Sveta’s hand went out. She missed the gun, but stopped extending her arm. It came to rest on his arm, fingers hooking over the top, and pulled it back and away.

Wretch up, I flew into the floor beneath the man’s feet. Already damaged, it broke further, the floor under him becoming a slope.

I reached out to catch, and got my hand around the gun. He fell the rest of the way, his hands out, wrists catching the worst of the impact on uneven ground. He fell to his side a moment later, groaning. The timing of the fall was weirdly off, but only because he’d had to figure out how to pull back and not be resting his upper body weight on two injured wrists.

The other guy put his hands up.

“Can you do cuffs?” I asked Capricorn.

“I can. I can splint, while I’m at it,” he said. He bent down by the guy. “If I do it wrong, though, it’s going to be fifteen pounds of rock hanging off of those hands of yours. You going to cooperate?”

The guy on the ground below spat.

“Yeah. Big man. Keep those arms still,” Capricorn said. He gave me a look, eyes visible behind the eyeholes of his helm.

The door cracked open. The woman peered out.

“Do we need to worry about you too?” I asked her.

“No. Are you still offering that way out?”

“Yeah. Come on, hurry up,” I said.

“Sorry my husband’s an asshole,” she said.

“Mom,” the kid behind her said.

“He is,” she said. “Don’t be like your dad, okay?”

Good enough, I supposed.

I flew her down to the ground, then flew the kids two at a time. The second wife and then the man were last. We led them back and away, and the gunman with his lower arms encased in a single growth of stone was last.

I imagined he could use that stone as a makeshift weapon if he had a mind to, but it was hard to picture him being very effective that way, especially when possibly broken wrists were encased in the middle. Knee-buckling pain, I imagined.

I wasn’t sure if Capricorn had similar reservations, but he withdrew a bit of cord from his belt, and he used orange motes to fix one end to the cuffs and another bit to the guy’s belt. He steered the guy with one hand at his shoulder.

Sveta came around the corner of the house. She put out one hand, and I slapped her hand with mine, holding it for a moment in a victory squeeze.

This? As melancholy as everything else could be, I liked this.

“You’re leaving. We’re going to head that way,” I said, indicating the path we’d made, with the walls for cover. “Any advice on where to go? Houses with children?”