“For now,” Kintyre says, and helps him limp around the counter.
The answer of whose blood is on his shirt becomes clear when the skinny volunteer from the Green Room doors follows after him, the back of his forearm showing a long, deep defensive wound that is matched by the one on his forehead. Clearly he’d raised his arm to protect his face from some sort of flying debris. There are paper napkins stuck to the edges of the wounds where Ichiro had tried to stop the bleeding.
“Come on,” Kintyre tells them. “Grab whatever you think we’ll need—water skins, bandages, ointments, what food you can, and we will set up a camp in the far room there.”
“Water skins?” the skinny volunteer echoes, looking dazed. He was probably concussed by whatever caused the gash to his arm and forehead. All the same, the two lads obey, and a handful of other people—a mix of all ages and ethnicities—emerge from behind the counters and under carts at their urging.
Bevel goes over to a mother holding her sniffling baby tight to her chest—they are both extremely dark-complected, their hair in matching tight braids along their scalps, their eyes both wide, white, fearful circles in their faces. The side of the mother’s face and the backs of her hands are covered with fine cuts from protecting her child.
“Here,” Bevel says, and takes the babe from its dazed mother. The child, like all children around Bevel Dom, immediately ceases to fuss and stares up at his face in fascinated, charmed awe. “There now. Much better, isn’t it? You’re all right now, wee thing. Look at you. Regular Queen of the Pirates, you are. Follow us.”
The mother, as charmed as her child, stoops for the always present diaper bag and shoulders it. I know the weight of such bags intimately, and watching my brother-in-law cradling someone else’s baby, I find I miss mine fiercely. But again, I am glad she is not here. Others emerge from the shadows in the corners, from under gaming tables. Everyone sports defensive cuts and bruises, everyone is covered liberally with dust, but it seems as if no one save the skinny volunteer is deeply, dangerously wounded. Good.
Kintyre leads the caravan, shuffling and limping, to the ballroom. A dozen more people emerge from the side rooms, about a third of them in volunteer shirts, and another third in cosplay. Several are thankfully carrying plastic first aid kits.
When we reach the ballroom doors, we see that there are about a hundred people altogether. Several of the able-bodied men and women help Kintyre yank the main doors closed behind us. They mostly fit, even if they cannot close all the way.
Bevel leads his ragtag refugees to the corner of overturned and trampled chairs to the left of the stage. The stage itself is empty, Elgar’s club chair overturned. The projector screen is crumpled on the stage floor, the fly gallery above it a ragged mess of hanging wires and ropes.
“Best nobody goes up there,” he says, peering up at the rigging from the lip of the stage. “Is there an exit at the back?”
“Yeah, into the corridors,” one of the volunteers says, and Bevel nods.
“Right, take some folks and block it up best you can with chairs or whatever you find. Anything to make it so that if someone comes in that way, we’ll hear it, and they’ll have to go slow.”
“Yeah, but . . . I mean, who are you trying to keep out?”
Bevel just stares at her evenly, until she swallows hard, nods, and does as she’s asked, fear and curiosity on her face. Kintyre would have shouted to get it done. But Bevel has always been more subtle than his trothed.
Kintyre, done with the doors, crosses the room to Bevel. He scoops the child out of his trothed’s hands, placing her back in her mother’s embrace, then wraps his arms around Bevel’s shoulders and pulls the shorter man tight against his chest. He lowers his face to Bevel’s neck, whispering something in his ear, or simply taking in the scent. Then Kintyre pulls back, just enough for me to hear: “We’ve just vanished, and they’ll never know . . .”
Kintyre says it in a long, hitching rush, and suddenly, I feel horrid for intruding on what is clearly a deeply personal moment.
“I know. It’s torture,” Bevel soothes back, his hands sweeping down my brother’s spine. “It’s awful. But you have to keep moving. These people need us.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
We join Pip, Ahbni, and Elgar where they are seated in a small clump, looking shaken and anxious. Ahbni, especially, looks as if she is about to vomit. Shock can be vicious, and I cast around for a blanket and some water. I find the latter, and take the Shadow’s Cloak from Bevel for the former.
“Thanks,” Ahbni says, but it is hollow, automatic. She is staring at the wall, seeing nothing, teeth chattering. Her fingers curl into the layers of fine cloth.
“Right,” Pip says, and nods to herself, firm, shaking herself from her own shocked funk. “Right. Okay. Okay. So, now what? What’s the plan, my brawny boys?”
“You need to rest,” I tell her, and she shakes her head, then winces. She looks feverish, and is still shaking slightly, sweat beading on her forehead and upper lip as she tries to hide how difficult even walking to the ballroom had been. “Don’t argue. That is our first priority.”
“Rest, and then what?” Pip asks, mulish. “Forsyth, we can’t just . . . it’s not working. Everything we’re doing, it’s just endangering people, it’s just making things worse. We don’t know where he is, and if we keep blundering around, then who else is going to get hurt?”
“Do you know of any other way to draw out the Viceroy?” Kintyre says, impatient.
“Maybe . . . I don’t know . . .” Pip says and looks over at Elgar. “Maybe if you Wrote—”
“Absolutely not!” I shout. “Pip, this is
