Somewhere in the building, an alarm sounded. Gallen threw his robe over Maggie’s face. She struggled up, thinking that they would die any moment, but Gallen scooped her into his arms and staggered to the window.
“I can’t …” Maggie cried, weeping bitterly.
Gallen pushed her out. The building was sloped, and for a moment she slid out in the darkness through air that felt pleasantly icy, then hit the black water. It was far colder than she would have guessed. She thrashed vigorously and floundered for a moment, found herself underwater. She bobbed to the surface again and called for help. She looked up. Gallen was clinging precariously to the windowsill like a spider, and she wondered if he had somehow gotten stuck, then he splashed into the water ten feet away. Maggie thrashed her legs, went under again. A moment later, Gallen grasped her neck.
He pulled her to the surface, holding her head up from behind. She kept struggling and tried to spin, grab him. “Help! I can’t swim!”
“Can’t swim?” Gallen asked. “Your father and brothers all drowned. I’d think you’d learn to swim.”
Maggie gasped, part from the cold, part from the fear that she would slip under again. Gallen reached around, put something in her mouth. It felt like the mouthpiece to a flute, but it was attached to two small bottles.
“Breath in and out through this,” Gallen panted. “It’s an oxygen exchanger. It recycles air. As long as you breathe through this, it doesn’t matter if your head goes underwater. In a minute, I’ll start pulling you to shore. We will have to dive underwater. Don’t fight me.” Maggie tried breathing through the machine. She had to exert extra force to inhale, as if she were breathing through heavy cloth.
Gallen fumbled to put on his own oxygen exchanger, then dove and began pulling her toward shore. He did not try to hurry, just made a leisurely swim of it, so that by the time they came up, they were far downstream from Toohkansay and had rounded a bend in the river. The lights from the city gleamed over the water, and a lighted barge sailed past them, heading downriver. Gallen swam to the mouth of a small creek, and they waded upstream till they reached a bridge that arched above them darkly, shutting out the powdered light of the stars.
Under the bridge, Gallen stepped from the water, pulling Maggie after him. He bent and opened a cloth sack that was lying in some tall grass, pulled out a single blanket. Maggie was shivering vigorously, shaking from more than the chill night air. Everything that had happened to her over the past few days slammed into her like a giant fist.
“I’m sorry,” she cried, feeling ill to the core of her soul. “I’m so sorry.” She wanted to explain why she was so sorry but did not know where to begin. She was so cold, she could not feel her fingers. Gallen wrapped the blanket around her; he was shivering violently. She wrapped her arms around him so they could share the blanket.
“You-you had this planned?” she asked between chattering teeth. His golden hair gleamed in the starlight, and she could make out little of his features. The brackish odor of the river was heavy on them both.
“Aye,” Gallen said. “I’ve got some food in the pack, dry clothes. I found a trail along this creek. We can follow it up into the hills, then circle back north of town to where Orick and I set camp. I think we should stay off the road.”
The blackness still hung over Maggie, and every few moments the images of her work over the past few days would flash in her mind. The demented gleam in Avik’s eye. Sorting the tagged feelers of the dead dronons, the images of the twisted people she had built.
There were no signs of pursuit, but she was sure that the dronons would come after them soon.
The cold, the fear, the darkness of it all was too much for Maggie, and she sank to her knees. Wild vetch grew in a tangled mass here in the shadow of the bridge.
Gallen knelt, hugging her to keep her warm.
“Everynne?” Maggie stammered, and it seemed to her that her thoughts were now unnaturally clear, bright and well-defined, like the chemical fire from an incendiary rifle.
“We found her this morning,” Gallen said. “She was heading north for another gate. The dronons were on her trail. She plans to fight them. She asked us to come with her, but …”
Maggie looked up, studied his face. It caught only the slightest touch of starlight, and she could not see his eyes. But one thing was clear: he could have gone with Everynne, but Gallen had chosen to stay and rescue Maggie.
She leaned her shivering body against Gallen, felt the firm muscles beneath his wet shirt. His breath warmed her neck. She realized he’d planned the escape in every detaiclass="underline" two sets of dry clothes, two oxygen exchangers. But only one blanket. He’d planned to share this moment with her.
The residual emotions stimulated by the Guide were still affecting her somewhat. The night before, she’d staved off Avik’s advances by fantasizing about Gallen, and now she found that an edge of lust still lingered.
Maggie was painfully aware of her thin nightgown, her nipples tight, protruding against the hairs of Gallen’s chest. He shivered. She wrapped both hands around his neck, kissed him firmly on the mouth. Gallen pulled away slightly, gasped as if surprised by her action.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, aware that he was shaking harder. She recognized it for what it was. He was shaking with desire. “Don’t you want this?”
“You’re still too young,” Gallen said, his voice husky.
She grew so angry, she wanted to hit him. “We don’t all age at the same rate, and some things make you old before your time,” she said. “Watching your family die, that ages you! Working-working day and night just to stay alive, that ages you. Wearing a Guide-hell, Gallen, I, I can’t even begin to tell you what that thing did to me. It’s like a vice, crushing you. It teaches you and it rapes you all at the same time, because the things it teaches you shatter all of your deepest hopes-and if it didn’t play games with you and make you feel like you were in heaven, you would gladly cut your own head off to be rid of it!”
Maggie began sobbing and trembling. She imagined that she could feel the dronons’ black sensor whips on her arms, cold and rough like cornstalks, fouling her. “Gallen, you don’t even begin to understand what kind of place we live in-”
“I know-” Gallen said. “I put on a teaching machine in the city. It taught me.”
“Did it teach you about the dronon, about their plans?”
“No,” Gallen admitted. “The teacher only showed me how the dronon conquered this world.”
“In other words, this teacher taught you only what the dronon want you to know!”
Maggie was shivering and angry. Gallen put his arm around her, and she desperately wanted to be loved, to be comforted, for at that moment, it seemed that love was the only token that could be put on the scale that might balance out all the pain and despair that threatened to overwhelm her. Even then, she wasn’t certain that love would be quite enough.
At that moment, something touched her back, and Maggie realized that Gallen held something long and hard in his hand. She reached around with her palm and touched the incendiary rod. Amazingly, he had managed to carry both it and her through the water.
And in that moment, she knew what else she needed to balance out her pain. Revenge.
“You said Everynne plans to overthrow the dronon,” Maggie whispered. “Do you have any idea what her plans are?”
“No,” Gallen admitted, “but I know where her gate is.”
Maggie nodded softly and whispered, “Let’s go.”
But at that moment, a great circle of light shone on the bridge above them. The bridge rumbled and shook, so that bits of dirt rained down.
In horror, Galled clapped a hand over Maggie’s mouth. She could think only one thing: they found us!
Overhead, a voice sounded from the sky. “You there: put up your hands!”