the engine screaming, and the whole shimmering gray distance opened out in front of us. The ruined gas station. The water tower. The long, ugly line of cars across the northern road. And drawn up in front of the barricade, nose to tail, with their engines idling and their black armor shining in the thin sunlight, two long black trucks with a golden lantern on each door."Slow down," I said.Rhydian eased off the gas. He killed the engine a hundred yards from the rear truck, and we coasted in silence and stopped, with the tow truck's nose pointing straight at their tailgate. Nobody got out."Now what?" said Thaddeus."We wait.""For what?""For Danny."We could see the whole scene from where we sat. The barricade was shut. Two cars had been dragged across the road, with a third we







