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Master Law, some voice said, somewhere in the dome. There was a flood of echoes, other voices whispering it, and one calling it out... “Master Law!”
People came to him, some that he knew, some that he did not, and suddenly he panicked, because in the dark there was no color, and he had deceived them. They came, and near him Sbi stood, still hooded. Someone tried to take his hand, and he flinched and saved himself, looked into Carl Gytha’s tear-streaked face and flung his arms about him, which hurt too. He could not make himself heard if he tried: the whole dome rang with voices. Master Law!the shout went up, and people surged in until they pressed on him and Gytha and someone thrust at the crowd trying to clear him room.
“Let me out,” he pleaded of Gytha, of Sbi, of anyone who could hear him. He shouted into the noise and could hardly hear himself. “Let me out!” The whole place was mad and Waden Jenks’s firelit face presided over it in rigid horror.
Perhaps Gytha understood. A tide started in the press which surged toward the other side of the dome, which swept him along with Gytha’s arm to protect him ... or Sbi’s ... in the confusion he was no longer sure. The crush compressed his ribs, threatened his hands, and he would have fallen but for an arm which encircled his waist and pulled him.
They broke forth into the air, a spill of the crowd like a wound bleeding forth onto the firelit paving. He had a momentary view of the distant, dying fires of the hedge, of ancient shrubbery gone skeletal and black as winter twigs.
“Sir,” someone was saying to him, but he shook his head dazedly, finding even breathing hard. The crowd was pouring out after him, threatening to surround him here as well. Panic took him and he pushed at someone with his arm, saw Gytha’s anxious look directed to the outpouring crowd.
And there in shadow, a taller, hooded figure, which unhooded itself and stood with naked head facing the crowd, which wavered, which slowed. Sbi turned and purposefully came and took him by the arm, drew him away in the moment’s shock, even away from Gytha, even from those he would have wanted to see. He yielded to Sbi’s encircling arm, walking farther up Main, slipping into what fitful shadows there were from the light of the burning, where Second Street offered them shelter.
Herrin stopped there, sank down on the doorstep of a dark and open doorway, his arm locked across his aching side.
“You are hurt?” Sbi asked him, touched his face with two gentle fingers, wiped sweat from him.
“Drink?” Herrin asked, for shock threatened him and somewhere—he could not even remember where—he had lost the bundles of his belongings, everything. Sbi bent and touched his lips, transferred a mouthful of sweetish fluid to him, caressed his brow in drawing away and regarded him with great black eyes, pursed mouth bearing an expression of ahnit sorrow.
“Sit,” Sbi wished him. “O Herrin, sit still.”
“Waden,” he said. “He and Keye ... won’t know what to do. Can’t know what to do. I have to go to the Residency, Sbi, and talk to them ... if I can help there—I have to.”
He tried to get up. Sbi did not help him at first, until he had almost made it and almost fallen, and then Sbi’s arm encircled him. A dark ru
“Come on. Come on. Let’s get back to Main, into the light.”
“Your species frightens me.”
“Come.” He walked, insisting, anxious himself until they were back on the main line of the city, with the smoldering hedge in front of them and the fire from the burning buildings still lighting the smoke which hung over the city like a reddened ceiling, casting light to all that was below it. It all looked wrong; and then he realized that he had never seen the buildings on Port Street without the façades lit. Only a few windows showed light on the Residency’s uppermost floor. He could not see the University clearly, but they had emergency power over there too, as they did at the port, and it was all dark, as far as he could see.
He was afraid ... on all sides, afraid. More ru
They left the concrete for the berm, which was powdered black with the burning of the hedge. Smoke obscured their vision. Fires still crackled, knee-high flames in a line down the remnant of the hedge on either side as they passed what was left of the archway and crossed onto Port Street, in front of the Residency.
The whole west end was a shambles, the roof of the fifth level caved in, making rubble of that level and the next, where he had had his rooms ... and cracking walls beneath. The east wing, the source of the lights, stayed apparently intact, but the cracks ran there too.
I would have died here,he thought dazedly, reckoning where his rooms were. He crossed the street with Sbi close beside him. No one prevented them, no one appeared on the street or on the outside steps. The doors gaped dark and open, showing only a little light from somewhere up the interior stairs when they walked in. The desk at the entry was deserted, dusted with fallen cement and there was rubble on the floor.
“Waden?”he called aloud, and his voice echoed terrifyingly in the empty halls. Something moved, scurried, ran, stopped ru
They came into the uppermost hall, where light showed on the right and wind from the ruined west wing came skirling in with a stinging breath of smoke. “Waden?” Herrin called again, fearing to surprise whatever guards Waden Jenks might have about him. He trod the hall carefully, toward that closed door where Waden’s office was.
He called again. Something moved inside. He heard a voice, used his bandaged hand to press the latch and pushed it open.
Keye met them. She had been sitting opposite the door in the long room, and rose, and her hands came up to shield her face. She cried out: Keye ...cried aloud, and Herrin reached out a hand to prevent her dissolution. “Keye,” he said, but she darted—for him, he thought for the instant—and then slid past him, past Sbi, for the dark hall, out, out of his presence and the sight of him. He looked back again to the room, dazed and of half a mind to go after Keye, to stop her if he could and reason with her if there was any reason. But there was movement in the doorway beyond the ell, and Waden was there, his face quickly taking on that look that Keye’s had had.
“Waden,” Herrin said, before he could do what Keye had done. “What happened?”
Waden only stared at him, in frozen stillness.
“The Outsiders,” Herrin said. “Waden, you see me. You see I’m not alone; you always have, haven’t you? Wake up and see what’s going on, Waden. The city’s afire; your Outsiders have run mad. It was a lie. From the begi
“Your reality,” Waden said from dry lips. “This is your reality, Herrin Law.”
He blinked, caught up in that fancy automatically, for one mind-wrenching instant that made all the walls shimmer, that rearranged everything and sent it inside out. “No,” he said, and reached his clumsy hand for Sbi, for a blue cloak, drawing the ahnit forward, into Waden’s full view. “Real as I am, Waden; real as you are, as the fire is real. You can’t cancel it.”
“It’s yours,” Waden said bleakly. “I would not have imagined this. I failed to kill you, and you did this.”