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young things hovering over me.’
    I went.
    Down by Shed 14 the exodus was underway. Vega was sitting on an upturned crate. He
wouldn’t go until everyone was safely out. He must have decided that if he sat down
he could direct proceedings for a bit longer, but the way he braced himself—hands
on knees, hardly moving—you could tell he was mainly focused on staying upright.
I told him Levkova was on her way, got a nod and was told to get off the hill. I
went looking for Lanya but I couldn’t see her in the crowd.
    A woman in a squad uniform came pounding through the gates, struggling against the
tide of people going the other way. She saluted Vega. ‘Sir, a Cityside convoy has
crossed the bridge at Curswall—’ she checked her watch ‘—half an hour ago. Heading
this way. About thirty of them.’
    Vega glanced at Levkova, who’d just arrived. ‘Thirty,’ he said. ‘They coming in?’
    â€˜Don’t seem to be, sir. Looks like they’ve stopped on the Curswall boundary road.’
Vega rubbed a hand over his face, smearing dirt, dust and sweat. He stared at his
palm and wiped it on his jacket. I wanted badly for my father to be standing beside
him, shouldering some of the command and not off over the river having, for all I
knew, a nice break from all this dust and destruction and counting bodies and trying
to defend the place with practically no resources at all.
    Still no Lanya. I asked Jeitan, but he shook his head and turned back to allocating
people to trucks and loading up whatever remained of the HQ—equipment, documents—that
couldn’t be left behind for an enemy to find. I was pushing through the crowd, searching,
when a truck came through the gate and a man jumped out, saluted Vega and pointed
downriver towards Port.
    â€˜Sir! Army trucks from the city! They’ve crossed the bridge at Gull’s Fort and halted
on the boundary road. Setting up checkpoints, looks like.’
    Vega chewed his lip and looked at Levkova again. I swear those two could read each
other’s minds.
    Vega said, ‘You say they’re not coming in?’
    â€˜Didn’t look like it, sir, but I couldn’t guarantee it.’
    I stopped searching. Lanya wasn’t there: not in the crowd, not helping get people
into trucks, not loading up boxes of stuff. Then I realised exactly who she’d be
helping, and I ran for the graveyard.
    If the Cityside army was coming in, we needed to get out fast. If they were only
setting up checkpoints, that wasn’t so bad. Checkpoints were nothing new. Set up
on the borders between the townships on Southside, they made life difficult for everyone
because you had to stop and queue and explain your reasons for travelling. That’s
what they called it—travelling—when all you were doing was trying to go a few blocks
down the road. It could take hours to get anywhere. We had to explain ourselves,
at great length and in insane detail, but the checkpoints came and went with no explanation.
Cityside usually did things with no explanation; it was part of keeping Southside
off balance.
    And now we were seriously off balance, because we didn’t know what Frieda had in
mind. What was the ‘next step’ that she was so pleased with herself about? And when
was it going to happen? Chances are she had Moldam Hill in her sights, either for
a takeover or for smashing, finally and completely, to dust.

CHAPTER 06
    I found Lanya walking down the aisles between the graves doing Pathmaker work. Her
arms were stretched out across the riverstones that they used for grave markers here,
and she was chanting prayers for the peaceful journey of the souls whose bodies had
been disturbed. That last rocket had blasted a crater in the western section where
the older graves lay. The air there was still thick with the smell of explosives
and upturned soil. I stood in the gateway and listened to the rising-falling