“You can take it from here,” Wick said. “Straight on down the tunnel,” Wick said.
“What about you?” Cass said.
“I can’t leave my brother back there. Able can take you.”
You’re my brother, too, Able signed.
Wick reached behind Able’s neck and pulled the man’s forehead to his own in a show of affection. Able patted his face before they separated.
“Go on. Godspeed.”
Wick turned and started back towards where the others were holed up. Cass felt like her heart was about to break. She was Wren’s mother, and she loved him more than she loved herself. But deep in her heart, she knew that she would rather die fighting alongside those people back there than live with herself knowing she’d left them behind.
“I will take the child,” Chapel said.
Somehow he had perceived her thoughts.
“Wick, wait,” she called.
It was the most terrible decision Cass had ever made, and her heart seemed to tear within her chest as she handed Wren’s unconscious form over to the blindfolded old man. But he had cared for her son before, when she had been unable. And though Cass did not know Chapel well, she knew she could trust his word. Chapel laid him on his shoulder. Cass kissed Wren on the forehead as he lay there, as if he’d been asleep, and she was kissing him goodnight. He had once been forced to say goodbye to her. Now it was her turn to bear that pain.
“Bye, baby,” she said.
She took Three’s pistol from its holster on her thigh, and handed it to Chapel.
He shook his head. “I have no need.”
“It’s for Wren. I want him to have it.”
He nodded, then, and took it and tucked it away inside his coat.
“Careful, it’s loaded,” she said.
“Go,” Chapel said.
Cass brushed Wren’s hair with her fingers, and kissed him one last time. And then she turned back, and she and Able together caught up with Wick.
When he first woke, Wren couldn’t tell he had opened his eyes. But he could tell he was lying on a hard surface, with something squishy under his head, and he blinked his eyes several times. His next thought was that he had gone blind. He called out. “Mama!”
A hand pressed into his shoulder, firm, with strong fingers. Not his mother.
“Shhh, child,” Chapel said. “She is not here, but you are safe.”
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Away.”
“What happened, Chapel? Where are we?”
Chapel explained in his patient way, gentle in truth, but hiding nothing. Wren wept then, deeply and bitterly, and Chapel comforted him, not with words, but with his presence.
After a time they resumed their journey. He rode on Chapel’s back through the long darkness, sometimes sleeping, sometimes wakeful, and often unable to distinguish the two. His sorrow was heavier than any he had known. And now he understood something of Painter’s agony. The uncertainty of the loss. Unable to grieve fully because weak hope continued to cling whether bidden or no.
But it was indeed a weak hope, too frail to support the belief that Wren would see his mother again. And so he felt trapped between the two thoughts: that his mother was dead, or that she was alive but never to be seen again. He had grieved for her once in his lifetime. It was even harder the second time.
And all those others. Gamble, and Sky, and Able; Wick, Finn, Mouse, and Swoop. Swoop alone among them could be mourned.
And Painter. Wren had no words to describe the pain that thoughts of Painter caused. He too was dead, in a way. Wren didn’t understand it exactly, but he knew that somehow Asher had reached Painter, had changed him. Or that Painter had allowed himself to be changed, which was even more tragic.
And then there was Asher. He’d had his vengeance on Morningside. It was probably too much to hope that Asher believed Wren to be dead. How long would it be before he came to claim his little brother? Or would he be content to have destroyed everything that Wren had loved?
Wren lost all sense of time during that journey. He still had his pack with him, which had a little food and some water. Enough to get them through, though Chapel never ate. When they finally reached the end, dawn was breaking over the city.
And together they walked towards Greenstone, the last known survivors of the once great city in the east.