They reached the south end of the square. The Guard had already left his post at the rusted station doors, market-time duties done for the day.

Rownie jerked one way, pulling Vass with him, and dropped the sack as he bolted the other way, toward the rusted gate. He pushed against the metal latticework and squeezed through, stumbling in. He felt Vass’s hand reach in after him and catch at the edge of his coat. He pulled back.

“Stupid runt!” Vass shouted.

“I have a message from Graba!” Rownie was angry that she wouldn’t let him deliver it, even though there wasn’t really any message to deliver.

“Stupid,” she said. “So stupid. Now the diggers will get you. Can you hear them? Can you hear them behind you?”

Rownie took a step backward, farther in. He didn’t look behind him. “It’s all flooded,” he said. “They dug the tunnel into the River, and now it’s all flooded.” Everyone knew that. The Mayor wanted to build a railcar track between Northside and Southside. He kept trying, but the tunnel kept flooding.

The Mayor also wanted to tear down the ramshackle buildings of Southside and replace them with roads that moved in straight lines. That’s what Graba always said.

“Folks still hear them digging,” Vass told Rownie. “So the diggers are still down there, in the rail tunnel.” She let that thought sink in for a while. It sank. Rownie thought about diggers with skin all gray from soaking in River water. He thought about how they would only remember digging, how they would always move forward and break things in front of them with shovels or pickaxes or just their hands. Diggers were people without hearts, without any will of their own, and they just kept doing whatever task they were set to. Rownie wondered if any of them had struck off downward, disoriented by the flood, and if they might pop out the other side of the world someday. He thought about the tunnels behind him, haunted by digging.

“I’ll protect you,” Vass told him, as sweetly as Vass could say anything. “Come out and carry the sack.”

Rownie stepped backward again. “No,” he said. Now he haunted the tunnels. Now he was something to be afraid of.

Vass spit on the ground. Then she smiled, and it looked like Graba’s smile in miniature. “Where’s my gear oil, runt?” she asked.

Rownie’s heart beat like it wanted to run off without him. “What oil?” Vass had left the house already when Graba gave him the errand. Vass couldn’t have known about it.

“Stop it!” Vass yelled, and Rownie didn’t think she was yelling at him. Her eyes were shut. All the muscles of her face were tightly scrunched. “You can’t! I’m not a Grub. Stop it, stop it!” Vass stumbled away, out of sight. She took the grain sack with her.