“But we’re going to leave at once. Today. Close down the roadhouse. I just need time to get some friends to look in on the place so it doesn’t get taken over by squatters till we come back.”

“Where are you going?” asked Umbo.

“To Vadeshfold,” said Loaf. “Apparently having a facemask made me so virile and vigorous that Leaky wants one, too.”

Umbo was stunned. “Are you serious?”

Leaky leaned in close. “Look at my pretty pretty face. You think I’m afraid a facemask might be too much improvement?”

“But why?” asked Umbo.

“She’s afraid she can’t keep up with me,” said Loaf. They laughed like conspirators in a particularly fiendish crime.

Umbo realized it so suddenly that he blurted it out. “You don’t want to wait to see if you can have children now just by rejuvenating Loaf.”

“We don’t want it to be anyone’s fault that we took so long conceiving,” said Loaf. “So she wants a facemask to heal everything that’s wrong with both our bodies.”

“I just want to be as athletic as he is,” said Leaky.

“She just wants to be able to chop wood with exquisite accuracy,” said Umbo. “But it might take more than a facemask to confer a talent like that on her.”

“I need you to come with us so we can get through the Wall,” said Loaf. “But you don’t have to stay with us.”

“Where exactly would I go?” asked Umbo. “I have no reason to come back here without you.”

Hardly were the words out of his mouth than he realized that there was something he needed very badly to do. But it could wait until they got back. That was the nice thing about the past—it stayed right where you put it until you needed to pick it up again.

Chapter 5: Burning House

CHAPTER 5

Burning House

Rigg had planned to make his tour of the wallfolds by himself. He didn’t want to make conversation with anybody, and he didn’t want to have to worry about protecting someone else. Truth to tell, he would have welcomed Umbo. But not the Umbo of today—what he wished for was the Umbo he had set out with years before. Before the rivalry. Though perhaps there was never a time before rivalry—just a time before Rigg knew about it.

What Rigg certainly did not want was to travel with any of the expendables. Even if he thought they could be trusted, he couldn’t get past the fact that they all looked like Father. They all were Father. He had spent his childhood traveling with an expendable. Learning everything from him. It. Subservient to it. Until it pretended to die and thrust him onto this path which was leading . . . somewhere.