Corva hands Jack’s backpack to Lyia. “Hold on to this. We’ll need to book as soon as he’s through.” She makes a quick assessment of Lyia’s clothes. The woman is basically just wearing bed clothes, nothing particularly well-suited for traveling. She doesn’t even have shoes on. “If you’re sticking with us, we’ll have to find a way to get you some travel clothes and gear on the way.”

Lyia takes the bag from Corva, but doesn’t do anything with it. She just holds it. “Wait, what? ‘On the way’? On the way where?”

Slinging the straps of her own backpack on her shoulders, Corva wonders just how much she should be sharing about her situation. Advice from Avó echoes in her mind. Tread slowly. “The bar’s trashed. Again. And it’s not really safe here for Jack anymore. For either of us, really.” She walks over to the tunnel exit, waiting for Jack to come out.

“Is someone after Jack?” Lyia walks after her, bag still in her hands.

“Not Jack.”

“After you?” Corva watches as Lyia tries to make sense of the cryptic answers she’s getting.

“Not exactly. It’s … complicated. You gathered that much when you healed Zeke. Put the bag on.”

Lyia drops the bag and grabs Corva’s arm. “No. You need to tell me what’s—”

“Did you guys see that?” Jack’s excited face pokes out of the tunnel. He worms his way out of the hole, talking the whole time. “It was totally sweet. That grunt was a giant ball of fire. Boom! And Zeke!” He turns his head over to Zeke, who is patiently standing and waiting for Jack to get out. “Oh man, Zeke. You little flippy, jumpy badass! He did some real damage to that first one.” Jack pulls himself out and slaps the dirt and dust from his clothes. “With any luck, we slowed them from followin’ us at least. Bought us some time. Oh, hey, my bag. Thanks!” He grabs his pack from the ground near Lyia and pulls the straps over his shoulders. “We ready? We just gotta make it over to the—”

Jack’s voice trails off as he finally looks up and sees the stand-off between Corva and Lyia. “What’s going on?”

“Girlie here says that you guys are skipping town. This raid is here because of her, isn’t it?”

Jack takes the briefest of moments to glance over at Corva before answering, “Nah. They ain’t after her. Well, they weren’t, anyway.” He shakes his head. “But that ain’t important right now. Right now we gotta get safe. We can explain the rest then.”

Lyia takes a step forward. “Where’s safe? We just torched the Red Light. You’ve nixed the siege caves for some unknown reason. What else is there?”

Jack turns toward the far end of Lower Bule. “We’ll go to Slim’s. He’s got a bunch of tech for protection and his building is dug right into the cliff wall. There’s even a way to get down to Cliff City from there if we need some shielding for doing fixins. Though that way is a bit, um, me-sized.” Corva watches Jack’s eyes work their way up Lyia’s profile. “Might be a bit of a tight fit for you.”

Now it’s Corva’s turn to be surprised. “Slim’s place? That crazy guy who made your stupid psionic paranizers or whatever? That’s your plan?”

Jack’s eyes narrow. “Subsonic paralyzers. They sure as shit saved your hide earlier. And yes. Slim’s is a safe place for Lyia and a good route for us getting out of here.”

Corva is about to continue her argument, but she’s interrupted by Lyia. “So you are leaving? I don’t believe it. You fought so hard to keep that bar. Jackspin, you need to tell me what’s going on, right now. If I’m going to risk living, I need to know why.”

Jackspin? That’s his full name?

The kid looks at Corva with a half-hearted shrug and then turns to address Lyia. “Alright, I’ll give you the short version, but it’s gonna raise more questions we ain’t got time for and I ain’t sure I’ve actually got the answers to. You gotta promise me that you’ll hold your new questions until we’re safe.”

Lyia, still looking confused, gives her own shrug. “Yeah. Fine.”

That’s all the prompting Jack needs. Words spill out of his mouth like a waterfall. “The horde ain’t here for Corva. I figure that they’re here after the ol’ wrinkly fuck who showed at my bar with imbued tech. He was after Corva. Turns out, he’s Death. But I call him Wrinkles.”

With that, Jack starts walking down the narrow alley between buildings, away from the tunnel that leads to the Red Light. Zeke jumps up to a perch on his shoulder.

“Death?” Lyia swings her face toward Corva. “Like Death, Death? You’re being hunted by the last of the Four?”

Inwardly, Corva groans. Jack. Você é idiota. What dumb thing are you going to say next? Deciding it’s best not to answer at this point, she starts following Jack.

Lyia walks past Corva and grabs Jack by the arm to stop him. “And you let her stay at your bar? Are you stupid? Why is he after her?”

“Hey, I didn’t know. You didn’t either when you helped me patch her up. ’Sides, it’s cool now. I knocked him out with—” Apparently Jack is having trouble telling Lyia that he knows how to use the Touch. “Well, I knocked him out.”

Smooth. Moron.

“Anyhow, point is he ran off. We’re clear of that for now.” He shrugs, strangely aloof, and continues his hike down the path. “In any case, between what we did back at Maddy’s and the fact that now that we’re out in the open, the Goats’re after all of us. We need to gitfo, like, now. ’Specially before any of ’em see us.”

