Marked, Not Kept
And Maya stood alone in the middle of a yard full of people trying to get off their knees without looking at her, and understood, in a slow cold wave, that she had just won and that there was nothing whatsoever good about it.
Then Wilder's head turned.
"Maya."
"Don't. Please. Not right now, I can't—"
"Maya."
She looked where he was looking.
Past the trucks, past the six blankets, up at the far end of the lot where the chain fence sagged, somebody was standing.
Not kneeling. Not staggering. Not holding onto anything.
Just standing there in the grey morning with their hands in their pockets, a hundred and forty feet from a thing that had just put twenty-nine elders face-down in the mud, watchi