It was restless country and they were glad to be out of it.
They traveled late that evening, moving before a line of thunderclouds, and found shelter in a small Roadmaker church. It was an ideal situation, with a decent supply of wood left over from the last visitor, and a roof that was sufficiently decayed to let out smoke, but whole enough to protect them from the storm. The front door was missing, but that was okay because they were sharing the building with the animals. They watered and fed the horses and rubbed them down and then relaxed wearily in front of a fire.
They had no ale or wine left with which to toast the good fortune of the day, but Quait produced his Walloon. His fingers danced across the strings, and he invited requests.
“A good camp song,” suggested Chaka.
“Indeed, you shall have it, my lady,” he said. “Avila, do you know ‘The Golden Company’?”
Avila held up her pipe and essayed a few bars. And Quait sang:
They sang as many verses as they knew and then switched to “Barrel Up,” and changed pace with “Tan.” Fueled by their sense of loss, mingled with the exhilaration of the day’s escape, the evening became an emotional event. They observed moments of silence for Silas and for Jon Shannon; raised cups of tea to Chaka, “our glorious rescuer”; and laughed over how people back home would react to hearing how they had outwitted a table.
“When she announced that she was Doctor Milana and that thing took her seriously,” said Flojian, “I was barely able to keep a straight face.” He went on to draw the lesson: “The intelligences that haunt the Roadmaker ruins aren’t really very bright. If there are any more incidents, we need to keep our heads.”
Chaka noticed that Quait grew increasingly quiet during the latter part of the evening, and seemed almost distracted when Avila announced that she was going to call it a night.
“Before you do,” said Quait, “I have something to say.” His voice was off-tone. Jittery.
The firelight created an aura around him. He looked at Chaka for a long moment, and tugged at the drawstrings of his shirt. “I wouldn’t want to be like the trooper in the song and miss my chance. I wouldn’t want to ride away one day and leave you—” he was still watching her, his gray eyes very round and very intense,”—leave you waving good-bye.”
A stillness came over the moment. Light and shadow drifted around the crumbling walls. Chaka discovered she was barely breathing.
“I would be very happy if, when we return to Illyria, you would marry me.”
The stiffness melted out of his expression and she read a new message: There, I’ve said it and nothing can make me take it back.
Rain was falling steadily, beating on the roof, pouring through here and there into the old building. “This is a surprise, Quait,” she said, stalling for time to collect her thoughts. She flicked back to Illyria and brought up an image of Raney, but he wouldn’t come clear.
She took his hand and squeezed it. “I think so. Yes. I would like very much to marry you, Quait.”
20
Five days after Ann Arbor, they arrived at another city, vast and empty, and stood on the west bank of a major river. Shay’s track turned north into the ruins. They followed it along the waterfront, past gray quays and ancient pilings and collapsed warehouses and moldering wharves and stranded ships. The ships were all on the bottom, decks and spars usually above water. Some were behemoths, corroded vessels of such incredible dimensions that they explained the giant anchor on River Road. By midafternoon they were passing the remnants of a collapsed bridge. A second bridge, farther north, had once connected the west bank with an island. It was also down.
Flojian watched seabirds drift across the surface. “Current’s not bad,” he said.
As if Karik had reacted to the sight of the second damaged bridge, the trail turned away from the river, back into the city. They made camp on the shore that night and, fortified by a trout breakfast, worked their way in the morning past mountains of concrete and iron rubble. As had happened in Chicago, some of the larger buildings had collapsed. To the northwest, a bowl-shaped structure stood serenely intact amid an ocean of debris. The forest was coming back, and patches of black walnut and cottonwood now grew on the bones of these ancient monsters.
They came out on the shore of a long, narrow lake that had formed among the artificial hills. Trees crowded down to the bank. The water was quiet, and they stopped to enjoy the sylvan atmosphere, isolated among so much wreckage.
Ducks drifted on the placid surface, and turtles paddled through the depths. A gray stone slab rose out of the water at the eastern end. Carved letters announced DETROIT-WINDSOR TUNNEL. It was odd, because no tunnel was in evidence.
The trail led back out to the river, where it stopped. Two pairs of Shay’s markers turned vertical. “They crossed here,” said Quait.
The other side looked far away. Flojian gazed around at the trees. Some had been cut. “I think I prefer this to dangling in the air anyhow.”
“I’ve never built a raft,” said Chaka. “Do we know how to do this?”
Flojian feigned shock. “Do we know how to do this? Do you know how to make a bracelet? This is the way I earn my living.” He smiled in a lopsided, owlish way. “Well, it was the way I started.”
By nightfall they’d taken down eight trees. That wasn’t bad for half a day’s work by a businessman, a militiaman, and a former priest. (Chaka, who was deemed the least physical of the four, was sent fishing for dinner. She returned with more trout.)
Her relationship with Quait had changed in several subtle ways since the marriage proposal. Curiously, the distance between them seemed to have increased. If their attitude toward each other had not become more formal, it had at least become more circumspect. There was less furtive handholding, and almost no stolen kisses. This might have resulted from a combination of Quait’s awareness of the chemical relations among the four companions and a reluctance to disturb them, as a formal pairing off would have done; and from Chaka’s reflexive tendency to assert her independence.
Chaka also discovered that the sexual tension had eased. Quait had engaged her interest during the first days of the quest. That interest had evolved gradually, or maybe not so gradually, into friendship and then passion. Consequently, she knew she had begun to put on a show for him, softening her voice when she spoke to him, lingering a little too long against a setting sun, letting her eyes speak for her. It would not have been correct to say she no longer felt a need to do any of that, but the pressure was gone, and she was now enjoying him more.
She’d been curious why he had proposed to her in front of the others. “Were you so certain?” she asked.
“Public commitment,” he said. “These are peculiar circumstances, and I didn’t want you to think I was trying to take advantage of them. I wanted you to know I was serious.”