We marched to a square a few blocks away that was bustling with people. It wasn't quite a protest, and it wasn't quite a mob, but a group of men were yelling at another group, and it was escalating even as we watched. It wasn't hard to figure out why: this city was full of age-old conflict. Conflict over religion, conflict over land-conflict that could easily spark up into something ugly if, for instance, you thought your longtime enemies had just committed an atrocity.
Turning the Circle against us wasn't the Saxons' only objective, I suddenly realized. The assassinations they'd been committing and blaming on the Order for so long had spread fear, oily and black. And now they'd set a match to it.
"How could they do this?" I murmured to Stellan. Around us, soldiers were pulling their masks over their faces and raising their shields. We did the same, and fell into formation. "The Saxons, but the Melechs, too. This is their own city."
"Because all the Circle cares about is the Circle, and especially their family," Stellan said, his voice echoing through his mask. "The Melechs live here and adopt parts of the culture to fit in, but you can't say they have loyalty to this place any more than you can say every British person is a sociopath like your brother and sister."
"So they don't care at all about their people?"
"They care about how much power their territories have, certainly. You can be sure Britain will benefit from the Saxons' actions, as will their allies. But a few lives lost to get what they want?" He shrugged. "It's nothing. Knowing exactly how to use the world as a tool to get yourself ahead is how the Circle has always worked. Sometimes the families like when there's conflict in their territories- it makes a place easier to manipulate."
From across the square, a flaming rag in the top of a bottle sailed toward us, smashing on the cobblestones just ahead of our group with a quick orange burst of flame.
The officer in charge shouted orders, and a few soldiers took off in the direction it had come from. I watched them subdue both sides of a fight that had broken out, attempting to keep the peace without hurting anyone. Stellan grabbed my arm and I followed him, jogging to the far corner of the square with a guy not too much older than us, who had a shock of curly hair and blue eyes so light, they were almost eerie against his olive complexion.
While we hurried along, Stellan talked to him in Hebrew and I prayed he wouldn't say anything to me.
Just then, though, Stellan pointed and said something, alarm in his voice. The guy answered and nodded toward a street behind us. Stellan and I started that way, and the guy jogged off in the opposite direction. The second his back disappeared around a corner, we ducked into a tiny alley and ditched our riot gear. I wished we could do more since this was so very much our fault, but what we really had to do was find the cure, and to do that, we had to get out of here.
"Do you have any idea where we're going?" I said.
Stellan nodded. Our rendezvous point was a hotel near the Old City. We'd started choosing one everywhere we went, just in case we got separated and couldn't return to where we'd been staying. "But I need to find a phone before we do anything else," he said, looking up and down the alley and directing us to the far end.
"Our phones are back in the car at the initiation site." We emerged on a major street and waited in a crowd of pedestrians for the light to change.
"I know," he said. "That's why I need to find one. Any phone. A pay phone. I need to call Anya's nanny and tell her all of this. Tell her to lie low."
Oh. That was probably half of why he'd been so on edge this whole time. "I don't know if pay phones even exist anymore. There will be a phone at the hotel. It'll be okay. I doubt they're even thinking about Anya right now."
He just nodded tightly and guided us down back streets, staying out of heavily trafficked areas. I watched the haunted faces of people going by. "If the Saxons did this here, they'll do it elsewhere if they have enough of the virus left."
Stellan nodded. "If I were betting, I'd say somewhere in the Emirs' territory, to make it look to the world like a Middle East conflict. That would spread fear faster than random attacks."
"We have to warn them, then."
Stellan looked grim. "It's unlikely anyone will believe us since they think we did it."
We rounded a corner and the hotel appeared. We both stopped, looking up at it. Neither of us had mentioned Jack and Elodie and Luc since the hospital-on purpose, I was certain. We couldn't afford to panic again. But as we'd made our way here, I'd been getting more and more nervous.