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believe me?”
    He curled his hands into his chest in a reflexive, protective motion. “I’ve been there. I can’t go back.”
    She touched his shoulder. All rapport and confidence. “Tiago, what is the name of that girl you like?”
    “Nusdilla,” he replied, before he could stop himself. Damn, damn, triple damn.
    Kay moved her hand up to his neck and pulled him in close. 
    “If you don’t go, she will suffer far worse than you ever will have in Dekkan.” She let go. “Do you believe me now , Tiago?”
    He did. Absolutely.
    He nodded.
    “Good,” Kay said, and handed him a kevlar raincoat and one of the gasmasks from the door. “Then let’s go.”

Chapter Seven

     
    They walked through the slowly darkening streets, the rain hissing against their protective gear. Ox-men and Runners followed. Their footsteps clicked against cobblestone as Kay led them through side alleys and tiny backstreets so cramped they had to move through them single file.
    No one else was out in the dark.
    Tiago stopped a tremble in his hands at the thought of being out at night. Some places had bogeyman to frighten the children. Here in Placa del Fuego there was the real life Doaq stalking around at night.
    Even in the alien district they shut the doors and hid for the night.
    Several times Kay came to a dead end where small locked doors stopped the group’s progress. But a few knocks in a pattern and they would open, and everyone would tromp through someone’s front room, leaving sizzling drops of rain behind.
    In a steady sort of way, dodging the streets and moving through the city using Kay’s own geography of passages and doors, they moved through half the Back Circle in two hours.
    Kay finally stopped and removed her gas mask in the quiet foyer of a restaurant, eerie in its empty state: the tables were all set and ready, waiting for the morning crowd. 
    Tiago burned his fingers on the wet straps of his gas mask as he pulled it free. Kay looked right at him, “There’s a prison wagon on its way to the Dekkan Holding Center. It’ll pass us by. I’ve paid and faked documents to get your name on the list, and bribed the driver to stop and pick you up. Tiago, are you listening?”
    He felt numb. He looked outside to where the rain had eased to a drizzle. The gaslight streetlamps flickered as the wind whipped flames this way and that, each drop of rain causing the lamps to spit and flare with increased energy.
    Tiago nodded. “I’m listening,” he said. He struggled to get his head back into the moment. “Why do you want me in there? What exactly am I doing?”
    Kay pulled out a packet of photos and spread them with a flourish across a nearby table, like a card dealer. “These seven people are all survivors of the Palentar fire. One of them might be in the wagon, or in the Holding Center.”
    Tiago looked at her across the table. “I don’t understand?”
    “You don’t need to understand,” Kay said.
    “Actually, it would help,” said Nashara. Tiago startled, whirled, and found that she’d been standing in a corner of the room watching all this. A shadow herself, she moved out of the dark and into the lit area.
    For a split second, Kay stared at her, and Nashara stared back. It seemed, Tiago thought, that an entire conversation happened in that split second. One he was, and never would be, party to.
    Kay moved in closer, creating that bubble of space around them both once more. “You remember the fire on Palentar?”
    “Yes.” There had been rumors that a superhuman man of some sort from the Xenowealth fought the Doaq. And lost, of course.
    “You heard the rumors?”
    “Yes.”
    Kay smiled. “Those weren’t rumors. The man who fought the Doaq was Pepper.”
    “From New Anegada?” Tiago looked at Nashara.
    “My grandfather,” Nashara confirmed. “In a sense. Yes.”
    Tiago stepped back from Kay and moved slightly closer to Nashara. “They say he ripped up the road, smashed through houses, and between the