“No, you don’t,” he said, his voice grinding, threatening against the backdrop of the river’s roar. “And you better tell them to stop where they are or the lady on the bridge is gonna be the least of your worries. Tell them!”

Isaac did it for her, holding his hands up, pushing his arms away from his body several times, urging them to halt, to stay away. Not a single one of them obeyed. Trish was only a hundred meters from them, now, the rest lumbering along behind her. He could see, way in the back, Old Man Frypan trotting as if any step might be his last.

“I warned you,” Timon said. But instead of doing anything, he looked at Letti, maybe assuming that she’d pull out the knife that had killed Kletter. But Letti was still looking up at the clouds, not the slightest sign of concern on her face.

“Please don’t hurt them,” Sadina said. “I swear on this Godhead that you won’t shut up about that if you hurt a single one of them, I won’t care about myself anymore. If it takes my last breath to get it done, you’re dead.”

Isaac had never heard her say anything like it in the entire time he’d known her.

Trish was almost upon them, just seconds away, shouting Sadina’s name.

Letti, seemingly for the first time, noticed the oncoming rush of people. She didn’t reach for a knife or anything else. With an exaggerated sigh, she sat down on the line where the steel of the bridge met the decaying surface of the road.

“Timon, calm yourself and take a seat,” the woman said as the other three looked down at her with shocked expressions. “And whatever you do, don’t try to hurt anybody. This is exactly what we wanted. What we came here for.”

Timon’s eyes met Isaac’s. Isaac shrugged, baffled as to what Letti meant. Timon sat down.

Sadina ran for Trish.

So many sensations, all at once.

Piercing, biting cold. Clothes and hair soaked and heavy. The rush and gurgle of water from all directions. Liquid in his nose and mouth, trying to force itself down his throat. The raw, rough ache of coughing and spitting it back out. Disorientation as he spun and twisted in the river. The pain, as seemingly every part of his body smacked against the rocks.

It all reminded him of something, in an odd place of his mind that thought about such things even as he was being whisked away from the bridge and Roxy, maybe to his death. It reminded him of the time he and Orange had stolen a couple of artillery suits and tried them without a single hour of training. The medium had been air and gravity back then, but the nausea and pain had been just as stark.