They pushed up the last stretch of stairwell and out onto the flat roof with its rusted ventilators. The air was colder than she’d expected on an August evening, cold and with a feeling of chill beneath that. Black clouds were piling up above. Dúnedain ohtar had lit green smoke flares at each corner of the roof and then those of them still hale knelt behind the low coping at the edge, bundles of arrows at hand. Ritva and Ian did likewise; he looked down and murmured: “High enough.”

They looked at each other gravely; that meant high enough for a final leap, if worse came to worst. Then motion caught her eye.

“Troops here!” she shouted, and it was echoed moments later from all four sides of the building.

The Boise soldiers were moderate-sized dolls from four tall stories up; she could hear voices and make out words when someone shouted. They seemed to be crossbowmen in mail shirts mostly, arriving first on bicycles and then stacking them and taking up firing positions; then regular infantry, hundreds of them, tramping at the double. That drowned out the voices, until they came to a halt with an earthquake stamp.

An officer stood forth, and raised a speaking-trumpet to his mouth. “Terrorists!” the amplified voice blared. “You are surrounded by overwhelming force! There is no escape! Surrender!”

Ritva grinned. Ian chuckled. “There’s a flaw in his logic,” the man from Drumheller said.

She raised her face and shouted back to point it out: “If you’re so overwhelming, yrch, come up and make us surrender!”

From the stir and growl along the serried ranks of eagle-and-thunderbolt shields, they wanted to do just that. Astrid came up behind the pair, with the Thurstons. The growl grew louder.

“There’s blood on the face of the President’s sister!” the officer shouted, and there was genuine rage in his voice. “We demand she be given medical attention immediately, or you’ll be a week dying!”

Astrid had a speaking-trumpet of her own; it had been a good bet that they’d need one at some point in this mission.

“It isn’t her blood, good sir,” she said, loud but not shouting. “Fighting is messy.”

She handed her canteen to Cecile Thurston, who poured water on a handkerchief and wiped her daughter’s face; that had the added virtue of getting rid of the drying tear-tracks.

“I’m fine, see?” the girl called. “We’re all OK, Mom and Janie and little Lawrence. And Juliet,” she added as an afterthought.

Ritva and Ian grinned at each other; there wasn’t much love lost there. The girl looked as if she would go on, but Astrid murmured softly to her: “No, not yet. Too risky.”