our fates that day. Just as I was now, approaching the Scion Republic of France. I had no idea what would befall me in this new theatre of war. What names and faces I would wear. Who I might become.
If I had, I might have turned back.
****
The dockworker who had met us in Dover appeared at the door to our container, face creased beneath the peak of his cap.
“They’re searching all ships that arrive from England.” His breath clouded. “We have to leave.”
When I lifted my head, pain bolted down my nape. My eyes felt tightly screwed into my skull.
The dockworker watched, impenetrable. His hair and eyes were gray as slate. No distinctive features. Through a dense headache, I wondered how many fugitives he had abetted, and how far this network stretched.
“Paige,” Warden said. “Can you stand?”
My nod ripped out the bones of the world. All at once, nothing had structure. The dockworker shed features and edges until he was a frameless smear. Everything spread, like paint in water. Colors leaked across boundaries. I unfolded my legs, keeping hold of the dossier Scarlett Burnish had pressed into my arms only a couple of hours ago. It contained my new identity.
As I tried to get up, something deep inside me cracked. Pain thumped through my bones and bruises. With a sharp intake of breath, I stopped, my face glazed with cold sweat.
Warden knelt in front of me. As soon as I shook my head, he gathered me to his chest and stood. I clasped my arms around his neck as he followed the dockworker out of the container.
Our escape registered in fits and starts. Warden sheltered me from the rain and brutal cold. From the nest of his coat, I caught my first glimpse of the Port of Calais. Though it had to be mid-morning, the sky was dark enough that everything was still illuminated. Floodlights cast shadows on to walls of shipping containers. Ferries and freighters waited to depart, their gangways sheened with ice, and a transmission screen shone a message through the downpour:
you are now entering the republic of scion france
vous entrez maintenant à la république de la france de scion
The dockworker splashed ahead and ushered us into a mail van. “Keep quiet,” he said, and closed the doors.
Darkness enfolded me, as it had in the cell I had barely escaped. The never-ending void, broken only by the light above the waterboard, the fire of Rephaite eyes.
Warden shifted a few of the sacks and boxes in the van. As I crawled into the space he had cleared, I caught the stale reek of the sweat beneath my oilskin and the thick grease in my hair.
“He could hand us over,” I rasped.
Warden covered me with his coat. “I have no intention of letting Scion take you again.”
The engine rumbled to life. Icy perspiration trickled down my face.
“I want to sleep.” I breathed the words. “I just want to sleep.”
He settled in beside me, and his hands closed around mine. My wool-clad fingers seemed brittle in his grasp.
“Sleep,” he said. “I will keep watch.”
****
The poltergeist in Senshield had left a web of fine cracks on my dreamscape. As I dozed fitfully beside Warden, shunted by the motion of the van, memories rippled through the flowers in my mind, which were steeped in murky water.
I saw my grandparents, hauled into the shadow of the anchor. I saw their farmhouse, its briar roses, the hand-carved sign above its door that showed a honeybee in flight.
I saw my father, murdered by a golden blade.
****
Somehow the dockworker drove out of a guarded port with the two most wanted fugitives in the Republic of Scion. After an eternity, the van stopped, and Warden scooped me back into his arms. I was starting to hurt again. Pain seethed like the red heat under the earth, waiting to burst forth.
The dockworker had parked on a quiet street. He shepherded us through a door, into a small hallway.
“This is your safe house,” he said tersely. “You will hear from someone in the network soon. Do not go outside.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
Only my labored breathing disturbed the silence. A staircase led up to the next floor. Warden was still for a time, his hand at the back of my head.
In the colony, he had found ways to help and protect me. He had wielded a degree of power, even if it had been a façade. Now he was a fugitive. A god in exile. He had no means