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“Don’t you want to see who it is?” I ask, as the guns start to fire around me. “The ammo,” I protest. “For the Bishop.”

I press my cheek into the loam and curse. My words disappear in the noise and smoke of people who’ve already lost one of their leaders, one physically and the other mentally, and aren’t taking any more chances.

I hope whatever or whoever is out there has run far and fast.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Cas

I stayed on my knees a good long time after the gate closed behind Syd, and the Governor took his leave. Troy and Len fought in a low, bitter hush, and eventually Troy stomped off, leaving Len to tend to me. I staggered to my feet, devoid of emotion. The noonday wind came up and blew grit into our eyes as we walked in silence to the Acolyte apartments.

Inside, Len made some chamomile tea with honey, and swaddled me into the corner of the couch with a blanket. He hovered between me and the window, where he could see they’d taken the Deacon into the Sheriff’s office.

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” he said, “but I should check on him, okay?”

I made myself nod.

He continued to chatter, as if holding up the conversation for both of us. “I’ll get some things for you from the house in the morning. Maybe I can board Windy at the Sheriff’s stables so she’ll be closer to you. You have some clothes here, right? But you’ll need more. Later you can make me a list.”

I wanted to tell him I was fine, but I couldn’t make words come out. Gruesome visions swarmed beneath my eyelids, daring me to sleep—future scenes at the gate punctuated by a thousand hazy endings.
The Deacon going after the Governor, calling sound from the sky until both their ears bled. The Deacon locked up, feverish and suffering in the corner of a stone cell. The Deacon disappearing in a puff of smoke. Syd in a silver cape striding up to his cell bars to free him, riding away together on a shining white Turner stallion.

When the door shut behind Len, I stood up from the couch and made my way to the front window to watch for him to cross the street. Sheriff Jayne intercepted him, and sent him away. He put his hat back on, looked up, but then kept walking. Even as my heart fell, I couldn’t blame him for not coming back. I didn’t want to be alone with me, either.

I let myself into his room and rooted around his closet until I found a flask of whiskey. I took one and dumped it into my tea along with some more honey. It tasted awful, but eventually did the trick.

An hour later and almost numb, I closed my eyes. One and only one image played out on the backs of my eyelids: Syd’s crestfallen face, waiting all these long years for any man’s love to follow her out the gates of New Charity.

I woke hours later, my head muzzy but devoid of clamoring visions, and the sun was just beginning to set. It was the longest day I could remember. How much longer would it be for Syd? Would she be warm enough? What if they were starving her? Beating her? What if Syd were here? She’d tell me to stop.

I sat up. If the situation were reversed, she’d get answers.

And so would I.

I had to find a way to get into my father’s office to recover the gun, but for that I’d need Len’s help. Which I’d ask for, once he’d made his own peace with the day. To make sure Syd was okay, I only needed Windy.

I slipped on a pair of jeans and a dark, long-sleeved shirt. I washed the traces of makeup off my face from the party the night before and pushed my bright hair under one of Len’s black caps. It was a risk going back to our barn, but I hoped my family would be occupied with dinner or fighting or drinking or, even better, all three.

A month ago, I’d have guessed Len would have been the first to fall out of my father’s graces, but I kept forgetting Len and I weren’t quite equal, he being born with an advantage I’d never had. In fact, all my brothers’ manhoods seemed to excuse them of crimes far greater than questioning the Governor’s authority.

The evening was still, and the few folks I did run into seemed unsuspicious, involved in their own errands. In my dark uniform in the oncoming twilight, I was less recognizable than usual. When I walked past the mercantile, Bill didn’t even look up from the counter. I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

I skirted the hillside, approaching our house and the barn alongside from the back of the property. Nothing but the horses stirred in the slow, orange light of the lingering sun.

Windy stuck her head from the open half of the split stall door, ears swiveling toward me as I whistled softly. I undid the sliding lock and let myself into her stall, and again into the main barn itself. Perhaps my father would have me arrested for stealing horse and tack, but I had a hard time imagining Sheriff Jayne cooperating with the charge. At least after today.

In the tack room, I grabbed my saddle and bridle, as well as a currycomb and brush, though I didn’t want to take the time to do much more than a cursory prep for the saddle. I’d have time to do a better job once things settled down.

I hadn’t tried the lights. Even though they were hooked up to the mansion’s generator, I’d hoped to avoid attracting anyone’s attention. When the overhead fixtures above the stalls flipped on, I jumped and so did Windy. Crouching to the floor, I prayed it would be Len.

“Figured as much,” Troy said, peering over the stall door.

I stood and crossed behind Windy, currying her other side with more vigor.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

I didn’t answer.

“She’s using you, Cas, just like she did me. You just don’t see it.”

“I’m not going anywhere you want to go.” I set the brushes in a feed bucket hanging on the wall and shook out my saddle blanket.

“You sound funny. Have you been drinking or something?” He brushed at his ears.

“Didn’t you see the way she looked at you when she left? What did she ever do to you to deserve to be treated that way? Did she reject you? Did she leave you? Did she dump you?”

He watched my mouth, but continued without seeming to hear me. “She promised she wouldn’t leave without telling me. When we got to her house, she had a gun and a backpack. The Governor was right—it’s been one lie after another. I’m not waiting around for her to leave again, Cas. She doesn’t want me. Never did.”

