Jandi saw me glance sidelong at the billowing sky and followed my gaze with a worried frown. His threadbare tank top was stuck to his ribs like a second skin, and his skinny arms were puckered with goose bumps, even with the temp not much below 80 yet. As Daniel motored us around the block to rejoin the convoy, I dug one of my smallest tees out of my backpack and made the boy put it on under his life jacket, then found one for myself.

Couldn’t recall the last time I’d actually felt cold.

The intersection was trashed. Raft debris and loose cargo washed up along the building walls and caught in the trailing ends of the rope bridges. We heard sporadic fighting inside the buildings and on the rooftops, but the gunfire had stopped. As we cleared the corner, two howling Smith women overwhelmed a wounded Rev and shoved him from a third-story window. The swell slammed him against the bricks until he sank.

The raft crews had suffered the worst. They were being taken in tow by the late-show Tommy patrols who were dragging our floating wounded into their boats. I counted at least a dozen casualties being lashed to the biggest raft. No guilt about leaving Adders or Revs to drift out with the tide, but we’d bring our own dead home for the pyres.

“Where’s Zephyr?” I asked Daniel.

“Don’t see her. They were right up front, so with luck, they scrammed uptown when the shooting started.”

Maxine wouldn’t want that, I was sure, but hopefully Jake had overruled her.

At least Rousseau and Doyle were both upright, but deep into a shouting match in the stern of a rocking water taxi. Daniel pulled up to idle nearby.

“They caught us here, they could catch us again, anywhere along the way!” Rousseau argued, his voice and shoulders tight. The ambush had dealt him a heavy blow.

“Were you dreaming we’d get through this unscathed?” Doyle was as bloodied as any Adder, all waving arms and battle-hyped grimaces. “No way! But we got those fuckers on the run now! Got the advantage! Taking the avenue’ll let us pick off the rest as we go. If there are any. Make life easier down the line.”

“In open water, we’ve only weather to battle, with two hours yet of favorable tide.”

“Less,” the taxi’s grizzled skipper muttered.

I waited for Daniel to put in a word, bring up the wind change, but he kept Melville steady in the rolling water, just listening in.

“Tom, I can’t put my people through that again! Too many dead and I . . .”