Lyia, still sorting through everything Jack’s said, looks back to Corva. Not sure what exactly she could say or do at this point, Corva merely claps her hands together once like she’s closing a book and then walks after Jack. She hears Lyia’s footsteps trail close behind them. A little farther back, she thinks she can hear the Umbrati grunts working their way through the lower burg. As she catches up to Jack, she looks over to Zeke, still sitting on his shoulder.

The monkey points his face toward Jack. You need to tell him to pick up the pace. Grunts from the horde will track the residual energy of soulmancy. Both he and Lyia used it, so our little group here is a lighthouse in the night.

She’s not sure what a lighthouse is, but she gets the point. She turns her attention to Jack. “Hey Jack, how far away is Slim’s? We need to get to it pretty quick.”

“It ain’t far. Normally it don’t take but a few minutes. However—” He takes a turn that doubles back the way they came, but down a different alley. “We’ve gotta take a few detours to get there.”

Jack then takes a few more turns that zigzag their way between buildings and puts them in a direction that Corva thinks is perpendicular to the direction they should be going. A few steps in, he grabs a ladder that looks like it leads up to a terrace created by a series of adjoining buildings.

Corva exchanges a look with Zeke before she decides she’s had enough. She grabs his hand before he starts climbing up the ladder. “Listen to me. The horde is going to track us all. There was a whole lot of soul energy used in that basement.”

He stops and looks back at her. “You think I don’t know that? I ain’t totally stupid. Why do you think we’re takin’ so many turns and doublin’ back on our route? Gotta let some of that juice wear off a bit. Otherwise, we’re gonna lead the Goats right to Slim’s place and anywhere we go after.” He jerks his hand away and resumes his climb.

Corva stops, surprised and momentarily impressed with Jack’s forethought. Zeke hadn’t even thought of that. She lets Lyia up the ladder ahead of her.

Climbing the ladder, Lyia calls up to Jack, “How do you know how fast the trail dissipates?”

Reaching the top, he turns around and reaches out to help her up the last couple rungs. “I don’t. But even if it doesn’t wear away completely, takin’ a crazy path like this will hopefully slow ’em down a bit … so long as they don’t sniff us out first. So keep your head on a swivel.” When Corva gets all the way up to the terrace, he turns and keeps going, now at a light jog.

From this place up on the terrace, Corva tries to look out over Lower Bule and see what kind of progress the raid party has made in following them. The Red Light isn’t all that far away. A little, barely perceptible wisp of smoke curls in the air nearby. It’s kind of eerie how quiet Bule is. Normally at this time of day, it’s a bustling little town with mercs and travelers weaving through the paths and stairs, stopping in various shops to do business, get some R and R, and restock for the next leg of whatever their trip is.

Now it’s different. There’s still movement in the paths and alleys, but the flow is distinctly away from the stairs connecting to Upper Bule. Aside from the three of them, the only people not following that pattern are a handful of folks that look like they’re in Harris’s militia. They’re either standing in place, guiding folks to the nearest siege cave, or they’re running against the flow, armed to hold back the raiding horde.

They’re not going to have it easy. Upper Bule looks to be completely overrun. The Umbrati swarmed that section of town and now teams of grunts pour their way down and over the steps between Upper and Lower Bule. It’s a terrifying sight, but there’s hardly any sound. Every now and again, she thinks she can hear the creepy throat-clearing noise that the grunts make, but it’s tough to tell if that’s just her mind being paranoid.

She turns to catch up to Jack and Lyia, allowing herself a moment to look out into the canyon. It’s an impressive view. In a different context, this place could almost be beautiful. Then, just as she’s about to return her full attention to the other two, she catches a glimpse of something in her periphery. She turns to get a better view, but finds herself looking into the sun. Raising her arm to shield her eyes, she thinks she can just make out a dark shape cutting in front of it.

“Corva! C’mon. We have a lead, but them grunts move faster than—shit!”

Corva turns just in time to see a pair of Umbrati grunts blocking Jack and Lyia’s way across the rooftops. She rushes up to their side. “Where did they come from?”

“I dunno. I don’t think they were followin’ from the Red Light. Maybe they were a search group starting on this side of town.” He looks to his side. “Shit, there’s more.”

Two more grunts climb up to the rooftop on their side. Corva looks back toward the ladder that they came up just as one more pair of grunts crest the edge of the building there. “And behind us.”

The trio turns, defensively putting their backs up against one another.

Lyia looks over her shoulder and down at Corva. “Doesn’t matter now, anyway. It’s six to three. We’re done.”

Zeke hops from Jack’s shoulder to Corva’s. It’s six to four. Do you trust me?

Corva glances over to Zeke. “Yeah. Well enough, I guess.”

“What?” Confusion knits across Lyia’s face.

Jack interrupts, “Oh yeah. That’s one more thing we need to talk about when bringing you up to speed later. Apparently Corva here can talk to Zeke.”

Corva ignores Jack’s statement and the continued escalation of Lyia’s perplexity. Instead, she focuses on the words coming through her own inner voice, words coming from the little monkey on her shoulder.

Nodding in understanding, she closes her eyes. “We’re not done. But you guys probably won’t like this very much.”