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What an odd and terrible thing to know

If Rath hadn’t scented the Caprine and followed theht silence would not exist at all; this sa screa, sweet small bundle, and all the others, too, instead of the aries

"Aries!" said Hazael, laughing--laughing with relief, it seeully were only aries: shaggy, curling-horned livestock, and no Caprine sheepfolk, no chimaera at all

"You and you" Kala pointed out two soldiers "Kill the her teah to brush the leaning trees at the gully’s edges and shed sparks "Find their owners"

Sveva heard the screams of the aries and pressed her face harder into Rath’s shoulder Rath had persuaded the sheepfolk to drive off their flock and double back along the creek bed, climb out of that ravine and into another--this one--and take shelter They were too ether, and the aries were too loud, too unruly to trust with their lives; they’d be seen, he’d said, and he’d been right

Now the aries were dying

Sveva clutched her sister’s hand; it was limp The screams of the aries were terrible, even at a distance, but they didn’t last long, and when they finally trailed away she i in the sky overhead Angels, hunting Hunting them She clutched the hilt of her own stolen knife and it made her feel her s brute fist

Maybe she would stab one with it What would that feel like? Oh, her hate was hot; she alels, of course, but in a faraway, vague kind of way They’d been monsters from bedtime tales She’d never even seen one before she was captured For centuries this land had been safe--the Warlord’s armies had kept it so What ill luck, then, to live in the time of failed safety! Now, suddenly, seraphi tormentors, beautiful in a way that made beauty hideous

And then there was Rath, dreadful in a way that al, at least Proud How curious, to take comfort in the bulk of a flesh-eater at her side, but she did Again, Sveva felt herself scraping at her own shallows; since she was taken slave, her world had fallen open She had beheld seraphim and revenants; she had seen death and smelled it, and today, just today, she had learned ether First Rath, then the Caprine: sheepfolk she had called herdbeasts, and would have left to fend for theiven her so to break her fever They had shared their food, and Lell, who srass, had taken to Sveva and ridden astride her back for a time, her little arreat black shackle had been

Sveva’s eyes were closed Her face was against Rath’s shoulder, and her hip hard against Nur’s, and the silence held theood kind of closeness These weren’t her folk, but… they were, and maybe that meant that anyone could be anyone’s, which was a sort of nice thing to think, with the world falling apart Sveva wondered if she would ever get home to her mother and father so she could tell them that

She tried to pray, but she had only ever prayed at night, and it seeels chose to hunt by day

In the end, it wasn’t Lell who gave them away, but Sarazal

She jolted awake, her li free of Sveva’s The fever had come down; Nur’s spice and poultice had worked, and Sarazal’s big dark eyes, when they fluttered open, were much clearer than when Sveva had looked at them last Only… they fluttered open to see Rath’s fearsome face mere inches from her own

And Sarazal opened her mouth, and screamed

29

THE DEVILS WILL STILL BE THERE IN THE MORNING

"Listen to this one," said Zuzana "She-devil sighting in southern Italy--"

"Blue hair?" asked Mik It came outto sleep

"Pink, actually I guess the legions of Satan are exploring their color options" She was sitting up in bed, reading off her laptop "So, she scaled the side of this cathedral and hissed, at which point the witness was able to ascertain, at a distance of soue was forked"

"Good eyes"

"Yeah" She puffed out her cheeks and backpaged to her Google search screen "What a bunch of ht out there," he said "Coot, ht size for uely "Here’s one from yesterday, u Hurray! We’ve found Karou! What she’s doing in Bakersfield, California, stalking schoolchildren is unclear" She gave a derisive snort and returned to the Google screen

The world, it would seee boards that reported angels a abreast of the devil situation, too, and in a quirk of coincidence--ahem--ever since the widely televised shon on the Charles Bridge, devils tended to have blue hair, black trench coats, and tattoos of eyes on the palms of their hands

Karou was the face of the Apocalypse, which Zuzana happened to think was a pretty kick-ass brand of infaazine with the headline "Is This What a Deeous picture soels, her hair wild, hamsas outthrust before her, a look on her face of fierce concentration with a hint of… wild delight Zuzana reht It had been a little freaky Tiely enough had failed to print her expletive-riddled response Kaz, of course, had not disappointed theain "The devils will still be there in the "

"In a minute," Zuzana said, but it wasn’t a minute An hour later she had made a cup of tea and e boards weren’t getting her anywhere; that here the crazies went to play She narrowed her search She’d already traced the IP address of Karou’s single e-mail to Morocco, which wasn’t a surprise The last she’d heard from her friend she’d been in Morocco This wasn’t Marrakesh, though, but a city called Ouarzazate--pronounced War-za-zat--in a region of pales of the Sahara desert

Dust and starlight? Why, yes One would iine

Priestess of a sandcastle? Kasbahs did look extraordinarily like sandcastles Too bad there were, like, fifty million of them scattered over hundreds of ot that dorky song "Rock the Casbah" stuck in her head and huh dozens of sites that mostly came up as trek outfitters or "authentic nomad experience" kasbah hotels, all of the pools that didn’t look terribly no a French guy had written about his trek in the Atlas Mountains It was only a couple of days old and mostly it was just landscape pictures and ca jewelry at the roadside, but then there was this one shot that caused Zuzana to set her teacup aside and sit up She zooht sky with a perfect half pie of a h that she wouldn’t have noticed thes, they were visible mostly for the way they blotted out the stars Hard to deterot her

Don’t tell the angel chasers, but they have soht birds down here