“We’ve been here before,” he said.

“We have?”

“When we came out of the Fold the first time. We stopped in the orchard, not very far from the house. I recognized it earlier when we were out shooting.”

I remembered. It seemed like a lifetime ago. The fruit on the trees had been too small and sour to eat.

“How did the Soldat Sol do today?”

“Not bad. Only a few of them have much range. But if we’re lucky, that’s all we’ll need. A lot of them saw action in the First Army, so at least there’s a chance they’ll keep their heads.”

Laughter drifted back to us from the receiving room. Someone—Harshaw, I suspected—had started singing. But in the parlor, it was quiet and I could hear that it had begun to rain.

“Mal,” I said. “Do you think … do you think it’s the amplifiers?”

He frowned, checking the sight on a rifle. “What do you mean?”

“Is that what’s between us? My power and yours? Is that why we became friends, why…” I trailed off.

He picked up another gun, sighted down the barrel. “Maybe that brought us together, but it didn’t make us who we are. It didn’t make you the girl who could get me to laugh when I had nothing. It sure as hell didn’t make me the idiot who took that for granted. Whatever there is between us, we forged it. It belongs to us.” Then he set down the rifle and wiped his hands on a rag.

“Come with me,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me behind him.

We moved through the darkened house. I heard voices singing something bawdy down the hall, footsteps overhead as someone ran from one room to the next. I thought Mal might lead me up the stairs to the bedrooms; I guess I hoped he would, but instead he took me through the east wing of the house, past a silent sewing room, a library, all the way to a windowless vestibule lined with trowels, spades, and dried cuttings.

“Um … delightful?”

“Wait here.” He opened a door I hadn’t seen, tucked into the wall.

In the dim light, I saw it led to some kind of long, narrow conservatory. The rain beat a steady rhythm against the vaulted roof and glazed glass walls. Mal moved deeper into the room, lighting lanterns that rested on the edge of a slender reflecting pool. Apple trees lined the walls, their boughs dense with clusters of white flowers. Their petals lay like a smattering of snow on the red tile floor and floated on the surface of the water.

I trailed Mal down the length of the pool. The air inside was balmy, sweet with apple blossoms and loamy with the rich scent of soil. Outside, the wind rose and howled with the storm, but in here it was as if the seasons had been suspended. I had the strangest sense that we could be anywhere, that the rest of the house had simply fallen away, and we were completely alone.