Bone Dance

Sometime later we were parked in a dark place, with Frances sitting hunched in the driver’s spot as if she’d been gut-shot, her arms folded tight around her. “While he ran us through downtown like icons in a video game, he sealed up the City,” she said. Her voice was the ruin of the one I was used to. “Maybe we could get out on foot. Maybe, but we couldn’t get far. Dear God, dear God, why didn’t you let me kill him?” Then she shook herself, and sat upright. “Stop that. Well, Horatio, I need another idea.” She looked over her shoulder.

She wanted me to think. I shook my head, to tell her I couldn’t do that, that cause and effect and the manipulating of them were beyond me because they were part of the stream of time, and I didn’t want to go there. Maybe she thought I just didn’t have any ideas. It came to the same thing.

She sat very still for a long while; then she put the trike in gear. “Back to the island, if we can. Maybe China Black will bury us in the basement for a year and a day, or however long it is before Tom finds some pleasing distraction that isn’t us.”

I don’t know why Worecski hadn’t ordered the bridge stopped up. Maybe some property of the island prevented it. Or maybe his roadblock was on the span co

China Black’s gate looked different in the dark, its weathered wooden slats higher, closer set, forbidding; Frances drove fifty feet past it, cursed, and backed up. It didn’t open when we turned in. Frances left the trike to idle as she went up to try it, and finally to pound on it. There was no response.

She stepped back a pace from the gate and addressed it in a clear, carrying voice, bright as buffed chrome. “I understand the reluctance — the wasps’ nest having been knocked down, I don’t suppose I’d want to be standing next to the fool with the stick, either. But at least have the decency to minister to one of the victims.”

It worked like an incantation. After a moment the left half of the gate swung inward a little. It was China Black herself who’d opened it; the eyebrows caught the light as she looked past the panel at Frances. Then she slipped through and pulled the gate to behind her. The black, high-collared thing she wore, I decided, was a robe.

She reached the trike in two long strides and peered in at me. “You’re hurt?” She stretched out a hand for my shoulder.

Of course. The blood. I’d forgotten I was wearing Cassidy’s colors on my shirt.

The passionless, ironical observer that was master of my head wasn’t mastering my body. I was as surprised as anyone when I jerked away and folded forward in the passenger’s seat, clutching my hands to my face as if to close off all the senses that worked there.

“No,” Frances said, and I felt China Black’s hand snatched away. “It’s not h — the blood isn’t Sparrow’s. But yes, that’s the victim. All I want is a way out of town, or shelter until the mess I’ve made settles.”

The foolish physical reaction was gone already. “You wouldn’t have so much trouble,” I muttered, straightening up carefully, “if you didn’t talk about me in the third person.”

But China Black was already shaking her head. “I can’t. The island was safe only as long as he wanted nothing on it. We have no defense against the kind of force he will bring; we are too few, and those are not our skills. We ca

Frances lifted her chin. “News, it seems, travels fast. I thought the car phones were all gone.”

“Rumors travel fast. That you are here, and desperate, confirms them, no?”

“Can you at least help us leave?”

Another head shake. “I don’t know enough. I’m sorry. Beware of the river; you can be caught at the old dams and locks, and they may be watching at the bridges, too. But if you escape, there is a place you can go.” China Black recited the directions: south, farther south than I’d been since I’d first entered the City.

“You didn’t warn us about Mick,” I said.

“I wasn’t sure until tonight, when I found him gone. Forgive me.”

“Is Sherrea here? Or Theo? I’d like to say goodbye.”

It seemed like a stupid thing to want, but neither of them looked at me oddly. “They’ve both gone,” said China Black. “They, too, are at risk, because they were seen with you. They left not long after you did.”

“Of course.” I had nothing more to say.

Frances stood very straight, with one hand on the trike. “I’m sorry to have turned surly,” she said to China Black, “when I ought to have been thanking you for sheltering me. Someday someone will put Tom out of his and the rest of the world’s misery. He might even manage to do it himself. But I won’t get another chance.”

“Life is full of second chances,” China Black said sternly.

“I don’t deny it. But thank you, anyway.” Frances swung herself back on the trike and closed the shell around us. China Black stepped backward when the engine started. Frances saluted her with a raised hand and pulled out of the drive.

The east was turning milky; it was there to see as we recrossed the bridge, heading for whatever haven we might happen on. Another dawn in Frances’s company. I’d spent more time with Frances than I’d ever spent with Sherrea at a stretch. I didn’t think that, by itself, constituted friendship.

I hoped Sherrea was safe. She’d tried, after all. She’d told me to change my wicked ways long ago — days ago. Forever. To forget myself, and serve whatever came my way, needing it. There was very little now to forget. And something, I supposed, to serve. How many days ago? Five? Six? I’d called her from Del Corazón, and I’d threatened Beano with — that’s right, it had been…

“What day is it?” I asked Frances.

A pause. “Thursday, I think. No, it’s tomorrow now — Friday.”

“Turn right at the next street.”

She glanced back at me. “Is this a decision-making device?”

“I’ve had an idea. No, that way. Now, go straight.”

A short cautious time later, we had stopped in the shadows behind Del Corazón. We might be too late. We couldn’t be — that would be closing the last gate, the ultimate injustice in an unjust world. Fifteen years of life used up, wiped away; if I found out I was fifteen minutes late for the only unselfish thing I’d ever thought of doing, it would be more than even I deserved. I yanked on the cord that rang the back bell, and waited, and yanked again.

The door flew open, and the door frame protested, metal on metal. Beano stood inside, white as diluted milk, in tight, torn jeans and a T-shirt that seemed likely to die of exhaustion crossing his pectorals. He frowned when he saw me. He began to swing the door shut.

“No,” I said, my voice breaking. “Listen to the deal first. Then make decisions.”

“A deal?” Beano asked. “Or a screw job?”

“A deal. Can we come in?”

I don’t think he’d seen Frances until then. “Who’s she?”

“A package I want to deliver.”

“Fastened with tape,” Frances said blandly, “and not with string. Don’t look at me; I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Can we come in?” I repeated.

After a moment Beano said, “I’m busy.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.” And I met and sustained his rose-colored glare.

“It is a screw job.”

I shook my head.

I think he let us in out of unadulterated curiosity. He hurried us through the back rooms to the shop, where the air was thick with old and new incense. Frances sat, one ankle across the other knee, on the corner of a little table stacked with denim and leather pants. It would have been a convincingly casual pose, if she hadn’t spoiled it by watching me. Behind her, hanging from a nail, was something made of knotted silk cord, like the web of a wealthy spider. Beano went behind the counter and leaned on it. That told me my place. I was the supplicant; I was to have judgment passed on me and my offer.