Bring me the story! This command became our lives. Rather than a slow, bleary-eyed stagger down to the gallery, my day would begin—in the deepest part of the night—with the telephone ringing. I would fumble for the phone, offer a mumbled “Hello?” A voice, usually Lacond’s, sometimes his assistant, would whisper “123 So-and-so Street—there’s been a bombing.” If the phones weren’t working, it would be a knock on the door from a runner, usually Sybel, who’d taken the job because there was nothing else for him in the city. Where once Sybel had dressed outrageously, now he wore clothes that allowed him to blend right into the wall. “To each time and place its own apparel,” he told me. “Not that I don’t miss the bad old days.” (Miss them? He was still living them. Acting as a runner for a broadsheet gave him a certain amount of neutrality in sections of the city critical for him to reach if he wanted to continue providing “substances to those who desire them,” as he was fond of saying. It certainly made it more convenient for Sybel to slip me my “peace of mind,” as he called the tincture I required. As for Sybel’s wartime clothes, they hardly taxed his skill at camouflage. You should have seen what he wore while in his natural element, the trees. Except … you couldn’t see him there.)

I would then rush into a shirt and trousers—the only practical clothes for a woman in such circumstances—shove big black boots over cold feet—and careen out the door, pen and notebook clutched in one hand. In my pants pocket, the dried mushrooms Duncan had given me. If a spore bomb exploded near me, I was to swallow them as an antidote. Of course, this only helped against F&L’s unconventional weapons. I would still be vulnerable to the shrapnel bombs of H&S.

I cannot think—through all of our transformations of position, location, and function—of a change more bone-crunching than that which made us reporters. I had never counted physical endurance among my attributes, but now I had to call on hidden reserves almost every day. I kept spraining my ankles, too, whether running toward a story (or away from one that had proven too hostile), walking across an uneven island of pavement disfigured by fungi, or fighting to avoid being trampled by a mob of fleeing citizens. Eventually, I wrapped both ankles in bandages before I went out, hoping that the extra support would help.

Considering the ease with which death had found our father, it can only be luck that saved us. Sometimes, as we stared at the smoldering remains of a grocery store, the clerks reduced to red ash, the stench unbearable, I wondered if I wasn’t trying to kill myself all over again.