“Are we going to be able to get out?” There was a tinge of desperation to the father’s voice.
Michel hesitated. If he was smart, he’d leave the seven of them here to try and make it on their own. He’d flush his safe house in Upper Landfall, cut off his contacts with Hendres, Kazi, and anyone else, and find the deepest hole in Greenfire Depths to wait out this occupation.
He didn’t need to help these people. His own mother was safely out of the city, and as a spy he’d never been close to anyone else.
But despite his alternate loyalties, he didn’t believe anyone deserved to be snatched up by foreign occupiers, least of all children.
“You’ll get out,” Michel finally said. “But we have to move fast.” The patrol passed, and Michel led the family out from beneath the stilted houses. He picked up the smallest of the children, cradling her face against his neck, then began to hurry them all along at a quicker pace. They crossed the sandiest, deepest part of the floodplains and entered the fens. The wetlands were bisected by hundreds of drainage ditches built by convicts in the labor camps. The ditches made poor highways, but it kept them out of sight of the road as they moved farther and farther away from the city.
Wet, muddy, and stinking, the group emerged on the opposite side of the fens and crossed the final highway before the coastal plains became cotton and tobacco fields for as far as the eye could see. As in the city, patrol frequency out here had increased, and it wasn’t until Michel and his charges were hiding in a farmer’s shed on the northern side of the highway that he allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief.
Outside, the sky was beginning to lighten. It would be daybreak soon, and that would complicate his return to the city. He glanced at the small faces huddled in the shed, and then at the father, whose eyes were tired and his expression bleak. “How much farther?” the father asked.
“Until what?” Michel responded. “Safety? Long time until then.” He heard the bitter note in his voice and silently scolded himself. He was here to help, not deepen the man’s fears. “Sorry,” he said in a gentler voice. “This is as far as I take you. I’ve got to get back before it’s light. You’ll head about two miles due north. There’s a farmhouse with distinct yellow paint on the east wall. They’ll hide you for a day, and tomorrow night get you to a carriage that will take you along the back roads and safely out of range of the Dynize patrols.”
There was a long silence, and Michel could see the man steeling himself to try and herd six children across two miles of open land before the sun came up. Michel didn’t envy him the task.
“How can I thank you?” the father asked.
The question surprised Michel. Most of these smuggled families were so exhausted by the trek that good-bye was a simple nod and then disappearance into the dark. “Just … if you find your wife, or reach the armies, or the Lady Chancellor or anyone, you can tell them that people are still fighting in Landfall. And we’d rather not be abandoned.”
“Come with us,” the father said. “If an escape route can take seven, it can surely take eight.”
The offer was tempting. But Michel had made his decision. He was going to stay in Landfall through this thing, for good or ill. There were more people to keep out of Dynize hands. He slapped the father on the shoulder. “Get moving. If daylight hits you, find a ditch to hide in. Watch the horizon for patrols. Remember that the farmhouse you’re looking for has a yellow wall.”
The father nodded, and Michel opened the shed door and watched the silent, frightened children file out and follow their father into the cotton fields. Michel watched them merge into the night, then turned back toward Landfall.
From here, the massive Landfall Plateau and the city that covered its face and skirted its knees seemed almost peaceful. There was no sign of the bombardment that had scarred the eastern face of the plateau, or the rancid smoke of the fires to the south where bodies were still being dumped. The only sign of the battle was a trickle of smoke rising from Greenfire Depths, where the fires were still not out from the Palo riots.
Michel almost turned and ran to catch up with the father and his children. Better to escape now, while escape was still an option, a small voice told him. “Stop being a coward,” he told it. Taking his last swallow of whiskey, he crossed the highway and headed back into the fens to make his way toward the city.
Chapter 6
Michel jerked awake, reaching for the pistol on the bedside table, knocking an empty wine bottle and his pocket watch to the floor with a clatter that made his head hurt. He fumbled for a grip and sat up in bed, pointing the pistol toward the doorway, his head hammering in his chest and his eyes crossed badly.
“It’s me,” a voice said gently.
Michel took several deep breaths and lowered the pistol. “Sorry,” he said. “Nerves a little frayed.”
Hendres stepped inside the tiny room that she and Michel shared in a tenement on the south side of the gorge in Upper Landfall. Hendres was young – or at least what Michel thought of as young, though in her midtwenties she was probably just as old as he. She had brown hair, cut short beneath a bowler cap, and wore a reddish-brown day laborer’s suit much the same as Michel’s. Her face had old pockmarks down the left side. She had intelligent eyes and a military bearing about her, and had somehow managed to make the rank of Silver Rose in the secret police despite her young age.
Michel knew how hard that was from experience.
Hendres closed the door behind her and touched the empty wine bottle with her toe. “I have no idea how you keep finding something to drink. The Dynize have put the squeeze on everything going in and out of the city, and the booze seems to have disappeared first.”
“I, uh, know a lot of bartenders,” Michel responded. “Most of them owe me a favor or two.” He squinted at the pistol in his hand. The pan wasn’t even primed. He sighed and set it on the bedside table.
“You’re a bit shaky with a pistol,” Hendres observed.
“Guns aren’t really my thing,” he said, trying to rub the sleep from his eyes and the headache from his brain. He looked at his empty flask sitting on the washstand across the room. “Pit, you’re a terrible spy,” he muttered. “You should not be drinking.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
Hendres moved to sit on the edge of the bed, then suddenly recoiled. “By Adom, what’s that smell?”
“Had to go across the fens last night to get that family out.”
“I thought we agreed you were going to wash before coming to bed. You know I have to sleep here too, right?”
“Sorry,” Michel said, though he didn’t feel it. “Got caught out near dawn because your courier showed up forty minutes late. And the bloody Dynize changed their patrol routes.”
Hendres pulled a face and finally sat down beside him. They’d known each other for all of three weeks – Hendres was one of the regiment of Blackhats that had stayed behind to help hold the city after the Grand Master was killed by Styke. She’d returned with Michel to try and make a difference during the Dynize occupation.
They’d spent the first week hiding – and screwing – in a Blackhat safe house before the occupying forces finally instilled order on the city. Since then their relationship had cooled to purely professional, and Michel was glad for it. He already liked Hendres for her competence and her lack of questions. He didn’t need to get any more attached.
“Someone threw a bunch of grenades into a crowd of Dynize soldiers,” Hendres said.
“So?”