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You'd
make merc if you wanted! I'll sing your song, I will.''
    They'd known what to do, his comrades, and
she'd felt helpless as they'd used belts and tubes and collected
what obvious parts of his legs as they could, and bore him away.
The Commander had come by a few moments later as she was still
clutching her daughter to her, the two of them perhaps weeping into
the privacy of the other's shoulder. His face was clean but the
uniform had been busy; there was blood -- perhaps even Tommee's
blood -- on his sleeve.
    How someone could be businesslike under
these mad circumstances she did not know, but he had been, and she
returned it as best she could.
    ''You have my card and you have my thanks.
Smitty told me you sent your cab against anti-armor, and saved his
life. By the rocks, you could have been killed! Good work, ma'am.
I'll make it good -- you understand? A new cab; repairs. You have
my card. Get to me with a bill, hear?''
    He'd attempted a bow, gave it up, saluted,
and was gone. His aide also refused to take Tommee's gun from her
-- ''Ma'am, he knows it might be the last thing he gets to give if
you have my meaning, and you took damage for him. He's a newbie and
his paycheck and his sidegun, it's what he owns. If it was me, I'd
keep it and sleep with it under my pillow!''
    Vertu sighed, made sure of her grip on the
leather belt that held Tommee's gift, and walked unsteadily over to
the cab, and her daughter leaning there. It had not escaped damage,
this second of Wylan's three vehicles -- there were holes stitched
down the driver's door, a shattered window, a list to one side that
spoke of blown stabilizers.
    A bill, she thought wearily. For a new cab,
and repairs.
    Tomorrow, she would bill Higdon's Howlers
for the damage they had caused her. For now . . .
    ''Fereda,'' she said, extending a hand to
touch her daughter's pale and soot-streaked face.
    The girl blinked as if she suddenly came to
her senses from a swoon, stepping sharply away from her cab, away
from Vertu's hand.
    She turned her back, arms crossed tightly
over her chest.
    Vertu gasped, heart stuttering at the
violence of the act -- worse than any she had witnessed this day.
Worse even than that flash which had dazzled everyone and
everything, more violent than the ground-shake, more violent than
the noise when that arrived.
    Heart-struck, Vertu drew a careful breath
and exhaled. Surviving that, she drew another breath . . . and a
third.
    The leather was real in
her hand, and she had to do, now, with what was real now.
    There was a stain on the belt, and the gun
was twice as heavy as her own, the one that Fereda held in such low
esteem as to pocket it so clumsily that it might fall out. But it
was hers, this gun. A gift, for her care. That was real.
    The fighting had been short and sharp; she'd
shot once or twice with the gun Fereda had, not because she knew
who was shooting but because they were shooting at her, or her car,
or her daughter, or bloody Tommee . . .
    She did not look at the street. Instead, she
paced forward until she faced her daughter, trying to ignore the
dark clouds overhead and in her daughter's visage.
    ''Fereda dea'San,'' she said to set face and
distant eyes, ''we shall leave here together. On the morrow, if the
planet is still here, we shall sit and speak together, telling over
my errors.''
    Her daughter shied away from the offered
hand, but she began walking through the dust toward the end of the
road, Vertu dea'San Clan Wylan, the Delm Herself, threw the gunbelt
over her shoulder, and cinched the strap, walking as firmly as she
could, stride for stride with her daughter.
    This world, it made no sense any longer.
    Tomorrow -- tomorrow, she would do something
about it.
    * * *
    Port City, Surebleak
     
    The wind whipped by , the now familiar sound rushing down the narrow
side-streets becoming a brief moan before becoming a continual
rattling
susurration
of air, grit, and weather. Her well-used coat
wrapped as tight as the seals allowed,