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I give her a shove and startto the shadows and away from the surveillance cameras "Ever seen the beauty of the outer swamps?"

"I suppose out there they won’t find my body at all Smart"

"Does your platoon’s psych attendant know about this obsession with your own death?"

"Just trying to be helpful," she ritted teeth We’re not far fro I’ht up with lasers and six kinds of alare of civilization, the soldiers are stuck ire fences and foot patrols Central Coet aith to supply them, and it shows On top of that, the last few months of ceasefire have made them lazy Their patrols aren’t what they should be

I can hear the search parties on the other side of the base, but here where it butts up against the town, it’s quieter They always think the rebels will coh to walk around to approach from the tohere there’s less protection

I can tell she starts thinking about those search parties about the sa the barrel of the gun into her skin in warning We’re both still for a long, tenseshe doesn’t She lets the air out of her lungs in a furious capitulation

I kick at the wire until the place I wound the severed ends back together gives way, and then we’re outside her territory and into the swaloo creeks and streams The water’s as ae, so nobody but the locals can tell where the solid ground is until they put their feet down The floating clu--deeper, shallower, interconnecting in different ways each week as ishly

Most of the swaht now, the perht froht there are a couple ofthe waters to flow this way and that But I’ve never once seen theray

My currach is pulled up and beached on the mud by the fence, her flat-bottomed hull of sturdy plastene a battered contrast to the o places they don’t even see, withouta sound I push Jubilee ahead of rowls a wordless protest

"You know,in her ear, hoping to keep her too distracted to think of a way out of this "Even you looked keen onher naood One ive me a second chance"

I shove her forward into the currach and knock the lid off the fuel can with asoline we’re forced to use is so toxic, I can srab her collar to shove her face down against the can With an indignant protest she sucks in a lungful of vapor It takes her a few seconds to push past the pain and work out what I’h that her liive out and she slips, wrenching free of me to thump down into the bottoht Her gaze is furious as she struggles to stay conscious, trying to push up on one elbow Then she’s gone, her head falling back to thunk against the plastene hull I lean in carefully to peel back her eyelids, but she’s out She’ll have a screa her over the head Too easy toher instead

Without wasting another second, I flick on the safety, stick un into lides swift and silent through the water I can’t risk a light, not when I can see the lights of the base security forces dancing behind ate by feel, unclipping the pole fro soft, quick touches ahead and aroundto the channel that will lead hts sweeping the stretch of swaht to reach I keep expecting to feel a hand on ut, but she doesn’t stir

As soon as the sounds of shouts carrying across the water begin to fade and I can no longer see the distant lights of the base, I stop long enough to find iving the light an eerie green-broash; occasionally the soldiers spot our boats or our signal lights, and the cae can make them dismiss what they’ve seen as the will-o’-the-wisps so feared in this swamp

What they don’t know is that anyone who’d seen a real wisp could never confuse it with one of our lanterns

I hang the lantern on its spur rising from the bow and turn back to the unconscious trodaire in the bottom of the currach There’s no way out of this now Whether or not she can shed light on what’s happening in the stretch of no-man’s-land east of the base, she knows es to connect me with my sister, she’ll personally lead the hunt until she has my head on a platter--she won’t need their so-called Fury as an excuse for taking me apart piece by piece