"I know a way out of the city,” Cherry admitted. “It’s been a long time since I thought about using it.” Her eyes leapt to the shelves of scrolls behind Fintan.

  RuTing released the counter. The heavy oak plank, beveled and polished to a shine, was cracked in the middle, but it didn’t break away. Her casual questioning was hid with a shallow restraint Cherry saw through, but he’d missed.

  The illusion in the Green would last for hours if their show of intimacy left the fragile ideas untouched. The illusion had no substance. It couldn’t respond to a question. If interfered with, the illusion would disappear and expose the mist generator. He’d hoped they would manage several visits to the library before that happened, but their plans had fallen apart on the first day. Cherry was in trouble, and she wouldn’t forget that they had witnessed the altercation. He’d advised her to run, revealing his intentions toward Bannerburg.

  The revelation was not in his best interest. She alone attended the marble-sheathed library, and he puzzled why that was the case. She brandished her authority with the other ogre. Such was not the case with the department head. The Ogre carried a status he didn’t understand. The library enshrined their knowledge in a display that could only be a direct challenge to Zeusopolis, but he saw few visitors outside of the doctors. They could have hidden in the shelves, studied the scrolls, and waited for Cherry to compose herself. That was not his way. That was not the way he was taught.

  Fintan worried about Cherry’s situation. RuTing would tell him he should be concerned for their own. The city walls were coated with a slick polymer and made from a bedrock aggregate. He’d never Stepped through something so thick. The barracks were outside the city wall, and he could sense people’s eimai in the barracks, but just barely. Would Stepping pose such difficulty? It might be at the extent of his range.

  The returning confidence in Cherry’s voice was betrayed by her eyes.

  “How much do you know about the afterlife?” Fintan asked. “There must be someplace you can go?”

  “I’ve read the scrolls,” she said. “I wove them. There is no place better than Bannerburg, but there are worse places, far worse.”

  “The ogres write the scrolls,” RuTing said. “Have you been anywhere else?”

  Cherry shook her head in negation.

  “You are right. This isn’t the Union. Only approved scrolls are allowed in the library. The doctors who keep their own journals use metal foil. I came from the portals directly to Bannerburg centuries ago. I don’t know anything other than what I’ve read.”

  Her hesitance was apparent. She had nowhere to go, and how well could she trust RuTing and Fintan? They’d only known each other for a few weeks. Fintan didn’t need to know everything about Bannerburg to know it wasn’t right. This could be the best of the afterlife. They lived in voluntary privation. Wealth and status were accorded to the few who fought for privileges they were accorded in another life. Should happiness be so fleeting in the afterlife?

  “The Union is peace,” Fintan reminded Cherry. He died in the Union—murdered, but the fact was the Peace compelled nonviolence. Her memory of the peace would make her subservient to coercion because, above all other biological influences, the need to benefit the whole rather than the individual was endemic to the Union. “We are from the Union. There must be others.”

  “If you show us the way,” RuTing said. “We can get you out of here. You can travel with us until you find something better.”

  “Then I better get ready,” Cherry said.

  “We can manifest anything you need,” Fintan replied, but Cherry shook her head. She turned from them to throw open the door behind the counter. The sewing room held a heavy wooden peg board with spun gold and silver wire of all different gauges.

  The gold thread reels were mounted on the Swinger. She took the needle off the sewing head and all the spares and put them in a small box. She had a bag made of fine silver thread and she emptied the peg board into the bag until she strained under the weight. RuTing lifted it off her shoulders.

  “You are as strong as an Ogre,” Cherry said. A drip of blood fell on the floor.

  “You’re bleeding,” Fintan said.

  “I pricked my finger on the needle.”

  Cherry stuck her finger in her mouth and found a small hammer in her workbench. It was worn, green in places from oxidization, but the orange of copper on the head and handle. She hit the Swinger, trying to break the machine into pieces with the hammer, but it was well made.

  “May I?” Fintan asked. He didn’t have the strength levels RuTing had, but she was encumbered by the bag of gold. Cherry handed him the hammer, and he almost dropped it from the weight. No wonder she was breathing hard.

  “It’s iridium, electroplated with copper and nickel. I smooth abrasions in the thread before I wind it on a spool. Without the needles and the Swinger, they won’t be able to make new scrolls for a while.”

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  “We are going to have all of Bannerburg chasing us,” RuTing said. She was not happy.

  “It’s my final paycheck, and I’m emptying my account,” Cherry replied. “They talk a lot about intellectual freedom here, but the Ogres own all the patents. The only reason why they haven’t taken the swinger is they don’t want to learn how to sew.”

  Fintan swung the hammer. With his strength, he broke the Swinger. He wasn’t sure if it wasn’t taking out his rage physically, but the dry air didn’t seem as debilitating. He hammered at the machine until it was in pieces on the floor. Cherry kicked the pieces into the corner. She might want him to continue for longer, but this was enough.

  “There are a few things we need to do before we leave,” Fintan said.

  Cherry turned off the main gas valve to the library. The flames on the gas lamps disappeared with puffs as the remaining gas in the lines left them in darkness. She carried a small candle for light.

  The plan was simple. They would retrieve their belongings from the flower bed and then find Paris. If they couldn’t find a way close to the underground jail, Fintan could Step in and free Paris.

