In a city called Toledo the lake met a wide river snaking up from the south, and they reined in their horses on the edge of it, a ledge off which there was a fifty-foot drop down to the raging river. There was no longer any road before them; the rubble of the I-80 bridge lay in the river far below.

“What happened here?” asked Kira. The precipice was dizzying, the wind whipping through her hair. “The bridge looks too new to just fall apart like this.”

“Look at the beams,” said Samm, pointing below to the metal infrastructure twisting out of the concrete on their side of the chasm. “This was blown up.”

“That should make you happy,” said Heron to Afa. Afa was turning in circles on his horse Oddjob, ignoring them and muttering threats that Kira guessed were only half directed at the horse.

“We’ll have to go around,” said Samm, pulling Buddy’s head to the left to head back. Kira stayed near the edge, peering across to the far side. The fallen bridge had made a sort of barrier in the river, not big or tall enough to block its flow, but intrusive enough to send the placid river roiling and bubbling over the rubble before smoothing again on the other side.

“Who would have blown it up?” she asked.

“There was a war,” said Heron. “You probably don’t remember it, you were pretty young.”

Kira did her best not to glare at her. “I know there was a war,” she said. “I just don’t understand which side had a good reason to blow up a bridge. You told me the Partials focused on military targets, so they wouldn’t have done it, and the humans wouldn’t have destroyed their own structures.”

“That’s the attitude that started the war,” said Heron, and Kira was surprised by the angry undercurrent in her voice.

“I don’t understand,” said Kira.

Heron looked at her, a mixture of calculation and disdain, then turned and looked out over the river. “Your tacit assumption of sovereignty. This bridge belonged as much to the Partials as it did to the humans.”

“Partials were given property rights in 2064,” said Afa, staring at the road as Oddjob turned him around and around. “These rights were never recognized by state courts, and Partials were still unable to get loans to buy anything anyway. New York Times, Sunday edition, September 24.”

“There’s your answer,” said Samm, pointing down at the line of broken water as the river rolled over the fallen bridge. “There, sticking out of the water about twenty yards out.” Kira looked, following the line of his finger and shading her eyes against the spots of glare off the water.