As she rumbled past him, Olena smiled and waved. She was clearly enjoying her father’s frustration. Watching her, it stunned him again that he was here, in some crazy-ass country he’d never even known existed, with a beautiful girl who he both knew and didn’t know, with a gangster ace that might destroy them or save them, and with a procession of jokers he could barely talk to but felt willing to stake his life on. He thought of his family, a world away in the suburbs of Baltimore. A quick barrage of ancient memories flashed through his mind, times long gone. What would they think if they knew where he was? Nothing, he figured. They didn’t want to know, wouldn’t care if they did. Forget about them, he thought. Only here and now and these people matter. He pushed his past out of his mind.

He noticed Nurassyl gazing at him from the back of the truck. The joker boy held up a tentacled hand.

Marcus did the same. He mouthed the words the boy was fond of saying, “High-five, bro. What’s up?” He couldn’t help saying them with a Kazakh accent. He figured he’d hear those particular words in the boy’s voice from now on.

The Handsmith, who was trailing behind the truck, stopped beside him. He turned and took in the scene a moment. He didn’t give an indication he saw the vague shapes Marcus did. After a short silence, he said, “Moses.”

“What?” Marcus asked.

The man turned to him. He smiled with one corner of his mouth, revealing the gap of a missing tooth Marcus hadn’t noticed before. “You … Moses.”

“Oh,” Marcus said, “you mean I’m like Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt? Hardly.” He smirked at the idea, though the compliment made him flush. “Like Moses taking you to a promised land called Baikonur…”

The man nodded. “Like Moses to Baikonur. Come, Moses, to Baikonur.” He slipped an arm around Marcus’s shoulder and eased him into motion. Sliding forward beside him, Marcus looked ahead into the moonlit valley on the far side of the ridgeline. The road switched back and forth as it descended, a silver shimmer so bright that the vehicles had begun to cut their lights and inch along it at one with the night.

Good, Marcus thought. This was one migration that was better done in secret. Better, as jokers, that they travel as far as they can unnoticed by the world. Or unnoticed by a god that looks down on it and laughs.

It was close to midnight when some impatient asshole with no sense of time simultaneously rang the doorbell and pounded on the farmhouse door. Mollie, half awake, welcomed the respite from her dreams.

Mom came downstairs a moment later wearing a dead look in her eyes. The same dead look she’d worn since Mollie had taken her to the hospital.

“Mollie.” Her flat voice carried no emotion. “Get your lazy ass upstairs and answer the door.”