Madder still: to find, after a long run through twisting alleys, an open post office. To follow Umar in, watch him empty the steel chest’s contents into a cardboard box, tape the box shut, and write an address Corbin could not read. A clerk waited behind the desk, cheek puddled around his knuckles, bored, as if the day were sunless due to rain. The clerk looked twice at Umar’s bare chest, but only twice. “Anything fragile, liquid, perishable, or hazardous?”

“No,” Umar said, and paid what he was asked.

“What the hells did we just do?” Corbin shouted at him when they were safe in the empty street again, if anywhere beneath that sky could be called safe.

“We sent the package,” Umar said. “Now, you will lead us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Seril has touched you.” Umar touched Corbin’s forehead. “We have seen to the weapon. Now we must strike. Some within this city pray to her. She hides herself from me, but you can follow her. Lead me to them, and she will suffer.”

The words opened Corbin’s mind. He had been lost in the dream of Umar, carried in the big man’s wake. But Corbin heard the prayers Umar meant, the moonlit surf that washed through his nightmares. He heard his girls’ voices in that song. The world was mad. Great powers broke his family apart. Umar would help him stop all that.

He staggered west, following a distant song.

62

62

Tara climbed the mountain to meet her Goddess.

She walked steep trails until she found an iron ladder riveted to living stone. The ladder’s rungs chafed her hands. Fortunately she kept her nails short, and wore sensible shoes.

By three rungs she’d climbed past the treetops. Pines grew tall in these western woods. She’d never been northwest to Regis or the Maw, but people said the trees there were taller than mountains, older than the Imperium, older than most gods: broad, deep, ancient, and invulnerable.

The higher you climbed, the smaller you felt. The mining camp below might have been a toy for an older child—no one would trust a toddler with parts so tiny.

She tore her jacket as she pulled herself onto a ledge. If she made it home, she’d look a sight before the court: wrinkled and ripped and bruised, sweat-caked, hadn’t showered in days; one advantage of slacks over skirts was that it wouldn’t be obvious she had not shaved either. Appearance mattered in court. Everything mattered—everything you did, everything you were, told a story to the Judge, to the opposing counsel, to the world.

She wished there was time to climb back down, make ablutions in camp, fix her suit. But while appearances mattered, court dates mattered more. There was no way for her to fly to Alt Coulumb in time, which left one option she did not like.