She watched them train expressionlessly, drilling even harder. When she at last let them go, Ory gave her a wide berth and didn’t speak to her for the rest of the evening. He clearly didn’t believe her when she’d brushed off his remark that she didn’t like him.
But it was true. It wasn’t that Naz didn’t like him. It was in fact the opposite. She did like him, because he was someone who was as close to the General and Paul as she was—but especially Paul. After all the stories Naz had heard him tell about his lost best friend Ory, and now having Ory here, looking and acting exactly like she’d imagined from Paul’s descriptions, telling the same stories about Paul from his own perspective, it made her feel like she too had known Ory for a long time. Like he’d also been her friend, and she’d also left him behind on that mountain.
WHEN ORY HAD FIRST WALKED THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR with Malik, the General told him that he and Paul had tried to go back and find him and his wife, Max. That was true. But what the General never told Ory was that once they’d established the army and had the forces to spare, they had planned to go back for them again, a second time.
The General hadn’t mentioned that second attempt because he didn’t like to talk about anything that touched the memory of Paul’s last days in any way. Any reminder was too painful to him. Naz was glad Ory didn’t know, though. It made things simpler. Because she was the person who was supposed to have led the rescue team to travel to that deserted mountain, to find this Orlando Zhang and Maxine Webber and bring them safely to the Iowa.
THEY’D TRAINED FOR WEEKS TO PREPARE. IT WAS TO BE A small team, just a handful of soldiers and Naz, so that they could move quickly and quietly. Paul and the General had reported that when they’d attempted to cross back themselves, the bridge had been swarmed with shadowless and too dangerous to cross—but it was still standing, and they had greater numbers now. They could make it this time.
Paul had ordered Malik to put his best people on the job, but Malik insisted he would only accept volunteers. When Naz saw the desperation in Paul’s face as he waited for someone, anyone, to raise a hand, it made her think of the first time she’d met him. She knew how easily he could have left her and Rojan there to die after the shadowless attack instead of helping them. They were total strangers, and he already had so many mouths to feed at the Iowa. For all he knew, they could have been feigning the seriousness of their injuries. The smarter, safer thing would have been to refuse to take them in. If it had been Naz who had found Paul instead of the other way around, she would have run without even so much as an apology.
But Paul didn’t. He had looked at Naz and her sister and known right away—even though they were so bundled in rags one could barely see their same dark eyes, their same sharp noses. When Malik disagreed about bringing them back to the Iowa, Paul had said, “Look at them, Malik. Just look. They’re family.” And he saved Rojan—for what little time she’d had left.
Now it was all reversed—everyone gathered was staring at Paul this time, rather than at Naz, and he was the one who was trying and failing to save the life of someone he loved.
Naz put her hand up firmly. She was the first volunteer.
But they never went. The night before the mission was to leave, Malik had to cancel the rescue—because Paul’s shadow disappeared.
“I CAN’T JUSTIFY LETTING YOU GO NOW,” MALIK TOLD HER the morning after it happened. They were outside the General and Paul’s room, where Malik had been standing guard since the previous evening. Inside, the sobs had grown hoarse with exhaustion. Naz could hear Paul’s voice, calm and muffled through the door, but the General was inconsolable. “I’m afraid to leave them, in case Paul—” He sighed. “I need someone to lead the library trips in my place until the General comes around again.”
But the General didn’t come around. As Paul deteriorated, the grief overwhelmed him. Malik tried to manage him and Naz tried to manage the army. Just before he’d lost his shadow, Paul had been particularly taken with the New Orleans rumors, and then with the idea that books could be what The One Who Gathers was seeking. Malik ordered Naz to continue collecting as many as they could, as fast as they could—at that time, the Reds didn’t exist yet. They would come later, but at that point, the library was completely abandoned. Just books and cobwebs. Once or twice, they ran into a shadowless or two inside, but they weren’t organized. Just wanderers who had happened upon a dry, warm place. Sort of like the Iowans. With Naz in charge, they managed a few good runs before things got much worse with Paul.
The last thing he said to her was about Ory. “Find him,” he begged. Naz promised tearfully that she’d do it, even though she knew that she never would now. The next day, Paul no longer remembered how to speak.