She let the Fire take her again.
The battle moved on, as guerrilla battles do, off toward the Hill of Landing with its monuments just to the west, and the office buildings beyond it. Nothing much was left behind but broken cars and weapons and no longer valuable bodies.
Tal walked carefully over to where Keylinn was sitting on the edge of a fountain of grouped stone eagles, her chest still panting with hard, rasping breaths. “Are you all right?” he asked. She still clasped the light-rifle in one hand and he removed it very slowly and put it on the ground. Lord Canniff and Sir Thomas Netherall emerged from their hiding places, dirty but safe. “Where’s Spider?”
Spider pulled himself out from under the paisley car. His shirt was ripped. He looked at what was left of their transportation and winced.
Lord Canniff called, “Sondy?”
“Don’t bother,” said Keylinn.
Tal turned back to her. “That was crazy.”
“Yeah. It happens to my clan sometimes.”
“It’s only random luck you weren’t killed.”
She shook her head as though he were being irrational. “They never hit when the Fire is on you.”
Her face glowed with quiet rapture, and he felt a stab of fear. Maybe she’d be all right when they got back uphill. She stood up and walked over to the car. “This one is out of the question. Let’s go see if the pastry truck is operational.”
She walked stiffly. This return to practicality was reassuring, and Tal fell in beside her as they reached the truck.
A smell of fresh apple pie came from the back. “Are you sure you’re all right?” asked Tal. She turned to him. Her braid had come down and her hair hung around her face in tufts. At another time she might have looked foolish, but her eyes were still shining with exaltation.
“Did we miss anybody?” asked Tal. It would be a pity to get shot in front of a load of pies. His voice seemed muffled to his own ears, as though it were coming from a long way off.
She turned to scan the area, and he saw for the first time that a streak of blood, somebody else’s blood, was splattered on the other side of her nose, across her cheek to the comer of her left eye. It was the final straw. He pulled her over to him and put his mouth against hers.
There was a second, not of surprise, but of faint startlement. Then she put her arms around him and things seemed to recede even further.
Somebody was calling him. Had been calling him. He pulled himself away and said, “What?” just as Spider came around the comer of the truck.
Tal’s hands were on Keylinn’s shoulders. Spider said, “Are you okay, Key?”
“She’s fine,” said Tal. “What is it?”
“One of the uniforms left a hand-com on the ground. I’ve been talking to their officer. There’s a squad transport with a bunch of state security coming and they say they’ll escort us to the port.”
“Good,” he said. He put his hands down and followed Spider out into the plaza.
Keylinn walked behind them both, as though she’d get lost if she didn’t, still feeling oddly disoriented. Still feeling Tal’s hands on her shoulders. They rejoined the two knights, who had brought Sondy’s body out beside the fountain. One said, “We want to take him back. To recycle him into the Diamond.” He said it defiantly, as though expecting Tal to argue, but Tal only shrugged.
“If there’s room in the transport, it’s not my affair.”
A groan came from a state security man—more of a boy—on the ground. Keylinn walked over to him. It was the private whose rifle she had taken.
“This one is still alive,” said Tal. “Kill him.”
His eyes were open. Very wide, they were. She knew he could hear, but fear had taken away his voice.
Tal said, “We’re supposed to be neutral and you just took out any number of rebels—not to mention anybody else. This is the only witness.”
“See here—” began Lord Canniff.
“Sir, Adrian will explain this to you when we return,” said Tal. “Meanwhile, shut up.”
When a Graykey swears, cover your ears. Trusting a Graykey—
“I don’t believe he’ll say anything,” she said. “And if he does, we’ll just say he was hallucinating.”
“Why should he hallucinate?”
She reversed the rifle abruptly and brought it down against the side of the soldier’s head, knocking him unconscious. “Because,” she said viciously, “he’s got a head wound.”
She threw the rifle on the ground and walked away. Then she said, “Unless, of course, you insist.”
“No. I don’t insist.” He felt at a total loss.
They sat down the edge of the fountain to await their escort. One of the knights said, “But her marks are on the rifle.”
“This isn’t a murder trial,” she said tiredly. “It’s a war. Nobody’s going to check.”
The other knight—Tom, she’d heard him called—held onto Sondy’s body. Eventually there came the vibration of the squad transport.
Chapter 42
It would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
In contrast to most of the sections of the city they’d just traveled through, the port was busy. A gray shuttle with the huge red circle stamp of Baret Station lifted off on one grid while an out-system ship blinked impatiently on another. The state security escort passed their party through the arrivals and departures building, almost empty when they’d first arrived downhill and now crammed with middle-class Baret Two families who had reason—or believed they had reason—to fear the coming of the Republic. They had blankets spread on the floor, and what they would do when the food ran out was anybody’s guess.
The escort brought them to a man behind a counter at the end of the room. A line of people stood stoically before the counter, holding bags stuffed with their possessions; they watched with hostile eyes as the Diamonders were herded to the front of the line.
The man looked up. He was young, harried, and
