“Silly,” I said, and fell asleep.

10.1: Who plans revenge must dig two graves

The wind had come up, and swept a domed lid of overcast across the night as far as I could see. Which, given the towers in the way, wasn’t far; but I’d seen it over the road into the City, too. In the Night Fair, vendors would be keeping an eye on the sky, a hand on their shutters and awning cranks. If the wind didn’t blow the clouds away, there would be rain. Which was no guarantee that there would be a whirlwind.

LeRoy had driven me to the edge of the Deeps. I’d spent the ride looking out the passenger’s side window of the truck, to keep from looking at him. Even so, I could tell that he was glancing over every few minutes, when the crumbling pavement gave him leave. Whatever he wanted — to ask if he could come along, to ask me to give it up, to cuss me out for undoing his work in getting me out of the City in the first place — I wasn’t strong enough to stand against it. So I’d kept my face to the glass and the growing darkness, and hoped that the cloud cover meant that the Engineers, or random luck, were giving us what we needed.

Josh had wanted to come, too. I’d talked him out of that, at least. I didn’t want anyone else there if Tom Worecski managed to backtrack along my trail. LeRoy was risk enough. I wondered if LeRoy realized that I hadn’t made any provisions for getting out of the City. Something could happen that would leave me alive and in danger if I stayed. But how could I say when and where I’d meet him, or what to do if I didn’t? Besides, alive and still in danger was the least likely possibility.

I had a clean shirt, Large Bob’s nice trousers, the glass bead on a chain around my neck, and not much else. Nothing that might serve as a weapon. I had maybe been rash there. But I didn’t know anything about weapons, and I didn’t want to hurt myself. Or have someone take the gun or knife or whatever away and use it to hurt me. That, at the moment, seemed more pressing than symbolism.

It wasn’t deja vu; I had been here before, in the street, looking up at Ego. But the appropriate haunted-house sky was missing this time behind the building’s halo of little lights. And Frances wasn’t with me. She was in the Gilded West, with Theo, waiting for a brisk Jehovan miracle. For Oya Iansa, Lightning Woman, patron of revolution and change, whose dancing brings the wind. I wondered if she was the pictograph who sounded like Frances. I hoped Theo hadn’t taken too much gear from the Underbridge. If an electrical storm came with the tornado, the club would be full of dancers under the long windows. Oh, gods. I wanted to be on the sound balcony. I wanted to see Robby, and hear Spangler say “fuck” one more time. I wanted it so badly I hurt.