“No!” Baru said, from her heart, and then, thinking now of the danger Xe would be in at her side, of the terrible fate that haunted her path, “Yes, yes, go, quickly.”

Xe’s lips brushed Baru’s ear. “Remember,” she said, “you are not alone.”

And she was gone, too.

Execarne peeked out the door behind her. “Jackal grenadiers out there. At least ten of them, coming in from the east. They’ll want me alive, I think.”

He tore the back off a wine cabinet and produced two leathery masks with glazed eyes and bulbous sponge filters over the mouth. As he put his on he cracked the ampule of filtersoak in the nose. Baru tried the same: sharp alcohol stink flooded her sinuses. She coughed, and swore, and through the watercolor smear of the lenses saw Execarne reaching out to her.

“We have to go!”

Baru and Execarne linked hands—the old man’s grip fierce, his face wild with exhilaration—and ducked through the door. Up on the east ridge, tall lanky shapes moved against the sunrise. Oriati grenadiers with black faces, bright eyes, long rapiers. Bombs with thick oily fuses dangled from colorful bandoliers. They looked too wonderful to be real.

Thirty feet away the well beckoned to them with its swinging pump-arm. Iscend and Yawa had already gone down.

The ringing in Baru’s ears died down to a thin hum. Now from the north and west came the sound of voices.

WE ARE THE FIST OF THE PEOPLE. WE ARE THE HAND OF THE MASK.

CAST DOWN YOUR WEAPONS. LOWER YOUR NAKED FACES.

WE ARE HERE.

*   *   *

THE stars fell.

Sulane arced a constellation of rocket flares over the island and the hot light burned the images of the Oriati grenadiers onto Baru’s eyes.

Then the saltgrass on the western edge of the farm made a sound like cut violin-string. Crossbow bolts caught flare light: starlight shrapnel. Grenadiers hit in the face, in the chest, in the prickled hands and pierced knees.

Out of the grass came the red-masked marines. They did not fire or make any sound. On their harnesses they carried blood tampons and corkwrapped cylinders of oil and grenades and ropes and long knives cold and slim and thirsty.

The Oriati threw grenades. Dirt fountained. Grass cratered. The silence died again.

Baru bolted for the well. Execarne came after. Baru thought she might have pissed herself but couldn’t be sure: Wydd preserve her, Hu had fought in this, she had fought and kept her head and lived, the woman eternally a marvel. Baru tripped and stumbled and got up again into a three-limbed scuttle, headfirst right into the rim of the well. She fell back stunned.