Mara had known, somewhere in the back of her mind, that her fleeing the Capital would have consequences farther reaching than the impact on her own life. She hadn’t looked that knowledge in the eye, because it carried with it a shame and guilt she did not have the strength to bear alongside her grief. Nonetheless, she had known.

Eli must have known as well, because there was no surprise in his expression or his tone as he explained what he had learned from the Order officer. Resignation, weariness, and unease, but no surprise.

They sat in Lori’s sitting room, mugs of calming tea in hand. Becca was still at work–Lori explained that when Order patrols came through they kept their distance from each other. Becca even kept separate rooms for the sake of appearances. So for now, aside from Nick and Adeline, it was only the three of them and the bloated, unpleasant truth between them.

“This is our fault,” Mara said, unwilling to let it go unspoken. Increased Order patrols across the Provinces, raids both targeted and random, a crackdown on petty crimes and sins of honor–all part of the new mission set Eli had pried from the mind of the officer. The team they’d encountered was one of forty–two full companies–the largest contingent Cinder had seen in living memory. “We caused this.” When they’d run from the Capital, they had proven the Order’s suspicions. Davy was a traitor, and he had accomplices–a robust enough network to secret away his wife and child in a city where the Order’s reach was a vice grip of control and oversight.

Who knew how many innocent lives would be turned upside down in the ensuing search for rebels? Surely this increased activity wasn’t contained to Cinder.

When she asked as much, Eli shook his head. “He was just an ensign, so he didn’t know the exact distribution. But he had friends in a company headed for Prosco and half his battalion had orders for Bedford. Both those cities already have robust order presence, so the addition is…” He shook his head again, staring down into his tea. “It’s concerning.”

“But unsurprising,” Mara added for him.

His jaw tightened, and when he looked up it was Lori’s eyes he met, not Mara’s. “I am sorry. Truly. I brought this to your door.”

Mara tried to put herself in Lori’s position. How would she feel, if fresh scrutiny and the threat of violence were levied against her family and her community for the sake of three people? How would she feel if Davy was still alive, still in danger, and the Order began routing out rebels because some other man’s family had decided to run?

How did Mara feel in her own position? She hadn’t made the decision to run. Eli had made it for her. He had weighed her life and Nick’s against the rebellion’s mission and all the lives attached to it. He had placed the burden of all those lives on her shoulders without giving her a choice.

Fierce gratitude and sullen anger mixed like oil and water within her, separating out into layers of slippery uncertainty.

There was no such uncertainty in Lori. She set her tea aside and turned so that she faced Eli on the couch they shared, one leg hitched up onto the cushions, her arm draped across the back. She wore her conviction like armor, her face that of a warrior before battle–sure and ready.

“Sweetheart,” she said. “The beast was never going to sleep forever and we’ve crept around in its shadow for long enough. You woke it, but don’t forget, you also woke us. You gave us tools with which to fight, so have some faith in what you’ve built. If we can’t handle what comes next, what was the point?”

Eli didn’t answer except to bow his head. Mara found her own posture curling over, humbled by Lori’s strength. Envious, if she was being honest. What was it like, to have such faith in one’s own power, such certainty in one’s convictions?

“Still,” she said, because Eli had voiced his apologies but she hadn’t. And whether by her choice or not, it was for her and her son that all this was happening. “It bears mentioning that we’re responsible. If there’s anything we can do–”

“Get to the Enclave,” Lori said. “Make it worth something.” She turned back to Eli. “Make it worth something.”

The way she repeated the phrase itched in the back of Mara’s mind. Something pointed in the tone that said there was something to hear between the words. The question was what.

Unfortunately, as with all of Mara’s questions, it would have to wait. She didn’t need Eli to tell her that their three-day restful sojourn in Cinder would be cut short, the sanctuary it provided run through by the Order’s presence. They spent the remainder of the hour making plans to leave, and the remainder of the day preparing for departure.

Fortunately, Eli had managed to gather all the supplies they needed before catching wind of the Order’s presence and rushing back to the Sleepery, so there was no further need to leave the relative safety of the inn.

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To Mara’s consternation, she was given charge of the children for most of the day, while Lori and Eli secreted themselves away in the dining room to have important-sounding conversations in low voices. She couldn’t exactly begrudge them the time–someone had to tend to Nick and Adeline, and she had little to contribute to a conversation about the rebel underground.

Still, she would have liked to be part of the conversation. She would have liked to learn, to have a role in things as clear and true as Lori’s. Eli spoke to the woman as an equal, trusting her with tasks–inform the others, create a withdrawal strategy out of Southport–and asking her advice–how best to rally Cinder’s small rebel contingent, how to bring the outlaw factions into rebel sympathy. And those were just the bits Mara overheard. What other confidence they shared, while she was busy resolving disputes over toys and cleaning up spilled milk, she didn’t know.

