Leaving. He was leaving. Naz could feel the panic crushing her. He was leaving, and there was nothing she could do. “Malik,” she gasped.
“I know,” Malik said. She felt his arm around her shoulder, holding her up.
The General turned back once and waved, and then he was gone, turned onto another street. Everything was suddenly completely silent.
She turned to Malik at last. He and Ory looked as panicked as she felt, rooted to the asphalt, eyes wide as they stared into the empty street.
“What do we do?” Ory asked numbly. None of them moved for a few moments, until at last Vienna walked up.
“Dad,” she said softly, “they’re all waiting for you.”
Malik finally snapped back to attention and turned to face the troops. “All right!” he cried. “We don’t know how much time we have, so let’s work fast, soldiers. When the General gets back, the whole Red horde might be right on his ass—so we had better be ready to move. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir!” they cried in unison.
“My group, upstairs on packing duty. Double-check everything—we do not leave a single book! Ahmadi’s group, the basement.” He clapped once. “Let’s go!”
NAZ STILL THOUGHT OF THE BASEMENT AS A GARAGE, EVEN though it wasn’t a garage anymore—the luxury cars were all long gone. Parked in their places now was a row of carriages, each from a different era. And along the opposite wall, the soldiers had built low walls out of scrap to transform the parking spots into stalls—stables, to be exact.
“This?” Ory panted.
“No, the bridles.” Naz gestured impatiently. “The thin brown straps with the metal bit in the middle.”
She saw him pause between dragging heaps of riding tack over to her and Vienna to stare at the row of horses snorting and stamping in their stalls. She knew what he wanted to ask them—where were they getting enough grass, how had he never seen them being exercised, where had they even found them—but she could also tell he was thinking the same way she did: that would just waste time, and time was something they didn’t have much of. There was only one question that really mattered anyway. “Why aren’t we using cars?”
She smiled at being proven right.
“Would if we could,” Vienna answered as she slid the reins over one horse’s head and hefted a harness after it with a grunt. “Once the Reds figured out that petroleum makes a fire burn even faster, they went after it like—” she considered.
“Like flies after horse shit,” Naz finished for her. She reached for another bridle, and Ory jumped to grab a harness that he guessed should go after. She grunted in approval and started on the next horse in her row, hands moving efficiently, buckling straps and fitting bands across the giant, muscled creatures. He was picking it up quickly.
“You’d be lucky if you could find enough fuel in all of D.C. now to power a motorcycle for two miles,” Vienna added. She was taking the General’s decision to walk into the Red’s territory alone better than they were—still young enough to believe a person when he promised he would come back no matter what. She trusted almost as quickly as Rojan used to. “Carriages were the best we could do. We stole them from the Smithsonian before the Red King torched them.”
“Concentrate,” Naz finally admonished them, but gently. She and Vienna moved to the next horse in sync. Ory tried to scoot as quickly as he could around the stall to follow, but he accidentally bumped a huge brown bay on the nose with his shoulder. It was some kind of draft breed, with legs as thick as tree trunks. An irritated whinny screeched off the concrete ceiling.
“That’s Holmes,” Vienna said when Ory had finished cowering. She tipped her chin at the stall after, where a light gray horse of the same size with silvered hooves stood. “And Watson.”
“Because they’re clever stallions?” Ory muttered, still grimacing from the sound.
“They’re both female,” Vienna said. “I just named them that because they like to be near each other.”
They worked in silence for a few minutes after that, which is what Naz thought she had wanted. But the longer she tightened bridles and hoisted harnesses, the more agitated she became. She had actually let the General walk in there alone. She had let him talk her out of the promise she’d made with herself about Rojan, about Paul, about Ory and Max—to protect them at all costs. She had sworn each time, and now she was about to fail again.
Naz put down the bridle. Damn the General’s orders. She was not going to lose yet another person that she loved.
“Think you can finish the horses up alone?” she asked Vienna. “I need Ory for another job.”
“I still have—” Vienna started, but when she caught the expression on Naz’s face, she fell silent and saluted.
Naz nodded gratefully. “Head back upstairs,” she said to Ory, and started jogging. “I need to find Malik, and then I’ll meet you there.”