We were the Destroyers that time. Not us exactly, not Rigg and me and the others, but we humans. Ram Odin. The expendables. Garden has had bad luck with living through the arrival of ships from Earth.

Still, this meant that Umbo’s map of time extended from the last moment before humans came until nearly the last moments that humans survived. Almost all his time-shifting had been within the past dozen years, but they had gone back to a time only a few centuries after the establishment of the colonies, when they all went to witness, in Vadeshfold, the battle between the people with facemasks and the people without them. That is, they had all gone except Umbo, because he had had to stay behind as their anchor, so they could return to the time they had left.

Now, though, I don’t need an anchor. Now I could go with them on such an expedition, and bring us all back. Because the whole history of Garden, up to the end, is the past in my mind.

He reached Leaky’s Landing with a few hours to spare. He didn’t want to walk into the roadhouse before he left to go save Kyokay, lest he should cause a copy of himself to pop into existence or, worse, deflect his earlier self enough to make it so he did not figure out the plan that worked to save the reckless boy.

He was looking for an out-of-the-way place to wait, one where he wouldn’t be noticed by his earlier self while he was waiting for an upriver boat. Then he realized: I don’t have to wait. I can jump to the right time. Just because it’s only a few hours doesn’t make it any less possible.

Umbo chose an out-of-the-way place to make the jump in privacy. Not for the first time he wished for Rigg’s path-sense, because Rigg would have known just how heavily trafficked any spot might be. Then again, Rigg couldn’t help him in this case because the paths that would be most pertinent had not yet been laid down in this place. Rigg could not see into the future.

Umbo tried to keep from thinking, Rigg can’t do what I can do. But the effort not to think it was nothing more than another way to think it, while feeling even more guilty and frustrated.

He made the jump forward to the exact time he wanted. To Loaf and Leaky, he would have been gone only an hour.

He walked to the roadhouse door, opened, came inside. “Well, I’m back,” he announced.

Loaf and Leaky looked up from behind the bar, where Loaf was putting away glasses and mugs on the highest shelf.

“Took you long enough,” said Loaf.

“Sorry,” said Umbo.

“Well, did you save him?” asked Loaf.