Chapter 414: We’ll Meet.

My eyes gave her the answer before I opened my mouth.

Something in her face closed. The hand on the frame tightened until the knuckles went bloodless.

"Bram." She didn’t move off the threshold. "Is Max alright?"

I pulled her into me.

She fought it at once — both palms flat against my chest, shoving hard enough that the wound at my neck pulled and the dried blood on my shirt cracked under her fingers. She didn’t want the comfort. She wanted the word. I let her go.

She found her balance in the doorway. One hand still on the wood.

"Answer me."

"He’s gone."

She stood there.

The alley held its dark. Code’s weight shifted once on the veranda boards and went still. Somewhere behind her, in the room, a floorboard ticked.

Then she breathed out once and that was all of it. No collapse. No sound. Only the breath, and the space it left.

"You looked at me."

Her voice had something coming apart underneath it. Not volume. Structure.

"I tried."

"You looked at me," Louder now. The words hit the alley walls and came back. "I was standing in that road and you looked at me and you said it."

Behind me, three people turned. I didn’t have to look. Sherry’s intake of breath. May’s boots on stone.

"I know what I said."

"Say it back to me."

"Becky—"

"Say it back to me, Bram."

"I said I’d do everything I could."

"No." She shook her head once. "I asked you to make sure he didn’t die. That’s what I asked you. And you put your hand on my shoulder."

"It took seconds." The words came out useless even as I said them. "Becky, it was fast. There was nothing in it."

"Fast."

A small laugh with nothing in it. Dry. A sound that had given up on being a laugh before it left her mouth.

"And you’re standing here." She looked at all of me. "You’re standing here and he isn’t. So don’t tell me about seconds."

Her hand went back a fraction.

And came round with a sword in it.

The blade cleared the dark of the room in a single bright arc. Street light found the edge. Her arm was already committed to the line between my throat and her grief.

Code was between us before her arm straightened.

I hadn’t seen him leave the veranda. One moment the boards, the next the space between Becky’s sword and my chest, a blade of his own laid flat across her throat — not cutting, holding, the metal steady against the skin where her pulse jumped. His bad shoulder sat correctly now. The limp was gone from the stance.

"Put it down." he said.

"Let her go."

"Bram—"

"She’s not going to do anything. Let her go."

"Don’t try me." Becky didn’t look at him once. She kept her eyes on me over the top of his blade, the sword still up, the steel at her throat treated as weather. "Don’t tell him what I’m going to do."

"Becky."

"Next time I see you, you can carry my greetings to my brother."

"Say that again."

May, coming up fast behind me. Boots hard on the alley stone.

"May—" Sherry’s voice, thinner.

"No. Say it again." She cut her off. "Because you can stand there and threaten whoever you like, you can do exactly what your brother did to this city—"

"May—"

"—but you don’t come at him." May was past my shoulder now, close enough that I felt the heat off her arm. "Not one finger. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?"

Becky’s eyes never left mine. Sword in her right hand, Code’s steel on her throat, and not one part of her interested in either. Her heart was still doing what I’d heard from the threshold.

"We’ll meet," she said.

She started stepping back into the house.

The sword lowered by degrees. Code’s blade followed the retreat without pressing, a constant distance, until the dark of the room took her shoulder and then her face and then the last of the street light on the steel.

"We’ll meet."

The doorway emptied.

Code stayed exactly where he was with the blade still up, facing the gap, as if the threat might change its mind and come back through the frame. A full second passed. He lowered the steel and stepped aside.

I stood and looked at the space where she’d been.

She’s right.

I found her standing in the middle of that road with her feet planted, and I talked her out of it. I put my hand on her shoulder and I told her to go and I said I’d do everything I could.

And he died about ninety seconds later.

"What was that?" Sherry asked.

"What was what?" May’s voice came back sharp, still aimed at the empty doorway.

I didn’t turn around. I looked up at the strip of sky over the alley — no stars, only the washed dark above the street lamps — and let it sit on me.

"That girl is grieving," Sherry said. "She’s just lost her brother and you made it worse."

"Who cares?"

"May—"

"No, genuinely. Who cares about her brother?" May wasn’t stopping. The words came fast, stacked. "Her brother put those things in this city. Three days. Do you know how many people are standing out on that road right now who used to be somebody’s brother?"

"She’s hurt."

"What about everybody else’s brothers?" May’s boots shifted on the stone. "The ones he put down for nothing. Are their sisters out here waving swords at people?"

"She’s hurt, May."

"So that’s a licence now, is it? She’s hurt, so she gets to hurt him?"

"He had it handled."

"He always has it handled. That’s the problem with him."

I turned around.

Not at them. The two of them disagreeing was the most ordinary sound the alley was holding.

I looked past them, down the length of the street.

The infected were still standing where they’d stopped. Every single one. The woman in the torn coat at the shop window. The Guardian with the rifle against his knee. Heads down. Arms loose. A city of statues waiting on a set of eyelids somewhere I hadn’t found yet.

That’s the next problem.

And it’s the whole of it. Solve that, and there’s somewhere for all of us to live.

"I’m going," I said.

"Where?" Sherry turned.

"I’ll be back."

"That’s not an answer."

"Stay in that room. All three of you."

"Bram."

"I won’t be long."

Both of them wanted to argue it. I saw it land and stall — the half-step forward, the breath taken for a sentence that didn’t come. Neither of them spoke, because I always came back, and they’d both stopped bothering to doubt it somewhere along the way.

"Okay."

I put a kiss on Sherry’s forehead. Salt. Dust. The heat of skin that had been crying.

"Look after Becky. She’s hurt and she’s right to be." I kept hold of her shoulder a second — the solid weight of her under my hand, the life of her. "And look after yourself."

"Okay. You too."

She went back into the house. The door stayed open behind her. May stayed where she was, between me and the alley mouth, the smile gone, something harder and more practical in its place.

"Let’s go," I said to Code, and he turned.

"We’ll be back," I told her.

She nodded once.

"I know." She tilted her chin up. The street light found her eyes. "But you’re not going anywhere without tasting my lips first."

"Fine."

I kissed her. Brief. The insistence of someone who ran numbers on death and still demanded this before the next door.

Code was already moving up the alley.

And the limp had gone.