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Whatever anyoneis to pick your feet up as quickly as possible—as if the ground has developed a great desire to hurt you Which it kind of had I took off at a pace that would have leftto check whether his legs were stillMore people exploded in h them I vaulted a cart, which i wood peppering the wall as I dived through an open

I rolled to my feet inside what looked to be, and certainly smelled like, a brothel of such low class I hadn’t even been aware of its existence Shapes writhed in the gloo over a lamp, a wicker table, a dresser, and a s the shutters on the rearon my way out

The room lit behind me I crashed across the alleyway into which I’d spilled, let the opposite wall arrest h cracked, sill and lintel, the whole building splitting The twin fissures, light and dark, wove their path afterup still more speed I jumped a poppy-head slumped in the alley and raced on From the sound of it the fissure cured his addiction permanently a heartbeat later

Eyes forward is the second rule of running, right after the one about picking up your feet So about the crack delance back at it

Sla breath for , I pulled away, only to discover the as holding ed and bloody, bunched in the jacket over my chest I looked up, then up soason’s pale eyes

“What—” He hadn’t tih us I saw a black fracture race through the Norse darkness In the sahthe world away

My vision cleared just in ti I heard a crack of an entirely different kind My nose breaking And the world went away again

SIX

First check where my money pouch is, and pat for my locket It’s a habit I’ve developed When you wake up in the kinds of places I wake up in, and in the company I often pay to keepwell, it pays to keep your coin close The bed was harder and more bumpy than I tend to like As hard and bulorious safeaas over I rolled onto, or the stink had kept even the beggars off That and the excitement down the road, the trail of exploded citizens, the burning opera house, the blazing crack The crack! I staggered todown the alley and pointing straight at ht and a quarter moon

“Shit” My nose hurt more than seemed reasonable I remembered fierce eyes beneath heavy browsand then those heavy brows s into my face “Snorri”

The Norseone Why s the walls, I couldn’t say I remembered the way those two fissures had run side by side, crossing and recrossing, and at every junction, a detonation The dark fracture line had run through Snorri—I had seen it across his face The light—

I pattedfor injury The light one had run through rubby shins with no sign of golden light shining fron of the fissure either Nothing reht

I shook thoughts of that blinding golden light from my mind I’d survived! The screams from the opera house returned to me How many had died? How many of my friends? My relatives? Had Alain’s sisters been there? Pray God Maeres Allus had been Let it be one of those nights he pretended to be a merchant and used his money to buy hih, I needed to put more distance between o? The Silent Sister’sat the palace to finish the job?

When in doubt, run

I took off again, along dark streets, lost but knowing in tis anew Running blind is apt to get you a broken nose, and since I had one of those already and wasn’t keen to find out what came next I kept my pace on the sensible side of breakneck I nor a few s a whole lot better As I ran, though, breathing through , I felt worse and worse A general unease grewanxiety I wondered whether this hat conscience felt like Not that any of it had been my fault I couldn’t have saved anyone even if I’d tried