That evening, Becca returned home in time for supper, followed by rushed but tearful goodbyes. Mara hugged both women, struck by a strange sense of loss. She’d known them less than a day–had no reason to feel this way, as if she was leaving behind dear friends.

With the goodbyes rendered, Mara and Eli donned their packs and followed Lori out a back door into an alleyway that stank of mud. It had stopped raining before supper, but thick clouds blotted out the moon and stars, rendering the confines of the alleyway into an abstract construction of blue-black shapes on gray-black backgrounds. Despite the season, a crisp chill had overtaken the air and Mara’s breath clouded around her in a thick gray plume.

They waited in tense, expectant silence, until a narrow cart clattered around a corner, drawn by an animal that Mara guessed was a donkey. The cart drew to a halt beside them, and the stench of fresh rubbish wafted over them in a damp, rancid wave.

The man driving the wagon wore a hood pulled low over his face, and the only exchange was a shallow nod followed by a jerk of his head toward the wagon behind him.

Mara was not looking forward to this part of the plan.

Nick had been persuaded into a deep sleep, and Eli held him for her as she clambered up into the wagon in a narrow channel that had been carved out between piles of refuse. Once she was settled, she accepted her son and laid back, fighting not to gag at the stench. She’d tied a handkerchief over her face, doused in oil of sweetleaf, but the sharp aroma did little to dampen the thick odor of moldering rot.

Eli settled their bags by her feet and climbed in to stretch out beside her, and Lori flung a tarp over all of them. A few bags were tossed artfully over top, one resting on Mara’s legs, another on her belly, another just above her head. They were light–filled with paper and old pillows. Nonetheless, their weight and the thick canvas tarp inspired a sense of being trapped that surpassed even what she’d felt in the tunnel.

Here, there was nothing to distract her. She didn’t even have to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. She could only struggle to breathe and wait to get caught, wincing as the wagon clattered over the rough ground and jostled the back of her skull against the rough wood. The journey would take thirty minutes, she’d been told. Perhaps an hour if the driver caught wind of an Order patrol and changed his course.

They encountered no problems that she could tell, but those thirty minutes did not elapse in the usual straightforward manner. With no outside stimuli to anchor time’s passage, it performed complex, senseless maneuvers that threatened to hold her in the darkness, in the stench, in the uncertainty for an eternity. Each second bent around and stalked the heels of the second before it. The minutes wobbled in slow, drunken circles. And all the while Mara’s head thumped against the floor of the wagon, her lungs filled with the thick miasma of old trash, the air around her humid with her own breath, her dizzy mind flitting from one horrid outcome to the next–what if they were caught, what if they suffocated, what if the rubbish collector betrayed them, what if, what if, what if?

They passed through the gate. There, time reordered itself and the seconds ticked by, soothed to a steady rhythm by the ordinary exchange between their driver and the gate guards. Pleasantries, mostly. No bribes. And then they were moving again, and time resumed its aimless, spiral meander.

When the wagon finally stopped, Mara barely had the presence of mind to worry whether they had arrived at their destination or been caught. The light weight of the decoy bags was removed, and then the tarp, and a rush of cool air washed like water over her sweaty face. She blinked and could just make out the outline of trees overhead–scraggly pine branches overlapping against a backdrop of puffy, soot-gray clouds.

Eli sat up beside her and shifted to the end of the wagon, holding out his arms for Nick as she too sat up. She handed her son over and shuffled awkwardly out of the wagon, shrugged into her bag, and took Nick back. Eli had drawn their driver to the side, shaking his hand and clapping him on the shoulder. They exchanged a few whispered words, and a small coin purse that the driver tried unsuccessfully to reject. Then the driver clambered back into the wagon and drove away.

“Let’s go,” Eli whispered, gesturing toward the trees. Mara shifted Nick higher in her arms and wondered how her life had come to this. How she had come to this–reeking of trash, cold, dizzy, widowed. And strangest of all, relieved. Relieved to be back on her feet, with the dependable weight of her pack on her shoulders and a predictable path before her. Relieved to know what tonight would bring–walking, sweat, quiet breaks for food and the bliss of crisp water on her parched tongue.

She followed Eli into the trees, her feet finding easy purchase despite the uneven ground, her lungs pulling greedily at the clean, fresh air. As the woods closed in around them and the comfort of routine overtook her, she thought of Lori’s words–Make it worth something.

She didn’t know how. She had no tools with which to fight, no platform upon which to build a worthwhile future even for her son, let alone for an entire rebellion.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t learn.