Flying slope beneath my feet, movement all around me, screams and shots—I am racing toward a few wan lights that illuminate a window with printed gingham curtains, a homely sort of porch with a box planter, pale flowers in the lamp light the petals throwing shadows over their own blossoms. A shriek as a man swings to the ground not far from me his knee blown out. Without a mind I run over haul him up with his arm on my shoulder and propel him down toward the planter and the gingham curtains. He is screaming in my ear so loud I think my head will split. My hand cups his ribs I can feel them pump—he passes out and we both plunge forward. I splint his leg but he remains unconscious—someone ploughs into me from above and we tangle head over heels rolling down the slope. This person kicks loose from me and I am left rubbing my bruises and craning my eyes up.

I try climbing back up to the man I left but bodies whip past me I can feel the thud of their air go by—I can’t see anything. I turn and look again to the porch light, put it due behind me and climb up. I can’t find the wounded man. Hands take hold of me—Silichieh is bellowing in my face, calling me names—I try to explain but my voice is coming out of me by way of the ground and I can’t make myself understood and he is dragging me down the slope toward the city. I am not released.

Now I am sent staggering forward on level ground, I feel cobbles under my feet. I look up at the lamp, the planter and the curtained windows above it; I see two horror-stricken faces there in the glass, staring out at me.

*

The camp is still where it was, everything though is scattered. I look in on Nardac, whom I had entrusted to a trained attendant before I left. Evidently, she has been unconscious for days. Her wound looks like a charred spot in a pile of rags, but it hasn’t festered. Gazing into her eyes I see she is a living corpse.

...

“If they capture you, they’ll kill you.”

“You think Makemin won’t?”

Thrushchurl sits nearly knee-to-knee with me back in camp, in our tent, on our cots. I’ve told him what I saw.

“But by sea—if I could get a ship, would you come with me?”

He lies down on his side, two black crescents still looking at me.

“They’ll kill you, you know,” he says conversationally, softly. “If you haven’t a pass to leave the harbor, they’ll stop you.”

A scrape on the ground outside and an Edek bursts into the tent, her attendant reelingly visible outside and behind him. She seizes me by the front of my uniform and drags my face near to hers—I hear the faint, quick breath through the fabric—the pits of her eyes bore into me—in panic I feel myself become weightless falling in all directions—the grip on my clothes is gone, and everything else.