“And you know this how? Because the Governor said so?” I lifted the saddle over Windy’s back and pulled the girth from over the top of the pommel. “The gun was her father’s. You don’t know what she was planning, and you never asked. You dismissed her so easily.”

“I remember when you said it. That I shouldn’t go after her,” Troy said, shaking his head. “This morning, the Governor said she’d be trying to run just as soon as she made another attempt on the Bishop’s life.”

“What do you mean, ‘another attempt’?”

He laughed darkly. “Last night she said
he
attacked
her
, and she pulled a knife on him. Said it was self-defense.”

Beneath my sleeves, the scabs on my arms burned from the glass the Bishop had thrown me into. “I believe her.”

“Are you hearing me?” he asked. Anger and anguish plastered his mouth. “She was packed to leave and carrying a gun. That’s not an accident, Cas. It’s premeditation.”

I knew he couldn’t hear me. My words were just sound, and I was starting to get careless with them. “You should have just talked to her, you idiot.”

“Syd Turner has always been destined for something other than me.” He shook his head. “Even if she’s on the level, she was never going to be mine. She was never going to love me like I loved her.”

“Not if you treat her like this. I’m sorry, Troy, but you’re wrong.”

“I can see you over there, Cas. Judging me. Like you know anything about anything. Like you’re some big relationship expert.”

He was just like our mother, tabulating faults when it suited them. “Maybe I don’t know anything about romance,” I said. “But I do know about love. And I know a whole lot more about friendship. And you know what? You’re a sorry bastard at both.”

Troy scuffed chaff beneath his boot. “Don’t think I don’t know where you’re going.”

I put a knee in Windy’s middle to make her exhale, and tightened the girth. “I love my friend, and I’m going to go make sure she’s okay.”

“It’s dangerous,” he said.

All the simmering acrimony of the day came to a full boil. “I don’t care if it’s dangerous. Life is dangerous. Love is dangerous.”

He met my eyes. He’d finally heard me. “But that love is just too much to ask for your family, isn’t it?”

“I think I’d rather take my chances on someone who might love me back.”

“I could call the guards.”

“You make the choice that’s best for you.”

I grabbed a Governor’s Office courier bag from the tack room and slung it over my shoulder. I didn’t think the gate guards were going to ask questions, especially with the Survivors back at camp and the excitement of the day past. At the gate, I told the man on duty that I was heading to Klein. He didn’t seem to recognize me or particularly care.

I relaxed, letting Windy guide us over the moonlit trail. I was just descending the last small hillock before the clearing when I heard hoofbeats. I pulled the reins gently and stopped there, paralyzed, unsure of which direction the horse was coming from. Before I could calm down enough to plead with the Spirit for my safety, Troy galloped into the clearing behind me.

Even though part of me had wanted him to change his mind and come with me, his presence made me uneasy. “What changed your mind?” I asked quietly.

He was still speaking as if in some internal monologue. “I wanted to make sure I made the right decision.”

“And if you didn’t?”

“If I’m wrong, I guess I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to her.”

We rode in silence, his foul mood descending over us like a cloud. Making a large circle around the Survivor camp, we listened intently. We heard no screams, no sounds of torture or pain. We stumbled upon a makeshift corral with several horses inside. With the help of the moon, I could see the Turner Ranch freeze brand near the manes of a few of the darker animals. Thankfully Troy had been too busy trying to see into the camp to study the horses, but there it was: Cal had indeed helped the Survivors. The only question left was why, though I wasn’t sure it mattered much anymore. Cal had almost certainly realized, as Syd and I had, that taking sides was the quickest path to ruin.

“We should go,” I said, reining Windy back toward the other side of the clearing. “I don’t think there’s anything more to see here.”

“You wanted to come. You wanted to see Syd. So let’s see Syd already.”

I sighed. There would be no winning here.

We slowly approached a thin wall of Douglas fir between us and the camp. Through the trees, we could see Syd sitting at a table near a cooking fire with five or six men, in turns frustrated and animated. Speaking or explaining or pleading. We couldn’t hear much over the roar of the Basalt and the crack of their fire. A giant man seemed to put an end to their talking, and Syd sat, looking in turns pensive and satisfied.

“Look how comfortable she is,” he said. “What if she’s been their ally the whole time?”

I didn’t see comfort in Syd’s posture, just the overenergetic assertion she maintained when she was in unfamiliar situations. The same as she’d used on Becky the first day of Vocational Retraining. I shook my head. “Wrong.”

“But you can’t say for sure she hasn’t been working with them?”

I wanted to say yes
. Yes, because Syd told me so.
But I knew Troy wasn’t going to listen. And there was a very small and terrible part of me that saw what he saw. She
had
shut the power off. She
had
lived in the City. She
had
asked to stop here when we brought her into New Charity that first night. It all looked bad.

I recognized a handsome man as the Survivor the Deacon had attacked. He sat down beside Syd and put his good arm—his other arm was in a sling—around her in a jovial hug. I felt Troy bristle beside me.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I murmured. Through the trees, Syd smiled her most sincere smile, the one I’d only seen really in the last couple of days.