  RuTing wanted Cherry to lock the library and close it like usual. There was no hiding the destruction of the Swinger, but they locked the door to her sewing room. Large windows in the front of the library displayed scrolls with text and diagrams. At night's end, she reshelved the displays, swept the floor, and polished the furniture.

  RuTing wanted Cherry’s disappearance to remain a mystery.

  “If the Ogres investigate, they might find out he was harassing you,” RuTing said.

  The logical recourse was far from Cherry’s mind. Her cheeks were still pale, and her eyes looked wet from unshed tears. Destroying the Swinger hurt her deeply as much as she demanded to be part of it.

  “We should blow it up,” Cherry said. “No one would get hurt.”

  “No,” RuTing said. “We don’t want to make Bannerburg more angry than we need to.”

  Fintan agreed. He also realized that while he remembered the Union and The Peace strongly, those memories were distant for Cherry. She might trust them because she knew who they were, but Bannerburg had changed her.

  They hurried through the streets. He didn’t bother to explain that he and RuTing created illusions to cover their activity. The mist was thick in the streets of Bannerburg, and he felt stronger when he was away from the dry air.

  Cherry stayed between them, eyes wide. She hadn’t even seen Zeusopolis, their closest neighbor. In comparison, Bannerburg was an impressive city. Compared to the hovels around the portals, more so.

  When they reached the flower bed, Fintan manifested a wooden shovel. RuTing dropped Cherry’s bag, tossed away the smooth retaining wall stones, and produced a rake out of the thick air.

  “The witchcraft doesn’t surprise you?” he asked Cherry. He thought she would make a noise about the casual manifestation, but she appeared nonplussed.

  “Everyone’s tried it,” she said. “We don’t do it where we can get caught, but everyone knows if you go outside, you can make something. The doctors say you will go blind if you try too hard, and we are all afraid of the nightmares.”

  “The light keeps the nightmares away,” RuTing said. She wasn’t even breathing hard, and her rake was a blur.

  “That’s why we have gas lamps lit even when no one is around.”

  A few feet below the surface, they found their possessions. RuTing reclaimed her sword and Fintan his poniard. He kept his grandfather’s coat even though it reminded him all too much of the Ogres. Not every doctor subscribed to this system. Without his grandfather, he might have forgotten that. At the end of the day, he probably shared more with Ogres of Bannerburg than anyone else he’d met in the afterlife.

  He kept digging. A few feet below the dark earth, he found a hard white crust—the bedrock impervious to his wooden tools. It wasn’t level, but it was smooth. He tapped on the ground, but he heard no echo. Until Bannerburg, he thought the bedrock was impossible to destroy.

  “We know there is a jail below the city,” he said. “We have one more person to rescue.”

  “A Zeusopolan?” Cherry said aghast. “Why would you take one of those with us?”

  “We promised,” RuTing said.

  “I’m not going to leave anyone to be tortured,” Fintan said. “If I can get close to him, I can get him out.”

  “Let his people take care of him,” Cherry said.

  “They won’t. I don’t know why, but he’s certain they won’t.”

  Cherry wanted to debate the decision longer, but standing under the gas lamps in the middle of the street wasn’t the answer. She gave her objections, although her reticence was evident.

  “If he’s in jail, I might have the answer,” Cherry said. “My way out is through the Convalescence Annex under the city. My plan was for the portal gate. The jail you describe is connected to the River Gate, but they might be the same. Much of the city was designed with symmetry when it was rebuilt.”

  “We came through the Portal Gate when they brought us to Bannerburg,” RuTing said.

  “So named because that is where the wagons run to get arrivals from the portals. That’s where all the fighting starts. Everyone wants a piece of the portals. The Adversary and gods who pay tribute to him get access to his roads. The others have to fight for a place.”

  “We worked near the River Gate,” Fintan said. “It was a smaller garrison.”

  “No one wants to work any closer to the river than they have to. If the plans are the same, the Convalesense Annex will connect to the barracks outside the city.”

  “How do we get to the Annex?” RuTing asked.

  They’d been all around the city and hadn’t heard of the Annex. It would take years to explore a city this size, but they hadn’t even heard of it.

  “I know a secret door. When I transcribed an account of the planning commission into the archives, there was an expense for a new door and an increase in beds. The only other access is in the hospitals.”

  Fintan hadn’t been to a hospital. Most of his appointments were in the future, but he expected the equipment was guarded closely. Cherry’s real value to their exit was the secret door. In one stroke, they could free Paris and leave Bannerburg.

  Where is the door?” RuTing asked.

  “I’ll show you.”

  When Cherry said the words, then a massive detonation shook the bedrock. He thought the crust was unbreakable, but it vibrated, and a rush of red fire burst into the sky. The streets channeled the shockwave, and the lamp posts popped as the gas blew out. Darkness flooded into the streets like rushing water into a new channel.

  Over the tops of buildings, a red glow shot fiery embers into the sky, and droplets rained on them, burning Fintan’s skin. It was liquid silver.

  “What did you do?” RuTing cried.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Cherry said. “I put the main on the exhaust and left a candle in the utility room.”

  “The library was too close to the reservoir,” Fintan said. “You set the city on fire.”