“Look, Marcus,” Olena whispered.

He opened his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d closed them. Olena’s face swam before his. He lifted an arm to touch her cheek. She clasped his hand, brought it to her lips, and kissed it. Her eyes looked wet with tears as she turned and pointed. “Look, Marcus. I told you this was a place for us.”

With effort, he turned. There, on the street a little ways away, shapes moved. They were strange shapes, and at first he didn’t understand them. He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Then they came closer, and he saw what they were.

Jokers. That’s what the shapes were. A man who limped on legs that weren’t jointed right, that splayed out to either side as he walked. Another with a single horn that curled around his head like a turban. A woman with the face of a toad. Another—man or woman Marcus couldn’t tell—that came on like a hunchbacked, hairy beast of some old horror movie. And still others with mutations small and large. They converged slowly on Marcus and Olena, a silent procession of the virus-twisted.

Marcus had watched them as his vision blurred, unsure whether what he was seeing was real or imagined. Unsure whether to fear them, or to reach out for them as kin. Instead of doing either he’d lost consciousness. Or most of it. He knew that Olena had talked with the jokers. He knew that they’d worked together to lift and move him. He knew he was inside somewhere warm and smoky, smelling of metal and oil. But all of this seemed far away, like none of it really had anything to do with him, until Olena woke him, for the second time that day, by saying, “Don’t sleep, my hero. Soon you can, but not yet.”

Opening his eyes, Marcus at first thought they were in a barn, as the rafters and walls were hung with tools. He could feel the rough contours of the floor through the old quilted blanket he lay on. With effort, he rose to his elbow, leaning back heavily on a sack.

Olena said, “Someone is here to help you.”

The someone stood just behind her, a villager who looked ill at ease. He was a middle-aged man, short and round-faced and Asian-looking, like many of the people Marcus had seen since escaping the arena. Burlap sacks covered his hands, tied in place at the wrists. Behind him the glow of a furnace lit the room with soft yellow light.

“This is Jyrgal,” Olena said. “Around here he is called the Handsmith. You understand? Instead of blacksmith. Handsmith. This is his forge.”

Marcus wondered if the man’s hands were covered because he had burned them. “I don’t need a blacksmith,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

“And this is his son, Nurassyl.”

Marcus hadn’t noticed the boy. He stood mostly hidden behind his father’s legs. His body was shaped like a child draped in a sheet, like a simple ghost costume. His flesh was gelatinous, glistening with moisture. His arms were chubby and he held his fists tight against his chest. He moved not on feet but on a wriggling platform of little nobules. Marcus couldn’t place what they reminded him of for a moment, and then he did. Anemones. They moved him out from behind his father, a smooth glide accompanied by a squelching sound.