“Makes sense,” he said quietly.
“That’s Ahmadi,” Vienna sighed. She kicked her feet out of her stirrups and swung them absently. It reminded Naz so much of Rojan that she had to look away. She was always on the verge of crying now, any time she thought of any of them. Rojan. Maman. Paul. Imanuel. “All business.”
“I am not all business,” Naz finally said.
“Yes, you are. That’s why my dad likes you so much.”
“WE NEED AT LEAST FIFTEEN TO STAND GUARD AT NIGHT,” Ory was saying to the group as the soldiers climbed exhausted from their horses. Dusk peeked at them from just over the horizon, already half gone. “Not forever, we can scale back after a few days—but we’re still so close to D.C. right now, the Reds might still be on our tail. I know everyone’s tired. But we’re all going to have to make it with only four hours of sleep a day until we’re in the clear. I’m going to take one of those posts tonight—who’s with me?”
Naz tried not to smile at his surprised expression as well over half the hands in the crowd went up.
“I didn’t make it through all that and then ride this far just to get ambushed my first night,” Malik said. “I’ll rest when we’re in New Orleans.”
IT SEEMED LIKE SLEEP WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE, BUT WHEN SHE woke to the sounds of screaming in the pitch-black, Naz’s first bleary thought was Well, I’ll be damned, I did drop off after all. Then she was scrambling, ripping the zipper on her tent, bow and quiver already in hand.
“What’s going on?” she shouted. The small campfire was out, no more than an angry, chugging column of smoke. Where were the Reds? She whipped the bow fiercely, searching. “General! Malik! Someone report!”
“The lake!” Vienna cried, suddenly beside her. “Leave the bow, come on!”
At the center of the camp, Ory and Malik were against the side of a carriage, trying to push it—somehow only their top halves visible in the night. A swarm of soldiers was racing to join them.
Water, Naz suddenly realized. They’re in water. “Are they . . . swimming?” she asked, dumbfounded.
“Chest deep!” Ory shouted when he saw her. “Help push, before it gets inside to the books!”
She and Vienna splashed in, gasping at the icy cold. Her hands found the rough wooden side of the carriage and she kicked as hard as she could, aiming for shore.
When the wagon was safe and all the books checked, Ory came back with a blanket over his damp hair—the best they could do for a towel. “That lake that disappeared earlier opened up right beneath us,” he said as he sat down next to her and Vienna. Someone had used new, dry wood to start another fire. The soldiers who’d jumped in wandered slowly in circles around the glow, some wearing their clothes to dry them, others clad only in undershorts, holding out shirts and pants like human clotheslines. “Thank goodness we parked all the carriages in such a wide circle. We’d never have pushed more than one out in time.”
“Put your shoes there, so they dry,” Naz said to him, pointing at the grass just beyond the flames, then shook her head. What was she, his mother? Her pants stuck to her as she shifted, slimy with lake grime. It brought all that with it too, every time it moved, it seemed. Did it also have fish?
“Hopefully we outrun it,” Ory sighed as he pried his feet out of each waterlogged boot. “Hopefully it has its own territory and will stray only so far.”
“Hopefully,” Vienna answered.
Naz watched the water reflect the light from their camp and tried not to think. About Vienna or Rojan. Or especially Ory. Every time there was danger, she filled one girl in for the other. She didn’t need a third person to worry about.
“What is it?” Ory asked.
“I just—I thought it was the Reds,” she finally said.
THE LAKE WAS STILL THERE AT DAYBREAK, AND SEEMED TO stay where it was when they left.